Round the Block Part 23

"It is the tail of a lion bounding through his native jungles. Why? The effect of suggesting the lion, so to speak, is much more thrilling than that of painting him at full length. Genius accomplishes by hints what mere talent fails to achieve by the utmost elaboration. You will not deny that that vague revelation of the lion's tail inspires a feeling of mystery and terror, which would not be caused by a full-length portrait of that king of beasts?"

Marcus Wilkeson did not deny it, but said that perhaps everybody could not identify the object as a lion's tail.

"That has all been thought of," said Tiffles. "I shall explain the panorama, you must understand. When I come to the lion's tail, I shall tell the audience what it is, and go on to give a full account of the lion, and his ferocious habits. This will gratify the women and small boys quite as much as seeing the lion _in propria persona_."

"Precisely. Very good," was the laughing acknowledgment. "And what is that thing, twisted like a piece of grapevine above the tall gra.s.s at this point?"

"The trunk of an elephant. Look a little farther on, as the canvas unrolls, and you will observe the white tusk of a rhinoceros protruding from the jungle with wonderful effect. Why? The two animals are advancing toward each other for mortal combat."

"I shall describe their terrific struggles," interrupted Tiffles. "Have read up Buffon for it."

"More lions' and elephants' tails, you observe," continued the artist; "also more rhinoceroses' tusks. It is well to have enough of them, to ill.u.s.trate the teeming life of the African jungle. Also the head of a boa constrictor. Likewise the tail of one. Here we come to a change of scene. Mark how wonderfully a few strokes of dark-green paint, put on by the hand of genius, impart the idea of a pestiferous swamp. That odd-looking object, like a rock, is the head of a hippopotamus. A few feet beyond, you notice two things like the stumps of aquatic weeds.

Those are the tails of two hippopotamuses engaged in deadly strife at the bottom of the swamp. The heads of crocodiles are thrust up here and there. Severe simplicity again."

The panorama, from thence nearly to the end of it--or rather the beginning--was a repet.i.tion of jungles and deserts, varied by an occasional swamp, all diversified with the heads and tails of indigenous animals. The last hundred feet was the river Gambier, over which Patching had introduced a sunrise of the most gorgeous description, at the earnest request of Wesley Tiffles.

Patching explained: "In my opinion, such effects are tawdry, and detract not only from the severe simplicity, but from the UNITY which should pervade a painting of this description. Of course, I wash my hands of all these innovations upon the province of high Art."

"And I cheerfully shoulder them," said Tiffles. "I know what the public want. They want any quant.i.ty of sunsets, crocodiles, lions, and other objects of interest. If we had time and money to spare, and I could overcome Patching's scruples--do you understand?--I would put 'em in twice as thick. Men of genius, like Patching, cannot be expected to be practical."

The artist shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.

Tiffles then repeated his invitation to Marcus to accompany him on his first expedition into the interior of New Jersey; but Marcus positively declined. Tiffles said he would send him a note a day or two before the panorama started, and hoped that Marcus would conclude to go, just for the fun of the thing.

Marcus then shook hands with Patching--who made his long finger nail amicably felt--and with Tiffles, and withdrew to the entry, followed by the latter individual.

Tiffles closed the door. "By the way," said he, as if the thought occurred to him then for the first time, "can you spare thirty-five dollars to-day? Pay you on the--let me see--on the first of next month.

By that time the panorama will be fairly under headway, and coining money." (Tiffles always fixed his days of payment with great particularity.)

Marcus, without saying a word, produced his pocket book, and counted out thirty-five dollars. Tiffles had already borrowed from Overtop and Maltboy, but had generously spared the oldest of the three bachelors.

Marcus felt that his time had come, and he would not meanly avoid his destiny. He placed the money in Tiffles's hand.

"Give you my note?" asked Tiffles.

"Oh, no!" said Marcus; "make it a matter of honor."

Tiffles pocketed the funds, placed his hand over his heart, and replied that it should be. "But, now I think of it," he suddenly added, "I want exactly sixty-three dollars--do you understand?--to see me through with this panorama. Suppose you make it twenty-eight dollars more."

Marcus smiled, and said that he didn't understand; whereat Tiffles laughed outright, to show that he took no offence at the refusal; and creditor and debtor parted with mutual good wishes.

CHAPTER III.

LOVING AFAR OFF.

The boy Bog had now become, professionally, a creature of the night. He was abroad at the, same hours as the burglars and garroters, and other owls and weasels of society. Fink & Co. (Bog was the Co.) had secured the bill posting for three theatres and one negro-minstrel hall. This they called their heavy business. Carrying the huge damp placards, had already given to Bog's shoulders a manifest tendency to roundness, which he was constantly trying to overcome by straightening up. Fink, who was the veteran bill poster of the town, was as round shouldered as a hod carrier. But Bog thought of somebody, and stood as nearly erect as he could.

The firm also obtained rather more than their share of ordinary bill posting, from doctors, drygoods dealers, and other people who find their profit in continually addressing the public from the summit of a dead wall, or the muddy level of the curbstones. This they called their light business. As it required neither strength nor practised dexterity of manipulation, the firm intrusted it to a.s.sistants.

There were a dozen of these, all stout, hulking young fellows nearly as old as Bog. They took a fancy to bill posting, and worked industriously and faithfully at it, because it was nocturnal, mysterious, romantic.

The half dollar which they each received for a night's labor, enabled them to lounge about the streets all day in glorious indolence.

Sometimes there was a prodigious rush of business, and then the firm were obliged to hire an extra force of boys.

Once, when a quack undertook to take the public by storm with his "New and Sure Cure for Dyspepsia," Fink & Co. put a colored poster as large as a dining table on every wall and high fence below Sixty-first street; small oblong bills every ten feet along the curbstones of Broadway, Bowery, Wall street, Fulton street, Cortlandt street, and Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Eighth, Madison, and Lexington Avenues; besides throwing cheap circulars, folded, into the front yards of about four thousand residences in the fas.h.i.+onable quarters of the town--all in a single night. This immense job took one hundred boys.

Bog had been in this partners.h.i.+p since the first of January. It was now near the close of March. The firm had been very successful. Bog had comfortably supported himself and his aunt (whose rheumatism got worse in steady proportion as his business improved), and had invested more than two hundred and fifty dollars in a Wall-street savings bank.

With this money at his disposal, Bog might have thrown away the greasy cap and old coat and trowsers, spotted with paste, in which he pursued his occupation. But when Bog was at his business, he was not above his business. And he felt none the less attached to his old clothes because they were two inches too short in the legs and arms, and pinched him a little in all directions.

But Bog had a better suit, made of neat gray cloth, which he wore upon occasions. These occasions happened daily between three and four P.M.

During that interval, it always fell out that Bog had no work to do which he could not postpone as well as not. And whether it rained or shone, the occasions brought him, like an inexorable fate, through the street where Miss Pillbody's school was situated. He would first stride smartly up the opposite sidewalk, whistling, and cast ardent glances at the lower windows of Miss Pillbody's school, shaded by green curtains with gold borders.

After going two blocks in that direction, he would cross the street, whistling yet, and march boldly up the other sidewalk, past Miss Pillbody's school, as on an enemy. But if there had been anybody to watch him closely--as there was not on that thronged street--that body would have seen that Bog's cheeks began to blush, and his eyes to be cast down, and his whistle to be fainter, as he hurried by the neat three-story brick building with the polished doorplate and handsome curtains.

Then he would loiter for a while in front of McFeeter's grocery, two corners remote, and gaze from that safe distance with intrepidity upon the abode of enchantment; after which he would screw his courage up to the point of marching past the house back and forth again, and would then resume his position at McFeeter's, and wait until four P.M., or about that time, when the envied door of Miss Pillbody's establishment would open, and an angel would dazzle upon his sight, with a music book in her hand instead of a harp, and a jaunty little chip bonnet on her head instead of a golden crown. If the harp and crown had suddenly taken their proper places, and a pair of spangled wings had blossomed right out of her shoulders, and the radiant creature, thus equipped, had spread her pinions and soared up to heaven, the boy Bog would hardly have been surprised. As this angel came down the happy front steps to the blessed pavement (Bog's mind supplying these adjectives), Bog would color up, and sneak off at his best walking pace in the opposite direction. He felt that, if Pet ever saw him, and should ask him what he was doing in that neighborhood, he should melt away in perspiring confusion on the spot.

He called at Mr. Minford's twice a week, to indulge in the hollow form of asking if he could do anything for him. There he confronted Pet, with that trembling figure and those averted eyes which an inexperienced thief may show before the man that he has robbed. But Pet knew not of the adoring spy.

One afternoon, the boy Bog had made his second detour, and was approaching the corner of the favored block, when a novel idea struck him. The very night before, Bog had posted bills of the play, "Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair Lady." The gigantic lettering arose in his mind's eye, like the cross in Constantine's. He had never seen the drama, and he did not know to what extent Ruy Gomez pushed his audacity, and won the Countess by it. But the name of the drama held the moral of it; and the moral, as applied to Bog's case, was: "Stop at this corner, and take a good view of the, house." To do this, in Bog's opinion, was the height of boldness. But he thought of the huge parti-colored lettering, and he did it.

He stopped at the corner, and leaned recklessly against a hydrant. He looked at the house with a deliberation that amazed himself. At the same time, as a matter of instinctive caution, he kept his left leg well out toward the side street, so that he might retreat, should the door suddenly open and disclose the seraphic vision. He consulted his large bull's-eye silver watch (a capital timekeeper), and found that it was half past three o'clock, and he never knew her to be out before four.

This reflection emboldened him. "Faint Heart Ne'er Won Fair Lady," he thought again, and brought back his left leg to an easy position, crossing it with his right one against the hydrant. Then he feasted, with strange composure, upon the house.

Neither Bog nor a much wiser metaphysician could explain it; but the house, and all around it, seemed to be glorified by the loved one within. The newly painted door was bright with love; the polished doorplate and bell handle glistened with love. The name Pillbody looked, somehow, musical and winning, because the owner of that name was the teacher and dear companion of Pet. The carved stone roses over the door seemed to be truly the emblems of love. It was a silly notion; but, in Bog's eyes, love imparted a not unpleasant expression to the grim lions'

faces that looked down from the roof. But the green window curtains with gold borders were the most significant symbols of love, in his eyes. Bog felt that curtains of any other color would be wholly out of place in that house. The patch of a garden, scarcely bigger than a bathroom, in front of the house; the single fir tree that grew up in the middle of it; the black iron railing; the door steps, and the pavement--all took their share of beat.i.tude from the joy within. Bog could hear love rustle in the boughs of the young maple, that stood in its long green case like a fancy boot top, at the edge of the sidewalk.

CHAPTER IV.

LEGERDEMAIN.

As Bog was resting against the hydrant, absorbed in this delicious revery, and totally indifferent to the consequences, he was startled by a slight tap on the shoulder. He turned quickly, and saw--the man he hated--the man who pretended (Bog would never admit that it was more than a pretence) to save Pet from the falling boards.

"Well," said Bog, looking on this man as his mortal enemy, "What do you want of me?" He spoke in the gruff, defiant manner peculiar to children of the city.

The man's livid face and lead-colored eyes and white teeth all combined in a rea.s.suring smile. "Nothing," said he, "my good fellow, but to do an errand."

"I say, now, who'd you take me for, hey?" answered Bog, shaking his head at the man, and feeling a tremendous desire to knock his s.h.i.+ning hat off.

The man looked up and down Bog's cheap gray suit, and at his neatly polished shoes and his clean slouching cap, and then said:

"No offence meant, my lad. But I thought you wouldn't object to earning a quarter. You're only to deliver a letter at that house; that's all."

He pointed to Miss Pillbody's.

"Hey--what house?" asked Bog, turning pale, with a strange and jarring combination of rage, jealousy, envy, and insulted dignity.