UPON a certain June afternoon, toward the end of the month, had you looked into the cellar of Burns, Dolan & Co.'s plumbing-shop you would have found a certain young Irishman by the name of William Grogan eying mechanically, yet professionally, the glowing end of his soldering-iron. There was a fixity in his gaze, a lack-luster in his eye, familiar to all psychologists of dreams. The iron fell upon the drain-pipe scientifically, because William had reduced the building of dreams to a fine art. Having set his hands to their appointed task, they proceeded to go on automatically, leaving his spirit free to roam as it listed. He was like that Hindu Yogi who could set his body grinding corn, take his soul out and go visiting with it.
William belonged to the supreme order of rainbow-chasers. All horizons were merely circles of linked pots of gold. It follows naturally that he possessed a fleet of serviceable magic carpets; and he sailed with superb confidence toward his rainbow-ends. If this or that one vanished, presto! he promptly arched another. It cost nothing. He was twenty-four, and that is the high noon of the rainbow-chaser. Beyond this age one begins to look back at the wrecks.
In parenthesis, before I go any further, do you believe in magic carpets, in our times better known as day-dreams? I mean, do you believe in letting yourself drift on the wings of a pleasant fancy at odd moments during a dull workaday? If you know anything about the preciousness of these little intervals between actions, when you stand or sit motionless and gaze beyond the horizon into that future which presently or by and by is to roll over the rim of the world with fulfilment—why, then, come along. For this is a story of a rainbow, part of which was found.
There are two kinds of poets, professional and instinctive; and William was a poet by instinct. He could not express himself in words; his rhymes were visions. He was by trade a journeyman plumber; inclination as well as necessity had driven him into it. He found Romance in lead pipes, sheet tin, gas and water mains. To his mind there was nothing quite so marvelous as the amazing cobweb of pipes and mains that stretched across the great city a few feet under the surface. Who but a poet would have stripped in fancy the masonry from the cloud-touching monoliths, and viewed the naked pipings, twisting and elbowing, bending and rearing, more wonderful than any magic beanstalk—water and power and light!
Born in New York, thrown upon the streets at nine, at an age which poets (the professional kind) love to call tender, but which in reality is tough, William was, at twenty-four, a thoroughly metropolitan product. He was keen mentally, shrewd in his outlook, philosophical as all men are who in youth knew rude buffets, hunger, and cold. He was kindly, generous, quick-tempered, and quick-forgiving; and he was not above defending his "honor and territory," when occasion required, by the aid of his fists. An idea, entering his head, generally remained there; and when he offered his friendship his heart's blood went with it. He was Irish.
He talked in the argot of the streets; not because he knew no better, but because habit is not only insidious, but tentacled. It was only when he began to attend night-school that he was made to realize that he was not a purist; and, being ambitious, he strove to curb this passion for unorthodox English. On guard, he spoke sensibly and correctly; but if he became excited, embarrassed, or angry, he spoke in argot because simple English seemed to lack what he called punch. Strange lingo! All nations possess it, all nations that have vagabonds and thieves and happy-go-luckies; and William was a happy-go-lucky.
The carpet he was sailing on at this precise moment was the choicest Ispahan in his possession, his Ardebil: a home all his own some day, a garden to play in, a wife and a couple of kids.
Presently the smell of sizzling resin brought him back to port. That was the one fault with his ships of wool: they were always bringing him back to port before he really got anywhere. He thrust the iron into the cup of the gasolene furnace, and sighed. June was outside; and somewhere clouds were being mirrored in the streams winding along the flower-laden lips of green meadows, birds were singing, and gay little butterflies were fulfilling their brief destinies in the clover-fields. He knew that such things were going on, because he had read about them.
"Aw, and me here in this cellar!" he murmured.
He directed his gaze toward the basement window above him, toward the brilliant sunshine which broke in dazzling lances against the glass in the shop across the street. He was very fond of this window. It was the one bright spot in his rather dull and grimy existence in the employ of Burns, Dolan & Co., steam-fitting and fixtures.
Day after day, in rainy or sunshiny weather, he viewed the ever-changing panorama of boots and shoes: fat ones and slim ones, the smart and the trig, the run-down and the patched. He saw youth and age pass; confidence and hesitance, success and failure, joy and hopelessness. The step of each passer-by was to him a wonderful story whose plot was ever in embryo. Whence did they come, these myriads of feet, and whither did they go? The eternal stream which flowed past that little window! There was ebb and flood all through the day, and the real marvel of it was that each pair of shoes was going somewhere, had a destination and a destiny. Out of this pair or that William constructed the character of the owner; and he often builded better than he knew. He saw this strange world of his through the eyes of a Balzac; but he could only visualize, he could not transcribe his deductions or marshal them coherently. He knew that this man drank for the joy of it, that that one had something to forget; he knew when old man Hennessy had just lost his job and Heinie Stahl had found one. Here was a young woman going to meet her lover, here was one who carried a heartache; all in the step. And there was the broad, flat, shapeless shoe belonging to all sorts and conditions of women, from Tony Cipriano's thrifty wife, always bearing children, down to the wheezing, gin-soaked virago who scrubbed floors for her ten-cent pieces. Nor did he ever grow tired of the angular legs of childhood; these were the leaven of humor in a grim procession of tragedies. Wasn't that the baker's kid that just went by, hippity-hoppity, headed for the soda-fountain?
Out of this fantastical world of shod feet, one pair became of peculiar interest. They were feminine; and it was but natural that William should build him a romance. Their regularity of appearance first appealed to him; later he added little characteristics. She was young, sensible, and a wage-earner like himself. She was young, because there was always a spring to her step; sensible, because she wore low shoes in the summer and stout boots in the winter. There was no nonsense, no embroidered silks; old-fashioned lisle and wool were good enough for her. That she was a wage-earner there could be no doubt. At eight o'clock each morning, Saturday and Sunday excepted, she walked east with confident step. Never had he seen it drag or falter. It was a small and shapely foot, alluring, but not enticing. Perhaps the picture lasted three seconds; eastward at eight in the morning and westward at four in the afternoon, four or thereabouts. He pondered over these hours for some time before he fell upon the truth of the matter. She was one of the teachers in the public school near by. Saturdays minus and the gap of July and August could in no other way be explained.
For three years now these little feet had twinkled past the basement window. The odd part of this singular one-sided romance, William was never tempted to run up to see what the young woman looked like. He was canny for an Irishman. He rather preferred his dream. There were lots of homely young women with pretty feet. He hadn't many illusions left, this young philosopher of the soldering-iron, and he wanted to keep this one. Besides, what good would it do to "pipe her fiz"? If he spoke to her she might put him down as a masher and walk to school by another route. Let it be as it was, her world outside there in the sunshine and his in this smelly cellar. But, nevertheless, he often wished he knew a girl such as he imagined this one to be. One thing was certain: anywhere in the world, in any kind of leather, he would recognize those feet. And thereby hangs this tale.
I have forgotten to mention that William was an orphan. Once upon a time this condition had embarrassed him considerably; it had forced him to make his bed in empty halls and areaways, in stables, in dry-goods boxes; but as he prospered he outgrew this sense of isolation and this style of habitation. His father and mother had died within a few months of each other. The father, a sober, industrious Hercules, had been killed out in the railroad-yards where he had served as section-boss. The widow had received his last pay-envelope, and that had been sufficient to pay for his casket. Naturally, this casket had to have silver handles and a silver plate with his name and sundry encomiums engraved upon it lest in the final census he be overlooked. When the widow died the kindly neighbors saw to it that her casket was just as fine, which entailed a noisy valedictory of the Grogan household effects. Hence, on the night following her burial, William found himself under a counterpane of stars, lonely and distressed, but cheered occasionally by the thought that he would not have to go to school any more. William's inheritance was therefore but slightly in excess of what it had been upon his arrival: the clothes on his back and a growing boy's appetite.
To-day, however, all these difficulties were vague memories. I doubt if he ever looked back. He was of the breed who are always looking forward, hunting for stepping-stones. He drank a social glass of beer occasionally, smoked strong tobacco, weighed a hundred and ninety pounds, was as tough and sturdy as a coastal oak, and marched along the straight road, because if his hands were steeped in grime, his heart was clean.
Fifteen lonely metropolitan years, some of them fields of muck, others narrow and dangerous as tight-ropes, still others like the trail up the Matterhorn; and to come through unscathed, with a sound body and a sane mind! The truth is, William was born with a strong sense of humor, which, as a life-raft, has carried more human beings into safe harbors than the ten thousand decalogues of the ten thousand creeds. There was an ironic edge to this humor, however. Men who are born and bred in New York and begin life in the streets never quite lose the gamin's sardonical outlook.
I wish I could truthfully state that William was handsome. The clay was rich and beautiful, but the finishing touches would have barred him from a niche correspondingly as prominent as that given the Apollo in the Vatican. In repose his countenance was rugged; animated, it became merry and smile-provoking. There was a generous sprinkling of paprika on his pug-nose and on the adjacent sides of his cheeks; and his hair was so red that, given the proper foreground and perspective, he might easily have been mistaken for a Turner sunset. Perhaps the Master, having given William a perfect body, considered it unwise (for William's welfare) to add a perfect face. Even then, in one particular, he had relented. When you looked into William's eyes, you forgot the red hair and freckles. These eyes were as blue as Ionian seas, kindly and mirthful, and there was something electric in them, something which mysteriously flashed blue fires like the sea-water in the famed Blue Grotto of Capri; the eyes of a fighter who could also lose himself in fine dreams.
He read a good deal, borrowing his books from the great public library; and his head was filled with an odd jumble of classics and trash, truth and untruth; and his faith in what he read was boundless. But humanity could not fool him.
Out of this reading he wove a second magic carpet, nearly as attractive as his Ardebil. He longed to travel, to see Europe, Africa, Asia, all those queer places he had read about. He yearned for trains, steamships, donkeys, rickshaws, camels and elephants, jungles and snow-caps, deserts and South Sea islands. He wanted to shake down cocoanuts by hand, pick oranges and bananas; he wanted a parrot that could talk like Long John Silver's—"Pieces of eight! Pieces of eight!"
"A fat chance!" he always murmured upon dispersing these tantalizing visions. "A home-run in the last half of the ninth inning!" Hadn't it taken him six years to save up eight hundred dollars? And how far would that carry him? About as far as the Hoboken docks.
Four o'clock! She'd be dancing by in a moment or two. Next week she would be going away on her vacation. He set the drain-pipe in the corner and put out the furnace. He pressed some "scrap" into his corn-cob pipe and waited. There she was! One, two, three and she was gone. Tan shoes and stockings and a bit of blue skirt. It was all over in three seconds, like one of those moving-pictures.
"H-e-y, Bill!" some one called, from up-stairs.
"Ye-ah. What's wanted?"
"Letter for you. Shall I throw it down?"
"I'll be up."
A letter? Who could be writing to him? He never had any bills; he paid as he went along. He rammed his unlighted pipe into his hip pocket and mounted the stairs. The young girl who acted as bookkeeper, stenographer, and cashier thrust the letter into his hand.
"Oh, you William!" she cried. "Some girl we don't know anything about."
"Aw!" He studied the envelope doubtfully. "Hargreave, Bell & Davis, attorneys and counselors at law. Say, Susie, have I been buying a sewing-machine, or have I fallen for some nifty book-agent's gab? I don't know any lawyers."
"Open it and see," advised Susie.
The letter was coldly brief. William Grogan was requested to call upon "the undersigned at his earliest convenience." Nothing more than that. William read it over four or five times, and it grew colder and colder with each reading. Lawyers, and after him.
"Where's Burns?" he demanded.
"In the office." Susie returned to her little grilled desk.
William walked down to the rear end of the shop and rapped on the office door. Ordinarily he would have entered without formality.
"Say, Mr. Burns, what kind of bunk is this?" He laid the letter upon his employer's desk.
"Humph!" said Burns, who was practically Dolan & Co. also. "What have you been doing?"
"Who, me? Nothing. They haven't lifted me out of the cradle yet."
"Got any relatives?"
William scratched his head and blinked ruminatively. "Nobody but an uncle in St. Louis, my mother's brother; an old crab, who got sore because mother didn't marry the flannel-mouth he'd picked out for her. Never saw him nor heard from him."
"Well, you take to-morrow morning off and look into it. If there is any money, Bill, you bring it to me. There's nothing to these lawyers. You bring it to me."
"Sure, Mr. Burns. But it's a pipe there's no dough. Maybe they expect me to settle for the funeral; that 'd be my luck."
"Maybe it's a breach-of-promise suit."
"Aw, I couldn't get into the Old Ladies' Home without a jimmy."
"Well, go and see the sharps, and then come to me. Take your mother's marriage certificate along, while you're about it. You got it?"
"Ye-ah. I was only nine when she died, but she was some mother."
"They all are, son, they all are. Haven't put your name on any paper?"
"Haven't had a pen in my hand since I quit night-school last winter."
"You never can tell," said Burns, gravely. "But if you've got tied up any way, I'll see what I can do. See you to-morrow." Burns chuckled as William went out. It was a great world.
William, in a distinctly restless frame of mind, left the shop and walked homeward. He was filled with foreboding. Some lawyers wanted to see him, and cold-blooded ones, too, if letters counted. Burns always said that if you went to court for anything, the lawyers got it. What had he done, anyhow? He combed his near-past thoroughly; but aside from two or three pinochle games over at the engine-house (two bits the corner), his record was as spotless and shiny as new sheet-tin. Oh, well, why borrow trouble? They couldn't get blood out of a turnip, and besides, Burns would see to it that he got a square deal.
Whenever he was worried or in the doldrums, William hied him forth to the near-by moving-picture theater. For an hour and a half he could lose himself completely. He could cast off trouble in the lobby, even if that little old man of the sea jumped on his back again as he went out. It was something to have cheated trouble out of an hour and a half.
Eight o'clock that night found him in his accustomed seat. With his toil-bitten hand propping his chin, he gazed in rapt wonder at a caravan of camels as they came superciliously down the sand-hills of the Libyan desert. Instantly the scene changed. He saw the bewildering peoples of the bazaars. Turbans and tarbooshes, flowing robes and sandaled feet, fruit-sellers and water-carriers, tourists in spotless white linen and sun-helmets; and presently through this swarm came the heroine on a scraggy little donkey. The villain pointed her out to his minions, and stealthily they pursued her until she was safe and happy in her lover's arms.
William wasn't much interested in the exploits of this heroine, whose salary was large enough to support a South American republic; nor was he certain that the Libyan desert and the bazaars were not located south-by-east from Los Angeles. But the camels were real; aye, real enough to whisk him away on one of his carpets from Bagdad, overseas, to that wonderful world he was never to see, much as the Irish soul of him hungered for it.
During the short intermission he idly studied the people about him. At his left sat a pretty young woman, in cool but sensible summer clothes. He spoke to her.
"It's a great business."
"Yes, it is," she replied, fingering the single-sheet program.
"A dime, and you can go anywhere in the world. I've always wanted to see the Orient."
He said nothing more, and gave his attention to the screen where the announcements of coming features were being projected. And because he stopped where he did he aroused a mild curiosity in his neighbor. She recognized that here was no masher type, a phase of the moving-picture theater that had caused her annoyance more than once. He was just a comfortable, every-day sort of young man, who had had a thought and had expressed it aloud to her merely because she happened to be sitting next to him.
A few minutes later she heard him laugh uproariously at the antics of a slap-stick comedian. She laughed, too, not so loudly, perhaps, but quite as heartily and humanly as this unknown red-headed young man. When the comedy was over he tipped back the seats for her, and presently she lost sight of him in the crowd. She forgot all about him, even as William forgot all about her.
The next morning when he entered the outer office of Hargreave, Bell & Davis, a small boy, not at all impressed by the visitor's ready-made tie and celluloid collar, jumped up and confronted him, coldly and alertly.
"Whadjuh want?" he demanded.
"Whadjuh got?" countered William, fiercely.
"Bertie!" called the girl at the typewriter, warningly.
"Oh, so his name is Bertie, huh? Well, Bertie, I eat 'em alive when they call 'em that. I want to see your boss."
"Nothin' leakin' in these offices," flung back the boy, observing William's hands and sniffing the faint odor of gasolene.
"My name is Grogan," said William, giving the honors to the boy because he was in a hurry.
"Oh! Middle door; Mr. Bell," said the girl, her eyes full of sudden interest.
The boy shuffled to the door and opened it. "Mister Grogan," he announced, with fine irony.
"Show him in at once."
As he was passing through the doorway, William turned and lightly blew a kiss toward the boy, who, thorough sportsman that he was, recognized this red-head as a brother.
"Mr. Grogan?"
"Yes."
"Be seated." Mr. Bell was a middle-aged man. "You had an uncle in St. Louis?"
"Ye-ah; Michael Regan."
The lawyer nodded. "Your mother's name?"
"Amelia. Michael was her brother."
"Have you absolute legal proof that you are Amelia Regan's son?"
"Sure!" William produced the marriage certificate, pleased that Burns had suggested bringing it.
Mr. Bell adjusted his glasses. "This is Amelia Regan's certificate of marriage, but that doesn't prove you're her son, Mr. Grogan."
"Turn it over," advised William, wetting his lips and stretching his neck out of his collar, which had grown suddenly tight.
"Ah!"
On the reverse side of the certificate was the date of William's arrival into this mortal coil, briefly witnessed by the doctor, the parish priest, the father, and two neighbors.
"That's legal enough for anybody. We knew all about you, Mr. Grogan, but the legal end of it had to be satisfied. You're the man we're after."
"Say, what am I up against?" asked William, huskily.
"Your uncle died a month gone. He left his lumber business to his partner, but all his ready cash he willed to you unconditionally. Through us he kept track of you, your work, and your habits. I am, therefore, empowered to turn over to you the sum of twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-one cents. And I have the certified check in my safe at this very moment." Mr. Bell beamed upon his client, awaiting the outburst of joy.
But no outburst came. William's mouth opened and his derby hat slipped from his hands and wabbled about on the floor at his feet.
The dinosaurus has been dead for some time; but if one had poked its head through the window at that moment and yammered at William, he wouldn't have been surprised; he would have accepted its advent as a part of the nightmare.
ALL the years of unremitting toil came back to him in panoramic fragments. He had always managed to clothe and feed himself, with a little left over for amusements. At half past six in the morning, summer and winter and spring, he was up and off for the day's work (with that cheerful and optimistic spirit which has been at once millstones and eagle wings to the Irish). … A fortune! Was he really awake? Wait a moment. He stared at the slate-colored doves that were sailing over and about the church spires near by, at the broad silver highway by which the great ships went down to the sea, at the blue mists of morning still hanging against the Jersey heights. Up from the street, deep down below, came the dull thunder of the Elevated. There was not the least doubt of it; he was wide awake; he could see and he could hear. Twenty-eight thousand seven hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-one cents!
"Say, would you just as soon say that all over again—slow?" he asked in a voice which he knew was his, because he could feel it coming out of his throat; beyond that it was wholly unrecognizable.
Mr. Bell laughed happily as he reached for William's hat and placed it upon the dazed young man's knees. He was thoroughly enjoying this scene; he wasn't a bad man at heart; he was only a lawyer. When he put the magical slip of paper into William's trembling hand his joy was complete. He had imagination; he knew what was going on in William's head.
"Don't pinch me, I might wake up. … And thirty-one cents!"
"What are you going to do with it?" asked Mr. Bell, curiously.
William suddenly recalled Mr. Burns's warning relative to lawyers.
"Well, I don't know," he said, doubtfully. "I suppose I'm liable to raise hell with this thirty-one cents. The Great White Way, huh? Why, I can make the Subway blasts sound like bursting paper bags. Nix on the glow-worm, Lena! This dough is going to be old-age stuff, believe me. No over-the-hills for William Grogan. Every dollar is worth exactly one hundred and four cents. I've got eight hundred in the bank, and I know."
"That's the proper spirit. If you want any help regarding investments, come to me," said Mr. Bell. He was having a fine time; he felt that glowing satisfaction which is always warming up the hearts of good fairies.
"What's this cost me?"
"Nothing. All the fees have been paid."
"From the dollar-sign, then, to and including the thirty-one cents is mine?"
"Absolutely. And I wish you good luck with it. At four per cent. it will yield you something like eleven hundred the year."
"Some little old world!" William admitted as he fingered the check, turned it about and stared at it with ever-increasing wonder. "And yesterday I was wondering how I could hit the high places at Coney without going broke for the rest of the week!" He laughed weakly.
"Have a cigar?"
"Well, say!"
It was the first perfecto William had ever stuck between his teeth. His extravagance in this direction consisted of "three for a quarter" every Sunday.
He went down the elevator expecting every moment to "roll out of bed." He became obsessed with the idea that he was sleep-walking. He pinched himself literally and thumped his chest, which seemed filled with champagne bubbles. Oh, he was awake; and he was standing under the far-off end of a rainbow and the pot of gold lay at his feet! Out in the street he walked on silver flagstones, and the air he breathed was evaporated wine and honey. He was rich; no more worry, no more drain-pipes, bath-tubs, kitchen sinks. No more pothering over sums on the back of his pay-envelope, Saturday nights: so much for board and extra meals at noon, so much for washing, so much to lay away in the bank; no more that vain endeavor to stretch a short, limp five-dollar note over seven long days—spending-money. He was rich.
A wild desire seized him to go forth and spend some of this fortune, just to prove to himself that it was true. But he buttoned his coat tightly over the check and hurried for the Subway. William was patently Irish, but there must have been a strain of Scotch blood in him somewhere.
"Well?" inquired Burns, as William burst into the office an hour later. "Was it a breach-of-promise suit?"
"Ye-ah. But we settled it out of court, and here's the alimony." William flourished the check. "Say, I renig. That uncle of mine was no crab; he was pure goldfish."
"Well, I'm dinged! Nearly thirty thousand, huh? Fine work, son, fine work. And now I'm going to tell you the secret. I knew all about it. The lawyers were here pumping me, and you bet I told 'em you were a little angel. I didn't say anything, because I wanted you to get all the fun out of it. And now what are you going to do with it?"
"I was thinking maybe I could buy an interest in the firm here."
Burns scrubbed his chin. "It's a thriving shop, Bill. I wouldn't think of selling any of my interest."
"I know it's a good business. That's why I wanted to get inside," said William, regretfully.
"Say, wait a minute. Mrs. Dolan has a twenty-thousand-dollar interest. It pays her between six and seven per cent. Last winter she talked a good deal about wanting to pull out and go back to her folks in Ohio. Suppose I make a stab and see if she's of the same idea now? You come up to the house to-night and I'll let you know how matters stand. I'd like to have a young hustler about." Burns reached for his hat. "I'll take you over to the Corn Exchange and identify you."
"The Lincoln 'll do that. I got eight hundred up there."
"Keep it there and let 'er grow. Whenever you get a few dollars you don't feel like spending, slap 'em into the Lincoln. That 'll be the real rainy-day cash, son. When a man has two bank accounts he's got two good crutches."
"You're the doctor."
"Come along. If we can bring Mrs. Dolan around, you can buy out her interest, and I'll put you over the contract work. With your increased salary and your income you'll have something like four thousand a year."
"Me and John D., huh? Honest, Mr. Burns, my head feels like my foot was asleep."
"I understand. But you're awake." Burns slapped William soundly on the back. "Feel that? Come on. Better keep a couple of hundred in your pocket when you leave the bank. Bad luck to draw against an account the minute you open it."
So, with two hundred and fifty-six dollars and thirty-one cents in his pocket, William, upon being left to his own devices, wandered over into Broadway and took an up-town car. He got off at Forty-second Street, which he knew to be the city axis—that is, if you had money.
What should he do by way of celebrating this momentous event? It certainly had to be celebrated. A glass of beer and a cigar? He laughed. He could see William Grogan, his elbow crooked on the polished bar of yonder great hotel, drinking beer and confiding to the blasé bartender that he had just deposited a fortune in the Corn Exchange and was aching to find some congenial soul to help him to spend it. He laughed, blew a kiss toward the hotel, and went on.
Nevertheless, he celebrated. A few doors south from the hotel he ran afoul a pipe-shop. He had always wanted a real meerschaum pipe; a lump of clay as big as your fist, with flowing mermaids emerging at various angles. The pipe was worth seven dollars in money and not a picayune in utility. Human teeth weren't grown that could stand the drag of that pipe. I know; I have seen it. I suppose it was not the pipe really; the fun lay in the fact that something he had always coveted and could not afford was now his for the mere physical effort of paying out the money. I believe the feel of that pipe in his pocket convinced him as much as anything that he was truly awake.
Pipe in pocket and peace in heart, he stepped forth into the sunshine again. Well, here was little old Broadway, famed in story-books and theater magazines and Sunday newspapers, the home of provincial millionaires and chorus-girls, Fort Lobster and Fort Champagne and Fort Tip. William had the native New-Yorker's tolerant contempt for the thoroughfare. He called it the "collar on the beer," the rat-trap for "boobs" and "hicks" and "come-ons," the coal-chute for papa's money. No doubt his prejudice had been sown and nurtured by the Sunday newspapers. Dutifully each Sunday they recorded the Broadway exploits of this torn-fool or that. The Great White Way: waste, extravagance, wild-oats, cold-blood and old-blood and lack-mercy. On the other hand, he admired the physical beauty of it; at night he knew it had no counterpart in all the wide world.
"Some old highway," he murmured, aloud, "but it 'll never dig a nickel out of my jeans."
He wandered on, peering into this window and that, full of lively interest in everything he saw. By and by he summoned a carpet. It carried his spirit in one direction, while his feet led him in another, toward his destiny. Without realizing it, he turned off Broadway and crossed over to Fifth Avenue. Here the fashionable curio-shops attracted him. There were art-galleries, too, and windows full of strange-looking carpets and rugs. Presently he paused before a window which had an art-gallery air, but wasn't. Printers' ink instead of oil ruled. There were great ships going down to sea, tropical isles, the Nile country, India, China, Japan; Arabs, camels, elephants, rickshaws, and bewildering temples. He looked up at the sign overhead.
"Well, what do you know about that?" he murmured. "Little ol' Thomas Cook and Willie Grogan! Well, say!"
But he did not move on. With one hand propping an elbow and the other hand stroking his chin, he continued to stare at the brilliant lithographs and strange coins and paper money. Suddenly he knew what it was he wanted. He drew out his bank-book and eyed the deposit: $28,500.
"Sure, Mike!"
He chuckled and stepped into the office of Thos. Cook & Son, who are agents for Bagdad carpets. A dozen persons were scattered about, interviewing clerks. There was one idle clerk, and boldly William approached him. He hadn't the least idea where he was going, but he knew he was going somewhere, that he was going to tie himself up in such a manner as to prevent caution from overcoming this marvelously likable impulse. All his life he had held himself on the leash, and now bang! went the leather. He swallowed two or three times; his throat was still dry from the fever he had acquired at the law offices of Hargreave, Bell & Davis. The clerk smiled reassuringly.
"Anything I can do for you, sir?"
"I want to take a trip around the world," said William. The words went down-hill rapidly, due to his inability to project them in a level tone.
If the clerk had turned upon him scornfully with a "Beat it, bo, while the beating's good!" William would have faded from the scene like one of those double-exposures which still mystified him at the movies. But the clerk continued to smile, and said, affably, "This is the right place for that."
Eventually, William decided upon the ship Ajax. The boat left harbor on August 15th for a six months' cruise of the world, landing at San Francisco some time along in February. The fare included all travel on land and water. It offered the tail-end of summer in Italy and the fall and winter in the Orient.
"That's the dope for me," declared William, calming himself. "But say, I haven't got the cash with me. How'll I fix it?"
"Make a deposit of one hundred," said the clerk, still smiling. William certainly did not look like a tour of the world, but this clerk had seen many a celluloid collar, and they were deceiving things.
The joy of taking a roll of money out of your pocket, money that was absolutely and wholly yours, money that did not legally belong to creditors, honest money! To pay out one hundred dollars for the first time in your life! To consummate a bargain that was to carry you to the far ends of the world, just by the mere wave of your hand! Rainbows were real, after all.
As the clerk accepted the notes, William observed the difference between his own and the other's finger-nails. He was thunderstruck! Certainly he could not go traveling with finger-nails like these. True, he scrubbed them twice a day, but the grime had penetrated beyond the reach of ordinary soap and water and bristles. He put the receipt for his deposit in his wallet, and departed, chin out, chest high. He had done it; no side-stepping now; he had to go or forfeit his hundred, and that he would never do, not if he had to be wheeled in an invalid's chair to the pier. And yesterday he'd been wondering if he could afford to go to Coney for the Sunday! Wasn't he the gay little bird!
But his fingers began to worry him seriously. Something must be done. Hitherto he had held in contempt manicured fingers; but Uncle Michael's legacy had switched his outlook on to the main trunk, among the thunderbolts.
There were manicurists in all the hotel barber-shops, so he resolutely directed his steps to a famed Broadway caravansary and sought the basement. In a corridor off the barber-shop he saw a row of little tables and at each table sat a pretty girl. He could see that most of them knew it; and all of them were chewing gum. That was nothing. So far as William knew, all women chewed gum. He was not above a cud himself once in a while. He entered the corridor and sat down at a table, assuming a nonchalance he did not feel, for on general principles William laid his course in wide circles where women were concerned. He was less bashful than suspicious. However, being a New-Yorker born, nothing less than the inside of a church could abash him. The girl laid aside her magazine and eyed him haughtily.
"Here's a real job," he said, spreading out his formidable hands.
The girl noted his fine eyes, and the ice around her lips crackled a little. She took a hand and studied it with frank doubtfulness. Then she looked at the clock. It was quarter past eleven. "I don't know," she said. "I'm off at five."
"Some job, huh? Well, I never came into these wax-works before."
"Thought not. I've a friend who might do it in less time."
"What's her name and address?"
"It's a he-friend. He works out at Bronx; manicures the elephants in the spring."
"Zowie! Some smoke to that one, believe me! What league are you pitching for? The truth is, duchess, I'm a journeyman plumber by birth, and an uncle of mine has just left me a million silver washers. I'm about to enter the gay life, and I want to do it with pink nails."
"Going to the funeral?" It was all in a day's work: Isobel de Montclair for the swells and fresh guys and Nellie Casey for the stevedores.
"Nope. The funeral has went. Now, laying aside the hook, can you do the job with these hams, Virginia style?"
"If it was anybody but you, Aloysius, I might say nay. But you'll have to buy me a new set of tools."
"You're on."
The girl stuck her gum under the marble top of the little table and fell to work. It was a job, but she knew her business. William gave her half a dollar, the first sizable tip he had ever laid down. The girl looked at the coin, then up at William, puzzled. The red hair, the freckles, and the celluloid collar did not dovetail with such prodigality.
"On the level, have you been left some money?"
"Honest as the day is long. Not enough to buy lobsters every night, but enough for my uses. And some day, according to the magazine there, I'm coming back from a long voyage and marry you."
"On your way, Aloysius! I don't look like a girl who would marry for money, do I?"
"If I wasn't afraid the dye 'd leak through this bean of mine, I'd go and have it dyed purple. Say, what's all this noise about red hair, anyhow?"
"Don't ask me. Personally I ain't got anything against it. But I never saw a man with red hair that wasn't always looking for trouble and finding it."
"It's tough to be Irish."
"Irish? Why, I wouldn't have believed it! Well, good luck, and keep away from the bright lights."
"The same to you, only more so;" and William left the shop.
"Hey, Nellie, who's the chrysanthemum?"
"Was that Reginald?"
The object of these kindly attentions held up the half-dollar.
"Did he forget his change?"
"What's his home town—Troy?"
"Aw, you girls make me weary! You can't tell a real man from a tailor's dummy, take it from me, free of charge." Nellie took her gum from under the table. "He may have red hair, but he beats Mike the baggage-man for shoulders."
"Mebbe that's what he is, a trunk-hop."
The manageress in charge intervened. "You girls lay off that kidding."
From then on it became a series of sudden chuckles with William. These broke out as he walked the streets, as he ate his beefsteak lunch, as he idled an hour at a movie, as, later, he took the tube. Out of a perfectly sober countenance they rumbled, stirred into life, now at the sight of his hands, now at the feel of the crisp receipt in his inside pocket. For all that he chuckled over them, his hands were a source of real embarrassment. He was afraid to put them in his pockets, to touch the evening papers, to hang on the Subway strap. He was also certain that everybody noticed the discrepancy between his nails and his general outfit.
"A celluloid collar and ten pink nails! What do you know about that, Isobel? If I went over to the engine-house to-night, the boys 'd drop dead."
Of course he told his landlady all about his marvelous windfall, that he was going on a trip around the world, and all that. She cackled over him like a hen that discovers a pheasant in her brood.
"Willie Grogan, an' you stand there tellin' th' likes o' that t' me!"
"Nix, mother, I'm giving it to you straight. Look at this!" He showed her his bank-book. The Widow Hanlon gasped when she saw those noble five figures.
"God bless me, it's true! 'Tis glad I am for your luck, boy. My, an' you'll be wearin' dress-suits an' patent-lither an' passin' your ol' friends on th' street. Well, you were always a good boy. You'll not be leavin'?"
"Not on your tin-type! This 'll be my hangout for a long time to come. But, gee! I sure forgot about the dress-suit stuff. I'll see to that to-morrow. Anyhow, this rubber collar is headed for the ash-can. I never thought, with this topknot of mine, that I might set fire to it—eh, mother? And mum's the word to the rest of the bunch. I'm hungry and don't want to answer questions. Whadjuh got for supper?"
"Corn' beef an' cabbige."
"Lead me to it!"
The whole house reeked with the odor of boiled cabbage; but William was used to it. He knew that he was never going to play the snob; he was going through life simple and unchanged by his good fortune; he was never going to forget the old order of things, the plain, homely food, the plain, homely people who shared it with him. I'll wager he found more relish in his corned beef and cabbage that night than ever Lucullus found in his nightingales' tongues.
After supper he went to the home of his employer. Mrs. Dolan was ready to sell; the transfer could be made on the morrow. This news delighted William. But he did not tell Burns about his visit to Cook's. He thought it wiser to say nothing until after the transfer was drawn up and signed. Somewhere around eleven he started for home afoot. His boarding-house was only a mile away, and walking was always good on summer nights.
Along his route on one of the streets which cut Broadway, there was a restaurant famed for its quiet and remoteness from the town's glitter. William knew something about it. He had passed it dozens of times. Other men's wives and other wives' husbands patronized this restaurant, so it was said.
William was perhaps within ten feet of the restaurant when he paused. Through the painted screened windows came the strange surging melodies of a Magyar rhapsody. William loved music; even the thin pinkapank of the hurdy-gurdies held charm for him. As he listened to this wild gipsy music it seemed as though his senses had been gathered up and swept into the gipsy hills themselves, through the forests on the forewings of a storm, to be caught by the tempest itself and swirled, buffeted, smothered, finally to be let down gently into the succeeding calm; all as elusive as the shadows which tumble over the pebbled floor of a brook.
"Gee! but that was great!" he murmured, leaning against the lamp-post. He hoped there might be more of it.
Suddenly the upper door opened and a young woman came hurriedly down the steps. The moment she reached the sidewalk she started off at a brisk run. Her hat obscured her features. William got a whiff of lavender as she whisked by. Had hubby turned up? he wondered, cynically.
As a rule William always walked on. He never meddled with an affair he knew nothing about, being a New-Yorker. To-night, however, he was in a mischievous mood. He'd see what the game was.
A man in evening dress came out, looked east and west, and ran down to the sidewalk. He did not pursue the young woman, for the very reason that William stood in his way.
"Nothing doing, bo," he said, quietly. "When a young lady hits into the bleachers like that, she's off for the home-plate."
"Who the devil are you? Get out of my way."
"Beat it. I don't like your accent. Handsome-Is."
"Will you stand aside? Or, is this a hold-up?"
"Ye-ah, it's a kind of a hold-up. But what are you doing off your beat? What's the matter with old Forty-second Street stuff? Ain't they young enough?"
"Why, damn your impudence. …"
"Sir Hurlbert, unsay them cruel woids." Suddenly the banter left William's voice. "Listen to me. That young girl was running away from you; I don't need any inside information to get that. It's a hunch. Now, there's just two things on the card. Either you sashay back to your bucket of suds or you take the flat of my lily-white on your kazoozle. Are you wise?"
Had the stranger spoken gruffly that the young woman under discussion was his wife, William would have side-stepped the issue and gone on. But the hesitance, the indecision, were enough to convince William that this was an old story.
"Well, bo?"