Part 3

“Do you feel that way?” said Flick, opening his eyes with delight. “Shake! You’re my long-lost brother.”

“However, we’re not shipping before the mast,” said Tootles anxiously, who saw the dinner arriving with relief. “We’re eating a nice, ripe, juicy steak with friend Santa Claus.”

“Where have you come from now?” said Flick, waking up.

“Had a try at Alasky, sunk it all in a bum mine and a phony partner,” said O’Leary. “Got as far as Kansas City and got trimmed by a pickpocket while I snoozed. Boys, I certainly was up against it there. Had to take a job as a coachman. Mighty little I had to go on, but luck was with me. Usually is, wherever I tumble. The horses were a couple of baa-lambs that an infant could have harnessed, let alone driven. That was all right, I bluffed through that. But the old lady was a terror. The old man had struck it sudden, and she was wallowing in that carriage. She was fierce. She was a fat woman, and she swore like a mule-driver. I tell you, that month was something awful. I stood it until she drove down to the bank and paid me off, jabbing me in the back with her parasol and swearing directions under her breath. I’ve stood a good deal in my little canters around this globe, but I can’t stand being sworn at by a fat woman on a public street.”

“What did you do?” said Tootles, adding a curling strip of brown potatoes, smothered onions, and splashes of beans, peas, and carrots to each plate.

“With fifty dollars tucked away, I laid for her until out she came with a final poke in the ribs. Then I hauled in my horses, took off my livery, made her a bow, and handed it over to her with the reins, right there in the main street. By jingo, it was worth it to see her face!”

“What’s the queerest job you ever landed?” said Flick, savoring the steak with gratitude.

“Queerest?” said O’Leary, scratching his head and seeming to return over a long and grotesque line. “I’ve done some funny things in my time.”

“Tell you what I did over in Chattanooga--in red-hot midsummer, too,” said Flick, in a burst of confidence. “I was a dog-catcher.”

“That certainly is going down for it,” said O’Leary, grinning. “But I’ve got you beat. I subbed in a face-parlor.”

“A what?”

“Painted out black eyes and that sort of thing. Fact--out in Chicago.”

“My word!” said Tootles, overjoyed to see a beam of good humor breaking through the clouds. “I wonder that I associate with such persons.”

“Leaving out the dog-catcher,” said O’Leary, falling with gusto to the attack of his heaped-up plate, “I do believe, with the exception of preaching and tooth-extracting, I’ve tried them all. I’ve run a country paper. There’s a story there I’ll give you some day. Lord! I even taught school in the Philippines to the pesky heathen. Have mined for gold, silver, copper, diamonds, and zinc, from Cripple Creek to Kimberley. I’ve traded and sold everything from a thousand cattle to peddling collar-buttons at the Queen’s Jubilee. I’ve been a bartender in Paree, and into a peck of trouble, too. I’ve run a steam laundry in Porto Ricky and had the whole danged business washed away in a hurricane. I’ve dipped into a few spring revolutions in South Americky, and I rode out with Jameson in the raid that kicked out the whole African mess. Got in and out of Kimberley, and joined the Rough Riders with Teddy--here’s to him! Never was much of a sailor, but I’ve seen my time before the mast through the Southern seas (that’s how I appreciated your nautical terms, boy) when I stowed away for Chiny and Calcutta. Lord, where haven’t I been?”

“O’Leary, you’re either a hell of a big liar or a regular fellow,” said Flick, cheerfully, “and either way, I’m for you.”

“Maybe I’m blowing too much,” said O’Leary quietly. “But it’s sort o’ whistling in the wind to keep your courage up. However, I’ve laid my cards on the table. That’s me. Well, this is starting good enough to keep it going. What do you say to taking in a show? There’s something in the line of vaudeville over at the Colonial?”

“Is there so much money in the world?” said Tootles doubtfully.

“Boy, a taxi!” said King O’Leary, pounding on the table gorgeously.

“I’m beginning to feel like the Fourth of July,” said Flick, who gave in completely with this last display of magnificence.

“That’s what we’ll make it,” said King O’Leary. “Schnapps, steal the change. Come on.”

The visit to the theater was the undoing of all the good work accomplished, nor could the result have been foreseen. The orchestra was comfortably filled with an indiscriminate scattering of transients, plainly marooned, and the three friends, being resolved to laughter, applauded the opening numbers with such zest that they woke up the torpid house and had the entertainers gratefully aiming their shafts in the direction of their box for the pure joy of rousing King O’Leary’s soul-filling, rumbling laughter, to hear which was infection itself. The outer world, the season, and the calendar had been shut away as they roared over the grotesque tumbles and trippings of a comic acrobat who gyrated fearfully on a bicycle the size of a house, when the curtain went down and up again on the Lovibond Sisters. “Sweet Singers from the South,” who, according to the program, “would introduce sentimental favorites.”

All their mirth vanished. They waited glumly through “Annie Laurie,” and fidgeted as the quartet quavered into “Way Down Upon the Suwanee River,” but when “My Old Kentucky Home” began, with moonlight effects on the back drop and cowbells tinkling, O’Leary got up suddenly and said:

“Hell! Let’s beat it.”

They emerged glumly on the sidewalk, while Flick swore copiously for the crowd and led the way down the avenue to Campeau’s, where they found a table in a noisy gathering thundered over by a dynamic orchestra.

“O’Leary, it’s no use,” said Flick; “we can’t get away from it.”

“Guess you’re right.”

They stayed there a long while, passing into the confidential stage, while Tootles consumed large quantities of ginger ale and sought desperately to stem the rising tide, which came rolling in blackly. They had yielded to their depression, reveling in it. While King O’Leary listened, jerking at his fingers, Flick reminisced of forgotten days in a little Western town, of white Christmases when the relations gathered in jingling sleighs and the table was crowned with a wild turkey at one end and a crackling pig at the other.

“With a roast apple in his snout, and a ribbon--a blue--no, a pink ribbon decorating his ornery little tail. King, I can taste that pig yet--fact--good pig--good old pig! What did we use to call him? Can’t remember.” He went off into a foggy search, dipping his finger in a puddle of water on the table and seeking to reconstruct it in the shape of his remembered idol. “Looked like that--just so. There’s the tail--see? We used to fight to get that tail, Lem, Minnie, and me--” He suddenly looked up, as though conscious of O’Leary’s staring silence. “I say, did you used to have pig--roast pig? No? Well, what sort of Christmas did you have?”

“There was only one that counted,” said King O’Leary, frowning stubbornly, “and that, son, we won’t talk about.”

“Why not?” said Flick indignantly. He added, as though in his clouded brain he had found the answer, “Secret sorrow--that it?”

“Call it that.”

The news seemed further to depress Flick. He contemplated the shining plate with deep commiseration, shaking his head.

“All right. Sorry--mighty sorry. Felt that right off about you. Fact! Shake--shake hands.”

Tootles watched Flick, a little maudlin, silently offer his hand to King O’Leary, who took it glumly and abruptly arose as though shaking off a leaden weight, saying:

“Well, I’ve had enough of this place. Beat it again.”

They began to wander, east and west, up-town and down-town, seeking memory’s oblivion, finding it always dogging their heels--a rapid, confused passage through lighted restaurants and noisy cafés, with momentary junctions in casual parties. They ended up in an all-night restaurant, where King O’Leary took possession of the piano, Tootles conducting the orchestra, while Flick, with pompous dignity, singled out the fattest and oldest ladies and made them a bow, saying with terrific dignity:

“Madam, will you accord me the honor of this dance? No? I am sorry--very sorry, but thank you, thank you perfectly jus’ same.”

Tootles, finally, in the wee hours, coaxed them back to the Arcade (after many a slip), and woke up Sassafras, whose fee for such gala performances was half a dollar. But on the threshold of the elevator King O’Leary suddenly remembered the alarming ascent of the afternoon and hastily imparted the information to Flick, saying:

“Wouldn’t have it harm a hair of your head, not a hair. Understand? Like you, boy. No harm!”

“Must be careful, very careful,” said Flick solemnly. “Won’t stand great strain, see? That’s the idea.”

“I see,” said King O’Leary, “but how?”

“That’s it. How?”

“Six--all six at once--too much. Dangerous,” said King O’Leary sadly. “And, son, I wouldn’t have ’em harm a hair of your head, not a hair.”

“I’ve got idea,” said Flick, all at once. “No strain--you’ll see--coax elevator.”

Tootles, who always remained in the picture, solemnly led King O’Leary into the elevator, saying in a soothing manner,

“It’s all right, King; we all trust Flick.”

Wilder was so touched by this burst of confidence that he momentarily forgot his happy thought. But all at once, as they waited anxiously and expectantly, he woke up and said firmly:

“Up one!”

The elevator groaned and lumbered to the first floor.

“What now?” said Tootles.

“Out!”

The three filed forth.

“Down!”

He led the way down to the ground floor, while they followed him, mystified, and into the elevator again.

“Up _two_!” said Flick, with the gleam of a field-marshal in his eyes. “Out! Down!”

A third time they entered the elevator, mounted to the third floor and solemnly, like the King of France and all his men, descended three flights and again rose to the fourth. Again at the bottom, Flick condescended to explain:

“One flight at time--see? No strain. Always be kind to elevators--see? Coax elevators.”

“Absolutely,” said King O’Leary, with the dignity of an archbishop.

Tootles, inwardly convulsed, maintained a grave face, assuming the tense gravity of his two friends, mounting to the fifth floor and carefully descending the long stone flights, his hands on King O’Leary’s shoulders, whose hands in turn reposed on Flick’s scrawny back, which stiffened with the sense of responsibility of a chosen leader. They waited solemnly for Sassafras, standing in dusky line, for all the world like a vat, a walking-stick, and a peanut, until the elevator sank, gleaming, to the level. Then they entered, rose to the sixth floor, and congratulated Flick.

Back in the windy corridor, with two dusky spots of light overhead and empty milk-bottles before the doors, King O’Leary was seized with a new emotion, an overflowing love of mankind, and a longing to cheer blighted existences.

“Poor things,--poor miserable things!” he said, contemplating the row of shadowy doors. “No Christmas cheer.”

“No peace on earth, no good-will to men,” said Flick, seeing the idea and almost moved to tears.

“Son, we never thought--did we?--never thought of that.”

“Never,” said Flick.

“We must.”

“Absolutely,” said Flick, who had been struck by the word, and he frowned and asked, “What should we think?”

“We should think--” began King O’Leary, and stopped, lost in conjecture. He repeated: “We should think,” and turned, looking to Flick for relief. “I say, what was the thing--the thing I told you we should think about?”

Wilder, thus appealed to, shook his head mournfully, and Tootles had visions of crowning the last two hours’ labors with the blissful prospect of getting them safely into the studio and to bed, when, as luck would have it, King O’Leary’s foot came in contact with a milk bottle. The rolling sound revived his memory.

“We must cheer--bring cheer--bring presents,” said King O’Leary, getting at length to his thought. “Every one must have presents--Christmas presents.”

Tootles here interposed hastily, with the irritation of the sober pilot who sees the harbor of rest escaping.

“To-morrow. Good idea! To-morrow we’ll get presents for them all--fine--but to-morrow! Now bedtime.”

This ending was unfortunate, as Tootles felt the moment he had uttered it.

“Never bedtime,” said Flick indignantly.

“Presents--now--Christmas Eve--Santa Claus,” said King O’Leary, with equal firmness. “Go right down--now.”

“All right, then; go and get them,” said Tootles, in despair, and, at the end of his patience, he entered the studio and shut the door. “Well, they’ll come back in about a week, I suppose,” he said angrily. “Three o’clock! Lord! I’ve got to get some sleep.”

But to his surprise, in about half an hour he heard them returning, having accomplished the upper trip by the same gradual process. He peered cautiously out and perceived them laden with paper bags, solemnly and reverently passing from door to door and placing before each one orange, one hazel nut, and one raisin. They entered with the satisfied serenity of good Samaritans, and, perceiving Tootles in pajamas, were immediately struck by the same idea.

“We must put the child to bed,” said King O’Leary.

“Absolutely. Christmas eve. Children should be asleep--all children.”

They addressed him affectionately, lifted him up tenderly, and placed him in bed (Tootles was wise enough to submit), tucked him in solicitously, and chuckling over some plotted joke, got out three stockings, which they hung up with difficulty and filled from the bags.

Tootles, peeping over the coverlet, laughed to himself at their grotesque efforts and air of concentrated seriousness, waiting until they had fallen asleep on the couches. He arose, listened to the heavy breathing a moment, and, being of an economical trend, passed into the hall to collect the oranges. At O’Leary’s door he perceived the end of an envelope and drew it forth.

“That’s queer,” he said to himself, examining it. “It’s neither a bill nor an advertisement.” This in itself, was an event in the Arcade. “How strange!”

He placed it between his teeth and continued on his mission. But as he reached the further end of the hall, fronting Broadway, he perceived, to his amazement, that the oranges which should be there had disappeared. He stopped, with ear on edge, listening for a sound, but no sound returned. Then he went along on tiptoe, vastly intrigued. There was the door of Lorenzo P. Drinkwater, counsellor-at-law. But there was no sign of any one’s being up. Neither there, nor at the next, which bore the names of Miss Belle Shaler and Miss Pansy Hartmann, with the placard:

Out for lunch. Leave messages with elevator-man.

Miss Angelica Quirley’s room was likewise dark, as was the next of Miss Millie Brewster. But opposite, through the foggy glass door inscribed “Aristide Jean-Marie Cornelius” a faint blur was showing--a telltale streak of yellow under the door.

“By Jove, it’s the baron!” he said to himself, and he remained a long moment, stock-still, in surprise. “Wonder if the poor devil is actually hungry. Well, if he is--” He yielded to the good impulse, softly placed three oranges in line, and withdrew on tiptoe.

Back in the studio, he took the letter from his lips, scanned it curiously, and then inserted it in the stocking which was King O’Leary’s by right of a desperate scrawl. He approached the two sleepers, drew a blanket over each and stood a moment studying the new friend who had dropped in on their existence as though he had fallen like the rain-drip through the skylight, drawing his own conclusions, neither judge nor sinner but wise young philosopher.

King O’Leary lay with his head on an outstretched arm, which showed the green tracings of a tattoo, the shock of hair well off the clear and friendly forehead, the face flushed and contracted in a painful frown, as though still under the fever of tormenting recollections.

“Not the sort that bats for nothing,” thought Tootles. “The kind that drinks to forget. Wonder what the deuce is back of it all, old boy. Well, you wouldn’t make a bad Santa Claus at that!”

He put out the lights slowly, one by one--the great green Chinese dragon floating in mid-air, where it had swallowed a bulb which gleamed through its belly; the twin yellow shades on either side of the door, held up by brass statues of Liberty, sadly tarnished--until only the four yellow eyes of the owls remained glowing out of the upper darkness. Then he cautiously withdrew the electric button from Flick’s relaxed fingers and extinguishing these in turn, tiptoed over and went gratefully to bed.

IV

The oldest inhabitant of the sixth floor, so ancient that he was already installed when the present Mr. Teagan had inherited the Arcade from his uncle, was a Frenchman, Mr. Cornelius, who lived in the corner room on the court overlooking the square, which had one economy that, to his mind, compensated for the thunder of the elevated, the grind of the traffic and the shrill of the newsboys which rolled through it--a providential arc-light, sputtering and furnace-white, which lit his room, once the curtains were drawn, and saved the expense of lighting. There was a tradition that he had at one time occupied the large studio at the farther end and had successively progressed down the hall to his present quarters, which, on account of the clamor of Broadway, were favored with a special price. Mr. Cornelius was in the sixties, of slight build, erect, and springy on his little feet, mustache and imperial worn in the manner of the Emperor Napoleon III, snow-white against the dusky Spanish tan of his complexion and the still eloquent eyes of mellow brown. His features were delicate and finely chiseled, especially the nose, and one eyebrow was noticeably lifted, which gave him an alert expression. In his youth he must have been remarkably handsome, in a dashing, wild-animal way that appealed to women. He lived in seclusion, scrupulously polite whenever in the elevator he encountered a neighbor, but opening his door only to one person--Miss Pansy Hartmann, who had won his confidence and posed for the dilettante sketches it amused him to make, while she read mechanically to him from yellowed books of which she understood not a word--Pascal, the letters of Madame de Sévigné, and the works of Voltaire. He wore a nightcap with a tassel, and for days never left his room, occasionally appearing in a faded peacock-blue dressing-gown. Each Sunday, however, he donned a Prince Albert coat of forgotten lines, scrupulously clean, though shiny and mended, put on a black stock and brought out from some treasure-box a top-hat of swirling lines, such as the celebrated Victor Hugo was wont to wear, inclined it slightly over one ear, and, taking gloves and silver-studded cane in hand, walked magnificently to church and back again.

Several things were inexplicable in his habits. No one knew when he slept, while curious whirring noises were heard over the transom after the fall of night. On the first days of each month, sometimes for two nights, never for more than three, he donned his gala attire, ordered a taxi from the opposite hotel and gave orders to the chauffeur to drive to Delmonico’s. When he returned, Sassafras always noticed a gardenia in his button-hole. The rest of the month he skimped along, no one knew how except little Pansy, who by a pretense of feeding the parrot, which was his sole companion, contrived to leave daily a third of a bottle of milk and a good portion of bread.

In the room next to Mr. Cornelius, who was called “the baron,” was a tiny old lady, Miss Angelica Quirley, who had nested there for a decade in the company of a shivering, jerky little black-and-tan terrier, Rudolph (in memory perhaps of an unhappy romance), who was known as “the fire-hound” from the uncanny instinct with which he could rouse the Arcade with his yapping at the slightest smoldering. Miss Quirley spent her time dressing dolls for toy shops, mending old favorites, and painting into china cheeks rosebud smiles to gladden the hearts of unknown children. She was all in a flutter when she had to pass any one and began to bob her graying curls when she was still yards away, until the gold-rimmed spectacles all but fell off--for all the world like a fairy godmother. Children would have flocked to her knee, only, unfortunately, there were no children there. And so Miss Quirley went on bobbing and smiling, longing for some one to listen to but never quite mustering up her courage to approach a friendship. In the morning she would peer timidly from her door to make sure that no one could see her, before hastily emerging in wrapper and slippers to gather in the milk and rolls.

Next to Miss Quirley was a lawyer, lately arrived, Lorenzo Pinto Drinkwater, a Portuguese Yankee, who had an office on the second floor, and who seemed to envelop all his movements with an instinctive mystery and was believed not only to exercise the profession accredited him but to be not averse to lending money as well at profitable returns. He had the Yankee body, lank and ribbed, and was so tall that his head seemed always looking over a transom. The face was handsome, in a dark, gipsy way, and the eyes, despite their shiftiness, had a certain flashy attraction. He dressed loudly, and spoke in a confidential whisper. Several times he had sought to open a conversation with “the baron,” who evidently had aroused his ferreting instincts, but Mr. Cornelius, despite his usual courtesy, had openly snubbed him.

Across the passage from the elevator to the hall, next to King O’Leary’s room, was the home of Miss Myrtle Popper, manicurist and marcel-waver, who had looked kindly on O’Leary as he stood in the Arcade before Joey Shine’s barber shop, wondering to whom he could send a present. She had come from New Hartford, Connecticut, with a yearning for the greater advantages of metropolitan society, tall, clear-eyed, a Junoesque figure, undeniably stunning, with her youth, her vibrant health, her smiling green eyes and her miraculous coils of ruddy hair. She had thoroughly enjoyed her first winter in New York society, and was slangy, pert, calmly determined to be amused and as equally determined to hold her head high, quite capable of taking care of herself, a democrat by association and a philosopher by a native shrewdness, amusing and amused.

Across the hall from Mr. Cornelius was another arrival of the autumn, a migratory type of which the Arcade had seen many a flight--Miss Minnie Brewster from the Middle West, who had come to New York with golden dreams of an operatic career and who paid an unhanged charlatan the sum of five dollars a quarter of an hour for refusing to tell her the truth about her sweet, toylike voice. She was a pretty country plant, sadly transplanted, a fragile blonde, with an angelic face and starry eyes, destined for simpler things, and quite helpless when confronting the world alone. She was dying of loneliness.

The two models who roomed together in the adjoining studio (whom Millie was longing to meet and lay awake nights constructing conversations which would lead to an acquaintance), Miss Belle Shaler and Miss Pansy Hartmann, were daughters of New York, utterly opposite in temperament and inclination, but fast friends by the bond of a long and united front against the perplexities, the trials, and the tribulations of their existence.