Hulbert Footner - The Deaves Affair

Evan Weir's pipe was foul; he threw it down with an exclamation of disgust. Its foulness was symbolic; everything was out of kilter. He looked at the picture he had been painting for a week – rotten! It was a still life; a broken jar and three books on a rag of Persian embroidery. Picking up his pen-knife he deliberately cut the canvas out of the stretcher, and setting a match to a corner of it, tossed it in the empty stove. He paced up and down the room wondering what the devil was the matter with him; he couldn't work; he couldn't read; his friends bored him; life was as flat as beer dregs.

His attic studio was lighted by a dormer window at a height convenient to receive his elbows on the sill. He came to a pause in that position morosely staring out on Washington Square basking in the summer morning sunshine. In some occult way the gilding on the green leaves stabbed at his breast and accused him of futility.

"What the deuce am I doing up here in this dusty garret painting bad pictures while the whole world is alive!" he thought.

He picked up his hat and went slowly down the three flights to the street. At the corner of the square he turned down Macdougall street into the Italian quarter.

This intimate thoroughfare was as crowded as a bee-hive. Happy, dirty, big-eyed children played in the gutters while their obese mothers squatted untidily on the stoops. No lack of the zest of life here. It shamed the pedestrian without cheering him.

"They haven't much to live for," he thought, "and they're not complaining. Why can't I take things as they come, as they do, without searching my soul?"

It was a point of pride with Evan not to look like a denizen of Washington Square. So his hair was cut, and his clothes like anybody's else. He even went so far as to keep his hat brushed, his trousers creased and his shoes polished. For the rest he was a vigorous, deep-chested youth of middle height with rugged features and glowing dark eyes. He had a self-contained, even a dogged look. Like all men susceptible of deep feeling, he did not choose to wear his heart upon his sleeve.

Half an hour later found him in that quaint corner of the island bounded by Liberty street, Greenwich street and the river. It is generally called the Syrian quarter, though shared by the Syrians with immigrants of all nations, whose boarding-houses abound there, convenient to the landing station. A feature of the neighbourhood is the cheap clothing stores where the immigrants buy their first United States suits. These suits hang swinging from the awnings like wasted gallows birds. A hawk-eyed salesman lurks beneath; in other words the "puller-in."

As Evan approached such a place in darkest Greenwich street a customer issued forth of aspect so comical and strange that Evan was drawn out of himself to regard him. It was a tall, lean old man who moved with a factitious sprightliness. He was clearly no immigrant but a native of these United States. He was wearing a hand-me-down which hung in weird folds on his bones. The trousers lacked a good four inches of the ground, and the sleeves revealed an inch of skinny wrist. The wearer looked like a gawky school-boy with an old, old face. Yet he bore himself with the conscious pride of one who wears a new suit. On his head he wore a brownish straw hat which was a little too small for him, and had seen three summers. As he walked along with his sprightly shuffle, which did not get him over the ground very fast, his head ceaselessly turned from side to side, and he continually looked over his shoulder without seeming to see anything. His mouth was fixed in the lines of a sly smile, which had nothing to do with the expression of his eyes. This was furtive and anxious. His little grey eyes searched in all the corners of the pavement like a rag-picker's eyes. To Evan there was something familiar about the face, but he couldn't quite place it.

The old man turned a corner into one of the little streets leading to the river. Evan, bound nowhere in particular, and full of curiosity, followed. There was something notable about the old figure in its ridiculous habiliments; this was no common character. Under his arm he carried a bundle wrapped in crumpled paper, which presumably contained his discarded suit.

He stopped at a fruit-stand, and as Evan overtook him, was engaged in scanning a tray of apples as if the fate of nations depended upon his picking the best one at the price. The fruit-vendor regarded him with a disgusted sneer. Evan loitered, and as the little comedy developed, stopped outright to see it out.

The old man after an anxious period of indecision finally made his choice. After having satisfied himself that there was no concealed blemish in his apple he proffered a nickel in payment and extended a trembling hand for the change. The Syrian dropped a penny in it, and turned away with a suspiciously casual manner.

"Where's my other penny?" demanded the old man in a high-pitched, creaking voice.

"What's the matter with you?" demanded the vendor with a wholly disproportionate display of passion. "That's all you get."

The old man pointed an indignant forefinger to the ticket on the tray. "Two for five!" he shrilled.

"That's right. Or four cents a piece," was the rejoinder.

"No you don't! Half of five is two and a half. You make half a cent on the deal anyhow."

"Well, if y'ain't satisfied, gimme the penny and take another!" With an unerring eye the vendor pounced on the smallest and knobbiest apple in the tray and offered that.

The old man would have none of it. "Give me my other penny!" said he.

"That's all you get!"

"Give me my other penny or I'll call the police!"

"Yah! For a penny would you! You're a big man of business you are! Call a cop, go on, and see what he'll say for a penny!" The vendor passionately searched under a shelf, and producing a ticket marked "4¢" defiantly stuck that alongside the "2 for 5."

"No you don't!" cried the old man. "You can't raise the price on me after I've bought!"

"One for four, two for five! I guess I charge what I like! I don't have to charge half the price for one!"

"You're a robber!"

The vendor appealed to Heaven to witness that he was maligned. He brandished a fist before the old man's nose. "You lie! You lie!" he cried. "Get out of here. I don't want you by my stand!"

"Give me my penny!"

"Ain't no penny comin' to yeh!"

Evan was not the only grinning on-looker. A crowd collected out of nowhere as crowds do. The anxious vendor had now not only to keep up his end of the argument, but to watch his exposed stock as well. But he showed no signs of giving in.

"Get out of here! I don't want you round me!" he cried.

"Give me my penny!"

"Ain't no penny comin' to yeh!"

They repeated it with incredible passion, over and over.

The crowd at first egged on both parties impartially:

"Go to it, men! A penny's a penny at that!"

"Don't let him jew you, old man. All them dagoes is robbers!"

"Soak him one, Tony, the tight-wad!"

"Sue him for the penny, Grandpa. I'll go witness for you."

"Aw, give him his penny, Mike. He needs a new lid." And so on.

"Gimme my penny!"

"Ain't no penny comin' to yeh!"

Finally the old man threw the apple back on the tray. "I won't deal with you at all!" he cried. "You're a robber! Gimme my money back!"

"You bruised it!" cried the Syrian tragically. "I don't take back no spoiled goods. Leave it lay at your own risk!"

"Gimme back my money!" cried the old man undaunted.

A grimy little hand slid out from the crowd and closed over the disputed apple. In the flick of a whip it was gone, and no man could say where. The crowd rocked with laughter.