CHAPTER XV.
Theways of cabmen are similar, the civilized world over; and it did not confuse Octave as it would a less accustomed traveller to have a number of these enterprising Jehus rush for her little hand-bag, as she emerged from the great station, and stood for a moment looking about her.
She had been half over Europe in company with her Uncle Fritz, who never liked to journey anywhere alone, and who found the sturdy Octave his least troublesome “pickle” whenever he was minded to refresh himself with the presence of any of them. Besides, the girl had the great gift of observation. If she had once seen a thing she never forgot it; all its little details had impressed themselves upon her memory with the distinctness of a photograph.
She had visited the great building where she had left the train but once before, and that once when, in company with her guardian, she had passed through it on her journey to Deer Hill.Yet so keenly had she observed her surroundings, that she knew directly which way to turn for a certain kind-faced policeman, whom she had seen befriend a little girl while she was waiting for their outward-bound train.
Now, to look for a particular policeman in a great city like New York would have seemed to an older person very much like looking for the proverbial “needle in the hay-mow”; but to the adventurous and romantic Octave it appeared the simplest thing in the world. So, with a feeling of perfect security, she lightly moved away from the detaining cabbies, rigidly holding to the little satchel which contained a hair-brush and comb, and Melville’s well-filled pocket-book.
Ah! there he was, in almost the same place on the block where she had last beheld him. And, with the confidence of an old acquaintance, Octave walked straight to the officer and bade him a pleasant “Good evening.”
“Good evening,” returned the gentleman in blue uniform, looking a little surprised at the unusual salutation. He was accustomed to be addressed as: “Say, look here! Where is, or what is, so and so?”
“I want to go to Prof. Edric von Holsneck’s. Which is the best way, and will you get me a carriage?”
“Eh? What? I didn’t quite ‘catch on,’” was the reply.
Octave frowned. It was getting late, and she was anxious to get to her destination before it grew too dark for her to observe what Uncle Fritz called “her bearings.” She had a wild idea of taking a night-train back to the mountain; but if she should find that unadvisable she would have to look up a lodging place.
“I want to go to the house of Prof. von Holsneck,” said the girl, repeating her first statement with the distinctness known at The Snuggery as “Octave’s spunk.” “You certainly must know the residence of a man so famous.”
“Well, I don’t then. I know who he is and what he is; but where he lives I never took the trouble to find out. Why do you want to go there? He is a big feller, too busy to be bothered.”
Octave tossed her head with a movement of scorn, which she considered quite womanly. “Iwish to see him on business. If—you don’t know anything about him, how am I going to find my way?”
“Easy enough. Look in the Directory.”
“Where will I find the ‘Directory?’” asked the girl, tapping her foot impatiently.
“In the drug store on the corner.”
Octave’s eyes followed the glance of the policeman, and, thanking him, she made her way to the place and pursued her inquiries. Very speedily she had possessed herself of all the needed information, and set out to visit the great scientist. An older and a wiser person would have hesitated long before intruding upon one so fully occupied as Prof, von Holsneck; but the girl had but one idea in her mind, and believed that the man she sought was the best one in the world to help her to her object. Why, then, should she not go to him? To her it appeared the most natural way, when one was in need, to apply at head-quarters for the assistance required; and she knew very well that in neither Europe nor America was there any one who could approach the professor in his special branch of knowledge.
But, simple as the affair appeared to her, it did not apparently strike others in just the same light. The trim and prim lackey who opened the door of the great mansion to the plainly dressed girl stared at her in a most disconcerting way.
The professor was at home; but the professor was engaged in dining. The professor was not to be interrupted on any pretext whatever, when he was at table. Would she leave her card? This last inquiry with a supercilious sneer which, if anything had been needed to put Octave “on her mettle” would certainly have accomplished it.
“My card will be of no use, in this case. My business is personal; and I will come in and await the professor’s leisure.” She coolly moved forward into the vestibule, and, much as he would have liked to do so, the servant did not dare refuse her entrance. Nor was he wholly to be blamed for this reluctance. He knew, if she did not, that his master’s hours of recreation were few, and of labor many; and that each had a distinct and weighty money value. The lackey’sbusiness was to serve and save his employer, and in his eyes there seemed nothing which a chit of a girl, arriving in a cheap railway hack, could possibly want with the great man except to beg for something or other.
“Shall I wait here?” asked Octave, as the man allowed her to stand just within the entrance and made no effort to give her a seat.
“If you will tell me your business, I will see if you can have an audience; that is, when the professor has finished dining,” replied the servant, loftily.
“It would be impossible for you to understand my business,” replied the visitor with a hauteur fully equalling Jeems’s own. And, as he stared at her afresh nor made any motion toward serving her, she walked into the first room she saw open, and quietly sat down to await developments.
“Well, I like this!” exclaimed the quick-tempered girl; “I wonder what Fritzy Nunky would say!”
One Painting Especially Captivated Her Attention.Page175.
Then she began to look about her, and soon forgot the awkwardness of her situation, the latenessof the hour, and all the other disagreeable things which she should have remembered. The walls of the reception room were lined with pictures, and there was nothing which had so intense a fascination for Octave as a beautiful picture. She knew at a glance that these were such; though she could not have told why, save that they reminded her of those she had delighted in among the great galleries abroad, where she had so often gone with her Uncle Fritz.
One painting especially captivated her attention. It was an “Interior” of a German peasant home. In her childhood Octave had seen dozens just such homes, and in one of them she had passed some of the merriest days she could remember.
“Oh! I do believe that was painted for a portrait of dear old Hans Schwartz! And that is Gretchen with the baby—it really, really is! Oh, who could have done that, and how did it come here? Good evening, Hans; hast thou the white cow already milked? And may I have some of the foaming liquid for supper? Gretchen’s brown bread would taste so good thisvery minute. Give it, Gretchen, and I’ll nurse the baby for you.” She had thought herself entirely alone when she entered the apartment, and she had forgotten everything else but delight at finding here a real—she was certain it was a real—portrait of some of her oldest friends. So thinking, she had not feared to talk aloud to them; and she was recalled to herself by the sharp surprise of hearing a voice close to her elbow.
“You seem to be impressed with that picture.”
Octave wheeled around, too unconscious of herself to be abashed.
“Oh, but I have been in that very kitchen—I surely have, and drank my milk out of one of those very earthen bowls! I don’t know who painted it, or how in the world it came here and I came to see it, but that is Hans Schwartz’s cottage at Erding, where we children have passed three summers and had such fun.” Octave paused in her eagerness, recalled to the time and place by the striking of a clock somewhere near.
The clear radiance of shaded electric lights suffused the apartment, which the girl nowobserved was simply but elegantly arranged. For the first time a feeling of timidity stole over her, and a sense that she had intruded arose to trouble her. It might be that she had made a mistake; if so, the only thing left for her to do was to get away as quickly as she could. She looked into the face of the old man who had spoken to her, and noticed with satisfaction that he was as simply attired and as every-day-like in his appearance as herself.
“Can you tell me, sir, if it would be possible for me to have a few minutes’ conversation with the gentleman who owns this house,—the great professor of chemistry, and—lots of other things?”
The old man smiled. “On what subject, my child?” He did not disconcert her as the liveried servant had done, and, if he was surprised to see her occupying the great man’s gallery, and enjoying his pictures without leave or license, he was too kindly to say so.
“This dear old fellow is somebody’s grandfather,” thought Octave, reminded by his gentleness of Grandmother Amy; “I wonder if he is asort of upper servant; he looks as if he felt at home.” Aloud she said:—
“I had rather not try to explain it to any one except the professor, or to some one he will recommend, if he is too busy to see me. It is about a discovery that a boy made. I don’t understand it myself, but the boy wrote it all down on paper, and I have seen it act. I do hope he will see me, for I believe he would be interested, if he heard the whole story.”
At that moment, Octave’s suspicion that her companion was “somebody’s grandfather” was confirmed. A merry little child ran into the room, and with a scream of delight that she had escaped her nurse’s hands, bounded upon the old man’s knee. “O grandpa! don’t let her take me to bed, will you? I haven’t played you were a bear for three days!”
“Three days, is it, sweetheart? That is long indeed, for little people to remember. Maybe I will play bear, soon; just now I am busy. Go and tell the goodbonnethat I wish you to stay up one half-hour longer; then you may come and sit upon my lap, and hear me talk with this young girl.”
The child ran swiftly away, singing something in French; and thereby puzzling poor Octave’s brain still more. A baby of three, possibly four, years old, who talked in excellent English and sang carols in French, was astonishing enough; but not so greatly such as to be met at the entrance by pomposity in livery and find the interior, if far richer, as unpretentious as the living room at The Snuggery.
Her puzzle was destined to increase. “Now, my dear, if you will show me the papers, and tell me what you wish, I shall be happy to serve you,” said the old man, stroking his white beard and looking into her astonished eyes with the most encouraging of smiles.
“You—you? Are you Prof. Edric von Holsneck?” faltered Octave.
“Yes. It was he you came to see?”
“Yes, si-ir; but—but I—perhaps I had better go away. I didn’t think so at first, but now it seems like presumption for me to talk to—to you.” Try as she would, the girl could not reconcile the real professor with her preconceived notion of him. She had fancied a tall, stern, spectacledperson, in a laboratory, and with learning fairly oozing from his gaunt person. But this man, he might have been—anybody!
“There is no presumption in any honest person’s talking to any other. Evidently you thought you had something worth saying or you would not have taken the trouble to come and try to say it. I shall be glad to hear or read the matter you have in hand.” His manner, rather than his words, said also that he would be glad to do so at once, for wasted moments were a thing unknown in his day’s calendar.
Octave became herself again on the instant. All her timidity vanished, and with the simple directness of manner which some found so charming because it was so wholly natural and unconscious of self, she told him Melville’s story. The little grandchild came in, and, evidently accustomed to be quiet when her grandfather so desired, nestled herself in his arms and lay there still, with her eyes fixed upon Octave’s face, and apparently listening closely to every word she uttered.
“The papers,” said Prof. von Holsneck, whenshe had related with lucid brevity all that had led up to Melville’s discovery. His eyes had gained in brightness and his whole manner had lost the look of age and fatigue it had worn when Octave first beheld him. Knowledge was to this man what a draught of wine is to some others.
Swiftly Octave opened the closely guarded pocket-book, and gave the professor some simple lines of writing, with odd looking formulæ. To her, they were less intelligible than Greek; but to the gentleman they were a familiar language. Their meaning, also, appeared to have startled and delighted him; for he suddenly laid down the sheets of paper and looked at Octave searchingly. “Do you tell me that this was prepared by a boy of fourteen years? An invalid, and alone?”
“I do. He has had good instruction until within the last six months, when the professor who used to live on Deer Hill Mountain removed to the South. My cousin Melville cares for nothing so much as study, and he has had no chance to do anything else. I don’t know much about boys, but it seems to me he is awfully clever, is he not?”
“He is more. He is a genius.”
“And is the ‘stuff,’ good for anything?”
“Time will prove, and some exhaustive experiments. It interests me. I will look into it. If you will give me your address, I will write to him.” Octave drew out her card, but, as she was about to hand it to her host, he said, “How did you come here? With friends?”
“I came alone, sir.”
“Alone! Where shall you spend the night?”
“I—hoped to get through in time to go home, but I fear it is too late. Will you be good enough to tell me some hotel that is nearer the station than theMetropole? I want to get back as early in the morning as I can.”
“Do you know theHotel Metropole?”
“Yes, sir; we stopped there for a week when we came to America with Uncle Fritz. But it is a long way down, I think.”
The great man looked at the girl who was but a child, but who seemed so little dismayed at hunting up a lodging place in a great city alone, and after dark. There was nothing bold in her manner, if there was perfect fearlessness—thefearlessness of innocent ignorance. Then his eyes fell down upon the little grandchild in his arms. “My dear young lady, you are too young to have done this thing alone, and I cannot let you go away to-night. You must remain with us.”
“Oh! sir, I did not dream of making myself such a trouble to you. I came only to find out for poor Melville if there was anything in his idea, and I knew nobody could tell me as well as you. I couldn’t bear to have him bothered by people who did not know exactly; it will be such a glorious thing for him if he is right, and he couldn’t bear suspense.”
The girl’s flattering candor was pleasant to the learned man, for there is no one so wise but that he likes appreciation; besides, the frank face pleased him in other ways, and he was minded to hear the history of the cottage she had recognized by its portrait on his walls.
He touched a button, and the servant who had treated Octave with so much contempt appeared. “Send away this young lady’s cab. She will pass the night here.”
Octave held out her purse, but the professor waived it aside. “You are my guest. If I mistake not, the most notable I have entertained for many a day.” The girl understood that he referred to Melville’s possible discovery, for the same eager light had come into the bright eyes of the scientist, and she felt no undue elation at his words. She, the messenger, was nothing to him but a messenger; and, with a funny little grimace at herself, she reflected that even in this most important transaction of her young life she was still “only Octave.”
“Why are you smiling, girl?” asked the grandchild, slipping her hand confidingly into the young visitor’s.
“At foolish thoughts, my dear.”
The professor roused himself. “Have you had your dinner, Miss—”
“Octave Pickel. No, sir; but that is of no consequence.”
“It should be of the highest consequence to a growing girl. Run, little one, and ask grandmother to have supper prepared for our guest. And Pickel, you said? The name commendsitself to me. I am indebted to those of that name for many great kindnesses. It may not be the same family; yet you recognized the Erding cottage. Did you ever live at Munich?”
“It is my home,” responded Octave, eagerly.
“The great publishing house of ‘Pickel & Pickel’—do you know that, too?”
“Do I not? Since I am part of the ‘& Pickel.’ The head of the house is Fritz; and Franz, his brother, was my father.”
The professor held out his hands in cordial greeting. “Then, indeed, you are in the house of friends. Now, while the supper is made ready, tell me about the cottage the picture of which my son painted.”