The Spread Eagle and Other Stories Part 22

A shadow fell upon my pool of sunshine and, looking up, I perceived a handsome, flashy young man of the clever, almost Satanic type that is so common below Fourteenth Street; and he stood looking cynically over the cheap furs in my window and working his thin jaws. Then I saw him take, with his right hand, from a bunch that he carried in his left, a great white grape and thrust it into his mouth. They were my grapes, those which I had gone uptown to fetch for my wife. By the fact that there were none such to be had in our neighborhood I might have known them.

But the sure proof was a peculiar crook in the stem which I had noticed when I had hung them for my wife at the foot of her bed.

I rose and went quietly out of the shop.

"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling.

"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged."

"What fine grapes those are," I commented.

"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he grimaced.

"Where are such to be had?" I asked.

"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price."

"So you bought the last bunch?"

"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way.

"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made me take 'em away."

"So she has a conscience?" I said.

"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?"

I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt the red blood in my veins turn into acid.

There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children.

Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to live for and who are sad, I prospered. G.o.d was ever presenting me with opportunities and the better ends of bargains.

When fifteen years had pa.s.sed I returned once more to New York. I had reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness.

I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone, but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed.

One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly awaiting the event.

The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick, flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that, like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pa.s.s and be over.

But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides.

"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice, while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been looking for you for weeks, and--"

"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly.

"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained.

"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book.

"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw that the work was good.

"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said.

He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased.

"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--"

But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money.

"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be disturbed."

"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!"

When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him more than another's.

"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...."

Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this and that.

"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's disappeared."

"Things have that habit," I said.

"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just so--thank you forever--"

"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked.

"And you so young and masterful."

"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the most regular and explicit order--"

I felt a little shiver, as if I had taken cold.

"And, do you know," here the young man dawdled with his pencil and presently ceased working for the moment, "I've always felt as if I had had a hand in it--though I was only seven. I'd done something so naughty and wrong that I looked forward all day to my father's home-coming as a sinner looks forward to going to h.e.l.l. My father had never punished me.

But he would this time, I knew--and I was terribly afraid and--sometimes I have thought that, perhaps, I prayed to G.o.d that my father might never come home. I'm not sure I prayed that--but I have a sneaking suspicion that I did. Anyway, he never came, and, Great Grief! what a time there was. My mother nearly went insane--"

"What had you done?" I asked, forcing a smile, "to merit such terrible punishment?"

The young man blushed.

"Why," he said, "my mother had been quite sick for a long time, and, to tempt her appet.i.te, my father had journeyed 'way uptown and at vast expense bought her a bunch of wonderful white hot-house grapes. I remember she wouldn't eat them at first--just wanted to look at them--and my father hung them for her over the foot of the bed. Well, soon after he'd gone to business she fell asleep, leaving the grapes untouched. They tempted me, and I fell. I wanted to show off, I suppose, before my young friends in the street--there was a girl, Minnie Hopflekoppf, I think her name was, who'd pa.s.sed me up for an Italian butcher's son. I wanted to show _her_. I'm sure I didn't mean to eat the things. I'm sure I meant to return with them and hang them back at the foot of the bed."

"Please go on," I managed to say. "This is such a very human page--I'm really excited to know what happened."

"Well, one of those flashy Bowery dudes came loafing along and said: 'Hi, Johnny, let's have a look at the grapes,' I let him take them, in my pride and innocence, and he wouldn't give them back. He only laughed and began to eat them before my eyes. I begged for them, and wept, and told him how my mother was sick and my father had gone 'way uptown to get the grapes for her because there were none such to be had in our neighborhood. And, please, he must give them back because they were White Muscats of Alexandria, very precious, and my father would kill me.

But the young man only laughed until I began to make a real uproar. Then he said sharply to shut up, called me a young thief, and said if I said another word he'd turn me over to the police. Then he flung me a fifty-cent piece and went away, munching the grapes. And," the young man finished, "the fifty-cent piece was lead."

Then he looked up from his sketch and, seeing the expression of my face, gave a little cry of delight.

"Great Grief, man!" he cried, "stay as you are--only hold that expression for two minutes!"