CHAPTER XI
No, Nightingale Cottage ain't in the market, and it looks like I'd got a steady job introducin' Aunt 'Melie's doll collection to society; for Pinckney carts down a new gang every Sunday. As Sadie's generally on hand to help out, I'm ready to stand for it. Anyways, I've bought a fam'ly ticket and laid in a stock of fancy groceries.
The Maje? Oh, him and me made it up handsome. He comes over and tells me about that Mission Ridge stunt of his every chance he gets. But say, I'm beginnin' to find out there's others. It's a great place, Primrose Park is, and when I sized it up as a sort of annex to a cemetery I'd mistook the signs.
It don't make much difference where you are, all you've got to do to keep your blood from thinnin' out, is to mix in with folks. Beats all how much excitement you can dig up that way.
Now, I wa'n't huntin' for anything of the kind, but I was just usin' my eyes and keepin' my ears open, so I notices that out on the main road, in front of the Park, is one of those swell big ranches that hog the shore front all the way from Motthaven up to the jumpin'-off place. From the outside all you can see is iron gates and stone wall and stretches of green-plush lawn. Way over behind the trees you can get a squint at the chimney tops, and you know that underneath is a little cottage about the size of the Grand Central station. That's the style you live in when you've hit the stock-market right, or in case you've got to be a top-notch grafter that the muck-rakers ain't jungled yet.
I'd been wonderin' what kind of folks hung out in there, but I'd never seen any of 'em out front, only gardeners killin' time, and coachmen exercisin' the horses. But one mornin' I gets a private view that was worth watchin' for.
The first thing on the program was an old duffer dodgin' in and out around the bushes and trees like he was tryin' to lose somebody. That got me curious right away, and I begins to pipe him off. He was togged out in white ducks, somethin' like a window cook in a three-off joint, only he didn't sport any apron, and his cap had gold braid on it. His hair was white, too, and his under lip was decorated with one of them old-fashioned teasers—just a little bunch of cotton that the barber had shied. He was a well-built old boy, but his face had sort of a sole leather tint to it that didn't look healthy.
From his motions I couldn't make out whether he was havin' a game of hide-and-go-seek or was bein' chased by a dog. The last thought seemed more likely, so I strolls over to the stone wall and gets ready to hand out a swift kick to the kioodle, in case it was needed.
When he sees me the old gent begins to dodge livelier than ever and make signals with his hands. Well, I didn't know his code. I couldn't guess whether he wanted me to run for a club, or was tryin' to keep me from buttin' in, so I just stands there with my mouth open and looks foolish.
Next thing I sees is a wedge-faced, long-legged guy comin' across the lawn on the jump. First off I thought he was pushin' one of these sick-abed chairs, like they use on the board walk at Atlantic City. But as he gets nearer I see it was a green wicker tea-wagon—you know. I ain't got to the tea-wagon stage myself, but I've seen 'em out at Rockywold and them places. Handy as a pocket in a shirt, they are. When you've got company in the afternoon the butler wheels the thing out on the veranda and digs up a whole tea-makin' outfit from the inside. When it's shut it looks a good deal like one of them laundry push-carts they have in Harlem.
Now, I ain't in love with tea at any time of the day except for supper, and I sure would pass it up just after breakfast, but I don't know as I'd break my neck to get away from it, same's the old gent was doin'. The minute he gets a look at the wagon comin' his way he does some lively side-steppin'. Then he jumps behind a bush and hides, givin' me the sign not to let on.
The long-legged guy knew his business, though. He came straight on, like he was followin' a scent, and the first thing old Whitey knows he's been run down. He gives in then, just as if he'd been tagged.
"Babbitt," says he, "I had you hull down at one time, didn't I?"
But either Babbitt was too much out of breath, or else he wasn't the talkative kind, for he never says a word, but just opens up the top of the cart and proceeds to haul out some bottles and a glass. First he spoons out some white powder into a tumbler. Then he pours in some water and stirs it with a spoon. When the mess is done he sticks it out to the old gent. The old one never lifts a finger, though.
"Salute, first, you frozen-faced scum of the earth!" he yells. "Salute, sir!"
Babbitt made a stab at salutin' too, and mighty sudden.
"Now, you white-livered imitation of a man," says the old gent, "you may hand over that villainous stuff! Bah!" and he takes a sniff of it.
Babbitt keeps his eyes glued on him until the last drop was down, then he jumped. Lucky he was quick on the duck, for the glass just whizzed over the top of his head. While he was stowin' the things away the old fellow let loose. Say, you talk about a cussin', I'll bet you never heard a string like that. It wasn't the longshoreman's kind. But the way he put together straight dictionary words was enough to give you a chill. It was the rattlin' style he had of rippin' 'em out, too, that made it sound like swearin'. If there was any part of that long-legged guy that he didn't pay his respects to, from his ears to his toe-nails, I didn't notice it.
"It's the last time you get any of that slush into me, Babbitt," says he. "Do you hear that, you peanut-headed, scissor-shanked whelp?"
"Ten-thirty's the next dose, Commodore," says he as he starts off.
"It is, eh, you wall-eyed deck swab?" howls the Commodore. "If you mix any more of that infant food for me I'll skin you alive, and sew you up hind side before. Do you hear that, you?"
I was wearin' a broad grin when the old Commodore turns around to me.
"If that fellow keeps this up," says he, "I shall lose my temper some day. Ever drink medicated milk, eh? Ugh! It tastes the way burnt feathers smell. And I'm dosed with it eight times a day! Think of it, milk! But what makes me mad is to have it ladled out to me by that long-faced, fish-eyed food destroyer, whose only joy in life is to hunt me down and gloat over my misery. Oh, I'll get square with him yet, sir; I swear I will."
"I wish you luck," says I.
"Who are you, anyway?" says he.
"Nobody much," says I, "so there's two of us. I'm livin' in the cottage across the way."
"The deuce you say!" says he. "Then you're Shorty McCabe, aren't you?"
"You're on," says I. "How'd you guess it?"
Well, it seems one of my reg'lars was a partner of his son-in-law, who owned the big place, and they'd been talkin' about me just the day before. After that it didn't take long for the Commodore and me to get a line on each other, and when I finds out he's Roaring Dick, the nervy old chap that stood out on the front porch of his ship all through the muss at Santiago Bay and hammered the daylights out of the Spanish fleet, I gives him the hand.
"I've read about you in the papers," says I.
"Not so often as I used to read about you," says he.
And say, inside of ten minutes we was like a couple of G. A. R. vets, at a reunion. Then he told me all about the medicated-milk business.
It didn't take any second sight to see that the Commodore was a gay old sport. He'd been on the European station for three years, knockin' around with kings and princes, and French and Russian naval officers that was grand dukes and such when they was ashore; and he'd carried along with him a truck-driver's thirst and the capacity of a ward boss. The fizzy stuff he'd stowed away in that time must have been enough to sail a ship on. I guess he didn't mind it much, though, for he'd been in pickle a long time. It was the seventeen-course night dinners and the foreign cooking that gave him the knockout.
All of a sudden his digester had thrown up the job, and before he knew it he was in a state where a hot biscuit or a piece of fried potato would lay him out on his back for a week. He'd come home on sick leave to visit his daughter, and his rich son-in-law had steered him up against a specialist who told him that if he didn't quit and obey orders he wouldn't last three weeks. The orders was to live on nothin' but medicated milk, and for a man that had been livin' the way he had it was an awful jolt. He couldn't be trusted to take the stuff himself, so they hired valets to keep him doped with it.
"I scared the first one half to death," says the Commodore, "and the next one I bribed to smuggle out ham sandwiches. Then they got this fellow Babbitt to follow me around with that cursed gocart, and I haven't had a moment's peace since. He's just about equal to a job like that, Babbitt is. I make him earn his money, though."
You'd have thought so if you could have seen the old Commodore work up games to throw Babbitt off the track. I put in most of the day watchin' 'em at it, and it was as good as a vaudeville act. About a quarter of an hour before it was time for the dose the valet would come out and begin to look around the grounds. Soon as he'd located the Commodore he'd slide off after his tea wagon. That was just where the old boy got in his fine work. The minute Babbitt was out of sight the Commodore makes a break for a new hidin' place, so the valet has to wheel that cart all over the lot, playin' peek-a-boo behind every bush and tree until he nailed his man.
Now you'd think most anyone with a head would have cracked a joke now and then with the old gent, and kind of made it easy all round. But not Babbitt. He'd been hired to get medicated milk into the Commodore, and that was all the idea his nut could accommodate at one time. He was one of these stiff-necked, cold-blooded flunkies, that don't seem much more human than wooden Indians. He had an aggravatin' way, too, of treatin' the old chap when he got him cornered. He was polite enough, so far as what he had to say, but it was the mean look in his ratty little eyes that grated.
With every dose the Commodore got madder and madder. Some of the names he thought up to call that valet was worth puttin' in a book. It seemed like a shame, though, to stir up the old gent that way, and I don't believe the medicine did him any more good. He took it, though, because he'd promised his daughter he would. Course, I had my own notions of that kind of treatment, but I couldn't see that it was up to me to jump in the coacher's box and give off any advice.
Next mornin' I'd been out for a little leg-work and I was just joggin' into the park again, when I hears all kinds of a ruction goin' on over behind the stonewall. There was screams and yells and shouts, like a Saturday-night riot in Double Alley. I pokes up a giraffe neck and sees a couple of women runnin' across the lawn. Pretty soon what they was chasin' comes into view. It was the Commodore. He was pushin' the tea-wagon in front of him, and in the top of that, with just his legs and arms stickin' out, was Babbitt.
I knew what was up in a minute. He'd lost his temper, just as he was afraid he would, and before he'd got it back again he'd grabbed the valet and jammed him head first into the green cart. But where he was goin' with him was more'n I could guess. Anyway, it was somewhere that he was in a hurry to get to, for the old boy was rushin' the outfit across the front yard for all he was worth.
"Oh, stop him, stop him!" screams one of the women, that I figures out must be the daughter.
"Stop 'im! Stop 'im!" yells the other. She looked like one of the maids.
"I'm no backstop," thinks I to myself. "Besides, this is a family affair."
I'd have hated to have blocked that run, too; for it was doin' me a lot of good, just watchin' it and thinkin' of the bumps Babbitt was gettin', with his head down among the bottles.
I follows along on the outside though, and in a minute or so I sees what the Commodore was aimin' at. Out to one side was a cute little fish-pond, about a hundred feet across, and he was makin' a bee line for that. It was down in a sort of hollow, with nice smooth turf slopin' clear to the edge.
When the Commodore gets half-way down he gives the cart one last push, and five seconds later Mr. Babbitt, with his head still stuck in the wagon, souses into the water like he'd been dropped from a balloon. The old boy stays just long enough to see the splash, and then he keeps right on goin' towards New York.
At that I jumps the stone wall and prepares to do some quick divin', but before I could fetch the pond Babbitt comes to the top, blowin' muddy water out of his mouth and threshin' his arms around windmill fashion. Then his feet touches bottom and he finds he ain't in any danger of bein' drowned. The wagon comes up, too, and the first thing he does is to grab that. By the time I gets there he was wadin' across with the cart, and the women had made up their minds there wa'n't any use fainting.
"Babbitt," says the Commodore's daughter, "explain your conduct instantly. What were you doing standing on your head in that tea-wagon?"
"Please, ma'am, I—I forget," splutters Babbitt, wipin' the mud out of his eyes.
"You forget!" says the lady. And say, anyone that knew the old Commodore wouldn't have to do any guessin' as to who her father was. "You forget, do you? Well, I want you to remember. Out with it, now!"
"Yes, ma'am," says Babbitt, tryin' to prop up his wilted collar. "I'd just give him his first dose for the day, and I'd dodged the glass, when somethin' catches me from behind, throws me into the tea-wagon, and off I goes. But that dose counts, don't it, ma'am? He got it down."
I sees how it was then; Babbitt had been gettin' a commission for every glass of the medicated stuff he pumped into the Commodore.
"Will you please run after my father and tell him to come back," says the lady to me.
"Sorry," says I, "but I'm no antelope. You'd better telegraph him."
I didn't stay to see any more, I was that sore on the whole crowd. But I hoped the old one would have sense enough to clear out for good.
I didn't hear any more from my neighbors all day, but after supper that night, just about dusk, somebody sneaks in through the back way and wabbles up to the veranda where I was sittin'. It was the old Commodore. He was about all in, too.
"Did—did I drown him?" says he.
"You made an elegant try," says I; "but there wasn't water enough."
"Thank goodness!" says he. "Now I can die calmly."
"What's the use dyin'?" says I. "Ain't there no thin' else left to do but that?"
"I've got to," says he. "I can't live on that cursed stuff they've been giving me, and if I eat anything else I'm done for. The specialist said so."
"Oh, well," says I, "maybe he's made a wrong guess. It's your turn now. Suppose you come in and let me have Mother Whaley broil you a nice juicy hunk of steak?"
Say, he was near starved. I could tell that by the way he looked when I mentioned broiled steak. He shook his head, though. "If I did, I'd die before morning," says he.
"I'll bet you a dollar you wouldn't," says I.
That almost gets a grin out of him. "Shorty," says he, "I'm going to risk it."
"It's better'n starving to death," says I.
And he sure did eat like a hungry man. When he'd put away a good square meal, includin' a dish of sliced raw onions and two cups of hot tea, I plants him in an arm chair and shoves out the cigar box. He looks at the Fumadoras regretful.
"They've kept those locked away from me for two weeks," says he, "and that was worse than going without food."
"Smoke up, then," says I. "There's one due you."
"As it will probably be my last, I guess I will," says he.
Honest, the old gent was so sure he'd croak before mornin' that he wanted to write some farewell letters, but he was too done up for that. I tucked him into a spare bed, opened all the windows, and before I could turn out the light he was sawin' wood like a hired man.
He was still workin' the fog horn when I went in to rout him out at five o'clock. It was a tough job gettin' him up, but I got him out of his trance at last.
"Come on," says I, "we've got to do our three miles and have a rub-down before breakfast."
First off he swore he couldn't move, and I guess he was some stiff from his sprint the day before, but by the time he'd got out where the birds was singin', and the trees and grass looked like they'd been done over new durin' the night, I was able to coax him into a dog-trot. It was a gentle little stunt we did, but it limbered the old boy up, and after we'd had a cold shower and a quick rub he forgot all about his joints.
"Well, are you set on keepin' that date in the obituary column, or will we have breakfast?" says I.
"I could eat cold lobscouse," says he.
"Mother Whaley's got somethin' better'n that in the kitchen," says I.
"I suppose this will finish me," says he, tacklin' the eggs and corn muffins.
Now, wouldn't that give you the pip? Why, with their specialists and medicated dope, they'd got the old chap so leery of good straight grub that he was bein' starved to death. And even after I'd got him braced up into something like condition, he didn't think it was hardly right to go on eatin'.
"I expect I ought to go back and start in on that slop diet again," says he.
I couldn't stand by and see him do that, though. He was too fine an old sport to be polished off in any such style. "See here, Commodore," says I, "if you're dead stuck on makin' a livin' skeleton of yourself, why, I throws up me hands. But if you'll stay here for a couple of weeks and do just as I say, I'll put you in trim to hit up the kind of life I reckon you think is worth livin'.
"By glory!" says he, "if you can do that I'll—"
"No you won't," say I. "This is my blow."
Course, it was a cinch. He wa'n't any invalid. There was stuff enough in him to last for twenty years, if it was handled right. He begun to pick up right away. I only worked him hard enough to make the meals seem a long ways apart and the mattress feel good. Inside of a week I had the red back in his cheeks, and he was chuckin' the medicine ball around good and hard, and tellin' me what a scrapper he used to be when he first went to the cadet mill, down to Annapolis. You can always tell when these old boys feel kinky—they begin to remember things like that. Before the fortnight was up he wasn't shyin' at anything on the bill of fare, and he was hintin' around that his thirst was comin' back strong.
"Can't I ever have another drink?" says he, as sad as a kid leavin' home.
"I'd take as little as I could get along with," says I.
"I'll promise to do that," says he.
He did, too. About the second day after he'd gone back to his son-in-law's place, he sends for me to come over. I finds him walkin' around the grounds as spry as a two-year-old.
"Well," says I, "how did the folks take it?"
He chuckles. "They don't know what to say," says he. "They can't see how a specialist who charges five hundred dollars for an hour's visit can be wrong; but they admit I'm as good as new."
"How's Babbitt?" says I.
"That's why I wanted you to come over," says he. "Now watch." Then he lets out a roar you could have heard ten blocks away, and in about two shakes old wash-day shows up. "Ha! You shark-nosed sculpin!" yells the Commodore. "Where's your confounded tea cart? Go get it, sir."
"Yes, sir; directly, sir," says Babbitt.
He comes trottin' back with it in a hurry.
"Got any of that blasted decayed milk in it?" says the Commodore.
"No, sir," says Babbitt.
"Are you glad or sorry? Speak up, now," says the Commodore.
"I'm glad, sir," says Babbitt, givin' the salute.
"Good!" says the Commodore. "Then open up your wagon and mix me a Scotch high-ball."
And Babbitt did it like a little man.
"I find," says the Commodore, winkin' at me over the top of his glass, "that I can get along with as few as six of these a day. To your very good health, Professor McCabe."
Stand it? Well, I shouldn't wonder. He's a tough one. And ten years from now, if there's another Dago fleet to be filled full of shot holes, I shouldn't be surprised to find my old Commodore fit and ready to turn the trick.