Florinda lived in a flat with fire-escapes written all over the front of it. The street in front was being repaired. It had been said by imbecile residents of the vicinity that the paving was never allowed to remain down for a sufficient time to be invalided by the tramping millions, but that it was kept perpetually stacked in little mountains through the unceasing vigilance of a virtuous and heroic city government, which insisted that everything should be repaired. The alderman for the district had sometimes asked indignantly of his fellow-members why this street had not been repaired, and they, aroused, had at once ordered it to be repaired. Moreover, shopkeepers, whose stables were adjacent, placed trucks and other vehicles strategically in the darkness. Into this tangled midnight Hawker conducted Florinda. The great avenue behind them was no more than a level stream of yellow light, and the distant merry bells might have been boats floating down it. Grim loneliness hung over the uncouth shapes in the street which was being repaired.
“Billie,” said the girl suddenly, “what makes you so mean to me?”
A peaceful citizen emerged from behind a pile of débris, but he might not have been a peaceful citizen, so the girl clung to Hawker.
“Why, I’m not mean to you, am I?”
“Yes,” she answered. As they stood on the steps of the flat of innumerable fire-escapes she slowly turned and looked up at him. Her face was of a strange pallour in this darkness, and her eyes were as when the moon shines in a lake of the hills.
He returned her glance. “Florinda!” he cried, as if enlightened, and gulping suddenly at something in his throat. The girl studied the steps and moved from side to side, as do the guilty ones in country schoolhouses. Then she went slowly into the flat.
There was a little red lamp hanging on a pile of stones to warn people that the street was being repaired.
CHAPTER XXV.
“I’ll get my check from the Gamin on Saturday,” said Grief. “They bought that string of comics.”
“Well, then, we’ll arrange the present funds to last until Saturday noon,” said Wrinkles. “That gives us quite a lot. We can have a table d’hôte on Friday night.”
However, the cashier of the Gamin office looked under his respectable brass wiring and said: “Very sorry, Mr. — er — Warwickson, but our pay-day is Monday. Come around any time after ten.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter,” said Grief.
When he plunged into the den his visage flamed with rage. “Don’t get my check until Monday morning, any time after ten!” he yelled, and flung a portfolio of mottled green into the danger zone of the casts.
“Thunder!” said Pennoyer, sinking at once into a profound despair
“Monday morning, any time after ten,” murmured Wrinkles, in astonishment and sorrow.
While Grief marched to and fro threatening the furniture, Pennoyer and Wrinkles allowed their under jaws to fall, and remained as men smitten between the eyes by the god of calamity.
“Singular thing!” muttered Pennoyer at last. “You get so frightfully hungry as soon as you learn that there are no more meals coming.”
“Oh, well — —” said Wrinkles. He took up his guitar.
Oh, some folks say dat a niggah won’ steal,
‘Way down yondeh in d’ cohn’-fiel’;
But Ah caught two in my cohn’-fiel’,
Way down yondeh in d’ cohn’-fiel’.
“Oh, let up!” said Grief, as if unwilling to be moved from his despair.
“Oh, let up!” said Pennoyer, as if he disliked the voice and the ballad.
In his studio, Hawker sat braced nervously forward on a little stool before his tall Dutch easel. Three sketches lay on the floor near him, and he glared at them constantly while painting at the large canvas on the easel.
He seemed engaged in some kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness, eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind, and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, formidably. His arm moved with the energy of a strange wrath. He might have been thrusting with a sword.
There was a knock at the door. “Come in.” Pennoyer entered sheepishly. “Well?” cried Hawker, with an echo of savagery in his voice. He turned from the canvas precisely as one might emerge from a fight. “Oh!” he said, perceiving Pennoyer. The glow in his eyes slowly changed. “What is it, Penny?”
“Billie,” said Pennoyer, “Grief was to get his check to-day, but they put him off until Monday, and so, you know — er — well — —”
“Oh!” said Hawker again.
When Pennoyer had gone Hawker sat motionless before his work. He stared at the canvas in a meditation so profound that it was probably unconscious of itself.
The light from above his head slanted more and more toward the east.
Once he arose and lighted a pipe. He returned to the easel and stood staring with his hands in his pockets. He moved like one in a sleep. Suddenly the gleam shot into his eyes again. He dropped to the stool and grabbed a brush. At the end of a certain long, tumultuous period he clinched his pipe more firmly in his teeth and puffed strongly. The thought might have occurred to him that it was not alight, for he looked at it with a vague, questioning glance. There came another knock at the door. “Go to the devil!” he shouted, without turning his head.
Hollanden crossed the corridor then to the den.
“Hi, there, Hollie! Hello, boy! Just the fellow we want to see. Come in — sit down — hit a pipe. Say, who was the girl Billie Hawker went mad over this summer?”
“Blazes!” said Hollanden, recovering slowly from this onslaught. “Who — what — how did you Indians find it out?”
“Oh, we tumbled!” they cried in delight, “we tumbled.”
“There!” said Hollanden, reproaching himself. “And I thought you were such a lot of blockheads.”
“Oh, we tumbled!” they cried again in their ecstasy. “But who is she? That’s the point.”
“Well, she was a girl.”
“Yes, go on.”
“A New York girl.”
“Yes.”
“A perfectly stunning New York girl.”
“Yes. Go ahead.”
“A perfectly stunning New York girl of a very wealthy and rather old-fashioned family.”
“Well, I’ll be shot! You don’t mean it! She is practically seated on top of the Matterhorn. Poor old Billie!”
“Not at all,” said Hollanden composedly.
It was a common habit of Purple Sanderson to call attention at night to the resemblance of the den to some little ward in a hospital. Upon this night, when Sanderson and Grief were buried in slumber, Pennoyer moved restlessly. “Wrink!” he called softly into the darkness in the direction of the divan which was secretly a coal-box.
“What?” said Wrinkles in a surly voice. His mind had evidently been caught at the threshold of sleep.
“Do you think Florinda cares much for Billie Hawker?”
Wrinkles fretted through some oaths. “How in thunder do I know?” The divan creaked as he turned his face to the wall.
“Well — —” muttered Pennoyer.
CHAPTER XXVI.
The harmony of summer sunlight on leaf and blade of green was not known to the two windows, which looked forth at an obviously endless building of brownstone about which there was the poetry of a prison. Inside, great folds of lace swept down in orderly cascades, as water trained to fall mathematically. The colossal chandelier, gleaming like a Siamese headdress, caught the subtle flashes from unknown places.
Hawker heard a step and the soft swishing of a woman’s dress. He turned toward the door swiftly, with a certain dramatic impulsiveness. But when she entered the room he said, “How delighted I
am to see you again!”
She had said, “Why, Mr. Hawker, it was so charming in you to come!”
It did not appear that Hawker’s tongue could wag to his purpose. The girl seemed in her mind to be frantically shuffling her pack of social receipts and finding none of them made to meet this situation. Finally, Hawker said that he thought Hearts at War was a very good play.
“Did you?” she said in surprise. “I thought it much like the others.”
“Well, so did I,” he cried hastily—”the same figures moving around in the mud of modern confusion. I really didn’t intend to say that I liked it. Fact is, meeting you rather moved me out of my mental track.”
“Mental track?” she said. “I didn’t know clever people had mental tracks. I thought it was a privilege of the theologians.”
“Who told you I was clever?” he demanded.
“Why,” she said, opening her eyes wider, “nobody.”
Hawker smiled and looked upon her with gratitude. “Of course, nobody. There couldn’t be such an idiot. I am sure you should be astonished to learn that I believed such an imbecile existed. But — —”
“Oh!” she said.
“But I think you might have spoken less bluntly.”
“Well,” she said, after wavering for a time, “you are clever, aren’t you?”
“Certainly,” he answered reassuringly.
“Well, then?” she retorted, with triumph in her tone. And this interrogation was apparently to her the final victorious argument.
At his discomfiture Hawker grinned.
“You haven’t asked news of Stanley,” he said. “Why don’t you ask news of Stanley?”
“Oh! and how was he?”
“The last I saw of him he stood down at the end of the pasture — the pasture, you know — wagging his tail in blissful anticipation of an invitation to come with me, and when it finally dawned upon him that he was not to receive it, he turned and went back toward the house ‘like a man suddenly stricken with age,’ as the story-tellers eloquently say. Poor old dog!”
“And you left him?” she said reproachfully. Then she asked, “Do you remember how he amused you playing with the ants at the falls?”
“No.”
“Why, he did. He pawed at the moss, and you sat there laughing. I remember it distinctly.”
“You remember distinctly? Why, I thought — well, your back was turned, you know. Your gaze was fixed upon something before you, and you were utterly lost to the rest of the world. You could not have known if Stanley pawed the moss and I laughed. So, you see, you are mistaken. As a matter of fact, I utterly deny that Stanley pawed the moss or that I laughed, or that any ants appeared at the falls at all.”
“I have always said that you should have been a Chinese soldier of fortune,” she observed musingly. “Your daring and ingenuity would be prized by the Chinese.”
“There are innumerable tobacco jars in China,” he said, measuring the advantages. “Moreover, there is no perspective. You don’t have to walk two miles to see a friend. No. He is always there near you, so that you can’t move a chair without hitting your distant friend. You — —”
“Did Hollie remain as attentive as ever to the Worcester girls?”
“Yes, of course, as attentive as ever. He dragged me into all manner of tennis games — —”
“Why, I thought you loved to play tennis?”
“Oh, well,” said Hawker, “I did until you left.”
“My sister has gone to the park with the children. I know she will be vexed when she finds that you have called.”
Ultimately Hawker said, “Do you remember our ride behind my father’s oxen?”
“No,” she answered; “I had forgotten it completely. Did we ride behind your father’s oxen?”
After a moment he said: “That remark would be prized by the Chinese. We did. And you most graciously professed to enjoy it, which earned my deep gratitude and admiration. For no one knows better than I,” he added meekly, “that it is no great comfort or pleasure to ride behind my father’s oxen.”
She smiled retrospectively. “Do you remember how the people on the porch hurried to the railing?”
CHAPTER XXVII.
Near the door the stout proprietress sat intrenched behind the cash-box in a Parisian manner. She looked with practical amiability at her guests, who dined noisily and with great fire, discussing momentous problems furiously, making wide, maniacal gestures through the cigarette smoke. Meanwhile the little handful of waiters ran to and fro wildly. Imperious and importunate cries rang at them from all directions. “Gustave! Adolphe!” Their faces expressed a settled despair. They answered calls, commands, oaths in a semi-distraction, fleeting among the tables as if pursued by some dodging animal. Their breaths came in gasps. If they had been convict labourers they could not have surveyed their positions with countenances of more unspeakable injury. Withal, they carried incredible masses of dishes and threaded their ways with skill. They served people with such speed and violence that it often resembled a personal assault. They struck two blows at a table and left there a knife and fork. Then came the viands in a volley. The clatter of this business was loud and bewilderingly rapid, like the gallop of a thousand horses.
In a remote corner a band of mandolins and guitars played the long, sweeping, mad melody of a Spanish waltz. It seemed to go tingling to the hearts of many of the diners. Their eyes glittered with enthusiasm, with abandon, with deviltry. They swung their heads from side to side in rhythmic movement. High in air curled the smoke from the innumerable cigarettes. The long, black claret bottles were in clusters upon the tables. At an end of the hall two men with maudlin grins sang the waltz uproariously, but always a trifle belated.
An unsteady person, leaning back in his chair to murmur swift compliments to a woman at another table, suddenly sprawled out upon the floor. He scrambled to his feet, and, turning to the escort of the woman, heatedly blamed him for the accident. They exchanged a series of tense, bitter insults, which spatted back and forth between them like pellets. People arose from their chairs and stretched their necks. The musicians stood in a body, their faces turned with expressions of keen excitement toward this quarrel, but their fingers still twinkling over their instruments, sending into the middle of this turmoil the passionate, mad, Spanish music. The proprietor of the place came in agitation and plunged headlong into the argument, where he thereafter appeared as a frantic creature harried to the point of insanity, for they buried him at once in long, vociferous threats, explanations, charges, every form of declamation known to their voices. The music, the noise of the galloping horses, the voices of the brawlers, gave the whole thing the quality of war.
There were two men in the café who seemed to be tranquil. Hollanden carefully stacked one lump of sugar upon another in the middle of his saucer and poured cognac over them. He touched a match to the cognac and the blue and yellow flames eddied in the saucer. “I wonder what those two fools are bellowing at?” he said, turning about irritably.
“Hanged if I know!” muttered Hawker in reply. “This place makes me weary, anyhow. Hear the blooming din!”
“What’s the matter?” said Hollanden. “You used to say this was the one natural, the one truly Bohemian, resort in the city. You swore by it.”
“Well, I don’t like it so much any more.”
“Ho!” cried Hollanden, “you’re getting correct — that’s it exactly. You will become one of these intensely —— Look, Billie, the little one is going to punch him!”
“No, he isn’t. They never do,” said Hawker morosely. “Why did you bring me here to-night, Hollie?”
“I? I bring you? Good heavens, I came as a concession to you! What are you talking about? — Hi! the little one is going to punch him, sure!”
He gave the scene his undivided attention for a moment; then he turned again: “You will become correct. I know you will. I have been watching. You are about to achieve a respectability that will make a stone saint bl
ush for himself. What’s the matter with you? You act as if you thought falling in love with a girl was a most extraordinary circumstance. — I wish they would put those people out. — Of course I know that you —— There! The little one has swiped at him at last!”
After a time he resumed his oration. “Of course, I know that you are not reformed in the matter of this uproar and this remarkable consumption of bad wine. It is not that. It is a fact that there are indications that some other citizen was fortunate enough to possess your napkin before you; and, moreover, you are sure that you would hate to be caught by your correct friends with any such consommé in front of you as we had to-night. You have got an eye suddenly for all kinds of gilt. You are in the way of becoming a most unbearable person. — Oh, look! the little one and the proprietor are having it now. — You are in the way of becoming a most unbearable person. Presently many of your friends will not be fine enough. — In heaven’s name, why don’t they throw him out? Are you going to howl and gesticulate there all night?”
“Well,” said Hawker, “a man would be a fool if he did like this dinner.”
“Certainly. But what an immaterial part in the glory of this joint is the dinner! Who cares about dinner? No one comes here to eat; that’s what you always claimed. — Well, there, at last they are throwing him out. I hope he lands on his head. — Really, you know, Billie, it is such a fine thing being in love that one is sure to be detestable to the rest of the world, and that is the reason they created a proverb to the other effect. You want to look out.”
“You talk like a blasted old granny!” said Hawker. “Haven’t changed at all. This place is all right, only — —”
“You are gone,” interrupted Hollanden in a sad voice. “It is very plain — you are gone.”
CHAPTER XXVIII.
The proprietor of the place, having pushed to the street the little man, who may have been the most vehement, came again and resumed the discussion with the remainder of the men of war. Many of these had volunteered, and they were very enduring.
Complete Works of Stephen Crane Page 37
