THE FOUR MILLIONAIRES
JOHNNIE always started his own daily program with a taste of fresh air.
He cared less for this way of spending his first fifteen free minutes
than for many another. But as Cis, with her riper wisdom, had pointed
out, a short airing was necessary to a boy who had no red in his cheeks,
and too much blue at his temples--not to mention a pinched look about
the nose. Johnnie regularly took a quarter of an hour out of doors.
He took it from the sill of the kitchen window--which was the only
window in the Barber flat.
This sill was breast-high from the kitchen floor, Johnnie not being tall
for his age. But having shoved up the lower sash with the aid of the
broom handle, he did not climb to seat himself upon the ledge. For there
was no iron fire escape outside; the nearest one came down the wall of
the building to the kitchen window of the Gamboni family, to the left.
And so Johnnie denied himself a perch on his sill--a dangerous position,
as both Mrs. Kukor and Cis pointed out to him.
Their warnings were unnecessary. He could easily realize what a slip of
the hand might mean: a plunge through space to the brick paving far
below; and there an instant and horrible end. His picture of it was
enough to guard him against accident. He contented himself with laying
his body across the sill, with the longer and heavier portion of his
small anatomy balanced securely against a shorter and lighter upper
portion.
He achieved this position and held it untiringly by the aid of the old
rope coil. This coil was a relic of those distant times when there was
no fire escape even outside the kitchen window of the Gambonis, and the
landlord provided every tenant with this cruder means of flying the
building. The rope hung on a large hook just under the Barber window,
and was like a hard, smudged wheel, so completely had the years and the
climate of the kitchen colored and stiffened it. And Johnnie's weight
was not enough to elongate its set curves.
It was a handy affair. Using it as a stepping-place, and pulling himself
up by his hands, he brought the lower end of his breastbone into contact
with the sill. Resting thus, upon his midriff, he was thoroughly
comfortable, due to the fact that Big Tom's shirt and trousers
thoroughly padded his ribby front. Then he swelled his nostrils with his
intaking of air, and his back heaved and fell, so that he was for all
the world like some sort of a giant lizard, sunning itself on a rock.
Against the dingy black-red of the old wall, his yellow head stood forth
as gaudily as a flower. The flower nodded, too, as if moved by the
breeze that was wreathing the smoke over all the roofs. For Johnnie was
taking a general survey of the scenery.
The Barber window looked north, and in front of it were the rear windows
of tenements that faced on a street. There was a fire escape at every
other one of these windows--the usual spidery affair of black-painted
iron, clinging vinelike to the bricks. And over each escape were draped
garments of every hue and kind, some freshly washed, and drying; others
airing. Mingling with the apparel were blankets, quilts, mattresses,
pillows and babies.
Somehow Johnnie did not like the view. He glanced down into the gloomy
area, where a lean and untidy cat was prowling, and where there
sounded, echoing, the undistinguishable harangue of the fretful Italian
janitress.
Now Johnnie's general survey was done. He always made it short, wasting
less than one minute in looking down or around. It was beauty that drew
him--beauty and whatever else could start up in his mind the experiences
he most liked. His face upturned, one hand flung across his brows to
shield his eyes, for the light outside the sill seemed dazzling after
the semidark of the flat, he scanned first the opposite roof edges, a
whole story higher than he, where sparrows were alighting, and where
smoke plumes curled like veils of gossamer; next he scanned the sky.
Above the roofline of the tenements was a great, changing patch which he
called his own, and which he found fascinating. And not only for what it
actually showed him, which was splendid enough, but for the eternal
promise of it. At any moment, what might not come slipping into sight!
What he longed most to catch sight of was--a stork. Those babies across
on the fire escapes, storks had brought them (which was the main reason
why all the families kept bedclothes out on the barred shelves; a quilt
or a pillow made a soft place on which to leave a new baby). A stork had
brought Cis--she had had her own mother's word for it many times before
that mother died. A stork had brought Johnnie, too--and Grandpa, Mrs.
Kukor, the Prince of Wales, the janitress; in fact, every one.
"I wonder what kind of a stork was it that fetched _Big Tom_!" Johnnie
once had exclaimed, straightway visioning a black and forbidding bird.
Storks, according to Cis, were as bashful as they were clever, and did
not come into sight if any one was watching. They were big enough to be
seen easily, however, as proven by this: frequently one of them came
floating down with twins!
"Down from where?" Johnnie had wanted to know, liking to have his
knowledge definite.
"From their nests, silly," Cis had returned. But had been forced to
confess that she did not know where storks built their nests. "In
Central Park, I guess," she had added. (Central Park was as good a place
as any.)
"Oh, you guess!" Johnnie had returned, disgusted.
He had never given up his watching, nor his hope of some day seeing a
big baby-bringer. He searched his sky patch now. But could see only the
darting sparrows and, farther away, some larger birds that wheeled
gracefully above the city. Many of these were seagulls. The others were
pigeons, and Cis had told him that people ate them. This fact hurt him,
and he tried not to think about it, but only of their flight. He envied
them their freedom in the vast milkiness, their power to penetrate it.
Beyond the large birds, and surely as far away as the sun ever was, some
great, puffy clouds of a blinding white were shouldering one another as
they sailed northward.
Out of the wisdom possessed by one of her advanced age, Cis had told him
several astonishing things about this field of sky. What Barber
considered a troublesome, meddlesome, wasteful school law was, at
bottom, responsible for her knowing much that was true and considerable
which Johnnie held was not. And one of her unbelievable statements (this
from his standpoint) was to the effect that his sky patch was constantly
changing,--yes, as frequently as every minute--because the earth was
steadily moving. And she had added the horrifying declaration that this
movement was in the nature of _a spin_, so that, at night, the whole of
New York City, including skyscrapers, bridges, water, streets, vehicles
and population, _was upside down in the air_!
"Aw, it ain't so!" he cried, though Cis reminded him (and rather
sternly, for her) that in doing so he was questioning a teacher who drew
a magnificent salary for spreading just such statements. "And if they
pay her all that money, they're crazy! Don't y' know that if we was t'
come upside down, the chimnies'd fall off all the buildin's? and East
River'd _spill_?"
Cis countered with a demonstration. She filled Big Tom's lunch pail with
water and whirled it, losing not a drop.
But he went further, and proved her wrong--that is so far as the
upside-down of it was concerned. He did this by staying awake the whole
of the following night and noting that the city stayed right-side up
throughout the long hours. Cis, poor girl, had been pitifully
misinformed.
But the changing of the sky he believed. He believed it because at night
there was the kind of sky overhead that had stars in it; also,
sometimes, a moon. But by dawn, the starred sky was gone--been left
behind, or got slipped to one side; in its place was a plain,
unpatterned stretch of Heaven which, in due time, was once more
succeeded by a firmament adorned and a-twinkle.
When Cis returned home one evening and declared that the forewoman at
the factory had asserted that there were stars everywhere in the sky by
day as well as by night, and no plain spots at all anywhere; and,
further, that if anybody were at the bottom of a deep well he--or
she--could see stars in the sky in the daytime, Johnnie had fairly
hooted at the tale. And had finally won Cis over to his side.
Her last doubt fled when, having gone down into a dark corner of the
area the Sunday following, she found, as did he, that no stars were to
be seen anywhere. After that she believed in his theory of starless
sky-spots; starless, but not plain. For in addition to the sun, many
other things lent interest to that field of blue--clouds, rain, sleet,
snow, and fog, all in their time or season. Also, besides the birds, he
occasionally glimpsed whole sheets of newspapers as they ambitiously
voyaged above the house tops. And how he longed for them to blow against
his own window, so that he might read them through and through!
Sometimes he saw a flying machine. The first one that had floated across
his sky had very nearly been the death of him. Because, forgetting
danger in his rapturous excitement, he had leaned out dangerously, and
might have fallen if he had not suddenly thought of Grandpa, and thrown
himself backward into the kitchen to fetch the wheel chair. The little
old soldier had only been mildly diverted by the sight. Johnnie,
however, had viewed the passing of the biplane in amaze, though later on
he came to accept the conquest of the air as just one more marvel in a
world of marvels.
But his wonder in the sky itself never lessened. About its width he did
not ponder, never having seen more than a narrow portion of it since he
was big enough to do much thinking. But, oh, the depth of it! He could
see no sign of a limit to that, and Mrs. Kukor declared there was none,
but that it reached on and on and on and on! To what? Just to more of
the on and on. It never stopped.
One night Cis and he, bent over the lip of the window, she upholstered
on a certain excelsior-filled pillow which was very dear to her, and he
padded by Big Tom's cast-offs, had attempted to realize what Mrs. Kukor
had said. "On--and on--and on--and on," they had murmured. Until finally
just the trying to comprehend it had become overpowering, terrible. Cis
declared that if they kept at it she would certainly become dizzy and
fall out. And so they had stopped.
But Johnnie was not afraid to think about it, awful as it was. It was
at night, mostly, that he did his thinking. At night the birds he loved
were all asleep. But so was Barber; and Johnnie, with no fear of
interruption, could separate himself from the world, could mentally kick
it away from under him, and lightly project his thin little body up to
the stars.
Whenever fog or clouds screened the sky patch, hiding the stars, a
radiance was thrown upon the heavens by the combined lights of the
city--a radiance which, Johnnie thought, came from above; and he was
always half expecting a strange moon to come pushing through the cloud
screen, or a new sun, or a premature dawn!
Now looking up into the deep blue he murmured, "On--and--on--and on," to
himself. And he wondered if the gulls or the pigeons ever went so far
into the blue that they lost their way, and never came back--but just
flew, and flew, and flew, till weariness overcame them, when they
dropped, and dropped, and dropped, and dropped!
A window went up in front of him, across the area, and a voice began to
call at him mockingly: "Girl's hair! Girl's hair! All he's got is girl's
hair! All he's got is girl's hair!"
He started back as if from a blow. Then reaching a quick hand to the
sash, he closed the window and stepped down.
The voice belonged to a boy who had once charged Mrs. Kukor with going
to church on a Saturday. But even as Johnnie left the sill he felt no
anger toward the boy save on Mrs. Kukor's account. Because he knew that
his hair _was_ like a girl's. If the boy criticized it, that was no more
than Johnnie constantly did himself.
The second his feet touched the splintery floor he made toward the
table, caught up the teapot, went to lean his head over the sink, and
poured upon his offending locks the whole remaining contents of the
pot--leaves and all. For Cis (that mine of wisdom) had told him that
tea was darkening in its effect, not only upon the lining of the tummy,
which was an interesting thought, but upon hair. And while he did not
care what color he was inside, darker hair he longed to possess. So, his
bright tangles a-drip, he set the teapot in among the unwashed pans and
fell to rubbing the tea into his scalp.
And now at last he was ready to begin the really important matters of
the day.
But just which of many should he choose for his start? He stood still
for a moment, considering, and a look came into his face that was all
pure radiance.
High in the old crumbling building, as cut off from the world about him
as if he were stranded with Grandpa on some mountain top, he did not
fret about being shut in and away; he was glad of it. He was spared the
taunts of boys who did not like his hair or his clothes; but also he had
the whole flat to himself. Day after day there was no one to make him do
this, or stop his doing that. He could handle what he liked, dig around
in any corner or box, eat when he wished. Most important of all, he
could think what he pleased!
He never dwelt for any length of time upon unhappy pictures--those which
had in them hate or revenge. His brain busied itself usually with places
and people and events which brought him happiness.
For instance, how he could travel! And all for nothing! His calloused
feet tucked round the legs of the kitchen chair, his body relaxed, his
expression as rapt as any Buddhist priest's, his big hands locked about
his knees, and his eyes fastened upon a spot on the wall, he could
forsake the Barber flat, could go forth, as if out of his own body, to
visit any number of wonderful lands which lay so near that he could
cross their borders in a moment. He could sail vast East Rivers in
marvelous tugs. He could fly superbly over great cities in his own
aeroplane.
And all this travel brought him into contact with just the sort of men
and women he wanted to know, so politely kind, so interesting. They
never tired of him, nor he of them. He was with them when he wanted to
be--instantly. Or they came to the flat in the friendliest way. And when
its unpleasant duties claimed him--the Monday wash, the Tuesday ironing,
the Saturday scrubbing, or the regular everyday jobs such as dishes,
beds, cooking, bead-stringing, and violet-making--frequently they helped
him, lightening his work with their charming companionship, stimulating
him with their example and praise.
Oh, they were just perfect!
And how quiet, every one of them! So often when the longshoreman
returned of an evening, his bloodshot eyes roving suspiciously, a crowd
of handsomely dressed people filled the kitchen, and he threaded that
crowd, yet never guessed! When Big Tom spoke, the room usually cleared;
but later on Johnnie could again summon all with no trouble whatever,
whether they were great soldiers or presidents, kings or millionaires.
Of the latter he was especially fond; in particular, of a certain four.
And as he paused now to decide upon his program, he thought of that
quartet. Why not give them a call on the telephone this morning?
He headed for the morris chair. Under its soiled seat-cushion was a
ragged copy of the New York telephone directory, which just nicely
filled in the sag between the cushion and the bottom of the chair. He
took the directory out--as carefully as if it were some volume not
possible of duplication.
It was his only book. Once, while Cis was still attending school, he had
shared her speller and her arithmetic, and made them forever his own
(though he did not realize it yet) by the simple method of photographing
each on his brain--page by page. And it was lucky that he did; for when
Cis's brief schooldays came to an end, Big Tom took the two textbooks
out with him one morning and sold them.
The directory was the prized gift of Mrs. Kukor's daughter, Mrs.
Reisenberger, who was married to a pawnbroker, very rich, and who
occupied an apartment (not a flat)--very fine, very expensive--in a
great Lexington Avenue building that had an elevator, and a uniformed
black elevator man, very stylish. The directory meant more to Johnnie
than ever had Cis's books. He knew its small-typed pages from end to
end. Among the splendid things it advertised, front, back, and at the
bottom of its pages, were many he admired. And he owned these whenever
he felt like it, whether automobiles or animals, cash registers or
eyeglasses. But such possessions, fine as they were, took second place
in his interest. What thrilled him was the list of subscribers--the
living, breathing thousands that waited his call at the other end of a
wire! And what people they were!--the world-celebrated, the fabulously
wealthy, the famously beautiful (as Cis herself declared), and the
socially elect!
Of course there was still others who were prominent, such as
storekeepers, prize fighters, hotel owners and the like (again it was
Cis who furnished the data). But Johnnie, as has been seen, aimed high
always; and he was particular in the matter of his telephonic
associations. Except when shopping, he made a strict rule to ring up
only the most superior.
There was a clothesline strung down the whole length of the kitchen.
This Johnnie lowered on a washday to his own easy reach. At other times
it was raised out of the way of Big Tom's head.
He let the line down. Then pushing the kitchen chair to that end of the
rope which was farthest from the stove and the sleeping old man, he
stood upon it; and having considered a moment whether he would first
call up Mr. Astor, or Mr. Vanderbilt, or Mr. Carnegie, or Mr.
Rockefeller, decided upon Mr. Astor, and gave a number to a priceless
Central who was promptness itself, who never rang the wrong bell, or
reported a busy wire, or cut him off in the midst of an engrossing
conversation.
This morning, as usual, he got his number at once. "Good-mornin', Mister
Astor!" he hailed breezily. "This is Johnnie Smith.--'Oh, good-mornin',
Mister Smith! How are y'?'--I'm fine!--'That's fine!'--How are you,
Mister Astor?--'Oh, I'm fine.'--That's fine!--'I was just wonderin',
Mister Smith, if you would like to go out ridin' with me.'--Yes, I
would, Mister Astor. I think it'd be fine!--'Y' would? Well, that's
fine! And, Mister Smith, I'll come by for y' in about ten minutes. And
if ye'd like to take a friend along----'"
There now followed, despite the appointment set for so early a moment, a
long and confidential exchange of views on a variety of subjects. When
this was finished, Johnnie rang, in turn, Messrs. Vanderbilt, Carnegie
and Rockefeller, sparing these gentlemen all the time in the world.
(When any one of them did indeed call for him, fulfilling an
appointment, what a gorgeous blue plush hat the millionaire wore! and
what a royally fur-collared coat!)
Now Johnnie put aside the important engagement he had made with Mr.
Astor, and, being careful first to find the right numbers in the book,
got in touch with numerous large concerns, and ordered jewelry,
bicycles, limousines, steam boilers and paper drinking cups with
magnificent lavishness.
He had finished ordering his tenth automobile, which was to be done up
in red velvet to match the faithful Buckle, when there fell upon his
quick ear the sound of a step. In the next instant he let go of the
clothesline, sent the telephone book slipping from the chair at his
feet, and plunged like a swimmer toward that loose ball of gingham under
the sink.
And not a moment too soon; for scarcely had he tossed the tied strings
over his tea-leaf-sprinkled hair, when the door opened, and there, coat
on arm, great chest heaving from his climb, bulgy eyes darting to mark
the condition of the flat, stood--Barber!