the soberest act of reason and of justice to fling away a life which
has lost its value in losing its egoism. But over that abyss his
thought hovered but an instant, and the horror of that instant produced
a swift reaction. The dangerous moment passed, and left him with a new
appetite for life. He felt the swift uprisal of faculties of enjoyment
in himself such as the convalescent feels when the blood flows nimbly
after sickness; and on a sudden he found himself convulsed with
laughter. The absurdity of his position moved him like a caricature.
He had blundered badly, but of what consequence was it in the vast sum
of things? All things continued as they were, the stars still were
steadfast in their courses, and from that upper silence fell a voice
that made him, and all human perturbations, a vain thing that endured
but for a moment. The spirit of derision was upon him, and, still
laughing, he plunged into the moving crowd.
Presently he found himself in Sixth Avenue, and his eye recognised the
sign of a small Italian restaurant of which he had heard an excellent
report. The front of the house was mean and narrow; the door opened on
a sanded vestibule, which, in turn, led to a long and crowded room. At
its upper end was a daïs, on which an excellent orchestra was seated.
As he entered the room, a man with a sweet and powerful tenor voice
sang an Italian comic song, the chorus of which was taken up by the
diners, who beat time with glasses and knives upon the tables. An
extraordinary vivacity characterised this curiously mixed assembly;
they appeared to have no cares in life, or, if they had, they were
intent upon forgetting them. All types were present, from the city
clergyman a little ill at ease in his environment to women of exotic
beauty, whose sidelong glances left little doubt of their profession.
Yet there was no element of disorder, no impression of vulgarity; there
was freedom but no licence, the mingling of human creatures in a
catholic amity; each content for the time to forget distinctions that
elsewhere might be deemed important, each happy in a transient release
from the servitudes of the long day, and perhaps from the memories of
misfortune.
Arthur was fortunate in finding a single seat vacant at a narrow table
next the wall. Here he took his place, and had already proceeded
halfway with his meal before he noticed a man who sat on the other side
of the table. He was a cheerful little fellow, with a good face,
humorous eyes, and mobile mouth, who was evidently itching for
conversation. Some trifling courtesy of the table brought them
acquainted, and in a few moments they were deep in talk. It seemed
that he was an Englishman, a wandering artist, a man with a wide and
cheerful acquaintance with vicissitude, who gave his name as Horner.
He had been born and bred in London, in an atmosphere of lower
middle-class insularity and ignorance, from which he had escaped into a
wider world by the means of art-classes and night-schools. He had thus
reached the lower slopes of Parnassus, only to discover that there his
progress ended; he had neither the education nor the means to carry him
farther; and so he had slowly declined from the production of original
work into a kind of Ishmael hanging on the borders of the art-world, an
expert restorer of old paintings, and at times an amateur dealer. It
is a curious fact that the Englishman, who at home is the most reticent
of all human animals, often becomes the most communicative when he
meets men of his own nation abroad. There the freemasonry of race
tells, loneliness acts as a solvent of reserve, and the possession of
common memories invites immediate intimacy. To hear the familiar
Cockney dialect again, with its clipped vowels and reckless
distribution of the aspirate, to remark phrases heard nowhere save upon
the London streets, is to be transported instantly, as on a magic
carpet, to the atmosphere of home, to see again the glitter of the
Strand, the midnight throngs in Piccadilly Circus, the dear and dingy
purlieus of Soho. The very words have an esoteric significance; they
cannot be heard or uttered save with a thrilling heart; and among
banished Englishmen they are the symbols of an irrecoverable joy, and
constitute an instant bond of brotherhood.
Arthur listened with delight to Horner's narrative of his adventures.
It appeared that he knew most of the millionaires who collected
pictures, and nearly all the dealers from whom they bought them. In
describing these people he had the rare art of the vitalising touch.
The millionaires moved before the eye in all their eager ignorance, the
dealers in all their duplicity and craft. Manufactories of old masters
existed for the sole purpose of meeting the demand of American
millionaires. It was a known fact that sixteen thousand Corots had
passed the New York Customs House in the last few years, whereas every
one knew that Corot could not have painted more than two thousand
pictures in a long life of the most unremitting toil.
"Why, I could paint better Corots myself than most of those that hang
in American galleries," he remarked.
"Perhaps you've done so," laughed Arthur.
"I won't say I hav'n't," he replied with cheerful impudence. "But I've
done with that sort of thing now. And I'll say one thing for myself, I
never yet sold a picture that I knew was a fake. But, O Lor', these
people are such children! They think they know everything, and on art
they are as ignorant as dirt. They carry round little books of
nothingness by Professor This and Professor That, and go into raptures
over all sorts of rubbish because they're told to. And they won't be
told better, that's the trouble. But I mean to tell them some day.
Only, you see, I can't write the way it ought to be written. I
suppose, now, you're not by any chance a writer, are you?"
"I suppose I'm a sort of writer. At all events, the last thing I did
was to write something of which I am heartily ashamed."
"And did they sack you?"
"They did. Or, to be more precise, I sacked myself."
"Well, why shouldn't you and I join forces? Of course I wouldn't think
of saying this to any one but an Englishman. I can give you lots of
stuff, and you can write it up, you know. We might make a book, don't
you think?"
"But I know nothing about art except in an amateur way."
"And what's that matter, I'd like to know? I'll be bound you know lots
more than the folk that do the writing here. And as for the
collections--oh my, you should see them! Constables done in Soho, and
Raphaels painted in Paris; curtains hung over them, if you please, as
if they were too precious to see the light; and when you mildly remark,
'But that picture's in Munich or Dresden or Buckingham Palace,' they
reply indignantly, 'Oh no! that's the copy--this the original. I have
a certificate of genuineness.' And then they produce a written
pedigree, with the names of Prince This or Prince That, through whose
hands their precious canvas has passed, when any one with half an eye
can see that the paint is 'ardly dry upon it."
"Is it as bad as that?"
"Much worse, if I told you all."
And thereupon followed story after story, full of rapid etchings of the
dupes and the dealers; with amazing biographies of adroit Jews born in
garrets who now owned palaces and sported titles; and strange old men
in London who hid behind shuttered windows genuine and priceless
pictures, and credulous millionaires in New York, who bought what might
by courtesy be called pictures by the yard, labelling them with august
names, and taking care that the papers duly reported the immense sums
they paid for them. It was all highly amusing, a backstairs view of
life, so to speak, which somehow bore the stamp of the authentic. The
time sped; the music and the company had become less restrained; and
the hovering waiter reminded them by his black looks that they had sat
too long.
"Where are you staying?" said Homer, as they rose to go.
Arthur mentioned the hotel to which he had sent his trunks.
"Oh my!" said Horner, "but, you know, that won't do. It isn't a safe
district, that. What took you there?"
"Poverty, to be frank," said Arthur. "I find it necessary to choose
the cheapest lodging I can find."
"But it won't do," said the little man gravely. He meditated for a
moment, as if not quite sure of how to express what he wished to say.
"Englishmen should stand together, shouldn't they?" he remarked at
last. "Now look here, suppose you come to my rooms. You'll be very
welcome. I can give you a shake-down of some sort, and to-morrow we'll
talk over that book. I really shall be very much gratified if you'll
come."
The offer was made with such unaffected kindness that Arthur's heart
warmed toward the little man. He had already received a hard lesson in
life that day, and it had left his heart sore and bitter. Here was
another kind of lesson. A man whom the world had not used generously
or perhaps justly, a total stranger, who had seen enough of the seamy
side of life to make him reasonably suspicious or even cynical, was
ready to share what he had with him on the mere ground of common
nationality. "Englishmen should stand together," he had said, and was
instantly prepared to act upon that simple ethic, although for all he
knew the man to whom he offered hospitality might be a rascal or a
thief. Such a lesson at such a moment was calculated to restore faith
in human nature, faith in that radical goodness of the human heart
which is the base of all decent living.
"Mr. Horner," he said, "I accept your offer thankfully. You don't know
how much you've done for me by making it. I shall never forget it."
"Oh! that's all right," said the little man, with a deprecating
gesture. "I've only done what I'd like some one to do for me." And he
did not seem to be aware that the words uttered so carelessly, as if
they expressed nothing more than the most ordinary commonplace, really
contained the sum of all religion.
Arthur went home with his new friend, and found that his rooms
consisted of a littered studio in one of the older houses of New York.
"When I'm doing pretty well, I always stay in a hotel," said Horner,
"but at a pinch one can sleep here."
"Why apologise?" said Arthur. "Why, man, you have something here that
the best hotel in New York can't give you. You've an open fireplace.
It's like coming home again to see that."
"Yes," said Horner, with a whimsical air of wisdom, "the decay of
marriage and the family in America dates from the hot-air register and
the steam-heating business. People who never sit round an open fire
never get a chance of knowing one another. I never had much of a home
myself. I had to start out working pretty early; but there's one thing
I never forget, and that's the open fire round which we kids sat on
winter nights while mother told us stories. I used to see things in
that fire--castles, and sunsets, and burning ships, like most kids do.
But I wanted to paint 'em, and if it hadn't been for those times in the
firelight I'd never have been an artist. But O Lor', look at these
Americans!--the women standing over hot-air registers with their
clothes blown out like balloons when they want to get warm, and the men
getting as close as they can to a fizzling coil of steam-pipes. I
don't call that being civilised, do you? It's a beastly way of living,
I call it."
While he was thus delivering his views on the iniquity of steam
heating, the little man had lit a fire of wood, which instantly blazed
up, and filled the room with ruddy light. Having done this, he
attacked with great vigour what appeared to be a wardrobe, tugging at
it with might and main, until the whole front suddenly collapsed,
revealing a concealed bed. From behind a curtain in a corner of the
room he wheeled a small chair-bedstead, and at the same time produced a
plate of fruit and a tin of tobacco.
"Now we can be comfortable," he remarked. "It's not exactly in the
Waldorf Astoria style, but I guess it'll do. And now let us talk."
If Horner had talked well over dinner in the restaurant, he talked
super-excellently well now in this friendly firelight. Arthur had
little to do but listen, which he did for the most part with rising
admiration. He remarked an unaffected innocence of spirit in the man
which was entirely unsubdued by his hard experience of life; he talked
like a good-natured, enthusiastic boy who had by some occult means
possessed himself of the experience of a world-worn man; he entertained
ideals of an almost pathetic impractibility; he had even written
poetry, and at that moment, it appeared, designed a prose work on art
which should be a magnificent compendium of the wisdom of the ages. Of
these great designs he spoke at one moment with the ardent vanity of
the amateur; the next, the man of the world popped up, to pour upon
them humorous depreciation. The same spirit of contradiction coloured
all his judgments. England he should have detested, for it had cast
him out; but let a word of justest criticism be uttered of its customs
or its manners, and he was in arms at once. America had befriended
him, and yet he was more than candid in his apprehension of her faults,
and had no word of praise for her institutions. In his judgments of
men it was the same. He had seen enough of the baser side of life to
fill him with the venom of Diogenes, and yet he spoke with kindliness
even of those who had defrauded him. His mind moved in giddy flight
among these crags of contradiction; he did not aim at consistency, nor
did he value it; yet out of the turmoil of his thoughts there shone
unmistakably a generous nature, a kindly disposition, a temperament of
light-hearted courage, which made a jest of disadvantage and calamity.
Courage was perhaps his most essential quality, and particularly that
rare courage which is not depressed by past error; so that listening to
him, Arthur thought that many a preacher he had heard had a much less
vital message to declare than this irresponsible but philosophic
Bohemian.
Arthur slept soundly that night, and awoke in a glow of spirits he had
not known for many days. Horner's talk had given a tonic to his mind
which he badly needed, and he awoke with many clear and definite
resolutions to repay his debt in the best way he could. But here
Destiny took a hand in the game, for no sooner was breakfast over than
a telegram was handed in to his host which changed the whole situation.
"My!" he said, "here's a go! I'm wanted at once in Baltimore, and I
suppose I'd best go. And just now too, when you and I were going to
work together."
"Must you really go?"
"I fear I must. It's important. But look here, you know that need
make no difference to you. You can stop here just as long as you like.
It'll save you a hotel, anyhow."
"But----" began Arthur.
"No buts," said the little man, with dignity. "I shall be offended if
you think of saying No. I know the room isn't all that I could wish to
offer to a friend, but if you'll put up with it, it's yours as long as
you like. And see here, I'll leave you my papers to run over while I'm
gone. It'll be a fine thing for me to have you here, and I count it
luck; so we'll take that as settled."
And so, waving aside all remonstrance, the little artist packed his
valise, and half an hour later, with a final grip of the hand,
disappeared down the narrow staircase, leaving Arthur monarch of all he
surveyed.
And then began that period in the experience of our hero which, like
the more obscure passages of history, may be passed over in silence,
although they contain more of tragedy than many famous battlefields.
Emptied of the vivacious presence of Horner, the room seemed singularly
desolate, and life at once took a grayer aspect. Perhaps it was helped
by the character of the day. The exquisite sky, which had shone
brilliant as a jewel for so many weeks, was now filled with heavy
clouds; a bitter wind blew, snow had begun to fall, and the city
crouched like some frightened animal, waiting for the stroke of the
impending blizzard. Arthur's first act was to light the fire, and go
over the mass of papers which Horner had confided to him. In the
innocence of his spirit Horner had informed him that it was no
difficulty for him to write--the really difficult thing was to stop
writing; and the fruits of this facility now lay before Arthur in an
enormous pile of manuscript. It consisted of pencil jottings on a vast
variety of themes, notes on pictures (often pungently sagacious),
anecdotes of humorous frauds perpetrated on the credulous, the
beginnings of an autobiography as frank as Benvenuto Cellini's,
interspersed with fragments of poems, short stories, crude
philosophies, and even the draft of a novel.
"What on earth does he expect me to do with all this?" groaned Arthur.
One thing he could see very plainly--viz., that here was a prodigious
mine of excellent material for any one who knew how to use it. The
storm beat without, the long day passed, and he was still at his task.
He struggled through the snow to a cheap restaurant, came back,
rekindled the fire, and sat down to reflect for the hundredth time on
the strangeness of his position. Here he was, in the room of a man
whom he scarcely knew, and, as it appeared, the custodian of his most
private memoranda. As he read on and on, there gradually grew before
his mind's eye an authentic portrait of the man. He saw him at once
shrewd and guileless, sagacious and impractical, full of innocent
vanities and idealisms, unworldly as a child, and also, like a child,
attaining moments of naïve wisdom, of unintentional philosophic
insight; and he suddenly perceived what might be done with this mass of
memoranda. There was no doubt what Horner wished to have done; he
designed a book of some sort. Why not edit it? And, as if in answer
to this question, there came next noon a hurried line from Horner,
saying he would be detained in Baltimore for at least a month, and
begging him to do anything he liked with his papers, with the fullest
discretionary power. Here was an unsought task imposed upon him by
what seemed the whim of circumstance. He could take Horner's partly
written novel, fill in the gaps from his own abundant autobiographic
material, and perhaps succeed in producing a human document that would
at least arrest attention by its realistic truth. As for himself, he
smiled grimly as he counted the few remaining dollars in his purse.
Christmas and the elusive Bundy were six weeks away; he was destined to
a hard siege, with the bread-line as a not negligible possibility.
Providence had put a roof over his head; here was a task recommended to
him by his gratitude, and if it would bring him no financial gain, yet
it afforded him an inestimable distraction from the uncertainties of
his own situation. It seemed he was predestined to become a writer
after all.
Then began a form of life which in after years appeared to him
fantastic as a dream. He measured out his money with the strictest
parsimony, existed on the cheapest forms of food, and amid the riot of
New York lived the life of an anchorite in his cell. The days passed
unregarded; he went nowhere, saw no one; and at length there came a
night when his task was done. Does the reader recollect a novel called
_The Amateur Artist_, by Cyril Horner, which a short time ago became
the sensation of the season? That was the book which Arthur finished
late one night at Horner's room, and expressed next morning with almost
his last penny to the office of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion.
He felt weak and ill, and for the first time a thrill of fear shot
through his heart. Toward evening he dined exiguously on a dish of
milk and porridge, and remembered hazily a dispute with the waiter on
the question of a tip. He went out into the streets. A slender curve
of moon rode in a sky of ice, the air was bitter cold, a sharp wind
eddied round the corners of the streets, and took him by the throat.
He walked on and on, with the illusion of the city slipping past him
like a river full of glittering reflections, himself treading upon air.
Once he found himself shambling; it horrified him, for it was so that
tramps and outcasts walked. A little later he found himself gazing on
the bread-line; he stood an instant in fascinated pity, and fled.
About midnight he found himself once more before the doors of the old
Astor House, and felt that he could walk no farther. He gathered
courage to enter, and blessed the undesigned humanitarianism of
America, which makes an hotel lobby an open rendezvous. Here, at
least, was light and warmth. A night clerk was at the desk--not he of
the toothpick and the supercilious back. He made a shift to ask him if
Bundy had arrived.
"When do you expect him?" asked the clerk.
"Hourly."
"Where does he come from?"
"The West--Oklahoma, I believe."
"Then he'll get in at seven on the Pennsylvania, most likely."
"Can I wait for him?"
The clerk eyed him narrowly.
"You used to stay here, didn't you?"
"I was here for a fortnight."
"I don't know but you can," he remarked ungraciously. "But say, you
ought to take a room, you know."
"I'd rather not till I know if Mr. Bundy comes."
"Down on your luck?"
"Down on my luck," said Arthur gravely.
The clerk laughed.
"Parlour A. might suit you. Don't let me see you, that's all."
In Parlour A. he took refuge, and was soon asleep, his head bowed upon
the table. He woke from time to time with a strong shudder. "Not
that, O God--not that!" he moaned, for it was of the bread-line he had
dreamed.
He was still asleep when a sudden hand was laid upon his shoulder.
He awoke, and looked into the face of Bundy.
XV
THE MILLIONAIRE
He could hardly believe his good fortune. The mist of sleep and
weakness was upon his eyes, hysteric laughter shook him. He rose,
trembling. He saw the good-natured night-clerk in the doorway, heard
him say, "I guess he's been up against it good and hard," and the next
moment found himself sinking through an abyss of coloured lights into
an unfathomable darkness. The descent lasted but for an instant; when
he opened his eyes again it was to protest that there was nothing
whatever the matter with him.
"Been out on the bat," said the clerk laconically.
"Been starving," said another voice.
And then the owner of that second voice grew clear to him--a kindly
face of inimitable shrewdness, the gray hair neatly parted in the
middle, the gray moustache closely trimmed, and a pair of big, dreamy
eyes fixed on him in anxious consideration.
"Poor lad!--poor lad!" said Bundy. "It seems I'm just in time. I got
your letter--only a week ago. I got one from home, too--trust Mrs.
Bundy for telling a man what his duty is. So I hustled, and came off
at once. Now tell me, you aren't ill, are you?"
"I don't think so," said Arthur weakly.
"Case of the last dollar, eh? Well, we'll soon mend that. When you've
put yourself outside a sirloin steak ... here, Mr. Squire, send Charlie
up at once ... I'll breakfast here--it's my old room.... Now, hurry!"
He bustled round in a furious heat of action, flung his fur-coat from
him, talking all the while. "Omelette, steak, and special
coffee--that'll do for a beginning, Charlie; ... and see here, Mr.
Squire"--this to the clerk--"my friend is a distinguished Englishman,
and don't you forget it."
"Of course," said the clerk. "I knew he was a friend of yours, or I
wouldn't have done what I did for him."
"That's all right, Mr. Squire. But you'd better forget what you said
about going out on the bat--he's not that kind. Now, are we ready?"
And with the suddenness of a transformation scene in a pantomime,
Arthur found himself seated at a laden table, the meats steaming on the
dish, the coffee bubbling in the percolator, the very air fragrant with
provocation to his appetite. No wonder men stole for food, he thought;
his very nostrils quivered with the lust of meat. The blood sang
within his veins as the first drop of liquid warmth thrilled his
palate, and his flesh seemed sweeter to him, his whole house of man
renewed. Until that hour he had not known how hardly he had used his
body, how great the violence he had offered it. Now he entered into
the repossession of his own flesh; this was the moment of his
reconciliation, and this the sacramental food of a physical atonement.
"And now," said Bundy, when the meal was finished, "tell me all about
yourself."
Arthur told his story from the beginning, Bundy meanwhile smoking and
watching him with a curious flicker of suppressed humour in his eye.
It was a little disconcerting to be so watched; it set Arthur wondering
what Bundy really thought of him, and at last he broke out with the
remark, "I'm afraid you think me something of a fool, Mr. Bundy?"
"Well, I won't pretend to say that I would have done all that you've
done," Bundy answered. "I don't quite get your view-point, especially
in what you say about your father. But there's one thing in which I
see you have been wise--you've left England, and that was the wisest
thing you ever did."