"My friends to whom I introduced you ignored me. I was rather some pumpkins with Hall and Duffy until you came, and tonight I was forgotten by them. Would you mind the next time we are together telling them I held the horses for you?"
"Honest, Bill, do you mean it?"
"Yes, I think it would add to my prestige."
A few days later we were at Mouquin's. I was stringing out a lurid outlaw story. I stopped in the middle and turned to Porter, as though my memory had slipped and I had overlooked an important detail. "Bill, you remember," I said, "that was the night you held the horses." Duffy dropped his fork, sending out a roar of laughter. He reached over and grabbed Porter's hand. "By Jove, I always suspected you, Bill Porter."
"I want to thank you, colonel, for those kind words. You have done me a great service. I sold two stories this morning on the strength of my presumed association with you," Porter said a day later. "Those fellows think now that I really belonged to your gang. I have become a personage."
Not for worlds, though, would Porter have openly acknowledged to these men that he had been a prisoner in the Ohio penitentiary. Bob Davis, I am certain, knew it. He practically admitted it to me. Duffy and Hall felt the mysterysurrounding the man.
"Colonel, every time I step into a public cafe I have the horrible fear that some ex-con will come up and say to me 'Hello, Bill; when did you get out of the O. P.'?"
No one ever did this. It would have been an insufferable shock to Porter's pride, especially when his success was new to him. After all the jovial warmth of that dinner at Mouquin's, after all the banter and gayety, the weight of oppressive sadness came down upon him.
The memory of the past; the troubled fear of the future—the two together seemed ever to press like gigantic forces against the bonny happiness of the present for Bill Porter.
I was recklessly gay. I had taken plenty of the "wine that boils when it is cold." In the exuberance I asked all the gentlemen present to be my escort across the river. Porter kicked me under the table, turning on me a straight, meaningful look.
"Colonel, I am the only one that has nothing to do except yourself. These gentlemen are editors. I shall be glad to act as your escort and keep you from walking off the boat. The sea never gives up its dead."
"I didn't want those men to be with us in our last moments," he said when we were crossing the Hudson.
"Good God, Bill, you aren't going to jump over and pull me with you?"
"No. But I think I would rather enjoy it."
He had not been shamming gayety at the dinner. When a full tide, it had swept over him. But there was always an undertow of shadows and whenever he was alone it carried him out often to a bitter depth of gloomy depression.
CHAPTER XXX.
Supper with a star; frank criticism; O. Henry's prodigality; Credit at the bar; Sue's return.
A human prism he was—refracting the light in seven different colors. But different in this he was not predictable. Reds and blues and yellows were in his moods, but sometimes the gold would predominate and sometimes the indigo. Bill Porter's was a baffling spectrum of gay and somber hues.
These moods of his were inscrutable to me. At times he was so aloof I could scarcely get a word from him. I would go away seething with anger. And in an hour he would come over with the gentlest and subtlest persuasion to wheedle me into friendliness.
"Bill, you've got a feminine streak in you; you're so damned unreliable." I meant it for a stinging rebuke.
Porter looked at me, putting on a foolish simper. "It makes me quite interesting and enigmatic, doesn't it, colonel?"
And then he became instantly serious. "Sometimes things look so black to me, Al. I don't see much use in anything. I can't bet on myself. Sometimes I want to have nothing to do with any one and sometimes I envy the defiance that seems to win you so many friends."
Porter could have walked down Broadway and won the smiling salute of every celebrity for a mile had he so wished. And yet he made that comment one day because a half-dozen bartenders had called me by name.
He had been very busy getting out some stories. I had not seen him for four days. I improved the time by striking up acquaintance with the elite of the bar- rooms. One evening I was talking to the tender in a saloon across from the Flatiron Building. Both my listener and I were excitedly going through the perilous joys of a holdup. I heard a hesitating cough. Porter was at my elbow.
"Did you find an old friend in the bartender?" he asked when we got outside.
"No, I just met him yesterday."
"Well, I stood there 10 minutes with a Sahara thirst on me before he turned to quench it. You're evidently more riches to him than my dime.
"I've been looking for you, colonel. I went into five different saloons. I asked if a diminutive giant with a demure face and red hair had been prowling about the premises. 'Who, Mr. Jennings from Oklahoma?' they up and says, and then they try to point out your footprints to me on the asphalt. How do you do it?"
"You ought to come here and run for Mayor. You'd be elected sure. And then you could appoint me your secretary. We'd be in clover."
Many hours later we wheeled around again near the Flatiron Building. My hat was carried away in the tornado and then hurled down the street.
I started to run after it. Porter's firm, strong hand was on my arm. "Don't, colonel. Some one will bring it to you. The north wind is considerate. It pays indemnities on the damage wrought. It will send a porter to return your headpiece to you."
"Like hell it will."
A likely chance it seemed at two o'clock in the morning. I shook off his arm, determined to recover my property, when dashing up from nowhere came an old man. "Pardon me, sir, is this yours?"
For the second time in my life I heard Bill Porter send up that bubbling, sonorous laugh of his.
For a moment I felt like a person bewitched. "Where in thunder did that old gnome come from, anyway?"
"You oughtn't to be so particular about the creature's origin. You've got your hat, haven't you?"
It was a night of gayety. "We'll continue this in our next, colonel. Come over at noon." It was Porter's good night.
I was ready for the jaunt promptly at 12. "Mr. Porter is in his rooms—go right up," the clerk said. I reached the door. I could hear Bill stropping his razor. I knocked. He did not answer.
Mindful of the joyous buoyancy of the night before I gave a vicious kick at the door. He did not come.
In a gale of resentment and hurt pride, I rushed to my room a block away.
"He's sick and tired of me sliding in there night and day," I thought. "He wants to be rid of me." I grabbed up my suitcase and started dumping my clothes into it. I planned to leave New York that afternoon. I was just jamming in the last few collars when the door opened and Bill's ruddy, understanding face looked down at me.
"Forgive me, colonel, that I have not a sixth sense. I could not distinguish your knock from any one else's." Porter slipped his hand into his pocket. "Take this, Al, and let yourself in any hour of the day or night. You'll never find Bill Porter's door or his time locked against the salt of the earth."
More eloquent than the gift of a dollar from a Shylock was this tribute from the reserved Bill Porter.
I was always under the impression that Porter's spirit, unshadowed by the walls of the Ohio penitentiary, would have been a buoyant, fantastic incarnation. He had a robust philosophy that withstood without the tarnish of cynicism the horrors of prison life.
Without these searing memories I think the debonair grace of youth that was uppermost in his heart would have been the dominant force triumphant over the ordinary melancholy of life.