The Red Book Magazine/Volume 46/Number 2/You Can't Always Tell
ENVELOPES. Don't you remember how you used to pounce upon the broad white envelopes with embossed titles in the upper left-hand corners, that came in the morning's mail? You still open them as they come, but without enthusiasm; for right well you know that you are going to be invited to a banquet (where nobody laughs any more) or to some kind of a sale; or some ancient sweetheart of yours is announcing her twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, and naturally you are expected to dig up something in silver.
But these ordinary envelopes, bought already stamped, written in lead-pencil, thumb-marked, disreputable! Never yet have you opened one of these and been wholly disappointed. You have found everything in these chirographical outcasts—tragedy, comedy, inexpressible romance, “mute inglorious” Miltons.
So it is with human envelopes; the gold lies within the shabby Of course there will sometimes be a beautiful envelope with a beautiful content; but in this noisy jungle of ours, they are white orchids.
Certainly, upon seeing Jimmy Conway, alias Dope, for the first time, your initial thought would be: I should not care to meet that chap after dark!
Jake Killian trained prize-fighters and managed them. His camp was in the foothills of the Adirondacks. He believed in training his man so far from New York that junkets were impossible. The result was, he had on his string a middle- and a light-weight, real contenders, clean, healthy fighting-machines and formidable box-office attractions. Tommy Sands and Willie Donlin drew big purses and put away their “cuts” against that rainy day inevitable in the lives of ring-men.
The camp consisted of a comfortable frame house on one side of the road, and a roomy barn on the other. This barn had been converted into a gymnasium, the stalls having been made over into bedrooms, where the handlers and pork-and-beaners slept.
Dope's true patronymic was unknown to most of those who knew him. He was called Dope because he was a peripatetic World's Almanac on all matters of fistiana. Killian fed and clothed him and gave him a little money from time to. time. Whenever Sands or Donlin was matched with some comparatively unknown scrapper, Killian consulted Dope. In ringside phraseology, Dope would point out the merits and demerits of the challenger; and nine times out of ten, his information would be correct. Hence, the nickname......
It began on a May day. A few compact white clouds sailed northeast across the blue The willows were golden; the spruce and balsam were developing tender bloomy greens among the rusty Emerald green were the fields that rolled down from the forest rim. The air was full of magic; it got into the blood—sap was springing up in all things that lived. Far away to the north were the mountains where patches of snow gleamed whitely—the stubborn fingers of winter sullenly giving way.
The boys were gathered at the south end of the barn, roughing it with the handball. They were barking joyously like young dogs.
“Soak it, ol' scout!”
“Atta boy!”
Dull of eye, Dope sat on the stone wall. He was wizen and rateyed and flat of chest First-off, he repelled you; you had to get used to him to dissipate the suggestion that it wouldn't be wise to come upon him in the dark. Thus it is that Fate stamps humanity with her ironic heel. Within that gargoyle of a body burned the soul of Galahad, striving desperately to get out, to express itself. Galahad, blind and swordless!
It was hard work to become friends with Dope; but once the contract was made, it was bound with hoops of steel. Perhaps, of all those who knew Dope, only Killian's niece suspected the imprisoned thing that beat itself against invisible bars.
Dope talked the argot of the ring; for the life of him, he could not have said ten words without committing mayhem upon some of them. But he read “Treasure Island,” “Lorna Doone,” “Rodney Stone,” “The Three Musketeers,” “The Tale of Two Cities'—any good book he could lay his hands on. Of course there had to be fighting, or a book was worthless to him. One of his pet heroes was Umslopogas, that bloody old Zulu of Rider Haggard's tales. Dope was educating his mind, but his tongue was a truculent, unconquerable rebel. Once Jenny Killian had found him sniveling. He had just come upon Sidney Carton's end. Shamed at being caught in such unmanly weakness, he had confessed to a bad cold in the head; and Jenny, full of understanding, had given him some camphor pills, never again remarking the incident.
DOPE'S tongue was a double-edged rapier—in ring dialect, be it understood. When the boys were throwing the medicine balls listlessly or were sparring without the needful pep, a few words were sufficient to turn them into angry bulls. As they dared not ease this rage by pummeling Dope, they took it out on one another, to the secret delight of Killian, whose curses often fell short. Only one could put a button on Dope's rapier—Willie Donlin: the deeper the irony, the wider grew Willie's Irish grin.
Dope's tongue was clean, as a rapier is clean: no smut was bandied about while he was hard by. This, because Jenny was always bobbing up unexpectedly. Thus Dope not only stirred the man-lust in them properly, but also kept their looseness of speech in check.
So today he sat hunched on the stone wall—a living gargoyle, Irony personified.
“Hey, Willie, whata yuh think that is—a dishrag?” he cried from a droop-cornered mouth.
Willie grinned and sent the ball with such violence against the side of the barn that Sands muffed the rebound and had to step off the cement into the soggy soil to recover.
“How's that, Count?” jeered Willie.
Willie no longer called the other Dope. He applied military and noble titles, because of the bookish tendencies of his baiter. Singularly enough, these jeering epithets pleased Dope and were one of the two things that stirred him to smiles. The other was Jenny. If he saw her coming down the road, half a mile away, he smiled.
No man ever wished to be sublime for his own sake. Thus Dope was always dreaming of doing mighty deeds, of making tremendous sacrifices. He was perpetually assuming the char- acter of some adored hero. He was D'Artagnan or John Ridd or Sidney Carton when he was alone; and was always wondering what Jenny would say when she learned that it was he who had pulled her out of The Cardinal's clutches, or the den of the Doones.
The handball game went on; but before its allotted time was up, Dope became conscious of some one standing on the far side of the wall within arm's-reach. He turned and saw a young man in the early twenties, in a rough suit of clothes, a flannel shirt, a sport cap and a pair of muddy tan shoes. Killian's camp was four miles from the railway.
Some new pork-and-beaner, thought Dope contemptuously—a cream-puff, too. Suddenly he asked himself where he had seen this pale face before. For Dope had the memory of an elephant; he never forgot a face that interested him. He had seen this boy somewhere.
“Wall, stranger?” he drawled, imitating Mr. Hart. Dope was a movie fan.
“Any chance of a job around here?” The young fellow had a pleasant voice.
“Sure. We hire 'em as they come. Which hand is the mule-kick in?”
“What?”
“Which is the haymaker, or have yuh got two?”
“Oh! Why, there may be a kick in both. That's the point. I want to find out.”
Dope laughed derisively. “Yuh will if yuh stick around here!”
“Where will I find Mr. Killian?” asked the stranger, unabashed. He even smiled, revealing a set of white, handsome teeth.
“Don't yuh like your teet'? Why waste 'em on this dump?”
“Oh, I sha'n't mind spending a couple—if I get what I want.”
THE smile vanished; and instantly Dope recognized the quality of the expression that succeeded; he had seen it in the ring hundreds of times. The expression—swiftly come and gone—stirred his respect; and his bright, ratlike eyes began to absorb the stranger. What he saw—though he could not have described it—was a face that would have been handsome and manly but for the pasty skin, bloodshot eyes and bloodless lips. Dope knew all the signs of dissipation, and he saw in the stranger's face the initial marks of the Broadway route. The body was straight and the frame generous. Dope went into primary mathematics; up to the mark this guy ought to tip the scales at a hundred and sixty; just now, if he weighed a hundred and twenty-five, he was lucky. No ordinary pork-and-beaner, this one; even with the hangover, he had class. And where had he seen him before?
Shot and crisscrossed as his mind was by the imprint of great moments in fiction, Dope scented a plot. He swung around and off the wall.
“C'mon, baby,” he said; “I'll take yuh straight to papa. An' listen, he's the wisest guy in the game. So don't pull no boner, or yuh hikes right back where yuh come fm. Whata yuh think y are, Poicy?”
“Welter.”
“Where'd yuh fight last?”
“Coming up the road.”
“Whazat?”
“Fighting to see if I was ready to lose a couple of teeth.”
“Amachure, huh?”
“Yes.”
“All right; I'll steer yuh into Pops. An' mind the footwork. Gotta be fast to get by Pops.”
Killian's desk stood in the corner of the living-room. In another corner was a fine player-piano. Over all was the sign-manual of the woman. There is something indescribable about the way a woman can deftly feminize a man's room.
Killian was a big man, raw-boned, clear of skin and eye. In his youth he had been a cowboy, and he still possessed the cow- boy's contempt for cities. He went to New York or Boston or New Orleans, wherever the ring was; but immediately after the fight, he herded his men directly back to camp, which sprawled over six hundred acres and was farmed by local men on a fifty-fifty basis. Once in a while, however, because he understood men thoroughly, he took the boys down to New York, when there was no serious fight in the offing, and let them run loose for two or three days. A few theaters and a few pool-games at Doyle's, and some candy benders constituted this wild dissipation. Back in camp again, the candy and the cake were sweated out of them by strenuous work-outs, and life resumed its normal run.
POPS—few called him Jake—sat at his desk, sorting a fat bundle of press-clippings.
“Hey, Pops, here's a new choppin'-block for Sands an' Willie. Amachure welter. Was last knocked out by Kid Hooch. Thinks he's got too many teet', an' wants to gamble a couple.”
“All right, Dope. Here, take these clippings and look 'em over. See if the line on the Wop is all right.”
Dope took the clippings and departed, grinning slyly.
The stranger then had a queer sensation. The cold blue eye of the ex-cowboy ran up and down him with almost the feel of a hand.
“Huh. Young man, you've got the wrong camp. The man you're looking for is Billy Muldoon. This is no health-resort. I'm a pug exploiter.”
“I want to be licked every day for three months—for board and lodgings. If at the end of that time I can't give as good as I get, give me the gate and I'll walk back to where I came from.”
Killian chuckled. “That's a brand-new one. Licked every day for three months, huh? What's the big idea?”
“I'm offering my body, not my reasons.” But the young man smiled as he spoke.
“You're no fighter.'
“That's been the trouble for the past five years.”
“So you were a scrapper before that date, huh? At what?”
“Football.”
“Where?”
“Have I got to tell you?”
“You sure have. No mysteries on this lot, no ringers. We know all about you, or we don't know you at all.”
“Yale.”
“Can you prove it? You don't have to stand up; sit down.”
The stranger sat down, and for a while stared at the floor. “In confidence,” he said.
“Well, I don't say no to that. But mind, I'm not hiding any crook. When I give a job to a man, I must know him all the way back to his first teeth. If I like your story, I'll keep my mouth shut; if I don't, you beat it.”
Half an hour later Killian rose. His eyes twinkled, but his face was grim.
“Sands and Donlin live here; the rest of the boys bunk in the barn. You'll find it comfortable. I'll check up your yarn, and if it dovetails, I'll see that you get all the lickings you require.”
“You don't belong to this camp,” Jenny pursued. “You're not the sort who let pugilists batter them about.”
“Thanks.”
“What do you want to be called?”
“Johnny White.”
Killian laughed. “Johnny White it is. Toddle out to the barn and make yourself known. I'm feeding you to Willie Donlin; and if you're not sick of the job inside a week— Well, we'll see. But put the diamond-hitch on this: no loafing, no stalling; you fight or you beat it. Breakfast at seven, dinner at one and supper at six. Johnny on the spot is the word around here. Go over and make yourself known. Say I sent you.”
Killian turned his chair to the desk and became absorbed in the unsorted clippings. The stranger understood that he was dismissed. Slowly he left the house and walked toward the barn.
Dope entered noisily, his beady eyes alight with excitement.
“Hey, where's that guy gone?”
“Sent him over to the barn,” said Killian. “Why?”
“Lookit what I finds on the back o' one o' them clippin's. The minute I lamps him, I knowed I'd seen him somewheres.”
Killian read the reverse side of the Saturday sport page of an evening newspaper. He called into service his poker face: it was a good one.
“You're a million miles away, Dope. Look alike, maybe, but that's all there is to it.”
“Yuh mean to say—”
“Sure. White just gave me his stuff.”
“Mebbe he was lyin'.”
“Did you ever lie to me and get by with it?” Dope grinned. “Well,” continued Killian, “the boy told me the truth. Jenny's been feeding you too many 'Deadwood Dicks.' ” Killian tore up the clipping and dropped the bits into the basket. “Toddle over to the barn and get things started for six two-minute rounds.
I want to see what this bird has got.”
Dope saw his jaw harden. The next act would be a call for the police. But the unexpected happened.
“All right, Pops.” Dope wasn't the least fooled by Killian's attitude. Those clippings had come in with the morning's mail, and nearly all of them were fresh. The thing had happened Friday, and this was Wednesday of the following week Of course it was young Bromley, and Killian had his reasons for keeping mum
White's frame was sturdy, but it was clothed with flabby flesh, and the skin was dull. Killian saw at once that the boy had had on the gloves before. On one side of the ring was a four-plank grandstand, and here Killian perched himself.
“No hitting in the clinches, Willie,” he called “This is a try-out.”
“All right, Pops,” said the grinning Donlin. He was almost a head shorter than White. “Where d'yuh want it?”
“Anywhere but the stomach,” answered White cheerfully.
The pork-and-beaners glowered at the newcomer. They always glowered at candidates for pummelasia, for it generally meant that one of them was to go
The gloves were “pillows,” and stung and shocked but mildly. When either Sands or Donlin was in training for a bout, the regulation gloves were in order. and the setups earned their beans
The young man who called himself White suddenly found himself in the center of a leather shower-bath. Donlin hit him everywhere but in the foot, as the saying goes, with everything but the pail. All through the six rounds, however, White grinned—a mobile grin at the start, a set grin at the finish. He went into the shower-room with a red eye (black tomorrow) and a split lip as the result of the try-out. These were the visible signs. Inwardly he was in agony; his lungs ached, and his back; his knees seemed to be disjointed; his hands were numb and useless. The shower revived him to some extent. To be licked every day for three months!
“What's he got?” asked Killian of his lightweight
“A left that's a wiz; but he needs thirty pounds o' beefsteak to put the kick in it. What's the big idea? This guy aint no beaner; he aint no pro.”
“He comes up to be licked ninety days straight,” said Killian “And no coddling.”
Everybody within hearing laughed. There was a lot of coddling in this camp, where cruelty to human beings was taught scientifically as well as relentlessly! But while they laughed, the men scented a mystery. Killian wasn't managing a health resort.
“Well, how d'yuh feel?” asked Dope, as, later, he and White started for the house in answer to the supper bell
“I've been drawn through a lopsided knothole.”
“Soft's a new egg. A week'll toughen the shell. Hungry?”
“Nothing since morning. Two doughnuts and a cup of coffee.”
White strongly disliked the appearance of Dope; but he warmed toward the little man for his proffer of companionship.
Dope, as a matter of fact, was boiling and bubbling with tinted romance. This was just like it was in a book; and he was “gonna eat it up.” He wasn't friendly toward the newcomer; he was merely friendly toward the opportunities the young man offered in the realm of romantic dreams.
The dining-room contained two tables, large and small. At the large table sat the handlers and “chopping-blocks,” the proletariat of the camp. Mind you, there were no loafers about; you worked at something, and you worked hard, too. Dope guided his tentative protégé to a chair and sat down beside him
By the window was the small table, and at this Killian, Sands and Donlin seated themselves. White indifferently noticed a vacant chair.
Supper consisted of prime beefsteak, baked potatoes, spinach bran muffins and coffee. There was rich milk if you wanted it. White could not remember of having ever tasted steak so good. He had a juicy bit impaled upon his fork and on the way to his eager mouth, when the fork paused in midair—Jenny Killian came in and sat down in the empty chair.
“A young woman in camp?” White whispered to Dope. “Who is she?”
“Jenny Killian,” Dope replied in kind. “The fines' skirt in the world. An' put that in your coco right now: Killian was a cowboy oncet, an' packed a gun. If she speaks to yuh, O. K.; but if she don't, keep on walkin'.”
White, whose heart was filled with bitterness against all women, sullenly resented the presence of this girl. He hadn't come here to be polite to anyone, to open his book of etiquette, to tip his hat. He had come to Killian's, boiling with vengeance; he wanted to live hard, feel hard, wanted no soft tones on this canvas. \ woman about, to dodge or to kowtow to—he didn't like it. No one at the Killian table had risen; this took a grain or two out of the bitterness.
Ten times during the meal he caught himself staring at Jenny, and each time he pulled his gaze aside angrily. For Jenny—to quote Dope—was an eyeful: Diana in sport clothes, tanned, vibrant, sweet-voiced (for White heard her frequent laughter), her red-brown hair bundled carelessly on top of her head. White grew puzzled. The girl did not seem to fit in. Probably it was this fact that attracted his eye; certainly it was not because she was woman.
After supper Dope led him to the front porch, and together they sat down pn the bottom step. He was informed that Jenny taught the district school and had for three years, and that from one end of the county to the other folks liked Jenny Killian White pretended an interest he did not feel. His eye pained him, and his lips were puffed and dry; he longed for his cot in the stall; but tonight he must wait for his cue. Dope extended a pack of cigarettes.
“Smoke?”
“No, thanks.”
“No cigs, huh?”
“Smoked my last this morning.”
“F'r how iong?”
“Three months.”
“All right. We'll boil that an' the hooch outa yuh. But nobody c'n boil the yelluh out.”
“There's a lot in me.”
“Uh-huh! Ku Klux?”
White laughed. “Not as bad as that. I'm yellow under my own hat.”
“Sure. Aw, take a peek at that!” Dope waved his hand toward the rolling hills, bearing the aftermath of day on their crests. “Lookit them stars. Smell th' air.”
Surprised by this unexpected sidelight, White asked: “You like scenery?”
“Ye-ah, even w'en it's on a shirt-front,” answered Dope dryly. “The first week I gits here—four years ago—I quits cheatin' myself at Canfield. Some day I'll be a dam' fool an' go to church Now yuh know why Sands and Donlin are on top. Yuh can't do no dirty work in a clean place like this.”
“Why do they call you Dope?”
Patiently Dope explained
“What's your real name?” White was becoming interested in this odd specimen of humanity
“Reginald Vere de Vere—same as yours is White. Ye-ah.”
Footsteps. Both men turned their heads.
“Hello, Dope.”
“Hello, Jenny. Meet White—some new pie for Willie to play movies wit'.”
White got up and took off his cap, inwardly cursing himself for having done so.
“I hope you'll like it here, Mr. White.”
“I think I shall.”
Dope chuckled audibly and lit a fresh cigarette.
Jenny proceeded to the road and swung off toward the north.
“What made you laugh?” White wanted to know
“Yuh think yuh'll like it here! Aint that a wow? Wait'll Willie gits interested in yuh. Wait'll yuh git one o' Sands' five-inch pokes in the slats. Oh, baby! He thinks he'll like it here!”
WHITE was up at five-thirty the next morning, because of Dope's insistence. He was so lame that he never wanted to get out of bed again. But he recollected in time what this adventure signified. So he set his teeth and thought hard upon the objective point. He would reach it if it was the last thing he ever did on earth. The May dawn was chill and the shower untempered; but when he reached the breakfast table, he was hungry.
Dope outlined the daily routine. The afternoons would be open, though White was warned that Killian had a trick of suddenly shifting schedules. In the morning there would be odd jobs about the place until ten; from then until noon, work-outs with the gloves, with an hour's rest before lunch. In the afternoons there would be hikes across country—optional to all but Sands and Donlin.
At ten-thirty White took his second drubbing—smiling. Killian knew all about that kind of smiling. This boy was in torture, and it would take the length of two weeks to graduate this torture to a negligible point. But would he stick it out fourteen days? That remained to be seen. Anyhow, Killian decided that he was going to enjoy watching this particular evolution.
At three-thirty Killian, Sands and Donlin started off for the two-hour hike. White joined them. He was muscle-wise, as they say. The harder he plugged, the sooner his aches would diminish in their intensity. But the stride today was too swift for him. At the end of two miles he dropped out and sat down on a boulder, his lungs on the verge of bursting.
What a wreck he had made of himself in these five years! He set his chin in his palms, his elbows on his knees, and ran back across these five mad years. Was he yellow? He had never been yellow at college. He had played the game there. Could yellowness be acquired, implanted? Two weeks of this life would settle that question.
SHE had laughed—the woman he had spent his love and money on. Laughed, when Gorham had knocked him down in the Ritz supper-room; laughed, when he had got up and lunged at Gorham, only to be knocked down again; laughed, with the emerald bracelet he had given her flashing on her white wrist. And he hadn't understood until he awoke in a police cell the next morning, where he had been haled on the charge of drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Played him for the poor fool he was, and all the while in cahoots with that shyster broker Gorham!
The Great White Way; jazz and liquor and show-girls! A father who had given him enough money to land him in jail and who then had disowned him!
“No son of mine!”
He had left the house, perfectly assured that somehow he had got into the movies and that this was the end of the first reel.
“Feeling pretty bad?”
He turned his head, positively astonished to behold Jenny Killian, a lunch-box and some books under her arm. He stood up because the act was a part of his inheritance
“No wind any more.”
“That'll come back,” said Jenny. “Johnny White—is that your real name?”
“You don't belong to this camp,” Jenny pursued. “You're not the sort who let pugilists batter them about.”
“I'm going to be, for a while. But you don't belong, either.”
Jenny laughed. “Oh, yes, I do. Killian's my uncle, and I adore him. Let the boys understand you, and they're as good as any. My uncle knows men, and only the right sort ever step inside this camp.”
“How do you know I'm the right sort?”
“I don't; but he does.”
He saw her face now in the clear daylight. It was strong, yet exquisitely feminine. She had approached him and was talking to him exactly as one of his own kind would have done: easily, confidently, without a mark of diffidence. His own kind! he thought bitterly. Five years had come and gone since he had mingled with his own kind. Under the tan of her satiny skin was a ruddy glow; and her eyes were as blue as any he had ever seen. She was almost as tall as he was.
On her side she saw handsome youth under the film that was the beginning of false old age. She had noticed this sign on the faces of most men who came to camp to witness the work- outs when Sands or Donlin was getting in shape for a match— followers of the ring. There was a difference, however: upon the faces of these visitors the film was set. Here there was a chance of youth and renewed health absorbing the sign. In fine, the breed was different.
“No use waiting for the boys to pick you up. Suppose we get on toward camp?”
“All right.”
“How long will you be here?”
“Three months, I expect.”
“Then we'll see a lot of each other. So, if it will ease your mind, I'll tell you that I shall never ask you any questions. You've got by Uncle. He has some good reason for taking you on. He never makes any mistakes.”
“He sha'n't make any in mine.”
She understood exactly what he meant. “Let's get on. Take it easy; no hurry. And don't mind about me. I can outwalk anyone in camp except Donlin. That boy has more stamina than any human being has a right to.”
“I'll O. K. that.”
“Hurt you?”
“Some.”
“Another thing,” she said, as together they fell into an easy stride. “No matter what happens, never cry 'enough.' It's a cruel game, and that's its first law. In two weeks' time you'll like everybody or you'll hate everybody.”
“I don't believe I shall hate you.”
“You haven't got to hate or like me. I'm in a ringside seat and don't count.”
She was like no other girl he had ever known, either in life or in books. She did not belong to the world in which he had formerly moved; she did not belong to the world he had but recently left. Had she been of either, his interest would have remained unstirred. Neither was she what he would have designated as middle-class. He was conscious of astonishment; he could not label her. He sensed her presence as he did the air, clean and invigorating. And here she was, in a prize-fighters' camp, as out of place as Ione would have been, living among the rough gladiators in the Suburbium.
The highway wound in and out of virgin forests and around crystal lakes. Suddenly a vista caught White's eye, and he stopped entranced. Beyond the break in the forest he saw a lake, lying like a newly minted coin in a green purse. Above, compact white clouds were forming profiles and castles and heavenly fortresses across a background of intense blue.
“God seems very near, doesn't He?” said Jenny softly.
“Thanks for reminding me.”
“Do you like books?”
“Very much. I've neglected them, too.”
“I haven't much of a library, but you're welcome to what | have. Probably you've read most of them. 'Lorna Doone'--that kind.”
“I shall be very glad to have something to read.”
So atmospheric effects stopped him, and he liked good books! This young man couldn't be all bad, was her thought. Her uncle read mankind, and had no use for books. None of the fighting men read anything but the sporting pages of newspapers. She had succeeded with Dope; but he was as yet only skimming the top of the pot of gold. Later, when they became better acquainted, she might pleasantly talk of books with this young man.
Jenny was lonely; but she admitted it only in her prayers. She longed for the companionship of young women, and the longing was denied. The village accepted her for what she was, a school-teacher of high merit, to whom childhood flew as the needle to the magnet. Shrewd and saving, the district school-commissioners accepted Jenny despite her sordid background—the prize-fighters' camp. Socially the village ignored her. Folks were willing to trust her with their children but not with their silver.
Killian, manlike, because of Jenny's ready laugh, did not suspect the tragedy that stalked his niece. Jenny taught because she wanted to, not from necessity. Every dollar he had in the world—and Jenny knew it—was hers for the asking; and rough but simple man that he was, he considered this sufficient to pay his obligations to his brother's daughter. Had he known that Jenny had been affronted and often slighted, he would have torn down the village with his bare hands.
Here, then, was a situation as old as the hills: a young woman seeking companionship and a young man trying to patch up his broken illusions. Delectable propinquity!
DOPE was sitting on the porch steps as they came over the knoll toward the house. Everything within him seemed to tighten suddenly, as if a cold hand had thrust itself into his breast and squeezed. Seeing a stranger with Jenny always did that, so there was no novelty in the sensation. But yonder was a new kind of stranger—Jenny's style. He had never really feared the average camp visitor; but this son of the man who built railroads across the last wildernesses, who counted his millions as Jimmy Conway counted his dimes!
These days folks weren't quite human to Dope. He was always enduing them with the likeness of characters out of the few books he had read. He was sensible enough to realize that only a fairy-tale miracle could put Jenny within his reach. But there was this dream: that he and Jenny would grow old together here, that to the end of time he would hear her laughter and see the sparkle in her eyes.
He flung away his cigarette and went down to the gate.
“Hey, Jenny!” he hailed. “Minnie's come through wit' six pups.”
Minnie was Killian's pet Airedale.
“Six? Good heavens! Was the poor thing alone?”
“Naw. I heard her yelpin' an' hiked aroun' to the woodshed. They looks like a lot o' caterpillars.”
Jenny flew down the side-path and vanished around the rear of the house.
“Gee!” said Dope, wiping his forehead. “Can yuh beat it? I was a helluva midwife. Gee! Kinda hurts to see a dawg suffer an' not doin' nothin' for it.”
White held out his hand. “Will you shake?”
“What's the big idea?” asked Dope, hardening up again.
“I can always like a man who likes dogs.”
Dope felt hypnotized. He did not want to shake hands with White. He knew that in a little while he was going to hate this young man more bitterly than any other thing on God's earth. Yet he took the proffered hand; and White was surprised to find the hand warm and dry.
“I know a lot about dogs. I'm going to see if Miss Killian has any boracic acid to treat the pups' eyes with. Even in professional kennels you have to be on the watch.”
White took the side-path to the wood-shed.
Dope returned to his perch on the steps, the pains of hell in his heart and the mirth of Antisthenes the Cynic in his head.
THE resilience of the early twenties! The heart as well as the body! Misfortune strikes with the same futility as water strikes a duck's back.
At the end of two weeks White no longer smiled as he received his daily drubbing: he laughed. His body, tuning up day by day, tonicked a sickly mind. His superior mentality soon made itself evident in his pillowed fists. The old trick of watching the other fellow's feet returned. He began to “read up” this dynamic shadow known as Willie Donlin; and one fine morning he sent Donlin, doubled like a jackknife, through the ropes. Inside of eight seconds Willie was back; but he did not fall in position.
“Y' ol' son-of-a-gun!” he said, grinning. He held out his hand.
So it came to pass exactly as Jenny had foretold. He liked these gladiators, clean living, illiterate; he liked their rough play, their practical jokes; he admired and envied them their control of their tempers. He had never once noted the passion of anger. Because they roared and went slam-bang at each other was no indication of temper. There is always something deadly in madness controlled. Never in all his life had he heard such baitings as Killian gave the men; and presently he understood the meaning; the boys knew that Killian was trying to make them lose their tempers, and that they weren't to be caught.
JUNE moved on. Jenny's school closed for the vacation months. At some time during the day White usually found himself with the girl—in the woodshed with the puppies, or on the porch, talking books. One afternoon Jenny got out a couple of rods and guided him to a merry stream which they whipped until sundown, netting a dozen speckled beauties.
Killian paid no direct attention to their companionship. He knew Jenny. She could take care of herself in any emergency, mental or physical. Besides, she was twenty-one, on her own; he was not her guardian, but only her uncle. So he proceeded as usual, plotting campaigns for Sands and Donlin. Perhaps his indifference was due to the knowledge he had of White, direct knowledge. In his man's eyes, White had made good; more than that, the boy had a likable personality.
Dope hated White, a hatred steeped in the thought of battle, murder and sudden death. He hoped passionately that, sooner or later, Sands or Donlin would spoil that handsome face, make it ugly and grotesque like his own. He hated White for his pantherlike quickness, whereas his own quickness was monkeylike.
He thought up dreadful plots for the extermination of his enemy, but never put one of these into execution. Jenny was in the way. He mustn't hurt Jenny. If she grew to care for the White-light boob, why, that was all right; if she didn't, why, that was all right, too. He could think evil, but he could not apply it. Jenny alone mattered; the rest of the world didn't count.
What did they talk about in the woodshed with the pups—when they went fishing—when they chatted on the porch—when they sat by the player-piano? The agony of it! He never intruded; he dared not. He might give himself away, though he knew Jenny wasn't the kind who'd laugh. Jenny would cry if she learned that Dope loved her.
And the funny thing was, the boob seemed to like him. Whadda yuh know about that, huh? He was always making ad- vances; and he had to grin and bandy talk when he wanted the boob's throat in his grip. Out of all the training-camps, he had to pick this one!
Many a time, when the house was deserted, Dope would go out to the woodshed and commune with Minnie the Airedale.
“Helluva world, eh, Minnie? You wit' no weddin'-ring an' me wit' a face 'at'd stop a sun-dial. What's the big idea, huh? Sure, them's fine pups; take it f'm me. They's thoroughbreds, an' I'm a mongrel. F'r all I know, I'm an Irish-Wop, out of a Senegambian. My ol' man an' woman—don't know who they was. Say, Minnie, come across. Was it that big redheaded son-of-a-gun f'm the millionaire's camp? I betcha!”
Then he would take Minnie's lean, wiry head in the crook of his arm and sit cheek by jowl with her; and Minnie would rumble with pleasure. For she loved this man into whose soul she could look as no human eye ever might—loved him better than her master, though she hid this passion with that skill known to females the world over. She was loyal to Killian, but her love was Dope's.
DOPE possessed that uncanny gift of true poets and novelists, of seeing through masks, of translating smiles, glances. All he lacked was expression; and woefully he lacked that. He had always watched a newcomer to note the effect upon Jenny. After the first day or so he had ceased to worry. Until now not a man had appeared to Jenny other than just one of the species. But this young fellow who called himself White and was somebody else was as different from the familiar breed as Jenny was different from all the other women Dope had ever known.
Dope wasn't a liar, not even to himself; and he recognized the fact that the glory of youth had returned to the erstwhile wastrel. What intensified his bitterness was the positive knowledge that, with Jenny out of the picture, he too would have liked White.
It was in July that he learned the truth—that Jenny had found her mate. He saw it in her eyes, in her smile—heard it in her voice. He wasn't so sure of White. These swells were all alike in covering up. White was always eager to go where Jenny listed; he was always standing up and taking off his cap when she entered or left the room But Dope could not positively assert that there were any love signs in these actions of respect.
So there came about a change in his desires. He no longer dreamed of exterminating his rival. He dreamed instead of committing some act of colossal irony, of rescuing White from a burning building, of dragging him forth alive from the lake or from under an automobile—of giving him to Jenny.
Should he tell Jenny who White was—the son of Bromley, the millionaire railroad builder? - For Killian's little maneuver—the casual destruction of the identifying newspaper clipping—had not hoodwinked Dope in the least. He had seen this boy more than once at the ringside, togged out in “soup-and-fish”"—the National Sporting Club stuff. A millionaire's son, booted out of house and home for a row in a fashionable restaurant that had landed him in jail, who never had earned a dollar in his life, who had chased around with Broadway Lizzies until the coin gave out. And Jenny had fallen for him! To warn Jenny now would be to act the sneak; and Jenny despised sneaks. He should have told her in May; now it was too late.
He resented, too, Killian's apparent indifference What was Jake thinking of? Couldn't he see the way things were going? Ye-ah; what was the matter with Pops?
Thus, Dope was like the will-o'-the-wisp of the swamps, as old wives have it; a soul that couldn't find its way out.
ONE night, when Dope believed the others in bed, he went for a walk. He couldn't sleep; and he knew by experience that a long walk in the night usually induced sleep. On his return—around eleven, for ten o'clock was taps at Killian's—he paused at the house gate to moon at Jenny's window.
Suddenly a strange, puzzling sound struck his ears. At first he could not get the direction; but his eyes, now trained to the dark, presently discovered a dim shape apparently draped across the stone wall. Soft-footed, he approached.
It was Jenny, sobbing
“Jenny, what's the matter?”
“Why, Dope, is that you?”
“What's he been sayin' to yuh? I'll croak him!”
“What are you talking about? Croak whom?”
“White.”
“You're crazy! White hasn't said anything to me. Why should he? I'm just blue. Women are fools sometimes. The village lets me teach their children, but it ignores me otherwise; and I grow very lonely.”
Her voice would have fooled his ears had he not previously noted the love-lights in her eyes. He smiled ironically, trusting the dark.
“When is he checkin' out?”
“Tomorrow,” answered Jenny thoughtlessly.
So that was it? A joyous fire ran over him. Jenny would be his again.
“D'yuh know who he is?”
“Of course. He told me all about himself long ago.”
Dope wanted to laugh. Whichever way he turned, his knife was beaten down. “What did he say his handle was?”
“Bromley.”
“Uh-huh. Father boots him out 'cause he's a Broadway hound, a souse an' a skirt- chaser; an' he comes up here to git in shape so's he can do it all over again.”
“No, Dope. He'll never go back to that again.”
“What's he done—ast yuh to marry him?” Dope demanded, his knees trembling.
“Good heavens, no! I'm a school-teacher, and he's the son of a rich man.”
“What t'ell's that got to do wit' it—if yuh took a shine?”
“Dope, I would never marry a man who was at odds with his family. I might become an obstacle, a barrier between him and the reconciliation; and in the end he would turn about and hate me. They think differently in that world than we do in ours, Dope. I'm the niece of a man—and I love him!—who manages prize-fighters. We are outcasts; even the village knows it and acts accordingly. So be it. There will always be children to teach. You don't know what it is, Dope, to watch their little minds grow, to be the confidante of their joys and sorrows. And the mischief of them! They are like Minnie's puppies. But I thought you and Johnny were friendly?”
“Oh, he's friendly,” snarled Dope. “If he goes to the ol' town, I'm gonna go, too. I wanta pick him up off the sidewalk when his ol' man gives him the leather again.”
“Dope, has Johnny ever done anything to you that you should hate him?”
“I jus' don't like his kind, Jenny. You'd better gumshoe it into the house before they's a scandal.”
“Good night, Dope.”
“Good night, Jenny.”
He crossed the road to the barn and tiptoed to his stall.
So that was it! Jenny loved White, but White didn't care. Dope tried in vain to analyze his emotions. He was glad that White did not iove Jenny; he was miserable because Jenny loved White. Oh, there was no mistaking that; he had come upon Jenny weeping over the thought of losing White.
Johnny, she had called him. To hell with him! And yet it was evident that White had played fair. He hadn't made love to Jenny to pass the time. Round and round he, Dope, followed the unbroken circle. He could not destroy White for two reasons: Jenny loved him and the boy had played fair. Dope dug his fingers venomously into his pillow.
NEXT morning Dope was surprised by White.
“Dope, I'm off to New York today. I want you to go with me. I'll stake you to the fare both ways. I'd like your company.”
“Well, say!” Dope wanted to laugh; the desire was almost uncontrollable—sardonic laughter. “Where's the coin comin' f'm?”
“I've a couple of hundreds I've been hanging on to. Will you come?'
“I'll hafta see Pops.”
“He's agreeable.”
“Company, huh? You're on. I need a little wild life. Lead me to it.”
It was not the bid for his companionship that intrigued Dope; it was the grim expression on White's face. The boy was going right in to Daddy and tell him what was what; and a guy named Dope would be witness to the scene. He had dug up some interesting facts about Bromley Senior, a man as tough and rigid as his rails; and the meeting would be a hot one. Besides, he would be seeing the last of Bromley, alias Johnny White. Ye-ah.
The good-by was general—at the breakfast-table. White shook hands with everyone. He did not maneuver Jenny apart from the others to say good-by to her alone. He did not hold her hand any longer than he held Killian's or Sands' or Donlin's. Dope wanted to kill him for Jenny's sake—hug him for his own.
IT was an ail-day ride on the train and it was hot and stuffy. The oddly assorted pair whiled away most of the time at pinochle. They got out at Utica and Albany to stretch their legs. From Albany to New York they snoozed in spine-twisting positions. At ten the train drew into New York.
All through the day Dope had covertly studied the tanned handsome face of the man he hated, to discover some weakness if he could. All day long his eyes encountered a set grimness which nothing he said nor did could lift. This was not the face of a man on the way to beg parental forgiveness; on the contrary, it was that of a man about to demand a reckoning.
“We'll take a taxi, Dope.”
“It's your coin, M'Lord. Aint it too late to see the ol' man?”
“My father? If he ever sees me again, it will be the result of an accident.”
Dope at once understood, to use his own expression, that he had wandered up the wrong alley.
“But why the poison-ivy mug all day?”
“The what?”
“That map o' yourn. Look's if yuh'd been eatin' nails.”
“Oh. That's why I wanted you to come along. I've got a little business to transact, and I want you to witness it.”
To the taxi-driver he named a famous club. He then turned to the astonished Dope.
“I'm still a clubman, Dope. Paid for my room and dues up to next January. Good hunch, wasn't it? Place to sleep until I land a job.”
“Yuh aint comin' back wit' me to camp?”
“No.”
For a moment Dope became wildly happy. He wanted to hug his enemy. But the recollection of Jenny sobbing—
AT the club the doorman spoke respectfully, though he looked askance at Dope, whose expression was blasé. He was 1s impenetrable to the visible grandeur of uniforms as the armadillo probably is. Dollars to doughnuts he knew some of these club guys by their first names, for Dope's acquaintance was as wide as it was mixed.
Entering his room and bidding Dope sit down, White proceeded to open his trunk, out of which he took a light summer suit. He dressed in silence.
“Is the ol' man in town?” asked Dope.
“I suppose so. When he's not in Europe or South America, he's always sure to be in town.”
“Uh-huh. What's this gonna be t'night—prelim or main bout?”
“How did you learn who I was?” countered White.
“Newspaper an' Id piped yuh at the ringside a few times. Come across, now; what's the lay? I aint pokin' my noodle int' sumpin I don't know nothin' about.”
“So you read about the row in the newspaper? Well, I'm going to the Ritz and shame the man who shamed me. No man or woman shall make a fool of me and get away with it. Will you hold the bucket?”
“Believe me, Aloysius—bucket, bell an' sponge !”
FOR it flashed into Dope's head that this poor boob was going to walk straight into the same mess he had walked into in the spring. There would be general rough-house, jail and another newspaper yarn. That would cure Jenny, by and large. Once Jenny might forgive; but never a repeat. Dope decided to leave no effort untried to bring about this debacle. The old life again, with Jenny all to himself.
“Yuh sure o' findin' your man?”
“Long-distance yesterday. He said he'd be at the Ritz with the mate to the punch he'd given me before.”
“Let's go!” cried the jubilant Dope. “Why, they's nothin' to it. One punch'll send him to the hospital. Yea, bo!”
As he later entered the Ritz supper-room at young Bromley's heels, Dope was conscious of the same thrill that had tingled him years ago, when, as a newsie, he had stolen into his first prize-fight up in Harlem
Bromley paused inside the threshold of the supper-room, his eye roving. Dope saw his jaw harden, and knew that the next act would be a call for the police. But the unexpected happened. Bromley put his hand on Dope's shoulder and began to laugh! Dope recognized the quality instantly; it was not the sardonic laughter of the ring; it was just laughter, the explosion of humorous thought.
“Come on, Dope. Let's take the air.”
Bromley literally propelled Dope into the street
“Yelluh, huh?” snarled Dope, flinging off the hand. He was murderously mad.
“No. All these weeks preparing for this moment, and then not caring a damn! It was the girl's face, Dope—the same girl who rooked me and laughed. One look, and then I knew what had happened. Jenny, God bless her! Jenny, clean and straight! If she'll wait a little— Come on; we've just thirty minutes to make the Grand Central in!”
Dope stood perfectly still, dull and cold.
“Yuh gonna go back?”
“You bet I am! Dear God, I wonder if she cares a little? Well, I'm going to find out. Come on!”
“Nix. I gotta lot o' errands,” hedged Dope. “Tell Pops I'll be back day after t'morrow.”
“So long, then!”
Bromley ran to the curb, got into a taxi and vanished. Slowly Dope set his steps toward Broadway, where there was a cheap hotel which he patronized when in New York. Jenny The lights danced and multiplied, and Dope was astonished to find that his eyes were filled with tears!
THE offices of the Bromley Construction Company were on Broad Street, fourteenth story. You went up in express lifts that unsettled your diaphragm. The main office hummed with the clatter of typewriters. There was a barrier in the form of a high railing. Inside this barrier, at the left of the gate, was an elderly man with a cold face and an agate eye. No one passed this man except by appointment; he was the bulldog at the gate.
“I wanta see Mr. Bromley,” said Dope.
“Busy.”
Murder boiled up inside of Dope. He understood. It was his mug. He couldn't get by anywhere with that. A volley of hair-lifting oaths rumbled against his teeth; but he remembered Jenny in time.
“J'ever make any mistakes?”
Cerberus looked up, frankly astonished “We all make mistakes sometimes,” he admitted.
“Well, take it f'm me, you're gonna make one helluva mistake unless yuh git me to the boss. Got some news about his son that wont keep.”
“Ned?” The guard jumped to his feet. “I'll tell him at once, though he gave orders not to be disturbed.”
“Wait a minute. Don't wanta see yuh come back wit' the spiel they aint no son. Tell him if he ever wants to see his son alive again, he'd better see me.”
“He's dying?” cried the guard, aghast.
“Naw. But that'll git a rise.”
“I'll tell you frankly, if Ned is after money, this is the wrong shop.”
“Not a nickel, not a plugged buffalo. He don't even know I'm here.”
“All right,” said the guard. Within five minutes he was back. “The first door. I hope your story's good; otherwise you may come out on your head.”
“Leave it to me,” replied Dope jauntily.
HE was unafraid; he would have faced a dozen Bromleys as unagitatedly as presently he would face one. The secret of this nonchalant approach was, he wanted nothing for himself. Besides, thirty of his thirty-six years had been spent among the rough of temper, so that he himself was no mean antagonist in a verbal war.
He entered the private office, closed the door and stood with his back to it. During the brief tableau that ensued, the eyes of the rat clashed with those of the eagle. Dope saw the cold blue eyes, the square chin and the grim mouth of the man who had literally hewn his way into fortune. Bromley saw a countenance that was palpably criminal, save the beady eyes met his squarely, unwaveringly.
The boy, he thought, had fallen pretty low to have chosen such a messenger.
“Well, how much money did he send you to get?” Bromley asked insolently.
“He gives me his right eye to sell to yuh. How much 'm I offered? I git yuh. Not a damn, whedder he's sick or dyin'. How much coin! Yuh gives him a wad an' says 'Don't bother me!' An' 'en, when he toboggans to hell wit' it, you gives him the boot. Ye-ah. You're a helluva father.”
THE blow was as unexpected as it was true and straight, and Bromley gasped inwardly. This wizen, rat-eyed man had with one sweep of the hand, torn aside the veil Bromley had refused to look through The phrases he had marshaled to smother this emissary with became useless rubble.
“Is he sick and in need of money?”
“Naw. He aint sick an' he don't want any money.”
“Then what does he want?”—growing bewildered. For all this was out of the beaten track.
“Nothin' f'm you. It's Jenny.”
“Oh, I see. What comic opera—”
“Cut it out,” snapped Dope. “Jenny's none o your Broadway Lizzies. I thought mebbe y'd like to come to the weddin'.”
“What? Wedding! What the devil is he going to support a wife on?” demanded Bromley, getting back on familiar ground again.
“I dunno; but he will.”
“You've more confidence in him than I have.”
“Sure. I know him an' you don't. You jus' handed him the coin an' let it go at that. A guy who c'n turn himself f'm a hooch-hound into a he-man aint gonna wonder where the job's comin' f'm. But I git yuh. You're lookin' at this mug an' speculatin' am I a dip or a second-story man. Well, I aint. I'm Jake Killian's scout.”
“And who might Jake Killian be?”
Dope could scarcely believe his ears. “Yuh never heard o' Jake Killian, the whitest man in the fight game?”
“Ah! So this son of mine is to become a prize-fighter? Well, that's logical. Whisky, women and fists.”
“You're all wrong, Mister. He horned into camp to make a man of himself, an' he done it. Took a lickin' every day for three months; an' now he can give an' take wit' Sands. Git that? Sands!”
BROMLEY was becoming deeply interested. The undercurrent of truculence in a man who should be whining puzzled him
“Sit down. What is your name?”
“My legs are all right. They calls me Jimmy Conway when I signs things, but they calls me Dope because I has it on every pug in the country.”
“Has he a job in prospect—my son?”
“Oh, I didn't say he was gonna git married first. It's like this: It'll make Jenny happy to know that you'll come when the weddin' takes place.”
“Does she understand that she wont be marrying a single dollar of the Bromley money?”
Dope laughed. “Jenny aint no gold-digger; she's a school-teacher.”
“Who is she?”
“Killian's niece; an' he's got all kinds o coin an' nobody to leave it to but Jenny. She's the kind that wouldn't marry your son if there was a row on. So I comes on my own to ast yuh to bury the hatchet until after the weddin'. Git me right,” said Dope, with a snarl. “I hates your son like poison-ivy.”
“You hate him?” Bromley's bewilderment returned, utter bewilderment.
“Ye-ah. He's got everythin' that I aint. But I can't touch him, 'cause Jenny loves him.”
Dope did not appreciate what he had done—bared his soul before the eyes of this cynical millionaire. But there was no cynicism in Bromley; on the contrary, he felt small and mean.
He rose from his chair and walked to a window and stared down the gray cañon. He turned abruptly.
“I used to be a good sport myself. Perhaps it's not too late to dig up a spark. Will you shake hands with me, Mr. Conway?”
“What's the use? I hate you, too. All I wanta know is: will yuh come to the weddin' when it happens?”
“Yes. Where is this camp?”
“Yuh leave here at midnight an' git there in the mornin'.”
“When are you returning?”
“T'night.”
“Then I'll go with you. I'll engage a stateroom for both—”
“Nix. I rides.in the smoker.”
Bromley smiled. “Do you stick to your friends the same way you stick' to your grudges?”
“That's me,” said Dope, and immediately departed.
Down in the noisy street he came to a halt and scratched his head under his cap. That was funny. He couldn't remember. What book was it where..... Gee! That was funny. He couldn't remember what hero he had imitated. He moved on, cudgeling his brains. Suddenly he smacked a fist upon a palm. He had it! That guy who had taken another guy's place at the guillotine! Him and Jimmy Conway! Huh?
He continued his way, smiling contentedly.
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1932, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 91 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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