The men pressed closer to look. "Roses, on a man like him!"
"Again the Captain's reverent tones rang out:
"'We therefore commit his body to the deep——'
"Two sailors stooped down and raised one end of the box. There came a grating sound, a splash, and the highway of silver was broken into steps of light.
"The Captain closed his book, the crowd opening to let him pass; the crew went back to their tasks—the sailor with tarred marlin to finish the bight of the cable he was whipping, the men to their furnaces, Hunter to his desk, I to where the girl reclined in her chair. She recognized my step and half raised herself toward me, as if eager to catch my first word.
"'Did he like the roses?' she asked, her voice full of tenderness.
"'Yes.'
"Where did you put them—by his bedside?'
"'No, on his breast.'
"'Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for him! Did you tell him I sent them?'
"'He knows.'
"'What did he say?'
"'Nothing—but he will some day.'
"Her eyes widened.
"'When? Where?'
"'In heaven.'
"The eyelids relaxed again, and a smile lighted up her face. She saw now that I was not in earnest. Then a sudden thought possessed her.
"'What is his name?' The inquiry came quick and sharp and with an anxious tone, as if she had been remiss in not asking before.
"'He has none—not aboard ship.'
"'Has no name! Why, I never heard of such a thing. How very strange!'
"'No, not among stokers; stokers never have any names. This one was called "Number Seven."'"
Mac stopped and leaned toward the fire, his head in his hands, the fingers covering the eyes. Not once during the long narrative had he looked at me. He had been speaking like one in a trance, or as one speaks to himself when alone. That I had been present was of no consequence; I was no more than the portraits and studies on the walls, not so much as the andirons and the fire. That I had listened in complete silence was what pleased him. This, I think, is one reason why he so often unburdens his heart to me.
Mac straightened his back, rose to his feet and took a turn around the room, restlessly, as if the tale had stirred other memories which he was trying to banish; then he dropped again into his chair.
"That's what I mean by the other side of the brick wall, old man. Makes your blood boil, doesn't it? Did mine."
"And the girl in the chair never knew?"
"No, and never will. He did; he looked back as he mounted the silver steps, and pointed her out to the angel helping him up the ladder. God knew what he had suffered, and wiped out whatever there was against him."
There was a tone now in Mac's voice that thrilled me. For a moment I did not trust myself to speak.
"And about the letter—did you read it?"
"Yes; it was from his wife. The Doctor gave it to me, and I hunted her up. Little place outside of London where they make bricks. Only two rooms; in one a half-starved daughter, white as chalk. She had sent for him, the wife said. Same old story—told a hundred times a day, if you will but listen with your ears to some wall. The steerage out to New York; the landing in a strange city; the weary, hungry hunt for work; money gone, clothes gone, strength gone—then the inevitable. This one had made one last effort, even to giving his body to be burned. The white-faced daughter wanted to know, of course, all about it—they all want to know; but I didn't tell her—I lied! I said he had had heart failure, and that they had buried him at sea, and in a coffin like any other passenger, because we were only three days out; and I described the service and the roses, and how sorry the passengers were. She knows the truth now. He's told her.
"Go get your rose, old man. I ought to have had better sense than to rake it all up. No use in it. Not your side of the wall, not my side. Let me smell it. Yes, same perfume. Here, put it back in your button-hole."
PART IV
With a Detailed Account of a Dangerous Footpad.
Mac had invited three or four of us to luncheon—Boggs, Lonnegan, Marny, and myself. These feasts were "Dutch" in the strictest sense, the sum total paid being divided, share and share alike, between the host of the day and his guests. That was the custom among the students in Munich and Paris, even at Florian's in Venice, and the custom was still observed. It did away with unpleasant comparisons—Lonnegan's inherited bank-account, for instance, and Woods's income from his rich aunt, who refused him nothing, in contrast to my own and Boggs's annual earnings. The only liberty given to the host of the day was the choice of restaurants. At Maroni's we could get a hot sandwich and a glass of beer for fifteen cents; at Brown's, in Twenty-eighth Street, a chop, a baked potato, and a mug of bass for half of a trade dollar. When some one of the less opulent had sold a picture, and had become temporarily rich over and above the amount due for the month's rent, Lonnegan, or Woods, or Pitkin (Pitkin had a father who could cut off coupons) selected Delmonico's. These occasions were rare, and ever afterward became historic.
This day, it being Mac's turn, he selected Oscar Pusch's, on Fourth Avenue—a modest little beer-house near the corner of Twenty-fourth Street, its only distinguishing mark being a swinging, double shutter door and the advertisement of a brewery in the window. Inside was a long bar drenched with the foam of countless mugs of Hofbrau, facing a line of tables centred by cheap castors and dishes of cold slaw, and flanked at one end by a back room. This last apartment was for the elect. One table was always reserved for the exalted; of this group MacWhirter was High Priest.
Here often at night Mac held forth to an admiring crowd of young painters who believed in his brush and who loved the man who wielded it. When I look back now down the vista of twenty years and see how fine and strong and superb that brush was, how true, how wonderful in color, how much better than any other painter of his time—Barbizon, London, or Dusseldorf—and think of how many lies the resident picture dealer told his patrons to discredit Mac's genius, I always experience a peculiar hotness under my collar-button. It cools off, it is true, whenever I see one of his masterpieces hung to-day on the walls of the redeemed. My anger then turns to a genial warmth, suffusing my cheeks and permeating my being, especially when I learn the sum paid for the smallest product of his brush.
"One of MacWhirter's, sir; one of his choicest; painted in his best period," says this same fraud to-day (the period, remember, when he would say, "What can one expect of the Hudson Rivery School, sir?"), and then the dealer demands a price which, had it been paid in Mac's earlier days, would have resulted in his breaking all students' rules and setting up Johannesburg of '41 instead of the simple steins of the Hofbrau with which Lonnegan, Boggs, and the rest of us were being regaled.
The hospitable and ever alert Oscar did not welcome us this time, but a new waiter, who sprang at Mac as if he had been his lost brother—a joyous sort of waiter, clean-shaven as a priest, ruddy-cheeked, blue-eyed, with short, tan-colored hair sticking straight up on his head, looking as if at some time in his life he had been frightened half out of his wits and had never been able to keep his hair down since.
The appearance of this overjoyed individual produced a peculiar effect on Mac.
"Oh, Mr. Pusch found a place for you at last, did he, Carl?" he burst out. "Glad you're here," and Mac stepped forward and shook the waiter's hand with more than his usual warmth.
Boggs looked at me and winked. What would Mac be doing next?
"Some member of the royal family, Mac?" asked Boggs, when the waiter had left the room to execute Mac's orders.
"No," said Mac, unfolding his napkin, "just plain man."
"I know," said Boggs, "ran off with a soprano at the Imperial Opera House; disinherited by his father; fought a duel with his Colonel on account of her; dismissed from his club; sought refuge in flight to God's free country, where for years he worked in a small café on Fourth Avenue. Was known for years as 'Carl' where——"
Mac raised his eyes at Boggs.
"Lively imagination you've got, Boggs. If I were you I——"
"On the death of his father, the late Baron Schweizerkase," continued Boggs in the nasal tone of an exhibitor of wax works, completely ignoring Mac's interruption, "the exile, who was none other than Prince Pumperknickel, returned to his estates, where his beautiful and accomplished wife, though not of royal blood, now dispenses the hospitality of his noble house with all the honors which——"
"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 Panthéon?"
"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 glass 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 café—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. Hello! 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 password 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 God, 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 habitués—Charley Woods among them—who had already arrived and were awaiting our return.
"Mac's been doing the noble 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—'God 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 Lass 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-class 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. Nobody 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.
