“Sit down here a minute–I’ve been wanting to see you for a month.” Captain Morton spoke all but in a whisper. The Adam’s apple kept strangling him. The Judge saw that the old man was wrestling with some heavy problem. He turned, and looking down at the little wizened man, asked: “Well, Captain?”
The Captain moistened his lips, patted his toes on the 257floor, and twirled his fingers. He took a deep breath and said: “Tom, I’ve known you since you were twenty-one years old. Do you remember how we took you in the first night you came to town–me and mother? before the hotel was done, eh?” A smile on the Judge’s face emboldened the Captain. “You’ve got brains, Tom–lots of brains–I often say Tom Van Dorn will sit in the big chair at the White House yet–what say? Well, Tom–” Now there was the place to say it. But the Captain’s Adam’s apple bobbed convulsively in a second silence. He decided to take a fresh start: “Tom, you’re a sensible man–? I says to myself I’m going to have a plain talk to that man. He’s smart; he’ll appreciate it. Just the other day–George back there, and John Kollander and Dick Bowman and old man Adams, and Joe Calvin, and Kyle Perry were in here talking and I says–Gentlemen, that boy’s got brains–lots of brains–eh? and he’s a prince; ’y gory a prince, that’s what Tom Van Dorn is, and I can go to him–I can talk to him–what say?” The Captain was on the brink again. Slowly there mantled over the face of the prince the gray scum of a fear. And the scar on his forehead flashed crimson. The Captain saw that he had been anticipated. He began patting his toes on the floor. Judge Van Dorn’s face was set in a cement of resistance.
“Well?” barked the Judge. The little man’s lips dried, he smiled weakly, and licked his lips and said: “It was about my sprocket–my Household Horse–I says, Tom Van Dorn understands it if you gentlemen don’t and some day him and me will talk it over and ’y gory–he’ll buy some stock–he’ll back me.”
The Captain’s nervous voice had lifted and he was talking so that the clerk and Mr. Brotherton both in the back part of the store might hear. The cement of the Judge’s countenance cracked in a smile, but the gray mantle of fear still fluttered across his eyes.
“All right, Captain,” he answered, “some other time–not now–I’m in a hurry,” and went strutting out into the storm.
Mr. Brotherton with his moon face shining into the ledger laughed a great clacking laugh and got up from his stool to 258come to the cigar case, saying, “Well, say–Cap–if you’d a’ went on with what you started out to say, I’d a’ give fi’ dollars–say, I’d a’ made it ten dollars–say!” And he laughed again a laugh that seemed to set all the celluloid in the plush covered, satin lined toilet cases on the new counter a-flutter. He walked down the store with elephantine tread, as he laughed, and then the door opened and Dr. Nesbit came in. Five months had put a perceptible bow into his shoulders, and an occasional cast of uncertainty into his twinkling eyes.
Mr. Brotherton called half down the store, “Say, Doc–you should have been here a minute ago, and seen the Captain bristle up to Tom Van Dorn about his love affair and then get cold feet and try to sell him some Household Horse stock.” The Captain grinned sheepishly, the Doctor patted the Captain affectionately on the shoulder and chirped.
“So you went after him, did you, Ezry?” The loose skin of his face twitched, “Poor Tom–packing up his career in a petticoat and going forth to fuss with God–no sense–no sense,” piped the Doctor, glancing over the headlines in his Star. The Captain, still clinging to the subject that had been too much for him, remarked: “Doc–don’t you think some one ought to tell him?” The Doctor put down his paper, stroked his pompadour and looking over his glasses, answered:
“Ezry–if some one hasn’t told him–no one ever can. I tried to tell him once myself. I talked pretty middlin’ plain, Ezry.” He was speaking softly, then he piped out, “But what a man’s heart doesn’t tell him, his friends can’t. Still, Ezry, a strong friend is often a good tonic for a weak heart.” The Doctor looked at the Captain, then concluded: “That was a brave, kind act you tried to do–and I warrant you got it to him–some way. He’s a keen one–Ezry–a mighty keen one; and he understood.”
Mr. Brotherton went back to his ledger; the Doctor plunged into the Star, the Captain folded up his newspaper and began studying the trinkets in the holiday stock in the show case under the new books. A comb and brush with tortoise shell backs seemed to arrest his eyes. “Doc,” he mused, “Christmas never comes that I don’t think of–her–mother! 259I guess I’d just about be getting that comb and brush for her.” The Doctor casually looked through the show case and saw what had attracted the Captain. “Doc,” again the Captain spoke, bending over the case with his face turned from his auditor: “You’re a doctor and are supposed to know lots. Tell me this: How does a man break it to a woman when he wants to leave her–eh?” Without waiting for an answer the Captain went on: “And this is what puzzles me–how does he get used to another one–with that one still living? You tell me that. I’d think he’d be scared all the time that he would do something the way his first wife had trained him not to. Of course,” meditated the Captain, “right at first, I suppose a man may feel a little coltish and all. But, Doc, honest and true, when mother first left I kind of thought–well, I used to enjoy swearing a little before we was married, and I says to myself I guess I may as well have a damn or two as I go along–but, Doc, I can’t do it. Eh? Every time I set off the fireworks–she fizzles; I can see mother looking at me that way.” The old man went on earnestly: “Tell me, Doc, you’re a smart man–how Tom Van Dorn can do it. What say? ’Y gory I’d be scared–right now! And if I thought I had to get used all over again to another woman, and her ways of doing things–say of setting her bread Friday night, and having a hot brick for her feet and putting her hair in her teeth when she done it up, and dosing the children with sassafras tea in spring–I’d just naturally take to the woods, eh? And as for learning over again all the peculiarities of a new set of kin and what they all like to eat and died of, and how they all treated their first wives, and who they married–Doc? Doc?” The Captain shook a dubious and doleful head. “Fourteen years, Doc,” sighed the Captain. “Pretty happy years–children coming on,–trouble visiting us with the rest; sorrow–happiness–skimping and saving; her a-raking and scraping to make a good appearance, and make things do; me trying one thing and another, to make our fortune and her always kind and encouraging, and hopeful; death standing between us and both of us sitting there by the kitchen stove trying to make up some kind of prayer to comfort the other. Fourteen 260 years of it, Doc–her and me, and her so patient, so forbearing–Doc–you’re a smart man–tell me, Doc, how did Tom Van Dorn get around to actually doing it? What say?”