"Then uprose a handsome lawyer, But would not give his name; He defended this old lady And well he done the same.
The verdict was "Not guilty!"
_Tears_ stood in the jury"s eyes; When the unknown lawyer heard it, Then says he to their surprise:"
With secret consternation Ewing waited, trying to laugh with the others, who had exploded at "_tears_," wrenched out in a high minor wail. The air now took a graceful swinging waltz movement, and the puzzled youth suffered an illumining flash:
"She was my mother once In days of long ago; I"ll not forsake her now, Her lots has fell so low.
I have other mothers now To take me by the hand, But I"ll not desert this one Just because I"m rich and grand."
Enlightened at last, Ewing joined in the applause, amid which Chalmers resumed his seat. Instantly perceiving why they had laughed at his own song, he burned at recalling how chance alone had saved him from betraying a simple-hearted faith in the virtues of that gem. Now it was funny, even to him. Other songs of Ben"s rang in his ears; they were _all_ funny--though he must never let Ben know that. He had unwittingly betrayed Ben to a ribald crew, but he had learned a thing it was well to know. He had learned of the world; he had aged in a leap.
They sat late at table, drinking beer from stone mugs, smoking long-stemmed pipes and trifling with song. They blended their voices in melting harmony at the climax of "Nelly"s" woe and in the acuter parts of "Nothing but Mother."
As they drifted out at midnight Chalmers made an appointment with Ewing to inspect the vacant studio and make himself, if he liked, one of the colony of not too serious workers housed by the Rookery.
Half a dozen men strolled with him to the Stuyvesant, and in the shadow of its sober doors, as a parting testimonial to his worth, they sang once more in blended pathos:
"She was my moth-e-r-r once In days so long a-g-o-o-o!"
He watched them up the street a block, pouring out their hearts in song to a watchful and cynical policeman.
CHAPTER XII
THE NEW MEMBER
When Ewing, a few days later, moved into the vacant studio on the top floor of the Rookery, the men there made an affair of it, flocking from their studios to receive him. They showed him the view from his windows, a far stretch of dull-red roofs, with murky water b.u.t.ts stuck aloft like giant c.o.c.kades against the gray sky. They showed him where he would sleep, in a little closet-like alcove screened from the big room by a gay curtain. They exhibited the alcohol lamp left by Glynn, over which water would be boiled for the morning coffee. And they superintended, from their wider experience, the arrangement of his belongings.
He felt aloof from the friendly turmoil, unable to believe that the place would be his own. The thing was too vast for his experience. It would surely be for another that Baldwin spread the Navajo blankets on the floor and couch; for some one else that Chalmers, of the beard--him they called the Brushwood Boy or eke "the human ambush"--removed piles of old magazines from the cot in the alcove; for some one else that Dallas tucked brushes into a ginger jar; and for some one else that Griggs tested water taps and the radiator.
When they had cheerfully discovered that no one could think of anything further to do they trooped down Broadway to celebrate Ewing"s advent in a dinner at the Monastery. When this was over and the crowd had thinned to a few late sitters they had him do a picture. The others watched him as he worked, standing on a bare table drawn to the wall. Brother Hilarius grew before their eyes, insecurely astride a bucking broncho, narrowly observed by two figures in the background--a dismayed brother of his order in gown of frieze and hempen girdle, and Red Phinney, contorting himself in ribald glee.
The watchers applauded as the picture grew. They had not supposed that the quiet, almost timid, boy, who betrayed his unsophistication by countless little mannerisms, could have attained the sureness of line his strokes revealed.
The heated air of the room rushed up to make a torrid zone of the region about the worker"s head, and from time to time one of the watchers handed him a mug of creaming ale with which he washed the dust of the charcoal from his throat. He lost himself in the work at last. The voices, laughter, songs, strains of the piano, came but faintly to him, and were as the echoes of street life that sounded in his ears each night before he slept. It was after one o"clock when he stepped down from the table to survey the finished drawing.
He knew he had done well, but he was glad to be told so by others. It was clearly their opinion that the club had in no way descended from its high standards of mural decoration. Baldwin brought a bottle of fixative and sprayed the drawing through a blowpipe. Then they drained a final b.u.mper to the artist and the work and went out into the mild September night, making the empty street, sleeping in shadow, resound to their noisy talk.
The light of a car crept ghostlike toward them and they stood to board it. As it moved on through Broadway Ewing thought of an empty creek bed at the bottom of some ravine at home. This was the dry time, but with earliest dawn would come the freshet, flooding the canon, surging over its rocky bed to some outlet as mysterious as its source. The image brought him a sudden pang of homesickness. Despite the jovial friendliness of the crowd he was still a detached spectator. There was no intimacy for him, no real contact. He was glad to remember the bed that awaited him and confessed this to Chalmers.
"Bed!" echoed Chalmers in righteous amazement. "What"s the use of going to bed? You only fall asleep!"
"He"s right, old man," put in Baldwin warningly. "I"ve tried it."
Dallas turned a reproachful gaze on Ewing. "G.o.d has given you a beautiful life and you sleep it away! Come, come, man!"
"We"ll have a bite to eat, anyway," broke in Griggs. "Come on, here"s Clayton"s."
They were presently about a table far back in a restaurant where lingered many sitters-up of nights. They ordered Welsh rabbits and ale.
Ewing refused the ale and drank water.
Dallas put on an air of wishing to defend this choice of beverage. "Of course, it"s the stuff that made Noah famous," he submitted.
"Yes--and it made all that trouble at Johnstown, too," broke in Chalmers with deep hostility in his look at Ewing"s gla.s.s. "I can"t forget that.
Water has never been the same to me since."
They fell to the food when it came. They smoked, they drank more ale, they sang in tones enough subdued to avert public disfavor, and they flung jests about to spice the endless gossip of their craft.
Ewing listened, yet with eager eyes for the people at other tables about them. These men and women captivated him by their suggestions of mystery--characters in the play he was forever beholding-- curious-looking men whose faces suggested lives of dramatic tension; beautiful women, splendidly arrayed, with much of mystery and something of daring in their animation. He scanned them all furtively as the talk at his own table flowed on.
It was chiefly of their work that they talked. Chalmers related matters exposing the inefficiency of an art editor to whose mercies fate now and then betrayed him. Chalmers bitterly thought that this person should be driving an ice wagon or helping about in a shipyard, or something of the sort--not telling artists how to draw their pictures.
Baldwin sympathized. He had his own art editor. It came out that no man present had ever even heard of a competent art editor. It stood to reason that there could be none. A man of capacity to be an art editor would have too much self-respect. He would starve in the gutter first.
But it took time and talk and replenished mugs to reduce this truth to its beautiful, naked simplicity, and Ewing at last saw that day had come. The lights inside were paling to an unwholesome yellow. He mentioned the circ.u.mstance insinuatingly, for he was tired.
Baldwin scowled at his watch, then dropped it into his fresh mug of ale, and glanced triumphantly about the table.
"A degenerate race," muttered Chalmers. "At the first sign of daylight we scamper off to bed like scared rabbits. For me--thank G.o.d--there"s nothing like the glorious sunrise, the crisp air, the healthy glow.
There"s magic in it--Nature"s choicest gift. Yes, sir, the splendors of dawn for me! D"you s"pose I"d miss _this_?" He glared about the room and ecstatically sniffed the thick, smoky air. "What does that clod know of beauty?" He indicated a waiter, dozing against the wall with practiced equilibrium.
"Well, well," exclaimed Baldwin, "if I haven"t gone and forgotten to eat breakfast! How shiftless!" He aroused the waiter with snapping fingers.
"I hope we"re not keeping you up, Claude, but bacon and eggs, please, and coffee."
An hour later they went out to find the street already alive with early workers. Baldwin appeared to consider that these, also, were night-long revelers.
""Stonishing how they can keep it up, night after night," he remarked, frowning in wonder at the early procession. "You"d think they"d _have_ to sleep some time."
"It"ll tell on their nerves sooner or later, you mark my words," said Griggs sententiously.
Chalmers stared intently into the window of a florist adjoining the restaurant. He turned to them with purpose in his fair face and spoke again of his art editor.
"Only trouble with him--he"s pa.s.sed away, poor fellow, and doesn"t know it. He ought to be told--but not brutally. I see something here for him."
He came out of the florist"s presently with a sizable emblem of mortality--a floral pillow with "Rest" worked on it in immortelles.
"Come on!"
At the corner they crowded into hansoms. It was a long ride, and Ewing was asleep when they reached Park Row, but they aroused him to help escort Chalmers and his offering to the elevator of a mighty building.
While they awaited his return Baldwin bethought him of his own art editor. He seemed to believe that something fitting might be done. After deep reflection he crossed the narrow street to a district messenger office, to emerge a moment later followed by eight grinning messenger boys. These he led to the elevator of another building near by.
Chalmers returned from his own mission, wiping his eyes.
"Poor fellow, he knows he"s dead now. But I broke down and sobbed like a child when I gave it to him--I"m all heart. It"s over now, all but the life insurance. And yet he didn"t thank me. On the contrary he spoke language I should blush to repeat."
The others put on looks of chastened gloom and were speaking in hushed tones of the sad event when Baldwin returned. He dismissed his uniformed attendants with largesse.