The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (111 page)

“There’s three of them,” said Grief in a hoarse whisper.

“Four, I tell you!” said Wrinkles in a low, excited tone.

“Four,” breathed Pennoyer with decision.

They held fierce pantomimic argument. From the corridor came sounds of rustling dresses and rapid feminine conversation.

Grief had kept his ear to the panel of the door. His hand was stretched back, warning the others to silence. Presently he turned his head and whispered, “Three.”

“Four,” whispered Pennoyer and Wrinkles.

“Hollie is there, too,” whispered Grief. “Billie is unlocking the door. Now they’re going in. Hear them cry out, ‘Oh, isn’t it lovely!’ Jinks!” He began a noiseless dance about the room. “Jinks! Don’t I wish I had a big studio and a little reputation! Wouldn’t I have my swell friends come to see me, and wouldn’t I entertain ‘em!” He adopted a descriptive manner, and with his forefinger indicated various spaces of the wall. “Here is a little thing I did in Brittany. Peasant woman in sabots. This brown spot here is the peasant woman, and those two white things are the sabots. Peasant woman in sabots, don’t you see? Women in Brittany, of course, all wear sabots, you understand. Convenience of the painters. I see you are looking at that little thing I did in Morocco. Ah, you admire it? Well, not so bad — not so bad. Arab smoking pipe, squatting in doorway. This long streak here is the pipe. Clever, you say? Oh, thanks! You are too kind. Well, all Arabs do that, you know. Sole occupation. Convenience of the painters. Now, this little thing here I did in Venice. Grand Canal, you know. Gondolier leaning on his oar. Convenience of the painters. Oh, yes, American subjects are well enough, but hard to find, you know — hard to find. Morocco, Venice, Brittany, Holland — all oblige with colour, you know — quaint form — all that. We are so hideously modern over here; and, besides, nobody has painted us much. How the devil can I paint America when nobody has done it before me? My dear sir, are you aware that that would be originality? Good heavens! we are not æsthetic, you understand. Oh, yes, some good mind comes along and understands a thing and does it, and after that it is æsthetic. Yes, of course, but then — well —— Now, here is a little Holland thing of mine; it — —”

The others had evidently not been heeding him. “Shut up!” said Wrinkles suddenly. “Listen!” Grief paused his harangue and they sat in silence, their lips apart, their eyes from time to time exchanging eloquent messages. A dulled melodious babble came from Hawker’s studio.

At length Pennoyer murmured wistfully, “I would like to see her.”

Wrinkles started noiselessly to his feet. “Well, I tell you she’s a peach. I was going up the steps, you know, with a loaf of bread under my arm, when I chanced to look up the street and saw Billie and Hollanden coming with four of them.”

“Three,” said Grief.

“Four; and I tell you I scattered. One of the two with Billie was a peach — a peach.”

“O, Lord!” groaned the others enviously. “Billie’s in luck.”

“How do you know?” said Wrinkles. “Billie is a blamed good fellow, but that doesn’t say she will care for him — more likely that she won’t.”

They sat again in silence, grinning, and listening to the murmur of voices.

There came the sound of a step in the hallway. It ceased at a point opposite the door of Hawker’s studio. Presently it was heard again. Florinda entered the den. “Hello!” she cried, “who is over in Billie’s place? I was just going to knock — —”

They motioned at her violently. “Sh!” they whispered. Their countenances were very impressive.

“What’s the matter with you fellows?” asked Florinda in her ordinary tone; whereupon they made gestures of still greater wildness. “S-s-sh!”

Florinda lowered her voice properly. “Who is over there?”

“Some swells,” they whispered.

Florinda bent her head. Presently she gave a little start. “Who is over there?” Her voice became a tone of deep awe. “She?”

Wrinkles and Grief exchanged a swift glance. Pennoyer said gruffly, “Who do you mean?”

“Why,” said Florinda, “you know. She. The — the girl that Billie likes.”

Pennoyer hesitated for a moment and then said wrathfully: “Of course she is! Who do you suppose?”

“Oh!” said Florinda. She took a seat upon the divan, which was privately a coal-box, and unbuttoned her jacket at the throat. “Is she — is she — very handsome, Wrink?”

Wrinkles replied stoutly, “No.”

Grief said: “Let’s make a sneak down the hall to the little unoccupied room at the front of the building and look from the window there. When they go out we can pipe ’em off.”

“Come on!” they exclaimed, accepting this plan with glee.

Wrinkles opened the door and seemed about to glide away, when he suddenly turned and shook his head. “It’s dead wrong,” he said, ashamed.

“Oh, go on!” eagerly whispered the others. Presently they stole pattering down the corridor, grinning, exclaiming, and cautioning each other.

At the window Pennoyer said: “Now, for heaven’s sake, don’t let them see you! — Be careful, Grief, you’ll tumble. — Don’t lean on me that way, Wrink; think I’m a barn door? Here they come. Keep back. Don’t let them see you.”

“O-o-oh!” said Grief. “Talk about a peach! Well, I should say so.”

Florinda’s fingers tore at Wrinkle’s coat sleeve. “Wrink, Wrink, is that her? Is that her? On the left of Billie? Is that her, Wrink?”

“What? Yes. Stop punching me! Yes, I tell you! That’s her. Are you deaf?”

In the evening Pennoyer conducted Florinda to the flat of many fire-escapes. After a period of silent tramping through the great golden avenue and the street that was being repaired, she said, “Penny, you are very good to me.”

“Why?” said Pennoyer.

“Oh, because you are. You — you are very good to me, Penny.”

“Well, I guess I’m not killing myself.”

“There isn’t many fellows like you.”

“No?”

“No. There isn’t many fellows like you, Penny. I tell you ‘most everything, and you just listen, and don’t argue with me and tell me I’m a fool, because you know that it — because you know that it can’t be helped, anyhow.”

“Oh, nonsense, you kid! Almost anybody would be glad to — —”

“Penny, do you think she is very beautiful?” Florinda’s voice had a singular quality of awe in it.

“Well,” replied Pennoyer, “I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do, Penny. Go ahead and tell me.”

“Well — —”

“Go ahead.”

“Well, she is rather handsome, you know.”

“Yes,” said Florinda, dejectedly, “I suppose she is.” After a time she cleared her throat and remarked indifferently, “I suppose Billie cares a lot for her?”

“Oh, I imagine that he does — in a way.”

“Why, of course he does,” insisted Florinda. “What do you mean by ‘in a way’? You know very well that Billie thinks his eyes of her.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Yes, you do. You know you do. You are talking in that way just to brace me up. You know you are.”

“No, I’m not.”

“Penny,” said Florinda thankfully, “what makes you so good to me?”

“Oh, I guess I’m not so astonishingly good to you. Don’t be silly.”

“But you are good to me, Penny. You don’t make fun of me the way — the way the other boys would. You are just as good as you can be. — But you do think she is beautiful, don’t you?”

“They wouldn’t make fun of you,” said Pennoyer.

“But do you think she is beautiful?”

“Look here, Splutter, let up on that, will you? You keep harping on one string all the time. Don’t bother me!”

“But, honest now, Penny, you do think she is beautiful?”

“Well, then, confound it — no! no! no!”

“Oh, yes, you do, Penny. Go ahead now. Don’t deny it just because you are talking to me. Own up, now, Penny. You do think she is beautiful?”

“Well,” said Pennoyer, in a dull roar of irritation, “do you?”

Florinda walked in silence, her eyes upon the yellow flashes which lights sent to the pavement. In the end she said, “Yes.”

“Yes, what?” asked Pennoyer sharply.

“Yes, she — yes, she is — beautiful.”

“Well, then?” cried Pennoyer, abruptly closing the discussion.

Florinda announced something as a fact. “Billie thinks his eyes of her.”

“How do you know he does?”

“Don’t scold at me, Penny. You — you — —”

“I’m not scolding at you. There! What a goose you are, Splutter! Don’t, for heaven’s sake, go to whimpering on the street! I didn’t say anything to make you feel that way. Come, pull yourself together.”

“I’m not whimpering.”

“No, of course not; but then you look as if you were on the edge of it. What a little idiot!”

When the snow fell upon the clashing life of the city, the exiled stones, beaten by myriad strange feet, were told of the dark, silent forests where the flakes swept through the hemlocks and swished softly against the boulders.

In his studio Hawker smoked a pipe, clasping his knee with thoughtful, interlocked fingers. He was gazing sourly at his finished picture. Once he started to his feet with a cry of vexation. Looking back over his shoulder, he swore an insult into the face of the picture. He paced to and fro, smoking belligerently and from time to time eying it. The helpless thing remained upon the easel, facing him.

Hollanden entered and stopped abruptly at sight of the great scowl. “What’s wrong now?” he said.

Hawker gestured at the picture. “That dunce of a thing. It makes me tired. It isn’t worth a hang. Blame it!”

“What?” Hollanden strode forward and stood before the painting with legs apart, in a properly critical manner. “What? Why, you said it was your best thing.”

“Aw!” said Hawker, waving his arms, “it’s no good! I abominate it! I didn’t get what I wanted, I tell you. I didn’t get what I wanted. That?” he shouted, pointing thrust-way at it—”that? It’s vile! Aw! it makes me weary.”

“You’re in a nice state,” said Hollanden, turning to take a critical view of the painter. “What has got into you now? I swear, you are more kinds of a chump!”

Hawker crooned dismally: “I can’t paint! I can’t paint for a damn! I’m no good. What in thunder was I invented for, anyhow, Hollie?”

“You’re a fool,” said Hollanden. “I hope to die if I ever saw such a complete idiot! You give me a pain. Just because she don’t — —”

“It isn’t that. She has nothing to do with it, although I know well enough — I know well enough — —”

“What?”

“I know well enough she doesn’t care a hang for me. It isn’t that. It is because — it is because I can’t paint. Look at that thing over there! Remember the thought and energy I —— Damn the thing!”

“Why, did you have a row with her?” asked Hollanden, perplexed. “I didn’t know — —”

“No, of course you didn’t know,” cried Hawker, sneering; “because I had no row. It isn’t that, I tell you. But I know well enough” — he shook his fist vaguely—”that she don’t care an old tomato can for me. Why should she?” he demanded with a curious defiance. “In the name of Heaven, why should she?”

“I don’t know,” said Hollanden; “I don’t know, I’m sure. But, then, women have no social logic. This is the great blessing of the world. There is only one thing which is superior to the multiplicity of social forms, and that is a woman’s mind — a young woman’s mind. Oh, of course, sometimes they are logical, but let a woman be so once, and she will repent of it to the end of her days. The safety of the world’s balance lies in woman’s illogical mind. I think — —”

“Go to blazes!” said Hawker. “I don’t care what you think. I am sure of one thing, and that is that she doesn’t care a hang for me!”

“I think,” Hollanden continued, “that society is doing very well in its work of bravely lawing away at Nature; but there is one immovable thing — a woman’s illogical mind. That is our safety. Thank Heaven, it — —”

“Go to blazes!” said Hawker again.