Smoke Bellew | Page 4

queried.
Kit brushed his eyes with his hands and peered about him anxiously
before replying.
"No, it's not that. It's my eyes. They seem to be going back on me,
that's all."
For several days he continued to fall over and bump into the office

furniture. But O'Hara's heart was not softened.
"I tell you what, Kit," he said one day, "you've got to see an oculist.
There's Doctor Hassdapple. He's a crackerjack. And it won't cost you
anything. We can get it for advertizing. I'll see him myself."
And, true to his word, he dispatched Kit to the oculist.
"There's nothing the matter with your eyes," was the doctor's verdict,
after a lengthy examination. "In fact, your eyes are magnificent--a pair
in a million."
"Don't tell O'Hara," Kit pleaded. "And give me a pair of black glasses."
The result of this was that O'Hara sympathized and talked glowingly of
the time when the Billow would be on its feet.
Luckily for Kit Bellew, he had his own income. Small it was, compared
with some, yet it was large enough to enable him to belong to several
clubs and maintain a studio in the Latin Quarter. In point of fact, since
his associate editorship, his expenses had decreased prodigiously. He
had no time to spend money. He never saw the studio any more, nor
entertained the local Bohemians with his famous chafing-dish suppers.
Yet he was always broke, for the Billow, in perennial distress, absorbed
his cash as well as his brains. There were the illustrators who
periodically refused to illustrate, the printers who periodically refused
to print, and the office boy who frequently refused to officiate. At such
times O'Hara looked at Kit, and Kit did the rest.
When the steamship Excelsior arrived from Alaska, bringing the news
of the Klondike strike that set the country mad, Kit made a purely
frivolous proposition.
"Look here, O'Hara," he said. "This gold rush is going to be big-- the
days of '49 over again. Suppose I cover it for the Billow? I'll pay my
own expenses."
O'Hara shook his head.

"Can't spare you from the office, Kit. Then there's that serial. Besides, I
saw Jackson not an hour ago. He's starting for the Klondike to-morrow,
and he's agreed to send a weekly letter and photos. I wouldn't let him
get away till he promised. And the beauty of it is, that it doesn't cost us
anything."
The next Kit heard of the Klondike was when he dropped into the club
that afternoon, and, in an alcove off the library, encountered his uncle.
"Hello, avuncular relative," Kit greeted, sliding into a leather chair and
spreading out his legs. "Won't you join me?"
He ordered a cocktail, but the uncle contented himself with the thin
native claret he invariably drank. He glanced with irritated disapproval
at the cocktail, and on to his nephew's face. Kit saw a lecture gathering.
"I've only a minute," he announced hastily. "I've got to run and take in
that Keith exhibition at Ellery's and do half a column on it."
"What's the matter with you?" the other demanded. "You're pale.
You're a wreck."
Kit's only answer was a groan.
"I'll have the pleasure of burying you, I can see that."
Kit shook his head sadly.
"No destroying worm, thank you. Cremation for mine."
John Bellew came of the old hard and hardy stock that had crossed the
plains by ox-team in the fifties, and in him was this same hardness and
the hardness of a childhood spent in the conquering of a new land.
"You're not living right, Christopher. I'm ashamed of you."
"Primrose path, eh?" Kit chuckled.
The older man shrugged his shoulders.

"Shake not your gory locks at me, avuncular. I wish it were the
primrose path. But that's all cut out. I have no time."
"Then what in-?"
"Overwork."
John Bellew laughed harshly and incredulously.
"Honest?"
Again came the laughter.
"Men are the products of their environment," Kit proclaimed, pointing
at the other's glass. "Your mirth is thin and bitter as your drink."
"Overwork!" was the sneer. "You never earned a cent in your life."
"You bet I have--only I never got it. I'm earning five hundred a week
right now, and doing four men's work."
"Pictures that won't sell? Or--er--fancy work of some sort? Can you
swim?"
"I used to."
"Sit a horse?"
"I have essayed that adventure."
John Bellew snorted his disgust.
"I'm glad your father didn't live to see you in all the glory of your
gracelessness," he said. "Your father was a man, every inch of him. Do
you get it? A Man. I think he'd have whaled all this musical and artistic
tomfoolery out of you."
"Alas! these degenerate days," Kit sighed.

"I could understand it, and tolerate it," the other went on savagely,