The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (107 page)

Pennoyer, coming home one morning with two gigantic cakes to accompany the coffee at the breakfast in the den, saw a young man bounce from a horse car. He gave a shout. “Hello, there, Billie! Hello!”

“Hello, Penny!” said Hawker. “What are you doing out so early?” It was somewhat after nine o’clock.

“Out to get breakfast,” said Pennoyer, waving the cakes. “Have a good time, old man?”

“Great.”

“Do much work?”

“No. Not so much. How are all the people?”

“Oh, pretty good. Come in and see us eat breakfast,” said Pennoyer, throwing open the door of the den. Wrinkles, in his shirt, was making coffee. Grief sat in a chair trying to loosen the grasp of sleep. “Why, Billie Hawker, b’ginger!” they cried.

“How’s the wolf, boys? At the door yet?”

“‘At the door yet?’ He’s halfway up the back stairs, and coming fast. He and the landlord will be here to-morrow. ‘Mr. Landlord, allow me to present Mr. F. Wolf, of Hunger, N. J. Mr. Wolf — Mr. Landlord.’”

“Bad as that?” said Hawker.

“You bet it is! Easy Street is somewhere in heaven, for all we know. Have some breakfast? — coffee and cake, I mean.”

“No, thanks, boys. Had breakfast.”

Wrinkles added to the shirt, Grief aroused himself, and Pennoyer brought the coffee. Cheerfully throwing some drawings from the table to the floor, they thus made room for the breakfast, and grouped themselves with beaming smiles at the board.

“Well, Billie, come back to the old gang again, eh? How did the country seem? Do much work?”

“Not very much. A few things. How’s everybody?”

“Splutter was in last night. Looking out of sight. Seemed glad to hear that you were coming back soon.”

“Did she? Penny, did anybody call wanting me to do a ten-thousand-dollar portrait for them?”

“No. That frame-maker, though, was here with a bill. I told him — —”

Afterward Hawker crossed the corridor and threw open the door of his own large studio. The great skylight, far above his head, shed its clear rays upon a scene which appeared to indicate that some one had very recently ceased work here and started for the country. A distant closet door was open, and the interior showed the effects of a sudden pillage.

There was an unfinished “Girl in Apple Orchard” upon the tall Dutch easel, and sketches and studies were thick upon the floor. Hawker took a pipe and filled it from his friend the tan and gold jar. He cast himself into a chair and, taking an envelope from his pocket, emptied two violets from it to the palm of his hand and stared long at them. Upon the walls of the studio various labours of his life, in heavy gilt frames, contemplated him and the violets.

At last Pennoyer burst impetuously in upon him. “Hi, Billie! come over and —— What’s the matter?”

Hawker had hastily placed the violets in the envelope and hurried it to his pocket. “Nothing,” he answered.

“Why, I thought—” said Pennoyer, “I thought you looked rather rattled. Didn’t you have — I thought I saw something in your hand.”

“Nothing, I tell you!” cried Hawker.

“Er — oh, I beg your pardon,” said Pennoyer. “Why, I was going to tell you that Splutter is over in our place, and she wants to see you.”

“Wants to see me? What for?” demanded Hawker. “Why don’t she come over here, then?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” replied Pennoyer. “She sent me to call you.”

“Well, do you think I’m going to —— Oh, well, I suppose she wants to be unpleasant, and knows she loses a certain mental position if she comes over here, but if she meets me in your place she can be as infernally disagreeable as she —— That’s it, I’ll bet.”

When they entered the den Florinda was gazing from the window. Her back was toward the door.

At last she turned to them, holding herself very straight. “Well, Billie Hawker,” she said grimly, “you don’t seem very glad to see a fellow.”

“Why, heavens, did you think I was going to turn somersaults in the air?”

“Well, you didn’t come out when you heard me pass your door,” said Florinda, with gloomy resentment.

Hawker appeared to be ruffled and vexed. “Oh, great Scott!” he said, making a gesture of despair.

Florinda returned to the window. In the ensuing conversation she took no part, save when there was an opportunity to harry some speech of Hawker’s, which she did in short contemptuous sentences. Hawker made no reply save to glare in her direction. At last he said, “Well, I must go over and do some work.” Florinda did not turn from the window. “Well, so-long, boys,” said Hawker, “I’ll see you later.”

As the door slammed Pennoyer apologetically said, “Billie is a trifle off his feed this morning.”

“What about?” asked Grief.

“I don’t know; but when I went to call him he was sitting deep in his chair staring at some — —” He looked at Florinda and became silent.

“Staring at what?” asked Florinda, turning then from the window.

Pennoyer seemed embarrassed. “Why, I don’t know — nothing, I guess — I couldn’t see very well. I was only fooling.”

Florinda scanned his face suspiciously. “Staring at what?” she demanded imperatively.

“Nothing, I tell you!” shouted Pennoyer.

Florinda looked at him, and wavered and debated. Presently she said, softly: “Ah, go on, Penny. Tell me.”

“It wasn’t anything at all, I say!” cried Pennoyer stoutly. “I was only giving you a jolly. Sit down, Splutter, and hit a cigarette.”

She obeyed, but she continued to cast the dubious eye at Pennoyer. Once she said to him privately: “Go on, Penny, tell me. I know it was something from the way you are acting.”

“Oh, let up, Splutter, for heaven’s sake!”

“Tell me,” beseeched Florinda.

“No.”

“Tell me.”

“No.”

“Pl-e-a-se tell me.”

“No.”

“Oh, go on.”

“No.”

“Ah, what makes you so mean, Penny? You know I’d tell you, if it was the other way about.”

“But it’s none of my business, Splutter. I can’t tell you something which is Billie Hawker’s private affair. If I did I would be a chump.”

“But I’ll never say you told me. Go on.”

“No.”

“Pl-e-a-se tell me.”

“No.”

When Florinda had gone, Grief said, “Well, what was it?” Wrinkles looked curiously from his drawing-board.

Pennoyer lit his pipe and held it at the side of his mouth in the manner of a deliberate man. At last he said, “It was two violets.”

“You don’t say!” ejaculated Wrinkles.

“Well, I’m hanged!” cried Grief. “Holding them in his hand and moping over them, eh?”

“Yes,” responded Pennoyer. “Rather that way.”

“Well, I’m hanged!” said both Grief and Wrinkles. They grinned in a pleased, urchin-like manner. “Say, who do you suppose she is? Somebody he met this summer, no doubt. Would you ever think old Billie would get into that sort of a thing? Well, I’ll be gol-durned!”

Ultimately Wrinkles said, “Well, it’s his own business.” This was spoken in a tone of duty.

“Of course it’s his own business,” retorted Grief. “But who would ever think — —” Again they grinned.

When Hawker entered the den some minutes later he might have noticed something unusual in the general demeanour. “Say, Grief, will you loan me your —— What’s up?” he asked.

For answer they grinned at each other, and then grinned at him.

“You look like a lot of Chessy cats,” he told them.

They grinned on.

Apparently feeling unable to deal with these phenomena, he went at last to the door. “Well, this is a fine exhibition,” he said, standing with his hand on the knob and regarding them. “Won election bets? Some good old auntie just died? Found something new to pawn? No? Well, I can’t stand this. You resemble those fish they discover at deep sea. Good-bye!”

As he opened the door they cried out: “Hold on, Billie! Billie, look here! Say, who is she?”

“What?”

“Who is she?”

“Who is who?”

They laughed and nodded. “Why, you know. She. Don’t you understand? She.”

“You talk like a lot of crazy men,” said Hawker. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Oh, you don’t, eh? You don’t? Oh, no! How about those violets you were moping over this morning? Eh, old man! Oh, no, you don’t know what we mean! Oh, no! How about those violets, eh? How about ‘em?”

Hawker, with flushed and wrathful face, looked at Pennoyer. “Penny — —” But Grief and Wrinkles roared an interruption. “Oh, ho, Mr. Hawker! so it’s true, is it? It’s true. You are a nice bird, you are. Well, you old rascal! Durn your picture!”

Hawker, menacing them once with his eyes, went away. They sat cackling.

At noon, when he met Wrinkles in the corridor, he said: “Hey, Wrinkles, come here for a minute, will you? Say, old man, I — I — —”

“What?” said Wrinkles.

“Well, you know, I — I — of course, every man is likely to make an accursed idiot of himself once in a while, and I — —”

“And you what?” asked Wrinkles.

“Well, we are a kind of a band of hoodlums, you know, and I’m just enough idiot to feel that I don’t care to hear — don’t care to hear — well, her name used, you know.”

“Bless your heart,” replied Wrinkles, “we haven’t used her name. We don’t know her name. How could we use it?”

“Well, I know,” said Hawker. “But you understand what I mean, Wrinkles.”

“Yes, I understand what you mean,” said Wrinkles, with dignity. “I don’t suppose you are any worse of a stuff than common. Still, I didn’t know that we were such outlaws.”

“Of course, I have overdone the thing,” responded Hawker hastily. “But — you ought to understand how I mean it, Wrinkles.”

After Wrinkles had thought for a time, he said: “Well, I guess I do. All right. That goes.”

Upon entering the den, Wrinkles said, “You fellows have got to quit guying Billie, do you hear?”

“We?” cried Grief. “We’ve got to quit? What do you do?”

“Well, I quit too.”

Pennoyer said: “Ah, ha! Billie has been jumping on you.”

“No, he didn’t,” maintained Wrinkles; “but he let me know it was — well, rather a — rather a — sacred subject.” Wrinkles blushed when the others snickered.

In the afternoon, as Hawker was going slowly down the stairs, he was almost impaled upon the feather of a hat which, upon the head of a lithe and rather slight girl, charged up at him through the gloom.

“Hello, Splutter!” he cried. “You are in a hurry.”

“That you, Billie?” said the girl, peering, for the hallways of this old building remained always in a dungeonlike darkness.

“Yes, it is. Where are you going at such a headlong gait?”

“Up to see the boys. I’ve got a bottle of wine and some — some pickles, you know. I’m going to make them let me dine with them to-night. Coming back, Billie?”

“Why, no, I don’t expect to.”

He moved then accidentally in front of the light that sifted through the dull, gray panes of a little window.

“Oh, cracky!” cried the girl; “how fine you are, Billie! Going to a coronation?”

“No,” said Hawker, looking seriously over his collar and down at his clothes. “Fact is — er — well, I’ve got to make a call.”

“A call — bless us! And are you really going to wear those gray gloves you’re holding there, Billie? Say, wait until you get around the corner. They won’t stand ’em on this street.”

“Oh, well,” said Hawker, depreciating the gloves—”oh, well.”

The girl looked up at him. “Who you going to call on?”

“Oh,” said Hawker, “a friend.”

“Must be somebody most extraordinary, you look so dreadfully correct. Come back, Billie, won’t you? Come back and dine with us.”

“Why, I — I don’t believe I can.”

“Oh, come on! It’s fun when we all dine together. Won’t you, Billie?”

“Well, I — —”

“Oh, don’t be so stupid!” The girl stamped her foot and flashed her eyes at him angrily.

“Well, I’ll see — I will if I can — I can’t tell — —” He left her rather precipitately.

Hawker eventually appeared at a certain austere house where he rang the bell with quite nervous fingers.

But she was not at home. As he went down the steps his eyes were as those of a man whose fortunes have tumbled upon him. As he walked down the street he wore in some subtle way the air of a man who has been grievously wronged. When he rounded the corner, his lips were set strangely, as if he were a man seeking revenge.