_With a Detailed Account of a Dangerous Footpad._
Mac had invited three or four of us to luncheon--Boggs, Lonnegan, Marny,
and myself. These feasts were "Dutch" in the strictest sense, the sum
total paid being divided, share and share alike, between the host of the
day and his guests. That was the custom among the students in Munich and
Paris, even at Florian's in Venice, and the custom was still observed.
It did away with unpleasant comparisons--Lonnegan's inherited
bank-account, for instance, and Woods's income from his rich aunt, who
refused him nothing, in contrast to my own and Boggs's annual earnings.
The only liberty given to the host of the day was the choice of
restaurants. At Maroni's we could get a hot sandwich and a glass of beer
for fifteen cents; at Brown's, in Twenty-eighth Street, a chop, a baked
potato, and a mug of bass for half of a trade dollar. When some one of
the less opulent had sold a picture, and had become temporarily rich
over and above the amount due for the month's rent, Lonnegan, or Woods,
or Pitkin (Pitkin had a father who could cut off coupons) selected
Delmonico's. These occasions were rare, and ever afterward became
historic.
This day, it being Mac's turn, he selected Oscar Pusch's, on Fourth
Avenue--a modest little beer-house near the corner of Twenty-fourth
Street, its only distinguishing mark being a swinging, double shutter
door and the advertisement of a brewery in the window. Inside was a long
bar drenched with the foam of countless mugs of Hofbrau, facing a line
of tables centred by cheap castors and dishes of cold slaw, and flanked
at one end by a back room. This last apartment was for the elect. One
table was always reserved for the exalted; of this group MacWhirter was
High Priest.
Here often at night Mac held forth to an admiring crowd of young
painters who believed in his brush and who loved the man who wielded it.
When I look back now down the vista of twenty years and see how fine and
strong and superb that brush was, how true, how wonderful in color, how
much better than any other painter of his time--Barbizon, London, or
Dusseldorf--and think of how many lies the resident picture dealer told
his patrons to discredit Mac's genius, I always experience a peculiar
hotness under my collar-button. It cools off, it is true, whenever I see
one of his masterpieces hung to-day on the walls of the redeemed. My
anger then turns to a genial warmth, suffusing my cheeks and permeating
my being, especially when I learn the sum paid for the smallest product
of his brush.
"One of MacWhirter's, sir; one of his choicest; painted in his best
period," says this same fraud to-day (the period, remember, when he
would say, "What can one expect of the Hudson Rivery School, sir?"),
and then the dealer demands a price which, had it been paid in Mac's
earlier days, would have resulted in his breaking all students' rules
and setting up Johannesburg of '41 instead of the simple steins of the
Hofbrau with which Lonnegan, Boggs, and the rest of us were being
regaled.
The hospitable and ever alert Oscar did not welcome us this time, but a
new waiter, who sprang at Mac as if he had been his lost brother--a
joyous sort of waiter, clean-shaven as a priest, ruddy-cheeked,
blue-eyed, with short, tan-colored hair sticking straight up on his
head, looking as if at some time in his life he had been frightened half
out of his wits and had never been able to keep his hair down since.
The appearance of this overjoyed individual produced a peculiar effect
on Mac.
"Oh, Mr. Pusch found a place for you at last, did he, Carl?" he burst
out. "Glad you're here," and Mac stepped forward and shook the waiter's
hand with more than his usual warmth.
Boggs looked at me and winked. What would Mac be doing next?
"Some member of the royal family, Mac?" asked Boggs, when the waiter had
left the room to execute Mac's orders.
"No," said Mac, unfolding his napkin, "just plain man."
"I know," said Boggs, "ran off with a soprano at the Imperial Opera
House; disinherited by his father; fought a duel with his Colonel on
account of her; dismissed from his club; sought refuge in flight to
God's free country, where for years he worked in a small cafe on Fourth
Avenue. Was known for years as 'Carl' where----"
Mac raised his eyes at Boggs.
"Lively imagination you've got, Boggs. If I were you I----"
"On the death of his father, the late Baron Schweizerkase," continued
Boggs in the nasal tone of an exhibitor of wax works, completely
ignoring Mac's interruption, "the exile, who was none other than Prince
Pumperknickel, returned to his estates, where his beautiful and
accomplished wife, though not of royal blood, now dispenses the
hospitality of his noble house with all the honors which----"
"Will you shut up, Boggs," cried Lonnegan. "Your tongue goes like an
eight-day clock." Then he turned to Mac. "Seems to me I've seen that
waiter before--last summer, if I remember. Where was it? Florian's or
the Pantheon?"
"No, I don't think so," said Mac. "Carl hasn't been out of the country
for two years to my knowledge. Much obliged, Oscar, for giving him a
place." This to the proprietor, who was now beaming across the bar at
Mac. "You'll find Carl all right," and he nodded toward the waiter, who
was again approaching the table.
"Everything suit you, Carl?"
"Oh, yes, yes, Mr. MacWhirter; I was comin' to see you about it, but I
just got back from Philadelphy." The man seemed hardly able to keep his
arms from around Mac's neck. I've seen a dog sometimes show that
peculiar form of trembling joy when brought suddenly into his master's
presence after a long absence, but never a man.
Marny now spoke up.
"Tell us about this waiter, Mac."
"There's nothing to tell; just one of my acquaintances, that's all. Some
I bow to, some I shake hands with--Carl is one of the last," and Mac
nodded and emptied his glass at a single draught, shutting off all
discussion. No one knew better than Mac how to avoid a subject on which
he preferred to keep silence.
On the way back to the Old Building Marny and I walked together,
Lonnegan, Mac, and Boggs behind.
"Something in that waiter Carl," remarked Marny, "or Mac wouldn't have
shaken hands with him. These waiters are a queer lot; they're never in
the same city more than a year. I drew my chair up to a table in Moscow
two years ago in that swell cafe--forget the name--outside of a park,
and sat me down, wondering which one of my ragged languages I could use
in getting something to eat, when the waiter behind my chair leaned over
and said in perfect English, 'What wine, Mr. Marny?' He'd waited at
Brown's, on Twenty-eighth Street, for years. Hello! Who's Mac talking
to?--a street beggar! Just like him!"
We were crossing the Square now and nearing the Old Building and No. 3.
There was evidently some dispute over the beggar, for Mac was apparently
defending the woman, while the others were objecting to her asking for
alms.
"They've got a password and a signal-call for Mac," continued Boggs;
"he never goes to luncheon but there's half a dozen of 'em strung along
his route."
We had now reached our companions.
"Did you give that tramp anything, Mac?" burst out Marny.
"Let not your right hand know what your left hand doeth, my boy,"
answered Mac, with a wave of his hand as he strode along.
"Did he, Lonnegan?" persisted Boggs.
"Yes, and wanted to know where she lived."
"I can tell you where she lives," exploded Boggs. "She lives in a
brownstone front somewhere facing the Park. Drives up Riverside every
Sunday in her carriage, and all because fools like you, Mac, support
her. Only last week a man I know gave some pennies to a woman who was
crying with hunger, with two little babes to feed--'For the love of God,
kind sir!' and all that sort of thing--and that night, going home from
the club, he found her on a doorstep under a gaslight counting out her
earnings--all the cents in one pile, all the dimes in another; then the
quarters, halves, and so on. She'd earned more money that day than he
had. When she saw him she laughed, and went right on with her counting."
Mac was now entering the Building, we following him upstairs, the
discussion still going on. Lonnegan insisted that there were city
charities that took care of such tramps; Boggs interrupted that they
ought to be turned over to the police. Marny thought that there might be
some of them deserving, but the chances were that the greater part of
them were too lazy to work.
Our heads were now level with the top of the Chinese screen, and the
next instant the whole party were inside No. 3 and warming themselves at
MacWhirter's wood fire.
Mac hung up his coat, threw some fresh logs on the andirons, swept up
the hearth, and dragged up the chairs for his guests alongside of some
of the other habitues--Charley Woods among them--who had already arrived
and were awaiting our return.
"Mac's been doing the noble act again," Boggs burst out; "that's why
we're late. Shook hands with a red-headed waiter named Carl down at
Pusch's, who seemed glad enough to eat him up; then he emptied his
pockets to a bag of bones outside with a basket--'God knows I haven't
eaten anything, kind sir, for three days. Got three children' (Boggs's
drawl was inimitable). You know that kind of hag. He would have invited
her to dinner if we hadn't been along. If he wasn't a natural born fool
with his money it might do Mac some good to prove to him that----"
"You will get left every time, Mac," interrupted Woods from his chair,
"over this foolishness of yours." It was never considered rude to
interrupt Boggs--not even by Boggs. "Half of these beggars are dead
beats. I've had some experience."
"Never 'left' when you're right, Woods," shouted back Mac, who had
crossed the room to his basin and was busy washing his brushes.
"It's never 'right,' Mac, to allow yourself to be buncoed; and that's
what happened to me last fall," retorted Woods.
Boggs leaned forward in his chair and fixed his eyes on Woods. The
buncoing of Charles Wood, Esquire--a man who prided himself on knowing
everything--was a story so delicious that not a word of it must be lost.
The other men were of the same opinion, for they drew their chairs
closer to the blaze, particularly those who had just come out of the
keen wind in crossing the Square.
"You don't know, of course, for I have never told you," Woods continued,
when every one was settled comfortably; "but when I was real pious--and
I was once--I used to oblige my dear old aunt and go down to the Bowery
and read to the tramps that were hived in a room rented by the church to
which she belonged. I would give them short stories--touch of pathos,
broad farce, or dramatic incident, whatever I thought would suit them
best--from 'Charles O'Malley,' 'Boots at Holly Tree Inn,' and Hans
Breitmann's yarns. I got along pretty well with the Irish, Dutch, and
English dialects, but a new story just out at that time, 'That Lass o'
Lowrie's,' in the Lancashire dialect, upset me completely. I didn't know
how to read it properly, and I couldn't find anyone who could teach me.
I tried it there one night, and after making a first-class fizzle of it
I suddenly thought that in an audience representing almost every
nationality on the globe there might be someone from Lancashire, and so
I stepped again to the edge of the platform, told them why I made the
inquiry, and invited anyone from that part of England to stand up so
that I could see and talk to him. Nobody moved, and I went away
determined never to read the story again.
"The next day I was pegging away at my easel--it was when I had my
studio over Duncan's grocery store on Fourteenth Street and Union
Square, next to Quartley's and Sheldon's rooms--you remember it--when
there came a rap at the door, and there stood a young fellow about
twenty-five years of age, dressed in a shabby suit of once good clothes.
Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man, who had evidently
seen better days. I believe that you can always tell when a man has been
a gentleman; there is something about the cut of his jib that indicates
his blood, no matter how low he may have fallen; something in the
quality of his skin, the lines about his nose and the way it is fastened
to his face; the way the hair grows on his temples, and its fineness;
the rise of the forehead; and the ears--especially the ears--small,
well-modelled ears are as true an indication of gentle blood as small,
well-turned hands and feet. I have painted too many portraits not to
have found this out. This fellow had all these marks.
[Illustration: Not a tramp; rather a good-looking, well-mannered man,
who had evidently seen better days.]
"He had, moreover, a way of looking you right in the eye without
flinching, following yours about like a searchlight without letting go
of his hold. His voice, too, was the voice of a man of some
refinement--a reed-like voice, like a clarionette, well-modulated, even
musical at times, and with an intonation and accent which showed me at
once that he was an Englishman.
"'I heard what you said last night about the Lancashire dialect,' he
began, 'but I didn't like to stand up to speak to you. I was afraid you
might not be satisfied with what I could do for you. But I am in such
straits to-day that I couldn't help coming, and so I asked the
Superintendent for your address. I don't want any money, but I must have
some food; if you will help me you will do a kind act. I am out of
money, and I may never get any more from home, so that what you do for
me I may not be able to repay. I haven't really had much to eat for
nearly a week and my strength is giving out. I could hardly get up your
stairs.'
"All this, remember, without giving me a chance to ask him a single
question and without stopping to take breath--just as a book agent
rattles on--he standing all the time on my door-sill, his hat in his
hand, not as a beggar would carry it, but as some well-bred friend who
had dropped in for an afternoon call. Good deal in the way a man holds
his hat, let me tell you, when you are sizing a stranger up. That's
another one of my beliefs.
"I had brought him inside now and he was standing under my skylight, his
face and figure making an even better impression on me than when he was
in the dark of the doorway.
"'And you speak the Lancashire dialect, of course?' I asked, my eyes now
taking in the military curl of his mustache, his broad shoulders and the
way his really fine head was set upon them.
"'No,' he answered; 'to tell you the truth, I do not--not to be of any
service to you. I know some words, of course, but not many. I ought to
be able to speak it perfectly, for my father's place is in the next
county; but I have been a good deal away from home. I didn't come for
that; I came because you seemed to me last night to be the sort of a man
I could talk to; I meet very few of them; I don't like to stop people in
the street, and my clothes now are not fit to enter anyone's office, and
it would do no good if I did, for I know no one here.'
"'Where have you lived?' I asked.
"'Oh, all over; Australia part of the time, three years in Canada----'
"'You don't look over twenty-five.'
"He dropped his eyes now and looked down at the floor.
"'I wish I was,' he answered slowly; 'I might have done differently. You
are wrong, I am thirty-one--will be my next birthday. I was home last
summer to see my father, but I only stayed an hour with him. He wouldn't
talk to me, so I left and came here.'
"'Why not?'
"'Well, I'd rather not go into that; it's a family matter.'
"'Pretty rough, turning you out, wasn't it?' I was getting interested in
him now.
"'No, I can't say that it was. I hadn't been square with him--not the
year before.'
"'Well, you were ready to do the decent thing then, I hope?'
"'Yes, but my Governor is a peculiar sort of man that don't forget
easily. But he's my father all the same, and so I'd rather keep away
than have him hate me. No--please don't ask me anything about it. I
don't think he was quite fair, but I'm not going to say so.'
"I had him in a chair now and had laid down my palette and brushes. When
a man is thrown out into the world by his father and then refuses to
abuse him, or let anybody else do so, there's something inside of him
that you can build on.
"I handed him a greenback. 'Go down,' I said, 'on Sixth Avenue and get
something to eat and anything else you need for your comfort, and then
come back to me.'
"He folded the bill up carefully, put it in his waistcoat pocket,
thanked me in a simple, straightforward way, just as any of you would
have done had I loaned you an equal amount to tide you over some
temporary emergency, and with the bow of a thoroughbred closed my door
behind him and went downstairs.
"While he was gone I began unconsciously to let my imagination loose on
him. I immediately invested him with all the attributes I had failed to
discover in him while he stood hat in hand under my skylight. Some young
blood, no doubt, of good family, I said to myself; ran through his
allowance, shipped off to Australia, returns and is forgiven. Then more
debts, more escapades. Father a choleric old Britisher, who gets purple
in the face when he is angry--'Out you go, you dog; never more shall you
be son of mine!" You remember George Holland as an irate father of the
old school?--same kind of an old sardine. No question, though, but that
his son was in hard lines and on the verge of suicide or, what was
worse, crime.
"What, then, was my duty under the circumstances? What would my own
Governor think of a man who had found me in a similar strait in London,
penniless, half-clothed, and hungry, and who had turned me out again
into the cold?
"Before I had decided what to do he was back again in my studio looking
like a different man. Not only had he been fed, but he was clean-shaven
and clean-collared.
"'I took you at your word,' he said. 'I had a bath and bought me a clean
collar. Here is the change,' and he handed me back some silver. 'I don't
want to promise anything I can't do, and I don't say I'll pay it back,
for I may not be able to, but I'll try my best to do so. Good-by, and
thank you again.'
"'Hold on,' I said. 'Sit down, and let me talk to you.' Now right here,
gentlemen, I want to tell you"--Woods swept his eye around the circle as
he spoke, then rose to his feet as if to give greater emphasis to what
he was about to say, his round bullet-head, eye-glasses, and immaculate
shirt collar glistening in the overhead light--"I want to tell you
right here that the buying of that clean collar and the return of the
change settled the matter for me. I'm a student of human nature, as most
of you know, and I have certain fixed rules to guide me which never
fail. My duty was clear; I would play the Good Samaritan for all I was
worth. I wouldn't cross over and ask him how the cripple was getting on;
I'd walk down both sides of the street, call an ambulance, lift him in
to a down-covered cot run on C springs, and trundle him off to flowery
beds of ease or whatever else I could scrape up that was comforting. Now
listen--and, Mac, I want you to take all this in, for I am telling this
yarn for your special benefit.
"That same afternoon I took him up to my rooms--I was living with my
aunt then up on Murray Hill--opened up my wardrobe, pulled out a shirt,
underwear, socks, shoes, cut-away coat, waistcoat, and trousers; gave
him a scarf, and then to add a touch to his whole get-up I picked a
scarf-pin from my cushion and stuck it in myself. Next I handed him a
cigar, opened up a bottle of Scotch, and after dinner--my aunt was
dining out, and we had the table to ourselves--sat up with him till near
midnight, he and I talking together like any other two men who had met
for the first time and who had, to their delight, found something in
common.
"Nor would any of you have known the difference had you happened to drop
in upon us. No reference, of course, was made to his condition or to the
way in which we had met. He was clean, well-dressed, well-mannered,
perfectly at ease, and entirely at home. You could see that by the way
in which he shadowed his wine-glass as a sign to the waiter not to
refill it; passed the end of his cigar toward me that I might snip it
with the cutter attached to my watch-chain, having none of his own, of
course--a fact he made no comment upon; did everything, in fact, down to
the smallest detail (and I watched and studied him pretty closely) that
any one of you would have done under similar circumstances; all of which
proved his birth and breeding, and all of which, you will admit, no man
not born to it can acquire and not be detected by one who knows.
"My idea was--and this is another one of my theories--that you can
restore a man's energies only when you restore his self-respect, and I
intended to prove my theory on this Englishman. What I was after was
first to bring him back to his old self--he taking his place where he
belonged, shutting out the hideous nightmare that was pursuing him--and
then get him a situation where he could be self-sustaining. This done, I
proposed to write to his father and patch it up somehow between them,
and the next time I went abroad we would go together and kill the fatted
calf, haul in the Yule log, summon the tenants, build triumphal arches,
and all that sort of thing.
"The following morning promptly at ten o'clock he rapped at my studio
door. Pitkin saw him and thought he had come to buy out the studio, he
was so well dressed--you remember him, Pit?"
Pitkin shook his head and smiled.
"Then commenced the hunt for work, and I tell you it was hard sledding;
but I stuck at it, and at the end of the week old Porterfield gave him a
position as entry clerk in his foreign department. During all that week
he was spending his time between my studio and my aunt's, I looking
after his expenditures--not much, only a few dollars a day. Every
evening we dined at home, and every evening we roamed the world:
mountain climbing, pig sticking, pheasant shooting in Devonshire; who
won the Derby, and why; English politics, English art, the tariff--every
topic under the sun that I knew anything about and a lot I didn't, he
leading or following in the talk, his eyes fixed on mine, his rich,
musical voice filling the room, his handsome, well-bred body comfortably
seated in my aunt's easiest chair.
"And now comes the most interesting part of this story. The afternoon
before he was to present himself at Porterfield's, about five
o'clock--an hour before I reached home--he rang my aunt's front-door
bell; told the servant that I had been called suddenly out of town for
the night and had sent him post haste in a cab for my portmanteau and
overcoat. Then he tripped upstairs to my apartment, waited beside the
servant until she had stowed away in my best Gladstone my dress-suit,
shirt with its links and pearl studs, collars--everything, even to my
patent-leather shoes; and then, while she was out of the room in search
of my overcoat, emptied into his pockets all my scarf-pins, my silver
brandy-flask, and a lot of knick-knacks on my bureau, took the coat on
his arm, preceded her leisurely downstairs, she carrying the bag,
stepped into the cab, _and I haven't seen him since_!"
* * * * *
"There, Mac, that yarn is told for your especial benefit. What do you
think of it?"
"I think you're all white, Woods, and I'm glad to know you," cried Mac
as he grasped the painter's hand and shook it warmly.
"Yes, but what do you think of that cur of an Englishman?"
"I think he'll live to see the day he'll regret the mean trick he played
you," answered Mac; "but that doesn't prove your contention that all
beggars are frauds."
"Did you try to catch him?" interrupted Boggs.
"No, I was too hurt. I didn't mind the money or the clothes. What I
minded was the way in which I had squandered my personality. The only
thing I did do was to tell Captain Alec Williams of our precinct about
him.
"'Smooth-talking fellow?' Williams asked; 'had a scrap with his father?
Light-blue eyes and a little turned-up mustache? Yes, I know
him--slickest con' man in the business. We've got his mug in our
collection; show it to you some day, if you come;' and _he did_."
"And the great reader of human nature didn't go to London and build
arches and kill the fatted calf, after all," remarked Lonnegan, with a
wink at Boggs.
"No," retorted Boggs; "he could have suicided himself at home with less
trouble."
"Laugh on, you can't hurt me! I'm immune," said Woods. "I learned my
lesson that time, and I've graduated. I'm not practising any theories,
old or new; I'm doing missionary work instead, pointing out and running
down dead beats wherever I see them. No more men's night meetings for
me, no more widows with twins--no nothing. When I've got anything to
give I hand it to my aunt. It isn't a pleasant yarn--it's one on me
every time. I only told it to Mac so he could save his money."
"I'm saving it, Woods--save it every day; got a lot of small banks all
over the place that pay me compound interest. Now I'll tell _you_ a
yarn, and I want you fellows to listen and keep still till I get
through. If there's any doubts, Boggs, of your releasing your grasp on
your talking machine, I'll take your remarks now. All right, enough
said. Now hand me that tobacco, Lonnegan, and one of you fellows move
back so I can get up closer, where you can all hear. This story,
remember, Woods, is for you."
When Mac talks we listen. The story, whatever it may be, always comes
straight from his heart.
"One cold, snowy night--so cold, I remember, that I had to turn up my
coat collar and stuff my handkerchief inside to keep out the driving
sleet--I turned into Tenth Street out of Fifth Avenue on my way here. It
was after midnight--nearly one o'clock, in fact--and with the exception
of the policeman on our beat--and I had met him on the corner of the
Avenue--I had not passed a single soul since I had left the club. When I
got abreast of the long iron railing I caught sight of the figure of a
man standing under the gaslight. He wore a long ulster, almost to his
feet, and a slouch hat. At sound of my footsteps he shrank back out of
the light and crouched close to the steps of one of those old houses
this side of the long wall. His movements did not interest me; waiting
for somebody, I concluded, and doesn't want to be seen. Then the thought
crossed my mind that it was a bad night to be out in, and that perhaps
he might be suffering or drunk, a conclusion I at once abandoned when I
remembered how warmly he was clad and how quickly he had sprung into
the shadow of the steps when he heard my approach--all this, of course,
as I was walking toward him. That I was in any danger of being robbed
never crossed my mind. I never go armed, and never think of such things.
It's the fellow who sees first who escapes, and up to this time I had
watched his every move.
"When I got abreast of the steps he rose on his feet with a quick spring
and stood before me.
"'I'm hungry,' he said in a low, grating voice. 'Give me some money; I
don't mean to hurt you, but give me some money, quick!'
"I threw up my hands to defend myself and backed to the lamp-post so
that I could see where to hit him best, trying all the time to get a
view of his face, which he still kept concealed by the brim of his
slouch hat.
"'That's not the way to ask for it,' I answered. I would have struck him
then only for the tones of his voice, which seemed to carry a note of
suffering which left me irresolute.
"He was edging nearer and nearer, with the movement of a prize-fighter
trying to get in a telling blow, his long overcoat concealing the
movements of his legs as thoroughly as his slouch hat did the features
of his face. Two thoughts now flashed through my mind: Should I shout
for the policeman, who could not yet be out of hearing, or should I land
a blow under his chin and tumble him into the gutter.
"All this time he was muttering to himself: 'I'm crazy, I know, but I'm
starving; nobody listens to me. This man's got to listen to me or I'll
kill him and take it away from him.'
"I had gathered myself together and was about to let drive when he
grabbed me around the waist; we both slipped on the ice and fell to the
pavement, he underneath and I on top. I had my knee on his chest now,
and was trying to get my fingers into his shirt collar to choke the
breath out of him, when the buttons on his ulster gave way. I let go my
hold and sprang up. The man was naked to his shoes, except for a pair of
ragged cotton drawers!
"'Don't kill me,' he cried, 'don't kill me.' He was sobbing now, hat
off, his face in the snow, all the fight out of him.
"I know a hungry man when I see him; been famished myself, wolfish and
desperate once--and this man was hungry.
"'Put on your hat, button up your coat,' I said, 'and come with me.'"
"Bully for you, Mac; that's the kind of talk," cried Boggs. "Waltzed him
right down to the police station, didn't you?"
"No, I brought him to this very room, sat him down in that very chair
where you sit, Boggs," answered Mac, "and before this very fire. He
followed me like a homeless dog that you meet in the street, never
speaking, keeping a few steps behind; waited until I had unlocked the
street door, held it back for me to pass through; mounted the flight of
steps behind me--the light is out, as you know, at that hour, and I had
to scratch a match to find my way; remained motionless inside this room
until I had turned on the gas, when I found him standing by that screen
over there, a dazed expression on his face--like a man who had fallen
overboard and been picked up by a passing ship.
"He had been discharged from his last place because some drunken young
men had lost their money in a bar-room and had accused him of taking it.
For some weeks he had slept in a ten-cent lodging-house. Two days before
someone had stolen his clothes, all but his overcoat, which was over
him. Since that time he had been walking around half-naked.
"'Pull that coat off,' I said, 'and put on these,' and I handed him some
underwear and a suit of sketching clothes that hung in my closet. 'And
now drink this,' and I poured out a spoonful of whiskey--all he needed
on an empty stomach.
"When he was warm and dry--this did not take many minutes--we started
downstairs again and over to Sixth Avenue. Jerry's screens and blinds
were shut, but his lights were still burning; some fellows were having a
game of poker in the back room.
"'Got anything to eat, Jerry?' I asked.
"'Yes, Mr. MacWhirter; a cold ham and some hot chowder, if they ain't
turned off the steam. Pretty good chowder, too, this week. What'll it
be--for one or two?'
"'For one, Jerry.'
"I left him alone for a while sitting at one of Jerry's tables, his
hungry, eager eyes watching every movement of the old man, as a starved
cat watches the bowl of milk you are about to place before it.
"When he had devoured everything Jerry had given him, I moved to the
bar, poured out half a glass of whiskey from one of Jerry's bottles,
waited until he had swallowed it, and then sent him upstairs to sleep in
one of Jerry's beds."
"And that was the last you ever saw of him, of course," broke out Woods,
with a laugh.
"No; saw him every day for a month, till he got work. Saw him again
to-day at Pusch's. He waited on us. It was Carl."