"He doesn"t look well, Annie."
"He have been ver" seeck. Now we come home he is already weller."
"But do you think it is wise for you to come back here?" I demanded, feeling brutal as I put the question. Annie Oombrella"s reply did not make me feel any less so. She sent a quivering look around that unspeakably messy, choked-up little hole in the wall that was home to Plooie and her.
"We have loved each other so much here," said she.
Our Square is too poor to be enduringly uncharitable, either in deed or thought. War"s resentments died out quickly in us. No longer was Plooie in danger of mob violence. By common consent we let him alone; he made his rounds unmolested, but also unpatronized. But for Annie Oombrella"s prodigies of industry with pail and brush, the little couple in Schepstein"s bas.e.m.e.nt would have fared ill.
Annie earned for both. In the process, happiness came back to her face.
To the fat Rosser twin accrues the credit of a pleasurable discovery about Plooie. This was that, if you sneaked softly up behind him and shouted: "Hey, Plooie! What was _you_ doing in the war?" his jaw would drop and his whole rackety body begin to quiver, and he would heave his burden to his shoulder and break into a spavined gallop, muttering and sobbing like one demented. As the juvenile sense of humor is highly developed in Our Square, Plooie got a good deal of exercise, first and last.
Eventually he foiled them by coming out only in school hours. This didn"t help his trade. But then his trade had dwindled to the vanishing point anyway. Even Madame Tallafferr had dropped him. She preferred not to deal with a poltroon, as she put it.
On the day of the great exodus, Plooie put in some extra hours. He was in no danger from his youthful persecutors, because they had all gone up to line Fifth Avenue and help cheer the visiting King of the Belgians.
So had such of the rest of Our Square as were not at work. The place was practically deserted. Nevertheless, Plooie prowled about, uttering his cracked and lugubrious cry in the forlorn hope of picking up a parapluie to raccommode. I was one of the few left to hear him, because Mendel, the jeweler, had most inconsiderately gone to view royalty, leaving my unrepaired gla.s.ses locked in his shop; otherwise I, too, would have been on the Fifth Avenue curb shouting with the best of them. Do not misinterpret me. For the divinity that doth hedge a king I care as little as one should whose forbears fought in the Revolution. But for the divinity of high courage and devotion that certifies to the image of G.o.d within man, I should have been proud to take off my old but still glossy silk hat to Albert of the Belgians. So I was rather cross, and it was well for my equanimity that the Bonnie La.s.sie, who had remained at home for reasons which are peculiarly her own affair and that of Cyrus the Gaunt, should have come over to my favorite bench to cheer me up.
Said the Bonnie La.s.sie:
"I wonder why Plooie didn"t go to see his king."
"Sense of shame," I suggested acidly.
"Yes?" said the Bonnie La.s.sie in a tone which I mistrusted.
"It is no use," I a.s.sured her, "for you to favor me with that pitying and contemptuous smile of yours, for I can"t see it. Mendel has my nearer range of vision locked in his shop."
"I was just thinking," said the Bonnie La.s.sie in ruminant accents, "how nice it must be to look back on a long life of unspotted correctness with not an item in it to be ashamed of. It gives one such a comfortable basis for sitting in judgment."
"Her lips drip honey," I observed, "and the poison of asps is under her tongue."
"Your quotations are fatally mixed," retorted my companion.
From across the park sounded Plooie"s patient falsetto: "Parapluie-ee-ee-ee-ees! Annie Oombrella for mend? Parapluie-ee-ee-" The call broke off in a kind of choke.
"What"s happened to Plooie?" I asked. "The youngsters can"t have got back from the parade already, have they?"
"A very tall man has stopped him," said the Bonnie La.s.sie. "Plooie has dropped his kit.... He"s trying to salute.... It must be one of the Belgian officers.... Oh, Dominie!"
"Well, what?" I demanded impatiently and cursed the recreant Mendel in my heart.
"It can"t be ... you don"t think they can be arresting poor Plooie at this late day for evading service?"
"Serve him right if they did," said I.
"I believe they are. The big man has taken him by the arm and is leading him along. Poor Plooie! He"s all wilted down. It"s a shame!" cried the Bonnie La.s.sie, beginning to flame. "It ought not to be allowed."
"Probably they"re taking him away. Do you see an official-looking automobile anywhere about?"
"There"s a strange car over on the Avenue. Oh, dear! Poor Annie Oombrella! But--but they"re not going there. They"re going into Schepstein"s bas.e.m.e.nt."
I could feel the Bonnie La.s.sie fidgeting on the bench. For a moment I endured it. Then I said:
"Well, La.s.sie, why don"t you?"
"Why don"t I what?"
"Take your usual const.i.tutional, over by the railings. Opposite Schepstein"s."
"That isn"t my usual const.i.tutional, and you know it, Dominie," said the Bonnie La.s.sie with dignity.
"Isn"t it? Well, curiosity killed a cat, you know."
"How shamelessly you garble! It was--"
"Never mind; the quotation is erroneous, anyway. It should be: _suppressed_ curiosity killed a cat."
The Bonnie La.s.sie sniffed.
"Rather than be dislodged from my precarious perch on this bench," I pursued, "through the trembling imparted to it by your clinging to the back to restrain yourself from going to see what is up, I should almost prefer that you would go--and peek."
"Dominie," said the Bonnie La.s.sie, "you are a despicable old man....
I"ll be back in a minute."
"Don"t stay long," I pleaded. "Pity the blind."
Her golden laughter floated back to me. But there was no mirth in her voice when she returned.
"It"s so dark in there I can hardly see. But the big man is sitting on a pile of ribs talking to Plooie, and Annie Oombrella"s face is all swollen with crying. I saw it in the window for a minute."
Pro and con we argued what the probable event might be and how we could best meet it. So intent upon our discussion did we become that we did not note the approach of a stranger until he was within a few paces of the bench. With my crippled vision I apprehended him only as very tall and straight and wearing a loose cape. The effect upon the Bonnie La.s.sie of his approach was surprising. I heard her give a little gasp. She got up from the bench. Her hand fell upon my shoulder. It was trembling.
Where, I wondered, had those two met and in what circ.u.mstances, that the mere sight of the stranger caused such emotion in the unusually self-controlled wife of Cyrus Staten. The man spoke quickly in a deep and curiously melancholy voice:
"Madame perhaps does me the honor to remember me?"
"I--I--I--" began the Bonnie La.s.sie.
"The Comte de Tournon. At Trouville we met, was it not? Several years since?"
"Y-yes. Certainly. At Trouville."
(Now I happen to know that the Bonnie La.s.sie has never been at Trouville, which did not a.s.suage my suspicions.)
"You are friends of my--countryman, Emile Garin, are you not?" he pursued in his phraseology of extreme precision, with only the faint echo of an accent.
"Who?" I said. "Oh, Plooie, you mean. Friends? Well, acquaintances would be more accurate."
"He tells me that you, Monsieur, befriended him when he had great need of friends. And you, Madame, always. So I have come to thank you."