Mortmain Part 15

"Isabeau! My poor Isabeau! I envy you--creature perfect in symmetry, perfect in feeling!"

The cat rubbed her head against the b.u.t.tons of his coat. McCartney leaned back his head. The little room was bare of ornament or of furniture other than the chair, save for a deal table at the foot of the bed, bearing a litter of newspapers and yellow pad paper.

"I am discouraged by the street, The pacing of monotonous feet!"

murmured the man in the rocker. The light died out above the Palisades; the cat snuggled down between her master's legs.

"Dear Son of G.o.d, in mercy give My soul to flames, but let me _live_!"

he added softly. Then he lifted the cat gently to the floor, threw on a short, faded reefer coat, and opened the door.

"Well, Isabeau, it's time for us to go out and earn our supper!"

McCartney gazed solemnly down from the small rostrum upon which he was standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been received.

"Dot's goot!" shouted an abdominal "Dutchman," pounding the table with his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"

"Ya!" exclaimed his _confrere_. "Dot feller, he was a corker, eh?" He put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney: "Here, kommen sie unt haf a gla.s.s bier mit us!"

Three teamsters, a card sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen uncla.s.sables nodded their heads and stamped, while the bartender pa.s.sed up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed with easy grace to the a.s.sembled company, and drank. Then he descended to the table occupied by the Germans.

"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven for climate--h.e.l.l for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"

The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.

"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"

The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles, to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not distinguished, guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of transparent dice.

"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet table. The first German examined them with approval.

"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbor. "I trow you for die Schnapps, eh?"

McCartney watched them covetously as they emptied the leathern shaker, solemnly counting the spots at the conclusion of each cast.

"Here, let me show you how," volunteered their guest. "Poker hands." He rattled the dice and poured them forth. They came up indiscriminately.

"Not so goot, eh?" commented the German. "I'll trow you. I'll trow ennyboty mit _clear_ dice. Venn dey ain't loated I can trow mit ennyboty." He held them up to the light. "Dese is clear--goot."

"Three times for a dollar," said McCartney.

"So," answered the German. He threw carefully, and counted two sixes, an ace, a three, and a five. He left in the sixes and threw the others.

This time he got an ace and two fives. Once more he put them back, but accomplished no better result.

"Now, I'll show you," said McCartney, and emptied the shaker. The dice tumbled upon the table to the tune of two aces, two deuces, and a five.

He put back the deuces and the five and threw another ace, a three, and a five.

"I win," he remarked. "You don't know how!"

"Vat's dot? Don't know how, eh!" roared the other. "I trow you for fife dollars, see? Gif me dose leetle dice." He threw with a heavy bang that shook the table. This time he got two sixes, two aces, and a five, and put back the latter. Securing another ace he leaned back and took a heavy draught of beer. "Full house! Beat dat eef you can!"

McCartney tossed the dice carelessly upon the board for two fours, one ace, and two fives. To the amazement of the Germans, he left in the ace and returned the other four to the shaker. This time he got two more aces. His last throw gave him another ace and a five.

"Zum teuffel!" growled the German, thrusting his hand into his pocket and drawing forth a dirty wad of bills. "Here, take your money!" He handed McCartney six dollars.

"Kind sirs, good night," remarked McCartney, thrusting the bills into his waistcoat pocket and arising from his place. "I must betake me hence. Experience is the only teacher. Let me advise you never to play games of chance with strangers."

The two Germans stared at him stupidly.

"You don't understand? Permit me. You saw the dice were not loaded? Very good! You examined them? Very good again. Your powers of observation are uncultivated, merely. The stern mother of invention--that is to say necessity--has obeyed the law of evolution. Three of the dice in my pocket bear no even numbers. The information is well worth your six dollars. Again, good night."

"Betruger!" cried the loser of the six dollars, arising heavily and upsetting his beer. "Dot feller skivinded us mit dice geloaded! _Sheet!

Sheet!_"

They blundered toward the side entrance, while McCartney side-stepped into an adjacent portal. Long Acre Square gleamed from end to end. Above him an electric display, momentarily vanishing and reappearing, heralded the attributes of the cigar sacred to the Scottish bard. Peering through the haze generated by the countless lights a few tiny stars repaid diligent search. A scanty number of pedestrians was abroad. The pantheon of delights shone silent save for an occasional clanging car. The Germans pa.s.sed in search of an officer, excitedly jabbering about the "sheet," their angry expressions reverberating along the concrete, fading gradually into the hum of the lower town.

Then slowly into view crept one of those anachronisms of the metropolis--a huge, s.h.a.ggy horse slowly stalking northward, dragging a rickety express wagon whereon reposed a semisomnolent yokel. Hitched by its shafts to the tail of the wagon trailed a decrepit brougham (destined, probably, for country-depot service), behind this a debilitated Stanhope buggy, followed by a dogcart, a phaeton, a buckboard, with last of all a hoodless Victoria. This picturesquely mournful procession of vanished respectability staggered hesitatingly past our hero, who regarded it with vast amus.e.m.e.nt. To his fanciful imagination it appeared like the fleshless vertebrae of a sea serpent slowly writhing into the obscurity of the night. Occasionally one of the component dorsals would strike an inequality in the pavement and start upon a brief frolic of its own, swinging out of line at a tangent until hauled back into place again by the pull of the s.h.a.ggy horse. Sometimes all started in different directions at one and the same time, and the semblance to a skeleton snake was heightened--even the ominous rattle was not wanting. The Victoria looked restful to McCartney, whose legs were always tired.

"Why should we fret that others ride?

Perhaps dull care sits by their side, And leaves us foot-men free!"

he hummed to himself, recollecting an old college glee.

"All the same that old bandbox looks not uncomfortable. How long is it since I have used a cushion! Poverty makes a poor bedfellow!"

As the last equipage swung by, McCartney took a few steps in the same direction and clambered in. He had become a "foot-man" in fact, but a very undignified and luxurious one, who lay back with his feet crossed against the box in front of him. Of all the lights on Broadway none glowed so comfortingly for McCartney as the tip of his cigarette.

"My prayer is answered," he remarked softly to himself. "Thus do I escape the 'monotonous feet.' Had I only Isabeau I should have attained the height of human happiness--to have dined, to smoke, to ride on cushions under the starlight, to have six dollars, and not to know where one is going--a plethora of gifts. So I can spare Isabeau for the nonce. Doubtless she would not particularly care for the delights of locomotion."

Thus Voltaire sailed northward, noticed only by solitary policemen and lonely wayfarers. Near Eightieth Street his eye caught the burning circle of a clock pointing at half-past nine, and he stretched himself and yawned again. They were pa.s.sing the vestibule of an old church which contrasted quaintly with the more ambitious modern architecture of the neighborhood. From the interior floated out the gray unison of a hymn.

McCartney swung himself to the ground and listened while the skeleton rattled up the avenue.

"Egad!" thought he, "yon prayerful folk are not troubled with my disorder. h.e.l.l is for them what Jersey City is for me--a vital reality."

A woman, her head shrouded in a worn gray shawl, approached timidly and stationed herself near the door. McCartney could see that she was weeping and that she had a baby in her arms. He grumbled a bit to himself at this business. It did not suit his fancy--his scheme. Having planned a continuation of this night of comedy so auspiciously begun, he disliked any incongruity.

"Broke?" he inquired without rising. The woman nodded.

"What's the matter?"

"Dan cleared out the flat and skipped yesterday afternoon. We've had nothing to eat--me and the kid--all day."

"Let's look at your hands."

The woman held out a thin, rough, red hand. McCartney gave it a glance and continued:

"What's your kid's name?"