"I'll get my check from the Gamin on Saturday," said Grief. "They bought
that string of comics."
"Well, then, we'll arrange the present funds to last until Saturday
noon," said Wrinkles. "That gives us quite a lot. We can have a _table
d'hôte_ on Friday night."
However, the cashier of the Gamin office looked under his respectable
brass wiring and said: "Very sorry, Mr.--er--Warwickson, but our pay-day
is Monday. Come around any time after ten."
"Oh, it doesn't matter," said Grief.
When he plunged into the den his visage flamed with rage. "Don't get my
check until Monday morning, any time after ten!" he yelled, and flung a
portfolio of mottled green into the danger zone of the casts.
"Thunder!" said Pennoyer, sinking at once into a profound despair
"Monday morning, any time after ten," murmured Wrinkles, in astonishment
and sorrow.
While Grief marched to and fro threatening the furniture, Pennoyer and
Wrinkles allowed their under jaws to fall, and remained as men smitten
between the eyes by the god of calamity.
"Singular thing!" muttered Pennoyer at last. "You get so frightfully
hungry as soon as you learn that there are no more meals coming."
"Oh, well----" said Wrinkles. He took up his guitar.
Oh, some folks say dat a niggah won' steal,
'Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel';
But Ah caught two in my cohn'-fiel',
Way down yondeh in d' cohn'-fiel'.
"Oh, let up!" said Grief, as if unwilling to be moved from his despair.
"Oh, let up!" said Pennoyer, as if he disliked the voice and the ballad.
In his studio, Hawker sat braced nervously forward on a little stool
before his tall Dutch easel. Three sketches lay on the floor near him,
and he glared at them constantly while painting at the large canvas on
the easel.
He seemed engaged in some kind of a duel. His hair dishevelled, his eyes
gleaming, he was in a deadly scuffle. In the sketches was the landscape
of heavy blue, as if seen through powder-smoke, and all the skies burned
red. There was in these notes a sinister quality of hopelessness,
eloquent of a defeat, as if the scene represented the last hour on a
field of disastrous battle. Hawker seemed attacking with this picture
something fair and beautiful of his own life, a possession of his mind,
and he did it fiercely, mercilessly, formidably. His arm moved with the
energy of a strange wrath. He might have been thrusting with a sword.
There was a knock at the door. "Come in." Pennoyer entered sheepishly.
"Well?" cried Hawker, with an echo of savagery in his voice. He turned
from the canvas precisely as one might emerge from a fight. "Oh!" he
said, perceiving Pennoyer. The glow in his eyes slowly changed. "What is
it, Penny?"
"Billie," said Pennoyer, "Grief was to get his check to-day, but they
put him off until Monday, and so, you know--er--well----"
"Oh!" said Hawker again.
When Pennoyer had gone Hawker sat motionless before his work. He stared
at the canvas in a meditation so profound that it was probably
unconscious of itself.
The light from above his head slanted more and more toward the east.
Once he arose and lighted a pipe. He returned to the easel and stood
staring with his hands in his pockets. He moved like one in a sleep.
Suddenly the gleam shot into his eyes again. He dropped to the stool and
grabbed a brush. At the end of a certain long, tumultuous period he
clinched his pipe more firmly in his teeth and puffed strongly. The
thought might have occurred to him that it was not alight, for he looked
at it with a vague, questioning glance. There came another knock at the
door. "Go to the devil!" he shouted, without turning his head.
Hollanden crossed the corridor then to the den.
"Hi, there, Hollie! Hello, boy! Just the fellow we want to see. Come
in--sit down--hit a pipe. Say, who was the girl Billie Hawker went mad
over this summer?"
"Blazes!" said Hollanden, recovering slowly from this onslaught.
"Who--what--how did you Indians find it out?"
"Oh, we tumbled!" they cried in delight, "we tumbled."
"There!" said Hollanden, reproaching himself. "And I thought you were
such a lot of blockheads."
"Oh, we tumbled!" they cried again in their ecstasy. "But who is she?
That's the point."
"Well, she was a girl."
"Yes, go on."
"A New York girl."
"Yes."
"A perfectly stunning New York girl."
"Yes. Go ahead."
"A perfectly stunning New York girl of a very wealthy and rather
old-fashioned family."
"Well, I'll be shot! You don't mean it! She is practically seated on top
of the Matterhorn. Poor old Billie!"
"Not at all," said Hollanden composedly.
It was a common habit of Purple Sanderson to call attention at night to
the resemblance of the den to some little ward in a hospital. Upon this
night, when Sanderson and Grief were buried in slumber, Pennoyer moved
restlessly. "Wrink!" he called softly into the darkness in the direction
of the divan which was secretly a coal-box.
"What?" said Wrinkles in a surly voice. His mind had evidently been
caught at the threshold of sleep.
"Do you think Florinda cares much for Billie Hawker?"
Wrinkles fretted through some oaths. "How in thunder do I know?" The
divan creaked as he turned his face to the wall.
"Well----" muttered Pennoyer.