The Wood Fire in No. 3 Part 7

"Again the Captain's reverent tones rang out:

"'We therefore commit his body to the deep----'

"Two sailors stooped down and raised one end of the box. There came a grating sound, a splash, and the highway of silver was broken into steps of light.

"The Captain closed his book, the crowd opening to let him pa.s.s; the crew went back to their tasks--the sailor with tarred marlin to finish the bight of the cable he was whipping, the men to their furnaces, Hunter to his desk, I to where the girl reclined in her chair. She recognized my step and half raised herself toward me, as if eager to catch my first word.

"'Did he like the roses?' she asked, her voice full of tenderness.

"'Yes.'

"Where did you put them--by his bedside?'

"'No, on his breast.'

"'Poor fellow, I'm so sorry for him! Did you tell him I sent them?'

"'He knows.'

"'What did he say?'

"'Nothing--but he will some day.'

"Her eyes widened.

"'When? Where?'

"'In heaven.'

"The eyelids relaxed again, and a smile lighted up her face. She saw now that I was not in earnest. Then a sudden thought possessed her.

"'What is his name?' The inquiry came quick and sharp and with an anxious tone, as if she had been remiss in not asking before.

"'He has none--not aboard s.h.i.+p.'

"'Has no name! Why, I never heard of such a thing. How very strange!'

"'No, not among stokers; stokers never have any names. This one was called "Number Seven."'"

Mac stopped and leaned toward the fire, his head in his hands, the fingers covering the eyes. Not once during the long narrative had he looked at me. He had been speaking like one in a trance, or as one speaks to himself when alone. That I had been present was of no consequence; I was no more than the portraits and studies on the walls, not so much as the andirons and the fire. That I had listened in complete silence was what pleased him. This, I think, is one reason why he so often unburdens his heart to me.

Mac straightened his back, rose to his feet and took a turn around the room, restlessly, as if the tale had stirred other memories which he was trying to banish; then he dropped again into his chair.

"That's what I mean by the other side of the brick wall, old man. Makes your blood boil, doesn't it? Did mine."

"And the girl in the chair never knew?"

"No, and never will. He did; he looked back as he mounted the silver steps, and pointed her out to the angel helping him up the ladder. G.o.d knew what he had suffered, and wiped out whatever there was against him."

There was a tone now in Mac's voice that thrilled me. For a moment I did not trust myself to speak.

"And about the letter--did you read it?"

"Yes; it was from his wife. The Doctor gave it to me, and I hunted her up. Little place outside of London where they make bricks. Only two rooms; in one a half-starved daughter, white as chalk. She had sent for him, the wife said. Same old story--told a hundred times a day, if you will but listen with your ears to some wall. The steerage out to New York; the landing in a strange city; the weary, hungry hunt for work; money gone, clothes gone, strength gone--then the inevitable. This one had made one last effort, even to giving his body to be burned. The white-faced daughter wanted to know, of course, all about it--they all want to know; but I didn't tell her--I lied! I said he had had heart failure, and that they had buried him at sea, and in a coffin like any other pa.s.senger, because we were only three days out; and I described the service and the roses, and how sorry the pa.s.sengers were. She knows the truth now. _He's told her._

"Go get your rose, old man. I ought to have had better sense than to rake it all up. No use in it. Not your side of the wall, not my side.

Let me smell it. Yes, same perfume. Here, put it back in your b.u.t.ton-hole."

PART IV

_With a Detailed Account of a Dangerous Footpad._

Mac had invited three or four of us to luncheon--Boggs, Lonnegan, Marny, and myself. These feasts were "Dutch" in the strictest sense, the sum total paid being divided, share and share alike, between the host of the day and his guests. That was the custom among the students in Munich and Paris, even at Florian's in Venice, and the custom was still observed.

It did away with unpleasant comparisons--Lonnegan's inherited bank-account, for instance, and Woods's income from his rich aunt, who refused him nothing, in contrast to my own and Boggs's annual earnings.

The only liberty given to the host of the day was the choice of restaurants. At Maroni's we could get a hot sandwich and a gla.s.s of beer for fifteen cents; at Brown's, in Twenty-eighth Street, a chop, a baked potato, and a mug of ba.s.s for half of a trade dollar. When some one of the less opulent had sold a picture, and had become temporarily rich over and above the amount due for the month's rent, Lonnegan, or Woods, or Pitkin (Pitkin had a father who could cut off coupons) selected Delmonico's. These occasions were rare, and ever afterward became historic.

This day, it being Mac's turn, he selected Oscar Pusch's, on Fourth Avenue--a modest little beer-house near the corner of Twenty-fourth Street, its only distinguis.h.i.+ng mark being a swinging, double shutter door and the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a brewery in the window. Inside was a long bar drenched with the foam of countless mugs of Hofbrau, facing a line of tables centred by cheap castors and dishes of cold slaw, and flanked at one end by a back room. This last apartment was for the elect. One table was always reserved for the exalted; of this group MacWhirter was High Priest.

Here often at night Mac held forth to an admiring crowd of young painters who believed in his brush and who loved the man who wielded it.

When I look back now down the vista of twenty years and see how fine and strong and superb that brush was, how true, how wonderful in color, how much better than any other painter of his time--Barbizon, London, or Dusseldorf--and think of how many lies the resident picture dealer told his patrons to discredit Mac's genius, I always experience a peculiar hotness under my collar-b.u.t.ton. It cools off, it is true, whenever I see one of his masterpieces hung to-day on the walls of the redeemed. My anger then turns to a genial warmth, suffusing my cheeks and permeating my being, especially when I learn the sum paid for the smallest product of his brush.

"One of MacWhirter's, sir; one of his choicest; painted in his best period," says this same fraud to-day (the period, remember, when he would say, "What can one expect of the Hudson Rivery School, sir?"), and then the dealer demands a price which, had it been paid in Mac's earlier days, would have resulted in his breaking all students' rules and setting up Johannesburg of '41 instead of the simple steins of the Hofbrau with which Lonnegan, Boggs, and the rest of us were being regaled.

The hospitable and ever alert Oscar did not welcome us this time, but a new waiter, who sprang at Mac as if he had been his lost brother--a joyous sort of waiter, clean-shaven as a priest, ruddy-cheeked, blue-eyed, with short, tan-colored hair sticking straight up on his head, looking as if at some time in his life he had been frightened half out of his wits and had never been able to keep his hair down since.

The appearance of this overjoyed individual produced a peculiar effect on Mac.

"Oh, Mr. Pusch found a place for you at last, did he, Carl?" he burst out. "Glad you're here," and Mac stepped forward and shook the waiter's hand with more than his usual warmth.

Boggs looked at me and winked. What would Mac be doing next?

"Some member of the royal family, Mac?" asked Boggs, when the waiter had left the room to execute Mac's orders.

"No," said Mac, unfolding his napkin, "just plain man."

"I know," said Boggs, "ran off with a soprano at the Imperial Opera House; disinherited by his father; fought a duel with his Colonel on account of her; dismissed from his club; sought refuge in flight to G.o.d's free country, where for years he worked in a small cafe on Fourth Avenue. Was known for years as 'Carl' where----"

Mac raised his eyes at Boggs.

"Lively imagination you've got, Boggs. If I were you I----"

"On the death of his father, the late Baron Schweizerkase," continued Boggs in the nasal tone of an exhibitor of wax works, completely ignoring Mac's interruption, "the exile, who was none other than Prince Pumperknickel, returned to his estates, where his beautiful and accomplished wife, though not of royal blood, now dispenses the hospitality of his n.o.ble house with all the honors which----"