"But, my dear sir, your connections and your reputation as a writer places you above suspicion. I had frequently heard of you before the Pernamba episode."
"Thank you," said Hemming, with a crispness in his voice.
"But this man O'Rourke?" continued the other.
"O'Rourke," said Hemming, "lacks neither personal distinction nor respectable family connections. I have watched him under the most trying circumstances, and his behaviour has always been above criticism. Also, he happens to be my dearest friend."
CHAPTER II.
A NEW RESTLESSNESS
"All night long, in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by." ... R.L.S.
During the first few days following O'Rourke's sensational meeting with Miss Hudson, Hemming saw very little of that headstrong young man, for the lover spent his afternoons and evenings in making up for lost time, and his mornings in rearing Spanish castles. At first Hemming took joy in his friend's happiness—then came envy, and bleak disgust at his own case. He sought refuge in hard work, and toiled every morning with a half-heart for the subject in hand, and ears pricked up for O'Rourke's babble of joy and content. And behold, at the end of a morning's grind, twenty pages for the fire. Even his novel came to a standstill. The chapter of romance, which had the joyful meeting of O'Rourke and Miss Hudson for its inspiration, seemed to have no connection with the rest of the narrative, and no excuse for existence save its own beauty. He wondered if this chapter were a story in itself—a breath of life's real poetry, too fine and rare for marketing. One night, alone in the sitting-room brooding above the manuscript, he tried to rewrite it in verse. A new restlessness had him by the heart, lifting him, one moment, to the heights of confidence, only to drag him down, the next, to the depths of uncertainty and longing. Three lines pulsed up to his brain, and he wrote them down. Then he opened his sitting-room window and looked out. The lights in the square gleamed down on the wet pavement. The black tree-tops threshed in the wind. A cab sped down from Fifth Avenue, under the arch. A policeman paused beneath him, and yawned at the bright entrance.
Hemming sniffed the wind, and decided to go for a walk. He circled the square three times. Then he struck up Fifth Avenue, with his hands in the pockets of his mackintosh and his stick under his arm. The big old houses on each side of the avenue wore an air of kindness that was not for him. Lights were in the upper windows of most of them. One was still awake, and carriages waited in a solemn row at the curb. It seemed to Hemming that all the world but himself was at peace. The coachmen and footmen waited contentedly outside, while their masters and mistresses laughed and danced within. What had these people to do with the bitterness of the unattainable? His eyes were turned in upon his own heart, and nothing seemed real but this new restlessness, this nameless desire like a crying in the dark. It was not for fame, nor altogether for the power of expression, though that, at one time or another, will tear the heart of every artist. It was not bred of any regret for the past, nor inspired by apprehension for the future. On the fly-leaf of a friend's book he had once read the words, "There is only the eternal now—an oasis of fleeting actuality between two deserts of mirage." Now he remembered the words as he strolled up Fifth Avenue. The Eternal Now! Could it give him no more solace than this? For him would it be always this empty room, from the windows of which he might look backward upon one mirage and forward to another? He felt in his pockets for something to smoke. They were empty, so he decided to keep on until he could find a tobacconist's establishment. Deep in thought, buffeted and yet soothed by the bleak wind, he strode along, with little heed to his course. Presently, upon glancing up, he found himself on a side street, before the area railings of a basement restaurant that he knew well. Here he could get a Porto Rican cigar to which he was particularly partial, or cigarettes of pungent tobacco rolled in sweet brown paper. He opened the iron gate, descended the steps, and rang the signal of the initiated on the bell. The Italian woman opened the door, and smilingly admitted him. In the larger of the two dining-rooms only one table was occupied, for stray customers were not welcomed after the regular dinner hours. At the table sat two men whom Hemming knew, and one who was a stranger to him. They were drinking coffee and smoking, and from a chafing-dish in the centre of the table drifted an odour with a tang to it.
Upon Hemming's entrance, Potts, assistant editor of a ten-cent magazine, called to him to join them. The Englishman did so, gladly. Akerly, the illustrator, he knew, and he was introduced to the third, a thick-shouldered, blond-haired youth, by name Tarmont. Tarmont also proved to be an artist. He was a Canadian by birth, and had just arrived in New York from a two years' visit in England.