From the squalour, the heat, dirt and turmoil of Eighth Avenue, P.
Sybarite turned west on Thirty-eighth Street to seek his
boarding-house.
This establishment--between which and the Cave of the Smell his
existence alternated with the monotony of a pendulum--was situated
midway on the block on the north side of the street. It boasted a
front yard fenced off from the sidewalk with a rusty railing: a plot
of arid earth scantily tufted with grass, suggesting that stage of
baldness which finally precedes complete nudity. Behind this, the
moat-like area was spanned to the front door by a ragged stoop of
brownstone. The four-story facade was of brick whose pristine coat of
fair white paint had aged to a dry and flaking crust, lending the
house an appearance distinctly eczematous.
The sun of April, declining, threw down the street a slant of kindly
light to mitigate its homeliness. In this ethereal evanescence the
house Romance took the air upon the stoop.
George Bross was eighty-five per-centum of the house Romance. The
remainder was Miss Violet Prim. Mr. Bross sat a step or two below Miss
Prim, his knees adjacent to his chin, his face, upturned to his
charmer, wreathed in a fond and fatuous smile. From her higher plane,
she smiled in like wise down upon him. She seemed in the eyes of her
lover unusually fair--and was: Saturday was her day for seeming
unusually fair; by the following Thursday there would begin to be a
barely perceptible shadow round the roots of her golden hair....
She was a spirited and abundant creature, hopelessly healthy beneath
the coat of paint, powder and peroxide with which she armoured herself
against the battle of Life. Normally good-looking in ordinary
daylight, she was a radiant beauty across footlights. Her eyes were
bright even at such times as belladonna lacked in them; her nose
pretty and pert; her mouth, open for laughter (as it usually was),
disclosed twin rows of sound, white, home-made teeth. Her active young
person was modelled on generous lines and, as a rule, clothed in a
manner which, if inexpensive, detracted nothing from her conspicuous
sightliness. She was fond of adorning her pretty, sturdy shoulders, as
well as her fetching and shapely, if plump, ankles, with
semi-transparent things--and she was quite as fond of having them
admired.
P. Sybarite, approaching the gate, delicately averted his eyes....
At that moment, George was announcing in an undertone: "Here's the
lollop now."
"You are certainly one observin' young gent," remarked Miss Prim in
accents of envious admiration.
Ignoring the challenge, Bross pondered hastily. "Think I better spring
it on him now?" he enquired in doubt.
"My Gawd, no!" protested the lady in alarm. "I'd spoil the plant,
sure. I'd _love_ to watch you feed it to him, but Heaven knows I'd
never be able to hold in without bustin'."
"You think he'll swallow it, all right?"
"That simp?" cried Miss Prim in open derision. "Why, he'll eat it
_alive_!"
P. Sybarite walked into the front yard, and the chorus lady began to
crow with delight, welcoming him with wild wavings of a pretty,
powdered forearm.
"Well, _look_ who's here! 'Tis old George W. Postscript--as I live!
Hitherwards, little one: I wouldst speech myself to thee."
Smiling, P. Sybarite approached the pair. He liked Miss Prim for her
unaffected high spirits, and because he was never in the least ill at
ease with her.
"Well?" he asked pleasantly, blinking up at the lady from the foot of
the steps. "What is thy will, O Breaker of Hearts?"
"That'll be about all for yours," announced Violet reprovingly. "You
hadn't oughta carry on like that--at your age, too! Not that _I_
mind--I rather like it; but what'd your family say if they knew you
was stuck on an actress?"
"'Love blows as the wind blows,'" P. Sybarite quoted gently. "How
shall I hide the fact of my infatuation? If my family cast me off, so
be it!"
"I told you, behave! Next thing you know, George will be bitin' the
fence.... What's all this about you givin' a box party at the
Knickerbocker to-night?"
"It's a fact," affirmed P. Sybarite. "Only I had counted on the
pleasure of inviting you myself," he added with a patient glance at
George.
"Never mind about that," interposed the lady. "I'm just as tickled to
death, and I love you a lot more'n I do George, anyway. So _that's_
all right. Only I was afraid for a while he was connin' me."
"You feel better now?"
Violet placed a theatrical hand above her heart. "Such a relief!" she
declared intensely--"you'll never know!" Then she jumped up and
wheeled about to the door with petticoats professionally a-swirl.
"Well, if I'm goin' to do a stagger in society to-night, it's me to go
doll myself up to the nines. So long!"
"Hold on!" George cried in alarm. "You ain't goin' to go dec--decol--low
neck and all that? Cut it, kid: me and P.S. ain't got no dress soots,
yunno."
"Don't fret," returned Violet from the doorway. "I know how to pretty
myself for my comp'ny, all right. Besides, you'll be at the back of
the box and nobody'll know you exist. Me and Molly Leasing'll get all
the yearnin' stares."
She disappeared by way of the vestibule. George shook a head heavy
with forebodings.
"Class to that kid, all right," he observed. "Some stepper, take it
from me. Anyway, I'm glad it's a box: then I can hide under a chair. I
ain't got nothin' to go in but these hand-me-downs."
"You'll be all right," said P. Sybarite hastily.
"Well, I won't feel lonely if you don't dress up like a horse. What
are you going to wear, anyway?"
"A shave, a clean collar, and what I stand in. They're all I have."
"Then you got nothin' on me. What's your rush?"--as P. Sybarite would
have passed on. "Wait a shake. I wanna talk to you. Sit down and have
a cig."
There was a hint of serious intention in the manner of the shipping
clerk to induce P. Sybarite, after the hesitation of an instant, to
accede to his request. Squatting down upon the steps, he accepted a
cigarette, lighted it, inhaled deeply.
"Well?"
"I dunno how to break it to you," Bross faltered dubiously. "You
better brace yourself to lean up against the biggest disappointment
ever."
P. Sybarite regarded him with sharp distrust. "You interest me
strangely, George.... But perhaps you're no more addled than usual.
Consider me gently prepared against the worst--and get it off your
chest."
"Well," said George regretfully, "I just wanna put you next to the
facts before you ask her. Miss Lessing ain't goin' to go with us
to-night."
P. Sybarite looked startled and grieved.
"No?" he exclaimed.
George wagged his head mournfully. "It's a shame. I know you counted
on it, but I guess you'll have to get summonelse."
"I'm afraid I don't understand. How do you know Miss Lessing won't go?
Did she tell you so?"
"Not what you might call exactly, but she won't all right," George
returned with confidence. "There ain't one chance in a hundred I'm in
wrong."
"In wrong? How?"
"About her bein' who she is."
P. Sybarite subjected the open, naïf countenance of the shipping clerk
to a prolonged and doubting scrutiny.
"No, I ain't crazy in the head, neither," George asseverated with some
heat. "I suspicioned somethin' was queer about that girl right along,
but now I _know_ it."
"Explain yourself."
"Ah, it ain't nothin' against her! You don't have to scorch your
collar. _She's_ all right. Only--she 's in bad. I don't s'pose you
seen the evenin' paper?"
"No."
"Well, I picked up the _Joinal_ down to Clancey's--this is it." With
an effective flourish, George drew the sheet from his coat pocket and
unfolded its still damp and pungent pages. "And soon's I seen that,"
he added, indicating a smudged halftone, "I begun to wise up to that
little girl. It's sure some shame about her, all right, all right."
Taking the paper, P. Sybarite examined with perplexity a portrait
labelled "Marian Blessington." Whatever its original aspect, the
coarse mesh of the reproducing process had blurred it to a vague
presentment of the head and shoulders of almost any young woman with
fair hair and regular features: only a certain, almost indefinable
individuality in the pose of the head remotely suggested Molly
Lessing.
In a further endeavour to fathom his meaning, the little bookkeeper
conned carefully the legend attached to the putative likeness: