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The Underdog

F >> F. Hopkinson Smith >> The Underdog




"Drowned?"

His answer gave me a little start, but I did not betray myself.

"So they said. The water trickled along his nose for two days as he lay
on the slab, before they found out who he was."

"In the morgue?" I inquired in a tone of surprise. I spoke as if this
part of the story had not reached me.

"In the morgue, Monsieur."

The repeated words came as cold and merciless as the drops of water that
fell on poor Channet as he lay under the gas-jets.

"Drowned himself for love of Mademoiselle Béraud, you say?"

"Quite true, Monsieur. He is not the only one. I know four."

"And she began to love another in a week?" My indignation nearly got the
better of me this time, but I do not think he noticed it.

"Why not, Monsieur? One must live."

As he spoke he moved an ash-tray deliberately within reach of my hand,
and poured the balance of the St. Julien into my glass without a quiver.

I smoked on in silence. Every spark of human feeling had evidently been
stifled in him. The Juggernaut of Paris, in rolling over him, had broken
every generous impulse, flattening him into a pulp of brutal
selfishness. That is why his face was so smooth and cold, his eyes so
dull and his voice so monotonous. I understood it all now. I changed the
subject. I did not know where it would lead if I kept on. Drowned lovers
were not what I was looking for.

"You say you have only been two years in Suresne?" I resumed,
carelessly, flicking the ashes from my cigar.

"But two years, Monsieur."

"Why did you leave Paris?"

"Ah, when one is over fifty it is quite done. Is it not so,
Monsieur?"--this made with a little deferential wave of his hand. I
noted the tribute to the staid painter, and nodded approvingly. He was
evidently climbing up to my level. Perhaps this plank, slender as it
was, might take him out of the slough and land him on higher and
better ground.

"Yes, you are right. And so you came to Suresne to be quiet."

"Not altogether, Monsieur. I came to be near--Well! we are never too old
for that--Is it not so?" He said it quite simply, quite as a matter of
course, the tones of his voice as monotonous as any he had yet
used--just as he had spoken of poor Channet in the morgue with the
water trickling over his dead face.

"Oh, then, even at fifty you have a sweetheart!" I blurted out with a
sudden twist of my probe. I felt now that I might as well follow the
iniquity to the end.

"It is true, Monsieur."

"Is she pretty?" As long as I was dissecting I might at least discover
the root of the disease. This remark, however, was not addressed to his
face, but to a crumb of ashes on the cloth, which I was trying to remove
with the point of a knife. He might not have answered, or liked it, had
I fired the question at him point-blank.

"Very pretty--" still the same monotone.

"And you love her!" It was up to the hilt now.

"She is the only thing I have left to love, Monsieur," he answered,
calmly.

Then, bending over me, he added:

"Monsieur, I do not think I am mistaken. Were you not painting along the
river this morning?"

"Yes."

"And a little child stood beside you while you worked?" Something in his
voice as he spoke made me raise my head. To my intense amazement the
listless eyes were alight with a tenderness that seemed to permeate his
whole being, and a smile of infinite sweetness was playing about his
mouth--the smile of the old saint--the Ribera of the Prado!

"Yes, of course; the one playing with the priest," I answered, quickly.
"But--"

"No; that was me, Monsieur. I have often been taken for a priest,
especially when I am off duty. It is the smooth face that misled you--"
and he passed his hand over his cheeks and chin.

"You the priest!" This came as a distinct surprise. "Ah, yes, I do see
the resemblance now. And so your sweetheart is the woman in the white
cap." At last I had reached his tender spot.

"No, you are wrong again, Monsieur. The woman in the white cap is my
sister. My sweetheart is the little girl--my granddaughter, Susette."

* * * * *

I raised my own white umbrella over my head, picked up my sketch-trap,
and took the path back to the river. The rain had ceased, the sun was
shining--brilliant, radiant sunshine; all the leaves studded with
diamonds; all the grasses strung with opals, every stone beneath my
feet a gem.

I didn't know when I left what became of Mademoiselle Ernestine Béraud,
with her last lover under the sod, and the new one shut up in the kiosk,
and I didn't care. I saw only a little girl--a little girl in a
brown-madder dress and yellow-ochre hat; with big, blue eyes, a tiny
pug-nose, a wee, kissable mouth, and two long pig-tails down her back.
Looking down into her bonny face from its place, high up on the walls of
the Prado, was an old cracked saint, his human eyes aglow with a light
that came straight from heaven.



"DOC" SHIPMAN'S FEE

It was in the Doctor's own office that he told me this story. He has
told me a dozen more, all pulled from the rag-bag of his experience,
like strands of worsted from an old-fashioned reticule. Some were
bright-colored, some were gray and dull--some black; most of them, in
fact, sombre in tone, for the Doctor has spent much of his life climbing
up the rickety stairs of gloomy tenements. Now and then there comes out
a thread of gold which he weaves into the mesh of his talk--some gleam
of pathos or heroism or unselfishness, lightening the whole fabric. This
kind of story he loves best to tell.

The Doctor is not one of your new-fashioned doctors quartered in a
brownstone house off the Avenue, with a butler opening the door; a pair
of bob-tailed grays; a coupé with a note-book tucked away in its pocket
bearing the names of various millionnaires; an office panelled in oak; a
waiting-room lined with patients reading last month's magazines until he
should send for them. He has no such abode nor belongings. He lives all
alone by himself in an old-fashioned house on Bedford Place--oh, Such a
queer, hunched-up old house and such a quaint old neighborhood poked
away behind Jefferson Market--and he opens the door himself and sees
everybody who comes--there are not a great many of them nowadays,
more's the pity.

There are only a few such houses left up the queer old-fashioned street
where he lives. The others were pulled down long ago, or pushed out to
the line of the sidewalk and three or four stories piled on top of them.
Some of these modern ones have big, carved marble porticos, made of
painted zinc and fastened to the new brickwork. Inside these portals are
a row of bronze bells and a line of speaking tubes with cards below
bearing the names of those who dwell above.

The Doctor's house is not like one of these. It would have been had it
not belonged to his old mother, who died long ago and who begged him
never to sell it while he lived. He was thirty years younger then, but
he is still there and so is the old house. It looks a little ashamed of
its shabbiness when you come upon it suddenly hiding behind its pushing
neighbors. First comes an iron fence with a gate never shut, and then a
flagged path dividing a grass-plot, and then an old-fashioned wooden
stoop with two steps, guarded by a wooden railing (many a day since
these were painted); and over these railings and up the supports which
carry the roof of the portico straggles a honeysuckle that does its best
to hide the shabbiness of the shingles and the old waterspout and
sagging gutter, and fails miserably when it gets to the farther cornice,
which has rotted away, showing under its dismal paint the black and
brown rust of decaying wood.

Then way in under the portico comes the door with the name-plate, and
next to it, level with the floor of the piazza or portico--either you
please, for it is a combination of both--are two long French windows,
always open in summer evenings and a-light on winter nights with the
reflection of the Doctor's soft-coal fire, telling of the warmth and
cheer within.

For it is a cheery place. It doesn't look like a doctor's office. There
are dingy haircloth sofas, it is true, and a row of shelves with
bottles, and funny-looking boxes on the mantel--one an electric
battery--and rows and rows of books on the walls. But there are no
dreadful instruments about. If there are, you don't see them.

The big chair he sits in would swallow up a smaller man. It is covered
with Turkey red and has a roll cushion for his head. There are two of
these chairs--one for you, or me; this last has big arms that come out
and catch you under the elbows, a mighty help to a man when he has just
learned that his liver or lungs or heart or some other part of him has
gone wrong and needs overhauling.

Then there is a canary that sings all the time, and a small dog--oh,
such a low-down, ill-bred, tousled dog; kind of a dog that might have
been raised around a lumber-yard--was, probably--one ear gone, half of
his tail missing; and there are some pots of flowers, and on the wall
near the window where everybody can see is a case of butterflies impaled
on pins and covered by a glass. No, you wouldn't think the Doctor's
office a grewsome place, and you certainly wouldn't think the Doctor was
a grewsome person--not when you come to know him.

If you met him out on Sunday afternoon in his black clothes, white
neck-cloth, and well-brushed hat, his gray hair straggling over his
coat-collar, pounding his cane on the pavement as he walked, you would
say he had a Sunday-school class somewhere. If you should come upon him
suddenly, seated before his fire, his gold spectacles clinging to his
finely chiselled nose, his thoughtful face bending over his book, you
would conclude that you had interrupted some savant, and bow
yourself out.

But you must ring his bell at night--say two o'clock A.M.; catch his
cheery voice calling through the tube from his bedroom in the
rear--"Yes; coming right away--be there soon as I get my clothes
on"--feel the strength and sympathy and readiness to help in the man,
and try to keep step with him as he hurries on, and then watch him when
he enters the sick-room, diffusing hope and cheer and confidence, and
listen to the soft, soothing tones of his voice, before you really get
at the inside lining of "Doc" Shipman.

All this brings me to the story. Of course, I could have told you the
bare facts without giving you an idea of the man and his surroundings,
but that wouldn't be fair to you, for you would have missed knowing the
Doctor, and I the opportunity of introducing him to you.

We were sitting in the old-fashioned office, then, one snowy night in
January, the Doctor leaning back in his chair, his meerschaum pipe in
his mouth--the one with the gold cap that a long-ago patient gave
him--when he straightened his back and tugged at his fob, bringing to
the surface a small gold watch--one I had not seen before.

"Where's the silver one?" I asked, referring to an old silver-backed
watch I had seen him wear.

The Doctor looked up and smiled.

"That's in the drawer. I don't wear it any more--not since I got this
one back."

"What happened? Was it broken?"

"No, stolen."

"When?"

"Oh, some time ago. Help yourself to a cigar and I'll tell you about it.

"One night last summer I came in late, took off my coat and vest, hung
them on a chair by the window and went to bed, leaving the sashes ajar,
for it was terribly hot and I wanted a draught of air through from
my bedroom."

(I must tell my reader here that the Doctor is a born story-teller and
something of an actor as well. He seldom explains his characters or
situations as he goes on by putting in "I said" and "he said" and
similar expressions. You know by the tones of his voice who is speaking,
and his gestures supply the rest.)

"I always carried this watch in my vest-pocket. I carry it now inside my
waistband so they will have to pull me to pieces to get it.

"Well, about three o'clock in the morning--I had just heard the old
clock in the tower strike, and was dozing off to sleep again--a footstep
awoke me to consciousness. I looked through these doors"--here the
Doctor was pointing to the folding doors of the office where we
sat--"and through my bedroom saw the dim outline of a man moving about
this room. He had my vest and trousers over his arm. I sprang up, but he
was too quick for me, and before I could reach him he had slipped
through the windows out on to the porch, down the yard, through the
gate, and was gone.

"With him went my mother's watch, which was in the upper vest-pocket,
and some fifty dollars in money. I didn't mind the money, but I did the
watch. It was my mother's, a present from my father when they were first
married, and had the initials '_E.M.S. from J.H.S_.' engraved on the
under side of the case. When she died I pasted the dear old lady's
photograph inside the upper lid. I know almost everybody around here,
and they all know me; they come in here with broken heads for me to sew
up, and stab wounds, and such-like misfortunes, and when they heard what
had happened to me they all did what they could.

"The Captain of the precinct came around, and everybody was very sorry,
and they hunted the pawnshops, and I offered a reward--in fact, did all
the foolish things you do when you have lost something you think a heap
of. But no trace of the watch could be found, and so I gave it up and
tried to forget it and couldn't. That's why I bought that cheap silver
one. My only clew to the thief was the glimpse I had of a scar on his
cheek and a slight dragging of his foot as he stepped about my room.

"One night last autumn there came a ring at the bell, and I let in a man
with a slouch hat pulled over his eyes and the collar of his coat turned
up. He was soaking wet, the water oozing from his shoes and slopping the
oilcloth in the hall where he stood. I had never seen him before.

"'Doc,' he said, 'I want you.' They all call me 'Doc' around
here--especially this kind of a man--and I saw right away where
he belonged.

"'What for?'

"'My pal's sick.'

"'What's the matter with him?'

"'Well, he's sick--took bad. He'll die if he don't git help.'

"'Where is he?'

"'Down in Washington Street.'

"'Queer,' I said to myself, 'his wanting me to go two miles from here,
when there are plenty of doctors nearer by,' and so I said to him:

"'You can get a doctor nearer than me. I'm waiting for a woman case and
may be sent for any minute. Try the Dispensary on Canal Street; they've
always a doctor there.'

"'No--we don't want no Dispensary sharp. We want you. Pal's sent me for
you--he knows you, but you mightn't remember him.'

"'I'll go.' These are the people I can never refuse. They are on the
hunted side of life and don't have many friends. I slipped on my rubbers
and coat, picked up my umbrella and my bag with my instruments in it;
hung a card in the window so the hall-light would strike it, marked
'Back in an hour'--in case the woman sent for me; locked my door and
started after him.

"It was an awful night. The streets were running rivers, the wind
rattling the shutters and flattening the umbrellas of everybody who
tried to carry one--one of those storms that drives straight at the
front of the house, drenching it from chimney to sidewalk. We waited
under the gas-lamp, boarded a Sixth Avenue car, and got out at a signal
from my companion. During the trip he sat in the far corner of the car,
his hat slouched over his eyes, his coat-collar covering his ears. He
evidently did not want to be recognized.

"If you know the neighborhood about Washington Street you know it's the
last resort of the hunted. When they want to hide, they burrow under one
of these rookeries. That's where the police look for them, only they've
got so many holes they can't stop them all. Captain Packett of the Ninth
Precinct told me the other day that he'd rather hunt a rattlesnake in a
tiger's cage than go open-handed into some of the rookeries around
Washington Street. I am never afraid in these places; a doctor's like a
Sister of Charity or a hospital nurse--they're safe anywhere. I don't
believe that other fellow would have stolen my watch if he had known I
was a doctor.

"When we left the car at Canal Street, my companion whispered to me to
follow him, no matter where he went. We kept along close to the houses,
past the dives--the streets, even here, were almost deserted; then I saw
him drop down a cellarway. I followed, through long passages, up a
creaking pair of stairs, along a deserted corridor--only one gas-jet
burning--up a second flight of stairs and into an empty room, the door
of which he opened with a key which he held in his hand. He waited until
I passed in, locked the door behind us, felt his way to a window, the
glow of some lights in the tenements opposite giving the only light in
the room, and raised the sash. Then down a fire-escape, across a wooden
bridge, which was evidently used to connect the two buildings; through
an open door, and up another stairs. At the end of this last corridor my
companion pushed open a door.

"'Here's the "Doc,"' I heard him say.

"I looked into a room about as big as this we sit in. It was filled with
men, most of them on the floor with their backs to the wall. There was a
cot in one corner, and a pine table on which stood a cheap kerosene
lamp, and one or two chairs. The only other furniture were a
flour-barrel and a dry-goods box. On top of the barrel was a tin
coffeepot, a china cup, and half a loaf of bread. Against the
window--there was but one--was tacked a ragged calico quilt, shutting
out air and light. Flat on the floor, where the light of the lamp fell
on his face, lay a man dressed only in his trousers and undershirt. The
shirt was clotted with blood; so were the mattress under him and
the floor.

"'Shot?' I asked of the man nearest me.

"'Yes.'

"I knelt down on the floor beside him and opened his shirt. The wound
was just above the heart; the bullet had struck a rib, missed the lungs,
and gone out at the back. Dangerows, but not necessarily fatal.

"The man turned his head and opened his eyes. He was a stockily built
fellow of thirty with a clean-shaven face.

"'Is that you, "Doc"?'

"'Yes, where does it hurt?'

"'"Doc" Shipman--who used to be at Bellevue five or six years ago?'

"'Yes--now tell me where the pain is.'

"'Let me look at you. Yes--that's him. That's the "Doc," boys. Where
does it hurt?--Oh, all around here--back worst'--and he passed his hand
over his side.

"I looked him over again, put in a few stitches, and fixed him up for
the night. When I had finished he said:

"'Come closer, "Doc"; am I going to die?'

"'No, not this time; you'll pull through. Close shave, but you'll
weather it. But you want some air. Here, you fellows'--and I motioned
to two men leaning against the quilt tacked over the window--'rip that
off and open that window. He's got to breathe--too many of you in
here, anyway,'

"One of the men moved the lidless dry-goods box against the wall, picked
up the kerosene lamp and placed it inside, smothering its light; the
other tore the lower end of the quilt from the sash, letting in the
fresh, wet night-air.

"I turned to the wounded man again.

"'You say you've seen me before?'

"'Yes, once. You sewed this up'--and he held up his arm showing a
healed scar. 'You've forgot it, but I haven't.'

"'Where?'

"'Bellevue. They took me in there. You treated me white. That's why my
pal hunted you up. Say, Bill'--and he called to my companion with the
slouch hat--'pay the "Doc."'

"Half a dozen men dove instantly into their pockets, but my companion
already had his roll of bills in his hand. He bent over so that the glow
of the half-smothered lamp could fall upon his hand, unrolled a
twenty-dollar bill and handed it to me.

"I passed it back to him. 'I don't want this. Five dollars is my fee. If
you haven't anything smaller, wait till I come to-morrow, then you can
give me a ten. I'm ready to go now; lead the way out.'

"Next morning I went to see him again. Bill, by arrangement, met me at
the corner of the street and took me to the wounded man's room, in and
out, by the same route we had taken the night before. I found he had
passed a good night, had no fever, and was all right. I left some
medicine and directions, got my ten dollars, and never went again.

"Last month, some two days before Christmas, I was sitting here
reading--it was after twelve o'clock--when I heard a tap on the
window-pane. I pushed aside the shade and looked out a thick-set man
motioned me to open the door. When he got inside the hall he said:

"'Ain't forgot me again, have you, "Doc"!'

"'No, you're the man I fixed up in Washington Street last fall.'

"'Yea, that's right, "Doc"; that's me. Can I come in? I got something
for you.'

"I brought him in and he sat down on that sofa. Then he pulled out a
package from his inside pocket.

"'"Doc,"' he began, 'I was thinking to-night of what you done for me and
how you did it, and how decent you've been about it always, and I
thought maybe you wouldn't feel offended if I brought you this bunch of
scarfpins to take your pick from'--and he unwrapped the bundle. 'There's
a pearl one--that might please you--and here's another that
sparkles--take your pick, "Doc." It would please me a heap if you
would'--and he handed me half a dozen scarfpins stuck in a flannel
rag--some of them of great value.

"I didn't know what to say at first. I couldn't get mad. I saw he was in
dead earnest, and I saw, too, that it was pure gratitude on his part
that prompted him to do it. That's a kind of human feeling you don't
want to crush out in a man. When he's got that, no matter what else he
lacks, you've got something to build on. I pulled out the pearl pin from
the others. I wanted to get time to make up my mind as to what I really
ought to do.

"'Very nice pin,' I said.

"'Yes, I thought so. I got it on a Sixth Avenue car. Maybe you'll like
the gold one better; take your pick, it's all the same to me. That one
you've got in your hand is a good one.' I was slowly looking them over,
making up my mind how I would refuse them and not hurt his feelings.

"'How did you get this one?' I asked, holding up the pearl pin.

"'I picked it up outside Cooper Union.'

"'On the sidewalk?'

"'No, from a feller's scarf. I held the cab door for him.' He spoke
exactly as if he had been a collector who had been roaming the world for
curios. 'Take 'em both, "Doc"--or all of 'em--I mean it.'

"I laid the bundle on the table and said: 'Well, that's very kind of you
and I don't want you to think I don't appreciate it--but you see I don't
wear scarfpins, and if I did I don't think I ought to take these. You
see we have two different professions--you've got yours and I've got
mine. I saw off men's legs, or I help them through a spell of sickness.
They pay me for it in money. You've got another way of making your
living. Your patients are whoever you happen to meet. I mightn't like
your way of doing, and you mightn't like mine. That's a matter of
opinion, or, perhaps, of education. You've got your risks to run, and
I've got mine. If I cut too deep and kill a man they can shut me
up--just as they can if you get into trouble. But I don't think we ought
to mix up the proceeds. You wouldn't want me to give you this
five-dollar Bill--and I held up a note a patient had just paid me--'and
therefore I don't see how I ought to take one of your pins. I may not
have made it plain to you--but it strikes me that way.'

"'Then you ain't mad 'cause I brought 'em?'--and he looked at me
searchingly from under his dark eyebrows, his lips firmly set.

"'No, I'm very grateful to you for wanting to give them to me--only I
don't see my way clear to take them.'

"He settled back on the sofa and began twirling his hat with his hand.
Then he rose from his seat, a shade of disappointment on his face, and
said, slowly:

"'Well, "Doc," ain't there something else I can do for you? Man like you
must have _something_ you want--something you can't get without
somebody's help. Think now--you mightn't see me again.'

"Instantly I thought of my mother's watch.

"'Yes, there is. Somebody came along one night when I was asleep and
borrowed my vest hanging over that chair by the window, and my
trousers, and my mother's watch was in the vest pocket. If you could
help me get that back you would do me a real service--one I
wouldn't forget.'

"'What kind of a watch?'

"I described it closely, its inscription, the portrait of my mother in
the case, and showed him a copy of her photograph--like the one here.
Then I gave him as close a description of the man as I could.

"When I had described the scar on his face he looked at me in surprise.
When I added that he had a slight limp, he said, quickly:

"'Short man--with close-cropped hair--and a swipe across his chin. Lost
a toe, and stumbles when he walks. I'll see what I can do. He ain't one
of our men. He comes from Chicago. He never stays more'n a day or two in
any town. Don't none of 'em know him round here. Leave it to me; may
take some time--see you in a day or two'--and he went out.

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