The oldest inhabitant of the sixth floor, so ancient that he was
already installed when the present Mr. Teagan had inherited the
Arcade from his uncle, was a Frenchman, Mr. Cornelius, who lived
in the corner room on the court overlooking the square, which had
one economy that, to his mind, compensated for the thunder of the
elevated, the grind of the traffic and the shrill of the newsboys
which rolled through it--a providential arc-light, sputtering and
furnace-white, which lit his room, once the curtains were drawn,
and saved the expense of lighting. There was a tradition that he
had at one time occupied the large studio at the farther end and
had successively progressed down the hall to his present quarters,
which, on account of the clamor of Broadway, were favored with a
special price. Mr. Cornelius was in the sixties, of slight build,
erect, and springy on his little feet, mustache and imperial worn
in the manner of the Emperor Napoleon III, snow-white against the
dusky Spanish tan of his complexion and the still eloquent eyes
of mellow brown. His features were delicate and finely chiseled,
especially the nose, and one eyebrow was noticeably lifted, which
gave him an alert expression. In his youth he must have been
remarkably handsome, in a dashing, wild-animal way that appealed
to women. He lived in seclusion, scrupulously polite whenever in
the elevator he encountered a neighbor, but opening his door only
to one person--Miss Pansy Hartmann, who had won his confidence and
posed for the dilettante sketches it amused him to make, while
she read mechanically to him from yellowed books of which she
understood not a word--Pascal, the letters of Madame de Sévigné,
and the works of Voltaire. He wore a nightcap with a tassel, and
for days never left his room, occasionally appearing in a faded
peacock-blue dressing-gown. Each Sunday, however, he donned a
Prince Albert coat of forgotten lines, scrupulously clean, though
shiny and mended, put on a black stock and brought out from some
treasure-box a top-hat of swirling lines, such as the celebrated
Victor Hugo was wont to wear, inclined it slightly over one
ear, and, taking gloves and silver-studded cane in hand, walked
magnificently to church and back again.
Several things were inexplicable in his habits. No one knew when he
slept, while curious whirring noises were heard over the transom
after the fall of night. On the first days of each month, sometimes
for two nights, never for more than three, he donned his gala
attire, ordered a taxi from the opposite hotel and gave orders to
the chauffeur to drive to Delmonico’s. When he returned, Sassafras
always noticed a gardenia in his button-hole. The rest of the
month he skimped along, no one knew how except little Pansy, who
by a pretense of feeding the parrot, which was his sole companion,
contrived to leave daily a third of a bottle of milk and a good
portion of bread.
In the room next to Mr. Cornelius, who was called “the baron,” was
a tiny old lady, Miss Angelica Quirley, who had nested there for a
decade in the company of a shivering, jerky little black-and-tan
terrier, Rudolph (in memory perhaps of an unhappy romance), who
was known as “the fire-hound” from the uncanny instinct with
which he could rouse the Arcade with his yapping at the slightest
smoldering. Miss Quirley spent her time dressing dolls for toy
shops, mending old favorites, and painting into china cheeks
rosebud smiles to gladden the hearts of unknown children. She
was all in a flutter when she had to pass any one and began to
bob her graying curls when she was still yards away, until the
gold-rimmed spectacles all but fell off--for all the world like a
fairy godmother. Children would have flocked to her knee, only,
unfortunately, there were no children there. And so Miss Quirley
went on bobbing and smiling, longing for some one to listen to but
never quite mustering up her courage to approach a friendship.
In the morning she would peer timidly from her door to make sure
that no one could see her, before hastily emerging in wrapper and
slippers to gather in the milk and rolls.
Next to Miss Quirley was a lawyer, lately arrived, Lorenzo
Pinto Drinkwater, a Portuguese Yankee, who had an office on the
second floor, and who seemed to envelop all his movements with
an instinctive mystery and was believed not only to exercise the
profession accredited him but to be not averse to lending money
as well at profitable returns. He had the Yankee body, lank and
ribbed, and was so tall that his head seemed always looking over
a transom. The face was handsome, in a dark, gipsy way, and the
eyes, despite their shiftiness, had a certain flashy attraction.
He dressed loudly, and spoke in a confidential whisper. Several
times he had sought to open a conversation with “the baron,” who
evidently had aroused his ferreting instincts, but Mr. Cornelius,
despite his usual courtesy, had openly snubbed him.
Across the passage from the elevator to the hall, next to King
O’Leary’s room, was the home of Miss Myrtle Popper, manicurist and
marcel-waver, who had looked kindly on O’Leary as he stood in the
Arcade before Joey Shine’s barber shop, wondering to whom he could
send a present. She had come from New Hartford, Connecticut, with
a yearning for the greater advantages of metropolitan society,
tall, clear-eyed, a Junoesque figure, undeniably stunning, with
her youth, her vibrant health, her smiling green eyes and her
miraculous coils of ruddy hair. She had thoroughly enjoyed her
first winter in New York society, and was slangy, pert, calmly
determined to be amused and as equally determined to hold her
head high, quite capable of taking care of herself, a democrat by
association and a philosopher by a native shrewdness, amusing and
amused.
Across the hall from Mr. Cornelius was another arrival of the
autumn, a migratory type of which the Arcade had seen many a
flight--Miss Minnie Brewster from the Middle West, who had come to
New York with golden dreams of an operatic career and who paid an
unhanged charlatan the sum of five dollars a quarter of an hour for
refusing to tell her the truth about her sweet, toylike voice. She
was a pretty country plant, sadly transplanted, a fragile blonde,
with an angelic face and starry eyes, destined for simpler things,
and quite helpless when confronting the world alone. She was dying
of loneliness.
The two models who roomed together in the adjoining studio (whom
Millie was longing to meet and lay awake nights constructing
conversations which would lead to an acquaintance), Miss Belle
Shaler and Miss Pansy Hartmann, were daughters of New York, utterly
opposite in temperament and inclination, but fast friends by the
bond of a long and united front against the perplexities, the
trials, and the tribulations of their existence.
Belle Shaler was a noted character in the art circles in New York,
through which she roamed slangy, cheeky, outswearing a man, flying
occasionally into the temper of a fishwife, but with the biggest
heart in the world--a female gamin, up out of the slums, always
ready to wage battle against injustice or for misfortune, speaking
her mind brusquely, a terror to pretense and hypocrites; a jewel of
a model, with lithe, slender limbs and delicate curves, despite
her sandy hair bobbed short and the upturned urchin’s nose, defiant
and satirical. She made herself at home wherever she pleased,
carrying the gossip of the profession, welcomed everywhere, in the
studios of celebrated illustrators on the West Side, in the lofts
of sculptors on the top floor of Healy’s, or rambling through the
outer regions of Washington Square and Greenwich Village always
ready for a spree, brimming over with vitality and a cocky summons
to the world to amuse her.
Pansy was of opposite type, soft-eyed, soft-spoken and gentle,
without Belle’s beauty of limb, but like a dark and velvety flower,
with her soft, oval, blushing face and Oriental eyes which seemed
to crowd her eyelids;--all feminine, a virtue by which she had
made a deep and disquieting mark on the impressionable heart of
Tootles. She knew little of her own life. She had been a model as a
child, with blurred memories of older and harsher beings about her
who had long since faded away. She had an archness in her smile,
and one eyebrow noticeably uplifted, in a manner so strikingly
like the baron’s that every one commented on it. Indeed, she might
easily have passed for his daughter, nor could he have treated her
with more deference, punctiliously surrounding her with formality,
always leaving the door open with ostentation when she came to
visit him. She was very fond of the aristocratic, lonely old man
with an impulsive kindliness which was deep in her nature.
Between their room and the abode of Art and Literature was the home
of Ludovic Schneibel, a dentist by necessity, with offices on the
third floor, but with a spiritual yearning toward art, literature,
and music, and, in particular, the company of artists. He was a
squatty, fiery-headed and fiery-worded Swiss-American, in the
forties, lame in one leg, and given to velvet coats and flowing
neckties. He executed fearful compositions of Alpine storms over
leaden lakes with large rainbows in the background, being indeed
without any talent but the love of painting, yet selling his
canvases to the large department-stores to set off their stock
of gilt frames. He worked at night and during holidays, singing
unmusically sentimental ballads, with occasional outbursts of
yodeling whenever the creative fit was strong. He was a lovable,
social tramp, and any rascal in long hair with the requisite jargon
could reach his sympathies and his pocketbook. Everything to him
was an enthusiasm; Tootles vowed he could go into a paroxysm over a
cold potato.
Down the hall, at the extreme back, in the little studio next to
King O’Leary’s, was a Miss Inga Sonderson, of whom the Arcade
knew as little as they did of Mr. Aristide Jean-Marie Cornelius
(if indeed that were his true name, which no one believed). Belle
Shaler had posed for her several times--she did posters, covers,
and decorative sketches--and had a peaceful memory of filmy
coverings and hangings, harmonies in gray and green like the
brooding sea, neat couches and window boxes of pungent and bright
flowers. She seemed twenty-four or twenty-five--possibly a year or
so older--repressed and contemplative--as one who, contrary to the
ordinary prejudice, never used conversation to think out loud.
Her body was like a youth’s, firm and supple, and when she moved,
the eye went to the hip immediately as a center of grace--of that
flowing grace which one sees in the poised female figures on
Grecian friezes. Her hair, which was a profound black with the
depth in it of a forest pool, had certain blue, furtive gleams
which perhaps only an artist would have noticed. She wore it
braided and drawn over her forehead in a Swedish coil, rather
severe in movement. The face was fragile, unusually dark, with
the darkness of the Northlander, and two things were remarkable in
it--the eyes and the upper lip, which was unusually sensitive and
the first to quiver with any strong emotion which was elsewhere
repressed. The eyes were the blue of cold, open waters, with a mist
of gray--like a curtain drawn across her soul, beyond which no one,
not even the man who came to love her, ever penetrated. She dressed
in simple lines and quiet tones, dark blues and black, with only a
broad lace collar and cuffs in neat relief. She appeared haughty;
Tootles, who, as well as Flick, had been romantically attracted,
referred to her as “Lady Vere de Vere.” As a matter of fact, she
was not haughty at all, and utterly unaristocratic, as Belle
Shaler, that ardent social anarchist, admitted herself. She was
simply self-sufficient. Whatever her antecedents, she spoke English
naturally, as though she had been born to it, with a low, rather
guttural, but pleasant note, curiously soothing; and yet she might
have been a waif from a distant Scandinavian region of encroaching
night and wan, midnight days. Despite their curiosity, no one would
have dreamed of questioning her, not even Belle Shaler, who was
unaccountably silent under the sea-blue eyes which looked out at
her as though through a mist.
Opposite this room, at the back corner, was the show studio of the
Arcade. A genius now passed into society had inhabited it, and the
tradition remained. Yet it had had an unlucky history. Those who
had held it had not held it long, and the last occupant, a friend
of Inga Sonderson’s, Champeno, a young sculptor of great promise,
had disappeared under a cloud, leaving his furniture in forfeit.
For a month it had stood empty, until several days before the
opening of this story, when the rumor went around that it had been
let to an artist by the name of Dangerfield, and the curiosity
of the Arcade was further excited by the appearance of numerous
packing boxes of unusual size, suggesting furniture _de luxe_.
This was the situation on the sixth floor back among these social
stragglers enclosed in narrow prisons of their own choosing,
secretly yearning for each other’s company, when on Christmas day,
invitations issued jointly by Mr. St. George Kidder, Mr. Flick
Wilder, and Mr. King O’Leary fell among them like carnival bombs.
V
There was only one thing in life that bothered Tootles greatly, and
that was the getting out of bed in the morning. It was high noon
by a shaft of sunlight that beat persistently on his Wellingtonian
nose, when he finally determined to try the influence of mind over
matter according to a method all his own.
“I see myself skipping gracefully over to the wash-basin,” he said
aloud.
The Mind was attentive, but Matter did not bulge. He decided to
modify the test.
“I see myself standing proudly on my own feet by the side of my
bed.”
Still no result.
“I see one of my legs thrust from the covers,” he persisted, in the
line of the best psychopathic suggestion. Immediately, one lavender
pajama emerged. “I see both of my legs out. I see myself raising
myself to a sitting position,” he continued triumphantly, and,
suiting the action to the word, he sat bolt upright. At the same
moment, King O’Leary rose to a sitting position. They confronted
each other thus drowsily a moment, and then smiled, and the smile
seemed to descend over the accidental meeting with the binding
cement of friendship.
“Well, Santa Claus, how are you?” said Tootles, with the superior
cruelty of the teetotaler.
King O’Leary made a wry face, and ran his hand nervously through
his hair.
“Was I pretty bad last night?”
“My boy, I thought you were charming,” said Tootles,
encouragingly, “particularly when you put me to bed and hung up my
stocking. Mother couldn’t have done it more gently.”
“Good Lord, I don’t get that way once in a dog’s age!” said King
O’Leary, rather ashamed; and he asked, nervously: “Did I get to
shooting off my mouth?”
“You talked,” said Tootles, descending, “but you kept a tight lip.
You said nothing you didn’t want to, old cockywax.”
This seemed to reassure O’Leary. He rose, shaking himself
together, and his glance fell on the three suspended socks bulging
grotesquely.
“Did I do that?” he said, with a wan smile.
“Don’t you remember playing Santa Claus up and down the hall?”
“No; but I remember something about riding miles and miles in an
elevator.”
Flick Wilder now began to return, talking violently and flopping
about in the last stages of a nightmare.
“Whoa there! Catch him! Hold on to him! Don’t let go of him--head
off that camel!”
“Wake up!” said Tootles, shaking him. “Where do you think you are?”
“Where’s Sassafras?” said Flick frantically, betwixt the dream
and the reality. “Good Lord, I thought that elevator had broken
loose--riding him down Broadway, when he turned into Elsie, the
camel!”
He stared at King O’Leary a moment in confusion, and then a light
dawned.
“Oh, hello! Well, King, you’re the real guy. How are you?”
“Fine,” said King O’Leary, as cheerfully as such answers are given
the morning after.
“Art, you may start the coffee,” said Flick, yawning. “What’s
that--oranges?”
“You don’t remember decorating the hall?” said Tootles, lighting
the percolator.
“I do,” said Flick, whose memory was remarkable. He added sternly:
“King, the infant has stolen our Christmas presents--presents we
gave the floor. All our kind intentions are beaten by this son of a
thief.”
“I may have taken away the Christmas presents,” said Tootles
unfeelingly, “but I was thinking of Christmas breakfast, likewise
Christmas lunch and Christmas dinner.”
King O’Leary immediately, with an air of great apprehension, dove
into his clothes, while they awaited the result of the search with
increasing anxiety.
O’Leary straightened up, displaying a last remaining handful of
small coin.
“Shake yourself,” said Flick, alarmed.
“You fed one greenback to a cab-horse down at the Café Boulevard,”
said Tootles, trying to be helpful.
“Seventy-nine cents,” said King O’Leary ruefully.
“You can buy a lot of peanuts for that,” said Flick, “and, believe
me, peanuts are nourishing.”
“Beans are cheap, so is macaroni,” said Tootles, considering. “We
might get three twenty-five-cent lunches at Brannigan’s bar.” By
this, O’Leary understood that he was definitely adopted by virtue
of the axiom of what was his was theirs. “Brannigan’s a friend of
mine. Might stretch it a little if I offered to paint his portrait.
What did you give Sassafras?”
“Fifty cents, of course.”
“Every time you got into the elevator?”
“By Jove, that’s so.”
“Great system of yours, Flick. Sassafras has got six of it. Of
course, we might murder Sassafras,” said Tootles unfeelingly.
“Never mind; there’s the stockings. They’re full of nuts.”
O’Leary went to them and emptied them on the table, perceiving
the letter for the first time. He took it up, looking at it
suspiciously.
“I don’t like these things,” he said, frowning.
“Neither do I,” said Tootles. “They send you a bill nowadays like a
billet-doux.”
Flick began to repeat, doubtfully.
“Bill--billet-doux; billet-doux--bill.”
“What are you doing now?” said Tootles, perceiving Flick resorting
to his note-book.
“I might work up that elevator story,” said Wilder, who had
abandoned the pun. “There’s a meal in that.”
“Yes; but that’s to-morrow,” said Tootles.
“Kick me,” said O’Leary, all at once, staring at the open letter.
“Perfectly willing to, but why?” said Tootles, approaching.
“Kick me--bite me--stick a pin in me,” said O’Leary wildly.
“Wish it was that fellow Drinkwater,” said Tootles, who availed
himself, however, of the first alternative.
“Then I am awake,” said O’Leary solemnly. “Listen.”
Perceiving that something startling had happened, they gathered
around while O’Leary read:
South Washington, Oklahoma.