CHAPTER V

THE IRONWORKERS' BALL--AND MAISIE

"You fool!" remarked former Alderman Goldberg to his man, Mulligan, when he learned a little later that night of the spirited occurrence in his bar room. "You fool! Don't you know no better than to put it onto a newspaper guy? Don't you know he can make all kinds of trouble for us if he wants to? Don't you know nothin'? Just because he did up a pal of yours,--and God knows he had it comin' to him!--is that any reason you've got to pitch into the bloke and set a lot of bees stingin' us? You're a bright one, ain't you? You're a rotten stiff!" fulminated Goldberg, while his assistant scowled and said nothing. "I'll tell you one thing," concluded Goldberg, "if they make any trouble for me out of your fool break, you get the run, see?"

But no trouble ensued and Mulligan remained. Micky, having come out ahead, laughed at his rough treatment as a part of a good joke, being no whiner. There was no disposition at the Courier office to cause Goldberg any more trouble than it was hoped was due him after the next election, along with his mates. All the Courier's hopes were centered on that pleasing goal.

Micky's night off, a little later in the week, fell uneventfully, and it was with distinct boredom that he tried to kill time. He was invariably uneasy at these brief intervals of respite from the grind, and it might be said that he enjoyed himself in discontent. It was with a generally ennuied air that he sauntered at midnight into a night lunch room much frequented by the Courier staff and encountered Dick there, whom he greeted with enthusiasm. It happened that Dick was through especially early that evening.

An odd friendship had arisen between these two, so dissimilar and yet so like in the welding quality of good fellowship and thorough bohemianism. It was this restless spirit, the arch-enemy of commercial routine, that had drawn Dick into journalism after leaving college. The step was a disappointment to his father, who had hoped that Dick would elect to enter the parent's office and learn the business from the ground up. He did not oppose Dick's inclinations, however, thinking that a little experience would weary him of his idea. Thus far, however, there seemed little likelihood that Dick would leave the fascinating grind for the more substantial though more prosaic office desk. He had taken naturally to journalism, was a ready and pleasing writer, and he liked it.

It was the same restless spirit, too, linked with an inborn, luring love of roving and shift of scene, that fired O'Byrn. A happy vagabond, his eyes were filled ever with the charm of new scenes that all too soon grew old. Always were fair mirages to glow on his horizon, bringing him hurrying on--to find them faded. Dream-houses, built on barren sands, dissolving in mists of tears as the years spell the bitter, brutal thing that we call wisdom! Always for him, strange little Irishman, the luring whisper from afar and the mad dash thither, to find as before only chill mists and brooding shadows; and so on, over the wastes, to silence and the end.

"What have you done with yourself?" inquired Dick, as the two settled themselves comfortably before their sandwiches and coffee. "Find anything worth while?"

"Oh, early in the evenin' I dropped into Ryan's roof garden," replied Micky. "The first stunt wasn't so bad; then they rang in one of those cockney carolers from dear ol' Lunnon. He got off a yowl about--

"'Wipe no more, my lidy, Oh, wipe no more to die--'

and I got out. Suggested a scullery strike and business, and it was my night off.

"Blew along and met a bunch of the boys at the Gold Coin. They had started in early and were left-handed in both feet and hangin' onto the bar like a freighter in a recedin' tide. They tried to annex me, but I faded away. I'm through. The budge-mixer's the natural enemy of the profesh. He gets your money and you get next, but it's never till the next morning. I knew a district attorney once, up north, who had been prosecutin' a gang of cheap thieves from a bum district of the county. He was gettin' off his final spiel, and it was a beaut'. 'Gentlemen of the jury,' he yells, 'they don't raise anything on the Pine Plains but hell and huckleberries!' and it was no lie.

"Now on whisky the product's even more limited. You just raise hell. No more for me, I'm stickin' to suds. It's popular, the red-eye, but it doesn't last and then it does. There's nothing in it but a pneumatic head and a nimbus of cracked ice in the mornin'. Your Uncle Mike--Why, hello, Fatty!"

Fatty Stearns had ambled in and stood regarding them with a tender smile. Glenwood pulled him into a chair and invited him to order what he wanted. Stearns was soon busy.

"Just ran out for lunch," came from him in muffled tones. "I'm up to my neck in that golf game you didn't have time to do," he told Glenwood with a reproachful glance. "It's got me wingin'."

There were strange gurglings from Micky, grown suddenly wild-eyed. "Fatty, Fatty!" he moaned. "Did you say 'game?'"

"Sure he did!" answered Dick truculently. "What's the matter with it, you little ape? I play it."

Micky dissolved in simulated sobs. "He plays it!" he groaned. "Oh, why was he ever born, Eliza? Better never have been born than born a slave!"

"We will listen, Micky," remarked Dick deliberately, "to any objections you have to the greatest, most healthful--"

"Oh, fudge!" interrupted Micky. "I was there once and it's a wonder I didn't turn out a lush for life. Honest, I'd done everything in my time, but that assignment got me wingin'. I get cross-eyed yet every time I think about it and I talk really maudlin. I can't tell what I say those times but the boys say it's fierce. Say I murmur fool talk about putting it onto the green and bawling on the bunkers. I don't know. I guess I got it all in my head that time, but somehow I never could make it jibe.

"You see it was when I was on the Signal in Gulf City. Old man sent for me one day and says, 'There's a three-day golf meet starts tomorrow morning and it's up to you.'

"Now ordinarily I'm the last to buck at any assignment, but I'd seen a fellow dislocate his jaw once on some of the vocabulary of that game, so I sparred for wind.

"'I don't know anything about it,' says I.

"'Neither does anyone else,' says he.

"'Do the players?' I asks him.

"'Damfino!' he came back at me. 'Ask 'em. That's what you're for.'

"So behold your Uncle Mike, Dick, about nine the next morning looping the links. I had done a fuss stunt and was got up regardless. Had one of those long cutaways that dallied with my ankles; they hadn't gone out in Gulf City. I saw a bunch of busy boys humped up around a dinky flag and started for 'em to ask 'em about it. One of 'em, I judged, was gettin' ready to whale a toad or somethin' with an umbrella handle. He'd hocked his hat and hadn't kept much more than his shirt on anyway; barrin' a pair of pants that had got elephant-tiss-siss-siss, or whatever you call it, and looked like they came off the pile way back in the happy hitherto. His shirt sleeves were rolled up and his arms were the color of sun-cured tobacco, or the mud pies that sister used to bake. Oh, he was a beam-baked child of nature all right. Well, he sees me comin' toward him, and straightens up and gives me the cold storage stare.

"'Here, you!' he yells, 'I can't drive over you!'

"'No, you bet you can't!' I yells back. 'Ain't it scandalous you can't? Why can't you? Did you hock the horse along with the hat? Here, go buy yourself a new one of both!' and I tosses him a dime.

"They didn't say anything but it grew kind o' chilly, so I turns up my coat collar and wanders along and by and by I came to the club house.

"It was gorgeous enough around there, looked like the short end at the surrender of Yorktown. My fuss stunt looked like mourning in that color scheme. I drifted around, feelin' lonesome and like a drab tassel on a red fringe. It was a new one on me, but by and by I got a look-in on the pools. They had a set of cards tacked on the board.

"There was a big geezer in a sunrise coat goin' by just then. I annexed him. 'What's those?' I asked him, pointin' to the cards.

"'Why, the scores, of course,' says he, tryin' to jerk away.

"'Well, how many times do they score before they start?' I asks, hangin' on. And honestly, Dick, I didn't know. I was one up in the air with the parachute busted, and it certainly looked slow to me.

"He broke away, wouldn't answer me at all. It was no way to treat a lonesome tassel. He deserved to be censured for turning me adrift.

"Well, after awhile I struck a pretty decent guy, if he did wear a horse blanket for a vest. He said he'd help me out, that the scorers were busy. I suppose they were flaggin' the bad actors.

"This accommodatin' chap began to go over the cards with me. I got along all right for a while till I got to an X mark. 'What's this?' I asked him.

"'Oh,' says he, 'that's because he struck his caddy.'

"'For how much?' I asks. 'Besides, I supposed the caddies were the ones to strike. They need the money. What races has this bloke been playin' lately? Must have bet on some brute that ran like cold molasses.'

"'You don't understand,' says he. 'He struck his caddy with the ball. It knocks him out.'

"'I should think it would,' says I, running my finger down the list. 'Here's a fellow with two X's. That's two down, ain't it? I should think a ten-strike would make a caddy feel sore for fair.'

"'It makes a player use language when he does that,' says the accommodatin' chap, starin' at the board and lookin' reminiscent.

"'Does the caddy contribute?' I asked him.

"He didn't pay any attention to that, but kept on lookin' dreamy-eyed. But I wanted to find out about things, so I kept at him.

"'Say,' I says, 'I notice every once in a while one of those guys yells 'Fore!' That means he's just hit the caddy four times, doesn't it? The caddy gets all that's comin' to him, doesn't he?'

"And with that he came to and gave me a sad look-over. Then he faded away and I floated around lonesome again, lookin' for some one to put me wise. After a while I heard a couple of swell dames talkin'.

"'Theah,' one of 'em says, 'my deah, see those two young men? They ah the Sherrod twins. I declaiah, they ah so much alike that I cawn't tell one from the othah. One of them's an expert golfah, but I declaiah, I cawn't tell which one he is. I cawn't guess why he isn't playing today. The othah one doesn't play at all.'

"I took a look, and sure enough, they were as near alike as campaign promises. My move was cut out for me all right and I made a stab at it. I steered up against one of 'em and buttonholed him.

"'Say,' says I, 'are you you or your brother?'

"He looked kind of wild for a minute, but steadied. 'Why, I guess I'm me,' he says, as if he wasn't sure of it.

"'Well, you're the man I'm lookin' for,' says I. 'The other one doesn't play.' Sure enough, he was the right one. He was all right, barrin' the mashie microbe, and he started in to put me next. It would have been all hunk, only he was the soul of hospitality and I always hate to say no. Besides, I wanted to forget it.

"It was highballs till sunset and then I went away after sticking out both fins for farewell shakes with him both, for he looked like both him and his twin to me. It must have been a mistake, for I have a hazy recollection that the one who didn't play left early. Anyway, my friend might have been a sextette or a full chorus choir, for they all looked alike to me about that time. I got down town, thinkin' about writin' my story every now and then, and I fell in with a gang.

"The last I remember of that story I was in the backroom of a saloon tryin' to write it. I was writin' about two words to a page about then, though once in a while I would make an extra brace and get in three. It was 'steen down and a bluff to play with me and I was foozled for fair. My stuff wouldn't make sense. It just gibbered. I don't know just when I called it off, but I think it was just after I had scrawled a screed to the effect that 'Willie Van Hackensack, instead of approaching the tea as he should, had bunked hazardous highballs till he was batty in his loft.' It was no lie, either, only it didn't belong in the story.

"That story never got to the Signal, Fatty, and I didn't either. It got lost somewhere and so did I. I came out of it about a week later, with Gulf City 'way back beyant the blue and me sitting by the old familiar track, waiting for a freight.

"No golf in mine, Dick, it holed me for fair. It's an excuse, that's all. When you aren't out huntin' low balls you're inside huntin' highballs. After a while you can't tell a mashie from a ball bat. I don't know what a mashie is, but I do know what a highball bat is. It's generally a job, unless you break it off in the middle. Do you follow me, Fatty? If you do, I'm sorry for you."

It was with a windy sigh and a look of added dejection that Fatty Stearns rose to return to the office and finish his account of the golf tourney. "Just forget what Micky told you," called Dick after him, "or you'll get all mixed up and get the run in the morning." Then he surveyed Micky with that smile, so exasperating in golfers, the smile of forgiving pity for the man outside.

"Of course, you never played, Micky," he remarked. "If you ever had--"

"Forget it, Dick," said Micky briskly. "I want to. Say, do you dance?"

"Why, I don't know," answered Dick doubtfully, taken aback by the swift change of subject. "Ask some of my partners. I'm in doubt myself and aching to know."

"And they know and are aching," grinned Micky. "Well, we'll try you out. Come on," he added, rising, "let's go over to the Ironworkers' ball. They'll be going for an hour yet." They left the cafe, and after a little bolted up the wide stairway of a big brick block. Encountering a stalwart young fellow behind a ticket table on a landing, Dick's hand sought his pocket. Micky restrained him, and nodding to the sentry, who knew him, they passed up to the final landing, where a burst of music saluted them. A number of couples were "cooling off" there. Dick peered curiously inside. "How do they dance in such a crush?" he inquired.

"Why, when these husky guys are dancin' with 'em," explained Micky, "their feet don't touch the floor at all, and the men don't count."

Indeed, the brawny cavaliers were well nigh making Micky's comment good. The prompter, a big red-faced fellow with a bull's voice, just then roared, "Swing your partners!" It was the relished order, for every ironworker there had from earliest dancing days devoted himself without mercy to the mastery of the art of swinging. At the welcome call, each swain, an arm encircling his partner's waist gently but firmly, placed one calloused paw against the lady's back, just below the shoulder blades, while her palm sought his arm. His other hand sought her free one and extended it out sideways and a little upward. This served a double purpose, sufficing to fend off danger from colliding circlers and to add impetus to the ensuing maelstrom. Then, while the fiddlers bent to their work, there whizzed a general centrifugal whirl, with a soft scuff of pivoting feet and the swish of agitated lingerie. That it was as delightful as dizzying was evidenced by the appreciative comments of the breathless fair, as the spinning knights halted them, preparatory to starting the next figure.

"I'm a thirty-third on that," announced Micky complacently. "Can you do it, Dick?"

Dick was dubious. "Well, probably they'll have a waltz or two-step next," proceeded Micky reassuringly. "They sandwich in round ones after every square deal lately. Gettin' what Bill Nye called ray-sher-shay. Come on, here's one I know. I'll put you next for the next." He dragged Dick over to a big blonde and left them introduced and waiting for a two-step.

The quadrille ended and Micky watched the dancers scrambling for seats, of which there were an insufficiency. The overflow billowed out upon the landing, laughing and demanding room at the open windows. Micky, from the doorway, beheld with sudden interest a vision seated across the hall. He grasped an acquaintance by the arm.

"Say, Lacy," he demanded impetuously, "if you know that, knock me down to it, will you?"

So Micky was conveyed across the room and formally knocked down to Miss Maisie Muldoon. The end was well worth his enterprise. Small and prettily formed, with eyes of truest Irish blue, the loveliest shade of brown hair extant and a complexion of milk and roses, she was charming. She was simply gowned in duck skirt and an airy confection of diaphanous white waist, which revealed tantalizing glimpses of sweet white neck and arms. Micky mentally registered her "a dream."

"Will you dance?" he asked, crowding into a seat beside her.

"Oh, I don't know, Mr.--er--O'Byrn," she answered. "My card seems to be full already. I might give you an extra, if they have one," with a mischievous glance.

"You might scratch half a dozen of those names," suggested Micky easily, "and substitute mine. It looks prettier."

"I believe you're a newspaper man, aren't you?" freezingly. "Seems to me I've heard so."

"How do you like 'em?" he demanded, his impudent eyes twinkling.

"If you're any sample, they seem to have a crust," witheringly.

"So does any good thing," he chuckled. "Don't you like pie?"

She laughed in spite of herself. "Say," she acknowledged, turning her charming face toward his freckled one with decided interest, "you ain't so worse! I almost wish I had a dance for you."

"Maybe one of 'em will die," said Micky hopefully. "If I can be of any help--"

"The music's starting," she interrupted. "It's a two-step and I've got it with Billy Ryan. He's rotten on that. Are you?"

"I'm probably the ripest peach of a two-stepper," averred Micky, "that ever triangled down a floor. I'm a pippin. Where is your gazabe?"

"I don't know," she replied, looking about frowningly. "Maybe he won't come." Micky waxed complacent at the discreet hope lingering in her tone.

The dance was well under way. Dick shuffled past, the big blonde in his arms. He seemed enjoying himself. Micky grew impatient.

"Went out for another drink, I guess," remarked Miss Maisie disgustedly, in another moment. "Come on, I sha'n't wait for him," and she rose.

"Went a block for a beer with a Manhattan right inside," murmured Micky, as they prepared to start. "Oh, you g'wan!" she laughed, and they swung into the revolving circle.

Micky's boast of terpsichorean ability made good, (he had picked up the art long before, as readily as he did everything else,) he was rewarded with two more regulars and an extra before the affair ended. One of the regulars was originally scheduled with the recreant Ryan, who appeared for it in due course and retired congealed, with a black look at the grinning O'Byrn. The other regular had originally been Miss Muldoon's cousin's. She transferred it airily, but the cousin bore it with the equanimity of a mere relative.

"I suppose you've got company home?" inquired Micky, with a certain mournful hesitation, as they were finishing the last dance.

"Not yet," she answered demurely. "That is," with a flash of blue eyes, "Mr. Ryan brought me but he sha'n't take me back. He's too thirsty. That first dance you got was the second he'd missed with me."

"Forget him!" breathed Micky ecstatically. "I'm in luck." He invariably took things for granted.

"But," she recollected, chilling somewhat, "I haven't accepted your escort yet, Mr.--er--O'Byrn. I never met you till tonight."

"O, happy night!" he retorted, with the impudence that time would never wither nor custom stale. "Aren't you glad you came?"

She laughed again, a girlish, joyous laugh that warmed the heart in the hearing. "I'm it," she averred. "You are certainly the limit. But you aren't in such luck as you think. It's a long way home."

"Never too long with you for a pacemaker," he assured her. "And luck--I know the varieties. I've had all kinds." So, as the last waltz ceased and the dancers prepared for departure, he hastened to the door, where Dick was waiting for him, and dismissed that gentleman. Glenwood raised his eyebrows comprehensively and departed alone.

The way was short to Mulberry Avenue, all too short for Micky, and as for the lady--well, it would have seemed longer had the discredited Ryan been in her company. There was the first faint hint of dawn in the shrouded sky as Micky left the girl at her door and turned away, with her gracious permission to call on his next night off. So Micky turned to retrace the way now suddenly grown long; agitated stirrings in his warm Irish heart that he could not have explained, those first faint harbingers that come to us all, poor children of fleeting youth, and are stilled ere we can understand.

Ah, youth! with its thrilled pulses and fragrant, unspoiled heart, its mysteries divine--and the arid waste beyond, when dreams are done! It's a long way home, indeed!