Turns about Town Part 12

Day scorned the packed, parading trolley cars, and swung vigorously up the street. Far up the thoroughfare an enormous electric sign (in its size suggesting that it had been somehow brought back by Gulliver from the country of Brobdingnag and mounted here upon a st.u.r.dy little building for awful exhibition) its gigantic illuminated letters spelling "Arthur Pendennis Ten Cent Cigar," lighted the mist for blocks approaching it, and marked the north boundary of the dominion for revelry. The sidewalks were much quieter now. One of those birds of the urban night deftly wheeled his vehicle alongside our pedestrian and pulled his clattering quadruped violently back upon its haunches until it slid along the slippery pavement. "Cab, sir? Cab?" Then he whisked away again. It was not long before Richard had entered into the district of slumbering residences, and not much longer until he ran up the steps before his own door, or, speaking more literally, his own landlady's door. It is not much to mount three pairs of stairs in the brave days when one is twenty-one, and Day was in the little room, where, rich only in the glory of his rising sun, in his youth, he weathered it so long.

This apartment was the width of the dark hall, which was face to face with it, about fourteen feet long, and furnished in tune, so to speak.

An uncommonly small, old-fashioned, wooden bedstead, a bantam-size "dresser," a washstand its shorter brother, a small table or "stand,"

and two half-grown chairs, mature before their season, were the princ.i.p.al articles of furniture. The room was heated by an oil stove that had pa.s.sed the age of vanity in one's appearance; it was lighted at night by a gas-jet, without a globe; by day through a single window, which occupied between a half and a third of the wall s.p.a.ce of the front end of the room, and which balanced in decorative effect with the door at the other end. A row of books was arranged along the dresser top against the lower part of the small looking-gla.s.s. Two pictures (the property of Day), one of Lincoln and one of Roosevelt squinting in the sunlight (this is a land where every young man may hope to be President), were tacked on the walls. In company with these were a combination calendar and fire-insurance advertis.e.m.e.nt and a card displaying a lithographed upper part and idealistic legs of a blithe young woman wearing, stuck on, a short, bright skirt made of sandpaper and streaked with match-scratches, who in fancy letters was ingeniously labelled "A Striking Girl." These bits of applied art were properties of Mrs. Knoll's establishment.

Day's dresser had several small drawers and a little square door. He had one day discovered adhering to the back of this door a hardened piece of chewing gum, and from this he had deduced that a former tenant of the room had been a woman, presumably a young one (for surely there is an age after which one knows better). He sometimes speculated on the subject of the former tenant, and he was of three minds about her vocation. Sometimes he thought she had been a school-teacher, sometimes he thought an art student, and again a clerk in a store. He reconstructed her as having had red hair and having been a bit frowsy.

But whatever she had been she had slept on a mighty hard little bed, and he felt something like a tenderness for her on that account.

When he had got home from the theatre, Richard sat on the edge of his bed (it seemed always somehow the most natural place in the room to sit), and smoked his pipe. One Christmas Day he and his bosom friend had gone together and bought pipes exactly alike, then each had given his to the other. Years later Day was compelled to give up smoking, and he was never exactly the same again. But when he was young the G.o.ds blessed him. He smoked his pipe out, then he slowly pulled off his shoes. That is, he pulled off one shoe and sat abstractedly a considerable while with it in his hand. He had many thoughts, mainly a.s.sociated with an unknown young lady he had seen that evening at the theatre. He wished he had had on a different style of collar--and he would have had if his laundryman had kept his word. However, he thought rather sadly what booted it to him now. Then he roused himself, slowly undressed, put on his pajamas (his mother had made them for him), turned off his light, pulled up his window curtain (so the morning light would waken him), and got into bed.

Richard fell into a great many adventures in his night's sleep. He fought bandits, with never any cartridges in his gun; he travelled across plains that appeared to be constructed on the principle of a treadmill; he visited sundry peculiar places and did divers queer things with solemnity and without surprise. After a while it seemed to him that he was somewhere talking with, or rather to, the former tenant of his room. But the former tenant did not have red hair; her hair was the loveliest brown; nor was she the least bit frowzy; she was the very opposite extreme to that. Nor clerk nor teacher nor student was she. She was a bright princess. Her complexion had rather more of the rose than of the lily. Her pure and eloquent blood spoke in her cheeks. She and the lady he had seen at the theatre were one and the same person. He could not make out exactly how he came to know she was the former tenant, but that seemed to be considered so very well understood he felt ashamed to speak about it.

He was saying to her some of the cleverest things he had ever heard. He surprised himself as he listened to himself; and he was much elated; for if ever he wished to speak well, now was the time. Now Day was really a very clever fellow, as well as a comely one (this is only a story of his youth, but in after life he became a distinguished man), and, like all very clever fellows, he was never perfectly happy except when his talents were recognized and appreciated. Here in his dream he had come into his own. It was a night to be marked with a white stone. One of the things that particularly impressed him in this dream was his impression that it was not a dream.

In the morning it was always colder in Day's room than at night, and always it seemed somehow lonesomer. It was bare then, and not cozy. To come directly from such an especially comfortable dream into the cold, grey dawn, and find one's window opaque with frost and one's breath like steam in the air, requires a little time for one to adjust oneself to the transition. Richard lay a little time generating courage to get up.

He did not immediately shake off his dream entirely; but crumbs of it stuck to his mind, like the last of a fine cake on the face. But it was as if his cake had turned cold in the mouth. He squirmed in bed with embarra.s.sment when he reviewed those clever things, on which he had so plumed himself, that he had said to the former tenant. They were so very poor and flat that he tried to stop his mind against the recollection of them. And even the former tenant herself, as she faded now more into the night, and he came more out into the morning, was like Cinderella as she fled from the hall back to her kitchen. But Richard caught up the crystal slipper that remained to him and in his bosom bore it forth into the day.

CHAPTER XVIII

ONLY SHE WAS THERE

Directly in the intense emphasis of white light from an arc lamp overhead, and standing about midway in the long, dark, thickly-packed line of people waiting, was a young man decidedly above the middle stature, in a long outer coat. He was broad in the shoulders, formed in excellent proportion, apparently in about the first or second and twentieth year of his age. His forehead was intelligent, his nose exceptionally good, his mouth rather big and lips full, his chin round and with a cleft in the centre. His hair, chestnut, moderately cropped, discovered, what of it was visible below his hat, a decided inclination to curl. He was redolent of health and the unmined masculine vigor pertaining to his time of life. As the earliest ancestor of this kind of historical writing would have said, "He was one of the handsomest young fellows that hath ever been seen"; in short, he was not unlike one Jones, Christian-named Tom. This young man was Richard Day, student of the law, and he had come from his silent "furnished room" to refresh himself, at a minimum cost, at the dramatic presentation of an immortal story of love.

On the occasions when the entertainment to be is of a superior order, the price of admission is doubled or trebled, and the patrons of the theatre gallery are of an exceptional character. They comprise school teachers in abundance, miscellaneous students, matinee girls driven high by the prohibitory prices below, young clerks, and a sprinkling from the usual ranks of the gallery-G.o.d, the better sort of them, however, the more wealthy and more aspiring. The original line containing Richard Day had a.s.sembled an hour or so before time, to be on the spot at the opening of the doors at a commendable production of "Romeo and Juliet."

There came a sudden jolting, like the coupling of railroad cars, then a denser packing of the line, a being pushed off one's balance and being pressed back into it again, and slowly, jerkily, the crowd began to move forward; then swept toward the entrance. The doors had been opened. As the throng began to move, a woman's voice rose near Day e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.n.g. breathlessly, "Oh! Oh!" Simultaneously a shrill cry arose, "Oh, there's a sick lady here! a sick lady! Oh, please! Oh, please! Won't you make room for a sick lady!" Day with all his force made what room he could, conceiving that the thing desired was to get the stricken lady out in the open as quickly as possible. A little peaked woman in a light coat took instant advantage of the slight breach then opened, impetuously to advance herself in the line. When the momentary gap had closed again, piteously the crying was resumed, and it continued at intervals almost the entire distance to the box-office, though it was in a slightly different neighborhood and observably proceeded from exactly the point of vantage gained by the little peaked woman; who, it might be inferred, was a dual personality, comprising in the same lady both a sick lady and another who was her good Samaritan and a.s.sumed the care of her.

Nothing railed the crowd into a straight line on one side, though on the other a wall held them so. The impatient crowding forward from the rear convexed the outer edge of the line of people, much against the will of those persons who found themselves being swept out of the direct way and felt the main current surging past them. What was yet more agitating to these was that ahead of them an iron railing did begin, at the foot of some steps, fencing in a narrow approach to the ticket office. If they should be swept past the mouth of this lane on the outside, their chance of admittance was hopeless. Day stemmed the swerving current himself by the strength of his body and by a kind of determined exercise of his will. But he felt directly behind him someone less strong losing hold with every step of advance; then suddenly this despairing someone, realizing herself pushed quite to one side, with a little scream, caught at his crooked arm; which he instantly, involuntarily clapped firmly against him, hooking on in this manner and towing safely and rapidly along someone frailer than himself. When they had come to the rail he saw that he would get in by so narrow a margin himself that, himself inside, he would then but tow her along outside, which of course would be a less than useless thing for her. So he backed water, so to speak, with all his might, bracing himself against the end of the rail, until he had got a little s.p.a.ce before him, around into which he drew her whom he thought robbed of her place by the frantic selfishness of the crowd.

But in doing this, it seemed he had inadvertently held back for a moment the little peaked woman, who was at his inside elbow. She, finding herself delayed for a brief period almost at the goal in her desperate bargain-counter sort of rush for the ticket-window, blew out into a spitting cat kind of impotent fury. "Ain't you got no semblance of decency! you great big brute!" she screamed in his ear. "Ain't you got no ideas of gentlemanliness at all! If I was a man I'd teach you some shame, tramplin' on a woman, a poor weak woman! a woman!" She fairly writhed with scorn at this depravity. Day attempted to humble himself to her, for her pacification; but another woman's getting in ahead of her at that instant drove her almost mad, and her frenzy interfering for the moment with her articulation she could only glare at him with an expression suggesting some kind of feline hydrophobia. When her breath returned more to her command she continued to revile him as they went along. Although Day had done nothing to merit shame, he squirmed inwardly with something not unlike that feeling, and he blessed the general commotion which drowned a vixen's voice. He felt ashamed, too, to be where he was, though he had not thought of it that way before; he should not have brought himself into a crowd more than half of women.

His reflections became rather abstract and levelled themselves somewhat against the feminine temperament in general. He felt the littleness of it (so he saw it), the peevishness of it; its inability to take punishment good-naturedly; its incapacity for being a "good loser"; its lack of the philosophic character which accepts humorously discomforts and injustice, real as well as imagined; its lack of broadness of view; its selfish lack of the sense of fair play; its not-being-square-and-above-board way; its sneakiness, its deceitfulness; the contemptible devices that it will resort to, a.s.suming them to be its natural weapons against a superior strength, both physical and of the understanding. He knew that in a crowd of men if anyone of them had had the despicable disposition of this woman his dread of the hearty, boisterous ridicule of his fellow brutes which would inevitably have followed his meanness would have forced him to stifle his temptation in silence. He knew that there is no place where one may better learn to appreciate what may be called the good-natured easy-goingness of the male animal generally than in an uncomfortable crowd of men. He thanked heaven he was of the superior s.e.x. When a young man thanks heaven that he is of the superior s.e.x it may not be uninteresting to observe in what manner he conducts himself subsequently.

As fast as the crowd was served with tickets it ran up the multiplied flights of stairs, moved in single file past the ticket-chopper, then on to come out, high up, into the vast bowl of the theatre. Here from one's seat the impression of the weird, ship-at-sea like effect of the curves of the galleries, balconies, and tiers of boxes, sweeping back from the light in front, dropping away from the vaulted ceiling; the impression of being high up close under a great roof and far from the stage; the impression of the myriads of vague elusive faces in the half-lit, thick, scintillating atmosphere of the hot, crowded place; the impression of the playhouse scheme of decoration, red walls and tinsel in the dusk, cream color and tinsel bas-relief in the highly artificial yellow light, casting purplest shadows, and the heroic mural paintings in blue and yellow and green, the sense of the infinite moving particles of the throng; the sense of its all facing one way, of the low hum of it, and of its respiration--all this is stuff that puts one in the mood for a play. The keen actualities fade and become the shadows; sense of one's own life and vanity and disappointment slips away; one is to enjoy a transmigration of soul for a brief time. "Now for the play!" thought Richard.

A man was climbing up the steps of the aisle, some distance away, flinging an inadequate number of fluttering programs into the crowd.

None fell in Day's neighborhood, to the indignant consternation of all there. A chorus of exclamatory sighs went up from a feminine flock just settled at his right, all faces following the disappointing program distributor. A stocky young man at Day's left hand arose, and clambering out between the parallel two rows of seats, occupants getting on their feet to allow him pa.s.sage, started after the disappearing man of programs.

A full-throated feminine voice burst almost in Day's right ear: "Oh, please tell him to get one for us!" Day lunged after the stocky young man, reaching for his coat-tails, and cried out, "Hey there! Hey!

Fellow! Hold on!" until it was quite hopeless to continue. The sea of people closed in between him and his quest; the stocky young man, his ears plugged with the mult.i.tude of voices, shook himself free from the narow, clogged pa.s.sage, and was gone. Day turned to the owner of the feminine voice, "He will bring a lot, I think; if not I'll get you some," he said. And he caught an elusive impression of cheeks precisely the color of cheeks that had just been smartly slapped, suggesting the idea that if one should press one's finger against them one's finger would leave streaks there when taken away; and he caught an impression of eyes that were like deep, br.i.m.m.i.n.g pools reflecting lights; and an impression of a cloud of dusky brown-like hair which reminded him of a host of rich autumn leaves. She of these cheeks and eyes and this hair was, apparently, in a party with two companions, whose peering faces showed indistinctly beyond her. In one significance of the word, she might have been called a girl, or she was a young woman, a miss, a la.s.s, a young lady, as you please; as were they her companions. Merry school-girl spirits lingered in them all, supplemented by the grace and dawning dignity of young womanhood. She was at that sweet nosegay period when young ladies are just, as it is sometimes said, finishing their education. Her age was that enchanted time, holiest of the female seasons, which hangs between mature girlhood and full womanhood. Day felt a suspicion, though without perceptible foundation, that this was the very person he had towed along outside.

The stocky young man returned presently, showing an uncommonly blunt face and with the programs, which proved sufficient in number. There was an interval in which to read them; then the huge place fell suddenly much darker, except directly to the fore, which burst into great light; the immense curtain majestically ascended, and the time was that of the quarrels of the houses of Capulet and Montague in the sixteenth century.

Richard Day pa.s.sed out of his body sitting upright on the seat and lived in this incarnation of the master dramatist.

But unwittingly he had inhaled a liquor, that was even then feeding his blood; he was even then continuing to inhale it; it crept in at the pores of his right side; it was stealing its sweet breath about his brain. This liquor was the magnetism of a powerful pleasant young feminine presence near to him--too near. Too near for a clean-cut young man, in his second and twentieth year, redolent of health, with moderately cropped chestnut hair inclined to curl, intelligent forehead, good nose, rather big mouth, full lips, and round chin with a cleft in the centre--too near for him even to remain in the hands of the master dramatist. A warm glow suffused him. His intellectual perception of the illuminated, n.o.ble spectacle before him in a frame of night numbed in his brain and he was conscious only of the rich sensation that circulated through him. Metaphorically, senses and emotions lolled on rich colored divans, spread with thick rugs, in the tropical atmosphere of his head. The magically spoken lines of Shakespeare became as so much unfelt, unrecognized, distant sounding jargon. What he had come to be thrilled by, as the dark, breathless audience like a sea about him was thrilled, was in a moment nothing to him. And yet he had not touched her, nor again spoken with her, nor glanced at her.

Only she was there!

CHAPTER XIX

A HUMORIST'S NOTE-BOOK

I admit that (though, indeed, I can claim a very fair collection of authors as acquaintances) I share the popular interest in the idiosyncratic nature of the literary profession. I am as curious as to the occult workings of the minds of authors, the esoteric process by which subtle insinuations of inspiration are translated into works of literary art, as though I had never seen an author--off a platform. I would read the riddle of genius. I am fascinated by its impenetrable mysteries. I would explore the recesses of the creative head.

Therefore, in the presence of the treasure of such incalculable value which is before me, I experience tense intellectual excitement. In the thought of its possession by myself I find the uttermost felicity. What it is is this: it is _a humorous writer's note-book_.

I must tell you the wonderful story--how this came into my hands, and how, romantically enough, it is, so to say, by the bequest of the author himself, your own possession. The strange circ.u.mstances are as follows:

Something like a week ago I received through the post at my place of residence an oblong package. It was similar in shape to an ordinary brick; not so heavy, and somewhat larger. I had ordered nothing from a shop, and so, as the parcel was plainly addressed to myself, I concluded that it must contain a present. As I am very fond of presents, I was, with much eagerness, about to open the package, when I suddenly recollected the newspaper reports of the recent dastardly Bolshevist bomb plots; the sending through the mails, by some apparently organized agency, to prominent persons in all parts of the country these skillfully disguised engines of death and destruction. They were outwardly, I recalled, innocent looking parcels, which when opened blew housemaids to bits, demolished dwellings and, in some instances, accomplished the murder of the personage who had incurred the enmity of the criminals.

I bounded some considerable distance away from the object before me.

Though, after a moment, I did, indeed, reflect that I was not what would probably be regarded as an eminent citizen, and had never felt a sense of power in the government of my country, I could not dissolve a decided distaste toward my undoing this mysterious parcel. Also I did not enjoy seeing it remain there on my table. And, further, I had no inclination to carry it from the room.

In this dilemma it occurred to me to summon the janitor of the apartment house where I reside. When I had explained to him that, because of my having a sore thumb (which made it painful for me to handle things), I wished him to open this package for me--, when I had explained this to him, he told me that he was very much occupied at the moment mending the boiler downstairs, and that he must hasten to this occupation, otherwise the lower floors would shortly be flooded. And he withdrew without further ceremony.

I sat down to consider the situation. I realized that it was a bothersome moral responsibility--placing the lives of others (even if janitors) in jeopardy. But something must be done; and done soon--perhaps there was a time fuse in this thing. A thought came to me (the buzzer of our dumb-waiter sounded at the moment); I decided to go further down the scale in the value of human life to be risked. So I communicated down the shaft to our iceman (one Jack) that I desired his presence in the apartment. Well, the upshot of the matter is that Jack showed no hesitation whatever about coolly putting the package in a pail of water and afterward undoing it.

The parcel proved to be an ordinary cigar-box (labelled outside, in the decorative fashion of cigar-box labels, "Angels of Commerce"); within was a letter resting upon a note-book, and beneath that the ma.n.u.scripts of two short stories. The submersion of the box would have (most disastrously) obliterated, or gone near to obliterating, the message of the letter and the writing in the note-book and the ma.n.u.script, had not (happily) these things been packed tightly into the box by surrounding waste paper.

The letter was from Taffy Topaz, known to us all--a humorist if there ever was one. I cannot say that I had been on intimate terms with Mr.

Topaz; indeed (to admit the truth) all my acquaintance with authors is slight. I admire authors so much that it is the joy of my life to be acceptable to them in any degree. I put myself in their way at every opportunity. I regard it as a great privilege (as, certainly, it is) to spend freely of my income in entertaining them at meals. And in this way and that it is that I have attained the honor of hobn.o.bbing with a number of writers, when they are not otherwise engaged.

As I say, I had not been on intimate terms with Mr. Topaz; and so I was no little surprised (and, I admit, no little flattered) at this decided attention (whatever it might mean) to me. The letter was not (oh, not at all!) a humorous letter. It was a very solemn letter. It said that Mr.

Topaz was just about to go to the war. I was, naturally, puzzled at this: the war is (theoretically) over. I hunted round and found a piece of the wrapping paper which had enclosed the box. On it was the postmark (the paper had dried somewhat); and the stamp bore the date of October 1, 1917. I was still more puzzled as to where the box could have been all this while. Then, I recollected the heroic labors of the post-office in maintaining any kind of a schedule of delivery during the war. My poor friend's box had been goodness knows where all this time!

The letter stated (as I have said) that Mr. Topaz was about to go to the war--as a newspaper correspondent. It said (oh, it almost made one weep, so solemn was it!) that he might never return from "over there."

In case he did not come back (the letter continued), he (Mr. Topaz) wished me to undertake the charge of placing the enclosed ma.n.u.scripts with some magazine or magazines; the money got from them, though it was inadequate he knew (so he said), he prayed that I would accept as payment for the advances which I had made him from time to time. (Alas!

my poor friend, what were those miserable loans compared to the wealth of his society! How I remember that proud day when he called me, so pal-like, a "poor fish"!) But this is not a time to indulge one's grief; I must press on with my story.

The remainder of his literary effects, he said (meaning, of course, the note-book), he desired me (as he knew I had some connection with a certain magazine) to present to the editor of that journal. Little more remains to be said here of Mr. Topaz (my friend). He was not called upon to lay down his life for his country (or his paper); after the armistice he went valiantly into Germany; and there (as the papers have reported) he contracted a marriage; and is little likely again to be seen in these parts.

The first page of the note-book contains these entries. It is headed

JOTTINGS

"Good name for a small orphan--Tommy Crandle.

"Fat person--shrugged his stomach.

"Name for a spendthrift--Charles Spending.