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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




"Auguste laid the bill on his tray and walked up to the desk with a face
struggling between joy over the fee and terror for my safety. A fellow
who lived on ten-lire wine and who gave money away like water must
murder people for a living and have a cemetery of his own in which to
bury his dead. He evidently never expected to see me alive again.

"Dinner over and paid for, my host put on his coat, said 'Good-night'
with rather an embarrassed air, and without looking at anyone in the
room--not even Roscoff, who made a move as if to intercept him--Roscoff
had some pictures of his own to sell--walked dejectedly out of the caffe
and disappeared in the night.

"When I crossed the traghetto the following evening the storm had not
abated. It was worse than on the previous night; the wind was blowing a
gale and whirling the fog into the narrow streets and choking up the
archways and _sotti portici_.

"As my foot touched the nagging of the Campo, Diffendorfer stepped
forward and laid his hand on my arm.

"'You are late,' he said. He spoke in the same crisp way he had the
night before. Whether it was an assumed air of bravado, or whether it
was his natural ugly disposition, I couldn't tell. It jarred on me
again, however, and I walked on.

"He stepped quickly in front of me, as if to bar my way, and said, in a
gentler tone:

"'Don't go away. Come dine with me.'

"'But I dined with you yesterday.'

"'Yes, I know--and you hated me afterward. I'll be better this time.'

"'I didn't hate you, I only----'

"'Yes, you did, and you had reason to. I wasn't myself, somehow. Try me
again to-day.'

"There was something in his eyes--a troubled, disappointed expression
that appealed to me--and so I said:

"'All right, but on one condition: it's my dinner this time.'

"'And my wine,' he answered, and a satisfied look came into his face.

"'Yes, your wine. Come along.'

"The fellow's blunt, jerky way of speaking had somehow made me speak in
the same way. Our talk sounded just like two boys who had had a fight
and who were forced to shake hands and make up. My own curiosity as to
who he might be, what he was doing in Venice, and why he was pursuing
me, was now becoming aroused. That he should again throw himself in my
way after the stupid dinner of the night before only deepened
the mystery.

"When we got inside, just as we were taking our seats at one of the
small tables in that side room off the street, a shout of laughter came
from the next room--the one we fellows always dined in. I had determined
to get inside of the fellow at this sitting, and thought the more
retired table better for the purpose. Diffendorfer jumped to his feet on
hearing the laughter, peered into the room, and, picking up his wet
umbrella, said:

"'Let's go in there--more people.' I followed him, and drew out another
chair from a table opposite one at which Roscoff, Woods, and two or
three of the boys were dining. They all nudged each other when we came
in, and a wink went around, but they didn't speak. They behaved
precisely as if I had a girl in tow and wanted to be left alone.

"This dinner was exactly like the first one. Diffendorfer ordered the
same wine--Valpocelli, '82, and ate each course that Auguste brought
him, with only a word now and then about the weather, the number of
people in Venice, and the dishes. The only time when his face lighted up
was when a chap named Cruthers, from Munich, who arrived that morning
and who hadn't been in Venice for years, came up and slapped me on the
back and hollered out as he dragged up a chair and sat down beside me:
'Glad to see you, old man; what are you drinking?'

"I reached for the '82--there was only a glass left--and was moving the
bottle within reach of my friend's hand when Diffendorfer said
to Auguste:

"'Bring another quart of '82;' then he turned and said to the Munich
chap: 'Sorry, sir, it isn't the '71, but they haven't a bottle in
the house.'

"I was up a tree, and so I said:

"'Cruthers, let me present you to my friend, Mr. Diffendorfer.' My
companion at mention of his name sprang up, seized Cruthers's fingers as
if he had been a long-lost brother, and pretty nearly shook his hand
off. Cruthers said in reply:

"'I'm very glad to meet you. If you're a friend of Marny's you're all
right. You've got all you ought to have in this world.' You must have
known Cruthers--he was always saying that kind of frilly things to the
boys. Then they both sat down again.

"After this quite a different expression came into the man's face. His
embarrassment, or ugliness of temper, or whatever it was, was gone. He
jumped up again, insisted upon filling Cruthers's glass himself, and
when Cruthers tasted it and winked both of his eyes over it, and then
got up and shook Diffendorfer's hand a second time to let him know how
good he thought it was, and how proud he was of being his guest,
Diffendorfer's face even broke out into a smile, and for a moment the
fellow was as happy as anybody about him, and not the chump he had been
with me. He was evidently pleased with Cruthers, for when Cruthers
refused a third glass he said to him: 'To-morrow, perhaps'--and,
beckoning to Auguste, said, in a voice loud enough for us all to hear:
'Put a cork in it and mark it; we'll finish it to-morrow.'

"Cruthers made no reply, not considering himself, of course, as one of
the party, and, nodding pleasantly to my companion, joined Woods's
table again.

"When dinner was over, Diffendorfer put on his hat and coat, handed me
my umbrella, and said:

"'I'm going home now. Walk along with me?'

"It was still raining, the wind rattling the swinging doors of the
caffè. I did not answer for a moment. The dinner had left me as much in
the dark as ever, and I was trying to make up my mind what to do next.

"'Why not stay here and smoke?' I asked.

"'No, walk along with me as far as the traghetto, please,' and he laid
his hand in a half-pleading way on my arm.

"Again that same troubled look in his face that I had seen once before
made me alter my mind. I threw on my coat, picked up my umbrella, nodded
to the boys, who looked rather anxiously after me, and plunged through
the door and out into the storm.

"It was the kind of a night that I love,--a regular howler. Most people
think the sunshine makes Venice, but they wouldn't think so if they
could study it on one of these nights when a nor'easter whirls up out of
the Adriatic and comes roaring across the lagoons as if it would swallow
up the dear old girl and sweep her into the sea. She don't mind it. She
always comes up smiling the next day, looking twice as pretty for her
bath, and I'm always twice as happy, for I've seen a whole lot of things
I never would have seen in the daylight. The Campanile, for one thing,
upside down in the streaming piazza; slashes of colored light from the
shop-windows soaking into the rain-pools; and great, black, gloomy
shadows choking up alleys, with only a single taper peering out of the
darkness like a burglar's lantern.

"When we turned to breast the gale--the rain had almost ceased--and
struggled on through the Ascensione, a sudden gust of wind whirled my
umbrella inside out, and after that I walked on ahead of him, stopping
every now and then to enjoy the grandeur of it all, until we reached the
traghetto. When we arrived, only one gondola was on duty, the gondolier
muffled to his eyes in glistening oilskins, his sou'wester hat tied
under his chin.

"Once on the other side of the Canal it started in to rain again, and so
Diffendorfer held his own umbrella over me until we reached my gate on
the Fondamenta San Zorzi, in the rear of my quarters. He stood beside me
under the flare of the gas-jets while I fumbled in my pocket for my
night-key--I had about decided to invite him in and pump him dry--and
then said:

"'I live a little way from here; don't go in; come home with me.'

"A strange feeling now took possession of me, which I could not account
for. The whole plot rushed over me with a force which I must confess
sent a cold chill down my back. I began to think: This man had forced
himself upon me not once, but twice; had set up the best bottle of wine
he could buy, and was now about to steer me into a den. Then the thought
rose in my mind--I could handle any two of him, and if I give way now
and he finds I am over-cautious or suspicious, it will only make it
worse for me when I see him again. This was followed by a common-sense
view of the whole situation. The mystery in it, after all, if there was
any mystery, was one of my own making. To ask a man who had been dining
with you to come to your lodging was neither a suspicious nor an unusual
thing. Besides, while he had been often brusque, and at times curt, he
had shown me nothing but kindness, and had tried only to please me.

"My mind was made up instantly. I determined to follow the affair to the
end.

"'Yes, I'll go,' and I pulled my umbrella into shape, opened it with a
flop, and stepped from the shelter of the doorway into the pelt of the
driving rain.

"We kept on up the Fondamenta, crossed the bridge by the side of the
Canal of San Vio as far as the Caffè Calcina, and then out on the
Zattero, which was being soused with the waves of the Giudecca breaking
over the coping of its pavement. Hugging the low wall of Clara
Montalba's garden, he keeping out of the wind as best he could, we
passed the church of San Rosario and stopped at the same low door
opening into the building next to Pietro's wine-shop--the one I had seen
him enter when I was painting. The caffè was still open, for the glow of
its lights streamed out upon the night and was reflected in the
rain-drenched pavement. Then a thought struck me:

"'Come in here a moment,' I said to him, and I pushed in Pietro's door.

"'Pietro,' I called out, so that everybody in the caffè could hear, 'I'm
going up to Mr. Diffendorfer's room. Better get a fiasco of Chianti
ready--the old kind you have in the cellar. When I want it I'll send
for it.' If I was going into a trap it was just as well to let somebody
know whom I was last seen with. The boys had seen me go out with him,
but nobody knew where he lived or where he had taken me. I was ashamed
of it as soon as I had said it, but somehow I felt as if it were just
as well to keep my eyes open.

"Diffendorfer pushed past me and called out to Pietro, in a half-angry
tone:

"'No, don't you send it. I've got all the wine we'll want,' turned on
his heel, held his door open for me to pass in, and slammed it
behind us.

"It was pitch-dark inside as we mounted the stairs one step at a time
until we reached the second flight, where the light from a smouldering
wick of a fiorentina set in a niche in the wall shed a dim glow. At the
sound of our footsteps a door was opened in a passageway on our left, a
head thrust out, and as suddenly withdrawn. The same thing happened on
the third landing. Diffendorfer paid no attention to these intrusions,
and kept on down a long corridor ending in a door. I didn't like the
heads--it looked as if they were waiting for Diffendorfer to bring
somebody home, and so I slipped my umbrella along in my hand until I
could use it as a club, and waited in the dark until he had found the
key-hole, unlocked the door, and thrown it open. All I saw was the gray
light of the windows opposite this door, which made a dim silhouette of
Diffendorfer's figure. Then I heard the scraping of a match, and a
gas-jet flashed.

"'Come in,' called Diffendorfer, in a cheery tone. 'Wait till I punch up
the fire. Here, take this seat,' and he moved a great chair close to
the grate.

"I have seen a good many rooms in my time, but I must say this one took
the breath out of me for an instant. The walls were hung in old
tapestries, the furniture was of the rarest. There were three or four
old armchairs that looked as if they had been stolen out of the
Doge's Palace.

"Diffendorfer continued punching away at the fire until it burst into a
blaze.

"In another moment he was on his feet again, saying he had forgotten
something. Then he entered the next room--there were three in the
suite--unlocked a closet, brought back a mouldy-looking bottle and two
Venetian glasses, moved up a spider-legged, inlaid table, and said, as
he placed the bottle and glasses beside me:

"'That's the Valpocelli of '71. You needn't worry about helping
yourself; I've got a dozen bottles more.'

"I thought the game had gone far enough now, and I squared myself and
faced him.

"'See here, Mr. Diffendorfer,' I said, 'before I take your wine I've got
some questions to ask you. I'm going to ask them pretty straight, too,
and I want you to answer them exactly in the same way. You have followed
me round now for two weeks. You invite me to dinner--a man you have
never seen before--and when I come you sit like a bump on a log, and
half the time I can't get a word out of you. You spend your money on me
like water--none of which I can return, and you know it--and when I tell
you I don't like that sort of thing you double the expense. Now, what
does it all mean? Who are you, anyway, and where do you come from? If
you're all right there's my hand, and you'll find it wide open.'

"He dropped into his chair, put his head into his hands for a moment,
and said, in a greatly altered tone:

"'If I told you, you wouldn't understand.'

"'Yes, I would.'

"'No, you wouldn't--you couldn't. You've had everything you wanted all
your life--I haven't had anything.'

"'Me!--what rot! You've got a chair under you now that will sell for
more money than I see in a year.'

"'Yes--and nobody to sit in it; not a man who knows me or wants to know
me.'

"'But why did you pick me out?'

"'Because you seemed to be the kind of a man who would understand me
best. I watched you for weeks, though you didn't know it. You've got
people who love you for yourself. You go into Florian's or the Quadri
and you can't get a chance to swallow a mouthful for fellows who want to
shake hands with you and slap you on the back. When I saw that, I got up
courage enough to speak to you.

"'When that first night you wouldn't introduce me to your friend
Roscoff, I saw how it was and how you suspected me, and I came near
giving it up. Then I thought I'd try again, and if you hadn't introduced
Mr. Cruthers to me, and if he hadn't drank my wine, I would have given
it up. But I don't want them to like me because I'm with _you_. I want
them to like me for myself, so they'll be glad to see me when I come in,
just as they are glad to see you.

"'I come from Pennsylvania. My father owns the oil-wells at Stockville.
He came over from Holland when he was a boy. He sent me over here six
months ago to learn something about the world, and told me not to come
back till I did. I got to Paris, and I couldn't find a soul to talk to
but the hotel porter; then I kept on to Lucerne, and it was no better
there. When I got as far as Dresden I mustered up courage to speak to a
man in the station, but he moved off, and I saw him afterward speaking
to a policeman and pointing to me. Then I came on down here. I thought
maybe if I got some good rooms to live in where people could be
comfortable, I could get somebody to come in and sit down. So I bought
this lot of truck of an Italian named Almadi--a prince or something--and
moved in. I tried the fellows who lived here--you saw them sticking
their heads out as we came up--but they don't speak English, so I was as
bad off as I was before. Then I made up my mind I'd tackle you and keep
at it till I got to know you. You might think it queer now that I didn't
tell you before who I was or how I came here, or how lonesome I
was--just lonesome--but I just couldn't. I didn't want your pity, I
wanted your _friendship_. That's all.'

"He had straightened up now, and was leaning back in his chair.

"'And it was just dead lonesomeness, then, was it?' and I held out my
hand to him.

"'Yes--the deadliest kind of lonesome. Kind makes you want to fall off a
dock. Now, please drink my wine'--and he pushed the bottle toward me--'I
had a devil of a hunt for it, but I wanted to do something for you you
couldn't do for yourself.'

"We fellows, I tell you, took charge of Diffendorfer after that, and a
ripping good fellow he was. We got that high collar off of him, a slouch
hat on his head instead of his stove-pipe, and a pipe in his mouth, and
before the winter was over he had more friends than any fellow in
Venice. It was only awkwardness that made him talk so queer and ugly.
And maybe we didn't have some good times in those rooms of his on
the Zattere!"

Marny stopped, threw away the end of his cigar, laid a coin under his
plate for the waiter and another on top of it for Henri, the chef,
reached for his hat, and said, as he rose from his seat, and flecked
the ashes from his coat-sleeve:

"So now, whenever I see a poor devil haunting a place like this, looking
around out of the corner of his eye, hoping somebody will speak to him,
I say that's a Diffendorfer, and more than half the time I'm right."



MUFFLES--THE BAR-KEEP

My friend Muffles has had a varied career. Muffles is not his baptismal
name--if he were ever baptized, which I doubt. The butcher, the baker,
the candlestick maker, and the brewer--especially the brewer--knew him
as Mr. Richard Mulford, proprietor of the Shady Side on the Bronx--and
his associates as Dick. Only his intimates knew him as Muffles. I am one
of his intimates. This last sobriquet he earned as a boy among his
fellow wharf-rats, by reason of an extreme lightness of foot attended by
an equally noiseless step, particularly noticeable when escaping from
some guardian of the peace who had suddenly detected him raiding an
apple-stand not his own, or in depleting a heap of peanuts the property
of some gentleman of foreign birth, or in making off with a just-emptied
ash-barrel--Muffles did the emptying--on the eve of an election.

If any member of his unknown and widely scattered family reached the
dignity of being considered the flower of the clan, no stretch of
imagination or the truth on the part of his acquaintances--and they
were numerous--ever awarded that distinction to Muffles. He might have
been a weed, but he was never a flower. A weed that grew up between the
cobbles, crouching under the hoofs of horses and the tramp of men, and
who was pulled up and thrown aside and still lived on and flourished in
various ways, and all with that tenacity of purpose and buoyancy of
spirit which distinguishes all weeds and which never by any possibility
marks a better quality of plant, vegetable or animal.

The rise of this gamin from the dust-heap to his present lofty position
was as interesting as it was instructive. Interesting because his career
was a drama--instructive because it showed a grit, pluck, and
self-denial which many of his contemporaries might have envied and
imitated: wharf-rat, newsboy, dish-washer in a sailor's dive,
bar-helper, bar-tender, bar-keeper, bar-owner, ward heeler, ward
politician, clerk of a district committee--go-between, in shady deals,
between those paid to uphold the law and those paid to break it--and
now, at this time of writing, or was a year or so ago, the husband of
"the Missus," as he always calls her, the father of two children, one
three and the other five, and the proprietor of the Shady Side Inn,
above the Harlem River and within a stone's throw of the historic Bronx.

The reaching of this final goal, the sum of all his hopes and
ambitions, was due to the same tenacity of purpose which had
characterized his earlier life, aided and abetted by a geniality of
disposition which made him countless friends, a conscience which
overlooked their faults, together with a total lack of perception as to
the legal ownership of whatever happened to be within his reach. As to
the keeping of the other commandments, including the one of doing unto
others as you would have them do unto you----

Well, Muffles had grown up between the cobbles of the Bowery, and his
early education had consequently been neglected.

The Shady Side Inn, over which Muffles presided, and in which he was
one-third owner--the Captain of the Precinct and a "Big Pipe" contractor
owned the other two-thirds--was what was left of an old colonial
mansion. There are dozens of them scattered up and down the Bronx, lying
back from the river; with porches falling into decay, their gardens
overrun with weeds, their spacious rooms echoing only the hum of the
sewing-machine or the buzz of the loom.

This one belonged to some one of the old Knickerbockers whose winter
residence was below Bleecker Street and who came up here to spend the
summer and so escape the heat of the dog-days. You can see it any day
you drive up the Speedway. It has stood there for over a hundred years
and is likely to continue. You know its history, too--or can, if you
will take the trouble to look up its record. Aaron Burr stopped here, of
course--he stopped about everywhere along here and slept in almost every
house; and Hamilton put his horse up in the stables--only the site
remains; and George Washington dined on the back porch, his sorrel mare
tied to one of the big trees. There is no question about these facts.
They are all down in the books, and I would prove it to you if I could
lay my hand on the particular record. Everybody believes it--Muffles
most of all.

Many of the old-time fittings and appurtenances are still to be seen. A
knocker clings to the front door--a wobbly old knocker, it is true, with
one screw gone and part of the plate broken--but still boasting its
colonial descent. And there is a half-moon window over the door above
it, with little panes of glass held in place by a spidery parasol frame,
and supported on spindling columns once painted white. And there is an
old lantern in the hall and funny little banisters wreathed about a
flight of stairs that twists itself up to the second floor.

The relics--now that I come to think of it--stop here. There was a fine
old mantel framing a great open fireplace in the front parlor, before
which the Father of His Country toasted his toes or sipped his grog, but
it is gone now. Muffles's bar occupied the whole side of this front
room, and the cavity once filled with big, generous logs, blazing away
to please the host's distinguished guests, held a collection of bottles
from Muffles's cellar--a moving cellar, it is true, for the beer-wagon
and the grocer's cart replenished it daily.

The great garden in the rear of the old mansion has also changed. The
lines of box and sweet syringa are known only by their roots. The
rose-beds are no more, the paths that were woven into long stripes
across its grass-plats are overgrown and hardly traceable. Only one
lichen-covered, weather-stained seat circling about an old locust-tree
remains, and this is on its last legs and needs propping up--or did the
last time I saw it. The trees are still there. These old stand-bys reach
up their arms so high, and their trunks are so big and straight and
smooth, that nothing can despoil them. They will stay there until the
end--that is, until some merciless Commissioner runs the line of a city
street through their roots. Then their fine old bodies will be drawn and
quartered, and their sturdy arms and lesser branches go to feed the
fires of some near-by factory.

No ladies of high degree now sip their tea beneath their shade, with
liveried servants about the slender-legged tables, as they did in the
old days. There are tables, of course--a dozen in all, perhaps, some in
white cloths and some in bare tops, bare of everything except the glass
of beer--it depends very largely on what one orders, and who orders
it--but the servants are missing unless you count Muffles and his
stable-boy. Two of these old aristocrats--I am speaking of the old trees
now, not Muffles, and certainly not the stable-boy--two giant elms (the
same that Washington tied his mare to when they were little)--stand
guard on either side of the back porch, a wide veranda of a porch with a
honeysuckle, its stem, as thick as your arm, and its scraggy, half-dead
tendrils plaited in and out of the palings and newly painted
lattice-work.

On Sunday mornings--and this tale begins with a Sunday morning--Muffles
always shaved himself on this back porch. On these occasions he was
attired in a pair of trousers, a pair of slippers, and a red flannel
undershirt.

I am aware that this is not an extraordinary thing for a man living in
the country to do on a Sunday morning, and it is not an extraordinary
costume in which to do it. It was neither the costume nor the occupation
that made the operation notable, but the distinguished company who sat
around the operator while it went on.

There was the ex-sheriff--a large, bulbous man with a jet-black mustache
hung under his nose, a shirt-collar cut low enough to permit of his
breathing, and a skin-tight waistcoat buttoned over a rotundity that
rested on his knees. He had restless, quick eyes, and, before his "ex"
life began and his avoirdupois gained upon him, restless, quick fingers
with steel springs inside of them--good fingers for handling the
particular people he "wanted."

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