King O’Leary reluctantly continued farther up the bare hallway to
his room.
“I say, over there!”
O’Leary turned, looking back at Tootles, who stood dimly revealed
in the light of the half-open door, his head on one side,
scratching his ear, as though, by some instinct, he had divined the
shadow over the other man’s heart.
“Well, son, what is it?”
“Merry Christmas, and all that sort of thing, you know!”
“Oh, sure--back to you. Merry Christmas?” said the other, as though
trying it on his ear, and a loud guffaw followed. “Yes, it’ll be a
merry Christmas--I think--NOT!”
King O’Leary turned the lock and flung open the door on the dim
solitude of his room. Then he threw on the electric light, and each
bare detail came suddenly out--a cot with the cover still turned
down, a wash-stand, and an upright piano with an armchair before
it, turned sideways, so that he could avail himself of the height
of the arm when he played. In one corner was a low hair trunk,
reenforced with leather of the make sailors were wont to use.
He closed the door, whistling gloomily, went over to the piano and
struck a few aimless chords.
“Anywhere else in civilization, Vladivostok, Valparaiso, or
Honolulu, a white man could speak to another on such a night as
this; but in this God-forsaken wilderness, I suppose they’d think I
was after their watch.”
He turned again to the keyboard, and, playing by ear, with a truly
sensitive touch, ran into the _Feuer Motif_ of “Die Walküre.”
“God, that’s great--that is great!” he said solemnly. “That is
it--earth, fire, and water!”
He tried another start--shut the piano viciously and rose.
“Damn New York!” he said, with his nose to the curtainless window,
peering out at the opposite side of the court, with its chilly,
bare outline. “Damn New York for an unfriendly stuck-up port,
anyhow! Dozens of poor devils sitting around nursing their misery
and afraid to say hello to another human being. Danged if I don’t
try it!” he said, all at once, and, slapping on his hat, he went
out of his room and up to the corner studio, near which a dozen
boxes were piled.
“I’ll try each in turn,” he said grimly, and knocked.
But a moment’s pounding convinced him that the studio was
unoccupied, and he turned to the opposite room, which lay next to
his, and rapped on it as though to summon forth a spirit.
The door was presently opened, and the figure of a young woman
appeared.
“My name’s King O’Leary,” he said desperately, taking off his hat.
“I’m looking for some mortal being, man, woman or child, who’s as
plumb lonely as I am, to go out and help me through this night. I’m
not a thug or a pickpocket, and I’m not fresh. Anywhere else on
this blessed globe except here, people would understand me. Well,
how about it? I suppose you think I’m crazy?”
She stood a little defensively, her hands behind her back in an
attitude which seemed to bar the way into the studio, which lay
behind, warm and inviting with the charm her feminine touch had
laid over its crude outlines, as the spreading ivy softens the
ugliness of a ruin. Her hat and coat were on a near-by chair, as
though she were preparing to go out. Though she stood against the
light, he was struck with the oddity of her appearance--a certain
defiant, youthful erectness in her body, the depth of darkness
that lay over her, in the black of her hair, which was braided and
coiled about her forehead, and the brown oval of the face--brown as
an Indian’s. He could not see the eyes for the moment.
“You’re in the room next to me, aren’t you--the one who was
playing?” she said, in a matter-of-fact tone, and her voice was
gutturally pleasant, so different from the high-pitched excitement
of the New Yorker that he stared at her in surprise.
“Yes; I’m just about twenty miles away,” he said, shrugging his
shoulders. “Well, I suppose I’m letting myself in for a throw-down,
but here goes. Honestly, I mean what I say. I’m stranded
here--don’t know a soul. I’m just craving for some one to talk to.
Fact. If you’re in the same box and can size a man up for what he
is, why--” he added, in an embarrassed rush, aware by the white
gleam of her teeth that the girl was watching him, amused at his
embarrassment--“I say, what do you do to a man who has the nerve to
knock on your door and ask you to go out to dinner?”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, yes; that’s what I expected. Well, I meant it all right,” he
said ruefully.
“That’s not what I mean,” she said. “I’m sorry, but I’m going
out to dinner.”
As she said this she seemed to relax, as though satisfied of the
sincerity of his appeal, and, turning, for the first time the
light fell clear across her face. What the color of her eyes was
in the daytime he did not know, only now, in the darkness and the
artificial light, there was something luminous and deep and full,
and yet they struck him as a sort of barrier held against those who
sought to read deeper. These eyes looked straight into his, quiet,
restrained--not quite the eyes of a young girl nor yet the eyes of
a woman. The whole swift impression on him was of some one quite
unlike the rest, an inflexibility of purpose, something decisive
in look and attitude and, at the same time, something withheld--a
flash of elfin wildness cruelly mastered.
“I beg your pardon,” he said, conscious that he had looked too
intently; and he added, in blunt tribute: “Yes, of course, you
would be going somewhere.”
“I’m sorry,” she said; and this time she smiled, a smile like
the woman, curiously devoid of coquetry and yet at the same time
haunting the imagination.
“Do you mean you would have come?” he said eagerly.
“Of course,” she said, as though this were the most natural thing
in the world.
“Lord, this looks human!” he said, hungrily glancing into the
studio. “Wish you could see the cell I’m in.” He hesitated a moment
and then said abruptly, “I’d like--well, just to get the feeling of
it--can I step in--just a moment?”
She hesitated in turn and studied his face intently.
“Just a minute, then,” she said, but she remained by the open door.
King O’Leary strode into the room over the grateful softness
underneath.
“Rugs!” he said ecstatically, and he put his head back as though to
inhale the welcome odor of a home. “Lord, I can just smell it!” he
said. “It just warms you up--makes you feel real.”
He stood, hat in hand, his face glowing, surveying the blending
shades of gray and green, the subdued glow of the table-lights,
the grateful touches of warm colors here and there, and the easel
covered with a cloak of mellow golden velvet that was in itself
calming to look at.
“You’re an artist?” he said.
“Yes.”
She made no move to question him, watching him with a quiet sense
of dignity that seemed to accord him what he needed and no more. He
turned regretfully from his contemplation.
“You’re sure about dinner?”
“Yes.”
He wanted to shake hands, but her attitude did not seem to permit
it. He made a last attempt.
“Say, if I annoy you with my pounding--just rap on the wall and
shut me up.”
“I like it.”
“Really--anything in particular?”
“No; I like it all.”
“I’m glad of that.” He hesitated again, moved toward the door.
“I’m sorry about that dinner.”
She nodded, and he thought she was still watching him with her
disconcerting amusement.
“Good luck!”
The door closed, leaving King O’Leary, who had met women, good,
bad, and indifferent, in many climes and held his own with Irish
audacity, so thoroughly perplexed that he stood staring at the warm
light playing on the glass of the door a long moment before he
squared his shoulders and advanced to the next test.