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The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig

D >> David Graham Phillips >> The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig



Robert Rowe, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.



THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG

A NOVEL

BY DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS





CONTENTS


I.--MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF
II.--IN THE BEST SOCIETY
III.--A DESPERATE YOUNG WOMAN
IV.--"HE ISN'T LIKE US"
V.--ALMOST HOOKED
VI.--MR. CRAIG IN SWEET DANGER
VII.--MRS. SEVERENCE IS ROUSED
VIII.--MR. CRAIG CONFIDES
IX.--SOMEWHAT CYCLONIC
X.--A BELATED PROPOSAL
XI.--MADAM BOWKER HEARS THE NEWS
XII.--PUTTING DOWN A MUTINY
XIII.--A MEMORABLE MEETING
XIV.--MAGGIE AND JOSH
XV.--THE EMBASSY GARDEN PARTY
XVI.--A FIGHT AND A FINISH
XVII.--A NIGHT MARCH
XVIII.--PEACE AT ANY PRICE
XIX.--MADAM BOWKER'S BLESSING
XX.-MR. CRAIG KISSES THE IDOL'S FOOT
XXI.--A SWOOP AND A SCRATCH
XXII.--GETTING ACQUAINTED
XXIII.--WHAT THE MOON SAW AND DID
XXIV.--"OUR HOUSE IS AFIRE"
XXV.--MRS. JOSHUA CRAIG





THE FASHIONABLE ADVENTURES OF JOSHUA CRAIG


CHAPTER I

MR. CRAIG ARRAYS HIMSELF


It was one of the top-floor-rear flats in the Wyandotte, not
merely biggest of Washington's apartment hotels, but also "most
exclusive"--which is the elegant way of saying most expensive. The
Wyandotte had gone up before landlords grasped the obvious truth
that in a fire-proof structure locations farthest from noise and
dust should and could command highest prices; so Joshua Craig's
flat was the cheapest in the house. The ninety dollars a month
loomed large in his eyes, focused to little-town ideas of values;
it was, in fact, small for shelter in "the de luxe district of the
de luxe quarter," to quote Mrs. Senator Mulvey, that simple, far-
Western soul, who, finding snobbishness to be the chief
distinguishing mark of the Eastern upper classes, assumed it was a
virtue, acquired it laboriously, and practiced it as openly and
proudly as a preacher does piety. Craig's chief splendor was a
sitting-room, called a parlor and bedecked in the red plush and
Nottingham that represent hotel men's probably shrewd guess at the
traveling public's notion of interior opulence. Next the sitting-
room, and with the same dreary outlook, or, rather, downlook, upon
disheveled and squalid back yards, was a dingy box of a bedroom.
Like the parlor, it was outfitted with furniture that had
degenerated upward, floor by floor, from the spacious and
luxurious first-floor suites. Between the two rooms, in dark
mustiness, lay a bathroom with suspicious-looking, wood-inclosed
plumbing; the rusted iron of the tub peered through scuffs and
seams in the age-grayed porcelain.

Arkwright glanced from the parlor where he was sitting into the
gloom of the open bathroom and back again. His cynical brown-green
eyes paused upon a scatter of clothing, half-hiding the badly-
rubbed red plush of the sofa--a mussy flannel nightshirt with
mothholes here and there; kneed trousers, uncannily reminiscent of
a rough and strenuous wearer; a smoking-jacket that, after a
youth of cheap gayety, was now a frayed and tattered wreck, like
an old tramp, whose "better days" were none too good. On the
radiator stood a pair of wrinkled shoes that had never known
trees; their soles were curved like rockers. An old pipe clamored
at his nostrils, though it was on the table near the window, the
full length of the room from him. Papers and books were strewn
about everywhere. It was difficult to believe these unkempt and
uncouth surroundings, and the personality that had created them,
were actually being harbored behind the walls of the Wyandotte.

"What a hole!" grumbled Arkwright. He was in evening clothes, so
correct in their care and in their carelessness that even a woman
would have noted and admired. "What a mess! What a hole!"

"How's that?" came from the bedroom in an aggressive voice, so
penetrating that it seemed loud, though it was not, and much
roughened by open-air speaking. "What are you growling about?"

Arkwright raised his tone: "Filthy hole!" said he. "Filthy mess!"

Now appeared in the bedroom door a tall young man of unusual
strength and nearly perfect proportions. The fine head was carried
commandingly; with its crop of dark, matted hair it suggested the
rude, fierce figure-head of a Viking galley; the huge,
aggressively-masculine features proclaimed ambition, energy,
intelligence. To see Josh Craig was to have instant sense of the
presence of a personality. The contrast between him standing half-
dressed in the doorway and the man seated in fashionable and
cynically-critical superciliousness was more than a matter of
exteriors. Arkwright, with features carved, not hewn as were
Craig's, handsome in civilization's over-trained, overbred
extreme, had an intelligent, superior look also. But it was the
look of expertness in things hardly worth the trouble of learning;
it was aristocracy's highly-prized air of the dog that leads in
the bench show and tails in the field. He was like a firearm
polished and incrusted with gems and hanging in a connoisseur's
wall-case; Josh was like a battle-tested rifle in the sinewy hands
of an Indian in full war-paint. Arkwright showed that he had
physical strength, too; but it was of the kind got at the
gymnasium and at gentlemanly sport--the kind that wins only where
the rules are carefully refined and amateurized. Craig's figure
had the solidity, the tough fiber of things grown in the open air,
in the cold, wet hardship of the wilderness.

Arkwright's first glance of admiration for this figure of the
forest and the teepee changed to a mingling of amusement and
irritation. The barbarian was not clad in the skins of wild
beasts, which would have set him off superbly, but was trying to
get himself arrayed for a fashionable ball. He had on evening
trousers, pumps, black cotton socks with just enough silk woven in
to give them the shabby, shamed air of having been caught in a
snobbish pretense at being silk. He was buttoning a shirt torn
straight down the left side of the bosom from collar-band to end
of tail; and the bosom had the stiff, glassy glaze that advertises
the cheap laundry.

"Didn't you write me I must get an apartment in this house?"
demanded he.

"Not in the attic," rejoined Arkwright.

"I can't afford anything better."

"You can't afford anything so bad."

"Bad!"

Craig looked round as pleased as a Hottentot with a string of
colored glass beads. "Why, I've got a private sitting-room AND a
private bath! I never was so well-off before in my life. I tell
you, Grant, I'm not surprised any more that you Easterners get
effete and worthless. I begin to like this lolling in luxury, and
I keep the bell-boys on the jump. Won't you have something to
drink?"

Arkwright pointed his slim cane at the rent in the shirt. "What
are you going to do with that?" said he.

"This? Oh!"--Josh thrust his thick backwoods-man's hand in the
tear--"Very simple. A safety-pin or so from the lining of the
vest--excuse me, waistcoat--into the edge of the bosom."

"Splendid!" ejaculated Arkwright. "Superb!"

Craig, with no scent for sarcasm so delicate, pushed on with
enthusiasm: "The safety-pin's the mainstay of bachelor life," said
he rhetorically. "It's his badge of freedom. Why, I can even
repair socks with it!"

"Throw that shirt away," said Arkwright, with a contemptuous
switch of his cane. "Put on another. You're not dressing for a
shindy in a shack."

"But it's the only one of my half-dozen that has a bang-up bosom."

"Bang-up? That sheet of mottled mica?"

Craig surveyed the shiny surface ruefully. "What's the matter with
this?" he demanded.

"Oh, nothing," replied Arkwright, in disgust. "Only, it looks more
like something to roof a house with than like linen for a
civilized man."

Craig reared. "But, damn it, Grant, I'm not civilized. I'm a wild
man, and I'm going to stay wild. I belong to the common people,
and it's my game--and my preference, too--to stick to them. I'm
willing to make concessions; I'm not a fool. I know there was a
certain amount of truth in those letters you took the trouble to
write me from Europe. I know that to play the game here in
Washington I've got to do something in society. But"--here Josh's
eyes flashed, and he bent on his friend a look that was
impressive--"I'm still going to be myself. I'll make 'em accept me
as I am. Dealing with men as individuals, I make them do what _I_
want, make 'em like me as I am."

"Every game has its own rules," said Arkwright. "You'll get on
better--quicker--go further--here if you'll learn a few elementary
things. I don't see that wearing a whole shirt decently done up is
going to compromise any principles. Surely you can do that and
still be as common as you like. The people look up to the fellow
that's just a little better dressed than they."

Josh eyed Arkwright in the way that always made him wonder whether
he was in full possession of the secret of this strenuous young
Westerner. "But," said he, "they love and trust the man who will
have nothing which all may not have. The shirt will do for this
evening." And he turned back into the bedroom.

Arkwright reflected somewhat uncomfortably. He felt that he
himself was right; yet he could not deny that "Josh's cheap
demagoguery" sounded fine and true. He soon forgot the argument in
the study of his surroundings. "You're living like a wild beast
here, Josh," he presently called out. "You must get a valet."

A loud laugh was the reply.

"Or a wife," continued Arkwright. Then, in the voice of one
announcing an inspiration, "Yes--that's it! A wife!"

Craig reappeared. He had on his waistcoat and coat now, and his
hair was brushed. Arkwright could not but admit that the
personality took the edge off the clothes; even the "mottled
mica"--the rent was completely hid--seemed to have lost the worst
of its glaze and stiffness. "You'll do, Josh," said he. "I spoke
too quickly. If I hadn't accidentally been thrust into the
innermost secrets of your toilet I'd never have suspected." He
looked the Westerner over with gentle, friendly patronage. "Yes,
you'll do. You look fairly well at a glance--and a man's clothes
rarely get more than that."

Craig released his laugh upon his fastidious friend's judicial
seriousness. "The trouble with you, Grant, is you've never lived a
human life. You've always been sheltered and pampered, lifted in
and out of bed by valets, had a suit of clothes for every hour in
the day. I don't see how it is I happen to like you." And in
Craig's face and voice there was frankly the condescension of
superior to undoubted inferior.

Arkwright seemed to be wavering between resentment and amused
disdain. Then he remembered the circumstances of their first
acquaintance--those frightful days in the Arizona desert, without
food, with almost no water, and how this man had been absolute
ruler of the party of lost and dying men; how he had forced them
to march on and on, with entreaties, with curses, with blows
finally; how he had brought them to safety--all as a matter of
course, without any vanity or boasting--had been leader by divine
right of strength of body and soul. Grant turned his eyes from
Craig, for there were tears in them. "I don't see why you like me,
either, Josh," said he. "But you do--and--damn it all, I'd die for
you."

"I guess you'll come pretty near dying of shame before this
evening's over," laughed Craig. "This is the first time in my life
I ever was in a fashionable company."

"There's nothing to be frightened about," Grant assured him.

"Frightened!" Josh laughed boisterously--Arkwright could have
wished he would temper that laugh. "I--frightened by a bunch of
popinjays? You see, it's not really in the least important whether
they like me or not--at least, not to me. I'll get there, anyhow.
And when I do, I'll deal with them according to their deserts. So
they'd better hustle to get solid with me."

In the two years since he had seen Craig, Arkwright had almost
forgotten his habit of bragging and blowing about himself--what he
had done, what he was going to do. The newspapers, the clippings
Josh sent him, had kept him informed of the young Minnesotan's
steady, rapid rise in politics; and whenever he recalled the
absurd boasting that had made him feel Craig would never come to
anything, he assumed it was a weakness of youth and inexperience
which had, no doubt, been conquered. But, no; here was the same
old, conceited Josh, as crudely and vulgarly self-confident as
when he was twenty-five and just starting at the law in a country
town. Yet Arkwright could not but admit there had been more than a
grain of truth in Craig's former self-laudations, that there was
in victories won a certain excuse for his confidence about the
future. This young man, not much beyond thirty, with a personality
so positive and so rough that he made enemies right and left,
rousing the envy of men to fear that here was an ambition which
must be downed or it would become a tyranny over them--this young
man, by skill at politics and by sympathetic power with people in
the mass, had already compelled a President who didn't like him to
appoint him to the chief post under an Attorney-General who
detested him.

"How are you getting on with the Attorney-General?" asked
Arkwright, as they set out in his electric brougham.

"He's getting on with me much better," replied Craig, "now that he
has learned not to trifle with me."

"Stillwater is said to be a pretty big man," said Arkwright
warningly.

"The bigger the man, the easier to frighten," replied Josh
carelessly, "because the more he's got to lose. But it's a waste
of time to talk politics to you. Grant, old man, I'm sick and worn
out, and how lonesome! I'm successful. But what of that, since I'm
miserable? If it wasn't for my sense of duty, by Heaven, I
sometimes think I'd drop it all and go back to Wayne."

"Don't do that, Josh!" exclaimed Arkwright. "Don't let the country
go rolling off to ruin!"

"Like all small creatures," said Craig, "you take serious matters
lightly, and light matters seriously. You right a moment ago when
you said I needed a wife."

"That's all settled," said Grant. "I'm going to get you one."

"A woman doesn't need a man--if she isn't too lazy to earn a
living," pursued Craig. "But what's a man without a woman about?"

"You want a wife, and you want her quick," said Arkwright.

"You saw what a condition my clothes are in. Then, I need somebody
to talk with."

"To talk to," corrected Grant.

"I can't have you round all the time to talk to."

"Heaven forbid!" cried Arkwright. "You never talk about anything
but yourself."

"Some day, my boy," said Josh, with his grave good humor of the
great man tolerating the antics of a mountebank, "you'll
appreciate it wasn't the subject that was dull, but the ears. For
the day'll come when everybody'll be thinking and talking about me
most of the time."

Arkwright grinned. "It's lucky you don't let go before everybody
like that."

"Yes, but I do," rejoined Craig. "And why not? They can't stop my
going ahead. Besides, it's not a bad idea"--he nodded, with that
shrewdness which was the great, deep-lying vein in his nature--
"not at all a bad idea, to have people think you a frank, loose-
mouthed, damn fool--IF you ain't. Ambition's a war. And it's a
tremendous advantage to lead your enemies to underestimate you.
That's one reason why I ALWAYS win...So you're going TO TRY to get
me a wife?"

"I'm going to get you one--one of the sort you need. You need a
woman who'll tame you down and lick you into shape."

Craig smiled scornfully.

"One who'll know how to smooth the enemies you make with your
rough-and-tumble manners; one who'll win friends for you socially--"

Josh made a vehement gesture of dissent. "Not on your life!" cried
he. "Of course, my wife must be a lady, and interested in my
career. But none of your meddling politicians in petticoats for
me! I'll do my own political maneuvering. I want a woman, not a
bad imitation of a man."

"Well, let that go," said Arkwright. "Also, she ought to be able
to supply you with funds for your political machinery."

Josh sat up as if this were what he had been listening for.

"That's right!" cried he. "Politics is hell for a poor man,
nowadays. The people are such thoughtless, short-sighted fools--"
He checked himself, and in a different tone went on: "However, I
don't mean exactly that--"

"You needn't hedge, Josh, with me."

"I don't want you to be thinking I'm looking for a rich woman."

"Not at all--not at all," laughed his friend.

"If she had too much money it'd be worse for my career than if she
had none at all."

"I understand," said Arkwright.

"Enough money to make me independent--if I should get in a tight
place," continued Josh. "Yes, I must marry. The people are
suspicious of a bachelor. The married men resent his freedom--even
the happily married ones. And all the women, married and single,
resent his not surrendering."

"I never suspected you of cynicism."

"Yes," continued Craig, in an instantly and radically changed
tone, "the people like a married man, a man with children. It
looks respectable, settled. It makes 'em feel he's got a stake in
the country--a home and property to defend. Yes, I want a wife."

"I don't see why you've neglected it so long."

"Too busy."

"And too--ambitious," suggested Arkwright.

"What do you mean?" demanded Josh, bristling.

"You thought you'd wait to marry until you were nearer your final
place in the world. Being cut out for a king, you know--why, you
thought you'd like a queen--one of those fine, delicate ladies
you'd read about."

Craig's laugh might have been confession, it might have been mere
amusement. "I want a wife that suits me," said he. "And I'll get
her."

It was Arkwright's turn to be amused. "There's one game you don't
in the least understand," said he.

"What game is that?"

"The woman game."

Craig shrugged contemptuously. "Marbles! Jacks!" Then he added:
"Now that I'm about ready to marry, I'll look the offerings over."
He clapped his friend on the shoulder. "And you can bet your last
cent I'll take what I want."

"Don't be too sure," jeered Arkwright.

The brougham was passing a street lamp that for an instant
illuminated Craig's face. Again Arkwright saw the expression that
made him feel extremely uncertain of the accuracy of his estimates
of the "wild man's" character.

"Yes, I'll get her," said Josh, "and for a reason that never
occurs to you shallow people. I get what I want because what I
want wants me--for the same reason that the magnet gets the
steel."

Arkwright looked admiringly at his friend's strong, aggressive
face.

"You're a queer one, Josh," said he. "Nothing ordinary about you."

"I should hope not!" exclaimed Craig. "Now for the plunge."





CHAPTER II

IN THE BEST SOCIETY


Grant's electric had swung in at the end of the long line of
carriages of all kinds, from coach of ambassador and costly
limousine of multi-millionaire to humble herdic wherein poor,
official grandee's wife and daughter were feeling almost as common
as if they had come in a street car or afoot. Josh Craig, leaning
from the open window, could see the grand entrance under the wide
and lofty porte-cochere--the women, swathed in silk and fur,
descending from the carriages and entering the wide-flung doors of
the vestibule; liveries, flowers, lights, sounds of stringed
instruments, intoxicating glimpses of magnificence at windows,
high and low. And now the electric was at the door. He and
Arkwright sprang out, hastened up the broad steps. His expression
amused Arkwright; it was intensely self-conscious, resolutely
indifferent--the kind of look that betrays tempestuous inward
perturbations and misgivings. "Josh is a good deal of a snob, for
all his brave talk," thought he. "But," he went on to reflect,
"that's only human. We're all impressed by externals, no matter
what we may pretend to ourselves and to others. I've been used to
this sort of thing all my life and I know how little there is in
it, yet I'm in much the same state of bedazzlement as Josh."

Josh had a way of answering people's thoughts direct which
Arkwright sometimes suspected was not altogether accidental. He
now said: "But there's a difference between your point of view and
mine. You take this seriously through and through. I laugh at it
in the bottom of my heart, and size it up at its true value. I'm
like a child that don't really believe in goblins, yet likes the
shivery effects of goblin stories."

"I don't believe in goblins, either," said Arkwright.

"You don't believe in anything else," said Josh.

Arkwright steered him through the throng, and up to the hostess--
Mrs. Burke, stout, honest, with sympathy in her eyes and humor in
the lines round her sweet mouth. "Well, Josh," she said in a slow,
pleasant monotone, "you HAVE done a lot of growing since I saw
you. I always knew you'd come to some bad end. And here you are--
in politics and in society. Gus!"

A tall, haughty-looking young woman, standing next her, turned and
fixed upon Craig a pair of deep, deep eyes that somehow flustered
him. Mrs. Burke presented him, and he discovered that it was her
daughter-in-law. While she was talking with Arkwright, he examined
her toilette. He thought it startling--audacious in its display of
shoulders and back--until he got over his dazed, dazzled feeling,
and noted the other women about. Wild horses could not have
dragged it from him, but he felt that this physical display was
extremely immodest; and at the same time that he eagerly looked
his face burned. "If I do pick one of these," said he to himself,
"I'm jiggered if I let her appear in public dressed this way. Why,
out home women have been white-capped for less."

Arkwright had drifted away from him; he let the crowd gently push
him toward the wall, into the shelter of a clump of palms and
ferns. There, with his hands in his pockets, and upon his face
what he thought an excellent imitation of Arkwright's easy, bored
expression of thinly-veiled cynicism, he surveyed the scene and
tried to judge it from the standpoint of the "common people." His
verdict was that it was vain, frivolous, unworthy, beneath the
serious consideration of a man of affairs such as he. But he felt
that he was not quite frank, in fact was dishonest, with himself
in this lofty disdain. It represented what he ought to feel, not
what he actually was feeling. "At least," said he to himself,
"I'll never confess to any one that I'm weak enough to be
impressed by this sort of thing. Anyhow, to confess a weakness is
to encourage it... No wonder society is able to suck in and
destroy so many fellows of my sort! If _I_ am tempted what must it
mean to the ordinary man?" He noted with angry shame that he felt
a swelling of pride because he, of so lowly an origin, born no
better than the machine-like lackeys, had been able to push
himself in upon--yes, up among--these people on terms of equality.
And it was, for the moment, in vain that he reminded himself that
most of them were of full as lowly origin as he; that few indeed
could claim to be more than one generation removed from jack-boots
and jeans; that the most elegant had more relations among the
"vulgar herd" than they had among the "high folks."

"What are you looking so glum and sour about?" asked Arkwright.

He startled guiltily. So, his mean and vulgar thoughts had been
reflected in his face. "I was thinking of the case I have to try
before the Supreme Court next week," said he.

"Well, I'll introduce you to one of the Justices--old Towler. He
comes of the 'common people,' like you. But he dearly loves
fashionable society--makes himself ridiculous going to balls and
trying to flirt. It'll do you no end of good to meet these people
socially. You'll be surprised to see how respectful and eager
they'll all be if you become a recognized social favorite. For
real snobbishness give me your friends, the common people, when
they get up where they can afford to put on airs. Why, even the
President has a sneaking hankering after fashionable people. I
tell you, in Washington EVERYTHING goes by social favor, just as
it does in London--and would in Paris if fashionable society would
deign to notice the Republic."

"Introduce me to old Towler," said Craig, curt and bitter. He was
beginning to feel that Arkwright was at least in part right; and
it angered him for the sake of the people from whom he had sprung,
and to whom he had pledged his public career. "Then," he went on,
"I'm going home. And you'll see me among these butterflies and
hoptoads no more."

"Can't trust yourself, eh?" suggested Arkwright.

Craig flashed exaggerated scorn that was confession.

"I'll do better than introduce you to Towler," proceeded
Arkwright. "I'll present you to his daughter--a dyed and padded
old horror, but very influential with her father and all the older
crowd. Sit up to her, Josh. You can lay the flattery on as thick
as her paint and as high as her topknot of false hair. If she
takes to you your fortune's made."

"I tell you, my fortune is not dependent on--" began Craig
vehemently.

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