The Wood Fire in No. 3 Part 8

"Will you shut up, Boggs," cried Lonnegan. "Your tongue goes like an eight-day clock." Then he turned to Mac. "Seems to me I've seen that waiter before--last summer, if I remember. Where was it? Florian's or the Pantheon?"

"No, I don't think so," said Mac. "Carl hasn't been out of the country for two years to my knowledge. Much obliged, Oscar, for giving him a place." This to the proprietor, who was now beaming across the bar at Mac. "You'll find Carl all right," and he nodded toward the waiter, who was again approaching the table.

"Everything suit you, Carl?"

"Oh, yes, yes, Mr. MacWhirter; I was comin' to see you about it, but I just got back from Philadelphy." The man seemed hardly able to keep his arms from around Mac's neck. I've seen a dog sometimes show that peculiar form of trembling joy when brought suddenly into his master's presence after a long absence, but never a man.

Marny now spoke up.

"Tell us about this waiter, Mac."

"There's nothing to tell; just one of my acquaintances, that's all. Some I bow to, some I shake hands with--Carl is one of the last," and Mac nodded and emptied his gla.s.s at a single draught, shutting off all discussion. No one knew better than Mac how to avoid a subject on which he preferred to keep silence.

On the way back to the Old Building Marny and I walked together, Lonnegan, Mac, and Boggs behind.

"Something in that waiter Carl," remarked Marny, "or Mac wouldn't have shaken hands with him. These waiters are a queer lot; they're never in the same city more than a year. I drew my chair up to a table in Moscow two years ago in that swell cafe--forget the name--outside of a park, and sat me down, wondering which one of my ragged languages I could use in getting something to eat, when the waiter behind my chair leaned over and said in perfect English, 'What wine, Mr. Marny?' He'd waited at Brown's, on Twenty-eighth Street, for years. h.e.l.lo! Who's Mac talking to?--a street beggar! Just like him!"

We were crossing the Square now and nearing the Old Building and No. 3.

There was evidently some dispute over the beggar, for Mac was apparently defending the woman, while the others were objecting to her asking for alms.

"They've got a pa.s.sword and a signal-call for Mac," continued Boggs; "he never goes to luncheon but there's half a dozen of 'em strung along his route."

We had now reached our companions.

"Did you give that tramp anything, Mac?" burst out Marny.

"Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth, my boy,"

answered Mac, with a wave of his hand as he strode along.

"Did he, Lonnegan?" persisted Boggs.

"Yes, and wanted to know where she lived."

"I can tell you where she lives," exploded Boggs. "She lives in a brownstone front somewhere facing the Park. Drives up Riverside every Sunday in her carriage, and all because fools like you, Mac, support her. Only last week a man I know gave some pennies to a woman who was crying with hunger, with two little babes to feed--'For the love of G.o.d, kind sir!' and all that sort of thing--and that night, going home from the club, he found her on a doorstep under a gaslight counting out her earnings--all the cents in one pile, all the dimes in another; then the quarters, halves, and so on. She'd earned more money that day than he had. When she saw him she laughed, and went right on with her counting."

Mac was now entering the Building, we following him upstairs, the discussion still going on. Lonnegan insisted that there were city charities that took care of such tramps; Boggs interrupted that they ought to be turned over to the police. Marny thought that there might be some of them deserving, but the chances were that the greater part of them were too lazy to work.

Our heads were now level with the top of the Chinese screen, and the next instant the whole party were inside No. 3 and warming themselves at MacWhirter's wood fire.

Mac hung up his coat, threw some fresh logs on the andirons, swept up the hearth, and dragged up the chairs for his guests alongside of some of the other habitues--Charley Woods among them--who had already arrived and were awaiting our return.

"Mac's been doing the n.o.ble act again," Boggs burst out; "that's why we're late. Shook hands with a red-headed waiter named Carl down at Pusch's, who seemed glad enough to eat him up; then he emptied his pockets to a bag of bones outside with a basket--'G.o.d knows I haven't eaten anything, kind sir, for three days. Got three children' (Boggs's drawl was inimitable). You know that kind of hag. He would have invited her to dinner if we hadn't been along. If he wasn't a natural born fool with his money it might do Mac some good to prove to him that----"

"You will get left every time, Mac," interrupted Woods from his chair, "over this foolishness of yours." It was never considered rude to interrupt Boggs--not even by Boggs. "Half of these beggars are dead beats. I've had some experience."

"Never 'left' when you're right, Woods," shouted back Mac, who had crossed the room to his basin and was busy washing his brushes.

"It's never 'right,' Mac, to allow yourself to be buncoed; and that's what happened to me last fall," retorted Woods.

Boggs leaned forward in his chair and fixed his eyes on Woods. The buncoing of Charles Wood, Esquire--a man who prided himself on knowing everything--was a story so delicious that not a word of it must be lost.

The other men were of the same opinion, for they drew their chairs closer to the blaze, particularly those who had just come out of the keen wind in crossing the Square.

"You don't know, of course, for I have never told you," Woods continued, when every one was settled comfortably; "but when I was real pious--and I was once--I used to oblige my dear old aunt and go down to the Bowery and read to the tramps that were hived in a room rented by the church to which she belonged. I would give them short stories--touch of pathos, broad farce, or dramatic incident, whatever I thought would suit them best--from 'Charles O'Malley,' 'Boots at Holly Tree Inn,' and Hans Breitmann's yarns. I got along pretty well with the Irish, Dutch, and English dialects, but a new story just out at that time, 'That La.s.s o'

Lowrie's,' in the Lancashire dialect, upset me completely. I didn't know how to read it properly, and I couldn't find anyone who could teach me.

I tried it there one night, and after making a first-cla.s.s fizzle of it I suddenly thought that in an audience representing almost every nationality on the globe there might be someone from Lancashire, and so I stepped again to the edge of the platform, told them why I made the inquiry, and invited anyone from that part of England to stand up so that I could see and talk to him. n.o.body moved, and I went away determined never to read the story again.

"The next day I was pegging away at my easel--it was when I had my studio over Duncan's grocery store on Fourteenth Street and Union Square, next to Quartley's and Sheldon's rooms--you remember it--when there came a rap at the door, and there stood a young fellow about twenty-five years of age, dressed in a shabby suit of once good clothes.

Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently seen better days. I believe that you can always tell when a man has been a gentleman; there is something about the cut of his jib that indicates his blood, no matter how low he may have fallen; something in the quality of his skin, the lines about his nose and the way it is fastened to his face; the way the hair grows on his temples, and its fineness; the rise of the forehead; and the ears--especially the ears--small, well-modelled ears are as true an indication of gentle blood as small, well-turned hands and feet. I have painted too many portraits not to have found this out. This fellow had all these marks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently seen better days.]

"He had, moreover, a way of looking you right in the eye without flinching, following yours about like a searchlight without letting go of his hold. His voice, too, was the voice of a man of some refinement--a reed-like voice, like a clarionette, well-modulated, even musical at times, and with an intonation and accent which showed me at once that he was an Englishman.

"'I heard what you said last night about the Lancashire dialect,' he began, 'but I didn't like to stand up to speak to you. I was afraid you might not be satisfied with what I could do for you. But I am in such straits to-day that I couldn't help coming, and so I asked the Superintendent for your address. I don't want any money, but I must have some food; if you will help me you will do a kind act. I am out of money, and I may never get any more from home, so that what you do for me I may not be able to repay. I haven't really had much to eat for nearly a week and my strength is giving out. I could hardly get up your stairs.'

"All this, remember, without giving me a chance to ask him a single question and without stopping to take breath--just as a book agent rattles on--he standing all the time on my door-sill, his hat in his hand, not as a beggar would carry it, but as some well-bred friend who had dropped in for an afternoon call. Good deal in the way a man holds his hat, let me tell you, when you are sizing a stranger up. That's another one of my beliefs.

"I had brought him inside now and he was standing under my skylight, his face and figure making an even better impression on me than when he was in the dark of the doorway.

"'And you speak the Lancashire dialect, of course?' I asked, my eyes now taking in the military curl of his mustache, his broad shoulders and the way his really fine head was set upon them.

"'No,' he answered; 'to tell you the truth, I do not--not to be of any service to you. I know some words, of course, but not many. I ought to be able to speak it perfectly, for my father's place is in the next county; but I have been a good deal away from home. I didn't come for that; I came because you seemed to me last night to be the sort of a man I could talk to; I meet very few of them; I don't like to stop people in the street, and my clothes now are not fit to enter anyone's office, and it would do no good if I did, for I know no one here.'

"'Where have you lived?' I asked.

"'Oh, all over; Australia part of the time, three years in Canada----'

"'You don't look over twenty-five.'

"He dropped his eyes now and looked down at the floor.

"'I wish I was,' he answered slowly; 'I might have done differently. You are wrong, I am thirty-one--will be my next birthday. I was home last summer to see my father, but I only stayed an hour with him. He wouldn't talk to me, so I left and came here.'

"'Why not?'

"'Well, I'd rather not go into that; it's a family matter.'

"'Pretty rough, turning you out, wasn't it?' I was getting interested in him now.

"'No, I can't say that it was. I hadn't been square with him--not the year before.'

"'Well, you were ready to do the decent thing then, I hope?'

"'Yes, but my Governor is a peculiar sort of man that don't forget easily. But he's my father all the same, and so I'd rather keep away than have him hate me. No--please don't ask me anything about it. I don't think he was quite fair, but I'm not going to say so.'

"I had him in a chair now and had laid down my palette and brushes. When a man is thrown out into the world by his father and then refuses to abuse him, or let anybody else do so, there's something inside of him that you can build on.

"I handed him a greenback. 'Go down,' I said, 'on Sixth Avenue and get something to eat and anything else you need for your comfort, and then come back to me.'