Tales from Bohemia Part 15

"All right," replied the tall tramp, climbing upon the end of a car.

"But don't ever call me Kersh any more. After this I'm always Bill the b.u.m. Bill Kershaw's dead--" and he added to himself, "and decently buried on the hill over there under the moon."

XI. -- UNDER AN AWNING

For ten minutes we had been standing under the awning, driven there at two o'clock at night by a shower that had arisen suddenly.

"A pocket umbrella is one of the unsupplied necessities of the age,"

said my companion.

"Yes, and the peculiarity of the age is that while such luxuries as the phonograph and the kinetograph multiply day by day, important necessities remain unsupplied."

My friend mused for a time, while he watched the reflection of the electric light in the little street pools that were agitated by the falling fine drops of rain.

He looked from the reflection to the light itself, and thus his eyes turned upward.

An expression of surprise changed to mirth, and then dropping his glance until it met mine, he said:

"Have you noticed anything peculiar about this awning?"

"No, what is it?"

"Simply that there is no awning. Look up and see. Here are the posts and there is the framework, but only the sky is above, and we've been getting rained upon for the past ten minutes in blissful ignorance."

It was as he said, so we ran to the next awning, which was a fact, not a figment of fancy.

"That reminds me," resumed my friend, "of Simpkins. He was a young man who used to catch cold at the slightest dampness. His being out in the rain without an umbrella never failed to result in his remaining in the house for two or three subsequent days.

"One night, Simpkins, surprised by an unexpected shower, took refuge beneath the framework of an awning, which framework lacked the awning itself. He waited for an hour, until the shower had pa.s.sed, and then joyously took up again his homeward way, without having observed his mistake. He told me on the next day of his narrow escape from the rain.

I happened to know that the awning to which he alluded had been removed a few weeks before. But I did not tell him so until there no longer seemed to exist any likelihood of his catching cold from that wetting.

You see, his imagination had saved him."

"That tale is singularly reminiscent of those dear old stories about the man who took cold through sitting at a window that was composed of one solid sheet of gla.s.s, so clean that he thought it was no gla.s.s at all; and the men who, awaking in the night, stifling for want of fresh air, broke open the door of a bookcase which they took to be a window, and immediately noticed a pleasant draught of pure outside air."

"There is a likeness, which simply goes toward proving the truth of all three accounts. But the remarkable thing about Simpkins' case is that when he once learned that there had been nothing over his head during that rain, he immediately caught cold, although two weeks had pa.s.sed since the night of the shower. Wonderful, wasn't it?"

"Astonis.h.i.+ng, indeed."

Silence ensued and we meditated for awhile. Evidently the same thought came simultaneously into the minds of both of us, for while I was mentally commenting upon the deserted and lonely condition of the city streets at two o'clock on a rainy night, my friend spoke:

"A man is alone with his conscience, the electric lights, the shadows of the houses, and the sound of the rain at a time and place like this, isn't he? Standing as we stand now, under an awning, during a persistent rainfall, at this hour, with no other human being in sight, a man is for the time upon a desert island. Which reminds me:

"One night, at a later hour than this, when the rain was heavier than this, I was alone under an awning that was smaller than this. Being without umbrella and overcoat, I saw at least a quarter of an hour waiting for me. The thought was dismal.

"Happy idea! I would smoke. I had a cigar in my mouth in an instant.

"Horrors! I had no matches.

"The desire to smoke instantly increased tenfold. I puffed despairingly at my unlit cigar. No miracle occurred to ignite it. I looked longingly at the electric lights and the gas-lamps in the distance.

"Like a sailor cast upon an island and straining his eyes on the lookout for a s.h.i.+p, I stood there scanning the prospect in search of a man with a light. I was Enoch Arden; the awning was my palm-tree.

"Ten minutes pa.s.sed. No craft hove in sight.

"Suddenly uncertain footsteps were heard. I looked. Some one came that way. It was a squalid-looking personage--a professional beggar, half-drunk. He landed upon my island, beneath my awning.

"'For charity's sake, give me a match!' I cried.

"He looked at me--'sized me up,' in the technical terminology of his trade. Intelligence began to illumine his countenance. He saw that the opportunity of his life had come. He held out a match.

"'I'll sell it to you for fifty cents,' he said, with a grin.

"I had erred in revealing the depth of my want, the extent of my distress.

"I compromised by promising to give him a half-dollar if I should succeed in lighting my cigar with his solitary match. We did succeed. He took the fifty and started back for the saloon from whence he had come.

"Oh, my boy, the irony of fate--that same old oft-quoted irony!

"I hadn't blown three mouthfuls of smoke from that cigar when a friend came along with a lighted cigar, an umbrella, and a box full of matches.

"The whole effect of this story lies in the value that fifty cents possessed for me at that time. It was my last fifty cents, and two days stood between that night and salary day.

"I had another experience--"

But a night car came in view from around a corner, my friend ran for it, and his third tale remains untold.

XII. -- SHANDY'S REVENGE

He was old enough to know better, and a superficial observer might have thought that he did. But a severe and haughty manner in repose is not any indication of knowledge, nor is a well-kept beard, even when it is turning gray. Melrose Welty, the possessor of these and other ways and features symbolical of wisdom, had no higher occupation in life than to sit in club-houses and cafes, telling of conquests won by him over women, chiefly over soubrettes and chorus girls.

Of his means of livelihood, no one had certain knowledge. He always dressed well, but he abode in a lodging-house, to which he never invited any of his a.s.sociates. He affected the society of newspaper men, some of whom p.r.o.nounced him a good fellow until they discovered that he was an a.s.s; and he never refused an invitation to have a drink.

When he had you at a table in a quiet corner of a cafe, or in front of a bar, or in the lobby of a theatre between the acts, no matter how the conversation began, he would invariably turn it into that realm to which his thoughts were confined.

"I've got a supper on hand to-night after the performance," he would probably say, "with a blonde in the ---- Company. A lovely girl, too!

It's curious, old man, how I happened to meet her. I've talked to her only twice, but I made a hit with her in the first five minutes. I'll tell you how it was--"

Whereupon, if you were polite, and did not know Welty sufficiently to flee on a pretext, he would tell you how it was, inflicting upon you the wearisome minute details of the most commonplace thing in the world, the birth and growth of an acquaintance between a man about town and a silly young woman, not fastidious as to who pays for her food and drink as long as the food and drink are adequate.

If you were a newspaper man, Welty was apt to supplement his story with something like this:

"By the way, old fellow, if you have any pull with your dramatic editor, can't you give her a line or two? She hasn't much to do in the piece, but she does it well, and she's clever. She may get a good part one of these days. Have something nice said about her, won't you?"