Tootles shared the studio, which was a curiosity in itself, and
a sort of refuge for indigent artists, transient reporters and
just plain-a-day human beings, with Mr. Flick Wilder, who numbered
among his activities (without tarrying overlong in any) journalism,
all grades of publicity and press-work, advance agent, and odd
theatrical jobs, special stories, and occasionally minor editorial
positions, briefly held. As he aspired to a liberal position in
the literary world--and by liberal, he understood a position in
which he should originate the ideas that others were laboriously to
execute--he had decided to take up as a steady profession (steady
being used in a relative sense) the occupation of joke-smith, or
joke-cracker, as he himself termed it, as one which necessitated
only a trifling expense in the shape of a note-book, developed
the memory, and made the companionship of witty associates a
lucrative necessity. He pounded out the pun ordinary by the dozen
for the comic weeklies at fifty cents an item. He dressed up
anecdotes skimmed from current journalism, and fitted them to
celebrities, a process which he termed “developing the property.”
He seasoned English humor with the pepper of American wit. He
tagged an inscription to a cartoon and supplied ideas for others
_ad libitum_, and occasionally, by astutely padding two lines into
a paragraph or a paragraph into a section, realized the colossal
sum of five dollars. Daily contemplation of all things in their
humorous possibilities had settled upon him a fixed gravity, a sort
of distant look in the eyes, of seeking to determine whether the
last man had uttered anything of value, and where others broke
into laughter, he resorted to his note-book. He had seen many sides
of New York in the periodic lapses which kept him constantly in
search of a new profession. He had even been a dog-catcher during
a week of financial stringency, when he was seeking to earn his
fare from Chattanooga back to the metropolis, but he never referred
to this except in moments of full confession. He had a play and a
novel which he intended to complete. In tribute to this literary
productivity, he liked to refer to himself as “Literature,” while
addressing Tootles as “Art.”
Their association had come about six months previously, in a quite
accidental manner. Tootles, who was of extravagant tastes, was
immersed in a fit of hard work, in an effort to catch up with
the rent, which, though only thirty dollars a month, was beyond
his powers of concentration. He was at his easel, finishing up a
series of commercial sketches depicting certain Olympian young men,
beautiful as men are not, lolling on the seashore in the new spring
styles of Wimpfheimer & Goldfinch’s twenty-five-dollar suits--a
degradation which he endured against the day when the galleries of
the world should contend for his masterpieces, on the practical
theory that it not only kept the landlord in good humor but gave
the artist himself exceptional opportunities in the matter of his
own wardrobe.
The door was open, and he was aware that something unusual was
taking place along the hall--from the intermittent sounds which
rolled down, of loud and angry conversation--when there abruptly
entered the room, and by the same token his own immediate
existence, Mr. Flick Wilder, a sandy-haired, freckled Westerner,
with a watery eye and an impudent tilt to his nose, a heavy,
thirsty underlip, about thirty, of middle height but so abnormally
thin that he appeared back-bone _et præterea nihil_.
“Hello, kid!” said Mr. Wilder, with a friendly though suspiciously
enthusiastic greeting.
“Hello, you human hatpin,” Tootles immediately retorted. “What’s
your line of goods?”
“Did I hear you ask me in?” said Wilder affably.
“No agents need apply,” said Tootles, in warning. “However, can you
lend me five?”
From long contact, he had adopted a defensive formula: In case of
doubt, touch the other man first.
“I can,” said the other, accepting this as an invitation to enter.
Tootles eyed him through the narrowing slits of his eyes and
repeated sternly,
“Come now; what’s your line of goods?”
“I have a camel,” said the other, in an easy, matter-of-fact tone.
“A _what_?”
“A camel.”
“I don’t want any toys.”
“It’s a real camel.”
“Thanks. I’m only interested in getting goats,” said Tootles
sarcastically.
Whereupon, to his amazement, his visitor immediately drew out a
memorandum-book, reflected a moment, nodded, and jotted down a
note. Then he said:
“Want you to ride it.”
“Oh, you do, eh?”
“And if ten dollars means anything to you, kiddo--look this over.”
Whereupon he took two five-dollar bills from a sizeable roll and
flaunted them conspicuously on the table. The aspect of ready money
had always a convincing effect upon Tootles. Still, the thing was
too absurd. He looked at Wilder, and then went to the door and
looked out suddenly, suspecting a hoax. He came back warily,
forgetting his English accent, which he had laboriously imitated in
admiration of a certain vaudeville hero.
“Say, what kind of a game is this?”
“Money talks, doesn’t it?”
“A camel!”
“You don’t believe I’ve got a camel, do you?” said Wilder, with a
hypnotic stare. “Come here.”
They went to the window and craned out. Below, in the street,
surrounded by a swarm of newsboys, was indubitably a camel. Up to
this moment, Tootles had remained incredulous. Now he began to feel
a rising excitement. He scented trouble, and if there was anything
he went to naturally, with enthusiasm, it was trouble. He liked to
be in it, and he particularly liked to lead others therein.
“How about the cops,” he said, at once.
Wilder exhibited a permit.
“It’s a publicity dodge--see!” he explained. “New show at Coney. If
I can make Times Square at five o’clock, a bunch of the boys are
primed up for a big story.”
“Why don’t you ride him yourself,” said Tootles, in a last
objection.
“I can’t. I’m too sober,” said Flick, with a discouraged shake of
his head, as though to convey the idea that the day had been too
short.
They descended to the sidewalk.
“How’ll I get up?” said Tootles, craning his neck.
This was a puzzler. Wilder reflected.
“I had a trained slave who could make him kneel,” he explained,
“but I lost Abu over on Ninth Avenue--the drunken rascal!”
Finally they maneuvered Elsie against the side of a truck, and
Tootles scrambled into place, amid the jeers of the neighborhood.
Wilder placed himself courageously at the head, with the
leading-strap, and they started. Unfortunately it was only four
o’clock, and he did not wish to reach his rendezvous before five,
and, in a luckless moment, decided to cross the park and explore
the East Side. This, too, might have resulted without accident, had
not Flick, whose sense of geography was becoming misty, happened
to remember Abu, and stopped at each saloon to conduct a personal
search, despite the frantic remonstrances of Tootles, who did not
relish these moments of lonely and lofty splendor. Elsie, the
camel, however, was of a sociable, man-loving nature, and no harm
might have come, had not Wilder, whose sobriety was perceptibly
being cured, remembered, as a humane man with an investigating turn
of mind, that Elsie must be getting thirsty, and offered her a can
of foaming beer.
The consequence was that the camel suddenly awoke and assumed
the direction of the party, heading due east (with an instinct,
perhaps, toward the fatherland) at an accelerated pace, despite
Tootles’ objurgations and Flick’s frantic efforts to head her
off. The rest was a painful memory--a weird, reeling flight of
excited tenements, balking horses, swearing policemen, and a
sudden entangling plunge into an Italian wedding, in which camel,
bride, coupés, and guests became fantastically intermingled, while
Tootles, hanging to the top of a providential lamp-post, saw Flick,
Elsie, the policemen and wedding-party rolling away in a whirling
mist.
A week later, Flick Wilder reappeared, having beaten his way back
from Buffalo, where he had landed, he knew not how and asked
shelter, while he made certain cautious inquiries as to the fate of
Elsie and the propriety of a public reappearance.
From this hectic beginning, they became fast chums. Tootles, who
never touched a drop, unconsciously exercised a sobering influence
over Mr. Flick Wilder, gradually leading him into the paths
of ambition while following him through a series of incredible
escapades. Lonely, each in his own struggling beginning, they found
a divine measure of comradeship in their exuberant youth, dreaming
away at night under the stars that came down to them through the
open skylight; Tootles of fame and masterpieces; Flick of more
worldly ambitions, of rolling down the avenue, not on camels but in
glaring limousines, of being saluted obsequiously by precipitate
head waiters conducting him through luxurious restaurants where
beautiful women with diamonds in their hair sent him imploring
glances. But as these dreams, though immensely satisfying to the
inner needs, had the one serious defect of not being discountable,
the rent loomed over them like the sword of Damocles, compelling
them, much as the outer world called to their curiosity and love
of adventure, to the cruel necessity of doing a certain amount
of work--menial, brutalizing periods, which set upon them in the
closing week of the month, with consequent scurrying to editorial
offices.
During the free, happy weeks, Tootles dreamed and dabbled at
painting, executing lurid portraits of Belle Shaler and Pansy
Hartmann, models who roomed together down the hall, and who, under
promise of possessing these treasures of art, agreed to sit for him
at special rates, payable at some radiant future date. Occasionally
Tootles wandered into the studios of artists in the Sixty-seventh
Street district for such crumbs of knowledge as they good-humoredly
threw him. The truth is, he had unusual talent but too much youth.
Occasionally, too, Flick Wilder, impressed with his serious view of
life, would get out his copybooks, sharpen his pencil and prepare
to think.
The studio was a capacious one, arranged in compromise between
Flick’s yearning for splendor and Tootles’ feeling for the
decorative in art. At first glance, it looked like a theatrical
storehouse, from which parentage most of its furnishings had found
their way, so that one versed in dramatic necrology would have
fancied himself on the reef of last season’s plays. The studio was
lit by two windows on the street and a great, slanting skylight
overhead. On one side was a huge back drop depicting a sunset in
the Grand Cañon, while on the other was a bucolic view of southern
plantations, secured from a broken-down troupe of “Uncle Tom’s
Cabin,” for a price between two and three dollars. The introduction
of these novel effects in mural decoration, a relic of Flick
Wilder’s friendship with a convivial property-man, was at first
strenuously opposed by Tootles, who, however, ceded his position
when Flick pertinently pointed out, first, that the bare walls
were in a shocking state and could not be replastered unless one
month’s rent could be guaranteed in advance, and, second, that the
scenery would serve as invaluable backgrounds for the production of
Wimpfheimer & Goldfinch’s pastorales.
In a back corner, four property spears, from a popular failure
of “Julius Cæsar,” upheld a yellowish-green silk curtain which,
when parted, disclosed two bunks, one above the other, for greater
economy of space--Tootles occupying the more exposed position in
deference to Flick’s uncertain habits.
The opposite corner by the windows was consecrated to Art,
paint-boxes, easel, and canvases; while the home of Literature was
a damaged roll-top desk from the first act of a deceased melodrama,
with easy refuge at hand in a second-hand easy chair and a divan
with the front spring still in good order. Another sofa and a
hanging couch burned with pipe-ashes were known as the guest-rooms,
while the studio was artfully divided into zones by three
pseudo-Japanese screens, red, yellow, and violet, which swore at
everything else and at themselves. Behind one was the bathroom,
so-called as a compliment to the presence of a wash-basin and
running water. A second screen, with memories of “Zaza,” concealed
the culinary preparations when, indeed, there was anything in the
larder to conceal; while behind a third was a wardrobe containing
Tootles’ multiple suits, which had come to him in part payment
(dress suits excepted) of his services to the house of Wimpfheimer
& Goldfinch.
All the electric bulbs were concealed in varicolored globes
representing several varieties of the fish and animal kingdom and
capable of flooding the studio with red, blue, or green tints,
while perched in the high, dusky corners of the ceiling were two
cast-iron owls so wired that Flick, from his couch, could cause
four yellowish eyes to spring out of the darkness. Finally, the
pride of the floor, where it dominated gorgeously the collection
of vagrant mats, was a genuine if moldy bear-rug, with which Flick
had unaccountably made his appearance one night, insisting that it
had attacked him without warning. Tootles was considerably worried,
but a closer inspection of the animal convinced him that Flick had
more probably rescued it from an ash-can than carried it off by any
act of grand larceny. Consequently he set to work with enthusiasm
to restore it to some of its original ferocity, and with the aid
of odd scraps of furs succeeded in reconstructing a semblance of a
body, but one of such unusual colors that it might have passed as
a specie of the Go-to-fro--that mythological animal which has the
left leg shorter than the right in order that it may run around a
hill the faster.
In the hallway was a large sign inscribed:
PEDDLERS, BOOK AGENTS AND CREDITORS
CROSS THIS LINE AT THEIR PERIL.
SAVAGE DOG ON PREMISES
Around the studio others signs announced:
GUESTS STAYING FOR BREAKFAST
PROVIDE THEIR OWN COFFEE
AND
WILL BE CHARGED FOR
THE USE OF THE TOWEL.
By the door, a practical inspiration of Tootles, was a
collection-box bearing a large placard:
KIDDER & WILDER’S 25c LODGINGS
FOR TRANSIENT BACHELORS ONLY
THIS IS NOT A CARNEGIE FOUNDATION.
COME ONCE AND BE OUR GUEST
COME AGAIN AND CONTRIBUTE
COME OFTEN, THE RENT IS HIGH.