In the meantime, while the confidential conversation was going on between master and secretary, Miram Monroe sat in his office scheming against his employer, against the secretary, and against the sick young woman, whose knowledge of things worldly was now a blank. It is always true of men of limited ability that they aim far above the possible.
Monroe, with his microscopic smile this day stretched almost into a cynical grin, so satisfied was he with his genius, was perusing page after page of complicated figures. He was doing this mechanically, though, or otherwise he could not have O K"d them, being as he was in such a ruminating turn, with his mind set on other things so much dearer to his undefiling heart. Who was possessed with his special inborn faculty, qualifying him for his employment? Who had such a special disposition to accomplish what he purposed? Who had such a presiding genius for good or evil over the destiny of other men? Why, Miram Monroe--Mr. Monroe, if you please. He rang a bell. Welty Morne stepped within, and closed the door behind him, meeting his superior with a superior smile to that of the rigid face.
"Welty," said Monroe, with the solemnity of a gray goose, "I have seen the boss of the Board of Directors."
"Well?"
"They have decided, he tells me, to create the office of a.s.sistant treasurer in the New York branch."
"No!"
"Yes," without a crow"s foot.
"Good, old boy; we must celebrate it tonight," said Welty, in a whisper.
"And the young chap goes."
"No!"
"Yes," without a wrinkle.
"We must celebrate that tomorrow night--When?"
"At once," without a crack.
"Bully! We must celebrate that the next night--Who?"
"You," without a wink.
"No!"
"Yes," without a twinkle.
"Whee! We"ll celebrate that the next night--Where?"
"At the Bottomless Pit," with a microscopic smile. "Be at my room at nine p. m."
"With joy, old boy; I"ll be with you! Hah, you"re no two-spot!" With this Welty expired, almost, over his good feelings that his promotion brought over him.
The bell rang again. In came Bate Yenger, with a crimped smile on his stale face.
"Bate, do you want Welty"s place?" asked the marble idol.
"Want it?" exclaimed the idolizing Bate. "Can I get it? or are you buffooning?"
"You have it, Bate," without a twitch.
"When?" asked the anxious Bate.
"Soon," without a quiver.
"Shall we celebrate?" asked Bate.
"We will," with a smack.
"Where?"
"At the Bottomless Pit," with a feathered smile. "Be at my room at nine p. m."
"Bully!" With this Bate also expired--with joy over his air castles.
Accordingly, at nine p. m., the trio met in rooms Nos. 4-11-44 in the St. Charles hotel, a hostelry of good repute where men of disrepute would sometimes get through the cordon of morality that was strung around it. Monroe had a suite of three rooms, as became a man of quality, as he was, with no disparagement of the "quality." These quarters were furnished, of course, in such magnificence that contrast between the riches of the room and the nature of the man was like the temperate and the frigid zones. His bed room was in white enamel, with cream-colored carpet, a frail white iron bed-stead, with dainty white materials on it. Why the combination? It was that he, when he donned his white night gown, imagined he would be in a little heaven of his own, during his nocturnal sojournings into Dreamland--the only heaven he ever would be enabled to approach, perhaps. He had a lounging room fitted up in gray, in which he lounged during his hours of rest, and in which he received his friends. The other room he called the Bottomless Pit--not that it was bottomless, nor that it was a pit, in the strict sense, but that here was where he refreshed himself and entertained. It was done in dark-brown, probably in commemoration of that old jest, "dark-brown taste the morning after."
Welty and Bate had been there before, so they needed no formal reception to cause them to make themselves at home. So repairing to the Pit, a spread was in waiting. The bill-of-fare (ach, G.o.d in himmel, it should be menu) was mushrooms on toast, frogs" legs in b.u.t.ter, calves" brains in cracker meal, squabs in stew, oysters in whisky, rolls in brown, b.u.t.ter in squares, sugar in cubes, coffee in percolator, pickles in acetics, cheese in limburger, nuts in hull, desserts in bottle, and cigars in box. All this in honor of Monroe"s erudition as a manipulator of things clandestine in his attempt at circ.u.mvention of a certain favored young man.
When they sat down at the table, which was just big enough for three to hear each other across with loud talk, with the load of savory things in china, garnished by genuine sterling, upon it, they were all very hungry, and besides very thirsty.
"Gentlemen," said the stiffness, rising, without a break in his metallic visage, the others rising with him, "gentlemen, a toast to the lady; may the good Lord preserve her."
"The lady! the lady!" cried the two Monroe dupes in unison.
"And to Welty and Bate; may they ever prosper in their new jobs," he continued. "Hah, too conscientiously modest to toast yourselves, are you?--take water, you kids." This last remark was made by him when he saw that Welty and Bate hesitated about toasting themselves. However, they toasted.
Thus they toasted, and they gabbled, and they ate, till all the viands had vanished, and nothing was left upon the board but the smeared platters. Then to the bottles they betook themselves with a wild and merry gusto. Monroe pulled the corks, and poured. He drank, and they drank. He smoked, and they smoked, till the air was a blue haze of whirling objects, only to be dispelled by the dark-brown in the morning.
Once, during a fit of eructation, Monroe thought he would surely die, and got ready to make his will.
"Write it out, Welty," he commanded, in a severe maudlin tone; "and write it out so that She shall get it all, with a codicil that you and Bate are to get one-third of what is left, after I am gone. Whoop! Woe me! Woe me!" he wailed, with his face like that of a gargoyle. "Write it out before I die," he said, as he went staggering against a wall, falling over a chair, crushing down a rocker, flailing his hands like bat"s wings, as he retched and perambulated through the Pit.
"Give me a pen first, and paper; I can"t write (hic) with my fingers like a c.h.i.n.k," said the hysterical Welty--hysterical in mirth only over the wild effusions of Monroe.
"I"ll write it; I"ll write it, if I have to use my toes, if you get me the ink, or tar, or something else that is black--only get it; get it!"
weeped the disconsolate Bate, who at that moment had a fearsome feeling that his friend Monroe would die before the act was done, lolling his head the while over the back of his chair, as if that part of his anatomy was too loose ever to be set back to its normality.
At this outburst of Bate, Monroe plunged forward through the door of the Pit to the gray room, and to his secretary, from which he withdrew everything before he found the ink, the pen and the paper. Returning with these articles, Welty wrote the will in such hiroglyphic chirography that a Greely himself could not make it out. But it was writ, and signed, and sealed in due form. Welty in his hilarity did not lose sight of its import, and put it away in a secret pocket, for future use should the occasion ever demand it.
He then shouldered Monroe into his downy bed, in full dress, with "Woe me! Woe me!" escaping in a groan from his unsmiling lips. Then Welty took the inebriated Bate, in the completeness of debauch, and rolled him, shoes and all, into that otherwise spotless couch. Then, before he should completely lose the balance of his own muddled reason, he also tumbled into Monroe"s heaven, leaving the dark-brown room to clarify itself of their revelings.
And amid the stillness of the lights, all left burning brightly, they went sailing into the land of ethereal asphyxia, to await the hour of the "dark-brown taste" to bring them back to the time of remorse, and its painful complications.
CHAPTER XX.
WHAT THE SPRINGTIME BROUGHT FORTH.
Christmas had come and gone; New Years was here, and pa.s.sing, and Edith still lay upon her bed. Her face was thin and wan and spiritless. Her form had wasted away till she was almost as a skeleton. Her little hands were fleshless and cold, and her eyes were dull. The malady was in her brain yet, refusing to lift its anchorage, although she saw and recognized everybody permitted in her sight.