I
OUR Square lies broad and green and busy, in the forgotten depths of the
great city. By day it is bright with the laughter of children and shrill
with the bickering of neighbors. By night the voice of the spellbinder
is strident on its corners, but from the remoter benches float murmurs
where the young couples sit, and sighs where the old folk relax their
weariness. New York knows little of Our Square, submerged as we are in
a circle of slums. Yet for us, as for more Elysian fields, the crocus
springs in the happy grass, the flash and song of the birds stir our
trees, and Romance fans us with the wind of its imperishable wing.
The first robin was singing in our one lone lilac when the Bonnie Lassie
came out of the Somewhere Else into Our Square and possessed herself of
the ground floor of our smallest house, the nestly little dwelling with
the quaint old door and the broad, friendly vestibule, next but one to
the Greek church. Before she had been there a month she had established
eminent domain over all of us. Even MacLachan, the dour tailor on the
corner, used to burst into song when she passed. It was he who dubbed
her the Bonnie Lassie, and as it was the first decent word he'd spoken
of living being within the memory of Our Square, the name stuck. Apart
from that, it was eminently appropriate. She was a small girl who
might have been perhaps twenty-three or twenty-four if she hadn't (more
probably) been twenty, and looked a good deal like a thoughtful kitten
when she wasn't twinkling at or with somebody. When she twinkled--and
she did it with eyes, voice, heart, and soul all at once--the
cart-peddlers stopped business to look and listen. You can't go further
than that, not in Our Square at least.
How long Cyrus the Gaunt had been there before she discovered him is
a matter of conjecture. He slipped in from the Outer Darkness quite
unobtrusively and sat about looking thoughtful and lonely. He was
exaggeratedly long and loose and mussed-up and melancholy-looking, and
first attracted local attention on a bench which several other people
wanted more than he did. So he got up and gave it to them. Later, when
the huskiest of them met him and explained, by way of putting him in
his proper place, what would have happened to him if he hadn't been so
obliging, Cyrus absent-mindedly said, “Oh, yes,” threw the belligerent
one into our fountain, held him under water quite as long as was safe,
dragged him out, hauled him over to Schwartz's, and bought him a drink.
Thereafter Cyrus was still considered an outlander, but nobody actively
objected to his sitting around Our Square, looking as melancholy and
queer as he chose. Nobody, that is, until the Bonnie Lassie took him in
hand.
Nothing could have been more correct than their first meeting,
sanctioned as it was by the majesty of the law. Terry the Cop, who
presides over the destinies of Our Square, led the Bonnie Lassie to
Cyrus's bench and said; “Miss, this is the young feller you asked me
about. Make you two acquainted.”
Thereupon the young man got up and said, “How-d'ye-do?” wonderingly, and
the young woman nodded and said, “How-d'ye-do?” non-committally, and the
young policeman strolled away, serene in the consciousness of a social
duty well performed.
The Bonnie Lassie regarded her new acquaintance with soft, studious
eyes. There was something discomfortingly dehumanizing in that intent
appraisal. He wriggled.
“Yes, I think you'll do,” she ruminated slowly.
“Thanks,” murmured Cyrus, wondering for what.
“Suppose we sit down and talk it over,” said she.
Studying her unobtrusively from his characteristically drooping
position, Cyrus wondered what this half-fairy, half-flower, with the
decisive manner of a mistress of destiny, was doing in so grubby an
environment.
On her part, she reflected that she had seldom encountered so homely a
face, and speculated as to whether that was its sole claim to interest.
Then he lifted his head; his eyes met hers, and she modified her
estimate, substituting for “homely,” first “queer,” then “quaint,” and
finally “unusual.” Also there was something impersonally but hauntingly
reminiscent about him; something baffling and disconcerting, too. The
face wasn't _right_.
“Do you mind answering some questions?” she asked.
“Depends,” he replied guardedly. “Well, I'll try. Do you live here?”
“Just around the corner.”
“What do you do?”
“Nothing much.”
“How long have you been doing it?”
“Too long.”
“Why don't you stop?”
For the second time Cyrus the Gaunt lifted his long, thin face and
looked her in the eye. “Beautiful Incognita,” he drawled with mild
impertinence, “did you _write_ the Shorter Catechism or are you merely
plagiarizing?”
“Oh!” she said. Surprise and the slightest touch of dismay were in the
monosyllable. “I'm afraid I've made a mistake. I thought--the policeman
said you were a down-and-outer.”
“I'm the First Honorary Vice-President of the Life Branch of the
Organization.”
He slumped back into his former attitude. Again she studied him. “No, I
don't understand,” she said slowly.
But the dehumanizing tone had gone from the soft voice. Cyrus began to
rescue his personality from her impersonal ignoring of it. He also felt
suddenly a livelier interest in life. Then, unexpectedly, she turned his
flank.
“You lurk and stare at my house in the dark,” she accused.
“Which house?” he asked, startled.
“You know quite well. You shouldn't stare at strange houses. It
embarrasses them.”
“Is that the miniature mansion with the little bronzes of dancing
street-children in the windows?”
She nodded.
“Why shouldn't I stare? There's a secret in that house!”
“A secret? What secret?”
“The secret of happiness. Those dancing kiddies have got it. I want it.
I want to know what makes'em so happy.”
“I do,” said the girl promptly.
“Yes. I shouldn't be surprised,” he assented, lifting his head to
contemplate her with his direct and grave regard. “Do you live there
with them?”
“They're mine. I model them. I'm a sculptor.”
“Good Lord! You! But you're a very good one, aren't you?--if you did
those.”
“I've been a very bad one. Now I'm trying to be a very good one.”
A gleam of comprehension lit his eye. “Oh, then it's as a subject that
you thought I'd do. You wanted to sculp me.”
“Yes, I do. For my collection. You see, I've adopted this Square.”
“And now you're sculping it. I see.” He raised himself to peer across at
the windows where the blithe figures danced, tiny mænads of the gutter,
Bacchæ of the asphalt. “But I don't see why on earth you want me. Do you
think you could make _me_ happy?”
“I shouldn't try.”
“Hopeless job, you think? As a sculptor you ought to be a better judge of
character. You ought to pierce through the externals and perceive with
your artistic eye that beneath this austere mask I'm as merry a little
cricket as ever had his chirp smothered by the slings and arrows of
outrageous Fortune.”
It was then that she twinkled at him, and the twinkle grew into a laugh,
such golden laughter as brightened life to the limits of its farthest
echo. Cyrus had the feeling that the gray April sky had momentarily
opened up and sent down a sun-ray to illumine the proceedings.
“How wonderfully you mix them!” she cried. “Shall I sculp you in cap and
bells?”
“Why should I let you sculp meat all?” She stopped laughing abruptly and
looked up at him with wondering eyes and parted lips, drooping just the
tiniest bit at the corners. “Everybody does,” she said.
At once he understood why everybody did that or anything else she
wished. “All right,” he yielded. “What am I to sit for?”
“Fifty cents an hour.”
Then the Bonnie Lassie got her second surprise from him. His face
changed abruptly. An almost animal eagerness shone in his eyes.
“Fif-fif-fif--” he began, then recovered himself. “Pardon my performing
like a deranged steam-whistle, but do I understand that you offer to
pay me for sitting about doing nothing while you work? Did all those
cheerful dancers in the window collect pay at that rate?”
“Some of them did. Others are my friends.”
“Ah, you draw social distinctions, I perceive.”
“I think we needn't fence,” said the girl spiritedly. “When I came to
you I thought you were of Our Square. If you will tell me just what
variety of masquerader you are, we shall get on faster.”
“Do you think I don't belong quite as much to Our Square as you do?”
“Oh, I! This is my workshop. This is my life. But you--I should have
suspected you from the first word you spoke. What are you? Don't tell
me that you are here Settlementing or Sociologizing or Improving the
Condition of Somebody Else! Because I really do need your face,” she
concluded with convincing earnestness. “It's yours at fifty cents an
hour.”
“And you're not an Improver?”
“Absolutely not. Do I look as if I'd improved myself?”
“You wouldn't do at all for my present purpose, improved,” she observed.
“Please don't forget that. When can you come to me?”
“Any time.”
“Haven't you anything else to do?”
“Nothing but look out for odd jobs. That's why I'm so grateful for
regular employment.”
“But this isn't regular employment.” His face fell. “It's most
irregular, and there's very little of it.”
“Oh, well, it's fifty cents an hour. And that's more than I've ever
earned in my life, Miss Sculptor.”
“I am Miss Willard.”.
“Then, Miss Willard, you're employing Cyrus Murphy. Do you think I'll
sculp up like a Murphy?”
“I don't think you'll sculp up like a Murphy at all, and I've too many
friends who are Murphys to believe that you are one. In fact, I could do
you much better if I knew what you are.”
“That's quite simple. I'm a suicide. I walked right spang over the edge
of life and disappeared. Splash! Bubble-bubble! There goes nothing. The
only difference between me and a real suicide is that I have to eat. At
times it's difficult.”
“Haven't you any trade? Can't you do _anything?_” With a sweep of her
little hand she indicated the bustling activities with which the outer
streets whirred. “Isn't there any place for you in all this?”
He contemplated the world's work as exemplified around Our Square.
His gaze came to rest upon a steam-roller, ponderously clanking over a
railed-off portion of the street. “I suppose I could run that.”
“Could you? That's a man's job at least. Have you ever run one?”
“No, but I know I could. Any kind of machinery just eats out of my
hand.”
“Well, that's something. It's better than being a model. Be at my house
tomorrow at nine please.”
For an hour thereafter Cyrus the Gaunt sat on the bench musing upon
a small, flower-like, almost absurdly efficient young person who had
contracted, as he viewed it, to inject light and color into life at
fifty cents an hour, and who had plainly intimated that, in her view,
he was not a man. It was that precise opinion expressed by another and a
very unlike person which was responsible for his being where he was. At
that time it had made him furious. Now it made him thoughtful.
Presently he went through his pockets, reckoned his assets, rose up from
the bench, and made a trip to MacLachan's “Home of Fashion,” where he
left his clothes to be pressed overnight. In the morning he reappeared
again, shaved to the closest limit of human endurance, and thus
addressed the Scot:--
“Have you got my clothes pressed?”
“Aye,” said the tailor.
“Well, unpress 'em again.”
“Eh?” said the tailor.
“Unpress'em. Sit on'em. Roll'em on the floor. Muss'em up. Put all the
wrinkles back, just as they were.”
“Mon, ye shud leave the whiskey be,” advised the tailor.
Thereupon Cyrus caught up his neatly creased suit and proceeded to
play football with it, after which he put it on and viewed himself with
satisfaction.
“And I almost forgot that she wouldn't have any use for me, improved,”
he muttered as he wended his way to the little, old friendly house.
“Lord, I might have lost my job!”
Any expectation of social diversion at fifty cents an hour which Cyrus
the Gaunt may have cherished was promptly quashed on his arrival. It was
a very businesslike little sculptor who took him in hand.
“Sit here, please--the right knee farther forward--let the chin drop a
little--” and all that sort of thing.
He might not even watch the soft, strong little hands as they patted and
kneaded, nor the vivid face as plastic as the material from which the
hands worked their wonders, for when he attempted it:--
“I don't wish you to look at me. I wish you to look at nothing, as you
do when you sit on the bench. Make your eyes tired again.”
The difficulty was that his eyes, tired so long with that weariness
which lies at the very roots of being, didn't feel tired at all in the
little studio. For one thing, there was an absurd, fluffed-up whirlwind
of a kitten who performed miracles of obstacle-racing all over the
place. Then, in the most unexpected crannies and corners lurked tiny
bronzes, instinct with life: a wistful dog submitting an injured paw to
a boy hardly as large as himself; “Androcles” this one was labeled.
Then there was “Mystery,” a young, ill-clad girl, looking down at a dead
butterfly; “Remnants,” a withered and bent old woman, staggering under
her load of builders' refuse; “The Knight,” a small boy astride across
the body of his drunken father, brandishing a cudgel against a circle of
unseen tormentors; and many others, all vivid with that feeling for the
human struggle which alone can make metal live.
“Recess!” cried the worker presently. “You're doing quite well!”