The Complete Works of Stephen Crane (106 page)

Wrinkles had been peering into the little dry-goods box that acted as a cupboard. “There are only two eggs and half a loaf of bread left,” he announced brutally.

“Heavens!” said Warwickson from where he lay smoking on the bed. He spoke in a dismal voice. This tone, it is said, had earned him his popular name of Great Grief.

From different points of the compass Wrinkles looked at the little cupboard with a tremendous scowl, as if he intended thus to frighten the eggs into becoming more than two, and the bread into becoming a loaf. “Plague take it!” he exclaimed.

“Oh, shut up, Wrinkles!” said Grief from the bed.

Wrinkles sat down with an air austere and virtuous. “Well, what are we going to do?” he demanded of the others.

Grief, after swearing, said: “There, that’s right! Now you’re happy. The holy office of the inquisition! Blast your buttons, Wrinkles, you always try to keep us from starving peacefully! It is two hours before dinner, anyhow, and — —”

“Well, but what are you going to do?” persisted Wrinkles.

Pennoyer, with his head afar down, had been busily scratching at a pen-and-ink drawing. He looked up from his board to utter a plaintive optimism. “The Monthly Amazement will pay me to-morrow. They ought to. I’ve waited over three months now. I’m going down there to-morrow, and perhaps I’ll get it.”

His friends listened with airs of tolerance. “Oh, no doubt, Penny, old man.” But at last Wrinkles giggled pityingly. Over on the bed Grief croaked deep down in his throat. Nothing was said for a long time thereafter.

The crash of the New York streets came faintly to this room.

Occasionally one could hear the tramp of feet in the intricate corridors of the begrimed building which squatted, slumbering, and old, between two exalted commercial structures which would have had to bend afar down to perceive it. The northward march of the city’s progress had happened not to overturn this aged structure, and it huddled there, lost and forgotten, while the cloud-veering towers strode on.

Meanwhile the first shadows of dusk came in at the blurred windows of the room. Pennoyer threw down his pen and tossed his drawing over on the wonderful heap of stuff that hid the table. “It’s too dark to work.” He lit a pipe and walked about, stretching his shoulders like a man whose labour was valuable.

When the dusk came fully the youths grew apparently sad. The solemnity of the gloom seemed to make them ponder. “Light the gas, Wrinkles,” said Grief fretfully.

The flood of orange light showed clearly the dull walls lined with sketches, the tousled bed in one corner, the masses of boxes and trunks in another, a little dead stove, and the wonderful table. Moreover, there were wine-coloured draperies flung in some places, and on a shelf, high up, there were plaster casts, with dust in the creases. A long stove-pipe wandered off in the wrong direction and then turned impulsively toward a hole in the wall. There were some elaborate cobwebs on the ceiling.

“Well, let’s eat,” said Grief.

“Eat,” said Wrinkles, with a jeer; “I told you there was only two eggs and a little bread left. How are we going to eat?”

Again brought face to face with this problem, and at the hour for dinner, Pennoyer and Grief thought profoundly. “Thunder and turf!” Grief finally announced as the result of his deliberations.

“Well, if Billie Hawker was only home — —” began Pennoyer.

“But he isn’t,” objected Wrinkles, “and that settles that.”

Grief and Pennoyer thought more. Ultimately Grief said, “Oh, well, let’s eat what we’ve got.” The others at once agreed to this suggestion, as if it had been in their minds.

Later there came a quick step in the passage and a confident little thunder upon the door. Wrinkles arranging the tin pail on the gas stove, Pennoyer engaged in slicing the bread, and Great Grief affixing the rubber tube to the gas stove, yelled, “Come in!”

The door opened, and Miss Florinda O’Connor, the model, dashed into the room like a gale of obstreperous autumn leaves.

“Why, hello, Splutter!” they cried.

“Oh, boys, I’ve come to dine with you.”

It was like a squall striking a fleet of yachts.

Grief spoke first. “Yes, you have?” he said incredulously.

“Why, certainly I have. What’s the matter?”

They grinned. “Well, old lady,” responded Grief, “you’ve hit us at the wrong time. We are, in fact, all out of everything. No dinner, to mention, and, what’s more, we haven’t got a sou.”

“What? Again?” cried Florinda.

“Yes, again. You’d better dine home to-night.”

“But I’ll — I’ll stake you,” said the girl eagerly. “Oh, you poor old idiots! It’s a shame! Say, I’ll stake you.”

“Certainly not,” said Pennoyer sternly.

“What are you talking about, Splutter?” demanded Wrinkles in an angry voice.

“No, that won’t go down,” said Grief, in a resolute yet wistful tone.

Florinda divested herself of her hat, jacket, and gloves, and put them where she pleased. “Got coffee, haven’t you? Well, I’m not going to stir a step. You’re a fine lot of birds!” she added bitterly, “You’ve all pulled me out of a whole lot of scrape — oh, any number of times — and now you’re broke, you go acting like a set of dudes.”

Great Grief had fixed the coffee to boil on the gas stove, but he had to watch it closely, for the rubber tube was short, and a chair was balanced on a trunk, and two bundles of kindling was balanced on the chair, and the gas stove was balanced on the kindling. Coffee-making was here accounted a feat.

Pennoyer dropped a piece of bread to the floor. “There! I’ll have to go shy one.”

Wrinkles sat playing serenades on his guitar and staring with a frown at the table, as if he was applying some strange method of clearing it of its litter.

Florinda assaulted Great Grief. “Here, that’s not the way to make coffee!”

“What ain’t?”

“Why, the way you’re making it. You want to take — —” She explained some way to him which he couldn’t understand.

“For heaven’s sake, Wrinkles, tackle that table! Don’t sit there like a music box,” said Pennoyer, grappling the eggs and starting for the gas stove.

Later, as they sat around the board, Wrinkles said with satisfaction, “Well, the coffee’s good, anyhow.”

“’Tis good,” said Florinda, “but it isn’t made right. I’ll show you how, Penny. You first — —”

“Oh, dry up, Splutter,” said Grief. “Here, take an egg.”

“I don’t like eggs,” said Florinda.

“Take an egg,” said the three hosts menacingly.

“I tell you I don’t like eggs.”

“Take — an — egg!” they said again.

“Oh, well,” said Florinda, “I’ll take one, then; but you needn’t act like such a set of dudes — and, oh, maybe you didn’t have much lunch. I had such a daisy lunch! Up at Pontiac’s studio. He’s got a lovely studio.”

The three looked to be oppressed. Grief said sullenly, “I saw some of his things over in Stencil’s gallery, and they’re rotten.”

“Yes — rotten,” said Pennoyer.

“Rotten,” said Grief.

“Oh, well,” retorted Florinda, “if a man has a swell studio and dresses — oh, sort of like a Willie, you know, you fellows sit here like owls in a cave and say rotten — rotten — rotten. You’re away off. Pontiac’s landscapes — —”

“Landscapes be blowed! Put any of his work alongside of Billie Hawker’s and see how it looks.”

“Oh, well, Billie Hawker’s,” said Florinda. “Oh, well.”

At the mention of Hawker’s name they had all turned to scan her face.

“He wrote that he was coming home this week,” said Pennoyer.

“Did he?” asked Florinda indifferently.

“Yes. Aren’t you glad?”

They were still watching her face.

“Yes, of course I’m glad. Why shouldn’t I be glad?” cried the girl with defiance.

They grinned.

“Oh, certainly. Billie Hawker is a good fellow, Splutter. You have a particular right to be glad.”

“You people make me tired,” Florinda retorted. “Billie Hawker doesn’t give a rap about me, and he never tried to make out that he did.”

“No,” said Grief. “But that isn’t saying that you don’t care a rap about Billie Hawker. Ah, Florinda!”

It seemed that the girl’s throat suffered a slight contraction. “Well, and what if I do?” she demanded finally.

“Have a cigarette?” answered Grief.

Florinda took a cigarette, lit it, and, perching herself on a divan, which was secretly a coal box, she smoked fiercely.

“What if I do?” she again demanded. “It’s better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow.”

“Oh, Splutter, you poor little outspoken kid!” said Wrinkle in a sad voice.

Grief searched among the pipes until he found the best one. “Yes, Splutter, don’t you know that when you are so frank you defy every law of your sex, and wild eyes will take your trail?”

“Oh, you talk through your hat,” replied Florinda. “Billie don’t care whether I like him or whether I don’t. And if he should hear me now, he wouldn’t be glad or give a hang, either way. I know that.” The girl paused and looked at the row of plaster casts. “Still, you needn’t be throwing it at me all the time.”

“We didn’t,” said Wrinkles indignantly. “You threw it at yourself.”

“Well,” continued Florinda, “it’s better than liking one of you dubs, anyhow. He makes money and — —”

“There,” said Grief, “now you’ve hit it! Bedad, you’ve reached a point in eulogy where if you move again you will have to go backward.”

“Of course I don’t care anything about a fellow’s having money — —”

“No, indeed you don’t, Splutter,” said Pennoyer.

“But then, you know what I mean. A fellow isn’t a man and doesn’t stand up straight unless he has some money. And Billie Hawker makes enough so that you feel that nobody could walk over him, don’t you know? And there isn’t anything jay about him, either. He’s a thoroughbred, don’t you know?”

After reflection, Pennoyer said, “It’s pretty hard on the rest of us, Splutter.”

“Well, of course I like him, but — but — —”

“What?” said Pennoyer.

“I don’t know,” said Florinda.

Purple Sanderson lived in this room, but he usually dined out. At a certain time in his life, before he came to be a great artist, he had learned the gas-fitter’s trade, and when his opinions were not identical with the opinions of the art managers of the greater number of New York publications he went to see a friend who was a plumber, and the opinions of this man he was thereafter said to respect. He frequented a very neat restaurant on Twenty-third Street. It was known that on Saturday nights Wrinkles, Grief, and Pennoyer frequently quarreled with him.

As Florinda ceased speaking Purple entered. “Hello, there, Splutter!” As he was neatly hanging up his coat, he said to the others, “Well, the rent will be due in four days.”

“Will it?” asked Pennoyer, astounded.

“Certainly it will,” responded Purple, with the air of a superior financial man.

“My soul!” said Wrinkles.

“Oh, shut up, Purple!” said Grief. “You make me weary, coming around here with your chin about rent. I was just getting happy.”

“Well, how are we going to pay it? That’s the point,” said Sanderson.

Wrinkles sank deeper in his chair and played despondently on his guitar. Grief cast a look of rage at Sanderson, and then stared at the wall. Pennoyer said, “Well, we might borrow it from Billie Hawker.”

Florinda laughed then.

“Oh,” continued Pennoyer hastily, “if those Amazement people pay me when they said they would I’ll have the money.”

“So you will,” said Grief. “You will have money to burn. Did the Amazement people ever pay you when they said they would? You are wonderfully important all of a sudden, it seems to me. You talk like an artist.”

Wrinkles, too, smiled at Pennoyer. “The Eminent Magazine people wanted Penny to hire models and make a try for them, too. It would only cost him a stack of blues. By the time he has invested all his money he hasn’t got, and the rent is three weeks overdue, he will be able to tell the landlord to wait seven months until the Monday morning after the day of publication. Go ahead, Penny.”

After a period of silence, Sanderson, in an obstinate manner, said, “Well, what’s to be done? The rent has got to be paid.”

Wrinkles played more sad music. Grief frowned deeper. Pennoyer was evidently searching his mind for a plan.

Florinda took the cigarette from between her lips that she might grin with greater freedom.

“We might throw Purple out,” said Grief, with an inspired air. “That would stop all this discussion.”

“You!” said Sanderson furiously. “You can’t keep serious a minute. If you didn’t have us to take care of you, you wouldn’t even know when they threw you out into the street.”

“Wouldn’t I?” said Grief.

“Well, look here,” interposed Florinda, “I’m going home unless you can be more interesting. I am dead sorry about the rent, but I can’t help it, and — —”

“Here! Sit down! Hold on, Splutter!” they shouted. Grief turned to Sanderson: “Purple, you shut up!”

Florinda curled again on the divan and lit another cigarette. The talk waged about the names of other and more successful painters, whose work they usually pronounced “rotten.”