By Advice of Counsel
however, was not why he had left Ireland, which had had something to do
with Phoenix Park; nor was it the cause of the decline of his fortunes,
which had been the coming of the motor.
Some day a story must be written called The Hitching Post, about those
thousands of little cast-iron negro boys who stand so patiently on the
green grass strips along village streets waiting to hold long-forgotten
bridle reins. They lost their usefulness a decade or more ago, and so,
by the same token and at the same time, did all that army of people who
lived and moved and had their being by ministering to the needs of the
horse. The gas engine was to them what the mechanical bobbin was to the
spinners of Liverpool and Belfast. With the coming of the motor the race
of coachmen, grooms and veterinaries began to perish from the earth.
Among the last was Danny Lowry, at the very zenith of his fortunes an
unofficial vet to most of the swell stables belonging to the carriage
people of Fifth Avenue. One by one these stables had been converted into
garages, and the broughams and C-spring victorias, the landaus and
basket phaetons had been dragged to the auction room or shoved into dim
corners to make room for snappy motors; and the horses Danny knew and
loved so well had been sold or turned out to grass.
But there was nobody to turn Danny out to grass. He had to keep going.
So he had drifted lower and lower, passing from the private stable to
the trucking stable, and from the trucking stable to the last remaining
decrepit boarding and liveries of the remote West Side. The tragedy of
the horse is the tragedy of all who loved them. Danny was one of these
tragedies, but he still picked up a precarious living by doing odd jobs
at Mulqueen's and acting as a veterinary when called upon, and he could
generally be found either loafing in the smelly little office or smoking
his T D pipe on the steps outside.
He and Mr. Ephraim Tutt, the lawyer, who lived in the rickety old house
with the tall windows and piazzas protected by railings of open ironwork
round which twisted the stems of extinct wistarias, had long been
friends. Many a summer evening the two old men had sat together and
discoursed of famous jockeys and still more famous horses, of Epsom and
Ascot, until Mr. Tutt's cellaret was empty and never a stogy left in the
box at all. Probably no one save the odd lanky old attorney, who himself
seemed to belong to a bygone era, knew the story of Danny's glorious
past--how he had risen from his Uncle Aherne's livery in Dublin first to
being paddock groom to Lord Ashburnham and then to jockey, finally to
ride the Derby under the Farringdon gold and crimson, and to carry away
Katherine Brady, the second housemaid, as Mrs. Lowry when he went back
to Dublin with a goodly pile of money to take over his uncle's business;
and how thereafter had come babies, and fever, and the epizootic, and
hard times; and Danny, a heartbroken man, had fled from bereavement and
pauperism and possibly from prison to seek his fortune in America. And
then the motor! Lastly, now, a hand-to-mouth, furtive, ignorant old age,
a struggle for bare existence and to keep the tiny flat going for his
seventeen-year-old granddaughter, Katie, who kept house for him and of
whose existence few, even of Danny's friends, were aware excepting Mr.
Tutt.
There was, in fact, a striking parallel between these two old men, the
one so ignorant, the other so essentially a man of culture, in that they
were both humanitarians in a high sense. It is improbable that Ephraim
Tutt was conscious of what drew him to Danny Lowry, but drawn he was;
and the reason for it was that the fundamental mainspring of the life of
each was love--in the case of the man of law for those of his fellow men
who suffered through foolishness or poverty or weaknesses or misfortune;
and in that of his more humble counterpart, whose limitations precluded
his understanding of more endowed human beings, for the dumb animals,
who must mutely suffer through the foolishness or poverty or weakness or
misfortune of their owners and masters.
Danny had sat up all night with only a horse blanket drawn over his
legs, taking care of a roan mare with the croup. The helpless thing had
lain flat on her side in the straw struggling for breath, and Danny, his
heart racked with pity, had sat in the stall beside her, every hour
giving her steam and gently pouring his own secret mixture down her
throat. Nobody but Danny cared what became of the mare, left there two
weeks before by a stranger who had not returned for it; stolen,
probably. Cramped, stiff with rheumatism, half dead from fatigue and
suffering from a bad cough himself, he left the stable at eight o'clock
next morning, hopeful that the miserable beast would pull through, and
stepped round to Salvatore's lunch cart for a bowl of coffee and a hot
dog. He was just lighting his pipe preparatory to going back to the
stable when a stranger pulled up to the curb in a mud-splashed depot
wagon.
"'Morning," he remarked pleasantly. "Can you tell me if Mulqueen's
livery stable is anywhere about here?"
Danny removed his pipe and spat politely.
"Sure," he replied, taking in the horse, which besides being lame and
having a glaring spavin on its off hind leg was a mere bone bag fit only
for the soap factory. "'Tis just forninst the corner. I'm after goin'
there meself."
The stranger, a heavy-faced man with a thick neck, nodded.
"All right. You go along and I'll follow."
Mulqueen was not yet at the stable and Danny helped unharness the
animal, which, as soon as relieved of the shafts, hung its head between
its legs, evidently all in. The stranger handed Danny a cigar.
"I'm lookin' for a vet," said he. "My horse ought to have something done
for him."
"I can well see that!" agreed Danny. "He needs a poultice and hot
bandages. A bit of rest wouldn't do him no harm, neither."
"Well, I'm no vet," returned the stranger with an apologetic grin, "but
it don't take much to know that he's a sick horse. I'm a doctor, myself,
but not a horse doctor. Have you got one here?"
"Some calls me a horse doctor," modestly answered Danny. "I can treat a
spavin and wind a bandage as well as the next. How long will you be
leavin' him?"
"Oh, a day or two, I guess. Well, if you're a veterinary I leave him in
your care. My name's Simon--Dr. Joseph R. Simon, of Hempstead, Long
Island."
Danny worked all the morning over the horse, doing his best to make it
comfortable. Indeed, before he had concluded his treatment the animal
was probably more comfortable than he, for the night in the cold stall
had given him a chill and when he left the stable to go home for lunch
he was in a high fever. Doctor Simon was outside on the sidewalk talking
to Mulqueen.
"Well, doctor," said he, "what did you find was the matter with my
horse?"
"Spavin, lame in three legs, sore eyes, underfed," replied Danny,
shivering. "Sure an' he's a sick animal."
"How much do I owe you?" inquired Doctor Simon.
Danny was about to answer that a couple of dollars would be all right
when the thought occurred to him that here was an opportunity to secure
medical treatment for himself.
"If you'll give me something to stop a fever we'll call it even," he
suggested.
"That's easy!" returned Doctor Simon heartily. "Come into the office and
I'll take your temperature and write you out a prescription."
So they sat down by the stove and the doctor took Danny's pulse and put
a thermometer under his tongue, chatting amicably meanwhile, and when he
had completed his examination he wrote something on a piece of paper.
"How long have you been practicing veterinary medicine?" he inquired.
"All my life," answered Danny truthfully. "But I don't get near so much
to do as I used. These be hard times for those as have to do with
horses."
He got up painfully.
"Well, now," said Doctor Simon, "I'd feel better if I paid you for
treating my horse. Just put this five-dollar bill in your pocket. I
guess you need it more than I do."
Danny shook his head. "That's all right!" he said weakly, for he was
feeling very ill. "It's a stand-off."
"Oh, go ahead, take it!" urged Doctor Simon, shoving the bill into the
pocket of Danny's overcoat. "By the way, have you got your card? I might
be able to send a little business your way."
When his magic skill with horses was matter of common knowledge among
the upper circle of Long Island grooms and coachmen Danny had had a few
cards struck off by a friendly printer. A couple of fly-blown specimens
still lingered in the drawer of Mulqueen's desk. Danny searched until he
found one:
DANIEL LOWRY
VETERINARY
212 WEST 53D STREET
NEW YORK CITY
"Here, sor," said he, his head swimming, "that's my name, but the
address is wrong."
Doctor Simon put it in his pocketbook.
"Thanks," he remarked. "Much obliged for fixing up my horse." Then in a
businesslike manner, he threw back his coat and displayed a glittering
badge. "Now," he added brusquely, "I must arrest you for practising
veterinary medicine without a license. Just come along with me to the
nearest police station."
* * * * *
When Mr. Tutt returned home that evening after attending one of the
weekly sessions at the Colophon Club, where he had reluctantly
contributed the sum of fifty-seven dollars to relieve the immediate
needs of certain impecunious persons gathered there about a
green-baize-covered table in a remote corner of the card room, he
perceived by the light of an adjacent street lamp that someone was
sitting upon the top of the steps leading to his front door.
"Are you Mr. Tutt?" inquired Katie Lowry, getting up and making a timid
curtsy. "The great lawyer?"
"That is my name, child," he answered. "What do you want of me?"
She was but a wisp of a girl and her eyes shone like a cat's from under
a gray shawl gathered over a pair of narrow, pinched shoulders.
"They've taken grandfather away to prison," she replied with a catch in
her throat. "He didn't come in to lunch nor to supper, and when I went
to the stable Mr. Mulqueen said a detective had arrested grandfather for
doctoring horses without a license and he had pleaded guilty and they'd
locked him up. I went to the police station, but they said he wasn't
there any more, but that he was in the Tombs."
"Who is your grandfather?" demanded Mr. Tutt as he unlocked the door.
"Danny Lowry," she replied. "Oh, sir, won't you try to do something for
him, sir? He thinks so much of you! He often has told me what a grand
man you were and so kind, besides being such a clever lawyer and all the
judges afraid of you!"
"Danny Lowry in the Tombs!" cried Mr. Tutt. "What an outrage! Of course
I'll do what I can for him. But first come inside and warm yourself.
Miranda!" he shouted to the colored maid of all work. "Make us some hot
toast and tea and bring it up to the library. Now, my dear, take off
your shawl and sit down and tell me all about it."
So with her frayed kid shoes upturned on the fender, little Katie Lowry,
confident that she had found an all-powerful friend in this queer long
man who smoked such queer long cigars, sipping her tea only when she had
to pause for breath, poured out the story of her grandfather's fight
with poverty and misfortune, while her auditor's wrinkled face grew soft
and hard by turns as he watched her through the gray clouds from his
stogy. An hour later he left her at the door of her flat, happy and
encouraged, with a twenty-dollar bill crumpled in her hand.
* * * * *
"But what do you expect me to do about it?" retorted District Attorney
Peckham in his office next morning when Mr. Tutt had explained to him