The Trimmed Lamp
by
O. Henry
Part 1 out of 4
and revised by Joseph E. Loewenstein, M.D.
THE TRIMMED LAMP
And Other Stories of the Four Million
By
O. HENRY
CONTENTS
THE TRIMMED LAMP
A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT
THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL
THE PENDULUM
TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN
THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS
THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY
THE BADGE OF POLICEMAN O'ROON
BRICKDUST ROW
THE MAKING OF A NEW YORKER
VANITY AND SOME SABLES
THE SOCIAL TRIANGLE
THE PURPLE DRESS
THE FOREIGN POLICY OF COMPANY 99
THE LOST BLEND
A HARLEM TRAGEDY
"THE GUILTY PARTY"--AN EAST SIDE TRAGEDY
ACCORDING TO THEIR LIGHTS
A MIDSUMMER KNIGHT'S DREAM
THE LAST LEAF
THE COUNT AND THE WEDDING GUEST
THE COUNTRY OF ELUSION
THE FERRY OF UNFULFILMENT
THE TALE OF A TAINTED TENNER
ELSIE IN NEW YORK
THE TRIMMED LAMP
Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the
other. We often hear "shop-girls" spoken of. No such persons exist.
There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that
way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be
fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as
"marriage-girls."
Lou and Nancy were chums. They came to the big city to find work
because there was not enough to eat at their homes to go around.
Nancy was nineteen; Lou was twenty. Both were pretty, active,
country girls who had no ambition to go on the stage.
The little cherub that sits up aloft guided them to a cheap and
respectable boarding-house. Both found positions and became
wage-earners. They remained chums. It is at the end of six months
that I would beg you to step forward and be introduced to them.
Meddlesome Reader: My Lady friends, Miss Nancy and Miss Lou.
While you are shaking hands please take notice--cautiously--of
their attire. Yes, cautiously; for they are as quick to resent a
stare as a lady in a box at the horse show is.
Lou is a piece-work ironer in a hand laundry. She is clothed in a
badly-fitting purple dress, and her hat plume is four inches too
long; but her ermine muff and scarf cost $25, and its fellow beasts
will be ticketed in the windows at $7.98 before the season is over.
Her cheeks are pink, and her light blue eyes bright. Contentment
radiates from her.
Nancy you would call a shop-girl--because you have the habit. There
is no type; but a perverse generation is always seeking a type; so
this is what the type should be. She has the high-ratted pompadour,
and the exaggerated straight-front. Her skirt is shoddy, but has the
correct flare. No furs protect her against the bitter spring air,
but she wears her short broadcloth jacket as jauntily as though
it were Persian lamb! On her face and in her eyes, remorseless
type-seeker, is the typical shop-girl expression. It is a look of
silent but contemptuous revolt against cheated womanhood; of sad
prophecy of the vengeance to come. When she laughs her loudest the
look is still there. The same look can be seen in the eyes of Russian
peasants; and those of us left will see it some day on Gabriel's
face when he comes to blow us up. It is a look that should wither
and abash man; but he has been known to smirk at it and offer
flowers--with a string tied to them.
Now lift your hat and come away, while you receive Lou's cheery
"See you again," and the sardonic, sweet smile of Nancy that seems,
somehow, to miss you and go fluttering like a white moth up over the
housetops to the stars.
The two waited on the corner for Dan. Dan was Lou's steady company.
Faithful? Well, he was on hand when Mary would have had to hire a
dozen subpoena servers to find her lamb.
"Ain't you cold, Nance?" said Lou. "Say, what a chump you are for
working in that old store for $8. a week! I made $l8.50 last week.
Of course ironing ain't as swell work as selling lace behind a
counter, but it pays. None of us ironers make less than $10. And I
don't know that it's any less respectful work, either."
"You can have it," said Nancy, with uplifted nose. "I'll take my eight
a week and hall bedroom. I like to be among nice things and swell
people. And look what a chance I've got! Why, one of our glove girls
married a Pittsburg--steel maker, or blacksmith or something--the
other day worth a million dollars. I'll catch a swell myself some
time. I ain't bragging on my looks or anything; but I'll take my
chances where there's big prizes offered. What show would a girl
have in a laundry?"
"Why, that's where I met Dan," said Lou, triumphantly. "He came in
for his Sunday shirt and collars and saw me at the first board,
ironing. We all try to get to work at the first board. Ella Maginnis
was sick that day, and I had her place. He said he noticed my arms
first, how round and white they was. I had my sleeves rolled up.
Some nice fellows come into laundries. You can tell 'em by their
bringing their clothes in suit cases; and turning in the door sharp
and sudden."
"How can you wear a waist like that, Lou?" said Nancy, gazing down
at the offending article with sweet scorn in her heavy-lidded eyes.
"It shows fierce taste."
"This waist?" cried Lou, with wide-eyed indignation. "Why, I paid
$16. for this waist. It's worth twenty-five. A woman left it to be
laundered, and never called for it. The boss sold it to me. It's got
yards and yards of hand embroidery on it. Better talk about that
ugly, plain thing you've got on."
"This ugly, plain thing," said Nancy, calmly, "was copied from one
that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing. The girls say her bill in
the store last year was $12,000. I made mine, myself. It cost me
$1.50. Ten feet away you couldn't tell it from hers."
"Oh, well," said Lou, good-naturedly, "if you want to starve and put
on airs, go ahead. But I'll take my job and good wages; and after
hours give me something as fancy and attractive to wear as I am able
to buy."
But just then Dan came--a serious young man with a ready-made necktie,
who had escaped the city's brand of frivolity--an electrician earning
30 dollars per week who looked upon Lou with the sad eyes of Romeo,
and thought her embroidered waist a web in which any fly should
delight to be caught.
"My friend, Mr. Owens--shake hands with Miss Danforth," said Lou.
"I'm mighty glad to know you, Miss Danforth," said Dan, with
outstretched hand. "I've heard Lou speak of you so often."
"Thanks," said Nancy, touching his fingers with the tips of her cool
ones, "I've heard her mention you--a few times."
Lou giggled.
"Did you get that handshake from Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher, Nance?"
she asked.
"If I did, you can feel safe in copying it," said Nancy.
"Oh, I couldn't use it, at all. It's too stylish for me. It's
intended to set off diamond rings, that high shake is. Wait till I
get a few and then I'll try it."
"Learn it first," said Nancy wisely, "and you'll be more likely to
get the rings."
"Now, to settle this argument," said Dan, with his ready, cheerful
smile, "let me make a proposition. As I can't take both of you up
to Tiffany's and do the right thing, what do you say to a little
vaudeville? I've got the rickets. How about looking at stage
diamonds since we can't shake hands with the real sparklers?"
The faithful squire took his place close to the curb; Lou next, a
little peacocky in her bright and pretty clothes; Nancy on the
inside, slender, and soberly clothed as the sparrow, but with the
true Van Alstyne Fisher walk--thus they set out for their evening's
moderate diversion.
I do not suppose that many look upon a great department store as an
educational institution. But the one in which Nancy worked was
something like that to her. She was surrounded by beautiful things
that breathed of taste and refinement. If you live in an atmosphere
of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or
another's.
The people she served were mostly women whose dress, manners, and
position in the social world were quoted as criterions. From them
Nancy began to take toll--the best from each according to her view.
From one she would copy and practice a gesture, from another an
eloquent lifting of an eyebrow, from others, a manner of walking, of
carrying a purse, of smiling, of greeting a friend, of addressing
"inferiors in station." From her best beloved model, Mrs. Van
Alstyne Fisher, she made requisition for that excellent thing, a
soft, low voice as clear as silver and as perfect in articulation
as the notes of a thrush. Suffused in the aura of this high social
refinement and good breeding, it was impossible for her to escape a
deeper effect of it. As good habits are said to be better than good
principles, so, perhaps, good manners are better than good habits.
The teachings of your parents may not keep alive your New England
conscience; but if you sit on a straight-back chair and repeat the
words "prisms and pilgrims" forty times the devil will flee from
you. And when Nancy spoke in the Van Alstyne Fisher tones she felt
the thrill of _noblesse oblige_ to her very bones.
There was another source of learning in the great departmental
school. Whenever you see three or four shop-girls gather in a bunch
and jingle their wire bracelets as an accompaniment to apparently
frivolous conversation, do not think that they are there for the
purpose of criticizing the way Ethel does her back hair. The meeting
may lack the dignity of the deliberative bodies of man; but it
has all the importance of the occasion on which Eve and her first
daughter first put their heads together to make Adam understand his
proper place in the household. It is Woman's Conference for Common
Defense and Exchange of Strategical Theories of Attack and Repulse
upon and against the World, which is a Stage, and Man, its Audience
who Persists in Throwing Bouquets Thereupon. Woman, the most
helpless of the young of any animal--with the fawn's grace but
without its fleetness; with the bird's beauty but without its power
of flight; with the honey-bee's burden of sweetness but without
its--Oh, let's drop that simile--some of us may have been stung.
During this council of war they pass weapons one to another, and
exchange stratagems that each has devised and formulated out of the
tactics of life.
"I says to 'im," says Sadie, "ain't you the fresh thing! Who do you
suppose I am, to be addressing such a remark to me? And what do you
think he says back to me?"
The heads, brown, black, flaxen, red, and yellow bob together; the
answer is given; and the parry to the thrust is decided upon, to be
used by each thereafter in passages-at-arms with the common enemy,
man.
Thus Nancy learned the art of defense; and to women successful
defense means victory.
The curriculum of a department store is a wide one. Perhaps no other
college could have fitted her as well for her life's ambition--the
drawing of a matrimonial prize.
Her station in the store was a favored one. The music room was near
enough for her to hear and become familiar with the works of the
best composers--at least to acquire the familiarity that passed for
appreciation in the social world in which she was vaguely trying
to set a tentative and aspiring foot. She absorbed the educating
influence of art wares, of costly and dainty fabrics, of adornments
that are almost culture to women.
The other girls soon became aware of Nancy's ambition. "Here comes
your millionaire, Nancy," they would call to her whenever any man
who looked the rôle approached her counter. It got to be a habit of
men, who were hanging about while their women folk were shopping, to
stroll over to the handkerchief counter and dawdle over the cambric
squares. Nancy's imitation high-bred air and genuine dainty beauty
was what attracted. Many men thus came to display their graces
before her. Some of them may have been millionaires; others were
certainly no more than their sedulous apes. Nancy learned to
discriminate. There was a window at the end of the handkerchief
counter; and she could see the rows of vehicles waiting for the
shoppers in the street below. She looked and perceived that
automobiles differ as well as do their owners.
Once a fascinating gentleman bought four dozen handkerchiefs, and
wooed her across the counter with a King Cophetua air. When he had
gone one of the girls said:
"What's wrong, Nance, that you didn't warm up to that fellow. He
looks the swell article, all right, to me."
"Him?" said Nancy, with her coolest, sweetest, most impersonal, Van
Alstyne Fisher smile; "not for mine. I saw him drive up outside. A
12 H. P. machine and an Irish chauffeur! And you saw what kind of
handkerchiefs he bought--silk! And he's got dactylis on him. Give me
the real thing or nothing, if you please."
Two of the most "refined" women in the store--a forelady and a
cashier--had a few "swell gentlemen friends" with whom they now and
then dined. Once they included Nancy in an invitation. The dinner
took place in a spectacular café whose tables are engaged for New
Year's eve a year in advance. There were two "gentlemen friends"--one
without any hair on his head--high living ungrew it; and we can prove
it--the other a young man whose worth and sophistication he impressed
upon you in two convincing ways--he swore that all the wine was
corked; and he wore diamond cuff buttons. This young man perceived
irresistible excellencies in Nancy. His taste ran to shop-girls; and
here was one that added the voice and manners of his high social
world to the franker charms of her own caste. So, on the following
day, he appeared in the store and made her a serious proposal of
marriage over a box of hem-stitched, grass-bleached Irish linens.
Nancy declined. A brown pompadour ten feet away had been using her
eyes and ears. When the rejected suitor had gone she heaped carboys
of upbraidings and horror upon Nancy's head.
"What a terrible little fool you are! That fellow's a millionaire--he's
a nephew of old Van Skittles himself. And he was talking on the level,
too. Have you gone crazy, Nance?"
"Have I?" said Nancy. "I didn't take him, did I? He isn't a millionaire
so hard that you could notice it, anyhow. His family only allows him
$20,000 a year to spend. The bald-headed fellow was guying him about it
the other night at supper."
The brown pompadour came nearer and narrowed her eyes.
"Say, what do you want?" she inquired, in a voice hoarse for lack of
chewing-gum. "Ain't that enough for you? Do you want to be a Mormon,
and marry Rockefeller and Gladstone Dowie and the King of Spain and
the whole bunch? Ain't $20,000 a year good enough for you?"
Nancy flushed a little under the level gaze of the black, shallow
eyes.
"It wasn't altogether the money, Carrie," she explained. "His friend
caught him in a rank lie the other night at dinner. It was about
some girl he said he hadn't been to the theater with. Well, I can't
stand a liar. Put everything together--I don't like him; and that
settles it. When I sell out it's not going to be on any bargain day.
I've got to have something that sits up in a chair like a man,
anyhow. Yes, I'm looking out for a catch; but it's got to be able to
do something more than make a noise like a toy bank."
"The physiopathic ward for yours!" said the brown pompadour, walking
away.
These high ideas, if not ideals--Nancy continued to cultivate on $8.
per week. She bivouacked on the trail of the great unknown "catch,"
eating her dry bread and tightening her belt day by day. On her
face was the faint, soldierly, sweet, grim smile of the preordained
man-hunter. The store was her forest; and many times she raised her
rifle at game that seemed broad-antlered and big; but always some
deep unerring instinct--perhaps of the huntress, perhaps of the
woman--made her hold her fire and take up the trail again.
Lou flourished in the laundry. Out of her $18.50 per week she paid
$6. for her room and board. The rest went mainly for clothes. Her
opportunities for bettering her taste and manners were few compared
with Nancy's. In the steaming laundry there was nothing but work,
work and her thoughts of the evening pleasures to come. Many costly
and showy fabrics passed under her iron; and it may be that her
growing fondness for dress was thus transmitted to her through the
conducting metal.
When the day's work was over Dan awaited her outside, her faithful
shadow in whatever light she stood.
Sometimes he cast an honest and troubled glance at Lou's clothes
that increased in conspicuity rather than in style; but this was no
disloyalty; he deprecated the attention they called to her in the
streets.
And Lou was no less faithful to her chum. There was a law that Nancy
should go with them on whatsoever outings they might take. Dan bore
the extra burden heartily and in good cheer. It might be said that
Lou furnished the color, Nancy the tone, and Dan the weight of the
distraction-seeking trio. The escort, in his neat but obviously
ready-made suit, his ready-made tie and unfailing, genial, ready-made
wit never startled or clashed. He was of that good kind that you are
likely to forget while they are present, but remember distinctly
after they are gone.
To Nancy's superior taste the flavor of these ready-made pleasures
was sometimes a little bitter: but she was young; and youth is a
gourmand, when it cannot be a gourmet.
"Dan is always wanting me to marry him right away," Lou told her
once. "But why should I? I'm independent. I can do as I please with
the money I earn; and he never would agree for me to keep on working
afterward. And say, Nance, what do you want to stick to that old
store for, and half starve and half dress yourself? I could get you
a place in the laundry right now if you'd come. It seems to me that
you could afford to be a little less stuck-up if you could make a
good deal more money."
"I don't think I'm stuck-up, Lou," said Nancy, "but I'd rather live
on half rations and stay where I am. I suppose I've got the habit.
It's the chance that I want. I don't expect to be always behind a
counter. I'm learning something new every day. I'm right up against
refined and rich people all the time--even if I do only wait on
them; and I'm not missing any pointers that I see passing around."
"Caught your millionaire yet?" asked Lou with her teasing laugh.
"I haven't selected one yet," answered Nancy. "I've been looking
them over."
"Goodness! the idea of picking over 'em! Don't you ever let one get
by you Nance--even if he's a few dollars shy. But of course you're
joking--millionaires don't think about working girls like us."
"It might be better for them if they did," said Nancy, with cool
wisdom. "Some of us could teach them how to take care of their
money."
"If one was to speak to me," laughed Lou, "I know I'd have a
duck-fit."
"That's because you don't know any. The only difference between
swells and other people is you have to watch 'em closer. Don't you
think that red silk lining is just a little bit too bright for that
coat, Lou?"
Lou looked at the plain, dull olive jacket of her friend.
"Well, no I don't--but it may seem so beside that faded-looking
thing you've got on."
"This jacket," said Nancy, complacently, "has exactly the cut and
fit of one that Mrs. Van Alstyne Fisher was wearing the other day.
The material cost me $3.98. I suppose hers cost about $100. more."
"Oh, well," said Lou lightly, "it don't strike me as millionaire
bait. Shouldn't wonder if I catch one before you do, anyway."
Truly it would have taken a philosopher to decide upon the values
of the theories held by the two friends. Lou, lacking that certain
pride and fastidiousness that keeps stores and desks filled with
girls working for the barest living, thumped away gaily with her
iron in the noisy and stifling laundry. Her wages supported her
even beyond the point of comfort; so that her dress profited until
sometimes she cast a sidelong glance of impatience at the neat but
inelegant apparel of Dan--Dan the constant, the immutable, the
undeviating.
As for Nancy, her case was one of tens of thousands. Silk and jewels
and laces and ornaments and the perfume and music of the fine world
of good-breeding and taste--these were made for woman; they are her
equitable portion. Let her keep near them if they are a part of life
to her, and if she will. She is no traitor to herself, as Esau was;
for she keeps he birthright and the pottage she earns is often very
scant.
In this atmosphere Nancy belonged; and she throve in it and ate her
frugal meals and schemed over her cheap dresses with a determined
and contented mind. She already knew woman; and she was studying
man, the animal, both as to his habits and eligibility. Some day she
would bring down the game that she wanted; but she promised herself
it would be what seemed to her the biggest and the best, and nothing
smaller.
Thus she kept her lamp trimmed and burning to receive the bridegroom
when he should come.
But, another lesson she learned, perhaps unconsciously. Her standard
of values began to shift and change. Sometimes the dollar-mark grew
blurred in her mind's eye, and shaped itself into letters that
spelled such words as "truth" and "honor" and now and then just
"kindness." Let us make a likeness of one who hunts the moose or elk
in some mighty wood. He sees a little dell, mossy and embowered,
where a rill trickles, babbling to him of rest and comfort. At these
times the spear of Nimrod himself grows blunt.
So, Nancy wondered sometimes if Persian lamb was always quoted at
its market value by the hearts that it covered.
One Thursday evening Nancy left the store and turned across Sixth
Avenue westward to the laundry. She was expected to go with Lou and
Dan to a musical comedy.
Dan was just coming out of the laundry when she arrived. There was a
queer, strained look on his face.
"I thought I would drop around to see if they had heard from her,"
he said.
"Heard from who?" asked Nancy. "Isn't Lou there?"
"I thought you knew," said Dan. "She hasn't been here or at the
house where she lived since Monday. She moved all her things from
there. She told one of the girls in the laundry she might be going
to Europe."
"Hasn't anybody seen her anywhere?" asked Nancy.
Dan looked at her with his jaws set grimly, and a steely gleam in
his steady gray eyes.
"They told me in the laundry," he said, harshly, "that they saw her
pass yesterday--in an automobile. With one of the millionaires, I
suppose, that you and Lou were forever busying your brains about."
For the first time Nancy quailed before a man. She laid her hand
that trembled slightly on Dan's sleeve.
"You've no right to say such a thing to me, Dan--as if I had anything
to do with it!"
"I didn't mean it that way," said Dan, softening. He fumbled in his
vest pocket.
"I've got the tickets for the show to-night," he said, with a
gallant show of lightness. "If you--"
Nancy admired pluck whenever she saw it.
"I'll go with you, Dan," she said.
Three months went by before Nancy saw Lou again.
At twilight one evening the shop-girl was hurrying home along the
border of a little quiet park. She heard her name called, and wheeled
about in time to catch Lou rushing into her arms.
After the first embrace they drew their heads back as serpents do,
ready to attack or to charm, with a thousand questions trembling on
their swift tongues. And then Nancy noticed that prosperity had
descended upon Lou, manifesting itself in costly furs, flashing
gems, and creations of the tailors' art.
"You little fool!" cried Lou, loudly and affectionately. "I see you
are still working in that store, and as shabby as ever. And how
about that big catch you were going to make--nothing doing yet, I
suppose?"
And then Lou looked, and saw that something better than prosperity
had descended upon Nancy--something that shone brighter than gems
in her eyes and redder than a rose in her cheeks, and that danced
like electricity anxious to be loosed from the tip of her tongue.
"Yes, I'm still in the store," said Nancy, "but I'm going to leave it
next week. I've made my catch--the biggest catch in the world. You
won't mind now Lou, will you?--I'm going to be married to Dan--to
Dan!--he's my Dan now--why, Lou!"
Around the corner of the park strolled one of those new-crop,
smooth-faced young policemen that are making the force more
endurable--at least to the eye. He saw a woman with an expensive fur
coat, and diamond-ringed hands crouching down against the iron fence
of the park sobbing turbulently, while a slender, plainly-dressed
working girl leaned close, trying to console her. But the Gibsonian
cop, being of the new order, passed on, pretending not to notice,
for he was wise enough to know that these matters are beyond help so
far as the power he represents is concerned, though he rap the
pavement with his nightstick till the sound goes up to the
furthermost stars.
A MADISON SQUARE ARABIAN NIGHT
To Carson Chalmers, in his apartment near the square, Phillips
brought the evening mail. Beside the routine correspondence there
were two items bearing the same foreign postmark.
One of the incoming parcels contained a photograph of a woman. The
other contained an interminable letter, over which Chalmers hung,
absorbed, for a long time. The letter was from another woman; and
it contained poisoned barbs, sweetly dipped in honey, and feathered
with innuendoes concerning the photographed woman.
Chalmers tore this letter into a thousand bits and began to wear out
his expensive rug by striding back and forth upon it. Thus an animal
from the jungle acts when it is caged, and thus a caged man acts
when he is housed in a jungle of doubt.
By and by the restless mood was overcome. The rug was not an
enchanted one. For sixteen feet he could travel along it; three
thousand miles was beyond its power to aid.
Phillips appeared. He never entered; he invariably appeared, like a
well-oiled genie.
"Will you dine here, sir, or out?" he asked.
"Here," said Chalmers, "and in half an hour." He listened glumly to
the January blasts making an Aeolian trombone of the empty street.
"Wait," he said to the disappearing genie. "As I came home across
the end of the square I saw many men standing there in rows. There
was one mounted upon something, talking. Why do those men stand in
rows, and why are they there?"
"They are homeless men, sir," said Phillips. "The man standing on
the box tries to get lodging for them for the night. People come
around to listen and give him money. Then he sends as many as the
money will pay for to some lodging-house. That is why they stand in
rows; they get sent to bed in order as they come."
"By the time dinner is served," said Chalmers, "have one of those
men here. He will dine with me."
"W-w-which--," began Phillips, stammering for the first time during
his service.
"Choose one at random," said Chalmers. "You might see that he is
reasonably sober--and a certain amount of cleanliness will not be
held against him. That is all."
It was an unusual thing for Carson Chalmers to play the Caliph. But
on that night he felt the inefficacy of conventional antidotes to
melancholy. Something wanton and egregious, something high-flavored
and Arabian, he must have to lighten his mood.
On the half hour Phillips had finished his duties as slave of the
lamp. The waiters from the restaurant below had whisked aloft the
delectable dinner. The dining table, laid for two, glowed cheerily
in the glow of the pink-shaded candles.
And now Phillips, as though he ushered a cardinal--or held in charge
a burglar--wafted in the shivering guest who had been haled from the
line of mendicant lodgers.
It is a common thing to call such men wrecks; if the comparison be
used here it is the specific one of a derelict come to grief through
fire. Even yet some flickering combustion illuminated the drifting
hulk. His face and hands had been recently washed--a rite insisted
upon by Phillips as a memorial to the slaughtered conventions. In
the candle-light he stood, a flaw in the decorous fittings of the
apartment. His face was a sickly white, covered almost to the eyes
with a stubble the shade of a red Irish setter's coat. Phillips's
comb had failed to control the pale brown hair, long matted and
conformed to the contour of a constantly worn hat. His eyes were
full of a hopeless, tricky defiance like that seen in a cur's that
is cornered by his tormentors. His shabby coat was buttoned high,
but a quarter inch of redeeming collar showed above it. His manner
was singularly free from embarrassment when Chalmers rose from his
chair across the round dining table.
"If you will oblige me," said the host, "I will be glad to have your
company at dinner."
"My name is Plumer," said the highway guest, in harsh and aggressive
tones. "If you're like me, you like to know the name of the party
you're dining with."
"I was going on to say," continued Chalmers somewhat hastily, "that
mine is Chalmers. Will you sit opposite?"
Plumer, of the ruffled plumes, bent his knee for Phillips to slide
the chair beneath him. He had an air of having sat at attended
boards before. Phillips set out the anchovies and olives.
"Good!" barked Plumer; "going to be in courses, is it? All right,
my jovial ruler of Bagdad. I'm your Scheherezade all the way to the
toothpicks. You're the first Caliph with a genuine Oriental flavor
I've struck since frost. What luck! And I was forty-third in line. I
finished counting, just as your welcome emissary arrived to bid me
to the feast. I had about as much chance of getting a bed to-night
as I have of being the next President. How will you have the sad
story of my life, Mr. Al Raschid--a chapter with each course or the
whole edition with the cigars and coffee?"
"The situation does not seem a novel one to you," said Chalmers with
a smile.
"By the chin whiskers of the prophet--no!" answered the guest. "Now
York's as full of cheap Haroun al Raschids as Bagdad is of fleas.
I've been held up for my story with a loaded meal pointed at my
head twenty times. Catch anybody in New York giving you something
for nothing! They spell curiosity and charity with the same set of
building blocks. Lots of 'em will stake you to a dime and chop-suey;
and a few of 'em will play Caliph to the tune of a top sirloin;
but every one of 'em will stand over you till they screw your
autobiography out of you with foot notes, appendix and unpublished
fragments. Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward
me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three
times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper.
I claim descent from the late Tommy Tucker, who was forced to hand
out vocal harmony for his pre-digested wheaterina and spoopju."
"I do not ask your story," said Chalmers. "I tell you frankly that
it was a sudden whim that prompted me to send for some stranger to
dine with me. I assure you you will not suffer through any curiosity
of mine."
"Oh, fudge!" exclaimed the guest, enthusiastically tackling his
soup; "I don't mind it a bit. I'm a regular Oriental magazine
with a red cover and the leaves cut when the Caliph walks abroad.
In fact, we fellows in the bed line have a sort of union rate
for things of this sort. Somebody's always stopping and wanting
to know what brought us down so low in the world. For a
sandwich and a glass of beer I tell 'em that drink did it. For
corned beef and cabbage and a cup of coffee I give 'em the
hard-hearted-landlord--six-months-in-the-hospital-lost-job story.
A sirloin steak and a quarter for a bed gets the Wall Street
tragedy of the swept-away fortune and the gradual descent. This
is the first spread of this kind I've stumbled against. I haven't
got a story to fit it. I'll tell you what, Mr. Chalmers, I'm
going to tell you the truth for this, if you'll listen to it.
It'll be harder for you to believe than the made-up ones."
An hour later the Arabian guest lay back with a sigh of satisfaction
while Phillips brought the coffee and cigars and cleared the table.
"Did you ever hear of Sherrard Plumer?" he asked, with a strange
smile.
"I remember the name," said Chalmers. "He was a painter, I think, of
a good deal of prominence a few years ago."
"Five years," said the guest. "Then I went down like a chunk of
lead. I'm Sherrard Plumer! I sold the last portrait I painted for
$2,000. After that I couldn't have found a sitter for a gratis
picture."
"What was the trouble?" Chalmers could not resist asking.
"Funny thing," answered Plumer, grimly. "Never quite understood it
myself. For a while I swam like a cork. I broke into the swell crowd
and got commissions right and left. The newspapers called me a
fashionable painter. Then the funny things began to happen. Whenever
I finished a picture people would come to see it, and whisper and
look queerly at one another."
"I soon found out what the trouble was. I had a knack of bringing
out in the face of a portrait the hidden character of the original.
I don't know how I did it--I painted what I saw--but I know it did
me. Some of my sitters were fearfully enraged and refused their
pictures. I painted the portrait of a very beautiful and popular
society dame. When it was finished her husband looked at it with a
peculiar expression on his face, and the next week he sued for
divorce."
"I remember one case of a prominent banker who sat to me. While I
had his portrait on exhibition in my studio an acquaintance of his
came in to look at it. 'Bless me,' says he, 'does he really look
like that?" I told him it was considered a faithful likeness. 'I
never noticed that expression about his eyes before,' said he; 'I
think I'll drop downtown and change my bank account.' He did drop
down, but the bank account was gone and so was Mr. Banker.
"It wasn't long till they put me out of business. People don't
want their secret meannesses shown up in a picture. They can smile
and twist their own faces and deceive you, but the picture can't.
I couldn't get an order for another picture, and I had to give
up. I worked as a newspaper artist for a while, and then for a
lithographer, but my work with them got me into the same trouble. If
I drew from a photograph my drawing showed up characteristics and
expressions that you couldn't find in the photo, but I guess they
were in the original, all right. The customers raised lively rows,
especially the women, and I never could hold a job long. So I began
to rest my weary head upon the breast of Old Booze for comfort. And
pretty soon I was in the free-bed line and doing oral fiction for
hand-outs among the food bazaars. Does the truthful statement weary
thee, O Caliph? I can turn on the Wall Street disaster stop if you
prefer, but that requires a tear, and I'm afraid I can't hustle one
up after that good dinner."
"No, no," said Chalmers, earnestly, "you interest me very much. Did
all of your portraits reveal some unpleasant trait, or were there
some that did not suffer from the ordeal of your peculiar brush?"
"Some? Yes," said Plumer. "Children generally, a good many women and
a sufficient number of men. All people aren't bad, you know. When
they were all right the pictures were all right. As I said, I don't
explain it, but I'm telling you facts."
On Chalmers's writing-table lay the photograph that he had received
that day in the foreign mail. Ten minutes later he had Plumer at
work making a sketch from it in pastels. At the end of an hour the
artist rose and stretched wearily.
"It's done," he yawned. "You'll excuse me for being so long. I got
interested in the job. Lordy! but I'm tired. No bed last night, you
know. Guess it'll have to be good night now, O Commander of the
Faithful!"
Chalmers went as far as the door with him and slipped some bills
into his hand.
"Oh! I'll take 'em," said Plumer. "All that's included in the fall.
Thanks. And for the very good dinner. I shall sleep on feathers
to-night and dream of Bagdad. I hope it won't turn out to be a dream
in the morning. Farewell, most excellent Caliph!"
Again Chalmers paced restlessly upon his rug. But his beat lay as
far from the table whereon lay the pastel sketch as the room would
permit. Twice, thrice, he tried to approach it, but failed. He could
see the dun and gold and brown of the colors, but there was a wall
about it built by his fears that kept him at a distance. He sat down
and tried to calm himself. He sprang up and rang for Phillips.
"There is a young artist in this building," he said. "--a Mr.
Reineman--do you know which is his apartment?"
"Top floor, front, sir," said Phillips.
"Go up and ask him to favor me with his presence here for a few
minutes."
Reineman came at once. Chalmers introduced himself.
"Mr. Reineman," said he, "there is a little pastel sketch on yonder
table. I would be glad if you will give me your opinion of it as to
its artistic merits and as a picture."
The young artist advanced to the table and took up the sketch.
Chalmers half turned away, leaning upon the back of a chair.
"How--do--you find it?" he asked, slowly.
"As a drawing," said the artist, "I can't praise it enough. It's the
work of a master--bold and fine and true. It puzzles me a little; I
haven't seen any pastel work near as good in years."
"The face, man--the subject--the original--what would you say of
that?"
"The face," said Reineman, "is the face of one of God's own angels.
May I ask who--"
"My wife!" shouted Chalmers, wheeling and pouncing upon the
astonished artist, gripping his hand and pounding his back. "She is
traveling in Europe. Take that sketch, boy, and paint the picture
of your life from it and leave the price to me."
THE RUBAIYAT OF A SCOTCH HIGHBALL
This document is intended to strike somewhere between a temperance
lecture and the "Bartender's Guide." Relative to the latter, drink
shall swell the theme and be set forth in abundance. Agreeably to
the former, not an elbow shall be crooked.
Bob Babbitt was "off the stuff." Which means--as you will discover
by referring to the unabridged dictionary of Bohemia--that he had
"cut out the booze;" that he was "on the water wagon." The reason
for Bob's sudden attitude of hostility toward the "demon rum"--as
the white ribboners miscall whiskey (see the "Bartender's Guide"),
should be of interest to reformers and saloon-keepers.
There is always hope for a man who, when sober, will not concede or
acknowledge that he was ever drunk. But when a man will say (in the
apt words of the phrase-distiller), "I had a beautiful skate on last
night," you will have to put stuff in his coffee as well as pray for
him.
One evening on his way home Babbitt dropped in at the Broadway bar
that he liked best. Always there were three or four fellows there
from the downtown offices whom he knew. And then there would be
high-balls and stories, and he would hurry home to dinner a little
late but feeling good, and a little sorry for the poor Standard Oil
Company. On this evening as he entered he heard some one say:
"Babbitt was in last night as full as a boiled owl."
Babbitt walked to the bar, and saw in the mirror that his face was
as white as chalk. For the first time he had looked Truth in the
eyes. Others had lied to him; he had dissembled with himself. He was
a drunkard, and had not known it. What he had fondly imagined was a
pleasant exhilaration had been maudlin intoxication. His fancied wit
had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a
sot. But, never again!
"A glass of seltzer," he said to the bartender.
A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been
expecting him to join them.
"Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more
formality than the highballs ever called forth.
"Yes," said Babbitt.
Some one of the group took up the unwashed thread of a story he had
been telling; the bartender shoved over a dime and a nickel change
from the quarter, ungarnished with his customary smile; and Babbitt
walked out.
Now, Babbitt had a home and a wife--but that is another story. And I
will tell you that story, which will show you a better habit and a
worse story than you could find in the man who invented the phrase.
It began away up in Sullivan County, where so many rivers and so
much trouble begins--or begin; how would you say that? It was July,
and Jessie was a summer boarder at the Mountain Squint Hotel, and
Bob, who was just out of college, saw her one day--and they were
married in September. That's the tabloid novel--one swallow of
water, and it's gone.
But those July days!
Let the exclamation point expound it, for I shall not. For
particulars you might read up on "Romeo and Juliet," and Abraham
Lincoln's thrilling sonnet about "You can fool some of the people,"
&c., and Darwin's works.
But one thing I must tell you about. Both of them were mad over
Omar's Rubaiyat. They knew every verse of the old bluffer by
heart--not consecutively, but picking 'em out here and there as you
fork the mushrooms in a fifty-cent steak à la Bordelaise. Sullivan
County is full of rocks and trees; and Jessie used to sit on them,
and--please be good--used to sit on the rocks; and Bob had a way of
standing behind her with his hands over her shoulders holding her
hands, and his face close to hers, and they would repeat over and
over their favorite verses of the old tent-maker. They saw only the
poetry and philosophy of the lines then--indeed, they agreed that
the Wine was only an image, and that what was meant to be celebrated
was some divinity, or maybe Love or Life. However, at that time
neither of them had tasted the stuff that goes with a sixty-cent
_table d'hote_.
Where was I? Oh, they married and came to New York. Bob showed his
college diploma, and accepted a position filling inkstands in a
lawyer's office at $15 a week. At the end of two years he had worked
up to $50, and gotten his first taste of Bohemia--the kind that
won't stand the borax and formaldehyde tests.
They had two furnished rooms and a little kitchen. To Jess,
accustomed to the mild but beautiful savor of a country town, the
dreggy Bohemia was sugar and spice. She hung fish seines on the
walls of her rooms, and bought a rakish-looking sideboard, and
learned to play the banjo. Twice or thrice a week they dined at
French or Italian _tables d'hote_ in a cloud of smoke, and brag and
unshorn hair. Jess learned to drink a cocktail in order to get the
cherry. At home she smoked a cigarette after dinner. She learned to
pronounce Chianti, and leave her olive stones for the waiter to pick
up. Once she essayed to say la, la, la! in a crowd but got only as
far as the second one. They met one or two couples while dining out
and became friendly with them. The sideboard was stocked with Scotch
and rye and a liqueur. They had their new friends in to dinner and
all were laughing at nothing by 1 A. M. Some plastering fell in the
room below them, for which Bob had to pay $4.50. Thus they footed it
merrily on the ragged frontiers of the country that has no boundary
lines or government.
And soon Bob fell in with his cronies and learned to keep his foot
on the little rail six inches above the floor for an hour or so
every afternoon before he went home. Drink always rubbed him the
right way, and he would reach his rooms as jolly as a sandboy.
Jessie would meet him at the door, and generally they would dance
some insane kind of a rigadoon about the floor by way of greeting.
Once when Bob's feet became confused and he tumbled headlong over a
foot-stool Jessie laughed so heartily and long that he had to throw
all the couch pillows at her to make her hush.
In such wise life was speeding for them on the day when Bob Babbitt
first felt the power that the giftie gi'ed him.
But let us get back to our lamb and mint sauce.
When Bob got home that evening he found Jessie in a long apron
cutting up a lobster for the Newburg. Usually when Bob came in
mellow from his hour at the bar his welcome was hilarious, though
somewhat tinctured with Scotch smoke.
By screams and snatches of song and certain audible testimonials of
domestic felicity was his advent proclaimed. When she heard his foot
on the stairs the old maid in the hall room always stuffed cotton
into her ears. At first Jessie had shrunk from the rudeness and
favor of these spiritual greetings, but as the fog of the false
Bohemia gradually encompassed her she came to accept them as love's
true and proper greeting.
Bob came in without a word, smiled, kissed her neatly but
noiselessly, took up a paper and sat down. In the hall room the old
maid held her two plugs of cotton poised, filled with anxiety.
Jessie dropped lobster and knife and ran to him with frightened
eyes.
"What's the matter, Bob, are you ill?"
"Not at all, dear."
"Then what's the matter with you?"
"Nothing."
Hearken, brethren. When She-who-has-a-right-to-ask interrogates you
concerning a change she finds in your mood answer her thus: Tell her
that you, in a sudden rage, have murdered your grandmother; tell her
that you have robbed orphans and that remorse has stricken you; tell
her your fortune is swept away; that you are beset by enemies, by
bunions, by any kind of malevolent fate; but do not, if peace and
happiness are worth as much as a grain of mustard seed to you--do
not answer her "Nothing."
Jessie went back to the lobster in silence. She cast looks of
darkest suspicion at Bob. He had never acted that way before.
When dinner was on the table she set out the bottle of Scotch and
the glasses. Bob declined.
"Tell you the truth, Jess," he said. "I've cut out the drink. Help
yourself, of course. If you don't mind I'll try some of the seltzer
straight."
"You've stopped drinking?" she said, looking at him steadily and
unsmilingly. "What for?"
"It wasn't doing me any good," said Bob. "Don't you approve of the
idea?"
Jessie raised her eyebrows and one shoulder slightly.
"Entirely," she said with a sculptured smile. "I could not
conscientiously advise any one to drink or smoke, or whistle on
Sunday."
The meal was finished almost in silence. Bob tried to make talk,
but his efforts lacked the stimulus of previous evenings. He felt
miserable, and once or twice his eye wandered toward the bottle, but
each time the scathing words of his bibulous friend sounded in his
ear, and his mouth set with determination.
Jessie felt the change deeply. The essence of their lives seemed to
have departed suddenly. The restless fever, the false gayety, the
unnatural excitement of the shoddy Bohemia in which they had lived
had dropped away in the space of the popping of a cork. She stole
curious and forlorn glances at the dejected Bob, who bore the guilty
look of at least a wife-beater or a family tyrant.
After dinner the colored maid who came in daily to perform such
chores cleared away the things. Jessie, with an unreadable
countenance, brought back the bottle of Scotch and the glasses and
a bowl of cracked ice and set them on the table.
"May I ask," she said, with some of the ice in her tones, "whether
I am to be included in your sudden spasm of goodness? If not, I'll
make one for myself. It's rather chilly this evening, for some
reason."
"Oh, come now, Jess," said Bob good-naturedly, "don't be too rough
on me. Help yourself, by all means. There's no danger of your
overdoing it. But I thought there was with me; and that's why I
quit. Have yours, and then let's get out the banjo and try over that
new quickstep."
"I've heard," said Jessie in the tones of the oracle, "that drinking
alone is a pernicious habit. No, I don't think I feel like playing
this evening. If we are going to reform we may as well abandon the
evil habit of banjo-playing, too."
She took up a book and sat in her little willow rocker on the other
side of the table. Neither of them spoke for half an hour.
And then Bob laid down his paper and got up with a strange, absent
look on his face and went behind her chair and reached over her
shoulders, taking her hands in his, and laid his face close to hers.
In a moment to Jessie the walls of the seine-hung room vanished, and
she saw the Sullivan County hills and rills. Bob felt her hands
quiver in his as he began the verse from old Omar:
"Come, fill the Cup, and in the Fire of Spring
The Winter Garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To fly--and Lo! the Bird is on the Wing!"
And then he walked to the table and poured a stiff drink of Scotch
into a glass.
But in that moment a mountain breeze had somehow found its way in
and blown away the mist of the false Bohemia.
Jessie leaped and with one fierce sweep of her hand sent the bottle
and glasses crashing to the floor. The same motion of her arm
carried it around Bob's neck, where it met its mate and fastened
tight.
"Oh, my God, Bobbie--not that verse--I see now. I wasn't always such
a fool, was I? The other one, boy--the one that says: 'Remould it to
the Heart's Desire.' Say that one--'to the Heart's Desire.'"
"I know that one," said Bob. "It goes:
"'Ah! Love, could you and I with Him conspire
To grasp this sorry Scheme of Things entire
Would not we--'"
"Let me finish it," said Jessie.
"'Would not we shatter it to bits--and then
Remould it nearer to the Heart's Desire!'"
"It's shattered all right," said Bob, crunching some glass under his
heel.
In some dungeon below the accurate ear of Mrs. Pickens, the landlady,
located the smash.
"It's that wild Mr. Babbitt coming home soused again," she said.
"And he's got such a nice little wife, too!"
THE PENDULUM
"Eighty-first street--let 'em out, please," yelled the shepherd in
blue.
A flock of citizen sheep scrambled out and another flock scrambled
aboard. Ding-ding! The cattle cars of the Manhattan Elevated rattled
away, and John Perkins drifted down the stairway of the station with
the released flock.
John walked slowly toward his flat. Slowly, because in the lexicon
of his daily life there was no such word as "perhaps." There are no
surprises awaiting a man who has been married two years and lives in
a flat. As he walked John Perkins prophesied to himself with gloomy
and downtrodden cynicism the foregone conclusions of the monotonous
day.
Katy would meet him at the door with a kiss flavored with cold cream
and butter-scotch. He would remove his coat, sit upon a macadamized
lounge and read, in the evening paper, of Russians and Japs
slaughtered by the deadly linotype. For dinner there would be pot
roast, a salad flavored with a dressing warranted not to crack or
injure the leather, stewed rhubarb and the bottle of strawberry
marmalade blushing at the certificate of chemical purity on its
label. After dinner Katy would show him the new patch in her crazy
quilt that the iceman had cut for her off the end of his four-in-hand.
At half-past seven they would spread newspapers over the furniture
to catch the pieces of plastering that fell when the fat man in the
flat overhead began to take his physical culture exercises. Exactly
at eight Hickey & Mooney, of the vaudeville team (unbooked) in the
flat across the hall, would yield to the gentle influence of delirium
tremens and begin to overturn chairs under the delusion that
Hammerstein was pursuing them with a five-hundred-dollar-a-week
contract. Then the gent at the window across the air-shaft would get
out his flute; the nightly gas leak would steal forth to frolic in
the highways; the dumbwaiter would slip off its trolley; the janitor
would drive Mrs. Zanowitski's five children once more across the
Yalu, the lady with the champagne shoes and the Skye terrier would
trip downstairs and paste her Thursday name over her bell and
letter-box--and the evening routine of the Frogmore flats would be
under way.
John Perkins knew these things would happen. And he knew that at a
quarter past eight he would summon his nerve and reach for his hat,
and that his wife would deliver this speech in a querulous tone:
"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?"
"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," he would answer, "and play a
game or two of pool with the fellows."
Of late such had been John Perkins's habit. At ten or eleven he
would return. Sometimes Katy would be asleep; sometimes waiting up,
ready to melt in the crucible of her ire a little more gold plating
from the wrought steel chains of matrimony. For these things Cupid
will have to answer when he stands at the bar of justice with his
victims from the Frogmore flats.
To-night John Perkins encountered a tremendous upheaval of the
commonplace when he reached his door. No Katy was there with her
affectionate, confectionate kiss. The three rooms seemed in
portentous disorder. All about lay her things in confusion. Shoes in
the middle of the floor, curling tongs, hair bows, kimonos, powder
box, jumbled together on dresser and chairs--this was not Katy's
way. With a sinking heart John saw the comb with a curling cloud of
her brown hair among its teeth. Some unusual hurry and perturbation
must have possessed her, for she always carefully placed these
combings in the little blue vase on the mantel to be some day formed
into the coveted feminine "rat."
Hanging conspicuously to the gas jet by a string was a folded paper.
John seized it. It was a note from his wife running thus:
"Dear John: I just had a telegram saying mother is very sick.
I am going to take the 4.30 train. Brother Sam is going to meet
me at the depot there. There is cold mutton in the ice box. I
hope it isn't her quinzy again. Pay the milkman 50 cents. She
had it bad last spring. Don't forget to write to the company
about the gas meter, and your good socks are in the top drawer.
I will write to-morrow.
Hastily, KATY."
Never during their two years of matrimony had he and Katy been
separated for a night. John read the note over and over in a
dumbfounded way. Here was a break in a routine that had never
varied, and it left him dazed.
There on the back of a chair hung, pathetically empty and formless,
the red wrapper with black dots that she always wore while getting
the meals. Her week-day clothes had been tossed here and there in
her haste. A little paper bag of her favorite butter-scotch lay with
its string yet unwound. A daily paper sprawled on the floor, gaping
rectangularly where a railroad time-table had been clipped from it.
Everything in the room spoke of a loss, of an essence gone, of its
soul and life departed. John Perkins stood among the dead remains
with a queer feeling of desolation in his heart.
He began to set the rooms tidy as well as he could. When he touched
her clothes a thrill of something like terror went through him. He
had never thought what existence would be without Katy. She had
become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the
air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed. Now, without
warning, she was gone, vanished, as completely absent as if she had
never existed. Of course it would be only for a few days, or at most
a week or two, but it seemed to him as if the very hand of death had
pointed a finger at his secure and uneventful home.
John dragged the cold mutton from the ice-box, made coffee and sat
down to a lonely meal face to face with the strawberry marmalade's
shameless certificate of purity. Bright among withdrawn blessings
now appeared to him the ghosts of pot roasts and the salad with tan
polish dressing. His home was dismantled. A quinzied mother-in-law
had knocked his lares and penates sky-high. After his solitary meal
John sat at a front window.
He did not care to smoke. Outside the city roared to him to come
join in its dance of folly and pleasure. The night was his. He might
go forth unquestioned and thrum the strings of jollity as free as
any gay bachelor there. He might carouse and wander and have his
fling until dawn if he liked; and there would be no wrathful Katy
waiting for him, bearing the chalice that held the dregs of his joy.
He might play pool at McCloskey's with his roistering friends until
Aurora dimmed the electric bulbs if he chose. The hymeneal strings
that had curbed him always when the Frogmore flats had palled upon
him were loosened. Katy was gone.
John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as
he sat in his Katy-bereft 10x12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the
keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to
his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by
the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss
of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and
sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced
bird has flown--or in other no less florid and true utterances?
"I'm a double-dyed dub," mused John Perkins, "the way I've been
treating Katy. Off every night playing pool and bumming with the
boys instead of staying home with her. The poor girl here all alone
with nothing to amuse her, and me acting that way! John Perkins,
you're the worst kind of a shine. I'm going to make it up for the
little girl. I'll take her out and let her see some amusement. And
I'll cut out the McCloskey gang right from this minute."
Yes, there was the city roaring outside for John Perkins to come
dance in the train of Momus. And at McCloskey's the boys were
knocking the balls idly into the pockets against the hour for the
nightly game. But no primrose way nor clicking cue could woo the
remorseful soul of Perkins the bereft. The thing that was his,
lightly held and half scorned, had been taken away from him, and he
wanted it. Backward to a certain man named Adam, whom the cherubim
bounced from the orchard, could Perkins, the remorseful, trace his
descent.
Near the right hand of John Perkins stood a chair. On the back of
it stood Katy's blue shirtwaist. It still retained something of
her contour. Midway of the sleeves were fine, individual wrinkles
made by the movements of her arms in working for his comfort and
pleasure. A delicate but impelling odor of bluebells came from
it. John took it and looked long and soberly at the unresponsive
grenadine. Katy had never been unresponsive. Tears:--yes,
tears--came into John Perkins's eyes. When she came back things
would be different. He would make up for all his neglect. What
was life without her?
The door opened. Katy walked in carrying a little hand satchel. John
stared at her stupidly.
"My! I'm glad to get back," said Katy. "Ma wasn't sick to amount
to anything. Sam was at the depot, and said she just had a little
spell, and got all right soon after they telegraphed. So I took the
next train back. I'm just dying for a cup of coffee."
Nobody heard the click and rattle of the cog-wheels as the third-floor
front of the Frogmore flats buzzed its machinery back into the Order
of Things. A band slipped, a spring was touched, the gear was adjusted
and the wheels revolve in their old orbit.
John Perkins looked at the clock. It was 8.15. He reached for his
hat and walked to the door.
"Now, where are you going, I'd like to know, John Perkins?" asked
Katy, in a querulous tone.
"Thought I'd drop up to McCloskey's," said John, "and play a game or
two of pool with the fellows."
TWO THANKSGIVING DAY GENTLEMEN
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we
Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat
saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old
pump looks than it used to. Bless the day. President Roosevelt gives
it to us. We hear some talk of the Puritans, but don't just remember
who they were. Bet we can lick 'em, anyhow, if they try to land
again. Plymouth Rocks? Well, that sounds more familiar. Lots of us
have had to come down to hens since the Turkey Trust got its work
in. But somebody in Washington is leaking out advance information
to 'em about these Thanksgiving proclamations.
The big city east of the cranberry bogs has made Thanksgiving Day an
institution. The last Thursday in November is the only day in the
year on which it recognizes the part of America lying across the
ferries. It is the one day that is purely American. Yes, a day of
celebration, exclusively American.
And now for the story which is to prove to you that we have
traditions on this side of the ocean that are becoming older at a
much rapider rate than those of England are--thanks to our git-up
and enterprise.
Stuffy Pete took his seat on the third bench to the right as you
enter Union Square from the east, at the walk opposite the fountain.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years he had taken his seat there
promptly at 1 o'clock. For every time he had done so things had
happened to him--Charles Dickensy things that swelled his waistcoat
above his heart, and equally on the other side.
But to-day Stuffy Pete's appearance at the annual trysting place
seemed to have been rather the result of habit than of the yearly
hunger which, as the philanthropists seem to think, afflicts the
poor at such extended intervals.
Certainly Pete was not hungry. He had just come from a feast
that had left him of his powers barely those of respiration and
locomotion. His eyes were like two pale gooseberries firmly imbedded
in a swollen and gravy-smeared mask of putty. His breath came
in short wheezes; a senatorial roll of adipose tissue denied a
fashionable set to his upturned coat collar. Buttons that had been
sewed upon his clothes by kind Salvation fingers a week before flew
like popcorn, strewing the earth around him. Ragged he was, with a
split shirt front open to the wishbone; but the November breeze,
carrying fine snowflakes, brought him only a grateful coolness.
For Stuffy Pete was overcharged with the caloric produced by a
super-bountiful dinner, beginning with oysters and ending with plum
pudding, and including (it seemed to him) all the roast turkey and
baked potatoes and chicken salad and squash pie and ice cream in
the world. Wherefore he sat, gorged, and gazed upon the world with
after-dinner contempt.
The meal had been an unexpected one. He was passing a red brick
mansion near the beginning of Fifth avenue, in which lived two old
ladies of ancient family and a reverence for traditions. They even
denied the existence of New York, and believed that Thanksgiving Day
was declared solely for Washington Square. One of their traditional
habits was to station a servant at the postern gate with orders to
admit the first hungry wayfarer that came along after the hour of
noon had struck, and banquet him to a finish. Stuffy Pete happened
to pass by on his way to the park, and the seneschals gathered him
in and upheld the custom of the castle.
After Stuffy Pete had gazed straight before him for ten minutes he
was conscious of a desire for a more varied field of vision. With a
tremendous effort he moved his head slowly to the left. And then his
eyes bulged out fearfully, and his breath ceased, and the rough-shod
ends of his short legs wriggled and rustled on the gravel.
For the Old Gentleman was coming across Fourth avenue toward his
bench.
Every Thanksgiving Day for nine years the Old Gentleman had come
there and found Stuffy Pete on his bench. That was a thing that the
Old Gentleman was trying to make a tradition of. Every Thanksgiving
Day for nine years he had found Stuffy there, and had led him to a
restaurant and watched him eat a big dinner. They do those things in
England unconsciously. But this is a young country, and nine years
is not so bad. The Old Gentleman was a staunch American patriot, and
considered himself a pioneer in American tradition. In order to
become picturesque we must keep on doing one thing for a long time
without ever letting it get away from us. Something like collecting
the weekly dimes in industrial insurance. Or cleaning the streets.
The Old Gentleman moved, straight and stately, toward the
Institution that he was rearing. Truly, the annual feeding of Stuffy
Pete was nothing national in its character, such as the Magna Charta
or jam for breakfast was in England. But it was a step. It was
almost feudal. It showed, at least, that a Custom was not impossible
to New Y--ahem!--America.
The Old Gentleman was thin and tall and sixty. He was dressed all in
black, and wore the old-fashioned kind of glasses that won't stay
on your nose. His hair was whiter and thinner than it had been last
year, and he seemed to make more use of his big, knobby cane with
the crooked handle.
As his established benefactor came up Stuffy wheezed and shuddered
like some woman's over-fat pug when a street dog bristles up at him.
He would have flown, but all the skill of Santos-Dumont could not
have separated him from his bench. Well had the myrmidons of the two
old ladies done their work.
"Good morning," said the Old Gentleman. "I am glad to perceive that
the vicissitudes of another year have spared you to move in health
about the beautiful world. For that blessing alone this day of
thanksgiving is well proclaimed to each of us. If you will come with
me, my man, I will provide you with a dinner that should make your
physical being accord with the mental."
That is what the old Gentleman said every time. Every Thanksgiving
Day for nine years. The words themselves almost formed an
Institution. Nothing could be compared with them except the
Declaration of Independence. Always before they had been music in
Stuffy's ears. But now he looked up at the Old Gentleman's face with
tearful agony in his own. The fine snow almost sizzled when it fell
upon his perspiring brow. But the Old Gentleman shivered a little
and turned his back to the wind.
Stuffy had always wondered why the Old Gentleman spoke his speech
rather sadly. He did not know that it was because he was wishing
every time that he had a son to succeed him. A son who would come
there after he was gone--a son who would stand proud and strong
before some subsequent Stuffy, and say: "In memory of my father."
Then it would be an Institution.
But the Old Gentleman had no relatives. He lived in rented rooms
in one of the decayed old family brownstone mansions in one of the
quiet streets east of the park. In the winter he raised fuchsias in
a little conservatory the size of a steamer trunk. In the spring he
walked in the Easter parade. In the summer he lived at a farmhouse
in the New Jersey hills, and sat in a wicker armchair, speaking of
a butterfly, the ornithoptera amphrisius, that he hoped to find
some day. In the autumn he fed Stuffy a dinner. These were the Old
Gentleman's occupations.
Stuffy Pete looked up at him for a half minute, stewing and helpless
in his own self-pity. The Old Gentleman's eyes were bright with the
giving-pleasure. His face was getting more lined each year, but his
little black necktie was in as jaunty a bow as ever, and the linen
was beautiful and white, and his gray mustache was curled carefully
at the ends. And then Stuffy made a noise that sounded like peas
bubbling in a pot. Speech was intended; and as the Old Gentleman had
heard the sounds nine times before, he rightly construed them into
Stuffy's old formula of acceptance.
"Thankee, sir. I'll go with ye, and much obliged. I'm very hungry,
sir."
The coma of repletion had not prevented from entering Stuffy's
mind the conviction that he was the basis of an Institution. His
Thanksgiving appetite was not his own; it belonged by all the sacred
rights of established custom, if not, by the actual Statute of
Limitations, to this kind old gentleman who bad preempted it. True,
America is free; but in order to establish tradition some one must
be a repetend--a repeating decimal. The heroes are not all heroes of
steel and gold. See one here that wielded only weapons of iron,
badly silvered, and tin.
The Old Gentleman led his annual protege southward to the restaurant,
and to the table where the feast had always occurred. They were
recognized.
"Here comes de old guy," said a waiter, "dat blows dat same bum to a
meal every Thanksgiving."
The Old Gentleman sat across the table glowing like a smoked pearl
at his corner-stone of future ancient Tradition. The waiters heaped
the table with holiday food--and Stuffy, with a sigh that was
mistaken for hunger's expression, raised knife and fork and carved
for himself a crown of imperishable bay.
No more valiant hero ever fought his way through the ranks of an
enemy. Turkey, chops, soups, vegetables, pies, disappeared before
him as fast as they could be served. Gorged nearly to the uttermost
when he entered the restaurant, the smell of food had almost caused
him to lose his honor as a gentleman, but he rallied like a
true knight. He saw the look of beneficent happiness on the Old
Gentleman's face--a happier look than even the fuchsias and the
ornithoptera amphrisius had ever brought to it--and he had not the
heart to see it wane.
In an hour Stuffy leaned back with a battle won. "Thankee kindly,
sir," he puffed like a leaky steam pipe; "thankee kindly for a
hearty meal." Then he arose heavily with glazed eyes and started
toward the kitchen. A waiter turned him about like a top, and
pointed him toward the door. The Old Gentleman carefully counted out
$1.30 in silver change, leaving three nickels for the waiter.
They parted as they did each year at the door, the Old Gentleman
going south, Stuffy north.
Around the first corner Stuffy turned, and stood for one minute.
Then he seemed to puff out his rags as an owl puffs out his
feathers, and fell to the sidewalk like a sunstricken horse.
When the ambulance came the young surgeon and the driver cursed
softly at his weight. There was no smell of whiskey to justify a
transfer to the patrol wagon, so Stuffy and his two dinners went to
the hospital. There they stretched him on a bed and began to test
him for strange diseases, with the hope of getting a chance at some
problem with the bare steel.
And lo! an hour later another ambulance brought the Old Gentleman.
And they laid him on another bed and spoke of appendicitis, for he
looked good for the bill.
But pretty soon one of the young doctors met one of the young nurses
whose eyes he liked, and stopped to chat with her about the cases.
"That nice old gentleman over there, now," he said, "you wouldn't
think that was a case of almost starvation. Proud old family, I
guess. He told me he hadn't eaten a thing for three days."
THE ASSESSOR OF SUCCESS
Hastings Beauchamp Morley sauntered across Union Square with a
pitying look at the hundreds that lolled upon the park benches. They
were a motley lot, he thought; the men with stolid, animal, unshaven
faces; the women wriggling and self-conscious, twining and untwining
their feet that hung four inches above the gravelled walks.
Were I Mr. Carnegie or Mr. Rockefeller I would put a few millions
in my inside pocket and make an appointment with all the Park
Commissioners (around the corner, if necessary), and arrange
for benches in all the parks of the world low enough for women
to sit upon, and rest their feet upon the ground. After that I
might furnish libraries to towns that would pay for 'em, or build
sanitariums for crank professors, and call 'em colleges, if I
wanted to.
Women's rights societies have been laboring for many years after
equality with man. With what result? When they sit on a bench they
must twist their ankles together and uncomfortably swing their
highest French heels clear of earthly support. Begin at the bottom,
ladies. Get your feet on the ground, and then rise to theories of
mental equality.
Hastings Beauchamp Morley was carefully and neatly dressed. That
was the result of an instinct due to his birth and breeding. It
is denied us to look further into a man's bosom than the starch on
his shirt front; so it is left to us only to recount his walks and
conversation.
Morley had not a cent in his pockets; but he smiled pityingly at a
hundred grimy, unfortunate ones who had no more, and who would have
no more when the sun's first rays yellowed the tall paper-cutter
building on the west side of the square. But Morley would have
enough by then. Sundown had seen his pockets empty before; but
sunrise had always seen them lined.
First he went to the house of a clergyman off Madison avenue and
presented a forged letter of introduction that holily purported to
issue from a pastorate in Indiana. This netted him $5 when backed
up by a realistic romance of a delayed remittance.
On the sidewalk, twenty steps from the clergyman's door, a
pale-faced, fat man huskily enveloped him with a raised, red fist
and the voice of a bell buoy, demanding payment of an old score.
"Why, Bergman, man," sang Morley, dulcetly, "is this you? I was just
on my way up to your place to settle up. That remittance from my
aunt arrived only this morning. Wrong address was the trouble. Come
up to the corner and I'll square up. Glad to see you. Saves me a
walk."
Four drinks placated the emotional Bergman. There was an air about
Morley when he was backed by money in hand that would have stayed
off a call loan at Rothschilds'. When he was penniless his bluff was
pitched half a tone lower, but few are competent to detect the
difference in the notes.
"You gum to mine blace and bay me to-morrow, Mr. Morley," said
Bergman. "Oxcuse me dat I dun you on der street. But I haf not seen
you in dree mont'. Pros't!"
Morley walked away with a crooked smile on his pale, smooth face.
The credulous, drink-softened German amused him. He would have to
avoid Twenty-ninth street in the future. He had not been aware that
Bergman ever went home by that route.
At the door of a darkened house two squares to the north Morley
knocked with a peculiar sequence of raps. The door opened to the
length of a six-inch chain, and the pompous, important black face of
an African guardian imposed itself in the opening. Morley was
admitted.
In a third-story room, in an atmosphere opaque with smoke, he hung
for ten minutes above a roulette wheel. Then downstairs he crept,
and was out-sped by the important negro, jingling in his pocket the
40 cents in silver that remained to him of his five-dollar capital.
At the corner he lingered, undecided.
Across the street was a drug store, well lighted, sending forth
gleams from the German silver and crystal of its soda fountain and
glasses. Along came a youngster of five, headed for the dispensary,
stepping high with the consequence of a big errand, possibly one to
which his advancing age had earned him promotion. In his hand he
clutched something tightly, publicly, proudly, conspicuously.
Morley stopped him with his winning smile and soft speech.
"Me?" said the youngster. "I'm doin' to the drug 'tore for mamma.
She dave me a dollar to buy a bottle of med'cin."
"Now, now, now!" said Morley. "Such a big man you are to be doing
errands for mamma. I must go along with my little man to see that
the cars don't run over him. And on the way we'll have some
chocolates. Or would he rather have lemon drops?"
Morley entered the drug store leading the child by the hand. He
presented the prescription that had been wrapped around the money.
On his face was a smile, predatory, parental, politic, profound.
"Aqua pura, one pint," said he to the druggist. "Sodium chloride,
ten grains. Fiat solution. And don't try to skin me, because I know
all about the number of gallons of H2O in the Croton reservoir, and
I always use the other ingredient on my potatoes."
"Fifteen cents," said the druggist, with a wink after he had
compounded the order. "I see you understand pharmacy. A dollar is
the regular price."
"To gulls," said Morley, smilingly.
He settled the wrapped bottle carefully in the child's arms and
escorted him to the corner. In his own pocket he dropped the 85
cents accruing to him by virtue of his chemical knowledge.
"Look out for the cars, sonny," he said, cheerfully, to his small
victim.
Two street cars suddenly swooped in opposite directions upon the
youngster. Morley dashed between them and pinned the infantile
messenger by the neck, holding him in safety. Then from the corner
of his street he sent him on his way, swindled, happy, and sticky
with vile, cheap candy from the Italian's fruit stand.
Morley went to a restaurant and ordered a sirloin and a pint of
inexpensive Chateau Breuille. He laughed noiselessly, but so
genuinely that the waiter ventured to premise that good news had
come his way.
"Why, no," said Morley, who seldom held conversation with any one.
"It is not that. It is something else that amuses me. Do you know
what three divisions of people are easiest to over-reach in
transactions of all kinds?"
"Sure," said the waiter, calculating the size of the tip promised by
the careful knot of Morley's tie; "there's the buyers from the dry
goods stores in the South during August, and honeymooners from
Staten Island, and"--
"Wrong!" said Morley, chuckling happily. "The answer is just--men,
women and children. The world--well, say New York and as far
as summer boarders can swim out from Long Island--is full of
greenhorns. Two minutes longer on the broiler would have made this
steak fit to be eaten by a gentleman, Francois."
"If yez t'inks it's on de bum," said the waiter, "Oi'll"--
Morley lifted his hand in protest--slightly martyred protest.
"It will do," he said, magnanimously. "And now, green Chartreuse,
frappe and a demi-tasse."
Morley went out leisurely and stood on a corner where two tradeful
arteries of the city cross. With a solitary dime in his pocket, he
stood on the curb watching with confident, cynical, smiling eyes the
tides of people that flowed past him. Into that stream he must cast
his net and draw fish for his further sustenance and need. Good
Izaak Walton had not the half of his self-reliance and bait-lore.
A joyful party of four--two women and two men--fell upon him with
cries of delight. There was a dinner party on--where had he been for
a fortnight past?--what luck to thus run upon him! They surrounded
and engulfed him--he must join them--tra la la--and the rest.
One with a white hat plume curving to the shoulder touched his
sleeve, and cast at the others a triumphant look that said: "See
what I can do with him?" and added her queen's command to the
invitations.
"I leave you to imagine," said Morley, pathetically, "how it
desolates me to forego the pleasure. But my friend Carruthers, of
the New York Yacht Club, is to pick me up here in his motor car at
8."
The white plume tossed, and the quartet danced like midges around an
arc light down the frolicsome way.
Morley stood, turning over and over the dime in his pocket and
laughing gleefully to himself. "'Front,'" he chanted under his
breath; "'front' does it. It is trumps in the game. How they take it
in! Men, women and children--forgeries, water-and-salt lies--how
they all take it in!"
An old man with an ill-fitting suit, a straggling gray beard and a
corpulent umbrella hopped from the conglomeration of cabs and street
cars to the sidewalk at Morley's side.
"Stranger," said he, "excuse me for troubling you, but do you know
anybody in this here town named Solomon Smothers? He's my son, and
I've come down from Ellenville to visit him. Be darned if I know
what I done with his street and number."
"I do not, sir," said Morley, half closing his eyes to veil the joy
in them. "You had better apply to the police."
"The police!" said the old man. "I ain't done nothin' to call in the
police about. I just come down to see Ben. He lives in a five-story
house, he writes me. If you know anybody by that name and could"--
"I told you I did not," said Morley, coldly. "I know no one by the
name of Smithers, and I advise you to"--
"Smothers not Smithers," interrupted the old man hopefully. "A
heavy-sot man, sandy complected, about twenty-nine, two front teeth
out, about five foot"--
"Oh, 'Smothers!'" exclaimed Morley. "Sol Smothers? Why, he lives in
the next house to me. I thought you said 'Smithers.'"
Morley looked at his watch. You must have a watch. You can do
it for a dollar. Better go hungry than forego a gunmetal or the
ninety-eight-cent one that the railroads--according to these
watchmakers--are run by.
"The Bishop of Long Island," said Morley, "was to meet me here
at 8 to dine with me at the Kingfishers' Club. But I can't leave
the father of my friend Sol Smothers alone on the street. By St.
Swithin, Mr. Smothers, we Wall street men have to work! Tired is no
name for it! I was about to step across to the other corner and have
a glass of ginger ale with a dash of sherry when you approached me.
You must let me take you to Sol's house, Mr. Smothers. But, before
we take the car I hope you will join me in"--
An hour later Morley seated himself on the end of a quiet bench
in Madison Square, with a twenty-five-cent cigar between his lips
and $140 in deeply creased bills in his inside pocket. Content,
light-hearted, ironical, keenly philosophic, he watched the moon
drifting in and out amidst a maze of flying clouds. An old, ragged
man with a low-bowed head sat at the other end of the bench.
Presently the old man stirred and looked at his bench companion. In
Morley's appearance he seemed to recognize something superior to the
usual nightly occupants of the benches.
"Kind sir," he whined, "if you could spare a dime or even a few
pennies to one who"--
Morley cut short his stereotyped appeal by throwing him a dollar.
"God bless you!" said the old man. "I've been trying to find work
for"--
"Work!" echoed Morley with his ringing laugh. "You are a fool, my
friend. The world is a rock to you, no doubt; but you must be an
Aaron and smite it with your rod. Then things better than water will
gush out of it for you. That is what the world is for. It gives to
me whatever I want from it."
"God has blessed you," said the old man. "It is only work that I
have known. And now I can get no more."
"I must go home," said Morley, rising and buttoning his coat. "I
stopped here only for a smoke. I hope you may find work."
"May your kindness be rewarded this night," said the old man.
"Oh," said Morley, "you have your wish already. I am satisfied. I
think good luck follows me like a dog. I am for yonder bright hotel
across the square for the night. And what a moon that is lighting
up the city to-night. I think no one enjoys the moonlight and such
little things as I do. Well, a good-night to you."
Morley walked to the corner where he would cross to his hotel. He
blew slow streams of smoke from his cigar heavenward. A policeman
passing saluted to his benign nod. What a fine moon it was.
The clock struck nine as a girl just entering womanhood stopped on
the corner waiting for the approaching car. She was hurrying as if
homeward from employment or delay. Her eyes were clear and pure, she
was dressed in simple white, she looked eagerly for the car and
neither to the right nor the left.
Morley knew her. Eight years before he had sat on the same bench with
her at school. There had been no sentiment between them--nothing but
the friendship of innocent days.
But he turned down the side street to a quiet spot and laid his
suddenly burning face against the cool iron of a lamp-post, and said
dully:
"God! I wish I could die."
THE BUYER FROM CACTUS CITY
It is well that hay fever and colds do not obtain in the healthful
vicinity of Cactus City, Texas, for the dry goods emporium of
Navarro & Platt, situated there, is not to be sneezed at.
Twenty thousand people in Cactus City scatter their silver coin with
liberal hands for the things that their hearts desire. The bulk of
this semiprecious metal goes to Navarro & Platt. Their huge brick
building covers enough ground to graze a dozen head of sheep. You
can buy of them a rattlesnake-skin necktie, an automobile or an
eighty-five dollar, latest style, ladies' tan coat in twenty
different shades. Navarro & Platt first introduced pennies west of
the Colorado River. They had been ranchmen with business heads, who
saw that the world did not necessarily have to cease its revolutions
after free grass went out.
Every Spring, Navarro, senior partner, fifty-five, half Spanish,
cosmopolitan, able, polished, had "gone on" to New York to buy
goods. This year he shied at taking up the long trail. He was
undoubtedly growing older; and he looked at his watch several times
a day before the hour came for his siesta.
"John," he said, to his junior partner, "you shall go on this year
to buy the goods."
Platt looked tired.
"I'm told," said he, "that New York is a plumb dead town; but I'll
go. I can take a whirl in San Antone for a few days on my way and
have some fun."
Two weeks later a man in a Texas full dress suit--black frock coat,
broad-brimmed soft white hat, and lay-down collar 3-4 inch high,
with black, wrought iron necktie--entered the wholesale cloak and
suit establishment of Zizzbaum & Son, on lower Broadway.
Old Zizzbaum had the eye of an osprey, the memory of an elephant and
a mind that unfolded from him in three movements like the puzzle of
the carpenter's rule. He rolled to the front like a brunette polar
bear, and shook Platt's hand.
"And how is the good Mr. Navarro in Texas?" he said. "The trip was
too long for him this year, so? We welcome Mr. Platt instead."
"A bull's eye," said Platt, "and I'd give forty acres of unirrigated
Pecos County land to know how you did it."
"I knew," grinned Zizzbaum, "just as I know that the rainfall in El
Paso for the year was 28.5 inches, or an increase of 15 inches, and
that therefore Navarro & Platt will buy a $15,000 stock of suits
this spring instead of $10,000, as in a dry year. But that will be
to-morrow. There is first a cigar in my private office that will
remove from your mouth the taste of the ones you smuggle across the
Rio Grande and like--because they are smuggled."
It was late in the afternoon and business for the day had ended,
Zizzbaum left Platt with a half-smoked cigar, and came out of the
private office to Son, who was arranging his diamond scarfpin before
a mirror, ready to leave.
"Abey," he said, "you will have to take Mr. Platt around to-night
and show him things. They are customers for ten years. Mr. Navarro
and I we played chess every moment of spare time when he came. That
is good, but Mr. Platt is a young man and this is his first visit to
New York. He should amuse easily."
"All right," said Abey, screwing the guard tightly on his pin. "I'll
take him on. After he's seen the Flatiron and the head waiter at the
Hotel Astor and heard the phonograph play 'Under the Old Apple Tree'
it'll be half past ten, and Mr. Texas will be ready to roll up in
his blanket. I've got a supper engagement at 11:30, but he'll be all
to the Mrs. Winslow before then."
The next morning at 10 Platt walked into the store ready to do
business. He had a bunch of hyacinths pinned on his lapel. Zizzbaum
himself waited on him. Navarro & Platt were good customers, and never
failed to take their discount for cash.
"And what did you think of our little town?" asked Zizzbaum, with
the fatuous smile of the Manhattanite.
"I shouldn't care to live in it," said the Texan. "Your son and I
knocked around quite a little last night. You've got good water, but
Cactus City is better lit up."
"We've got a few lights on Broadway, don't you think, Mr. Platt?"
"And a good many shadows," said Platt. "I think I like your horses
best. I haven't seen a crow-bait since I've been in town."
Zizzbaum led him up stairs to show the samples of suits.
"Ask Miss Asher to come," he said to a clerk.
Miss Asher came, and Platt, of Navarro & Platt, felt for the first
time the wonderful bright light of romance and glory descend upon
him. He stood still as a granite cliff above the cañon of the
Colorado, with his wide-open eyes fixed upon her. She noticed his
look and flushed a little, which was contrary to her custom.
Miss Asher was the crack model of Zizzbaum & Son. She was of the
blond type known as "medium," and her measurements even went
the required 38-25-42 standard a little better. She had been at
Zizzbaum's two years, and knew her business. Her eye was bright, but
cool; and had she chosen to match her gaze against the optic of the
famed basilisk, that fabulous monster's gaze would have wavered and
softened first. Incidentally, she knew buyers.
"Now, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum, "I want you to see these princess
gowns in the light shades. They will be the thing in your climate.
This first, if you please, Miss Asher."
Swiftly in and out of the dressing-room the prize model flew, each
time wearing a new costume and looking more stunning with every
change. She posed with absolute self-possession before the stricken
buyer, who stood, tongue-tied and motionless, while Zizzbaum orated
oilily of the styles. On the model's face was her faint, impersonal
professional smile that seemed to cover something like weariness or
contempt.
When the display was over Platt seemed to hesitate. Zizzbaum was a
little anxious, thinking that his customer might be inclined to try
elsewhere. But Platt was only looking over in his mind the best
building sites in Cactus City, trying to select one on which to
build a house for his wife-to-be--who was just then in the
dressing-room taking off an evening gown of lavender and tulle.
"Take your time, Mr. Platt," said Zizzbaum. "Think it over to-night.
You won't find anybody else meet our prices on goods like these.
I'm afraid you're having a dull time in New York, Mr. Platt. A
young man like you--of course, you miss the society of the ladies.
Wouldn't you like a nice young lady to take out to dinner this
evening? Miss Asher, now, is a very nice young lady; she will make
it agreeable for you."
"Why, she doesn't know me," said Platt, wonderingly. "She doesn't
know anything about me. Would she go? I'm not acquainted with her."
"Would she go?" repeated Zizzbaum, with uplifted eyebrows. "Sure,
she would go. I will introduce you. Sure, she would go."
He called Miss Asher loudly.
She came, calm and slightly contemptuous, in her white shirt waist
and plain black skirt.
"Mr. Platt would like the pleasure of your company to dinner this
evening," said Zizzbaum, walking away.
"Sure," said Miss Asher, looking at the ceiling. "I'd be much
pleased. Nine-eleven West Twentieth street. What time?"
"Say seven o'clock."
"All right, but please don't come ahead of time. I room with a
school teacher, and she doesn't allow any gentlemen to call in the
room. There isn't any parlor, so you'll have to wait in the hall.
I'll be ready."
At half past seven Platt and Miss Asher sat at a table in a Broadway
restaurant. She was dressed in a plain, filmy black. Platt didn't
know that it was all a part of her day's work.
With the unobtrusive aid of a good waiter he managed to order a
respectable dinner, minus the usual Broadway preliminaries.
Miss Asher flashed upon him a dazzling smile.
"Mayn't I have something to drink?" she asked.
"Why, certainly," said Platt. "Anything you want."
"A dry Martini," she said to the waiter.
When it was brought and set before her Platt reached over and took
it away.
"What is this?" he asked.
"A cocktail, of course."
"I thought it was some kind of tea you ordered. This is liquor. You
can't drink this. What is your first name?"
"To my intimate friends," said Miss Asher, freezingly, "it is
'Helen.'"
"Listen, Helen," said Platt, leaning over the table. "For many years
every time the spring flowers blossomed out on the prairies I got to
thinking of somebody that I'd never seen or heard of. I knew it was
you the minute I saw you yesterday. I'm going back home to-morrow,
and you're going with me. I know it, for I saw it in your eyes when
you first looked at me. You needn't kick, for you've got to fall
into line. Here's a little trick I picked out for you on my way
over."
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