“Why, hello, Splutter!” they cried.
“Oh, boys, I’ve come to dine with you.”
It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.
Grief spoke first. “Yes, you have?” he said incredulously.
“Why, certainly I have. What’s the matter?”
They grinned. “Well, old lady,” responded Grief, “you’ve hit us at the wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to mention, and, what’s more, we haven’t got a sou.”
“What? Again?” cried Florinda.
“Yes, again. You’d better dine home to-night.”
“But I’ll — I’ll stake you,” said the girl eagerly. “Oh, you poor old idiots! It’s a shame! Say, I’ll stake you.”
“Certainly not,” said Pennoyer sternly.
“What are you talking about, Splutter?” demanded Wrinkles in an angry voice.
“No, that won’t go down,” said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.
Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them where she pleased. “Got coffee, haven’t you? Well, I’m not going to stir a step. You’re a fine lot of birds!” she added bitterly, “You’ve all pulled me out of a whole lot of scrape — oh, any number of times — and now you’re broke, you go acting like a set of dudes.”
Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was here accounted a feat.
Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. “There! I’ll have to go shy one.”
Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of its litter.
Florinda assaulted Great Grief. “Here, that’s not the way to make coffee!”
“What ain’t?”
“Why, the way you’re making it. You want to take — —” She explained some way to him which he couldn’t understand.
“For heaven’s sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don’t sit there like a music box,” said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas stove.
Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction, “Well, the coffee’s good, anyhow.”
“’Tis good,” said Florinda, “but it isn’t made right. I’ll show you how, Penny. You first — —”
“Oh, dry up, Splutter,” said Grief. “Here, take an egg.”
“I don’t like eggs,” said Florinda.
“Take an egg,” said the three hosts menacingly.
“I tell you I don’t like eggs.”
“Take — an — egg!” they said again.
“Oh, well,” said Florinda, “I’ll take one, then; but you needn’t act like such a set of dudes — and, oh, maybe you didn’t have much lunch. I had such a daisy lunch! Up at Pontiac’s studio. He’s got a lovely studio.”
The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, “I saw some of his things over in Stencil’s gallery, and they’re rotten.”
“Yes — rotten,” said Pennoyer.
“Rotten,” said Grief.
“Oh, well,” retorted Florinda, “if a man has a swell studio and dresses — oh, sort of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like owls in a cave and say rotten — rotten — rotten. You’re away off. Pontiac’s landscapes — —”
“Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker’s and see how it looks.”
“Oh, well, Billie Hawker’s,” said Florinda. “Oh, well.”
At the mention of Hawker’s name they had all turned to scan her face.
CHAPTER XX.
“He wrote that he was coming home this week,” said Pennoyer.
“Did he?” asked Florinda indifferently.
“Yes. Aren’t you glad?”
They were still watching her face.
“Yes, of course I’m glad. Why shouldn’t I be glad?” cried the girl with defiance.
They grinned.
“Oh, certainly. Billie Hawker is a good fellow, Splutter. You have a particular right to be glad.”
“You people make me tired,” Florinda retorted. “Billie Hawker doesn’t give a rap about me, and he never tried to make out that he did.”
“No,” said Grief. “But that isn’t saying that you don’t care a rap about Billie Hawker. Ah, Florinda!”
It seemed that the girl’s throat suffered a slight contraction. “Well, and what if I do?” she demanded finally.
“Have a cigarette?” answered Grief.
Florinda took a cigarette, lit it, and, perching herself on a divan, which was secretly a coal box, she smoked fiercely.
“What if I do?” she again demanded. “It’s better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow.”
“Oh, Splutter, you poor little outspoken kid!” said Wrinkle in a sad voice.
Grief searched among the pipes until he found the best one. “Yes, Splutter, don’t you know that when you are so frank you defy every law of your sex, and wild eyes will take your trail?”
“Oh, you talk through your hat,” replied Florinda. “Billie don’t care whether I like him or whether I don’t. And if he should hear me now, he wouldn’t be glad or give a hang, either way. I know that.” The girl paused and looked at the row of plaster casts. “Still, you needn’t be throwing it at me all the time.”
“We didn’t,” said Wrinkles indignantly. “You threw it at yourself.”
“Well,” continued Florinda, “it’s better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow. He makes money and — —”
“There,” said Grief, “now you’ve hit it! Bedad, you’ve reached a point in eulogy where if you move again you will have to go backward.”
“Of course I don’t care anything about a fellow’s having money — —”
“No, indeed you don’t, Splutter,” said Pennoyer.
“But then, you know what I mean. A fellow isn’t a man and doesn’t stand up straight unless he has some money. And Billie Hawker makes enough so that you feel that nobody could walk over him, don’t you know? And there isn’t anything jay about him, either. He’s a thoroughbred, don’t you know?”
After reflection, Pennoyer said, “It’s pretty hard on the rest of us, Splutter.”
“Well, of course I like him, but — but — —”
“What?” said Pennoyer.
“I don’t know,” said Florinda.
Purple Sanderson lived in this room, but he usually dined out. At a certain time in his life, before he came to be a great artist, he had learned the gas-fitter’s trade, and when his opinions were not identical with the opinions of the art managers of the greater number of New York publications he went to see a friend who was a plumber, and the opinions of this man he was thereafter said to respect. He frequented a very neat restaurant on Twenty-third Street. It was known that on Saturday nights Wrinkles, Grief, and Pennoyer frequently quarreled with him.
As Florinda ceased speaking Purple entered. “Hello, there, Splutter!” As he was neatly hanging up his coat, he said to the others, “Well, the rent will be due in four days.”
“Will it?” asked Pennoyer, astounded.
“Certainly it will,” responded Purple, with the air of a superior financial man.
“My soul!” said Wrinkles.
“Oh, shut up, Purple!” said Grief. “You make me weary, coming around here with your chin about rent. I was just getting happy.”
“Well, how are we going to pay it? That’s the point,” said Sanderson.
Wrinkles sank deeper in his chair and played despondently on his guitar. Grief cast a look of rage at Sanderson, and then stared at the wall. Pennoyer said, “Well, we might borrow it from Billie Hawker.”
Florinda laughed then.
“Oh,” continued Pennoyer hastily, “if those Amazement people pay me when they said they would I’l
l have the money.”
“So you will,” said Grief. “You will have money to burn. Did the Amazement people ever pay you when they said they would? You are wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You talk like an artist.”
Wrinkles, too, smiled at Pennoyer. “The Eminent Magazine people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them, too. It would only cost him a stack of blues. By the time he has invested all his money he hasn’t got, and the rent is three weeks overdue, he will be able to tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after the day of publication. Go ahead, Penny.”
After a period of silence, Sanderson, in an obstinate manner, said, “Well, what’s to be done? The rent has got to be paid.”
Wrinkles played more sad music. Grief frowned deeper. Pennoyer was evidently searching his mind for a plan.
Florinda took the cigarette from between her lips that she might grin with greater freedom.
“We might throw Purple out,” said Grief, with an inspired air. “That would stop all this discussion.”
“You!” said Sanderson furiously. “You can’t keep serious a minute. If you didn’t have us to take care of you, you wouldn’t even know when they threw you out into the street.”
“Wouldn’t I?” said Grief.
“Well, look here,” interposed Florinda, “I’m going home unless you can be more interesting. I am dead sorry about the rent, but I can’t help it, and — —”
“Here! Sit down! Hold on, Splutter!” they shouted. Grief turned to Sanderson: “Purple, you shut up!”
Florinda curled again on the divan and lit another cigarette. The talk waged about the names of other and more successful painters, whose work they usually pronounced “rotten.”
CHAPTER XXI.
Pennoyer, coming home one morning with two gigantic cakes to accompany the coffee at the breakfast in the den, saw a young man bounce from a horse car. He gave a shout. “Hello, there, Billie! Hello!”
“Hello, Penny!” said Hawker. “What are you doing out so early?” It was somewhat after nine o’clock.
“Out to get breakfast,” said Pennoyer, waving the cakes. “Have a good time, old man?”
“Great.”
“Do much work?”
“No. Not so much. How are all the people?”
“Oh, pretty good. Come in and see us eat breakfast,” said Pennoyer, throwing open the door of the den. Wrinkles, in his shirt, was making coffee. Grief sat in a chair trying to loosen the grasp of sleep. “Why, Billie Hawker, b’ginger!” they cried.
“How’s the wolf, boys? At the door yet?”
“‘At the door yet?’ He’s halfway up the back stairs, and coming fast. He and the landlord will be here to-morrow. ‘Mr. Landlord, allow me to present Mr. F. Wolf, of Hunger, N. J. Mr. Wolf — Mr. Landlord.’”
“Bad as that?” said Hawker.
“You bet it is! Easy Street is somewhere in heaven, for all we know. Have some breakfast? — coffee and cake, I mean.”
“No, thanks, boys. Had breakfast.”
Wrinkles added to the shirt, Grief aroused himself, and Pennoyer brought the coffee. Cheerfully throwing some drawings from the table to the floor, they thus made room for the breakfast, and grouped themselves with beaming smiles at the board.
“Well, Billie, come back to the old gang again, eh? How did the country seem? Do much work?”
“Not very much. A few things. How’s everybody?”
“Splutter was in last night. Looking out of sight. Seemed glad to hear that you were coming back soon.”
“Did she? Penny, did anybody call wanting me to do a ten-thousand-dollar portrait for them?”
“No. That frame-maker, though, was here with a bill. I told him — —”
Afterward Hawker crossed the corridor and threw open the door of his own large studio. The great skylight, far above his head, shed its clear rays upon a scene which appeared to indicate that some one had very recently ceased work here and started for the country. A distant closet door was open, and the interior showed the effects of a sudden pillage.
There was an unfinished “Girl in Apple Orchard” upon the tall Dutch easel, and sketches and studies were thick upon the floor. Hawker took a pipe and filled it from his friend the tan and gold jar. He cast himself into a chair and, taking an envelope from his pocket, emptied two violets from it to the palm of his hand and stared long at them. Upon the walls of the studio various labours of his life, in heavy gilt frames, contemplated him and the violets.
At last Pennoyer burst impetuously in upon him. “Hi, Billie! come over and —— What’s the matter?”
Hawker had hastily placed the violets in the envelope and hurried it to his pocket. “Nothing,” he answered.
“Why, I thought—” said Pennoyer, “I thought you looked rather rattled. Didn’t you have — I thought I saw something in your hand.”
“Nothing, I tell you!” cried Hawker.
“Er — oh, I beg your pardon,” said Pennoyer. “Why, I was going to tell you that Splutter is over in our place, and she wants to see you.”
“Wants to see me? What for?” demanded Hawker. “Why don’t she come over here, then?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Pennoyer. “She sent me to call you.”
“Well, do you think I’m going to —— Oh, well, I suppose she wants to be unpleasant, and knows she loses a certain mental position if she comes over here, but if she meets me in your place she can be as infernally disagreeable as she —— That’s it, I’ll bet.”
When they entered the den Florinda was gazing from the window. Her back was toward the door.
At last she turned to them, holding herself very straight. “Well, Billie Hawker,” she said grimly, “you don’t seem very glad to see a fellow.”
“Why, heavens, did you think I was going to turn somersaults in the air?”
“Well, you didn’t come out when you heard me pass your door,” said Florinda, with gloomy resentment.
Hawker appeared to be ruffled and vexed. “Oh, great Scott!” he said, making a gesture of despair.
Florinda returned to the window. In the ensuing conversation she took no part, save when there was an opportunity to harry some speech of Hawker’s, which she did in short contemptuous sentences. Hawker made no reply save to glare in her direction. At last he said, “Well, I must go over and do some work.” Florinda did not turn from the window. “Well, so-long, boys,” said Hawker, “I’ll see you later.”
As the door slammed Pennoyer apologetically said, “Billie is a trifle off his feed this morning.”
“What about?” asked Grief.
“I don’t know; but when I went to call him he was sitting deep in his chair staring at some — —” He looked at Florinda and became silent.
“Staring at what?” asked Florinda, turning then from the window.
Pennoyer seemed embarrassed. “Why, I don’t know — nothing, I guess — I couldn’t see very well. I was only fooling.”
Florinda scanned his face suspiciously. “Staring at what?” she demanded imperatively.
“Nothing, I tell you!” shouted Pennoyer.
Florinda looked at him, and wavered and debated. Presently she said, softly: “Ah, go on, Penny. Tell me.”
“It wasn’t anything at all, I say!” cried Pennoyer stoutly. “I was only giving you a jolly. Sit down, Splutter, and hit a cigarette.”
She obeyed, but she continued to cast the dubious eye at Pennoyer. Once she said to him privately: “Go on, Penny, tell me. I know it was something from the way you are acting.”
“Oh, let up, Splutter, for heaven’s sake!”
“Tell me,” beseeched Florinda.
“No.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Pl-e-a-se tell me.”
“No.”
“Oh, go on.”
“No.”
“Ah, what makes you so mean, Penny? You know I’d tell you, if it was the other way a
bout.”
“But it’s none of my business, Splutter. I can’t tell you something which is Billie Hawker’s private affair. If I did I would be a chump.”
“But I’ll never say you told me. Go on.”
“No.”
“Pl-e-a-se tell me.”
“No.”
CHAPTER XXII.
When Florinda had gone, Grief said, “Well, what was it?” Wrinkles looked curiously from his drawing-board.
Pennoyer lit his pipe and held it at the side of his mouth in the manner of a deliberate man. At last he said, “It was two violets.”
“You don’t say!” ejaculated Wrinkles.
“Well, I’m hanged!” cried Grief. “Holding them in his hand and moping over them, eh?”
“Yes,” responded Pennoyer. “Rather that way.”
“Well, I’m hanged!” said both Grief and Wrinkles. They grinned in a pleased, urchin-like manner. “Say, who do you suppose she is? Somebody he met this summer, no doubt. Would you ever think old Billie would get into that sort of a thing? Well, I’ll be gol-durned!”
Ultimately Wrinkles said, “Well, it’s his own business.” This was spoken in a tone of duty.
“Of course it’s his own business,” retorted Grief. “But who would ever think — —” Again they grinned.
When Hawker entered the den some minutes later he might have noticed something unusual in the general demeanour. “Say, Grief, will you loan me your —— What’s up?” he asked.
For answer they grinned at each other, and then grinned at him.
“You look like a lot of Chessy cats,” he told them.
They grinned on.
Apparently feeling unable to deal with these phenomena, he went at last to the door. “Well, this is a fine exhibition,” he said, standing with his hand on the knob and regarding them. “Won election bets? Some good old auntie just died? Found something new to pawn? No? Well, I can’t stand this. You resemble those fish they discover at deep sea. Good-bye!”
As he opened the door they cried out: “Hold on, Billie! Billie, look here! Say, who is she?”
“What?”
“Who is she?”
“Who is who?”
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 35
