The master : being in part copied from the minutes of the school for novelists, a round table of good fellows who, long since, dined every Saturday at the Sign o' the Lanthorne, on Golden Hill, in New York City

Front matter

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■1 THE

El MASTER fe";

Foreword

I WAS talking one day with my friend, Mr. Willis Brooks Hawkins, of the many careless nights we had known together at the old Lanthorne Club, which held its sessions in a very odd and ancient house on Monkey Hill, and later in the old tavern farther south, where once the redoubtable Captain Kidd loved to light his pipe and drink his grog and coffee. We spoke of the boys and men who had sat with us at meat before its ample fireside — of Crane, Field, Masson, Nye, Tarkington, Garland, Gaines, Gilder, Howells, Stedman and Stoddard, some of whom were then beginning their work. As our talk went on I told of my plan for this tale, and particularly of a quarrelsome old sea "Cap'n" who had pushed into my study at odd times and bullied me, busy as I had been with better people, into hearing him. I told how his rough fist had whacked my best mahogany in the midst of unwelcome tales and opinions ; how once he had broken into my task with a ribald song and boldly winked at me when I turned to protest, and begun to fight the wind, as one may say, in a long talk about "lady cooks"; how at viii THE MASTER

last I had thrust him into my plot and slain the wretch to get rid of him. I did not fail to speak of my suspicions that he might have been a deep one, the ghost of Kidd — or some one of his other relatives — sent by the gods themselves to destroy me for the public good.

We weighed these possibilities and wrangled over my plan quite in the fashion that prevailed at the old Sign of the Lanthorne. The Brotherhood of the Toilers' Chain was born of our talk, and I am indebted to my good friend for information as to Condon and his methods.

The few who may have read my first and leastknown tale, "The Master of Silence," will recognize herein one of its incidents and a trait of its leading character.

I have dared to hope that the reader would find amusement and something better in these singular adventures and observations of "The Pippin."

Irving Bacheller.

Robinwood, July 30, 1909.

Chapter I

I HAVE written half a hundred tales, but none so strange as this one that I have been living for the past twenty years. So many have sat with me through half a night by the fireside and heard me tell of Rog Rone and Ben Lovel and the Susq and the big round table at the Sign of the Lanthorne and begged for more when I rose and bade them good night that now here I am, at last, with pen in hand beginning my story. Hereafter I shall see less of the midnight hour and save my lungs and send them to the book at bedtime if they want more of me. I have some hope, too, that the truth as I shall set it down may restore a lost and loved companion of my youth if that be possible.

I was born in Bedford Square, London, in 1859. We lived handsomely, my father being in the Government service and fairly well-to-do, and I spent my boyhood in a boarding school.

My father died when I was fifteen, leaving his fortune in the possession of my stepmother and a guardian. I had been a pet and was now a problem and on my way to worse distinction, as I thought. Because I had been guilty of a little prank or two at school they pushed me into the world to earn my living with an allowance of forty pounds a year.

So it happened that soon after my bereavement I went to Liverpool to learn the plumber's trade. Now of all trades that was least to my liking, and yet if I had not been a plumber my story could never have made itself and I — well, I should have gone down into the dimgeons of the deep sea long ago, most likely.

So there I was in Liverpool for a matter of five years making the best of it, and a fairly good plumber, for one of delicate breeding, and the foundations of my history as well.

I had rather humble lodgings in the outskirts of the city. Being slow to make friends I grew to love the solitude of my attic chamber where people out of history and the story-books kept my heart up and in good company.

One night I lay in bed, hearing the rain as it beat over the roofs and against the window-panes when, suddenly, there came a rap at my door.

"Who's there?" I demanded, starting out of bed.

As I got no answer I repeated my call and stood a moment listening. I could hear nothing, however, but the wind and the rain. Having lighted a candle I dressed myself with all haste and opened the door, beyond which I could discern the figure of an old man in the hallway. Was he a straggler who had got in at the street door? I asked myself; and listened for the familiar voice of importunity. The old man approached me, and my wonder grew, for he was not a mendicant, as I had guessed, but an old gentleman in stock and collar and a suit of broadcloth, cut in the fashion of my grandfather's time. His hair was white, his face pale, his clothes dripping. He put his finger on his lips and shook his head. I liked not his silence, at such an hour of the night, and drew back involuntarily a step or two, although my pity should have drawn me toward him.

"Sit down," I said, "and tell me what I can do for you. "

Still he made no reply, but sank into the chair I offered and felt in his pocket and withdrew a leathern wallet. He opened it and found a letter which he presented to me. It was directed to my father, Kendric Holm, Esq., at the street and number in London where he had lived for half a century. The address had been crossed and my own added in the familiar handwriting of our old butler: "22 Kirkland Street, Liverpool, top floor."

It all seemed very strange to me, for my father had been six years in his grave. The old gentleman smiled and nodded as I examined the superscription. He took a small slate from his pocket and wrote hastily:

"Are you his son .?"

I nodded and said, "Yes."

Then he wrote the words, "Open and read the letter." So I broke its seal and there was my call into the long thoroughfare of my life story. It bore the date of March 5, 1879, and no indication of the place whence it came:

Dear Brother:

I need your help. Come to me at once. Consequences of moment to me, to you and to all men depend upon your coming promptly. Let nothing stand in your way. You shall be well repaid for any sacrifice of time or money that my wish involves. The bearer who leaves to-day on his way down to the sea will bring you here. He is provided with funds. Follow him and bring no one with you and come as soon as you can. If, perchance, you be ill or dead, even, this letter is for your son whom I shall welcome as I would welcome you.

From your loving brother,

David Holm. ,

I had often heard my father speak of his brother David — now my nearest relative — who had gone to America long before I was born. We had had no news of him since I was a little lad, just out of the nursery. In a package of old letters, which my father had given to me, were two from this brother of his, and I remembered their postmark and their brevity and the antique quality of their script. He was a doctor in Detroit when those letters were written. Here was the odd and unmistakable handwriting with which I had been long familiar.

Singular as the message was, the messenger was more so. I soon discovered that he could neither hear nor speak, and that he wished to know my answer. I brought some dry clothes from my wardrobe, but he would not touch them until I had written these words for him on the slate:

"I will go with you."

His face glowed with pleasure as he took my hand. Then he looked about him and shook his head and wrote:

"You shall have a better home. He is rich and some day you may be his heir."

He took a hundred-pound note from his pocket and gave it to me.

"Go to-morrow, and get passage on first steamer," he wrote.

I invited him to sleep in my bed, and he answered that he was ill and would be glad to rest until morning.

He would stop, now and then, as he was getting ready for bed and put his hand to his side and shake his head ruefully. He lay in bed at last, and I was about to go for a doctor, when he beckoned to me, and then this dialogue, with the aid of slate and pencil :

"Don't leave me," he wrote, and I thought it an odd request.

"When did you reach England?" was my query.

"March 19th, by the Northland," he wrote.

Soon he added: "Started from the inn before dark iind missed my way."

By find by he put the slate under his pillow and closed his eyes, and when I saw him resting quietly I lowered the lamplight and lay down upon a sofa and fell asleep. A strange cry awoke me. The sun was shining and the room very still. I rose and found the stranger lying dead where I had left him when I went to my couch soon after midnight. The slate and pencil were in his hands and the former bore this unfinished message:

"Our home is at Lac "

Death had cut him off in the midst of it, for the last letters showed the weakening of his hand, and sprawled to the edge of the slate, and I could scarcely read them.

So it was that my mystery and my quest began.

Chapter II

I HAD taken quarters at the Silver Mug, in New York, an odd little inn with trees and shaded tables on either side of a walk that led to its front door. There people sat long over their food and wine, of a summer evening, and forgot the day. Many strange and curious people made their home at the Mug — actors, musicians, artists, and a certain poet who borrowed eighty dollars from me, with which to produce a tragedy, and nearly succeeded, for the sum had touched the bottom of my purse. There my days were enlivened by the Mug's talent labouring with its technique on the xylophone, the cornet or the banjo, and my nights by roistering homecomers after the play.

I had been permitted to keep the hundred pounds which the messenger of my uncle had given to me, and that sum and I had begun our adventures. I had found it a feeble and failing partner, and one summer evening when I sat rather hopeless in the garden of the Silver Mug, eating my dinner, a small, grizzly, serious-looking man, with a stiff leg and a weather-beaten face of many scars and wrinkles, limped along the garden walk, his cane clanking on the stone flags, and sat down at my table. He had a nose which invited thoughtful contemplation and suggested thrilling incidents. It had been broken in the middle and twisted to one side and turned up at the end. I observed, also, that the skin of his hands was rough and hairy. He looked about the place with the air of a dog fancier surveying a litter of pups and with no high opinion of them. His small gray eyes, that were deepset, under a line of grizzled fur that crossed the base of his forehead, settled on a waiter who stood some feet away. He summoned him by tapping on the floor with his cane, and demanded to know, first, in a domineering fashion, if he were to be kept waiting all day, and next if he could have scallops and bacon.

The waiter consulted the bill and nodded, and the newcomer went on with a playful wink of his eye:

"Steer 'em up alongside, sonny, with some taters an' a bottle o' gin."

He looked across at me and winked one eye again, and I could scarcely keep my countenance on account of his odd behaviour. While he sat waiting he smacked his lips and ground his teeth together, and picked up a table-knife and felt its edge with his thumb.

Soon a woman passed us. His eyes followed her, and he gave a low whistle and leaned toward me and whispered confidentially: "Neat rigged an' tidy!"

I made no answer but turned to the old sea dog — for such I took him to be — a bit angry at his rudeness.

"Wal, what's the matter o' you, my pippin?" he asked in a pouncing manner.

"'My pippin!'" I exclaimed with resentment. "Pardon me, sir, but you will please excuse me from being your 'pippin.'"

He had addressed me and the waiter as if we had been the veriest slaves in his household.

"I mean it friendly," he answered, with a stem glance and a wink of challenge. He speared a pickle with a quick jab of his fork and added: "Don't git on the high ropes. Leave the cap'n alone. He's been to sea an' ain't seen a lady fer three year an' when they swish by they tech his feelinks, an' he speaks 'em — that's what he does. Hell's bells! If I had steam in me an' a whistle on the smoke-stack I'd give a toot ev'ry time I seen a lady go by — so I would an' no wonder."

I began to regard him with increasing sympathy and respect. It was only a rough sort of sea courtesy which had provoked my anger, and I was appeased.

"Once in a while they fling a harpoon right into my vitals and give a yank on the line," he added with a slow wink. "An' I've had 'em tow me hellwards out o' my course, matey, 'fore I cut loose an' let 'em go."

He whetted his knife on the edge of his plate for half a moment and added: "I like the looks on 'em an' the sound on 'em when they go by — some kind o' proud an' purty — like a schooner in new sails, an' I've had 'em git mad an' smash me in the eye, an' do ye think I hits 'em back ? No! not Cap'n Rog o' the Susq, says I — not never, an' that's the truth. He'll take anythink f'm a lady."

He broke off a piece of bread and stuffed his mouth and went on with a bulge in his left cheek. "They bring the man out of a lad. As soon as we come ashore an' git a look at 'em we begin t' step high. Look a' that ring."

He showed me a cheap seal ring on the little finger of his left hand.

" Two dollars ! " he whispered with a wink; "but I'll make it pay me ten to one — you mind what I say."

He gave me a short talk on the fair "sect" and its liking for "nicknacks" and, having eaten his dinner, touched his stiff knee, and said with a look and a tone that seemed to complain of his ill luck: "'Ain't what I used to be since I got a sny in my leg."

He spoke the words, "sny in my leg," with squinting eyes and the same tone of complaint as before. I took it to mean a slight but permanent bend.

Soon he lifted the stiff leg to the seat of a chair beside him, scratched a match on his rough palm and covered its blaze with his knotty fingers, as if he were out in the wind, and lighted a stogy. Then he puffed thoughtfully a moment and resumed his reflections on the peculiar powers and capacities of women.

"There's no time that a man'U fight like when a lady stan's by an' puts in a word good an' frequent," he began.

That started him on a thrilling tale about "a one-eyed lady," who had been cook of the Susq and who had assisted him in a battle with mutineers. This energetic and cyclopean lady held me when I had been about to leave the table, and really assisted fate as well as the Captain, for although I should have been thinking of better things he soon had me by the ears, so to speak, and my heart beating like a trip-hammer. He owned a big schooner called the Susquehanna, and had just arrived from Mexico, so he told me, with a load of pelts. His name was Roger Rone and he explained:

"Some calls me Rog Rone (he gave the g its hard sound), an' some calls me Cap'n Rog, an' you can call me anythink if ye say it friendly."

Born on the Bowery nearly sixty years before, of an Yankee mother and an English father, both of sea-faring stock, as he told me. Rone had run away in his boyhood and shipped before the mast.

We sat together until the evening had passed and he told me tales of the sea and smote the table with a clenched fist, and winked an eye sternly when he came to his fights and quarrels, and often shook his rough knuckles under my nose, and once threatened me with his bottle, to show me how he had laid about him with a broadsword. I thought of leaving two or three times, but soon we had the place to ourselves, and I must confess that his adventures were like a wonderful story-book.

The talented guests of the Mug had begun to return from concert hall and theatre when he invited me to his lodgings to spend "the sweet o' the night," and added by way of argument:

"It ain't often that I takes a fancy to any person like I done to you. I'll show ye some little trinkets, as I calls 'em, which are real particular fine an' no mistake, Cappy."

I wanted to know more of this singular man and so accepted his invitation.

We left the Mug and he clanked along beside me with his heavy cane at a pace that made me hurry. In this manner and with scarcely a word passing between us we walked to Bleecker Street and, turning westward, continued our tramp for a matter of five or six minutes. Soon my leader opened an iron gate and I followed up the steps of a dingy brick dwelling. I could see a dim light on the painted window-panes of the first floor above the basement, and the links of a chain, cut gracefully in the paint that covered the glass, shone like gold as they let out the light within.

The Cap'n thrust a key into the door and we entered as it swung open. A gas-jet lighted the hall within, the bare floor of which was creaky and worn with much coming and going. Its walls had once been covered with blue paper, now dirt-stained and partly stripped away. Through a sliding door, half open, I could see a number of men playing cards at a big round table — rough-faced, big-handed men, plainly clad, who peered through the door at us. Instantly the thought came to me that I had done a foolish thing, coming to such a place alone with a stranger, for this part of Bleecker Street was none too respectable, as I knew. But after all it was probably some lodge or club of working men who were now engaged in harmless recreation, I thought. The Cap'n reassured me by saying:

"Take a look at the club room, Cappy. It's a snug place and no mistake."

We stood in its half-open door and surveyed the room. It was furnished like the best room in a cheap tenement — tawdry colours in plush upholstery and carpet. A stack of camp chairs in the corner, suggested a place of assembly. A plain kitchen table covered with trades union and socialistic books and papers stood near the door. A portrait caught my eye and held it until we left the room — a man 's head and shoulders with a wonderful strength and repose in them. The expression of the head and body, and especially that of the strong brave eyes, was lion-like and impressive.

"Jack Condon," said the Cap'n as I raised my finger. "Some calls him the Devil, an' no wonder."

"And what is your club?"

"The T'ilers," he answered, as he limped into the hall ahead of me, and up a creaking stairway.

At the top of the last flight and rather close under the roof he unlocked a door and entered a dark room while I waited on the landing. As he turned the key a loud chattering and a burst of maudlin, careless laughter rose within. An odour, like that of a monkey house, came from the open doorway. My companion was crossing the dark room when I heard him trip and fall clattering on the floor. He rose with a loud oath and struck a match and lighted a gas-jet. I entered and saw a large attic room which extended from the front to the rear walls of the building. The Cap'n felt his lame leg and limped sorely to the side of an old lounge and threw down his hat. A great green parrot chained to a pole at the farther end of the room laughed uproariously. The Cap'n raised his cane, and as he struck the air with it, a blade some eight inches long darted from its ferrule and clicked into a socket. He poised the stout stick in his right hand and gave it a fling above his shoulder, reeling a little on his sound leg with arms extended as the weapon left his hand. It flew straight at the bird's breast and cut through its body. The Cap'n limped across the room and deliberately drew the knife from its wound and finished the bird with a blow.

"Ye will laugh at the Cap'n— will ye?" he muttered. "Ye' re all tryin' to walk on the Cap'n, so ye are, the hull bunch o' ye."

He took an old, rusty broadsword from a little table and approached a small sheetiron stove that stood a few feet away from the doorway.

"Ye just reached out with this 'ere leg o' yours to ketch the foot o' the Cap'n, so ye did," he declared, as he fetched the stove a whack that made it reel half about and settle down with a kind of shudder. Another blow and the pipe came apart and a length of the same with the stove tumbled noisily on the floor. Then the Cap'n continued his talk, emphasizing his words now and then with a blow of the broadsword: "You says to yerself the Cap'n 'II be back by an' by an' if he don't think to strike a match as soon as ever he opens the door, you says, I'll lay here in the dark an' stick out my leg an' trip him. You thinks an' you says he can't never do nothink to me, the Cap'n can't. I'm iron an' I'll just give him one — that's what I'll do. An' ye done it spiteful — ye did — an' now the Cap'n has got his say. Hell's bells! you're a tidy bit of a stove, you are. Now you've learnt suthink 'bout the Cap'n an' I wouldn't wonder."

The stove lay dented and crumpled into utter shapelessness.

The Cap'n threw down his sword and lifted the crumpled stove in his arms and lugged it across the room and balanced it on the sill of an open window and kicked it into the darkness beyond. The stove fell crashing on a fence in the back yard and bounded to the earth.

A gruff voice shouted from the hall below, " Aw - what's - de- matter -wid- ye .?" and the query was swiftly put as if it were all one word.

The Cap'n limped to the mantel shelf and stood silently filling his pipe.

"I won't be picked on by no stove whatever," he explained when the smoke was coming. "I never done nothink to that stove but black its boots and buy coal for it. I s'pose it didn't know no better. Hell's bells! but I'm fond of a row, shipmate. It must look like I'm crazy, but I can't help it. I have to fight with suthink every day an' that's the God's truth. I hain't like nobody you ever seen afore. I'd fight a hole in the ground if it didn't treat me proper an' ev'ry day in the year I fight the gov'ment."

"What government?" I asked.

"Ev'ry gov'ment," he answered with a wink. "They're all rotten. They've got their feet on the neck o' the poor man, Cappy — the world over an' no mistake. I'm for the under dog."

"I don't believe I'd like to fight with you," I said. "You certainly know how to use the sword-cane."

He opened a closet door and hauled out a kind of scarecrow figure — made by stuffing an old suit with straw — and stood it up in a corner. Then he stepped back as far as possible and asked where I would have him plant his knife.

"Aim at the heart," I said.

Again he poised the weapon and again it sped like an arrow as he flung and balanced on his good leg and his blade pierced the left breast of the lay figure. He continued to throw this deadly knife at the stuffed suit until the coat of the latter was cut to rags.

"Left leg, plum on the knee, Cap'n," he would shout as he flung his weapon. "Through the hold, Cap'n," "Abaft the neck, ol' friendy," and so he went on with surprising energy and unerring aim.

He seemed to be vain of his skill and sat down beside me with a wink and began filling his pipe again. A monkey crept from under the lounge where he had been hiding.

"Ho there, shipmate," said the Cap'n, "you slipped below till the storm was over — so ye done. Hell's bells! I'm glad ye lived through it."

The monkey approached him rather timidly and seeing no threat in his face or hand soon climbed to his knee.

"Picked up all kinds o' trinkets in my travel," said the Cap'n, as he lifted from his mantel a small wooden box about four inches long by three in width, one side of which was covered with close-set bars of fine wire.

Evidently it was the home of some tiny prisoner.

"Now ye never seen the like o' that, I dare presume to say," remarked the Cap'n as he lighted a candle and held it close to the wire bars. Its light showed me a great, hairy tarantula scurrying about the sand-covered bottom of the box.

He inserted a small stick and challenged this dreadful pet of his, which immediately rose on its hind legs in a threatening attitude and uncovered its fangs.

"Say, cappy," said my companion, "if ye had an enemy an' ye could spare 'im as well as not an' was to let this old boy loose in his bedroom there'd be trouble, an' I wouldn't wonder."

The Cap'n looked into my face and winked knowingly. Then he showed me a box of scorpions and gave me some account of their habits and particularly of their way of stinging.

In the midst of this he was interrupted by a loud rap. He quickly put away his pets and limped to the door and opened it.

" Why — why — up — upon my soul an' body it's — ;it's the shoemaker," he stammered, as if surprised and embarrassed in no small degree by the man who confronted him.

There in the open door stood as handsome a youth as ever I looked upon. His large, blue eyes were clear as a cloudless noonday; his wavy light hair was parted neatly over a broadly forehead; his skin was weathered brown, his nose and mouth finely modelled. He was, I judged, some two or three years younger than I.

He strode into the room without a word to the Cap'n and took my hand.

"This is Mr. Holm," he said, "and I — I am Ben Lovel."

"I do not remember to have met you," I said.

"No, but I have seen you often and could not help knowing your name."

"It is very late and I think that I must go," I said rising.

The newcomer passed a note to Cap'n Rone and turned to me and said:

"If you will let me I will walk to your inn with you."

I gladly accepted his offer and the Cap'n limped to the door with us where we bade him good night.

An old man with long, white beard and hair stood waiting near the foot of liie steps.

"This is my old master, Horton," said the youth as we three set out together. "I saw you coming here with Cap'n Rog. I thought it rather strange and followed you."