Tom Beauling/Chapter 14
"OH, Tom!" she said, all in a breath of rapid breathings, "Tibbs has left me, and I am all alone with Jack, and he is sick and nobody will take us in, and now you've come—I'm so glad you've come!—you'll help us, won't you, Tom?"
"Tibbs left you!" said Beauling. "What do you mean?"
"You know Tibbs," said the woman, "so good-natured and easily led he got into trouble—I don't know what; indorsed something and couldn't pay—I think—he wrote he couldn't face me—what could he have been thinking of, as if I cared!—and that I would never see him again, and would never know what had become of him."
"You poor child," said Beauling. She was slightly older than he. "Where is Jack?"
"He's—he," she said. "The man in the fruit-store let him sit there while I went to find some place to stay. We can't go on, poor little Jack is too sick; but he isn't going to die, Tom, he isn't. They said he was, at the hotel,—at all the hotels,—and that's why they wouldn't take us in."
"You haven't told me why you're here at all," said Beauling. "Come, we'll go and get Jack, and you tell."
The woman shook with a sob, and pointed out with a dejected, nervous little movement the direction in which they should go.
"He—"
"Who, Tibbs? Let's get it all straight," said Beauling.
"Yes, Tibbs." She spoke less hysterically. "He disappeared, and left a letter—poor old Tibbs!—as if it mattered what he'd done. I'll show it to you if you like—only I'd rather not, Tom; he said I must try and not think too hardly of him, and that I would never see him again, and that he wouldn't tell me where he was going. But I know him so well, Tom, that I knew where he would go as surely as if he had told me."
"Where is that?"
"Why, to his brother's in Singapore."
"And you were so sure of that that you started to follow him, to tell him you forgave him and couldn't do without him—you poor old Ellen!"
"Yes," she said, with a frank little smile, "I know Tibbs so well. We got here this morning, and poor little Jack didn't stand the trip well."
They turned a corner, and the woman led into a dingy fruit-shop—mostly dirt, dusty wine-bottles, and the usual assortment of played-out fruits, blackened and small, which you see in tropical and semitropical countries. On a pile of plaited mats, that looked as though they contained all the germs of all the diseases from A to Z and others undiscovered, a little child, who seemed to exist without the aid of blood, rested wearily, and read out of a "David Copperfield." He had a big, sickly head, brown eyes like a spaniel, precociously intelligent, and a neck shockingly delicate in the back where it took the weight of the skull, legs like broom-handles, and hands of great length and character like a sculptor's. He had been emaciated and on the point of death since his birth. He looked up and smiled bravely at his mother—looked at the man she had brought, and smiled joyfully.
"Upon my word," said the child—he could not have been more than twelve—"if it isn't Mr. Beauling!"
"So it is," said Beauling. "And of all the odd places to find you, Jack! And how did you leave Lettice?"
"She's such a dear!" said Jack. "But isn't this delightful, mama?"
He struggled to his feet, pale and dizzy, and gave Beauling a firm handshake.
"What's the plan?"
"First, there's got to be a big talk," said Beauling. "And a general tabooing of all plans we don't like. But before that we're going to have a feast up at the hotel."
"I suppose they'll let us in, mama, now that there's a—a man along." His voice quavered, and he looked as if it was his most bitter burden that he could not protect his mama from all the impositous heartlessness of this world and the next. As they went out of the shop, he reeled smartly into a barrel of tangerines.
"Jack," said Beauling, "I want exercise, and I'm going to pick you up and carry you."
"Don't trouble, Mr. Beauling," said Jack; "I can manage it."
Three steps were conviction that he could not. "Mr. Beauling," he said, "I'll bet you a shilling you c-can't carry me."
"I'll bet you I can," said Beauling. He lifted the child, still grasping the "David Copperfield"—a long, transparent finger marking the place—and the child, keeling over with fatigue and the heat, fainted in his arms. Beauling fell to mothering the mother and the child. She clung to his arms, distracted and weeping. After a little the child came to weakly. His head lolled from one shoulder to the other.
They went into the stony, street-level office of the hotel. Behind the desk, a black, big, fat Italian, with yellow whites to his eyes, a great expanse of dirty shirtfront, and stocky fingers yellowed with cigarettes, and finished as to the nails with new moons the color of ebony, grunted with the first squall of an important rage when he saw her, and wriggled ingratiatingly, like a newly caught eel, when he realized that she was cavaliered by so large a man as Beauling.
"Excellence will understand—excellence always does," he said rapidly. "I saw at once the child would die. The law so bitter to the innkeeper in whose house occurs a death! He is dead—no? The consumption—"
"I want two rooms on the water side for this lady," said Beauling. "First, you will get the best doctor—no, the best three doctors in Brindisi."
"Impossible." said the proprietor, oilily. "Excellence understands—the law—"
Beauling choked with rage.
"Put me down, Mr. Beauling," said Jack, faintly. When he was down he stood as upright as he could.
"Sir," he said, in pure Italian—the holy flame of tongues had lighted on that child's head—"I am not going to die yet awhile."
"It is enough," said the proprietor. "The little excellence is greatly wasted, and will surely die. I cannot take them."
The woman cried bitterly. The child reeled to a rush-bottomed chair and flopped down. Beauling reached out, got his fingers in the Italian's collar, and with one movement jerked him clear over the top of the desk, and landed him, a mass collapsing into itself with terror, and on the verge of apoplexy. He loosed his hold, and after a time the dark blood, brought leaping to the Italian's face, began to stream back into his body, purpling the veins of the neck as it passed through them. A proper pallor spread under his yellow hide.
"Porthos!" exclaimed Jack, clenching his hands with delight and admiration.
Beauling eyed the Italian as a cat eyes a mouse. He was furiously angry, but his mouth, as always when he saw red, had a whimsical expression of amused tolerance. His rage gradually waned before the abject collapse of the proprietor. It is tactless opposition which keeps men boiling.
"Two rooms on the water side," said Beauling, under his breath.
"Athos!" whispered Jack to himself.
"And if I hear of any more brutality and bullying of women and children, I shall be obliged to come from wherever I am and kill you." This sweetly.
"D'Artagnan!" said Jack.
"And now you shall send out for the doctor, and give orders to have a table laid for three on the balcony." This very sweetly.
"Aramis!" said Jack.
A one-eyed servant, cringing like a timid mouse, for he knew that the humiliation of his master would be passed on, scuttled out of a lurking-place and endeavored to leave the room. He failed to pass the scope of his master's vision. His master called upon him to stop, and proceeded to give him a tremendous broadside of orders, in the ringing voice of an admiral directing captains in fight.
"Pat à pouff!" said Jack. Beauling turned to Jack.
"Dear old man," he said, in a choking voice, "you're going to get well, and—and you stand for that—and—and—"
"Beauling!" cried Jack.