Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
believe there were such things as I read in print and saw in pictures. After some of my sporty associates of the Trident workers began to take me around with them evenings I kept perfectly still about my earlier disbeliefs, and my cheap streak began to talk up to me. Somebody came distributing free admission cards to concerts, managed by religious and fraternal bodies—but I preferred to pay money at the door of a burlesque theater. I liked to go scouting in dance-halls, and I haunted low resorts to hear what I could hear and see what I could see.
We went boldly, for we were husky youths. As for myself, I had licked the boys of Levant at every opportunity—and my Sidney temper afforded me opportunities aplenty. I was never afraid when I went about alone, either. I had a rather quiet way of minding my own business and impressing it on the other fellow that he’d better mind his.
So, it may be guessed, most of my wanderings had been done in the lower quarters of the city.
That’s where I went to hide. And I had knowledge enough of the locality to hide myself effectually and keep hidden.
I did get in touch with one of the fellows who had been around a great deal with me and whom I trusted—for he had no special use for Anson C. Doughty.
Anson C. Doughty was out of doors once more, after spending a week of retirement in the company of a few busy little leeches, and, as to eyes and nose, he was not looking so very badly on the outside, but was evidently having a great amount of trouble with a volcano raging within, so my informant told me. Mr. Doughty was proclaiming that he proposed to catch me so that he could make an example for the sake of discipline in his crews in the future; but according to the program he had promulgated, he proposed to cut me up with a meatchopper before turning me over to the law. So I decided to keep under cover for an indefinite period.
Then I sent word to Captain Jodrey Vose and had him call on me in my castle, because I did not want him to think that he had wasted all his efforts when he had made me a diver.
However, the captain did seem to think so. He frankly said so.
“You’ll never get another job diving on the Atlantic coast,” he told me. “In the first place, you won’t dare to show up as a diver where Anson C. Doughty can grab you. In the next place, Anson C. Doughty has posted you with all the wrecking companies as being as dangerous as an Asiatic tiger with lighted kerosene on his tail. Now tell me what made you do it.”
I told him.
He looked at me with his eyes squizzled up and a frown on his forehead.
“I’m getting along in years and I’m probably losing my mind to some extent,” he said, “but I’ll be cussed if I believe I’ve got entire softening of the brain. It must be that I’m deaf and can’t understand—because I don’t get the least idea of why you did it to him. Tell it over.”
I told him again.
“Yes, I must have softening of the brain,” he grunted. “It’s all a riddle-come-ree to me!”
“It is the same to me—and that’s why I can’t explain,” I told him, frankly. “I hung onto myself all that time, wanting to do it, and then I let go and did it!”
“About as you went to cutting up in Levant before you skipped out,” he snapped.
Up to that time, not by word or look had he let me know that he had any knowledge of why I had left my home town.
“Dod explained it to me in the letter he sent with you. But he had excuses to give.”
I had to admire Captain Vose’s ability to keep his thoughts to himself, as I remembered the placid countenance he showed to me when he had read that letter.
“Now I reckon that Dod was prejudiced in your favor and that you had been a young devil the folks wanted to boost out of town. Dod’s judgment was never very good in the case of any critters who were willing to cater to him. I don’t suppose you dare to go back up there?”
“I don’t want to go.” But all of a sudden a queer wave of homesickness seemed to come swelling up in me and to choke me like water chokes the throat of a dredge-pump. “I’m done with that town for good and all,” I told him. “I got along all right while I was doing dirt as fast as the rest of ’em, but when I tried to be decent they didn’t give me a show!” I snapped my finger. “I wouldn’t give that for anybody in Levant!”
I knew I was lying and I think Jodrey Vose knew it, for he was a keen old chap. He scowled at me and grunted.
“Got any money left after all the rake-helling you’ve been doing for a year past?”
So he knew all about that, too!
“I’m fixed all right!” But I looked up at the ceiling of my room when I said it, and I knew I was not fooling him. I ought to have had a bank account, considering what I had been pulling down. I had all my capital in my pocket—a roll about as big as my thumb. I had considerable of a string of memories, such as they were, regarding money I had spent; I had a brand-new diving dress, and, above all, queer as this may sound, I had a specially new outfit which was my chief pride: a frock-coat and pearl-gray trousers, waistcoat modestly fancy—my real tastes in that direction having been gently suppressed by an honest tailor—and a plug-hat whose shininess fairly put my eyes out. And up to that time I had had no opportunity to wear that suit except in front of the mirror in my hiding-place!
I had tested the tilt of that hat at a dozen different angles; I had nearly broken my neck in efforts to see just how the coat-tails flared in the back. With a chart as help, a card stuck in the side of the mirror, I had practised tying a scarf in Ascot style until my staring eyes watered and my fingers ached. Then I had walked back and forth, trying to get the hang of a cane.
Again I suggest that this may sound queer. But it was only another manifestation of that cheap streak in me, so I reckon. I was not modeling my appearance on the looks of any real gentleman I had ever seen; I had not bought that garb in order to appear at church or to climb into better society. But from the time I was ten years old I had nursed one special, hungry, despairing ambition. At the county fair I saw “Diamond Dick” Shrady marshaling his painted beauties in front of his tent, and, according to my notion, his rig-out was apparel which shaded even the robes of royalty. I could not conceive higher height of happiness than to own and wear for “every day” a suit like that.
Consider the lily—as I considered “Diamond Dick”! Then consider me as I stood in front of that tent!
I had on brogan shoes which I had fresh-tallowed for the day. My stockings were home-knit and bulged out in folds over the tops of my shoes. But I was not so keenly self-conscious of my footwear as of the rest of my outfit, because Levant boys wore brogans quite commonly. My trousers were my special sore point, for even in Levant they had been ridiculed. In the first place, the cloth was a glazy, stiff stuff; in the second place, my good mother did not understand how to cut out a boy’s pants. There was just as much fullness in the front as in the seat. I kept denting in that fullness with my fists when I was unobserved. I found that by stooping quite a bit when I walked or stood I was able to keep the fullness caved in and less noticeable. It was a wonder I did not become permanently humpbacked while I was wearing out those pants. The legs of them were like twin stovepipes, and almost as unyielding. They crackled at the knees when I sat down. Add to those items of attire a hickory shirt, for which I had made a false bosom out of a shingle painted white, a paper collar, and a butterfly bow made of a gingham rag, a hard hat which was a paternal hand-me-down; they called them “dips.” It was a good name. The hat was exactly the shape of the bowl of a table-spoon.
As I leaned back and gaped up at that gorgeous stranger on the platform, straightening myself and letting my forward fullness swell as it would, there was born in me that unconquerable hankering—wild desire to be dressed like that—sometime! To say to myself—sometime—“Now I am dressed right! Everything about me is just as it should be!”
To base my ideas on the outfit “Diamond Dick” wore was probably evidence of the cheap streak in me, I say, but when you consider