From a Bench in Our Square Part 18

THE GUARDIAN OF G.o.d'S ACRE

As far as the eye could apprehend him, he was palpably an outlander. No such pink of perfection ever sprung from the simple soil of Our Square.

A hard pink it was, suggestive less of the flower than of enameled metal. He was freshly shaved, freshly pressed, freshly anointed, and, as he paced gallantly across my vision, I perceived him to be slightly grizzled at the temples, but nevertheless of a vigorous and grim youthfulness that was almost daunting. Not until he returned and stood before me with his feet planted a little apart, giving an impression of purposeful immovability to his wiry figure, did I note that his eyes belied the general jauntiness of his personality. They were cold, direct eyes, with a filmy appearance, rather like those of a morose and self-centered turtle which had lived in our fountain until the day the Rosser twins fell in, when it crawled out and emigrated.

"Nice day," said the stranger, s.h.i.+fting a patent-leathered foot out of a puddle.

"Very," I agreed. Finical over-accuracy about the weather is likely to discourage a budding acquaintances.h.i.+p.

"Have one?" He extended a gemmed cigarette-case, and when, removing my pipe, I had declined in suitable terms, lighted up, himself. He then sat down upon the dryest portion of the bench not occupied by my person.

"Whiplash win in the fi'th," he volunteered presently.

"Yes?" said I with a polite but spurious show of interest.

"Under a pull. Spread-eagled his field."

"Who is Whiplash, may I ask?"

"Oh, Gaw!" said the pink man, appalled. He searched my face suspiciously. "A hoss," he stated at length, satisfied of my ignorance.

After several reflective puffs, the smoke of which insufficiently veiled his furtive appraisal of myself, he tried again:

"They give O'Dowd a shade, last night."

"Indeed? Who did?"

"The sporting writers."

"As a testimonial?" I inquired, adding that a shade, whether of the lamp or sun species seemed an unusual sort of gift.

My interlocutor groaned. He drew from the pocket of his gray-check cutaway, purple and fine linen, the purple being an ornate and indecipherable monogram, wherewith to wipe his troubled brow. Susan Gluck's Orphan, who was playing down-wind, paused to inhale deeply and with a beatific expression. Restoring the fragrant square to its repository, the pink one essayed another conversational skirmish.

"The Reds copped again yesterday."

"If you are referring to the raid on Anarchist Headquarters in Avenue C, I should have inferred that the Reds _were_ copped, to use your term."

Curt and contemptuous laughter was his response. "Don't you ever read the papers, down here?"

"Certainly," I retorted with some spirit, for the implied slur upon Our Square stung me. "In fact, I was reading one of our local publications when you inter--when you arrived. It contains some very interesting poetry."

"Yeh?" said the hard, pink man politely.

"For example, in this issue I find the following apostrophe." I proceeded to read aloud:

"Farewell, our dear one, we must part, For thou hast gone to heavenly home, While we below with aching heart Must long for thee and ever moan."

"Swell stuff," commented the sharer of my bench, with determined interest. "Poetry's a little out of my line, but I'm _for_ it. Who wrote that?"

"It is signed 'Loving Father and 3 Sisters.' But the actual authors.h.i.+p rests with the long gentleman in black whom you see leaning on the park fence yonder. His name is Bartholomew Storrs and he is the elegiac or mortuary or memorial laureate of Our Square."

This was said with intent to mortify the soul of my new acquaintance in revenge for his previous display of erudition. The bewilderment in his face told me that I had scored heavily. But he quickly rallied.

"Do I get you right?" he queried. "Does he write those hymns for other folks to sign?"

"He does."

"What does he do that for?"

"Money. He gets as high as five dollars per stanza."

"Some salesman!" My hard-faced companion regarded the lank figure overhanging the fence with new respect. "Looks to me like the original Gloom," he observed. "What's _his_ grouch?"

"Conscience."

"He must have a b.u.m one!"

"He has a busy one. He expends a great amount of time and sorrow repenting of our sins."

"Whose sins?" asked the other, opening wider his dull and weary eyes.

"Ours. His neighbors. Everybody in Our Square."

My interlocutor promptly and fitly put into words the feeling which had long lurked within my consciousness, ashamed to express itself against a monument of dismal pity such as Bartholomew Storrs. "He's got a nerve!"

he a.s.serted.

Warming to him for his pithy a.n.a.lysis of character, I enlarged upon my theme. "He rebukes MacLachan for past drunkenness. He mourns for Schepstein, who occasionally helps out a friend at ten per cent, as a usurer. He once accused old Madame Tallafferr of pride, but he'll never do that again. He calls the Little Red Doctor, our local physician, to account for profanity, and gets a fresh sample every time. Even against the Bonnie La.s.sie, whose sculptures you can just see in that little house near the corner"--I waved an ill.u.s.trative hand--"he can quote Scripture, as to graven images. We all revere and respect and hate him.

He's coming this way now."

"Good day, Dominie," said Bartholomew Storrs, as he pa.s.sed, in such a tone as a very superior angel might employ toward a particularly d.a.m.ned soul.

"That frown," I explained to my companion, after returning the salutation, "means that I failed to attend church yesterday."

But the hard, pink man had lost interest in Bartholomew. "Called you 'Dominie,' didn't he?" he remarked. "I thought I had you right. Heard of you from a little red-headed ginger-box named Smith."

"You know the Little Red Doctor?"

"I met him," he replied evasively. "He told me to look you up. 'You talk to the Dominie,' he says."

"About what?"

"I'm coming to that." He leaned forward to place a muscular and confidential hand on my knee. "First, I'd like to do you a little favor," he continued in his husky and intimate voice. "If you're looking for some quick and easy money, I got a little tip that I'd like to pa.s.s on to you."

"Evidently the Little Red Doctor told you that my mind was a tottering ruin, which may be quite true; but if it's a matter of investing in the Peruvian Gold, Rubber Tree, and Perpetual Motion Concession, I'm reluctantly compelled--"

"Forget it!" adjured the hard, pink man in a tone which secured my silence and almost my confidence. "This is a hoss. Seven to one, and a sure cop. I _know_ hosses. I've owned 'em."

"Thank you, but I can't afford such luxuries as betting."