The Green Mouse | Page 2

was
much more than sleight of hand; and he, always as good-humored as
well-bred, had never refused to amuse the frivolous, of which he was
also one, by picking silver dollars out of space and causing the proper
card to fall fluttering from the ceiling.
Day by day, as the little money left him melted away, he continued his
vigorous mental examination, until the alarming shrinkage in his funds
left him staring fixedly at his last asset. Could he use it? Was it an asset,
after all? How clever was he? Could he face an audience and perform
the usual magician tricks without bungling? A slip by a careless,
laughing, fashionable young amateur amusing his social equals at a
house party is excusable; a bungle by a hired professional meant an end
to hope in that direction.
So he rented a suite of two rooms on Central Park West, furnished them
with what remained from better days, bought the necessary
paraphernalia of his profession, and immured himself for practice
before entering upon his contemplated invasion of Newport, Lenox,
and Bar Harbor. And one very lovely afternoon in May, when the Park
from his windows looked like a green forest, and puff on puff of
perfumed air fluttered the curtains at his opened windows, he picked up
his gloves and stick, put on his hat, and went out to walk in the Park;
and when he had walked sufficiently he sat down on a bench in a
flowery, bushy nook on the edge of a bridle path.
Few people disturbed the leafy privacy; a policeman sauntering
southward noted him, perhaps for future identification. The spectacle of
a well- built, well-groomed, and fashionable young man sitting
moodily upon a park bench was certainly to be noted. It is not the
fashion for fashionable people to sit on park benches unless they
contemplate self, as well as social, destruction.

So the policeman lingered for a while in the vicinity, but not hearing
any revolver shot, presently sauntered on, buck-skinned fist clasped
behind his broad back, squinting at a distant social gathering composed
entirely of the most exclusive nursemaids.
The young man looked up into the pleasant blue above, then his
preoccupied gaze wandered from woodland to thicket, where the scarlet
glow of Japanese quince mocked the colors of the fluttering scarlet
tanagers; where orange-tinted orioles flashed amid tangles of golden
Forsythia; and past the shrubbery to an azure corner of water,
shimmering under the wooded slope below.
That sense of languor and unrest, of despondency threaded by hope
which fair skies and sunshine and new leaves bring with the young year
to the young, he felt. Yet there was no bitterness in his brooding, for he
was a singularly generous young man, and there was no vindictiveness
mixed with the memories of his failures among those whose cordial
respect for his father had been balanced between that blameless
gentleman's wealth and position.
A gray squirrel came crawling and nosing through the fresh grass; he
caught its eyes, and, though the little animal was plainly bound
elsewhere on important business, the young man soon had it curled up
on his knee, asleep.
For a while he amused himself by using his curious power, alternately
waking the squirrel and allowing it to bound off, tail twitching, and
then calling it back, slowly but inexorably to climb his trousers and curl
up on his knee and sleep an uncanny and deep sleep which might end
only at the young man's pleasure.
He, too, began to feel the subtle stillness of the drowsing woodland;
musing there, caressing his short, crisp mustache, he watched the
purple grackle walking about in iridescent solitude, the sun spots
waning and glowing on the grass; he heard the soft, garrulous whimper
of waterfowl along the water's edge, the stir of leaves above.
He thought of various personal matters: his poverty, the low ebb of his

balance at the bank, his present profession, his approaching début as an
entertainer, the chances of his failure. He thought, too, of the
astounding change in his life, the future, vacant of promise, devoid of
meaning, a future so utterly new and blank that he could find in it
nothing to speculate upon. He thought also, and perfectly impersonally,
of a girl whom he had met now and then upon the stairs of the
apartment house which he now inhabited.
Evidently there had been an ebb in her prosperity; the tumble of a New
Yorker's fortune leads from the Avenue to the Eighties, from thence
through Morristown, Staten Island, to the West Side. Besides, she
painted pictures; he knew the aroma of fixitive, siccative, and burnt
sienna; and her studio adjoined his sky drawing-room.
He thought of this girl quite impersonally; she resembled a youthful
beauty he had known--might