Arthur's first act on regaining his hotel was to terminate his residence therein. He ought to have done this long ago, for these thronged corridors, resounding night and day with the chink of innumerable dollars, was no place for one so poor as he. He had stayed there rather from natural heedlessness and inexperience than from choice; partly also in the hope that the invaluable Bundy would arrive; but now his fears were thoroughly aroused. Legion's phrase about the benches in Union Park and the breadline stuck in his mind. He had heard of such tragedies; he remembered a story which Vickars had told him of one of the most brilliant poets of the day who, in the course of his early struggles, had been reduced to holding horses at public-house doors for ha'pence in the Strand. It had also been the habit of his father, when he wished to inculcate habits of economy and perseverance on his childish mind, to do so by various realistic versions of the prodigal son, illustrated from the histories of certain men he had known who had not possessed the sense "to know which side their bread was buttered." It seemed that he was well upon the way to become such a prodigal. He was bound for the bread-line. Well, if this were the appointed night when he was to take farewell of respectability, the obsequies should be fitly celebrated. If to-morrow he must starve, to-night, at least, he would eat; he had lost so much that no further loss could make him poor; and from the extreme of fear his mind ran to the extreme of recklessness. From the clerk with the tooth-pick he learned the address of a small hotel near the docks, to which he ordered his trunks to be forwarded; having done which, and distributed various tips with a gentlemanly profusion, he stepped out into the gathering night of New York.
The city hummed and sang like some monstrous wheel, driven by an unseen dynamo. It presented to the eye a riot of life and light; its lofty buildings flared like torches, its shops glowed like jewels, its streets were lanes of fire; and into the upper air, still coloured with the hues of sunset, there rose an immense reverberation, composed of human cries and shouts, wheels pounding on granite roads, wheels groaning on roads of steel, all resolved into a thunderous bass note, the raucous music of the human multitude. There are moods in which such a spectacle is exhilarating, moods in which it is dreadful; but there is another and a rarer mood, when it appears majestic. As Arthur surveyed the scene, it was this aspect of majesty that appealed to him. It overwhelmed his mind with an impression more commonly attributed to astronomy—viz., the entire insignificance of the individual in relation to physical magnitudes. His own particular troubles suddenly assumed dwarfed proportions; his little life appeared a mere bubble floating for an instant on the crest of disappearing waves; the city itself a streaming star-river, flowing out of dark eternities, peopled for an instant by a tribe of eager ants. To what avail the strife, the passion, the disorder of these tiny lives? Yet a little while, a few days it might be, a few years at most, and he would be lost to sight as though he had never been. But the wheel would spin on, with a million new Ixions bound upon its flaming spokes; the magnificent and monstrous city would go on, piling pyramid on pyramid above the bones of its exhausted slaves, and with not one light the less because he did not see it, not one softened moment in its raucous song because his ear was filled with the clods of the valley.
In that moment he understood why men commit suicide, why it may appear the soberest act of reason and of justice to fling away a life which has lost its value in losing its egoism. But over that abyss his thought hovered but an instant, and the horror of that instant produced a swift reaction. The dangerous moment passed, and left him with a new appetite for life. He felt the swift uprisal of faculties of enjoyment in himself such as the convalescent feels when the blood flows nimbly after sickness; and on a sudden he found himself convulsed with laughter. The absurdity of his position moved him like a caricature. He had blundered badly, but of what consequence was it in the vast sum of things? All things continued as they were, the stars still were steadfast in their courses, and from that upper silence fell a voice that made him, and all human perturbations, a vain thing that endured but for a moment. The spirit of derision was upon him, and, still laughing, he plunged into the moving crowd.
Presently he found himself in Sixth Avenue, and his eye recognised the sign of a small Italian restaurant of which he had heard an excellent report. The front of the house was mean and narrow; the door opened on a sanded vestibule, which, in turn, led to a long and crowded room. At its upper end was a daïs, on which an excellent orchestra was seated. As he entered the room, a man with a sweet and powerful tenor voice sang an Italian comic song, the chorus of which was taken up by the diners, who beat time with glasses and knives upon the tables. An extraordinary vivacity characterised this curiously mixed assembly; they appeared to have no cares in life, or, if they had, they were intent upon forgetting them. All types were present, from the city clergyman a little ill at ease in his environment to women of exotic beauty, whose sidelong glances left little doubt of their profession. Yet there was no element of disorder, no impression of vulgarity; there was freedom but no licence, the mingling of human creatures in a catholic amity; each content for the time to forget distinctions that elsewhere might be deemed important, each happy in a transient release from the servitudes of the long day, and perhaps from the memories of misfortune.
Arthur was fortunate in finding a single seat vacant at a narrow table next the wall. Here he took his place, and had already proceeded halfway with his meal before he noticed a man who sat on the other side of the table. He was a cheerful little fellow, with a good face, humorous eyes, and mobile mouth, who was evidently itching for conversation. Some trifling courtesy of the table brought them acquainted, and in a few moments they were deep in talk. It seemed that he was an Englishman, a wandering artist, a man with a wide and cheerful acquaintance with vicissitude, who gave his name as Horner. He had been born and bred in London, in an atmosphere of lower middle-class insularity and ignorance, from which he had escaped into a wider world by the means of art-classes and night-schools. He had thus reached the lower slopes of Parnassus, only to discover that there his progress ended; he had neither the education nor the means to carry him farther; and so he had slowly declined from the production of original work into a kind of Ishmael hanging on the borders of the art-world, an expert restorer of old paintings, and at times an amateur dealer. It is a curious fact that the Englishman, who at home is the most reticent of all human animals, often becomes the most communicative when he meets men of his own nation abroad. There the freemasonry of race tells, loneliness acts as a solvent of reserve, and the possession of common memories invites immediate intimacy. To hear the familiar Cockney dialect again, with its clipped vowels and reckless distribution of the aspirate, to remark phrases heard nowhere save upon the London streets, is to be transported instantly, as on a magic carpet, to the atmosphere of home, to see again the glitter of the Strand, the midnight throngs in Piccadilly Circus, the dear and dingy purlieus of Soho. The very words have an esoteric significance; they cannot be heard or uttered save with a thrilling heart; and among banished Englishmen they are the symbols of an irrecoverable joy, and constitute an instant bond of brotherhood.
Arthur listened with delight to Horner's narrative of his adventures. It appeared that he knew most of the millionaires who collected pictures, and nearly all the dealers from whom they bought them. In describing these people he had the rare art of the vitalising touch. The millionaires moved before the eye in all their eager ignorance, the dealers in all their duplicity and craft. Manufactories of old masters existed for the sole purpose of meeting the demand of American millionaires. It was a known fact that sixteen thousand Corots had passed the New York Customs House in the last few years, whereas every one knew that Corot could not have painted more than two thousand pictures in a long life of the most unremitting toil.
"Why, I could paint better Corots myself than most of those that hang in American galleries," he remarked.
"Perhaps you've done so," laughed Arthur.
"I won't say I hav'n't," he replied with cheerful impudence. "But I've done with that sort of thing now. And I'll say one thing for myself, I never yet sold a picture that I knew was a fake. But, O Lor', these people are such children! They think they know everything, and on art they are as ignorant as dirt. They carry round little books of nothingness by Professor This and Professor That, and go into raptures over all sorts of rubbish because they're told to. And they won't be told better, that's the trouble. But I mean to tell them some day. Only, you see, I can't write the way it ought to be written. I suppose, now, you're not by any chance a writer, are you?"
"I suppose I'm a sort of writer. At all events, the last thing I did was to write something of which I am heartily ashamed."
"And did they sack you?"
"They did. Or, to be more precise, I sacked myself."
"Well, why shouldn't you and I join forces? Of course I wouldn't think of saying this to any one but an Englishman. I can give you lots of stuff, and you can write it up, you know. We might make a book, don't you think?"
"But I know nothing about art except in an amateur way."
"And what's that matter, I'd like to know? I'll be bound you know lots more than the folk that do the writing here. And as for the collections—oh my, you should see them! Constables done in Soho, and Raphaels painted in Paris; curtains hung over them, if you please, as if they were too precious to see the light; and when you mildly remark, 'But that picture's in Munich or Dresden or Buckingham Palace,' they reply indignantly, 'Oh no! that's the copy—this the original. I have a certificate of genuineness.' And then they produce a written pedigree, with the names of Prince This or Prince That, through whose hands their precious canvas has passed, when any one with half an eye can see that the paint is 'ardly dry upon it."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"Much worse, if I told you all."
And thereupon followed story after story, full of rapid etchings of the dupes and the dealers; with amazing biographies of adroit Jews born in garrets who now owned palaces and sported titles; and strange old men in London who hid behind shuttered windows genuine and priceless pictures, and credulous millionaires in New York, who bought what might by courtesy be called pictures by the yard, labelling them with august names, and taking care that the papers duly reported the immense sums they paid for them. It was all highly amusing, a backstairs view of life, so to speak, which somehow bore the stamp of the authentic. The time sped; the music and the company had become less restrained; and the hovering waiter reminded them by his black looks that they had sat too long.
"Where are you staying?" said Homer, as they rose to go.
Arthur mentioned the hotel to which he had sent his trunks.
"Oh my!" said Horner, "but, you know, that won't do. It isn't a safe district, that. What took you there?"
"Poverty, to be frank," said Arthur. "I find it necessary to choose the cheapest lodging I can find."
"But it won't do," said the little man gravely. He meditated for a moment, as if not quite sure of how to express what he wished to say. "Englishmen should stand together, shouldn't they?" he remarked at last. "Now look here, suppose you come to my rooms. You'll be very welcome. I can give you a shake-down of some sort, and to-morrow we'll talk over that book. I really shall be very much gratified if you'll come."
The offer was made with such unaffected kindness that Arthur's heart warmed toward the little man. He had already received a hard lesson in life that day, and it had left his heart sore and bitter. Here was another kind of lesson. A man whom the world had not used generously or perhaps justly, a total stranger, who had seen enough of the seamy side of life to make him reasonably suspicious or even cynical, was ready to share what he had with him on the mere ground of common nationality. "Englishmen should stand together," he had said, and was instantly prepared to act upon that simple ethic, although for all he knew the man to whom he offered hospitality might be a rascal or a thief. Such a lesson at such a moment was calculated to restore faith in human nature, faith in that radical goodness of the human heart which is the base of all decent living.
"Mr. Horner," he said, "I accept your offer thankfully. You don't know how much you've done for me by making it. I shall never forget it."
"Oh! that's all right," said the little man, with a deprecating gesture. "I've only done what I'd like some one to do for me." And he did not seem to be aware that the words uttered so carelessly, as if they expressed nothing more than the most ordinary commonplace, really contained the sum of all religion.
Arthur went home with his new friend, and found that his rooms consisted of a littered studio in one of the older houses of New York.
"When I'm doing pretty well, I always stay in a hotel," said Horner, "but at a pinch one can sleep here."
"Why apologise?" said Arthur. "Why, man, you have something here that the best hotel in New York can't give you. You've an open fireplace. It's like coming home again to see that."
"Yes," said Horner, with a whimsical air of wisdom, "the decay of marriage and the family in America dates from the hot-air register and the steam-heating business. People who never sit round an open fire never get a chance of knowing one another. I never had much of a home myself. I had to start out working pretty early; but there's one thing I never forget, and that's the open fire round which we kids sat on winter nights while mother told us stories. I used to see things in that fire—castles, and sunsets, and burning ships, like most kids do. But I wanted to paint 'em, and if it hadn't been for those times in the firelight I'd never have been an artist. But O Lor', look at these Americans!—the women standing over hot-air registers with their clothes blown out like balloons when they want to get warm, and the men getting as close as they can to a fizzling coil of steam-pipes. I don't call that being civilised, do you? It's a beastly way of living, I call it."
While he was thus delivering his views on the iniquity of steam heating, the little man had lit a fire of wood, which instantly blazed up, and filled the room with ruddy light. Having done this, he attacked with great vigour what appeared to be a wardrobe, tugging at it with might and main, until the whole front suddenly collapsed, revealing a concealed bed. From behind a curtain in a corner of the room he wheeled a small chair-bedstead, and at the same time produced a plate of fruit and a tin of tobacco.
"Now we can be comfortable," he remarked. "It's not exactly in the Waldorf Astoria style, but I guess it'll do. And now let us talk."
If Horner had talked well over dinner in the restaurant, he talked super-excellently well now in this friendly firelight. Arthur had little to do but listen, which he did for the most part with rising admiration. He remarked an unaffected innocence of spirit in the man which was entirely unsubdued by his hard experience of life; he talked like a good-natured, enthusiastic boy who had by some occult means possessed himself of the experience of a world-worn man; he entertained ideals of an almost pathetic impractibility; he had even written poetry, and at that moment, it appeared, designed a prose work on art which should be a magnificent compendium of the wisdom of the ages. Of these great designs he spoke at one moment with the ardent vanity of the amateur; the next, the man of the world popped up, to pour upon them humorous depreciation. The same spirit of contradiction coloured all his judgments. England he should have detested, for it had cast him out; but let a word of justest criticism be uttered of its customs or its manners, and he was in arms at once. America had befriended him, and yet he was more than candid in his apprehension of her faults, and had no word of praise for her institutions. In his judgments of men it was the same. He had seen enough of the baser side of life to fill him with the venom of Diogenes, and yet he spoke with kindliness even of those who had defrauded him. His mind moved in giddy flight among these crags of contradiction; he did not aim at consistency, nor did he value it; yet out of the turmoil of his thoughts there shone unmistakably a generous nature, a kindly disposition, a temperament of light-hearted courage, which made a jest of disadvantage and calamity. Courage was perhaps his most essential quality, and particularly that rare courage which is not depressed by past error; so that listening to him, Arthur thought that many a preacher he had heard had a much less vital message to declare than this irresponsible but philosophic Bohemian.
Arthur slept soundly that night, and awoke in a glow of spirits he had not known for many days. Horner's talk had given a tonic to his mind which he badly needed, and he awoke with many clear and definite resolutions to repay his debt in the best way he could. But here Destiny took a hand in the game, for no sooner was breakfast over than a telegram was handed in to his host which changed the whole situation.
"My!" he said, "here's a go! I'm wanted at once in Baltimore, and I suppose I'd best go. And just now too, when you and I were going to work together."
"Must you really go?"
"I fear I must. It's important. But look here, you know that need make no difference to you. You can stop here just as long as you like. It'll save you a hotel, anyhow."
"But——" began Arthur.
"No buts," said the little man, with dignity. "I shall be offended if you think of saying No. I know the room isn't all that I could wish to offer to a friend, but if you'll put up with it, it's yours as long as you like. And see here, I'll leave you my papers to run over while I'm gone. It'll be a fine thing for me to have you here, and I count it luck; so we'll take that as settled."
And so, waving aside all remonstrance, the little artist packed his valise, and half an hour later, with a final grip of the hand, disappeared down the narrow staircase, leaving Arthur monarch of all he surveyed.
And then began that period in the experience of our hero which, like the more obscure passages of history, may be passed over in silence, although they contain more of tragedy than many famous battlefields. Emptied of the vivacious presence of Horner, the room seemed singularly desolate, and life at once took a grayer aspect. Perhaps it was helped by the character of the day. The exquisite sky, which had shone brilliant as a jewel for so many weeks, was now filled with heavy clouds; a bitter wind blew, snow had begun to fall, and the city crouched like some frightened animal, waiting for the stroke of the impending blizzard. Arthur's first act was to light the fire, and go over the mass of papers which Horner had confided to him. In the innocence of his spirit Horner had informed him that it was no difficulty for him to write—the really difficult thing was to stop writing; and the fruits of this facility now lay before Arthur in an enormous pile of manuscript. It consisted of pencil jottings on a vast variety of themes, notes on pictures (often pungently sagacious), anecdotes of humorous frauds perpetrated on the credulous, the beginnings of an autobiography as frank as Benvenuto Cellini's, interspersed with fragments of poems, short stories, crude philosophies, and even the draft of a novel.
"What on earth does he expect me to do with all this?" groaned Arthur.
One thing he could see very plainly—viz., that here was a prodigious mine of excellent material for any one who knew how to use it. The storm beat without, the long day passed, and he was still at his task. He struggled through the snow to a cheap restaurant, came back, rekindled the fire, and sat down to reflect for the hundredth time on the strangeness of his position. Here he was, in the room of a man whom he scarcely knew, and, as it appeared, the custodian of his most private memoranda. As he read on and on, there gradually grew before his mind's eye an authentic portrait of the man. He saw him at once shrewd and guileless, sagacious and impractical, full of innocent vanities and idealisms, unworldly as a child, and also, like a child, attaining moments of naïve wisdom, of unintentional philosophic insight; and he suddenly perceived what might be done with this mass of memoranda. There was no doubt what Horner wished to have done; he designed a book of some sort. Why not edit it? And, as if in answer to this question, there came next noon a hurried line from Horner, saying he would be detained in Baltimore for at least a month, and begging him to do anything he liked with his papers, with the fullest discretionary power. Here was an unsought task imposed upon him by what seemed the whim of circumstance. He could take Horner's partly written novel, fill in the gaps from his own abundant autobiographic material, and perhaps succeed in producing a human document that would at least arrest attention by its realistic truth. As for himself, he smiled grimly as he counted the few remaining dollars in his purse. Christmas and the elusive Bundy were six weeks away; he was destined to a hard siege, with the bread-line as a not negligible possibility. Providence had put a roof over his head; here was a task recommended to him by his gratitude, and if it would bring him no financial gain, yet it afforded him an inestimable distraction from the uncertainties of his own situation. It seemed he was predestined to become a writer after all.
Then began a form of life which in after years appeared to him fantastic as a dream. He measured out his money with the strictest parsimony, existed on the cheapest forms of food, and amid the riot of New York lived the life of an anchorite in his cell. The days passed unregarded; he went nowhere, saw no one; and at length there came a night when his task was done. Does the reader recollect a novel calledThe Amateur Artist, by Cyril Horner, which a short time ago became the sensation of the season? That was the book which Arthur finished late one night at Horner's room, and expressed next morning with almost his last penny to the office of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion.
He felt weak and ill, and for the first time a thrill of fear shot through his heart. Toward evening he dined exiguously on a dish of milk and porridge, and remembered hazily a dispute with the waiter on the question of a tip. He went out into the streets. A slender curve of moon rode in a sky of ice, the air was bitter cold, a sharp wind eddied round the corners of the streets, and took him by the throat. He walked on and on, with the illusion of the city slipping past him like a river full of glittering reflections, himself treading upon air. Once he found himself shambling; it horrified him, for it was so that tramps and outcasts walked. A little later he found himself gazing on the bread-line; he stood an instant in fascinated pity, and fled.
About midnight he found himself once more before the doors of the old Astor House, and felt that he could walk no farther. He gathered courage to enter, and blessed the undesigned humanitarianism of America, which makes an hotel lobby an open rendezvous. Here, at least, was light and warmth. A night clerk was at the desk—not he of the toothpick and the supercilious back. He made a shift to ask him if Bundy had arrived.
"When do you expect him?" asked the clerk.
"Hourly."
"Where does he come from?"
"The West—Oklahoma, I believe."
"Then he'll get in at seven on the Pennsylvania, most likely."
"Can I wait for him?"
The clerk eyed him narrowly.
"You used to stay here, didn't you?"
"I was here for a fortnight."
"I don't know but you can," he remarked ungraciously. "But say, you ought to take a room, you know."
"I'd rather not till I know if Mr. Bundy comes."
"Down on your luck?"
"Down on my luck," said Arthur gravely.
The clerk laughed.
"Parlour A. might suit you. Don't let me see you, that's all."
In Parlour A. he took refuge, and was soon asleep, his head bowed upon the table. He woke from time to time with a strong shudder. "Not that, O God—not that!" he moaned, for it was of the bread-line he had dreamed.
He was still asleep when a sudden hand was laid upon his shoulder.
He awoke, and looked into the face of Bundy.
He could hardly believe his good fortune. The mist of sleep and weakness was upon his eyes, hysteric laughter shook him. He rose, trembling. He saw the good-natured night-clerk in the doorway, heard him say, "I guess he's been up against it good and hard," and the next moment found himself sinking through an abyss of coloured lights into an unfathomable darkness. The descent lasted but for an instant; when he opened his eyes again it was to protest that there was nothing whatever the matter with him.
"Been out on the bat," said the clerk laconically.
"Been starving," said another voice.
And then the owner of that second voice grew clear to him—a kindly face of inimitable shrewdness, the gray hair neatly parted in the middle, the gray moustache closely trimmed, and a pair of big, dreamy eyes fixed on him in anxious consideration.
"Poor lad!—poor lad!" said Bundy. "It seems I'm just in time. I got your letter—only a week ago. I got one from home, too—trust Mrs. Bundy for telling a man what his duty is. So I hustled, and came off at once. Now tell me, you aren't ill, are you?"
"I don't think so," said Arthur weakly.
"Case of the last dollar, eh? Well, we'll soon mend that. When you've put yourself outside a sirloin steak ... here, Mr. Squire, send Charlie up at once ... I'll breakfast here—it's my old room.... Now, hurry!" He bustled round in a furious heat of action, flung his fur-coat from him, talking all the while. "Omelette, steak, and special coffee—that'll do for a beginning, Charlie; ... and see here, Mr. Squire"—this to the clerk—"my friend is a distinguished Englishman, and don't you forget it."
"Of course," said the clerk. "I knew he was a friend of yours, or I wouldn't have done what I did for him."
"That's all right, Mr. Squire. But you'd better forget what you said about going out on the bat—he's not that kind. Now, are we ready?"
And with the suddenness of a transformation scene in a pantomime, Arthur found himself seated at a laden table, the meats steaming on the dish, the coffee bubbling in the percolator, the very air fragrant with provocation to his appetite. No wonder men stole for food, he thought; his very nostrils quivered with the lust of meat. The blood sang within his veins as the first drop of liquid warmth thrilled his palate, and his flesh seemed sweeter to him, his whole house of man renewed. Until that hour he had not known how hardly he had used his body, how great the violence he had offered it. Now he entered into the repossession of his own flesh; this was the moment of his reconciliation, and this the sacramental food of a physical atonement.
"And now," said Bundy, when the meal was finished, "tell me all about yourself."
Arthur told his story from the beginning, Bundy meanwhile smoking and watching him with a curious flicker of suppressed humour in his eye. It was a little disconcerting to be so watched; it set Arthur wondering what Bundy really thought of him, and at last he broke out with the remark, "I'm afraid you think me something of a fool, Mr. Bundy?"
"Well, I won't pretend to say that I would have done all that you've done," Bundy answered. "I don't quite get your view-point, especially in what you say about your father. But there's one thing in which I see you have been wise—you've left England, and that was the wisest thing you ever did."
"I've sometimes thought it the most foolish."
"Ah! because you've had a hard time. But that's nothing. I've been stony-broke myself a dozen times, and I've lived to think that these were the moments when I enjoyed my life the most. The great point is, you've shown yourself capable of an adventure. That's the spirit I like to see, and I like you the better for it. Now, my boy, I'd recommend you to get a good sleep. I've a pile of business to attend to. Later on we'll talk over your affairs, and I'll have something definite to say to you."
Great is the power of wealth, greater still, perhaps, the power of reputed wealth and the willingness to distribute it. At the waving of Bundy's magic wand Arthur had become at once a person of consideration; he was the tenant of an admirable suite of rooms, waited on by obsequious bell-boys, remarked by admiring chamber-maids, even sought by adroit reporters. He was a friend of Bundy's—that was the sole explanation of the miracle—for it appeared that Bundy's star was once more in the ascendant. When, late in the afternoon, Arthur left his room and went down into the hotel lobby, it seemed to him that it hummed with the name of Bundy. A constant stream of messenger-boys sought Parlour A.; a succession of automobiles discharged at the hotel door fur-coated men with anxious eyes, all bound for the same goal; the evening papers were full of the portraits and exploits of Bundy. Opening the door of Parlour A., he had a passing glimpse of a Bundy he had never seen before—a wild-eyed, gesticulating Bundy, orating behind a barricade of books and papers to a crowded room, rushing at intervals to the telephone and shouting orders, a man glowing with ardour, on springs with energy, intoxicated with success.
"I'll see you presently," he cried, and went on pouring out what appeared to be a Niagara of figures.
Arthur withdrew silently, went up to his room, and ordered all the papers, from which he proceeded to inform himself on the doings of his friend. The story, divested of a vast accretion of shop-soiled adjectives, reduced itself to this—that Bundy had suddenly enrolled himself among the multi-millionaires, at least potentially.
"The story of Mr. Bundy," began the chronicle, "is one of those romances of sudden wealth which are only possible in this country of unlimited and still undiscovered resources. Born in humble circumstances in the city of London, England, Mr. Bundy has raised himself by his own exertions to a place among the great captains of wealth, whose remarkable careers constitute the epic of human progress, and shed glory on the institutions of this free and enlightened country." Here, it appeared, the journalist's well of rhetoric ran dry, and he condescended to laconic statement. It was not to be supposed that a plain statement of fact could support all the amiable exaggerations with which the reporter had adorned Mr. Bundy's personal history; but the facts themselves were sufficiently amazing. From them Arthur gathered that Bundy had discovered fresh deposits of gold in the rivers of the Yukon, of undoubted value, and was about to float a dredging company which promised enormous dividends. "As early as 1898," continued the report, "fine-grained platinum was recognised in the black sand obtained along the Tuslin River, Yukon Territory, but until recently no active preparations have been made to recover it. This river drains the Tuslin Lake; its gravel-bed carries gold in paying quantities even by hand-working, throughout its entire length of 120 miles. Mr. Bundy claims that this gravel-bed contains immense quantities of gold, which may be recovered by the simple process of dredging. For thousands of years the erosion of the hills has precipitated gold into the river; the gold has sunk by its specific gravity into the river-bed, and there it remains in incalculable quantities. A good dredger costs about five thousand dollars. It scoops up the river-bed in so thorough a fashion that not a grain of gold is lost. Mr. Bundy has proved by actual experiment that from ten ounces of black sand, taken at random, sixty cents worth of platinum is obtainable, and gold in much larger quantities. Mr. Bundy holds a concession for more than eighty miles of this river. This means that with the most adequate machinery it will take fifty years to dredge the Tuslin. When we reckon the relatively light cost of dredging, it appears probable that Mr. Bundy's proposition means not less thanone thousand per cent.profit to the fortunate investor."
So this accounted for the wild scene in Parlour A., the rush of automobiles to the door of the hotel, the sudden fame of Bundy. The indefatigable adventurer, who was supposed to be in Texas or Oklahoma, had all the time been scooping gold in handfuls from the lap of the frozen north; Oklahoma had no doubt been used as a blind to cover his tracks; the reports in the papers had been ingeniously engineered; and then, at the precise moment, Bundy had descended on New York in a benignant advent. Arthur's thoughts went back to the shabby house in Lion Row, and he wondered if Mrs. Bundy had heard the news. He saw her preparing for a new apotheosis; fitting on the golden wings, so to speak, which were to waft her to the porticos of palaces; and, remembering her stories of similar hegiras, he wondered how much of truth lay behind this astounding story. Bundy no doubt believed it—it was impossible to doubt his good faith; but Bundy had been deceived before, he might be deceived again. A voice told Arthur that there was something unsubstantial in this glittering edifice; somewhere there was a rotten bolt, which, if plucked out, would result in total ruin. And the same voice told him that his own path did not lie in this direction; that whatever its allurement, it was not for him.
Bundy did not have the promised talk with him that evening, nor all the next day. The man was devoured by his own energy; he ate little, slept not at all, rushed frantically about New York in automobiles, was always the centre of a crowd, himself excited, vociferous, burning with zeal like an apostle. It was not until the third evening that he rushed into Arthur's room, and sank exhausted on the couch.
"I've treated you shamefully," he cried, "but it couldn't be helped. Lad, I've done it. I've pulled it off. Don't speak a word to me about it yet. I believe I've gone the limit. One more question to answer and I'd have a fit."
It was obvious even to an unpractised eye that he spoke the truth. The blood was congested in his cheeks, his breath came unevenly, his hands trembled, an insane frenzy blazed in his eyes.
"Order dinner," he went on hoarsely. "An hour's time—that will do. I didn't know I was so tired. I believe I'll just go to sleep where I am. They won't look for me here."
Arthur turned the lights down, covered him with a travelling-rug, and left him. He might have been a felon hiding from justice rather than a triumphant millionaire, and Arthur could not but reflect upon the strangeness of the spectacle. It was the first time he had looked upon the lust for gold. His father had acquired wealth, but not in this way. It had been won by deliberate siege, by steady, patient pressure which called for high qualities of restraint; if it was a gross passion, it had elicited certain elements of character that in themselves were worthy. But this mode of winning wealth had no dignity. It was a lust. It had the grossness and ferocity of a lust. It took the brain and body of a man and shattered them with its tremendous throb. And it was a lust also that had contagion in it. It was impossible to deny that its subtle virus had already touched his own heart. During those three days he had been as a man deafened by the noise of guns; he had stood in the very heart of the explosion, and had recognised something strong and savage in the scene. It thrilled him, fascinated him, made all ordinary modes of life trite and tame, and left him asking, Was not this life indeed?
And he knew it was not. He had only to think of that prostrate, half-demented man, sunk in the sleep of exhaustion on the couch, only to recollect the brave and lonely woman waiting for him in Lion Row, to know that this was not life. Better, better far, the humblest bread earned in quietness and eaten in peace, than this madness of mere possession. "A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of things which he possesseth"—ah no!thingsare a poor substitute for life, and to forfeit life in the pursuit of things is man's crowning folly.
An hour later there emerged a Bundy clothed and in his right mind, fresh-shaved, fresh-bathed, smiling, easy, tolerant. Dinner was served in Bundy's rooms, and when the meal was over he began to talk freely of his adventures and affairs.
"You'll never know how good civilised food is till you've gone upon a diet of salt-horse and biscuit for four months," he remarked. Little by little he unfolded the story of his travels, a story full of fierce hazards, Homeric toils, adroit strategies, defeats, despairs, surprising victories, ending in the supreme moment when he held his dearly-won concession in his hand, and knew himself master of incalculable spoil. It was the story of Ulysses, master of men, diplomat and fighter, swift, strong, and infinitely cunning, retold not without pride, but with the laconic brevity of the man who counts past hazards things of no importance.
"Well, I've pulled it off," he cried. "I've paid blood and sweat to do it. And now, do you know, about the only thing I've left to wish for is to go to sleep for a month, and wake up in my old bed at home, and smell the eggs and bacon cooking for my breakfast, and hear the old dog barking in the garden at the kids."
"Mrs. Bundy will be glad to hear the news."
"Yes, I guess she will. I didn't ought to have been away so long. It's been hard on her. Tell me, now, how was she looking? Older, I'm afraid, eh?"
And then he fell into a train of tender reminiscence. He talked of how brave and patient his wife had been, and of the long separation, and of the boys of whom he had seen so little.
"Sometimes it seems as if it wasn't worth it. It's only a short time folk have to live together any way, and I've been away from home most of my life. I don't know but what I'd have been a sight happier if I'd have lived like other folk, and gone to church Sundays with the kids, and earned my bit of money in the city, and just had a home. That's the thing I've never had—a home."
It was a singular confession for a man to make who had just attained the summit of success. He spoke with an extraordinary simplicity and tenderness, as if unconscious of an auditor, obedient only to some tide of memory that rose and swelled within his bosom.
"It's queer, the way we're made," he went on. "Here am I telling you what I've got by leaving England, and yet, if you're like me, you'll never have a happy day till you get back again. There's a house me and Mrs. Bundy lived in when we were first married: it was out Epping way, and it had a bed of mignonette under the window, and a hay-field just beyond the garden-wall; and I can smell that mignonette now, and the hay, and up there in the Yukon I'd wake in the mornings with that smell in the air, though there wasn't a flower in sight for God knows how many miles. I don't believe I could bear to see that house again. Yet if I could just go back, and be young again, I guess I'd give all the gold in the Yukon to do it—and then repent my bargain, and go off to get some more. Well, that's the way we're made. We don't know what we want, and with all our trying we get the wrong thing after all, most like."
He ended abruptly.
"I oughtn't to be talking like this. I guess it's mere foolishness. Well, let us come to business. There's something I want to say to you. It's about your father. Now, did Mrs. Bundy ever tell you that your father once helped me when I was in difficulties?"
"Yes, she told me that."
"She did, eh? Well, I've never forgotten it. Of course I've paid the money back long ago, but you can't pay a debt like that with money. I've always wanted to do more than that, and now the chance has come to me. I can't do anything for your father, but there's something I would like to do for you."
"You've already done a great deal, for which I am deeply grateful," said Arthur.
"Ah, that's a bagatelle! I mean something permanent. Now, how would it suit you if I made you secretary to my Dredging Company? You could draw five thousand dollars a year for a beginning, and I'd assign you shares in the company besides."
It was a splendid offer which might well dazzle a youth who a week ago had been acquainted with starvation. Had it come on that night when he shuddered at the bread-line, he would have snatched it as a starving dog flies upon a bone. But he had had time to recapture his self-control. He had been fed with good meat, he had slept, and once more the physical machine ran sweetly. And he had also had a terrifying glimpse of what the lust of gold meant, he had just heard Bundy's own expression of innocent regret, he had before him the man himself. Did he envy him? Something half-heroic in those Homeric labours he could recognise, but what about their object? And it came to him with the vividness of a revelation that there were elements in his own nature that responded all too eagerly to the bribe held out to him; that if he yielded now he would go the way of multitudes whose only god is wealth; that if he resisted now he might preserve those higher ideals of life so intimately dear and sacred to him, and only thus could they be retained. No, it must not be. The die was cast in silence, and the golden phantom vanished.
"Mr. Bundy," he said in a low and trembling voice, "you have made me a munificent offer. You have spoken to me your own intimate thoughts. Will you now let me speak mine with equal frankness?"
"Surely."
"Don't think me ungrateful, but I must refuse your offer."
"Why?"
"For reasons, some of which you have supplied, some of which lie in my own character. To be quite frank, I am not strong enough to resist the fascination of wealth. Some men know how to set a boundary to their desires, to stop there, and say, 'I will go no farther.' I do not believe I am one of these. If I once took the road of wealth, I should push on to the utmost limit. I might not become avaricious, but the fascination of the game would absorb me, and God only knows whether I might not become cruel and hard in course of time. Well, I dare not risk it, and that is the truth, the humiliating truth, if you like. The life I have always planned for myself is a life of quiet toil, simple, content—books, a garden, a home: I cannot let it go. My only anchorage in life lies there; without it I know not whither I might drift."
He ended. He had not noticed Bundy's face as he spoke; he had been too absorbed in his own confession. He saw that face now—pale, eager, and with tears upon the cheek. To his immense surprise, Bundy sprang up and flung his arms about his neck.
"My dear fellow," he cried, "I understand. Ah, you little know how you've torn the veil from my own heart! I once had all those thoughts. I would have entered the Church; I don't know why I didn't. I took another road—the wrong road, I suppose, and here I am.... Well, well! it can't be altered now.
"You're the best and kindest man I ever knew," cried Arthur. "And I know some one else who would say so too—Mrs. Bundy."
"Ah! that's because she loves me too much to see my faults. But I can see them. Well, well!" He turned his head away, his good honest face bowed in his hands. Then he recovered himself briskly, turned round, and said, "Well, that's done with. Now we'll start out afresh upon a new tack. I'vegotto help you, don't you understand? And I'm going to. Let me think a moment."
Presently he said, "Now I think I've got it. Sit down and light a fresh cigar. That's right. Now I believe I know the kind of life you want. Shall I take it for granted you don't mean to return to England?"
"No; there is no place for me there, at present."
"Well, there's one point settled, and let me say I agree with you. Now for another point. You want an outdoor life?"
"Yes, I prefer it."
"Very good. Now, let me paint you a picture. A country of wooded hills and snow mountains, a lake, a log-house, and let us say a hundred acres of cleared land with seventy-five apple trees to the acre. Do you know what that means? I'll tell you. An apple tree in bearing means from five to ten dollars. An orchard of only fifty acres therefore means—here, hand me that paper-pad."
And straightway he fell to work, with all the recovered ardour of the speculator, adding and re-adding interminable lines of figures, until he announced the surprising result that the man who owned fifty acres of land in this most desirable of valleys might count upon a yearly income of $18,750, and in due time twice or thrice that sum.
"It's better than a gold-mine," he cried inconsistently. "And it's safe—it's absolutely safe!"
"But how am I to buy it?"
"You're not going to buy it. Don't you understand? It's already yours. Here, wait a moment."
There was another series of swift calculations, and then Bundy communicated this result: that the money Archibold Masterman had lent him years before had been really worth to him thrice its value, for it had set him on his feet; that morally therefore he owed £2,000 to Archibold Masterman; that the price of this excellent fruit ranch, by a strange coincidence, was exactly £2,000; and that finally it was his fixed determination to make the ranch over to Arthur, as an act of gratitude.
"There's the life you want," he cried enthusiastically.
"But, Mr. Bundy——"
"Now don't object, for I won't hear of it. I'm only too glad you made me think of this. Why, if I were younger and hadn't got the Dredging Company on my hands, I'd go there myself, like a shot. There's no credit to me in giving it you. I'm rich; and besides, it's yours morally. God bless you, my boy! and if ever things go wrong with me, keep a room for poor old Bundy on the ranch. And now let us go to bed."
And, as if to prevent all further discussion, he swiftly switched the lights off, and incontinently vanished.