Part 7

“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 connection comprehensible 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--what _they_ do, 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 wonderful _may_ happen. They don’t know what it is. Poor devils, what can _they_ hope 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?”

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, I _am_ going 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.

IX

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 so gruffly 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, _she_ won’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 can _not_ marry 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 takes _you_ seriously, 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.

X

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 and young 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 Pomello that 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 often we 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.