第130章

"The fellow went away, and neither of them would give in.It's queer how real it was when you read it.You were right there looking on, and swallowing hard every few minutes-- though you were as mad as hops.

The girl began to die--slow --and lay there day after day, longing for him to come back, and knowing he wouldn't.At the very end, when there was scarcely a breath left in her, a young fellow who was crazy about her himself, and always had been, put out after the hard-headed fool to bring him to her anyhow.The girl had about given in then.And she lay and waited hour after hour, and the youngster came back by himself.He couldn't bring the man he'd gone after.He found him getting married to a nice girl he didn't really care a darn for.He'd sort of set his teeth and done it--just because he was all in and down and out, and a fool.The girl just dropped her head back on the pillow and lay there, dead! What do you think of that?" quite fiercely."Iguess it was sentimental all right, but it got you by the throat.""'Good-bye, Sweetheart, Good-bye,"' his grace quoted."First-class title.We are all sentimental.And that was the first, was it?""Yes, but it wasn't the last.I began to read the others.I've been reading them ever since.I tell you, for a fellow that knows nothing it's an easy way of finding out a lot of things.You find out what different kinds of people there are, and what different kinds of ways.

If you've lived in one place, and been up against nothing but earning your living, you think that's all there is of it--that it's the whole thing.But it isn't, by gee!" His air became thoughtful."I've begun to kind of get on to what all this means"--glancing about him--"to you people; and how a fellow like T.T.must look to you.I've always sort of guessed, but reading a few dozen novels has helped me to see WHYit's that way.I've yelled right out laughing over it many a time.

That fellow called Thackeray--I can't read his things right straight through-- but he 's an eye-opener.""You have tried nothing BUT novels?" his enthralled hearer inquired.

"Not yet.I shall come to the others in time.I'm sort of hungry for these things about PEOPLE.It's the ways they're different that gets me going.There was one that stirred me all up--but it wasn't like that first one.It was about a man "--he spoke slowly, as if searching for words and parallels --"well, I guess he was one of the early savages here.It read as if they were like the first Indians in America, only stronger and fiercer.When Palford was explaining things to me he'd jerk in every now and then something about 'coming over with the Conqueror' or being here 'before the Conqueror.' I didn't know what it meant.I found out in this book I'm telling about.It gave me the whole thing so that you SAW it.Here was this little country, with no one in it but these first savage fellows it'd always belonged to.They thought it was the world." There was a humorous sense of illumination in his half-laugh."It was their New York, by jings," he put in."Their little old New York that they'd never been outside of! And then first one lot slams in, and then another, and another, and tries to take it from them.Julius Caesar was the first Mr.Buttinski; and they fought like hell.They were fighters from Fightersville, anyhow.They fought each other, took each other's castles and lands and wives and jewelry--just any old thing they wanted.The only jails were private ones meant for their particular friends.And a man was hung only when one of his neighbors got mad enough at him, and then he had to catch him first and run the risk of being strung up himself, or have his head chopped off and stuck up on a spike somewhere for ornament.But fight! Good Lord! They were at it day and night.Did it for fun, just like folks go to the show.They didn't know what fear was.Never heard of it.They'd go about shouting and bragging and swaggering, with their heads hanging half off.And the one in this book was the bulliest fighter of the lot.I guess Idon't know how to pronounce his name.It began with H.""Was it Hereward the Wake, by chance?" exclaimed his auditor.

"Hereward the Last of the English?"

"That's the man," cried Tembarom.

"An engaging ruffian and thief and murderer, and a touching one also,"commented the duke."You liked him?" He really wanted to know.

"I like the way he went after what he wanted to get, and the way he fought for his bit of England.By gee! When he went rushing into a fight, shouting and boasting and swinging his sword, I got hot in the collar.It was his England.What was old Bill doing there anyhow, darn him! Those chaps made him swim in their blood before they let him put the thing over.Good business! I'm glad they gave him all that was coming to him--hot and strong."His sharp face had reddened and his voice rose high and nasal.There was a look of roused blood in him.

"Are you a fighter from Fightersville?" the duke asked, far from unstirred himself.These things had become myths to most people, but here was Broadway in the midst of them unconsciously suggesting that it might not have done ill in the matter of swinging "Brain-Biter"itself.The modern entity slipped back again through the lengthened links of bygone centuries--back until it became T.Tembarom once more-- casual though shrewd; ready and jocular.His eyes resumed their dry New York humor of expression as they fixed themselves on his wholly modern questioner.

"I'll fight," he said, "for what I've got to fight for, but not for a darned thing else.Not a darned thing.""But you would fight," smiled the duke, grimly."Did you happen to remember that blood like that has come down to you? It was some drop of it which made you `hot in the collar' over that engaging savage roaring and slashing about him for his `bit of England."'

Tembarom seemed to think it out interestedly.