Round the Block Part 19

Matthew Maltboy had also been invited to this _soiree dramatique_ (as Mrs. Slapman's large pasteboards expressed it). A fat man was a necessity of the play. Mrs. Slapman was not cordial to Matthew, regarding him as an excessively commonplace person, and had invited him to her social gatherings out of courtesy to Overtop; but her artist eye saw in him a fitness for the fat man. Matthew was delighted with the implied compliment to those talents for the stage which every man supposes himself to possess in some degree, and cheerfully undertook the part.

The proprieties of costume did not in the least perplex Mr. Maltboy, as he lay on the sofa digesting his dinner, and puffing out smoke rings by the dozen. His thoughts were mildly fixed on that delightful Miss Whedell. Five times he had been graciously permitted to visit the lady at her house, and to discover a score of new charms at each interview. A large experience in love making a.s.sured him that the object of his idolatry was not wholly indifferent to him. The paternal Whedell had hobbies. Matthew had studied them, like a skilful strategist, catered to them, and felt quite sure that he had that revered individual on his side. But, in the midst of these pleasant imaginings, there rose the dark and baleful image of Chiffield!

Marcus Wilkeson was also pondering--pleasantly, if one might judge from the contented smile upon his lips. The subject of his thoughts was one which, for reasons that seemed good to him, he still kept secret from his fellow bachelors. He had freely told them of his singular adventure at the house of the old gentleman opposite; but not a word of the inventor and his daughter, and of the private school at Miss Pillbody's.

Not even the minute and sometimes tedious accounts which Overtop and Maltboy gave of their private thoughts and experiences, could induce Marcus to reciprocate their confidence. For the first time in his life he wore a mask before his companions, and prevaricated, and became, on a small scale, a humbug.

The sharp ringing of the doorbell broke in upon the quiet reflections of the three bachelors. Mash, the cook, who was at that moment reading the fifteenth chapter of "The b.u.t.tery and the Boudoir: A Tale of Real Life,"

in her favorite weekly, threw down the paper in a pa.s.sion, bounded up stairs, and admitted John Wesley Tiffles, or Wesley Tiffles, as he always subscribed himself on promissory notes and other worthless paper.

Mr. Tiffles chucked Mash familiarly under the chin (resented with a scornful look by Mash, who had learned from "The b.u.t.tery and the Boudoir" to set a proper value on herself), and then walked straight to the parlor, like one who knew he was a welcome guest.

And he was right. For when he opened the door, and disclosed to the three bachelors the well-known laughing eyes, hopeful face, and spare figure of Wesley Tiffles, they hailed him with enthusiasm. He was a walking cure for despondency, although he sometimes charged too high, in the shape of borrowed money, for his professional services. But neither of the three bachelors had yet sustained that pecuniary tax which Wesley Tiffles always levied upon his friends, just before leaving them forever. They formed a part of his reserve corps, which had latterly been sadly thinned out in Mr. Tiffles's desperate contest with the world.

Mr. Tiffles shook hands with Marcus Wilkeson, giving him the grip of some unknown Order, slapped Overtop on the back, and playfully pulled the whiskers of Maltboy. Then he filled a pipe, threw himself into a chair, adjusted his legs in the true form of a compa.s.s, and opened his coat ostentatiously. All this in about ten seconds, and with a geniality that defied reproof. He was the very embodiment of cheer.

"Prepare to be astonished," said Mr. Tiffles, after his third whiff. "I have a splendid idea." The three bachelors smiled, and nodded an intimation that they were prepared,

"I have had some impracticable notions in my time; but this _is_ good, and you'll say so. You know that dog, Mark, two doors below--the large yellow one, with cropped ears, and a tail like the handle of a shaving brush?"

Mr. Wilkeson replied that he had the pleasure of the animal's acquaintance,

"Well, as I was pa.s.sing the dog's house on my way here, I slipped in the snow. The dog, always on the alert for victims, took a mean advantage of my situation, and jumped after me through the open gate. I scrambled to my feet, but not before he had fastened his teeth in my right leg----"

"Good heavens! was he mad?" cried Overtop, who had a horror of dogs, and made wide circuits about them in the street.

"Can't say as to that," replied Wesley Tiffles, "but advise you to keep shy of him for the future, I was about to say that he bit me through the leg of my trowsers. And on that very instant, as if by inspiration, I caught--not the hydrophobia, but a magnificent idea. Having got on my pins, I kicked the dog into his front yard, and immediately worked the idea into shape. You'll be sure to like it."

Marcus Wilkeson, speaking for self and friends, said he had no doubt of that. Mr. Tiffles's ideas always possessed the merit of novelty.

"That means that they have no other merit!" returned Tiffles, laughing, "Very true of most of them, I confess all my failures. But here is an idea which even you, skeptic as you are, will grant to be not only novel, but great. You have all observed, gentlemen, the immense differences in dogs. There are white, black, brown, gray, yellow (like our suggestive canine friend two doors below), tan-colored, mouse-colored, striped, and spotted dogs. There are round dogs, square dogs, long dogs, short dogs, tall dogs, and low dogs. There are full-grown dogs that weigh less than a pound, and others that kick the beam at a hundred pounds. There are dogs that are pretty much all tail, and there are dogs that have no tail to speak of. Among all the dogs that you meet in the street, do you ever see two exactly alike?"

Fayette Overtop, who spoke from extensive and minute observation, unhesitatingly said "No."

"True! Nature never repeats herself in dogs. In so doing, Nature works directly for my benefit, as I will show you. Now, in the second place, as you are probably aware, there is an ordinance forbidding unmuzzled dogs to run in the streets during the hot months--"

"An excellent law," interrupted Overtop.

"If caught at large without muzzles, they are taken to the public pound, and, unless redeemed by the owners within twenty-four hours, are drowned in a tub--"

"Serve 'em right," remarked the hydrophobiac bachelor.

"Now, I am _slightly_ acquainted with some members of the Common Council" (he laid emphasis on the word "slightly," to imply that he was on terms of the closest intimacy with them), "and can easily obtain from them the privilege of catching all the stray dogs, and taking them out of the country next summer."

"Which would be very benevolent to the dogs; and, regarded from their point of view, your idea is a n.o.ble one," thoughtfully observed Marcus Wilkeson. "But I don't, at this moment, exactly see how you are benefited by it."

Mr. Tiffles smiled with the consciousness of power, and chidingly said:

"You are dull this morning, Mark--quite dull. Strike, but hear! In a word, then, I propose to exhibit two or three hundred of these dogs, in some country where there are _no_ dogs. I would give them strange names, put them in cages, and call them the 'American Menagerie of Trained Animals.' A person who had never seen dogs, would suppose each one to be a different species from the others--just as the lion, the tiger, and the leopard are different, though all belonging to the one cat family.

Now, there is my idea. What do you think of it? Of course, you laugh, at first."

Roars of laughter from the three bachelors had formed the chorus of "Wesley Tiffles's closing sentences. Marcus Wilkeson, as became his age, was the first to recover himself.

"The idea is a splendid one. None better. But there is one slight difficulty in the way. Where are you to find your country that has no dogs? If there were such a happy land on the face of this earth, Overtop would have hunted it up long ago, and moved there."

Overtop laughingly replied, "That's so." He then informed Mr. Tiffles, while admitting the theoretical excellence of his idea, that every nation had its dogs as well as its fleas. Those two friends of man were impartially distributed over the terrestrial globe. Overtop referred to the standard Cyclopaedias, and several works on Natural History, in proof of his a.s.sertion.

"Can't be! can't be!" retorted Wesley Tiffles, who was at first disposed to defend his brilliant idea. But brilliant ideas were a common growth of his fertile mind, and, like all things easily produced, he held them cheaply. The moment that evidence, or the test of practice, showed them to be fallacious, he gave them up, and drew upon his brain for others.

So, after a second's reflection, he added:

"Perhaps you are right. Dogs are not exactly in my line, after all. But the idea, as an idea, was magnificent."

As Wesley Tiffles spoke, he repeated the act, for the twentieth time, of throwing back his overcoat (a little seedy), and opening his vest, as if to draw attention to his shirt front, whose natural whiteness was toned down by a delicate neutral tint. Immediately afterward, he placed his hand on a small breastpin in the centre of the shirt front, and turned it to the right and left. It sparkled for the first time in the rays of the fire, and revealed to the experienced eyes of the three bachelors simultaneously, that Wesley Tiffles was the wearer of a real diamond.

"Excuse me," said Marcus Wilkeson, who divined that Tiffles wished his diamond to be remarked upon, "but that is pretty!"

"Pretty! What?" said Tiffles, looking about the room.

"That diamond."

"Oh! the diamond. Perhaps you would like to look at it?" (hands it round for inspection). "Cost forty dollars. Rather a hard draw on my exchequer" (that was Mr. Tiffles's word for a friend's pocket); "but I considered it a most judicious investment for a young man just going into business."

The novelty of this idea was not lost on Fayette Overtop. "Pray explain, Tiffles," said he.

"Cheerfully," said Tiffles, replacing the gem in his shirt front, after it had been duly handled and admired. "n.o.body will acknowledge that he is taken in by a diamond. He will say, 'Anybody can buy a diamond, by saving up thirty or forty dollars; and why should I believe a man to be rich who wears one?' Yet, in his heart of hearts, he does believe it, unless the possessor of the diamond has the bad taste to dress flashily.

Then he pa.s.ses for an impostor, and people will doubt, even against their own senses, the genuineness of the stone. But let him dress plainly, as I do," continued Mr. Tiffles, stroking down the left leg of his black trowsers, shiny with wear, "and that little diamond shall stand, in the eyes of the whole world, as the representative of a fat bank account, a brown stone house, and a couple of corner lots."

Marcus and Matthew laughed, but Fayette Overtop, who absolutely revelled in paradoxes, said, "True, Tiffles, true!"

"Don't think," pursued Tiffles, "that I expected to impose on you with it. You know that I am a poor devil, living on my wits." (Tiffles was delightfully frank with his intimate acquaintances.) "I hold out this glittering bait, not for my friends, but for my old foe and natural enemy, the world. You must know that I am on the eve of a grand speculation--probably the grandest I have ever undertaken."

"Another plan of advertising with large kites by day, and pictorial lanterns attached to their tails at night?" asked Marcus Wilkeson.

"Or another Submarine Pneumatic Parcel-Delivering Tube to Brooklyn?"

asked Matthew Maltboy.

"Or an a.s.sociation for the Cultivation of Mushrooms in Dark Cellars?"

asked Fayette Overtop.

"Capital hits!" replied Wesley Tiffles, who took an unfeigned delight in a friendly allusion to his failures. "But allow me to inform you definitely, that those unfortunate speculations are not to be revived.

Like the lightning, I don't strike twice in the same place. No; the project upon which I am now engaged is one so eminently practical, so free from all that is visionary, that you will wonder how I thought of it. That project is a PANORAMA OF AFRICA!"

CHAPTER V.

THE PANORAMA OF AFRICA

The three bachelors concurred in the opinion that the idea was a good one; but Marcus Wilkeson suggested that the field was too large.

"I thought you would like the general proposition," said Tiffles. "But, bless you, Mark! I don't mean to paint the whole continent, from stem to stern, so to speak; only the undiscovered part of Central Africa--say from Cape Guardafui on the east to the Bight of Benin on the west."