"One evening I was strolling through the city of the dead;I viewed where all around me their peaceful forms were spread."
"One evening I was strolling through the city of the dead;I viewed where all around me their peaceful forms were spread."
"One evening I was strolling through the city of the dead;I viewed where all around me their peaceful forms were spread."
He took the thing at a quick, rollicking tempo, as one resolved to be gay under difficulties.
When they drew up to the station platform at Pagosa, Ewing hurried to greet Mrs. Laithe and her brother. Pierce busied himself with the trunks, cautiously watching the man check them.
Ben Crider, after a long, fervent look at Ewing's back, caught his breath, sniffled, strangled this, and stepped quickly into his wagon. Pulling the horses quietly away from the platform he whipped them into a sharp trot toward the town. Ewing ran back, shouting. Ben would not turn, but he thrust one arm back and upward with a careless wave.
Ewing stared hard at the bent head, the eloquent back, longing for a further sign, but none came. He was at the gateway of the world, a mist before his eyes.
A moment later their little train rattled into a narrow cañon where its shrill whistle, battered from wall to wall, made the place alive with shrieking demons.
Having seen his charge to a seat in the one squalid car, Ewing went out to brace himself on the rear platform. She who was doing this thing had seemed a strange lady again; in her manner, as in her dress, more formal. The dark-blue, close-fitting gown, the small toque of blue velvet, the secretive veil, the newish gloves, instead of the old, worn riding gauntlets, the glossy-toed black boots so different from those of scarred tan he knew, all marked a change that heightened the pangs of homesickness he already suffered.
With burning eyes and tightened throat he saw thefloor of the cañon rush away from him, and watched old Baldy's snow hood flashing momentarily as the train twisted, now sinking below a quick-rushing wall of rock, now showing over a clump of cedars. It was as if the old peak had become sprightly at his going, and sought to bob curtsies to him.
At intervals the train came to a jangling halt. The little locomotive would leave it and ramble inconsequently off into the big pine woods, to return with screeches of triumph, dragging a car load of new-sawn boards from the mill. Or it would puff away to a siding and come back importantly with a car of excited sheep. At these halts Ewing would leap to the ground to feel the San Juan earth under his feet.
At the junction where they were to take the through train he reflected that nothing had really happened yet. He could turn back and be out of the dream. The little train would return up the cañon presently. The conductor would be indifferent to his presence. To the brakeman, whom he knew, he could say, "Yes, I thought some of going to New York this morning, but I changed my mind." He would be back at Pagosa by five and find Ben at the post office or the "Happy Days" saloon. Then there would be no more of that curious sickness—a kind of sickish wanting. Yet, when the through train drew in, he hurried aboard.
He stood on the rear platform and watched a horseman jogging over the sandy plain to the west, picturing his ride from the junction to some lonely ranch on a distant river bottom. He would have the week's mail in a bag back of the saddle, and a stock of tobacco. He would reach the place after dark, perhaps, from sheerennui, shooting at a coyote or two along the way.He knew that rider's life, the days of it and the nights, and all of good or ill that might ever betake him. It was well, he thought, to dare a bigger life, though he waved a friendly greeting to the unconscious horseman, jogging at the head of his train of dust. He flung a tender glance at the diminished junction, now a low, dull blur on the level horizon, and went into the car.
For the moment the Pullman had no other occupant but himself and Mrs. Laithe, and she was sleeping, he thought; but her eyes opened as he would have passed her seat. She had replaced the toque with a brown cap he knew, and as she smiled up at him she seemed again almost the familiar godmother of his fairy tale. He passed on, however, after a meaningless word or two and, sprawling in another section, surrendered himself to the troubled pretentiousness of the Pullman school of decoration.
He had left the lady grateful for his going. She was in no mood for that artless lyric chant of youth in which he was so adept. Her brother that morning had accused her of waning enthusiasm for her protégé.
"I believe you're funking, Nell," he had said shrewdly. "You're discovering that mountain slumming is different from the city kind."
But she had protested that no discerning person of ordinary humanity could have done less for the prisoned youth. "Of course"—and she had sighed—"he's a mere bundle of untried eagerness, and we're responsible, in a way, for Heaven knows what, but we had to do it, didn't we?"
"Not 'we' had to!Youhad to. It's all yours, Nell—the credit and the glory and all the rest. I prefer to get up my own responsibilities, if you don't mind."
"But you agreed with me—youdid—you advised when I asked you—-it's perfectly plain—you said, 'Of course!'"—But the train moved off in the midst of his laugh at this, and he had doffed his hat to her with a mocking gesture of freehanded relinquishment.
Now, as she closed her eyes again, her memory dived for some fairy tale or fragment of mythology in which an unsuspecting humanitarian rescued an insignificant woods thing, only to have it change on the instant into a creature troublesome in more ways than one. She was certain some primitive fabulist had foreseen this complication, but her mind was weary and shadowed, and the historic solution evaded her. "Mountain slumming" was truly more exigent than the town sort.
But this reflection aroused a defensive sympathy. The vision of Ewing as he had passed glowed before her shut eyes, the active, square-shouldered, slender figure, garbed in a decently fitting suit of gray (she was glad to remember that), the quick eyes, ardent for life, the thinned, brown face, the usual buoyance held down to an easy self-possession that was new to her, the wild, reliant expectancy of a boy tempered all at once by some heritage of insight. Outwardly, at least, he would fit his new life. So reflecting, she dozed on the look of the man in his eyes, and dreamed that she feared this and fled. But after mad flight through the windings of an interminable corridor she awoke to look squarely into his eyes, to cower instinctively under his touch on her arm. Her waking thought took the thread of the dream, her flight had been vain: he was there, and his voice throbbed fatefully within a secret chamber of her mind, even though his words rang little of portent.
"We are coming to the supper station."
She hastened to freshen herself with cold water, and they were presently eating a hasty meal at a crowded table. Then they were out side by side to pace the platform briskly.
There was green about the station, where water had taught the desert to relent, but beyond this oasis the sand sea stretched far and flat to murky foothills. Above these they could see a range of sharp-peaked mountains that still caught the sunlight, some crystal white with snow, others muffled by clouds turned to iris-hued scarfs of filmiest gauze.
"El Dorado is beyond those hills," said the youth fervently.
"It looks accessible from here," she answered, "but——"
"You're warning me again. You're afraid I'll be discouraged by the hills."
"Not discouraged, but there are resting places on the way. They hold the bulk of the pilgrims, I fear."
"I shall go on; not even you could stop me."
She caught a glint in his fierce young eyes that she thought he must be unconscious of.
"I? Oh, I shall spur you—if you need spurring."
"I know; I'm only beginning to realize how much I owe you; I mean to repay you, though."
There was an intimation of remoteness in his tone, as if he saw himself removed from her, mounting solitary to his dream city, a free-necked, well-weaponed pilgrim, sufficient unto himself. It was as if he had put distance between them the moment he crossed the threshold of the world. She drew a full breath. It came to her, as the upflashing of some submergedmemory, that all his frank adoration of her had been quite impersonal. He had regarded her as a bit of line and color. It was amazing to remember that he had made no effort to know her, save with his eyes. She divined that she had stopped short of being human to him, while he to her had been, more than anything else, a human creature of freshness and surprises. Whatever difficulties might be in the way of an easy friendliness between them, they would not be of his own making. She was sure she felt a great relief.
Ewing awoke in the night at some jolting halt of the train, to feel an exciting thrill of luxury as he stretched in his berth. Here was no stumbling about in the dark to search for a lost trail; nor must he rise in the chill dawn to worry a blaze from overnight embers, cook a discouraging breakfast, catch horses, and lade unwilling beasts with packs. Things would be done for him; and the trail was wide and level as befits the approach to the world. He dozed royally off feeling that he had bitten into the heart of his wonder at last.
The following day they sped through a land whose kind he knew, but after another night he awoke to find their train breasting the brown waves of a sea that rolled lazily to far horizons. No longer was there one of his beloved mountain peaks to be a landmark: only an endless, curving lowness, as of land that had once tried to lash itself into the fury of mountain and crag, and then ceased all effort—to lie forever impotent and sad.
He thought of Ben amid this disconsolate welter. Ben had beheld this sight years ago, and had described it with aversion, as one relating a topographical scandal. Ewing favored his companion with heartfelt dispraiseof this landscape, applauding the suggestion of a woman she laughingly quoted that "there should be a tuck taken in the continent." He was sure nothing would be lost by it.
The lady beguiled him over the inadequacies of Kansas by promising a better land farther on. He gladly turned from the car window to watch the pretty play of her mouth as she talked.
But the next day—they steamed out of St. Louis in the morning—he scanned several hundred square miles of excellent farming land with sheer dismay. From morning till night they ran through what, to Ewing, was a dead, depressing flatness, a vast and clumsy jest of a checkerboard, with cornfields for squares. The tiny groves of oak at long intervals seemed only to satirize the monotony. The rolling plains of the day before had been vivacious beside this flatness, and there had been a certain mournful dignity in their solitude. But this endless level lacked even solitude. To Ewing, indeed, the mystery of it lay in its well-peopled towns. He wondered how men kept sane there. Mrs. Laithe insisted that it was an important stretch of our country, that it fed thousands and made useful objects in its tall-chimneyed factories (things like wagons and watches and boots, she believed), and that it ought not to be discountenanced. But he could feel nothing for it, save an unconfessed pity that it would sleep that night in ignorance of his glorious transit. He had never suspected there could be so many thousands of people who took the world as a tame affair and slept indifferent to young men with great things before them.
"If New York is like this," he said, with a flash ofhis old boyish excitement, "what can I ever do without you?"
"But it isn't at all like this, and you'll do big things without me—or with me, if I can help you."
"You will have to help me. Now that I've seen the beginning of the world, I'm depending on you more than I thought I should when we started."
"You will lose that."
"Will I? But it will be queer to see you as part of the world—no longer the whole of it; to see how you stand out from the others. Perhaps the rest of the world will be only a dingy background for you—you are all color and life."
"You've made me feel like a lay figure," she laughed. Then, in a flash of womanish curiosity, she ventured, "Have you ever thought me anything but a shell of color?"
He stammered, blushing painfully.
"Oh, a real person—of course, certainly! A woman, yes—but when I think of you as a woman, I'm scared, like those first times I saw you. I can't help it. You may not believe it," he concluded with a burst of candor, "but the truth is, I don't know women."
He was again embarrassed when she retorted, with her laugh:
"O youth! May you always know so much!"
"Well, to-morrow afternoon we shall be in New York," he said briskly, when she had shut the deeps of her eyes from him. He had felt the need to show that there were matters upon which he could speak with understanding.
BY five o'clock the next afternoon Ewing had ended his journey in an upper room of the Stuyvesant Hotel. This hostelry flaunts an outworn magnificence. Its hangings are dingy, its plenteous gilt is tarnished; and it seems to live on memories of a past when fashion splendidly thronged its corridors. But peace lies beyond the gloom of its portals, and Ewing was glad to be housed from the dazing tumult outside. Nothing reached him now but the muted rhythm of horses' feet on the asphalt below, and this but recalled agreeably to him that his solitude was an artificial thing of four walls. He had no wish to forget that the world waited beyond his door.
He fell back on the sofa, a once lordly thing of yellow satin, now frayed and faded, to eye the upper reaches of the room. The high, blue-tinted ceiling was scarred and cracked. Depending from its center a huge chandelier dangled glittering prisms of glass. An immense mirror in a gilt frame, lavishly rococo, rested on the mantel of carved white marble. Heavy lace curtains, shrouding the two broad windows, made a restful half light.
He had awakened to hills that morning, wooded hills and well towned. Then had come veritable cities, rich to him with all romance under their angular, smoky ugliness. And at last had come the real city—the endof the world and its center. He discovered it beyond a stretch of white-flecked water alive with strange craft. Its clean, straight, myriad-windowed towers glowed under a slanting sun in an air as crystal clear as that of his own hills. A vista ofheart-shakingsurprises unfolded ahead of the great boat they boarded, a boat with a heart strongly beating in tune with his own. Too soon it nosed its way, with a sort of clumsy finesse, into a pile-walled pocket. There followed the keen, quick rattling of a cogged wheel and a rush of people who seemed insufficiently impressed by the magnitude of the event. Then they entered a cab, to be driven from a throng of other cabs and jostling pedestrians through the maze of a dream come true. He tried not to ignore his companion for glimpses of that strange life through the cab window.
Very casually she had said at parting, "Thank you so much for all your care of me—and dine with us at seven-thirty, won't you? I shall try to have a friend here that I think may help you."
A long time he lay, reviewing that chaotic first hour in the world. Everything throbbed here, it seemed. One lived more quickly. And how long could the body endure it? Suddenly he felt his own pulses beating at a rate to terrify. He caught his breath and listened. He could hear the monstrous beats—they were actually shaking the sofa on which he lay. He thought of heart disease. He might be dying there—and they would wait dinner for him. He sprang up desperately. The sinister beating ceased. He put his hand to his heart, listened tensely, and heard again that which had alarmed him, the pulsing beat of a steam pump somewhere far below. In his relief he laughed aloud.
As he set about opening his trunks he was marveling at clothes lines he had seen stretched high between the rear walls of houses. How did people ever hang clothes on lines fifty feet from the ground? Truly it was a city of wonders.
He took out a suit of evening clothes that had been his father's. He had found that the suit fitted him, and he and Ben had assured themselves by reference to the pictured heroes in magazine advertisements that its cut was nearly enough in the prevailing mode. Ewing had also found some cards of his father's which would convey his own name to all who might care to read it.
As he sauntered out at the dinner hour he wished that Ben could be watching him. The Bartell house was in Ninth Street, less than a long block from his hotel, a broad, plain-fronted, three-story house of red brick trimmed with white marble. Caught in a little eddy from the stream heading in Washington Square and sweeping north, it had kept an old-time air of dignity and comfort. Ewing observed a cheering glow through the muslin curtains at the windows as he ascended the three marble steps. The old white door, crowned with a fanlight and retaining its brass knocker, had suffered the indignity of an electric bell, but this was obscurely placed at the side, and he lifted the knocker's lion head. As no bell rang, he dropped it, and was dismayed by its metallic clamor. He swiftly meditated flight, thinking to return for a seemlier demonstration. But the door swung back and a person in evening dress stood aside to bow him in.
"Ah, good evening!" exclaimed Ewing cordially. Then, embarrassed, he felt for a card, recalling that hewas in a land where, probably, one could not be cordial to persons who opened doors.
"For Mrs. Laithe," he said, in grave tones, eying the man's bluntly cut features with a severity meant to dispel any wrong impression. The person received the card on a tiny silver plate, relieved him of hat and coat with what seemed to Ewing an uncanny deftness, bowed him to the gloom of a large apartment on the left, and vanished. An instant later he reappeared, drew portiéres aside, revealing another warmly lighted room, and Ewing beheld a white vision of his hostess.
"I'm glad to have a word with you," she began. "Sit here. You're to meet a friend, Ned Piersoll, who will tell you a lot of things. I telephoned him directly I came in, and he found he could come, though he must run when he's eaten—some affair with his mother. But he'll have found out about you."
"I'm much obliged to you," he stammered, having caught little of her speech.
"Ned will tell you what to do. He knows everybody. He's on the staff of the Knickerbocker magazine, and he had a novel out last spring, 'The Promotion of Fools,' that you must have seen advertised everywhere, like a medicine."
"Yes, I've read that book."
"You must tell him if you liked it—they all care to hear that—and he'll see that you meet men of your own kind." For looking at her he had been able to give her words little attention. She had revealed herself anew in the dull white of a gown that brought out the elusive glow of her face. Her eyes were deep wells, shaded but luminous, under the lusterless dark of her hair, and her smile flashed a girlish benignity upon him. Acutelyalive was he to the line of neck and shoulder and arm, a slender, supple neck, set on shoulders superbly but lightly modeled, the small collarbone exquisitely muffled but not lost, and the little hollow at the base of her throat prettily definite. And all was white and lusterless save the warning dusk of her eyes and the flash from her parting lips.
With such cold passion for line did his artist's eye wreak its joy upon her that, as she talked, she found herself thinking him curiously dull to the prospect she opened. It was the impersonal look she had come to know; and his replies were languid, as if he thought of other matters. It might have passed for the bored ease of a man of the world had she not known him to be amid novel surroundings.
Feeling a slight discomfort under his look, she at length diverted his eyes to the room in which they sat.
"It's the room I like best in all the house," she said. "That big drawing room you came through is inhuman. It terrified me as a child, and still refuses to make friends with me, but this library—don't you feel that I've humanized it?"
He became aware that he had felt its easing charm of dark-toned wood and dull-red walls. There were low book-shelves, low seats that invited, a broad table with its array of magazines, and a lazy fire in the open grate.
"It's a fine room to be in," he said, bringing his eyes back to her.
"There's not a chair in it," she continued, "that wasn't meant to be sat in—most chairs nowadays are mere spectacles, you know—and no glass doors beforethe books. Nothing enrages me like having to open a door to get at books."
"It's the room you need," he replied. "You draw all the light to yourself. It gives you color, turns your hair to black, and makes your eyes look like——"
"Mr. Piersoll!" announced the man.
His look still engaged her as she floated forward to greet the tall, pleasant-faced, alert young man with tumbled yellow hair who now entered. Not until he heard his own name did he relinquish her to acknowledge the word of introduction.
A moment later the father of Mrs. Laithe strolled in and Ewing was again introduced, this time to a stoutish man with a placid, pink face, scanty hair going from yellow to white—arranged over his brow with scrupulous economy—and a closely cut mustache of the same ambiguous hue. He was a man who gracefully confessed fifty years to all but the better informed. Ewing felt himself under the scrutiny of a pair of very light gray eyes as Bartell took his hand, tentatively at first, then with a grip of entire cordiality. One may suspect that this gentleman had looked forward with mild apprehension to a dinner meeting with the latest protégé of his impulsive daughter. The youth's demeanor, however, so quickly caused his barbaric past to be forgotten that, by the time they were at table, his host had said to him, prefacing one of his best anecdotes, "Of course you know that corner table on the Café de la Paix terrace...."
Ewing floated dreamily on the stream of talk; laughing, chatty talk, spiced with suggestive strange names; blithe gossip of random happenings. He was content to feel its flow beneath him and rather resented theefforts to involve him in it, preferring to listen and to look. But he was courteously groped for by the others and compelled to response as the dinner progressed.
Piersoll mentioned his drawings pleasantly and engaged him for dinner at a club the following evening. "I'll call for you at the Stuyvesant about six," he said, when Ewing had accepted. "I must have a look at your stuff. Don't dress; we dine in our working clothes at the Monastery."
The father of Mrs. Laithe warned Ewing to beware of worry in his new surroundings.
"Let life carry you, my boy. That's my physiology in a nutshell. Don't try to lug the world about. The people who tell you that life in New York is a strain haven't learned rational living. Worry kills, but I never worry, and I find town idyllic. Clarence was born to worry: result, dyspepsia and nervous breakdown. My daughter worries. She goes into side streets looking for trouble, and when she finds it she keeps it. That's wrong. Life is whatever we see it to be. Eleanor sees too much of the black side, poverty, starvation, hard luck—all kinds of deviltry, and it reacts on her. I look only on the cheerful side, and that reacts on me. A good dinner, a glass of burgundy—there's an answer to all that socialistic pessimism."
"Suppose one hasn't the answer at hand?" his daughter broke in.
"Keep smiling, my dear," retorted her father with Spartan grimness. "Skipping a dinner or two can't overturn real philosophy. Down on the Chesapeake last fall, duck shooting one day, we lost the luncheon hamper overboard, and hadn't so much as a biscuit from four in the morning till after nine at night, shooting froma chilly, wet blind all day.Therewas a test! But I give you my word I never worried. I took it as so much discipline. My dear, if I had fretted over tenement houses the way you have, I should be a broken man. Thank the gods that be, I've had the wit to let my agent do all that!"
His daughter received this with a shrug of despair. "But confess, daddy—youhavea worry."
"'Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt!'" quoted Piersoll, divining her mark.
"I admit, my dear, that legitimate worry has its uses. I only warn against the too common abuse of it. I maintain," he went on, turning to Ewing, "that a man with the feelings of a boy should, if there's any moral balance in the world, retain the waistline of a boy; yet I've not done it. I go to doctors—they all talk the same ballyrot about exercise or they harangue you about diet. Why, I've heard them gibber of things one mustn't eat till I writhed in anguish. Some day I know I shall chuck it all and let Nature take her course." He glared defiantly about the table.
"She's not waiting for you to let her, dear," observed his daughter maliciously.
"It's my temperament, I suppose"—he sighed ruefully into his plate of sweet stuff—"just as it's Randy Teevan's temperament to keep slender, though I suspect Randy of stays."
Mrs. Laithe had glanced swiftly toward Ewing at the mention of this name. She again looked at him alertly a moment later when the man announced "Mr. Teevan and Mr. Alden Teevan."
"Alden told me this afternoon at the club, my dear, that he and his father might stop for a moment on theirway up town, just to say 'How-de-do.' We can have coffee in the library."
His daughter received this with a meditative under lip. Then she brightened.
"I'm sure you men would rather sit here and smoke while I run in and see them. They'll stay only a minute."
"Nonsense, child! I can't lose sight of you so soon again. We can smoke in there as well."
"Coffee in the library, Harris." She gave the order with a submissive shrug and led the way out.
Ewing saw two men come to greet her, alike enough of feature to reveal their relationship at first glance. He detected, however, a curious contrast they presented. The father, slight and short of stature, was a very young-looking old man, while the son was an old-looking young man. The father was dapper, effusive, sprightly, quick with smiling gestures; the son restrained, deliberate, low-toned with a slow, half-cynical smile of waiting. He gave the effect of subduing what his father almost elfishly expressed.
Father and son greeted the men over the shoulders of Mrs. Laithe, and Ewing was presented. There was an inclination of the son's head, and a careless glance of his waiting eyes; from the father, a jerky, absent "How-d'you do—How-d'you do!"
They moved by chatting stages to the library. The elder Teevan, carefully pointing the ends of his small, dark mustache, stood with his back to the dying fire, a coffee cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other, twittering gallantly of a town's desolation wrought by the going away of Mrs. Laithe; and of a town renewed by her great-hearted return. "A preciously timed relenting,"he called it, with a challenging sigh toward the lady, as he gracefully flicked back a ringlet of the lustrous brown hair that had fallen low on his brow. Ewing thought it wonderful hair on a man whose face, though ruddy in hue, showed signs of age. There were deep lines at the corners of those gallantly flashing eyes, and their under lids drooped. The skin was shrunk tightly over the high, thin nose, the cheeks were less than plump, and the neck revealed some unhappy wrinkles. Sadly, too, his voice failed at supreme moments. It was tragic, Ewing thought, to listen to a sentence valiantly begun, only to hear the voice crack on a crucial word.
Mrs. Laithe received the little man's tribute with a practiced indifference, chatting absently, meanwhile, with the son. Presently she led Ewing and the younger Teevan to the drawing room to admire a huge jar of roses for which she thanked Teevan.
Back in the library Piersoll was listening to a salmon-fishing story of Bartell's. The elder Teevan genially overlooked the scene, humming lightly to himself the catch air from a late musical comedy. He turned to study a bit of Japanese bronze on the mantel behind him, screwing a single glass into an eye. When he had scanned the bronze with a fine little air of appreciation he replaced it, resumed his jaunty humming, and idly picked up a card that had been thrown beside it. Carelessly under the still fixed monocle he brought the words "Mr. Gilbert Denham Ewing." A moment he held it so in fingers that suddenly trembled. His head went sharply back, the glass dropped from his eye, dangling on its silken ribbon, and his little song died. He glanced about him, observing the two groups to be still inattentive. Placing a supporting hand on themantel he set the glass firmly again and studied the card a second time. Another glance through the rooms, and he resumed his song, crumpling the card in his hand. Then, turning, he stood once more before the fire, his hands comfortably at his back. One of them tossed the card into the grate, and his song again ceased.
Bartell looked up, having, after incredible finesse, slain and weighed his giant salmon. Piersoll, recalling that the anecdotist had killed other salmon in his time, made a hasty adieu and went to his hostess, who lingered in the drawing room with the younger men. Teevan, before the fire, breathed in smoke, emitted it from pursed lips, studied the ash at the end of his cigarette from under raised, speculative brows, and flashed search-light eyes upon his host.
"Who's the young chap, Chris?"
Bartell took up a liqueur glass and turned to his questioner.
"Name's Ewing, I believe. Some chap Eleanor picked up in the far West. Painter, I believe, or means to be."
"Painter, yes, to be sure—quite right; painter...." He waited pointedly.
"Paints cowboys and Indians, I fancy—the usual thing. Seems a decent sort; rather a gentleman. You're looking a bit off. Randy."
"Am I, though? Queer! Never felt fitter. Walked to Fifty-ninth Street and back to-day. Might have overdone a bit. That chap staying in town long?"
"Have to ask Eleanor. It's her affair. By Jove, old boy, youarea wonder. I wish I could keep it off around here the way you do."
The little man drew himself up, expanded his chest,and bravely flourished a smile of acknowledgment. This faded into a look of hostile curiosity, discreetly veiled, as Mrs. Laithe and the two young men came in from the drawing room.
"Time to be moving on, Governor," young Teevan remarked.
"I'm not going, my boy," the little man answered in crisp tones, with the hint of a side look at Ewing and Mrs. Laithe. "Run on like a good chap and make my excuses to the dear grandmother. Needn't lie, you know. Say I chucked her theater party at the last moment because the places are stuffy. Say that I loathe plush and those crumpy little boxes where one sees nothing but the gas fellow in a gingham jumper yawning in the wings. Say I'm whimsical, capricious, fickle as April zephyrs—in all but my love for her. If you're quite honest she'll disbelieve you and guess that I'd a reason for stopping away. Run, like a good lad, while I quench a craving for tales of adventure from the most charming of her sex and from our young friend here—will you pardon my oversight—Ewing?—Ah, to be sure, from Mr. Ewing—-Ewing. I must remember that. I'm a silly ass about names."
But when his son had gone the little man appeared to forget the craving that had prompted his stay. From his stand on the hearth rug he jauntily usurped the talk, winging his way down the world stream of gossip from capital to capital. Circuitous, indeed, was his approach to art; an anecdote of studio life in Paris; a criticism of Rodin, "Whitman in marble;" the vigor of our native art impulse, only now learning to withdraw a slavish deference from the French schools. "And you—Mr.—Ah, yes—Ewing, to be sure—our amiable and rotund hosttells me that you are to be a warrior in this fray of brush and chisel. Bravo! You shall show me work."
Ewing had listened to his recondite discourse chiefly with a morbid expectancy of that recurrent break in the voice, straining until it came and relaxing until it quavered back to the hazardous masculine level. Finding himself thus noticed he stammered, "Oh, I—I've done some work in black and white. I hope—Mrs. Laithe has encouraged me."
"A charming modesty, yours; by no means the besetting sin of your craft, but is Mrs. Laithe an ideal promoter of genius? I fancy you'll need a sterner guide, one to be harsh as well as kind. Women can't be that, least of all the charming specimen who has honored you with her patronage. I shall be proud to supplement her deficiencies as critic—her glorious, her fascinating deficiencies. Women, audacious souls, are recklessly kind. They incur perils to chill the blood of brave enough men, meaning monstrously well all the time"—his narrowed eyes sought to read the face of Mrs. Laithe—"but I've yet to see one worth a second look who had divined that there exists a certain arbitrary relation between cause and effect. Need I word the inference?... No?..." Relieved by his scrutiny of her face he broke off, his heart leaping to the thought, "She doesn't know—doesn't know ... thefool!"
"I'll be glad to show you what I have," Ewing answered, rejoicing at this solicitude in a critic so obviously eminent. "I've been afraid all along that Mrs. Laithe might be too kind."
"Kinder than she knew—kindness is no word for her excess. Women lack fiber where their sympathies are involved. They'll not inflict pain within scope of theirimaginations—beyond that rather narrow field of course they're merciless, bless them! But trust me to score your work if it deserves that, and trust me to praise if it merits praise. You shall exhibit to me. By the way"—he consulted a small enameled watch—"I've a bit of time to spare. If you're stepping along I'll not mind looking at your things this evening."
Ewing arose, glowing with pleasure. He felt drawn to this wonderful little man who knew everything, and who was visibly kind—just, at any rate—under that fantastic cloak of severity.
"You're very good," he said. "I'm staying close by, at the Stuyvesant."
"Drop in often, Ewing," urged Bartell as they shook hands. "And don't let Teevan put you down. I dare say you'll come on, you know, if you chuck worry."
As he parted from Mrs. Laithe he was aware of a new look in her eyes. He had learned to read them. They sought now to tell him ... what? There was a warning in them, and her glance seemed to enfold him almost protectingly. But her words were not more than those of formal parting, with a suggestion that he drop in for tea some afternoon soon.
THEY walked briskly to the Stuyvesant in silence, for Ewing could think of nothing to say, and his companion seemed preoccupied. He showed, indeed, the stress of some excitement, for Ewing once heard him mutter heatedly. Suspecting this to be meant for himself, he evoked by inquiry only an impatient "Not here—not here!" He believed that his distinguished companion must be engrossed for the moment with something profounder than the drawings of a novice.
At the hotel they ascended to Ewing's room. Indicating a chair to Teevan he went to the mantel for matches. When he had set the room to sudden light he stepped quickly back, for the little man, standing there, glared at him in a panic of fear and disgust.
In the shock of his embarrassment Ewing fumbled at his overcoat and slowly drew it off. Teevan's eyes now blazed rage upon him. His small, withered, blue-veined hands were tightly clenched at his sides. His attitude was almost a crouch. Ewing felt a furtive amusement above his dismay, at sight of the dapper little figure in this incongruous battle pose.
A moment they stood so, then the upper lip of Teevan lifted slowly to a snarl. Seeing that he was about to speak, there ran with Ewing's amazement an absurd apprehension of that break in the voice.
"What do you mean by it?" The swiftness, the intensity of the utterance held the voice level thus far, but the break came with the next words, and the speech ended in a wail.
"What do you think to gain by coming here—by hounding me—by houndingme?"
Ewing constrained himself to quiet, with an impulse to soothe this inexplicable fury.
"Please sit down, won't you? You were going to criticise my drawings, you know. You suggested it a moment ago, and I thought—" He took up a portfolio of sketches from one of the open trunks.
"Your trash! What's that to me? Do you think to pass this off? You've learned effrontery in a fine school. Come to the point. What can you make by this indecency—this——"
Ewing's look checked him—something genuine in his bewilderment.
"Come," began Teevan again, "is it possible you're no one, after all, instead of being less than no one? You know me, don't you?"
"Of course I know you; Mrs. Laithe introduced us."
"Oh, don't juggle. You can't swagger it off with me. You shall not hound me or mine."
"Hound?" Ewing sought for light, still trying to subdue this absurd assailant.
"Hound, I said, you smug brat! You know me—you've not forgotten my name so soon."
"Teevan, I believe. Really, Mr. Teevan—I——"
"Randall Gordon Teevan! The name meant something to you, didn't it?"
"No; it didn't mean anything to me."
"Ah! say that again!" He came toward theyounger man to peer up into his face with a grinning, incredulous scowl. "Say it again!"
Ewing drew back from his scrutiny with a slight impatience.
"Why say it again? Isn't once enough? You hear well, don't you? What should your name mean to me?"
"You still try to carrythatoff? Your game isn't ready to play?"
Ewing resumed his patient search.
"See here, Mr. Teevan, let's be very quiet and get at this. I never heard your name until an hour ago. Perhaps it ought to mean something to me, but it doesn't. I'm not well acquainted in New York; I only came here to-day. Now"—his voice became cajoling—"suppose you sit down there quietly and tell me all about yourself."
"Your name is Ewing, isn't it?"
"Of course!"
"What's your full name?"
"Gilbert Denham Ewing."
"Damn him!"
"Damn him? You are speaking of me?"
"Not you—you cub!"
"Another Ewing?"
"Another Gilbert Denham Ewing!"
"I never knew any other but my father. And you wouldn't be damning him."
He said this with a confident smile, and the peering little man at last read him accurately. An impalpable veil seemed to screen his scowling face. Erect from his peering stoop he passed a small hand dazedly across his brow, and his face had become pleasantly ingenuous, alive with a half-comprehending regret. With arueful laugh he put out a hand to Ewing, who took it, to say the least, doubtfully.
"A thousand pardons, my boy! I fear I've suffered an attack of nervous aberration to which I am unhappily subject. It's most distressing. I'm chagrined beyond measure by the annoyance I must have caused you, I give no end of worry to my specialist by these seizures. My speech wandered provokingly, I dare say. It always does. You'd not credit some of the things I've said to my dearest friends at such times. But you can fancy the mortification it is to me. You'll pardon me, I trust—youth's charity for the failings of age. The horrid truth is that I'm a bit oldish—not aged, not outworn, mind you—my years have come and gone lightly—but at times like these I'm obliged to admit the count. Come, you'll forget?"
Ewing delightedly pressed his hand. He could believe the little man's tale of his years. The hair that he had remarked for its young look had been uncannily twisted on the head of its wearer during the flurry of his transport. An area of luminous scalp now showed above one ear.
He stammered awkward but heartfelt words of assurance.
"Doubtless it quite bowled you over," Teevan pursued—"though I never can recall what I've said; but let us forget, and, if you'd not mind, let us say nothing of it to anyone—to Mrs. Laithe, for example. If it came to the ears of my son—he's over-anxious about me already."
"Certainly, I'll not speak of it, and I'm sorry, very sorry. Lay your gloves on the mantel there and find a seat." He turned to his trunk, hoping the little manwould sight his head in the mirror. When he again looked up the hair was in perfect adjustment, and Teevan beamed on him from an armchair.
"Your father," he began, "I seem to recall your saying it—was a painter. Doubtless he taught you much."
"I studied with him there in the mountains till he died. I've nothing left of his but this portrait of my mother."
He took the unframed canvas from the tray of the trunk and held it before his guest.
"Do you get the right light there?"
It had been a bad quarter of an hour for Ewing, and, as he adjusted the picture, he felt a moment's satisfaction in having weathered it so plausibly. And now that the curious little gentleman seemed restored, it was pleasant to anticipate his cultured appreciation of that work of art which was the boy's chief treasure.
"There isn't any shine across it now, is there?" he asked, and looked up with a shy, proud, waiting smile.
But the agitations that had gone before were as nothing to what now passed in front of his dismayed eyes. One moment his guest hung staring at the canvas with a goblin horror; then, uttering a kind of sob, he shot incontinently out of the door.
The harried Ewing dropped the picture and rushed in pursuit. He came up with the little man at the head of the stairs. He was trembling, and his face was ashen gray; but after a few deep breaths he smiled and waved a hand jauntily to indicate humorous despair. It seemed to say, "I am frequently like this—it's annoying past words." He spoke of needing a restorative and suggested an advisable haste in the direction of the café.
"They've some choice old cognac downstairs. Suppose we chat over a bit of it. I'm rather done up. These absurd attacks of mine react on the heart. A noggin of brandy will fetch me about. You'll come?"
They were presently at a table in the hotel café.
"We've the room to ourselves," said Teevan genially. "Delightful old place, this; restful, reminiscent, mellow—and generally empty. I detest the cheap glitter of those uptown places with their rowdy throngs. They make me feel like a fish in a fiddle box, as our French cousins say. You'll have soda with yours?"
Teevan drank his own brandy neat, and at once refilled his glass.
"Now for a chat about yourself, my young friend—for surely only a friend could have borne with me as tenderly as you have this evening. You're a fellow of promise—the future clamors for you—your drawings enchant me."
Ewing reflected that his drawings had not been exposed, but the intention was kind, and he was grateful for that. Teevan drank more brandy with a dainty relish, and begged to hear of his young friend's adventures in the far hills.
Ewing expanded in the warmth of this kindly concern. He told, little by little, under adroit prompting, what he had to tell. Teevan displayed a gratifying interest, especially in what he recounted of his mother's death. But at intervals during this recital the young man became conscious, with astonishment, that there was an inexplicable look on the other's face, a look which he suddenly discovered to be an unbelievable veiled pleasure.
He fell back with a quick, blind repulsion, and thetwo stared at each other, the elder man dissolving with difficulty a monstrous smile. He appeared to recover himself with an effort, finding the lines about his mouth refractory, but his embarrassment was so poignant that Ewing felt sorry for him.
"Youmustforgive me, old fellow! These damned treacherous nerves of mine! I shall see that specialist chap of mine directly in the morning. I'm so weak that the sadness of that poor lady's death set me off into something like hysteria."
It was one o'clock when they parted, and then only at a hint that the place would close its old-fashioned doors for the night. Ewing rejoiced to feel that he had made a desirable friend. He liked the little man well. Teevan had said at the last. "You should move on to Paris, my boy. You'll need the touch they give only in that blessed rendezvous of the masters." Ewing went to his room realizing that the world of his dreams did actually abound in adventure. His first day had been memorable.
Teevan walked through Ninth Street to his own home, a few doors beyond the Bartell house. It was a place of much the same old-fashioned lines, that had withstood the north-setting current.
He let himself in and went to the dining room at the rear. Here he lighted a gas jet, took a decanter from the sideboard, and brought a glass and a bottle of soda from the butler's pantry. He sipped the drink and lighted a cigarette. His musings, as first reflected in his face, were agreeable. His mouth twitched pleasantly, his eyes glistened. At intervals he chuckled and muttered. With an increase of brandy in the glass he became more serious.
When Alden Teevan entered an hour later he found his father in a mood astonishingly savage. At sight of his son the little man became vocal with meaningless abuse. It was as if the presence of a listener incited him to continue aloud some tirade that he had pursued in silence. But the younger Teevan, lounging in the doorway, only stared with polite concern as he was greeted with these emotional phrases:
"—a damned milk-and-water Narcissus—a pretentious cub with the airs of a cheap manikin of the world—a squeaking parasite—a toadlike, damned obscenity——"
An easy smile came to the son's face as he noted the fallen tide in the decanter.
"Night-night, my quaint, amiable father—and cheery dreams!"
They studied each other a moment. The elder man seemed to meditate some disclosure, but stopped on the verge of it.
"That's all, my boy!"
The young man laughed again.
"It's enough, I fancy—but don't overdo it, Randy. You know one mustn't at your age."
"I'm taking care, taking care of everything, my boy—never you fear——"
The other passed on, but stopped at the stairway and called back:
"I say, Randy!"
"Yes—yes——"
"Get to bed, you absurd little rat, you!"
EWING awoke late the next morning, rejoicing that he need not cook his breakfast. After feeding his hill-born hunger with novel and exciting foods he sauntered out to become a wave on the tide that flooded those strange, heart-shaking streets. He mentally blazed his trail as he went. His soul marched to the swift and cheerful stepping of the life about him. He remembered Ben's warnings and wished that expert in urban evil could see how little menacing was this splendid procession. That the Saturday throng of shoppers and pleasure seekers was unaware of the greatness of the moment to him lent a zest of secrecy to his scouting.
Back and forth he wandered on Broadway, the moving crowds, volatile as quicksilver, holding him with a hypnotic power. Often he stopped before some shop, hotel, or theater that he had come to know in print. Not until five o'clock did he find that he was leg weary. Then he took his bearings and, in his own phrase, "made back to camp."
A boy brought him Piersoll's card at six, and Piersoll followed. He came with that alert self-possession which Ewing had come to consider typical of these dwellers in a crowd where each is the inconsiderable part of a great organic body, and must yet preserve his unique oneship.
"Bully old place, this," Piersoll began. "My mother came to balls here thirty years ago. Show me your stuff."
He dropped into one of the armchairs and lighted a cigarette.
Ewing opened a portfolio and placed drawings along the wall. Piersoll slid his chair closer and studied them.
"They're only little things I've seen," murmured Ewing. "I haven't had a chance to see much."
Piersoll blew out smoke and arose to put one of the drawings in a better light. He gazed at this closely, swept his eye again over the others, and exclaimed, "All right! Bully! Good drawing, and the real thing. That's the point—you've drawn only what you've seen. They're not all equally interesting, but they're all true. You'll do."
"I'm glad you like them. I never knew if they were good."
"They're better than I expected, from Mrs. Laithe's talk. She was so keen about them, I made allowances."
"Mrs. Laithe seemed to think I might sell them."
"Some of those you can sell, undoubtedly. The others show what you can do. They'll get your orders. The magazines are using a lot of Western stuff. That ranchman's wife there in her poor little flower garden, surrounded by a million miles of sage and cactus—fine! It's a story picture, and the story's good. The Knickerbocker might use that. They might want a series from you—six drawings or so—'Scenes of Ranch Life.'"
"It sounds too good."
"It's not, and you'll get stories to illustrate. Can you draw a pretty cowboy?"
"Pretty?"
"The kind in the magazine story. Harvard man, half-back, old New York family, named Van-Something or other; unhappy love affair; tries ranch life; fearless rider, dead shot 'six feet of clean-limbed, virile young manhood,' is the approved phrase for him. He's a beautiful thing—his man keeps his chaps pressed, and he never is seen needing a shave——"
Ewing grinned appreciatively.
"Girl comes out from New York," continued Piersoll—"thegirl, with her fierce aunt—home on north side of Washington Square. I'm going to do an article on the story people who've had fine old homes on the north side of Washington Square—thousands! That one block would have to be ten miles long to hold 'em. Girl in tea gown, fierce aunt with lorgnon—threatened with death—flood, fire, Apaches, stage-robbers, vicious bull, rattler—anything! Rescued by cool, daring, clean-limbed Van-Soforth, who says 'By Jove!' as he risks his life. That is, if it's in one of the respectable magazines. If it's only a young ten-center he says 'Damn!' right out in print. Then, love scene on mesa, faithful cow pony and mountains in background, and return to New York by next train, with clean-limbed Harold in one of our gent's nobby sack suits that sets off the unconscious grace of his slight but muscular figure—oh, you know the story."
"I have read it somewhere—something like it."
"You'll go on reading it. But you'll have to pretty your cowboys if you make the pictures for it. Hulston usually illustrates it. He can draw a cowboy that would make a bunch of violets look coarse."
"I'm afraid I couldn't——"
"Of course you couldn't. But you'll find work.Some of the magazines are becoming reckless and printing stories of cowboys that are almost real. Come along to the club. You'll meet some fellows there. The chap that printed my book is dining with me, but he'll slip off early and we can have the evening together."
"I liked your book," Ewing ventured, when they were in the street.
"Well, that's comforting. I dare say it was easier to read than it was to write. But about this club you're going to—it's a little place we've started lately—illustrators, newspaper men, book writers and that ilk. You must join. I believe I'll be safe in putting you up."
"I never joined a club," Ewing confessed. "Are there conditions?"
"Rigid ones—you must have ten dollars for the entrance-fee, and not be a leper."
"Well"—Ewing debated—"I have the money——"
"That's allyouneed think about. The other part is ours. We have you in to dine and look you over. Lots of men go there with an idea that they must be witty. One fellow was turned down last week for springing 'made' jokes at the table. I believe he spoke of 'quail on trust' as we were served with that bird—and in the hearing of three members of the board of Abbots. That settled him, of course. They didn't need his imitations of a German dialect comedian, which he sought to convulse them with later. Another man was turned down lately for saying, 'Oh, how quaintly bohemian!' after he'd looked about the grill room. Another was ejected for playing 'chopsticks' on the piano with the edges of his hands. They didn't even lethimget to the table. That's the sort of thing—andwe're strict, even though we need the money. I'm bursar and I know. There are weird jests about my decamping with the club funds, but I've never had enough surplus yet to take me beyond Rahway."
They ascended the steps of a dingy-fronted brick house in Clinton Place, a little out of the Broadway rush. Passing through a bare, echoing hall, they entered one of the two dining rooms of the club, connected by immense sliding doors, now thrown open. They were broad, lofty rooms with stained floors, mantels of gray marble, and rich old doors of polished mahogany framed in white casements—the drawing rooms of some staid family of a bygone generation, before the trade army had invaded this once quiet neighborhood.
Ewing at once noticed the walls. They had been covered with a grayish-brown cartridge paper, and on this the members of the Monastery had plied their charcoal in fancies more or less attuned to the spirit of the organization. There were monks in most of the pictures, monks combating or, alas! overborne by one or another of that meretricious trinity which ever conspires against godly living. Over the mantel in the first room a pink-fleshed nymph in simple garb of chef's cap allured an all but yielding St. Anthony with one of the club's dinnermenusheld before his hunger-lit eyes. On a panel to the right of this a befuddled lay brother, having emptied a flagon of wine, perched on the arm of a chair and angled fatuously in a jar of mocking goldfish, to the refrain: