A Good Samaritan by Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews
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Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews >> A Good Samaritan
[Illustration: "Could he--couldn't he?"]
Could he leave that prostrate form on the truck and snatch at this bit
of heaven dangling before him? Could he--Couldn't he? No, he could
not. It would be a question of fifteen minutes perhaps before the drowsy
Billy would be marching to the police station, and in his entirely
casual and fearless state of mind, the big athlete would make history
for some policeman, his friend could not doubt, before he got there. Rex
had put his hand to this intoxicated plow and he must not look back,
even when the prospect backwards was so bewilderingly attractive, so
tantalizingly easy. He stammered badly when, at length, the silence
which followed the soft voice had to be filled.
"I'm simply--simply--broken up, Miss Margery," and the girl's eyes
looked at him with a sweet wideness that made it harder. "I don't know
how to tell you, and I don't know how to resign myself to it either, but
I--I can't take you to the theater. I--I've got to--got to--well, you
see, I've got to be with Billy."
She spoke quickly at that. "Mr. Fairfax, is Billy really ill--is there
something more than I understand? Why didn't you tell me? Has their
been an accident, perhaps? Why, I must go to him too--come--hurry--I'll
go with you, of course."
Rex stumbled again in his effort to quiet her alarm, to prevent this
scheme of seeking Billy on his couch of pain. "Oh no, indeed you mustn't
do that," he objected strenuously. "I couldn't let you, you know. I
don't want you to be bothered. Billy isn't ill at all--there hasn't been
any accident, I give you my word. He's all right--Billy's all right." He
had quite lost his prospective by now, and did not see the rocks upon
which he rushed.
"If Billy's all right, why isn't he here?" demanded Billy's cousin
severely.
Rex saw now. "He isn't exactly--that is to say--all right, you know. You
see how it is," and he gazed involuntarily at the sleeping giant huddled
on the truck.
"I do not see." The brown eyes had never looked at him so coldly before,
and their expression cut him.
"I'm glad you don't," he cried, and realized that the words had taken
him a step deeper into trouble. "It's just this way, Miss Margery--Billy
isn't hurt or ill, but he isn't--isn't feeling quite himself, and--and
I've got to--I've got to be with him." His voice sounded as if he were
going to cry, but it moved the girl to no pity.
"Oh!" she said, and her bewildered tone was a whole world removed from
the bright comradeship with which she had met him. "I see--you and Billy
have something else planned." Her face flushed suddenly. "I'm sorry I
misunderstood about--about the theater. I wouldn't for worlds have--have
seemed to force you to--" She stopped, embarrassed, hurt, but yet with
her graceful dignity untouched.
"Oh," the wretched Rex exclaimed impetuously, "if I could only take you
to the theater, I'd rather than--" but the girl stopped him.
"Never mind about that, please," she said, with gentle decision. "I
must go home--when is the next boat? One is going now--good-night, Mr.
Fairfax--no, don't come with me--I don't need you," and she was gone.
Two minutes later Strong's innocent slumbers were dispersed by a vicious
shake. "Wake up! wake up!" ordered Fairfax, restraining himself with
difficulty from mangling the cause of his sufferings. "I've had enough,
and we're going home, straight."
Rex was mistaken about that, but Billy was cordial in agreeing with him.
"Good idea, Recky! Howd'y' ever come to think of it? Le's go home
straight; tha's a bully good thing to do. Le's do it. Big head on you,
ol' boy," and yawning still, but with unperturbed good nature, Strong
marched, a bit crookedly, arm in arm with his friend to the street.
[Illustration: At every station the conductor and Rex had to reason
with him]
Rex's memory of the trip uptown on the Elevated was like an evil dream.
Strong, after his nap, was as a giant refreshed, and his play of wit
knew no contracting limits. There were, luckily, not many passengers
going up at this hour, but the dozen or so on the car were regaled.
Billy selected a seat on the floor with his broad back planted against
the door, and at every station the conductor and Rex had to reason with
him at length before the door could be opened. The official threatened
as well as he could for laughing to put him off, but he threatened less
strenuously for the sight of six feet two of muscle in magnificently fit
condition. This lasted for half a dozen stations and then the patient
began to play like a mountainous kitten. He took a strap on either side
of the car and turned somersaults; he did traveling ring work with them;
he gave a standing broad jump that would have been creditable on an
athletic field; he had his audience screaming with laughter at an
imitation of water polo over the back of a seat. Then, just as the fun
was at an almost impossible point, and the conductor, highly entertained
but worried, was considering how to get this chap arrested, Billy walked
up to him with charming friendliness and shook hands.
"One th' besh track meets I've ever had pleasure attendin', sir," he
said genially, and sat down and relapsed into grave dignity.
So he remained for five minutes, to the trembling joy of his exhausted
guardian, but it was too good to be true. Suddenly, at Fifty-third
Street, he spied a young woman at the other end of the car. There were
not more than nine passengers, so that each person might have had a
matter of half a dozen seats a piece, but Strong suddenly felt a demand
on his politeness, and reason was nothing to him. He rose and marched
the forty feet or so between himself and the woman, and, standing in
front of her, lifted, with some difficulty, his hat.
"Won't you take my seat, madam?" he inquired, with a smile of perfect
courtesy.
The young person was a young person of common-sense and she caught the
situation. She flashed a reassuring glance at Rex, hovering distressed
in the background, and shook her head at Strong politely. "No--no, thank
you," she said; "I think I can find a seat at this end that will do
nicely."
"Madam, I insist," Strong addressed her again earnestly.
"No, really," The young woman was embarrassed, for the eyes of the car
were on her. "Thank you so much," she said finally; "I think I'd better
stay here."
Strong bent over and put a great hand lightly on her arm. "Madam, as
gen'leman I cannot, cannot allow it. Madam, you mush take my seat.
Pleash, madam, do not make scene. 'S pleasure to me, 'sure you--greates'
pleasure," and beneath this courtly urgency the flushed girl walked
shamefacedly the length of the almost empty car, and sat down in
Strong's seat, while that soul of chivalry put his hand through a strap
and so stood till his ministering angel extracted him from the train at
Seventy-second Street.
With a sigh of heartfelt relief, Rex put his arm in the big fellow's at
the foot of the steps. Freedom must now be at hand, for Billy's home
was in a great apartment building not ten minutes' walk away. The
culprit himself seemed to realize that his fling was over.
"Raished Cain t'night, didn' we, ol' pal?" he inquired, and squeezed
Rex's guiding arm with affection. "I'll shay this for you, Rex--you may
be soft-hearted ol' slob, you may be half-witted donkey--I'm not denyin'
all that 'n more, but I'll shay thish--you're the bes' man to go on a
drunk with in--in--in The'logican Sem'nary. I'm not 'xceptin' th'----"
"Shut up, Billy," remarked Rex, not for the first time that night. "I'd
get myself pulled together a bit if I were you," he advised. "You're
going to see your family in a minute."
"M' poor fam'ly!" mourned Strong, shaking his head. "M' poor fam'ly!
Thish'll be awful blow to m' fam'ly, Recky. They all like so mush to see
me sober--always--'s their fad, Recky. Don't blame 'em, Recky, 's
natural to 'em. Some peop' born that way. M' poor fam'ly."
They stood in front of the broad driveway which swept under lofty arches
into the huge apartment house. Strong stopped and gazed upwards
mournfully. "Right up there," he murmured, pointing skywards--"M'
fam'ly." The tears were streaming down his face frankly now. "I can't
face 'em Recky, 'n this condition you've got me in," he said more in
sorrow than in anger. At that second the last inspiration of the evening
caught him. Across the street arose the mighty pile of an enormous
uptown hotel. Strong jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "Go'n' break it
to m' fam'ly by telegraph' 'em," he stated, and bitterly Rex repented of
that thoughtless mention of the Strongs to their son and heir.
Good-naturedly as he had done everything, but relentlessly, he dragged
his victim over the way, and direct to the Western Union office of the
hotel--"Webster's Union" he preferred to call it. His first telegram
read:
"Rex Fairfax got me drunk. Don't blame him. It's natural to him."
That one was confiscated, Strong complaining gently that his friend was
all "fads."
The second message was this:
"Dear Mama: Billy's intoxicated. Awfully sorry. Couldn't be helped. Home
soon."
That one went in spite of Fairfax's efforts, with two cents extra to
pay, which item was the first event of the evening to ruffle Strong's
temper.
"Shame, shame on rich cap'talists like Webster's Union to wring two
cents from poor drunk chap, for lil' word like 'soon'," he growled, and
appealed to the operator. "Couldn't you let me off that two cents?" he
asked winningly. "You're good fellow--good lookin' fellow too"--which
was the truth. "Well, then, can I get 'em cheaper 'f I sen 'em by
quantity? I'll do that--how many for dollar, hey?"
"Five," said the grinning operator, troubled by the irregularity, but
taken by this highly entertaining scheme of telegraphing across the
street. And Rex, his arts exhausted in vain, watched hopelessly while,
one after another, five telegrams were sent to The Montana, a hundred
feet away. The first being short two of the regulation ten words. Strong
finished with a cabalistic phrase: "Rectangular parallelopipedon."
"That'll get even Webster's Union for chargin' me two cents for 'soon',"
he chuckled. "Don't y' wish y' hadn' charged me that two cents, hey?" he
demanded of the operator, laughing joyfully and cocking his hat over one
ear, and the operator and two or three men who stood near could do no
otherwise than laugh joyfully too. Strong straightened his face into a
semblance of deep gravity. "Thish next one's important," he announced,
and put the end of the pencil in his mouth and meditated, while his
fascinated audience watched him. He was lost in thought for perhaps two
minutes, and then scribbled madly, and as he ended the little bunch of
men crowded frankly to look at what he had written. He pushed it toward
them with charming unreserve, and the bewilderment with which it was
read seemed to please him.
"Dear Papa": it ran. "I'm Calymene Blumembachii, a trilobite, one of the
crustaceans related to the emtomostracans, but looking more like a
tetradecapod, but always your affectionate--Billy."
He pushed it to the operator. "Split that in three," he ordered. "Don't
want ruin the wires I'm careful 'bout wires. Big fall snow wouldn't do
more damage 'n heavy words like that," he explained to the listening
circle. "Think I look like tetradecapod?" he asked of them as one who
makes conversation. "Had that in geology lesson when I was fifteen," he
went on. "Got lodged in crack in brain and there tish t' thish day!
Every now'n then I go 'flip,'"--he appeared to pull a light lever
situated in his head--"'n fire it off. See? Always hit something."
It was ten o'clock when, the job lot of telegrams despatched, Fairfax
led his volcano from the hotel and headed for the apartment house. He
expected another balk at the entrance, for his round of gaiety had come
now to seem to him eternal--he could hardly imagine a life in which he
was not conducting a tipsy man through a maze of experiences. So that it
was one of the surprises of the evening when Strong entered quietly and
with perfect deportment took his place in the elevator and got out
again, eight floors up, with the mildness of a dove. At the door of the
apartment came the last brief but sharp action of the campaign.
"Recky," he said, taking Fairfax's shoulders in his great grasp, "no
mother could be t' me what you've been."
"I hope not," Rex responded promptly, but Strong was not to be
side-tracked.
"No mother 'n the world--not one--no sir!" he went on. His voice broke
with feeling. "I'll nev' forget it--nev'--don't ask me to," he insisted.
"Dear Recky--blessed old tomfool--I'm go'n kiss you good-night."
"You bet you're not," said Fairfax with emphasis. "Let go of me, you
idiot," and he tried to loosen the hands on his shoulders.
But one of the most powerful men in New York had him in his grip, and
Rex found himself suddenly folded in Billy's arms, while a chaste salute
was planted full on his mouth. As he emerged a second later, disgusted
and furious, from this tender embrace, the clang of the elevator twenty
feet away caught his ear and, turning, his eyes met the astonished gaze
of two young girls and their scornful, frowning father. At that moment
the door of the Strongs' apartment opened, there was a vision of the
elder Mr. Strong's distracted face, the yellow gleam of the last
telegram in his hands, and Rex fled.
* * * * *
Two weeks later, a May breeze rustling through the greenness of the
quadrangle, brushed softly the ivy-clad brick walls, and stole, like a
runaway child to its playmate, through an open window of the Theological
Seminary building at Chelsea Square. Entering so, it flapped suddenly at
the white curtains as if astonished. What was this? Two muscular black
clad arms were stretched across a table, and between them lay a brown
head, inert, hopeless. It seemed strange that on such a May day, with
such a May breeze, life could look dark to anything young, yet Reginald
Fairfax, at the head of the graduating class, easily first in more than
one way--in scholarship, in athletics, in versatility, and, more than
all, like George Washington, "first in the hearts of his countrymen,"
the most popular man of the Seminary--this successful and well beloved
young person sat wretched and restless in his room and let the breeze
blow over his prostrate head and his idle, nerveless hands. Since the
night of the rescue of Billy Strong he had felt himself another and a
worse man. He sent a note to his cousin the next day.
"Dear Carty," it read, "For mercy sake let me alone. I know I've lost my
chance at St. Eric's and I know you'll say it was my own fault. I don't
want to hear either statement, so don't come near me till I hunt you up,
which I will do when I'm fit to talk to a white man. I'm grateful,
though you may not believe it. Yours--Rex."
But the lost chance at St. Eric's, although it was coming to weigh
heavily on his buoyant spirit, was not the worst of his troubles. The
girl from Orange--there lay the sting. He had sent her a note as well,
but there was little he was free to say without betraying Billy, the
note was mostly vague expressions of regret, and Rex knew her
clearheaded directness too well to hope that it would count for much. No
answer had come, and, day by day, he had grown more dejected, hoping
against hope for one.
A knock--the postman's knock--and Rex started and sprang to the door.
One letter, but he could hardly believe his glad eyes when he saw the
address on it, for it was the handwriting which he had come to know
well, had known well, seeing it once--her handwriting. In a moment the
jagged-edged envelope, torn in a desperate hurry to get what it held,
lay one side, and he was reading.
"Dear Mr. Fairfax": the letter ran; "For two weeks I have been very
unjust to you and I want to beg your pardon. Billy was here three days
ago, and what I didn't know and what he didn't know we patched together,
and the consequence is I want to apologize and to make up to you, if I
can, for being so disagreeable. Billy's recollections of that night were
disjointed, but he remembered a lot in spots, and I know now just what a
friend you were to him and how you saved him. I think he was horrid, but
I think you were fine--simply fine. I can't half say it in writing so
will you please come out for over Sunday--mother says--and I'll try to
show you how splendid I think you were. Will you? Yours sincerely"--and
her name.
Would he? Such a radiant smile shone through the little bare room that
the May breeze, catching its light at the window, clapped gay applause
against the flapping curtain. This was as it should be.
But the breeze and the postman were not to be the only messengers of
happiness. Steps sounded down the long, empty hall, stopped at his
door, and Rex, a new joy of living pulsing through him, sprang again,
almost before the knock sounded, to meet gladly what might be coming.
His face looked out of the wide-open doorway with so bright a welcome to
the world, that the two men who stood across the threshold smiled an
involuntary answer.
"Carty! I'm awfully glad"--and Rex stopped to put his hand out
graciously, deferentially, to the gray-haired and distinguished man who
stood with Carter Reed.
"Judge Rush, this is my cousin, Mr. Fairfax," Reed presented him, and in
a moment Rex's friend, the breeze, was helping hospitality on with gay
little refreshing dashes at a warm, silvered head, as Judge Rush sat in
the biggest chair at the big open window. He beamed upon the young man
with interested, friendly eyes.
"That's all very well about the quadrangle, Mr. Reed. It certainly is
beautiful and like the English Universities," he broke into a sentence
genially. "But I wish to talk to Mr. Fairfax. I've come to bring you
the first news, Mr. Fairfax, of what you will hear officially within a
day or two--that the vestry of St. Eric's hope you will consider a call
to be our assistant rector." Rex's heart almost stopped beating, and his
smile faded as he stared breathless at this portly and beneficent
Mercury. Mercury went on "A vestry meeting was held last night in which
this was decided upon. Your brilliant record in this seminary and other
qualifications which have been mentioned to us by high authorities, were
the reasons for this action which appeared upon the surface, but I want
you to know the inner workings--I asked your cousin to bring me here
that I might have the pleasure of telling you."
It was rather warm, and the old gentleman had climbed stairs, and his
conversation had been weighty and steady. He arrested its flow for a
moment and took a long breath. "Don't stop," said Rex earnestly, and the
others broke into sudden laughter.
"I like that," Judge Rush sputtered, chuckling. "You're ready to let me
kill myself, if needs be, to get the facts. All right, young man--I like
impetuosity--it means energy. I'll go on. The facts not known to the
public, which I wish to tell you, are as follows. After your failure to
keep your appointment on the evening of the 7th, I was about through
with you. I considered you careless both of your own interests and ours,
and we began to look for another assistant. A man who fitted the place
as you did seemed hard to find and the case was _in statu quo_ when, two
nights ago, my son brought home young William Strong to dinner. Our
families are old friends and Billy's father and I were chums in college,
so the boy is at home in our house. As you probably know, he has the
gift of telling a good story, so when he began on the events of an
evening which you will remember----"
Rex's deep laughter broke into the dignified sentences at this point.
"I see you remember." Judge Rush smiled benignly. "Well, Mr. Fairfax,
Billy made an amusing story of that evening. Only the family were at the
table and he spared himself not at all. He had been in Orange the day
before, and the young lady in the case had told him how you had
protected him at your own expense--he made that funny too, but I thought
it very fine behavior--very fine, indeed, sir." Rex's face flushed under
this. "And as I thought the whole affair over afterwards, I not only
understood why you had failed me, but I honored you for attempting no
explanation, and I made up my mind that you were the man we wanted. Yes,
sir, the man we want. A man who knows how to deal with the situations of
to-day, with the vices of a great city, that is what we want. I consider
tact, and broad-mindedness and self-sacrifice no small qualities for a
minister of the gospel; and a combination of those qualities, as in you,
I consider exceptional. So I went to this vestry meeting primed, and I
told them we had got to have you, sir--and we've got to. You'll come?"
The question was much like an order, but Rex did not mind. "Indeed, I'll
come, Judge Rush," he said, and his manner of saying it won the last
doubtful bit of the Judge's heart.
The Sunday morning when the new assistant preached his first sermon in
St. Eric's, there sat well back in the congregation a dark-eyed girl,
and with her a tall and powerful young man, whose deep shoulders and
movements, as of a well fitted machine, advertised an athlete in perfect
form. The girl's face was rapt as she followed, her soul in her eyes,
the clean-cut, short sermon, and when the congregation filtered slowly
down the aisles she said not a word. But as the two turned into the
street she spoke at last.
"He is a saint, isn't he, Billy?" she asked, and drew a long breath of
contentment.
And from six-feet-two in mid-air came Billy Strong's dictum. "Margery,"
he said, impressively, "Rex may be a parson and all that, but, to my
mind, that's not against him; to my mind that suits his style of
handling the gloves. There was a chap in the Bible"--Billy swallowed as
if embarrassed--"who--who was the spit 'n' image of Rex--the good
Samaritan chap, you know. He found a seedy one falling over himself by
the wayside, and he called him a beast and set him up, and took him to a
hotel or something and told the innkeeper to charge it to him, and--I
forget the exact words, but he saw him through, don't you know? And he
did it all in a sporty sort of way and there wasn't a word of whining or
fussing at him because he was loaded--that was awfully white of the
chap. Rex did more than that for me and not a syllable has he peeped
since. And, you know, the consequence of that masterly silence is that
I've gone on the water-wagon--yes, sir--for a year. And I'm hanged if
I'm not going to church every Sunday. He may be a saint as you say, and
I suppose there's no doubt but he's horrid intellectual--every man must
have his weaknesses. But the man that's a good Samaritan and a good
sport all in one, he's my sort, I'm for him," said Billy Strong.