CHAPTER IV

The room was dim with smoke. Through the faint veil that curled incessantly toward the ceiling the pictures on the wall took on a misty haze that heightened rather than spoilt their effect. It was not a large room, but the walls were covered with pictures of every sort. It was impossible to escape observing the artistic carelessness that had prevailed in the arrangement of the furniture. Bookcases lined the lower portion of each wall; then came pictures. There was an original by Blum; a marvelously executed facsimile of a black-and-white by Abbey; a Vierge, and a Myrbach. Not the least remarkable Mature of these ornaments was the manner of their framing, A Parisienne, by Jules Cheret, for instance, all skirts and chic, looked as if she had just burst through the confines of a prison-wall of a daily paper. The carelessly serrated edges, then the white matting, and the brown frame gave a whole that was worth looking at twice. An etching--one of Beardsley's fantasies--was framed all in black; it was more effective than the original.

Over the mantel were scattered photographs of stage divinities in profusion. Many of them had autographs scrawled across the face of the picture. In a niche in the wall a human skull, with a clay pipe stuck jauntily between the teeth, looked out over the smoke.

From the next room, beyond the open portieres, came the sound of a violin and a piano.

The air of Mascagni's "Intermezzo" died away, and for it was substituted a slow dirge-like melody. Belden, in the front room, broke out into an explosive, "Ah, that's the stuff! Everybody sing: 'For they're hangin' Danny Deever in the mohn-nin'.'" The wail of that solemn ballad went echoing through the house, all the men present joining in. Belden, who had been lying at full length on the floor, explaining the beauties of a charcoal drawing by Menzel to a group of three other artists--Marsboro, of the _Telegraph_, Evans, of the _Standard_, and a younger man, Stevely, who was still going to the Art School--had jumped to his feet and was slowly waving a pencil in mock leadership of a chorus. Vanstruther, who was stealing an evening from society for Bohemia's sake, was far back in a huge rocking chair; a fantastic work by Octave Uzanne on his knee, and his legs stretched out over the center table; he now held his pipe in his hand and hummed the refrain in a deep bass.

"Go on," urged Belden, as the last notes moaned themselves away in the smoke, "go on, give us something else!" But Stanley laid his violin down on a bookcase and declared that his arm was tired.

Vanstruther pulled at his pipe again, until he was sure he still had fire. Then he declared, oracularly, "Stanley, you look tremendously religious tonight. Been jilted?

"No, shaved. You confirm an impression I have that a man never feels so religious as when he has just been shaved. I assure you that in this way I could really read one of your 'shockers,' Van, and feel that I was doing my duty."

"Oh," Belden cut in, going over to one of the bookcases, "anything to stop Stanley from hearing himself talk. It makes him drunk. Seeing we had a ballad of Kipling's just now, suppose some one reads something of his. Then someone else can sit still, and think of his sins, while the pen-and-ink men make sketches of him. How'll that do, eh?

"All right." It was Vanstruther, whose voice came from over the smoke. "I'll read if you like; and Stanley can get a far-away expression into his countenance, while you other fellows put his ephemeral beauty on paper. What'll it be?"

Stanley, who was rolling himself onto a sofa in the corner, murmured, while he rolled a cigarette with a deft motion of his fingers, "Oh, give us that yarn about the things in a dead man's eye, what's the title again--'At the End of the Passage', isn't it? I'm in the mood for something of that pleasant sort. By the way, aren't we a man shy, Belden?"

"Yes. Young Lancaster hasn't arrived yet. I had a great time getting him to say he would come; he has scruples about Sunday, and all that sort of thing; but he'll turn up pretty soon, I know. Here's the book, Van." He handed the volume across the table. Stanley, after a few chaffing remarks had passed back and forth, was arranged into a position that would give the artists a sharp profile to work from. The artists began sharpening pencils, and pinning paper on drawing boards. And then, for a time, there was nothing but the sounds of pens and pencils going over paper, and Vanstruther's voice reading that story of Indian heat and hopelessness. In the other room McRoy, the man who had been playing Stanley's piano accompaniment, was reading Swinburne to himself.

The bell rang suddenly. Belden threw his sketch down and opened the door. "Lancaster, I suppose," he said. Then they heard his voice in the hall, greeting the newcomer, who was presently ushered in and airily made known to such of the men as he had not yet been introduced to.

"You've just missed a treat, my boy," said Belden, pushing Dick into a chair. "Vanstruther has been reading us a yarn of Kipling's. You're fond of Kip., I suppose?"

While Dick said, "Oh, yes, indeed," Stanley put in.

"It's lucky for you you are, because Belden here swears by the trinity of Kipling, Riley and Henri Murger. He has occasional flirtations with other authors, but he generally comes back to those three. But then, when you get to know Belden better, you will realize that he has what is technically known as 'rats in his garret.' Do you know what he once did, just to illustrate? Walked miles in a bleak country district that he might reach a certain half-disabled bridge and there sit, reading De Quincey's 'Vision of Sudden Death' by moonlight! The man who can do that can do anything that's weird."

"There's only one way to stop your tongue, Stanley," Belden remarked humoredly, "and that is to ask you to play for us again. Lancaster has never heard you yet, you know."

Stanley looked out into the other room. "What do you say, Mac? Shall we tune our harps again?"

"Just as cheap," said the other, without looking up from his book.

They began to play. From Raff's "Cavatina," they strayed into a melody by Rubinstein; then it was a wild gallop through comic operas, popular songs, and Bowery catches. While they played the men in the other room began comparing sketches. Vanstruther ushered Dick into many of the artistic treasure-holds that the room contained. Also, he supplied him with running comments on some of the things they saw all about them. Dick, though he scarcely felt at ease, felt strongly the fascination of all this devil-may-care atmosphere. The haze of smoke; the melodious airs from beyond the portieres; the careless attire and jaunty nonchalance of the men, all drew him with a sort of sensual hypnotism, even while his inner being felt that he himself was a little better than this. He was in the land of Don't-Care; dogmas, creeds, faiths had no place here; everything was "do as you please, and let your neighbor please himself." He said but little; he thought a great deal.

One of the artists called Vanstruther over to the open bookcase, to show him a sketch by Gibson. Dick looked about him, picked up a copy of Omar Khayyam, that had Vedder's illustrations, and buried himself in the gentle philosophy of that classic.

But Belden was again become restless. Mere melody never did anything but irritate him. "Oh, play some nigger music," he asked. Then, when a few merry jingles from "'Way down South" had played themselves in and out of the echoes, Stanley put his violin down with a decisive gesture. "There, I've paid my way, I think!" When the piano had been closed, and the violin laid away in its case, he went on, "'Seems to me it's about time you were bringing along your friend Murger?"

Belden walked toward the shelf where the "Scènes de la Vie de Bohème" had its place. As he took it out, however, he said, "Come to think of it, Marsboro's going to commit matrimony pretty soon, I hear. Any objections?" He held the volume in the air, questioningly.

Marsboro laughed, and shook his head. "No, no," he said, "go on!"

"Just as if," Stanley observed, "a man about to be married knew what objections were! Dante Gabriel Belden, in some things you are weirdly primitive."

"I would sooner be primitive than effete," was Belden's retort.

Stanley turned to Marsboro. "Don't think me curious, old man, but is it any girl I know?"

Before Marsboro could reply, Vanstruther broke in with, "I'll bet money it's not! You don't suppose Marsboro is likely to think of marrying a woman with a past!"

Marsboro flushed a little; and moved uneasily in his chair. Dick, looking up from his Omar Khayam, wondered how the man could endure such verbal pitch and toss with such a subject.

But Stanley turned away from the matter with a sneer. "My dear fellow," he said, "if it will soothe your sweet soul, I am quite willing to admit that in the course of my life I have known some women who had pasts. They are invariably interesting. The only difference between a woman with a past and a man of the same sort is that the man still has a future before him. And a man with a future is as pathetic as a little boy chasing a butterfly: even if he wins the game, there is nothing but a corpse, and some dust on his fingers."

Belden, turning the pages of the Murger, said, deprecatingly, "Don't get Stanley started on moral reflections: in the first place, they are not moral; in the second place they reflect nothing but his own perverted soul. Talking morals with some men is like turning the pages of an edition de luxe with inky fingers."

Stanley laughed. "Good boy! But now go on with Rodolph and his flirtations. Where did you leave off? Hadn't he just written some poetry, spent the proceeds on feasting his friends, and the night in a tree?"

Belden began to read.

In spite of himself, Dick began to feel the fascination of Murger's recital of all those rollicking, roystering episodes in the Latin Quarter. He let the Omar fall idly into his lap, and gave himself up to listening to Belden's reading. The other men smoked and smiled. Dick's sense of humor told him that there was something quaint in the way Belden intentionally fed his own love for Bohemianism with another's description; none the less he admitted that there was no sham, dilettante Bohemianism about this place and the men present. It was not the Bohemianism of claw-hammer coats and high-priced champagne; of little suppers, after the theater, in a black and gold boudoir, where the women tasted some Welsh rarebit and declared that they were afraid it was "awfully Bohemian, don't you know!" It was the Bohemia that recked naught of others, but had as banner, "Do as you please," and as watchword "Don't care." It was the old philosophy of Epicurus brought to modern usage.

The good-humored account that. Henri Murger gave of so many picturesque light-love escapades, that had so much of pathos mingled with their unmorality, began to find in Dick a vein of sympathy. He felt that it was all very pleasant; all was charmingly put; it was interesting.

"There," Belden declared, as he finished reading the episode of the flowers that Musette watered every night, because she had promised to love while those blossoms lived, "I'm dry, that's what I am. I think it's about time we investigated. Come on into the kitchen, people. There's some coffee and cake and fruit. Shouldn't wonder if you could find a bottle or two of beer on the ice, too."

They trooped out, through a room and corridor, to the kitchen. There was a bare, deal table, a cooking range, a gas stove, a refrigerator and several doors leading to closets. Every man brought his own chair. A search was begun for cups, plates, knives and forks. Each man sat down where he pleased. The coffee that was made was hardly such as one gets at Tortoni's, but it was refreshing, nevertheless. The sound of corks drawing from beer-bottles, of knives rattling on plates, and of indiscriminate, lusty chatter filled the place. Belden was the master-spirit. He saw that everyone helped himself; he chaffed and he laughed; he looked after the provender and the cigars. The infection of all this jollity touched Dick; he began to say to himself that to worry himself "with conscientious scruples just because it was on a Sunday instead of a Monday that all this happened, was to be something of a prig." And he had always had a decided aversion to being that particular sort of nuisance. He resigned himself completely to the spirit of the time and place.

McRoy broke into the babel of talk with a plaintive, "Everybody listen for about a minute, will you? I want to ask Belden a solemn question: Belden, have you finished that copy of 'Old-World Idyls' that you were going to illustrate for me in pen-and-ink, on the margins?"

Belden smiled. "Why, to tell you the truth, old man--" he began, but the other interrupted him with, "There! publicly branded! Belden, you're the awfulest breaker of oaths that ever was let live. You've had the book six months, and I'll bet you've never drawn a stroke on it!"

"The mistake you made," put in Stanley, "was to believe that he ever _would_ do the thing. He once made a promise of that sort to me, but that was so long ago that I think I'm another person now."

"If the theory of evolution is correct," said Vanstruther, "your late lamented self must have been and abominably corrupt person."

Stanley sighed, "Perhaps so. I am trying, you know, day by day, to approach the sublime pinnacle on which you, my dear Van, tower above the rest of mankind. However--" he reached his arm out over the table--"Any beer left over there?"

Belden handed a mug and a bottle over to him.

"By the way," cut in Marsboro, "ever had any more trouble with the neighbors here? Said you kept them awake Sunday nights with your unholy orgies, didn't they?"

"Yes. But I said if they were going to kick on that score I would get out an injunction against that girl of theirs that is always trying to play 'After the Ball', with one hand. So I fancy our lances are both at rest."

So, with much careless clatter, and exchange of banter, they ate and drank lustily until their hunger was appeased. Then, pushing their plates and mugs into the middle of the table they leaned back to enjoy the pleasures of the god Nicotine. And presently someone hinted that the empty plates and the litter of the late-lamentedness in general was not a cheering sight and they might as well proceed into the studio again. There was a shoving back of chairs, a trooping through the corridor, and they were all assembled once more in the front rooms. McRoy hid himself behind a book. The others grouped themselves around the piano. The plaintiff strains of Chevalier's "The Future Mrs. 'Awkins" filled the room, born aloft on the impetus of five pairs of lungs.

There was a violent ringing at the outer bell. It was some little time before the men at the piano heard the din; it was only at McRoy's muttered "Somebody's pulling your front door bell off the wires, Belden!" that the latter went to open. The men in the room could hear the sound of a man's voice, a quick passage of sentences, then good-nights, all vaguely, over the strains of the coster-ditty.

"What do you think," said Belden, coming in again, "has happened? It was Ditton, of the _Telegraph_--lives a door or two north--just dropped in to tell me a bit of news that he thought would interest me. Wooton of the '_Torch_'? has disappeared, leaving the property deeply in debt. Nobody knows where he is. Jove, come to think of it, that's pretty rough news for you, Lancaster!"

"Yes," said Lancaster, "it is. And yet there is one consolation, he paid me within a week of what was due me."

There was a cessation of all other discussion to make room for the consideration of this bit of news. Everybody agreed that it was too bad that so good a sheet as the "Torch" should go the way of the majority. Concerning Wooton the opinions differed. Belden began to apologize to Lancaster for having led him into this "mess," as he called it, while Stanley sneered at everybody for not having seen through Wooton long ago.

"He is inordinately vain," said Stanley, "and frightfully extravagant. Clever. Lazy--awfully lazy. He can sit back in his chair and tell you how to run the New York _Herald_, and he has been able to get nothing profitable into or out of his paper from the time he began until now. He theorizes beautifully; the only thing he can really do successfully is to borrow money and talk to women. He used to amuse me just in the way an actor amuses me. Half the time I think he was deceiving even himself. I always thought he would do this very thing, one of these days. He used to have what old women call 'spells' now and again, when he found himself hard up for cash, that were really the most curious performances. He would stay away from his office altogether; genius as he was in warding off collectors, he used to prefer not to face them sometimes. There was--I should say there is--a woman, one of the cleverest, most cultured woman in town, who was fond of him in an elderly-sister sort of way, and he used to go to her and borrow money. Think of it: borrow money from a woman! She saw through him long ago, I know, and yet he used to use such artifice--such tears, and promises of betterment as the men employed!--that she always helped him in the end. Then he gambled to try to make the big stake that would enable him to run a rich man's paper; the only result is that he got deeper and deeper into the hole. All the time he avoided his office; if he scraped up a banknote or two he would send them along, per messenger boy, to the foreman of the composing-room and have the printers paid, at least. You must pay the printers and the pressmen, you know, even if you let a lot of literary devils starve! And then some guardian angel would send along a college chum, or some fellow with more loyality than discretion, and A.B. Wooton would make a big 'borrow' and be once more the genial, cynical man-of-the-world that the rest of you know. This time I presume the angel refused to come. The end had to come; it was simply a huge game of 'bluff.'"

"How is it you know all this?" asked one of the others.

"My dear fellow," was Stanley's answer, "I have _gambled_ with him. All through one of those periods when he was engaged, ostrich-like, in sticking his head into the sand, I was with him. Besides, I know something of his private affairs. He had sunk all of his own money long ago; for the last year or so the _Torch_ and Wooton have been living on the gullibility of others. It seems strange that this should be possible in this smart American city, but Wooton was not an ordinary bluffer; he was a genius. Owing you hundreds of dollars he could talk to you all day so skilfully on the one especial vanity of your heart that you would feel much more like offering him another hundred than like even so much as mentioning the old debt. I feel sorry for him. He should have a patron, to humor him in all his extravagances; he would be splendid, splendid!"

But Lancaster, whom the news had touched a good deal, declared that it was time he was taking himself off. Belden accompanied him to the door, and spoke to him encouragingly about another position that he thought Dick could easily obtain. Then Lancaster passed out into the night.