THE WAY OF THE LITTLE MAN
They walked briskly to the Stuyvesant in silence, for Ewing could think
of nothing to say, and his companion seemed preoccupied. He showed,
indeed, the stress of some excitement, for Ewing once heard him mutter
heatedly. Suspecting this to be meant for himself, he evoked by inquiry
only an impatient "Not here--not here!" He believed that his
distinguished companion must be engrossed for the moment with something
profounder than the drawings of a novice.
At the hotel they ascended to Ewing's room. Indicating a chair to Teevan
he went to the mantel for matches. When he had set the room to sudden
light he stepped quickly back, for the little man, standing there,
glared at him in a panic of fear and disgust.
In the shock of his embarrassment Ewing fumbled at his overcoat and
slowly drew it off. Teevan's eyes now blazed rage upon him. His small,
withered, blue-veined hands were tightly clenched at his sides. His
attitude was almost a crouch. Ewing felt a furtive amusement above his
dismay, at sight of the dapper little figure in this incongruous battle
pose.
A moment they stood so, then the upper lip of Teevan lifted slowly to a
snarl. Seeing that he was about to speak, there ran with Ewing's
amazement an absurd apprehension of that break in the voice.
"What do you mean by it?" The swiftness, the intensity of the utterance
held the voice level thus far, but the break came with the next words,
and the speech ended in a wail.
"What do you think to gain by coming here--by hounding me--by hounding
_me_?"
Ewing constrained himself to quiet, with an impulse to soothe this
inexplicable fury.
"Please sit down, won't you? You were going to criticise my drawings,
you know. You suggested it a moment ago, and I thought--" He took up a
portfolio of sketches from one of the open trunks.
"Your trash! What's that to me? Do you think to pass this off? You've
learned effrontery in a fine school. Come to the point. What can you
make by this indecency--this----"
Ewing's look checked him--something genuine in his bewilderment.
"Come," began Teevan again, "is it possible you're no one, after all,
instead of being less than no one? You know me, don't you?"
"Of course I know you; Mrs. Laithe introduced us."
"Oh, don't juggle. You can't swagger it off with me. You shall not hound
me or mine."
"Hound?" Ewing sought for light, still trying to subdue this absurd
assailant.
"Hound, I said, you smug brat! You know me--you've not forgotten my name
so soon."
"Teevan, I believe. Really, Mr. Teevan--I----"
"Randall Gordon Teevan! The name meant something to you, didn't it?"
"No; it didn't mean anything to me."
"Ah! say that again!" He came toward the younger man to peer up into
his face with a grinning, incredulous scowl. "Say it again!"
Ewing drew back from his scrutiny with a slight impatience.
"Why say it again? Isn't once enough? You hear well, don't you? What
should your name mean to me?"
"You still try to carry _that_ off? Your game isn't ready to play?"
Ewing resumed his patient search.
"See here, Mr. Teevan, let's be very quiet and get at this. I never
heard your name until an hour ago. Perhaps it ought to mean something to
me, but it doesn't. I'm not well acquainted in New York; I only came
here to-day. Now"--his voice became cajoling--"suppose you sit down
there quietly and tell me all about yourself."
"Your name is Ewing, isn't it?"
"Of course!"
"What's your full name?"
"Gilbert Denham Ewing."
"Damn him!"
"Damn him? You are speaking of me?"
"Not you--you cub!"
"Another Ewing?"
"Another Gilbert Denham Ewing!"
"I never knew any other but my father. And you wouldn't be damning him."
He said this with a confident smile, and the peering little man at last
read him accurately. An impalpable veil seemed to screen his scowling
face. Erect from his peering stoop he passed a small hand dazedly across
his brow, and his face had become pleasantly ingenuous, alive with a
half-comprehending regret. With a rueful laugh he put out a hand to
Ewing, who took it, to say the least, doubtfully.
"A thousand pardons, my boy! I fear I've suffered an attack of nervous
aberration to which I am unhappily subject. It's most distressing. I'm
chagrined beyond measure by the annoyance I must have caused you, I give
no end of worry to my specialist by these seizures. My speech wandered
provokingly, I dare say. It always does. You'd not credit some of the
things I've said to my dearest friends at such times. But you can fancy
the mortification it is to me. You'll pardon me, I trust--youth's
charity for the failings of age. The horrid truth is that I'm a bit
oldish--not aged, not outworn, mind you--my years have come and gone
lightly--but at times like these I'm obliged to admit the count. Come,
you'll forget?"
Ewing delightedly pressed his hand. He could believe the little man's
tale of his years. The hair that he had remarked for its young look had
been uncannily twisted on the head of its wearer during the flurry of
his transport. An area of luminous scalp now showed above one ear.
He stammered awkward but heartfelt words of assurance.
"Doubtless it quite bowled you over," Teevan pursued--"though I never
can recall what I've said; but let us forget, and, if you'd not mind,
let us say nothing of it to anyone--to Mrs. Laithe, for example. If it
came to the ears of my son--he's over-anxious about me already."
"Certainly, I'll not speak of it, and I'm sorry, very sorry. Lay your
gloves on the mantel there and find a seat." He turned to his trunk,
hoping the little man would sight his head in the mirror. When he again
looked up the hair was in perfect adjustment, and Teevan beamed on him
from an armchair.
"Your father," he began, "I seem to recall your saying it--was a
painter. Doubtless he taught you much."
"I studied with him there in the mountains till he died. I've nothing
left of his but this portrait of my mother."
He took the unframed canvas from the tray of the trunk and held it
before his guest.
"Do you get the right light there?"
It had been a bad quarter of an hour for Ewing, and, as he adjusted the
picture, he felt a moment's satisfaction in having weathered it so
plausibly. And now that the curious little gentleman seemed restored, it
was pleasant to anticipate his cultured appreciation of that work of art
which was the boy's chief treasure.
"There isn't any shine across it now, is there?" he asked, and looked up
with a shy, proud, waiting smile.
But the agitations that had gone before were as nothing to what now
passed in front of his dismayed eyes. One moment his guest hung staring
at the canvas with a goblin horror; then, uttering a kind of sob, he
shot incontinently out of the door.
The harried Ewing dropped the picture and rushed in pursuit. He came up
with the little man at the head of the stairs. He was trembling, and his
face was ashen gray; but after a few deep breaths he smiled and waved a
hand jauntily to indicate humorous despair. It seemed to say, "I am
frequently like this--it's annoying past words." He spoke of needing a
restorative and suggested an advisable haste in the direction of the
cafe.
"They've some choice old cognac downstairs. Suppose we chat over a bit
of it. I'm rather done up. These absurd attacks of mine react on the
heart. A noggin of brandy will fetch me about. You'll come?"
They were presently at a table in the hotel cafe.
"We've the room to ourselves," said Teevan genially. "Delightful old
place, this; restful, reminiscent, mellow--and generally empty. I detest
the cheap glitter of those uptown places with their rowdy throngs. They
make me feel like a fish in a fiddle box, as our French cousins say.
You'll have soda with yours?"
Teevan drank his own brandy neat, and at once refilled his glass.
"Now for a chat about yourself, my young friend--for surely only a
friend could have borne with me as tenderly as you have this evening.
You're a fellow of promise--the future clamors for you--your drawings
enchant me."
Ewing reflected that his drawings had not been exposed, but the
intention was kind, and he was grateful for that. Teevan drank more
brandy with a dainty relish, and begged to hear of his young friend's
adventures in the far hills.
Ewing expanded in the warmth of this kindly concern. He told, little by
little, under adroit prompting, what he had to tell. Teevan displayed a
gratifying interest, especially in what he recounted of his mother's
death. But at intervals during this recital the young man became
conscious, with astonishment, that there was an inexplicable look on the
other's face, a look which he suddenly discovered to be an unbelievable
veiled pleasure.
He fell back with a quick, blind repulsion, and the two stared at each
other, the elder man dissolving with difficulty a monstrous smile. He
appeared to recover himself with an effort, finding the lines about his
mouth refractory, but his embarrassment was so poignant that Ewing felt
sorry for him.
"You _must_ forgive me, old fellow! These damned treacherous nerves of
mine! I shall see that specialist chap of mine directly in the morning.
I'm so weak that the sadness of that poor lady's death set me off into
something like hysteria."
It was one o'clock when they parted, and then only at a hint that the
place would close its old-fashioned doors for the night. Ewing rejoiced
to feel that he had made a desirable friend. He liked the little man
well. Teevan had said at the last. "You should move on to Paris, my boy.
You'll need the touch they give only in that blessed rendezvous of the
masters." Ewing went to his room realizing that the world of his dreams
did actually abound in adventure. His first day had been memorable.
Teevan walked through Ninth Street to his own home, a few doors beyond
the Bartell house. It was a place of much the same old-fashioned lines,
that had withstood the north-setting current.
He let himself in and went to the dining room at the rear. Here he
lighted a gas jet, took a decanter from the sideboard, and brought a
glass and a bottle of soda from the butler's pantry. He sipped the drink
and lighted a cigarette. His musings, as first reflected in his face,
were agreeable. His mouth twitched pleasantly, his eyes glistened. At
intervals he chuckled and muttered. With an increase of brandy in the
glass he became more serious.
When Alden Teevan entered an hour later he found his father in a mood
astonishingly savage. At sight of his son the little man became vocal
with meaningless abuse. It was as if the presence of a listener incited
him to continue aloud some tirade that he had pursued in silence. But
the younger Teevan, lounging in the doorway, only stared with polite
concern as he was greeted with these emotional phrases:
"--a damned milk-and-water Narcissus--a pretentious cub with the airs of
a cheap manikin of the world--a squeaking parasite--a toadlike, damned
obscenity----"
An easy smile came to the son's face as he noted the fallen tide in the
decanter.
"Night-night, my quaint, amiable father--and cheery dreams!"
They studied each other a moment. The elder man seemed to meditate some
disclosure, but stopped on the verge of it.
"That's all, my boy!"
The young man laughed again.
"It's enough, I fancy--but don't overdo it, Randy. You know one mustn't
at your age."
"I'm taking care, taking care of everything, my boy--never you fear----"
The other passed on, but stopped at the stairway and called back:
"I say, Randy!"
"Yes--yes----"
"Get to bed, you absurd little rat, you!"