A Man in the Open Part 27

"It's Billy O'Flynn."

"No, but that's weally my guinea-pig, the pink one--Billy O'Flynn.

You're not a fairy, Billy?"

"Why, what does you know about fairies?"

"Most truthfully, you know? I don't believe in fairies, but then it pleases mummie."

So Billy sat on his heel making friends with the heaven-born, and Patsy, the nurse, came behind him, craving with cotton-gloved hands to touch the sailor's crisp, short, golden hair, and David gravely tried on the man's peaked cap.

"Yes," Billy agreed, "fairies is rot when there's real gals about, with rosy cheeks a-blus.h.i.+n' an' cotton gloves."

"Lawks! 'Ow you sailors does fancy yourselves," said Patsy, her shy fingers drawn by that magnetic gold of the man's hair.

"Climb on my back and ride," said young O'Flynn to David, "I'll be a fairy horse."

"The cheek of 'im!" jeered Patsy, "fairy 'orse indeed!"

Oh, surely the fairies were very busy about them, tugging at heartstrings, while Billy and Patsy fell head over ears in love, and my pet cupid had them both for slaves. David rode Billy home, by his august command straight into my brown study, where I sat in my lazy chair.

Was it my voice telling baby to go and get dry feet? Was it my hand grasping Billy's h.o.r.n.y paw? For I heard my roaring canon, saw my cliffs, my embattled sculptured cliffs, and once more seemed to walk with Jesse in Cathedral Grove. I could hear my dear man, speaking across the years, "Say, youngster, when you sawed off that table leg to make your mother's limb, what did you do with the caster?"

I laughed, I cried. Oh, yes, of course I made a fool of myself. For this dear lad came out of Wonderland, this heedless ruffian who knew of my second marriage, who had such a tale to tell of "Madame Scotson." Oh, haven't you heard? Her precious Baby David is illegitimate! Couldn't I hear my neighbor, Mrs. Pollock, telling that story at the Scandal Club?

Then a discreet paragraph from Magpie in _Home Truths_ would be libel enough to brand a public singer. My mother would suggest ever so gently that in the interests of the family, my retirement to a warmer climate--say Italy, would be so _suitable_. And madame's illegitimate son would be barred from decent schools. Oh, I could see it all!

With his pea-jacket thrown open, wiping his flushed face with a red handkerchief, s.h.i.+fting from one foot to the other in torment of uneasiness, blowing like some sea beast come up from the deeps to breathe, Billy consented not to run away from my hysterics.

Feeling ill-bred and common, I begged Billy's pardon, made him sit down, tried ever so hard to put him at his ease. Poor lad! His father condemned as a felon, his mother such a wicked old harridan, his life, to say the very least, uncouth. Yet somehow out of that rough savage face shone the eyes of a gentleman, and there was manliness in all he said, in everything he did. After that great journey for my sake, how could I let him doubt that he was welcome?

"I know I'm rough," he said humbly, "but you seem to understand. You know I'm straight. You won't mind straight talk unless you're changed, and you're not changed--at least not that way, mum."

Changed! Ah, how changed! The looking-gla.s.s had bitter things to tell me, and crying makes me such a frump. I never felt so plain. And the eyes of a young man are often brutally frank to women.

"Don't mind about me, Billy. Say what you've come to tell me."

"Been gettin' it ready to say ever since I started for England. Look here, mum, _I_ want to go back to the beginning, to when I was a kid, an' mother kep' that hash house in Abilene. D'ye mind if I speak--I mean about this here Polly?"

I set my teeth, and hoped he would be quick.

"Well, ye see, mum, she only done it for a joke, and the way Jesse treated her--"

"I can't hear this."

"You don't mind if I say that mother and me haven't no use for Jesse?"

"I know that."

"Well, mother put her up to the idea. To get shut of him, she shammed dead. I helped. I say she done right, mum. If she'd let it go at that, I'd take her side right now."

"Billy, was that a real marriage?"

"It was that. She's Jesse's wife all right."

There was something which braced me in his callous frankness. "I hoped,"

I said. "Go on."

"Well, mother hated Jesse somethin' chronic. Afterward when--well, she had to run for the British possessions, and we met up with Jesse again by accident. He give us a shack and some land, but mother an' me had our pride. How would _you_ like to take charity? Mother hated him still worse, and don't you imagine I'd go back on her. She's my mother.

"Then you married Jesse. Of course, mother and me both knew that Polly was alive. Father knew too--and father was around when no one but us ever seen him. We knew that Polly was alive, and mother would have given Jesse dead away, only we stopped her. Father said it was none of our business. Father liked Jesse, I thought the world of you, so when mother wrote to Polly, we'd burn her letters."

What an escape for us!

"Then you saved mother from burning in that shack, and afterward she hated Jesse worse, because she couldn't hit him for fear of hurting you.

Oh, she was mad because she'd got fond of you.

"And you took us into your ranch. Charity again, and you sailin' under Protestant colors, both of yez. The way mother prayed for Jesse was enough to scorch his bones." Billy chuckled. "I ain't religious--I drink, and mother's professin' Catholic cuts no figure with me.

"Then there's the fightin' between father's gang and Jesse's. Dad got hung, Jesse got the dollars. Rough, common, no-account, white trash, like mother an' me, hears Jesse expounding the Scriptures. We ain't got no feelings same as you."

Poor lad! Poor savage gentleman!

"You saved me from murdering Jesse, and got me away from that ranch.

Since then I've followed the sea. There's worse men there than Jesse. I seen worse grub, worse treatment, worse times in general since I quit that ranch. Five years at sea--"

There was the glamour, the greatness of the sea in this lad's eyes, just as in Jesse's eyes. Sailors may be rugged, brutal, fierce--not vulgar.

Men reach out into s.p.a.ces where we sheltered women can not follow.

"Suppose I've grown," said Billy. "Well, mum, I got a notion to go home.

Signed as A. B. in a four-masted bark _Clan Innes_ out o' Glasgow, for Vancouver with general cargo. I quit her at Vancouver, made Ashcroft by C. P. R., blind baggage mostly, then hit the road afoot. I thought I'd take my departure from the Fifty-Nine."

"The old bush trail?"

"Hard goin', but then I expected, of course, mother'd be there at the ranch, and you, mum, an' Jesse, of course, and--"

"Jones?"

Dreading his news, I fought for this one little respite before he came to all I feared. If Jesse lived, if he only lived! But at thought of the old ranch life, Billy lapsed to a sheepish grin with one quaint glint of mischief. Then with the utmost gravity he asked me if Patsy, my nursemaid, "was claimed".

"There's many a little craft dips her colors for one who wants me to stand by, but still--"

"Patsy is free."

"Faix! Can't help it, I backed my tawps'l."

"Proposed?"

"Save us! It's time to offer a tow when they're union down, and a danger to navigation. Um. I'm off my course."