II
“Only just Colin!” Behold a youth, tall, heavily built, powerful, his head leaning a little forward from the shoulders, his brown, healthy face adorned with the expression of good will toward mankind that, after all, is the one unfading charm of the human countenance. It was because of his trust in things that Colin never felt abashed, greeting the great and the lowly alike with honest good-fellowship. Although in the eyes of a critical woman of the world his person might have been found lacking in certain exterior signs deemed by her class indispensable, his looks and manner when he came into a room carried with them irresistible attraction. An ex-hero of the university, where Maurice had been his devoted chum and follower, the echo of Colin’s achievements in athletics had not yet died out in the two years since he had graduated. Take Jock Blair, for example, at present a junior under the wing of the same alma mater, and seat him at table in Colin’s company; a babbling and confident young fellow enough in ordinary society, Jock would be stricken dumb and reverentin the presence of this composite Napoleon and Wellington.
Now a hard worker in his first year at the law, not even those outsiders, chill of blood, who affect to contemn the practice of manly sports among healthy young collegians, could have found ground for a charge against Colin that he was subordinating brain to muscle. Under his new teaching, he had done more than well. To the physical animation acquired in college he had many times given thanks for helping him to endure this later life, in which a walk uptown after working hours was the chief outlet for his tremendous energy of body.
When we have said additionally that Colin was of a very short purse, and had no backing of family in New York—seeing that his relatives were unimportant residents of a small Western town—that he was hopelessly in love with Kathleen Blair, and that at college he had been dubbed Colin chiefly because his real name was John Walter Mackintosh, the tale is told.
Knowing that his charmer was that night to undergo the ordeal of proving her quality as a violinist before the supreme Herr Levitsky, our young man had moved heaven and earth to get an invitation to Crichton’s musicale; having succeeded in which, he had passed through atumult of emotions regarding a proper appearance for the occasion.
Maurice, sharing his confidence, had lent sage advice. Colin, who perhaps for no other reason would have taken on himself a debt, had secured upon the installment plan of payment a new suit of evening clothes, the genial sartor who provided them supplying, out of the fullness of his sympathy, facings for the coat of a better quality of silk than was nominated in the bond. At the instigation also of the more knowing Maurice, the aspirant had next repaired to a much advertised “Fire Sale” of “Gents’ Furnishings,” where he had laid in a dozen white linen ties, “imperceptibly damaged,” and six hemstitched pocket handkerchiefs. This done, there was yet a mighty obstacle to overcome. For two interminable days Colin had not seen his way clear to the possession of a pair of patent leather shoes. Over and again he had surveyed wistfully his rough ordinary footwear, and reluctantly decided that it would not do. The jest of the bootmaker to whom he had ventured a remonstrance as to the high price of his wares, that it “took extra leather to cover some men’s feet,” was iron entering Colin’s soul.
At this critical juncture, somebody had been called in haste from the law office claiming theservices of Mr. Mackintosh, to draw up an old woman’s death-bed will. To Colin had been assigned the task, and also, to his eternal gratitude, the small fee resulting. The speed made by him uptown that day after office hours, to reach the bootmaker before his shop should be closed, recalled to our hero some of his efforts at sprinting between hoarsely cheering crowds of college sympathizers.
Two minutes after he was invested in all his hardly-won integuments, Colin had forgotten them. He had long been planning how to present Kathleen with some flowers to wear at the musicale. Knowing her favorites, he had purchased a sheaf of those “naiad-like lilies of the vale, whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,” at a cost that would deprive him of luncheon money for some days; then, with a strong desire to see her pleasure in them, had walked around to the Blair’s house carrying the gift in person.
On the doorstep his courage had failed. Kathleen, sternly intent on checking his too rapid advance, might, and no doubt would, decline his offering. So rather miserably, the big young man had turned around again and marched away with his pasteboard box. At the corner, he bethought him of a recent speech of hers—that“better than anything but music,” she loved flowers. This renewed his prowess. Again he stormed the lady’s portal, and again fell away, discouraged, in apprehension of her frown. The scrutiny of a passing policeman served to weaken his last remnant of resolution.
The lilies, returning with him to his lodging, were, with continuing uncertainty, carried on to Crichton’s studio. There Mr. Mackintosh, proving to be the first arrival, had judged it best to remain secluded in the cloak-room, until a number of men, passing in, gave him countenance to enter the scene of entertainment. His vague plan of contriving to intercept Kathleen on her arrival, and putting the flowers in Morry’s hands, with the request that she should wear them, had now vanished into thin air. He wished at last he had never burdened himself with the confounded things.
What Colin felt while Kathleen had witched her audience with youth and loveliness and talent may be divined by the reader. Perhaps by ruffling the leaves of the book of Memory, some chronicle may still be found there, uneffaced, to suggest the proud tingling in the young man’s veins! The little lock of darkest hair, that while she wielded the bow had the habit of breaking cover and falling down upon a fine jetty eyebrow,the rich flush in her cheek swept by the lashes of down-dropping eyes, the noble unconsciousness of her face and figure, thrilled him with a more passionate resolve than ever to win her for his own.
When she had finished playing, and the crowd thronged about her to indorse the master’s verdict, Colin had kept aloof. He did not want to spoil the hour by commonplace; and indeed his heart was too full for utterance. Maurice, just then running upon him in the throng, had bidden his friend to supper. Colin, fed with new hope, had returned again to the dressing-room, intending to take a walk until it should be time to present himself at the Blairs’. Between two men talking over the performance of the evening as they lighted their cigars, he heard Kathleen discussed in terms that he considered daringly impertinent. Although the phrases used were chiefly those of custom upon the appearance of a new performer in her field, one of the men lent to them an emphasis so offensive that Colin had much ado to restrain himself from flying at the offender and choking him backward into a pile of hats.
Tempted to leave his now oppressive offering for beauty’s shrine in Crichton’s fireplace, he took up again his box of flowers and went outinto the night. How far he wandered through the chill, deserted streets in the effort to make time pass ere he thought it proper to appear before his goddess, Colin did not realize. When he could bear no longer not seeing her, he had rung Mr. Blair’s door-bell; but when he was asked into the supper room, where they were all assembled, the spurned and imprisoned lilies were tucked away on the lower shelf of the hat-rack, behind the galoches of Mr. Catullus Clarke.
“And where will you sit, Mr. Mackintosh?” asked Mrs. Blair, holding out a kind hand of welcome to her new guest, who accordingly dropped into the chair nearest her own.
Colin could hardly speak. In the stranger guest, ensconced in intimate conversation with Maurice, he recognized one of the men he had desired to knock down in the dressing-room at Crichton’s!
“Now, we may notice in Clarke’s poems,” Mr. Malvolio was saying with wicked relish, “what Emerson once remarked about Oxford. ‘Nothing new or true, and no matter.’”
“I do not pretend to solve my own problems, my dear fellow,” returned the poet, languidly, as he lay back at ease in a large arm-chair, surveying his patent-leather toes; “I only statethem to average intelligence, and then pray for the interposition of the Power that brought speech out of Balaam’s ass to give understanding to some of my readers.”
“Indeed, yours is the dearest little book we have had this month, Mr. Clarke,” exclaimed Kathleen; “and your poster is the wildest and weirdest in my collection.”
“Then I have not printed in vain, Miss Blair,” answered the bardling, looking at her with admiring eyes. In reality he was entirely happy.
It was only being overlooked that ever caused Catullus pain.
“Gather your roses, while you may, Clarke,” resumed Malvolio, cheerfully. “Presently the twentieth century will throw upon you mysterious folk a searchlight in which even you will stand revealed, and then your occupation will be gone. You owe Blair a debt of gratitude, by the way, for slating you so discreetly a couple of weeks ago. It’s immensely clever how he manages to let his authors think the failure to appreciate lies in him only, and that the world at large is ablaze over their productions. Now, in that thing about you, for instance, the readers of book reviews—I wonder who they are?—must have thought Blair a schoolboy who had accidentally tangled an Olympic deity in the tail of his kite.It was only after they had paid one fifty for the volume, I dare say, that they found out the truth.”
“Don’t spoil my wife’s supper by talking shop over it,” said Terence reprovingly. “To come here for the purpose of discussing modern literature—”
“You flatter Clarke,” interrupted Malvolio.
“Is hardly my idea of entertainment. You might as well invite a letter-carrier to take a walk for pleasure.”
“Or ask Malvolio to talk about Monet—” said Clarke.
“Who has seen ‘Heart of Topaz’?” asked Terence of his guests.
“I, says the fly, with my little eye,” answered Malvolio. “It is a pretty peep-show; but she is only Mrs. Tanqueray done into Japanese. If we are to have that lady at all on our stage, let her come in the strong, original guise of Pinero’s heroine. Although you, my dear Miss Blair, must stay away when she appears—”
“NowIprotest,” said Mrs. Blair. “But at this rate, we shall never find a subject of conversation upon which we agree.”
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Malvolio, whose glass Terence had just filled with a steaming golden mixture of innocent appearance.
“There is one, and that one uppermost in all our minds, yet deepest in our hearts—”
“Hear, hear!” murmured Mr. Clarke.
“I need not,” went on the speaker, arising and holding his glass in his right hand, while upon his saturnine countenance gleamed an attempt at angelic amiability, “say many words to emphasize the pleasure Miss Blair’s triumph has given to-night to her hearers. Up to the present time, I must confess, I have known the young lady chiefly in her capacity of sub-critic to her father. On various occasions like the present, I have profited by her opinions upon the topics of the hour; and I can truly say: ‘Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterranean, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit; snip, snap, quick, and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.’ But to-night she has soared into a region whither I may not follow her, save with the reverential eyes of an earth-bound loiterer; she has been accepted among the musical elect, and henceforward I can only offer my homage from below. Tho’ such as it is—the tribute of enchanted ignorance—it is hers most heartily; and I ask you all to join with me in drinking the health of the ‘Woman who has won!’”
“The woman who has won!” repeated Thorndyke, significantly, in Kathleen’s ear. He hadcrossed over for the first time to be near her, and his gaze was radiant.
“Now, why couldn’t I say some of those fine-sounding things?” poor Colin wasgrumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleenbreak into well-pleased smiles and bend blushing in the direction of her extoller. “Old Malvolio has no business to take this on himself, considering he’s no more musical sense than a turnip. That’s my trouble, after all. I can’t keep up with the phrase-makers in their eternal patter. And that man she is talking to her now! How am I to tell Morry or her father the way I heard him speak of her a while ago? How did he get here, anyway? Anybody can get in with Kathleen better than I, it seems. If she’d give me only one of the sweet looks she wastes upon all these literary freaks”—such, we grieve to say, was the classification made by Mr. Mackintosh of the rank and file of the Blairs’ associates—“I’d—”
His meditations were cut short by Kathleen herself, who, supple as a snake, had glided unnoticed to his elbow.
“You are the only one among us who has a long face,” she said to him, softly, while across and around the table now resounded a fusillade of merry sayings and laughter. “Is it because you disapprove of my playing in public?”
“Disapprove of you? Oh! good gracious, no!” he answered, incoherently. “I am proud to the core of my heart. But that doesn’t mean I like to think of you on a platform. It makes me wretched, and that’s the honest truth. You ought to be shut in from vulgar gazers in a little world of your own; and the question of dirty money oughtn’t to enter into your art.”
“Perhaps not,” said the more practical Kathleen; “but, after all, ‘dirty money’ puts the hallmark upon accomplishment. And as to the vulgar gazers and hearers, they light the torch of genius. When I was last at the opera, in those good seats in the parquet Mr. Toner sent papa, I watched the artists closely, and saw that every one of them was working with all his or her might to do the best possible; and whenever there came a burst of real applause—not that little rainfall of claps one hears from the gallery alone, but the kind that comes, quick as near-by thunder after lightning, from the body of the house—the ease and spontaneity of the performance was increased. The very muscles of their bodies seem to feel the tension, and their faces to grow more luminous.”
“That may be true,” said poor Colin, who was again out of his depth; “but somehow, I don’t fancy you among them. I had rather seeyou in the boxes with those nice girls who sit up by their mammas, and have fellows dropping in to call on them.”
“Please don’t!” cried she, with unaffected earnestness. “I can’t imagine any life that would suit me less than theirs. Sometimes, on a winter’s night when daddy and I hurry by them in the lobby, on our way to catch a cable car to get home in, I think maybe I might enjoy wearing one of their long fluffy white wraps like plumage—that look like seraphs’ overcoats—and having a footman in a fur cape to call my carriage. But really, I don’t want riches or fashion; I want opportunity only, and travel, and all the music I can get, and flowers like those orchids, and a new evening frock—and such nice things as Mr. Thorndyke has been saying to me about my touch, and—and to see my parents take a little rest from work. But that’s what I talk about to Morry, not to you. When his ship and mine come in, you’ll see what we shall do with our cargoes.”
Thus it was always. While she filled every chink and cranny of Colin’s dreams of the future, he had no part in hers. Swallowing his pain, he tried to find something to say to her about his pleasure in her success. He dared not venture in this place to criticise their new guest.
“Oh! thank you,” she said, studying his appearance, apparently for the first time. “And to return the compliment, I ought to tell you that you look—really very nice.”
“Morry put me up to it,” he said, glowing with pleasure. “We had a council over my old evening rig that had been through three years of the University before it came to New York; and he decided I could no longer pass muster.”
“Yes, I like you in these clothes,” she said, critically. “But I think—though I’m not certain—your collar should not turn down so low—and I’m quite sure your hair is too long.”
“Really?” he exclaimed, smiling ecstatically. It was so precious to have her speak to him in this proprietary way, even though he knew, too well, alas! that she was inspired by less than the interest of a sister. He would have been thankful, indeed, to have a part of Maurice’s share in her regard.
“Yes, really,” she said. “But for those minor points, I believe you are smart enough to appear in the gilded halls of Mrs. Beaumoris, where, by the way, I am to make my début on the twenty-fifth as a paid performer.”
“You! oh, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously, his brown face reddening.
“And why not, pray?” she answered, proudlyresentful of his protest. “What has become of your theories about the dignity of honest toil?”
“It’s not that—only—it is a chariot of fire that is coming to snatch you away from me,” he said, simply, and in spite of herself Kathleen was touched.
Colin, seeing his advantage, tried to follow it up. But it is the misfortune of those in his peculiar state, that the very force of their desire to be agreeable to the beloved object defeats their chances of success. He could find nothing appropriate to say, and felt as he looked—large, lumbering, disconsolate.
No wonder Kathleen flitted away from him to laugh and chaff lightly with the others. Even little Catullus, with his poses and bushy hair and solemn fripperies, made the time pass for her more trippingly than did Morry’s friend.
Terence, however, in his element as a host, presiding with rare grace and tact over their frugal feast, understood better than any one the art of amalgamating divers elements in a party. To their number was presently added Duval of theClarion, who had just been writing his critique of the last new play at the —— Theater, that would help to form opinion on the subject next morning at many breakfast tables. Talktook itself wings, and soon was stirring with mirthful impulse.
Then Terence, who possessed a tenor voice that might have coined ducats for his family where his pen won them a bare livelihood, sang some of his Irish melodies—not Tom Moore’s only, but Lover’s, and the like. Gazing for an inspiration at his pretty Kathleen, he trolled out the delicious by-gone serenade that carried his wife back many a long year, and brought to her eyes the tears of tenderest sentiment.
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shiningBecause they’ve nothing else to do?“The flowers late were open keeping,To try a rival blush with you;But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,With their rosy faces washed in dew.“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;He takes me for a thief, you see;He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,And then transported I should be.“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shining,Because they’ve nothing else to do?”
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shiningBecause they’ve nothing else to do?“The flowers late were open keeping,To try a rival blush with you;But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,With their rosy faces washed in dew.“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;He takes me for a thief, you see;He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,And then transported I should be.“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shining,Because they’ve nothing else to do?”
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shiningBecause they’ve nothing else to do?
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining
Because they’ve nothing else to do?
“The flowers late were open keeping,To try a rival blush with you;But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,With their rosy faces washed in dew.
“The flowers late were open keeping,
To try a rival blush with you;
But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,
With their rosy faces washed in dew.
“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;He takes me for a thief, you see;He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,And then transported I should be.
“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;
He takes me for a thief, you see;
He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,
And then transported I should be.
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,All lonely waiting here for you,When the stars above are brightly shining,Because they’ve nothing else to do?”
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining,
Because they’ve nothing else to do?”
Of all Mr. Blair’s listeners the only one who wore an expression not in sympathy with thepretty tuneful old song was Catullus; and even he, sitting in a Yellow Book attitude, exhibited the grace of magnanimous forbearance. So rapt were the others in the charm of listening, they paid no heed to “a new step on the floor” of the adjoining room. It was a pattering little step, much as if a mouse was scuttling through the house; and at once the door opened, and in came a tiny, bright-eyed old lady, fully dressed and wide-awake, although her cap was a tiny bit askew.
“Granny!” cried her family in a voice.
“You didn’t think, Terry, my boy, that I could stop upstairs in bed, and hear you sing the old songs down below,” answered Granny, unabashed.
“You’re like the ‘good ould Oirish gintlemen, all of the oulden toime,’ Granny,” said Maurice, bringing forward her especial chair. “Don’t you remember how he was supposed to be defunct, and his friends were ‘waking’ him, and the candles were lighted around his bed? The corpse stood all the rest, but when the whisky corks began to pop, he just sprang up and shouted, ‘Whoop! Murther! d’ye think I’ll be lying here dead, when such good stuff as that is flying around my head?’”
“For shame, saucy boy,” said Granny, givingher pet a little tap upon his hand that still clasped hers. “No supper, thanks; I couldn’t survive it, really; and not a wee drop of the punch, even. Just go on with your nonsense, good people, and let me listen. But first come here, Kathleen, child, and tell me how you stood your trial.”
“Let me settle your dear old cap, then,” replied Kathleen, proceeding to put her offer into execution. “It’s all right about me, Granny; I’m a gold mine, as you’ll say when you know what Mrs. Beaumoris is going to pay me for playing at her party. And as to what Herr Levitsky said, that will keep for to-morrow. Now, papa, we want ‘Widow Malone,’ as only you can sing it.”
“And afterward,” added Thorndyke, with effusion uncommon in that measured personage, “Miss Blair will surely not refuse to give us a taste of her quality on the violin.”
Therefore, in due course, Miss Blair, standing under the old clock, lifted her fiddle-bow, and lo! the air about them thrilled with exquisite sound. What she chose first to reproduce was the quaint German Christmas hymn, “Joseph, lieber, Joseph, mein,” written by Calvisius five hundred years before. Then without warning she broke into Granny’s favorite Irish jig, playingit with such resistless vim and merriment that every foot in the room began involuntarily to keep time, and every face wreathed itself into a smile. As quickly again the measure changed, and now Kathleen was back in Crichton’s studio, and her hour of triumph was lived again.
“You are a real witch,” said Colin, finding himself near her after this. “You have got all these people crazy about you. While you played, I was wondering if you’ll ever be satisfied with any one man for an audience.”
He turned, annoyed. There, behind him, stood Mr. Thorndyke, silent, inscrutable.
“Indeed, and I will!” Kathleen said, merrily.
“And what must he be or do to deserve it?”
“Be?” exclaimed the girl. “Like the donkey, all ears. And do? Give me a Stradivarius!”
A little later, when the company broke up and the guests went their several ways, Mackintosh, espying his forgotten flowers, had no longer the impulse to offer them to Kathleen. The events of the evening and the attentions of Thorndyke had made her recede further than ever from his reach.
“Will you ask your mother to have these lilies?” he said, awkwardly thrusting the box upon Maurice in the hall, and hurrying out of the house.
When Colin reached the spot he by courtesy called home he let himself in with a latch-key at a mean-looking door, and climbed three flights of stairs to his den. This was not exactly the traditional hall-bedroom of the struggling clerk, but a variant, in the shape of a middle room, lighted and aired by a small skylight in the roof only. In other respects it was as cheerless as a ragged carpet, lame furniture, and mismatched crockery could make it; but Colin thought little of personal comfort, and the gloom of his meditation as he threw himself upon a creaking chair beside his iron bed was not due to the young man’s meager surroundings. For almost the first time in his life, he felt a sense of impotency in meeting the future in fair fight; and his ordinary trustful spirit rebelled against thus leaving his affairs to “lie on the knees of the gods!”
“Give her a Stradivarius!” he said aloud, bitterly. And, somehow, with the phrase mingled a haunting thought of the man with the angel face, who had in Colin’s hearing spoken words concerning Kathleen that were not in the least angelic.