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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




The cigarette smoked, I was again in the corridor, the bald-headed man
holding the door for me to pass out first.

It was now nine o'clock, and we had been under way an hour. I found the
Pigeon Charmer occupying the sofa. The two young Acrobats and the
Lightning Calculator were evidently in bed, and the maid, no doubt, busy
preparing her mistress's couch for the night. She smiled quite frankly
when I approached, and motioned me to a seat beside her. All these
professional people the world over have unconventional manners, and an
acquaintance is often easily made--at least, that has been my
experience.

She began by thanking me in French for my share in getting her such
comfortable quarters--dropped into German for a sentence or two, as if
trying to find out my nationality--and finally into English, saying,
parenthetically:

"You are English, are you not?"

No financial magnate this time--rather queer, I thought--that she missed
that part of my personality. My room-mate had recognized it, even to the
extent of calling me "Your Highness."

"No, an American."

"Oh, an American! Yes, I should have known--No, you are not English. You
are too kind to be English. An Englishman would not have taken even a
little bit of trouble to help us." I noticed the race prejudice in her
tone, but I did not comment on it.

Then followed the customary conversation, I doing most of the talking. I
began by telling her how big our country was; how many people we had;
how rich the land; how wealthy the citizens; how great the opportunities
for artists seeking distinction, etc. We all do that with foreigners.
Then I tried to lead the conversation so as to find out something about
herself--particularly where she could be seen in Paris. She was charming
in her travelling-costume--she would be superb in low neck and bare
arms, her pets snuggling under her chin, or alighting on her upraised,
shapely hands. But either she did not understand, or she would not let
me see she did--the last, probably, for most professional people dislike
all reference to their trade by non-professionals--they object to be
even mentally classed by themselves.

While we talked on, the Dog Woman opened the door of her compartment,
knocked at the Dog's door--his Dogship and the maid were inside--patted
the brute on his head, and re-entered her compartment and shut the door
for the night.

I looked for some recognition between the two members of the same
troupe, but my companion gave not the slightest sign that the Dog Woman
existed. Jealous, of course, I said to myself. That's another
professional trait.

The Ring Master now passed, raised his hat and entered his compartment.
No sign of recognition; rather a cold, frigid stare, I thought.

The Sleeping-Car Manager next stepped through the car, lifted his hat
when he caught sight of my companion, tiptoed deferentially until he
reached the door, and went on to the next car. She acknowledged his
homage with a slight bend of her beautiful head, rose from her seat,
gave an order in Russian to her English maid who was standing in the
door of her compartment, held out her hand to me with a frank
good-night, and closed the door behind her.

I looked in on the bald-headed man. He was tucked away in the upper
berth sound asleep.

* * * * *

When the next morning I moved up the long platform of the Gare du Nord
in search of a cab, I stepped immediately behind the big Danish hound.
He was walking along, his shoulders shaking as he walked, his tongue
hanging from his mouth. The Woman had him by a leash, her maid following
with the band-boxes, the feather boa, and the parasols. In the crowd
behind me walked the bald-headed man, his arm, to my astonishment,
through that of the King Master's. _They_ both kotowed as they switched
off to the baggage-room, the Ring Master bowing even lower than
my roommate.

Then I became sensible of a line of lackeys in livery fringing the edge
of the platform, and at their head a most important-looking individual
with a decoration on the lapel of his coat. He was surrounded by half a
dozen young men, some in brilliant uniforms. They were greeting with
great formality my fair companion of the night before! The two Acrobats,
the German Calculator, and the English bareback-rider maid stood on
one side.

My thought was that it was all an advertising trick of the Circus
people, arranged for spectacular effect to help the night's receipts.

While I looked on in wonder, the Manager of the Sleeping-Car Company
joined me.

"I must thank you, sir," he said, "for making known to me the outrage
committed by one of our porters on the Princess. She is travelling
incognito, and I did not know she was on the train until she told me
last night who she was. We get the best men we can, but we are
constantly having trouble of that kind with our porters. The trick is to
give every passenger a whole compartment, and then keep packing them
together unless they pay something handsome to be let alone. I shall
make an example of that fellow. He is a new one and didn't know me"--and
he laughed.

"Do they call her the _Princess_?" I asked. They were certainly
receiving her like one, I thought.

"Why, certainly, I thought you knew her," and he looked at me curiously,
"the Princess Dolgorouki Sliniski. Her husband, the Prince, is attached
to the Emperor's household. She is travelling with her two boys and
their German tutor. The old gentleman with the white mustache now
talking to her is the Russian Ambassador. And you only met her on the
train? Old Azarian told me you knew her intimately."

"Azarian!" I was groping round in the fog now.

"Yes--your room-mate. He is an Armenian and one of the richest bankers
in Russia. He lends money to the Czar. His brother got on with you at
Cologne. There they go together to look after their luggage--they have
an agency here, although their main bank is in St. Petersburg. The
brother had the compartment next to that woman, with the big dog. She is
the wife of a rich brewer in Cologne, and just think--we must always
give that brute a compartment when she travels. Is it not outrageous? It
is against the rules, but the orders come from up above"--and he jerked
his finger meaningly over his shoulder.

The fog was so thick now I could cut it with a knife.

"One moment, please," I said, and I laid my hand on his elbow and
looked him searchingly in the eye. I intended now to clear things up.
"Was there a circus troupe on the train last night?"

"No." The answer came quite simply, and I could see it was the truth.

"Nor one expected?"

"No. There _was_ a circus, but it went through last week."



SAMMY

It was on the Limited: 10.30 Night Express out of Louisville, bound
south to Nashville and beyond.

I had lower Four.

When I entered the sleeper the porter was making up the berths, the
passengers sitting about in each other's way until their beds
were ready.

I laid my bag on an empty seat, threw my overcoat over its back, and sat
down to face a newspaper within a foot of my nose. There was a man
behind it, but he was too intent on its columns to be aware of my
presence. I made an inspection of his arms and hands and right leg, the
only portions of his surface exposed to view.

I noticed that the hands were strong and well-shaped, their backs
speckled with brown spots--too well kept to have guided a plough and
too weather-tanned to have wielded a pen. The leg which was crossed, the
foot resting on the left knee, was full and sinewy, the muscles of the
thigh well developed, and the round of the calf firmly modelled. The
ankle was small and curved like an axe handle and looked as tough.

There are times when the mind lapses into vacancy. Nothing interests
it. I find it so while waiting to have my berth made up; sleep is too
near to waste gray matter.

A man's thighs, however, interest me in any mood and at any time. While
you may get a man's character from his face, you can, if you will, get
his past life from his thigh. It is the walking beam of his locomotion;
controls his paddles and is developed in proportion to its uses. It
indicates, therefore, the man's habits and his mode of life.

If he has sat all day with one leg lapped over the other, arm on chair,
head on hand, listening or studying--preachers, professors, and all the
other sedentaries sit like this--then the thigh shrinks, the muscles
droop, the bones of the ankle bulge, and the knee-joints push through.
If he delivers mail, or collects bills, or drives a pack-mule, or walks
a tow-path, the muscles of the thigh are hauled taut like cables, the
knee-muscles keep their place, the calves are full of knots--one big one
in a bunch just below the strap of his knickerbockers, should he
wear them.

If he carries big weights on his back--sacks of salt, as do the poor
stevedores in Venice; or coal in gunnies, as do the coolies in Cuba; or
wine in casks, or coffee in bags, then the calves swell abnormally, the
thighs solidify; the lines of beauty are lost; but the lines of
strength remain.

If, however, he has spent his life in the saddle, rounding up cattle,
chasing Indians, hunting bandits in Mexico, ankle and foot loose, his
knees clutched tightly, hugging that other part of him, the horse, then
the muscles of the thigh round out their intended lines--the most subtle
in the modulating curving of the body. The aboriginal bareback rider
must have been a beauty.

I at once became interested then in the man before me, or rather in his
thighs--the "Extra" hid the rest.

I began to picture him to myself--young, blond hair, blue eyes, drooping
mustache, slouch hat canted rakishly over one eye; not over twenty-five
years of age. I had thought forty, until a movement of the paper
uncovered for a moment his waist-line which curved in instead of out.
This settled it--not a day over twenty-five, of course!

The man's fingers tightened on the edges of the paper. He was still
reading, entirely unconscious that my knees were within two inches
of his own.

Then I heard this exclamation--

"It's a damned outrage!"

My curiosity got the better of me--I coughed.

The paper dropped instantly.

"My dear sir," he said, bending forward courteously and laying his hand
on my wrist, "I owe you an apology. I had no idea anyone was
opposite me."

If I was a surprise to him, he was doubly so to me.

My picture had vanished.

He was sixty-five, if a day; gray, with bushy eyebrows, piercing brown
eyes, heavy, well-trimmed mustache, strong chin and nose, with fine
determined lines about the mouth. A man in perfect health, his full
throat browned with many weathers showing above a low collar caught
together by a loose black cravat--a handsome, rather dashing sort of a
man for one so old.

"I say it is a shame, sir," he continued, "the way they are lynching the
negroes around here. Have you read the Extra?" passing it over to me
--"Another this morning at Cramptown. It's an infernal outrage, sir!"

I had read the "Extra," with all its sickening details, and so handed it
back to him.

"I quite agree with you," I said; "but this man was a brute."

"No doubt of it, sir. We've got brutal negroes among us, just as we've
got brutal white men. But that's no reason why we should hang them
without a trial; we still owe them that justice. When we dealt fairly
with them there was never any such trouble. There were hundreds of
plantations in the South during the war where the only men left were
negroes. We trusted our wives and children to them; and yet such
outrages as these were unheard of and absolutely impossible. I don't
expect you to agree with me, of course; but I tell you, sir, the
greatest injustice the North over did the slave was in robbing him of
his home. I am going to have a smoke before going to bed. Won't you
join me?"

Acquaintances are quickly made and as quickly ended in a Pullman. Men's
ways lie in such diverse directions, and the hours of contact are often
so short, that no one can afford to be either ungracious or exclusive.
The "buttoned-up" misses the best part of travelling. He is like a
camera with the cap on--he never gets a new impression. The man with the
shutters of his ears thrown wide and the lids of his eyes tied back gets
a new one every hour.

If, in addition to this, he wears the lens of his heart upon his sleeve,
and will adjust it so as to focus the groups around him--it may be a
pair of lovers, or some tired mother, or happy child, or lonely
wayfarer, or a waif--he will often get a picture of joy, or sorrow, or
hope--life dramas all--which will not only enrich the dull hours of
travel, but will leave imprints on the mind which can be developed later
into the richest and tenderest memories of his life.

I have a way of arranging my own sensitized plates, and I get a certain
amount of entertainment out of the process, and now and then a Rembrandt
effect whose lights and darks often thrill me for days.

So when this unknown man, with his young legs and his old face, asked
me, on one minute's acquaintance, to smoke, I accepted at once.

"I am right about it, my dear sir," he continued, biting off the end of
a cigar and sharing with me the lighted match. "The negro is infinitely
worse off than in the slave days. We never had to hang any one of them
then to make the others behave themselves."

"How do you account for it?" I asked, settling myself in my chair. (We
were alone in the smoking compartment.)

"Account for what?"

"The change that has come over the South--to the negro," I answered.

"The negro has become a competitor, sir. The interests of the black man
and the white man now lie apart. Once the white man was his friend; now
he is his rival."

His eyes were boring into mine; his teeth set tight.

The doctrine was new to me, but I did not interrupt him.

"It wasn't so in the old days. We shared what we had with them.
One-third of the cabins of the South were filled with the old and
helpless. Now these unfortunates are out in the cold; their own people
can't help them, and the white man won't."

"Were you a slave-owner?" I asked, not wishing to dispute the point.

"No, sir; but my father was. He had fifty of them on our plantation. He
never whipped one of them, and he wouldn't let anybody else strike them,
either. There wasn't one of them that wouldn't have come back if we had
had a place to put him. The old ones are all dead now, thank God!--all
except old Aleck; he's around yet."

"One of your father's slaves, did you say?"

I was tapping away at the door of his recollections, camera all ready.

"Yes; he carried me about on his back when I was so high," and he
measured the distance with his hand. "Aleck and I were boys together. I
was about eight and he about fifteen when my father got him."

My companion paused, drumming on the leather covering of his chair. I
waited, hoping he would at least open his door wide enough to give me a
glimpse inside.

"Curiously enough," he went on, "I've been thinking of Aleck all day. I
heard yesterday that he was sick again, and it has worried me a good
deal. He's pretty feeble now, and I don't know how long he'll last."

He flicked the ashes from his cigar, nursing his knee with the other
hand. The leg must have pained him, for I noticed that he lifted it
carefully and moved it on one side, as if for greater relief.

"Rheumatism?" I ventured, sympathetically.

"No; just _gets_ that way sometimes," he replied, carelessly. "But
Aleck's got it bad; can hardly walk. Last time I saw him he was about
bent double."

Again he relapsed into silence, smoking quietly.

"And you tell me," I said, "that this old slave was loyal to your family
after his freedom?"

He hadn't told me anything of the kind; but I had found his key-hole
now, and was determined to get inside his door, even if I picked the
lock with a skeleton-key.

"Aleck!" he cried, rousing himself with a laugh; "well, I should say so!
Anybody would be loyal who'd been treated as my father treated Aleck. He
took him out of jail and gave him a home, and would have looked after
him till he died if the war hadn't broken out. Aleck wasn't raised on
our plantation. He was a runaway from North Carolina. There were three
of them that got across the river--a man and his wife and Aleck. The
slave-driver had caught Aleck in our town and had locked him up in the
caboose for safe-keeping. Then he came to my father to help him catch
the other two. But my father wasn't that kind of a man. The old
gentleman had curious notions about a good many things. He believed when
a slave ran away that the fault was oftener the master's than the
negro's. 'They are nothing but children,' he would say, 'and you must
treat them like children. Whipping is a poor way to bring anybody up.'

"So when my father heard about the three runaways he refused to have
anything to do with the case. This made the driver anxious.

"'Judge,' he said--my father had been a Judge of the County Court for
years--'if you'll take the case I'll give you this boy Aleck as a fee.
He's worth a thousand dollars.'

"'Send for him,' said my father. 'I'll tell you when I see him.'

"So they brought him in. He was a big, strong boy, with powerful
shoulders, black as a chunk of coal, and had a look about him that made
you trust him at first sight. My father believed in him the moment
he saw him.

"'What did you run away for, Aleck?' he asked.

"The boy held his head down.

"'My mother died, Marster, an' I couldn't stay dar no mo'.'

"'I'll take him,' said my father; 'but on condition that the boy wants
to live with me.'

"This was another one of the old gentleman's notions. He wouldn't have a
negro on the place that he had to watch, nor one that wasn't happy.

"The driver opened his eyes and laughed; but my father meant what he
said, and the papers were made out on those terms. The boy was outside
in charge of the Sheriff while the papers were being drawn, and when
they were signed the driver brought him in and said:

"'He's your property, Judge.'

"'Aleck,' father said, 'you've heard?'

"'Yes, sah.'

"The boy stood with tears in his eyes. He thought he was going to get a
life-sentence. He had never faced a judge before.

"'Well, you're my property now, and I've got a proposition to make to
you. There's my horse outside hitched to that post. Get on him and ride
out to my plantation, two miles from here; anybody'll tell you where it
is. Talk to my negroes around the quarters, and then go over to Mr.
Shandon's and talk to his negroes--find out from any one of them what
kind of a master I am, and then come back to me here before sundown and
tell me if you want to live with me. If you don't want to live with me
you can go free. Do you understand?'

"My father said it all over again. Aleck looked at the driver, then at
the Sheriff, and then at my father. Then he crept out of the room, got
on the mare, and rode up the pike.

"'You've thrown your money away,' said the driver, shrugging his
shoulders. 'You'll never see that nigger again.'

"The Sheriff laughed, and they both went out. Father said nothing and
waited. About an hour before sundown back came Aleck. Father always
said he never saw a man change so in four hours. He went out crouching
like a dog, his face over his shoulder, scared to death, and he came
back with his head up and a snap in his eye, looking as if he could whip
his weight in wildcats.

"'I'll go wid ye, an' thank ye all my life,' was all he said.

"Well, it got out around the village, and that night the other two
runaways--the man and wife--they were hiding in the town--gave
themselves up, and one of our neighbors bought them both and set them to
work on a plantation next to ours, and the driver went away happy.

"I was a little fellow then, running around barefooted, but I remember
meeting Aleck just as if it were yesterday. He was holding the horse
while my father and the overseer stood talking on one side. They were
planning his work and where he should sleep. I crept up to look at him.
I had heard he was coming and that he was a runaway slave. I thought his
back would be bloody and all cut to pieces, and that he'd have chains on
him, and I was disappointed because I couldn't see his skin through his
shirt and because his hands were free. I must have gotten too near the
mare, for before I knew it he had lifted me out of danger.

"'What's your name?' I asked.

"'Aleck,' he said; 'an' what's your name, young marster?'

"'Sammy,' I said.

"That's the way it began between us, and it's kept on ever since. I call
him 'Aleck,' and he calls me 'Sammy'--never anything else, even today."

"He calls you 'Sammy'!" I said, in astonishment. The familiarity was new
to me between master and slave.

"Yes, always. There isn't another person in the world now that calls me
'Sammy,'" he answered, with a tremor in his voice.

My travelling-companion stopped for a moment, cleared his throat, drew a
silver match-safe from his pocket, relighted his cigar, and continued.

"The overseer put Aleck to ploughing the old orchard that lay between
the quarters and the house. I sneaked out to watch him as a curious
child would, still intent on seeing his wounds. Soon as Aleck saw me, he
got a board and nailed it on the plough close to the handle for a seat,
and tied up the old horse's tail so it wouldn't switch in my face, and
put me on it, and I never left that plough till sundown. My father asked
Aleck where he had learned that trick, and Aleck told him he used to
take his little brother that way before he died.

"After the orchard was ploughed Aleck didn't do a thing but look after
me. We fished together and went swimming together; and we hunted eggs
and trapped rabbits; and when I got older and had a gun Aleck would go
along to look after the dogs and cut down the trees when we were out
for coons.

"Once I tumbled into a catfish-hole by the dam, and he fished me out;
and once, while he had crawled in after a woodchuck, a rock slipped and
pinned him down, and I ran two miles to get help, and fell in a faint
before I could tell them where he was. What Aleck had in those days I
had, and what I had he had; and there was no difference between us till
the war broke out.

"I was grown then, and Aleck was six or seven years older. We were on
the border-line, and one morning the Union soldiers opened fire, and all
that was left of the house, barns, outbuildings, and negro quarters was
a heap of ashes.

"That sent me South, of course, feeling pretty ugly and bitter, and I
don't know that I've gotten over it since. My father was too old to go,
and he and my mother moved into the village and lived in two rooms over
my father's office. The negroes, of course, had to shift for themselves,
and hard shifting it was--the women and children herding in the towns
and the men working as teamsters and doing what they could.

"The night before I left home Aleck crawled out to see me. I was hidden
in a hayrick in the lower pasture. He begged me to let him go with me,
but I knew father would want him, and he finally gave in and promised
to stay with him, and I left. But no one was his own master in those
days, and in a few months they had drafted Aleck and carried him off.

"Three years after that my mother fell ill, and I heard of it and came
back in disguise, and was arrested as a suspicious character as I
entered the town. I didn't blame them, for I looked like a tramp and
intended to. The next day I was let out and went home to where my mother
and father were living. As I was opening the garden-gate--it was
night--Aleck laid his hand on my shoulder. He had on the uniform of a
United States soldier. I couldn't believe my eyes at first. I had lost
track of him, and, as I found out afterward, so had my father. We stood
under the street-lamp and he saw the look in my face and threw his hands
up over his head as a negro does when some sudden shock comes to him.

"'Don't turn away f'om me, Sammy,' he cried; 'please don't, Sammy.
'Tain't my fault I got on dese clo'es, 'deed it ain't. Dey done fo'ced
me. I heared you was here an' I been tryin' to git to ye all day. Oh, I
so glad to git hold ob ye, Sammy, so glad, so glad.' He broke out into
sobs of crying. I was near it myself, for he was the first one from home
I had seen, and there was something in his voice that went through me.

"Then he unbuttoned his coat, felt in his pocket, pushed something into
my hand, and disappeared in the darkness. When I got inside and held it
out to the light, he had given me two five-dollar greenbacks!

"I was sitting by my mother the next night about ten o'clock--she
wouldn't let me out of her sight--when there came a rap at the door and
Aleck came in. I knew how my father would feel about seeing him in those
clothes. I didn't know till afterward that they were all he had and that
the poor fellow was as bad off as any of us.

"Father opened upon Aleck right away, just as I knew he would, without
giving him a chance to speak. He upbraided him for going into the Army,
told him to take his money back, and showed him the door. The old
gentleman could be pretty savage when he wanted to, and he didn't spare
Aleck a bit. Aleck never said a word--just listened to my father's abuse
of him--his hands folded over his cap, his eyes on the two bills lying
on the table where my father had thrown them. Then he said, slowly:

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