Felix O'Day Part 9

O'Day had stood smiling at the painter, Masie's hand fast in his, Fudge tiptoeing softly about, divided between a sense of the strangeness of the place and a certainty of mice behind the canvases. Felix knew the old fellow's kind, and recognized the note of attempted gayety in the voice--the bravado of the poor putting their best, sometimes their only, foot foremost.

"No, I won't sit down--not yet," he answered pleasantly; "I will look around, if you will let me, and I will try one of your pipes before I begin. What a jolly place you have here! Don't move"--this to the model, a slip of a girl, her eyes m.u.f.fled in a lace veil, one of Ganger's Oriental costumes about her shoulders--"I am quite at home, my dear, and if you have been a model any length of time you will know exactly what that means."

"Oh, she's my Fatima," exclaimed Ganger. "Her real name is Jane Hoggson, and her mother does my washing, but I call her Fatima for short. She can stop work for the day. Get down off the platform, Jane Hoggson, and talk to this dear little girl. You see, Mr. O'Day, now that the art of the country has gone to the devil and n.o.body wants my masterpieces, I have become an Eastern painter, fresh from Cairo, where I have lived for half a century--princ.i.p.ally on Turkish paste and pressed figs. My specialty at present--they are all over my walls, as you can see--is dancing-girls in silk tights or without them, just as the tobacco shops prefer. I also do sheiks, m.u.f.fled to their eyebrows in bath towels, and with scimitars--like that one above the mantel. And very profitable, too; MOST profitable, my dear sir. I get twenty doldars for a real odalisk and fifteen for a bashi-bazouk. I can do one about every other day, and I sell one about every other month. As for Sam Dogger here--Sam, what is your specialty? I said landscapes, Sam, when Mr. O'Day came in, but you may have changed since we have been talking."

The wizened old gentleman thus addressed sidled nearer. He was ten years younger than Ganger, but his thin, bloodless hands, watery eyes, their lids edged with red, and bald head covered by a black velvet skull-cap made him look that much older.

"Nat talks too much, Mr. O'Day," he piped in a high-keyed voice. "I often tell Nat that he's got a loose hinge in his mouth, and he ought to screw it tight or it will choke him some day when he isn't watching. He!

He!" And a wheezy laugh filled the room.

"Shut up, you old sardine! You don't talk enough. If you did you'd get along better. I'll tell you, Mr. O'Day, what Sam does. Sam's a patcher-up--a 'puttier.' That's what he is. Sam can get more quality out of a piece of sandpaper, a pot of varnish, and a little glue than any man in the business. If you don't believe it, just bring in a fake Romney, or a Gainsborough, or some old Spanish or Italian daub with the corners knocked off where the signature once was, or a sc.r.a.pe down half a cheek, or some smear of a head, with half the canvas bare, and put Sam to work on it, and in a week or less out it comes just as it left the master's easel--'Found by his widow after his death' or 'The property of an English n.o.bleman on whose walls it has hung for two centuries.'

By thunder! isn't it beautiful?" He chuckled. "Wonderful how these bullfrogs of connoisseurs swallow the dealers' flies! And here am I, who can paint any blamed thing from a hen-coop to a battle scene, doing signs for tobacco shops; and there is Sam, who can do Corots and Rousseaus and Daubignys by the yard, obliged to stick to a varnish pot and a sc.r.a.per! d.a.m.nable, isn't it? But we don't growl, do we, Sammy?

When Sammy has anything left over, he brings half of it down to me--he lives on the floor above--and when I get a little ahead and Sammy is behind, I send it up to him. We are the Siamese twins, Sammy and I, aren't we, Sam? Where are you, anyway? Oh, he's after the dog, I see, moving the canvases so the little beggar won't run a thumb-tack in his paw. Sam can no more resist a dog, my dear Mr. O'Day, than a drunkard can a rum-mill, can you, Sam?"

"At it again, are you, Nat?" wheezed the wizened old gentleman, dusting his fingers as he reappeared from behind the canvases, his watery eyes edged with a deeper red, due to his exertions. "Don't pay any attention to him, Mr. O'Day. What he says isn't half true, and the half that is true isn't worth listening to. Now tell me about that frame he's ordered. He don't want it, and I've told him so. If you are willing to lend it to him, he'll pay you for it when the picture is sold, which will never be, and by that time he'll--"

"Dry up, you old varnish pot!" shouted Ganger, "how do you know I won't pay for it?"

"Because your picture will never be hung--that's why!"

"Mr. Ganger did not want to buy it," broke in Felix, between puffs from one of his host's corn-cob pipes. "He wanted to exchange something for it--'swap' he called it."

"Oh, well," wheezed Sam, "that's another thing. What were you going to give him in return, Nat? Careful, now--there's not much left."

"Oh, maybe some old stuff, Sammy. Move along, you blessed little child--and you, too, Jane Hoggson! You're sitting on my Venetian wedding-chest--real, too! I bought it forty years ago in Padua. There are some old embroideries down in the bottom, or were, unless Sam has been in here while I--Oh, no, here they are! Beg pardon, Sammy, for suspecting you. There--what do you think of these?"

Felix bent over the pile of stuffs, which, under Ganger's continued dumpings, was growing larger every minute--the last to see the light being part of a priest's Cope and two chasubles.

"There--that is enough!" said Felix. "This chasuble alone is worth more than the frame. We will put the Florentine frame at ten dollars and the vestment at fifteen. What others have you, Mr. Ganger? There's a great demand for these things when they are good, and these are good. Where did you get them?"

"Worth more than the frame? Holy Moses!" whistled Ganger. "Why, I thought you'd want all there was in the chest! And you say there are people out of a lunatic asylum looking for rags like this?" And he held up one end of the cope.

"Yes, many of them. To me, I must say, they are worth nothing, as I don't like the idea of mixing up church and state. But Mr. Kling's customers do, and if they choose to say their prayers before a chasuble on a priest's back on Sunday and make a sofa cushion of it the next day, that is their affair, not mine. And now, what else? You spoke of some costumes this morning."

"Yes, I did speak of my costumes, but I'm afraid they are too modern for you--I make 'em up myself. Get up, Jane, and let Mr. O'Day see what you've got on!"

Jane jumped to her feet, looking less Oriental than ever, her spangled veil having dropped about her shoulders, her red hair and freckled face now in full view.

"I think her dress is beautiful, Uncle Felix," whispered Masie.

"Do you, sweetheart? Well, then, maybe I might better look again. What else have you in the way of Costumes, Mr. Ganger?"

Dogger stepped up. "He hasn't got a single thing worth a cent; he buys these pieces down in Elizabeth Street, out of push-carts, and Jane Hoggson's mother sews them together. But, my deary"--here he laid his hand on Masie's head--"would you like to see some REAL ONES, all-gold-and-silver lace--and satin shoes--and big, high bonnets with feathers?"

Masie clapped her hands in answer and began whirling about the room, her way of telling everybody that she was too happy to keep still.

"Well, wait here; I won't be a minute."

"Sam's fallen in love with her, too," muttered Ganger, "and I don't blame him. Come here, you darling, and let me talk to you. Do you know you are the first little girl that's ever been inside this place for ever--and ever and EVER--so long? Think of that, will you? Not one single little girl since--Oh, well, I just can't remember--it's such an awful long time. Dreadful, isn't it? Hear that old Sam stumbling down-stairs! Now let's see what he brings you."

Dogger's arms were full. "I've a silk dress," he puffed, "and a ruffled petticoat, and a great leghorn hat--and just look at these feathers, and you never saw such a pair of slippers and silk stockings! And now let's try 'em on!"

The child uttered a little scream of delight. "Oh, Uncle Felix! Isn't it lovely? Can't I have them? Please, Uncle Felix!" she cried, both hands around his shirt collar in supplication.

"Take 'em all, missy," shouted Sam. Then, turning to Felix: "They belonged to an actor who hired half of my studio and left them to pay for his rent, which they didn't do, not by a long chalk, and--Oh, here's another hat--and, oh, such a lovely old cloak! Yes, take 'em all, missy--I'm glad to get rid of 'em--before Nat claps them on Jane and goes in for Puritan maidens and Lady Gay Spankers. Oh, I know you, Nat!

I wouldn't trust you out of my sight! Take 'em along, I say." He stopped and turned toward Felix again.

"Couldn't you bring her down here once in a while, Mr. O'Day?" he continued, a strange, pathetic note in his wheezing voice. "Just for ten minutes, you know, when she's out with the dog, or walking with you.

n.o.body ever comes up these stairs but tramps and book agents--even the models steer clear. It would help a lot if you'd bring her. Wouldn't you like to come, missy? What did you say her name was? Oh, yes--Masie--well, my child, that's not what I'd call you; I'd call you--well, I guess I wouldn't call you anything but just a dear, darling little girl! Yes, that's just what I'd call you. And you are going to let me give them to her, aren't you, Mr. O'Day?"

Felix grasped the old fellow's thin, dry hand in his own strong fingers.

For an instant a strange lump in his throat clogged his speech. "Of course, I'll take the costumes, and many thanks for your wish to make the child happy," he answered at last. "I am rather foolish about Masie myself; and may I tell you, Mr. Dogger, that you are a very fine old gentleman, and that I am delighted to have made your acquaintance, and that, if you will permit me I shall certainly come again?"

Dogger was about to reply when Masie, Looking up into the wizened face, cried: "And may I put them on when I like, if I'm very, very--oh, so VERY careful?"

"Yes, you b.u.t.tercup, and you can wear them full of holes and do anything else you please to them, and I won't care a mite."

And then, with Jane Hoggson's help, he put on Masie's own hat and coat, which Ganger had hung on an easel, and Masie called Fudge from his mouse-hole, and Felix shook hands first with Nat and then with Sam, and last of all with Jane, who looked at him askance out of one eye as she bobbed him half a courtesy. And then everybody went out into the hall and said good-by once more over the banisters, Felix with the bundle under his arm, Masie throwing kisses to the two old gnomes craning their necks over the banisters, Fudge barking every step of the way down the stairs.

Chapter VI

The glimpse which Felix had caught of these two poor, unappreciated old men, living contentedly from hand to mouth, gayly propping each other up when one or the other weakened, had strangely affected him. If, as he reasoned, such battered hulks, stranded these many years on the dry sands of incompetency, with no outlook for themselves across the wide sea over which their contemporaries were scudding with all sails set before the wind of success--if these castaways, their past always with them and their hoped-for future forever out of their reach, could laugh and be merry, why should not he carry some of their spirit into his relations with the people among whom his lot was now thrown?

That these people had all been more than good to him, and that he owed them in return something more than common politeness now took possession of his mind. Few such helping hands had ever been held out to him.

When they had been, the proffered palm had generally concealed a hidden motive. Hereafter he would try to add what he could of his own to the general fund of good-fellowship and good deeds.

He would continue his nightly search--and he had not missed a single evening--but he would return earlier, so as to be able to spend an hour reading to Masie before she went to bed, or with his other friends and acquaintances of "The Avenue"--especially with Kitty and John. He had been too unmindful of them, getting back to his lodgings at any hour of the night, either to let himself in by his pa.s.s-key--all the lights out and everybody asleep--or to find only Kitty or John, or both, at work over their accounts or waiting up for Mike or Bobby or for one of their wagons detained on some dock. And since Kling had raised his salary, enabling him not only to recover his dressing-case, which then rested on his mantel, but to take his meals wherever he happened to be at the moment--he had seldom dined at home--a great relief in many ways to a man of his tastes.

Kitty, though he did not know it, had demurred and had talked the matter over with John, wondering whether she had neglected his comfort. When she had questioned him, he had settled it with a pat on her shoulders.

"Just let me have my way this time, my dear Mrs. Cleary," he had said gently but firmly. "I am a bad boarder and cause you no end of trouble, for I am never on time. And please keep the price as it is, for I don't pay you half enough for all your goodness to me."

Now under the impulse of his new resolution, and rather ashamed of his former att.i.tude in view of all her unremitting attentions, he resumed his place at her table. Nor did he stop here. He taught her to broil a chop over her coal fire by removing the stove lid--until then they had been fried--and a new way with a rasher of bacon, using the carving-fork instead of a pan. The clearing of the famous coffee-pot with an egg--making the steaming mixture anew whenever wanted instead of letting the dented old pot simmer away all day on the back of the stove--was another innovation, making the evening meal just that much more enjoyable, greatly to the delight of the hostess, who was prouder of her boarder than of any other human being who had come into her life, except John and Bobby.

These renewed intimacies opened his eyes to another phase of the life about him, and he soon found himself growing daily more interested in the sweet family relations of the small household.

"What do I care for what we haven't got," Kitty said to him one night when some economies in the small household were being discussed. "I'm better off than half the women who stop at my door in their carriages.

I got two arms, and I can sleep eight hours when I get the chance, and John loves me and so does Bobby and so does my big white horse Jim.

There ain't one of them women as knows what it is to work for her man and him to work for her." All the other married couples he had seen had pulled apart, or lived apart--mentally, at least. These two seemed bound together heart and soul.

More than once he contrived to stop at the Studio Building, where both of the old fellows were almost always to be found sitting side by side, and, picking them up bodily, he had set them down on hard chairs in a rathskeller on Sixth Avenue, where they had all dined together, the old fellows warmed up with two beers apiece. This done, he had escorted them back, seen them safely up-stairs, and returned to his lodgings.

It was after one of these mild diversions that, before going to his room, he pushed open the door of the Clearys' sitting-room with a cheery "May I come in, Mistress Kitty?"

"Oh, but I'm glad to see ye!" was the joyous answer. "I was sayin' to myself: 'Maybe ye'd come in before he went.' Here's Father Cruse I been tellin' ye about--and, Father, here's Mr. O'Day that's livin' wid us."