Before the bitter taste of the syrup
faded from his tongue, Donaldson’s thoughts
shifted from the Ultimate to the Now. He was
too good a sportsman to question his judgment by worry
when once committed to an enterprise. The world
now lay before him as he had wished it an
enchanted land in which he could move with as great
freedom as a prince in the magical kingdoms of Arabia.
The Present became sharpened to poignancy.
Even as he stood there musing over the marvel of the
new world into which he had leaped the
old thin world of years condensed into one thick week he
realized that this very wondering had cost him five
precious minutes. A dozen such periods made an
hour, two dozen hours a day one seventh
of his living space. This thought so whetted
his interest that he could have sat on here indefinitely,
thrilled to the marrow by the mere pageant of life
as it passed before his eyes on the street below.
The slightest incident was now dramatic; the hurry
of men and women on their way up-town and down-town,
the swift movement of vehicles, the fluttering of
birds in the sunshine, the unceasing, eager flux of
life. It was through the eyes of youth he was
looking for is youth anything more than
the ability to live the irresponsible days as they
come? Youth is Omar without his philosophy.
He grew dizzy. Life taken so was too powerful
a stimulant. He must brace himself.
He settled into one of the big chairs,
closing his eyes to the wonders about him, and tried
to think more soberly. He felt as though he must
dull his quickened senses in some way. His unsheathed
nerves quivered back from so direct a contact with
life.
“Quiet, old man, quiet,”
he cautioned himself. “There ’s a
lot of things you wish to do in these next few days.
So you must sober down you must get a
grip on yourself.”
He rose to his feet determinedly.
He must work out of such moods as this. One
of the first things for him to do was to buy a decent
personal outfit. As soon as he gave his mind
a definite object upon which to work, his thoughts
instantly cleared. It was just some such matter-of-fact
task as this which he needed.
He went down-stairs, and stepping
into a taxicab, was whisked to one of the large retail
stores. He had no time to squander upon a tailor,
but he was successful in securing a good fit in ready-made
clothing. He bought several street suits, evening
clothes, overcoats and hats, much silk underwear a
luxury he had always promised himself in that ghost
future and an extravagant supply of cravats,
gloves, socks, and odds and ends. He omitted
nothing necessary to make him feel a well-dressed
man so far as he could find it ready made. There
was nothing conceited about Donaldson, nothing of
the fop, but he enjoyed both the feeling and the appearance
of rich garments. He hired a messenger boy who
announced his name as Bobby and who followed along
at his heels, collecting the bundles and carrying
them out to the waiting cab.
He was a fresh cheeked youngster with
a quick interest in things. He could n’t
make up his mind whether Donaldson was really an Indian
prince or whether as a result of drinking he merely
felt like one. As time passed and he saw that
the man was neither an oriental nor drunk, his imagination
then wavered between accepting him as an English duke
or a member of the Vanderbilt family.
Donaldson perceived the keen interest
the boy was taking in his purchases, saw the wonder
in his eyes grow, based upon a faith that still accepted
Aladdin as an ever-present possibility, and realized
that Bobby was getting almost as much fun out of this
game as he himself. He began to humor him further
by consulting his taste in the matter of ties and
waistcoats, though he found that the latter’s
sporting instincts led him to colors too pronounced
to harmonize with his own ideas. Still he appreciated
the fact that Bobby was indulging in almost as many
thrills as though he were actually holding the purse.
This became especially true when Donaldson allowed
the boy to purchase for himself such articles as struck
his fancy. As a matter of fact there was not
so much difference in the present point of view of
the man and the boy; it was to them both a fairy episode.
They lounged from one store to another,
enjoying the lights, the colors, the beautiful cloths,
choosing where they would with all the abandon of
those with genii to serve them. Donaldson was
indulging something more fundamental than his enjoyment
of the things themselves; this was his first taste,
as well as Bobby’s, of gratifying desires without
worry of the reckoning. His wishes were now stripped
to bare wants. He was free of the skeleton hand
of the Future which had so long held him prisoner which
had frightened him into depriving himself of all life’s
garnishings until his condition had been reduced to
one of monastic simplicity without the monk’s
redeeming inspiration. He was no longer mocked
by the thin cry of “Wait!”
He moved about this gay store world
with a sense of kingly superiority. He listened
indulgently to the idle chatter of the shop girls,
the rattle of the cash boxes, and smiled at the seriousness
with which this business of selling was pressed.
What a tremendous ado they made of living, with year
after year, month after month, day after day, looming
endlessly before them! Not an act which they
performed, even to the tying up of a bundle, ended
in itself, but was one of an endless vista of acts.
The burden of the Future was upon them. They
drooped, poor bloodless things, beneath the weight
of the relentless days before them. And so this
faded present was all their future, too. They
saw nothing of the joyous world which spun around
him bright as a new coin. They were dead, because
of the weary days to come, to the magical brilliancy
of the big arc-lights, to the humor and action of the
crowd, to the quick shifts of colors; they were stupefied
by this great flux of life which swept them on day
after day to another day. Often unexpressed,
this, but felt dumbly below the chatter and dry laughter.
They waited, waited, circling about in a gray maelstrom
until the grave sucked them in. He himself had
been in the clutch of it. But that was yesterday.
To-day he saw all that lay unseen
before their dulled vision all the show
with its million actors. He saw for example the
pathos in the patient eyes of the old lady yonder still
waiting at eighty; he caught the flash of scarlet
ribbon beyond, the silent message of the black one
(another long waiting); the muffled laugh and the muffled
oath; the careless eyes that tossed the coin to the
counter, the sharp eyes that followed it, the dead
ones that picked it up and threw it into the nickeled
cash box which flew with it to its golden nest; the
tread, the tread, the tread of a thousand feet, the
beat, beat, beat of a thousand hearts. All these
things he saw and heard and felt.
When he had fully replenished his
wardrobe he still had several hours left to him.
He remembered a unique book store just off Fifth Avenue
at West Thirty-ninth Street which he had frequently
passed, often lingering in front of the windows to
admire quaint English prints. On cloudy days
especially he had often made it a point to walk up
there and breathe in the spirit of sunshine that he
found in the green grass of the old hunting scenes
and in the scarlet coats of the hearty-cheeked men
riding to hounds upon their lean horses.
“Come on,” he called enthusiastically
to Bobby. “We ’ve just begun.”
“Gee!” gasped Bobby.
“H’aint you spent it all? Have yer
gut more left?”
“Lots. As much as I can spend until I
die.”
The boy’s face grew eager.
“Say,” he asked confidentially.
“Where ’d yer git it?”
“Earned it, the most
of it. Sweat for it and starved for it and suffered
for it! And I earned with it the right to spend
it, the right, I tell you!”
Bobby shrank back a little before
such fierceness. The boy felt a faint suspicion
of what had not before occurred to him: that the
man was crazy. But the next second the gentle
smile returned to soften the tense mouth, and the
boy’s fear vanished. No one could fear
Donaldson when he smiled.
In front of the modest shop with its
quaint sign swinging above the door, they paused.
Donaldson found it difficult to believe that he now
had the right to enter. To him this store had
never been anything else but a part of the scenery
of life, a part of the setting of some foreign world
at which he gazed like a boy from the upper galleries
of a theatre. He had rebelled at this, looking
with some hostility at the well groomed men and women
who accepted it with such assurance that it was for
them alone, but now he realized the pettiness of that
position. With a few unmortgaged dollars in his
pocket, he was instantly one of them. He could
stride in and use the quiet luxury of the place as
his own.
For half an hour then, he browsed
about the sun-lit shop, selecting here and there bits
with which to brighten his room during the week.
He picked out an engraving or two, several English
prints which seemed to welcome him like old friends,
and a marine in water color because of the golden
blue in it. His bill exceeded that of the department
stores, and Bobby confidently delivered himself of
the opinion that he had been soaked, “good and
plenty.”
From here Donaldson began an extravagant
course down Fifth Avenue that left the boy, who watched
him closely every time he paid his bill, convinced
that he had on his hands nothing short of an Arabian
Prince such as his sister had told him of when he
had thought her fooling. They wandered from book
store to art store, to Tiffany’s, to an antique
shop back to another book store and then to where in
his lean days he had seen a bit of Dresden that brought
comfort to him through its dainty beauty. He
took for his own now all the old familiar friends
who had done what they could through store windows
to brighten those days. They should be a part
of him; share his week with him. There was that
old hammered copper tray which in the sun glowed like
a cooling ember; there was that hand-illumined volume
of Keats which he had so long craved; there was that
vase of Cloisonne, that quaint piece of ivory
browned with age, that old pewter mug reflecting the
burden of its years in its sober surface. All
these things he had long ago known as his own, and
now he came to claim them.
“Mine, all mine!” he exclaimed
to the boy. “And was n’t it decent
of them to wait for me?”
“They was waitin’ for
you all right,” agreed Bobby. “They
seen you comin’. They waits fer the
easy marks.”
“Yes,” returned Donaldson,
ignoring the latter’s sarcasm. “They
saw me coming when yet I was a great way off.
They knew me, so they waited. I told them all
to wait and some day I would come to them.”
“D’ yuh mean that ivory monkey waited?”
“For nearly a year.”
Bobby did not reply, but his respect for Donaldson
fell several degrees.
“There is one thing more, boy,” exclaimed
Donaldson; “I need flowers.”
He ordered sent to his room two dozen
rich lipped roses, a half dozen potted plants, and
a small conservatory of ferns. Then he started
back to the hotel.
It took the boy several trips to carry
the bundles upstairs even when they were piled to
his eyes. When he finished, Donaldson held out
his hand.
“I ’ve had a mighty
pleasant afternoon with you,” he said.
“And I hope we ’ll meet again. What’s
your number?”
“Thirty-four fifty-seven.”
“Well, thirty-four fifty-seven,
give us your hand in case we lose one another for
good.”
The boy gingerly extended his grimy
paw. When he removed it, he found himself clutching
a ten-dollar bill.
Donaldson remained in his room only
long enough to arrange his treasures and slip into
his evening clothes. There was too much outside
to be enjoyed for him to appreciate yet the luxury
of his indoor surroundings. He had a passion
for people, for crowds of people. He had thought
at first that he might attend the theatre, but he
realized now that the stage puppets were but faint
reflections of the stirring drama all about him the
playwright’s plot less gripping than that in
which he himself was the central figure. To pass
through those doors would be more like stepping out
of a theatre into the leaden reality of life as he
had seen it before yesterday.
For an hour or more he rubbed shoulders
with the press that was on its way to find relief
from their own lives in the mimic lives of others
behind the footlights. To him in the Now it was
comedy enough to watch them as they filed in; it would
have been an anticlimax to have gone further.
He craved good music, but a search of the papers did
not reveal any concert of note, so he sought one of
the popular restaurants, and, choosing a table in
a corner, devoted himself to the ordering of his dinner.
He was hungry and took a childish delight in selecting
without first studying the price list.
When he had concluded, he took a more
careful survey of the room. His wandering gaze
was checked by the profile of the woman whose eyes
had haunted him ever since he had first seen them
in Barstow’s laboratory. It was Miss Arsdale,
and opposite her sat a tall, thin-visaged young man.
As the latter turned and presented a full face view,
Donaldson was held by the peculiarity of his expression.
His hot, beadlike eyes burned from a white sensitive
face that was almost emaciated; his thin lips were
set as though in grim resolution; while even his brown
hair refused to lend repose to the face, but, sticking
out in cowlicks, added to the whole effect of nervousness
still further exaggerated by the restless white hands.
Over all, like a black veil, was an expression as
of one haunted by a great fear. The man both
repelled and interested Donaldson. There was
a shiftiness about the eyes that excited suspicion,
and yet there was in them a silent plea that asked
for sympathy. Save for the eyes, the face had
a certain poetic beauty due to its fine modeling and
its savage intensity. The longer Donaldson studied
it, the more sympathy he had for it. He had the
feeling that the fellow had gone through some such
crisis as his own.
But it was difficult to define the
girl’s relationship to him. There was
not the slightest trace of family resemblance between
them, and yet the man was hardly of a type that she
would choose for so intimate a friend as her presence
here with him suggested. She did not talk much,
but seemed rather to be on the alert to protect him
as from some unseen danger which appeared to hang
over him. She followed his eyes wherever they
wandered, and clearly took but little pleasure in being
here.
Donaldson found the oddly matched
couple absorbing his interest not only in the other
guests but also in his dinner. He finished in
almost the undue haste with which ordinarily he devoured
his daily lunch and with scarcely more appreciation
of the superior quality of these richer dishes.
With his black coffee he rolled a cigarette.
The familiar old tobacco brought him back to himself
again so that for a few minutes he was able to give
himself up to the swirling strains of the Hungarian
orchestra. But even through the delicious intoxication
of the waltz, the personality of this girl asserted
itself to him. He got the impression now that
she herself was in some danger. He wished that
he had asked Barstow more about her. She had
not noticed him as yet. He had watched closely
to see if she turned. As he studied her it seemed
certain that she was by no means enjoying herself in
her present company. If given half an opportunity
he would go over and speak to her.
He wished to see her eyes again.
He remembered them distinctly. They were not
black not gray, but black with the faintest
trace of silver, like starlight on a deep pool.
The whites were very clear and blue tinted.
Just then she raised her head and looked at him as
though she had been called. At that moment the
orchestra swept their strings in a minor and swirled
off in a mystic dance like that of storm ghosts in
the tree-tops. It caught him up with the girl
and for a measure or so bore them along like leaves,
in a new comradeship. To them the light laughter
was hushed; to them the heavy smoke clouds vanished;
to them the Babel of other personalities was no more.
They two had been lifted out of this and carried
hand in hand to some distant gypsy region. She
was the first to shake herself free. She started,
nodded pleasantly to him, and turned back to her companion,
with a little shiver.
That was all, but it left Donaldson
strangely moved. He paid his check at once and
prepared to leave, hoping that in passing her table
he might find his opportunity to stop a moment.
But they too rose as he was getting into his coat
and passed out ahead, the young man evidently trying
to hurry her.
On the sidewalk Donaldson found them
waiting at the curb for a big automobile which swooped
out of the dark to meet them. Making a pretext
of stopping to roll a cigarette, he paused. The
girl stepped into the machine, but her companion instead
of following at once gave an order to the chauffeur.
The latter left his seat and the girl expostulated.
The chauffeur apparently hesitated, but, the younger
man insisting, he hurried past Donaldson into the
cafe. Unconsciously Donaldson moved nearer.
He felt a foreboding of danger and a curious sense
of responsibility. He caught a glimpse of the
white face of the girl leaning forward towards her
companion heard her cry as the fellow stepped
into the chauffeur’s seat and, yielding
to some impulse, jumped to the running-board just
as the man threw on the power.
The machine leaped forward with a
shock that nearly tossed him off. To save himself
he sprang to the empty seat beside the girl.
The man at the wheel had apparently not noticed him;
he had plenty to occupy his mind to control the machine
which was tearing along at the rate of fifty miles
an hour.
The girl leaned forward and gripped Donaldson’s
arm.
“You must stop him,” she
said. “He has lost himself again!
Do you understand? You must stop him!”