“No, you won’t,” said King O’Leary resolutely. “I know the kind of stuff you love—moonbeams and gravestones! Nothing but yodeling for you, old friend Schneibel! Here, we’ve got to break this up! Every one on the floor, and all tune up. Who knows ‘We’ll all go down to Casey’s’?—Good! Come on now, knock the blues higher than a kite. One—two—three!”
“We’ll all go down to Casey’s
And we’ll have a little gin,
And we’ll sit upon the sand
Till the tide comes in,
Till the tide comes in;
And we’ll sit upon the sand
Till the tide comes in.”
“Right over again and faster,” said King O’Leary. “That’s the way, Miss Quirley; you’re a sport. That’s right—thump the floor; beat time anyhow!”
They were chanting this memory-haunting snatch for the third time, clapping hands in rhythm and struggling amid laughter to get their breaths, when the door was flung violently open and Dangerfield appeared, top-hat, fur coat and the gleam of a white tie.
The chorus died down immediately. Every one was struck by the strangeness of his entrance. He looked bigger and rougher than he was, muffled up in the great coat, with a flurry of snow on the shoulders, over which could be seen the white of two other faces peering curiously in. He took off his hat slowly, as he saw the company, but in a dazed way, and stood there blinking at them, for all the world like a great bear wandering into the glare of a camp-fire. There was indeed something restless and shaggy about him that struck them all as he stood there, staring into the room. The head was full and round with an abundance of curly black hair, grizzled at the temples, with one white lock that rose from the forehead like a white flame. The face was wide-spaced and rather flat, the yellow-green eyes were deep set with distended pupils, very animal-like—eyes that glowed and set in sudden fixed stares.
Evidently the party had startled him—perhaps it was the presence of women, which he had not foreseen, for after a moment he seemed to recover himself with an effort and said a few words which caused his companions to scuttle away and took a step into the room, smiling courteously, without a trace of the former wild, almost unbalanced stare.
“I am afraid I owe you an apology,” he said quietly. “My friends mistook this for my studio. I hope you will forgive the rudeness of my intrusion.”
During the moments which had followed the flying open of the door, the entire company had remained hushed under the spell of the brusque incident. Every one had the same feeling—there was something out of place with the man, dressed as he was, here in the Arcade alone on Christmas night—something indefinably wrong, though what it was each would have been hard put to it to express. In this short moment, where each man felt that he was in trouble, there was something about him, a certain weakness or a certain childlike wildness, that went to the heart of every woman present—a quality the man had of being lovable (for it was unconscious) despite all his faults. He had bowed and started to withdraw, before King O’Leary came to.
“Hold up, friend—you must be Dangerfield, aren’t you?”
“Dangerfield?” said the new arrival, stopping. “Yes, that’s my name.”