IV
The oldest inhabitant of the sixth floor, so ancient that he was already installed when the present Mr. Teagan had inherited the Arcade from his uncle, was a Frenchman, Mr. Cornelius, who lived in the corner room on the court overlooking the square, which had one economy that, to his mind, compensated for the thunder of the elevated, the grind of the traffic and the shrill of the newsboys which rolled through it—a providential arc-light, sputtering and furnace-white, which lit his room, once the curtains were drawn, and saved the expense of lighting. There was a tradition that he had at one time occupied the large studio at the farther end and had successively progressed down the hall to his present quarters, which, on account of the clamor of Broadway, were favored with a special price. Mr. Cornelius was in the sixties, of slight build, erect, and springy on his little feet, mustache and imperial worn in the manner of the Emperor Napoleon III, snow-white against the dusky Spanish tan of his complexion and the still eloquent eyes of mellow brown. His features were delicate and finely chiseled, especially the nose, and one eyebrow was noticeably lifted, which gave him an alert expression. In his youth he must have been remarkably handsome, in a dashing, wild-animal way that appealed to women. He lived in seclusion, scrupulously polite whenever in the elevator he encountered a neighbor, but opening his door only to one person—Miss Pansy Hartmann, who had won his confidence and posed for the dilettante sketches it amused him to make, while she read mechanically to him from yellowed books of which she understood not a word—Pascal, the letters of Madame de Sévigné, and the works of Voltaire. He wore a nightcap with a tassel, and for days never left his room, occasionally appearing in a faded peacock-blue dressing-gown. Each Sunday, however, he donned a Prince Albert coat of forgotten lines, scrupulously clean, though shiny and mended, put on a black stock and brought out from some treasure-box a top-hat of swirling lines, such as the celebrated Victor Hugo was wont to wear, inclined it slightly over one ear, and, taking gloves and silver-studded cane in hand, walked magnificently to church and back again.
Several things were inexplicable in his habits. No one knew when he slept, while curious whirring noises were heard over the transom after the fall of night. On the first days of each month, sometimes for two nights, never for more than three, he donned his gala attire, ordered a taxi from the opposite hotel and gave orders to the chauffeur to drive to Delmonico’s. When he returned, Sassafras always noticed a gardenia in his button-hole. The rest of the month he skimped along, no one knew how except little Pansy, who by a pretense of feeding the parrot, which was his sole companion, contrived to leave daily a third of a bottle of milk and a good portion of bread.
In the room next to Mr. Cornelius, who was called “the baron,” was a tiny old lady, Miss Angelica Quirley, who had nested there for a decade in the company of a shivering, jerky little black-and-tan terrier, Rudolph (in memory perhaps of an unhappy romance), who was known as “the fire-hound” from the uncanny instinct with which he could rouse the Arcade with his yapping at the slightest smoldering. Miss Quirley spent her time dressing dolls for toy shops, mending old favorites, and painting into china cheeks rosebud smiles to gladden the hearts of unknown children. She was all in a flutter when she had to pass any one and began to bob her graying curls when she was still yards away, until the gold-rimmed spectacles all but fell off—for all the world like a fairy godmother. Children would have flocked to her knee, only, unfortunately, there were no children there. And so Miss Quirley went on bobbing and smiling, longing for some one to listen to but never quite mustering up her courage to approach a friendship. In the morning she would peer timidly from her door to make sure that no one could see her, before hastily emerging in wrapper and slippers to gather in the milk and rolls.
Next to Miss Quirley was a lawyer, lately arrived, Lorenzo Pinto Drinkwater, a Portuguese Yankee, who had an office on the second floor, and who seemed to envelop all his movements with an instinctive mystery and was believed not only to exercise the profession accredited him but to be not averse to lending money as well at profitable returns. He had the Yankee body, lank and ribbed, and was so tall that his head seemed always looking over a transom. The face was handsome, in a dark, gipsy way, and the eyes, despite their shiftiness, had a certain flashy attraction. He dressed loudly, and spoke in a confidential whisper. Several times he had sought to open a conversation with “the baron,” who evidently had aroused his ferreting instincts, but Mr. Cornelius, despite his usual courtesy, had openly snubbed him.
Across the passage from the elevator to the hall, next to King O’Leary’s room, was the home of Miss Myrtle Popper, manicurist and marcel-waver, who had looked kindly on O’Leary as he stood in the Arcade before Joey Shine’s barber shop, wondering to whom he could send a present. She had come from New Hartford, Connecticut, with a yearning for the greater advantages of metropolitan society, tall, clear-eyed, a Junoesque figure, undeniably stunning, with her youth, her vibrant health, her smiling green eyes and her miraculous coils of ruddy hair. She had thoroughly enjoyed her first winter in New York society, and was slangy, pert, calmly determined to be amused and as equally determined to hold her head high, quite capable of taking care of herself, a democrat by association and a philosopher by a native shrewdness, amusing and amused.
Across the hall from Mr. Cornelius was another arrival of the autumn, a migratory type of which the Arcade had seen many a flight—Miss Minnie Brewster from the Middle West, who had come to New York with golden dreams of an operatic career and who paid an unhanged charlatan the sum of five dollars a quarter of an hour for refusing to tell her the truth about her sweet, toylike voice. She was a pretty country plant, sadly transplanted, a fragile blonde, with an angelic face and starry eyes, destined for simpler things, and quite helpless when confronting the world alone. She was dying of loneliness.
The two models who roomed together in the adjoining studio (whom Millie was longing to meet and lay awake nights constructing conversations which would lead to an acquaintance), Miss Belle Shaler and Miss Pansy Hartmann, were daughters of New York, utterly opposite in temperament and inclination, but fast friends by the bond of a long and united front against the perplexities, the trials, and the tribulations of their existence.
Belle Shaler was a noted character in the art circles in New York, through which she roamed slangy, cheeky, outswearing a man, flying occasionally into the temper of a fishwife, but with the biggest heart in the world—a female gamin, up out of the slums, always ready to wage battle against injustice or for misfortune, speaking her mind brusquely, a terror to pretense and hypocrites; a jewel of a model, with lithe, slender limbs and delicate curves, despite her sandy hair bobbed short and the upturned urchin’s nose, defiant and satirical. She made herself at home wherever she pleased, carrying the gossip of the profession, welcomed everywhere, in the studios of celebrated illustrators on the West Side, in the lofts of sculptors on the top floor of Healy’s, or rambling through the outer regions of Washington Square and Greenwich Village always ready for a spree, brimming over with vitality and a cocky summons to the world to amuse her.