David Malcolm Part 19

They said he was erratic, always in trouble by writing things contrary to the paper's policy, and gave up in disgust, to ship as supercargo on a vessel trading in the South Seas. He wrote a book after that, but the publishers failed, and Mallencroft couldn't even find a copy of it.

That must have been about the time you saw him--when he lectured on 'Life.' Poor old Hendry! It's his pride, his confounded pride--that's the trouble."

I had risen. Rufus Blight came to me and laid a hand on each of my shoulders. What a change since that day long ago! He had to reach up to me, and I looked down into his face.

"You'll think me a strange fellow, David. I didn't mean to tell you so much, but it just would come out when I saw that you understood. We must find him--you and I. We may find him any day; at this very minute he may be going by the Old Grub's door. Watch for him."

I promised. I must come often, he said; it was good to have such a friend as I was, one who could understand, to whom he could talk of old days in the valley. He had never really been at home since he left the valley. He had lived in strange places, among strange people. We must all go back--back to the valley, he and Penelope and I--we should go in May--Penelope had talked of it--in May, when the orchards were in blossom.

Rufus Blight laughed at the joyous prospect. And I? I closed my eyes to it. I turned away, through the great hall, but he, with unwelcome kindness, followed me to the stairs. What a great expedition it would be--to the valley--just he and I and Penelope! I laughed ironically--at myself. I plunged down the deep-carpeted steps. The grilled door closed behind me. I paused a moment to turn up my collar against the cold, to b.u.t.ton my gloves and collect my scattered thoughts. How the wind bit!

Across the Avenue a dark figure leaned against the wall of the park.

As I stepped over the pavement the man seemed to think that I was moving toward him, for he roused himself quickly and walked rapidly up the street. I laughed at his fright and turned on my way downtown, for I was thinking of myself and of what I had lost, and I had no care for shivering tramps. I reached the corner. Rufus Blight's words came back to me. Had that man been watching the Old Grub's door? I turned sharply, but I saw nothing, no sign of a living thing save the lights of a retreating cab.

CHAPTER XIX

I have spoken casually, in this rambling story of mine, of young Marshall, a fellow-lodger at Miss Minion's. He was the Brummel of the boarding-house. The fact that he occupied the smallest rear hall-bedroom, with the minimum of daylight, in no way affected his standing, for everybody knew that he went out in society. Indeed, for him more s.p.a.cious quarters were hardly needed, as he was seldom at home except to dress and to sleep. By day he hurried about Wall Street, buying and selling bonds. On the winter evenings he stepped forth from his cell a splendid figure, realizing, as nearly as possible, those spotless and creaseless young men whom the ill.u.s.trators draw with so much unction. Then we might have imagined that he would step on, into his brougham, to be whirled away to some smart dinner. Alas! his equipage was not even a cab. His pair of prancing blacks were only his galoches, and his protection against the weather a long ulster, a chest-protector of thickly padded satin, and an opera-hat. The great trouble which Marshall had on these nightly expeditions was getting home. I do not mean to insinuate that it was to find Miss Minion's door. It was to pa.s.s Miss Minion's door. There were several absent-minded old gentlemen living in the house who had a way of forgetting that they were not its sole occupants. Coming in from their weekly or monthly trip to the theatre, the hour would to them seem horribly late and they would catch the chain. Occasionally I was myself their victim, and had to stand shivering outside, ringing the bell with one hand and with the other playing a tattoo on the panels.

More generally it was Marshall, for, though I was frequently held very late at my work downtown, he was abroad at his pleasures even later.

The lateness with which he pursued these pleasures was no evidence against their innocence. Tom Marshall was one of the most innocent men that I have ever known. He was not a New Yorker. He came, as he told me, of the Marshalls of Pogatuck, in Maine. The way that he said it made me understand that there was no bluer blood in the land than that running in the veins of the Pogatuck Marshalls, and it explained why the Knickerbockers were so willing to meet him as an equal. He had come from Pogatuck by way of Harvard, and one advantage which his education had given him was an acquaintance that he could turn to use, inasmuch as his great ambition was to "go out." To him a card to the Ruyters would have been an olive-wreath of victory. It was a trophy that he hoped to win, and to that end he worked patiently, selling bonds all day, and at night as patiently setting forth in his galoches, his ulster, and his opera-hat to storm the outer works of society. He belonged to innumerable dancing-cla.s.ses. Indeed, it seemed to me that he kept himself poor meeting their dues, for I remember more than one occasion when he appealed to me in distress because he had to send fifteen dollars to the treasurer of the Tuesdays or the Fridays and the pater had forgotten to remit his allowance. Tom Marshall's father was the most forgetful of men.

I liked him. You could not help liking him. He was so thoroughly good-natured and affable. His conversation was by no means instructive, but there was an airiness about his views and ambitions which was restful to one who was taking life as seriously as was I in those days. I got to know him by having constantly to let him in. Of all the lodgers in the house, I was the most likely to be up late, and if one of the forgetful old gentlemen fastened the door-chain, to me would fall the duty of answering the signals of distress from the stoop.

Tom Marshall has played but a small part in my life. Like that of Boller of '89, his place in the cast is a minor one. He is one of those who fall in near the end of the line when the company joins hands to sidle across the stage, bowing and smiling, after the second act.

Yet without him I wonder sometimes how my own play would have ended.

It seems to me now as though he must have been born in Pogatuck, as though his whole life had been ordered, his love of going out developed, so that at the proper moment he might enter the stage where I was playing the hero to an empty house. He entered it at one o'clock in the morning. The door was chained. At the moment I was sitting in my room, on my one comfortable chair, my book on the floor at my side, my pipe in my mouth, and I was smoking very hard. What countless pipes I had smoked in this same way since the night, a month before, when I had dined with Rufus Blight! What countless nights I had sat in this same way, in this same month, with my book on the floor and my mind revolving ceaselessly in a circle! This night I had come to that part of the circle where I thought of Penelope, the lovely, the formal, the distant Penelope, when down in the depths of the house I heard the m.u.f.fled clatter of the bell and faint rat-tats upon the front door. I went to the window and put out my head, to see on the stoop the m.u.f.fled black figure of Tom Marshall.

"It was old Ransome again, I'll bet you," he said, when I had unchained the door and we stood in the dimly lighted hall. "This is the third time this month that he has locked me out, confound him!"

I raised my finger to my lips, cautioning Marshall not to arouse the whole house. But he would not be silenced--it was early yet, anyway--he had been to a Friday cotillon and it was a beastly bore--even the supper was poor--he wanted something to eat. His foot was on the stairs when he discovered that he was hungry. He discovered at the same time that he was indebted to me for having let him in, not alone this time but many others, and he insisted on showing his appreciation by taking me out to a late supper. I demurred. Marshall talked louder. I insinuated that he had been drinking, to which he replied that the Fridays never served anything but weak punch. I should have protested further, but Mrs. Markham's door opened at the head of the stairs and I heard her breathing indignantly. For the sake of quiet I consented, and so it happened that at one o'clock in the morning I found myself in the street, with my arm tucked under Marshall's and our faces set toward O'Corrigan's chop-house.

O'Corrigan's has been torn down these many years, but you can see a score of replicas of it on upper Sixth Avenue and Broadway. Its plate-gla.s.s windows were adorned with set pieces of lobsters and oysters, celery and apples, and you entered through a revolving door into an atmosphere laden heavily with kitchen fumes, into a room which multiplied itself in many mirrors. When you went there for the first time the man who took you, if he knew his New York, would tell you of O'Corrigan's rise from waiting at a downtown lunch-counter to the ownership of these glittering halls.

Of course, Tom Marshall knew O'Corrigan. He hailed him cordially, and it seemed to me that he had no little pride in the privilege. He even nodded to the bartender as we pa.s.sed him, leading me to the archway whence we could survey the adjoining room to see what was going on there. But nothing was going on there. These late-night restaurants are at their best in colored pictures. There they seem to own an atmosphere of light and joy. There lovely women sip champagne, that gayest of wines, from dainty gla.s.ses, and gallant men seem to say to us that if you would have health and wealth and happiness you would never go home until morning, but would live with them in this bright world of wine and women and song. Really, they are melancholy places, especially in their gayest hours. If vice really were attractive, how vicious most of us would be! I do not say that O'Corrigan's was a vicious place. At certain hours its patronage was of the dullest respectability from the suburbs. Dull respectability is not supposed to be abroad in the early hours of the morning, but it does seek at times to hover on the edge of disrespectability with something of the roguish curiosity of childhood. And now the respectables and the unrespectables, a motley gathering in that garish room, amid the ugly debris of their feasting, made an unattractive picture from which I turned with a sense of relief to the quieter place behind us.

As we moved to a table in a secluded corner, I saw Talcott and Bob Grant sitting with their heads close together over a litter of plates and gla.s.ses. Grant spoke to me. As he rose and offered his hand, I noticed in his eyes that watery brightness which comes in certain stages of conviviality. The effusiveness of his greeting might have flattered me had I not realized that his heart was unduly expanded by alcohol. To see such a great, good-natured animal as young Grant thus exhilarated was not surprising to me, but with Talcott it was different. I had known him only as a quiet, self-possessed man who, from policy if nothing else, I believed must be as circ.u.mspect in his life as in his clothes. Now he spoke to me. His greeting was perfunctory. In his eyes was that watery dulness which comes with the later stages of conviviality. His hair was tousled, his collar crushed, his tie awry; for whiskey muddles the clothes as well as the brain. He nodded to me; he wondered what I was doing out so late; he snapped his fingers and called loudly for Andrew. The summons to the waiter was for me a hint to be gone.

Tom Marshall was greatly impressed by the fact that I knew Talcott and Grant. When I rejoined him he seemed to treat me with greater respect than hitherto, for he had been rather patronizing. It was surprising to him, always so busy storming the outer works, to know that I, the drudge of the fourth floor front, who never "went out," was so intimate with these gallant cadets who lived in the citadel. He had come to give me beer. Now in a faltering voice he suggested champagne, rubbing his hands and smiling as he named it, as though it were his habit to indulge nightly in so expensive a beverage. Remembering that he had owed me five dollars for many months, I deemed it unwise to make an unnecessary inroad into his pocket-book. With my refusal he grew insistent, and at last consented, only with reluctance, to a modest repast of welsh-rabbit and beer.

"And the beer at once," he commanded the waiter.

Then, unfolding his napkin on his knees and lighting a cigarette, he looked over my shoulder to the distant table where the two heads were close together over the litter of plates and gla.s.ses. "So you know Talcott and Grant," he went on. "I'm sorry you didn't introduce me, Malcolm. I've seen them around, of course, but, strangely, have never met them. They are a great pair--stacks of money--Grant especially.

Talcott was in Harvard with me--was rather a sn.o.b and went with the rich crowd--very smart now. He was one of Willie Ruyter's ushers."

I smiled with compa.s.sion at this broken discourse. It brought to my mind Mrs. Bannister. Tom Marshall and Mrs. Bannister looked at life from the same view-point and I from one entirely different. To my mind there was nothing very remarkable in having my existence acknowledged by two very muddled young men, who in their present state acknowledged also their brotherhood with the _roue_ whom I had seen in the next room or the cabman sitting outside on his box in a half-stupor. I might envy the good fortune which allowed them to move in the same world as Penelope Blight, but to disavow intimacy with them, even to one so strangely ambitious as Tom Marshall, called for no loss of pride. With some show of temper I avowed that I hardly knew them. I had only met them once or twice at the house of friends. But the sincerity with which I disowned them served only to heighten the new-born respect with which Marshall treated me. He did not know that I "went out."

Laughing, I retorted that I never did go out. He said that I must; that he would take me out; he would present me to the right people. He launched into the delights of going out and the necessity of going out if a man was to be anybody at all; then suddenly stopped at the thought that the beer ordered at once was very slow in coming.

"That waiter is always confoundedly slow," he said. "I should have insisted on having Andrew. I apologize, Malcolm--I should have thought of Andrew. You would have enjoyed Andrew."

"Andrew?" I repeated, questioning.

"Yes, Andrew," replied Marshall. "Here's the beer. Now, George, hurry those rabbits--I'm famished. Andrew," he went on, lighting a fresh cigarette, "is a remarkable character. He is full of philosophy. He quoted Herbert Spencer to me the other night. He has a sly way--and a somewhat disconcerting one--when you order a drink, of trying to induce you to take mineral water, and if he can, and O'Corrigan is not within hearing, he serves a temperance lecture with every Scotch and soda."

Marshall tapped his forehead. "A little queer," he said sagely, "but shrewd. By Jove, there he is now arguing with Bob Grant--a temperance lecture, I'll bet--trying to persuade him to take plain soda."

I looked over my shoulder to see this philosophic waiter who served temperance lectures with whiskey. His back was to me. I saw only a tall, loose-jointed figure clad in a waiter's jacket, a long, black arm outstretched, a napkin draped over it, a long, thin hand clutching a bill-of-fare, and a head of dark hair shot with white. The bill-of-fare struck the table in emphasis, the napkin waved like a flag of battle, both arms were stretched out wide in appeal. Grant laughed again--uproariously.

"I'll bet he is trying to uplift those fellows," said Marshall. "He has a good chance to get in a word, as O'Corrigan is in the next room."

I turned to my companion. At that moment I was more interested in the non-arrival of the welsh-rabbit than in the scene behind me, for waiters are by nature inclined to be voluble when the opportunity is given them, and to me there was nothing particularly amusing in the picture of young Grant, with that graciousness which comes with too much drink, condescending to argue with this crack-brained fellow who moved with his head in the clouds while his weary feet shuffled in and out of O'Corrigan's kitchen. At the moment there was nothing familiar to me in the tall, thin figure, nothing more than I should have seen in any other lank, shambling waiter waving a napkin and a bill-of-fare. I was growing tired. I was regretting that I had even allowed Tom Marshall to inveigle me out so late, to breathe heavy air and to eat heavy food at this hour, when I should be refreshing my body with sleep.

But Tom Marshall's spirits grew higher as the night grew older. He was immensely comfortable with his beer and cigarettes, immensely amused at the argument which was going on behind my back.

"You really must meet Andrew. You will enjoy him, Malcolm," he said.

"I'll call him over when he is through with those men. He is a character worth knowing."

"You speak of him as if you had known him for a long time," I returned, and I think my lips must have curled a little; but if I was unappreciative of the hospitality which I was enjoying, my excuse was my great weariness.

"Oh dear, no," he demurred; "I've been coming here for years--late at night, you understand, for a bite occasionally. I never saw him until last fall--got talking to him--I always like to talk to waiters, to get their ideas. I found him a curious chap, better educated than most of them and surprisingly well informed--surprisingly. He seemed to have knocked around a good deal."

"Had been a waiter in Hoboken, I suppose," said I, "and in Philadelphia----"

"In Hoboken!" My sarcasm nettled Marshall. "He told me that he had never been a waiter at all until he came here; he was simply looking for an opportunity to find something really congenial. He was fresh from Canton. In Hoboken!" Tom Marshall leaned toward me aggressively.

"Why, man, he has been everywhere--through the South Seas, in----"

There _was_ something familiar in the tall, thin figure, something that even the waiter's jacket and the waving napkin could not hide.

"What's up now?" Marshall cried.

I had half risen from my chair and turned. Talcott and Grant were leaning over their table, elbows resting there, heads close together.

And behind Talcott's chair the black figure was bent until the hands could touch the floor. He was brushing up scattered crumbs. As I looked, he raised his head, and it seemed to me that he had forgotten his menial task, had forgotten his menial place, for he was very still.

He was no longer dusting. The napkin fell from his outstretched hand.

He was listening to the muttered, maudlin conversation as though from the chaos of it he gathered some sober words of truth.

I looked at my companion. "In the South Seas, you said, Marshall. Has he spoken of San Francisco? Do you know his name?"

Marshall sprang from his chair. I was up too, and it was to see the Professor with a hand on Talcott's collar, shaking him, holding him at arm's length as he shook him, as though this man were some contemptible thing that he would touch as little as he could and yet must hold to and shake until it was cleansed of its vileness.

CHAPTER XX

For myself I should have chosen the hut where I first met the Professor above the home to which he led me in the early morning. If the old was tumble-down, dark and ill-furnished, its air was the pure air of the mountains and the way to it through things green and lovely. To the new we went through squalid streets, westward, toward the river; we turned into a dilapidated tenement; we climbed three flights of rickety stairs into a room which compared to mine as mine to the house of Rufus Blight. The lighted gas revealed hardly more than a narrow cell, with dirty, torn paper on the walls, a narrow bed, a cheap table, and a single chair. Giving me the chair, my host seated himself upon the bed, so close to me, of necessity, that our knees touched. To my eyes he was little older than that day fifteen years before when we had met.

He was old then to my youthful view. Thinner he could not have been, and now only the scattered white hairs and the deepened lines of his face marked his increased years. He had laid aside his overcoat, and sat before me clad in his waiter's clothes, but the waiter's mien was gone. With his legs crossed, his hands clasped over one knee, his head drawn down between his shoulders, he seemed the languid, weary man of the store-porch, whose eyes quickened only at the trumpet-call to debate. Clearly his att.i.tude toward me was one of antagonism. This I saw in his quiet gaze and in the restless twitching of fingers, impatient for the cut and thrust of argument.

On our way from O'Corrigan's to his squalid room, the Professor had spoken little. For the most part, as he plodded along at my side, he had contented himself in expressing opinions not complimentary to Herbert Talcott, in voicing his regret that he had not thrashed him instead of merely shaking him. That he had not thrashed Talcott was hardly evidence of the mildness of his attack. It was rather because I had interposed; and then O'Corrigan, in the character of the outraged proprietor of a highly respectable restaurant, had intruded himself into the quarrel, even going so far as to threaten to call the police.

But I was first in the _melee_, and on me fell the blame of saving Talcott from merited chastis.e.m.e.nt. For this the Professor upbraided me. He spoke as though Talcott had been the aggressor. Had not Talcott struck him a blow under the eye? Yes, but it was feebly given.

But the sting of it was to the Professor's pride, and he would regret to his dying day that I had withheld him from giving the young scoundrel his just deserts.