Strictly Business by O. Henry (page 4)

week?”

“Tommy,” said Celia. “I’m no parlor maid. I’ve been fooling you. I’m Miss Spraggins–Celia Spraggins. The newspapers say I’ll be worth forty million dollars some day.”

Thomas pulled his cap down straight on his head for the first time since we have known him.

“I suppose then,” said he, “I suppose then you’ll not be marrying me next week. But you _can_ whistle.”

“No,” said Celia, “I’ll not be marrying you next week. My father would never let me marry a grocer’s clerk. But I’ll marry you to-night, Tommy, if you say so.”

Old Jacob Spraggins came home at 9:30 P. M., in his motor car. The make of it you will have to surmise sorrowfully; I am giving you unsubsidized fiction; had it been a street car I could have told you its voltage and the number of wheels it had. Jacob called for his daughter; he had bought a ruby necklace for her, and wanted to hear her say what a kind, thoughtful, dear old dad he was.

There was a brief search in the house for her, and then came Annette, glowing with the pure flame of truth and loyalty well mixed with envy and histrionics.

“Oh, sir,” said she, wondering if she should kneel, “Miss Celia’s just this minute running away out of the side gate with a young man to be married. I couldn’t stop her, sir. They went in a cab.”

“What young man?” roared old Jacob.

“A millionaire, if you please, sir–a rich nobleman in disguise. He carries his money with him, and the red peppers and the onions was only to blind us, sir. He never did seem to take to me.”

Jacob rushed out in time to catch his car. The chauffeur had been delayed by trying to light a cigarette in the wind.

“Here, Gaston, or Mike, or whatever you call yourself, scoot around the corner quicker than blazes and see if you can see a cab. If you do, run it down.”

There was a cab in sight a block away. Gaston, or Mike, with his eyes half shut and his mind on his cigarette, picked up the trail, neatly crowded the cab to the curb and pocketed it.

“What t’ell you doin’?” yelled the cabman.

“Pa!” shrieked Celia.

“Grandfather’s remorseful friend’s agent!” said Thomas. “Wonder what’s on his conscience now.”

“A thousand thunders,” said Gaston, or Mike. “I have no other match.”

“Young man,” said old Jacob, severely, “how about that parlor maid you were engaged to?”

A couple of years afterward old Jacob went into the office of his private secretary.

“The Amalgamated Missionary Society solicits a contribution of $30,000 toward the conversion of the Koreans,” said the secretary.

“Pass ’em up,” said Jacob.

“The University of Plumville writes that its yearly endowment fund of $50,000 that you bestowed upon it is past due.”

“Tell ’em it’s been cut out.”

“The Scientific Society of Clam Cove, Long Island, asks for $10,000 to buy alcohol to preserve specimens.”

“Waste basket.”

“The Society for Providing Healthful Recreation for Working Girls wants $20,000 from you to lay out a golf course.”

“Tell ’em to see an undertaker.”

“Cut ’em all out,” went on Jacob. “I’ve quit being a good thing. I need every dollar I can scrape or save. I want you to write to the directors of every company that I’m interested in and recommend a 10 per cent. cut in salaries. And say–I noticed half a cake of soap lying in a corner of the hall as I came in. I want you to speak to the scrubwoman about waste. I’ve got no money to throw away. And say–we’ve got vinegar pretty well in hand, haven’t we?’

“The Globe Spice & Seasons Company,” said secretary, “controls the market at present.”

“Raise vinegar two cents a gallon. Notify all our branches.”

Suddenly Jacob Spraggins’s plump red face relaxed into a pulpy grin. He walked over to the secretary’s desk and showed a small red mark on his thick forefinger.

“Bit it,” he said, “darned if he didn’t, and he ain’t had the tooth three weeks–Jaky McLeod, my Celia’s kid. He’ll be worth a hundred millions by the time he’s twenty-one if I can pile it up for him.”

As he was leaving, old Jacob turned at the door, and said:

“Better make that vinegar raise three cents instead of two. I’ll be back in an hour and sign the letters.”

The true history of the Caliph Harun Al Rashid relates that toward the end of his reign he wearied of philanthropy, and caused to be beheaded all his former favorites and companions of his “Arabian Nights” rambles. Happy are we in these days of enlightenment, when the only death warrant the caliphs can serve on us is in the form of a tradesman’s bill.

XVIII

THE GIRL AND THE HABIT

HABIT–a tendency or aptitude acquired by custom or frequent repetition.

The critics have assailed every source of inspiration save one. To that one we are driven for our moral theme. When we levied upon the masters of old they gleefully dug up the parallels to our columns. When we strove to set forth real life they reproached us for trying to imitate Henry George, George Washington, Washington Irving, and Irving Bacheller. We wrote of the West and the East, and they accused us of both Jesse and Henry James. We wrote from our heart–and they said something about a disordered liver. We took a text from Matthew or–er–yes, Deuteronomy, but the preachers were hammering away at the inspiration idea before we could get into type. So, driven to the wall, we go for our subject-matter to the reliable, old, moral, unassailable vade mecum–the unabridged dictionary.

Miss Merriam was cashier at Hinkle’s. Hinkle’s is one of the big downtown restaurants. It is in what the papers call the “financial district.” Each day from 12 o’clock to 2 Hinkle’s was full of hungry customers–messenger boys, stenographers, brokers, owners of mining stock, promoters, inventors with patents pending–and also people with money.

The cashiership at Hinkle’s was no sinecure. Hinkle egged and toasted and griddle-caked and coffeed a good many customers; and he lunched (as good a word as “dined”) many more. It might be said that Hinkle’s breakfast crowd was a contingent, but his luncheon patronage amounted to a horde.

Miss Merriam sat on a stool at a desk inclosed on three sides by a strong, high fencing of woven brass wire. Through an arched opening at the bottom you thrust your waiter’s check and the money, while your heart went pit-a-pat.

For Miss Merriam was lovely and capable. She could take 45 cents out of a $2 bill and refuse an offer of marriage before you could–Next!–lost your chance–please don’t shove. She could keep cool and collected while she collected your check, give you the correct change, win your heart, indicate the toothpick stand, and rate you to a quarter of a cent better than Bradstreet could to a thousand in less time than it takes to pepper an egg with one of Hinkle’s casters.

There is an old and dignified allusion to the “fierce light that beats upon a throne.” The light that beats upon the young lady cashier’s cage is also something fierce. The other fellow is responsible for the slang.

Every male patron of Hinkle’s, from the A. D. T. boys up to the curbstone brokers, adored Miss Merriam. When they paid their checks they wooed her with every wile known to Cupid’s art. Between the meshes of the brass railing went smiles, winks, compliments, tender vows, invitations to dinner, sighs, languishing looks and merry banter that was wafted pointedly back by the gifted Miss Merriam.

There is no coign of vantage more effective than the position of young lady cashier. She sits there, easily queen of the court of commerce; she is duchess of dollars and devoirs, countess of compliments and coin, leading lady of love and luncheon. You take from her a smile and a Canadian dime, and you go your way uncomplaining. You count the cheery word or two that she tosses you as misers count their treasures; and you pocket the change for a five uncomputed. Perhaps the brass-bound inaccessibility multiplies her charms–anyhow, she is a shirt-waisted angel, immaculate, trim, manicured, seductive, bright-eyed, ready, alert–Psyche, Circe, and Ate in one, separating you from your circulating medium after your sirloin medium.

The young men who broke bread at Hinkle’s never settled with the cashier without an exchange of badinage and open compliment. Many of them went to greater lengths and dropped promissory hints of theatre tickets and chocolates. The older men spoke plainly of orange blossoms, generally withering the tentative petals by after-allusions to Harlem flats. One broker, who had been squeezed by copper proposed to Miss Merriam more regularly than he ate.

During a brisk luncheon hour Miss Merriam’s conversation, while she took money for checks, would run something like this:

“Good morning, Mr. Haskins–sir?–it’s natural, thank you–don’t be quite so fresh . . . Hello, Johnny–ten, fifteen, twenty–chase along now or they’ll take the letters off your cap . . . Beg pardon–count it again, please–Oh, don’t mention it . . . Vaudeville?–thanks; not on your moving picture–I was to see Carter in Hedda Gabler on Wednesday night with Mr. Simmons . . . ‘Scuse me, I thought that was a quarter . . . Twenty-five and seventy-five’s a dollar–got that ham-and-cabbage habit yet. I see, Billy . . . Who are you addressing?–say–you’ll get all that’s coming to you in a minute . . . Oh, fudge! Mr. Bassett–you’re always fooling–no–? Well, maybe I’ll marry you some day–three, four and sixty-five is five . . . Kindly keep them remarks to yourself, if you please . . . Ten cents?–‘scuse me; the check calls for seventy–well, maybe it is a one instead of a seven . . . Oh, do you like it that way, Mr. Saunders?–some prefer a pomp; but they say this Cleo de Merody does suit refined features . . . and ten is fifty . . . Hike along there, buddy; don’t take this for a Coney Island ticket booth . . . Huh?–why, Macy’s–don’t it fit nice? Oh, no, it isn’t too cool–these light-weight fabrics is all the go this season . . . Come again, please–that’s the third time you’ve tried to–what?–forget it–that lead quarter is an old friend of mine . . . Sixty-five?–must have had your salary raised, Mr. Wilson . . . I seen you on Sixth Avenue Tuesday afternoon, Mr. De Forest–swell?–oh, my!–who is she? . . . What’s the matter with it?–why, it ain’t money–what?–Columbian half?–well, this ain’t South America . . . Yes, I like the mixed best–Friday?–awfully sorry, but I take my jiu-jitsu lesson on Friday–Thursday, then . . . Thanks–that’s sixteen times I’ve been told that this morning–I guess I must be beautiful . . . Cut that out, please–who do you think I am? . . . Why, Mr. Westbrook–do you really think so?–the idea!–one–eighty and twenty’s a dollar–thank you ever so much, but I don’t ever go automobile riding with gentlemen–your aunt?–well, that’s different–perhaps . . . Please don’t get fresh–your check was fifteen cents, I believe–kindly step aside and let . . . Hello, Ben–coming around Thursday evening?–there’s a gentleman going to send around a box of chocolates, and . . . forty and sixty is a dollar, and one is two . . .”

About the middle of one afternoon the dizzy goddess Vertigo–whose other name is Fortune–suddenly smote an old, wealthy and eccentric banker while he was walking past Hinkle’s, on his way to a street car. A wealthy and eccentric banker who rides in street cars is–move up, please; there are others.

A Samaritan, a Pharisee, a man and a policeman who were first on the spot lifted Banker McRamsey and carried him into Hinkle’s restaurant. When the aged but indestructible banker opened his eyes he saw a beautiful vision bending over him with a pitiful, tender smile, bathing his forehead with beef tea and chafing his hands with something frappé out of a chafing-dish. Mr. McRamsey sighed, lost a vest button, gazed with deep gratitude upon his fair preserveress, and then recovered consciousness.

To the Seaside Library all who are anticipating a romance! Banker McRamsey had an aged and respected wife, and his sentiments toward Miss Merriam were fatherly. He talked to her for half an hour with interest–not the kind that went with his talks during business hours. The next day he brought Mrs. McRamsey down to see her. The old couple were childless–they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn.

To make a short story shorter, the beautiful cashier won the hearts of the good old couple. They came to Hinkle’s again and again; they invited her to their old-fashioned but splendid home in one of the East Seventies. Miss Merriam’s winning loveliness, her sweet frankness and impulsive heart took them by storm. They said a hundred times that Miss Merriam reminded them so much of their lost daughter. The Brooklyn matron, née Ramsey, had the figure of Buddha and a face like the ideal of an art photographer. Miss Merriam was a combination of curves, smiles, rose leaves, pearls, satin and hair-tonic posters. Enough of the fatuity of parents.

A month after the worthy couple became acquainted with Miss Merriam, she stood before Hinkle one afternoon and resigned her cashiership.

“They’re going to adopt me,” she told the bereft restaurateur. “They’re funny old people, but regular dears. And the swell home they have got! Say, Hinkle, there isn’t any use of talking–I’m on the à la carte to wear brown duds and goggles in a whiz wagon, or marry a duke at least. Still, I somehow hate to break out of the old cage. I’ve been cashiering so long I feel funny doing anything else. I’ll miss joshing the fellows awfully when they line up to pay for the buckwheats and. But I can’t let this chance slide. And they’re awfully good, Hinkle; I know I’ll have a swell time. You owe me nine-sixty-two and a half for the week. Cut out the half if it hurts you, Hinkle.”

And they did. Miss Merriam became Miss Rosa McRamsey. And she graced the transition. Beauty is only skin-deep, but the nerves lie very near to the skin. Nerve–but just here will you oblige by perusing again the quotation with which this story begins?

The McRamseys poured out money like domestic champagne to polish their adopted one. Milliners, dancing masters and private tutors got it. Miss–er–McRamsey was grateful, loving, and tried to forget Hinkle’s. To give ample credit to the adaptability of the American girl, Hinkle’s did fade from her memory and speech most of the time.

Not every one will remember when the Earl of Hitesbury came to East Seventy—- Street, America. He was only a fair-to-medium earl, without debts, and he created little excitement. But you will surely remember the evening when the Daughters of Benevolence held their bazaar in the W—-f-A—-a Hotel. For you were there, and you wrote a note to Fannie on the hotel paper, and mailed it, just to show her that–you did not? Very well; that was the evening the baby was sick, of course.

At the bazaar the McRamseys were prominent. Miss Mer–er–McRamsey was exquisitely beautiful. The Earl of Hitesbury had been very attentive to her since he dropped in to have a look at America. At the charity bazaar the affair was supposed to be going to be pulled off to a finish. An earl is as good as a duke. Better. His standing may be lower, but his outstanding accounts are also lower.

Our ex-young-lady-cashier was assigned to a booth. She was expected to sell worthless articles to nobs and snobs at exorbitant prices. The proceeds of the bazaar were to be used for giving the poor children of the slums a Christmas din—-Say! did you ever wonder where they get the other 364?

Miss McRamsey–beautiful, palpitating, excited, charming, radiant–fluttered about in her booth. An imitation brass network, with a little arched opening, fenced her in.

Along came the Earl, assured, delicate, accurate, admiring–admiring greatly, and faced the open wicket.

“You look chawming, you know–‘pon my word you do–my deah,” he said, beguilingly.

Miss McRamsey whirled around.

“Cut that joshing out,” she said, coolly and briskly. “Who do you think you are talking to? Your check, please. Oh, Lordy!–“

Patrons of the bazaar became aware of a commotion and pressed around a certain booth. The Earl of Hitesbury stood near by pulling a pale blond and puzzled whisker.

“Miss McRamsey has fainted,” some one explained.

XIX

PROOF OF THE PUDDING

Spring winked a vitreous optic at Editor Westbrook of the _Minerva Magazine_, and deflected him from his course. He had lunched in his favorite corner of a Broadway hotel, and was returning to his office when his feet became entangled in the lure of the vernal coquette. Which is by way of saying that he turned eastward in Twenty-sixth Street, safely forded the spring freshet of vehicles in Fifth Avenue, and meandered along the walks of budding Madison Square.

The lenient air and the settings of the little park almost formed a pastoral; the color motif was green–the presiding shade at the creation of man and vegetation.

The callow grass between the walks was the color of verdigris, a poisonous green, reminiscent of the horde of derelict humans that had breathed upon the soil during the summer and autumn. The bursting tree buds looked strangely familiar to those who had botanized among the garnishings of the fish course of a forty-cent dinner. The sky above was of that pale aquamarine tint that ballroom poets rhyme with “true” and “Sue” and “coo.” The one natural and frank color visible was the ostensible green of the newly painted benches–a shade between the color of a pickled cucumber and that of a last year’s fast-black cravenette raincoat. But, to the city-bred eye of Editor Westbrook, the landscape appeared a masterpiece.

And now, whether you are of those who rush in, or of the gentle concourse that fears to tread, you must follow in a brief invasion of the editor’s mind.

Editor Westbrook’s spirit was contented and serene. The April number of the _Minerva_ had sold its entire edition before the tenth day of the month–a newsdealer in Keokuk had written that he could have sold fifty copies more if he had ’em. The owners of the magazine had raised his (the editor’s) salary; he had just installed in his home a jewel of a recently imported cook who was afraid of policemen; and the morning papers had published in full a speech he had made at a publishers’ banquet. Also there were echoing in his mind the jubilant notes of a splendid song that his charming young wife had sung to him before he left his up-town apartment that morning. She was taking enthusiastic interest in her music of late, practising early and diligently. When he had complimented her on the improvement in her voice she had fairly hugged him for joy at his praise. He felt, too, the benign, tonic medicament of the trained nurse, Spring, tripping softly adown the wards of the convalescent city.

While Editor Westbrook was sauntering between the rows of park benches (already filling with vagrants and the guardians of lawless childhood) he felt his sleeve grasped and held. Suspecting that he was about to be panhandled, he turned a cold and unprofitable face, and saw that his captor was–Dawe–Shackleford Dawe, dingy, almost ragged, the genteel scarcely visible in him through the deeper lines of the shabby.

While the editor is pulling himself out of his surprise, a flashlight biography of Dawe is offered.

He was a fiction writer, and one of Westbrook’s old acquaintances. At one time they might have called each other old friends. Dawe had some money in those days, and lived in a decent apartment house near Westbrook’s. The two families often went to theatres and dinners together. Mrs. Dawe and Mrs. Westbrook became “dearest” friends. Then one day a little tentacle of the octopus, just to amuse itself, ingurgitated Dawe’s capital, and he moved to the Gramercy Park neighborhood where one, for a few groats per week, may sit upon one’s trunk under eight-branched chandeliers and opposite Carrara marble mantels and watch the mice play upon the floor. Dawe thought to live by writing fiction. Now and then he sold a story. He submitted many to Westbrook. The _Minerva_ printed one or two of them; the rest were returned. Westbrook sent a careful and conscientious personal letter with each rejected manuscript, pointing out in detail his reasons for considering it unavailable. Editor Westbrook had his own clear conception of what constituted good fiction. So had Dawe. Mrs. Dawe was mainly concerned about the constituents of the scanty dishes of food that she managed to scrape together. One day Dawe had been spouting to her about the excellencies of certain French writers. At dinner they sat down to a dish that a hungry schoolboy could have encompassed at a gulp. Dawe commented.

“It’s Maupassant hash,” said Mrs. Dawe. “It may not be art, but I do wish you would do a five-course Marion Crawford serial with an Ella Wheeler Wilcox sonnet for dessert. I’m hungry.”

As far as this from success was Shackleford Dawe when he plucked Editor Westbrook’s sleeve in Madison Square. That was the first time the editor had seen Dawe in several months.

“Why, Shack, is this you?” said Westbrook, somewhat awkwardly, for the form of his phrase seemed to touch upon the other’s changed appearance.

“Sit down for a minute,” said Dawe, tugging at his sleeve. “This is my office. I can’t come to yours, looking as I do. Oh, sit down–you won’t be disgraced. Those half-plucked birds on the other benches will take you for a swell porch-climber. They won’t know you are only an editor.”

“Smoke, Shack?” said Editor Westbrook, sinking cautiously upon the virulent green bench. He always yielded gracefully when he did yield.

Dawe snapped at the cigar as a kingfisher darts at a sunperch, or a girl pecks at a chocolate cream.

“I have just–” began the editor.

“Oh, I know; don’t finish,” said Dawe. “Give me a match. You have just ten minutes to spare. How did you manage to get past my office-boy and invade my sanctum? There he goes now, throwing his club at a dog that couldn’t read the ‘Keep off the Grass’ signs.”

“How goes the writing?” asked the editor.

“Look at me,” said Dawe, “for your answer. Now don’t put on that embarrassed, friendly-but-honest look and ask me why I don’t get a job as a wine agent or a cab driver. I’m in the fight to a finish. I know I can write good fiction and I’ll force you fellows to admit it yet. I’ll make you change the spelling of ‘regrets’ to ‘c-h-e-q-u-e’ before I’m done with you.”

Editor Westbrook gazed through his nose-glasses with a sweetly sorrowful, omniscient, sympathetic, skeptical expression–the copyrighted expression of the editor beleagured by the unavailable contributor.

“Have you read the last story I sent you–‘The Alarum of the Soul’?” asked Dawe.

“Carefully. I hesitated over that story, Shack, really I did. It had some good points. I was writing you a letter to send with it when it goes back to you. I regret–“

“Never mind the regrets,” said Dawe, grimly. “There’s neither salve nor sting in ’em any more. What I want to know is _why_. Come now; out with the good points first.”

“The story,” said Westbrook, deliberately, after a suppressed sigh, “is written around an almost original plot. Characterization–the best you have done. Construction–almost as good, except for a few weak joints which might be strengthened by a few changes and touches. It was a good story, except–“

“I can write English, can’t I?” interrupted Dawe.

“I have always told you,” said the editor, “that you had a style.”

“Then the trouble is–“

“Same old thing,” said Editor Westbrook. “You work up to your climax like an artist. And then you turn yourself into a photographer. I don’t know what form of obstinate madness possesses you, but that is what you do with everything that you write. No, I will retract the comparison with the photographer. Now and then photography, in spite of its impossible perspective, manages to record a fleeting glimpse of truth. But you spoil every dénouement by those flat, drab, obliterating strokes of your brush that I have so often complained of. If you would rise to the literary pinnacle of your dramatic senses, and paint them in the high colors that art requires, the postman would leave fewer bulky, self-addressed envelopes at your door.”

“Oh, fiddles and footlights!” cried Dawe, derisively. “You’ve got that old sawmill drama kink in your brain yet. When the man with the black mustache kidnaps golden-haired Bessie you are bound to have the mother kneel and raise her hands in the spotlight and say: ‘May high heaven witness that I will rest neither night nor day till the heartless villain that has stolen me child feels the weight of another’s vengeance!'”

Editor Westbrook conceded a smile of impervious complacency.

“I think,” said he, “that in real life the woman would express herself in those words or in very similar ones.”

“Not in a six hundred nights’ run anywhere but on the stage,” said Dawe hotly. “I’ll tell you what she’d say in real life. She’d say: ‘What! Bessie led away by a strange man? Good Lord! It’s one trouble after another! Get my other hat, I must hurry around to the police-station. Why wasn’t somebody looking after her, I’d like to know? For God’s sake, get out of my way or I’ll never get ready. Not that hat–the brown one with the velvet bows. Bessie must have been crazy; she’s usually shy of strangers. Is that too much powder? Lordy! How I’m upset!’

“That’s the way she’d talk,” continued Dawe. “People in real life don’t fly into heroics and blank verse at emotional crises. They simply can’t do it. If they talk at all on such occasions they draw from the same vocabulary that they use every day, and muddle up their words and ideas a little more, that’s all.”

“Shack,” said Editor Westbrook impressively, “did you ever pick up the mangled and lifeless form of a child from under the fender of a street car, and carry it in your arms and lay it down before the distracted mother? Did you ever do that and listen to the words of grief and despair as they flowed spontaneously from her lips?”

“I never did,” said Dawe. “Did you?”

“Well, no,” said Editor Westbrook, with a slight frown. “But I can well imagine what she would say.”

“So can I,” said Dawe.

And now the fitting time had come for Editor Westbrook to play the oracle and silence his opinionated contributor. It was not for an unarrived fictionist to dictate words to be uttered by the heroes and heroines of the _Minerva Magazine_, contrary to the theories of the editor thereof.

“My dear Shack,” said he, “if I know anything of life I know that every sudden, deep and tragic emotion in the human heart calls forth an apposite, concordant, conformable and proportionate expression of feeling. How much of this inevitable accord between expression and feeling should be attributed to nature, and how much to the influence of art, it would be difficult to say. The sublimely terrible roar of the lioness that has been deprived of her cubs is dramatically as far above her customary whine and purr as the kingly and transcendent utterances of Lear are above the level of his senile vaporings. But it is also true that all men and women have what may be called a sub-conscious dramatic sense that is awakened by a sufficiently deep and powerful emotion–a sense unconsciously acquired from literature and the stage that prompts them to express those emotions in language befitting their importance and histrionic value.”

“And in the name of the seven sacred saddle-blankets of Sagittarius, where did the stage and literature get the stunt?” asked Dawe.

“From life,” answered the editor, triumphantly.

The story writer rose from the bench and gesticulated eloquently but dumbly. He was beggared for words with which to formulate adequately his dissent.

On a bench nearby a frowzy loafer opened his red eyes and perceived that his moral support was due a downtrodden brother.

“Punch him one, Jack,” he called hoarsely to Dawe. “W’at’s he come makin’ a noise like a penny arcade for amongst gen’lemen that comes in the square to set and think?”

Editor Westbrook looked at his watch with an affected show of leisure.

“Tell me,” asked Dawe, with truculent anxiety, “what especial faults in ‘The Alarum of the Soul’ caused you to throw it down?”

“When Gabriel Murray,” said Westbrook, “goes to his telephone and is told that his fiancée has been shot by a burglar, he says–I do not recall the exact words, but–“

“I do,” said Dawe. “He says: ‘Damn Central; she always cuts me off.’ (And then to his friend) ‘Say, Tommy, does a thirty-two bullet make a big hole? It’s kind of hard luck, ain’t it? Could you get me a drink from the sideboard, Tommy? No; straight; nothing on the side.'”

“And again,” continued the editor, without pausing for argument, “when Berenice opens the letter from her husband informing her that he has fled with the manicure girl, her words are–let me see–“

“She says,” interposed the author: “‘Well, what do you think of that!'”

“Absurdly inappropriate words,” said Westbrook, “presenting an anti-climax–plunging the story into hopeless bathos. Worse yet; they mirror life falsely. No human being ever uttered banal colloquialisms when confronted by sudden tragedy.”

“Wrong,” said Dawe, closing his unshaven jaws doggedly. “I say no man or woman ever spouts ‘high-falutin’ talk when they go up against a real climax. They talk naturally and a little worse.”

The editor rose from the bench with his air of indulgence and inside information.

“Say, Westbrook,” said Dawe, pinning him by the lapel, “would you have accepted ‘The Alarum of the Soul’ if you had believed that the actions and words of the characters were true to life in the parts of the story that we discussed?”

“It is very likely that I would, if I believed that way,” said the editor. “But I have explained to you that I do not.”

“If I could prove to you that I am right?”

“I’m sorry, Shack, but I’m afraid I haven’t time to argue any further just now.”

“I don’t want to argue,” said Dawe. “I want to demonstrate to you from life itself that my view is the correct one.”

“How could you do that?” asked Westbrook, in a surprised tone.

“Listen,” said the writer, seriously. “I have thought of a way. It is important to me that my theory of true-to-life fiction be recognized as correct by the magazines. I’ve fought for it for three years, and I’m down to my last dollar, with two months’ rent due.”

“I have applied the opposite of your theory,” said the editor, “in selecting the fiction for the _Minerva Magazine_. The circulation has gone up from ninety thousand to–“

“Four hundred thousand,” said Dawe. “Whereas it should have been boosted to a million.”

“You said something to me just now about demonstrating your pet theory.”

“I will. If you’ll give me about half an hour of your time I’ll prove to you that I am right. I’ll prove it by Louise.”

“Your wife!” exclaimed Westbrook. “How?”

“Well, not exactly by her, but _with_ her,” said Dawe. “Now, you know how devoted and loving Louise has always been. She thinks I’m the only genuine preparation on the market that bears the old doctor’s signature. She’s been fonder and more faithful than ever, since I’ve been cast for the neglected genius part.”

“Indeed, she is a charming and admirable life companion,” agreed the editor. “I remember what inseparable friends she and Mrs. Westbrook once were. We are both lucky chaps, Shack, to have such wives. You must bring Mrs. Dawe up some evening soon, and we’ll have one of those informal chafing-dish suppers that we used to enjoy so much.”

“Later,” said Dawe. “When I get another shirt. And now I’ll tell you my scheme. When I was about to leave home after breakfast–if you can call tea and oatmeal breakfast–Louise told me she was going to visit her aunt in Eighty-ninth Street. She said she would return at three o’clock. She is always on time to a minute. It is now–“

Dawe glanced toward the editor’s watch pocket.

“Twenty-seven minutes to three,” said Westbrook, scanning his time-piece.

“We have just enough time,” said Dawe. “We will go to my flat at once. I will write a note, address it to her and leave it on the table where she will see it as she enters the door. You and I will be in the dining-room concealed by the portières. In that note I’ll say that I have fled from her forever with an affinity who understands the needs of my artistic soul as she never did. When she reads it we will observe her actions and hear her words. Then we will know which theory is the correct one–yours or mine.”

“Oh, never!” exclaimed the editor, shaking his head. “That would be inexcusably cruel. I could not consent to have Mrs. Dawe’s feelings played upon in such a manner.”

“Brace up,” said the writer. “I guess I think as much of her as you do. It’s for her benefit as well as mine. I’ve got to get a market for my stories in some way. It won’t hurt Louise. She’s healthy and sound. Her heart goes as strong as a ninety-eight-cent watch. It’ll last for only a minute, and then I’ll step out and explain to her. You really owe it to me to give me the chance, Westbrook.”

Editor Westbrook at length yielded, though but half willingly. And in the half of him that consented lurked the vivisectionist that is in all of us. Let him who has not used the scalpel rise and stand in his place. Pity ’tis that there are not enough rabbits and guinea-pigs to go around.

The two experimenters in Art left the Square and hurried eastward and then to the south until they arrived in the Gramercy neighborhood. Within its high iron railings the little park had put on its smart coat of vernal green, and was admiring itself in its fountain mirror. Outside the railings the hollow square of crumbling houses, shells of a bygone gentry, leaned as if in ghostly gossip over the forgotten doings of the vanished quality. _Sic transit gloria urbis_.

A block or two north of the Park, Dawe steered the editor again eastward, then, after covering a short distance, into a lofty but narrow flathouse burdened with a floridly over-decorated façade. To the fifth story they toiled, and Dawe, panting, pushed his latch-key into the door of one of the front flats.

When the door opened Editor Westbrook saw, with feelings of pity, how meanly and meagerly the rooms were furnished.

“Get a chair, if you can find one,” said Dawe, “while I hunt up pen and ink. Hello, what’s this? Here’s a note from Louise. She must have left it there when she went out this morning.”

He picked up an envelope that lay on the centre-table and tore it open. He began to read the letter that he drew out of it; and once having begun it aloud he so read it through to the end. These are the words that Editor Westbrook heard:

“Dear Shackleford:

“By the time you get this I will be about a hundred miles away and still a-going. I’ve got a place in the chorus of the Occidental Opera Co., and we start on the road to-day at twelve o’clock. I didn’t want to starve to death, and so I decided to make my own living. I’m not coming back. Mrs. Westbrook is going with me. She said she was tired of living with a combination phonograph, iceberg and dictionary, and she’s not coming back, either. We’ve been practising the songs and dances for two months on the quiet. I hope you will be successful, and get along all right! Good-bye.

“Louise.”

Dawe dropped the letter, covered his face with his trembling hands, and cried out in a deep, vibrating voice:

_”My God, why hast thou given me this cup to drink? Since she is false, then let Thy Heaven’s fairest gifts, faith and love, become the jesting by-words of traitors and fiends!”_

Editor Westbrook’s glasses fell to the floor. The fingers of one hand fumbled with a button on his coat as he blurted between his pale lips:

_”Say, Shack, ain’t that a hell of a note? Wouldn’t that knock you off your perch, Shack? Ain’t it hell, now, Shack–ain’t it?”_

XX

PAST ONE AT ROONEY’S

Only on the lower East Side of New York do the houses of Capulet and Montagu survive. There they do not fight by the book of arithmetic. If you but bite your thumb at an upholder of your opposing house you have work cut out for your steel. On Broadway you may drag your man along a dozen blocks by his nose, and he will only bawl for the watch; but in the domain of the East Side Tybalts and Mercutios you must observe the niceties of deportment to the wink of any eyelash and to an inch of elbow room at the bar when its patrons include foes of your house and kin.

So, when Eddie McManus, known to the Capulets as Cork McManus, drifted into Dutch Mike’s for a stein of beer, and came upon a bunch of Montagus making merry with the suds, he began to observe the strictest parliamentary rules. Courtesy forbade his leaving the saloon with his thirst unslaked; caution steered him to a place at the bar where the mirror supplied the cognizance of the enemy’s movements that his indifferent gaze seemed to disdain; experience whispered to him that the finger of trouble would be busy among the chattering steins at Dutch Mike’s that night. Close by his side drew Brick Cleary, his Mercutio, companion of his perambulations. Thus they stood, four of the Mulberry Hill Gang and two of the Dry Dock Gang, minding their P’s and Q’s so solicitously that Dutch Mike kept one eye on his customers and the other on an open space beneath his bar in which it was his custom to seek safety whenever the ominous politeness of the rival associations congealed into the shapes of bullets and cold steel.

But we have not to do with the wars of the Mulberry Hills and the Dry Docks. We must to Rooney’s, where, on the most blighted dead branch of the tree of life, a little pale orchid shall bloom.

Overstrained etiquette at last gave way. It is not known who first overstepped the bounds of punctilio; but the consequences were immediate. Buck Malone, of the Mulberry Hills, with a Dewey-like swiftness, got an eight-inch gun swung round from his hurricane deck. But McManus’s simile must be the torpedo. He glided in under the guns and slipped a scant three inches of knife blade between the ribs of the Mulberry Hill cruiser. Meanwhile Brick Cleary, a devotee to strategy, had skimmed across the lunch counter and thrown the switch of the electrics, leaving the combat to be waged by the light of gunfire alone. Dutch Mike crawled from his haven and ran into the street crying for the watch instead of for a Shakespeare to immortalize the Cimmerian shindy.

The cop came, and found a prostrate, bleeding Montagu supported by three distrait and reticent followers of the House. Faithful to the ethics of the gangs, no one knew whence the hurt came. There was no Capulet to be seen.

“Raus mit der interrogatories,” said Buck Malone to the officer. “Sure I know who done it. I always manages to get a bird’s eye view of any guy that comes up an’ makes a show case for a hardware store out of me. No. I’m not telling you his name. I’ll settle with um meself. Wow–ouch! Easy, boys! Yes, I’ll attend to his case meself. I’m not making any complaint.”

At midnight McManus strolled around a pile of lumber near an East Side dock, and lingered in the vicinity of a certain water plug. Brick Cleary drifted casually to the trysting place ten minutes later. “He’ll maybe not croak,” said Brick; “and he won’t tell, of course. But Dutch Mike did. He told the police he was tired of having his place shot up. It’s unhandy just now, because Tim Corrigan’s in Europe for a week’s end with Kings. He’ll be back on the _Kaiser Williams_ next Friday. You’ll have to duck out of sight till then. Tim’ll fix it up all right for us when he comes back.”

This goes to explain why Cork McManus went into Rooney’s one night and there looked upon the bright, stranger face of Romance for the first time in his precarious career.

Until Tim Corrigan should return from his jaunt among Kings and Princes and hold up his big white finger in private offices, it was unsafe for Cork in any of the old haunts of his gang. So he lay, perdu, in the high rear room of a Capulet, reading pink sporting sheets and cursing the slow paddle wheels of the _Kaiser Wilhelm_.

It was on Thursday evening that Cork’s seclusion became intolerable to him. Never a hart panted for water fountain as he did for the cool touch of a drifting stein, for the firm security of a foot-rail in the hollow of his shoe and the quiet, hearty challenges of friendship and repartee along and across the shining bars. But he must avoid the district where he was known. The cops were looking for him everywhere, for news was scarce, and the newspapers were harping again on the failure of the police to suppress the gangs. If they got him before Corrigan came back, the big white finger could not be uplifted; it would be too late then. But Corrigan would be home the next day, so he felt sure there would be small danger in a little excursion that night among the crass pleasures that represented life to him.

At half-past twelve McManus stood in a darkish cross-town street looking up at the name “Rooney’s,” picked out by incandescent lights against a signboard over a second-story window. He had heard of the place as a tough “hang-out”; with its frequenters and its locality he was unfamiliar. Guided by certain unerring indications common to all such resorts, he ascended the stairs and entered the large room over the café.

Here were some twenty or thirty tables, at this time about half-filled with Rooney’s guests. Waiters served drinks. At one end a human pianola with drugged eyes hammered the keys with automatic and furious unprecision. At merciful intervals a waiter would roar or squeak a song–songs full of “Mr. Johnsons” and “babes” and “coons”–historical word guaranties of the genuineness of African melodies composed by red waistcoated young gentlemen, natives of the cotton fields and rice swamps of West Twenty-eighth Street.

For one brief moment you must admire Rooney with me as he receives, seats, manipulates, and chaffs his guests. He is twenty-nine. He has Wellington’s nose, Dante’s chin, the cheek-bones of an Iroquois, the smile of Talleyrand, Corbett’s foot work, and the poise of an eleven-year-old East Side Central Park Queen of the May. He is assisted by a lieutenant known as Frank, a pudgy, easy chap, swell-dressed, who goes among the tables seeing that dull care does not intrude. Now, what is there about Rooney’s to inspire all this pother? It is more respectable by daylight; stout ladies with children and mittens and bundles and unpedigreed dogs drop up of afternoons for a stein and a chat. Even by gaslight the diversions are melancholy i’ the mouth–drink and rag-time, and an occasional surprise when the waiter swabs the suds from under your sticky glass. There is an answer. Transmigration! The soul of Sir Walter Raleigh has traveled from beneath his slashed doublet to a kindred home under Rooney’s visible plaid waistcoat. Rooney’s is twenty years ahead of the times. Rooney has removed the embargo. Rooney has spread his cloak upon the soggy crossing of public opinion, and any Elizabeth who treads upon it is as much a queen as another. Attend to the revelation of the secret. In Rooney’s ladies may smoke!

McManus sat down at a vacant table. He paid for the glass of beer that he ordered, tilted his narrow-brimmed derby to the back of his brick-dust head, twined his feet among the rungs of his chair, and heaved a sigh of contentment from the breathing spaces of his innermost soul; for this mud honey was clarified sweetness to his taste. The sham gaiety, the hectic glow of counterfeit hospitality, the self-conscious, joyless laughter, the wine-born warmth, the loud music retrieving the hour from frequent whiles of awful and corroding silence, the presence of well-clothed and frank-eyed beneficiaries of Rooney’s removal of the restrictions laid upon the weed, the familiar blended odors of soaked lemon peel, flat beer, and _peau d’Espagne_–all these were manna to Cork McManus, hungry for his week in the desert of the Capulet’s high rear room.

A girl, alone, entered Rooney’s, glanced around with leisurely swiftness, and sat opposite McManus at his table. Her eyes rested upon him for two seconds in the look with which woman reconnoitres all men whom she for the first time confronts. In that space of time she will decide upon one of two things–either to scream for the police, or that she may marry him later on.

Her brief inspection concluded, the girl laid on the table a worn red morocco shopping bag with the inevitable top-gallant sail of frayed lace handkerchief flying from a corner of it. After she had ordered a small beer from the immediate waiter she took from her bag a box of cigarettes and lighted one with slightly exaggerated ease of manner. Then she looked again in the eyes of Cork McManus and smiled.

Instantly the doom of each was sealed.

The unqualified desire of a man to buy clothes and build fires for a woman for a whole lifetime at first sight of her is not uncommon among that humble portion of humanity that does not care for Bradstreet or coats-of-arms or Shaw’s plays. Love at first sight has occurred a time or two in high life; but, as a rule, the extempore mania is to be found among unsophisticated creatures such as the dove, the blue-tailed dingbat, and the ten-dollar-a-week clerk. Poets, subscribers to all fiction magazines, and schatchens, take notice.

With the exchange of the mysterious magnetic current came to each of them the instant desire to lie, pretend, dazzle and deceive, which is the worst thing about the hypocritical disorder known as love.

“Have another beer?” suggested Cork. In his circle the phrase was considered to be a card, accompanied by a letter of introduction and references.

“No, thanks,” said the girl, raising her eyebrows and choosing her conventional words carefully. “I–merely dropped in for–a slight refreshment.” The cigarette between her fingers seemed to require explanation. “My aunt is a Russian lady,” she concluded, “and we often have a post perannual cigarette after dinner at home.”

“Cheese it!” said Cork, whom society airs oppressed. “Your fingers are as yellow as mine.”

“Say,” said the girl, blazing upon him with low-voiced indignation, “what do you think I am? Say, who do you think you are talking to? What?”

She was pretty to look at. Her eyes were big, brown, intrepid and bright. Under her flat sailor hat, planted jauntily on one side, her crinkly, tawny hair parted and was drawn back, low and massy, in a thick, pendant knot behind. The roundness of girlhood still lingered in her chin and neck, but her cheeks and fingers were thinning slightly. She looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion, and sullen wonder. Her smart, short tan coat was soiled and expensive. Two inches below her black dress dropped the lowest flounce of a heliotrope silk underskirt.

“Beg your pardon,” said Cork, looking at her admiringly. “I didn’t mean anything. Sure, it’s no harm to smoke, Maudy.”

“Rooney’s,” said the girl, softened at once by his amends, “is the only place I know where a lady can smoke. Maybe it ain’t a nice habit, but aunty lets us at home. And my name ain’t Maudy, if you please; it’s Ruby Delamere.”

“That’s a swell handle,” said Cork approvingly. “Mine’s McManus–Cor–er–Eddie McManus.”

“Oh, you can’t help that,” laughed Ruby. “Don’t apologize.”

Cork looked seriously at the big clock on Rooney’s wall. The girl’s ubiquitous eyes took in the movement.

“I know it’s late,” she said, reaching for her bag; “but you know how you want a smoke when you want one. Ain’t Rooney’s all right? I never saw anything wrong here. This is twice I’ve been in. I work in a bookbindery on Third Avenue. A lot of us girls have been working overtime three nights a week. They won’t let you smoke there, of course. I just dropped in here on my way home for a puff. Ain’t it all right in here? If it ain’t, I won’t come any more.”

“It’s a little bit late for you to be out alone anywhere,” said Cork. “I’m not wise to this particular joint; but anyhow you don’t want to have your picture taken in it for a present to your Sunday School teacher. Have one more beer, and then say I take you home.”

“But I don’t know you,” said the girl, with fine scrupulosity. “I don’t accept the company of gentlemen I ain’t acquainted with. My aunt never would allow that.”

“Why,” said Cork McManus, pulling his ear, “I’m the latest thing in suitings with side vents and bell skirt when it comes to escortin’ a lady. You bet you’ll find me all right, Ruby. And I’ll give you a tip as to who I am. My governor is one of the hottest cross-buns of the Wall Street push. Morgan’s cab horse casts a shoe every time the old man sticks his head out the window. Me! Well, I’m in trainin’ down the Street. The old man’s goin’ to put a seat on the Stock Exchange in my stockin’ my next birthday. But it all sounds like a lemon to me. What I like is golf and yachtin’ and–er–well, say a corkin’ fast ten-round bout between welter-weights with walkin’ gloves.”

“I guess you can walk to the door with me,” said the girl hesitatingly, but with a certain pleased flutter. “Still I never heard anything extra good about Wall Street brokers, or sports who go to prize fights, either. Ain’t you got any other recommendations?”

“I think you’re the swellest looker I’ve had my lamps on in little old New York,” said Cork impressively.

“That’ll be about enough of that, now. Ain’t you the kidder!” She modified her chiding words by a deep, long, beaming, smile-embellished look at her cavalier. “We’ll drink our beer before we go, ha?”

A waiter sang. The tobacco smoke grew denser, drifting and rising in spirals, waves, tilted layers, cumulus clouds, cataracts and suspended fogs like some fifth element created from the ribs of the ancient four. Laughter and chat grew louder, stimulated by Rooney’s liquids and Rooney’s gallant hospitality to Lady Nicotine.

One o’clock struck. Down-stairs there was a sound of closing and locking doors. Frank pulled down the green shades of the front windows carefully. Rooney went below in the dark hall and stood at the front door, his cigarette cached in the hollow of his hand. Thenceforth whoever might seek admittance must present a countenance familiar to Rooney’s hawk’s eye–the countenance of a true sport.

Cork McManus and the bookbindery girl conversed absorbedly, with their elbows on the table. Their glasses of beer were pushed to one side, scarcely touched, with the foam on them sunken to a thin white scum. Since the stroke of one the stale pleasures of Rooney’s had become renovated and spiced; not by any addition to the list of distractions, but because from that moment the sweets became stolen ones. The flattest glass of beer acquired the tang of illegality; the mildest claret punch struck a knockout blow at law and order; the harmless and genial company became outlaws, defying authority and rule. For after the stroke of one in such places as Rooney’s, where neither bed nor board is to be had, drink may not be set before the thirsty of the city of the four million. It is the law.

“Say,” said Cork McManus, almost covering the table with his eloquent chest and elbows, “was that dead straight about you workin’ in the bookbindery and livin’ at home–and just happenin’ in here–and–and all that spiel you gave me?”

“Sure it was,” answered the girl with spirit. “Why, what do you think? Do you suppose I’d lie to you? Go down to the shop and ask ’em. I handed it to you on the level.”

“On the dead level?” said Cork. “That’s the way I want it; because–“

“Because what?”

“I throw up my hands,” said Cork. “You’ve got me goin’. You’re the girl I’ve been lookin’ for. Will you keep company with me, Ruby?”

“Would you like me to–Eddie?”

“Surest thing. But I wanted a straight story about–about yourself, you know. When a fellow had a girl–a steady girl–she’s got to be all right, you know. She’s got to be straight goods.”

“You’ll find I’ll be straight goods, Eddie.”

“Of course you will. I believe what you told me. But you can’t blame me for wantin’ to find out. You don’t see many girls smokin’ cigarettes in places like Rooney’s after midnight that are like you.”

The girl flushed a little and lowered her eyes. “I see that now,” she said meekly. “I didn’t know how bad it looked. But I won’t do it any more. And I’ll go straight home every night and stay there. And I’ll give up cigarettes if you say so, Eddie–I’ll cut ’em out from this minute on.”

Cork’s air became judicial, proprietary, condemnatory, yet sympathetic. “A lady can smoke,” he decided, slowly, “at times and places. Why? Because it’s bein’ a lady that helps her pull it off.”

“I’m going to quit. There’s nothing to it,” said the girl. She flicked the stub of her cigarette to the floor.

“At times and places,” repeated Cork. “When I call round for you of evenin’s we’ll hunt out a dark bench in Stuyvesant Square and have a puff or two. But no more Rooney’s at one o’clock–see?”

“Eddie, do you really like me?” The girl searched his hard but frank features eagerly with anxious eyes.

“On the dead level.”

“When are you coming to see me–where I live?”

“Thursday–day after to-morrow evenin’. That suit you?”

“Fine. I’ll be ready for you. Come about seven. Walk to the door with me to-night and I’ll show you where I live. Don’t forget, now. And don’t you go to see any other girls before then, mister! I bet you will, though.”

“On the dead level,” said Cork, “you make ’em all look like rag-dolls to me. Honest, you do. I know when I’m suited. On the dead level, I do.”

Against the front door down-stairs repeated heavy blows were delivered. The loud crashes resounded in the room above. Only a trip-hammer or a policeman’s foot could have been the author of those sounds. Rooney jumped like a bullfrog to a corner of the room, turned off the electric lights and hurried swiftly below. The room was left utterly dark except for the winking red glow of cigars and cigarettes. A second volley of crashes came up from the assaulted door. A little, rustling, murmuring panic moved among the besieged guests. Frank, cool, smooth, reassuring, could be seen in the rosy glow of the burning tobacco, going from table to table.

“All keep still!” was his caution. “Don’t talk or make any noise! Everything will be all right. Now, don’t feel the slightest alarm. We’ll take care of you all.”

Ruby felt across the table until Cork’s firm hand closed upon hers. “Are you afraid, Eddie?” she whispered. “Are you afraid you’ll get a free ride?”

“Nothin’ doin’ in the teeth-chatterin’ line,” said Cork. “I guess Rooney’s been slow with his envelope. Don’t you worry, girly; I’ll look out for you all right.”

Yet Mr. McManus’s ease was only skin- and muscle-deep. With the police looking everywhere for Buck Malone’s assailant, and with Corrigan still on the ocean wave, he felt that to be caught in a police raid would mean an ended career for him. He wished he had remained in the high rear room of the true Capulet reading the pink extras.

Rooney seemed to have opened the front door below and engaged the police in conference in the dark hall. The wordless low growl of their voices came up the stairway. Frank made a wireless news station of himself at the upper door. Suddenly he closed the door, hurried to the extreme rear of the room and lighted a dim gas jet.

“This way, everybody!” he called sharply. “In a hurry; but no noise, please!”

The guests crowded in confusion to the rear. Rooney’s lieutenant swung open a panel in the wall, overlooking the back yard, revealing a ladder already placed for the escape.

“Down and out, everybody!” he commanded. “Ladies first! Less talking, please! Don’t crowd! There’s no danger.”

Among the last, Cork and Ruby waited their turn at the open panel. Suddenly she swept him aside and clung to his arm fiercely.

“Before we go out,” she whispered in his ear–“before anything happens, tell me again, Eddie, do you l–do you really like me?”

“On the dead level,” said Cork, holding her close with one arm, “when it comes to you, I’m all in.”

When they turned they found they were lost and in darkness. The last of the fleeing customers had descended. Half way across the yard they bore the ladder, stumbling, giggling, hurrying to place it against an adjoining low building over the roof of which their only route to safety.

“We may as well sit down,” said Cork grimly. “Maybe Rooney will stand the cops off, anyhow.”

They sat at a table; and their hands came together again.

A number of men then entered the dark room, feeling their way about. One of them, Rooney himself, found the switch and turned on the electric light. The other man was a cop of the old régime–a big cop, a thick cop, a fuming, abrupt cop–not a pretty cop. He went up to the pair at the table and sneered familiarly at the girl.

“What are youse doin’ in here?” he asked.

“Dropped in for a smoke,” said Cork mildly.

“Had any drinks?”

“Not later than one o’clock.”

“Get out–quick!” ordered the cop. Then, “Sit down!” he countermanded.

He took off Cork’s hat roughly and scrutinized him shrewdly. “Your name’s McManus.”

“Bad guess,” said Cork. “It’s Peterson.”

“Cork McManus, or something like that,” said the cop. “You put a knife into a man in Dutch Mike’s saloon a week ago.”

“Aw, forget it!” said Cork, who perceived a shade of doubt in the officer’s tones. “You’ve got my mug mixed with somebody else’s.”

“Have I? Well, you’ll come to the station with me, anyhow, and be looked over. The description fits you all right.” The cop twisted his fingers under Cork’s collar. “Come on!” he ordered roughly.

Cork glanced at Ruby. She was pale, and her thin nostrils quivered. Her quick eye danced from one man’s face to the other as they spoke or moved. What hard luck! Cork was thinking–Corrigan on the briny; and Ruby met and lost almost within an hour! Somebody at the police station would recognize him, without a doubt. Hard luck!

But suddenly the girl sprang up and hurled herself with both arms extended against the cop. His hold on Cork’s collar was loosened and he stumbled back two or three paces.

“Don’t go so fast, Maguire!” she cried in shrill fury. “Keep your hands off my man! You know me, and you know I’m givin’ you good advice. Don’t you touch him again! He’s not the guy you are lookin’ for–I’ll stand for that.”

“See here, Fanny,” said the Cop, red and angry, “I’ll take you, too, if you don’t look out! How do you know this ain’t the man I want? What are you doing in here with him?”

“How do I know?” said the girl, flaming red and white by turns. “Because I’ve known him a year. He’s mine. Oughtn’t I to know? And what am I doin’ here with him? That’s easy.”

She stooped low and reached down somewhere into a swirl of flirted draperies, heliotrope and black. An elastic snapped, she threw on the table toward Cork a folded wad of bills. The money slowly straightened itself with little leisurely jerks.

“Take that, Jimmy, and let’s go,” said the girl. “I’m declarin’ the usual dividends, Maguire,” she said to the officer. “You had your usual five-dollar graft at the usual corner at ten.”

“A lie!” said the cop, turning purple. “You go on my beat again and I’ll arrest you every time I see you.”

“No, you won’t,” said the girl. “And I’ll tell you why. Witnesses saw me give you the money to-night, and last week, too. I’ve been getting fixed for you.”

Cork put the wad of money carefully into his pocket, and said: “Come on, Fanny; let’s have some chop suey before we go home.”

“Clear out, quick, both of you, or I’ll–“

The cop’s bluster trailed away into inconsequentiality.

At the corner of the street the two halted. Cork handed back the money without a word. The girl took it and slipped it slowly into her hand-bag. Her expression was the same she had worn when she entered Rooney’s that night–she looked upon the world with defiance, suspicion and sullen wonder.

“I guess I might as well say good-bye here,” she said dully. “You won’t want to see me again, of course. Will you–shake hands–Mr. McManus.”

“I mightn’t have got wise if you hadn’t give the snap away,” said Cork. “Why did you do it?”

“You’d have been pinched if I hadn’t. That’s why. Ain’t that reason enough?” Then she began to cry. “Honest, Eddie, I was goin’ to be the best girl in the world. I hated to be what I am; I hated men; I was ready almost to die when I saw you. And you seemed different from everybody else. And when I found you liked me, too, why, I thought I’d make you believe I was good, and I was goin’ to be good. When you asked to come to my house and see me, why, I’d have died rather than do anything wrong after that. But what’s the use of talking about it? I’ll say good-by, if you will, Mr. McManus.”

Cork was pulling at his ear. “I knifed Malone,” said he. “I was the one the cop wanted.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said the girl listlessly. “It didn’t make any difference about that.”

“That was all hot air about Wall Street. I don’t do nothin’ but hang out with a tough gang on the East Side.”

“That was all right, too,” repeated the girl. “It didn’t make any difference.”

Cork straightened himself, and pulled his hat down low. “I could get a job at O’Brien’s,” he said aloud, but to himself.

“Good-by,” said the girl.

“Come on,” said Cork, taking her arm. “I know a place.”

Two blocks away he turned with her up the steps of a red brick house facing a little park.

“What house is this?” she asked, drawing back. “Why are you going in there?”

A street lamp shone brightly in front. There was a brass nameplate at one side of the closed front doors. Cork drew her firmly up the steps. “Read that,” said he.

She looked at the name on the plate, and gave a cry between a moan and a scream. “No, no, no, Eddie! Oh, my God, no! I won’t let you do that–not now! Let me go! You shan’t do that! You can’t–you mus’n’t! Not after you know! No, no! Come away quick! Oh, my God! Please, Eddie, come!”

Half fainting, she reeled, and was caught in the bend of his arm. Cork’s right hand felt for the electric button and pressed it long.

Another cop–how quickly they scent trouble when trouble is on the wing!–came along, saw them, and ran up the steps. “Here! What are you doing with that girl?” he called gruffly.

“She’ll be all right in a minute,” said Cork. “It’s a straight deal.”

“Reverend Jeremiah Jones,” read the cop from the door-plate with true detective cunning.

“Correct,” said Cork. “On the dead level, we’re goin’ to get married.”

XXI

THE VENTURERS

Let the story wreck itself on the spreading rails of the _Non Sequitur_ Limited, if it will; first you must take your seat in the observation car “_Raison d’être_” for one moment. It is for no longer than to consider a brief essay on the subject–let us call it: “What’s Around the Corner.”

_Omne mundus in duas partes divisum est_–men who wear rubbers and pay poll-taxes, and men who discover new continents. There are no more continents to discover; but by the time overshoes are out of date and the poll has developed into an income tax, the other half will be paralleling the canals of Mars with radium railways.

Fortune, Chance, and Adventure are given as synonymous in the dictionaries. To the knowing each has a different meaning. Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside. The face of Fortune is radiant and alluring; that of Adventure is flushed and heroic. The face of Chance is the beautiful countenance–perfect because vague and dream-born–that we see in our tea-cups at breakfast while we growl over our chops and toast.

The VENTURER is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune. That is the difference between him and the Adventurer. Eating the forbidden fruit was the best record ever made by a Venturer. Trying to prove that it happened is the highest work of the Adventuresome. To be either is disturbing to the cosmogony of creation. So, as bracket-sawed and city-directoried citizens, let us light our pipes, chide the children and the cat, arrange ourselves in the willow rocker under the flickering gas jet at the coolest window and scan this little tale of two modern followers of Chance.

“Did you ever hear that story about the man from the West?” asked Billinger, in the little dark-oak room to your left as you penetrate the interior of the Powhatan Club.

“Doubtless,” said John Reginald Forster, rising and leaving the room.

Forster got his straw hat (straws will be in and maybe out again long before this is printed) from the checkroom boy, and walked out of the air (as Hamlet says). Billinger was used to having his stories insulted and would not mind. Forster was in his favorite mood and wanted to go away from anywhere. A man, in order to get on good terms with himself, must have his opinions corroborated and his moods matched by some one else. (I had written that “somebody”; but an A. D. T. boy who once took a telegram for me pointed out that I could save money by using the compound word. This is a vice versa case.)

Forster’s favorite mood was that of greatly desiring to be a follower of Chance. He was a Venturer by nature, but convention, birth, tradition and the narrowing influences of the tribe of Manhattan had denied him full privilege. He had trodden all the main-traveled thoroughfares and many of the side roads that are supposed to relieve the tedium of life. But none had sufficed. The reason was that he knew what was to be found at the end of every street. He knew from experience and logic almost precisely to what end each digression from routine must lead. He found a depressing monotony in all the variations that the music of his sphere had grafted upon the tune of life. He had not learned that, although the world was made round, the circle has been squared, and that it’s true interest is to be in “What’s Around the Corner.”

Forster walked abroad aimlessly from the Powhatan, trying not to tax either his judgment or his desire as to what streets he traveled. He would have been glad to lose his way if it were possible; but he had no hope of that. Adventure and Fortune move at your beck and call in the Greater City; but Chance is oriental. She is a veiled lady in a sedan chair, protected by a special traffic squad of dragonians. Crosstown, uptown, and downtown you may move without seeing her.

At the end of an hour’s stroll, Forster stood on a corner of a broad, smooth avenue, looking disconsolately across it at a picturesque old hotel softly but brilliantly lit. Disconsolately, because he knew that he must dine; and dining in that hotel was no venture. It was one of his favorite caravansaries, and so silent and swift would be the service and so delicately choice the food, that he regretted the hunger that must be appeased by the “dead perfection” of the place’s cuisine. Even the music there seemed to be always playing _da capo_.

Fancy came to him that he would dine at some cheap, even dubious, restaurant lower down in the city, where the erratic chefs from all countries of the world spread their national cookery for the omnivorous American. Something might happen there out of the routine–he might come upon a subject without a predicate, a road without an end, a question without an answer, a cause without an effect, a gulf stream in life’s salt ocean. He had not dressed for evening; he wore a dark business suit that would not be questioned even where the waiters served the spaghetti in their shirt sleeves.

So John Reginald Forster began to search his clothes for money; because the more cheaply you dine, the more surely must you pay. All of the thirteen pockets, large and small, of his business suit he explored carefully and found not a penny. His bank book showed a balance of five figures to his credit in the Old Ironsides Trust Company, but–

Forster became aware of a man nearby at his left hand who was really regarding him with some amusement. He looked like any business man of thirty or so, neatly dressed and standing in the attitude of one waiting for a street car. But there was no car line on that avenue. So his proximity and unconcealed curiosity seemed to Forster to partake of the nature of a personal intrusion. But, as he was a consistent seeker after “What’s Around the Corner,” instead of manifesting resentment he only turned a half-embarrassed smile upon the other’s grin of amusement.

“All in?” asked the intruder, drawing nearer.

“Seems so,” said Forster. “Now, I thought there was a dollar in–“

“Oh, I know,” said the other man, with a laugh. “But there wasn’t. I’ve just been through the same process myself, as I was coming around the corner. I found in an upper vest pocket–I don’t know how they got there–exactly two pennies. You know what kind of a dinner exactly two pennies will buy!”

“You haven’t dined, then?” asked Forster.

“I have not. But I would like to. Now, I’ll make you a proposition. You look like a man who would take up one. Your clothes look neat and respectable. Excuse personalities. I think mine will pass the scrutiny of a head waiter, also. Suppose we go over to that hotel and dine together. We will choose from the menu like millionaires–or, if you prefer, like gentlemen in moderate circumstances dining extravagantly for once. When we have finished we will match with my two pennies to see which of us will stand the brunt of the house’s displeasure and vengeance. My name is Ives. I think we have lived in the same station of life–before our money took wings.”

“You’re on,” said Forster, joyfully.

Here was a venture at least within the borders of the mysterious country of Chance–anyhow, it promised something better than the stale infestivity of a table d’hôte.

The two were soon seated at a corner table in the hotel dining room. Ives chucked one of his pennies across the table to Forster.

“Match for which of us gives the order,” he said.

Forster lost.

Ives laughed and began to name liquids and viands to the waiter with the absorbed but calm deliberation of one who was to the menu born. Forster, listening, gave his admiring approval of the order.

“I am a man,” said Ives, during the oysters, “Who has made a lifetime search after the to-be-continued-in-our-next. I am not like the ordinary adventurer who strikes for a coveted prize. Nor yet am I like a gambler who knows he is either to win or lose a certain set stake. What I want is to encounter an adventure to which I can predict no conclusion. It is the breath of existence to me to dare Fate in its blindest manifestations. The world has come to run so much by rote and gravitation that you can enter upon hardly any footpath of chance in which you do not find signboards informing you of what you may expect at its end. I am like the clerk in the Circumlocution Office who always complained bitterly when any one came in to ask information. ‘He wanted to _know_, you know!’ was the kick he made to his fellow-clerks. Well, I don’t want to know, I don’t want to reason, I don’t want to guess–I want to bet my hand without seeing it.”

“I understand,” said Forster delightedly. “I’ve often wanted the way I feel put into words. You’ve done it. I want to take chances on what’s coming. Suppose we have a bottle of Moselle with the next course.”

“Agreed,” said Ives. “I’m glad you catch my idea. It will increase the animosity of the house toward the loser. If it does not weary you, we will pursue the theme. Only a few times have I met a true venturer–one who does not ask a schedule and map from Fate when he begins a journey. But, as the world becomes more civilized and wiser, the more difficult it is to come upon an adventure the end of which you cannot foresee. In the Elizabethan days you could assault the watch, wring knockers from doors and have a jolly set-to with the blades in any convenient angle of a wall and ‘get away with it.’ Nowadays, if you speak disrespectfully to a policeman, all that is left to the most romantic fancy is to conjecture in what particular police station he will land you.”

“I know–I know,” said Forster, nodding approval.

“I returned to New York to-day,” continued Ives, “from a three years’ ramble around the globe. Things are not much better abroad than they are at home. The whole world seems to be overrun by conclusions. The only thing that interests me greatly is a premise. I’ve tried shooting big game in Africa. I know what an express rifle will do at so many yards; and when an elephant or a rhinoceros falls to the bullet, I enjoy it about as much as I did when I was kept in after school to do a sum in long division on the blackboard.”

“I know–I know,” said Forster.

“There might be something in aeroplanes,” went on Ives, reflectively. “I’ve tried ballooning; but it seems to be merely a cut-and-dried affair of wind and ballast.”

“Women,” suggested Forster, with a smile.

“Three months ago,” said Ives. “I was pottering around in one of the bazaars in Constantinople. I noticed a lady, veiled, of course, but with a pair of especially fine eyes visible, who was examining some amber and pearl ornaments at one of the booths. With her was an attendant–a big Nubian, as black as coal. After a while the attendant drew nearer to me by degrees and slipped a scrap of paper into my hand. I looked at it when I got a chance. On it was scrawled hastily in pencil: ‘The arched gate of the Nightingale Garden at nine to-night.’ Does that appear to you to be an interesting premise, Mr. Forster?”

“I made inquiries and learned that the Nightingale Garden was the property of an old Turk–a grand vizier, or something of the sort. Of course I prospected for the arched gate and was there at nine. The same Nubian attendant opened the gate promptly on time, and I went inside and sat on a bench by a perfumed fountain with the veiled lady. We had quite an extended chat. She was Myrtle Thompson, a lady journalist, who was writing up the Turkish harems for a Chicago newspaper. She said she noticed the New York cut of my clothes in the bazaar and wondered if I couldn’t work something into the metropolitan papers about it.”

“I see,” said Forster. “I see.”

“I’ve canoed through Canada,” said Ives, “down many rapids and over many falls. But I didn’t seem to get what I wanted out of it because I knew there were only two possible outcomes–I would either go to the bottom or arrive at the sea level. I’ve played all games at cards; but the mathematicians have spoiled that sport by computing the percentages. I’ve made acquaintances on trains, I’ve answered advertisements, I’ve rung strange door-bells, I’ve taken every chance that presented itself; but there has always been the conventional ending–the logical conclusion to the premise.”

“I know,” repeated Forster. “I’ve felt it all. But I’ve had few chances to take my chance at chances. Is there any life so devoid of impossibilities as life in this city? There seems to be a myriad of opportunities for testing the undeterminable; but not one in a thousand fails to land you where you expected it to stop. I wish the subways and street cars disappointed one as seldom.”

“The sun has risen,” said Ives, “on the Arabian nights. There are no more caliphs. The fisherman’s vase is turned to a vacuum bottle, warranted to keep any genie boiling or frozen for forty-eight hours. Life moves by rote. Science has killed adventure. There are no more opportunities such as Columbus and the man who ate the first oyster had. The only certain thing is that there is nothing uncertain.”

“Well,” said Forster, “my experience has been the limited one of a city man. I haven’t seen the world as you have; but it seems that we view it with the same opinion. But, I tell you I am grateful for even this little venture of ours into the borders of the haphazard. There may be at least one breathless moment when the bill for the dinner is presented. Perhaps, after all, the pilgrims who traveled without scrip or purse found a keener taste to life than did the knights of the Round Table who rode abroad with a retinue and King Arthur’s certified checks in the lining of their helmets. And now, if you’ve finished your coffee, suppose we match one of your insufficient coins for the impending blow of Fate. What have I up?”

“Heads,” called Ives.

“Heads it is,” said Forster, lifting his hand. “I lose. We forgot to agree upon a plan for the winner to escape. I suggest that when the waiter comes you make a remark about telephoning to a friend. I will hold the fort and the dinner check long enough for you to get your hat and be off. I thank you for an evening out of the ordinary, Mr. Ives, and wish we might have others.”

“If my memory is not at fault,” said Ives, laughing, “the nearest police station is in MacDougal Street. I have enjoyed the dinner, too, let me assure you.”

Forster crooked his finger for the waiter. Victor, with a locomotive effort that seemed to owe more to pneumatics than to pedestrianism, glided to the table and laid the card, face downward, by the loser’s cup. Forster took it up and added the figures with deliberate care. Ives leaned back comfortably in his chair.

“Excuse me,” said Forster; “but I thought you were going to ring Grimes about that theatre party for Thursday night. Had you forgotten about it?”

“Oh,” said Ives, settling himself more comfortably, “I can do that later on. Get me a glass of water, waiter.”

“Want to be in at the death, do you?” asked Forster.

“I hope you don’t object,” said Ives, pleadingly. “Never in my life have I seen a gentleman arrested in a public restaurant for swindling it out of a dinner.”

“All right,” said Forster, calmly. “You are entitled to see a Christian die in the arena as your _pousse-café_.”

Victor came with the glass of water and remained, with the disengaged air of an inexorable collector.

Forster hesitated for fifteen seconds, and then took a pencil from his pocket and scribbled his name on the dinner check. The waiter bowed and took it away.

“The fact is,” said Forster, with a little embarrassed laugh, “I doubt whether I’m what they call a ‘game sport,’ which means the same as a ‘soldier of Fortune.’ I’ll have to make a confession. I’ve been dining at this hotel two or three times a week for more than a year. I always sign my checks.” And then, with a note of appreciation in his voice: “It was first-rate of you to stay to see me through with it when you knew I had no money, and that you might be scooped in, too.”

“I guess I’ll confess, too,” said Ives, with a grin. “I own the hotel. I don’t run it, of course, but I always keep a suite on the third floor for my use when I happen to stray into town.”

He called a waiter and said: “Is Mr. Gilmore still behind the desk? All right. Tell him that Mr. Ives is here, and ask him to have my rooms made ready and aired.”

“Another venture cut short by the inevitable,” said Forster. “Is there a conundrum without an answer in the next number? But let’s hold to our subject just for a minute or two, if you will. It isn’t often that I meet a man who understands the flaws I pick in existence. I am engaged to be married a month from to-day.”

“I reserve comment,” said Ives.

“Right; I am going to add to the assertion. I am devotedly fond of the lady; but I can’t decide whether to show up at the church or make a sneak for Alaska. It’s the same idea, you know, that we were discussing–it does for a fellow as far as possibilities are concerned. Everybody knows the routine–you get a kiss flavored with Ceylon tea after breakfast; you go to the office; you come back home and dress for dinner–theatre twice a week–bills–moping around most evenings trying to make conversation–a little quarrel occasionally–maybe sometimes a big one, and a separation–or else a settling down into a middle-aged contentment, which is worst of all.”

“I know,” said Ives, nodding wisely.

“It’s the dead certainty of the thing,” went on Forster, “that keeps me in doubt. There’ll nevermore be anything around the corner.”

“Nothing after the ‘Little Church,'” said Ives. “I know.”

“Understand,” said Forster, “that I am in no doubt as to my feelings toward the lady. I may say that I love her truly and deeply. But there is something in the current that runs through my veins that cries out against any form of the calculable. I do not know what I want; but I know that I want it. I’m talking like an idiot, I suppose, but I’m sure of what I mean.”

“I understand you,” said Ives, with a slow smile. “Well, I think I will be going up to my rooms now. If you would dine with me here one evening soon, Mr. Forster, I’d be glad.”

“Thursday?” suggested Forster.

“At seven, if it’s convenient,” answered Ives.

“Seven goes,” assented Forster.

At half-past eight Ives got into a cab and was driven to a number in one of the correct West Seventies. His card admitted him to the reception room of an old-fashioned house into which the spirits of Fortune, Chance and Adventure had never dared to enter. On the walls were the Whistler etchings, the steel engravings by Oh-what’s-his-name?, the still-life paintings of the grapes and garden truck with the watermelon seeds spilled on the table as natural as life, and the Greuze head. It was a household. There was even brass andirons. On a table was an album, half-morocco, with oxidized-silver protections on the corners of the lids. A clock on the mantel ticked loudly, with a warning click at five minutes to nine. Ives looked at it curiously, remembering a time-piece in his grandmother’s home that gave such a warning.

And then down the stairs and into the room came Mary Marsden. She was twenty-four, and I leave her to your imagination. But I must say this much–youth and health and simplicity and courage and greenish-violet eyes are beautiful, and she had all these. She gave Ives her hand with the sweet cordiality of an old friendship.

“You can’t think what a pleasure it is,” she said, “to have you drop in once every three years or so.”

For half an hour they talked. I confess that I cannot repeat the conversation. You will find it in books in the circulating library. When that part of it was over, Mary said:

“And did you find what you wanted while you were abroad?”

“What I wanted?” said Ives.

“Yes. You know you were always queer. Even as a boy you wouldn’t play marbles or baseball or any game with rules. You wanted to dive in water where you didn’t know whether it was ten inches or ten feet deep. And when you grew up you were just the same. We’ve often talked about your peculiar ways.”

“I suppose I am an incorrigible,” said Ives. “I am opposed to the doctrine of predestination, to the rule of three, gravitation, taxation, and everything of the kind. Life has always seemed to me something like a serial story would be if they printed above each instalment a synopsis of _succeeding_ chapters.”

Mary laughed merrily.

“Bob Ames told us once,” she said, “of a funny thing you did. It was when you and he were on a train in the South, and you got off at a town where you hadn’t intended to stop just because the brakeman hung up a sign in the end of the car with the name of the next station on it.”

“I remember,” said Ives. “That ‘next station’ has been the thing I’ve always tried to get away from.”

“I know it,” said Mary. “And you’ve been very foolish. I hope you didn’t find what you wanted not to find, or get off at the station where there wasn’t any, or whatever it was you expected wouldn’t happen to you during the three years you’ve been away.”

“There was something I wanted before I went away,” said Ives.

Mary looked in his eyes clearly, with a slight, but perfectly sweet smile.

“There was,” she said. “You wanted me. And you could have had me, as you very well know.”

Without replying, Ives let his gaze wander slowly about the room. There had been no change in it since last he had been in it, three years before. He vividly recalled the thoughts that had been in his mind then. The contents of that room were as fixed, in their way, as the everlasting hills. No change would ever come there except the inevitable ones wrought by time and decay. That silver-mounted album would occupy that corner of that table, those pictures would hang on the walls, those chairs be found in their same places every morn and noon and night while the household hung together. The brass andirons were monuments to order and stability. Here and there were relics of a hundred years ago which were still living mementos and would be for many years to come. One going from and coming back to that house would never need to forecast or doubt. He would find what he left, and leave what he found. The veiled lady, Chance, would never lift her hand to the knocker on the outer door.

And before him sat the lady who belonged in the room. Cool and sweet and unchangeable she was. She offered no surprises. If one should pass his life with her, though she might grow white-haired and wrinkled, he would never perceive the change. Three years he had been away from her, and she was still waiting for him as established and constant as the house itself. He was sure that she had once cared for him. It was the knowledge that she would always do so that had driven him away. Thus his thoughts ran.

“I am going to be married soon,” said Mary.

On the next Thursday afternoon Forster came hurriedly to Ive’s hotel.

“Old man,” said he, “we’ll have to put that dinner off for a year or so; I’m going abroad. The steamer sails at four. That was a great talk we had the other night, and it decided me. I’m going to knock around the world and get rid of that incubus that has been weighing on both you and me–the terrible dread of knowing what’s going to happen. I’ve done one thing that hurts my conscience a little; but I know it’s best for both of us. I’ve written to the lady to whom I was engaged and explained everything–told her plainly why I was leaving–that the monotony of matrimony would never do for me. Don’t you think I was right?”

“It is not for me to say,” answered Ives. “Go ahead and shoot elephants if you think it will bring the element of chance into your life. We’ve got to decide these things for ourselves. But I tell you one thing, Forster, I’ve found the way. I’ve found out the biggest hazard in the world–a game of chance that never is concluded, a venture that may end in the highest heaven or the blackest pit. It will keep a man on edge until the clods fall on his coffin, because he will never know–not until his last day, and not then will he know. It is a voyage without a rudder or compass, and you must be captain and crew and keep watch, every day and night, yourself, with no one to relieve you. I have found the VENTURE. Don’t bother yourself about leaving Mary Marsden, Forster. I married her yesterday at noon.”

XXII

THE DUEL

The gods, lying beside their nectar on ‘Lympus and peeping over the edge of the cliff, perceive a difference in cities. Although it would seem that to their vision towns must appear as large or small ant-hills without special characteristics, yet it is not so. Studying the habits of ants from so great a height should be but a mild diversion when coupled with the soft drink that mythology tells us is their only solace. But doubtless they have amused themselves by the comparison of villages and towns; and it will be no news to them (nor, perhaps, to many mortals), that in one particularity New York stands unique among the cities of the world. This shall be the theme of a little story addressed to the man who sits smoking with his Sabbath-slippered feet on another chair, and to the woman who snatches the paper for a moment while boiling greens or a narcotized baby leaves her free. With these I love to sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of Kings.

New York City is inhabited by 4,000,000 mysterious strangers; thus beating Bird Centre by three millions and half a dozen nine’s. They came here in various ways and for many reasons–Hendrik Hudson, the art schools, green goods, the stork, the annual dressmakers’ convention, the Pennsylvania Railroad, love of money, the stage, cheap excursion rates, brains, personal column ads., heavy walking shoes, ambition, freight trains–all these have had a hand in making up the population.

But every man Jack when he first sets foot on the stones of Manhattan has got to fight. He has got to fight at once until either he or his adversary wins. There is no resting between rounds, for there are no rounds. It is slugging from the first. It is a fight to a finish.

Your opponent is the City. You must do battle with it from the time the ferry-boat lands you on the island until either it is yours or it has conquered you. It is the same whether you have a million in your pocket or only the price of a week’s lodging.

The battle is to decide whether you shall become a New Yorker or turn the rankest outlander and Philistine. You must be one or the other. You cannot remain neutral. You must be for or against–lover or enemy–bosom friend or outcast. And, oh, the city is a general in the ring. Not only by blows does it seek to subdue you. It woos you to its heart with the subtlety of a siren. It is a combination of Delilah, green Chartreuse, Beethoven, chloral and John L. in his best days.

In other cities you may wander and abide as a stranger man as long as you please. You may live in Chicago until your hair whitens, and be a citizen and still prate of beans if Boston mothered you, and without rebuke. You may become a civic pillar in any other town but Knickerbocker’s, and all the time publicly sneering at its buildings, comparing them with the architecture of Colonel Telfair’s residence in Jackson, Miss., whence you hail, and you will not be set upon. But in New York you must be either a New Yorker or an invader of a modern Troy, concealed in the wooden horse of your conceited provincialism. And this dreary preamble is only to introduce to you the unimportant figures of William and Jack.

They came out of the West together, where they had been friends. They came to dig their fortunes out of the big city.

Father Knickerbocker met them at the ferry, giving one a right-hander on the nose and the other an upper-cut with his left, just to let them know that the fight was on.

William was for business; Jack was for Art. Both were young and ambitious; so they countered and clinched. I think they were from Nebraska or possibly Missouri or Minnesota. Anyhow, they were out for success and scraps and scads, and they tackled the city like two Lochinvars with brass knucks and a pull at the City Hall.

Four years afterward William and Jack met at luncheon. The business man blew in like a March wind, hurled his silk hat at a waiter, dropped into the chair that was pushed under him, seized the bill of fare, and had ordered as far as cheese before the artist had time to do more than nod. After the nod a humorous smile came into his eyes.

“Billy,” he said, “you’re done for. The city has gobbled you up. It has taken you and cut you to its pattern and stamped you with its brand. You are so nearly like ten thousand men I have seen to-day that you couldn’t be picked out from them if it weren’t for your laundry marks.”

“Camembert,” finished William. “What’s that? Oh, you’ve still got your hammer out for New York, have you? Well, little old Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for me. It’s giving me mine. And, say, I used to think the West was the whole round world–only slightly flattened at the poles whenever Bryan ran. I used to yell myself hoarse about the free expense, and hang my hat on the horizon, and say cutting things in the grocery to little soap drummers from the East. But I’d never seen New York, then, Jack. Me for it from the rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is the West to me now. Have you heard this fellow Crusoe sing? The desert isle for him, I say, but my wife made me go. Give me May Irwin or E. S. Willard any time.”

“Poor Billy,” said the artist, delicately fingering a cigarette. “You remember, when we were on our way to the East how we talked about this great, wonderful city, and how we meant to conquer it and never let it get the best of us? We were going to be just the same fellows we had always been, and never let it master us. It has downed you, old man. You have changed from a maverick into a butterick.”

“Don’t see exactly what you are driving at,” said William. “I don’t wear an alpaca coat with blue trousers and a seersucker vest on dress occasions, like I used to do at home. You talk about being cut to a pattern–well, ain’t the pattern all right? When you’re in Rome you’ve got to do as the Dagoes do. This town seems to me to have other alleged metropolises skinned to flag stations. According to the railroad schedule I’ve got in mind, Chicago and Saint Jo and Paris, France, are asterisk stops–which means you wave a red flag and get on every other Tuesday. I like this little suburb of Tarrytown-on-the-Hudson. There’s something or somebody doing all the time. I’m clearing $8,000 a year selling automatic pumps, and I’m living like kings-up. Why, yesterday, I was introduced to John W. Gates. I took an auto ride with a wine agent’s sister. I saw two men run over by a street car, and I seen Edna May play in the evening. Talk about the West, why, the other night I woke everybody up in the hotel hollering. I dreamed I was walking on a board sidewalk in Oshkosh. What have you got against this town, Jack? There’s only one thing in it that I don’t care for, and that’s a ferryboat.”

The artist gazed dreamily at the cartridge paper on the wall. “This town,” said he, “is a leech. It drains the blood of the country. Whoever comes to it accepts a challenge to a duel. Abandoning the figure of the leech, it is a juggernaut, a Moloch, a monster to which the innocence, the genius, and the beauty of the land must pay tribute. Hand to hand every newcomer must struggle with the leviathan. You’ve lost, Billy. It shall never conquer me. I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or–the color work in a ten-cent magazine. I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw. It has caught you, old man, but I will never run beside its chariot wheels. It glosses itself as the Chinaman glosses his collars. Give me the domestic finish. I could stand a town ruled by wealth or one ruled by an aristocracy; but this is one controlled by its lowest ingredients. Claiming culture, it is the crudest; asseverating its pre-eminence, it is the basest; denying all outside values and virtue, it is the narrowest. Give me the pure and the open heart of the West country. I would go back there to-morrow if I could.”

“Don’t you like this _filet mignon_?” said William. “Shucks, now, what’s the use to knock the town! It’s the greatest ever. I couldn’t sell one automatic pump between Harrisburg and Tommy O’Keefe’s saloon, in Sacramento, where I sell twenty here. And have you seen Sara Bernhardt in ‘Andrew Mack’ yet?”

“The town’s got you, Billy,” said Jack.

“All right,” said William. “I’m going to buy a cottage on Lake Ronkonkoma next summer.”

At midnight Jack raised his window and sat close to it. He caught his breath at what he saw, though he had seen and felt it a hundred times.

Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream. The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous; some lay in long, desert cañons. Such was the background of the wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city. But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended like the city’s soul sounds and odors and thrills that make up the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained, of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill, enrich, despoil, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of it came up to him and went into his blood.

There was a knock on his door. A telegram had come for him. It came from the West, and these were its words:

“Come back and the answer will be yes.

“DOLLY.”

He kept the boy waiting ten minutes, and then wrote the reply: “Impossible to leave here at present.” Then he sat at the window again and let the city put its cup of mandragora to his lips again.

After all it isn’t a story; but I wanted to know which one of the heroes won the battle against the city. So I went to a very learned friend and laid the case before him. What he said was: “Please don’t bother me; I have Christmas presents to buy.”

So there it rests; and you will have to decide for yourself.

XXIII

“WHAT YOU WANT”

Night had fallen on that great and beautiful city known as Bagdad-on-the-Subway. And with the night came the enchanted glamour that belongs not to Arabia alone. In different masquerade the streets, bazaars and walled houses of the occidental city of romance were filled with the same kind of folk that so much interested our interesting old friend, the late Mr. H. A. Rashid. They wore clothes eleven hundred years nearer to the latest styles than H. A. saw in old Bagdad; but they were about the same people underneath. With the eye of faith, you could have seen the Little Hunchback, Sinbad the Sailor, Fitbad the Tailor,