The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig Part 1

The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig.

by David Graham Phillips.

CHAPTER I

MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF

It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not merely biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most exclusive"--which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and dust should and could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's flat was the cheapest in the house. The ninety dollars a month loomed large in his eyes, focused to little-town ideas of values; it was, in fact, small for shelter in "the DE LUXE district of the de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator Mulvey, that simple, far-Western soul, who, finding sn.o.bbishness to be the chief distinguishing mark of the Eastern upper cla.s.ses, a.s.sumed it was a virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and proudly as a preacher does piety. Craig's chief splendor was a sitting-room, called a parlor and bedecked in the red plush and Nottingham that represent hotel men's probably shrewd guess at the traveling public's notion of interior opulence. Next the sitting-room, and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon disheveled and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom. Like the parlor, it was outfitted with furniture that had degenerated upward, floor by floor, from the s.p.a.cious and luxurious first-floor suites. Between the two rooms, in dark mustiness, lay a bathroom with suspicious-looking, wood-inclosed plumbing; the rusted iron of the tub peered through scuffs and seams in the age-grayed porcelain.

Arkwright glanced from the parlor where he was sitting into the gloom of the open bathroom and back again. His cynical brown-green eyes paused upon a scatter of clothing, half-hiding the badly-rubbed red plush of the sofa--a mussy flannel nightshirt with mothholes here and there; kneed trousers, uncannily reminiscent of a rough and strenuous wearer; a smoking-jacket that, after a youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and tattered wreck, like an old tramp, whose "better days" were none too good. On the radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never known trees; their soles were curved like rockers. An old pipe clamored at his nostrils, though it was on the table near the window, the full length of the room from him. Papers and books were strewn about everywhere. It was difficult to believe these unkempt and uncouth surroundings, and the personality that had created them, were actually being harbored behind the walls of the Wyandotte.

"What a hole!" grumbled Arkwright. He was in evening clothes, so correct in their care and in their carelessness that even a woman would have noted and admired. "What a mess! What a hole!"

"How's that?" came from the bedroom in an aggressive voice, so penetrating that it seemed loud, though it was not, and much roughened by open-air speaking. "What are you growling about?"

Arkwright raised his tone: "Filthy hole!" said he. "Filthy mess!"

Now appeared in the bedroom door a tall young man of unusual strength and nearly perfect proportions. The fine head was carried commandingly; with its crop of dark, matted hair it suggested the rude, fierce figure-head of a Viking galley; the huge, aggressively-masculine features proclaimed ambition, energy, intelligence. To see Josh Craig was to have instant sense of the presence of a personality. The contrast between him standing half-dressed in the doorway and the man seated in fashionable and cynically-critical superciliousness was more than a matter of exteriors. Arkwright, with features carved, not hewn as were Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred extreme, had an intelligent, superior look also. But it was the look of expertness in things hardly worth the trouble of learning; it was aristocracy's highly-prized air of the dog that leads in the bench show and tails in the field. He was like a firearm polished and incrusted with gems and hanging in a connoisseur's wall-case; Josh was like a battle-tested rifle in the sinewy hands of an Indian in full war-paint. Arkwright showed that he had physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at the gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport--the kind that wins only where the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure had the solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air, in the cold, wet hardship of the wilderness.

Arkwright's first glance of admiration for this figure of the forest and the teepee changed to a mingling of amus.e.m.e.nt and irritation. The barbarian was not clad in the skins of wild beasts, which would have set him off superbly, but was trying to get himself arrayed for a fashionable ball. He had on evening trousers, pumps, black cotton socks with just enough silk woven in to give them the shabby, shamed air of having been caught in a sn.o.bbish pretense at being silk. He was b.u.t.toning a shirt torn straight down the left side of the bosom from collar-band to end of tail; and the bosom had the stiff, gla.s.sy glaze that advertises the cheap laundry.

"Didn't you write me I must get an apartment in this house?" demanded he.

"Not in the attic," rejoined Arkwright.

"I can't afford anything better."

"You can't afford anything so bad."

"Bad!"

Craig looked round as pleased as a Hottentot with a string of colored gla.s.s beads. "Why, I've got a private sitting-room AND a private bath! I never was so well-off before in my life. I tell you, Grant, I'm not surprised any more that you Easterners get effete and worthless. I begin to like this lolling in luxury, and I keep the bell-boys on the jump.

Won't you have something to drink?"

Arkwright pointed his slim cane at the rent in the shirt. "What are you going to do with that?" said he.

"This? Oh!"--Josh thrust his thick backwoods-man's hand in the tear--"Very simple. A safety-pin or so from the lining of the vest--excuse me, waistcoat--into the edge of the bosom."

"Splendid!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Arkwright. "Superb!"

Craig, with no scent for sarcasm so delicate, pushed on with enthusiasm: "The safety-pin's the mainstay of bachelor life," said he rhetorically.

"It's his badge of freedom. Why, I can even repair socks with it!"

"Throw that shirt away," said Arkwright, with a contemptuous switch of his cane. "Put on another. You're not dressing for a shindy in a shack."

"But it's the only one of my half-dozen that has a bang-up bosom."

"Bang-up? That sheet of mottled mica?"

Craig surveyed the shiny surface ruefully. "What's the matter with this?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing," replied Arkwright, in disgust. "Only, it looks more like something to roof a house with than like linen for a civilized man."

Craig reared. "But, d.a.m.n it, Grant, I'm not civilized. I'm a wild man, and I'm going to stay wild. I belong to the common people, and it's my game--and my preference, too--to stick to them. I'm willing to make concessions; I'm not a fool. I know there was a certain amount of truth in those letters you took the trouble to write me from Europe. I know that to play the game here in Washington I've got to do something in society. But"--here Josh's eyes flashed, and he bent on his friend a look that was impressive--"I'm still going to be myself. I'll make 'em accept me as I am. Dealing with men as individuals, I make them do what _I_ want, make 'em like me as I am."

"Every game has its own rules," said Arkwright. "You'll get on better--quicker--go further--here if you'll learn a few elementary things. I don't see that wearing a whole shirt decently done up is going to compromise any principles. Surely you can do that and still be as common as you like. The people look up to the fellow that's just a little better dressed than they."

Josh eyed Arkwright in the way that always made him wonder whether he was in full possession of the secret of this strenuous young Westerner.

"But," said he, "they love and trust the man who will have nothing which all may not have. The shirt will do for this evening." And he turned back into the bedroom.

Arkwright reflected somewhat uncomfortably. He felt that he himself was right; yet he could not deny that "Josh's cheap demagoguery" sounded fine and true. He soon forgot the argument in the study of his surroundings. "You're living like a wild beast here, Josh," he presently called out. "You must get a valet."

A loud laugh was the reply.

"Or a wife," continued Arkwright. Then, in the voice of one announcing an inspiration, "Yes--that's it! A wife!"

Craig reappeared. He had on his waistcoat and coat now, and his hair was brushed. Arkwright could not but admit that the personality took the edge off the clothes; even the "mottled mica"--the rent was completely hid--seemed to have lost the worst of its glaze and stiffness. "You'll do, Josh," said he. "I spoke too quickly. If I hadn't accidentally been thrust into the innermost secrets of your toilet I'd never have suspected." He looked the Westerner over with gentle, friendly patronage. "Yes, you'll do. You look fairly well at a glance--and a man's clothes rarely get more than that."

Craig released his laugh upon his fastidious friend's judicial seriousness. "The trouble with you, Grant, is you've never lived a human life. You've always been sheltered and pampered, lifted in and out of bed by valets, had a suit of clothes for every hour in the day. I don't see how it is I happen to like you." And in Craig's face and voice there was frankly the condescension of superior to undoubted inferior.

Arkwright seemed to be wavering between resentment and amused disdain.

Then he remembered the circ.u.mstances of their first acquaintance--those frightful days in the Arizona desert, without food, with almost no water, and how this man had been absolute ruler of the party of lost and dying men; how he had forced them to march on and on, with entreaties, with curses, with blows finally; how he had brought them to safety--all as a matter of course, without any vanity or boasting--had been leader by divine right of strength of body and soul. Grant turned his eyes from Craig, for there were tears in them. "I don't see why you like me, either, Josh," said he. "But you do--and--d.a.m.n it all, I'd die for you."

"I guess you'll come pretty near dying of shame before this evening's over," laughed Craig. "This is the first time in my life I ever was in a fashionable company."

"There's nothing to be frightened about," Grant a.s.sured him.

"Frightened!" Josh laughed boisterously--Arkwright could have wished he would temper that laugh. "I--frightened by a bunch of popinjays? You see, it's not really in the least important whether they like me or not--at least, not to me. I'll get there, anyhow. And when I do, I'll deal with them according to their deserts. So they'd better hustle to get solid with me."

In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost forgotten his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he had done, what he was going to do. The newspapers, the clippings Josh sent him, had kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's steady, rapid rise in politics; and whenever he recalled the absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to anything, he a.s.sumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the future.

This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality so positive and so rough that he made enemies right and left, rousing the envy of men to fear that here was an ambition which must be downed or it would become a tyranny over them--this young man, by skill at politics and by sympathetic power with people in the ma.s.s, had already compelled a President who didn't like him to appoint him to the chief post under an Attorney-General who detested him.

"How are you getting on with the Attorney-General?" asked Arkwright, as they set out in his electric brougham.

"He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he has learned not to trifle with me."

"Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright warningly.

"The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh carelessly, "because the more he's got to lose. But it's a waste of time to talk politics to you. Grant, old man, I'm sick and worn out, and how lonesome! I'm successful. But what of that, since I'm miserable? If it wasn't for my sense of duty, by Heaven, I sometimes think I'd drop it all and go back to Wayne."

"Don't do that, Josh!" exclaimed Arkwright. "Don't let the country go rolling off to ruin!"

"Like all small creatures," said Craig, "you take serious matters lightly, and light matters seriously. You were right a moment ago when you said I needed a wife."

"That's all settled," said Grant. "I'm going to get you one."

"A woman doesn't need a man--if she isn't too lazy to earn a living,"