The Fashionable Adventures of Joshua Craig | Page 2

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