THE NEW MEMBER
When Ewing, a few days later, moved into the vacant studio on the top
floor of the Rookery, the men there made an affair of it, flocking from
their studios to receive him. They showed him the view from his windows,
a far stretch of dull-red roofs, with murky water butts stuck aloft like
giant cockades against the gray sky. They showed him where he would
sleep, in a little closet-like alcove screened from the big room by a
gay curtain. They exhibited the alcohol lamp left by Glynn, over which
water would be boiled for the morning coffee. And they superintended,
from their wider experience, the arrangement of his belongings.
He felt aloof from the friendly turmoil, unable to believe that the
place would be his own. The thing was too vast for his experience. It
would surely be for another that Baldwin spread the Navajo blankets on
the floor and couch; for some one else that Chalmers, of the beard--him
they called the Brushwood Boy or eke "the human ambush"--removed piles
of old magazines from the cot in the alcove; for some one else that
Dallas tucked brushes into a ginger jar; and for some one else that
Griggs tested water taps and the radiator.
When they had cheerfully discovered that no one could think of anything
further to do they trooped down Broadway to celebrate Ewing's advent in
a dinner at the Monastery. When this was over and the crowd had thinned
to a few late sitters they had him do a picture. The others watched him
as he worked, standing on a bare table drawn to the wall. Brother
Hilarius grew before their eyes, insecurely astride a bucking broncho,
narrowly observed by two figures in the background--a dismayed brother
of his order in gown of frieze and hempen girdle, and Red Phinney,
contorting himself in ribald glee.
The watchers applauded as the picture grew. They had not supposed that
the quiet, almost timid, boy, who betrayed his unsophistication by
countless little mannerisms, could have attained the sureness of line
his strokes revealed.
The heated air of the room rushed up to make a torrid zone of the region
about the worker's head, and from time to time one of the watchers
handed him a mug of creaming ale with which he washed the dust of the
charcoal from his throat. He lost himself in the work at last. The
voices, laughter, songs, strains of the piano, came but faintly to him,
and were as the echoes of street life that sounded in his ears each
night before he slept. It was after one o'clock when he stepped down
from the table to survey the finished drawing.
He knew he had done well, but he was glad to be told so by others. It
was clearly their opinion that the club had in no way descended from its
high standards of mural decoration. Baldwin brought a bottle of fixative
and sprayed the drawing through a blowpipe. Then they drained a final
bumper to the artist and the work and went out into the mild September
night, making the empty street, sleeping in shadow, resound to their
noisy talk.
The light of a car crept ghostlike toward them and they stood to board
it. As it moved on through Broadway Ewing thought of an empty creek bed
at the bottom of some ravine at home. This was the dry time, but with
earliest dawn would come the freshet, flooding the canyon, surging over
its rocky bed to some outlet as mysterious as its source. The image
brought him a sudden pang of homesickness. Despite the jovial
friendliness of the crowd he was still a detached spectator. There was
no intimacy for him, no real contact. He was glad to remember the bed
that awaited him and confessed this to Chalmers.
"Bed!" echoed Chalmers in righteous amazement. "What's the use of going
to bed? You only fall asleep!"
"He's right, old man," put in Baldwin warningly. "I've tried it."
Dallas turned a reproachful gaze on Ewing. "God has given you a
beautiful life and you sleep it away! Come, come, man!"
"We'll have a bite to eat, anyway," broke in Griggs. "Come on, here's
Clayton's."
They were presently about a table far back in a restaurant where
lingered many sitters-up of nights. They ordered Welsh rabbits and ale.
Ewing refused the ale and drank water.
Dallas put on an air of wishing to defend this choice of beverage. "Of
course, it's the stuff that made Noah famous," he submitted.
"Yes--and it made all that trouble at Johnstown, too," broke in Chalmers
with deep hostility in his look at Ewing's glass. "I can't forget that.
Water has never been the same to me since."
They fell to the food when it came. They smoked, they drank more ale,
they sang in tones enough subdued to avert public disfavor, and they
flung jests about to spice the endless gossip of their craft.
Ewing listened, yet with eager eyes for the people at other tables
about them. These men and women captivated him by their suggestions
of mystery--characters in the play he was forever beholding--
curious-looking men whose faces suggested lives of dramatic tension;
beautiful women, splendidly arrayed, with much of mystery and something
of daring in their animation. He scanned them all furtively as the talk
at his own table flowed on.
It was chiefly of their work that they talked. Chalmers related matters
exposing the inefficiency of an art editor to whose mercies fate now and
then betrayed him. Chalmers bitterly thought that this person should be
driving an ice wagon or helping about in a shipyard, or something of the
sort--not telling artists how to draw their pictures.
Baldwin sympathized. He had his own art editor. It came out that no man
present had ever even heard of a competent art editor. It stood to
reason that there could be none. A man of capacity to be an art editor
would have too much self-respect. He would starve in the gutter first.
But it took time and talk and replenished mugs to reduce this truth to
its beautiful, naked simplicity, and Ewing at last saw that day had
come. The lights inside were paling to an unwholesome yellow. He
mentioned the circumstance insinuatingly, for he was tired.
Baldwin scowled at his watch, then dropped it into his fresh mug of ale,
and glanced triumphantly about the table.
"A degenerate race," muttered Chalmers. "At the first sign of daylight
we scamper off to bed like scared rabbits. For me--thank God--there's
nothing like the glorious sunrise, the crisp air, the healthy glow.
There's magic in it--Nature's choicest gift. Yes, sir, the splendors of
dawn for me! D'you s'pose I'd miss _this_?" He glared about the room and
ecstatically sniffed the thick, smoky air. "What does that clod know of
beauty?" He indicated a waiter, dozing against the wall with practiced
equilibrium.
"Well, well," exclaimed Baldwin, "if I haven't gone and forgotten to eat
breakfast! How shiftless!" He aroused the waiter with snapping fingers.
"I hope we're not keeping you up, Claude, but bacon and eggs, please,
and coffee."
An hour later they went out to find the street already alive with early
workers. Baldwin appeared to consider that these, also, were night-long
revelers.
"'Stonishing how they can keep it up, night after night," he remarked,
frowning in wonder at the early procession. "You'd think they'd _have_
to sleep some time."
"It'll tell on their nerves sooner or later, you mark my words," said
Griggs sententiously.
Chalmers stared intently into the window of a florist adjoining the
restaurant. He turned to them with purpose in his fair face and spoke
again of his art editor.
"Only trouble with him--he's passed away, poor fellow, and doesn't know
it. He ought to be told--but not brutally. I see something here for
him."
He came out of the florist's presently with a sizable emblem of
mortality--a floral pillow with "Rest" worked on it in immortelles.
"Come on!"
At the corner they crowded into hansoms. It was a long ride, and Ewing
was asleep when they reached Park Row, but they aroused him to help
escort Chalmers and his offering to the elevator of a mighty building.
While they awaited his return Baldwin bethought him of his own art
editor. He seemed to believe that something fitting might be done. After
deep reflection he crossed the narrow street to a district messenger
office, to emerge a moment later followed by eight grinning messenger
boys. These he led to the elevator of another building near by.
Chalmers returned from his own mission, wiping his eyes.
"Poor fellow, he knows he's dead now. But I broke down and sobbed like a
child when I gave it to him--I'm all heart. It's over now, all but the
life insurance. And yet he didn't thank me. On the contrary he spoke
language I should blush to repeat."
The others put on looks of chastened gloom and were speaking in hushed
tones of the sad event when Baldwin returned. He dismissed his uniformed
attendants with largesse.
"Thing that needed to be done for his own good," he explained. "Max
believes he's an art editor, but nobody else does--nobody else ever
believed it in this whole wide, beautiful world. So I lined those
trusting little boys up in front of his door and said, 'Boys, look in
there and you will see a real art editor.' They looked in at old Max and
then at me. 'You believe it, don't you, boys?' I asked them, and they
all said, 'Yes, sir!' So I made them bow to him and say in concert, 'We
_do_ believe you are an art editor, no matter what other people say,'
and then we left. We had to. I'm ashamed to tell you--but old Max seemed
to forget that he was a gentleman. He'll thank me when he comes to his
senses, all the same. He can lay his head on his pillow to-night knowing
that there are others in the world besides himself who believe he's an
art editor. Oh, I love to do good!" he concluded with a benevolent
smirk.
Once more they were in the hansoms and Ewing slept again, to the strains
of "I have other mothers now," sung by Baldwin, who sat in his lap.
As they climbed the stairs of the Rookery Baldwin found the moment
suited for sage counsel to Chalmers.
"'T won't do, my boy--'t won't do! Can't burn candles both ends. Your
face this minute looks like one of those cheap apple pies in a
restaurant window."
Ewing mounted to his own floor and found himself in the curious
stillness of the big room. It had seemed to wait there for him, mutely,
but with desire. He stood a moment in the silence, his ears ringing with
after sounds of the night. He fell on the couch, too tired to go
formally to bed, and felt himself falling into sleep as into a
beneficent and welcoming abyss.