Part 18

The lights were coming out on the avenue one by one when they returned to the Arcade. He stopped, suddenly solicitous of her, on the point of suggesting that she might prefer not to be seen returning thus. But, when this return of the worldly instinct was phrasing a question, she deliberately slipped her arm through his in a closer intimacy. He laughed contentedly.

“Why do you laugh?” she said, waving her hand to Myrtle Popper, who was on guard at Joey Shine’s window.

“It was an honest laugh,” he said evasively.

The naturalness and the directness of her nature, the simple force of her emotions, unfettered by self-consciousness, in contrast with the worldliness in which he had moved, overcame him, as the clear breath of the open fields sometimes is too overpowering to those who seek it in city weariness.

And so, arm in arm, defiant of the world, they returned to the Arcade where, only a few hours before, he had come in despair and surrender, seeing the end of all things. For a moment, the whole pack of cringing doubts--of himself, of her, of the waking realism of the morrow, of distrust for the enduring quality of dramatic moments--doubts that often caused him to laugh aloud in bitterness, came howling around him. Were the tingling sensations of awaking curiosity, the delight in singing sounds and thronging life, the overwhelming passion to be, to know himself still alive, but the mirage of a fool’s paradise? She felt the inner trouble in him, and drew her arm closer to his, saying, with already a beginning of proprietorship:

“What are you mumbling to yourself like that?”

“Call it a prayer,” he said, half in earnest, half in jest.

XXVI

“And when in the grave Her laddie they laid, Her heart then broke, And she fervently prayed: O God in Heaven, Let me go, too, And be wi’ my laddie--so guid and true!”

So sang Millie Brewster in her faint, pleasant soprano, while O’Leary, at the piano, nodded encouragement, and interpolated brilliant roulades into the accompaniment. The skylight was open in deference to the first warmth of the spring, as March went out like a lamb. Tootles, in overalls, so splashed with variegated tints that they might have passed for an impressionistic landscape, was giving the last tender touches to the completed canvas of the Well-dressed Man Contemplated By The Ages. Schneibel, who had stolen up between appointments, in his white dentist’s coat, was dividing his admiration between the contemplation of Tootles’ masterpiece and that critical attention which one great singer bestows upon the performance of another. Mr. Pomello, his high hat pushed back from his forehead, his hands on his cane, was sitting in judgment, with a view to giving Millie a trial performance at the Gloria, the moving-picture theater below, where King O’Leary thundered nightly on the piano. Flick, who had organized the demonstration with the express intention of capturing Mr. Pomello, sat well forward, nodding his head in a romantic, melancholy way, occasionally clearing his throat to convey emotion repressed with difficulty.

“Bravo!” said Tootles loudly, when the lass of bonnie Dundee had been laid away in true ballad form.

“You had me going,” said Flick, rubbing his eyes industriously, while King O’Leary patted the frightened girl on the back in rough encouragement.

“How about it, Pomello?” he said, wheeling on his stool. “That ought to take the house by storm.”

At this moment, a pounding was heard on the wall, followed by several “Bravas!” in Dangerfield’s deep voice.

“I like that better than the first thing she sang,” said Pomello; “got more stuff to it.”

“Sure--the first was just fireworks--grand-opera stuff--opens up the voice,” said O’Leary.

“Well, I don’t know anything about singing, but I know what I like,” said Pomello, who, by this phrase, doubly barred himself from the sphere of the higher criticism. “Sing something more, something sentimental.”

“What would you like?” said Millie.

Pomello reflected. His acquaintance was limited.

“Sing ‘The Rosemary.’”

At the end of the song (“The Rosary” was then only in the beginning of its devastating march), which Millie, with her eyes on O’Leary, sang with surprising fervor and pathos, great tears were rolling down Pomello’s wrinkled face. He was delighted. He hobbled over and shook Millie by the hands, and the engagement was ratified, to the joy of every one.

As a matter of fact, his indecision had only been a pretense. The question had been decided from the moment that Myrtle Popper had indicated her desire. During the last month, Pomello’s infatuation had become public property, though few, perhaps, divined the seriousness of it.

The party broke up, Schneibel fired with enthusiasm, yodeling his way back to the realities of dentistry (than which nothing is more real), while Flick escorted Mr. Pomello with ceremony to the elevator.

“Well, Millie, you’re a professional now, all right!” said O’Leary, laughing. “Monday night’s the night.”

“I could sing anything if you were there,” said Millie, with a grateful glance, “when you’re at the piano, it’s just as though you had your arm--” She stopped, confused at a shout from Tootles, who poked his head around the corner, saying:

“Oh, don’t mind me, Millie!”

“Well, you know what I mean,” said the girl, blushing fiery red under O’Leary’s laughing eyes. “You just make me sing.”

“Sure, I’ll make you sing, all right,” said O’Leary.

“You’re awful kind,” said the girl, holding out her hand. “I know it was you got Pomello interested.”

Now, O’Leary had carefully concealed from her the fact that it was Myrtle, who, in the bigness of her heart, had persuaded him to this act of generosity, divining, perhaps, the mute jealousy slumbering behind Millie’s quiet looks. At this moment Myrtle Popper came in tumultuously.

“Hurrah!” she cried. “I’ve heard the news! Won’t it be grand? I’ll make Pomello pay real hard cash too.”

“_You_’ll make him?” said Millie, drawing back. She glanced at O’Leary, bit her lip, and became suddenly very quiet.

“Take a look at the great work, Myrtle,” said Tootles, hastily coming to the rescue. O’Leary began a furious procession of ragtime up and down the piano, while Myrtle, unconscious of the jealousy she had aroused, passed behind the canvas.

“Gee, but that’ll go big!” she said, in admiration, seeing only her own portrait, which was indeed flattering.

“Pomello couldn’t take his eyes off it,” said Tootles maliciously.

“Honest, it’s wonderful! Say, isn’t Pansy cute, too?”

“Rather good of ‘the baron’--looks no end of a swell doesn’t he?”

“Sure; you ought to make a million dollars out of that!” said Myrtle, and, after a moment, she added, “Couldn’t you put a ring or two on my fingers--that hand of mine looks awful bare.”

“Flick’s got a couple of the Ready-Made magnates fighting for admission,” said Tootles, ignoring her criticism. “Soon as we land one, won’t we have a celebration though!”

Meanwhile, Millie Brewster had leaned over O’Leary and whispered:

“King, if this is her doings, I won’t have a thing to do with it--do you hear? I won’t take favors from her!”

“Thank you for nothing!” said O’Leary, assuming an offended air, while his hands descended upon a resounding chord in the bass. He managed to look so fearfully angry that the girl’s heart sank at once.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered contritely; “but I won’t be patronized by her.”

“I suppose I don’t count,” said O’Leary, who seized the strategic attitude. “Millie, I’m ashamed of you!”

But at the moment when the girl was humbly imploring him with her eyes to forgive her, a new bombshell was exploded by Myrtle’s emerging and saying:

“King, something I want to say to you--excuse me everybody!”

O’Leary shrugged his shoulders, arose, and followed her.

No sooner had they left the room than Tootles advanced with a reproachful air.

“My dear girl--playing the game wrong--that’s not the clever way! Keep him guessing. Crude, very crude!”

“What does she throw herself at him that way for?” said Millie miserably.

“Whatever she does, don’t _you_ make a scene,” said Tootles, still in his superior manner. “Don’t be such an idiot as to show your jealousy.”

“How about you?” said the girl rebelliously.

“How about me--what do you mean, how about me?”

“And Pansy?”

“Miss Pansy Hartmann is nothing in my life,” said Tootles, classically cold. “I admire her, but that is all.”

“Well, that’s a blessing--for I saw her yesterday lunching at Healy’s with that Portuguese lawyer!”

“You saw her with Drinkwater?” said Tootles furiously, dropping his brushes in his excitement.

“Yesterday.”

“And she swore to me--” said Tootles, who began struggling out of his overalls in such indignation that the rest of the sentence was lost.

“No use--she’s out,” said Millie hastily, as Tootles bolted for the door.

“You saw her?” said Tootles wildly. “The little vixen, and I believed her, yes, believed her smiling, treacherous eyes!”

“Mr. Kidder, Mr. Kidder,” said Millie, now genuinely alarmed at the fury with which Tootles flung paints and paint-brushes on the floor and stamped on them, “you mustn’t take on like that!”

“That ends it--this is the end!” said Tootles, whose usually genial face was contorted with rage. “I wouldn’t believe her again if she swore on her mother’s grave.”

All at once, he gave a prolonged “Aha!” seized a knife, and rushed to the canvas. The girl in horror flung herself on him, crying to him not to destroy it.

“No; I won’t destroy it, but I’ll destroy her!” said Tootles wildly. “Let me go!”

“What are you going to do?” said Millie, still clinging to his arm.

“I’m going to paint her out,” said Tootles, as savagely as though he had said, “I’m going to have her blood.”

He flung away the knife, and, with an exclamation of delight, sprang for his brushes. In five minutes, in place of the glowing complexion of Pansy the tantalizing, the swarthy, copper-colored hue of an Ethiopian emerged!

“Good heavens, what have you done now?” exclaimed Millie, aghast.

“I have blotted her image forever from my memory!” said Tootles.

“You’ve ruined it,” said Millie, wringing her hands. “I didn’t mean to tell you--honest, I didn’t!”

Tootles, without conveying to her how easily the transformation could be effected back to the Caucasian, assumed the air of one chastened by suffering and said nobly:

“It is over. I thank you.”

Meanwhile, O’Leary had followed Myrtle into the hall, rather puzzled by the anxiety he had read in her look, not at all annoyed at being quarreled over by two pretty women.

“Suppose she’s going to make a scene, too,” he thought.

But, to his surprise, Myrtle, without seeming to have taken the slightest notice of what had just passed, said directly,

“King, you’ve got to take me out to dinner to-night--alone!”

“What’s up?”

“I’ve just got to talk to you. There’s no jolly--it’s dead serious.”

“Can’t you tell me now?”

“No, no,” she said hastily and, with some confusion, she came closer and wound her fingers in his coat. “I’ve never asked you to take me anywhere like this before, have I?”

“No; that’s a fact.”

“And you don’t think I would now if there wasn’t something I just had to talk over with you,” she said impulsively. “You’re the only living soul I can come to for advice, and I need it bad and quick.”

O’Leary looked at her and drew his eyes together.

“Is that straight?”

“Dead straight.”

“All right; it’s a go,” he said solemnly. “But I’ve got to be at the theater by seven-thirty.”

“I’ll be ready in an hour.”

He nodded acquiescence, more and more puzzled by her manner, and as she ran down to her manicuring, he hesitated at the door of his studio, made a wry face, and went down the hall to Dangerfield’s. The door was open. Belle Shaler was on the model-stand in the garb of a street urchin, hands on her hips, hair tousled, bare-armed, and throat revealed through the ragged blouse. The great yellow rug had been rolled to one side, and two easels were pitched. At one, Inga was working, while, at the other, Dangerfield was filling in a rapid sketch. He paid no attention to O’Leary’s entrance, bending eagerly to his work, clad in loose-flowing corduroy that bore the marks of a hundred skirmishes of the brush, and a gray-flannel shirt.

“Hello, King! Ain’t I a Venus in these mud-rags?” said Belle, with a shrug of her shoulders, for the reasons of this pose, which obliterated her natural graces, were beyond her comprehension. “Say, how did it go? Did Millie land him?”

“Hooked him clear through the gills. Monday’s the night.”

“Hold that pose!” said Dangerfield sharply. Inga sent a warning glance toward O’Leary.

“’Scuses!” said Belle hastily. In Dangerfield’s presence she was unaccountably subdued.

King O’Leary moved silently behind Inga, with an exclamation of pleasure at the charm of her arrangement. Under her deft fingers, the urchin on the model-stand had been blended into the dainty color-scheme for a magazine cover, and, instead of the shabby reality, a fragile, idealized figure with grapevines and clustered purple grapes greeted his eyes.

Then he turned to Dangerfield’s easel with renewed curiosity. Against the white canvas, a figure stood out in glaring boldness, done in flowing, powerful lines, a figure all human flesh and greedy life, defiant, common, vital, astonishing in the power of its ugliness, which no longer had the quality of ugliness, so alive and instantaneous was the unifying spark of the actual which held it together. And King O’Leary understood.

“God, that’s it!” he exclaimed.

“Rest--finished,” said Dangerfield. He glanced a moment at the sketch and turned away without further interest.

Belle Shaler strolled down, gave a look at the canvas, whistled, and sauntered over to Inga. It was plain to see which picture she preferred. Mr. Cornelius, who had been curled up in an easy chair reading, came up, smiling and nodding.

“What strength of a brute, and still what _finesse_, eh?” he said, admiring it as a true connoisseur.

O’Leary nodded silently, and was joined by Belle, who tried to comprehend what they could see in it, not realizing that the artist had revealed to them secrets of which she herself was ignorant, the soul of a child of the people, tolerant of hardships and tragedies, smiling down the giant, useless fabrics of conventions and laws, fatalist and stoic, indomitable in her curiosity and enjoyment.

“He’s coming back fast,” thought O’Leary, watching from the corner of his eye the sea-blue eyes of Inga lighting up with an overwhelming joy.

Dangerfield returned for a second inspection, head on one side, his thumb to his teeth. He started to take up a charcoal, then shook his head, and, lifting the canvas, put it aside.

“Yes; she’s bringing him around,” said O’Leary wisely to himself. “No doubt about it--but he’s far from tame yet.”

XXVII

At six o’clock, Myrtle Popper tucked her arm under King O’Leary’s and tripped out as joyfully as though she were carrying him away forever into regions of blue skies and green islands.

“Now you’ve got me, where are you going to take me, or, rather, where am I going to take you?” said O’Leary warily, for he had pondered much over the object of the evening and had become suspicious. Myrtle’s light-heartedness and her eagerness did not fit exactly into the rôle of a maiden in distress. Still, you could never tell with women.

“Sure, are you objectin’ to a good-looking girl hanging on your arm,” said Myrtle, laughing with the delight of having accomplished her object. “Shall we go down the stairs or wait for that poky old elevator?”

“Thank you; we’ll take the elevator,” said O’Leary hastily. “You’re a deal too dashing and flashing to-night, Myrtle darlin’.”

“Now, just what are you insinuatin’ by that?” said the girl, her glowing eyes belying the sternness of her words.

“I mean that I wouldn’t be down the first flight but my arm would be slipping around your waist. Now, don’t be looking at me like that; it’s yourself is to blame.”

The color came suddenly into her cheeks.

“You don’t really care?” she said softly.

King O’Leary laughed and pressed the electric button a second time so that the buzzing sound filled the shaft, while his companion stamped her foot and turned away petulantly.

Sassafras emerged with rolling eyes.

“Our chauffeur is waiting?” said O’Leary, adopting the methods of Tootles.

“Yassir--yassir,” said Sassafras, whom nothing astonished. “And Mrs. Van Astorbilt am reclinin’ in de car.”

“Well, what _are_ you going to do with me?” said O’Leary, continuing in the light tone as a precautionary measure until the attack had shown its purpose.

“Do I have to tell you where to dine?” said Myrtle scornfully.

O’Leary performed a careful search of his pockets.

“We might buck the high places, if you ain’t too ravenous!”

She shrugged her shoulders, and, disdaining to answer his levity, led him down Columbus Avenue to Rossi’s, where, it being early, they found a deserted corner, and O’Leary took up the menu with an occasional stolen glance at his companion, who had become strangely silent.

“_Minestrone_ and--hello, here’s luck!” he said. “_Gnocci Milanese!_ Ever tasted them? They’re grand!”

“All right; I don’t care,” said the girl, without shifting her eyes.

“_Ravioli_ and a sweet, and don’t annoy us with any olives,” said O’Leary to the waiter. “Quite a place!”

He turned for an inspection of the restaurant known to a chosen few. Across the room, a party of Italians and Spaniards from the Opera were finishing an early supper.

“Say, that’s Marino and de Segga,” said O’Leary, in a whisper, indicating the reigning tenor and the famous baritone.

“I don’t care,” said his companion sharply.

King O’Leary, perceiving that the issue could no longer be avoided, said:

“Say, you do look awful serious.”

“I told you it was serious, didn’t I?”

“Yes; and you’ve got me guessing!”

Something in his tone made her draw back and consider. Presently she said:

“Wonder just what you thought I could have meant by--serious!”

O’Leary balanced his knife on his finger thoughtfully, and finally decided to answer.

“I was kind of worried.”

“How so?”

“Well, I didn’t know,” he said slowly, “but what you might have been getting in--in too deep.”

“Into trouble?”

“Yes; into trouble--you see a queer side of life. It isn’t every girl can steer a clear course.”

“Yes; I’ve taken chances,” she said and stopped. She looked at him with anxious scrutiny. “King, suppose it were so?”

“What do you mean?” he said, frowning.

“Suppose I have got in too deep--deeper than I mean to go?” She looked down at her hands. “What then?”

He looked up sharply, then smiled.

“It ain’t so.”

“Suppose it were?” she said breathlessly.

“It ain’t so,” he repeated quietly. He leaned over and patted her hand. “I know you, girl; you’re not that kind.”

“There’s lots of temptations.”

“Not for you,” he said, reassured in his conviction. “You’re straight, and you’ve got a good head on your shoulders.”

“That doesn’t always hold.”

“It does with you. Whatever you’ll do, Myrtle, you’ll do just what you’ve planned out and what your head tells you to do.”

“I don’t know as I like that,” she said, frowning at the implication that she was not of feminine frailty.

“Well, it’s true.”

“You don’t think I can be carried away, then?” she said, with a heightened flush. “You’re the last to say that.”

Luckily, the arrival of the _minestrone_ broke in upon a delicate subject, and the conversation, subject to the censorship of the waiter, became desultory. Dinner over, she leaned forward, her elbows on the table, her eyes full on his face, and said:

“King, shall I marry Mr. Pomello?”

He was so astonished that she herself could not repress a smile.

“Say that again,” he said, bewildered.

“I want your advice. Ought I to marry Mr. Pomello?”

“What the devil do you want to marry an old crutch for?” he said, more irritated than he would have believed possible. “Has he asked you?”

“Twenty times--I’ve been putting him off. It’s got to be yes or no to-night, and that’s no jolly. It’s take it or leave it.”

“Why the deuce do you come to me?”

“Because,” she said softly, “you’re the only one I can go to, and, King, it’s a big decision.”

“I don’t see why you want to marry him,” he said slowly. “He’s got money, I suppose.” She nodded. “Much?”

“How much should you say?”

“Oh, forty or fifty thousand.”

“More than that.”

“A hundred.”

“Higher.”

“Come off!”

“King, Mr. Pomello’s worth between three and four hundred thousand. Say, I’m not throwing a bluff. Straight goods. He told me so, offered to prove it.”

“How the devil----”

“Made it in moving pictures. He got in on the ground floor, and, King, if I marry him, he’ll make a will and leave it all to me.”

O’Leary was silent, staring at her. The thought of the price she might command seemed to make her a thousand times more desirable. He even felt a pang of jealousy.

“Gee, this is serious!” he said, and, being in a quandary, he rapped loudly on the table and selected the biggest cigar which was brought him.

Myrtle Popper was watching him with excited glance, her breath coming and going more rapidly as she noted the perturbation caused by the announcement.

“Of course, it ain’t a question of love,” he said more quietly, as he felt himself fortified behind a cloud of fragrant smoke.

“Not on my part.”

“Do you think you can carry it through?” he said, with frank curiosity. Down in his heart he was wondering at the insensibility of women in the very things in which men give them the greatest reverence.

“He’s kind, very kind,” she said, reflecting. “He’ll do anything I want, and, King, it sounds cold-blooded--but he’s over sixty, and he ain’t strong at that.”

“Gee!” said O’Leary.

Neither spoke for a long moment.

“It is cold-blooded,” he said, at last.

“It’s a bargain,” she said abruptly, shrugging her shoulders. “He wants me; he’s getting what he wants. If he sees it that way, why, it’s square enough.”

“Does he see it that way?”

“I’ve been honest. I’ve told him what I tell you. It’s understood like that between us.”

“Why do you even hesitate?” he said.

She stared beyond him.

“It would be hard,” she said simply, and looked at him with half-closed eyes.

He was so astonished at the disclosure that she had made that he felt like repeating his questions, to convince himself that what she had told him could be true, that this girl manicurist from Joey Shine’s barber shop could, for a nod of her head, leap forward a dozen generations.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, at last.

“I don’t suppose many girls in my position would have put him off this way,” she said meditatively. “There ain’t much to look ahead to in the manicuring line--a few years of good looks and being taken out, and then just sitting around.”

“And if you marry, why, it means even more work, don’t it,” he said, “cooking and the housework--and the kids. No; I can’t see as there are two sides to it.”

“There are two sides, though,” she said, and she drew a great breath that went through her young, glorious body. She drew back and stretched out her arms as though every muscle had risen in protest. “But a girl can’t be doing the askin’, you see.”

He remained frowning at the cloth so long that she said:

“Did you hear what I said?”

He nodded.

“And you remember what I said to you that afternoon about settling down and home and all the rest?”

“The afternoon I kissed you?”

Her face went red, and she turned away all at once. A wave of pity went through him that he should have been tempted by his vanity, for he knew that it lay no deeper than that. He swore at himself and said:

“So you’ve come to me for advice?”

She turned quickly.

“And what do you say?” she said, so low that he could scarcely distinguish it.

“Do you mean if I told you not to do it, you’d chuck it to the winds?”

She started twice to answer and stopped. Finally, she said: