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The Mystery of Murray Davenport

R >> Robert Neilson Stephens >> The Mystery of Murray Davenport




Larcher smiled. "Well, I hope your incredulity won't make you refuse to
do the pictures."

"Oh, no," returned Davenport, indolently. "I won't refuse. I'll accept
the commission with pleasure--a certain amount of pleasure, that is.
There was a time when I should have danced a break-down for joy,
probably, at this opportunity. But a piece of good luck, strange as it
is to me, doesn't matter now. Still, as it has visited me at last, I'll
receive it politely. In as much as I have plenty of time for this work,
and as Mr. Rogers seems to wish me to do it, I should be churlish if I
declined. The money too, is an object--I won't conceal that fact. To
think of a chance to earn a little money, coming my way without the
slightest effort on my part! You look substantial, Mr. Larcher, but I'm
still tempted to think this is all a dream."

Larcher laughed. "Well, as to effort," said he, "I don't think I should
be here now with that accepted manuscript for you to illustrate, if I
hadn't taken a good deal of pains to press my work on the attention of
editors."

"Oh, I don't mean to say that your prosperity, and other men's, is due
to having good things thrust upon you in this way. But if you do owe all
to your own work, at least your work does bring a fair amount of reward,
your efforts are in a fair measure successful. But not so with me. The
greatest fortune I could ever have asked would have been that my pains
should bring their reasonable price, as other men's have done. Therefore,
this extreme case of good luck, small as it is, is the more to be
wondered at. The best a man has a right to ask is freedom from what
people call habitual bad luck. That's an immunity I've never had. My
labors have been always banned--except when the work has masqueraded
as some other man's. In that case they have been blessed. It will seem
strange to you, Mr. Larcher, but whatever I've done in my own name has
met with wretched pay and no recognition, while work of mine, no better,
when passed off as another man's, has won golden rewards--for him--in
money and reputation."

"It does seem strange," admitted Larcher.

"What can account for it?"

"Do you know what a 'Jonah' is, in the speech of the vulgar?"

"Yes; certainly."

"Well, people have got me tagged with that name. I bring ill luck to
enterprises I'm concerned in, they say. That's a fatal reputation, Mr.
Larcher. It wasn't deserved in the beginning, but now that I have it, see
how the reputation itself is the cause of the apparent ill luck. Take
this thing, for instance." He held up a sheet of music paper, whereon he
had evidently been writing before Larcher's arrival. "A song, supposed to
be sentimental. As the idea is somewhat novel, the words happy, and the
tune rather quaint, I shall probably get a publisher for it, who will
offer me the lowest royalty. What then? Its fame and sale--or whether it
shall have any--will depend entirely on what advertising it gets from
being sung by professional singers. I have taken the precaution to submit
the idea and the air to a favorite of the music halls, and he has
promised to sing it. Now, if he sang it on the most auspicious occasion,
making it the second or third song of his turn, having it announced with
a flourish on the programme, and putting his best voice and style into
it, it would have a chance of popularity. Other singers would want it, it
would be whistled around, and thousands of copies sold. But will he do
that?"

"I don't see why he shouldn't," said Larcher.

"Oh, but he knows why. He remembers I am a Jonah. What comes from me
carries ill luck. He'll sing the song, yes, but he won't hazard any
auspicious occasion on it. He'll use it as a means of stopping encores
when he's tired of them; he'll sing it hurriedly and mechanically; he'll
make nothing of it on the programme; he'll hide the name of the author,
for fear by the association of the names some of my Jonahship might
extend to him. So, you see, bad luck _will_ attend my song; so, you see,
the name of bad luck brings bad luck. Not that there is really such a
thing as luck. Everything that occurs has a cause, an infinite line of
causes. But a man's success or failure is due partly to causes outside
of his control, often outside of his ken. As, for instance, a sudden
change of weather may defeat a clever general, and thrust victory upon
his incompetent adversary. Now when these outside causes are adverse,
and prevail, we say a man has bad luck. When they favor, and prevail, he
has good luck. It was a rapid succession of failures, due partly to folly
and carelessness of my own, I admit, but partly to a run of adverse
conjunctures far outside my sphere of influence, that got me my unlucky
name in the circles where I hunt a living. And now you are warned, Mr.
Larcher. Do you think you are safe in having my work associated with
yours, as Mr. Rogers proposes? It isn't too late to draw back."

Whether the man still spoke seriously, Larcher could not exactly tell.
Certainly the man's eyes were fixed on Larcher's face in a manner that
made Larcher color as one detected. But his weakness had been for an
instant only, and he rallied laughingly.

"Many thanks, but I'm not superstitious, Mr. Davenport. Anyhow, my
article has been accepted, and nothing can increase or diminish the
amount I'm to receive for it."

"But consider the risk to your future career," pursued Davenport, with a
faint smile.

"Oh, I'll take the chances," said Larcher, glad to treat the subject as
a joke. "I don't suppose the author of 'A Heart in Peril,' for instance,
has experienced hard luck as a result of your illustrating his story."

"As a matter of fact," replied Davenport, with a look of melancholy
humor, "the last I heard of him, he had drunk himself into the hospital.
But I believe he had begun to do that before I crossed his path. Well, I
thank you for your hardihood, Mr. Larcher. As for the _Avenue Magazine_,
it can afford a little bad luck."

"Let us hope that the good luck of the magazine will spread to you, as
a result of your contact with it."

"Thank you; but it doesn't matter much, as things are. No; they are
right; Murray Davenport is a marked name; marked for failure. You must
know, Mr. Larcher, I'm not only a Jonah; I'm that other ludicrous figure
in the world,--a man with a grievance; a man with a complaint of
injustice. Not that I ever air it; it's long since I learned better than
that. I never speak of it, except in this casual way when it comes up
apropos; but people still associate me with it, and tell newcomers about
it, and find a moment's fun in it. And the man who is most hugely amused
at it, and benevolently humors it, is the man who did me the wrong. For
it's been a part of my fate that, in spite of the old injury, I should
often work for his pay. When other resources fail, there's always he to
fall back on; he always has some little matter I can be useful in. He
poses then as my constant benefactor, my sure reliance in hard times. And
so he is, in fact; though the fortune that enables him to be is built on
the profits of the game he played at my expense. I mention it to you, Mr.
Larcher, to forestall any other account, if you should happen to speak of
me where my name is known. Please let nobody assure you, either that the
wrong is an imaginary one, or that I still speak of it in a way to
deserve the name of a man with a grievance."

His composed, indifferent manner was true to his words. He spoke, indeed,
as one to whom things mattered little, yet who, being originally of a
social and communicative nature, talks on fluently to the first
intelligent listener after a season of solitude. Larcher was keen to make
the most of a mood so favorable to his own purpose in seeking the man's
acquaintance.

"You may trust me to believe nobody but yourself, if the subject ever
comes up in my presence," said Larcher. "I can certainly testify to the
cool, unimpassioned manner in which you speak of it."

"I find little in life that's worth getting warm or impassioned about,"
said Davenport, something half wearily, half contemptuously.

"Have you lost interest in the world to that extent?"

"In my present environment."

"Oh, you can easily change that. Get into livelier surroundings."

Davenport shook his head. "My immediate environment would still be the
same; my memories, my body; 'this machine,' as Hamlet says; my old,
tiresome, unsuccessful self."

"But if you got about more among mankind,--not that I know what your
habits are at present, but I should imagine--" Larcher hesitated.

"You perceive I have the musty look of a solitary," said Davenport.
"That's true, of late. But as to getting about, 'man delights not me'--to
fall back on Hamlet again--at least not from my present point of view."

"'Nor woman neither'?" quoted Larcher, interrogatively.

"'No, nor woman neither,'" said Davenport slowly, a coldness coming upon
his face. "I don't know what your experience may have been. We have only
our own lights to go by; and mine have taught me to expect nothing from
women. Fair-weather friends; creatures that must be amused, and are
unscrupulous at whose cost or how great. One of their amusements is to
be worshipped by a man; and to bring that about they will pretend love,
with a pretence that would deceive the devil himself. The moment they
are bored with the pastime, they will drop the pretence, and feel injured
if the man complains. We take the beauty of their faces, the softness of
their eyes, for the outward signs of tenderness and fidelity; and for
those supposed qualities, and others which their looks seem to express,
we love them. But they have not those qualities; they don't even know
what it is that we love them for; they think it is for the outward
beauty, and that that is enough. They don't even know what it is that we,
misled by that outward softness, imagine is beyond; and when we are
disappointed to find it isn't there, they wonder at us and blame us for
inconstancy. The beautiful woman who could be what she looks--who could
really contain what her beauty seems the token of--whose soul, in short,
could come up to the promise of her face,--there would be a creature!
You'll think I've had bad luck in love, too, Mr. Larcher."

Larcher was thinking, for the instant, about Edna Hill, and wondering
how near she might come to justifying Davenport's opinion of women. For
himself, though he found her bewitching, her prettiness had never seemed
the outward sign of excessive tenderness. He answered conventionally:
"Well, one _would_ suppose so from your remarks. Of course, women like
to be amused, I know. Perhaps we expect too much from them.

'Oh, woman in our hours of ease,
Uncertain, coy, and hard to please,
And variable as the shade
By the light quivering aspen made.'

I've sometimes had reason to recall those lines." Mr. Larcher sighed at
certain memories of Miss Hill's variableness. "But then, you know,--

'When pain and anguish wring the brow,
A ministering angel them.'"

"I can't speak in regard to pain and anguish," said Davenport. "I've
experienced both, of course, but not so as to learn their effect on
women. But suppose, if you can, a woman who should look kindly on an
undeserving, but not ill-meaning, individual like myself. Suppose that,
after a time, she happened to hear of the reputation of bad luck that
clung to him. What would she do then?"

"Undertake to be his mascot, I suppose, and neutralize the evil
influence," replied Larcher, laughingly.

"Well, if I were to predict on my own experience, I should say she would
take flight as fast as she could, to avoid falling under the evil
influence herself. The man would never hear of her again, and she would
doubtless live happy ever after."

For the first time in the conversation, Davenport sighed, and the
faintest cloud of bitterness showed for a moment on his face.

"And the man, perhaps, would 'bury himself in his books,'" said Larcher,
looking around the room; he made show to treat the subject gaily, lest
he might betray his inquisitive purpose.

"Yes, to some extent, though the business of making a bare living takes
up a good deal of time. You observe the signs of various occupations
here. I have amused myself a little in science, too,--you see the cabinet
over there. I studied medicine once, and know a little about surgery,
but I wasn't fitted--or didn't care--to follow that profession in a
money-making way."

"You are exceedingly versatile."

"Little my versatility has profited me. Which reminds me of business.
When are these illustrations to be ready, Mr. Larcher? And how many are
wanted? I'm afraid I've been wasting your time."

In their brief talk about the task, Larcher, with the private design of
better acquaintance, arranged that he should accompany the artist to
certain riverside localities described in the text. Business details
settled, Larcher observed that it was about dinnertime, and asked:

"Have you any engagement for dining?"

"No," said Davenport, with a faint smile at the notion.

"Then you must dine with me. I hate to eat alone."

"Thank you, I should be pleased. That is to say--it depends on where you
dine."

"Wherever you like. I dine at restaurants, and I'm not faithful to any
particular one."

"I prefer to dine as Addison preferred,--on one or two good things well
cooked, and no more. Toiling through a ten-course _table d'hôte_ menu is
really too wearisome--even to a man who is used to weariness."

"Well, I know a place--Giffen's chop-house--that will just suit you. As
a friend of mine, Barry Tompkins, says, it's a place where you get an
unsurpassable English mutton-chop, a perfect baked potato, a mug of
delicious ale, and afterward a cup of unexceptionable coffee. He says
that, when you've finished, you've dined as simply as a philosopher and
better than most kings; and the whole thing comes to forty-five cents."

"I know the place, and your friend is quite right."

Davenport took up a soft felt hat and a plain stick with a curved handle.
When the young men emerged from the gloomy hallway to the street, which
in that part was beginning to be shabby, the street lights were already
heralding the dusk. The two hastened from the region of deteriorating
respectability to the grandiose quarter westward, and thence to Broadway
and the clang of car gongs. The human crowd was hurrying to dinner.

"What a poem a man might write about Broadway at evening!" remarked
Larcher.

Davenport replied by quoting, without much interest:

'The shadows lay along Broadway,
'Twas near the twilight tide--
And slowly there a lady fair
Was walking in her pride.'

"Poe praised those lines," he added. "But it was a different Broadway
that Willis wrote them about."

"Yes," said Larcher, "but in spite of the skyscrapers and the
incongruities, I love the old street. Don't you?"

"I used to," said Davenport, with a listlessness that silenced Larcher,
who fell into conjecture of its cause. Was it the effect of many
failures? Or had it some particular source? What part in its origin had
been played by the woman to whose fickleness the man had briefly alluded?
And, finally, had the story behind it anything to do with Edna Hill's
reasons for seeking information?

Pondering these questions, Larcher found himself at the entrance to the
chosen dining-place. It was a low, old-fashioned doorway, on a level
with the sidewalk, a little distance off Broadway. They were just about
to enter, when they heard Davenport's name called out in a nasal,
overbearing voice. A look of displeasure crossed Davenport's brow, as
both young men turned around. A tall, broad man, with a coarse, red face;
a man with hard, glaring eyes and a heavy black mustache; a man who had
intruded into a frock coat and high silk hat, and who wore a large
diamond in his tie; a man who swung his arms and used plenty of the
surrounding space in walking, as if greedy of it,--this man came across
the street, and, with an air of proprietorship, claimed Murray
Davenport's attention.




CHAPTER III.


A READY-MONEY MAN

"I want you," bawled the gentleman with the diamond, like a rustic
washerwoman summoning her offspring to a task. "I've got a little matter
for you to look after. S'pose you come around to dinner, and we can talk
it over."

"I'm engaged to dine with this gentleman," said Davenport, coolly.

"Well, that's all right," said the newcomer. "This gentleman can come,
too."

"We prefer to dine here," said Davenport, with firmness. "We have our own
reasons. I can meet you later."

"No, you can't, because I've got other business later. But if you're
determined to dine here, I can dine here just as well. So come on and
dine."

Davenport looked at the man wearily, and at Larcher apologetically; then
introduced the former to the latter by the name of Bagley. Vouchsafing a
brief condescending glance and a rough "How are you," Mr. Bagley led the
way into the eating-house, Davenport chagrinned on Larcher's account, and
Larcher stricken dumb by the stranger's outrage upon his self-esteem.

Nothing that Mr. Bagley did or said later was calculated to improve the
state of Larcher's feelings toward him. When the three had passed from
the narrow entrance and through a small barroom to a long, low apartment
adorned with old prints and playbills, Mr. Bagley took by conquest from
another intending party a table close to a street window. He spread out
his arms over as much of the table as they would cover, and evinced in
various ways the impulse to grab and possess, which his very manner of
walking had already shown. He even talked loud, as if to monopolize the
company's hearing capacity.

As soon as dinner had been ordered,--a matter much complicated by Mr.
Bagley's calling for things which the house didn't serve, and then
wanting to know why it didn't,--he plunged at once into the details of
some business with Davenport, to which the ignored Larcher, sulking
behind an evening paper, studiously refrained from attending. By the
time the chops and potatoes had been brought, the business had been
communicated, and Bagley's mind was free to regard other things. He
suddenly took notice of Larcher.

"So you're a friend of Dav's, are you?" quoth he, looking with benign
patronage from one young man to the other.

"I've known Mr. Davenport a--short while," said Larcher, with all the
iciness of injured conceit.

"Same business?" queried Bagley.

"I beg your pardon," said Larcher, as if the other had spoken a foreign
language.

"Are you in the same business he's in?" said Bagley, in a louder voice.

"I--write," said Larcher, coldly.

Bagley looked him over, and, with evident approval of his clothes,
remarked: "You seem to've made a better thing of it than Dav has."

"I make a living," said Larcher, curtly, with a glance at Davenport, who
showed no feeling whatever.

"Well, I guess that's about all Dav does," said Bagley, in a jocular
manner. "How is it, Dav, old man? But you never had any business sense."

"I can't return the compliment," said Davenport, quietly.

Bagley uttered a mirthful "Yah!" and looked very well contented with
himself. "I've always managed to get along," he admitted. "And a good
thing for you I have, Dav. Where'ud you be to-day if you hadn't had me
for your good angel whenever you struck hard luck?"

"I haven't the remotest idea," said Davenport, as if vastly bored.

"Neither have I," quoth Bagley, and filled his mouth with mutton and
potato. When he had got these sufficiently disposed of to permit further
speech, he added: "No, sir, you literary fellows think yourselves very
fine people, but I don't see many of you getting to be millionaires by
your work."

"There are other ambitions in life," said Larcher.

Mr. Bagley emitted a grunt of laughter. "Sour grapes! Sour grapes, young
fellow! I know what I'm talking about. I've been a literary man myself."

Larcher arrested his fork half-way between his plate and his mouth, in
order to look his amazement. A curious twitch of the lips was the only
manifestation of Davenport, except that he took a long sip of ale.

"Nobody would ever think it," said Larcher.

"Yes, sir; I've been a literary man; a playwright, that is. Dramatic
author, my friend Dav here would call it, I s'pose. But I made it pay."

"I must confess I don't recognize the name of Bagley as being attached to
any play I ever heard of," said Larcher. "And yet I've paid a good deal
of attention to the theatre."

"That's because I never wrote but one play, and the money I made out of
that--twenty thousand dollars it was--I put into the business of managing
other people's plays. It didn't take me long to double it, did it, Dav?
Mr. Davenport here knows all about it."

"I ought to," replied Davenport, coldly.

"Yes, that's right, you ought to. We were chums in those days, Mr.--I
forget what your name is. We were both in hard luck then, me and Dav. But
I knew what to do if I ever got hold of a bit of capital. So I wrote that
play, and made a good arrangement with the actor that produced it, and
got hold of twenty thousand. And that was the foundation of _my_ fortune.
Oh, yes, Dav remembers. We had hall rooms in the same house in East
Fourteenth Street. We used to lend each other cuffs and collars. A man
never forgets those days."

With Davenport's talk of the afternoon fresh in mind, Larcher had
promptly identified this big-talking vulgarian. Hot from several
affronts, which were equally galling, whether ignorant or intended, he
could conceive of nothing more sweet than to take the fellow down.

"I shouldn't wonder," said he, "if Mr. Davenport had more particular
reasons to remember that play."

Davenport looked up from his plate, but merely with slight surprise, not
with disapproval. Bagley himself stared hard at Larcher, then glanced at
Davenport, and finally blurted out a laugh, and said:

"So Dav has been giving you his fairy tale? I thought he'd dropped it as
a played-out chestnut. God knows how the delusion ever started in his
head. That's a question for the psychologists--or the doctors, maybe. But
he used to imagine--I give him credit for really imagining it--he used to
imagine he had written that play. I s'pose that's what he's been telling
you. But I thought he'd got over the hallucination; or got tired telling
about it, anyhow."

But, in the circumstances, no nice consideration of probabilities was
necessary to make Larcher the warm partisan of Davenport. He answered,
with as fine a derision as he could summon:

"Any unbiased judge, with you two gentlemen before him, if he had to
decide which had written that play, wouldn't take long to agree with Mr.
Davenport's hallucination, as you call it."

Mr. Bagley gazed at Larcher for a few moments in silence, as if not
knowing exactly what to make of him, or what manner to use toward him. He
seemed at last to decide against a wrathful attitude, and replied:

"I suppose you're a very unbiased judge, and a very superior person all
round. But nobody's asking for your opinion, and I guess it wouldn't
count for much if they did. The public has long ago made up its mind
about Mr. Davenport's little delusion."

"As one of 'the public,' perhaps I have a right to dispute that,"
retorted Larcher. "Men don't have such delusions."

"Oh, don't they? That's as much as you know about the eccentricities of
human nature,--and yet you presume to call yourself a writer. I guess you
don't know the full circumstances of this case. Davenport himself admits
that he was very ill at the time I disposed of the rights of that play.
We were in each other's confidence then, and I had read the play to him,
and talked it over with him, and he had taken a very keen interest in it,
as any chum would. And then this illness came on, just when the marketing
of the piece was on the cards. He was out of his head a good deal during
his illness, and I s'pose that's how he got the notion he was the author.
As it was, I gave him five hundred dollars as a present, to celebrate the
acceptance of the piece. And I gave him that at once, too--half the amount
of the money paid on acceptance, it was; for anything I knew then, it
might have been half of all I should ever get for the play, because
nobody could predict how it would pan out. Well, I've never borne him an
ounce of malice for his delusion. Maybe at this very moment he still
honestly thinks himself the author of that play; but I've always stood by
him, and always will. Many's the piece of work I've put in his hands; and
I will say he's never failed me on his side, either. Old Reliable Dav,
that's what I call him; Old Reliable Dav, and I'd trust him with every
dollar I've got in the world." He finished with a clap of good fellowship
on Davenport's shoulder, and then fell upon the remainder of his chop and
potato with a concentration of interest that put an end to the dispute.

As for Davenport, he had continued eating in silence, with an
expressionless face, as if the matter were one that concerned a stranger.
Larcher, observing him, saw that he had indeed put that matter behind
him, as one to which there was nothing but weariness to be gained in
returning. The rest of the meal passed without event. Mr. Bagley made
short work of his food, and left the two others with their coffee,
departing in as self-satisfied a mood as he had arrived in, and without
any trace of the little passage of words with Larcher.

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