Beasleys Christmas Party | Page 7

madness whatever spoke
loudly of her own imagination, indeed! The key to "Simpledoria" was
to be sought under some other mat.
... As I began to know some of my co-laborers on the "Despatch," and
to pick up acquaintances, here and there, about town, I sometimes made
Mr. Beasley the subject of inquiry. Everybody knew him. "Oh yes, I
know Dave BEASLEY!" would come the reply, nearly always with a
chuckling sort of laugh. I gathered that he had a name for "easy-going"
which amounted to eccentricity. It was said that what the ward-heelers
and camp-followers got out of him in campaign times made the
political managers cry. He was the first and readiest prey for every
fraud and swindler that came to Wainwright, I heard, and yet, in spite
of this and of his hatred of "speech-making" ("He's as silent as Grant!"
said one informant), he had a large practice, and was one of the most
successful lawyers in the state.
One story they told of him (or, as they were more apt to put it, "on" him)
was repeated so often that I saw it had become one of the town's
traditions. One bitter evening in February, they related, he was
approached upon the street by a ragged, whining, and shivering old
reprobate, notorious for the various ingenuities by which he had worn
out the patience of the charity organizations. He asked Beasley for a
dime. Beasley had no money in his pockets, but gave the man his
overcoat, went home without any himself, and spent six weeks in bed

with a bad case of pneumonia as the direct result. His beneficiary sold
the overcoat, and invested the proceeds in a five-day's spree, in the
closing scenes of which a couple of brickbats were featured to high,
spectacular effect. One he sent through a jeweller's show-window in an
attempt to intimidate some wholly imaginary pursuers, the other he
projected at a perfectly actual policeman who was endeavoring to
soothe him. The victim of Beasley's charity and the officer were then
borne to the hospital in company.
It was due in part to recollections of this legend and others of a similar
character that people laughed when they said, "Oh yes, I know Dave
BEASLEY!"
Altogether, I should say, Beasley was about the most popular man in
Wainwright. I could discover nowhere anything, however, to shed the
faintest light upon the mystery of Bill Hammersley and Simpledoria. It
was not until the Sunday of Miss Apperthwaite's absence that the
revelation came.
That afternoon I went to call upon the widow of a second-cousin of
mine; she lived in a cottage not far from Mrs. Apperthwaite's, upon the
same street. I found her sitting on a pleasant veranda, with boxes of
flowering plants along the railing, though Indian summer was now
close upon departure. She was rocking meditatively, and held a finger
in a morocco volume, apparently of verse, though I suspected she had
been better entertained in the observation of the people and vehicles
decorously passing along the sunlit thoroughfare within her view.
We exchanged inevitable questions and news of mutual relatives; I had
told her how I liked my work and what I thought of Wainwright, and
she was congratulating me upon having found so pleasant a place to
live as Mrs. Apperthwaite's, when she interrupted herself to smile and
nod a cordial greeting to two gentlemen driving by in a phaeton. They
waved their hats to her gayly, then leaned back comfortably against the
cushions--and if ever two men were obviously and incontestably on the
best of terms with each other, THESE two were. They were David
Beasley and Mr. Dowden. "I do wish," said my cousin, resuming her
rocking--"I do wish dear David Beasley would get a new trap of some
kind; that old phaeton of his is a disgrace! I suppose you haven't met
him? Of course, living at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, you wouldn't be apt to."
"But what is he doing with Mr. Dowden?" I asked.

She lifted her eyebrows. "Why--taking him for a drive, I suppose."
"No. I mean--how do they happen to be together?"
"Why shouldn't they be? They're old friends--"
"They ARE!" And, in answer to her look of surprise, I explained that I
had begun to speak of Beasley at Mrs. Apperthwaite's, and described
the abruptness with which Dowden had changed the subject.
"I see," my cousin nodded, comprehendingly. "That's simple enough.
George Dowden didn't want you to talk of Beasley THERE. I suppose
it may have been a little embarrassing for everybody--especially if Ann
Apperthwaite heard you."
"Ann? That's Miss Apperthwaite? Yes; I was speaking directly to her.
Why SHOULDN'T she have heard me? She talked of him herself a
little later--and at some length, too."
"She DID!" My cousin stopped rocking,