T was five o'clock, Sunday afternoon, and the slanting sunbeams had crawled across the bed and up the walls and vanished somehow into the ceiling when Voltaire McCartney came to himself, kicked off the patchwork quilt, elevated his torso upon one elbow and took an observation out of the dingy window. The prospect of the Palisade to the north-west was undimmed, for the wind was blowing fresh from the sea and the smoke from the glucose factory on the Jersey side was making straight up the river in a long, black, horizontal bar, behind which the horizon glowed in a brilliant, translucent mass of cloud. McCartney swung his thin legs clear of the bed and fumbled with his left hand in the pocket of a plaid waistcoat dangling from the iron post. The act was unconscious, equivalent to the automatic groping for one's slippers which perchance the reader's own well-regulated feet perform on similar occasions. The pocket in question yielded a square of white tissue which the fingers deftly folded, transferred to the other hand, and then filled with tobacco. Like others nourished upon stimulants and narcotics, McCartney awoke absolutely, without a trace of drowsiness, nervously ready to do the next thing, whatever that might chance to be. His first act was to pull on his shoes, the second to slip his suspender over his rather narrow shoulders, and the third to light the cigarette. Then he sauntered across the room to the window-sill, upon which slept profoundly a small tortoise-shell cat, and picked up a pocket volume, well worn, which he shook open at a point designated by a safety match. For several moments he devoured the page with his eyes, his hollow face filled with peculiar exaltation. Then he expelled a cloud of smoke sucked from the glowing end of his cigarette, tossed away the butt, and thrust the book into his hip-pocket.
He turned away from the window and pale against the gaudy west his profile shone drawn and haggard. Restlessly he filched his pocket for another cigarette and tossed himself wearily into a painted rocker. The cat awakened, elongated herself in a prodigious and voluptuous yawn of her whole body, dropped to the floor and leaped with a single spring into her master's lap. He stroked her sadly.
"Isabeau! My poor Isabeau! I envy you—creature perfect in symmetry, perfect in feeling!"
The cat rubbed her head against the buttons of his coat. McCartney leaned back his head. The little room was bare of ornament or of furniture other than the chair, save for a deal table at the foot of the bed, bearing a litter of newspapers and yellow pad-paper.
murmured the man in the rocker. The light died out above the Palisades; the cat snuggled down between her master's legs.
he added softly. Then he lifted the cat gently to the floor, threw on a short, faded reefer coat, and opened the door.
"Well, Isabeau, it's time for us to go out and earn our supper!"
McCartney gazed solemnly down from the small rostrum upon which he was standing at the end of the saloon without so much as a smile in answer to the roar of appreciation with which his time-worn anecdote had been received.
"Dot's goot!" shouted an abdominal 'Dutchman,' pounding the table with his beer mug. "Gif us 'n odder!"
"Ya!" exclaimed his confrère. "Dot feller, he was a corker, eh?" He put up his hands and making a trumpet of them bawled at McCartney. "Here, kommen sie unt haf a glass bier mit us!"
Three teamsters, a card-sharp, a porter, two cabbies, and a dozen unclassibles nodded their heads and stamped, while the bartender passed up a foaming stein to the performer. McCartney blew off the froth, bowed with easy grace to the assembled company, and drank. Then he descended to the table occupied by the Germans.
"May you all have better luck than the gentleman in my story," he remarked. "But I for one shall go straight to the other place. Heaven for climate—Hell for society, eh? Hoch der Kaiser!"
The Germans threw back their heads and laughed boisterously.
"Make that beer a sandwich, will you? Here, Bill, bring me a slice of cold beef and a cheese sandwich!"
The bartender opened a small ice chest and produced the desired edibles, to which variation in their offered hospitality the two interposed no objection, being in fact somewhat in awe of their intellectual, if not distinguished guest. As McCartney ate he produced a handful of transparent dice.
"Ever see any dice like those?" he asked, rolling them across the wet table. The first German examined them with approval.
"Dose is pooty, eh?" he remarked to his neighbor. "I trow you for die Schnapps, eh?"