It was the crush hour at Sherry's. A steady stream of men and women in
smart toilettes--the smartest the town afforded--had flowed in under the
street awning, through the doorway guarded by flunkeys, past the
dressing-rooms and coat-racks, and were now banked up in the spacious
hall waiting for tables, the men standing about, the women resting on
the chairs and divans listening to the music of the Hungarian band or
chatting with one another. The two cafés were full--had been since seven
o'clock, every table being occupied except two. One of these had been
reserved that morning by my dear friend Marny, the distinguished painter
of portraits--I being his guest--and the other, so the head-waiter told
us, awaited the arrival of Mr. John Stirling, who would entertain a
party of six.
When Marny was a poor devil of an illustrator, and worked for the funny
column of the weekly papers--we had studios in the same building--we
used to dine at Porcelli's, the price of the two meals equalling the
value of one American trade dollar, and including one bottle of vin
ordinaire. Now that Marny wears a ribbon in his button-hole, has a suite
of rooms that look like a museum, man-servants and maid-servants,
including an English butler whose principal business is to see that
Marny is not disturbed, a line of carriages before his door on his
reception days, and refuses two portraits a week at his own prices--we
sometimes dine at Sherry's.
As I am still a staid old landscape painter living up three flights of
stairs with no one to wait on me but myself and the ten-year-old
daughter of the janitor, I must admit that these occasional forays into
the whirl of fashionable life afford me not only infinite enjoyment, but
add greatly to my knowledge of human nature.
As we followed the waiter into the café, a group of half a dozen men,
all in full dress, emerged from a side room and preceded us into the
restaurant, led by a handsome young fellow of thirty. The next moment
they grouped themselves about the other reserved table, the young fellow
seating his guests himself, drawing out each chair with some remark that
kept the whole party laughing.
When we had settled into our own chairs, and my host had spread his
napkin and looked about him, the young fellow nodded his head at Marny,
clasped his two hands together, shook them together heartily, and
followed this substitute for a closer welcome by kissing his hand at
him.
Marny returned the courtesy by a similar handshake, and bending his head
said in a low voice, "The Rajah must be in luck to-night."
"Who?" I asked. My acquaintance with foreign potentates is necessarily
limited.
"The Rajah--Jack Stirling. Take a look at him. You'll never see his
match; nobody has yet."
I shifted my chair a little, turned my head in the opposite direction,
and then slowly covering Stirling with my gaze--the polite way of
staring at a stranger--got a full view of the man's face and figure;
rather a difficult thing on a crowded night at Sherry's, unless the
tables are close together. What I saw was a well-built, athletic-looking
young man with a smooth-shaven face, laughing eyes, a Cupid mouth, curly
brown hair, and a fresh ruddy complexion; a Lord Byron sort of a young
fellow with a modern up-to-date training. He was evidently charming his
guests, for every man's head was bent forward seemingly hanging on each
word that fell from his lips.
"A rajah, is he? He don't look like an Oriental."
"He isn't. He was born in New Jersey."
"Is he an artist?"
"Yes, five or six different kinds; he draws better than I do; plays on
three instruments, and speaks five languages."
"Rich?"
"No--dead broke half the time."
I glanced at the young fellow's faultless appearance and the group of
men he was entertaining. My eye took in the array of bottles, the number
of wineglasses of various sizes, and the mass of roses that decorated
the centre of the table. Such appointments and accompaniments are not
generally the property of the poor. Then, again, I remembered we were
at Sherry's.
"What does he do for a living, then?" I asked.
"Do for a living? He doesn't do anything for a living. He's a purveyor
of cheerfulness. He wakes up every morning with a fresh stock of
happiness, more than he can use himself, and he trades it off during the
day for anything he can get."
"What kind of things?" I was a little hazy over Marny's meaning.
"Oh, dinners--social, of course--board bills, tailor's bills,
invitations to country houses, voyages on yachts--anything that comes
along and of which he may be in need at the time. Most interesting man
in town. Everybody loves him. Known all over the world. If a fellow gets
sick, Stirling waltzes in, fires out the nurse, puts on a linen duster,
starts an alcohol lamp for gruel, and never leaves till you are out
again. All the time he is pumping laughs into you and bracing you up so
that you get well twice as quick. Did it for me once for five weeks on a
stretch, when I was laid up in my studio with inflammatory rheumatism,
with my grub bills hung up in the restaurant downstairs, and my rent
three months overdue. Fed me on the fat of the land, too. Soup from
Delmonico's, birds from some swell house up the Avenue, where he had
been dining--sent that same night with the compliments of his hostess
with a 'Please forgive me, but dear Mr. Stirling tells me how ill you
have been, and at his suggestion, and with every sympathy for your
sufferings--please accept.' Oh, I tell you he's a daisy!"
Here a laugh sounded from Stirling's table.
"Who's he got in tow now?" I asked, as my eyes roamed over the merry
party.
"That fat fellow in eyeglasses is Crofield the banker, and the
hatchet-faced man with white whiskers is John Riggs from Denver,
President of the C. A.--worth ten millions. I don't know the
others--some bored-to-death fellows, perhaps, starving for a laugh. Jack
ought to go slow, for he's dead broke--told me so yesterday."
"Perhaps Riggs is paying for the dinner." This was an impertinent
suggestion, I know; but then sometimes I can be impertinent--especially
when some of my pet theories have to be defended.
"Not if Jack invited him. He's the last man in the world to sponge on
anybody. Inviting a man to dinner and leaving his pocketbook in his
other coat is not Jack's way. If he hasn't got the money in his own
clothes, he'll find it somehow, but not in _their_ clothes."
"Well, but at times he _must_ have ready money," I insisted. "He can't
be living on credit all the time." I have had to work for all my
pennies, am of a practical turn of mind, and often live in constant
dread of the first of every month--that fatal pay-day from which there
is no escape. The success, therefore, of another fellow along different
and more luxurious lines naturally irritates me.
"Yes, now and then he does need money. But that never bothers Jack. When
his tailor, or his shoemaker, or his landlord gets him into a corner, he
sends the bill to some of his friends to pay for him. They never come
back--anybody would do Stirling a favor, and they know that he never
calls on them unless he is up against it solid."
I instinctively ran over in my mind which of my own friends I would
approach, in a similar emergency, and the notes I would receive in
reply. Stirling must know rather a stupid lot of men or they couldn't be
buncoed so easily, I thought.
Soup was now being served, and Marny and the waiter were discussing the
merits of certain vintages, my host insisting on a bottle of '84 in
place of the '82, then in the waiter's hand.
During the episode I had the opportunity to study Stirling's table. I
noticed that hardly a man entered the room who did not stop and lay his
hand affectionately on Stirling's shoulder, bending over and joining in
the laugh. His guests, too--those about his table--seemed equally loyal
and happy. Riggs's hard business face--evidently a man of serious
life--was beaming with merriment and twice as wide, under Jack's
leadership, and Crofield and the others were leaning forward, their eyes
fixed on their host, waiting for the point of his story, then breaking
out together in a simultaneous laugh that could be heard all over our
part of the room.
When Marny had received the wine he wanted--it's extraordinary how
critical a man's palate becomes when his income is thousands a year
instead of dollars--I opened up again with my battery of questions. His
friend had upset all my formulas and made a laughing-stock of my most
precious traditions. "Pay as you go and keep out of debt" seemed to
belong to a past age.
"Speaking of your friend, the Rajah, as you call him," I asked, "and his
making his friends pay his bills--does he ever pay back?"
"Always, when he gets it."
"Well, where _does_ he get it--cards?" It seemed to me now that I saw
some comforting light ahead, dense as I am at times.
"Cards! Not much--never played a game in his life. Not that kind of a
man."
"How, then?" I wanted the facts. There must be some way in which a man
like Stirling could live, keep out of jail, and keep his
friends--friends like Marny.
"Same way. Just chucks around cheerfulness to everybody who wants it,
and 'most everybody does. As to ready money, there's hardly one of his
rich friends in the Street who hasn't a Jack Stirling account on his
books. And they are always lucky, for what they buy for Jack Stirling
is sure to go up. Got to be a superstition, really. I know one broker
who sent him over three thousand dollars last fall--made it for him out
of a rise in some coal stock. Wrote him a note and told him he still had
two thousand dollars to his credit on his books, which he would hold as
a stake to make another turn on next time he saw a sure thing in sight.
I was with Jack when he opened the letter. What do you think he did? He
pulled out his bureau drawer, found a slip of paper containing a list of
his debts, sat down and wrote out a check for each one of his creditors
and enclosed them in the most charming little notes with marginal
sketches--some in water-color--which every man of them preserves now as
souvenirs. I've got one framed in my studio--regular little Fortuny--and
the check is framed in with it. Never cashed it and never will. The
Rajah, I tell you, old man, is very punctilious about his debts, no
matter how small they are. Gave me fifteen shillings last time I went to
Cairo to pay some duffer that lived up a street back of Shepheard's, a
red-faced Englishman who had helped Jack out of a hole the year before,
and who would have pensioned the Rajah for life if he could have induced
him to pass the rest of his years with him. And he only saw him for two
days! That's the funny thing about Jack. He never forgets his creditors,
and his creditors never forget him. I'll tell you about this old Cairo
lobster--that's what he looked like--red and claw-y.
"When I found him he was stretched in a chair trying to cool off; he
didn't even have the decency to get on his feet.
"'Who?' he snapped out. Just as if I had been a book agent.
"'Mr. John Stirling of New York.'
"'Owes _me_ fifteen shillings?'
"'That's what he said, and here it is,' and I handed him the silver.
"'Young man,' he says, glowering at me, 'I don't know what your game is,
but I'll tell you right here you can't play it on me. Never heard of
_Mister_-John-Stirling-of-New-York in my life. So you can put your money
back.' I wasn't going to be whipped by the old shell-fish, and then I
didn't like the way he spoke of Jack. I knew he was the right man, for
Jack doesn't make mistakes--not about things like that. So I went at him
on another tack.
"'Weren't you up at Philæ two years ago in a dahabieh?'
"'Yes.'
"'And didn't you meet four or five young Americans who came up on the
steamer, and who got into a scrape over their fare?'
"'I might--I can't recollect everybody I meet--don't want to--half of
'em--' All this time I was standing, remember.
"'And didn't you--' I was going on to say, but he jumped from his chair
and was fumbling about a bookcase.
"'Ah, here it is!' he cried out. 'Here's a book of photographs of a
whole raft of young fellows I met up the Nile on that trip. Most of 'em
owed me something and still do. Pick out the man now you say owes me
fifteen shillings and wants to pay it.'
"'There he is--one of those three.'
"The old fellow adjusted his glasses.
"'The Rajah! That man! Know him? Best lad I ever met in my life. I'm
damned if I take his money, and you can go home and tell him so.' He
did, though, and I sat with him until three o'clock in the morning
talking about Jack, and I had all I could do getting away from him then.
Wanted me to move in next day bag and baggage, and stay a month with
him. He wasn't so bad when I came to know him, if he was red and
claw-y."
I again devoted my thoughts to the dinner--what I could spare from the
remarkable personage Marny had been discussing, and who still sat within
a few tables of us. My friend's story had opened up a new view of life,
one that I had never expected to see personified in any one man. The
old-fashioned rules by which I had been brought up--the rules of "An eye
for an eye," and "Earn thy bread by the sweat of thy brow," etc.--seemed
to have lost their meaning. The Rajah's method, it seemed to me, if
persisted in, might help solve the new problem of the day--"the joy of
living"--always a colossal joke with me. I determined to know something
more of this lazy apostle in a dress suit who dispensed sweetness and
light at some other fellow's expense.
"Why do you call him 'The Rajah,' Marny?" I asked.
"Oh, he got that in India. A lot of people like that old lobster in
Cairo don't know him by any other name."
"What did he do in India?"
"Nothing in particular--just kept on being himself--just as he does
everywhere."
"Tell me about it."
"Well, I got it from Ashburton, a member of the Alpine Club in London.
But everybody knows the story--wonder you haven't heard it. You ought to
come out of your hole, old man, and see what's going on in the world.
You live up in that den of yours, and the procession goes by and you
don't even hear the band. You ought to know Jack--he'd do you a lot of
good," and Marny looked at me curiously--as a physician would, who, when
he prescribes for you, tells you only one-half of your ailment.
I did not interrupt my friend--I wasn't getting thousands for a child's
head, and twice that price for the mother in green silk and diamonds.
And I couldn't afford to hang out my window and watch any kind of
procession, figurative or otherwise. Nor could I afford to exchange
dinners with John Stirling.
"Do you want me to tell you about that time the Rajah had in India?
Well, move your glass this way," and my host picked up the '84.
"Ashburton," continued Marny, and he filled my glass to the brim, "is
one of those globe-trotters who does mountain-tops for exercise. He
knows the Andes as well as he does the glaciers in Switzerland; has been
up the Matterhorn and Mont Blanc, and every other snow-capped peak
within reach, and so he thought he'd try the Himalayas. You know how
these Englishmen are--the rich ones. At twenty-five a good many of them
have exhausted life. Some shoot tigers, some fit out caravans and cross
deserts, some get lost in African jungles, and some come here and go out
West for big game; anything that will keep them from being bored to
death before they are thirty-five years of age. Ashburton was that kind.
"He had only been home ten days--he had spent two years in Yucatan
looking up Toltec ruins--when this Himalaya trip got into his head.
Question was, whom could he get to go with him, for these fellows hate
to be alone. Some of the men he wanted hadn't returned from their own
wild-goose chases; others couldn't get away--one was running for
Parliament, I think--and so Ashburton, cursing his luck, had about made
up his mind to try it alone, when he ran across Jack one day in the
club.
"'Hello, Stirling! Thought you'd sailed for America.'
"'No,' said Jack, 'I go next week. What are you doing here? Thought you
had gone to India.'
"'Can't get anybody to go with me,' answered Ashburton.
"'Where do you go first?'
"'To Calcutta by steamer, and then strike in and up to the foot-hills.'
"'For how long?'
"'About a year. Come with me like a decent man.'
"'Can't. Only got money enough to get home, and I don't like climbing.'
"'Money hasn't got anything to do with it--you go as my guest. As to
climbing, you won't have to climb an inch. I'll leave you at the
foot-hills in a bungalow, with somebody to take care of you, and you can
stay there until I come back.'
"'How long will you be climbing?'
"'About two months.'
"'When do you start?'
"'To-morrow, at daylight.'
"'All right, I'll be on board.'
"Going out, Jack got up charades and all sorts of performances; rescued
a man overboard, striking the water about as soon as the man did, and
holding on to him until the lifeboat reached them; studied navigation
and took observations every day until he learned how; started a school
for the children--there were a dozen on board--and told them fairy tales
by the hour; and by the time the steamer reached Calcutta every man,
woman, and child had fallen in love with him. One old Maharajah, who was
on board, took such a fancy to him that he insisted on Jack's spending
a year with him, and there came near being a precious row when he
refused, which of course he had to do, being Ashburton's guest.
"When the two got to where Jack was to camp out and wait for Ashburton's
return from his climb--it was a little spot called Bungpore--the
Englishman fitted up a place just as he said he would; left two men to
look after him--one to cook and the other to wait on him--fell on Jack's
neck, for he hated the worst kind to leave him, and disappeared into the
brush with his retainers--or whatever he did disappear into and with--I
never climbed the Himalayas, and so I'm a little hazy over these
details. And that's the last Ashburton saw of Jack until he returned two
months later."
Marny emptied his glass, flicked the ashes from his cigarette, beckoned
to the waiter, and gave him an order for a second bottle of '84. During
the break in the story I made another critical examination of the hero,
as he sat surrounded by his guests, his face beaming, the light falling
on his immaculate shirt-front. I noted the size of his arm and the depth
of his chest, and his lithe, muscular thighs. I noticed, too, how
quickly he gained his feet when welcoming a friend, who had just stopped
at his table. I understood now how the drowning sailor came to be saved.
The wine matter settled, Marny took some fresh cigarettes from his
silver case, passed one to me, and held a match to both in turn. Between
the puffs I again brought the talk back to the man who now interested me
intensely. I was afraid we would be interrupted and I have to wait
before finding out why his friend was called the "Rajah."
"I should think he would have gone with him instead of staying behind
and living off his bounty," I ventured.
"Yes--I know you would, old man, but Jack thought differently, not being
built along your lines. You've got to know him--I tell you, he'll do you
a lot of good. Stirling saw that, if he went, it would only double
Ashburton's expense account, and so he squatted down to wait with just
money enough to get along those two months, and not another cent. Told
Ashburton he wanted to learn Hindustanee, and he couldn't do it if he
was sliding down glaciers and getting his feet wet--it would keep him
from studying."
"And was Stirling waiting for him when Ashburton came back?"
"Waiting for him! Well, I guess! First thing Ashburton ran up against
was one of the blackamoors he had hired to take care of Jack. When he
had left the fellow he was clothed in a full suit of yellow dust with a
rag around his loins. Now he was gotten up in a red turban and pajamas
trimmed with gewgaws. The blackamoor prostrated himself and began
kotowing backward toward a marquee erected on a little knoll under some
trees and surrounded by elephants in gorgeous trappings. 'The Rajah of
Bungpore'--that was Jack--'had sent him,' he said, 'to conduct his Royal
Highness into the presence of his illustrious master!'
"When Ashburton reached the door of the marquee and peered in, he saw
Jack lying back on an Oriental couch at the other end smoking the pipe
of the country--whatever that was--and surrounded by a collection of
Hottentots of various sizes and colors, who fell on their foreheads
every time Jack crooked his finger. At his feet knelt two Hindoo
merchants displaying their wares--pearls, ivories, precious stones,
arms, porcelains--stuffs of a quality and price, Ashburton told me, that
took his breath away. Jack kept on--he made out he didn't see
Ashburton--his slaves bearing the purchases away and depositing them on
a low inlaid table--teakwood, I guess--in one corner of the marquee,
while a confidential Lord of the Treasury took the coin of the realm
from a bag or gourd--or whatever he did take it from--and paid the shot.
[Illustration: At his feet knelt two Hindu merchants displaying their
wares.]
"When the audience was over, Jack waved everybody outside with a
commanding gesture, and still lolling on his rugs--or maybe his tiger
skins--told his Grand Vizier to conduct the strange man to his august
presence. Then Jack rose from this throne, dismissed the Grand Vizier,
and fell into Ashburton's arms roaring with laughter."
"And Ashburton had to foot the bills, I suppose," I blurted out. It is
astonishing how suspicious and mean a man gets sometimes who mixes as
little as I do with what Marny calls "the swim."
"Ashburton foot the bills! Not much! Listen, you six by nine! Stirling
hadn't been alone more than a week when along comes the Maharajah he had
met on the steamer. He lived up in that part of the country, and one of
his private detectives had told him that somebody was camping out on his
lot. Down he came in a white heat, with a bag of bow-strings and a squad
of the 'Finest' in pink trousers and spears. I get these details all
wrong, old man--they might have been in frock-coats for all I know or
care--but what I'm after is the Oriental atmosphere--a sort of property
background with my principal figure high up on the canvas--and one
costume is as good as another.
"When the old Maharajah found out it was Jack instead of some squatter,
he fell all over himself with joy. Wanted to take him up to his marble
palace, open up everything, unlock a harem, trot out a half-dozen chorus
girls in bangles and mosquito-net bloomers, and do a lot of comfortable
things for him. But Jack said No. He was put here to stay, and here he
was going to stay if he had to call out every man in his army. The old
fellow saw the joke and said all right, here he _should_ stay; and
before night he had moved down a tent, and a bodyguard, and an elephant
or two for local color, so as to make it real Oriental for Jack, and the
next day he sent him down a bag of gold, and servants, and a cook. Every
pedler who appeared after that he passed along to Jack, and before
Ashburton turned up Stirling had a collection of curios worth a fortune.
One-half of them he gave to Ashburton and the other half be brought home
to his friends. That inlaid elephant's tusk hanging up in my studio is
one of them--you remember it."
As Marny finished, one of the waiters who had been serving Stirling and
his guests approached our table under the direction of the Rajah's
finger, and, bending over Marny, whispered something in his ear. He had
the cashier's slip in his hand and Stirling's visiting card.
Marny laid the bill beside his plate, glanced at the card with a laugh,
his face lighting up, and then passed it to me. It read as follows: "Not
a red and no credit. Sign it for Jack."
Marny raised his eyes, nodded his head at Stirling, kissed his
finger-tips at him, fished up his gold chain, slid out a pencil dangling
at its end, wrote his name across the slip, and said in a whisper to the
waiter: "Take this to the manager and have him charge it to my account."
When we had finished our dinner and were passing out abreast of
Stirling's table, the Rajah rose to his feet, his guests all standing
about him, their glasses in their hands--Riggs's whiskers stood
straight, he was so happy--and, waving his own glass toward my host,
said: "Gentlemen, I give you Marny, the Master, the Velasquez of modern
times!"
* * * * * * *
Some weeks later I called at Marny's studio. He was out. On the easel
stood a full-length portrait of Riggs, the millionaire, his thin,
hatchet-shaped face and white whiskers in high relief against a dark
background. Scattered about the room were smaller heads bearing a strong
resemblance to the great president. Jack had evidently corralled the
entire family--and all out of that dinner at Sherry's.
I shut the door of Marny's studio softly behind me, tiptoed downstairs,
dropped into a restaurant under the sidewalk, and dined alone.
Marny is right. The only way to hear the band is to keep up with the
procession.
My philosophy is a failure.