CHAPTER XIIINTO AN UNKNOWN LAND
The red-haired man was fighting.
He had always been fighting. But to-night he must wield weapons whereof he had no experience; unskilled, must meet deft opponents on their own ground. The thought thrilled him, with the joy of the born fighter.
The hour for the Standish dinner was seven; that the meal might be well over before the musicale guests should begin to arrive. Caleb rang the Standish bell at twenty minutes before seven. The manservant who admitted him managed to convey from behind a totally mask-like face that there was something amiss with the arrival. Glancing into the drawing room as he followed a maid to the men’s dressing room upstairs, Caleb saw it was quite devoid of guests. In fact, a servant was lighting the lamps there. The dressing room, too, was deserted.
Conover was vaguely puzzled. Surely the invitation had fixed the hour for seven? And he was nearly twenty minutes ahead of time. At functions such as he was wont to attend, people always began to drop in nearly half an hour beforehand. So fearful had he been to-night of breaking some unknown social rule,that he had allowed a full twenty minutes leeway. Yet he was very palpably the first to arrive. This perplexed and shamed him. It even shook his iron self-confidence. He caught himself hoping that none of the Standishes knew he was there. The man who had with cool derision, faced hostile legislatures, investigation committees and actual physical danger; felt his nerve turning into nerves.
A tray of cigarettes lay on the chiffonier. Caleb had never smoked a cigarette. He wondered if etiquette commanded that he should do so now. He weighed the matter judicially as he took off his coat and gloves; then decided that the cigarettes had indisputedly been put there to be smoked. Gingerly, he lighted one. The aromatic mild flavor of the smoke disgusted him. He had always despised men who chose cigarettes in preference to cigars. Now he regarded such smokers as idiotic rather than decadent. Yet he puffed dutifully at the abhorred paper tube and pondered on the probability of his being called upon to repeat the performance, later, in the dining room. He had heard of people smoking cigarettes with dinner. Or, rather, hadn’t he seen pictures of such a scene? Yes. Surely. A picture on a calendar in the general passenger agent’s office. But the smokers, in the picture, were women. And one of them had her feet on the table. Caleb mentally apologized to his present hostesses and dismissed the theme.
When dinner was at seven, why shouldn’t peoplecome on time? Was there a joke in it somewhere? A joke on himself? Anything, just now, seemed possible. What was the use of smoking this measly cigarette when there was no one to see? He dropped it into a bronze dish, went over to the cheval glass and surveyed himself from head to foot. Then he turned; and, looking over one shoulder, sought to see how his dress coat fitted in the back. The twisting of his body caused a huge central wrinkle to spring out between his shoulders, creases diverging from it. Also there was a spear of stiff red hair in the very center of his well-brushed head that had escaped from the combined lures of pomade and water. Conover crossed to the chiffonier, picked up one of a pair of military brushes and attacked the rebellious lock with vigor.
There was no water in sight. How did these people expect a man to brush his hair without water? No pomade, either. Not even brilliantine. Could it be that folk of the Standish class did not use such aids? Or did they keep them locked up? Caleb’s eyes swept the room and its quiet furnishings appraisingly. It did not represent at all his idea of luxury. Not a bow, not a tidy, not a fancy screen nor a lambrequin in sight. Yet there was an indefinable something about the place that met his approval. He fell to walking back and forth, uneasily; pausing every now and then in front of the cheval glass.
Amzi Caine, who had come early in the futile hopeof a word alone with Letty before the dinner, found him thus employed. Conover swung around on his friend with a grunt of relief.
“Hello!” he said, his heavy voice actually cordial, “I begun to think it was Judgment Day an’ that I was the first one resurrected. How’d I look? All right? Nothin’ wrong in this get-up is there?”
“The glass of fashion and the mould of form!” laughed Caine, “Behold a phenomenon! The worker of miracles—and Steeloids—deigns to ask a mere mortal’s opinion!”
“All right, is it?” said Conover, relieved. “Say,” he went on suspiciously, “You’re guying me! Tell me what’s wrong. Be honest, can’t you?”
“If you insist,” replied Caine, nettled at the domineering tone, “I can’t just hint that most men don’t wear diamond studs with evening dress, and that your tie is rather too evidently a ‘masterpiece not made by hands.’ Otherwise, you look very fit indeed.”
Caleb scowled in the glass at the flashing studs and the ready-made lawn tie. Then, brushing away the gnat of worry, he answered, carelessly:
“I don’t like to dress like everybody else. Too much sameness for me. It’s well enough for fellers without an idee or a scrap of originality in their heads. I like to do a little different.”
“A Beau Brummell come to Judgment!” mocked Caine, “But with diamonds rising in price ten per cent. a year, I hope you won’t set the fashion justyet. You’ll break us. It’s all very well to dress regardless of expense—or style—but—”
“Let it go at that,” ordered Conover sullenly, “There’s something else I wanted to ask you about, first time I saw you alone. You told me one day that Desirée Shevlin could take any place she wanted, in s’ciety here, if only she married the right sort of a man. Remember?”
“Why, yes. But—”
“Well, would it work both ways? I mean, ifIwas to marry a girl who had a big social position in Granite, would it help me on, any?”
“I—should think so,” hesitated Caine, overcoming a desire to laugh at the unique idea. “Why? Are you thinking of it?”
“Not exactly thinkin’ of it, but turnin’ it over in my mind. If I wasthinkin’about it I’d do it. That’s my way.”
“Who is the lucky damsel?” bantered Caine, “Or haven’t you selected her yet?”
“I’ve about picked her out,” said Caleb slowly, “Just now she’s keepin’ comp’ny with another man.”
“Of course you won’t let that stand in your way for an instant?”
“No,” returned Caleb, on whom irony of any sort was ever lost, “Of course not. I have a way of gettin’ what I want. I only wish,” he continued with a half sigh of weariness, “that I could always keep on wantin’ what I get.”
Clive Standish ran into the room. From one of the servants he had heard of Caine’s arrival.
“What fun to find you before you go down!” he cried, “I was afraid you wouldn’t see me to-night and I knew you’d be disappointed. Aunt Lydia won’t let me sit up for the musicale, because I was bad last evening. And she’s made me learn a hymn called ‘I Know That God is Wroth With Me!’ besides. The hymn is signed ‘I. Watts.’ I think ‘I. Watts’ must have been a very sorrowful person. I wonder if God really disliked him as much as ‘I. Watts’ pretended. He—”
The child checked himself, catching sight of Caleb. “I beg your pardon,” he said, “I didn’t see there was anyone here besides Mr. Caine. Mr. Caine,” he explained, condescendingly, “is a friend of mine.”
“Go on with your gabfest together, then,” vouchsafed Caleb, with an effort at unbending. “Don’t mindme.”
The boy’s brows contracted at sound of the false note in Caleb’s voice. He looked at the Fighter long and with frank criticism. Caleb bore the scrutiny with visible discomfort. He was not fond of children and did not understand them. Having had no childhood himself he could nowhere meet them on equal terms. Yet, as this slender, Eton-suited youngster was apparently a relative of Letty’s and a member of the same household, he sought to improve the acquaintance.
“I know a little rat about your age,” he began,with elephantine geniality, “His name’s Billy Shevlin. Smart boy, too. Sharp as a whip. Ever meet him?”
“No, sir,” replied Clive, “I think not.”
“No? You wouldn’t be likely to, I s’pose. While you’re home, evenin’s, learnin’ hymns, he’s out learnin’ life. Spends most of his evenin’s round at the fire-house. Why, that kid knows the name of each engine in town the minute he hears ’em whistle.”
Clive’s eyes grew wistful with envy; yet abated none of the unconscious criticism wherewith they were still scrutinizing the Fighter. His lack of response confused Caleb; who started off on a new tack.
“Yes, Billy’s a great boy. He used to have a lot of cunnin’ tricks, too, when he was little. He’s outgrowin’ ’em now. Used to tiptoe up behind me an’ put both his dirty little hands over my eyes an’ say: ‘Guess who’s here?’ An’ then I’d guess ‘General Grant’ an’ ‘Abe Lincoln’ and ‘Queen Victoria’ an’ ‘Tom Platt’ an’ a lot of other big guns; till all of a sudden I’d guess ‘Billy Shevlin!’ An’ he’d squeal out ‘Yes!’ Not much sense in it. But kind of cute for such a little feller. I remember some folks were callin’ there one day an’ I wanted him to play that game, to show off before ’em. But he was kind of bashful and wouldn’t. An’ that made me mad; so I cuffed him over the head. An’ since then, somehow, he’s never played it any more.”
“I don’t wonder!” gasped Clive. “I—excuse me, sir,” he caught himself up, “I didn’t mean to be rude.”
“Go ahead!” laughed Caleb, “That ain’t rude. It’s bein’ honest. Don’t let ’em make a Miss Nancy of you by teachin’ you to ’pologize an’ say ‘please,’ an’ ‘Sir’ an’ all those folderols.”
“Iliketo say them,” retorted Clive, “And I’m not a Miss Nancy. Last week I thrashed a boy two years older than I am.”
“Look out, Conover!” warned Caine, solemnly, “He may pick you for the next victim.”
At the sound of the name, Clive had glanced sharply at Caleb.
“I beg your pardon,” he put in, now, “But you aren’t ‘Brute’ Conover, are you?”
“Clive!” admonished Caine, with what severity he could summon up.
“I b’lieve I’ve been called that a few times,” answered Caleb, in high good humor. “Why?”
“Because,” said Clive, backing toward the door, “from what I read in the newspapers about you,—and from something I once heard Grandpapa say,—I don’t think I care to know you, Mr. Conover. I’m sorry. Goodnight.”
Caleb Conover had not known there were so many kinds of forks in existence. From his oyster plate they stretched away to the left in what seemed an interminable vista. Had Desirée told him to begin with the left-hand fork and work inward, as the courses progressed? Or was it the right-hand fork he was tobegin with and work outward? A furtive glance at Letty, on his right, solved the problem.
Then, the same glance sweeping the table, he found he was the only person whose doubled napkin had not disappeared. He pulled it unnoticed down to his knee. A roll fell from its hidden interior and crashed to the floor with a report that sounded to him loud enough to shake the house. But the sound passed unheard, in the ripple of talk. Caleb kicked the offending bit of bread further under the table and sombrely attacked his oysters.
A cocktail had heralded the meal. This, with his glass of dry sherry, now began little by little to cut away the Fighter’s crust of stark self-consciousness. He was not wont, of late years, to touch liquor at all; although in early days his Gargantuan drinking bouts had been the wonder of the local Underworld. On his unaccustomed senses the slight stimulant now acted with redoubled force. It sharpened his wits, banished his first feeling of stiff discomfort, enabled him to come out of himself and take note of what went on about him.
Caine talking animatedly just opposite, was nevertheless looking unobtrusively at Conover. So were Reuben Standish and others at the table. To their varied relief or disappointment the big, silent man had perpetrated thus far none of the capers which comic stories ascribe toparvenus. He handled his soup-spoon with an inward sweep, it is true; but he atequietly and as one not wholly unaccustomed to civilized methods. Desirée’s long and stern training was standing him in good stead.
Letty, emboldened by these repeated signs of house-brokenness, ventured a few perfunctory remarks to him. Caleb replied briefly, but without embarrassment. He even answered a question put him from across the table, with the same self-possession. Caine relaxed his nervous vigilance. His reluctant admiration for the newcomer was increasing.
Conover, with the true fighter’s intuition, noted all the tokens of his own well-being, and his dawning self-possession grew steadily stronger.
The talk at his end of the table had turned into musical channels.
“We were able to get Miss Tyson for the musicale after all,” Letty was saying. “She was to have sung at the Worcester Music Festival, you know; but at the last moment they engaged someone else.”
“We are so grateful,” chimed in Mrs. Standish, managing to inject just a little recognition of the Divine into her tone. “She has a wonderful voice. In Munich she once sung the Forest Bird music in a performance ofSiegfried. Just think! One of our own townswomen, too!”
She cast a vitreous beam athwart the table as she spoke. Caine used to say that when Mrs. Standish’s glasses diffused that look, he was always sore tempted to bow his head and murmur “Amen.”
“Yes,” prattled the Saint, “hers is a heaven-sentgift. I believe that singing may often bear a message—”
“It’s easier, I should think,” put in Caleb, suddenly finding his tongue as he set down his empty wine glass, “for a woman to sing like a forest bird than for a bird to sing songs made up by humans.
“F’r instance,” he proceeded, with renewed courage, mistaking the general hush of surprise for a gratifying interest, “there’s a lady I know here in Granite who has a canary bird that sings all about the death of Ase. Sings it fine, too.”
Letty giggled.
“So you are a Grieg fiend, like so many other Granite people just now, Mr. Conover?” said she.
“Me?” Caleb exclaimed, in genuine astonishment, “No, indeed, ma’am. I leave dope of all sorts alone.”
There was a laugh. Caleb did not quite see the point, but felt dimly that he had scored a hit. Caine came to his rescue.
“What a pity the bird couldn’t have been pressed into service for the musicale,” he observed. “It would be a real comfort to hear the ‘Death of Ase’ in new form.”
“Oh, he don’t sing all of it,” amended Caleb. “He just sings the first part. I forget quite how it goes. But he does it fine. Only, to my mind,” with an air of profound criticism, “he sings it kind of sprightly for such a sad piece. Still, I s’pose that’s a matter of taste.”
Conover felt he was getting on finely. A most flattering attention—far different from the slight aloofness of the evening’s earlier moments—greeted his every word. Caine, however, seemed actually jealous of his friend’s popularity; for he cut in now with a complete change of subject.
“I wonder,” he conjectured, addressing no one in particular, “why tenors invariably are born without intelligence. When Providence gives a man a great tenor voice, He gives him nothing else. Perhaps, though, he needs nothing else.”
But an avalanche of trite sayings could not have halted Caleb. He listened with ponderous deference to Caine; then glanced about the table and cleared his voice.
“Speaking of ‘needin’ nothin’ else,’” said he, “reminds me of Old Man Wetherwolks who used to live at Pompton when I was a kid. He used to get jagged as reg’lar as pay-day came ’round. Had a battin’ av’rage of seven nights a week. Then when he’d blowed his last nickel he’d make us boys pilot him home. It wasn’t any cinch, either. For his wife was always waitin’ at the door. An’ the chunks of language she’d hand out to us would a’ fried an iceberg. One night, I remember, we brought the ol’ sot home worse’n usual. She was right there with the tongue-lashin’. She told him what a swine he was to spend all his fam’ly’s cash on booze and how he was a disgrace to his town, an’ other nice comfortin’ things like that. She wound up by screechin’: ‘An’ youhaven’t a single redeemin’ trait, you worthless drunkard!’ That was too much for Wetherwolks. He c’lapsed on the bottom step and began to cry. ‘You’re right, m’dear,’ he whines. ‘Ev’ry word you say is true. Ihaven’ta single redeemin’ trait. But,’ an’ here he throws his chest out an’ looks stern an’ noble, ‘But in ev’ryotherrespec’ I’m a dam’ fine man!’”
The anecdote somehow did not “go” as well as when Conover had told it in the back room of Kerrigan’s saloon. But if there was constraint in its reception, he did not observe it. Letty, dropping her voice, to shut him out of the general talk, inquired:
“Where is Pompton? I don’t think I ever heard of it. Did I? Are our Pompton Avenue and the Pompton Club named for it?”
“I don’t think so,” he answered. “It’s a little place, ’way up in the North Jersey hills. Swarmin’ with commuters, by now, I s’pose. I used to live there for a while, once, when I was learnin’ railroadin’. There’s a lake, with the soft green hills all closin’ down around it like they loved it. The sun used to set ’bout a mile from our house. It’d turn the lake all gold color. An’ then a blue sort of twilight would roll up through the valley. An’ the hills would seem to stretch out like they was goin’ to sleep.—Kind o’ pretty place,” he ended lamely.
“You are a poet!” the girl assured him with gushing uneasiness. “I had no idea you looked at nature through such roseate glasses.”
“Neither I do,” he replied, ashamed of his unwonted flight of fancy. “I was only tellin’ you how it used to seem to me when I was a half-baked kid. Since then I’ve been so busylivin’that I’ve lost all the knack of gettin’ enthoosed over measly lan’scapes. They don’t mean anything to me now. As for po’try,—honest, I never wrote a rhyme in my life. Never read one neither when I could help it. Guess you was stringin’ me, weren’t you?”
Nevertheless he was inwardly flattered at her praise and began to look on her with an even more favoring eye. If marriage in such a set were really the keystone to social achievement, he felt he might do far worse than choose this comely, quivering-nosed damsel at his side.
“Fond of rabbits?” he asked—as unintentionally as irrelevantly.
“What an odd question!” she cried, her round eyes raising incipient distress signals. “Is it a joke?”
“No,” he answered, floundering, “I—I just happened to say it. You—you look just a little like one. A very pretty one of course,” he supplemented with mammoth gallantry.
Her eyes, this time, hoisted the distress signal so perceptibly that Caine, skilled to read the signs, broke off in the midst of a sentence to his right-hand neighbor and engaged Caleb in momentary conversation. Letty, in the interval, stared appealingly about the board. But, thanks to her own success in drawing Conover intotête-à-tête, the others were not, at theinstant, noticing either of them. Thrown upon herself for comfort, she decided the rough guest had intended his asinine remark as a compliment. The thought did much to console her. She glanced, sideways, at him, with a new interest; and, Caine, relieved, saw the ‘Fair Weather’ standard flying once more.
But Conover, subtly aware of her emotion, knew he had somehow blundered. He saw how far he had deflected from his original plan of stony self-control. He knew it was the few glasses of wine he had drunk which, while in no way befuddling his brain, had given his tongue an undue looseness. A wave of self-contempt passed over him; sharp, unaccustomed. A manservant bent to fill one of his glasses. Caleb, recalling the etiquette-book maxim, clapped his hand hastily over the top of the goblet. The gesture was sudden and carried with it an unintended force. The wrought stem of the thin Venetian glass snapped.
Conover, purple with angry mortification, surveyed the wreck he had wrought. Then, pulling himself together, he looked about the board, the glare behind his forced grin challenging any and every eye that might dare to show derision.
“It doesn’t matter, Mr. Standish!” he called down the table to his host. “I’ll save the pieces and send you a whole set like it to-morrow. Where’d’you buy it?”
“It is of no consequence at all,” returned Standish, the consumption spots on his cheek bones burning alittle darker red than usual. He turned to the neighbor with whom he had been talking, and with his usual dry cough took up the shattered thread of conversation. But Caleb was resolved not to permit his overtures at restitution to be slighted.
“Where’d you buy it?” he repeated, raising his voice a little, “I want to know so I—”
“It is of no importance at all,” protested Standish, guiltily avoiding his sister-in-law’s saintly gaze. “I—”
“But I want to know,” persisted Caleb. “Where’d the glasses come from?”
“Why,” smiled Standish with a painful effort at careless good-nature, “I believe they’re some we picked up in Venice once. But they—”
“Well, I’ll send there for ’em, then,” promised Caleb, his defiant glance once more sweeping the oval of faces.
Strangely enough, everyone seemed to be talking at once, and no one seemed to be looking either at him or at Standish. In cool, level, unhurried tones they were speaking; these denizens of an unknown world, into whose presence he fought his way unasked, unwanted. Their language was not his language; their thoughts were not his thoughts. They were moving on as if he did not exist. Caleb remembered having read in some newspaper’s “reprint” column, how an oyster calmly glazes over the grain of irritating sand that has found unwelcome refuge within its shell. He felt humiliatingly like the nucleus of such a pearl. Andwith the thought, and the waning of the wine’s effects, came wholesome anger.
“I’ve got more cash than the whole crowd of ’em put together,” he told himself fiercely.
The reflection did much to build up his wobbling self-esteem. But, for the rest of the meal, he sat glum. After an endless, dreary aeon of time, Mrs. Standish’s eye-glasses flashed to the others of her sex the signal to retire. Everyone rose. The women, collecting from the men beside them the handkerchiefs, fans and other feminine accessories that strewed the floor under the table, filed out, chatting and laughing. Caleb, not minded to seem inferior to any man by hanging back and giving precedence to others, left the room at the heels of the last woman.
“Oh, Conover!” called Caine, as the Fighter’s shoulders vanished through the doorway.
“I wanted to ask you something about Steeloid Preferred, if you don’t mind,” continued Amzi.
A backward look told Conover that the men were re-seating themselves. He also saw the meaning of his mentor’s summons. At that moment Caleb came nearer feeling gratitude toward Caine than ever he had felt it for any man. He slouched back, unconcernedly; lighted a cigar, shook out his match and dropped into the vacated chair at Caine’s left. Mentally he resolved to tear the etiquette book, leaf from leaf, for failing to warn him that men outstay women in a dining room. But, with characteristic calm, he refused to be ruffled by the mistake.
“What was it you wanted to ask me?” said he.
“About Steeloid,” repeated Caine, “and about a rumor I heard that the Rogers-Whitman Company is—”
“Don’t let us talk business,” growled Conover, “I never talk shop when I’m out in s’ciety. It’s bad form. I’d rather chat just now ’bout music.”
He was himself again; loudly self-assured.
“This feller, Back, they were speakin’ about at dinner to-night,” he went on. “I’m kind o’ rusty on op’ras, lately. So I’ve lost track of him. Is he composin’ much, nowadays?”
“Bach has been de-composing for a couple of centuries,” answered Caine.
One or two men laughed. Caleb waxed glum once more. Nor could the combined tact of Caine and their host draw him again into speech.
The Fighter, glowering in a corner, watched the stream of musicale guests trickle in through the great double doors. He was lonely, cross, disappointed. He could not define his own sensations, nor see how nor wherein he had failed. Failure he had met. He knew that. But the knowledge made him the more determined to persist in his assault until the social citadel whose outworks he had stormed, should be his. And, the more he thought, the more his amorphous idea of entering that citadel under a wife’s aegis began to take definite shape. He found his gazestraying to where Letty Standish stood laughing and talking with a knot of newcomers. Once his eye caught hers, and she smiled. A polite, deprecatory smile that strengthened Caleb’s growing resolution. After all, he reflected, one might do worse than to marry.
An indefinable something swept across his busily-planning mind, like a breath of May through a slum. Even before he raised his eyes eagerly to the door, he knew that Desirée Shevlin had come into the room. Slender, dainty, infinitely pretty, in her soft white dress, the sight of her struck athwart Caleb’s senses; scattering to the winds every thought but delight at seeing her,—pride in the way she bore herself among the people in whose presence he felt so ill at ease.
And she had seen him. Seen him and noted his discomfiture, his aloneness; even while she was responding to her hosts’ welcome. As soon as she could leave Mrs. Hawarden’s side, she moved toward him. As he advanced to meet her, the labored grin of festivity wherewith Caleb had sought to wreathe his features for her benefit, gave way to a glow of boyish pleasure.
“Gee, but you’re dandy to look at in those clo’es, Dey!” he exclaimed. “There ain’t a one in the room who’s a patch on you.”
She smiled up at him in frank joy at the compliment. Then, looking more keenly into his face, she murmured, her pretty brows knit:
“You poor,poorboy! You’ve been having ahorrid, hagorous time! What have they been doing to you?”
In her voice was a vehement, motherly note; as of indignation against the ill-treatment accorded a loved, deficient child. Caleb felt it and it was as balm to his scratched sensibilities. But he laughed loudly as he made shift to reply:
“What a crazy notion! They treated me fine an’ I’ve had an out o’ sight time. Honest, I—”
“Caleb!”
“They made me quite one of ’em,” he bragged, the more earnestly for her unbelief. “I haven’t had such a good time in a couple o’ years. I—”
“Caleb Conover! Look me in the eyes.”
“It was rotten!” he admitted ruefully; his defense, as ever, breaking to pieces before the onslaught of her sweet imperiousness.
“I knew it!” she made answer; but there was no triumph in her words, “I knew how it would be. Oh, if only I could have been here to take care of you, you poor lamb among social lions! Listen to me! You’re not to stir from my side all evening. Understand? Now mind me!Iam going to see that nobody is woozzey to you or lets you stand all frumped up alone in a corner any more.”
“An’ spoil your own good time?” snorted Caleb. “Not much! You chase on an’ get talked to an’ made much of, you little girl! An’ I’ll get all the fun I want, watchin’ the hit you make.That’sno lie.”
“I’d rather be with you, if you don’t mind,” she insisted, “We’re chums, aren’t we? Well, then, mind me and do as I say! We’re going to stay right together.”
For some unknown reason, Caleb felt happier than he had for days. He was ashamed of the feeling, but so strong was it that he made no further demur. People were starting for the music room. Piloted by Desirée, (who managed to make it perfectly clear to divers and sundry youths, en route, that she was quite content to remain with her present escort) Conover found himself at last, enthroned on a maddeningly uncomfortable camp-stool; with the girl at his left side.
The musicale opened with a long, intricate piano solo; played with splendid persistence by a short young man with long hair. The night was hot. The bright-lit, overcrowded room was hotter. Caleb had eaten largely and had drunk more than was his wont. There is something very soporific, to the Philistine outlander, in a rendition of ultra-classical music long sustained. Conover shook himself impatiently to scare off the drowsiness that threatened to enmesh him. Desirée glanced at him with merry encouragement as the tireless pianist’s last reluctant note was followed by a ripple of civil applause. The clapping and Desirée’s look combined to bring Caleb’s drowsy senses back to normal wakefulness.
“That chap,” he whispered, “can’t play anywhere near as good as you do. Lord, but he did hit that old pianner some cruel ones! After he’d tired it allout, too; so it couldn’t get back at him. I bet them keys wish they hadyourwhite little fingers pettin’ ’em instead of that blacksmith’s. What’s this next turn goin’ to be?”
“A tenor solo,” she answered. “It’s the ‘Siciliana’ fromCavalleria Rusticana. Oh, good! It’s to be accompanied by the harp. It always ought to be, I think. Don’t you?”
“Sure!” responded Caleb, with an air of loyal certainty.
But Desirée was too much engrossed in the prelude to admonish him.
A few staccato chords; then began the song. At first, repressed floridity of phrase; then passion bursting starkly through the convention of stilted word and melody; rising at last to a crescendo where speech failed and a hot-gasped “A—ah!” broke off the strain.
To Caine, listening impassive on the other side of Desirée from Conover, the air conjured up its picture as vividly as though the scene lay before his eyes. Gray dawn in the gray-walled Sicilian village, high on the mountain top. Gray dawn of Easter, above the sleeping hamlet. One figure half hidden by the abutting angle of the stone houses, the only human being abroad. One figure,—a man, guitar in hand, singing that mad love song beneath the casement of the woman he had won—lost—and wrongfully won again. Turiddu, the returned soldier, serenading Lola, fickle wife of Alfio, the absent teamster; Alfiounder whose knife-thrust Turiddu was destined to fall, before the yet unrisen sun should stand at high noon above their sordid little village world. And, contemptuous of his half-foreseen fate, the wooer was singing to the woman whose love was to bring him death.
Mad, undisciplined, lawless adoration now moaned, now cried aloud, in both air and words. What mattered the holy day, the avenging husband’s steel, the forsaken Santuzza, who was sobbing alone somewhere in that huddle of blind houses? Love was king. The pirate love who knows its stake is death; and, unafraid, tempts its fate.
“C’è scrito sangue so prala tua porta—;Ma di restarci a me non me n’importa!”
“C’è scrito sangue so prala tua porta—;Ma di restarci a me non me n’importa!”
“C’è scrito sangue so prala tua porta—;
Ma di restarci a me non me n’importa!”
Then in a last burst of gloriously insane protestation:
“Si per te muojo e vado in Paradiso,Non c’entro se non vedo il tuo bel viso!”
“Si per te muojo e vado in Paradiso,Non c’entro se non vedo il tuo bel viso!”
“Si per te muojo e vado in Paradiso,
Non c’entro se non vedo il tuo bel viso!”
And that yearning, wordless passion-fraught cry wherein supreme longing rushed beyond the bounds of speech.
A rumbling mutter of the harp-strings. And silence.
“The sublimated howl of a back-fence tom-cat!” muttered Caine, to himself; the garish brain-picture fading.
A momentary, tense hush fell over the audience as the final chords trailed off into nothingness. Then, before the utter stillness could be broken by the burst of ensuing applause, another sound—hideously distinct, vibrant, long-drawn,—cut raggedly through the breathless quiet. The sound of a full-lunged, healthy snore.
Caleb Conover was sleeping like a child.