A Top-Floor Idyl Part 13

I HEAR RUMORS ABOUT GORDON

When we reached the top floor, Frances took the baby from me, while I lit her gas-jet. She kissed Baby Paul effusively, and placed him on the bed, after which she turned to me.

"It has done him ever so much good," she declared. "See how splendidly he looks now. Tell me, why are you so kind to me?"

Women have been in the habit of propounding riddles ever since the world began. This was a hard one, indeed, to answer, because I didn't know myself. I could hardly tell her that it was because, at least theoretically, every beautiful woman is loved by every man, nor could I say that it was because she had inspired me with pity for her.

"We have had a few pleasant moments together," I replied, "and I am ever so glad that Baby Paul has derived so much benefit. The kindness you speak of is mere egotism. I have given myself the great pleasure of your company. I do not suppose you realize how much that means to a chap whose usual confidant is his writing machine, and whose society, except at rare intervals, is made up of old books. My dear child, in this transaction I am the favored one."

I was surprised to see a little s.h.i.+ver pa.s.s over her frame.

"Oh! Mr. Cole, sometimes I can't help feeling such wonder, such amazement, when I think of how differently all these things might have come to pa.s.s. I--I was going off to the hospital on the next day. I should surely have met kindness and good enough care, but no one can understand what it was to me to have Frieda come in, with her sweet sympathetic face. It was as if some loving sister had dropped down to me from Heaven, and--and she told me about you. I--I remember her very words; she said that you were a man to be trusted, clean of soul as a child, the only one she had ever met into whose keeping she would entrust all that she holds most dear."

"Frieda is much given to exaggeration," I remarked, uneasily.

"She is not. Think of what my feelings would have been on the day when they would have sent me out of the hospital, with not a friend in the world, not a kindly heart to turn to!"

"My dear child," I said, "I believe that, if you have not been altogether forgotten by the G.o.ds and G.o.ddesses, it was because you were worthy of their kindest regard. I am confident that our little trip on the water will make you sleep soundly, and I trust that you will have pleasant dreams."

Yes! I occasionally call her my dear child, now. Neither my forty years nor the thinness of my thatch really ent.i.tles me to consider myself sufficiently venerable to have been her parent. But I am the least formal of men and find it difficult to call her Madame or Mrs. Dupont.

If I did so now, I think that she would wonder if I was aggrieved against her, for some such foolish reason as women are always keen on inventing and annoying themselves with. Once in a while I even call her Frances, but it is a habit I ought not to permit to grow upon me. There are altogether too many O'Flaherty's in the world, masculine, feminine and neuter.

She closed her door, after a friendly pressure of our hands, and I went to my room to write. The ideas, however, came but slowly and, upon arrival, were of the poorest. I, therefore, soon took my pipe, put my feet on the window ledge and listened to a distant phonograph. At last, came silence, a gradual extinguis.h.i.+ng of lights in windows opposite, and yawns from myself. I must repeat these trips, they make for sound slumber.

On the next day I took it upon myself to go to the small house in Brooklyn where Frances had formerly boarded. She was anxious to know if any letters might have come for her that had not been forwarded. She had wondered why her husband's parents had never written to announce the dreadful news which, however, had been briefly confirmed on inquiry at the Consulate. In the eastern section of our Greater City, which is about as familiar to me as the wilds of Kamchatka, I promptly lost myself. But kindly souls directed me, and I reached a dwelling that was all boarded up and bore a sign indicating that the premises were to be let. Thence, I went to a distant real estate office where the people were unable to give me any indication or trace of the former tenants, who had rented out rooms.

On my return I found Eulalie rummaging among my bureau drawers. She held up two undergarments and bade me observe the perfection of her darning, whereupon I a.s.sured her that she was a large, fat pearl without price.

"_Oui, Monsieur_," she a.s.sented, without understanding me in the least.

"Madame Dupont has gone to my cousin, Madame Smith. Her name was Carpaux, like mine, but she married an American painter."

"An artist?" I inquired.

"_Oui, Monsieur._ He used to paint and decorate and put on wallpaper.

Then, he went away to Alaska after gold and never sent his address. So Felicie has opened a cleaning and dyeing shop and is doing very well.

She has not heard from Smith for sixteen years, so that she thinks he is, perhaps, lost. She has told me that she wanted an American person, who could speak French, to wait on customers and keep the books and send the bills and write names and addresses on the packages. She lives in the back of the store. There is a big bed that would be very commodious for putting the baby on. Madame Dupont has gone to see. Next week I go to work there also and I will keep an eye on the baby when Madame is at the counter."

I know the shop; it is on Sixth Avenue, not far away. In the window always hang garments intended to show the perfection of dyeing and cleaning reached by the establishment. There is a taxidermist on one side of it and a cheap restaurant on the other. When weary of the odor of benzine and soap suds, Frances will be able to stand on the door-sill for a moment and inhale the effluvia of fried oysters or defunct canaries.

Eulalie left my room, and I remained there, appalled. I wish I could have found some better or more pleasant occupation for Frances.

When the latter returned, she looked cheerfully at me and announced that she had accepted the position tendered to her.

"I shall be able to have Baby with me," she explained, "and it will keep our bodies and souls together. I hope I shall suit Madame Smith. Do you know anything about how to keep books?"

At once I took paper and pencil and launched into a long explanation, undoubtedly bewildering her by the extent of my ignorance. Then I went out and got her a little book on the subject, over which she toiled fiercely for two days, after which she went to work, bearing little Paul in her arms, and returned at suppertime, looking very tired.

"It is all right," she announced. "Felicie is a very nice, hard-working woman, and tells me that Baby is a very fine child. I'll get along very well."

When a woman is really brave and strong, she makes a man feel like rather small potatoes. Her courage and determination were fine indeed, and I must say my admiration for her grew apace. After the hopes she had entertained; after the years spent in study, the fall must have seemed a terrible one to her. Yet she accepted the pittance offered to her, gratefully and with splendid pluck.

A week after this Gordon ran up to town in somebody's car, to make a selection of cravats at the only shop in New York where, according to him, a man could buy a decent necktie.

"Your limitations are frightful," I told him. "I know of a thousand."

"I know you do," he replied, "and most of your ties would make a dog laugh. The rest of them would make him weep. Come along with me for a bite of lunch at the Biltmore."

Over the Little Neck clam c.o.c.ktails he announced some great triumphs he had achieved at golf.

"And I can nearly hold my own with Miss Van Rossum at tennis," he said.

"She's a wonder at it. We got arrested last Friday on the Jericho turnpike for going fifty miles an hour, but she jollied the policeman so that he only swore to thirty, and we were let off with a reprimand. Good thing she was at the wheel. If I'd been driving, I'd have been fined the limit."

"You would have deserved it," I told him.

"I think the old judge knew her father; pretty big gun on the island, you know. By the way, what's become of--of the Murillo young woman?"

I explained to him how she was occupied.

"The deuce! You could certainly have found something easier for her to do, if you'd tried hard enough," he reproached me.

"I did all I could, and so did Frieda, but our hunt was in vain, on account of the baby."

"Yes, there's that plagued infant," he said, reflectively.

"I'll be glad, if you can shed the light of your genius on the situation, old man," I told him. "Among your enormous circle of friends----"

"You go to the devil! I'm not going to have people saying that Gordon McGrath is so interested in his model that he's trying to get rid of her by placing her somewhere or other. No, old boy, if I should hear of anything, I will let you know, but I'm not going to hunt for it. Do you know, that woman's got a wonderful face. Did you ever see such a nose and mouth? When she opens those big eyes of hers and looks at you and speaks in that hoa.r.s.e voice, it's quite pathetic. I--I think I'll take her on again, for a short time."

"I'm afraid you won't," I replied. "I wouldn't advise her to lose steady employment for the purpose of posing a couple of weeks for you."

"I suppose not. How do you like that Spanish omelette?"

Thus he cut short all reference to Frances, and, soon afterwards, we parted on the Avenue.

During the next two months there was little worthy of being chronicled.

Frances, I think, grew a little thinner, but always a.s.serted that she was in the best of health. Baby Paul was rapidly acc.u.mulating weight, and Frieda and I offered him a small baby carriage, which folded up most cleverly and took little room in the shop or at home. It was on the occasion of the completion of his fourth month that the presentation was made by my dear old friend.

"There, my dear, is a gimcrack thing David insisted on buying. The man at the store swore it couldn't possibly fold up suddenly with the baby in it. And now what do you think of my having that old blue dress of mine dyed black?"

The reply of Frances was a heartfelt one as to the perambulator, but discouraging in regard to the garment.

"Oh, never mind," said Frieda. "I'll make paint rags out of it, then. I only thought I'd help out the shop. Now let us get David to give us a cup of tea."

We were talking cheerfully together, when Gordon dropped in from the skies, most unexpectedly. We were glad to see him and, since four people in my room crowded it considerably, my friend took a seat on the bed. I had first met him in the Bohemia of the Latin Quarter, when his necktie out-floated all others and any one prophesying that he would become the portrayer in ordinary to the unsubmerged would have been met with incredulous stares. At that time, for him, Beranger was the only poet and Murger the only writer. And now his clothes are built, while his shoes are designed. Yet, in my top floor, he showed some of the old Adam, joining gladly in our orgy of tea and wafers and utterly forgetting all pose. I noticed that he looked a great deal at Frances, but it was no impertinent stare. She was quite unconscious of his scrutiny or, if at all aware of it, probably deemed it a continuation of his method of artistic study. She had become accustomed to it in his studio.

"David tells me that you are lost to me as a model," he said, suddenly, with a sort of eagerness that showed a trace of disappointment.