“La vie est brève:Un peu d’espoir,Un peu de rêve,Et puis bonsoir!”
“La vie est brève:Un peu d’espoir,Un peu de rêve,Et puis bonsoir!”
“Do you understand French?”
“No.”
“What I like about you,” he said irrelevantly, “is you don’t ask questions.”
“No; I never do.”
“That’s right,” he said, and, as though unconscious of her presence, he began to talk to himself in a sort of dreamy monotone that had an odd contrast of melancholy against the background of gaiety that came thrumming and throbbing from across the wall.
“Well, and, after all, we’re just children—all great cry-babies. We can’t enjoy what we’ve got, or know how to keep it. We go out and shoot ourselves or some one else—at least the great fools do—because some one we don’t love and over whose life, after all, we have no right, meets some one else who is bored. Work—work,” he said, his thoughts flowing in some connectioncomprehensible only to himself; “that’s the whole thing—the joy of working for something, for something you hope to get—and when that’s gone——” he stopped suddenly, continuing the thought in his own mind, looking out of the window. “Well, even then, why should we cry out? At least we don’t starve; we have a roof over our heads; we don’t harness our bodies to grindstones just to keep on living. I wonder which counts in the end—whattheydo, or what we do?”
Evidently he was thinking of the hordes which spread away from them in filthy blocks, for, after a long contemplation of the snow-coated roofs, and the heavy, reddened pall of clouds which caught the city’s reflection, he continued,
“Do you know what keeps them going—all of them—thousands on thousands—just the same as us?”
“What?”
“Hope,” he said, with a laugh. “The hope that something wonderfulmayhappen. They don’t know what it is. Poor devils, what cantheyhope for? But, you see, it may come. That’s where destiny plays tricks with us—has its laugh at us. Good Lord, how life plays with us, like a cat plays with a mouse! Hope! That’s how it can get us to go on, to stand a little more—the future—to-morrow—the thing you can’t guess.” He turned to her again. “Do you understand?”
“Yes, I understand—to-morrow.”
“You don’t understand at all,” he said impatiently. “What would you do if you knew, absolutely knew, that everything was over, that all you had hoped for was impossible, that everything you had been striving for—that nothing was to come of it, nothing—no more illusions, no more dreams.” The last words seemed to stick in his mind, for presently he began to grow more excited. “It’s the dreaming that’s the best of all; and when that’s gone—when you can’t lie back at night and dream to yourself of doing something so great that the whole world comes crowding in to stare at it—a ‘Mona Lisa’ or a ‘Spring’ of Botticelli or——” He ended abruptly, with a curious sound that was not quite a laugh but more a bitter protest. “No, no—no more dreams, no more.”
On the other side of the wall the dancing had ended. With the approach of the weakening hour when the old year would yield its last breath, the company began to sing old-fashioned ballads—“Kathleen Mavourneen” and “The Lass o’ Lowrie.” He seemed suddenly to realize all that he had been revealing of the rebellion in his soul, for he turned toward her in a sudden antagonism.
“Here, I don’t like your sitting there making me talk!”
“I’m not making you,” she said. “It’s you who wanted me to be by you to-night.”
“That’s so,” he assented. He turned toward her with another touch of that shrewd, half-smiling cunning which he had shown when he had thought to frighten her before. “If you only knew——”
“That’s just what I don’t want,” she said quickly. “I don’t want to know.”
“Really?” he said, drawing back to watch her.
“It isn’t necessary.”
This answer seemed to satisfy him, for he forgot her presently, returning to the contemplation of the city below them.
“I suppose it’s almost time,” he said. “The whistles will be blowing soon.”
From the adjoining studio came a chorus led by Schneibel’s shrill tenor impetuously in advance:
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And days o’ lang syne?”
“Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And never brought to mind?Should auld acquaintance be forgot,And days o’ lang syne?”
Far out toward the river, a premature tug began a tiny whistle.
“How ridiculous that sounds!” he said irritably. Then, listening intently to the repeated chorus, he seemed to be visualizing another scene, for presently he said, with a touch of sadness, the first he had displayed:
“They’ll be singing that pretty soon down by the marble fireplace after the speech. Steingall, Quinny, the whole crowd—the boys—perhaps—no, no; I guess not—‘auld acquaintance’—I wonder——”
Outside, a great bell rang, and swift upon it another. All at once, like a storm breaking, the night awoke with whistle, siren, and clanging steeple—joyful, eager, perennially hopeful.
She bent toward him and laid her hand over his.
“A new chance.”
He stood up suddenly, as though at the limit of his tether, and said between his teeth:
“By heavens, Iamgoing out! I can’t stand this.”
She rose silently, and turning, took his overcoat and held it up to him—an action so unexpected that he looked at her in surprise.
“Thought you didn’t want me to——”
“I was wrong. You have a right to do anything you want.”
He nodded appreciatively, and said suddenly, as though in excuse:
“I can’t help it; I can’t—I tell you, I can’t. I’ve got to get out.”
“Don’t explain,” she said quietly. “Don’t get excited; and when you come in, call me.”
He took her shoulders in his hands and turned her toward the light.
“You’re a queer one, queer as I am, I guess—but you understand.”
“Yes; I understand.”
“Why do you do it?” he said suddenly, his mind evidently turning again and again to the problem which perplexed him.
She laid both her hands against his shoulders, looking straight into his eyes.
“Because I don’t like to see a splendid ship go down.”
“I—a splendid ship?” he said, with an incredulous laugh.
“One in ten thousand.”
He laughed again, moving irritably.
“So you believe in me, do you?”
“Absolutely.”
He caught his breath, stood silent a long moment in a conflict of emotions, yielding, longing, haunted, and rebellious. At the end he said scornfully:
“Yes, they all do—at first. Well, you’re wrong!”
With which he stalked away without further notice. He did not come back that night at all, though the light shone under her door patiently. Late the next afternoon, Sassafras came into the studio with a mysterious gesture to King O’Leary, who was taking tea at the hands of Myrtle Popper and pretending to like it. Together they carried Dangerfield to his room. He was in a dreadful condition—a soiled and hopeless mass from the gutter out of which he had been rescued.
During this time Art, Literature, and Music were industriously engaged in the laudable enterprise of spending the unearned increment, in the course of which redistribution of wealth, they found the necessary encouragement from the more expensive sex. A round of gaiety set in such as the Arcadians had never known. Visits to restaurants and theaters became mere details of a daily routine. They gave a dance in the studio and plunged into the revelry of costume balls, then at its height; while, under the guidance of Belle Shaler, they made several excursions into the bohemia of Washington Square and Greenwich Village. In the inevitable pairing-off process, it transpired that, however they started forth, they returned home with Myrtle Popper snuggling close to O’Leary’s protecting bulk (she seemed particularly sensitive to the cold), Tootles tagging close to Pansy’s provoking shoulder, and Flick and Belle Shaler, who had quarreled from the start, walking six feet apart and stabbing each other with final deadly glances. Millie Brewster came to the parties in the studio, but seldom ventured forth on the marauding expeditions—not that she did not envy these rollicking sallies in wig and fancy dress, only she could not shake off the timidity and shyness which had grown about her in her months of isolation.
“Boys,” said King O’Leary, one morning, when from his couch he had watched Tootles’ mental control of Matter carrying him by successive jerks to the sink—“boys, I have a bit of news to break to you. I have been counting up, and there is just one more jamboree in sight.”
Flick awoke by one of those subconscious mental perceptions that the Society for Psychical Research is at present investigating.
“Broke?”
“King, tell us the worst.”
“Sixty-two dollars and some miserable change,” said O’Leary cheerfully, “is all that keeps us among the high rollers.”
A fearful suspicion flashed across Tootles’ ducal countenance as it dawned upon him that, though it was the first week of the month, no summons to pay the rent had yet appeared.
“King, you paid the rent!”
O’Leary did not deny it.
“How much?” said Flick faintly.
“A year.”
Tootles took this announcement very hard.
“It’s squandering money, that’s what it is,” he said bitterly.
“Why, damn it, man,” said Flick, equally outraged, “anything can happen—another uncle might die!”
“Well, it’s done,” said King O’Leary, without sign of penitence. “I’m getting tired of dissipation, anyhow. At least we have a roof over our heads.”
“We shall starve to death—like Croton water-bugs caught in a diamond casket,” said Flick, who had a taste for poetical flights.
“But, even then,” said Tootles, “even with that and the parties and the gorgeous presents, there ought to be three or four hundred left.” At this moment he caught sight of a guilty look on King O’Leary’s face. “Literature, I do believe he’s been and done some low-down, sneaking good action. What is it—paying rent for the whole floor?”
“Nothing of the sort,” said King O’Leary, but sogruffly that Tootles was confirmed in the idea that his guess had some pertinency.
“He’s been buying diamonds for Myrtle,” said Flick suspiciously.
“Well, here it is,” said King O’Leary, depositing a collection of bills and change upon the table. “What’ll we do with it?”
To his shame, Tootles, who had bourgeois inclinations, suggested that they should save it against the daily ache of the stomach.
“Never!” said Flick, with a withering look. “We have lived like dead-game sports, and we must end with a bang and not with a trickle.”
“Shake!” said King O’Leary.
“Well, what?” said Tootles glumly. “Oh, you fellows can grin; but I know what’s going to happen to me. That confounded money-eating little flirt of a Pansy will give me the royal shake the moment she gets wise.” When Tootles had a grief or a woe, he confided it to the world. “By Jove, I’ve made a fool enough of myself, running after her, when all I had to do was to sit quiet and condescend to let her feed out of my hand! Damn that Portuguese, Drinkwater! It was bad enough before—but now, O Lord!”
“I shall break my engagement to Belle,” said Flick facetiously. “Thank Heaven for one thing,shewon’t come around any more.”
“We’ve wasted too much time, anyhow,” said King O’Leary, mistaking the sincerity of these professions. “As for me, I feel like getting back to doing something. I tell you what we’ll do: We’ll take the girls out once more, give them the greatest razzle-dazzle blowout they have ever seen, and then, when their eyes are bulging out and they are ready to melt in our arms, we’ll say, ‘Ladies, adoo forever!’”
“Then we’re to tell them we’re bust?” said Flick, to whom the bravado appealed.
“No,” said Tootles firmly; “let’s put it on high moral grounds. We must tell them that we have listened to the stern voice of ambition, that we are artists, and our professions are reclaiming us.”
“That means work,” said Flick.
“I have an idea for a masterpiece,” said Tootles, who, by the last speech, had recovered lost ground. “It’s to be called ‘The Ages Contemplating the Well-Dressed Man.’ It’s to be a monumental work. Who knows, it may bring another thousand!”
At noon, while they were perfecting their plans (Flick’s suggestion of dining at the St. Regis having been dismissed on account of King O’Leary’s hostility to boiled linen and social dog-collars), there came a timid tap-tap at the door, and, to the amazement of two members of the firm at least, Millie Brewster arrived with a broom and a dust-cloth.
“Can’t I be useful?” she said, dreadfully confused at her own daring. (She had studied over this opening for an hour.) “It’s only neighborly, isn’t it?”
King O’Leary sprang up rather quickly, and while Tootles’ eyes watched him with a dawning suspicion, he went to the girl and said with rough good nature:
“You certainly can—come right in and set to it. Give your orders, Millie—we’re here.”
But to the surprise of everybody, the girl pushed him away with determination, saying:
“Not at all. Sit down—please. You’ll only be in the way.”
“So that’s the way the wind blows,” thought Tootles, noticing the light that came into the childish face as she looked up at the rugged globe-trotter.
“Why, bless my soul, is this to be a habit, Millie?” said Flick encouragingly.
“Please—if you’ll let me,” she said eagerly.
Flick gave the permission with the air of one parting with a string of pearls. The three men, lounging over their morning pipes, followed with delicious satisfaction the young girl routing the dust, and such is the soul-delight that such rare feminine spectacles engender in the masculine mind, that they found her, all at once, amazingly young, graceful, and romantically pretty.
“There’s lots and lots of dust,” said Millie, shaking her head. “I can’t get it all out at once.”
“I should like to make a sketch of her bending down like that,” said Tootles pensively. “Beautiful line—charming!”
“What a cracking idea for a heroine,” said Flick, who was stirred to creative rashness.
O’Leary, who understood better than the others, leaned back dreamily, puffing in contentment.
At this moment the door opened, and Belle Shaler slouched in, in a manner which would have set the hearts of fashionable débutantes afire with envy, and stopped short, her shocked hair whirling around her saucy face in amazement at the sight of Millie on a chair, caressing the dragon’s tail with a dust-cloth.
“For the love of Mike, woman, what’s struck you?” she exclaimed, though in somewhat stronger terms. “Degrading yourself for this bunch of loafers and sofa-warmers!”
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” said Flick sweetly. “No one’s going to ask you.”
“Well, you certainly have got your nerve,” said Belle, mistaking the initiative. “If you want a slave, why don’t you get a wife?”
“Miss Brewster has offered to do it out of the kindness of her heart,” said King O’Leary, seeing Millie overcome with embarrassment.
“Sit down, Belle; we’re keeping the family mending for you.”
Before Belle could get her breath to retort, Millie broke in:
“Oh, please—I expected—I wanted to do that—really I did!”
The tone in which it was said struck each one. Each felt the loneliness from which the girl was struggling. Belle gave her a short look of amazement and then went up and put her arm around her with abrupt good nature, saying:
“Don’t mind my jawing. I’m a rough nut. Bless your heart, don’t worry; you shall do it!”
“’Pon my word,” said Flick aggressively, “who’s disposing of things around here?”
“I am,” said Belle, shrugging her shoulders.
“Angel, you’re wrong,” said Flick suavely. “If you want to know what makes woman an elevating force and a tender, inspiring ideal in the life of rough men, sit here and watch Millie.”
Belle Shaler slumped to the table, swung up on it, and lit a cigarette before she condescended to glance down at Flick.
“Say, I’ll bet that’s what you think,” she said, with her battling glance.
“A woman like Millie,” said Flick, from the cushions, watching dreamily the bustling progress of the housecleaning, “could make me a credit to society.”
“Ha, ha!” said Belle, and flicked away the ash of her cigarette with a scornful wave. “What you need, bo, is a hell-cat, a raring, tearing hell-cat with a rotten temper, to stand over you with a poker and whang you one. Then you’d work.”
“No, Belle; no,” said Flick, putting out his hand as though to ward her off. “I cannotmarry you.”
“Dog!” said Belle, and flung at him the nearest object at hand, which happened to be a saucer.
“I really do believe they’re fond of each other,” said Tootles, the acute observer.
“Oh, you’re no better,” said Belle, turning on him; “you’re worse. You’ve got brains and won’t use them. Lord, but I loathe a bunch of work-dodgers! I see your finish—a lot of sandwich-men beating the pavements.”
“What the devil does she come around here for?” said Flick, beginning to grow angry, “just as we were comfy?”
“Haven’t we been keeping you in luxury?” said O’Leary, arousing himself.
“Well, you’re a good bunch,” said Belle, relaxing a little, “but what I said goes. You’re a fine lithograph of ambition, you are—wallowing around like a lot of yellow dogs. Why don’t you get up and work?”
“Where’s Pansy?” said Tootles, to divert the attack.
“Out cooing with Drinkwater, I guess,” said Belle, who flounced off with this parting stab. “You don’t think she takesyouseriously, do you? Why, you couldn’t support a canary!”
“Damn women, anyhow!” said Tootles, who winced perceptibly. “That’s what money does for you. They only come into your life to help you spend it, and then they make you miserable. Curse every one of them! Curse them one and all!”
“But curse Belle Shaler first,” said Flick.
“All except Millie,” said O’Leary, smiling.
“Well, except Millie.”
But, to their surprise, the girl, having finished what might be called her dust-survey, approached them and blurted out:
“Don’t be mad at her, Mr. Wilder. It’s because she cares for you she goes at you so.”
“Why, Millie, how do you know such things?” said Tootles, opening his eyes.
“Well, I do.”
“I do believe she agrees with Belle,” said O’Leary, who believed no such thing. “Come, now, the truth!”
Thus cornered, to their astonishment the girl looked very red and uncomfortable, but finally announced with a determined shake of her head:
“Well, yes; I do! I think she is absolutely right. And I think—I think you ought to be ashamed of yourselves, every one of you!”
When she had rushed away, overcome with her own daring, the three loungers looked helplessly at each other and then up at the skylight, as though to discover whence the bomb had fallen.
“I do believe we have touched these maidens’ hearts,” said Tootles, the first to break the silence.
“Never felt so gorgeously, deliciously happy in my life,” said Flick, in a melancholy tone. “Everything seemed just lovely with the world; I was just plain plumb glad to be alive—and then some one has to break in and shout, ‘Get up and work!’”
“Well, son, they’re right,” said O’Leary, jumping up and stretching his arms. “Guess millions don’t agree with us.”
“Speak for yourself,” said Flick.
“Flick,” said O’Leary solemnly, “Belle hits hard but she hits square. Son, you ought to be up and doing!”
“Why me any more than Tootles?”
“You’re older than I am,” said Tootles, who joined O’Leary in a withering contemplation of the joke-smith. “Besides, who cracks the jokes you sell?”
“So you’re all picking on me?” said Flick wrathfully.“All right; I’ll show you. And I won’t have to kill an uncle to do it, either,” he added, with a vindictive glance at O’Leary as he left the room.
“He’s gone out in search of puns,” said Tootles, who, after a moment’s whistling, added, “The party still on for to-night?”
“It’s our only salvation.”
“Well, I’ll go down and give the invitations,” said Tootles, who departed in quest of Pansy.
Left alone, King O’Leary began to move restlessly about the studio, his hands behind his back. The sun was sparkling through the skylight—the same sun that was shining on distant tranquil seas and over green islands; and some of the old tugging was at his heart, for he moved over to the trunk which was always ready for an instant departure. He was on his knees, searching through old keepsakes that had about them the scent of other days, when the voice of Myrtle Popper called:
“Hello there! Anybody in?”
He turned from his knees, to find her looking down suspiciously.
“Say you look as though you were running off?”
King O’Leary laughed guiltily.
“Myrtle, you’ve caught me with the goods! Well, yes; I was getting restless.” He rose and looked down at her with a shake of his head. “Lord, wouldn’t I like to be lying on my back, sailing into Hong Kong harbor, watching the mast scraping against the blue, and the yards creaking lazily——”
She went to the trunk and shut it with a bang, placing a red-heeled slipper on it, with a neat flash of blue-silk ankle above.
“Say, how old are you?”
“Myrtle, you’re looking as fresh as the first roses,” said King O’Leary artfully. “And that’s a lovely bit of ankle, blue as the blue sky over Hong Kong.”
“How old are you?” repeated the girl sternly, who looked wonderfully enticing, with her coiled hair andyoung figure set off by the lace apron against the black working-dress.
“Thirty-six beautiful years—and one more.”
“Thirty-seven!” said the girl severely. “And what are you—nothing but a hobo!”
“Hold up!” said O’Leary suspiciously. “Is this a conspiracy? Have you been talking to Belle?”
“I have been talking to no one,” said Myrtle indignantly. “I say what I mean; and I mean it’s a crying shame to see a fine, upstanding man like you, King O’Leary, no further along than you were twenty years ago.”
“What the devil’s got into this place, anyhow?” said O’Leary, putting his hand to his forehead and sitting down before the storm.
“Why don’t you settle down?” said Myrtle, in a coaxing voice. “You can do things—you can handle men—Lord, they’d jump for you!”
“What would you have me do?” said O’Leary, not insensible to the compliment of being frowned at by a pretty face.
“You can’t go on bumming forever. Get hold of something and stick to it. You’ve got brains, and you’ve got the push, too. Why, there are thousands of men making their pile right here in little old New York that aren’t fit to hold your coat!”
By this time, King O’Leary’s early resentment had passed, and the Irish fondness for teasing had begun to twinkle in his eyes.
“Well, Myrtle dear, what have you been making up your mind I am to do?”
“Try a chance with a moving-picture house,” said Myrtle eagerly. “Honest, King, I mean it. I’ve been thinking of what you might do for days. I want to see you get ahead. There’s an old fellow called Pomellothat has struck it rich and would do anything for me. Put some money in with him. Sure, I could arrange it in a minute.”
“My money is already invested,” said King O’Leary, telling a defensive fib.
“There are a dozen chances passing you every day, if you’ll only keep your eyes open,” said Myrtle, sitting on the sofa next to O’Leary, with such excitement in her great green eyes that King O’Leary was conscious of a pleasant conceit.
“Myrtle, I’m afraid you’re a determined woman,” he said, with a provoking smile.
“I wouldn’t be here if I wasn’t,” she said. “What would I be to-day if I couldn’t make up my mind? What you need is some one to push you on.”
“How would you like to be rolling up the Roo Royale—that’s in Paris—in a jingling open-front carriage, stretched back and watching the dukes and duchesses go by?” said King O’Leary maliciously.
“You’ll never be sensible,” said Myrtle, frowning.
He lay back, propped up against the pillows, watching the fine figure the girl made sitting there, her eyes sparkling with the busy schemes she was concocting in the back of her head, of whose one object he was pleasantly aware.
“What a pity I’m not the marrying kind,” he said slyly. “I believe you would make an alderman out of me.”
“Quit your kiddin’,” she said, shrugging her shoulders, “and don’t think, because a girl’s a good-enough pal to want to see you get on, that she’s throwing herself at your head.”
He laughed hugely.
“Got me that time, all right!”
“Be sensible,” she said, relenting. “It ain’t oftenwe get a chance to sit down alone. Lord, you don’t know what good it does me to slump in here for a quiet chat! You’re one of my own kind, King!”
O’Leary yielded to the temptation of the moment far enough to play with the coiled bracelet which lay against the girl’s wrist.
“Say, I’m rather curious about you,” he said, studying her gravely. “You see a queer side of life.”
“I can handle it.”
“I know that.”
“There’s one thing I have got,” she said, eager to seize the rare opportunity to lead him into a serious conversation, “and that’s a good, hard bump of common sense. Don’t make any mistakes about me and—and the others. I don’t lose my head, King.”
“Well, that’s a wonder, for you’re pretty enough to make the Pope himself lose his,” said O’Leary, patting her hand.
“Wish you meant it,” she said, looking at him seriously, “but, what with your blarney and your jollying, no one knows what you think. Yes, I like sassiety, but I’m not fooled. You bet I know where to pin the young fellows who take me out—and the old ones, too.”
“Should think you got into tight places sometimes,” said O’Leary, looking steadily into her eyes.
“Pooh! Men are like strange dogs,” she said contemptuously. “Walk right up to them, bold as life, and they’re gentle as ducks. Say—after all, there’s a lot of bunk about this bold, bad-man stuff. Honest, outside of a couple of freshies, men has been awfully decent to me. You know what I think? I think a lot of them are bored stiff with the women about them and just tickled to death to take out a girl who appreciates having a good time.”
O’Leary nodded.
“Men are rather decent. They go just about as far as a woman wants them to.”
“That’s right,” she said frankly, bobbing her head. “You get from them about what you want. Sure, I like the going out to the restaurants and the the-ayters, and I dote on dancing; but—say—that’s not all the game.”
“It isn’t, eh?”
“Not on your life; and little Myrtle knows it, and don’t you forget it. There’s a long ways to go after the mashers drop off. The main thing is settlin’ down to something that’s your own; findin’ the fellow who’s worth helping on, and startin’ to save.”
“Why, Myrtle, I thought you were a social butterfly!” said O’Leary, surprised and a little apprehensive as he thought he perceived the drift of these remarks.
“Butterfly nothing! Not when the right man comes up the street! Nix! Home and kiddies for me. I’m not ashamed to say it. That’s the real life. I’ve seen all I want of sassiety.”
“Well, Myrtle, you’ve got lots of chances,” he said, little reckoning how the future would play the cards. “I’ll bet some day I’ll see you rolling down the avenue in a fine limousine just like Mrs. Van Astorbilt.”
“Don’t tease me,” she said, so quietly that an embarrassing silence fell between them. She got up nervously. “I must be getting back to the job,” she said, glancing at her watch.
“You’re dining with me to-night,” he said, rising.
“Am I?” she said, putting her head back defiantly. “I’ve got an engagement—had it for a week.”
“You’ll break it, Myrtle darlin’?”
“Oh, will I?” she said impertinently. “You seem very sure of yourself.”
“I am,” he said, smiling and looking into her eyes so intently that she turned her glance away.
“Friendship!” she said scornfully, with a quick breath, “a lot of friendship there was in that!”Page 109.
“Friendship!” she said scornfully, with a quick breath, “a lot of friendship there was in that!”Page 109.
“Friendship!” she said scornfully, with a quick breath, “a lot of friendship there was in that!”Page 109.
“Just you and me?” she said, in a quieter tone.
“No; it’s the bunch. Oh, you needn’t make a face. We’re dining at the Waldorf. Sure, I’m not jollying you this time. So get out your swell duds,” he said, coming nearer and playing with the lace collar which lay close to her throat, “for I want the girl that’s on my arm to put it all over the rest of them—savvy?”
“Do you think I can?” she said, with a quick breath, for he was close to her, and her eyes flashed with a sudden leap as they met his.
“Sure, Myrtle, if you look at me again like that, you do it at your own peril,” he said, wild Irish mischief dancing in his glance.
“Don’t you dare!” she said, throwing up her head; and there was something in her look that made him laugh, and after a little scuffle, kiss her.
“Mind, though, that was just in friendship,” he said, in pretended seriousness.
She stood away against the wall, breathless, her cheeks on fire and her eyes snapping, her head a little light from the fervor of his embrace.
“Friendship!” she said scornfully, with a quick breath, “A lot of friendship there was in that!”
When she had gone, King O’Leary stood shaking his head slowly, his hands in his pockets, whistling to himself as he glanced in perplexity at the sun which was sparkling through the skylight—the sun that shone over distant seas and green isles.
Tootle’s sentimental difficulties were the more annoying inasmuch as he had only himself to blame, though he had this excuse: that the plight in which he found himself floundering, according to the caprices of the most fascinating game of chance in the world, was one into which many a satisfied male idol has precipitated himself unwittingly. In brief, up to the advent of the Christmas party and Drinkwater’s impertinent intrusion, Tootles had been adored because he was in the strategical position of permitting the adoration. During this time, Pansy, enraptured with Tootles’ sartorial splendor, his aristocratic features (which reminded one of a footman or a duke), his holiday English intonation, and finding him only languidly interested, was overjoyed at his condescension and quite miserable at his displeasure when she forgot and shifted her pose. Her eyes showed plainly her adoration, and she hurried gratefully to his call whenever Tootles would come rapping at the door, saying in his impertinent manner:
“Miss Hartmann, Mr. St. George Kidder will receive you for half an hour—for only half an hour, mind you. He has a sitter at three—a lady of the highest society, who wishes her visits to remain unsuspected.”
The more coolly the young scamp took her adoration, the more she adored him; and matters might have gone on thus indefinitely, had not Tootles been so amateurish as to resent the attentions of Drinkwater. Overnight the whole face of the world was changed, and from being pursued by a beautiful nymph who trembled under thefavor of his smile, Tootles, to his indignation, found himself the pursuer, without quite comprehending how the transformation had been worked. He was as astonished (as he himself expressed it) as the fleeing rabbit circling around a tree is to find himself abruptly pursuing the dog. Miss Pansy, from a grateful young lady with her heart at her finger-tips, became overnight a delighted and outrageous little flirt, maliciously bent on tormenting him to the limit of his endurance. Tootles, not having sense enough to stop and run in the opposite direction, continued with wrath and fury to pursue the tantalizing eyes which danced at him over her fleeing shoulder, until he was ready to believe that the love and likewise the tragedy of his life had descended upon him.
Belle Shaler’s trifling allusion to Drinkwater had aroused the atavistic yearning for murder in simple or exaggerated degrees in his usually easy-going nature. He stopped before the door of her studio a moment, frowning darkly, before deciding, with supreme cunning, to disguise his misery under a countenance of excessive joy. Pansy, to his relief, was there, camped in a green-plush rocking-chair, sewing on something pink and filmy. On the center-table was a very large vase of chrysanthemums. When Tootles perceived this, his gaiety descended, so to speak, into the cellar. He entered the room with a forced dapperness, saying:
“Have the diamonds come yet, or would you prefer pearls?”
The room was divided by a green-baize curtain which concealed the domestic arrangements and the oil-stove. Popular full-pages in color from magazines and newspapers littered the walls, while different articles of furniture were decked out in ribbons and ruffles, which gave them the effect of displaying their lingerie. A sewing-machine was disguised under an Eastern blanket, whilethe bed-couches were piled with fancy pillows, depicting such romantic scenes as a mother-bird feeding its young; a tennis-match entitled “Love All,” the noble red Indians around a camp-fire, and another, adorned with a red-cheeked damsel with her hand behind her head and her legs out of proportion, inscribed “An American Beauty.” Tootles saw none of these details, nor the kimono-covered screen, nor the knicknacks on the desk representing dogs with pipes in their mouths, rabbits in the form of match-safes and a young man kissing a young lady over a stile. He saw only the chrysanthemums.
“Oh, hello!” said Pansy, continuing at her work.
“Who’s that?” said Belle, sticking her head through the curtains. “Oh, it’s only you!”
Tootles put his hand on his heart and made several rapid bows.
“Thanks—thanks for this ovation!”
“What have ye been doing all this while?” Pansy condescended to say, and, as though this were a soul-confidence, she raised her eyes liquidly and allowed her glance to flutter in his in one of those destructive looks which do not need to be taught at high school.
“It’s my birthday,” said Tootles, hoping to derive some future advantage; “and I am arranging for my friends to give me a surprise-party.”
“Go wan,” said Pansy, who, having treated him to a melting look, now froze him with one of indifferent disdain. However, the scent of dinner in the air demanded a certain diplomacy. She smiled. “What is it—feed or show?”
“It is my birthday,” said Tootles indignantly. “Don’t you think I was born, the same as you?”
“Come off!” said Belle, who emerged from behind the curtains with her hat on. “I’ll bet they picked you off a tree.”
“My dear girl,” said Tootles, who resorted to his defensive English accent, “it would be far better if you attended to your own troubles. At this very moment, Flick may be a suicide. He started for the river.”
“He may choke to death,” said Belle scornfully, “but he’ll never end in water.”
“He is exceedingly distressed,” said Tootles, who was afraid that, if he annoyed her, she might stay. “Well, girls, the automobile will be here at seven. Those who love me are invited.” And as he was still fearful that she might linger, he added artfully, with an admiring glance at her slender body and saucy face tucked under a fur toque that set off her rebellious shock of hair, “Belle, I particularly want you; I like to be surrounded by beautiful women.”
As Belle Shaler was both human and feminine, she was grateful, and showed it, first by abuse, and then by a bit of advice.
“Try that on some one from the green grass,” she said, with a tilt of her nose. “Oh, I’ll be there.” And she added, patting his cheek: “Well, he’s a nice boy, only”—this in a lower tone, with a glance at Pansy—“don’t be a softy, Tootles—give her hell.”
Tootles answered her with a manly glare, to convince her of his inflexibility, and the door once closed behind her, flung a leg over the table, flirted with the work-basket, waited unsuccessfully for Pansy to take the initiative, and ended by saying:
“Well, how about it?”
“About what?” said Pansy, looking up as though she had just perceived his presence.
“Those who love me are invited,” said Tootles, folding his arms and giving her a killing look, as he remembered his favorite romantic actor, Mr. Wilbur Montague, would have done in such a situation.
“Do you want me to come?”
Saying which, she put down the sewing and looked again into his eyes with a tender look that seemed to say, “‘Why hide what’s in your heart, dear?’”
“Oh, no,” said Tootles, falling back on sarcasm as he felt himself crumbling weakly; “I came here expressly to beg you to refrain.”
“Now you’re cross,” said Pansy, quite delighted. “I suppose it’s them flowers.”
“What flowers?” said Tootles, looking around in surprise. He examined them and added: “Wired! Cheap stuff. Now, isn’t that just like a shyster lawyer!”
“Silly!” said Pansy, bursting into laughter. “How do ye know that ain’t for Belle?”
“Really?” said Tootles, beaming as though the sun had suddenly entered the room.
“Goose!”
“You’ve been mean enough to me,” said Tootles, taking her hand. “You might let up.”
“Do you really want me to come?” said Pansy, smiling all over.
“Want you? Why, you beautiful creature,” said Tootles, ecstatically, “come, and I’ll go before you with a dust-pan and dust the way! That’s how much I want you.”
These higher flights from Tootles always moved Pansy, who had a penchant for refined romance. She relented, and there was quite an important discussion as to whether Tootles did not, in fact, really believe that Myrtle Popper’s eyes were more unusual than hers, and favor the figure of Belle Shaler. All of which would have had an agreeable ending, had not Belle returned and let the cat out of the bag by asking Pansy if she might wear some of her chrysanthemums.
When Tootles returned, to find King O’Leary in a perplexedself-examination, he was in a fearful state. He slammed the door and dove on the couch, where he gave an exhibition of tearing his hair which would have inspired Mr. Wilbur Montague himself to envy.
“Say, what is this?” said O’Leary, after a moment of amazement. “Love or bills?”
Tootles’ remarks, while intelligible, remained outside the limits of organized speech which the wise fathers who established the dictionary as an uplift have imposed. In the end, when calm had returned, he arose and said, with terrific impressiveness:
“That ends it! King, take witness—I’m through—I’m cured!”
“Oh, Pansy’s a good sort, all right,” said O’Leary, understanding.
“Good sort! Yes; certainly. Do tell me why I, St. George Kidder, with a career, with fame and with riches, a future, should be running after a little smudgy-eyed slip of a girl who hasn’t a thought in her head.”
“Oh, now!”
“She hasn’t. King, I swear she is positively stupid! Fact. Now, honestly, what gets me, why am I pattering at her heels—why?”
“She has beautiful eyes, son.”
“Do you think that’s enough? No; it’s not enough!”
“Well, that depends how close they are,” said King O’Leary ruefully, thinking of other eyes.
“Do you see me now?” said Tootles fiercely. “I am calm. I am not saying this because I am excited. I am calm. Now listen: I can look at myself and see what’s what. King, I am cured! There’s nothing—nothing there. A pretty face, yes—but that’s all. Drinkwater can have her. I don’t care now. It’s only vanity—just low, despicable vanity, with me, I admit. Thank heaven, I am strong enough to admit it, and because Iadmit it, I can laugh at it!” He gave an imitation of great hilarity. “Lord, King, what asses we can be!”
Belle Shaler rapped at the door.
“Hey there, Tootles!”
“Well, what?” growled Tootles, stopping short.
“Pansy wants to speak to you.”
“Oh, she does? Well, I’m in the bathtub,” said Tootles, and, as the steps went down the hall, he whistled blithely at King O’Leary, and said:
“You see?”
“Sure; but why did you give a lie?”
“I dislike undignified discussions,” said Tootles loftily.
“Well, on the whole, I think you’re right about the girls,” said O’Leary. “We’ll give them a grand-stand finish to-night, and then we’ll get down to tacks.”
Flick came in with his hat over his eyes, saying gloomily:
“Is the wake still on?”
While King O’Leary was explaining the finality of the ceremony, there came a rush and tap outside, and the voice of Belle Shaler cried:
“Tootles, Pansy’s cut her finger.”
“Good Lord!” said Tootles, who sprang from the imaginary bathtub to the door, to find Belle Shaler confronting him with a scornful glance.
“Hmm! Bathtub! Well, young man, I know what I’d do to you.”
But behind Belle was Pansy, with soulful eyes, holding out an imploring hand, saying in the voice of an angel:
“Tootles—please!”
Tootles went, and when he returned, he said triumphantly, deadened to all sense of shame:
“It was all Belle’s doing. The flowers were hers. I suppose I was a little hasty.”
They departed in taxi-cabs at seven sharp. Tootles in evening dress, pleasantly aware of the admiring glance of Pansy, directed at the irreproachable set of his white cravat; Flick with collar reversed and a black-silk square drawn over the opening of his vest; while the problem of passing King O’Leary through the barriers of evening dress was solved by the simple expedient of taking the part out of his hair and decorating him with a flowing tie, which, as Tootles aptly remarked, made the difference between a genius and a piker. In case of need he was to be addressed as “Prince Olgoff.” Despite these precautions and Tootles’ finished air of distilling money, whether due to the irreverent expression of Flick or some suspicion of the virtuosity of King O’Leary, they were held up at the door of the brilliant dining-room. While they were fidgeting under the expert scrutiny of the head waiter, the ladies all aflutter, who should come up from a near-by table but Dangerfield.
“Friends of mine, Oscar,” he said. “One of your best tables.”
He glanced at Flick’s clerical make-up with a twinkle in his eye, but under Tootles’ cautious look he checked himself and took the introductions gravely, and only Flick, who had noted the apprehensive glances of the group of men he had left, divined under the correctness of his attitude the fierce struggle for control which was going on.
“Did you get the name the head waiter called him?” said O’Leary to Tootles, as they were ushered to a corner table with honors due to an ambassador.
“No.”
“Neither did I, but it was not Dangerfield—hello!”
“What is it?”
O’Leary, whose eyes had found some one in the crowd, mumbled an evasive explanation and proceeded to arrangethe table with special attention to the placing of Tootles and Pansy.
The evening made a terrific impression on the ladies, whose eyes began to glow more kindly under the spell of the lights and the music and the awed recognition of what each dish must cost. They went to a comic opera in a box, in full view of an audience, took supper among the highest paying social strata, oblivious of the rising fear in the breasts of Flick and Tootles lest O’Leary might make an error in subtraction. King, in fact, had calculated so fine that he was forced to send the others ahead while he picked a quarrel with the waiter to save the tip for the journey home, where they ended, so to speak, in a dead heat. At that, disaster had hovered near while Flick was arguing Belle Shaler out of a second ice.
“Did you see him?” O’Leary found a moment to whisper to Flick.
“Never thought he’d get out of the door,” said Wilder, who had watched Dangerfield’s perilous exit.
“No, not Dangerfield—Drinkwater,” said O’Leary. “I was afraid Tootles would see him.”
“That ferret! Was he there? Chasing Pansy, eh?”
“No—he was there on other business,” said O’Leary. “Mark my words, he’s on Dangerfield’s trail, boy. There’s some dirty business in the wind.”
Tootles approached, and they switched the conversation. Each couple now showed such a desire to linger in the shadows that they arrived at the sixth floor well together.
“Mr. St. George Kidder has a few words to say,” said Flick gravely.
Tootles, the stage having been thus set, brought one lock of hair over his forehead in the wild, romantic way of a true genius, and said:
“Charming and beautiful women—we thank you! We thank you for being just what you are—charming and beautiful! We thank you the more because to-night we say farewell. You laugh, you doubt me—but the laugh is on you. You thought to roll on forever in luxury. To-night you have assisted at our farewell appearance as gilded dispensers of ill-gotten wealth.”
“Amen!” said Flick and O’Leary, in sepulchral chorus.
“Despite your sneers, your abuse, your cruel misunderstandings,” continued Tootles, charmed with the sound of his own voice, “we have shown you how artists dispense their wealth. While gold flowed from our pockets, we planned only how to give you pleasure. Now that we face a cold, hard dawn, without a cent, without a friend, but proudly, with the inspiration of our art, we do not wait to be abandoned by you—we say farewell!”
“You’re broke?” said the three girls, in horrified chorus.
“Broke!” said the three men, delighted; and, falling into lockstep, their hats waving gaily, they marched roaring with laughter down the hall and into their room.
The next morning the sixth floor was treated to two surprises. Before the home of the Arts a placard in red ink announced:
WE ARE WORKING.NO WOMEN ADMITTED BEFORE TEA-TIME.P. S. Bring the Tea.
Down the hall was the sound of wrenching planks, and those who ventured curiously beheld Dangerfield, assisted by Sassafras, busy at the task of unpacking, while Inga, from her point of vantage, surveyed the operations.
Since New Year’s, Dangerfield had made no attempt to mingle with the others, though several times he had stopped for a word of greeting, as though in self-excuse; but he never passed the threshold, and, after a moment’s fidgeting and a few gracious words, he departed.
“Sometimes I think he’d like to chum in, but is afraid to,” said Flick, who was puzzled by this lack of sociability—not being affected in the same way.
“Let him alone; he’ll come around in his way,” said O’Leary, “if there’s anything left of him.”
At this period, though he would not have admitted it, he felt a growing antagonism, and the cause was Inga. The girl had a drawing force of which he was always aware. It was not that he felt sentimentally moved, for there was an ingrained common sense about him that warned him of the folly of such a hope. She perplexed him; she held him; she aroused a certain sense of combat in him, like a spirited horse. It was not that he would ever be in love with her, but that, rating her high in his experience, it rankled in his vanity, not that she was indifferent to him but that she should have gone so directly to another, who had not even sought her. Yet he had gone twice in the fortnight at her call to help her through stormy nights with the derelict.
Inga, alone of the floor, knew the full extent of the turbulent voyage through which Dangerfield was passing. Since the night on which she had committed the error of attempting to restrain him, she had refrained from putting any brake upon his actions, holding herself in readiness to come to him in the limp hours of succeeding weakness and despair. This attitude awakened his curiosity, as it gained his confidence. Once he even asked to see her room. She refused.
“Why not?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said thoughtfully, “but I had rather you wouldn’t.”
“It’s not—” Then he stopped. It could not have been on account of prudery. “No; it’s not that you care what the others say.”
“No; it’s not that,” she said, amused at the thought.
“Well, then?”
“It’s a feeling—I don’t know. It’s something I want to keep to myself—part of me. You don’t understand.”
He shook his head, and, struck with the peculiar intensity of her eyes, revery mixed almost with a touch of fear, he said impulsively,
“Inga, I can’t make you out.”
“Don’t.”
This reply dissatisfied him. His eyes began to follow her more intently when they were alone, and several times unsuccessfully he returned to the attack.
During this time, the visitors, men of his own world, who flitted in for a brief duty-visit, began to fall away.He saw them go with a scorn and bitterness at first, and then with a sort of relief. Sassafras received orders to announce that he was out, except to two men, lawyers evidently, who came from time to time. Curiously enough, even after the wildest nights, he never showed any remorse. When Inga was there he often fell into profound fits of moroseness, in which he would sit with his fists clutched to his mouth, gnawing at his nails, staring at a medallion, a Della Robbia, or a Perseus of Benvenuto Cellini, which he had brought forth out of the disorder.
She never relinquished her intention of getting him into an atmosphere of calm and order, and occasionally tried by devious ways to suggest the subject of unpacking. But the moment the man felt a compelling hand, some malicious and refractory devil seemed to rise up in him, and he would say:
“I know what you’re after. Well, I won’t do it.”
Then, one morning, to her surprise, he called her and said abruptly:
“Well, I’m going to fix up the studio. There now—will you be satisfied?”
“Thank you,” she said, with a bright nod.
“Oh, you needn’t thank me,” he said grimly. “Wait and see. You may regret it.”
They set to work with a vim, and once launched on a new idea, he threw himself into it with the enthusiasm of a child. Sassafras was pressed into service (having surreptitiously jammed the elevator), rolling his eyes at the magnificence he uncovered. They spent a gay morning transforming the boarded bareness of the studio with the warm, green background of great tapestries, restful in harmony and dreamy verdure. The man had a love of beauty as intense as all his desires, and if she did not always understand the value of the really fine bits ofLouis XV furniture, spreadingfauteuilsand the great flat-top desk with bulging curves which reminded one of a pompous burgomaster, or the shadowy massiveness of the carved-oak sideboard, she had an instinctive eye for proportion and delicacy.
“Well, I suppose we’ll have to stop for lunch,” he said at last.
“Send Sam for sandwiches, and let’s go on,” she said eagerly.
“Do you want to?”
“Indeed I do!”
They lunched on a great Florentine table of carved oak, ample enough to seat a dozen, discussing where the sideboard should stand and the old Roman chest with beaten brass clasps. Underneath them, a great rug in the center transformed the floor with the heavy faded yellows and greens of its rich softness.
“We’ll draw a curtain of China silk, a warm gray, over the skylight,” he said, studying the harmonies that had come into the room. “Hello! What are you doing?” he added, smiling.
She had stolen from her slippers, and was moving lightly over the deep Oriental rug, reveling in its velvety voluptuousness.
“I love the very feel of it,” she said, her face flushing in the first emotion she had shown him.
“Go back into the tapestry,” he said, with mock sternness, and half closing his eyes, he nodded approvingly, his glance following the flowing line of the deep-green silk skirt which turned from the graceful hip, the firm, dark neck rising above the youthful breast, and the forestlike wildness of the oval face.
She slipped her green-silk feet back into the slippers and said impulsively:
“It’s all just as I thought you would have it.”
“Oh, it is?” he said, enjoying her enthusiasm.
“Things you live with tell so much,” she said, moving curiously toward the chest.
“You’ve got some strange ideas about me,” he said grimly.
“I have the right one,” she said calmly. She laid her hand on the chest. “What’s hidden here?”
“So you can have curiosity, too?” he said, smiling, caught by the rare mood of enthusiasm, which seemed to waken sudden delicate flushes and sensitive emotions across the blue veil of her eyes and the finely turned upper lip.
He opened the chest and drew forth an armful of old silks and velvets, rare satins and brocades, spilling a riot of color into her arms—leaping, flashing swirls of sapphire, gold, and faded amethyst. She put them aside, and, with a cry of delight, seized something lying in the chest—a rose velvet with the faintest silver sheen, which brought back the pageantry of the Middle Ages.
“How wonderful!”
“You have a good instinct,” he said, nodding. “That’s Italian, thirteenth century, the rarest of all. What color, eh?”
She wrapped her arms in it and drew her cheek across the glorious velvet, which might have lain against the cheek of a storied princess, and as her breath drew deep, across the dark face there spread such a blush of pleasure that she seemed to absorb the rare tint into her own body. He took it from her and gazed at it hungrily, as though he were plunging his look into some gorgeous autumnal pool, drinking in its ecstasy with the mingled pain and pleasure of a lost love remembered.
“Color—color!” he said, held by it. “It thrills you like the first sight of your own country.”
All at once, with a smothered cry—the longing of hissoul for the lost days of inspiration, perhaps—he struck the chest with the full force of his fist and turned away in rebellion.
“God!”
“Don’t.” She laid her hands quickly on his shoulders, straight and slim, as she stood gazing earnestly into his tormented eyes. “Mr. Dangerfield, that’ll come again.”
“Never; no, never,” he said gloomily, and his lips twitched as he glanced away.
Sassafras returned at this moment. Then they set to work again, but she had lost him for the day. The exuberance had departed. He gave his assent in monosyllables, and seemed to have so completely lost interest that she hastened the work, fearing that the whim would seize him to countermand it. The worst of it was that in such moods there was no arguing with him, as he seemed to go so completely from her as to have no sense of what he heard. With the coming of the night and the blazing-out of the lights, he began to get restless, wandering about the room as though each thing in it were raising a haunting memory before him. Once he objected, when Sassafras had started to unpack the easel and the paint-boxes.
“Not that!” he said angrily.
“Unpack them; you can put them away afterward,” she said casually.
He looked at her so furiously that, for a moment, she half expected an angry answer. Then he laughed and shrugged his shoulders.
“I know your idea—little good it will do!” he said, with a stubborn look, and went to the window, gazing out without further notice of what she did.
There was yet much to be done, but the essential had been accomplished. The studio had been rid of boxes and wrappings, and though frames and bric-à-brac, porcelains,bronzes, terra cottas, stood against the walls, mingled with the dull gray of rapiers, green masks and brown boxing gloves, with glowing pools of burnished copper, the room was humanized.
“That’s enough for to-night,” she said, after she had sent Sassafras away.
He turned, and the first thing he saw was the easel.
“You seem to know where to place it,” he said abruptly.
“I am glad that’s right,” she said quietly.
“Well, now that you’ve gotten me to do it,” he said, staring dully about the room, his nails at his mouth, “we’ll see what will come of it.”
She started to leave.
“Wait! I don’t mean to be rude,” he said nervously, “only——”
“Why, Mr. Dangerfield, don’t say that!” she said quietly. “I understand.”
He nodded, and rather absent-mindedly patted her shoulder. Then, apparently irrelevantly, he said:
“Afraid I’m going off on a wild night, aren’t you?”
“I wasn’t thinking of it.”
“See here,” he said abruptly; “I want you to understand one thing—that isn’t the trouble—I can stop that any time I want”—he added almost viciously—“but I don’t want to.” Then he said, seemingly without reason, as though his mind were vacillating from one extreme to the other: “How long is it to the twentieth?”
“Why, twelve days.”
“Still twelve? The twentieth—that’s a date to remember,” he said, as though to himself.
She saw him frown and stare past her, as that other self came into his eyes, bristling, savage, rebelling against some inner torture.
He started at the sound of her voice, looked at her a moment as though trying to account for her presence, and ended by saying:
“Well, it was curious.”
“What?”
“How you knew where to place that easel.”
“I don’t think so,” she said quietly.
He waited a moment, evidently turning something over in his mind, before saying with the same abruptness:
“Do I remind you of any one?”
She glanced at him quickly, and then shook her head twice energetically.
“That’s strange—well, you made me think so,” he said, and without explaining his meaning, he went off.
Having permitted her to influence him so far, out of pure deviltry, he seemed determined to make her regret it. To the surprise of every one, he became exceedingly sociable, dropping in at all hours, with the exception of tea-time, when the girls came back at the end of the day. He was always polite to them; but it was plain to see that they did not interest him in the least. This new phase of Dangerfield’s had unfortunately an upsetting influence, just as virtue had set in strongly, with Tootles composing the figure-scheme of his monumental work which would represent the ages in admiration before the apotheosis of the well-dressed man; Flick beginning new duties as the press-agent for a folding tooth-brush which could be carried in the vest pocket; and King O’Leary installed at the piano at Campeau’s restaurant. If Tootles and O’Leary maintained some semblance of concentration, Flick, who never refused an invitation to patrol the city or to usher in the sun, abandoned the folding tooth-brush on the second day of sightseeing in Dangerfield’s company. Sometimes the night ended in the studio with boxing or fencing or a group about the card-table,and Sassafras promoted to the station and perquisites of a butler. It was not so much the drinking that went on, though there was enough of that, but the waste of energy that was appalling. Though Dangerfield drank heavily and continuously, he had a knack of concealing it, of always remaining within the limits of his dignity. It was rather his consuming of vitality and lack of sleep that seemed to be wearing him down before their eyes.