Plain Mary Smith: A Romance of Red Saunders

by Henry Wallace Phillips

"What in the world!" says I.

"Behold the Marquis De La Tour!" says he.

"The devil it is!" says I. "Still respected, though forty greats removed! Perez, old man, that's my grandpa!"

"The face proves it," he answered. "He is also mine. Cousin, I felt the pull of blood this day. Your hand, and we shall have a bottle of wine."

"It ain't often that a man meets his forty-ply great-grandpa and so nice a Spanish cousin," says I. "I reckon I can square it with Mary later. Lead on, McDuff, and dammed be he who cannot hold enough."

A very tidy little tidal wave of joy broke over the Perez mansion. Everybody rejoiced; we had the man-servant and the maid-servant and the rest of the menagerie in drinking healths to the new-met relatives. To this day I ain't exactly sure how close connected Perez and I are. Grandpa De La Tour was a little nearer than Adam, to be sure, but not near enough, so there wouldn't have been some fussing about his will, if it should suddenly be discovered.

One of his daughters married a Spaniard that started the Perez line,—and My! but that line was spread out thin! There'd been pretty husky families on my side, too; however, I was durned proud to claim kin with a man like Perez, and I wouldn't have spoiled the lonesome little man's joy in finding a relative, anyhow. All his tribe but him had been wiped out completely. I was the only relative he had—that is, that he knew about. The United States was full of 'em, if he'd only known it. Europe, too, I reckon. Still, his talk about the pull of blood wasn't nonsense, neither. I felt drawn to him from the first, and who can say that in feeling and ways of acting we really weren't closer connected than some brothers are? And Grandpa De La Tour was all right for an excuse. I sure did look like him—not so much now, that I wear hair on my face, but then I wouldn't have known which was him and which was me if we met on the street.

Before we turned in for the night I spoke to Perez again about Sax and Mary. He listened eager enough now. What I suggested was all right—little peculiarities of a gentleman. As Perez put it, "The greater courtesy of the heart, that stops not at the puny fences of the fixed way." How different the same thing looks in different lights! He was dead right about the fences. I never saw a fence yet without wanting to tear a hole in it, but you've only to string a thread across, if I've no business there, to keep me out.

It appeared to me then, and it appears to me still, that I had a right to interfere in Mary's affair. At times, of course, you're a plain meddlesome Pete, if you cut in, and you deserve all you probably will get,—as many kicks as the parties can land on you before you escape; on the other hand, Perez was right when he said it sometimes was shameful not to interfere. And while marriage is the most private of all things, it's the most binding, too: you can lose money, get experience, and make more; fall out with your friends and make it up again, but a lifetime tied to one person is the stiffest proposition a human being is called upon to face. Here's Mary, a girl without much experience, putting herself in the way of being hooked for life to a man I knew to be a fraud—let her suffer for her folly? No, by the Lord! Let me suffer for my folly, if necessary, but in it I go. We're all kids and sometimes we've got to be made to do the right thing—and—here's the rub—if strict but kind papa is sure he's right (which he can't be) its easy; if not, I suppose it's up to us as per general orders, do the best you can and prepare to go down with the wreck. I envy the man who's sure he's right, but the Lord have mercy on his friends. Well, that's what Perez and I arrived at; that we were stacked against a blooming mystery and we'd shoot at the one glimmer of light we had. Mary did care for Sax. Good. Belknap was a fraud. Good. To the devil with the rest of the argument.

However, I didn't reveal my full plan regarding Belknap to my kinsman. I had a hunch that even my likeness to Grandpa De La Tour wouldn't convince him. You see, like most kids, savages, and people not grown up in general, I believed in playing the game as it was played on me. I wouldn't let a rogue escape for want of a helpful lie in season, acted or spoken. I couldn't see why you shouldn't get him his way, so long as you got him. It took me some years to understand Saxton's saying, that it was better for a rascal to escape, than for an honest man to turn rascal in catching him. Plain enough when you think of it. If you work low down on the other feller, to trip him, there's two rascals, that's all. It comes medium hard to see it in that light, though, when before your eyes the rascal is having it all his own way. And, while I disapprove of my own methods, the results was great. No use talking, the wicked sometimes prosper and your Uncle William played in a full-jeweled streak of luck. The next day I opened my campaign.