The Four Million
“I’m so glad you’ve kept on,” said Delia, heartily. “You’re bound to
win, dear. Thirty-three dollars! We never had so much to spend before.
We’ll have oysters to-night.”
“And filet mignon with champignons,” said Joe. “Where is the olive
fork?”
On the next Saturday evening Joe reached home first. He spread his $18
on the parlour table and washed what seemed to be a great deal of dark
paint from his hands.
Half an hour later Delia arrived, her right hand tied up in a shapeless
bundle of wraps and bandages.
“How is this?” asked Joe after the usual greetings. Delia laughed, but
not very joyously.
“Clementina,” she explained, “insisted upon a Welsh rabbit after her
lesson. She is such a queer girl. Welsh rabbits at 5 in the afternoon.
The General was there. You should have seen him run for the chafing
dish, Joe, just as if there wasn’t a servant in the house. I know
Clementina isn’t in good health; she is so nervous. In serving the
rabbit she spilled a great lot of it, boiling hot, over my hand and
wrist. It hurt awfully, Joe. And the dear girl was so sorry! But Gen.
Pinkney!—Joe, that old man nearly went distracted. He rushed downstairs
and sent somebody—they said the furnace man or somebody in the
basement—out to a drug store for some oil and things to bind it up
with. It doesn’t hurt so much now.”
“What’s this?” asked Joe, taking the hand tenderly and pulling at some
white strands beneath the bandages.
“It’s something soft,” said Delia, “that had oil on it. Oh, Joe, did
you sell another sketch?” She had seen the money on the table.
“Did I?” said Joe; “just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot
to-day, and he isn’t sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and
a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand,
Dele?”
“Five o’clock, I think,” said Dele, plaintively. “The iron—I mean the
rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen.
Pinkney, Joe, when—”
“Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat
beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
“What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?” he asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and
stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but
at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she confessed. “And I couldn’t bear to
have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that
big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make
up both General Pinkney and Clementina, don’t you, Joe? And when a girl
in the laundry set down a hot iron on my hand this afternoon I was all
the way home making up that story about the Welsh rabbit. You’re not
angry, are you, Joe? And if I hadn’t got the work you mightn’t have
sold your sketches to that man from Peoria.”
“He wasn’t from Peoria,” said Joe, slowly.
“Well, it doesn’t matter where he was from. How clever you are,
Joe—and—kiss me, Joe—and what made you ever suspect that I wasn’t
giving music lessons to Clementina?”
“I didn’t,” said Joe, “until to-night. And I wouldn’t have then, only I
sent up this cotton waste and oil from the engine-room this afternoon
for a girl upstairs who had her hand burned with a smoothing-iron. I’ve
been firing the engine in that laundry for the last two weeks.”
“And then you didn’t—”
“My purchaser from Peoria,” said Joe, “and Gen. Pinkney are both
creations of the same art—but you wouldn’t call it either painting or
music.”
And then they both laughed, and Joe began:
“When one loves one’s Art no service seems—”
But Delia stopped him with her hand on his lips. “No,” she said—“just
‘When one loves.’”
THE COMING-OUT OF MAGGIE
Every Saturday night the Clover Leaf Social Club gave a hop in the hall
of the Give and Take Athletic Association on the East Side. In order to
attend one of these dances you must be a member of the Give and
Take—or, if you belong to the division that starts off with the right
foot in waltzing, you must work in Rhinegold’s paper-box factory.
Still, any Clover Leaf was privileged to escort or be escorted by an
outsider to a single dance. But mostly each Give and Take brought the
paper-box girl that he affected; and few strangers could boast of
having shaken a foot at the regular hops.
Maggie Toole, on account of her dull eyes, broad mouth and left-handed
style of footwork in the two-step, went to the dances with Anna McCarty
and her “fellow.” Anna and Maggie worked side by side in the factory,
and were the greatest chums ever. So Anna always made Jimmy Burns take
her by Maggie’s house every Saturday night so that her friend could go
to the dance with them.
The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall
of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle-making
inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to
engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous
combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop
with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an
efficient screen. For sometimes the tip went ’round, and if you were
among the elect that tiptoed up the dark back stairway you might see as
neat and satisfying a little welter-weight affair to a finish as ever
happened inside the ropes.
On Saturdays Rhinegold’s paper-box factory closed at 3 P. M. On one
such afternoon Anna and Maggie walked homeward together. At Maggie’s
door Anna said, as usual: “Be ready at seven, sharp, Mag; and Jimmy and
me’ll come by for you.”
But what was this? Instead of the customary humble and grateful thanks
from the non-escorted one there was to be perceived a high-poised head,
a prideful dimpling at the corners of a broad mouth, and almost a
sparkle in a dull brown eye.
“Thanks, Anna,” said Maggie; “but you and Jimmy needn’t bother
to-night. I’ve a gentleman friend that’s coming ’round to escort me to
the hop.”
The comely Anna pounced upon her friend, shook her, chided and
beseeched her. Maggie Toole catch a fellow! Plain, dear, loyal,
unattractive Maggie, so sweet as a chum, so unsought for a two-step or
a moonlit bench in the little park. How was it? When did it happen? Who
was it?
“You’ll see to-night,” said Maggie, flushed with the wine of the first
grapes she had gathered in Cupid’s vineyard. “He’s swell all right.
He’s two inches taller than Jimmy, and an up-to-date dresser. I’ll
introduce him, Anna, just as soon as we get to the hall.”
Anna and Jimmy were among the first Clover Leafs to arrive that
evening. Anna’s eyes were brightly fixed upon the door of the hall to
catch the first glimpse of her friend’s “catch.”
At 8:30 Miss Toole swept into the hall with her escort. Quickly her
triumphant eye discovered her chum under the wing of her faithful
Jimmy.
“Oh, gee!” cried Anna, “Mag ain’t made a hit—oh, no! Swell fellow?
well, I guess! Style? Look at ’um.”
“Go as far as you like,” said Jimmy, with sandpaper in his voice. “Cop
him out if you want him. These new guys always win out with the push.
Don’t mind me. He don’t squeeze all the limes, I guess. Huh!”
“Shut up, Jimmy. You know what I mean. I’m glad for Mag. First fellow
she ever had. Oh, here they come.”
Across the floor Maggie sailed like a coquettish yacht convoyed by a
stately cruiser. And truly, her companion justified the encomiums of
the faithful chum. He stood two inches taller than the average Give and
Take athlete; his dark hair curled; his eyes and his teeth flashed
whenever he bestowed his frequent smiles. The young men of the Clover
Leaf Club pinned not their faith to the graces of person as much as
they did to its prowess, its achievements in hand-to-hand conflicts,
and its preservation from the legal duress that constantly menaced it.
The member of the association who would bind a paper-box maiden to his
conquering chariot scorned to employ Beau Brummel airs. They were not
considered honourable methods of warfare. The swelling biceps, the coat
straining at its buttons over the chest, the air of conscious
conviction of the supereminence of the male in the cosmogony of
creation, even a calm display of bow legs as subduing and enchanting
agents in the gentle tourneys of Cupid—these were the approved arms and
ammunition of the Clover Leaf gallants. They viewed, then, genuflexions
and alluring poses of this visitor with their chins at a new angle.
“A friend of mine, Mr. Terry O’Sullivan,” was Maggie’s formula of
introduction. She led him around the room, presenting him to each
new-arriving Clover Leaf. Almost was she pretty now, with the unique
luminosity in her eyes that comes to a girl with her first suitor and a
kitten with its first mouse.
“Maggie Toole’s got a fellow at last,” was the word that went round
among the paper-box girls. “Pipe Mag’s floor-walker”—thus the Give and
Takes expressed their indifferent contempt.
Usually at the weekly hops Maggie kept a spot on the wall warm with her
back. She felt and showed so much gratitude whenever a self-sacrificing
partner invited her to dance that his pleasure was cheapened and
diminished. She had even grown used to noticing Anna joggle the
reluctant Jimmy with her elbow as a signal for him to invite her chum
to walk over his feet through a two-step.
But to-night the pumpkin had turned to a coach and six. Terry
O’Sullivan was a victorious Prince Charming, and Maggie Toole winged
her first butterfly flight. And though our tropes of fairyland be mixed
with those of entomology they shall not spill one drop of ambrosia from
the rose-crowned melody of Maggie’s one perfect night.
The girls besieged her for introductions to her “fellow.” The Clover
Leaf young men, after two years of blindness, suddenly perceived charms
in Miss Toole. They flexed their compelling muscles before her and
bespoke her for the dance.
Thus she scored; but to Terry O’Sullivan the honours of the evening
fell thick and fast. He shook his curls; he smiled and went easily
through the seven motions for acquiring grace in your own room before
an open window ten minutes each day. He danced like a faun; he
introduced manner and style and atmosphere; his words came trippingly
upon his tongue, and—he waltzed twice in succession with the paper-box
girl that Dempsey Donovan brought.
Dempsey was the leader of the association. He wore a dress suit, and
could chin the bar twice with one hand. He was one of “Big Mike”
O’Sullivan’s lieutenants, and was never troubled by trouble. No cop
dared to arrest him. Whenever he broke a pushcart man’s head or shot a
member of the Heinrick B. Sweeney Outing and Literary Association in
the kneecap, an officer would drop around and say:
“The Cap’n ’d like to see ye a few minutes round to the office whin ye
have time, Dempsey, me boy.”
But there would be sundry gentlemen there with large gold fob chains
and black cigars; and somebody would tell a funny story, and then
Dempsey would go back and work half an hour with the six-pound
dumbbells. So, doing a tight-rope act on a wire stretched across
Niagara was a safe terpsichorean performance compared with waltzing
twice with Dempsey Donovan’s paper-box girl. At 10 o’clock the jolly
round face of “Big Mike” O’Sullivan shone at the door for five minutes
upon the scene. He always looked in for five minutes, smiled at the
girls and handed out real perfectos to the delighted boys.
Dempsey Donovan was at his elbow instantly, talking rapidly. “Big Mike”
looked carefully at the dancers, smiled, shook his head and departed.
The music stopped. The dancers scattered to the chairs along the walls.
Terry O’Sullivan, with his entrancing bow, relinquished a pretty girl