Equipped as we are for the conquest of comfort with fresh pipes, full mugs, and the flavor of a best of suppers still extant within our mouths, it may be an impertinence for one to moralize. And yet, as I go forward to this incident, I will premise that, in every least exigency of life, ill begets ill, while good springs from good and follows the doer with a profit. Such has been my belief; such, indeed, has been my unbroken experience; and the misfortunes of Connelly, and my relief of them, small matters in themselves, are in proof of what I say.
At sixty I look back with envy on that decade which followed my issuing forth from Trinity College, when, hopeless, careless, purposeless beyond the moment, I wandered the face of the earth and fed or starved at the hands of chance-born opportunity. I was up or down or rich or poor, and, with an existence which ran from wine to ditch water and back again to wine, was happy. I recall how in those days of checkered fortune, wherein there came a proportion of one hour of shadow to one moment of sun, I was wont to think on riches and their possession. I would say to myself: “And should it so befall that I make my millions, I’ll have none about me but broken folk: I’ll refuse to so much as permit the acquaintance of a rich man.” I’ve been ever deeply controlled by the sentiment therein expressed. Sure it is, I’ve been incapable of the example of the Levite, and could never keep to the other side of the way when distress appealed.
My youth was wild, and staid folk called it “vicious.” I squandered my fortune; melted it, as August melteth ice, while still at Trinity. It was my misfortune to reach my majority before I reached my graduation, and those two college years which ensued after I might legally write myself “man” and the wild days that filled them up, brought me to face the world with no more shillings than might take me to Australia. However, they were gay though graceless times—those college years; and Dublin, from Smock Alley to Sackville Street, may still remember them.
Those ten years after quitting Dublin were years of hit or miss. I did everything but preach or steal. Yes, I even fought three prize-fights; and there were warped, distorted moments when, bloody but victorious, I believed it better to be a fighter than to be a bishop.
But for the main, I drifted to the theaters and lived by the drama. Doubtless I was a wretched actor—albeit I felt myself a Kemble—but the stage was so far good to me it finally brought me—as an underling of much inconsequence—to the fair city of New York. I did but little for the drama, but it did much for me; it led me to America. And now that I’ve come to New York in this story, I’ve come to Connelly.
Mayhap I had been in New York three weeks. It was a chill night in April, and I was going down Broadway and thinking on bed; for, having done nothing all day save run about, I was very tired. It was under the lamps at the corner of Twenty-ninth Street, that I first beheld Connelly. Thin of face as of coat, he stood shivering in the keen air. There was something so beaten in the pose of the sorrowful figure that I was brought to a full stop.
As strange to the land and its courtesies as I was to Connelly, I hesitated for a moment to speak. I was loth to be looked upon as one who, from a motive of curiosity, would insult another in bad luck. But I took courage from my virtue and at last made bold to accost him:
“Why do you stand shivering here?” I said. “Why don’t you go home?”
“It’s a boarding-house,” said Connelly. “I owe the old lady thirty dollars and if I go back she’ll hold me prisoner for it.”
Then he told me his name, and that the trouble with him came from too much rum. Connelly had a Dublin accent and it won on me; moreover, I also had had troubles traceable to rum.
“Come home,” I said; “you can’t stand here all night. Come home; I’ll go with you and have a talk with the old lady myself. Perhaps I’ll find a way to soften her or make her see reason.”
“She’s incapable of seeing reason,” said Connelly; “incapable of seeing anything save money. She understands nothing but gold. She’ll hold me captive a week; then if I don’t pay, she’ll have me arrested. You don’t know the ‘old lady:’ she’s a demon unless she’s paid.”
However, I led Connelly over to Sixth Avenue and restored his optimism with strong drink. Then I bought a quart of whiskey; thus sustained, Connelly summoned courage and together we sought his quarters. In his little room we sat all night, discussing the whiskey and Dublin and Connelly’s hard fate.
With the morning I was presented to the “old lady,”—an honor to make one quake. When I reviewed her acrid features, I knew that Connelly was right. Nothing could move that stony heart but money. I put off, therefore, those gallantries and blandishments I might otherwise have introduced, and came at once to the question.
“How much does Connelly owe?”
“Thirty dollars!”
The words were emphasized with a click of teeth that would have done credit to a rat-trap.
There was a baleful gleam, too, in the jadestone eye. Clearly, Connelly had read the signs aright. He might regard himself as a prisoner until the “old lady” was paid.
That iron landlady went away to her duties and I counted my fortunes. They assembled but twenty-four dollars—a slim force and not one wherewith to storm the citadel of Connelly’s troubles. How should I augment my capital? I knew of but one quick method and that flowed with risks—it was the races.
I turned naturally to the horses, for it was those continuous efforts which I put forth to name winners that had so dissipated my patrimony. About the time I might have selected a victor now and then, my wealth was departed away. It is always thus. Sinister yet satirical paradox! the best judges of racing have ever the least money!
There was no new way open to me, however, in this instance of Connelly. I must pay his debt that day if I would redeem him from this Bastile of a boarding-house, and the races were my single chance. I explained to Connelly; obtained him the consolation of a second quart wherewith to cure the sharper cares of his bondage, and started for the race-course. I knew nothing of American horses and less of American tracks, but I held not back for that. In the transaction of a work of virtue I would trust to lucky stars.
As I approached the race-course gates, my eyes were pleased with the vision of that excellent pugilist, Joe Coburn. I had known this unworthy in Melbourne; he had graced the ringside on those bustling occasions when I pulled shirt over head and held up my hands for the stakes and the honor of old Ireland. Grown too fat for fisticuffs, Coburn struggled with the races for his daily bread. As he was very wise of horses, and likewise very crooked, I bethought me that Coburn’s advice might do me good. If there were a trap set, Coburn should know; and he might aid a former fellow-gladiator to have advantage thereof and show the road to riches.
Are races ever crooked? Man! I whiles wonder at the age’s ignorance! Crooked? Indubitably crooked. There was never rascal like your rascal of sport; there’s that in the word to disintegrate integrity. I make no doubt it was thus in every time and clime and that even the Olympian games themselves were honeycombed with fraud, and the sacred Altis wherein they were celebrated a mere hotbed of robbery. However, to regather with the doubtful though sapient Coburn.
“Who’s to win the first race?” I asked.
“Play Blue Bells!” and Coburn looked at me hard and as one who held mysterious knowledge.
Blue Bells!—I put a cautious five-dollar piece on Blue Bells. I saw her at the start. Vilest of beasts, she never finished—never met my eye again. I asked someone what had become of her. He said that, taking advantage of sundry missing boards over on the back-stretch, Blue Bells had bolted and gone out through the fence. This may have been fact or it may have been sarcasmal fiction; the truth important is, I lost my wager.
Still true to a first impression—though I confess to confidence a trifle shaken—I again sought Coburn.
“That was a great tip you gave me!” I said. “That suggestion of Blue Bells was a marvel! What do you pick for the next?”
“Get Tambourine!” retorted Coburn. “It’s a sure thing.”
Another five I placed on Tambourine; not without misgivings. But what might I do better? My judgment was worthless where I did not know one horse from another. I might as well take Coburn’s advice; the more since he went often wrong and might name a winner by mistake. Five, therefore, on Tambourine; and when he started my hopes and Connelly—whose consoling quart must be a pint by now—went with him.
At the worst I may so far compliment Tambourine as to say that I saw him again. He finished far in the rear; but at least he had the honesty to go around the course. Yet it was five dollars lost. When Tambourine went back to his stable, my capital was reduced by half, and Connelly and liberty as far apart as when we started.
Following the disaster of Tambourine I sought no more the Coburn. Clearly it was not that philosopher’s afternoon for naming winners. Or if it were, he was keeping their names a secret.
Thus ruminating, I sat reading the race card, when of a blinking sudden my eye was caught by the words “Bill Breen.” The title seemed a suggestion. Bill Breen had been my roommate—my best friend in the days of old Trinity. I pondered the coincidence.
“If this Bill Breen,” I reflected, “is half as fast as my Bill Breen, he’s fit to carry C?sar and his fortunes.”
The more I considered, the more I was impressed. It was like sinking in a quicksand. In the end I was caught. I waxed reckless and placed ten dollars—fairly my residue of riches—on Bill Breen in one of those old-fashioned French Mutual pools common of that hour; having done so, I crept away to a lonesome seat in the grandstand and trembled. It was now or never, and Bill Breen would race freighted with the fate of Connelly.
About two seats to my right, and with no one between, sat a round, bloated body of a man. He looked so much like a pig that, had he been put in a sty, you would have had nothing save the fact that he wore a hat to distinguish him from the other inmates. And yet I could tell by the mien of him, and his airs of lofty isolation and superiority, that he knew all about a horse—knew so much more than common folk that he despised them and withdrew from their society. It was like tempting the skies to speak to him, so wrapped was he in the dignity of his vast knowledge, but my quaking solicitude over Bill Breen and the awful stakes he ran for in poor Connelly’s evil case, emboldened me. With a look, deprecatory at once and apologetic, I turned to this oracle:
“Do you know a horse named Bill Breen?” I asked.
“I do,” he replied coldly. Then ungrammatically: “That’s him walking down the track to the scales for the ‘jock’ to weigh in,” and he pointed to a greyhound-shaped chestnut.
“Can he race?” I said, with a gingerly air of merest curiosity.
“He can race, but he won’t,” and the swinish man twined the huge gold chain about his right fore-hoof. “I lost fifty dollars on him Choosday. The horse can race, but he won’t; he’s crazy.”
“He looks well,” I observed timidly.
“Sure! he looks well,” assented the swinish one; “but never mind his looks; he won’t win.”
Then came the start and the horses got away on the first trial. They went off in a bunch, and it gave me some color of satisfaction to note Bill Breen well to the front.
“He has a good start,” I ventured.
“Hang the start!” derided the swinish one.
“He won’t win, I tell you; he’ll go and jump over the fence and never come back.”
As the horses went from the quarter to the half mile post, Bill Breen, running easily, was strongly in the lead and increasing. My blood began to tingle.
“He’s ahead at the half mile.”
“And what of it?” retorted the swinish one, disgustedly. “Now keep your eye on him. In ten seconds he’ll fly up in the air and stay there. He won’t win; the horse is crazy.”
As the field swung into the homestretch and each jockey picked his route for the run to the wire, Bill Breen was going like a bird, twenty yards to the good if a foot. The swinish one placed the heavy member that had been caressing the watch-chain on my shoulder. He did not wait for any comment from me.
“Sit still,” he howled; “sit still. He won’t win. If he can’t lose any other way, he’ll stop back beyant on the stretch and bite the boy off his back. That’s what he’ll do; he’ll bite the jockey off his back.”
To this last assurance, delivered with a roar, I made no answer. The horses were coming like a whirlwind; riders lashing, nostrils straining. The roll of the hoofs put my heart to a sympathetic gallop. I could not have said a word if I had tried. With the grandstand in a tumult, the horses flashed under the wire, Bill Breen winner with a flourish by a dozen lengths.
Connelly was saved.
As the horses were being dismissed, and “Bill Breen” was hung from the judges’ stand as “first,” the swinish one contemplated me gravely and in silence.
“Have you a ticket on him?”
“I have,” I replied.
“Then you’ll win a million dollars.” This with a toss as he arose to go. “You’ll win a million dollars. You’re the only fool who has.”
It’s like the stories you read. The swinish one was so nearly correct in his last remark that I found but two tickets besides my own on Bill Breen. It has the ring of fable, but I was richer by eleven hundred and thirty-two dollars when that race was over. Blue Bells and Tambourine were forgotten; Bill Breen had redeemed the day! It was pleasant when I had cashed my ticket to observe me go about recovering the lost Connelly.
“Now, there,” cried the Jolly Doctor, “there is a story which tells of a joy your rich man never knows—the joy of being rescued from a money difficulty.”
“And do you think a rich man is for that unlucky?” asked the Sour Gentleman.
“Verily, do I,” returned the Jolly Doctor, earnestly. “I can conceive of nothing more dreary than endless riches—the wealth that is by the cradle—that from birth to death is as easy to one’s hand as water. How should he know the sweet who has not known the bitter? Man! the thorn is ever the charm of the rose.”
It was discovered in the chat which followed the Red Nosed Gentleman’s tale that Sioux Sam might properly be regarded as the one who should next take up the burden of the company’s entertainment. It stood a gratifying characteristic of our comrade from the Yellowstone that he was not once found to dispute the common wish. He never proffered a story; but he promptly told one when asked to do so. He was taciturn, but he was no less ready for that, and the moment his name was called he proceeded with the fable of “Moh-Kwa and the Three Gifts.”