Marshall Pinckney Wilder - The Wit and Humor of America, Volume VI

He listened to it all in silence, walking restlessly about the office, his blue eyes shining with a strange light. He took up a bronze paper-weight and gazed at it with an intensity of self-absorption.

"I can't go," he said.

"Oh, but you have to," I exclaimed.

"Mr. Westoby," he resumed, "I was foolish enough to back a friend's credit at a store here. He has skipped to Minnesota, and I am left with three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents to pay. To take a three days' holiday would be a serious matter to me at any time, but at this moment it is impossible."

I gave him a good long look. He didn't strike me as a borrowing kind of man. I should probably insult him by volunteering. Was there ever anything so unfortunate?

"I can't go," he repeated with a little choke.

"You may never have another opportunity," I said. "Eleanor is doing a thing I should never have expected from one of her proud and reserved nature. The advances of such a woman—"

He interrupted me with a groan.

"If it wasn't for my mother I'd throw everything to the winds and fly to her," he burst out. "But I have a mother—a sainted mother, Mr. Westoby—her welfare must always be my first consideration!"

"Is there no chance of anything turning up?" I said. "An appendicitis case—an outbreak of measles? I thought there was a lot of scarlatina just now."

He shook his head dejectedly.

"Doctor," I began again, "I am pretty well fixed myself. I'm blessed with an income that runs to five figures. If all goes the way it should we shall be brothers-in-law in six months. We are almost relations. Give me the privilege of taking over this small obligation—"

I never saw a man so overcome. My proposal seemed to tear the poor devil to pieces. When he spoke his voice was trembling.

"You don't know what it means to me to refuse," he said. "My self-respect … my—my...." And then he positively began to weep!

"You said three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents, I believe?"

He waved it from him with a long, lean hand.

"I can not do it," he said; "and, for God's sake, don't ask me to!"

I argued with him for twenty minutes; I laid the question before him in a million lights; I racked him with a picture of Eleanor, so deeply hurt, so mortified, that in her recklessness and despair she would probably throw herself away on the first man that offered! This was his chance, I told him; the one chance of his life; he was letting a piece of idiotic pride wreck the probable happiness of years. He agreed with me with moans and weeps. He had the candor of a child and the torrential sentiment of a German musician. Three hundred and four dollars and seventy-five cents stood between him and eternal bliss, and yet he waved my pocketbook from him! And all the while I saw myself losing Freddy.

I went away with his "no, no, no!" still ringing in my ears.

At the club I found a note from Freddy. She pressed me to lose no time. Mrs. Matthewman was talking of going to Europe, and of course she and Eleanor would have to accompany her. Eleanor, she said, had ordered two new gowns and had brightened up wonderfully. "Only yesterday she told me she wished that silly doctor would hurry up and come—and that, you know, from Eleanor is almost a declaration!"

Some of my best friends happened to be in the club. It occurred to me that poor Nevill was diabetic, and that Charley Crossman had been boring everybody about his gout. I buttonholed them both, and laid my unfortunate predicament before them. I said I'd pay all the expenses. In fact, the more they could make it cost the better I'd be pleased.

"What," roared Nevill, "put myself in the hands of a young fool so that he may fill his empty pockets with your money! Where do I come in? Good heavens, Westoby, you're crazy! Think what would happen to me if it came to Doctor Saltworthy's ears? He'd never have anything more to do with me!"

Charley Crossman was equally rebellious and unreasonable.

"I guess you've never had the gout," he said grimly.

"But Charley, old man," I pleaded, "all that you'd have to do would be to let him talk to you. I don't ask you to suffer for it. Just pay—that's all—pay my money!"

"I'm awfully easily talked into things," said Charley. (There was never such a mule on the Produce Exchange.) "He'd be saying, 'Take this'—and I'm the kind of blankety-blank fool that would take it!"

Then I did a mean thing. I reminded Crossman of having backed some bills of his—big bills, too—at a time when it was touch and go whether he'd manage to keep his head above water.

"Westoby," he replied, "don't think that time has lessened my sense of that obligation. I'd cut off my right hand to do you a good turn. But for heaven's sake, don't ask me to monkey with my gout!"

The best I could get out of him was the promise of an anemic servant-girl. Nevill generously threw in a groom with varicose veins. Small contributions, but thankfully received.

"Now, what you do," said Nevill, "is to go round right off and interview Bishop Jordan. He has sick people to burn!"

But I said Jones would get on to it if I deluged him with the misery of the slums.

"That's just where the bishop comes in," said Nevill. "There isn't a man more in touch with the saddest kind of poverty in New York—the decent, clean, shrinking poverty that hides away from all the dead-head coffee and doughnuts. If I was in your fix I'd fall over myself to reach Jordan!"

"Yes, you try Jordan," said Charley, who, I'm sure, had never heard of him before.

"Then it's me for Jordan," said I.

I went down stairs and told one of the bell-boys to look up the address in the telephone-book. It seemed to me he looked pale, that boy.

"Aren't you well, Dan?" I said.

"I don't know what's the matter with me, sir. I guess it must be the night work."

I gave him a five-dollar bill and made him write down 1892 Eighth Avenue on a piece of paper.

"You go and see Doctor Jones first thing," I said. "And don't mention my name, nor spend the money on Her Mad Marriage ."

I jumped into a hansom with a pleasant sense that I was beginning to make the fur fly.

"That's a horrible cold of yours, Cabby," I said as we stopped at the bishop's door and I handed him up a dollar bill. "That's just the kind of a cold that makes graveyards hum!"

"I can't shake it off, sir," he said despondently. "Try what I can, and it's never no use!"

"There's one doctor in the world who can cure anything," I said; "Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I was worse than you two weeks ago, and now look at me! Take this five dollars, and for heaven's sake, man, put yourself in his hands quick."

Bishop Jordan was a fine type of modern clergyman. He was broad-shouldered mentally as well as physically, and he brought to philanthropic work the thoroughness, care, enthusiasm and capacity that would have earned him a fortune in business.

"Bishop," I said, "I've come to see if I can't make a trade with you!"

He raised his grizzled eyebrows and gave me a very searching look.

"A trade," he repeated in a holding-back kind of tone, as though wondering what the trap was.

"Here's a check for one thousand dollars drawn to your order," I went on. "And here's the address of Doctor Henry Jones, 1892 Eighth Avenue. I want this money to reach him via your sick people, and that without my name being known or at all suspected."

"May I not ask the meaning of so peculiar a request?"

"He's hard up," I said, "and I want to help him. It occurred to me that I might make you—er—a confederate in my little game, you know."

His eyes twinkled as he slowly folded up my check and put it in his pocket.

"I don't want any economy about it, Bishop," I went on. "I don't want to make the best use of it, or anything of that kind. I want to slap it into Doctor Jones' till, and slap it in quick."