Part 23

The silence of the room seemed emphasized by the presence of its occupant; he was one who under no circumstances was likely to disturb the serenity of a house. In most cases a single room takes on the character of the one who inhabits it; this is invariably the case where the apartment is in the possession of a woman; but turn a man loose in a room, and leave him to himself for a season, and he will have made of that room a witness strong enough to condemn or condone him on the Last Day; the whole character of the place will gradually change until it has become an index to the man's nature; where this is not the case, the man is without noticeable characteristics.

Those who knew Paul Clitheroe, the solitary at the Eyrie, would at once recognize this room as his abode; those of his friends who saw this room for the first time, without knowing it to be his home, would say: "Paul Clitheroe would fit in here." A kind of harmonious incongruity was the chief characteristic of the man and his solitary lodging.

He sat for some time as silent as the inanimate objects in that singularly silent room. An occasional turn of the wrist, the momentary flash of the ash at the end of his cigarette, the smoke-wreath floating in space--those were all that gave assurance of life; for when this solitary returned into his well-chosen solitude he seemed to shed all that was of the earth earthy, and to become a kind of spectre in a dream.

Having finished his cigarette, Paul withdrew into the conservatory, his sleeping room, half doll's house and half bower, where the ivy had crept over the top of the casement and covered his ceiling with a web of leaves. Shortly he was reposing upon his pillow, over which his holy-water font--a large crimson heart of crystal with flames of burnished gold, set upon a tablet of white marble--seemed almost to pulsate in the exquisite half-lights of approaching dawn.

It may not have been manly, or even masculine, for him thus literally to curtain his sleep, like a faun, with ivy; it may not have been orthodox for him to admit to his Valhalla some of the false Gods, and to honor them after a fashion; the one true God was duly adored, and all his saints appealed to in filial faith. That was his nature and past changing; if he could not look upon God as a Jealous God visiting His judgments with fanatical justice upon the witted and half-witted, it was because his was a nature which had never been warped by the various social moral and religious influences brought to bear upon it.

He may have lacked judgment, in the eyes of the world, but he had never suffered seriously in consequence. It may not have been wise for him to fondly nourish tastes and tendencies that were usually quite beyond his means; but he did it, and doing it afforded him the greatest pleasure in life.

You will pardon him all this; every one did sooner or later, even those who discountenanced similar weaknesses or affectations--or whatever you are pleased to call them--in anyone else, soon found an excuse for overlooking them in his case.

He was not, thank heaven, all things to all men; all things to a few, he may have been--yea, even more than all else to some, so long as the spell lasted; to the majority, however, he was probably nothing, and less than nothing. And what of that? If he did little good in the world, he certainly did less evil, and, as he lay in his bed, under a white counterpane upon which the dawning light, sifting through the vines that curtained the glazed front of his sleeping room, fell in a mottled Japanese pattern, and while the ivy that covered the Gothic ceiling trailed long tendrils of the palest and most delicate green, each leaf glossed as if it had been varnished, this unheroic-hero, this pantheistic-devotee, this heathenized-Christian, this half-happy-go-lucky æthestic Bohemian, lay upon his pillow, the incarnation of absolute repose.

And so the morning broke, and the early birds began to chirp in the ivy and to prune their plumage and flutter among the leaves; and down the street tramped the feet of the toilers on their way to forge and dock. Over the harbor came the daffodil light from the sun-tipped eastern hills, and it painted the waves that lapped the sleek sides of a yacht lying at anchor under the hill. A yacht that Paul had watched many a day and dreamed of many a night; for he often longed with a great longing to slip cable and hie away, even unto the uttermost parts.

II.

WHAT THE SUN SHONE ON

He shone on the far side of the eastern azure hills and set all the tree tops in the wood beyond the wold aflame; he looked over the silhouette out of a cloudless sky upon a Bay whose breadth and beauty is one of the seven hundred wonders of the world; he paved the waves with gold, a path celestial that angels might not fear to tread. He touched the heights of the Misty City and the sea-fog that had walled it in through the night as with walls of unquarried marble--albeit the eaves had dripped in the darkness as after a summer shower--and anon the opaque vapors dissolved and fled away. There she lay, the Misty City, in all her wasted and scattered beauty; she might have been a picture for Poets to dream on and Artists to love--their wonder and their despair--but she is not; she is hideous to look upon save in the sunset or the after-glow when you cannot see her, but only the dim vision of what she might have been.

He rose as a God refreshed with sleep and called the weary to their work, and disturbed the slumbers of those that toil not and spin not, and have nothing to do but sleep.

There were no secrets from him now; every detail was discovered; and so having gilded for a moment the mossy shingles of the Eyrie he stole into the room where Paul Clitheroe passed most of his waking hours, and through the curtain of ivy and geraniums that screened the conservatory from the eyes of the curious world, and where Paul was at this moment sleeping the sleep of the just. From the bed of the ravine below the Eyrie rose the rumble and roar of traffic. The hours passed by. The sleeper began to turn uneasily on his pillow. The sound of hurrying feet was heard upon the board walks in front of the Eyrie-cliff; many voices, youthful voices, swelled the chorus that told of the regiments of children now hastening to school. From dreamland Paul returned by easy stages to the work-a-day world. He arose, donned a trailing garment with angel sleeves and a large crucifix embroidered in scarlet upon the breast--that robe made of him a cross between a Monk and a Marchioness--slipped his feet into sandals and entered the larger chamber which was at once living-room and library. He opened the shutters in the deep bay window and greeted the day with the silent solemnity of a fire-worshipper; gave drink to his potted palms and ferns and flowering plants; let his eye wander leisurely over the titles of his books; lingered a little while over his favorites and patted some of them fondly on the back. Taking a small key from its nail by the door he opened the mail box without, carrying his letters to his writing table and leaving them there unopened. He loved to speculate as to whom the writers were and what they may have said to him. This piqued his curiosity, and tided him over a scant breakfast at an inexpensive but fly-blown restaurant where he was wont to eat or make a more or less brave effort to eat whenever he had the wherewithal to settle for the same. Breakfast over and gone the young man returned to his Eyrie, and in due course was at his writing table, and at work upon the weekly article that had been appearing in the Sunday issue of one of the popular Dailies for an indefinite period, and the price of which had on several occasions kept him from becoming a conspicuous object of charity.

Having written himself out for the day, as he was apt to in a few hours, he wandered down to the Club for a bit of refreshment which was sure to be forthcoming, for his friends there were ever ready to dine him, or more frequently to wine him, merely for the pleasure of his company.

So the afternoon waned and the dinner hour approached; fortunately this hour was usually bespoken and for a little while at least he was lapped in luxury. On his way home he was very apt to turn in at the wicker gates of a typical German Rathskellar where he was unmolested; where the blustering pipes of a colossal orchestrion brayed through an aria from Trovatore with more sound than sentiment and all unmindful of modulation.

He was at home by midnight, for the beer and the bravura ceased to flow at the witching hour. Then he lounged in the easy chair, gradually and not unconsciously shedding all the worldly influences that had been clothing him as with a hair-shirt even since he first went forth that morning. Safely he sank into the silence of the place. Every breath he drew was balm; every moment healing. So he passed into the silence, enfolded by invisible arms that led him gently to his pillow where he sank to sleep with the trustful resignation of a tired babe.

If this routine was ever varied it was a variation with a vengeance. "From grave to gay, from lively to severe" might have been engraved upon his escutcheon. It chanced that the family motto was Festina Lente; this also was appropriate; had he not all his life made haste slowly? For this very reason he had been accounted one of the laziest of his kind; his indolence was a byword merely because he did not throw himself into an easy chair at the Club, of an evening, and bewail his fate; because he did not puff and blow and talk often of the work he had accomplished, was accomplishing, or hastening forward to accomplishment. With all his faults, thank heaven, that sin cannot be charged against him.

III.

BALM OF HURT WOUNDS

He was scrimping in every way; his case was growing desperate. The books, the pictures, the bric-a-brac so precious in his eyes, he was loath to part with; moreover, he was well aware that if he were to trundle his effects down to an auction-room they would not bring him enough to cover his expenses for a single week. "Better to starve in the midst of my household gods," thought he, "than to part with them for the sake of prolonging this misery." The situation was in some respects serio-comic. While he seemed to have everything, he really had almost nothing; he was in a certain sense at the mercy of his friends and dependent upon them.

As the dinner hour approached, Paul was called upon to make choice of the character of his table-talk; there were several standing invitations to dine at the houses of old friends, and these were a boon to him, for at such houses the homeless fellow felt much at home. There were special invitations, sometimes an embarrassing profusion of them--all kindly, some persistent, and some even imperative; thus the dinner was a fixed fact; the mood alone was to be consulted in his choice of a table and after all how much of the success of a dinner depends upon the mood of the diner!

Paul's income was uncertain; while he had written much, and traveled much as a special correspondent, he had never regularly connected himself with any journal, and he knew nothing of the routine of office-work. Sometimes, I may say not infrequently, he could not write at all; yet his pen was his only source of revenue, and often he was without a copper to his credit. He was, therefore, constrained to dine sumptuously with friends, when he would have found a solitary salad a sweet alternative, and independence far more acceptable. The state of the exchequer was very often alarming, and his predicament might have cast a stronger man into the depths; but Paul could fast without complaint, when necessary, for he had fasted often; and, to confess the truth, he would much rather have fasted on and on, than parted with any of the little souvenirs that made his surroundings charming in spite of his privations. The friends who loved and fondled him were wont to send messengers to his door with gifts of flowers, books, pictures and the like, when soup-tickets would have been more serviceable, though by no means more acceptable. It had happened to him more than once, that having failed to break his fast--for he had a judicious horror of debt, born of bitter experience--he received at a late hour as tokens of sincere interest in his welfare, scarf pins, perfumery and scented soap; or it may have been a silk handkerchief bearing the richly wrought monogram of the happy but hungry recipient. At any rate these testimonials of his popularity were never edible. Was this hard luck? He went from one swell dinner to another, day after day, with never so much as a crumb between meals. It of course made some difference to him--this prolonged abstinence--but fortunately, or unfortunately, the effect upon him mentally, morally and physically was hardly visible to the naked eye.

He had a dress coat of the strictly correct type, which he had worn but a few times; he had lectured in it; once or twice, he had recited poems in it to the audiences of admiring lady friends. It was of no use to him now, and he felt that he should never need it again. On the street below him was a small shop, kept by the customary Israelite. Again and again, Paul had noted the sun-faded frock-coat swinging from a hook over the sidewalk in front of this shop; he had said, "I will take this coat to him; it is a costly garment; divide the original price of it by the number of times I have worn it and I find it has cost me about ten dollars an evening. Perhaps this old-clothes dealer will pay me a fair price for it; Jew though he be, he may be possessed of the heart of a Christian!"

Alas and alack! All of Clitheroe's sufferings could be traced to the cool, calculating hardness of the Christian's heart. Probably it was prejudice alone that caused him to trust the Christian, and distrust the Jew.

From day to day he passed the shop, striving to muster courage enough to enter and propose his bargain. At first he had imagined the dealer offering him but ten dollars for the coat--it had cost him a goodly sum; a little later he concluded that ten dollars was too little for any one to offer him; he might take twenty; a day later thirty seemed to him a probable offer, and shortly after he imagined himself consenting to receive fifty dollars, since the coat was in such admirable repair.

One day he took it to the dealer; he was not cordially welcomed by the man in shirt sleeves, with whom of late he had held innumerable imaginary conversations. The shop was extremely small and dark; the odor of dead garments pervaded it. With an earnest and kindly glance, Paul invited the sympathy of Abraham the son of Moses who was the son of Isaac; he saw nothing but speculation in those eyes. His coat was examined and tossed aside, as possessing few attractions. Clitheroe's heart sunk within him; and it sank deeper and deeper as it began to dawn upon him that the Hebrew had no wish to possess the garment, and, if he did so, he did so only to oblige the Christian youth. A bargain was at last struck; Paul departed with five dollars in his pocket--his dress-coat was a thing of the past.

What could he do next to extricate himself from his dubious dilemma? He had a small gold watch, a precious souvenir: "Gold is gold," said he, "and worth its weight in gold." He had the address of one who was known far and wide as "Uncle." He had heard of persons of the highest respectability seeking this uncle when close pressed, and there finding temporary relief at the hands of one who is in some respects a good Samaritan in disguise. Paul found it absolutely impossible for him to enter the not unattractive front of this establishment but there was a "private entrance" in a small dark alley-way; so delicate is the consideration of an uncle whose business it is to nourish those in distress.