Chapter XIX Turning a Trick for Beany
Where’d I collect the Flemish oak tint on muh noble br-r-r-ow? No, not sunnin’ myself down to Coney Island. No such tinhorn stunt for me! This is the real plute color, this is, and I laid it on durin’ a little bubble tour we’d been takin’ through the breakfast doughnut zone.
It was Pinckney’s blow. He ain’t had the gasolene-burnin’ fever very hard until this summer; but when he does get it, he goes the limit, as usual. Course, he’s been off on excursions with his friends, and occasionally he’s chartered a machine by the day; but I’d never heard him talk of wantin’ to own one. And then the first thing I knows he shows up at the house last Monday night in the tonneau of one of these big seven-seater road destroyers, all fitted out complete with spare shoes, hat box, and a double-decker trunk strapped on the rack behind.
“Gee!” says I. “Why didn’t you buy a private railroad train while you was about it, Pinckney?”
“Precisely what I thought I was getting,” says he. “However, I want you and Sadie to help me test it. We’ll start to-morrow morning at nine-thirty. Be all ready, will you?”
“Got any idea where you’re going, or how long you’ll be gone?” says I.
“Nothing very definite,” says he. “Purdy-Pell suggested the shore road to Boston and back through the Berkshires.”
“Fine!” says I. “I’d love to go meanderin’ through the country with you from now until Christmas; but sad to say I’ve got one or two——”
“Oh, Renée tells me we can make it in four days,” says Pinckney, nodding at the chauffeur. “He’s been over the route a dozen times.”
Well, I puts the proposition up to Sadie, expectin’ she’d queer it first jump; but inside of ten minutes she’d planned out just how she could leave little Sully, and what she should wear, and it’s all fixed. I tried to show her where I couldn’t afford to quit the studio for two or three weeks, just at this time of year, when so many of my reg’lars need tunin’ up after their vacations; but my arguments don’t carry much weight.
“Rubbish, Shorty!” says she. “We’ll be back before the end of the week, and Swifty Joe can manage until then. Anyway, we’re not going to miss this lovely weather. We’re going, that’s all!”
“Well,” says I to Pinckney, “I’ve decided to go.”
Now this ain’t any lightnin’ conductor rehash. Bubble tourin’ has its good points, and it has its drawbacks, too. If you’re willin’ to take things as they come along, and you’re travelin’ with the right bunch, and your own disposition’s fair to middlin’, why, you can have a bang up time, just like you could anywhere with the same layout. Also, I’m willin’ to risk an encore to this partic’lar trip any time I get the chance.
But there was something else I was gettin’ at. It don’t turn up until along durin’ the afternoon of our second day out. We was tearin’ along one of them new tar roads between Narragansett Pier and Newport, and I was tryin’ to hand a josh to Renée by askin’ him to be sure and tell me when we went through Rhode Island, as I wanted to take a glance at it,—for we must have been hittin’ fifty an hour, with the engine runnin’ as smooth and sweet as a French clock,—when all of a sudden there’s a bang like bustin’ a paper bag, and we feels the car sag down on one side.
“Sacré!” says Renée through his front teeth.
“Ha, ha!” sings out Pinckney. “My first blow-out!”
“Glad you feel so happy over it,” says I.
It’s a sensation that don’t bring much joy, as a rule. Here you are, skimmin’ along through the country, glancin’ at things sort of casual, same’s you do from a Pullman window, but not takin’ any int’rest in the scenery except in a general way, only wonderin’ now and then how it is people happen to live in places so far away.
And then all in a minute the scenery ain’t movin’ past you at all. It stops dead in its tracks, like when the film of a movin’ picture machine gets tangled up, and there’s only one partic’lar scene to look at. It’s mighty curious, too, how quick that special spot loses its charm. Also, as a gen’ral rule, such things happen just at the wrong spot in the road. Now we’d been sailin’ along over a ridge, where we could look out across Narragansett Bay for miles; but here where our tire had gone on the blink was a kind of dip down between the hills, with no view at all.
First off we all has to pile out and get in Renée’s way while he inspects the damage. It’s a blow-out for fair, a hole big enough to lay your two hands in, right across the tread, where we’d picked up a broken bottle, or maybe a cast horseshoe with the nails in it. Then, while he proceeds to get busy with the jack and tire irons, we all makes up our minds to a good long wait; for when you tackle one of them big boys, with the rims rusted in, it ain’t any fifteen-minute picnic, you know.
Course, Pinckney gets out his fireless bottles and the glasses and improves the time by handin’ around somethin’ soothin’ or cheerin’, accordin’ to taste. Not bein’ thirsty, I begins inspectin’ the contagious scenery. It wa’n’t anything an artist would yearn to paint. Just back from the road is a sort of shack that looks as though someone might be campin’ out in it, and behind that a mess of rough sheds and chicken coops.
Next I discovers that the object down in the field which I’d taken for a scarecrow was a live man. By the motions he’s goin’ through, he’s diggin’ potatoes, and from the way he sticks to it, not payin’ any attention to us, it seems as if he found it a mighty int’restin’ pastime. You’d most think, livin’ in an out of the way, forsaken place like that, that most any native would be glad to stop work long enough to look over a hot lookin’ bunch like ours.
This one don’t seem inclined that way, though. He keeps his back bent and his head down and his hands busy. Now, whenever I’ve been out in a machine, and we’ve had any kind of trouble, there’s always been a gawpin’ committee standin’ around, composed of every human being in sight at the time of the casualty, includin’ a few that seemed to pop up out of the ground. But here’s a case where the only party that can act as an audience ain’t doin’ his duty. So a fool freak hits me to stroll over and poke him up.
“Hey, you!” says I, vaultin’ the fence.
He jerks his head up a little at that, kind of stares in my direction, and then dives into another hill of spuds.
“Huh!” thinks I. “Don’t want any city folks in his’n, by chowder! But here’s where he gets ’em thrust on him!” and I pikes over for a closer view. Couldn’t see much, though, but dirty overalls, blue outing shirt, and an old haymaker’s straw hat with a brim that lops down around his face and ears.
“Excuse me,” says I; “but ain’t you missin’ a trick, or is it because you don’t feel sociable to-day? How’re the murphies pannin’ out this season?”
To see the start he gives, you’d think I’d crept up from behind and swatted him one. He straightens up, backs off a step or two, and opens his mouth. “Why—why——” says he, after one or two gasps. “Who are you, please?”
“Me?” says I. “Oh, I’m just a stray stranger. I was being shot through your cunnin’ little State on a no-stop schedule, when one of our tires went out of business. Hence this informal call.”
“But,” says he, hesitatin’ and pushin’ back the hat brim, “isn’t this—er—aren’t you Professor McCabe?”
Say, then it was my turn to do the open face act! Course, knockin’ around as much as I have and rubbin’ against so many diff’rent kinds of folks, I’m liable to run across people that know me anywhere; but blamed if I expected to do it just walkin’ out accidental into a potato orchard.
Sure enough, too, there was something familiar about that long thin nose and the droopy mouth corners; but I couldn’t place him. Specially I’d been willin’ to pass my oath I’d never known any party that owned such a scatterin’ crop of bleached face herbage as he was sportin’. It looked like bunches of old hay on the side of a hill. The stary, faded out blue eyes wa’n’t just like any I could remember, either, and I’m gen’rally strong on that point.
“You’ve called my number, all right,” says I; “but, as for returnin’ the compliment, you’ve got me going, neighbor. How do you think I’m looking?”
He makes a weak stab at springin’ a smile, about the ghastliest attempt at that sort of thing I ever watched, and then he shrugs his shoulders. “I—I couldn’t say about your looks,” says he. “I recognized you by your voice. Perhaps you won’t remember me at all. I’m Dexter Bean.”
“What!” says I. “Not Beany, that used to do architectin’ on the top floor over the studio?”
“Yes,” says he.
“And you’ve forgot my mug so soon?” says I.
“Oh, no!” says he, speakin’ up quick. “I haven’t forgotten. But I can’t see very well now, you know. In fact, I—I’m—— Well, it’s almost night time with me, Shorty,” and by the way he chokes up I can tell how hard it is for him to get out even that much.
“You don’t mean,” says I, “that—that you——”
He nods, puts his hands up to his face, and turns his head for a minute.
Well, say, I’ve had lumps come in my throat once in a while before on some account or other; but I never felt so much like I’d swallowed a prize punkin as I did just then. Most night time! Course, you hear of lots of cases, and you know there’s asylums where such people are taken care of and taught to weave cane bottoms for chairs; but I tell you when you get right up against such a case, a party you’ve known and liked, and it’s handed to you sudden that he’s almost in the stick tappin’ class—well, it’s apt to get you hard. I know it did me. Why, I didn’t know any more what to do or say than a goat. But it was my next.
“Well, well, Beany, old boy!” says I, slidin’ an arm across his shoulder. “This is all news to me. Let’s get over in the shade and talk this thing over.”
“I—I’d like to, Shorty,” says he.
So we camps down under a tree next to the fence, and he gives me the story. As he talks, too, it all comes back to me about the first time some of them boys from up stairs towed him down to the studio. He’d drifted in from some Down East crossroads, where he’d taken a course in mechanical drawin’ and got the idea that he was an architect. And a greener Rube than him I never expect to see. It was a wonder some milliner hadn’t grabbed him and sewed him on a hat before he got to 42d-st.
Maybe that gang of T Square sports didn’t find him entertainin’, too. Why, he swallowed all the moldy old bunk yarns they passed over, and when they couldn’t hold in any longer, and just let loose the hee-haws, he took it good natured, springin’ that kind of sad smile of his on ’em, and not even gettin’ red around the ears. So the boss set him to sweepin’ the floors and tendin’ the blueprint frames on the roof.
That’s the way he broke in. Then a few months later, when they had a rush of contracts, they tried him out on some detail work. But his drawin’ was too ragged. He was so good natured, though, and so willin’ to do anything for anybody, that they kept him around, mainly to spring new gags on, so far as I could see.
It wa’n’t until he got at some house plans by accident that they found out where he fitted in. He’d go over a set of them puzzle rolls that mean as much to me as a laundry ticket, and he’d point out where there was room for another clothes closet off some chamber here, and a laundry chute there, and how the sink in the butler’s pantry was on the wrong side for a right handed dish washer, and a lot of little details that nobody else would think of unless they’d lived in just such a house for six months or so. Beany the Home Expert, they called him after that, and before any house plans was O. K.’d by the boss he had to revise ’em.
Then he got to hangin’ round the studio after hours, helpin’ Swifty Joe clean up and listenin’ to his enlightenin’ conversation. It takes a mighty talented listener to get Swifty started; but when he does get his tongue once limbered up, and is sure of his audience, he enjoys nothin’ like givin’ off his views in wholesale lots.
As for me, I never said a whole lot to Beany, nor him to me; but I couldn’t help growin’ to like the cuss, because he was one of them gentle, quiet kind that you cotton to without knowin’ exactly why. Not that I missed him a lot when he disappeared. Fact was, he just dropped out, and I don’t know as I even asked what had become of him.
I was hearin’ now, though. It wa’n’t any great tragedy, to start with. Some of the boys got skylarkin’ one lunch hour, and Beany was watchin’ ’em, when a lead paper weight he was holdin’ slipped out of his hand, struck the end of a ruler, and flipped it up into his face. A sharp corner hit him in the eye, that’s all. He had the sore peeper bound up for three or four days before he took it to a hospital.
When he didn’t show up again they wondered some, and one of the firm inquired for him at his old boardin’ place. You know how it is in town. There’s so many comin’ and goin’ that it’s hard to keep track of ’em all. So Beany just faded out.
He told me that when the hospital doctor put it to him flat how bad off his bum lamp was, and how the other was due to go the same way, he just started out and walked aimless for two days and nights, hardly stoppin’. Then he steadied down, pulled himself together, and mapped out a plan.
Besides architectin’, all he knew how to do was to raise chickens. He figured that if he could get a little place off where land was cheap, and get the hang of it well in his head before his glim was doused altogether, he might worry along. He couldn’t bear to think of goin’ back to his old home, or hangin’ around among strangers until he had to be herded into one of them big brick barracks. He wanted to be alone and outdoors.
He had a few dollars with him that he’d saved up, and when he struck this little sand plot, miles from anywhere, he squat right down on it, built his shack, got some settin’ hens, and prepared for a long siege in the dark. One eye was all to the bad already, and the other was beginnin’ to grow dim. Nice cheerful proposition to wake up to every mornin’, wa’n’t it?
Does Beany whine any in tellin’ it, though? Never a whimper! Gets off his little jokes on himself about the breaks he makes cookin’ his meals, such as sweetenin’ his coffee out of the salt bag, and bitin’ into a cake of bar soap, thinkin’ it was a slice of the soggy bread he’d make. Keeps his courage up, too, by trying to think that maybe livin’ outdoors and improvin’ his health will help him get back his sight.
“I’m sure I am some better already,” says he. “For months all I could see out of my left eye was purple and yellow and blue rings. Now I don’t see those at all.”
“That so?” says I, battin’ my head for some come-back that would fit. “Why—er—I should think you’d miss ’em, Beany.”
Brilliant, wa’n’t it? But Beany throws back his head and lets out the first real laugh he’s indulged in for over a year.
“No, hardly that,” says he. “I don’t care about carrying my rainbows around with me.”
“But look here, Beany,” says I. “You can’t stay here doin’ the poultry hermit act.”
“It’s the only thing I’m fit for,” says he; “so I must.”
“Then you’ve got to let us send you a few things occasionally,” says I. “I’ll look up your old boss and——”
“No, no!” says he. “I’m getting along all right. I’ve been a little lonesome; but I’ll pull through.”
“You ought to be doin’ some doctorin’, though,” says I.
He shrugs his shoulders again and waves one hand. “What’s the use?” says he. “They told me at the hospital there wasn’t any help. No, I’ll just stay here and plug it out by myself.”
Talk about clear grit, eh! And maybe you can frame up my feelin’s when he insists there ain’t a thing I can do for him. About then, too, I hears ’em shoutin’ from the car for me to come along, as they’re all ready to start again. So all I does is swap grips with Beany, get off some fool speech about wishin’ him luck, and leave him standin’ there in the potato field.
Somehow I didn’t enjoy the rest of that day’s run very much, and when they jollies me by askin’ who’s my scarecrow acquaintance I couldn’t work myself up to tellin’ ’em about him. But all I could think of was Beany back there pokin’ around alone in the fog that was settlin’ down thicker and thicker every day. And in the course of two or three hours I had a thought.
“Pinckney,” says I, as we was puttin’ up in Newport, “you know all sorts of crackerjacks. Got any expert eye doctors on your list?”
He chews that over a minute or so, and concludes that he has, a Dr. Jason Craige, who’s right here in town.
“He’s the real thing, is he?” says I.
“Most skillful oculist in the country,” says Pinckney, “and charges accordingly.”
“As high as fifty a throw?” says I.
“Fifty!” says Pinckney. “You should see his Cliff Walk cottage.”
“Let’s,” says I. “There’s a friend of mine I’d like to have him take a look at to-morrow.”
“No use,” says Pinckney. “He drops his practice entirely during his vacation; wouldn’t treat an Emperor then, I’ve heard him say. He’s a good deal of a crank on that—and billiards.”
“But see here, Pinckney,” says I, and I goes on to give him the whole tale about Beany, puttin’ it over as strong as I knew how.
“Sorry,” says Pinckney; “but I know of no way in which I could induce him to change his custom. He’s Scotch, you know, and as obstinate as—— Hold on, Shorty! I’ve an idea. How strong will you back my game of billiards?”
Now of all the erratic cue performers I ever watched, Pinckney gets the medal. There’s times when he can nurse ’em along the cushion and run up quite a string, and then again I’ve seen him play a game any duffer’d be ashamed of. But I begins to smell out his scheme.
“If it means a chance for Beany,” says I, “I’ll bid good-by to five twenties and let you do your worst.”
“A wager of that sort would tempt Craige, if anything would,” says Pinckney. “We’ll try it on, anyway.”
Whether it was the bluff Pinckney threw, or the insultin’ way he suggests that the Doc don’t dare take him up, I can’t say. All I know is that inside of half an hour we was in Jason Craige’s private billiard room, him and Pinckney peeled down to their shirts, and at it.
As a rule I could go to sleep watchin’ the best three-ball carom game ever played; but durin’ this contest I holds the marker’s stick and never misses a move. First off Pinckney plays about as skillful as a trained pig practicin’ on the piano; but after four or five minutes of punk exhibition he takes a brace and surprises himself.
No need going into details. Pinckney wins out, and the Doc slams his cue into the rack with some remark about producin’ the charity patient to-morrow. Did I? I routs Renée out at daylight next mornin’, has him make a fifty-mile run at Vanderbilt Cup speed, and we has Beany in the eye expert’s lib’ry before he comes down for breakfast.
It takes Dr. Craige less’n three minutes to discover that the hospital hand who told Beany he was bound to lose both lamps was a fat brained nut who’d be more useful drivin’ an ashcart. The Doc lays Beany out on a leather couch, uses a little cocaine in the right place, monkeys around a minute or so with some shiny hardware, and announces that after he’s laid up for twenty-four hours in a dark room, usin’ the wash reg’lar, he’ll be able to see as well as any of us.
It’s a fact, too; for Beany goes back on his old job next Monday mornin’.
“By Jove!” says Pinckney, after the trick is turned. “A miracle, Craige!”
“Miracle be blowed!” says the Doc. “You accomplished the miracle last night, Pinckney, when you ran thirty-two buttons on scratch hits.”
The End