settlement at once. Business matters must be kept intact.
“What do you want him to do, Madam?” he asked, looking at her keenly from under his bushy eyebrows.
“Anything to earn his bread,” she replied, in a decided tone.
Cobb passed his hand over his face, pinched his chin with his thumb and forefinger, and looked out of the window. The answer pleased him. It pleased him, too, to be consulted by the Horns on a matter of this kind. It pleased him most of all to realize that when these aristocrats who differed with him politically got into a financial hole they had to send for him to help pull them out.
For a moment the Vermonter remained in deep thought. “Here is a Southern woman,” he said to himself, “with some common-sense and with a head on her shoulders. If her husband had half her brains I’d let the mortgage stand.” Then he turned and faced her squarely, his eyes boring into hers.
“Send him to New York, by all means, Madam, or anywhere else out of here,” he said, firmly, but with a kindly tone in his voice. “When you decide, let me know–I will give him a letter to a business friend of mine who lives on the Hudson, a short distance above the city, who may help him. But let me advise you to send him at once. I saw your son yesterday at the club, and he exactly fits your measure, except in one respect. He’s got more grit in him than you give him credit for. I looked him over pretty carefully, and if he gets in a tight place you needn’t worry about him. He’ll pull out, or my name isn’t Cobb. And now one thing more–” and he rose stiffly from the sofa and buttoned up his coat– “don’t give him any pocket-money. Chuck him out neck and heels into the world and let him shift for himself. That’s the way I was treated, and that’s the way I got on. Good-day.”
CHAPTER VII
A SEAT IN UNION SQUARE
Within a day’s journey of Kennedy Square lay another wide breathing-space, its winding paths worn smooth by countless hurrying feet.
Over its flat monotony straggled a line of gnarled willows, marking the wanderings of some guileless brook long since swallowed up and lost in the mazes of the great city like many another young life fresh from green fields and sunny hill-sides. This desert of weeds and sun-dried, yellow grass, this kraal for scraggly trees and broken benches, breasted the rush of the great city as a stone breasts a stream, dividing its current–one part swirling around and up Broadway to the hills and the other flowing eastward toward Harlem and the Sound. Around its four sides, fronting the four streets that hemmed it in, ran a massive iron railing, socketed in stone and made man-proof and dog-proof by four great iron gates. These gates were opened at dawn to let the restless in, and closed at night to keep the weary out.
Above these barriers of stone and iron no joyous magnolias lifted their creamy blossoms; no shy climbing roses played hide-and-seek, blushing scarlet when caught. Along its foot-worn paths no drowsy Moses ceased his droning call; no lovers walked forgetful of the world; no staid old gentlemen wandered idly, their noses in their books.
All day long on its rude straight-backed benches and over its thread-bare turf sprawled unkempt women with sick babies from the shanties; squalid, noisy children from the rookeries; beggars in rags, and now and then some hopeless wayfarer–who for the moment had given up his search for work or bread and who rested or slept until the tap of a constable’s club brought him to consciousness and his feet.
At night, before the gates were closed–ten o’clock was the hour–there could always be found, under its dim lamps, some tired girl, sitting in the light for better protection while she rested, or some weary laborer on the way home from his long day’s work, and always passing to and fro, swinging his staff, bullying the street-rats who were playing tag among the trees, and inspiring a wholesome awe among those hiding in the shadows, lounged some guardian of the peace awaiting the hour when he could drive the inmates to the sidewalk and shut the gates behind them with a bang.
Here on one of these same straight-backed wooden seats one September night–a night when the air was heavy with a blurred haze, through which the lamps peered as in a fog, and the dust lay thick upon the leaves–sat our Oliver.
Outside the square–all about the iron fence, and surging past the big equestrian statue, could be heard the roar and din of the great city–that maelstrom which now seemed ready to engulf him. No sound of merry laughter reached him, only rumbling of countless wheels, the slow thud of never-ending, crowded stages lumbering over the cobbles, the cries of the hucksters selling hot corn, and the ceaseless scrapings of a thousand feet.
He had sat here since the sun had gone down watching the crowds, wondering how they lived and how they had earned their freedom from such cares as were now oppressing him. His heart was heavy. A long-coveted berth, meaning self-support and independence and consequent relief to his mother’s
heart, had been almost within his grasp. It was not the place he had expected when he left home. It was much more menial and unremunerative. But he had outlived all his bright hopes. He was ready now to take anything he could get to save him from returning to Kennedy Square, or what would be still worse –from asking his mother for a penny more than she had given him. Rather than do this he would sweep the streets.
As he leaned forward on the bench, his face in his hands, his elbows on his knees, his thoughts went back to his father’s house. He knew what they were all doing at this hour; he could see the porches crowded with the boys and girls he loved, their bright voices filling the night-air, Sue in the midst of them, her curls about her face. He could see his father in the big chair reading by the lamp, that dear old father who had held his hands so tenderly and spoken with such earnestness the day before he had left Kennedy Square.
“Your mother is right,” Richard had said. “I am glad you are going, my son; the men at the North are broader-minded than we are here, and you will soon find your place among them. Great things are ahead of us, my boy. I shall not live to see them, but you will.”
He could see his mother, too, sitting by the window, looking out upon the trees. He knew where her thoughts lay. As his mind rested on her pale face his eyes filled with tears. “Dear old mother,” he said to himself–“I am not forgetting, dear. I am holding on. But oh, if I had only got the place to-day, how happy you would be to-morrow.”
A bitter feeling had risen in his heart, when he had opened the letter which had brought him the news of the loss of this hoped-for situation. “This is making one’s way in the world, is it?” he had said to himself with a heavy sigh. Then the calm eyes of his mother had looked into his again, and he had felt the pressure of the soft hand and heard the tones of her voice:
“You may have many discouragements, my son, and will often be ready to faint by the way, but stick to it and you will win.”
His bitterness had been but momentary, and he had soon pulled himself together, but his every resource seemed exhausted now. He had counted so
on the situation–that of a shipping-clerk in a dry- goods store–promised him because of a letter that he carried from Amos Cobb’s friend. But at the last moment the former clerk, who had been laid off because of sickness, had been taken back, and so the weary search for work must begin again.
And yet with everything against him Oliver had no thought of giving up the struggle. Even Amos Cobb would have been proud of him could he have seen the dogged tenacity with which he clung to his purpose–a tenacity due to his buoyant, happy temperament, or to his devotion to his mother’s wishes; or (and this is more than probable) to some drops of blood, perhaps, that had reached his own through his mother’s veins–the blood of that Major with the blue and buff coat, whose portrait hung in the dining-room at home, and who in the early days had braved the flood at Trenton side by side with the Hero of the Bronze Horse now overlooking the bench on which Oliver sat; or it may be of that other ancestor in the queue whose portrait hung over the mantel of the club and who had served his State with distinction in his day.
Whatever the causes of these several effects, the one dominating power which now controlled him was his veneration for his mother’s name and honor. For on the night succeeding Amos Cobb’s visit after she had dropped upon her knees and poured out her heart in prayer she had gone into Oliver’s bedroom, and shutting the door had told him of the mortgage; of his father’s embarrassment, and the danger they suffered of losing the farm–their only hope for their old age–unless success crowned Richard’s inventions. With his hand fast in hers she had given him in exact detail all that she had done to ward off this calamity; recounting, word by word, what she had said to the Colonel, lowering her voice almost to a whisper as she spoke of the solemn promise she had made him–involving her own and her husband’s honor–and the lengths to which she was prepared to go to keep her obligations to the bank.
Then, her hand still clasping his, the two sitting side by side on his bed, his wondering, startled eyes looking into hers–for this world of anxiety was an unknown world to him–she had by slow stages made him realize how necessary it was that he, their only son, and their sole dependence, should begin at once to earn his daily bread; not only on his own account but on hers and his father’s. In her tenderness she had not told him that the real reason was his instability of purpose; fearing to wound his pride, she had put it solely on the ground of his settling down to some work.
“It is the law of nature, my son,” she had added. “Everything that lives must WORK to live. You have only to watch the birds out here in the Square to convince you of that. Notice them to-morrow, when you go out. See how busy they are; see how long it takes for any one of them to get a meal. You are old enough now to begin to earn your own bread, and you must begin at once, Ollie. Your father can no longer help you. I had hoped your profession would do this for you, but that is not to be thought of now.”
Oliver, at first, had been stunned by it all. He had never before given the practical side of life a single thought. Everything had gone along smoothly from his earliest remembrance. His father’s house had been his home and his protection; his room with its little bed and pretty hangings and all its comforts –a room cared for like a girl’s–had always been open to him. He had never once asked himself how these things came about, nor why they continued. These revelations of his mother’s therefore were like the sudden opening of a door covering a vault over which he had walked unconsciously and which now, for the first time, he saw yawning beneath him.
“Poor daddy,” were his first words. “I never knew a thing about his troubles; he seems always so happy and so gentle. I am so sorry–dear daddy– dear dad–” he kept repeating.
And then as she spoke there flashed into his mind the thought of his own hopes. They were shattered now. He knew that the art career was dead for him, and that all his dreams in that direction were over.
He was about to tell her this, but he stopped before the words were formed. He would not add his own burden to her sorrow. No, he would bear it alone. He would tell Sue, but he would not tell his mother. Next there welled up in his heart a desire to help this mother whom he idolized, and this father who represented to him all that was kind and true.
“What can I do? Where can I go, dearie?” he cried with sudden resolve. “Even if I am to work with my hands I am ready to do it, but it must be away from here. I could not do it here at home with everybody looking on; no, not here! not here!”
This victory gained, the mother with infinite tact, little by little, unfolded to the son the things she had planned. Finally with her arms about his neck, smoothing his cheek with her hands she told him of Amos Cobb’s advice and of his offer, adding: “He will give you a letter to his friend who lives at Haverstraw near New York, my boy, with whom you can stay until you get the situation you want.”
The very impracticability of this scheme did not weigh with her. She did not see how almost hopeless would be the task of finding employment in an unknown city. Nor did the length of time her son might be a burden on a total stranger make any difference in her plans. Her own home had always been open to the friends of her friends, and for any length of time, and her inborn sense of hospitality made it impossible for her to understand any other conditions. Then again she said to herself: “Mr. Cobb is a thoroughly practical man, and a very kind one. His friend will welcome Oliver, or he would not have allowed my son to go.” She had repeated, however, no word of the Vermonter’s advice “to chuck the boy out neck and heels into the world and let him shift for himself,” although the very Spartan quality of the suggestion, in spite of its brusqueness, had greatly pleased her. She could not but recognize that Amos understood. She would have faced the situation herself if she had been in her son’s place; she said so to herself. And she hoped, too, that Oliver would face it as bravely when the time came.
As for the temptations that might assail her boy in the great city, she never gave them a thought. Neither the love of drink nor the love of play ran in her own or Richard’s veins–not for generations. back. “One test of a gentleman, my son,” Richard always said, “lies in the way in which he controls his appetites–in the way he regards his meat and drink. Both are foods for the mind as well as for the body, and must be used as such. Gluttons and drunkards should he classed together.” No, her boy’s heart might lead him astray, but not his appetites, and never his passions. She was as sure of that as she was of his love.
As she talked on, Oliver’s mind, yielding to her stronger will as clay does to a sculptor’s hand, began to take shape. What at first had looked like a hardship now began to have an attractive side. Perhaps the art career need not be wholly given up. Perhaps, too, there was a better field for him in New York than here–old Mr. Crocker had always told him this. Then, too, there was something of fascination after all, in going out alone like a knight-errant to conquer the world. And in that great Northern city, too, with its rush and whirl and all that it held for him of mystery! How many times had Mr. Crocker talked to him by the hour of its delights. And Ellicott’s chair! Yes, he could get rid of that. And Sue? Sue would wait–she had promised him she would; no, there was no doubt about Sue! She would love him all the better if he fought his battle alone. Only the day before she had told him of the wonderful feats of the White Knight, that the new English poet had just written about and that everybody in Kennedy Square was now reading.
Above all there was the delight of another sensation –the sensation of a new move. This really pleased him best. He was apparently listening to his mother when these thoughts took possession of him, for his eyes were still fixed on hers, but he heard only a word now and then. It was his imagination that swayed him now, not his will nor his judgment. He would have his own adventures in the great city and see the world as Mr. Crocker had done, he said to himself.
“Yes, dearie, I’ll go,” he answered quickly. “Don’t talk any more about it. I’ll do just as you want me to, and I’ll go anywhere you say. But about the money for my expenses? Can father give it to me?” he asked suddenly, a shade of anxiety crossing his face.
“We won’t ask your father, Ollie,” she said, drawing him closer to her. She knew he would yield to her wishes, and she loved him the better for it, if that were possible. “I have a little money saved which I will give you. You won’t be long finding a good place.”
“And how often can I come back to you?” he cried, starting up. Until now this phase of the situation had not entered his mind.
“Not often, my boy–certainly not until you can afford it. It is costly travelling. Maybe once or twice a year.”
“Oh, then there’s no use talking, I can’t go. I can’t–can’t, be away from you that long. That’s going to be the hardest part.” He had started from his seat and, stood over her, a look of determination on his face.
“Oh, yes, you can, my son, and you will,” she replied, as she too rose and stood beside him, stopping the outburst of his weakness with her calm voice, and quieting and soothing him with the soft touch of her hand, caressing his cheek with her fingers as she had so often done when he, a baby, had lain upon her breast.
Then with a smile on her face, she had kissed him good-night, closed the door, and staggering along the corridor steadying herself as she walked, her hand on the walls, had thrown herself upon her bed in an agony of tears, crying out:
“Oh, my boy–my boy! How can I give you up? And I know it is forever!”
And now here he is foot-sore and heart-sore, sitting in Union Square, New York, the roar of the great city in his ears, and here he must sit until the cattle-barge which takes him every night to the house of Amos Cobb’s friend is ready to start on her voyage up the river.
He sat with his head in his hands, his elbows on his knees, not stirring until a jar on the other end of the bench roused him. A negro hod-carrier, splashed with plaster, and wearing a ragged shirt and a crownless straw hat, had taken a seat beside him. The familiarity of the act startled Oliver. No negro wayfarer would have dared so much in his own Square at home.
The man reached forward and drew closer to his own end of the bench a bundle of sawed ends and bits of wood which he had carried across the park on his shoulder.
Oliver watched him for a moment, with a feeling amounting almost to indignation. “Were the poverty and the struggle of a great city to force such familiarities upon him,” he wondered. Then something in the negro’s face, as he wiped the perspiration from his forehead with the back of his hand, produced a sudden change of feeling. “Was this man, too, without work?” Oliver asked himself, as he felt the negro’s weariness, and realized for the first time, the common heritage of all men.
“Are you tired, Uncle?” he asked.
“Yes, a little mite. I been a-totin’ dis kindlin’ from way up yander in Twenty-third Street where the circus useter be. Dey’s buildin’ a big hotel dere now–de Fifth Avenue dey calls it. I’m a-carryin’ mortar for de brick-layers an’ somehow dese sticks is monst’ous heavy after workin’ all day.”
“Where do you live?” asked Oliver, his eyes on the kindling-wood.
“Not far from here, sah; little way dis side de Bow’ry. Whar’s yo’r home?” And the old man rose to his feet and picked up his bundle.
The question staggered Oliver. He had no home, really none that he could call his own–not now.
“Oh, a long way from here,” he answered, thoughtfully, without raising his head, his voice choking.
The old negro gazed at him for a moment, touched his hat respectfully, and walked toward the gate. At the entrance he wheeled about, balanced the bundle of wood on his shoulder and looked back at Oliver, who had resumed his old position, his eyes on the ground. Then he walked away, muttering:
“‘Pears like he’s one o’ my own people calling me uncle. Spec’ he ain’t been long from his mammy.”
Two street-rats now sneaked up toward Oliver, watched him for a moment, and whispered to each other. One threw a stone which grazed Oliver’s head, the other put his hand to his mouth and yelled: “Spad, spad,” at the top of his voice. Oliver understood the epithet, it meant that he wore clean linen, polished shoes, and perhaps, now and then, a pair of gloves. He had heard the same outcry in his own city, for the slang of the street-rat is Volapuk the world over. But he did not resent the assault. He was too tired to chase any boys, and too despondent to answer their taunts.
A constable, attracted by the cries of the boys, now passed in front of him swinging his long staff. He was about to tap Oliver’s knees with one end of it, as a gentle reminder that he had better move on, when something in the young man’s face or appearance made him change his mind.
“Hi, sonny,” he cried, turning quickly and facing Olivr, “yer can’t bum round here after ten, ye know. Keep yer eyes peeled for them gates, d’ye hear?”
If Oliver heard he made no reply. He was in no mood to dispute the officer’s right to order him about. The gates were not the only openings shut in his face, he thought to himself; everything seemed closed against him in this great city. It was not so at home on Kennedy Square. Its fence, was a shackly, moss-covered, sagging old fence, intertwined with honeysuckles, full of holes and minus many a paling; where he could have found a dozen places to crawl through. He had done so only a few weeks before with Sue in a mad frolic across the Square. Besides, why should the constable speak to him at all? He knew all about the hour of closing the New York gates without the policeman reminding him of it. Had he not sat here every night waiting for that cattle-boat? He hated the place cordially, yet it was the only spot in that great city to which he could come and not be molested while he waited for the barges. He always selected this particular bench because it was nearest the gate that led to the bronze horse. He loved to look at its noble contour silhouetted against the sky or illumined by the street-lamps, and was seldom too tired to be inspired by it. He had never seen any work in sculpture to be compared to it, and for the first few days after his arrival, he was never content to end the day’s tramping until he stood beneath it, following its outlines, his heart swelling with pride at the thought that one of his own nationality and not a European had created it. He wished that his father, who believed so in the talent of his countrymen, could see it.
Suddenly, while he was still resenting the familiarity of the constable, his ears were assailed by the cry of a dog in pain; some street-rat had kicked him.
Instantly Oliver was on his feet. A small spaniel was running toward him, followed by half a dozen boys who were pelting him with stones.
Oliver sprang forward as the dog crouched at his feet; caught him up in his arms and started for the rats, who dodged behind the tree-trunks, calling “Spad, spad,” as they ran. Then came the voice of the same constable.
“Hi, yer can’t bring that dog in here.”
“He’s not my dog, somebody has hurt him,” said Oliver in an indifferent tone, examining carefully the dog’s legs to see if any bones were broken.
“If that ain’t your dog what yer doin’ with him? See here, I been a-watchin’ ye. Yer got ter move on or I’ll run ye in. D’ye moind?”
Oliver’s eyes flashed. In all his life no man had ever doubted his word, nor had anyone ever spoken to him in such terms.
“You can do as you please, but I will take care of this dog, no matter what happens. You ought to be ashamed of yourself to see him hurt, and not want to protect him. You’re a pretty kind of an officer.”
A crowd began to gather.
Oliver was standing with the dog under one arm, holding the little fellow close to his breast, the other bent with fist tight shut as if to defend himself.
“I am, am I? yer moon-faced spad! I’ll show ye,” and he sprang toward Oliver.
“Here now, Tim Murphy,” came a sharp voice, “kape yer hands off the young gintleman. He ain’t a-doin’ nothin’, and he ain’t done nothin’. Thim divils hit the dog, I seen ’em myself.”
The officer turned quickly and faced a big, broad- shouldered Irish woman, bare-headed, her sleeves rolled up to her elbows, every line in her kindly face replete with indignation.
“Don’t put yer hands on him, or I’ll go to the lock-up an’ tell McManus.”
“Oh, it’s you, is it, Mrs. Mulligan?” said the officer, in a conciliatory tone.
“Yes, it’s me. The young gintleman’s right. It’s the b’ys ye oughter club into shape, not be foolin’ yer time over the dog.”
“Well, ye know it’s agin the rules to let dogs inside the gates,” he retorted as he continued his stroll along the walk, swinging his club as he went, puffing out his chest and cheeks with his old air as he moved toward the gate.
“Yes, an’ so it’s agin the rules,” she called after him, “to have them rapscallions yellin’ like mad an’ howlin’ bloody murder when a body comes up here to git a breath o’ air.”
“Is the dog hurt, sir?” and she stepped close to Oliver and laid her big hand on the dog’s head, as it lay nestling close to Oliver’s side.
“No, I don’t think so–he would have been if I had not got him.”
The dog, under the caress, raised his head, and a slight movement of his tail expressed his pleasure. Then his ears shot forward. A young man about Oliver’s own age was rapidly walking up the path, with a quick, springy step, whistling as he came. The dog, with a sudden movement, squirmed himself from under Oliver’s arm and sprang toward him.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Fred, is it?” broke out the woman, “and it’s Miss Margaret’s dog, too. Of course it’s her dog, an’ I was that dumb I didn’t know it. But it’s not me ye can thank for savin’ its skin –it’s the young gintleman here. Them divils would have killed it but for him.”
“Is the dog yours, sir?” asked Oliver, raising his hat with that peculiar manner of his which always won him friends at first sight.
“No, I wish it were. It’s Miss Margaret Grant’s dog–one of our students. I am taking care of it while she is away. The little rascal ran out and got into the Square before I knew it. I live right across the street–you can see my house from here. Miss Grant will be ever so much obliged to you for protecting him.”
“Oh, don’t mention it. I got hold of him just in time, or these ruffians would have hurt him. I think the old lady here, however, is most to be thanked. We might both have been locked up,” he added, smiling, “if she had not interfered. You know her, it seems.”
“Yes, she’s Mother Mulligan, as we call her. She’s janitress of the Academy of Design, where I draw at night. My name’s Fred Stone. Come over to where I live–it’s only a step,” and he looked straight into Oliver’s face, his big blue eyes never wavering.
“Well, I will if you don’t think it’s too late,” and the two young fellows, with a wave of their hands to the old woman, left the Square, the dog bounding before them.
Within the hour–in less time indeed, for the friendly light in the eyes of his new-found friend had shone straight into our boy’s soul, warming and cheering him to his finger-tips, opening his heart, and bringing out all his secrets–Oliver had told Fred the story of his fruitless tramps for work; of his mother’s hopes and fears; of his own ambitions and his aims. And Fred, his own heart wide open, had told Oliver with equal frankness the story of his own struggles; of his leaving his father’s farm in the western part of the State, and of his giving up everything to come to New York to study art.
It was the old, old story of two chance acquaintances made friends by reason of the common ground of struggle and privation on which they stood; comrades fighting side by side in the same trenches for the same end, and both dreaming of the morrow which would always bring victory and never death. A story told without reserve, for the disappointments of life had not yet dulled their enthusiasm, nor had the caution acquired by its many bitter experiences yet checked the free flow of their confidences.
To Oliver, in his present despondent mood, the hand held out to him was more than the hand of a comrade. It was the hand of a strong swimmer thrust into the sea to save a drowning man. There were others then besides himself, he thought, as he grasped it, who were making this fight for bread and glory; there was something else in the great city besides cruelty and misery, money-getting and money- spending–something of unselfishness, sympathy and love.
The two sat on the steps of Fred’s boarding-house –that house where Oliver was to spend so many happy days of his after-life–until there was only time enough to catch the barge. Reluctantly he bade his new-found comrade good-by and, waving his hand, turned the corner in the direction of the dock.
The edge of Oliver’s cloud had at last caught the light!
CHAPTER VIII
AN OLD SONG
Not only had the sunshine of a new friendship illumined the edge of Oliver’s clouds, but before the week was out a big breeze laden with success had swept them so far out to sea, that none but the clearest of skies radiant with hope now arched above his happy face.
A paste-board sign had wrought this miracle.
One day he had been tramping the lower parts of the city, down among the docks, near Coenties Slip, looking up the people who on former visits had said: “Some other time, perhaps,” or “If we should have room for another man we will be glad to remember you,” or “We know Mr. Cobb, and shall be pleased,” etc., etc., when he chanced to espy a strange sign tacked outside a warehouse door, a sign which bore the unheard-of-announcement–unheard of to Oliver, especially the last word, “Shipping Clerk WANTED.”
No one, for weeks, had WANTED anything that Oliver could furnish. Strangely enough too, as he afterward discovered, the bullet-headed Dutch porter had driven the last tack into the clean, white, welcome face of the sign only five minutes before Oliver stopped in front of it. Still more out of the common, and still more incomprehensible, was the reply made to him by the head salesman, whom he found just inside the door–a wiry, restless little man with two keen black eyes, and a perfectly bald head.
“Yes, if you can mark boxes decently; can show any references; don’t want too much pay, and can come NOW. We’re short of a boy, and it’s our busy season.”
Oh! blessed be Mr. Crocker, thought Oliver, as he picked up a marking-brush, stirred it round and round in the tin pot filled with lamp-black and turpentine, and to his own and the clerk’s delight, painted, on a clean board, rapidly and clearly, and in new letters too–new to the clerk–the full address of the bald-headed man’s employers:
MORTON, SLADE & CO.,
121 PEARL STREET, NEW YORK.
More amazing still were the announcements made by the same bald-headed man after Oliver had shown him Amos Cobb’s recommendations: Oliver was to come to work in the morning, the situation to be permanent provided Cobb confirmed by letter the good wishes he had previously expressed, and provided Mr. Morton, the senior partner, approved of the bald- head’s action; of which the animated billiard-ball said there was not the slightest doubt as he, the ball, had charge of the shipping department, and was responsible for its efficiency.
All of these astounding, incomprehensible and amazing occurrences Oliver had written to his mother, ending his letter by declaring in his enthusiasm that it was his art, after all, which had pulled him through, and that but for his readiness with the brush, he would still be a tramp, instead of “rolling in luxury on the huge sum of eight dollars a week, with every probability of becoming a partner in the house, and later on a millionnaire.” To which the dear lady had replied, that she was delighted to know he had pleased his employers, but that what had pleased her most was his never having lost heart while trying to win his first fight, adding: “The second victory will come more easily, my darling boy, and so will each one hereafter.” Poor lady, she never knew how sore that boy’s feet had been, nor how many times he had gone with half a meal or none at all, for fear of depleting too much the small store she had given him when he left home.
With his success still upon him, he had sallied forth to call upon young Fred Stone who had grasped his hand so warmly the night he had rescued the dog from the street-boys, and whose sympathy had gone out to him so freely. He had written him of his good fortune, and Fred had replied, begging him to call upon him, and had appointed this same Friday night as the night of all others when he could entertain him best.
But Oliver is not the same boy who said good-by to Fred that moonlight night the week before. His eyes are brighter; his face is a-glow with ill-concealed pleasure. Even his step shows the old-time spring and lightness of the days at home–on his toes part of the time, as if restraining an almost uncontrollable impulse to stop and throw one or two hand- springs just to relieve the pressure on his nerves.
When he reached the bench in the Square where he had sat so many nights with his head in his hands, one of those quick outbursts of enthusiasm took possession of him, the kind that sets young hearts singing with joy when some sudden shift of hope’s kaleidoscope opens a wide horizon brilliant with the light of future success. With an exclamation of boyish glee he plumped himself down upon the hard planks of the bench, and jumped up again, pirouetting on his toe and slanting his hat over one eye as if in a spirit of sheer bravado against fate. Then he sauntered out of the iron gate to Fred’s house.
Even as he waited on the stone steps of Miss Teeturn’s boarding-house for the dowdy servant-girl’s return–such dirty, unkempt steps as they were, and such a dingy door-plate, spotted with rain and dust, not like Malachi’s, he thought–he could hardly restrain himself from beating Juba with his foot, a plantation trick Malachi had taught him, keeping time the while with the palms of his hands on his shapely legs.
Meanwhile another young enthusiast is coming downstairs three steps at a time, this one bare- headed, all out of breath, and without a coat, who pours out his heart to the first Juba-beating enthusiast as the two climb the stairs together to the second enthusiast’s room on the very top floor. He tells him of his delight at seeing him again and of the lot of fellows waiting to welcome him under the skylight; and of what a jolly lot the “Skylarkers” really are; and of Mr. Slade, Oliver’s employer, whom Fred knows and who comes from Fred’s own town; and of how much Mr. Slade likes a certain new clerk, one Oliver Horn, of Kennedy Square, he having said so the night before, this same Horn being the precise individual whose arm at that very moment was locked in Fred’s own and which was now getting an extra squeeze merely for the purposes of identification.
All of this Fred poured into Oliver’s willing ear without stopping to take breath, as they mounted the four long flights of stairs that led to the top floor, where, under the roof, there lived a group of Bohemians as unique in their personalities as could be found the great city over.
When the two pairs of feet had at last reached the last flight of steps under the flat roof of the house, the “Skylarkers” were singing “Old Dog Tray” at the top of their voices, to the accompaniment of a piano, and of some other instruments, the character of which our young hero failed to recognize, although the strains had grown louder and louder as the young men mounted the stairs.
As Oliver stood in the open doorway and looked in through the haze of tobacco-smoke upon the group, he instantly became conscious that a new world had opened before him; a world, as he had always pictured it, full of mystery and charm, peopled by a race as fascinating to him as any Mr. Crocker had ever described, and as new and strange as if its members had been the denizens of another planet.
The interior was not a room, but a square low-ceiled hall into which opened some six or more small bedrooms, slept in, whenever sleep was possible, by an equal number of Miss Teetum’s boarders. The construction and appointments of this open garret, with two exceptions, were similar to those of all other garrets of its class: it had walls and ceiling, once whitewashed, and now discolored by roof- leaks from a weather-beaten skylight; its floor was bare of carpet, and its well-worn woodwork was stained with time and use. Chairs, however, were scarce, most of the boarders and their guests being seated on the floor.
The two exceptions, already noted, were some crisp, telling sketches, big and little, in color and black-and- white, the work of the artist members of this coterie, which covered every square inch of the leak-stained surface of ceiling and wall, and the yellow-keyed, battered piano which occupied the centre of the open space and which stood immediately under two flaring gas-jets. At the moment of Fred’s and Oliver’s arrival the top of this instrument was ornamented by two musically inclined gentlemen, one seated cross- legged like a Turk, voicing the misfortunes of Dog Tray, the other, with his legs resting on a chair, beating time to the melody with a cane. This cane, at short intervals, he brought down upon the shoulders of any ambitious member who attempted to usurp his place. The chief object of the gathering, so far as Oliver’s hasty glance could determine, was undoubtedly the making of as much noise as possible.
While the young men stood looking into the room waiting for the song to cease prior to Oliver’s entry and introduction, Fred whispered hurriedly into his guest’s ear some of the names, occupations, and characteristics of the group before him.
The cross-legged man with the long neck, drooping mustache, and ropy black hair, was none other than Bowdoin, the artist–the only American who had taken a medal at Munich for landscape, but who was now painting portraits and starving slowly in consequence. He mounted to this eyry every Friday night, so as to be reminded of the good old days at Schwartz’s. The short, big-mustached, bald- headed man swinging the cane, was Bianchi–Julius Bianchi–known to the Skylarkers as “The Pole,” and to the world at large as an accomplished lithographer and maker of mezzotints. Bianchi was a
piece of the early artistic driftwood cast upon our shores–an artist every inch of him–drawing from life, and handling the crayon like a master.
The pale-faced young fellow at the piano, with bulging watch-crystal eye-glasses and hair tucked behind his ears, was the well-known, all-round musician, Wenby Simmons–otherwise known as “Pussy Me-ow” –a name associated in some way with the strings of his violin. This virtuoso played in the orchestra at the Winter Garden, and occupied the bedroom next to Fred’s.
The clean-shaven, well-groomed young Englishman standing behind Simmons and holding a coal- scuttle half full of coal which he shook with deafening jangle to help swell the chorus, was “My Lord Cockburn” so called–an exchange clerk in a banking- house. He occupied the room opposite Fred’s.
With the ending of the chorus Fred Stone stepped into the open space with his arm through that of his guest, and the noise was hushed long enough for the entire party to welcome the young Southerner–a welcome which kindled into a glow of enthusiasm when they caught the look of frank undisguised pleasure which lighted his face, and noticed the unaffected bow with which he entered the room, shaking hands with each one as Fred introduced him–and all with that warm, hearty, simple, courteous manner peculiar to his people.
The slight ceremony over–almost every Friday night some new guest was welcomed–Fred seated himself on the floor with his back to the whitewashed wall, although two chairs were at once offered them, and made room for Oliver, who settled down beside him.
As they sat leaning back, Oliver’s eyes wandering over the room drinking in the strange, fascinating scene before him, as bewildering as it was unexpected, Fred–now that they were closer to the scene of action, again whispered or shouted, as the suddenly revived noise permitted, into Oliver’s alert and delighted ears, such additional facts concerning the other members present as he thought would interest his guest.
The fat man behind the piano astride of a chair, a pipe in his mouth and a black velvet skull-cap on his head, was Tom Waller, the sheep-painter-Thomas Brandon Waller, he signed it–known as the Walrus. He, too, was a boarder and a delightful fellow, although an habitual grumbler. His highest ambition was to affix an N. A. at the end of his name, but he had failed of election by thirty votes out of forty cast. That exasperating event he had duly celebrated at Pfaff’s in various continued libations covering a week, and had accordingly, on many proper and improper occasions, renewed and recelebrated the event, breathing out meanwhile, between his pewter mugs, scathing anathemas against the “idiots” who had defeated him out of his just rights, and who were stupid enough to believe in the school of Verboeckhoeven. Slick and shiny Verboeckhoeven, “the mechanic,” he would call him, with his fists closed tight, who painted the hair on every one of his sheep as if it were curled by a pair of barber’s tongs–not dirty and woolly and full of suggestions as, of course, he –the great Waller, alone of all living animal-painters –depicted it. All of which, to Waller’s credit, it must be parenthetically stated, these same “idiots” learned to recognize in after years as true, when that distinguished animal-painter took a medal at the Salon for the same picture which the Jury of N. A.’s had rejected at their Spring Exhibition.
The irreproachable, immaculate young person, with eyes half-closed, lying back in the arm-chair– one which he had brought from his own room–was “Ruffle-shirt” Tomlins. He was the only member who dressed every day for dinner, whether he was going out afterward or not–spike-tailed coat, white tie and all. Tomlins not only knew intimately a lady of high degree who owned a box at the Academy of Music, in Fourteenth Street, and who invited him to sit in it at least once a season, but he had besides a large visiting acquaintance among the people of quality living on Irving Place. A very agreeable and kindly little man was “Ruffle-shirt” Tomlins– so Fred said–the sort of a little man whose philosophy of life was based on the possibility of catching more innocent, unwary flies with honey than he could with vinegar, and who, in consequence, always said nice things about everybody–sometimes in a loud tone enough for everybody to hear. This last statement of Fred’s Tomlins confirmed ten minutes later by remarking, in a stage whisper to Waller:
“Did you see how that young Mr. Horn entered the room? Nobody like these high-bred Southerners, my boy. Quite the air of a man of the world– hasn’t he?” To all of which the distinguished sheep- painter made no other reply than a slight nod of the head, as he blew a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling –Tomlins’s immaculate appearance being a constant offence to the untidy painter.
The member with the stentorian voice, who was roaring out his opinions to Cockburn, Fred continued, was “Fog-horn” Cranch, the auctioneer. His room was next to Waller’s. His weaknesses were gay-colored waistcoats and astounding cravats. He varied these portions of his dress according to wind, weather, and sales of the day–selecting blue for sunshiny mornings, black for rainy ones, green for pictures, red for household furniture, white for real estate, etc. Into these color-schemes he stuck a variety of scarf-pins–none very valuable or rare, but each one distinct–a miniature ivory skull, for instance, with little garnets for eyes, or tiny onyx dice with sixes on all sides.
The one man of all the others most beloved by Fred and every other boarder, guest, and habitue that gathered around the piano in this garret-room, and now conspicuous by his absence, he having gone to the circus opposite the Academy of Music, and not likely to return until late–a fact greatly regretted by Fred who made this announcement with lowered voice to Oliver–was a young Irishman by the name of McFudd–Cornelius McFudd, the life of the house, and whom Waller, in accordance with the general custom, had christened “Continuous McFuddie,” by reason of the nature of the Hibernian’s habits. His room was across the open space opposite Fred’s, with windows overlooking the yard.
This condensation of good-nature, wit, and good- humor, Fred went on to say, had been shipped to “The States” by his father, a rich manufacturer of Irish whiskies in Dublin, that he might learn something of the ways of the New World. And there
was not the slightest doubt in the minds of his comrades, so Fred assured Oliver, that he had not only won his diploma, but that the sum of his knowledge along several other lines far exceeded that of any one of his contemporaries. His allowances came regularly every month, through the hands of Cockburn, who had known him in London, and whose bank cashed McFudd’s remittances–a fact which enabled my lord to a greater extent than the others to keep an eye on the Irishman’s movements and expenditures.
Whatever deviltry was inaugurated on this top floor during the day as well as the night, and it was pretty constant, could be traced without much difficulty to this irrepressible young Irishman. If Tomlins found his dress-suit put to bed, with a pillow for a body and his crush-hat for a head; or Cranch found Waller’s lay-figure (Waller often used his bedroom as a studio) sitting bolt upright in his easy-chair, with its back to him reading a newspaper–the servant having been told to announce to Cranch, the moment she opened the door, that “a gentleman was waiting for him in his room”; or Cockburn was sent off on some wild-goose chase uptown–it was safe to say that Mac was at the bottom of it all.
If, Fred added impressively, this rollicking, devil- may-care, perfectly sound and hearty young Hibernian had ever been absolutely, entirely, and completely sober since his sojourn in the land of the free, no one of his fellow-boarders had ever discovered it.
Of this motley gathering “Ruffle-shirt” Tomlins, the swell; “Fog-horn” Cranch, the auctioneer; “Walrus” Waller, the sheep-painter; “My Lord” Cockburn, the Englishman; Fred Stone and Cornelius McFudd, not only occupied the bedrooms, but had seats at Miss Teetum’s table, four flights below. Bianchi and the others were the guests of the evening.
All this, and more, Fred poured into Oliver’s willing ear in loud or soft tones, dependent upon the particular kind of bedlam that was loose in the room at the moment, as they sat side by side on the floor, Oliver’s back supported by a pillow which Tomlins had brought from his own bed and tucked behind his shoulders with his own hand.
This courtesy had been followed by another, quite as comforting and as thoughtful. Cockburn, the moment Oliver’s back touched the wall, had handed him a tooth-brush mug without a handle, filled to the brim with a decoction of Cockburn’s own brewing, compounded hot according to McFudd’s receipt, and
poured from an earthen pitcher kept within reach of Cockburn’s hand, and to which Oliver, in accordance with his habitual custom, had merely touched his lips, he being the most temperate of young gentlemen.
While they talked on, stopping now and then to listen to some outburst of Cranch, whose voice drowned all others–or to snatches of song from Wenby Simmons, the musician, or from Julius Bianchi, Waller’s voice managed to make itself felt above the din with an earnestness that gained the attention and calmed all the others.
“You don’t know what you’re all talking about,” he was heard to say. He was still astride his chair, his pipe in his hand. “Inness’s picture was the best thing we had in the Exhibition, except Eastman Johnson’s ‘Negro Life at the South.’ Kensett’s ‘Lake George’ was–“
“What–that Inness smear?” retorted “My Lord” Cockburn, who still stood with the coal-scuttle in his hand ready for another chorus. “Positively, Waller, you Americans amuse me. Do you really think that you’ve got anybody about you who can paint anything worth having–“
“Oh! oh! Hear the high-cockalorum! Oh! oh!”
The sheep-painter raised his hand to command silence.
“Do I think we’ve got anybody about here who can paint?–you fog-headed noodle from Piccadilly? We’ve got a dozen young fellows in this very town that put more real stuff into their canvases than all your men put together. They don’t tickle their things to death with detail. They get air and vitality and out-of-doors into their work, and–“
“Names! Names!” shouted “My Lord” Cockburn, rattling the scuttle to drown the answers to his questions.
“George Inness for one, and young McEntee and Sanford Gifford, and Eastman Johnson, Page, Casilear –a lot of them,” shouted “The Walrus.” “Go to the Exhibition and see for yourself, and you–“
The rest of the discussion was lost to Oliver’s ears owing to the roar of Cranch’s fog-horn, accompanied by another vigorous shaking of the scuttle, which the auctioneer caught away from “My Lord” Cockburn’s grasp, and the pounding of Simmons’s fingers on the yellow keys of the wheezy piano.
The tribute to Inness had not been missed by Oliver, despite the deafening noise accompanying its utterance. He remembered another green smear, that hung in Mr. Crocker’s studio, to which that old enthusiast always pointed as the work of a man who would yet be heard from if he lived. He had never appreciated it himself at the time, but now he saw that Mr. Crocker must be right.
Someone now started the chorus–
Down among the dead men, down.
Instantly every man was on his feet crowding about the piano, Oliver catching the inspiration of the moment and joining in with the others. The quality of his voice must have caught the ear of some of the singers, for they gradually lowered their tones; leaving Oliver’s voice almost alone.
Fred’s eye glowed with pleasure. His new-found friend was making a favorable impression. He at once urged Oliver to sing one of his own Southern songs as the darkies sung them at home, and not as they were caricatured by the end men in the minstrel shows.
Oliver, at first abashed, and then anxious to contribute something of his own in return for all the pleasure they had given him, hummed the tune for Simmons, and in the hush that followed began one of the old plantation songs that Malachi had taught him, beginning with
De old black dog he bay at de moon,
Away down yan ribber.
Miss Bull-frog say she git dar soon, Away down yan ribber.
As the melody rang through the room, now full and strong, now plaintive as the cooing of a dove or the moan of a whippoorwill, the men stood stock-still, their wondering eyes fixed on the singer, and it was not until the timely arrival of the Bull-frog and the escape of her lover had been fully told that the listening crowd allowed themselves to do much more than breathe. Then there came a shout that nearly raised the roof. The peculiar sweetness of Oliver’s voice, the quaintness of the melody, the grotesqueness of his gestures–for it was pantomime as well as music –and the quiet simplicity and earnestness with which it had all been done, had captivated every man in the room. It was Oliver’s first triumph–the first in all his life.
And the second was not far off, for in the midst of all the uproar that followed, as he resumed his place on the floor, Cockburn sprang to his feet and proposed Mr. Oliver Horn as a full member of the Skylarkers’ Club. This was carried unanimously, and a committee of two, consisting of “Ruffle-shirt” Tomlins and Waller, were forthwith appointed to acquaint the said member, who stood three feet away, of his election, and to escort him to Tomlins’s chair– the largest and most imposing-looking one in the room. This action was indorsed by the shouts and cat-calls of all present, accompanied by earthquake shakings of the coal-scuttle and the rattling of chairlegs and canes on the floor.
Oliver rose to his feet and stood blushing like a girl, thanking those about him in halting sentences for the honor conferred upon him. Then he stammered something about his not deserving their praise, for he could really sing very few songs–only those he had sung at home to help out an occasional chorus, and that he would be delighted to join in another song if any one of the gentlemen present would start the tune.
These last suggestions being eminently distasteful to the group, were immediately drowned in a series of protests, the noise only ceasing when “Fog-horn” Cranch mounted a chair and in his best real estate voice commanded silence.
“Ladies and Gentlemen,” thundered the auctioneer, “I have the honor to announce that the great barytone, Mr. Oliver Horn, known to the universe as the ‘Musical Cornucopia,’ late of the sunny South, and now a resident of this metropolis, will delight this company by singing one of those soul-moving plantation melodies which have made his name famous over two hemispheres. Mr. ‘Pussy Me-ow’
Simmons, the distinguished fiddling pianist, late of the Bowery, very late, I may remark, and now on the waiting list at Wallack’s Theatre–every other month, I am told–will accompany him.”
“Hear! Hear!” “Horn! Horn!” “Don’t let him get away, Fred.” “Song! Song!” was heard all over the room.
Oliver again tried to protest, but he was again shouted down by cries of–
“None of that!” “Can’t fool us.” “You know a barrel of ’em.” “Song! Song!”
Cranch broke in again–“Mr. Horn’s modesty, gentlemen, greatly endears him to his fellow-members, and we love him the better for it, but all the same–” and he raised his hand with the same gesture he would have used had it held an auctioneer’s hammer– “All in favor of his singing again say ‘Aye!’ Going! Going! Gone! The ayes have it.” In the midst of the cheering Cranch jumped from the chair and taking Oliver by the hand as if he had been a young prima donna at her first appearance, led him to the piano with all the airs and graces common to such an occasion.
Our young hero hesitated a moment, looked about in a pleased but helpless way, and nerving himself tried to collect his thoughts sufficiently to recall some one of the songs that were so familiar to him at home. Then Sue’s black eyes looked into his–there must always be a woman helping Oliver–and the strains of the last song he had sung with her the night before he left home floated through his brain. (These same eyes were gazing into another’s at the moment, but our young Oliver was unconscious of that lamentable fact.)
“Did you ever happen to hear ‘The Old Kentucky Home’?” Oliver asked Simmons. “No? Well, it goes this way,” and he struck the chords.
“You play it,” said Simmons, rising from the stool.
“Oh, I can only play the chords, and not all of them right–” and he took Simmons’s seat. “Perhaps I can get through–I’ll try it,” he added, simply, and squared himself before the instrument and began the melody.
The sun shines bright in the old Kentucky home, ‘Tis summer, the darkies are gay.
The corn-top’s ripe and the meadow is in bloom, While the birds make music all the day.
Weep no more, my lady–oh, weep no more to-day! We’ll sing one song for the old Kentucky home, For the old Kentucky home far away.
As the words rolled from his lips Oliver seemed to forget the scene before him. Somehow he could see the light in Sue’s eyes, as she listened, and hear her last words. He could hear the voice of his mother, and feel her hand on his head; and then, as the soft vowels and cadences of the quaint melody breathed themselves out, he could catch again the expression of delight on the face of Malachi–who had taught him the song–as he listened, his black cheek in his wrinkled palm. It was a supreme moment with Oliver. The thrill of happiness that had quivered through him for days, intensified by this new heaven of Bohemia, vibrated in every note he uttered.
The effect was equally startling on those about him. Cranch craned his head, and for once lowered his voice to a whisper in speaking to the man next him. Bowdoin, the painter, and one of the guests, left his seat and tip-toed to the piano, his eyes riveted on Oliver’s face, his whole being absorbed in the melody. Bianchi and Waller so far lost themselves that their pipes went out, while Simmons was so entranced that he forgot to applaud when Oliver finished.
The effect produced was not so much due to the quality in Oliver’s voice–sweet and sympathetic as it was–nor to his manner of singing, nor to the sentiment of the song itself, but to the fact of its being, with its clear, sweet notes, a positive contrast to all of noise and clamor that had gone before. This fact, more than any other, made his listeners hold their breath in wonder and delight. It came like the song of a bird bursting out after a storm and charming everyone with the beauty of its melody, while the thunder of the tempest still reverberated through the air.
In the hush of the death-like stillness that followed, the steady tramp of feet was heard on the staircase, and the next instant the head of a young man, with a rosy face and side-chop coachman whiskers, close-cut black hair and shoe-button eyes, glistening with fun, was craned around the jamb of the door.
It was the property of Mr. Cornelius McFudd!
He was in full evening dress, and as immaculate as if he had stepped out of a bandbox.
Whatever stimulants had permeated his system and fired his imagination had evidently escaped his legs, for they were as steady as those of a tripod. His entrance, in a measure, restored the assemblage to its normal condition. Mr. McFudd raised his hand impressively, checking the customary outbreak that always greeted his appearance on occasions like this, struck a deprecatory attitude and said, solemnly, in a rich, North-of-Ireland accent:
“Gentlemen, it is with the greatest surprise that I find ye contint to waste your time over such riotous proceedings as I know have taken place here to-night, when within a block of yez is a perfarmance that would delight yer souls. Think of a man throwing a hand-spring over–“
At this instant a wet sponge was fired point blank from an open bedroom door, missed McFudd’s head by an inch and bounded down the staircase.
“Thank ye, Admiral Lord Cockburn, for yer civility,” cried McFudd, bowing low to the open bedroom door, “and for yer good intintions, but ye missed it as yer did yer mither’s blessing–and as ye do most of the things ye try io hit.” This was said without raising his voice or changing a muscle of his face, his eyes fixed on the door inside of which stood Cockburn.
McFudd continued, “The perfarmance of this acrobat is one of the–“
Cries of “Don’t you see you disturb the music?” “Go to bed!” “Somebody sit on McFudd!” etc., filled the room.
“Go on, gentlemen. Continue your insults; defame the name of an honest man who is attimpting to convey to yer dull comprehinsions some idea of the wonders of the acrobatic ring. I’ll turn a hand-spring for yez meself that will illustrate what I mane,” and Mr. McFudd carefully removed his coat and began sliding up his shirt-cuffs.
At this juncture “My Lord” Cockburn, who had come from behind the door, winked significantly at Waller, and creeping on all fours behind McFudd, just as that gentleman was about lifting his legs aloft, swept him off his feet by a twist of his arm, and deposited him on the small of his back next to Oliver, his head resting against the wall. There Waller stood over him with a chair, which he threatened to turn over him upside down and sit on if the prostrate Irishman moved an inch.
McFudd waved his hand sadly as if in acquiescence to the inscrutable laws of fate, begged the gentlemen present to give no further thought to his existence, and after a moment of silence continued his remarks on the acrobatic ring to Oliver in the same monotonous tone of voice which he had addressed to the room before Cockburn’s flank movement had made him bite the dust.
“It may seem to you, Mr.– Mr.–, I haven’t your name, sir,” and he bent his head toward Oliver.
“Horn, sir,” Oliver suggested. “Oliver Horn.”
“Thanks, it may seem to you that I’m exaggerating, Mr. Oliver Horn, the wonder of this perfarmance, but-“
The rest of the sentence, despite the Hibernian’s well-intentioned efforts, was not addressed to Oliver, but to the room at large, or rather to its furniture, or to be still more exact, to the legs of the piano, and such chairs and tables as the Irishman’s prostrate body bumped into on the way to his room. For at that instant Waller, to save Oliver, as he pretended, from further annoyance, had caught the distinguished Hibernian by both feet, and in that position dragged him along the floor, as if he had been a wheelbarrow, McFudd’s voice never changing its tone as he continued his remarks on physical culture, and the benefits which would accrue to the human race if they would practice the acrobat’s hand-spring.
When Fred and Oliver had closed their bedroom door for the night, the guests having departed and all the regular boarders being supposedly secure in their beds (Fred without much difficulty had persuaded Oliver to share his own bed over night), there came a knock at Fred’s door, and the irrepressible Irishman stalked in.
He had removed his vest, high collar, and shoes, and had the air and look of an athlete. The marvellous skill of the acrobat still occupied his mind.
“Don’t disturb yourself, my dear Stone, but me deloightful conversation with yer friend, Mr. Horn, was interrupted by that wild beast of a Waller, and I wanted to finish it. I am quite sure I can do it–the trick I was telling ye of. I’ve been practizing in me room. It’s as easy as rolling off a jaunting car.”
“No, Mac, old man. Go to bed again,” pleaded Fred.
“Not till I show ye, me boy, one of the most beautiful feats of agility–“
“Come off, Mac, I say,” cried Fred, catching the Irishman around the waist.
“I’ll come nothing! Unhand me, gentlemen, or by the–” and tearing himself free McFudd threw a hand-spring with the ease of a professional, toppled, for a moment, his feet in the air, scraped along the whitewashed wall with his heels, and sweeping the basins and pitchers filled with water from the wash- stand measured his length on the floor. Then came the crash of broken china, a deluge of water, and Fred and Oliver began catching up sponges and towels to stay the flood.
A minute later a man in a long gray beard and longer night-robe–one of the regular boarders– bounded up the stairs two steps at a time and dashed through Fred’s open door.
“By thunder, boys!” he cried, “I don’t mind how much noise you make, rather like it; but what the devil are you trying to drown us out for? Wife is soaking–it’s puddling down on our bed.”
By this time every door had been flung open, and the room was filled with half-dressed men.
“It’s that lunatic, McFudd. He’s been to the circus and thinks he’s Martello,” cried Fred, pointing to the prostrate Irishman with the sponge which he had been squeezing out in the coal-scuttle.
“Or the clown,” remarked Waller, stooping over McFudd, who was now holding his sides and roaring with laughter.
Long after Fred had fallen asleep, Oliver lay awake thinking of the night’s pleasure. He had been very, very happy–happier than he had been for many months. The shouts of approval on his election to membership, the rounds of applause that had followed his rendering of the simple negro melodies, resounded in his ears, and the joy of it all still tingled through his veins. This first triumph of his life had brought with it a certain confidence in himself–a new feeling of self-reliance–of being able to hold his own among men, something he had never experienced before. This made it all the more exhilarating.
And the company!
Real live painters who sold their pictures and who had studied in Munich, and who knew Paris and Dresden and all the wonderful cities of which Mr. Crocker had talked. And real musicians, too!–who played at theatres; and Englishmen from London, and Irishmen from Dublin, and all so jolly and unconventional and companionable. It was just as Mr. Crocker had described it, and just what he had about despaired of ever finding. Surely his cup of happiness was full to the brim.
We can forgive him; we who still remember those glimpses behind the scenes–our first and never-to- be-forgotten! How real everything seemed, even the grease-paint, the wigs, and the clothes. And the walking gentleman and the leading old man and low comedian! What splendid fellows they were and how we sympathized with them in their enforced exiles from a beloved land. How they suffered from scheming brothers who had robbed them of their titles and estates, or flint-hearted fathers who had turned them out of doors because of their infatuation for their “art” or because of their love for some dame of noble birth or simple lass, whose name–“Me boy, will be forever sacred!” How proud we were of knowing them, and how delighted they were at knowing us–and they so much older too! And how tired we got of it all–and of them–and of all their kind when our eyes became accustomed to the glare and we saw how cheap and commonplace it all was and how much of its glamour and charm had come from our own inexperience and enthusiasm–and youth.
As Oliver lay with wide-open eyes, going over every incident of the evening, he remembered, with a certain touch of exultant pride, a story his father had told him of the great Poe, and he fell to wondering whether the sweetness of his own song, falling on ears stunned by the jangle of the night, had not produced a similar effect. Poe, his father had said, on being pressed for a story in the midst of a night of revelry in a famous house on Kennedy Square, had risen from his seat and repeated the Lord’s Prayer with such power and solemnity that the guests, one and all, stunned and sobered, had pushed their chairs from the table and had left the house. He remembered just where his father sat when he told the story and the impression it had made upon him at the time. He wished Kennedy Square had been present to- night to have heard him and to have seen the impression his song had made upon those gathered
about him.
Kennedy Square! What would dear old Richard Horn, with his violin tucked lovingly under his chin, and gentle, white-haired Nathan, with his lips caressing his flute, have thought of it all, as they listened to the uproar of Cockburn’s coal-scuttle? And, that latter-day Chesterfield, Colonel John Howard Clayton, of Pongateague, whose pipe-stemmed Madeira glasses were kept submerged in iced finger-bowls until the moment of their use, and whose rare Burgundies were drunk out of ruby-colored soap-bubbles warmed to an exact temperature. What would this old aristocrat have thought of McFudd’s mixture and the way it was served?
No! It was just as well that Kennedy Square, at the moment of Oliver’s triumph, was fast asleep.
CHAPTER IX
MISS TEETUM’S LONG TABLE
The prying sun peeped through the dingy curtains of Fred’s bedroom on the morning after Oliver’s revels, stencilling a long slant of yellow light down its grimy walls, and awaking our young hero with a start. Except for the shattered remnants of the basins and pitchers that he saw as he looked around him, and the stringy towels, still wet, hanging over the backs of the chairs, he would not have recognized it as the same room in which he had met such brilliant company the night before–so kindly a glamour does the night throw over our follies.
With the vision of the room and its tokens of their frolic came an uneasy sense of an unpleasant remembrance. The thrill of his own triumph no longer filled his heart; only the memory of the uproar remained. As he caught sight of the broken pieces of china still littering the carpet, and recalled McFudd’s sprawling figure, a slight color suffused his cheek.
The room itself, in the light of day, was not only cold and uninviting, but so bare of even the commonest comforts that Oliver shivered. The bottoms were half out of the chairs; the painted wash-stand stood on a square of chilly oil-cloth; the rusty grate and broken hearth were unswept of their ashes; the carpet patched and threadbare. He wondered, as he studied each detail, how Miss Teetum could expect her boarders to be contented in such quarters.
He saw at a glance how much more cosey and restful the room might be made with the addition of a few touches here and there; a colored print or two– a plaster cast–a bit of cheap stuff or some gay-colored cushions. It surprised him, above all, to discover that Fred, who was studying art and should, therefore, be sensitive to such influences, was willing to live amid such desolate surroundings.
When he stepped out into the square hall, the scene of the night’s revelry, and glanced about him, the crude bareness and reckless disorder that the merciful glow of the gas-light and its attendant shadows had kindly concealed, stood out in bold relief under the white light of the day now streaming through an oval skylight immediately above the piano. The floor was strewn with the various properties of the night’s performance–overturned stools, china mugs, bits of lemon-peel, stumps of cigars, and stray pipes; while scattered about under the piano and between the legs of the chairs, and even upon the steps of the staircase, were the pieces of coal which Fog-horn Cranch and Waller, who held the scuttle, had pounded into bits when they produced that wild jangle which had added so much of dignity and power to the bass notes of the Dead Man’s Chorus.
These cold facts aroused in Oliver a sense of repugnance which he could not shake off. It was as
if the head of some jolly clown of the night before had been suddenly thrust through the canvas of the tent in broad daylight, showing the paint, the wrinkles beneath, the yellow teeth, and the coarse mouth.
Oliver was about to turn back to Fred’s room, this feeling of revolt strong upon him, when his attention was arrested by a collection of drawings that covered almost every square inch of the ceiling. To his astonishment he discovered that what in the smoke of the night before he had supposed to be only hasty sketches scrawled over the white plaster, were in reality, now that he saw them in a clearer atmosphere, effective pictures in pastel, oil, and charcoal. That the basis of these cartoons was but the grimy stain made by the water which had beaten through the rickety sash during the drive and thrash of winter storms, flooding the whitewashed ceiling and trickling down the side-walls in smears of brown rust, did not lessen their value in his eyes.
Closer inspection showed him that these discolorations –some round or curved, others straight or angular–had been altered and amended as the signatures indicated by the deft pencils of Waller, Fred, Bowdoin, and the others, into flying Cupids, Dianas, Neptunes, and mermaids fit to grace the ceiling of a salon if properly enlarged; while the up-and-down smears had suggested the opportunity for caricaturing half the boarders of the house. Every fresh leak and its accompanying stains evidently presented a new problem to the painters, and were made the subject of prolonged study and much consultation before a brush was permitted to touch them, the point apparently being to help the discolorations express themselves with the fewest possible touches.
In addition to these decorations overhead, Oliver found, framed in on the cleaner plaster of the side- walls, between broad bands of black paint, several taking bits of landscape in color and black and white; stretches of coast with quaint boats and dots of figures; winter wood interiors with white plaster for snow and scrapings of charcoal for tree-trunks, each one marked with that sure crispness of touch which denotes the master-hand. Moreover, the panels of all the doors, as well as their jambs and frames, were ornamented with sketches in all mediums, illustrating incidents in the lives of the various boarders who occupied the rooms below, and who–so Fred told him afterward–stole into this sacred spot on the sly, to gloat over the night’s work whenever a new picture was reported and the rightful denizens were known to be absent.
As he stood absorbed before these marvels of brush and pencil, scrutinizing each one in turn, his sense of repulsion for the debris on the floor gave way to a feeling of enthusiasm. Not only were the sketches far superior to any he had ever seen, but the way in which they were done and the uses of the several mediums were a revelation to him. It was only when Fog-horn Cranch’s big voice roused him to consciousness that he realized where he was. The auctioneer was coming out of his room, resplendent in a striped suit, gaiters, and white necktie–this being his real-estate day.
“My dear fellow,” Cranch shouted, bringing his hand down on Oliver’s shoulder, “do you know you’ve got a voice like an angel’s?”
Before Oliver could reply, My Lord Cockburn joined them, his first word one of pleasure at meeting him, and his second a hope that he would know him better; then Fred ran out, flinging on his coat and laughing as he came. Under these combined influences of praise and good-cheer Oliver’s spirits rose and his blood began once more to surge through his veins. With his old-time buoyancy he put his arm through Fred’s, while the two tramped gayly down the four flights of stairs to be ushered into the long, narrow, stuffy dining-room on the basement floor, there to be presented to the two Misses Teetum, who as the young men entered bent low over their plates in unison. This perfunctory salute our young gentleman acknowledged by bowing grandly in return, after which he dropped into a seat next to Fred’s– his back to a tin box filled with plates, placed over the hot-air register–drew out a damp napkin from a bone ring, and took a bird’s-eye view of the table and its occupants.
The two Misses Teetum sat one at either end– Miss Ann, thin, severe, precise; Miss Sarah, stout, coy, and a trifle kittenish, as doubtless became a young woman of forty-seven, and her sister’s junior by eight years. Miss Ann had evidently passed the dead-line of middle age, and had given up the fight, and was fast becoming a very prim and very proper old lady, but Miss Sarah, being out of range, could still smile, and nod her head, and shake her curls, and laugh little, hollow, girlish laughs, and otherwise disport herself in a light and kittenish way, after the manner of her day and age. All of which betrayed not only her earnest desire to please, but her increasing anxiety to get in under matrimonial cover before one of Father Time’s sharpshooters picked her off, and thus ended her youthful career.
The guests seated on either side of these two presiding goddesses, Oliver was convinced, as he studied the double row of faces, would have stretched the wondering eyelids of Kennedy Square to their utmost limits.
Old Mr. Lang, who with his invalid wife occupied the room immediately below Fred’s, and who had been so nearly drowned out the night before because of McFudd’s acrobatic tendencies, sat on Fred’s left. Properly clothed and in his right mind, he proved to be a most delightful old gentleman, with gold spectacles and snow-white side-whiskers, and a welcoming smile for everyone who entered. Fred said that the smile never wavered even when the old gentleman had been up all night with his wife.
Across the table, with her eye-glasses trained on Oliver, half concealed by a huge china “compoteer” (to quote the waitress), and at present filled with last week’s fruit, caulked with almonds, sat Mrs. Southwark Boggs–sole surviving relic of S. B., Esq. This misfortune she celebrated by wearing his daguerreotype, set in plain gold, as a brooch with which she fastened her crocheted collar. She was a thin, faded, funereal-looking person, her body encased in a black silk dress, which looked as if it had been pressed and ironed over night, and her hands in black silk mitts which reached to her knuckles.
On Mrs. Boggs’s right sat Bates–a rising young lawyer with political tendencies–one of the first men to cut his hair so “Zou-Zou” that it stood straight up from his forehead; and next to him Morgan, the editor, who pored over manuscript while his coffee got cold; and then Nelson, and Webster, and Cummings all graded in Miss Ann’s mind as being eight, or ten, or twelve-dollar-a-week men, depending on the rooms that they occupied, and farther along, toward Miss Sarah, Cranch and Cockburn–five-dollar boys these (Fred was another), with the privilege of lighting their own coke fires, and of trimming the wicks and filling the bulbs of their own burning-fluid lamps. And away down in the far corner, crumpled up in his chair, crouched the cheery little hunchback, Mr. Crumbs, who kept a book-stall on Astor Place, where Bayard Taylor, Irving, Halleck, Bryant, and many another member of the Century Club used to spend their late afternoons delving among the old volumes on his shelves.
All these regular boarders, including Fog-horn Cranch and Fred, breakfasted at eight o’clock. Waller, the painter, and Tomlins, the swell, breakfasted at nine. As to that descendant of the Irish kings, Mr. Cornelius McFudd, he rose at ten, or twelve, or two, just as the spirit (and its dilutions of the night before) moved or retarded him, and breakfasted whenever Miss Ann or Miss Sarah, who had presided continuously at the coffee-urn from eight to ten, could spare one of her two servants to carry a tray to his room.
Last and by no means least, with her eyes devouring every expression that flitted across the new arrival’s face, there beamed out beside Miss Ann, a tail, willowy young person, whom Fred, in answer to an inquiring lifting of Oliver’s eyebrows, designated as the belle of the house. This engaging young woman really lived with her mother, in the next street, but flitted in and out, dining, or breakfasting, or spending a week at a time with her
aunts, the Misses Teetum, whenever an opportunity offered–the opportunity being a vacant and non- paying room, one of which she was at the time enjoying.
This fair damsel, who was known to the boarders on the top floor as “our Phemy,” and to the world at large as Miss Euphemia Teetum–the real jewel in her name was Phoebe, but she had reset it–had been especially beloved, so Fred informed Oliver, by every member of the club except Waller, who, having lived in boarding-houses all his life, understood her thoroughly. Her last flame–the fire was still smouldering –had been the immaculate Tomlins, who had won her heart by going into raptures, in one of his stage whispers, over the classic outlines of her face. This outburst resulted in Miss Euphemia appearing the following week in a silk gown, a Greek fillet and no hoops–a costume which Waller faithfully portrayed on the side-wall of the attic the night of her appearance–the fillet being reproduced by a strip of brass which the artist had torn from his easel and nailed to the plaster, and the classic curves of her hair by a ripple of brown paint.
This caricature nearly provoked a riot before the night was over, the whole club, including even the fun-loving McFudd, denouncing. Waller’s act as an outrage. In fact, the Hibernian himself had once been so completely taken off his feet–it was the first week of his stay–by the winning ways of the young lady, that Miss Ann had begun to have high hopes of Euphemia’s being finally installed mistress in one of those shadowy estates which the distinguished Hibernian described with such eloquence. That these hopes did not materialize was entirely due to Cockburn, who took pains to enlighten the good woman upon the intangible character of the Hibernian’s possessions, thus saving the innocent maiden from the clutches of the bold, bad adventurer. At least, that had been Cockburn’s account of it when he came upstairs.
But it was at dinner that same night–for Oliver at Fred’s pressing invitation had come back to dinner –that the full galaxy of guests and regulars burst upon our hero. Then came not only Miss Euphemia Teetum in a costume especially selected for Oliver’s capture, but a person still more startling and imposing –so imposing, in fact, that when she entered the room one-half of the gentlemen present made little backward movements with the legs of their chairs, as if intending to rise to their feet in honor of her presence.
This prominent figure in fashionable life, who had now settled herself on the right of Miss Ann–the post of honor at the table–and who was smiling in so gracious and condescending a manner as her eye lighted on the several recipients of her favor, was none other than the distinguished Mrs. Schuyler Van Tassell, of Tarrytown, another bird of passage, who had left her country-seat on the Hudson to spend the winter months in what she called the delights of “upper-tandem.” She belonged to an ancient family–or, at least, her husband did–he was under the sod, poor soul, and therefore at peace–and, having inherited his estate–a considerable one–was to be treated with every distinction.
These several personages of low and high degree interested our young gentleman quite as much as our young gentleman interested them. He made friends with them all–especially with the ladies, who all agreed that he was a most charming and accomplished youth. This good opinion became permanent when Oliver had paid each in turn the compliment of rising from his seat when any one of them entered the room, as much a habit with the young fellow as the taking off of his hat when he came into a house, but which was so rare a courtesy at Miss Teetum’s that each recipient appropriated the compliment as personal to herself.
These sentiments of admiration were shared, and to an alarming degree, by Miss Euphemia herself, who, on learning later that Oliver had decided to occupy half of Fred’s room through the winter, had at once determined to remain during the week, the better to lay siege to his heart. This resolution, it is fair to Oliver to say, she abandoned before dinner was over, when her experienced eye detected a certain amused if not derisive smile playing around the corners of Oliver’s mouth; a discovery which so impressed the young woman that she left him severely alone ever after.
And so it was that Oliver unpacked his trunk–the same old hair trunk, studded with brass nails, that had held his father’s wardrobe at college–spread out and tacked up the various knick-knacks which his mother and Sue and Miss Clendenning had given him when he had left the old home, and began to make himself comfortable on the top floor of Miss Teetum’s boarding-house on Union Square.
CHAPTER X
MCFUDD’S BRASS BAND
Our hero had been installed at Miss Teetum’s for a month or more, when one night at dinner a tiny envelope about the size of a visiting-card was brought