The Third Violet
Copyright© 2024 by Stephen Crane
Chapter 21
Pennoyer, coming home one morning with two gigantic cakes to accompany the coffee at the breakfast in the den, saw a young man bounce from a horse car. He gave a shout. “Hello, there, Billie! Hello!”
“Hello, Penny!” said Hawker. “What are you doing out so early?” It was somewhat after nine o’clock.
“Out to get breakfast,” said Pennoyer, waving the cakes. “Have a good time, old man?”
“Great.”
“Do much work?”
“No. Not so much. How are all the people?”
“Oh, pretty good. Come in and see us eat breakfast,” said Pennoyer, throwing open the door of the den. Wrinkles, in his shirt, was making coffee. Grief sat in a chair trying to loosen the grasp of sleep. “Why, Billie Hawker, b’ginger!” they cried.
“How’s the wolf, boys? At the door yet?”
“‘At the door yet?’ He’s halfway up the back stairs, and coming fast. He and the landlord will be here to-morrow. ‘Mr. Landlord, allow me to present Mr. F. Wolf, of Hunger, N. J. Mr. Wolf—Mr. Landlord.’”
“Bad as that?” said Hawker.
“You bet it is! Easy Street is somewhere in heaven, for all we know. Have some breakfast?—coffee and cake, I mean.”
“No, thanks, boys. Had breakfast.”
Wrinkles added to the shirt, Grief aroused himself, and Pennoyer brought the coffee. Cheerfully throwing some drawings from the table to the floor, they thus made room for the breakfast, and grouped themselves with beaming smiles at the board.
“Well, Billie, come back to the old gang again, eh? How did the country seem? Do much work?”
“Not very much. A few things. How’s everybody?”
“Splutter was in last night. Looking out of sight. Seemed glad to hear that you were coming back soon.”
“Did she? Penny, did anybody call wanting me to do a ten-thousand-dollar portrait for them?”
“No. That frame-maker, though, was here with a bill. I told him——”
Afterward Hawker crossed the corridor and threw open the door of his own large studio. The great skylight, far above his head, shed its clear rays upon a scene which appeared to indicate that some one had very recently ceased work here and started for the country. A distant closet door was open, and the interior showed the effects of a sudden pillage.
There was an unfinished “Girl in Apple Orchard” upon the tall Dutch easel, and sketches and studies were thick upon the floor. Hawker took a pipe and filled it from his friend the tan and gold jar. He cast himself into a chair and, taking an envelope from his pocket, emptied two violets from it to the palm of his hand and stared long at them. Upon the walls of the studio various labours of his life, in heavy gilt frames, contemplated him and the violets.
At last Pennoyer burst impetuously in upon him. “Hi, Billie! come over and—— What’s the matter?”
Hawker had hastily placed the violets in the envelope and hurried it to his pocket. “Nothing,” he answered.
“Why, I thought—” said Pennoyer, “I thought you looked rather rattled. Didn’t you have—I thought I saw something in your hand.”
“Nothing, I tell you!” cried Hawker.
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