THE CALIPH, CUPID AND THE CLOCK

Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna, sat on his favourite

bench in the park. The coolness of the September night quickened the

life in him like a rare, tonic wine. The benches were not filled; for

park loungers, with their stagnant blood, are prompt to detect and fly

home from the crispness of early autumn. The moon was just clearing the

roofs of the range of dwellings that bounded the quadrangle on the east.

Children laughed and played about the fine-sprayed fountain. In the

shadowed spots fauns and hamadryads wooed, unconscious of the gaze of

mortal eyes. A hand organ--Philomel by the grace of our stage carpenter,

Fancy--fluted and droned in a side street. Around the enchanted

boundaries of the little park street cars spat and mewed and the stilted

trains roared like tigers and lions prowling for a place to enter. And

above the trees shone the great, round, shining face of an illuminated

clock in the tower of an antique public building.

Prince Michael's shoes were wrecked far beyond the skill of the

carefullest cobbler. The ragman would have declined any negotiations

concerning his clothes. The two weeks' stubble on his face was grey

and brown and red and greenish yellow--as if it had been made up from

individual contributions from the chorus of a musical comedy. No man

existed who had money enough to wear so bad a hat as his.

Prince Michael sat on his favourite bench and smiled. It was a diverting

thought to him that he was wealthy enough to buy every one of those

close-ranged, bulky, window-lit mansions that faced him, if he chose. He

could have matched gold, equipages, jewels, art treasures, estates and

acres with any Croesus in this proud city of Manhattan, and scarcely

have entered upon the bulk of his holdings. He could have sat at table

with reigning sovereigns. The social world, the world of art, the

fellowship of the elect, adulation, imitation, the homage of the

fairest, honours from the highest, praise from the wisest, flattery,

esteem, credit, pleasure, fame--all the honey of life was waiting in the

comb in the hive of the world for Prince Michael, of the Electorate of

Valleluna, whenever he might choose to take it. But his choice was to

sit in rags and dinginess on a bench in a park. For he had tasted of

the fruit of the tree of life, and, finding it bitter in his mouth,

had stepped out of Eden for a time to seek distraction close to the

unarmoured, beating heart of the world.

These thoughts strayed dreamily through the mind of Prince Michael, as

he smiled under the stubble of his polychromatic beard. Lounging thus,

clad as the poorest of mendicants in the parks, he loved to study

humanity. He found in altruism more pleasure than his riches, his

station and all the grosser sweets of life had given him. It was his

chief solace and satisfaction to alleviate individual distress, to

confer favours upon worthy ones who had need of succour, to dazzle

unfortunates by unexpected and bewildering gifts of truly royal

magnificence, bestowed, however, with wisdom and judiciousness.

And as Prince Michael's eye rested upon the glowing face of the great

clock in the tower, his smile, altruistic as it was, became slightly

tinged with contempt. Big thoughts were the Prince's; and it was always

with a shake of his head that he considered the subjugation of the world

to the arbitrary measures of Time. The comings and goings of people in

hurry and dread, controlled by the little metal moving hands of a clock,

always made him sad.

By and by came a young man in evening clothes and sat upon the third

bench from the Prince. For half an hour he smoked cigars with nervous

haste, and then he fell to watching the face of the illuminated clock

above the trees. His perturbation was evident, and the Prince noted, in

sorrow, that its cause was connected, in some manner, with the slowly

moving hands of the timepiece.

His Highness arose and went to the young man's bench.

"I beg your pardon for addressing you," he said, "but I perceive that

you are disturbed in mind. If it may serve to mitigate the liberty I

have taken I will add that I am Prince Michael, heir to the throne of

the Electorate of Valleluna. I appear incognito, of course, as you may

gather from my appearance. It is a fancy of mine to render aid to others

whom I think worthy of it. Perhaps the matter that seems to distress you

is one that would more readily yield to our mutual efforts."

The young man looked up brightly at the Prince. Brightly, but the

perpendicular line of perplexity between his brows was not smoothed

away. He laughed, and even then it did not. But he accepted the

momentary diversion.

"Glad to meet you, Prince," he said, good humouredly. "Yes, I'd say you

were incog. all right. Thanks for your offer of assistance--but I don't

see where your butting-in would help things any. It's a kind of private

affair, you know--but thanks all the same."

Prince Michael sat at the young man's side. He was often rebuffed but

never offensively. His courteous manner and words forbade that.

"Clocks," said the Prince, "are shackles on the feet of mankind. I have

observed you looking persistently at that clock. Its face is that of a

tyrant, its numbers are false as those on a lottery ticket; its hands

are those of a bunco steerer, who makes an appointment with you to your

ruin. Let me entreat you to throw off its humiliating bonds and to cease

to order your affairs by that insensate monitor of brass and steel."

"I don't usually," said the young man. "I carry a watch except when I've

got my radiant rags on."

"I know human nature as I do the trees and grass," said the Prince, with

earnest dignity. "I am a master of philosophy, a graduate in art, and I

hold the purse of a Fortunatus. There are few mortal misfortunes that I

cannot alleviate or overcome. I have read your countenance, and found

in it honesty and nobility as well as distress. I beg of you to accept

my advice or aid. Do not belie the intelligence I see in your face by

judging from my appearance of my ability to defeat your troubles."

The young man glanced at the clock again and frowned darkly. When his

gaze strayed from the glowing horologue of time it rested intently upon

a four-story red brick house in the row of dwellings opposite to where

he sat. The shades were drawn, and the lights in many rooms shone dimly

through them.

"Ten minutes to nine!" exclaimed the young man, with an impatient

gesture of despair. He turned his back upon the house and took a rapid

step or two in a contrary direction.

"Remain!" commanded Prince Michael, in so potent a voice that the

disturbed one wheeled around with a somewhat chagrined laugh.

"I'll give her the ten minutes and then I'm off," he muttered, and

then aloud to the Prince: "I'll join you in confounding all clocks, my

friend, and throw in women, too."

"Sit down," said the Prince calmly. "I do not accept your addition.

Women are the natural enemies of clocks, and, therefore, the allies of

those who would seek liberation from these monsters that measure our

follies and limit our pleasures. If you will so far confide in me I

would ask you to relate to me your story."

The young man threw himself upon the bench with a reckless laugh.

"Your Royal Highness, I will," he said, in tones of mock deference. "Do

you see yonder house--the one with three upper windows lighted? Well,

at 6 o'clock I stood in that house with the young lady I am--that is,

I was--engaged to. I had been doing wrong, my dear Prince--I had been

a naughty boy, and she had heard of it. I wanted to be forgiven, of

course--we are always wanting women to forgive us, aren't we, Prince?"

"'I want time to think it over,' said she. 'There is one thing certain;

I will either fully forgive you, or I will never see your face again.

There will be no half-way business. At half-past eight,' she said, 'at

exactly half-past eight you may be watching the middle upper window of

the top floor. If I decide to forgive I will hang out of that window a

white silk scarf. You will know by that that all is as was before, and

you may come to me. If you see no scarf you may consider that everything

between us is ended forever.' That," concluded the young man bitterly,

"is why I have been watching that clock. The time for the signal to

appear has passed twenty-three minutes ago. Do you wonder that I am a

little disturbed, my Prince of Rags and Whiskers?"

"Let me repeat to you," said Prince Michael, in his even, well-modulated

tones, "that women are the natural enemies of clocks. Clocks are an

evil, women a blessing. The signal may yet appear."

"Never, on your principality!" exclaimed the young man, hopelessly. "You

don't know Marian--of course. She's always on time, to the minute. That

was the first thing about her that attracted me. I've got the mitten

instead of the scarf. I ought to have known at 8.31 that my goose was

cooked. I'll go West on the 11.45 to-night with Jack Milburn. The jig's

up. I'll try Jack's ranch awhile and top off with the Klondike and

whiskey. Good-night--er--er--Prince."

Prince Michael smiled his enigmatic, gentle, comprehending smile and

caught the coat sleeve of the other. The brilliant light in the Prince's

eyes was softening to a dreamier, cloudy translucence.

"Wait," he said solemnly, "till the clock strikes. I have wealth and

power and knowledge above most men, but when the clock strikes I am

afraid. Stay by me until then. This woman shall be yours. You have the

word of the hereditary Prince of Valleluna. On the day of your marriage

I will give you $100,000 and a palace on the Hudson. But there must be

no clocks in that palace--they measure our follies and limit our

pleasures. Do you agree to that?"

"Of course," said the young man, cheerfully, "they're a nuisance,

anyway--always ticking and striking and getting you late for dinner."

He glanced again at the clock in the tower. The hands stood at three

minutes to nine.

"I think," said Prince Michael, "that I will sleep a little. The day

has been fatiguing."

He stretched himself upon a bench with the manner of one who had slept

thus before.

"You will find me in this park on any evening when the weather is

suitable," said the Prince, sleepily. "Come to me when your marriage

day is set and I will give you a cheque for the money."

"Thanks, Your Highness," said the young man, seriously. "It doesn't look

as if I would need that palace on the Hudson, but I appreciate your

offer, just the same."

Prince Michael sank into deep slumber. His battered hat rolled from

the bench to the ground. The young man lifted it, placed it over the

frowsy face and moved one of the grotesquely relaxed limbs into a more

comfortable position. "Poor devil!" he said, as he drew the tattered

clothes closer about the Prince's breast.

Sonorous and startling came the stroke of 9 from the clock tower. The

young man sighed again, turned his face for one last look at the house

of his relinquished hopes--and cried aloud profane words of

holy rapture.

From the middle upper window blossomed in the dusk a waving, snowy,

fluttering, wonderful, divine emblem of forgiveness and promised joy.

By came a citizen, rotund, comfortable, home-hurrying, unknowing of the

delights of waving silken scarfs on the borders of dimly-lit parks.

"Will you oblige me with the time, sir?" asked the young man; and the

citizen, shrewdly conjecturing his watch to be safe, dragged it out and

announced:

"Twenty-nine and a half minutes past eight, sir."

And then, from habit, he glanced at the clock in the tower, and made

further oration.

"By George! that clock's half an hour fast! First time in ten years I've

known it to be off. This watch of mine never varies a--"

But the citizen was talking to vacancy. He turned and saw his hearer,

a fast receding black shadow, flying in the direction of a house with

three lighted upper windows.

And in the morning came along two policemen on their way to the beats

they owned. The park was deserted save for one dilapidated figure that

sprawled, asleep, on a bench. They stopped and gazed upon it.

"It's Dopy Mike," said one. "He hits the pipe every night. Park bum for

twenty years. On his last legs, I guess."

The other policeman stooped and looked at something crumpled and crisp

in the hand of the sleeper.

"Gee!" he remarked. "He's doped out a fifty-dollar bill, anyway. Wish

I knew the brand of hop that he smokes."

And then "Rap, rap, rap!" went the club of realism against the shoe

soles of Prince Michael, of the Electorate of Valleluna.

Date: 2015-01-11; view: 720