"Happy to show you anything," I said, smiling.
"Don't need anything in the fur line to-day," said he; "much obliged."
"What fine grapes those are," I commented.
"Um," said he, "they call 'em white muskets of Alexander"; and he
grimaced.
"Where are such to be had?" I asked.
"Well," he said, "I got these just round the corner; but _you'd_ have to
visit some uptown fruit emporium and pay the price."
"So you bought the last bunch?"
"Bought nothin'," he said, and he smiled in a knowing and leering way.
"They were given to me," he said, "by a married woman. I happened to
drop in and she happened to have sent her husband uptown to fetch these
grapes for her because she's playing sick and works him in more ways
than one--but she said the grapes sickened her conscience, and she made
me take 'em away."
"So she has a conscience?" I said.
"They all have," said the young man. "Have one?"
I took one of the grapes with a hand that shook, and ate it, and felt
the red blood in my veins turn into acid.
There happened to be a man in the neighborhood who had been nibbling
after my business for some time. I went to him now and made him a cheap
sale for cash. This I deposited with my savings, keeping out a hundred
dollars for myself, and put the whole in trust for my wife and children.
Then I went away and, after many hardships, established myself in a new
place. And, as is often the case with men who have nothing whatsoever to
live for and who are sad, I prospered. God was ever presenting me with
opportunities and the better ends of bargains.
When fifteen years had passed I returned once more to New York. I had
reached a time of life when the possibility of death must be as steadily
reckoned with as the processes of digestion. And I wished, before I lay
down in the narrow house, to revisit the scenes of my former happiness.
I took the same furnished lodging to which we had gone after our
wedding. I lay all night, but did not sleep, in our nuptial bed. Alone,
but rather in reverence and revery than sadness, I made all those little
excursions upon which we had been so happy during the days of our
honey-moon. I made a point of feeding the animals in the park, of dining
at Claremont--I even stood for a long time before the fruit shop that is
near the Grand Central. But I was too old to feel much. So it seemed.
One day I sat on the steps of the lodging-house in the sun. I had been
for a long walk and I was very tired, very sick of my mortal coil, very
sure that I did not care if the end were to be sleep or life
everlasting. Then came, slowly around the corner of the shabby street
and toward me, a hansom cab. Its occupant, an alert, very young, eager
man, kept glancing here and there as if he were looking for something or
some one; for the old East Side street had still its old look, as if all
the inhabitants of its houses had rushed out to watch an eclipse of the
sun or the approach of a procession--and were patiently and idly
awaiting the event.
The children, and even many of the older people, mocked at the young man
in the hansom and flung him good-natured insults. But he knew the
language of the East Side and returned better than he received. My old
heart warmed a little to his young, brightly colored face, his quick,
flashing eyes, and his ready repartees. And it seemed to me a pity that,
like all the pleasant moments I had known, he, too, must pass and
be over.
But his great eyes flashed suddenly upon my face and rested; then he
signalled to the driver to stop and, springing out, a big sketch-book
under his arm, came toward me with long, frank strides.
"I know it's cheeky as the devil," he began in a quick, cheerful voice,
while he had yet some distance to come, "but I can't help it. I've been
looking for you for weeks, and--"
"What is it that I can do for you?" I asked pleasantly.
"You can give me your head." He said it with an appealing and delighted
smile. "I'm a sort of artist--" he explained.
"Show me," I said, and held out my hands for the sketch-book.
"Nothing but notes in it," he said, but I looked, not swiftly, through
all the pages and--for we Poles have an instinct in such matters--saw
that the work was good.
"Do you wish to draw me, _Master?_" I said.
He perceived that I meant the term, and he looked troubled and pleased.
"Will you sit for me?" he asked. "I will--"
But I shook my head to keep him from mentioning money.
"Very cheerfully," I said. "It is easy for the old to sit--especially
when, by the mere act of sitting, it is possible for them to become
immortal. I have a room two flights up--where you will not be
disturbed."
"Splendid!" he said. "You are splendid! Everything's splendid!"
When he had placed me as he wished, I asked him why my head suited him
more than another's.
"How do I know?" he said. "Instinct--you seem a cheerful man and yet I
have never seen a head and face that stood so clearly for--for--please
take me as I am, I don't ever mean to offend--steadiness in sorrow.... I
am planning a picture in which there is to be an ol--a man of your age
who looks as--as late October would look if it had a face...."
Then he began to sketch me, and, as he worked, he chattered about this
and that.
"Funny thing," he said, "I had a knife when I started and it's
disappeared."
"Things have that habit," I said.
"Yes," said he, "things and people, and often people disappear as
suddenly and completely as things--chin quarter of an inch lower--just
so--thank you forever--"
"And what experience have you had with people disappearing?" I asked.
"And you so young and masterful."
"I?" he said. "Why, a very near and dear experience. When I was quite a
little boy my own father went to his place of business and was never
heard of again from that day to this. But he must have done it on
purpose, because it was found that he had put all his affairs into the
most regular and explicit order--"