in by the middle-aged waitress and laid beside Simmons’s plate. The envelope contained six orchestra seats at the Winter Garden and was accompanied by a note which read as follows: “Bring some of the boys; the piece drags.”
The musician studied the note carefully and a broad smile broke over his face. As one of the first violins at the Winter Garden, with a wide acquaintance among desirable patrons of the theatre, he had peculiar facilities for obtaining free private boxes and orchestra chairs not only at his own theatre, but often at Wallack’s in Broome Street and the old Bowery. Simmons was almost always sure to have
tickets when the new piece needed booming, or when an old play failed to amuse and the audiences had begun to shrink. Indeed, the mystery of Mrs. Schuyler Van Tassell’s frequent appearance in the left-hand proscenium box at the Winter Garden on Friday nights–a mystery unexplained among the immediate friends in Tarrytown, who knew how she husbanded her resources despite her accredited wealth–was no mystery at all to the guests at Miss Teetum’s table, who were in the habit of seeing just such tiny envelopes handed to Simmons during soup, and duly passed by him to that distinguished leader of society. Should more than two tickets be enclosed, Mrs. Van T. would, perhaps, invite. Mr. Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, or some other properly attired person, to accompany her–never Miss Ann or the little hunchback, who dearly loved the play, but who could seldom afford to go–never anybody, in fact, who wore plain clothes or looked a compromising acquaintance.
On this night, however, Pussy Me-ow Simmons, ignoring Mrs. Van Tassell, turned to Oliver.
“Ollie,” he whispered–the formalities had ceased between the members of the Skylarks–“got anything to do to-night?”
“No; why?”
And then, Simmons, with various imaginary poundings of imaginary canes on the threadbare carpet beneath his chair, and with sundry half-smothered bursts of real laughter in which Fred and Oliver joined, unfolded his programme for the evening–a programme which was agreed to so rapturously that the trio before dinner was over excused themselves to their immediate neighbors and bounded upstairs, three steps at a time. There they pulled the Walrus out of his bed and woke up McFudd, who had gone to sleep before dinner, and whom nobody had called. Then having sent my Lord Cockburn to find Ruffle- shirt Tomlins, who by this time was paying court to Miss Euphemia in the front parlor, and having pinned a ticket to Mr. Fog-horn Cranch’s door, with instructions to meet them in the lobby the moment he returned, they all slipped on their overcoats, picked up their canes, and started for the theatre.
Six young fellows, all with red blood in their veins, steel springs under their toes and laughter in their hearts! Six comrades, pals, good-fellows, skipping down the avenue as gay as colts and happy as boys– no thought for to-day and no care for to-morrow! Each man with a free ticket in his pocket and a show ahead of him. No wonder the bluecoats looked after them and smiled; no wonder the old fellow with the shaky legs, waiting at the corner for one of the squad to help him over, gave a sigh as he watched McFudd, with cane in air, drilling his recruits, all five abreast. No wonder the tired shop-girls glanced at them enviously as they swung into Broadway chanting the “Dead Man’s Chorus,” with Oliver’s voice sounding clear as a bell above the din of the streets.
The play was a melodrama of the old, old school. There was a young heroine in white, and a handsome lover in top-boots and white trousers, and a cruel uncle who wanted her property. And there was a particularly brutal villain with leery eyes, ugly mouth, with one tooth gone, and an iron jaw like a hull-dog’s. He was attired in a fur cap, brown corduroy jacket, with a blood-red handkerchief twisted about his throat, and he carried a bludgeon. When the double-dyed villain proceeded in the third act to pound the head of the lovely maiden to a jelly at the instigation of the base uncle, concealed behind a painted tree-trunk, and the lover rushed in and tried to save her, every pair of hands except Oliver’s came together in raptures of applause, assisted by a vigorous hammering of canes on the floor.
“Pound away, Ollie,” whispered Simmons; “that’s what we came for; you are spoiling all our fun. The manager is watching us. Pound away, I tell you. There he is inside that box.”
“I won’t,” said Oliver, in a tone of voice strangely in contrast with the joyousness of an hour before.
“Then you won’t get any more free tickets,” muttered Simmons in surprise.
“I don’t want them. I don’t believe in murdering people on the stage, or anywhere else. That man’s face is horrible; I’m sorry I came.”
Simmons laughed, and, shielding his mouth with his hand, repeated Oliver’s outburst to Waller, who, having first sent news of it down the line, reached over and shook Oliver’s hand gravely, while he wiped a theatrical tear from his eye; while my Lord Cockburn, with feet and hands still busy, returned word to Oliver by Tomlins, “not to make a colossal ass of himself.” Oliver bore their ridicule good-naturedly, but without receding from his opinion in any way, a fact which ultimately raised him in the estimation of the group. Only when the villain was thrown over the pasteboard cliff into a canvas sea by the gentleman in top-boots, to be devoured by sharks or cut up by pirates, or otherwise disposed of as befitted so blood-thirsty and cruel a monster, did Oliver join in the applause.
The play over, and Simmons having duly reported to the manager–who was delighted with the activity of the feet, but who advised that next time the sticks be left at home–the happy party sailed up Broadway, this time by threes and twos, swinging their canes as before, and threading their way in and out of the throngs that filled the street.
The first stop was made at the corner of Thirteenth Street by McFudd, who turned his troop abruptly to the right and marched them down a flight of steps into a cellar, where they immediately attacked a huge wash-tub filled with steamed clams, and covered with a white cloth to keep them hot. This was the bar’s free lunch. The clams devoured–six each–and the necessary beers paid for, the whole party started to retrace their steps, when Simmons stopped to welcome a new-corner who had entered the cellar unperceived by the barkeeper, and who was bending
over the wash-tub of clams, engaged in picking out the smallest of the bivalves with the end of all iron fork. He had such a benevolent, kindly face, and was so courtly in his bearing, and spoke with so soft and gentle a voice, that Oliver, who stood next to Simmons, lingered to listen.
“Oh, my dear Simmons,” cried the old gentleman, “we missed you to-night. When are you coming back to us? The orchestra is really getting to be deplorable. Miss Gannon quite broke down in her song. We must protest, my boy; we must protest. I saw you in front, but you should be wielding the baton. And is this young gentleman one of your friends?”
“Yes–Mr. Horn. Ollie, let me introduce you to Mr. Gilbert, the actor”–and he laid his hand on Oliver’s shoulder–“dear John Gilbert, as we always call him.”
Oliver looked up into the kindly, sweet face of the man, and a curious sensation passed over him. Could this courtly, perfectly well-bred old gentleman, with his silver-white hair, beaming smile and gentle voice, the equal of any of his father’s guests, be an actor? Could he possibly belong to the profession which, of all others, Oliver had been taught to despise? The astonishment of our young hero was so great that for a moment he could not speak.
Simmons thought he read Oliver’s mind, and came to his rescue.
“My friend, Mr. Horn, did not like the play to- night, Mr. Gilbert,” he said. “He thinks the death-scene was horrible”–and Simmons glanced smiling at the others who stood at a little distance watching the interview with great interest.
“Dear me, dear me, you don’t say so. What was it you objected to, may I ask?” There was a trace of anxiety in his voice.
“Why, the murder-scene, sir. It seemed to me too dreadful to kill a woman in that way. I haven’t forgotten it yet,” and a distressed look passed over Oliver’s face. “But then I have seen but very few plays,” he added–“none like that.”
The old actor looked at him with a relieved expression.
“Ah, yes, I see. Yes, you’re indeed right. As you say, it is quite a dreadful scene.”
“Oh, then you’ve seen it yourself, sir,” said Oliver, in a relieved tone.
The old actor’s eyes twinkled. He, too, had read the young man’s mind–not a difficult task when one looked down into Oliver’s eyes.
“Oh, many, many times,” he answered with a smile. “I have known it for years. In the old days, when they would smash the poor lady’s head, they used to have a pan of gravel which they would crunch with a stick to imitate the breaking of the. bones. It was quite realistic from the front, but that was given up long ago. How did YOU like the business to-night, Mr. Simmons?” and he turned to the musician.
“Oh, admirable, sir. We all thought it had never been better played or better put on,” and he glanced again toward his companions, who stood apart, listening breathlessly to every word that fell from the actor’s lips.
“Ah, I am glad of it. Brougham will be so pleased –and yet it shocked you, Mr. Horn–and you really think the poor lady minded it? Dear me! How pleased she will be when I tell her the impression it all made upon you. She’s worked so hard over the part and has been so nervous about it. I left her only a moment ago–she and her husband wanted me to take supper with them at Riley’s–the new restaurant on University Place, you know, famous for its devilled crabs. But I always like to come here for my clams. Allow me a moment–” and he bent over the steaming tub, and skewering the contents of a pair of shells with his iron fork held it out toward Oliver.
“Let me beg of you, Mr. Horn, to taste this clam. I am quite sure it is a particularly savory one. After this my dear young friend, I hope you’ll have a better opinion of me.” And his eye twinkled. “I am really better than I look–indeed I am–and so, my dear boy, is this clam. Come, come, it is getting cold.”
“What do you mean by ‘a better opinion’ of you, Mr. Gilbert?” stammered Oliver. He had been completely captivated by the charm of the actor’s manner. “Why shouldn’t I think well of you?–I don’t understand.”
“Why–because I strangled the poor lady to- night. You know, of course–that it was I who played the villain.”
“You!” exclaimed Oliver. “No, I did not, sir. Why, Mr. Gilbert, I can’t realize–oh, I hope you’ll forgive me for what I’ve said. I’ve only been in New York a short time, and–“
The old gentleman cut short Oliver’s explanation with a wave of his fork, and looking down into the boy’s face, said in a serious tone:
“My son, you’re quite right. Quite right–and I like you all the better for it. All such plays are dreadful I feel just as you do about them, but what can we actors do? The public will have it that way.”
Another little prejudice toppled from its pedestal, another household tradition of Oliver’s smashed into a thousand pieces at his feet! This rubbing and grinding process of man against man; this seeing with one’s own eyes and not another’s was fast rounding out and perfecting the impressionable clay of our young gentleman’s mind. It was a lesson, too, the scribe is delighted to say, which our hero never forgot; nor did he ever forget the man who taught it. One of his greatest delights in after-years was to raise his hat to this incomparable embodiment of the dignity and courtliness of the old school. The old gentleman had long since forgotten the young fellow, but that made no difference to Oliver–he would cross the street any time to lift his hat to dear John Gilbert.
The introduction of the other members of the club to the villain being over–they had stood the whole time, they were listening to the actor, each head uncovered–McFudd again marshalled his troop and proceeded up Broadway, where, at Oliver’s request, they were halted at the pedestal of the big Bronze Horse and within sight of their own quarters.
Here McFudd insisted that the club should sing “God Save the Queen” to the Father of his Country, where he sat astride of his horse, which was accordingly done, much to the delight of a couple of night- watchmen, who watched the entire performance and who, upon McFudd’s subsequent inspection, proved to be fellow-countrymen of the distinguished Hibernian.
Had the buoyant and irrepressible Irishman been content with this patriotic outburst as the final winding- up of the night’s outing, and had he then and there betaken himself and his fellows off to bed, the calamity which followed, and which so nearly wrecked the Skylarks, might have been avoided.
It is difficult at any time to account for the workings of Fate or to follow the course of its agents. The track of an earth-worm destroys a dam; the parting of a wire wrecks a bridge; the breaking of a root starts an avalanche; the flaw in an axle dooms a train; the sting of a microbe depopulates a city. But none of these unseen, mysterious agencies was at work–nothing so trivial wrecked the Skylarks.
It was a German street-band!
A band whose several members had watched McFudd and his party from across the street, and who had begun limbering their instruments before the sextet had ceased singing; regarding the situation, no doubt, as pregnant with tips.
McFudd did not give the cornet time to draw his instrument from its woollen bag before he had him by the arm.
“Don’t put a mouthful of wind into that horn of yours until I spake to ye,” he cried in vociferous tones.
The leader stopped and looked at him in a dazed way.
“I have an idea, gentlemen,” added McFudd, turning to his companion’s, and tapping his forehead. “I am of the opinion that this music would be wasted on the night air, and so with your parmission I propose to transfer this orchestra to the top flure, where we can listen to their chunes at our leisure. Right about, face! Forward! March!” and McFudd advanced upon the band, wheeled the drum around, and, locking arms with the cornet, started across the street for the stone steps.
“Not a word out of any o’ ye till I get ’em in,” McFudd continued in a low voice, fumbling in his pocket for his night-key.
The musicians obeyed mechanically and tiptoed one by one inside the dimly lighted hall, followed by Oliver and the others.
“Now take off your shoes; you’ve four flights of stairs to crawl up, and if ye make a noise until I’m ready for ye, off goes a dollar of your pay.”
The bass-drum carefully backed his instrument against the wall, sat down on the floor, and began pulling off his boots; the cornet and bassoon followed; the clarionet wore only his gum shoes, and so was permitted to keep them on.
“Now, Walley, me boy, do you go ahead and turn up the gas and open the piano, and Cockburn, old man, will ye kindly get the blower and tongs out of Freddie’s room and the scuttle out of Tomlins’s closet and the Chinese gong that hangs over me bed? And all you fellers go ahead treading on whispers, d’ye moind?” said McFudd under his breath. “I’ll bring up this gang with me. Not a breath out of any o’ yez remimber, till I get there. The drum’s unhandy and we got to go slow wid it,” and he slipped the strap over his head and started upstairs, followed by the band.
The ascent was made without a sound until old Mr. Lang’s door was reached, when McFudd’s foot slipped, and, but for the bassoonist’s head, both the Irishman and the drum would have rolled down- stairs. Lang heard the sound, and recognizing the character of the attendant imprecation, did not get up. “It’s only McFndd,” he said quietly to his suddenly awakened wife.
Once safe upon the attic floor the band who were entering with great gusto into the spirit of the occasion, arranged themselves in a half-circle about the piano, replaced their shoes, stripped their instruments of their coverings–the cornetist breathing noiselessly into the mouth-pieces to thaw out the frost–and stood at attention for McFudd’s orders.
By this time Simmons had taken his seat at the piano; Cockburn held the blower and tongs; Cranch, who on coming in had ignored the card tacked to his door, and who was found fast asleep in his chair, was given the coal-scuttle; and little Tomlins grasped his own wash-basin in one hand and Fred’s poker in the other. Oliver was to sing the air, and Fred was to beat a tattoo on Waller’s door with the butt end of a cane. The gas had been turned up and every kerosene lamp had been lighted and ranged about the hall. McFudd threw off his coat and vest, cocked a Scotch smoking- cap over one eye, and seizing the Chinese gong in one hand and the wooden mallet in the other, climbed upon the piano and faced his motley orchestra.
“Attintion, gentlemen,” whispered McFudd.
“The first chune will be ‘Old Dog Tray,’ because it begins wid a lovely howl. Remimber now, when I hit this gong that’s the signal for yez to begin, and ye’ll all come together wid wan smash. Then the band will play a bar or two, and then every man Jack o’ ye will go strong on the chorus. Are yez ready?”
McFudd swung his mallet over his head; poised it for an instant; ran his eye around the circle with the air of an impresario; saw that the drum was in position, the horns and clarionet ready, the blower, scuttle, tongs, and other instruments of torture in place, and hit the gong with all his might.
The crash that followed woke every boarder in the house and tumbled half of them out of their beds. Long before the chorus had been reached all the doors had been thrown open, and the halls and passageways filled with the startled boarders. Then certain mysterious-looking figures in bed-gowns, water- proofs, and bath-robes began bounding up the stairs, and a collection of dishevelled heads were thrust through the door of the attic. Some of the suddenly awakened boarders tried to stop the din by protest; others threatened violence; one or two grinned with delight. Among these last was the little hunchback, swathed in a blanket like an Indian chief, and barefooted. He had rushed upstairs at the first sound as fast as his little legs could carry him, and was peering under the arms of the others, rubbing his sides with glee and laughing like a boy. Mrs. Schuyler Van Tassell, whose head and complexion were not ready for general inspection, had kept her door partly closed, opening it only wide enough when the other boarders rushed by to let her voice through–always an unpleasant organ when that lady had lost her temper.
As the face of each new arrival appeared in the doorway, McFudd would bow gracefully in recognition of the honor of its presence, and redouble his attack on the gong. The noise he produced was only equalled by that of the drum, which never ceased for an instant–McFudd’s orders being to keep that instrument going irrespective of time or tune.
In the midst of this uproar of brass, strings, sheep- skin, wash-bowls, broken coal, pokers and tongs, a lean figure in curl-papers and slippers, bright red calico wrapper reaching to the floor, and a lighted candle in one hand, forced its way through the crowd at the door and stood out in the glare of the gaslights facing McFudd.
It was Miss Ann Teetum!
Instantly a silence fell upon the room.
“Gentlemen, this is outrageous!” she cried in a voice that ripped through the air like a saw. “I have put up with these disgraceful performances as long as I am going to. Not one of you shall stay in my house another night. Out you go in the morning, every one of you, bag and baggage!”
McFudd attempted to make an apology. Oliver stepped forward, the color mounting to his cheeks, and Waller began a protest at the unwarrantable intrusion, but the infuriated little woman waved them all aside and turning abruptly marched back through the door and down the staircase, preceded by the other female boarders. The little hunchback alone remained. He was doubled up in a knot, wiping the tears from his eyes, his breath gone from excessive laughter.
The Skylarkers looked at each other in blank astonishment. One of the long-cherished traditions
of the house was the inviolability of this attic. Its rooms were let with an especial privilege guaranteeing its privacy, with free license to make all the noise possible, provided the racket was confined to that one floor. So careful had been its occupants to observe this rule, that noisy as they all were when once on the top floor, every man unlocked the front door at night with the touch of a burglar and crept upstairs as noiselessly as a footpad.
“I’m sorry, men,” said McFudd, looking into the astounded faces about him. “I’m the last man, as ye know, to hurt anybody’s feelings. But what the divil’s got into the old lady? Who’d ‘a’ thought she would have heard a word of it down where she sleeps in the basement?”
“‘Tis the Van Tassell,” grunted the Walrus. “She’s so mesmerized the old woman lately that she don’t know her own mind.”
“What makes you think she put her up to it, Waller?” asked Cranch.
“I don’t think–but it’s just like her,” answered Waller, with illogical prejudice.
“My eye! wasn’t she a beauty!” laughed Fred, and he picked up a bit of charcoal and began an outline of the wrapper and slippers on the side-wall.
Tomlins, Cranch, and the others had no suggestions to offer. Their minds were too much occupied in wondering what was going to become of them in the morning.
The German band by this time had regained their usual solidity. The leader seemed immensely relieved. He had evidently expected the next apparition to be a bluecoat with a pair of handcuffs.
“Put their green jackets on ’em,” McFudd said to the leader quietly, pointing to the instruments. “We’re much obliged to you and your men for coming up,” and he slipped some notes into the leader’s hand. “Now get downstairs, every man o’ ye, as aisy as if ye were walking on eggs. Cranch, old man, will ye see ’em out, to kape that infernal drum from butting into the Van Tassell’s door, or we’ll have another hornet’s nest. Begorra, there’s wan thing very sure–it’s little baggage I’LL have to move out.”
The next morning a row of six vacant seats stared Miss Ann out of countenance. The outcasts had risen early and had gone to Riley’s for their breakfast. Miss Ann sat at the coffee-urn as stiff and erect as an avenging judge. Lofty purpose and grim determination were written in every line of her face. Mrs. Van Tassell was not in evidence. Her nerves had been so shattered by the “night’s orgy,” she had said to Miss Ann, that she should breakfast in her room. She further notified Miss Teetum that she should at once withdraw her protecting presence from the establishment, and leave it without a distinguished social head, if the dwellers on the top floor remained another day under the same roof with herself.
An ominous silence and depressing gloom seemed. to hang over everybody. Several of the older men pushed back their plates and began drumming oh the table-cloth with their fingers, a far-away look in their eyes. One or two talked in whispers, their coffee untasted. Old Mr. Lang looked down the line of empty seats and took his place with a dejected air. He was the oldest man in the house and the oldest boarder; this gave him certain privileges, one being to speak his mind.
“I understand,” he said, unfolding his napkin and facing. Miss Ann, “that you have ordered the boys out of the house?”
“Yes, I have,” snapped out Miss Teetum.
Everybody looked up. No one recognized the tone of her voice, it was so sharp and bitter.
“Why, may I ask?”
“I will not have my house turned into a bear- garden, that’s why!”
“That’s better than a graveyard,” retorted Mr. Lang. “That’s what the house would be without them. I can’t understand why you object. You sleep in the basement and shouldn’t hear a sound; my wife and I sleep under them every night. If we can stand it, you can. You send the boys away, Miss Teetum, and we’ll move out.”
Miss Ann winced under the shot, but she did not answer.
“Do you mean that you’re going to turn the young gentlemen into the street, Miss Ann?” whined Mrs. Southwark Boggs in an injured tone, from her end of the table. “Are we going to have no young life in the house at all? I won’t stay a day after they’re gone.”
Miss Teetum changed color, but she looked straight ahead of her. She evidently did not want her private affairs discussed at the table.
“I shall want my bill at the end of the week, now that the boys are to leave,” remarked the little hunchback to Miss Ann as he bent over her chair. “Life is dreary enough as it is.”
And so the boys stayed on.
Only one room became vacant at the end of the month. That was Mrs. Schuyler Van Tassell’s.
CHAPTER XI
A CHANGE OF WIND
The affair of the brass band, with its dramatic and most unlooked-for ending, left an unpleasant memory in the minds of the members of the club, especially in Oliver’s. His training had been somewhat different from that of the others present, and his oversensitive nature had been more shocked than pleased by it all. While most of the other participants regretted the ill-feeling which had been aroused in Miss Teetum’s mind, they felt sure–in fact, they knew– that this heretofore kind and gentle hostess could never have fanned her wrath to so white a heat had not some other hand besides her own worked the bellows.
Suspicion first fell upon a new boarder unaccustomed to the ways of the house, who, it was reported, had double-locked herself in at the first crash of the drum, and who had admitted, on being cross-examined by McFudd, that she had nearly broken her back in trying to barricade her bedroom door with a Saratoga trunk and a wash-stand. This theory was abandoned when subsequent inquiries brought to light the fact that Mrs. Van Tassell, when the echoes of one of McFudd’s songs had reached her ears, had stated a week before that no respectable boarding-house would tolerate uproars like those which took place almost nightly on the top floor, and that she would withdraw her protection from Miss Euphemia and leave the house at once and forever if the noise did not cease. This dire threat being duly reported to the two Misses Teetum had–it was afterward learned–so affected them both that Miss Ann had gone to bed with a chill and Miss Sarah had warded off another with a bowl of hot camomile tea.
This story, true as it undoubtedly was, did not entirely clear up the situation. One part of it sorely puzzled McFudd. Why did Miss Euphemia need Mrs. Van Tassell’s protection, and why should the loss of it stir Miss Ann to so violent an outburst? This question no member of the Skylarks could answer.
The solution came that very night, and in the most unexpected way, Waller bearing the glad tidings.
Miss Euphemia, ignoring them all, was to be married at St. Mark’s at 6 P.M. on the following Monday, and Mrs. Van Tassell was to take charge of the wedding reception in the front parlor! The groom was the strange young man who had sat for some days beside Miss Euphemia, passing as Miss Ann’s nephew, and who really was a well-to-do druggist with a shop on Astor Place. All of the regular boarders of the house were to be invited.
The explosion of this matrimonial bomb so cleared the air of all doubt as to the guilt of Mrs. Van Tassell, that a secret meeting, attended by every member of the Skylarks, was at once held in Waller’s room with the result that Miss Ann’s invitations to the wedding were unanimously accepted. Not only would the resident members go–so the original resolution ran –but the non-resident and outside members would also be on hand to do honor to Miss Euphemia and her distinguished chaperone. This amendment being accepted, McFudd announced in a sepulchral tone that, owing to the severity of the calamity and to the peculiarly painful circumstances which surrounded their esteemed fellow-skylarker, the Honorable Sylvester Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, his fellow-members would wear crape on their left arms for thirty days. This also was carried unanimously, every man except Ruffle-shirt Tomlins breaking out into the “Dead Man’s Chorus”–a song, McFudd explained, admirably fitted to the occasion.
When the auspicious night arrived, the several dress-suits of the members were duly laid out on the piano and hung over the chairs, and each gentleman proceeded to array himself in costume befitting the occasion. Waller, who weighed 200 pounds, squeezed himself into McFudd’s coat and trousers (McFudd weighed 150), the trousers reaching a little below the painter’s knees. McFudd wrapped Waller’s coat about his thin girth and turned up the bagging legs, of the unmentionables six inches above his shoes. The assorted costumes of the other members were equally grotesque. The habiliments themselves were of proper cut and make, according to the standards of the time–spike-tailed coats, white ties, patent- leather pumps, and the customary trimmings, but the effects produced were as ludicrous as they were incongruous, though the studied bearing of the gentlemen was meant to prove their unconsciousness of the fact.
The astonishment that rested on Mrs. Van Tassell’s face when this motley group filed into the parlor and with marked and punctilious deference paid their respects to the bride, and the wrath that flashed in Miss Euphemia’s eyes, became ever after part of the traditions of the club. Despite Mrs. Van Tassell’s protest against the uproar on the top floor, she had invariably spoken in high terms to her friends and intimates of these very boarders–their acquaintance was really part of her social capital–commenting at the same time upon their exalted social and artistic positions. In fact, many of her own special guests had attended the wedding solely in the hope of being brought into more intimate relations with this distinguished group of painters, editors, and musicians, some of whom were already being talked about.
When, however, McFudd stood in the corner of Miss Teetum’s parlor like a half-scared boy, pulling out the fingers of Waller’s kid gloves, an inch too long for him, and Waller, Fred, and my Lord Cockburn stumbled over the hearth-rug one after the other, and Oliver, feeling like a guilty man and a boor, bowed and scraped like a dancing-master; and Bowdoin the painter, and Simmons and Fog-horn Cranch, talked platitudes with faces as grave as undertakers, the expectant special guests invited by Mrs. Van Tassell began to look upon her encomiums as part of an advertising scheme to fill Miss Teetum’s rooms.
The impression made upon the Teetum contingent by the appearance and manners of the several members –even Oliver’s reputation was ruined–was equally disastrous. It was, perhaps, best voiced by the druggist groom, when he informed Mrs. Van T. from behind his lemon-colored glove–that “if that was the gang he had heard so much of, he didn’t want no more of ’em.”
But these and other jollifications were not long to continue. Causes infinitely more serious were at work undermining the foundations of the Skylarks. The Lodge of Poverty, to which they all belonged, gay as it had often been, was slowly closing its door; the unexpected, which always hangs over life, was about to happen; the tie which bound these men together was slowly loosening. Its members might
give the grip of fellowship to other members in other lodges over the globe, but no longer in this one on the top floor of the house on Union Square.
One morning McFudd broke the seal of an important- looking letter bearing a Dublin post-mark on the upper right-hand corner of the envelope, and the family crest on its flap. For some moments he sat still, looking straight before him. Then two tears stole out and glistened on his lashes.
“Boys,” he said, slowly, “the governor says I must come home,” and he held up a steamer ticket and a draft that barely equalled his dues for a month’s board and washing.
That night he pawned his new white overcoat with the bone buttons and velvet collar–the one his father had sent him, and which had been the envy of every man in the club, and invested every penny of the proceeds in a supper to be given to the Skylarks. The invitation ran as follows:
Mr. Cornelius McFudd respectively requests the pleasure of your presence at an informal wake to be held in honor of a double-breasted overcoat, London cut. The body and tail will be the ducks, and the two sleeves and velvet collar the Burgundy.
Riley’s: 8 p.m. Third floor back.
The following week he packed his two tin boxes, boarded the Scotia, and sailed for home.
The keystone having dropped out, it was not long before the balance of the structure came down about the ears of the members. My Lord Cockburn the following week was ordered South by the bank to look after some securities locked up in a vault in a Georgia trust company, and which required a special messenger to recover them–the growing uneasiness in mercantile circles over the political outlook of the country having assumed a serious aspect. Cockburn had to swim rivers, he wrote Oliver in his first letter, and cross mountains on horseback, and sleep in a negro hut, besides having a variety of other experiences, to say nothing of several hair-breadth escapes, none of which availed him, as he returned home after all, without the bonds.
These financial straws, indicating the direction and force of the coming political winds, began to accumulate. The lull before the hurricane–the stagnation in commercial circles–became so ominous that soon the outside members and guests of the club ceased coming, being diligently occupied in earning their bread, and then Simmons sent the piano home –it had been loaned to him by reason of his profession and position–and only Fog-horn Cranch, Waller, Fred, Oliver, and Ruffle-shirt Tomlins were left. Alter a while, Waller gave up his room and slept in his studio and got his meals at the St. Clair, or went without them, so light, by reason of the hard times, was the demand for sheep pictures of Waller’s particular make. And later on Tomlins went abroad,
and Cranch moved West. And so the ruin of the club was complete; and so, too, this merry band of roysterers, with one or two exceptions, passes out of those pages.
Dear boys of the long ago, what has become of you all since those old days in that garret-room on Union Square? Tomlins, I know, turned up in Australia, where he married a very rich and very lovely woman, because he distinctly stated both of those facts in an exuberant letter to Oliver when he invited him to the wedding. “Not a bad journey–only a step, my dear Ollie, and we shall be so delighted to see you.” I know this, to be true, for Oliver showed me the letter. Bowdoin went to Paris, where, as we all remember, he had a swell studio opening on to a garden, somewhere near the Arc de Triomphe, and had carriages stop at his door, and a butler to open it, and two maids in white caps to help the ladies off with their wraps. Poor Cranch died in Montana while hunting for gold, and my Lord Cockburn went back to London.
But does anybody know what has become of McFudd–irresistible, irresponsible, altogether delightful McFudd? that condensation of all that was joyous, rollicking, and spontaneous; that devotee of the tub and pink of neatness, immaculate, clean- shaven and well-groomed; that soul of good-nature, which no number of flowing bowls could disturb nor succeeding headaches dull; that most generous of souls, whose first impulse was to cut squarely in half everything he owned and give you your choice of the pieces, and who never lost his temper until you refused them both. If you, my dear boy, are still wandering about this earth, and your eye should happen to fall on these pages, remember, I send you my greeting. If you have been sent for, and have gone aloft to cheer those others who have gone before, and who could spare you no longer, speak a good word for me, please, and then, perhaps, I may shake your hand again.
With the dissolution of the happy coterie there came to Oliver many a lonely night under the cheap lamp, the desolate hall outside looking all the more desolate and uninviting with the piano gone and the lights extinguished.
Yet these nights were not altogether distasteful to Oliver. Fred had noticed for months that his room-mate no longer entered into the frolics of the club with the zest and vim that characterized the earlier days of the young Southerner’s sojourn among them. Our hero had said nothing while the men had held together, and to all outward appearances had done his share not only with his singing, but in any other way in which he could help on the merriment. He had covered the space allotted to him on the walls with caricatures of the several boarders below. He had mixed the salad at Riley’s the night of McFudd’s farewell supper, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the cook’s cap on his head. He had lined up with the others at Brown’s on the Bowery; drank his “crystal cocktails” –the mildest of beverages–and had solemnly marched out again with his comrades in a lock-step like a gang of convicts. He had indulged in forty- cent opera, leaning over the iron railing of the top row of the Academy of Music, and had finished the evening at Pfaff’s, drinking beer and munching hardtack and pickles, and had laughed and sung in a dozen other equally absurd escapades. And yet it was as plain as daylight to Fred that Oliver’s heart was no longer centred in the life about him.
The fact is, the scribe is compelled to admit, the life indulged in by these merry bohemians had begun to pall upon this most sensitive of young gentlemen. It really had not satisfied him at all. This was not the sort of life that Mr. Crocker meant, he had said to himself after a night at Riley’s when Cranch had sounded his horn so loud that the proprietor had threatened to turn the whole party into the street. Mr. Crocker’s temperament was too restful to be interested in such performances. As for himself, he was tired of it.
Nothing of all this did he keep from his mother. The record of his likes and dislikes which formed the subject-matter of his daily letters was an absorbing study with her, and she let no variation of the weather-vane of his tastes escape her. Nor did she keep their contents from her intimate friends. She had read to Colonel Clayton one of his earlier ones, in which he had told her of the concerts and of the way Cockburn had served the brew that McFudd had concocted, and had shown him an illustration Oliver had drawn on the margin of the sheet–an outline of the china mug that held the mixture–to which that Chesterfield of a Clayton had replied:
“What did I tell you, madame–just what I expected of those Yankees–punch from mugs! Bah!”
She had, too, talked their contents over with Amos Cobb, who, since the confidence reposed in him by the Horn family, had become a frequent visitor at the house.
“There’s no harm come to him yet, madame, or he wouldn’t write you of what he does. Boys will be boys. Let him have his fling,” the Vermonter had replied with a gleam of pleasure in his eye. “If he has the stuff in him that I think he has, he will swim out and get to higher ground; if he hasn’t, better let him drown early. It will give everybody less trouble.”
The dear lady had lost no sleep over these escapades. She, too, realized that as long as Oliver poured out his heart unreservedly to her there was little to fear. In her efforts to cheer him she had sought, in her almost daily letters sent him in return, to lead his thoughts into other channels. She knew how fond he had always been of the society of women, and how necessary they were to his happiness, and she begged him to go out more. “Surely there must be some young girls in so great a city who can help to make your life happier,” she wrote.
In accordance with her suggestions, he had at last put on his best clothes and had accompanied Tomlins and Fred to some very delightful houses away up in Thirty-third Street, and another on Washington Square, and still another near St. Mark’s Place, where his personality and his sweet, sympathetic voice had gained him friends and most pressing invitations to call again. Some he had accepted, and some he had not–it depended very largely on his mood and upon the people whom he met. If they reminded him in any way, either in manners or appointments, of his life at home, he went again–if not, he generally stayed away.
Among these was the house of his employer, Mr. Slade, who had treated him with marked kindness, not only inviting him to his own house, but introducing him to many of his friends–an unusual civility Oliver discovered afterward–not many of the clerks being given a seat at Mr. Slade’s table. “I like his brusque, hearty manner,” Oliver wrote to his mother after the first visit. “His wife is a charming woman, and so are the two daughters, quite independent and fearless, and entirely different from the girls at home, but most interesting and so well bred.”
Another incident, too, had greatly pleased not only Oliver and his mother, but Richard as well. It happened that a consignment of goods belonging to Morton, Slade & Co. was stored in a warehouse in Charleston, and it became necessary to send one of the clerks South to reship or sell them, the ordinary business methods being unsafe, owing to the continued rumblings of the now rapidly approaching political storm–a storm that promised to be infinitely more serious than the financial stringency. The choice had fallen on Oliver, he being a Southerner, and knowing the ways of the people. He had advised with his mother and stood ready to leave at an hour’s notice, when Mr. Slade’s heart failed him.
“It’s too dangerous, my lad,” he said to Oliver. “I could trust you, I know, and I believe you would return safely and bring the goods or the money with you, but I should never forgive myself if anything should happen to you. I will send an older man.” And he did.
It was at this time that Oliver had received Cockburn’s letter telling him of his own experiences, and he, therefore, knew something of the risks a man would run, and could appreciate Mr. Slade’s action all the more. Richard, as soon as he heard of it, had put down his tools, left his work-bench, and had gone into his library, where he had written the firm a letter of thanks, couched in terms so quaint and courtly, and so full of generous appreciation of their interest in Oliver, that Mr. Slade, equally appreciative, had worn it into ribbons in showing it to his friends as a model of style and chirography.
Remembering his mother’s wishes, and in appreciation of his employer’s courtesy, he had kept up this intimacy with the Slade family until an unfortunate catastrophe had occurred, which while it did not affect his welcome at their house, ruined his pleasure while there.
Mr. Slade had invited Oliver to dinner one rainy night, and, being too poor to pay for a cab, Oliver, in attempting to cross Broadway, had stepped into a mud-puddle a foot deep. He must either walk back and change his shoes and be late for dinner–an unpardonable offence–or he must keep on and run his chances of cleaning them in the dressing-room. There was no dressing-room available, as it turned out, and the fat English butler had to bring a wet cloth out into the hall (oh! how he wished for Malachi!) and get down on his stiff knees and wipe away vigorously before Oliver could present himself before his hostess, the dinner in the meantime getting cold and the guests being kept waiting. Oliver could never look at those shoes after that without shivering.
This incident had kept him at home for a time and had made him chary of exposing himself to similar mortifications. His stock of clothes at best was limited–especially his shoes–and as the weather continued bad and the streets impassable, he preferred waiting for clearer skies and safer walking. So he spent his nights in his room, crooning over the coke fire with Fred, or all alone if Fred were at the Academy, drawing from the cast.
On these nights he would begin to long for Kennedy Square. He had said nothing yet about returning, even for a day’s visit. He knew how his mother felt about it, and he knew how he had seen her struggle to keep the interest paid up on the mortgage and to meet the daily necessities of the house. The motor was still incomplete, she wrote him, and success was as far off as ever. The mortgage had again been extended and the note renewed–this time for a longer term, owing to some friend’s interest in the matter whose name she could not learn. She, therefore, felt no uneasiness on that score, although there were still no pennies which could be spared for Olivers travelling expenses, even if he could get leave of absence from his employers.
At these times, as he sat alone in his garret-room, Malachi’s chuckle, without cause or reminder would suddenly ring in his ears, or some low strain from his father’s violin or a soft note from Nathan’s flute would float through his brain. “Dear Uncle Nat,” he would break out, speaking aloud and springing from his chair–“I wish I could hear you tonight.”
His only relief while in these moods was to again seize his pen and pour out his heart to his mother or to his father, or to Miss Clendenning or old Mr. Crocker. Occasionally he would write to Sue–not often–for that volatile young lady had so far forgotten Oliver as to leave his letters unanswered for weeks at a time. She was singing “Dixie,” she told him in her last billet-doux, now a month old, and wondering whether Oliver was getting to be a Yankee, and whether he would be coming home with a high collar and his hair cut short and parted in the middle.
His father’s letters in return did not lessen his gloom. “These agitators will destroy the country, my son, if they keep on,” Richard had written in his last letter. “It is a sin against civilization to hold your fellow-men in bondage, and that is why years ago I gave Malachi and Hannah and the others their freedom, but Virginia has unquestionably the right to govern her internal affairs without consulting Massachusetts, and that is what many of these Northern leaders do not or will not understand. I am greatly disturbed over the situation, and I sincerely hope your own career will not be affected by these troubles. As to my own affairs, all I can say is that I work early and late, and am out of debt.” Poor fellow! He thought he was.
Oliver was sitting thus one night, his head in his hands, elbows on his knees, gazing into the smouldering coals of his grate, his favorite attitude when his mind was troubled, when Fred, his face aglow, his big blue eyes dancing, threw wide the door and bounded in, bringing in his clothes the fresh, cool air of the night. He had been at work in the School of the Academy of Design, and had a drawing in chalk under his arm–a head of the young Augustus.
“What’s the matter, Ollie, got the blues?”
“No, Freddie, only thinking.”
“What’s her name? I’ll go and see her and make it up. Out with it–do I know her?”
Oliver smiled faintly, examined the drawing for a moment, and handing it back to Fred, said, sadly, “It’s not a girl, Freddie, but I don’t seem to get anywhere.”
Fred threw the drawing on the bed and squeezed himself into the chair beside his chum, his arm around his neck.
“Where do you want to get, old man? What’s the matter–any trouble at the store?”
“No–none that I know of. But the life is so monotonous, Fred. You do what you love to do. I mark boxes all day till lunch-time, then I roll them out on the sidewalk and make out dray tickets till I come home. I’ve been doing that all winter; I expect to be doing it for years. That don’t get me anywhere, does it? I hate the life more and more every day.”
(Was our hero’s old love of change again asserting itself, or was it only the pinching of that Chinese shoe which his mother in her anxiety had slipped on his unresisting foot, and which he was still wearing to please her? Or was it the upper pressure of some inherent talent–some gift of his ancestors that would not down at his own bidding or that of his mother or anybody else’s?)
“Somebody’s got to do it, Ollie, and you are the last man hired,” remarked Fred, quietly. “What would you like to do?”
Oliver shifted himself in the crowded chair until he could look into his room-mate’s eyes.
“Fred, old man,” he answered, his voice choking, “I haven’t said a word to you about it all the time I’ve been here, for I don’t like to talk about a thing that hurts me, and so I’ve kept it to myself. Now I’ll tell you the truth just as it is. I don’t want Mr. Slade’s work nor anybody else’s work. I don’t like business and never will. I want to paint, and I’ll never be happy until I do. That’s it, fair and square.”
“Well, quit Slade, then, and come with me.”
“I would if it wasn’t for mother. I promised her I would see this through, and I will.” As he spoke the overdue mortgage and his mother’s efforts to keep the interest paid passed in review before him.
Fred caught his breath. It astonished him, independent young Northerner as he was, to hear a full- grown man confess that his mother’s’ apron-strings still held him up, but he made no comment.
“Why not try both?” he cried. “There’s a place in the school alongside of me–we’ll work together nights. It won’t interfere with what you do downtown. You’ll get a good start, and when you have a day off in the summer you can do some out-door work. Waller has told me a dozen times that you draw better than he did when he commenced. Come along with me.”
This conversation, with the other incidents of the day, or rather that part of it which had reference to the Academy, was duly set forth in his next letter to his mother–not as an argument to gain her consent to his studying with Fred, for he knew it was the last thing she would agree to–but because it was his habit to tell her everything. It would show her, too, how good a fellow Fred was and what an interest he took in his welfare. Her answer, three days later, sent him bounding upstairs and into their room like a whirlwind.
“Read, Fred, read!” he cried. “I can go. Mother says she thinks it would be the best thing in the world for me. Here, clap your eyes on that–” and Oliver held the letter out to Fred, his finger pointing to this passage: “I wish you would join Fred at the Academy. Now that you have a regular business that occupies your mind, and are earning your living, I have no objection to your studying drawing or learning any other accomplishment. You work hard all day, and this will rest you.”
The cramped foot was beginning to spread! The Chinese shoe had lost its top button.
CHAPTER XII
AROUND THE MILO
Still another new and far more bewildering world was opened to Oliver the night that he entered the cast-room of the School of the National Academy of Design and took his seat among the students.
The title of the institution, high-sounding as it was, not only truthfully expressed the objects and purposes of its founders, but was wofully exact in the sense of its being national; for outside the bare walls of these rooms there was hardly a student’s easel to be found the country over.
And such forlorn, desolate rooms; up two flights of dusty stairs, in a rickety, dingy loft off Broadway, within a short walk of Union Square–an auction- room on the ground floor and a bar-room in the rear. The largest of these rooms was used for the annual exhibition of the Academicians and their associates, and the smaller ones were given over to the students; one, a better lighted apartment, being filled with the usual collection of casts–the Milo, the Fighting Gladiator, Apollo Belvidere, Venus de Medici, etc., etc.; the other being devoted to the uses of the life-class and its models. Not the nude. Whatever may have been clone in the studios, in the class-room it was always the draped model that posed –the old woman who washed for a living on the top floor, or one of her chubby children or buxom daughters, or perhaps the peddler who strayed in to sell his wares and left his head behind him on ten different canvases and in as many different positions.
The casts themselves were backed up against the walls; some facing the windows for lights and darks, and others pushed toward the middle of the room, where the glow of the gas-jets could accentuate their better points. The Milo, by right of divinity, held the centre position–she being beautiful from any point of sight and available from any side. The Theseus and the Gladiator stood in the corners, affording space for the stools of two or three students and their necessary easels. Scattered about on the coarse, whitewashed walls were hung the smaller life-casts; fragments of the body–an arm, leg, or hand, or sections of a head–and tucked in between could be found cheap lithographic productions of the work of the students and professors of the Paris and Dusseldorf schools. The gas-lights under which the students worked at night were hooded by cheap paper shades of the students’ own fashioning, and the lower sashes of the windows were smeared with whitewash or covered with newspapers to concentrate the light. During working hours the drawing-boards were propped upon rude easels or slanted on overturned chairs, the students sitting on three-legged stools.
A gentle-voiced, earnest, whole-souled old man– the one only instructor–presided over this temple of art. He had devoted his whole life to the sowing of figs and the reaping of thistles, and in his old age was just beginning to see the shoots of a new art forcing their way through the quickening clay of American civilization. Once in awhile, as assistants in this almost hopeless task, there would stray into his class-room some of the painters who, unconsciously, were founding a national art and in honor of whom a grateful nation will one day search the world over for marble white enough on which to perpetuate their memories: men as distinct in their aims, methods, and results as was that other group of unknown and despised immortals starving together at that very time in a French village across the sea–and men, too, equally deserving of the esteem and gratitude of their countrymen.
Oliver knew the names of these distinguished visitors to the Academy, as did all the other members of the Skylarks, and he knew their work. The pictures of George Inness, Sanford Gifford, Kensett, McEntee, Hart, Eastman Johnson, Hubbard, Church, Casilaer, Whittredge, and the others had been frequently discussed around the piano on the top floor at Miss Teetum’s, and their merits and supposed demerits often hotly contested. He had met Kensett once at the house of Mr. Slade, and McEntee had been pointed out to him as he left the theatre one night, but few of the others had ever crossed his path.
Of the group Gifford appealed to him most. One golden “Venice” of the painter, which hung in a picture-store, always delighted him–a stretch of the Lagoon with a cluster of butterfly sails and a far- away line of palaces, towers, and domes lying like a string of pearls on the horizon. There was another of Kensett’s, a point of rocks thrust out like a mailed hand into a blue sea; and a McEntee of October woods, all brown and gold; but the Gifford he had never forgotten; nor will anyone else who has seen it.
No wonder then that all his life he remembered that particular night, when a slender, dark-haired man in loose gray clothes sauntered into the class- room and moved around among the easels, giving a suggestion here and a word of praise there, for that was the night on which Professor Cummings touched our young hero’s shoulder and said: “Mr. Gifford likes your drawing very much, Mr. Horn”–a word of praise which, as he wrote to Crocker, steadied his uncertain fingers “as nothing else had ever done.”
The students in his school were from all stations in life: young and old; all of them poor, and most of them struggling along in kindred professions and occupations–engravers, house-painters, lithographers, and wood-carvers. Two or three were sign- painters. One of these–a big-boned, blue-eyed young follow, who drew in charcoal from the cast at night, and who sketched the ships in the harbor during the day–came from Kennedy Square, or rather from one of the side streets leading out of it. There can still be found over the door of what was once his shop a weather-beaten example of his skill in gold letters, the product of his own hand. Above the signature is, or was some ten years since, a small decorative panel showing a strip of yellow sand, a black dot of a boat, and a line of blue sky, so true in tone and sure in composition that when Mr. Crocker first passed that way and stood astounded before it–as did Robinson Crusoe over Friday’s footprint–he was so overjoyed to find another artist besides himself in the town, that he turned into the shop, and finding only a young mechanic at work, said:
“Go to New York, young man, and study, you have a career before you.”
The old landscape-painter was a sure prophet; little pen-and-ink sketches bearing the initials of this same sign-painter now sell for more than their weight in gold, while his larger canvases on the walls of our museums and galleries hold their place beside the work of the marine-painters of our own and other times and will for many a day to come.
This exile from Kennedy Square had been the first man to shake Oliver’s hand the night he entered the cast-room. Social distinctions had no place in this atmosphere; it was the fellow who in his work came closest to the curve of the shoulder or to the poise of the head who proved, in the eyes of his fellow- students, his possession of an ancestry: but the ancestry was one that skipped over the Mayflower and went straight back to the great Michael and Rembrandt.
“I’m Jack Bedford, the sign-painter,” he said, heartily. “You and I come from the same town,” and as they grasped each other’s hands a new friendship was added to Oliver’s rapidly increasing list.
Oliver’s seat was next to Fred, with Jack Bedford on his right. He had asked to join this group not only because he wanted to be near his two friends but because he wanted still more to be near the Milo. He had himself selected a certain angle of the head because he had worked from that same point of sight with Mr. Crocker, and it had delighted him beyond measure when the professor allowed him to place his stool so that he could almost duplicate his earlier drawing. His ambition was to get into the life-class, and the quickest road, he knew, lay through a good cast drawing. Every night for a week, therefore, he had followed the wonderful lines of the Milo’s beautiful body, which seemed to grow with warmth under the flare of the overhanging gas-jets.
These favored life students occupied the room next to the casts. Mother Mulligan, in full regalia of apron and broom, often sat there as a model. Oliver had recognized her portrait at once; so can anyone else who looks over the earlier studies of half the painters of the time.
“Oh, it’s you, is it–” Mrs. Mulligan herself had cried when she met Oliver in the hall, “the young gentleman that saved Miss Margaret’s dog? She’ll be here next week herself–she’s gone home for awhile up into the mountains, where her old father and mother live. I told her many times about ye, and she’ll be that pleased to meet ye, now that you’re WAN of us.”
It was delightful to hear her accent the “wan.” Mother Mulligan always thought the institution rested on her broad shoulders, and that the students were part of her family.
The old woman could also have told Oliver of Margaret’s arrival at the school, and of the impression which she, the first and only girl student, made on the night she took her place before an easel. But of the reason of her coming Mrs. Mulligan could have told nothing, nor why Margaret had been willing to exchange the comforts of a home among the New Hampshire hills for the narrow confines of a third-story back room, with Mrs. Mulligan as house- keeper and chaperon.
Fred knew all the details, of course, and how it had all come about. How a cousin of Margaret’s who lived on a farm near her father’s had one day, years before, left his plough standing in the furrow and apprenticed himself to a granite-cutter in the next town. How later on he had graduated in gravestones, and then in bas-reliefs, and finally had won a medal in Rome for a figure of “Hope,” which was to mark the grave of a millionnaire at home. How when the statue was finished, ready to be set up, this cousin had come to Brookfield, wearing a square- cut beard, straight-out mustaches with needle-points, and funny shoes with square toes. How the girl had been disposed to laugh at him until he had told her stories of the wonderful cities beyond the sea and of his life among the painters and sculptors; then she showed him her own drawings, searching his face anxiously with her big eyes. How he had been so astounded and charmed by their delicacy and truth, that he had pleaded with her father–an obstinate old Puritan–to send her to New York to study, which the old man refused point-blank to do, only giving his consent at the last when her brother John, who had been graduated from Dartmouth and knew something of the outside world, had joined his voice to that of her mother and her own. How when she at last entered the class-room of the Academy the students had looked askance at her; the usual talk had ceased, and for a time there had been an uncomfortable restraint everywhere, until the men found her laughing quietly at their whispered jokes about her. After that the “red-headed girl in blue gingham,” as she was called, had become, by virtue of that spirit of camaraderie which a common pursuit develops, “one of us” in spirit as well as in occupation.
Fred had described it all to Oliver, and every night when Oliver came in from the hall, his eyes had wandered over the group of students in the hope of seeing the strange person. A girl studying art, or anything else for that matter, seemed to him to be as incongruous as for a boy to learn dress-making or for a woman to open a barber-shop. He knew her type, he said to himself: she would be thin and awkward, with an aggressive voice that would jar on the stillness of the room. And she would believe in the doctrines of Elizabeth Cady Stanton–a name never mentioned by his mother except apologetically and in a low voice–and when she became older she would address meetings and become conspicuous in church and have her name printed in the daily papers.
Our hero’s mind was intent upon these phases of character always to be found, of course, in a girl who would unsex herself to the extent that Miss Grant had done, when one night a rich, full, well-modulated voice sounding over his shoulder said:
“Excuse me, but Mother Mulligan tells me that you are Mr. Horn, Fred Stone’s friend. I want to thank you for taking care of my poor Juno. It was very good of you. I am Margaret Grant.”
She had approached him without his seeing her. He turned quickly to accost her and immediately lost so much of his breath that he could only stammer his thanks, and the hope that Juno still enjoyed the best of health. But the deep-brown eyes did not waver after acknowledging his reply, nor did the smile about the mouth relax.
“And I’m so glad you’ve come at last,” she went on. “Fred has told me how you wanted to draw and couldn’t. I know something myself of what it is to hunger after a thing and not get it.”
He was on his feet now, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers, his shirt-cuff rolled back to give his hand more freedom. His senses were coming back, too, and there was buoyancy as well as youth in his face.
“Yes, I do love it,” said Oliver, and his eyes wandered over her wonderful hair that looked like brown gold illumined by slants of sunshine, and then rested for an instant on her eyes. “I drew with old Mr. Crocker at home, but we only had one cast, just the head of the Milo, and I was the only pupil. Here everything helps me. What are you at work on, Miss Grant?”
“I’m doing the Milo, too; my seat is right in front of yours. Oh! what a good beginning,” and she bent over his drawing-board. “Why, this can’t be your first week,” and she scanned it closely. “One minute–a little too full under the chin, isn’t it?” She picked up a piece of chalk, and pointed to the shaded lines, looking first with half-closed eyes at the full-sized cast before them, and then at the drawing.
“Yes, I think you’re right,” said Oliver, studying the cast also with half-closed eyes. “How will that do?” and he smudged the shadow with his finger-tip.
“Just right,” she answered. “How well you have the character of the face. Isn’t she lovely!–I know of nothing so beautiful. There is such a queenly, womanly, self-poised simplicity about her.”
Oliver thought so too, and said so with his eyes, only it was of a face framed in brown-gold that he was thinking and not of one of white plaster. He was touched too by the delicate way in which she had commended his drawings. It was the “woman” in her that pleased him, just as it had been in Sue–that subtle, dominating influence which our fine gentleman could never resist.
He shifted his stool a little to one side so that he could see her the better unobserved while she was arranging her seat and propping up her board. He noticed that, although her face was tanned by the weather, her head was set on a neck of singular whiteness. Underneath, where the back hair was tucked up, his eye caught some delicate filmy curls which softened the line between her throat and head and shone in the light like threads of gold. The shoulders sloped and the whole fulness of her figure tapered to a waist firmly held by a leather belt. A wholesome girl, he thought to himself, and good to look at, and with a certain rhythmic grace about her movements.
Her crowning glory, though, was her hair, which was parted over her forehead and caught in a simple twist behind. As the light fell upon it he observed again how full it was of varying tones like those found in the crinklings of a satin gown–yellow-gold one minute and dark brown the next. Oliver wondered how long this marvellous hair might be, and whether it would reach to the floor if it should burst its fastenings and whether Sir Peter Lely would have loved it too could he have seen this flood of gold bathing her brow and shoulders.
He found it delightful to work within a few feet of her, silent as they had to be, for much talking was discountenanced by the professor: often hours passed without any sound being heard in the room but that of the scraping of the chairs on the bare floor or the shifting of an easel.
Two or three times during the evening the old professor emerged from his room and overlooked his drawing, patiently pointing out the defects and as patiently correcting them. He was evidently impressed with Oliver’s progress, for he remarked to Miss Grant, in a low voice:
“The new student draws well–he is doing first- rate,” and passed on. Oliver caught the expression of satisfaction on the professor’s face and interpreted it as in some way applying to his work, although he did not catch the words.
The old man rarely had to criticise Margaret’s work. The suggestions made to her came oftener from the students than from the professor himself or any one of the visiting critics. In these criticisms, not only of her own work but of the others, everyone took part, each leaving his stool and helping in the discussion, when the work of the night was over. Fred’s more correct eye, for instance, would be invaluable to Jack Bedford, the ex-sign-painter, who was struggling with the profile of the Gladiator; or Margaret, who could detect at a glance the faintest departure from the lines of the original, would shorten a curve on Oliver’s drawing, or he in turn would advise her about the depth of a shadow or the spot for a high light.
As the nights went by and Oliver studied her the closer, the New England girl became all the more inexplicable to him. She was, he could not but admit, like no other woman he had ever met; certainly not in his present surroundings. She really seemed to belong to some fabled race–one of the Amazons, or Rhine maidens, or Norse queens for whom knights couched their lances. It was useless to compare her to any one of the girls about Kennedy Square, for she had nothing in common with any one of them. Was it because she was unhappy among her own people that she had thus exiled herself from her home, or had some love-affair blighted her life? Or could it be, as Fred had suggested, that she was willing to undergo all these discomforts and privations simply for love of her art? As this possible solution of the vexing problem became established in his mind, with the vision of Margaret herself before him, the blood mounted to his cheeks and an uncontrollable thrill of enthusiasm swept over him.
He could forgive her anything if this last motive had really controlled and shaped her life.
Had he seen the more closely and with prophetic vision, he would have discerned, in this Norse queen with the golden hair, the mother of a long line of daughters, who, in the days to follow, would hang their triumphant shields beside those of their brothers, winning equal recognition in salon and gallery and conferring equal honor on their country. But Oliver’s vision was no keener than that of anyone else about him. It was only the turn of Margaret’s head that caught the young student’s eye and the wealth of her brown-gold hair. With the future he had no concern.
What attracted him most of all in this woman who had violated all the known traditions of Kennedy Square, was a certain fearlessness of manner–an independence, a perfect ingenuousness, and a freedom from any desire to interest the students in herself. When she looked at any one of them, it was never from under drooping eyelids, as Sue would have done, nor with that coquettish, alluring glance to which he had always been accustomed. She looked straight at them with unflinching eyes that said, “I can trust you, and WILL.” He had never seen exactly that look except in the portrait of his uncle’s grandmother by Sir Peter Lely–the picture he had always loved. Strange to say, too, the eyes of the portrait were Margaret’s eyes, and so was the color of the hair.
No vexed problems entered Margaret’s head regarding the very engaging young gentleman who sat behind HER stool. He merely represented to her another student–that was all; the little band was small enough, and she was glad to see the new ones come. She noticed, it is true, certain unmistakable differences–a peculiar, soft cadence in his voice as the words slipped from his lips without their final g’s; a certain deference to herself–standing until she regained her seat, an attention which she attributed at first to embarrassment over his new surroundings and to his desire to please. She noticed, too, a certain grace in his movements–a grace that attracted her, especially in the way with which he used his hands, and in the way in which he threw his head up when he laughed; but even these differences ceased to interest her after the first night of their meeting.
But it did not occur to her that he came from any different stock than the others about her, or that his blood might or might not be a shade bluer than her own. What had really impressed her more than anything else–and this only flashed into her mind while she was looking in the glass one night at her own– were his big white teeth, white as grains of corn, and the cleanliness of his hands and nails. She liked these things about him. Some of the fingers that rested on her drawing-board were often more like clothes-pins than fingers, and shocked her not a little; some, too, were stained with acids, and one or more with printer’s ink that no soap could remove.
Before the evening was over Oliver became one of the class-room appointments–a young man who sat one stool behind her and was doing fairly well with his first attempt, and who would some day be able to make a creditable drawing if he had patience and application.
At the beginning of the second week a new student appeared–or rather an old one, who had been laid up at home with a cold. When Oliver arrived he found him in Margaret’s seat, his easel standing where hers had been. He had a full-length drawing of the Milo–evidently the work of days–nearly finished on his board. Oliver was himself a little ahead of time–ahead of either Margaret or Fred, and had noticed the new-comer when he entered, the room being nearly empty. Jack Bedford was already at work.
“Horn,” Jack cried, and beckoned to Oliver– “see the beggar in Miss Grant’s seat. Won’t there be a jolly row when she comes in?”
Margaret entered a moment later, her portfolio under her arm, and stood taking in the situation. Then she walked straight to her former seat, and said, in a firm but kindly tone:
“This is my place, sir. I’ve been at work here for a week. You see my drawing is nearly done.”
The young man looked up. He toiled all day in a lithographer’s shop, and these precious nights in the loft were his only glimpses of happiness. He sat without his coat, his shirt-sleeves liberally smeared with the color-stains of his trade.
“Well, it’s my place, too. I sat here a week before I was taken sick,” he said, in a slightly indignant tone, looking into Margaret’s face in astonishment.
“But if you did,” continued Margaret, “you see I am nearly through. I can’t take another seat, for I’ll lose the angle. I can finish in an hour if you will please give me this place to-night. You can work just as well by sitting a few feet farther along.”
The lithographer, without replying, turned from her impatiently, bent over his easel, picked up a fresh bit of charcoal and corrected a line on the Milo’s shoulder. So far as he was concerned the argument was closed.
Margaret stood patiently. She thought at first he was merely adding a last touch to his drawing before granting her request.
“Will you let me have the seat?” she asked.
“No,” he blurted out. He was still bending over his drawing, his eyes fixed on the work. He did not even look up. “I’m going to stay here until I finish. You know the rules as well as I do. I wouldn’t take your seat–what do you want to take mine for?” There was no animosity in his voice. He spoke as if announcing a fact.
The words had hardly left his lips when there came the sound of a chair being quickly pushed back, and Oliver stood beside Margaret. His eyes were flashing; his right shirt-cuff was rolled back, the bit of charcoal still between his fingers. Every muscle of his body was tense with anger. Margaret’s quick instinct took in the situation at a glance. She saw Oliver’s wrath and she knew its cause.
“Don’t, Mr. Horn, please–please!” she cried, putting up her hand. “I’ll begin another drawing. I see now that I took his seat when he was away, although I didn’t know it.”
Oliver stepped past her. “Get up, sir,” he said, “and give Miss Grant her seat. What do you mean by speaking so to a lady?”
The apprentice–his name was Judson–raised his eyes quickly, took in Oliver’s tense, muscular figure standing over him, and said, with a contemptuous wave of the hand:
“Young feller–you go and cool off somewhere, or I’ll tell the professor. It’s none of your business. I know the rules and–“
He never finished the sentence–not that anybody heard. He was floundering on the floor, an overturned easel and drawing-board lying across his body; Oliver standing over him with his fists tightly clenched.
“I’ll teach you how to behave to a lady.” The words sounded as if they came from between closed teeth. “Here’s your chair, Miss Grant,” and with a slight bow he placed the chair before her and resumed his seat with as much composure as if he had been in his mother’s drawing-room in Kennedy Square.
Margaret was so astounded. that for a moment she could not speak. Then her voice came back to her. “I don’t want it,” she cried, in a half-frightened way, the tears starting in her eyes. “It was never mine–I told you so. Oh, what have you done?”
Never since the founding of the school had there been such a scene. The students jumped from their chairs and crowded about the group. The life class, which were at work in another room, startled by the uproar, swarmed out eager to know what had happened and why–and who–and what for. Old
Mother Mulligan, who had been posing for the class, with a cloak about her fat shoulders and a red handkerchief binding up her head, rushed over to Margaret, thinking she had been hurt in some way, until she saw the student on the floor, still panting and half-dazed from the effect of Oliver’s blow. Then she fell on her knees beside him.
At this instant Professor Cummings entered, and a sudden hush fell upon the room. Judson, with the help of Mother Mulligan’s arm, had picked himself up, and. would have made a rush at Oliver had not big sack Bedford stopped him.
“Who’s to blame for this?” asked the professor, looking from one to the other.
Oliver rose from his seat.
“This man insulted Miss Grant and I threw him out of her chair,” he answered quietly.
“Insulted you!” cried the professor, in surprise, and he turned to Margaret. “What did he say?”
“I never said a word to her,” whined Judson, straightening his collar. “I told her the seat was mine, and so it is. That wasn’t insulting her.”
“It’s all a mistake, professor–Mr. Horn did not understand,” protested Margaret. “It was his seat, not mine. He began his drawing first. I didn’t know it when I commenced mine. I told Mr. Horn so.”
“Why did you strike him?” asked the professor, and he turned and faced Oliver.
“Because he had no business to speak to her as he did. She is the only lady we have among us and every man in the class ought to remember it, and every man has since I’ve been here except this one.”
There was a slight murmur of applause. Judson’s early training had been neglected as far as his manners went, and he was not popular.
The professor looked searchingly into Oliver’s eyes and a flush of pride in the boy’s pluck tinged his pale cheeks. He had once thrown a fellow-student out of a window in Munich himself for a similar offence, and old as he was he had never forgotten it.
“You come from the South, Mr. Horn, I hear,” he said in a gentler voice, “and you are all a hot- tempered race, and often do foolish things. Judson meant no harm–he says so, and Miss Grant says so. Now you two shake hands and make up. We are trying to learn to draw here, not to batter each other’s heads.”
Oliver’s eyes roved from one to the other; he was too astonished to make further reply. He had only done what he knew every other man around Kennedy Square would have done under similar circumstances, and what any other woman would have thanked him for. Why was everybody here against him–even the girl herself! What sort of people were these who would stand by and see a woman insulted and make no defence or outcry? He could not have looked his father in the face again, nor Sue, nor anyone else in Kennedy Square, if he had failed to protect her.
For a moment he hesitated, his eyes searching each face. He had hoped that someone who had witnessed the outrage would come forward and uphold his act. When no voice broke the stillness he crossed the room and taking the lithographer’s hand, extended rather sullenly, answered, quietly: “If Miss Grant is satisfied, I am,” and peace was once more restored.
Margaret sharpened her charcoals and bent over her drawing. She was so agitated she could not trust herself to touch its surface. “If I am SATISFIED,” she kept repeating to herself. The words, somehow, seemed to carry a reproach with them. “Why shouldn’t I be satisfied.? I have no more rights in the room than the other students about me; that is, I thought I hadn’t until I heard what he said. How foolish for him to cause all this fuss about nothing, and make me so conspicuous.”
But even as she said the words to herself she remembered Oliver’s tense figure and the look of indignation on his face. She had never been accustomed to seeing men take up the cudgels for women. There had been no opportunity, perhaps, nor cause, but even if there had been, she could think of no one whom she had ever met who would have done as much for her just because she was a woman.
A little sob, which she could not have explained to herself, welled up to her throat. Much as she gloried in her own self-reliance, she suddenly and unexpectedly found herself exulting in a quality heretofore unknown to her–that quality which had compelled an almost total stranger to take her part. Then the man himself! How straight and strong and handsome he was as he stood looking at Judson, and then the uplifted arm, the quick spring, and, best of all, the calm, graceful way in which he had handed her the chair! She could not get the picture out of her mind. Last, she remembered with a keen sense of pleasure the chivalrous look in his face when he held out his hand to the man who a moment before had received its full weight about his throat.
She had not regained mastery of herself even when she leaned across her drawing-board, pretending to be absorbed in her work. The curves of the Milo seemed in some strange way to have melted into the semblance of the outlines of other visions sunk deep in her soul since the days of her childhood–visions which for years past had been covered over by the ice of a cold, hard puritanical training, that had prevented any bubbles of sentiment from ever rising to the surface of her heart. As remembrances of these visions rushed through her mind the half-draped woman, with the face of the Madonna and the soul of the Universal Mother shining through every line of her beautiful body, no longer stood before her. It was a knight in glittering armor now, with drawn sword and visor up, beneath which looked out the face of a beautiful youth aflame with the fire of a holy zeal. She caught the flash of the sun on his breastplate of silver, and the sweep of his blade, and heard his clarion voice sing out. And then again, as she closed her eyes, this calm, lifeless cast became a gallant, blue-eyed prince, who knelt beside her and kissed her finger-tips, his doffed plumes trailing at her feet.
When the band of students were leaving the rooms that night, Margaret called Oliver to her side, and extending her hand, said, with a direct simplicity that carried conviction in every tone of her voice and in which no trace of her former emotions were visible:
“I hope you’ll forgive me, Mr. Horn. I’m all alone here in this city and I have grown so accustomed to depending on myself that, perhaps, I failed to understand how you felt about it. I am very grateful to you. Good-night.”
She had turned away before he could do more than express his regret over the occurrence. He wanted to follow her; to render her some assistance; to comfort her in some way. It hurt him to see her go out alone into the night. He wished he might offer his arm, escort her home, make some atonement for the pain he had caused her. But there was a certain proud poise of the head and swift glance of the eye which held him back.