The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 9

"Git out, will I!--ME!--I'll git out when you eat yer words,--and you WILL eat 'em. Down they go--"

Joe had him by the throat now, his fingers tight under his chin, his head flattened against the wooden part.i.tion. In his powerful grasp the man was as helpless as a child.

"Eat it,--swallow it!--MORE--MORE--all of it! d.a.m.n ye!"

He was cramming the wad between the editor's lips, one hand forcing open his teeth, the other holding his head firm against the wall.

Then flinging the half strangled man from him he turned, and facing the crowd of reporters and employes--Miss Parker among them,--shouted:--

"And ye're no better,--none o' ye. Ye all hunt dirt,--live on dirt and eat dirt. Ye're like a lot o' buzzards stuck up on a fence rail waitin'

fur an old horse to die. Ain't one o' you reporters wouldn't been glad to do what that catamount over there done last night, and ain't one o'

ye wouldn't take pay fur it. Katie Murdock's fired? Yes,--two of us is fired,--me and her. We'll go back whar we come from. We mayn't be so almighty smart as some o' you city folks be, but we're a blamed sight decenter. Up in my country dead girls is sumpin' to be sorry fur, not sumpin' to make money out'er, and settin' a poor mother crazy is worse'n murder. Git out o' my way thar, or I'll hurt some o' ye! Come, Katie!"

THE BEGUILING OF PETER GRIGGS

Peter was in his room when I knocked--up two flights of stairs off Was.h.i.+ngton Square--Eighth Street really--in one of those houses with a past--of mahogany, open wood fires, old Madeira in silver coasters pushed across hand-polished tables,--that kind of a past.

None of all this could be seen in its present. The marble steps outside were worn down like the teeth of an old horse, and as yellow; the iron railings were bent and cankered by rust; the front door was in blisters; the halls bare, steps uncarpeted, and the spindling mahogany bal.u.s.ters showed here and there subst.i.tutes of pine.

Nor did the occupants revive any of its old-time charm. The bas.e.m.e.nt held a grocery--a kindling-wood, ice and potato sort of grocery; the parlor boasted a merchant tailor--much pressing and repairing, with now and then a whole suit; the second floor front was given over to a wig-maker and the second story back to a manicure. Here the tide of the commercial and the commonplace stopped--stopped just short of the third floor where old Peter Griggs lived.

You would understand why if you knew the man.

Just as this particular old house possessed two distinct personalities--one of the past and the other of the present--so did the occupant of the third floor.

Downtown in the custom house, where he was employed (he had something to do with invoices), he was just plain Mr. Griggs--a short, crisp, "Yes and so" little man--exact, precise and absurdly correct: never, in all his life, had he made a mistake.

Up in these rooms on the third floor he was dear old Peter--or Pete--or Griggsy--or whatever his many friends loved best to call him. Up here, too, he was the merriest companion possible; giving out as much as he absorbed, and always with his heart turned inside out. That he had been for more than thirty years fastened to a high stool facing his desk bespoke neither political influence nor the backing of rich friends.

n.o.body, really, had ever wanted his place. If they did they never dared ask for it--not above their breath. They would as soon have thought of ousting the old clock from its perch in the rotunda, or moving one of the great columns that faced the street. So he just stayed on ticking away at his post, quite like the old clock itself, and getting stiffer and stiffer in the line of his duty--quite like the columns--and getting more and more covered with the dust of long habit--quite like both of them.

This dust, being outside dust, and never sinking the thousandth part of an inch below the surface, left its mark on the man beneath as a live coal fading and whitening leaves its covering of ashes on the spark.

These two--the ashes and the spark--made up the sum of Peter's individuality. The ash part was what he offered to the world of routine--the world he hated. The spark part--cheery, warm, enthusiastic, full of dreams, of imaginings, with an absorbing love for little bits of beauty, such as old Satsuma, Cloisonne, quaint miniatures and the like--all good, and yet within reach of his purse--this part he gave to his friends.

I am inside his room now, standing behind him taking in the glow of the fire and the red damask curtains s.h.i.+elding the door that leads to his bedroom; my eye roving over the bookcases crammed with books, the tables littered with curios and the mantel covered with miniatures and ivories. I invariably do this to discover his newest "find" before he calls my attention to it. As he has not yet moved or given me any other sign of recognition than a gruff "Draw up a chair," in a voice that does not sound a bit like him--his eyes all the time on the smouldering fire, there is yet a chance to look him over before he begins to talk.

(We shall all be busy enough listening when he does begin.)

I say "ALL," for there is a second visitor close behind me, and the sound of still another footstep can already be heard in the hall below.

It is the back of Peter's head now that interests me, and the droop of his shoulders. They always remind me of Leech's sketch of Old Scrooge waiting for Marly's ghost, whenever I come upon him thus un.o.bserved.

To-night he not only wears his calico dressing-gown--unheard-of garment in these days--but a red velvet cap pulled over his scalp. Most bald men would have the cap black--but then most bald men have not Peter's eye for color.

It's a queer head--this head of Peter Griggs. Not at all like any other head I know. If I should attempt to describe it, I should merely have to say bluntly that it was more like an enlarged hickory-nut than any other object I can think of. It is of the same texture, too, and almost as devoid of hair. Except on his temples, and close down where his collar binds his thin neck, there is really very little hair left; and this is so near the color of the shrivelled skin beneath that I never know where one begins and the other ends.

When I face him--and by this time I am facing him--I must admit that the hickory-nut simile still holds. There are no particular features, no decided b.u.mps, no decided hollows; the nose is only an enlarged ridge, the cheeks and eye-sockets only seams. But the eyes count--yes, the eyes count--count so that you see at once that they are the live points of the live coal smouldering beneath.

Here the hickory-nut as a simile goes all to pieces. These eyes are the flash from some distant lighthouse, burning dull when the commonplace of life pa.s.ses before him, and bursting into effulgence when something touches his heart or stirs his imagination. Downtown in the Dismal Tomb even the lighthouse goes to smash. Here the eyes set so far back in his head that they look for all the world like two wary foxes peeping out of a hole, losing nothing of what is going on outside--never being fooled, never being wheedled or coaxed out of their retreat. "Can't fool Mr. Griggs," some broker says, as he tries to get his papers signed out of his turn. Uptown these same foxes are running around loose in an abandonment of jollity, frisking here and there, all restraint cast aside--trusting everybody--and glad to. That's why I couldn't understand his tone of voice when I opened his door.

"Not sick, old fellow?" I cried. He had not yet lifted his head or vouchsafed a single word of welcome.

"Yes, sick at heart. My old carca.s.s is all right, but inside--way down where a man lives--I'm sick unto death. Take a look at the mantelpiece.

You see my best miniature's gone, don't you?"

"Not the Cosway?"

"Yes, the Cosway!"

"Stolen?"

"Worse than stolen! Oh, my boy, such mean people live in the world! I couldn't believe it possible. I've read in the papers something like it, but that I should have been--oh, I can't get over it! It haunts me like a ghost. It isn't the value--it's the way it was done; and I was so helpless, and I meant only to be kind."

The other men had arrived now and the three of us were ranged around Peter in a circle, wondering with wide-opened eyes at his tone of voice, his dismal expression, and especially at the air of dejection which seemed to ooze through every square inch of his calico dressing-gown.

"Sit down, all of you," he continued "and listen. And it's all your fault. If only one of you had come up to see me! I waited and waited; I knew most of you would be off somewhere eating your Thanksgiving turkey, but that every mother's son of you should have forgotten me--that's what I won't forgive you for."

We, with one accord, began to make excuses, but he waved us into silence.

"After a while I got so lonely I couldn't stand it any longer. So about six o'clock I started out to dine alone somewhere--some place where I had no a.s.sociations with any one of you. I hadn't gone as far as Broadway when along came two men and a woman. You'd have said 'two gentlemen and a lady'--I say two men and a woman. I looked at them and they looked at me. I saw they were from out of town, and right away came the thought, they must be lonely, too. Everybody is lonesome on Thanksgiving if he's away from home, or, like me, has no place to go to. The Large Man stopped and nudged the Small Man, and the Woman turned and looked at me earnestly, then all three talked together for a minute, then I heard the Small Man say, 'I'll go you a ten on it,'

which conveyed no meaning to me. Then all three of them walked back to where I stood and the Large Man asked me where Foscari's restaurant was.

"Well, of course, that was in the next street, so I volunteered to show them the place. On the way over the Small Man and the Woman lagged behind and I overheard them say that it would never do--that is, the Woman said so; at which the Small Man laughed and said they couldn't find a better. All this time the Large Man held me by the arm in a friendly sort of way, as if he were afraid I would stub my toe and fall if he didn't help me over the gutters; telling me all the time that he didn't know the ropes around New York and how much obliged he was to me for taking all this trouble to show him. Pretty soon we arrived at Foscari's. I never dined there--never had been inside the place. Cheap sort of a restaurant--down two steps from the sidewalk, but they asked for Foscari's, and that's where I took them.

"'Here's the place,' I said, and I lifted my hat to the Woman and turned to go back.

"'No, don't go,' said the Large Man, still holding on to my arm.

'You've been white and decent to us; we're all stranded here. This is Thanksgiving--come in and have dinner with us.'

"Then I began by thanking them and ended by saying I couldn't. Then the Small Man began to urge me, saying that out in his country, near the Rockies, everybody was willing to sit down at anybody's table when he was invited; and the Large Man kept on squeezing my arm in a friendly sort of way, so I finally said I didn't care if I did, and in we all went. When we got inside the place was practically empty--only one guest, really--and he was over by the wall in a corner. There were only two waiters--one an Irishman who said his name was Mike, with a very red head and an enormous mouth--a queer kind of a servant for that kind of a restaurant, I thought--and the other a young Italian, who was probably the cook.

"'You order,' said the Large Man. 'You know what's good in New York.'

"So I ordered.

"And I want to tell you that the dinner was a particularly good one--well cooked and well served. We had soup and fish and an Italian ragout, macaroni, peppers and two bottles of red wine. Before the soup was over I was glad I'd come; glad, not only because the dinner was all right, but because the people were human kind of people--no foolishness about them--no pretension. They were not our kind of people, of course--couldn't find them in New York if you looked everywhere--not born and brought up here. The Woman was gentle and kindly, saying very little, but the Large Man was a hearty, breezy sort of fellow--even if his language at times was rough and uncouth--at least I thought so. Big bones and a well-fed body; quick in his movements, yet slow in his talk, showing force and determination in everything he said. The Small Man was as tough physically and as alert mentally, but there wasn't so much of him. He talked, however, twice as fast as the Large Man, and said less.

"He talked of the city--how smart the people were, how stuck up some of them, thinking they knew it all, and how, if they but thought about it, they must see after all that the West was the only thing that kept the country alive. That kind of talk--not in an offensive way--just as all of us talk when we believe in our section of the country.

"All this time the solitary guest sat against the wall listening. Near as I could make out he only had one dish and a small bottle of wine.

Presently he made a remark--not to us--not to the room--more as if to himself.

"'West is the only thing, is it? And every man Jack of them from New England stock!'

"This, too, didn't come in any offensive spirit--just as an aside, as if to keep himself company, being lonely, of course.

"But the Large Man caught it before all the words were out of his mouth.