From the Sketchbook of a Boulevardier

by Geraldine Bonner

FROM THE SKETCHBOOK OF A BOULEVARDIER

 

THE ABERRATION OF MYNDERT VAN KULL

 

MYndert Van Kull was possessed of many of the attributes of the ideal hero of a society novel. He had the position and the family, and the forefathers necessary, and he was, moreover, ideally wealthy, with the extravagant wealthiness of which lady novelists dream. Being the only son and principal heir of the late Gillian Mortimer Van Kull, it was but natural that he should be somewhat haughty in his style, and regard himself with cold complacence as a young man of the very highest importance.

That he was not good-looking, according to the standard of the novelists, was not accounted a drawback. It was also a matter of small moment that he was not remarkably clever. Ideal heroes sometimes have these peculiarities. But, if he had looked like Antinous, and talked like Macaulay, he could not have been more persistently sought. Society dogged his languid footsteps. His travels were chronicled in the daily papers, and when it was rumored that he was betrothed to some English noble lady or European princess, the rumors were always put in the Associated Press dispatches. As for the undaunted perseverance with which the patrician daughters of his native land hunted him from Dan to Beersheba, both he and his mother were wont to speak of it in terms of surprised but patient resignation as an ill to which millionaire only sons must submit with fortitude. Was it then surprising that, at twenty-five, Mr. Van Kull had become extremely blasé?

It so happened that one day, a day of unrelieved and particularly irksome boredom, he sauntered down to the studio of a rising artist, in whom he took a fitful interest. There he found the artist conversing with a young woman who had given him various hand-painted vases and bonbonnières, to sell for her. The young woman—her name was Miss Bessie Geary—was pretty, and of very frank and attractive manners. Mr. Van Kull thought her so charming that he bought her two handsomest bonbonnières, and gave her a commission for a third.

Miss Bessie Geary executed the commission and then received still another. Mr. Van Kull met her at the studio and gave her an extensive order for a punch bowl. While this masterpiece was in process of decoration he asked leave to come and view it with an owner’s critical eye. Miss Geary assented, though she disliked showing her work in its unfinished crudeness. But she did not like to run the risk of annoying Mr. Van Kull, who had given her such profitable orders.

When the blasé aristocrat withdrew, the artist friend told her to do her best with the punch bowl, for Van Kull, if he liked it, might give her other orders, and if she could get the patronage of his sisters it would be a splendid thing for her, as they were wealthy and generous women who took pleasure in posing as patrons of struggling genius. So Miss Bessie Geary went home feeling very rich and happy, and dreaming of unlimited orders from Van Kull’s sisters.

The Gearys—mother and daughter—lived across town in a huge flat building honeycombed with tiny apartments. It was in a vulgar Irish neighborhood, where, at the pleasant hour of twilight, unkempt women performed that domestic task known as “rushing the growler,” where innumerable small children played sportively in the gutters. They were Bohemians, were the Gearys. Mrs. G.—as her defunct husband had called her—had been an actress—small parts in the legitimate—as Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, she had made quite a hit. Now she was fat, wore wrappers all day and large flat-heeled slippers. Mr. G. had been nothing in particular, and all he had left his adored Mrs. G. was their Bessie and a life insurance policy of five thousand dollars. Bessie, with her crayon portraits and painted china bonbonnières and vases made the rest. A good girl was Bessie, hard-working and cheerful, if a trifle too Bohemian for a strictly refined standard.

Gearys’ flat was always at sixes and sevens. They never could find anything in it except what they did not want. When Mr. Van Kull climbed up there to look at his punch bowl he generally found Mrs. Geary in her dingy wrapper, making Bessie’s dresses. The ex-Queen of Denmark, always regally indifferent to the dinginess of her attire, ushered him politely in to a confusion of millinery and art, Miss Bessie being invariably discovered sitting at a table painting, and between whiles eating candy from a box at her elbow. While thus occupied she was not talkative. It was particularly disconcerting to Mr. Van Kull, when, in the midst of his discourse, she paused in her work and looked at him with round, absent eyes, evidently not having heard a word of his improving conversation.

But Miss Bessie was pretty—there was a good deal in that. She was pretty with the dainty freshness of some of the roses she painted so deftly on her porcelain boxes. She, too, wore old wrappers, and not irreproachable slippers, but her figure was like a young Greek girl’s and her feet like a young Andalusian’s. She had golden hair, too—real golden—which, when in gala array, she arranged in a tight and elongated twist from the end of which three yellow, spiral curls emerged in an abrupt and unexpected manner. Miss Bessie called this hirsute ornament that stood out so defiantly from her smooth little head, her “Pish twist.” Mr. Van Kull eyed it with curious admiration as she bent over her work, repeating in an absent tone “Pish.” He had never heard the word before.

Toward the spring Mr. Van Kull ordered another porcelain bonbon box with little bunches of roses sprinkled over it, and he came down to see how it progressed. The people in the flats had, as they would have expressed it in their unredeemable and hopeless vulgarity, got on to Mr. Van Kull. As he lounged slowly up the street in his irreproachable clothes, spring-like in the spring-like air, he was conscious of an agitation of the closed shutters along the building’s façade. They opened slightly. Mr. Van Kull felt the eyes of women upon him, and, adjusting his glasses on his nose, hurried his pace, loathing the inspection. Even as he noiselessly ascended the stairs, the doors on the landings opened a crack, and eyes were seen to be glued to the aperture. It was not often that the inhabitants of that remote neighborhood saw anything as magnificent as Myndert Van Kull.

When he reached the top flat and rang, his gentle summons appeared to carry consternation to the dwellers within. There was a hurrying to and fro, followed by a silence, during which Mr. Van Kull was aware that the ex-Queen of Denmark was surveying the field through the keyhole. After this prudent reconnoitering she retired with her creaking steps and acquainted her daughter with the fact of Mr. Van Kull’s proximity, having, it appeared, recognized that gentleman from the small section of his waistcoat that the keyhole commanded. When the patrician visitor was admitted he found Miss Bessie in the parlor, very comfortable in her old cotton frock, painting. She had no disengaged hand to offer him and no time to converse. And so Mr. Van Kull talked for both, while the bonbonnière grew in beauty, and the ex-Queen of Denmark cut out Bessie’s new dress with a pair of big, creaking shears.

In the spring the poet has told us what happens to the young man’s fancy. Mr. Van Kull’s fancy turned more than lightly to thoughts of love. It turned steadily, and Mr. Van Kull was alarmed and enraged for he could not stop it turning. He was afraid of his family hearing, for though he was master of his fortune as of his actions, he dreaded the comments of his family. It was a serious family, proud and majestic, and Mr. Van Kull knew what it would say. While it stayed in town he took pains to conceal his infatuation from it—went about uncomplainingly with his third and only unmarried sister, dined gorgeously and solemnly at home, brought his mother no more presents of hand-painted bonbon boxes, and only let a restless spirit in his feet carry him to the big flat on the east side once every fortnight or three weeks.

But when the family went to Newport, the family’s only son said he had business that would keep him in town and stayed on. The city was dusty and deserted. The big house where the family lived was cool, but very dull. Mr. Van Kull took a delicate, carefully-prepared dinner in the dim, leather-hung dining room, sipping thin yellow wines in the cool of the twilight. As he waited for the next course he thought how pleasant it would have been if Bessie Geary had been sitting at the other end of the table listening to him and also sipping the yellow wine, that, in its amber clearness, would have matched her eyes to perfection.

After dinner, there being nothing else to do, Mr. Van Kull strolled across town to the large flat building on the east side. When he had climbed the many fights of stairs, pressed the bell, sustained the usual inspection through the key hole, the ex-Queen of Denmark, never particularly gracious, reluctantly ushered him into the stuffy little parlor, where one large lamp burned, and the work table was littered with the royal lady’s dress-making paraphernalia.

Miss Bessie did not paint on such warm evenings, but curled up in a corner of the sofa, the inevitable box of candy at her elbow, listlessly twanged on an old and tuneless guitar. On an easel opposite—to be eyed critically in the pauses of the twanging—stood a new crayon portrait in process of construction, the subject being a gentleman who was chief of a fire brigade and whose sister lived in the flat below. It was for her, Bessie explained, over the tinkling of the hesitating music, and she was to pay for it with a pair of opera glasses. This was very nearly all she said. She always had the appearance of giving to Van Kull’s conversation but a half-hearted attention, now and then stopping in her twanging of the strings to offer suggestions to her mother on the absorbing topic of the family dress-making.

During those summer months Van Kull went a good many times to the flat on the east side. Nobody but he himself ever knew how often he went, for there were many evenings when he did not go in, but moody and harassed and bitterly ashamed of his love for the daughter of the ex-Queen of Denmark, he surreptitiously loitered in the shadow of the corner grocery and watched her windows, where the ragged white curtains gently fanned in and out on the fitful breezes. Sometimes he could hear the tinkling notes of the guitar, Then he thought with melting tenderness of how she sat there in her white and yellow beauty like a narcissus blossom, dreaming of him in the summer night. Miss Bessie—to keep to the truth of history—lay on the old tapestry sofa in very aged attire, twanging the guitar and eating caramels. Her mother, by the lamp, stitched on a polka-dotted blouse.

“And for goodness sake,” said Miss Bessie, stretching a little pale hand for another candy—“for goodness sake, if our aristocratic patron comes ringing at the bell, don’t make a sound, but just let him ring. He’ll think we’re out and go away. It’s too warm an evening to talk to blasé patricians, even though they do give us orders?”

All through that long July and glaring, parched August, Mr. Van Kull wrestled with the problem of his love, and, in the end—as better men than he have been—was conquered. There came a day when he decided that life without Bessie Geary was not worth living. He would marry her. The beautiful legend of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid would once more have its modern prototype.

After this decision, there was nothing to be done but decide upon the best way of getting rid of Her Majesty of Denmark. Myndert Van Kull loved Bessie Geary, but toward her mother he cherished sentiments other than tender. This pacific and gentle young man almost wished that the days of hiring bravos were not passed, and that he could have hired some desperate bandit to remove the regal lady of whom he was so keenly ashamed. Some days he thought that he would buy an orange grove in Florida, and send her there to take care of it. Then he thought of purchasing a large country place in England and settling her there as housekeeper. He might also buy an extensive naphtha-launch, put her on board that, and keep it forever cruising on the open sea, like the Flying Dutchman. One thing was certain, she must never be seen or known of as the mother of Bessie Van Kull, née Geary. It was bad enough that Bessie herself should have painted bonbonnières and worn a “Pish twist.”

So one momentous afternoon Mr. Van Kull went to see his humble love and to offer her the old and honorable name of Van Kull.

Fate seemed to favor him for he found Miss Bessie alone—a rare occurrence. Gertrude, Queen of Denmark, was in the kitchen singing the unqueenly lay of Annie Rooney and clattering crockery. It was the weekly wash-day at the Gearys’ flat, when the Queen did the dish-washing of seven days’ standing. But Mr. Van Kull knew nothing of these domestic details, and to make the most of the blessed opportunity burst into his love tale without preamble or delay. So hurried and anxious was he to say it all before Mrs. Geary’s return that, side by side with the recital of his love he poured out his generous plans for the Queen’s own future all in one breathless, unbroken stream.

For the first few moments Miss Bessie stared at him with wide, astonished eyes, then she got up, walked to the window and remained there, her elbows on the sill. When he had concluded and stood waiting for his answer, she turned her head, her elbows still on the sill, and said over her shoulder, “No, my dear Mr. Van Kull, but thank you just the same.”

Then she turned away and looked down at the people walking in the street, after the fashion of those small, plump birds that peer so curiously over the leaden gutters, at the traffic below.

A sound of inarticulate query came from Van Kull.

“Oh no,” said Miss Bessie, craning her neck forward to follow with her eyes a well-dressed female figure as it swept down the street—“a marriage between you and me would be very unsuitable.”

Mr. Van Kull came suddenly toward her with a light of love and anger in his eyes.

“Oh, no,” she said, half smiling and holding out one small, arresting hand—“It isn’t possible at all. Anyway,” and she tilted her head sideways—“anyway, even if I was willing to marry you, I couldn’t, I’m engaged to that man over there”—she pointed to the crayon portrait of the chief of the fire brigade. “We will be married when we’re better off. And you?—Why I only thought you cared about the painted bonbonnières. I'd never have let you come that way if I’d thought it was for me.”

Geraldine Bonner.