The Wood Fire in No. 3 Part 5

"Go on, Jack," urged Pitkin in an encouraging tone--they had lived together in the same studio in the Quartier, these two, and knew each other's lives as they did their own pockets,--or each other's, for that matter.

"No, I'm not going on--only waste it on you fellows. That's all. Just one of my memories, my boy. But it comes from wet violets, mark you, not from fry-pans, cold bottles, or hot fish," and he glanced at Marny.

PART III

_With Especial Reference to a Girl in a Steamer Chair._

"Don't be angry, Colonel,"--no mortal man knows why Mac calls me "Colonel,"--"but would you mind leaving that red rose you've got in your b.u.t.ton-hole outside in the hall, or some place where I can't smell it?

Red roses have a singular effect on me." I had come in earlier than the others this afternoon and had found Mac alone.

I looked at Mac in astonishment. Peculiar as he sometimes is, hatred of flowers is not one of his eccentricities.

"Why, I thought you loved roses!"

"I do--all except red ones."

I unpinned the rose from my b.u.t.ton-hole and laid it in a gla.s.s on the shelf over his wash-basin.

"All right; anything to please you, Mac. Now out with it; give me the name of the girl, and tell me why."

Mac laughed quietly to himself and settled down in his chair. For some time he did not speak.

"Go on; I'm waiting."

"Oh, it brings up a memory, that's all, Colonel. You heard what Stirling said about the perfume of violets bringing back to him the little dinner he had with Christine Levoix at the Bellevue overlooking the Seine, didn't you?"

"Yes, but he didn't mention the girl's name."

"I know; but it was Christine. I remember that hat and the gloves. In my day they were black, not gray, and came up to her shoulders, like Yvette's. The eyes, though, never changed, no matter who sat opposite.

Stirling bought a lot of violets that year; so did some of the others in the Quartier, until the Russian carried her off to Moscow," and again Mac laughed softly to himself. "Well, perfumes produce that same effect on me."

"Of violets?" I asked, twisting my head to look into Mac's eyes.

"No--tarred hemp and roses." Then he added slowly and thoughtfully, as if he were recalling some incident in his past life: "Quite a different kind of girl, my boy, from Christine; about as different as--well, there isn't any comparison. Yes, tarred hemp and red roses; funny combination, isn't it?--and yet I never catch the odor of one without smelling the other. And the whole scene comes back, too, every detail: the rolling s.h.i.+p; the girl as she lay in her chair, the roses in her lap; the tones of the Captain's voice (I have sometimes heard them in my sleep); the glare of the overhead light, and then the splash. Queer things, these memories!"

Mac paused, and smoked on quietly.

I made no answer. If you want Mac at his best, never interrupt him.

When he is in one of his reminiscent moods his philosophy, his knowledge of life, his wide personal experience, his many adventures by land and sea make him the most delightful of conversationalists, while his choice of words and marvellous powers of description--talking as a painter talks, one who sees and who, therefore, can make you see; using words as some men do pigments with all the force of their contrasts--make his descriptions but so many brilliantly colored pictures. Then his voice!

Suddenly, without a moment's warning, your eyes fill up, leaving you wondering why, until you remember some throat tone that vibrated through you like the note of a violin.

When he is in one of these moods he rarely looks at me or at anyone who listens, especially when he is alone with some one of his chums--and we two were alone this afternoon, it being Varnis.h.i.+ng Day, and all of the men at the Academy. He looks up at the ceiling, lying back in his chair, talking to some crack or stain in the plastering, or drops his head and talks to the smouldering coals, his human eyes fixed on the logs. This habit of talking to whatever is within the reach of his hands or legs--his brushes, palette, colors, the chair that gets in his way, the rug he stumbles over--is characteristic of the man; woodsmen have it who live alone in great forests. Mac's explanation is that he lived so much alone in his early life that he acquired the habit in self-defence. The fire, however, seems to understand, never answering back as it does to me when I try to punch it into life, but simmering away like a slow-boiling pot, giving out a steady glow for hours as it listens, nursing its heat until the master has finished or puts on another log.

Mac refilled his pipe, rested the tongs where his hand could grasp them, and continued, his big shoulders filling the chair, the light of the blaze on his humorous, kindly face.

"There are great contrasts in life, my boy, that never fail to interest me--big Rembrandt things that stand out sharp and solid, sudden as the exit from a foul shaft into a sunny winter's day, white and cold. And the reverse side--the black side. That is the worst of these contrasts, the darks always predominate--out of a yacht's warm cabin, for instance, into a merciless, hungry sea, without a moment's warning. No, nothing to do with my memory of tarred hemp and red roses; only to make my point clear to you," and Mac's head sank the lower in his chair. "Did you ever focus your mind, for one thing, on the contrasts that the two sides of a nine-inch brick wall of any house in town present? Did you never lie in your bed, with your head to the plaster, and wonder what was going on nine inches away from your ears? I have; I do it now. It may be sorrow or cruelty or death, if we did but know--some girl mourning for her lover; some woman crouching in fear; some silent body, cold in a sheet.

Not always so, of course; many times the happiness is on their side and all the misery on ours; but the two atmospheres are never alike. Only nine inches of wall! Shut it out as we may, cover it with tapestries or pictures or paint, it is still within that many inches of our ears. What a blessing we can't see! Life would be a h.e.l.l for some of us if we saw both sides of its brick walls at once. I try now and then to get a glimpse of both sides because of the effects I get of light and shadow--they always appeal to me. When I do I often get a heart wrench that upsets me for days, and yet the next opportunity I am at it again."

Once more Mac paused and looked into the fire, as if he were trying to recall to his mind, among its glowing, heaped-up coals, some picture in that rich past of his.

"And that old perfume of tarred hemp and roses," I asked, "does that suggest one of them?"

"Yes, one of the strangest I ever experienced; and yet it was only one of the things that goes on every day. A steamer's deck was the brick wall this time: On our side a cloudless sky, fresh air, light, chairs filling the length of the deck, whisperings in corners, two lovers hanging over the rail, some in the bow away from intruders. Now and then a line of song wafted from open cabin windows. Seaward, a stretch of steely blue dominated by a clear, round moon, its light flooding a pathway of silver to the very side of the s.h.i.+p, a pathway along which angels might have stepped--were stepping, if we could have seen.

"This was one of the times when I had both sides of the wall in review; she did not. Her heart and mind were on other things. No, nothing that you think, old man; not another Christine--I left all that behind me; not anybody in particular, really; just a girl I met on board. There were a dozen others as pretty--prettier. Our steamer chairs happened to come together, that was all. We were but two days out, and her roses were still fresh--big red ones that some of her friends had sent her.

They lay in her lap over her steamer rug. I picked them up for her when they dropped to the deck, and so the acquaintance began.

"Such a happy girl, with a fresh, sunburnt skin, and strong chest, and capable, earnest eyes; no nonsense about her, no coquetry."

Mac hesitated for an instant and a look of peculiar tenderness came into his face--one I always remembered. Then he went on:

"Just a plain, straightforward American girl, with a good mother at home and a matter-of-fact father who had sent her abroad with an aunt who was flat on her back in her cabin most of the time; she herself looked as if she had never known a day's sickness in her life. This was her first trip abroad. Half a dozen young men and as many young girls had come to see her off, and her share of the flowers sent on board had been the largest, and she was as happy over it as a child with a new toy--that kind of a girl. She wanted, of course, to know about Mt. Blanc and the Rhigi, and whether the Salon would be open, and which pictures she ought to see, and what at the Luxembourg--all the questions a girl asks when she finds you can paint. Her joyousness, though, was what appealed to me. I like happy people. To her the deck of the steamer was the top of a great hill from which she looked down on suns.h.i.+ne and peace; no clouds, no dark shadows; only perspectives of greater happiness yet to come.

This was her side of the wall.

"I did not disturb her outlook. What use would it have been? Why tell her of what was going on, for instance, under her very eyes? Why let her know that that tightly built young man who seemed to be so devoted to the pale, hollow-eyed gentleman of sixty, sitting beside him in the smoking-room or in the steamer chairs--never five feet away from him day or night--was a Scotland Yard detective, and that the hollow-eyed invalid would have a pair of handcuffs slipped over his white, trembling wrists as soon as the gang-plank was fastened to the dock? Or why let her know that the thoughtful, clean-shaven young man who now spent most of his time in walking the deck had never entered the smoking-room since the first night, when the purser took him one side and, calling him by a name not on the pa.s.senger list had informed him in measured tones that it might interfere with his comfort if he took the wrapper from another pack of his own or anybody else's cards during the remainder of the voyage. Neither did I tell her, that third night out, where I had spent the afternoon, except to say that I had been with Mr. Hunter, the Chief Engineer, in his room several decks below where we sat--down among the furnaces and hot steam and plunging pistons--adding that the Chief was a great friend of mine and had been for years. If you ever get to know him as I do he may some time, in a burst of confidence, open the drawer of a locker behind his bunk and show you a little paper box, and inside of it a small bit of copper about the size of a big cent with a crossbar and a ribbon, saying that it was for gallant conduct or something like it.

"But that has got nothing to do with my perfume of tarred rope and roses--quite another affair altogether--an affair that the Chief and I had had some previous talk about; and so I was not surprised when his messenger approached my chair and the girl's, and said in a low voice, bending close to me:

"'Mr. Hunter's compliments, sir, and he would like to see you in his room, if you don't mind. He says if you can't come it will be at twelve sharp, and you're not to mention it to any of the pa.s.sengers, sir.'

"She looked at me curiously, having heard the messenger's words, but I did not explain, and, rising quickly, left her with the roses in her lap--her last bunch, she told me.

"Hunter met me at the door; the Second Engineer and the s.h.i.+p's Doctor were inside his room.

"'That stoker died about an hour ago, wasn't it, Doctor?' Hunter asked, turning to the s.h.i.+p's surgeon.

"'Yes.'

"These men are accustomed to such incidents; there is hardly a voyage without one or more of them. To me it was but the opening of another crack in one of my brick walls.

"'What of?' I asked.

"'Exhaustion; want of food, perhaps, and the heat. The heart gave out,'

answered the Doctor in a perfunctory tone.

"'Do many of them go that way?' I asked.

"'Yes, when they strike the furnaces for the first time. This man was too old--over fifty, I should say--and should never have been taken on,'

and he glanced reprovingly at Hunter.

"'He begged so hard,' interrupted the Second Engineer, 'I let him on. We are short of men, too, on account of the strike--'He spoke as if in defence of his Chief. 'Didn't look to me to be so old till he caved in.

Shall I make a box for him, sir?' and he turned to Hunter.

"'Yes, and paint it.'