his head.
“Ten thousand Yankees will be here in the morning, Horn!” be gasped, out of breath with his run across the Square, holding one hand to his side as he spoke, and waving an open telegram in the other. “Stop! This is no time for fiddling. They’re not going round by water; they’re coming here by train. Read that,” and he held out the bit of paper.
The Colonel’s sudden entrance and the startling character of the news, had brought every man to his feet.
Richard laid down his violin, read the telegram quietly, and handed it back.
“Well, suppose they do come, Clayton?”
His voice was so sustained, and his manner so temperate, that a certain calming reassurance was felt.
“Suppose they DO come! They’ll burn the town, I tell you,” shouted the infuriated man, suddenly remembering his hat and handing it to Malachi. That’s what they’re coming for. We want no troops in our streets, and the Government ought to know it. It’s an outrage to send armed men here at this time!”
“You’re all wrong, Clayton,” answered Richard, without raising his voice. “You have always been wrong about this matter. There are two sides to this question. Virginia troops occupied Harper’s Ferry yesterday. If the authorities consider that more troops are needed to protect Washington, that’s their affair, not yours nor mine.”
“We’ll MAKE it our affair. What right has this damnable Government to march their troops through a free and sovereign State without its permission! Whom do they think this town belongs to, I want to know, that this Northern scum should foul it. Not a man shall set foot here if I can help it. I would rather–“
Richard turned to stay the torrent of invectives in which such words as “renegades,” “traitors,” “mud-sills,” were heard, but the Colonel, completely unmanned by the rage he was in, and seemingly unconscious of the presence of the ladies, waved him aside with his hand, and faced the row of frightened, expectant faces.
“Gentlemen, when you are through with this tom- foolery, I shall be glad if you will come to the club; any of you who have got guns had better look them up; they’ll be wanted before this is over. We’ll meet these dirty skinflints with cold lead and plenty of it.”
Oliver’s face flushed at the Colonel’s words, and he was about to speak, when his mother laid her hand on his arm. Visions of the kindly face of Professor Cummings, and the strong well-knit figure of Fred Stone, John Grant, Hank, Jonathan Gordon, and the others whom he loved came before his eyes.
Richard raised his hand in protest:
“You are mad, Clayton; you don’t know what you are doing. Stop these troops and our streets will run blood. I beg and beseech you to keep cool. Because South Carolina has lost her head, that is no reason why we should. This is not our fight! If my State called me to defend her against foreign invasion, old as I am I would be ready, and so should you. But the Government is part of ourselves, and should not be looked upon as an enemy. You are wrong, I tell you, Clayton.”
“Wrong or right, they’ll have to walk over my dead body if they attempt to cross the streets of this town. That’s my right as a citizen, and that I shall maintain. Gentlemen, I have called a meeting at the club at ten o’clock to-night. All of you able to carry a gun will do me the kindness to be present. I’d rather die right here in my tracks than let a lot of low-lived mud-sills who never entered a gentleman’s house in their lives come down here at the beck and call of this rail-splitter they’ve put in the White House and walk over us rough-shod! And you, Horn, a Virginian, defend it! By God, sir, it’s enough to make a man’s blood boil!”
The inventor’s eyes flashed. They blazed now as brightly as those of Clayton. Not even a life-long friend had the right to use such language in his presence, or in that of his guests. Richard’s figure grew tense with indignation. Confronting the now reckless man, he raised his hand and was about to order him out of the house when Oliver stepped quickly in front of his father.
“You are unjust, Colonel Clayton.” The words came slowly between the boy’s partly closed teeth. “You know nothing of these people. I have lived among them long enough not only to know but to love them. There are as many gentlemen North as South. If you would go among them as I have done, you would be man enough to admit it.”
The Colonel turned upon him with a snarl:
“And so you have become a dirty renegade, have you, and gone back on your blood and your State? That’s what comes of sending boys like you away from home!”
The guests stood amazed. The spectacle of the most courteous man of his time acting like a blackguard was more astounding than the news be had brought. Even Malachi, at the open door, trembled with fear.
As the words fell from his lips Mrs. Horn’s firm, clear voice, crying “Shame! Shame!” rang through the room. She had risen from her seat and was walking rapidly to where the Colonel was standing.
“Shame, I say, John Clayton! How dare you speak so? What has our young son ever done to you, that you should insult him in his father’s house! What madness has come over you?”
The horrified guests looked from one to the other. Every eye was fixed on the Colonel, shaking with rage.
For a brief instant he faced his hostess, started to speak, checked himself as if some better judgment prevailed, and with upraised hands flung himself from the room, shouting, as he went:
“Ten o’clock, gentlemen! Chesapeake Club! Every man with a gun!”
Richard, astounded at Clayton’s action and now thoroughly convinced of the danger of the situation and determined to do what he could to thwart the efforts of such men as the Colonel and his following, laid his violin in its case, turned to his frightened guests and with a few calming words and a promise to send each one of them word if any immediate danger existed, called Oliver and Nathan to him, and taking his cloak and hat from Malachi’s outstretched trembling hands started for the club.
Once outside it was easy to see that a feeling of intense and ominous excitement was in the air. Even on the sidewalk and on the street corners, men stood silent, huddled together, their eyes on the ground, the situation being too grave for spoken words.
On arriving they found its halls already filled with angry and excited men discussing the threatened invasion, many of whom met the young man with scowling looks, the Colonel having evidently informed them of Oliver’s protest.
A few of the members had brought their sporting guns. These had been handed to the gouty old porter, who, half-frightened out of his wits, had stacked them in a row against the wall of the outer hall. Billy Talbot arrived a few moments later carrying a heavy fowling-piece loaded for swan. He had been dining out when summoned and had hurriedly left the table, excusing himself on the ground that he had been “called to arms.” He had taken time, however, to stop at his own house, slip out of his English dress- suit and into a brown ducking outfit.
“We’ll shoot ’em on the run, damn ’em–like rabbits, sir,” he said to Cobb as he entered, the Vermonter being the only man likely to communicate with the invaders and so make known the warlike intentions of at least one citizen, and the utter hopelessness of any prolonged resistance. Waggles, who had followed close on his master’s heels, was too excited to sit down, but stood on three legs, his eye turned toward Talbot, as if wanting to pick up any game which Billy’s trusty fowling-piece might bring down.
A quiet, repressed smile passed, over Oliver’s face as he watched Waggles and his master; but he spoke no word to the Nimrod. He could not help thinking how Hank Pollard would handle the fashion-plate if he ever closed his great bony hands upon him.
Judge Bowman now joined the group, bowing to Richard rather coldly and planting himself squarely in front of Oliver.
“There’s only one side to this question, young man, for you,” he said. “Don’t be fooled by those fellow up in New York. I know them–known them for years. Look up there”–and he pointed to the portrait of Oliver’s ancestor above the mantel. “What do you think he would do if he were alive to-day! Stick to your own, my boy–stick to your own!”
General Mactavish now hurried in, drawing off his white gloves as he entered the room, followed by Tom Gunning, Carter Thorn, and Mowbray, an up- country man. The four had been dining together and had also left the table on receipt of the Colonel’s message. They evidently appreciated the gravity of the situation, for they stood just outside the excited group that filled the centre of the large room, listening eagerly to Richard’s clear tones pleading for moderation–“in a crisis which,” he urged, “required the greatest public restraint and self-control,” and which would surely “plunge the State into the most horrible of wars” if those about him listened to the counsels of such men as Clayton and Judge Bowman.
During the whole discussion Amos Cobb stood silent, leaning against the mantel-piece, his cold gray eyes fixed on the excited throng, his thin lips curling now and then. When the Defence Committee, in spite of Richard’s protest, had at last been formed, and its members formally instructed to meet the enemy outside the city and protest, first by voice and then, if necessary, by arms, against the unwarrantable invasion of the soil of their State, the Vermonter buttoned up his coat slowly, one button after another, fastened each one with a determined gesture, drew on his gloves, set his lips tight, singled out Oliver and Richard, shook their hands with the greatest warmth, and walked straight out of the club-house. Some time during the night he drove in a hack to Mr. Stiger’s house; roused the old cashier from his sleep; took him and the big walled-town-key down to the bank; unlocked the vault and dragged from it two wooden boxes filled with gold coin, his own property, and which the month before he had deposited there for safe-keeping. These, with Stiger’s assistance, he carried to the hack. Within the hour, the two boxes with their contents were locked up in bureau-drawer in his own house awaiting their immediate shipment to New York.
The next morning Malachi’s wizened face was thrust inside Oliver’s bedroom door. He was shaking with terror, his eyes almost starting from his head.
“Marse Ollie, Marse Ollie, git up quick as you kin! De Yankees is come; de town is black wid ’em!”
Oliver sprang from his bed and stood half-dazed looking into Malachi’s eyes.
“How do you know? Who told you?”
“I done seen ’em. Been up since daylight. Dey got guns wid ’em. Fo’ Gawd dis is tur-ble!” The old man’s voice trembled–he could hardly articulate.
Oliver hurried into his clothes; stepped noiselessly downstairs so as not to wake his father and mother, and, closing the front door softly behind him, stood for a moment on the top step. Should he forget the insults of the night before and go straight to Colonel Clayton, and try to dissuade him from his purpose, or should he find the regiment and warn them of their danger?
A vague sense of personal responsibility for whatever the day might bring forth took possession of him –as though the turning-point in his life had come, without his altogether realizing it. These men from the North were coming to his own town, where he had been born and brought up, and where they should be hospitably received. If Clayton had his way they would be met with clenched hands and perhaps with blows. That these invaders were armed, and that each man carried forty rounds of ammunition and was perfectly able to take care of himself, did not impress him. He only remembered that they were of the same blood as the men who had befriended him, and that they were in great personal danger.
The angry shouts of a crowd of men and boys approaching the Square from a side street, now attracted his attention. They rushed past Oliver without noticing him, and, hurrying on through the gate, crossed the park, in the direction of the railroad station and the docks. One of the mob, lacking a club, stopped long enough to wrench a paling from the rickety fence enclosing the Square, trampling the pretty crocuses and the yellow tulips under foot. Each new arrival, seeing the gap, followed the first man’s example, throwing the branches and tendrils to the ground as they worked, until the whole panel was wrecked and the vines were torn from their roots. As they swept by the Clayton house, half a dozen men, led by the Colonel, ran down the steps, and joined the throng.
Oliver, seeing now that all his efforts for peace would be hopeless, ran through the Square close behind the shouting mob, dashed down a side street parallel to that through which the cars carrying the troops were to pass on their way to Washington, turned into an alley, and found himself on the waterfront, opposite one of the dock slips.
These slips were crowded with vessels, their bowsprits, like huge bayonets, thrust out over the, car- tracks, as if to protect the cellars of the opposite warehouses, used by the ship-chandlers for the storage of coarse merchandise, and always left open during the day. The narrow strip of dock-front, between the car-tracks and the water-line–an unpaved strip of foot-trodden earth and rotting planks, on which lay enormous ship-anchors, anchor-chains in coils, piles of squared timber, and other maritime properties, stored here for years–was now a seething mass of people completely hiding the things on which they stood.
Oliver mounted a pile of barrels in front of one of these ship-chandler cellars, and, holding to an awning-post, looked off over the heads of the surging crowd and in the direction of the railroad station at the end of the long street. From his position on the top barrel he could see the white steam of the locomotives rising above the buildings and the line of cars. He could see, too, a yard engine backing and puffing, as if making up a train.
Suddenly, without apparent cause, there rose above the murmurs of the street an ominous sound, like that of a fierce wind soughing through a forest of pines. All eyes were directed down the long street upon a line of cars that had been shunted on the street-track; about these moved a group of men in blue uniforms, the sun flashing on their bayonets and the brass shields of their belts.
Oliver, stirred by the sound, climbed to the top of the awning-post for a better view and clung to the cross-piece. Every man who could gain an inch of vantage, roused to an extra effort by the distinct roar, took equal advantage of his fellows. Sailors sprang farther into the rigging or crawled out to the end of the bowsprits; the windows of the warehouses were thrown up, the clerks and employees standing on the sills, balancing themselves by the shutters; even the skylights were burst open, men and boys crawling out edging their way along the ridge-poles of the roofs or holding to the chimneys. Every inch of standing- room was black with spectators.
The distant roar died away in fitful gusts as suddenly as it had arisen, and a silence even more terrifying fell upon the throng as a body of police poured out of a side street and marched in a compact body toward the cars.
Then came long strings of horses, eight or ten in tandem. These were backed down and hooked to the cars.
The flash of bayonets was now cut off as the troops crowded into the cars; the body of police wheeled and took their places ahead of the horses; the tandems straightened out and the leaders lunged forward under the lash. The advance through the town had begun.
All this time the mob about Oliver stood with hands clenched, jaws tight shut, great lumps in their throats. Their eyes were the eyes of hungry beasts watching an approaching prey.
As the distant rumbling of the cars, drawn by teams of straining horses, sounded the nearer, a bare- headed man, with white hair and mustache and black garments that distinguished him from the mob about him, and whom Oliver instantly recognized as Colonel Clayton, mounted a mass of squared timber lining the track, ran the length of the pile, climbed to the topmost stick, and shouted, in a voice which reverberated throughout the street:
“Block the tracks!”
A torrent of oaths broke loose as the words left his lips, and a rush was made for the pile of timber. Men struggled and fought like demons for the end of the great sticks, carrying them by main strength, crossing them over the rails, heaping them one on the other like a pile of huge jack-straws, a dozen men to a length, the mobs on the house-tops and in the windows cheering like mad. The ends of the heavy chains resting on the strip of dirt were now caught up and hauled along the cobbles to be intertwined with the squared timber; anchors weighing tons were pried up and dragged across the tracks by lines of men urged on by gray-haired old merchants in Quaker-cut dress coats, many of them bare-headed, who had yielded to the sudden unaccountable delirium that had seized upon everyone. Colonel Clayton, Carter Thom, and Mowbray could be seen
working side by side with stevedores from the docks and the rabble from the shipyards. John Camblin, a millionnaire and nearly eighty years of age, head of the largest East India house on the wharves, his hat and wig gone, his coat split from the collar to the tails, was tugging at an anchor ten men could not have moved. Staid citizens, men who had not used an oath for years, stood on the sidewalks swearing like street- toughs; others looked out from their office-windows, the tears streaming down their cheeks. A woman with a coarse shawl about her shoulders, her hair hanging loose, a broom in one hand, was haranguing the mob from the top of a tobacco hogshead, her curses filling the air.
Oliver held to his seat on the cross-piece of the awning, his teeth set, his eye fixed on the rapidly advancing cars, his mind wavering between two opinions–loyalty to his home, now invaded by troops whose bayonets might be turned upon his own people, and loyalty to the friends he loved–and to the woman who loved him!
The shouting now became a continuous roar. The front line of policemen, as they neared the obstructions, swung their clubs right and left, beating back the crowd. Then the rumbling cars, drawn by the horses, came to a halt. The barricades must be reckoned with.
Again there came the flashing of steel and the intermingling of blue and white uniforms. The troops were leaving the cars and were forming in line to pass the barricades; the officers marching in front, the compact mass following elbow to elbow, their eyes straight before them, their muskets flat against their shoulders.
The approaching column now deployed sharply, wheeled to the right of the obstruction, and became once more a solid mass, leaving the barricades behind them, the Chief of Police at the head of the line forcing the mob back to the curbstone, laying about him with his club, thumping heads and cracking wrists as he cleared the way.
The colonel of the regiment, his fatigue cap pulled over his eyes, sword in hand, shoulders erect, cape thrown back, was now abreast of the awning to which Oliver clung. Now and then he would glance furtively at the house-tops, as if expecting a missile.
The mob looked on sullenly, awed into submission by the gleaming bayonets. But for the shouts of the police, beating back the crowd, and the muttered curses, one would have thought a parade was in progress.
The first company had now passed–pale, haggard- looking men, their lips twitching, showing little flecks of dried saliva caked in the corners of their mouths, their hands tight about the butts of their muskets.
Oliver looked on with beating heart. The dull, monotonous tramp of their feet strangely affected him.
As the second line of bayonets came abreast of the awning-post, a blacksmith in a red shirt and leather apron, his arms bared to the elbow, sprang from the packed sidewalk into the open space between the troops and the gutter, lifted a paving stone high above his head and hurled it, with all his might, straight against the soldier nearest him. The man reeled, clutched at the comrade next him, and sank to the ground. Then, quick as an echo, a puff of white smoke burst out down the line of troops, and a sharp, ringing report split the air. The first shot of defence had been fired.
The whole column swayed as if breasting a gale.
Another and an answering shot now rang through the street. This came from a window filled with men gesticulating wildly. Instantly the troop. wheeled, raised their muskets, and a line of fire and smoke belched forth.
A terrible fear, that paled men’s faces, followed by a moment of ominous silence, seized upon the mob, and then a wild roar burst out from thousands of human throats. The rectangular body of soldiers and the ragged-edged mob merged into a common mass. Men wrenched the guns from the soldiers and beat them down with the butt ends of the muskets. Frenzied policemen hurled themselves into the midst of the disorganized militia, knocking up the ends of their muskets, begging the men to hold their fire. The air was thick with missiles; bricks from the house-tops; sticks of wood and coal from the fireplaces of the offices; iron bolts, castings, anything the crazed mob could find with which to kill their fellow-men. The roar was deafening, drowning the orders of the officers.
Oliver clung to his post, not knowing whether to drop into the seething mass or to run the risk of being shot where he was. Suddenly his eye singled out a soldier who stood at bay below him, swinging his musket, widening the circle about him with every blow. The soldier’s movements were hampered by his heavy overcoat and army blanket slung across his shoulder. His face and neck were covered with blood and dirt, disfiguring him beyond recognition.
At the same instant Oliver became conscious that a man in blue overalls was creeping up on the soldier’s rear to brain him with a cart-rung that he held in his hand.
A mist swam before the boy’s eyes, and a great lump rose in his throat. The cowardice of the attack incensed him; some of the hot blood of the old ancestor that had crossed the flood at Trenton flamed up in his face. With the quickness of a cat he dropped to the sidewalk, darted forward, struck the coward full in the face with his clenched fist, tumbling him to the ground, wrenched the rung from his hands, and, jumping in front of the now almost overpowered soldier, swung the heavy stick about him like a flail, clearing the space before him.
The assaulting crowd wavered, fell back, and then, maddened at Oliver’s defence of the invader, with a wild yell of triumph, swept the two young men off their feet, throwing them bodily down the steps of a ship-chandler’s shop, the soldier knocked senseless by a blow from a brick which had struck him full in the chest.
Oliver lay still for a moment, raised his head cautiously and, putting forth all his strength, twisted his arms around the stricken man and rolled with him into the cellar. Then, springing to his feet, he slammed the door behind them and slipped in the bolt, before the mob could guess his meaning.
Listening at the crack of the door for a moment and finding they were not pursued, he stood over the limp body, lifted it in his arms, laid it on a pile of sails, and ran to the rear of the cellar for a bucket standing under a grimy window, scarcely visible in the gloom, now that the door was shut.
Under the touch of the cold water, the soldier slowly opened his eyes, straining them toward Oliver, as if in pain.
The two men looked, intently at each other; the soldier passing his hand across his forehead as if trying to clear his brain. Then lifting himself up on his elbow he gasped:
“Horn! Horn! My God!”
Oliver’s heart stopped beating.
“Who are you?”
“John Grant.”
Oliver saw only Margaret’s face!
As though he were working for the woman he loved–doing what she would have done–he knelt beside the wounded man, wiped the blood and grime from his cheeks with his own handkerchief, loosening his coat, rubbing his hands, murmuring “Old fellow,” “Dear John “: there was no time for other interchange of speech.
When at last Grant was on his feet the two men barricaded the doors more strongly, rolling heavy barrels against them, the sounds from the street seeming to indicate that an attack might be made upon them. But the mob had swept on and forgotten them, as mobs often do, while the fugitives waited, hardly daring to speak except in detached whispers, lest some one of the inmates of the warehouse overhead might hear them.
Toward noon a low tap was heard at the window, which was level with an alley in the rear, and a man’s hand was thrust through a broken pane. Oliver pressed Grant’s arm, laid his finger on his lips, caught up a heavy hammer lying on an oil-barrel, crept noiselessly along the wall toward the sound, and stopped to listen. Then he heard his name called in a hoarse whisper.
“Marse Ollie! Marse Ollie! Is you in here?”
“Who is it?” Oliver called back, crouching beneath the window, his fingers tight around the handle of the hammer.
“It’s me, Marse Ollie.”
“You! Malachi!”
“Yassir, I’se been a-followin’ ye all de mawnin’; I see ’em tryin’ to kill ye an’ I tried to git to ye. I kin git through–yer needn’t help me,” and he squeezed himself under the raised sash. “Malachi like de snake–crawl through anywheres. An’ ye ain’t hurted?” he asked when he was inside. “De bressed Lord, ain’t dat good! I been a-waitin’ outside; I was feared dey’d see me if I tried de door.”
“Where are the soldiers?”
“Gone. Ain’t nobody outside at all.Mos’ to de railroad by dis time, dey tells me. An’ dere ain’t nary soul ’bout dis place–all run away. Come ‘long wid me, son–I ain’t gwine ter leabe ye a minute. Marse Richard’ll be waitin’. Come ‘long home, son. I been a-followin’ ye all de mawnin’.” The tears were in his eyes now. “An’ ye ain’t hurted,” and he felt him all over with trembling. hands.
John raised himself above the oil-barrels. He had heard the strange talk and was anxiously watching the approaching figures.
“It’s all right, Grant–it’s our Malachi,” Oliver called out in his natural voice, now that there was no danger of being overheard.
The old man stopped and lifted both hands above his head.
“Gor’-a-mighty! an’ he ain’t dead?” His eyes had now become accustomed to the gloom.
“No; and just think, Mally, he is my own friend. Grant, this is our Malachi whom I told you about.”
Grant stepped over the barrel and held out his hand to the old negro. There are no class distinctions where life and death are concerned.
“Glad to see you. Pretty close shave, but I guess I’m all right. They’d have done for me but for your master.”
A council of war was now held. The uniform would be fatal if Grant were seen in it on the street. Malachi must crawl into the alley again, go over to Oliver’s house, and return at dusk with one of Oliver’s suits of clothes; the uniform and the blood- stained shirt could then be hidden in the cellar, and at dark, should the street still be deserted, the three would put on a bold front and walk out of the front door of the main warehouse over their heads. Once safe in the Horn house, they could perfect plans for Grant’s rejoining his regiment.
Their immediate safety provided for, and Malachi gone, Oliver could wait no longer to ask about Margaret. He had been turning over in his mind how he had best broach the subject, when her brother solved the difficulty by saying:
“Father was the first man in Brookfleld to indorse the President’s call for troops. He’d have come himself, old as he is, if I had not joined the regiment. He didn’t like you, Horn; I always told him he was wrong. He’ll never forgive himself now when he hears what you have done for me,” and he laid his hand affectionately on Oliver’s shoulder as he spoke. “I liked you as soon as I saw you, and so did mother, and so does Madge, but father was always wrong about you. We told him so, again and again, and Madge said that father would see some day that you got your politeness from the Cavaliers and we got our plain speaking from the Puritans. The old gentleman was pretty mad about her saying so, I tell you, but she stuck to it. Madge is a dear girl, Horn. A fellow always knows just where to find Madge; no nonsense about her. She’s grown handsome, too– handsomer than ever. There’s a new look in her face, somehow, lately. I tell her she’s met somebody in New York she likes, but she won’t acknowledge it.”
Oliver drank in every word, drawing out the brother with skilful questions and little exclamatory remarks that filled Grant with enthusiasm and induced him to talk on. They were young men again now–brothers once more, as they had been that first afternoon in the library at Brookfield. In the joy of hearing from her he entirely forgot his surroundings, and the dangers that still beset them both; a joy intensified because it was the first and only time he had heard someone who knew her talk to him of the woman he loved. This went on until night fell and Malachi again crawled in through the same low window and helped John into Oliver’s clothes.
When all was ready the main door of the warehouse above was opened carefully and the three men walked out–Malachi ahead, John and Oliver following. The moonlit street was deserted; only the barricades of timber and the litter of stones and bricks marked the events of the morning. Dodging into a side alley and keeping on its shadow side they made their way toward Oliver’s home.
When the three reached the Square, the white light of the moon lay full on the bleached columns of the Clayton house. Outside on the porch, resting against the wall, stood a row of long-barrelled guns glinting in the moon’s rays. Through the open doorway could be seen the glow of the hall lantern, the hall itself crowded with men. The Horn house was dark, except for a light in Mrs. Horn’s bedroom. The old servant’s visit had calmed their fears, and they had only to wait now until Oliver’s return.
Malachi stationed Oliver and John Grant in the shadow of the big sycamore that overhung the house, mounted the marble steps and knocked twice. Aunt Hannah opened the door. She seemed to be expecting someone, for the knock was instantly followed by the turning of the knob.
Malachi spoke a few words in an undertone to Hannah, and stepped back to where the two young men were standing.
“You go in, Marse Oliver. Leabe de gemman here wid me under de tree. Everybody’s got dere eye wide open now–can’t fool Malachi–I knows de signs.
Oliver walked leisurely to the door, closed it softly behind him, and ran upstairs into his mother’s arms.
Malachi whispered to Grant, and the two disappeared in the shadows. At the same moment a bolt shot back in a gate in the rear of the yard–a gate rarely unbolted. Old Hannah stood behind it shading a candle with her hand. Malachi led the way across the yard, through the green door of Richard’s shop, mounted the work-bench, felt carefully along the edge of a trap-door in the ceiling, unhooked a latch, pushed it up with his two hands, the dust sifting down in showers on his head, and disclosed a large, empty loft, once used by the slaves as a sleeping-room, and which had not been opened for years.
Assisted by the negro’s arms, Grant climbed to the floor above, where a dim skylight gave him light and air. A cup of hot coffee was then handed up and the door of the trap carefully fastened, Malachi rumpling the shavings on the work-bench to conceal the dust, No trace of the hiding-place of the fugitive was visible.
When Malachi again reached the front hall, it was in response to someone who was hammering at the door as if to break it down. The old man peered cautiously out through the small panes of glass. The sidewalk was crowded with men led by Colonel Clayton, most of them carrying guns. They had marched over from Clayton’s house. Among them was a posse of detectives from the Police Department.
In answer to their summons Richard had thrown up the window of his bedroom and was talking to Clayton, whose voice Malachi recognized above the murmurs and threats of the small mob.
“Come down, Horn. Oliver has proved traitor, just as I knew he would. He’s been hiding one of these damned Yankees all day. We want that man, I tell you, dead or alive, and we are going to have him.”
When the door was flung wide Clayton confronted, not Richard, but Oliver.
“Where’s that Yankee?” cried Clayton. He had not expected to see Oliver. “We are in no mood for nonsense–where have you hidden him?”
Malachi stepped forward before Oliver could answer.
“Marse Oliver ain’t hid him. If you want him go hunt him!”
“You speak like that to me, you black scoundrel,” burst out the Colonel, and he raised his arm as if to strike him.
“Yes–me! Ain’t nobody gwine ter tech Marse Oliver while I lib. I’s as free as you is, Marse Clayton. Ain’t no man can lay a han’ on me!”
The Colonel wheeled angrily and gave an order to one of the detectives in a low voice. Oliver stood irresolute. He knew nothing of Grant’s whereabouts.
The detective moved from the Colonel’s side and pushed his way closer to where Oliver stood.
“There’s no use your denying it, young feller; we’ve heard the whole story from one of our men who saw you jump in front of him. You bring him out or we’ll go through the place from cellar to garret.”
Oliver gazed straight at the speaker and still held his peace. He was wondering where Grant had hidden himself and what John’s chances were if the crowd searched the house. Malachi’s outburst had left him in the dark.
Mrs. Horn and Richard, who had followed Oliver and were standing half way down the stairs; looked on in astonishment. Would Clayton dare to break all the rules of good manners, and search the house, she whispered to Richard.
Another of the detectives now stepped forward– a dark, ugly-looking man, with the face of a bulldog.
“Look here! I’ll settle this. You and two men crossed the Square ten minutes ago. This nigger one of ’em; where’s the other?”
Malachi turned and smiled significantly at Oliver –a smile he knew. It was the smile which the old man’s face always wore whenever some tortuous lie of the darky’s own concoction had helped his young master out of one of his scrapes.
“I am not here to answer your questions,” Oliver replied quietly, a feeling of relief in his heart.
The officer turned quickly and said with an oath to one of the detectives, “Send one man to the alley in the rear, and place another at this door. I’ll search the yard and the house. Let no one of the family leave this hall. If that nigger moves put the irons on him.”
The men outside made a circle about the house, some of them moving up the alley to watch the rear. Clayton leaned against the jamb of the door. He addressed no word to Richard or Mrs. Horn, nor did be look their way. Oliver stood with folded arms under the eight-sided hall-lantern which an officer had lighted. Now and then he spoke in restrained tones to his mother, who had taken her seat on the stairs, Richard standing beside her. It was not the fate of the soldier that interested her–it was the horror of the search. Richard had not spoken except to direct Malachi to obey the officer’s orders. The horror of the search did not affect the inventor–that only violated the sanctity of the home: it was the brute force behind it which appalled him–that might annihilate the Republic.
“It is the beginning of the end,” he said to himself.
The tread of heavy feet was again heard coming through the hall. Malachi turned quickly and a subdued smile lighted his wrinkled face.
The two detectives were alone!
“He is not there, Colonel Clayton,” said the man with the bull-dog face, slipping his pistol into his hip pocket. “We went through the yard and the out- houses like a fine tooth-comb and made a clean sweep of the cellar. He may have gotten over the wall, but I don’t think it. There’s a lot of broken bottles on top. I’ll try the bedrooms now.”
As the words fell from his lips Mrs. Horn rose from her seat on the stairs, straight as a soldier on guard. The light from the lantern illumined her gray hair and threw into strong relief her upraised hand–the first of millions raised in protest against the invasion of the homes of the South. The detective saw the movement and a grim smile came into his face.
“Unless they’ll bring him out,” he added, slowly. “This young feller knows where he is. Make him tell.”
Colonel Clayton turned to Oliver. “Is he upstairs, Oliver?”
“No.”
“You give me your word of honor. Oliver, that he is not upstairs?”
“I do.”
“Of course he’d say that. Here, I’ll know pretty d– quick,” muttered the detective moving toward the stairway.
The Colonel stepped forward and barred his way with his arm.
“Stay where you are! You don’t know these people. If Oliver says he is not upstairs I believe him. These Horns don’t know how to lie. Your information is wrong. The man never entered the house. You must look for the Yankee somewhere else.” Waiting until the detectives had left the hall, he raised his hat, and with some show of feeling said:
“I am sorry, Sallie, that we had to upset you so. When you and Richard see this matter in its true light you’ll think as I do. If these scoundrels are to be permitted to come here and burn our homes we want to know which side our friends are on.”
“You are the judge of your own conduct, John Clayton,” she answered, calmly. “This night’s work will follow you all your life. Malachi, show Colonel Clayton to the door and close it behind him.”
Three nights later Malachi admitted a man he had never seen before. He was short and thick-set and had a grim, firmly set jaw. Under the lapel of his coat was a gold shield. He asked for Mr. Horn, who had lately been living in New York. He would not come inside the drawing-room, but sat in the hall on the hair-cloth sofa, his knees apart, his cap in his hand.
“I’m the Chief of Police,” he said to Oliver, without rising from his seat, “and I come because Mr. Cobb sent me. That’s between ourselves, remember. You’ll have to get out of here at once. They’ve got a yarn started that you’re a government detective sent down here to spot rebel sympathizers and they’ll make it warm for you. I’ve looked into it and I know it ain’t so, but this town’s in no shape to listen to anything. Besides, a while ago one of my men found your friend’s uniform in the cellar where you hid it behind the barrels and the handkerchief all blood, with your name on it; and they’ve got you dead to rights. That’ll all be out in the morning papers and make it worse for you. You needn’t worry about HIM. He’s all right. Mr. Cobb found him at daylight this morning just where your nigger left him and drove him over to the junction. He’s with his regiment by this time. Get your things together quick as you can. I’ll wait for you and see you safe aboard the owl train.”
Within the hour Oliver had turned his back on his home and all that he loved.
CHAPTER XIX
THE SETTLING OF THE SHADOW
The bruised crocuses never again lifted their heads in Kennedy Square.
With the settling of the shadow–a shadow black with hate–men forgot the perfume of flowers, the rest and cool of shady nooks, the kindling touch of warm hands, and stood apart with eyes askance; women shuddered and grew pale, and sad-faced children peered out through closed blinds.
Within the Square itself, along paths that had once echoed to the tread of slippered feet, armed sentries paced, their sharp challenges breaking the stillness of the night. Outside its wrecked fences strange men in stranger uniforms strode in and out of the joyless houses; tired pickets stacked their arias on the unswept piazzas, and panting horses nibbled the bark from the withered trees; rank weeds choked the gardens; dishevelled vines clung to the porches, and doors that had always swung wide to the gentle tap of loving fingers were opened timidly to the blow of the sword-hilt.
Kennedy Square became a tradition.
Some civilizations die slowly. This one was shattered in a day by a paving-stone in the hands of a thug.
CHAPTER XX
THE STONE MUGS
Frederick Stone, N.A., member of the Stone Mugs, late war correspondent and special artist on the spot, paused before the cheerful blaze of his studio fire, shaking the wet snow from his feet. He had tramped across Washington Square in drifts that were over his shoe-tops, mounted the three flights of steps to his cosey rooms, and was at the moment expressing his views on the weather, in terms more forcible than polite, to our very old friend, Jack Bedford, the famous marine-painter. Bedford, on hearing the sound of Fred’s footsteps, had strolled in from his own studio, in the same building, and had thrown himself into a big arm-chair, where he was sitting hunched up, his knees almost touching his chin, his round head covered by a skull-cap that showed above the chair-back.
“Nice weather for ducks, Jack, isn’t it? Can’t see how anybody can get here to-night,” cried Fred, striking the mantel with his wet cap, and scattering the rain-drops over the hearth. “Just passed a Broadway stage stuck in a hole as I came by the New York Hotel. Been there an hour, they told me.”
“Shouldn’t wonder. Whose night is it, Fred?” asked Jack, stretching out one leg in the direction of the cheery blaze.
“Horn’s.”
“What’s he going to do?”
“Give it up. Ask me an easy one. Said he wanted a thirty by forty. There it is on the easel,” and Fred moved a chair out of his way, hung his wet coat and hat on a peg behind the door, and started to clear up a tangle of artillery harness that littered the floor.
“Thirty by forty, eh,” grunted Jack, from the depths of his chair. “Thunder and Mars! Is the beggar going to paint a panorama? Thought that canvas was for a new cavalry charge of yours!” He had lowered the other leg now, making a double- barrelled gun of the pair.
“No; it’s Horn’s. He’s going to paint one of the fellows to-night.”
“In costume?” Jack’s head was now so low in the chair that his eyes could draw a bead along his legs to the fire.
“Yes, as an old Burgomaster, or something with a ruff,” and he kicked an army blanket into a corner as he spoke. “There’s the ruff hanging on that pair of foils, Waller sent it over.” Then his merry eyes fell on Jack’s sprawled-out figure, his feet almost in the grate–a favorite attitude of his neighbor’s when tired out with the day’s work, comfortable perhaps, but especially objectionable at the moment.
“Here–get up, you old stick-in-the-mud. Don’t sit there, doubled up like a government mule,” he laughed. (The army lingo still showed itself once in a while in Fred’s speech.) “Help me get this room ready or I’ll whale you with this,” and he waved one end of a trace over his head. “If the fellows are coming they’ll be here in half an hour. Shove back that easel and bring in that beer–it’s outside the door in a box. I’ll get out the tobacco and pipes.”
Jack stretched both arms above his head, emitted a yawn that could be heard in his room below, and sprang to his feet.
Fred, by this time, had taken down from a closet a tin box of crackers, unwrapped a yellow cheese, and was trimming its raw edges with a palette knife. Then they both moved out a big table from the inner room to the larger one, and, while Jack placed the eatables on its bare top, Fred mounted a chair, and began lighting a circle of gas-jets that hung from the ceiling of the skylight. The war-painter was host to- night, and the task of arranging the rooms for the comfort of his fellow-members consequently devolved upon him.
The refreshments having been made ready, Fred roamed about the rooms straightening the pictures on the walls–an old fad of his when guests of any kind were expected–punching the cushions and Turkish saddle-bags into plumpness, that he had picked up in a flying trip abroad the year the war was over, and stringing them along the divan ready for the backs and legs of the club-members. Next he stripped the piano of a collection of camp sketches that had littered it up for a week, dumped the pile into a closet, and, with a sudden wrench of his arms, whirled the instrument itself close against the wall. Then some fire-arms, saddles, and artillery trappings were hidden away in dark corners, and a lay figure, clothed in fatigue cap and blue overcoat, and which had done duty as “a picket” during the day, was wheeled around with its face to the wall, where it stood guard over Fred’s famous picture ofb”The Last Gun at Appomattox.” His final touches were bestowed on the grate-fire and the coal-scuttle, both of which were replenished from a big pine box in the hall.
Jack Bedford, meanwhile, had busied himself rolling another table–a long one–under the circle of gas-jets so that the men could see to work the better, and loading it with palettes, china tiles, canvases, etc., to be used by the members of the club in their work of the evening. Last of all and not by any means the least important, Jack, by the aid of a chair, gathered together, on the top shelf of the closet, the unique collection of stone beer-mugs from which the club took its name. These he handed down one by one to Fred, who arranged them in a row on one end of the long table. The mugs were to hold the contents of sundry bottles of beer, now safely stowed away in the lidless, pigeon-holed box, standing in the hall, which Fred unloaded later, placing the bottles on the window-sill outside to cool.
Before they had ended their preparations, the stamping of feet on the stair was heard, the door was thrown back, and the several members of the club began to arrive.
The great Waller came first, brushing the snow from his shaggy coat, looking like a great bear, growling as he rolled in, as was his wont. Close behind him, puffing with the run upstairs, and half-hidden behind Waller’s broad shoulders, trotted Simmons, the musician.
Not the tousled, ill-clad Waller, the “Walrus” of former days–no one dared to call the painter by any such names since his picture took the Medaille d’Honneur at Paris–and not the slender, smooth- faced Simmons, who in the old days was content to take his chances of filling a vacancy at Wallack’s or the Winter Garden, when some one of the regular orchestra was under the weather; but a sleek, prosperous, rotund Waller, with a bit of red in his button- hole, a wide expanse of shirt-front, and a waxed mustache; and a thoughtful, slightly bald, and well- dressed Simmons, with gold eyeglasses, and his hair worn long in his neck as befitted the leader of an orchestra whose concerts crowded the Academy to the doors.
These two arrivals nodded to Jack and Fred, Waller cursing the weather as he hung up his coat on a peg behind the door (unnecessary formalities of every kind, including the shaking of hands and asking after each other’s health, were dispensed with by men who saw each other several times a day at their different haunts), and Simmons, without stopping to take off his wet coat, flung his hat on the divan, crossed the room, and seated himself at the piano.
“Went this way, Waller, didn’t it?” said Simmons striking the keys, continuing the conversation the two had evidently had on the stairs. “Never heard Parepa in better voice. She filled every corner of the house. Crug told me he was up in Africa in the back row and never missed a note. Do you remember this?” and the musician’s fingers again slipped over the keys, and one of the great singer’s trills rippled through the room, to which Waller nodded approvingly, mopping his wet face with his handkerchief as he listened.
The opening and shutting of the door, the stamping of feet, the general imprecations hurled at the climate, and the scattering of wet snow and rain-drops about the entrance became constant. Crug bustled in–a short, thick-set, rosy-cheeked young fellow in a black mackintosh and a white silk muffler–a ‘cellist of repute, who had spent two years at the conservatoire, and who had once played for Eugenie at one of her musicales at the Tuileries, a fact he never let you forget. And close behind him came Watson, the landscape-painter, who had had two pictures accepted by the Royal Academy–one of them hung on the line, a great honor for an American; and after them blue-eyed, round-faced Munson, a pupil of Kaulbach, and late from Munich; as well as Harry Stedman, Post, the art-critic, and one or two others.
Each man as he entered divested himself of his wet garments, warmed his hands at the blazing grate- fire, and, reaching over the long table, picked up a clay or corn-cob pipe, stuffing the bowl full of tobacco from a cracked Japanese pot that stood on the mantel. Then striking a match he settled himself into the nearest chair, joining in the general talk or smoking quietly, listening to what was being said about him. Now and then one would walk to the window, raise the sash, uncork a bottle of beer where Fred had placed it, empty its contents into one of the mugs, and resume his seat–mug in one hand, pipe in the other.
Up to this time no work had been done, the courtesies of the club permitting none to begin until the member whose night it was had arrived.
As the half-hour slipped away the men began to grow restless.
“If it’s Horn’s night why the devil doesn’t he come, Fred?” asked Waller, in a querulous tone. Although the great sheep-painter had lost his sobriquet since the old days, he had never parted with his right to growl.
“He’ll be here,” cried Simmons from his seat by the piano. His fingers were still rippling gently over the keys, although he had stopped once just long enough to strip off his wet overcoat. “I met him at Margaret Grant’s this afternoon. She had a little tea.”
“There every afternoon, isn’t he, Simmons?” asked Munson, who was smoking quietly:
“Shouldn’t wonder,” came the response between the trills.
“How’s that affair coming on?” came a voice out of the tobacco-smoke.
“Same old way,” answered someone at the lower end of the table–“still waiting for the spondulix.”
“Seen her last picture?” remarked Watson, knocking the ashes from his pipe. “The one she scooped the medal with?”
“Yes. Rouser, isn’t it?” called out Waller. “Best thing she has done yet. She’s a great woman. Hello! there he is! This is a pretty time for him to put in an appearance!”
The door opened and Oliver walked in, a wet umbrella in one hand, his coat-collar turned up, his mustache beaded with melted snow-drops.
“What’s it doing outside, Ollie, raining cats and dogs?” Jack called out.
“No, going to clear up. It’s stopped snowing and getting colder. Oh, what a night! I love a storm like this, it sets my blood tingling. Sorry to keep you waiting, gentlemen, but I couldn’t help it. It won’t make any difference; I can’t begin, anyway. Bianchi won’t be here for an hour. Just met him on the street –he’s going to bring a guest, he says.”
“Who’s he going to bring?” shouted Simmons, who had risen from his seat at the piano, and was now sorting out some sheets of music that Fred had just laid on its top.
“He won’t tell; says it’s a surprise,” answered Oliver, slipping off his coat.
“A surprise, is it?” grumbled Waller. “I’ll bet it’s some greasy foreigner.” He had left Simmons’s side and was now standing by the mantel, filling a pipe from the bowl. “Bianchi has always got a lot of cranks about him.”
Oliver hung his wet coat among the row of garments lining the wall–he had come twice as far as the others–crowded his dripping umbrella into a broken Chinese jar that did duty as a rack, and, catching sight of the canvas, walked toward the easel holding the thirty by forty.
“Where did you get it, Freddie?” he said, putting his arms around the shoulders of his old chum and dragging him toward the easel for a closer inspection of the grain of the canvas.
“Snedecor’s”
“Just right, old man. Much obliged,” and he felt the grain of the cloth with his thumb. “Got a ruff?” and he glanced about him. “Oh, yes; I see. Thanks.”
The men, now that Oliver had arrived, drew up around the long table. Some began setting their palettes; others picked out, from the common stock before them, the panels, canvases, china plates, or sheets of paper, which, under their deft touches, were so soon to be covered with dainty bits of color.
It was in many ways a remarkable club. Most of its members had already achieved the highest rank in their several professions and outside the walls of this eyrie were known as earnest, thoughtful men, envied and sought after by those who respected their aims and successes.
Inside these cosey rooms all restraint was laid aside and each man’s personality and temperament expressed itself without reserve. Harry Stedman, who, perhaps, had been teaching a class of students all the morning in the new building of the National Academy of Design, each one of whom hung upon his words as if he had been inspired, could be found here a few hours later joining in a chorus with a voice loud enough to rattle every mug on the table.
Waller, who doubtless that same night, had been the bright particular star at some smart dinner uptown, and whose red ribbon had added such eclat to the occasion, and whose low voice and quiet manners and correct, conventional speeches had so charmed and captivated the lady on his right, would, when once in this room, sit astride some chair, a pipe in one hand, a mug of beer in the other. Here he would discuss with Simmons or Jack or Oliver his preference of Chopin over Beethoven, or the difference between Parepa-Rosa and Jenny Lind, or any topic which had risen out of the common talk, and all too with a grotesqueness of speech and manner that would have frozen his hostess of the dinner-table dumb with astonishment could she have seen him.
And so with the others. Each man was frankly himself and in undress uniform when under Fred’s skylight, or when the club was enjoying any one of its various festivals and functions.
Oliver’s election into the organization had, therefore, been to him one of the greatest honors he had received since his skill as a painter had been recognized by his fellows–an honor not conferred upon him because he had been one of the earlier members of the old Union Square organization, many of whom had been left out, but entirely because he was not only the best of fellows, but among the best of painters as well. An honor too, which brought with it the possibility of a certain satisfying of his tastes. Only once before had he found an atmosphere so congenial and that was when the big hemlocks that he loved stood firm and silent about him–companions in a wilderness that rested him.
The coming together of such a body of men representing, as they did, the choicest the city afforded in art, literature and music, had been as natural and unavoidable as the concentration of a mass of iron filings toward a magnet. That insatiable hunger of the Bohemian, that craving of the craftsman for men of his kind, had at last overpowered them, and the meetings in Fred’s studio were the inevitable result.
Many of these devotees of the arts had landed on the barren shores of America–barren of even the slightest trace of that life they had learned to love so well in the Quartier Latin in Paris and in the Rathskellers of Munich and Dusseldorf–and had wandered about in the uncongenial atmosphere of the commonplace until this retreat had been opened to them. Some, like Fred Stone and Jack Bedford, who had struggled on through the war, too much occupied in the whirl of their life to miss at the time the associations of men of similar tastes, had eagerly grasped the opportunity when it came, and others, like Oliver, who had had all they could do to get their three meals during the day and a shelter for the night, had hardly been conscious of what they wanted until the club had extended to them its congenial surroundings.
On the trio of painters we knew best in the old days these privations and the uncertainties and disappointments of the war had left their indelible mark. You became aware of this when you saw them among their fellow-workers. About Fred’s temples many tell-tale gray hairs were mingled with the brown, and about his mouth and eyes were deeper lines than those which hard work alone would have cut. He carried a hole, too, in his right arm–or did until the army surgeon sewed it up–you could see it as a blue scar every time he rolled up his sleeve–a slight souvenir of the Battle of Five Forks. It was bored out by a bullet from the hands of a man in gray when Fred, dropping his sketch-book, had bent to drag a wounded soldier from under an overturned caisson. He carried no scar, however, in his heart. That organ beat with as keen a sympathy and as warm a spirit of camaraderie as it did when it first opened itself to Oliver’s miseries in Union Square.
Jack Bedford, gaunt and strong of limb, looking a foot taller, had more than once been compelled to lay down his painter’s palette and take up the sign- painter’s brush, and the tell-tale wrinkles about his eyes and the set look about his mouth testified but too plainly to the keenness of his sufferings.
And Oliver–
Ah! what of Oliver, and of the changes in him since that fatal night in Kennedy Square when he had been driven away from his home and made an outcast because he had been brave enough to defend a helpless man?
You can see at a glance, as you watch him standing by the big easel, his coat off, to give his arm freer play, squeezing the tubes of color on his palette, that he is not the boy you knew some years ago. He is, you will admit, as strong and alert-looking as he was that morning when he cleared the space in front of Margaret’s brother with a cart-rung. You will concede, too, that the muscles about his chest and throat are as firmly packed, the eyes as keen, and the smile as winning, but you will acknowledge that the boy in him ends there. As you look the closer you will note that the line of the jaw is more cleanly cut than in his younger days; that the ears are set closer to the finely modelled head; that the nose is more aquiline, the eyes deeper, and that the overhanging brow is wrinkled with one or more tight knots that care has tied, and which only loosen when his face breaks into one of his old-time smiles. The mustache is still there –the one which Sue once laughed at; but it has lost its silky curl and stands straight out now from the corners of his mouth, its points reaching almost to the line of his ears. There is, too, beneath it a small imperial, giving to his face the debonair look of a cavalier, and which accentuates more than any other one thing his Southern birth and training. As you follow the subtle outlines of his body you find too, that he is better proportioned than he was in his early manhood; thinner around the waist, broader across the shoulders; pressed into a closer mold; more compact, more determined-looking. But for the gleam that now and then flashes out of his laughing eyes and the winning smile that plays about his mouth, you would, perhaps, think that the years of hardship through which he has passed have hardened his nature. But you would be wrong about the hardening process, although you would have been entirely right about the hardship.
They had, indeed, been years of intense suffering, full of privations, self-denial, and disappointments, not only in his New York home but in Kennedy Square, whenever at long intervals he had gone back to the old house to cheer its inmates in their loneliness –a loneliness relieved only by the loyalty of old Malachi and Hannah and the affection and sympathy of their immediate relatives and of such close friends as Amos Cobb, who had never left his post, Miss Clendenning, Dr. Wallace, Nathan and some others. But this sympathy had not always been extended to Oliver–not, by his old schoolmates and chums at least. Even Sue had passed him in the street with a cold stare and not a few of the other girls–girls he had romped with many a night through the cool paths of Kennedy Square, had drawn their skirts aside as he passed lest he should foul them with his touch.
But his courage had not wavered nor had his strength failed him. The same qualities that had made Richard stick to the motor were in his own blood. His delicately modelled slender fingers, white as ivory, and as sure as a pair of callipers –so like his father’s–and which as we watch him work so deftly arranging the colors on his palette, adjusting the oil-cup, trying the points of the brushes on his thumb-nail, gathering them in a sheaf in his left hand as they answer his purpose, had served him in more ways than one since he took that midnight ride back from his old home in Kennedy Square. These same hands that look so white and well-kept as he stands by his easel in the full glare of the gas-jets, had been his sole reliance during these days of toil and suffering. They had provided all the bread that had gone into his mouth, and every stitch of clothes that had covered his back. And they had not been over-particular as to how they had accomplished it nor at what hours or places. They had cleaned lithographic stones, the finger-nails stained for weeks with colored inks; they had packed hardware; they had driven a pen far into the night on space work for the daily papers; they had carried a dinner-pail to and from his lodgings to the factory two miles away where he had worked–very little in this pail some of the time; they had posted ledgers, made office-fires, swept out stores–anything and everything that his will compelled, and his necessities made imperative. And they had done it all forcefully and willingly, with the persistence and sureness of machines accomplishing a certain output in so many hours. Joyfully too, sustained and encouraged by the woman he loved and whose heart through all his and her vicissitudes was still his own.
All this had strengthened him; had taught him that any kind of work, no matter how menial, was worthy of a gentleman; so long as his object was obtained– in this case his independence and his livelihood. It had been a bitter experience at first, especially for a Southerner brought up as he had been; but he had mastered it at last. His early training had helped him, especially that part which he owed to his mother, who had made him carry the market-basket as a boy, to humble a foolish and hurtful pride. He was proud enough of it now.
But never through all these privations had these same white hands and this tired body and brain been so occupied that they could not find time during some one of the hours of the day and night to wield the brush, no matter how urgent had been the call for the week’s board–wielding it, too, so lovingly and knowingly, and with such persistency, that to-night although still poor–he stood recognized as a rising man by the men in the front rank of the painters of his time.
And with his mother’s consent, too. Not that he had asked it in so many words and stood hesitating, fearing to take the divergent path until he could take her willing blessing with him. He had made his decision firmly and against her wishes. She had kept silent at first, and had watched his progress as she had watched his baby steps, tearfully–prayerfully at times–standing ready to catch him if he fell. But that was over now. The bigness of her vision covering margins wide enough for new impressions, impressions which her broad mind, great enough and
honest enough to confess its mistakes, always welcomed and understood, had long since made clear to her what in her early anxiety she had ignored: –that if her son had inherited the creative and imaginative gifts of his father (those gifts which she so little understood), he had also inherited from her a certain spirit of determination, together with that practical turn of mind which had given the men of her own family their eminence. In proof of this she could not but see that the instability which she had so dreaded in his earlier years had given way to a certain fixedness of purpose and firm self-reliance. The thought of this thrilled her as nothing else in his whole career had ever done. All these things helped reconcile her to his choice of a profession.
Oliver, now thoroughly warm and dry, busied himself getting his brushes and paints together and scraping off one of Fred’s palettes. Bianchi’s bald head and fat, red, smooth-shaven face with its double chin–time had not dealt leniently with the distinguished lithographer–had inspired our hero to attempt a “Franz Hals smear,” as Waller called it, and the Pole, when he arrived, was to sit for him in the costume of an old Dutch burgomaster, the big white ruff furnishing the high lights in the canvas.
By the time Oliver had arranged his palette the club had settled itself for work, the smoke from the pipes floating in long lines toward the ceiling, befogging the big white albatross that hung from a wire in the skylight. Munson, who had rubbed in a background of bitumen over a square tile, sat next to Fred, who was picking out, with the end of a wooden match, the outlines of an army-wagon sketched on a plate smeared with color. Simmons was looking over a portfolio that Watson, a new member, had brought with him, filled with a lot of his summer sketches made on the Normandy coast.
One view of the fish-market at Dieppe caught Oliver’s eye. The slant of light burnishing the roof of the church to silver and flooding the pavement of the open square, crowded with black figures, the white caps of the fish-women indicated by crisp pats of the brush, pleased our painter immensely.
“Charming, old man,” said Oliver, turning to Watson. “How long did it take you?”
“About four hours.”
“Looks like it,” growled Waller, reaching over Oliver’s shoulder and drawing the sketch toward him. “That’s the gospel of ‘smear,’ Horn,” and he tossed it back. “Not a figure in the group has got any drawing in it.”
Waller had set his face against the new out-door school, and never lost a chance to ridicule it.
“That’s not what Watson is after,” exclaimed Oliver. “The figures are mere accessories. The dominating light is the thing; he’s got that”–and he held the sketch close to the overhead gas-jets so that the members could see it the better.
“Dominating light be hanged! What’s the use of slobbering puddles of paint over a canvas and calling it plein air, or impressionism, or out-of-doors, or some such rot? Get down to business and DRAW. When you have done that you can talk. It can’t be done in four hours, and if some of you fellows keep on the way you’re going, you’ll never do it in four years.”
“A four hours’ sketch handled as Watson has this,” said Oliver, thoughtfully, “is better than four years’ work on one of your Hudson Rivery things. The sun doesn’t stand still long enough for a man to get more than an expression of what he sees–that is if he’s after truth. The angle of shadow changes too quickly, and so do the reflected lights.”
“What’s the matter with the next day?” burst out Waller. “Can’t you take up your sketch where you left off? You talk as if every great picture had to be painted before luncheon.”
“But there is no ‘next day,'” interrupted Watson. “I entirely agree with Horn.” He had been listening to the discussion with silent interest. “No next day like the one on which you began your canvas. The sky is different–gray, blue, or full of fleecy, sunny clouds. Your shadows are more purple, or blue or gray, depending on your sky overhead, and so are your reflections. If you go on and try to piece out your sketch, you make an almanac of it– not a portrait of what you saw. I can pick out the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays on that kind of a sketch as soon as I see it. Nature is like a bird– if you want to surprise her, you must let go both barrels when she rises; if you miss her at your first shot you will never have another chance–not at that particular bird.”
“Well, but suppose you DO happen to have two days alike,” insisted Waller. “I have seen thirty days on a stretch in Venice without a cloud. What then?” The bird simile had evidently not appealed to the great critic.
“Then ten chances to one you are not the same man you were the day before,” replied Watson, calmly, laying down his pipe. “You have had bad news from home or your liver is out of order, or worse still, you have seen some new subject which has taken hold of you and your first enthusiasm has oozed away. If you persist in going on you will either undo what you did yesterday or you will trust to your memory of what you THINK yesterday was, to finish your sketch by. The first fills it full of lies and the second full of yourself; neither have anything to do with nature. Four hours, Waller, not a minute more. You’ll come to it before you die.”
“That depends on what you have got to paint with,” snapped out Jack Bedford, who was trying to clean a dingy-looking palette with a knife. “Whose dirt-dump is this, anyhow?” and he held it up to view. “Might as well try to get sunlight out of powdered brick. Look at that pile of mud,” and he pointed to some dry color near the thumb-hole.
“Which palette?” came a voice.
Jack held it up for the inspection of the room.
“Oh, that’s Parker Ridgway’s,” answered Fred. “He was here the other day and made a half-hour’s sketch of a model I had.”
The announcement of Ridgway’s name was greeted with shouts of laughter. He was a society painter of the day, pupil of Winterhalter and Meyer von Bremen, and had carried off more portraits and at higher prices than all the other men put together.
“Keep on! keep on! Laugh away,” grumbled Waller squeezing a tube of Prussian blue on his palette. “When any one of you fellows can get $4,000 for a season’s work you can talk; until you do, you can keep your mouths shut as tight as Long Island clams.”
“Who got it?”
“The Honorable Parker Ridgway, R.A., P.Q., and I don’t know but X.Y.Z.,” roared Waller.
“I’d like to know how?” asked Watson, reaching over Fred’s arm for the bottle of turpentine.
“That’s what he did,” snapped out Waller.
“Did what?”
“Knew how.”
“But he doesn’t know how,” cried Munson from across the table. “I sat alongside of that fellow at the Ecole for two years. He can’t draw, and never could. His flesh was beastly, his modelling worse, and his technique–a botch. You can see what color he uses,” and he pointed to the palette Jack was trying to clean.
“Granted, my boy,” said Waller. “I didn’t say he could PAINT; I said he knew how to earn $4,000 in three months painting portraits.”
“He never painted a portrait worth four cents. Why, I knew–“
“Dry up, Munson!” interrupted Jack. “Go on, Waller, tell us how he did it.”
“By using some horse-sense and a little tact; getting in with the procession and bolding his cud up,” retorted Waller, in a solemn tone.
“Give him room! Give him room!” cried Oliver, with a laugh, pouring a little dryer into his oil-cup. He loved to hear Waller talk. “He flings his words about as if they were chunks of coal,” he would always say.
The great man wheeled his chair around and faced the room. Oliver’s words had sounded like a challenge.
“Keep it up!–pound away,” he cried, his face reddening. “I’ve watched Ridgway ever since he arrived here last spring, and I will give you his recipe for success. He didn’t fall overboard into a second-rate club as soon as he got here and rub his brushes on his coat-sleeve to look artistic. Not much! He had his name put up at the Union; got Croney to cut his clothes, and Leary to make his hats, played croquet with the girls he knew, drove tandem–his brother-in-law’s–and dined out every night in the week. Every day or two he would haul out one of his six-foot canvases, and give it a coat of bitumen. Always did this when some club swell was around who would tell about it,”
“Did it with a sponge,” muttered Munson. “Old trick of his!”
“Next thing he did,” continued Waller, ignoring Munson’s aside, “was to refuse a thousand-dollar commission offered by a vulgar real-estate man to paint a two-hundred-pound pink-silk sofa-cushion of a wife in a tight-fitting waist. This spread like the measles. It was the talk of the club, of dinner-tables and piazzas, and before sundown Ridgway’s exclusiveness in taste and artistic instincts were established. Then he hunted up a pretty young married woman occupying the dead-centre of the sanctified social circle, went into spasms over her beauty–so classic, such an exquisite outline; grew confidential with the husband at the club, and begged permission to make just a sketch only the size of his hand–wanted it for his head of Sappho, Berlin Exhibition. Next he rented a suite of rooms, crowded in a lot of borrowed tapestries, brass, Venetian chests, lamps and hangings; gave a tea–servants this time in livery–exhibited his Sappho; refused a big price for it from the husband; got orders instead for two half-lengths, $1,500 each, finished them in two weeks, declined more commissions on account of extreme fatigue; disappeared with the first frost and the best cottage people; booked three more full-lengths in New York –two to be painted in Paris and the other on his return in the spring; was followed to the steamer by a bevy of beauties, half-smothered in flowers, and disappeared in a halo of artistic glory just $4,000 in.”
Fred broke out into a roar, in which the whole room joined.
“And you call that art, do you?” cried Munson, laying down his palette. His face was flushed, his eyes snapping with indignation.
“I do, my babbling infant,” retorted Waller. “I call it the art of making the most of your opportunities and putting your best foot foremost. That’s a thing you fellows never seem to understand. You want to shuffle around in carpet-slippers, live in a garret, and wait until some money-bags climbs up your crazy staircases to discover you. Ridgway puts. his foot in a patent-leather pump and silk stocking, and never steps on a carpet that isn’t two inches thick. Merchants, engineers, manufacturers, and even scientists, when they have anything to sell, go where there is somebody to buy; why shouldn’t an artist?”
“Just like a fakir peddling cheap jewelry,” said Stedman, in a low voice, sending a cloud of smoke to the ceiling.
“Or a bunco-man trading watches with a farmer,” remarked Jack Bedford. “What do you say, My Lord Tom-Noddy”–and he slapped Oliver on the back. The sobriquet was one of Jack’s pet names for Oliver–all the Kennedy Square people were more or less aristocrats to Jack Bedford, the sign-painter– all except Oliver.
“I think Waller’s about half-right, Jack. As far as Ridgway’s work goes, you know and I know that there isn’t one man or woman out of a hundred among his brother-in-law’s friends who knows whether it’s good or bad–that’s the pity of it. If it’s bad and they buy it, that’s their fault for not knowing any better, not Ridgway’s fault for doing the best he knows how. By silk stockings and pumps I suppose Waller means that Ridgway dressed himself like a gentleman, had his hair cut, and paid some attention to his finger-nails. That’s why they were glad to see him. The day has gone by when a painter must affect a bob-tailed velveteen jacket, long hair, and a slouch hat to help him paint, just as the day has gone by when an artist is not an honored guest in any gentleman’s house in town.”
“Bravo, Tom-Noddy!” shouted Jack and Fred in a breath. “Drink, you dear old pressed brick. Put your nose into this!” and Fred held a mug of beer to Oliver’s lips.
Oliver laid down his sheaf of brushes–buried his nose in the cool rim of the stone mug, the only beverage the club permitted, and was about to continue his talk, when his eye rested on Bianchi, who was standing in the open door, his hand upraised so as to bespeak silence.
“Here–you beautiful, bald-headed old burgomaster!” shouted Oliver. “Get into your ruff right away. Been waiting half an hour for you and–“
Bianchi put his fingers to his lips with a whispered hush, knit his brow, and pointed significantly behind him. Every eye turned, and a breathless silence fell upon the group, followed by a scraping of chairs on the floor as each man sprang to his feet.
Bianchi’s surprise had arrived!
CHAPTER XXI
“THE WOMAN IN BLACK”
In the doorway, immediately behind Bianchi and looking over the little man’s head, stood a woman of perhaps forty years of age in full evening toilet. About her head was wound a black lace scarf, and hanging from her beautiful shoulders, half-concealing a figure of marvellous symmetry, was a long black cloak, open at the throat, trimmed with fur, and lined with watermelon pink silk. Tucked in her hair was a red japonica. She was courtesying to the room with all the poise and graciousness of a prima donna saluting an audience.
Oliver sprang for his coat and was about to cram his arms into the sleeves, when she cried:
“Oh, please don’t! I wish I could wear a coat myself, so that I could take it off and paint. Oh! the smell of the lovely pipes! It’s heavenly, and it’s so like home. Really,” and she looked about her, “this is the only place I have seen in America that I can breathe in. I’ve heard of you all winter and I so wanted to come. I would not give dear Bianchi any rest till he brought me. Oh! I’m so glad to be here.”
Oliver and the others were still standing, looking in amazement at the new-corner. One of the unwritten laws of the club was that no woman should ever enter its doors, a law that until this moment had never been broken.
While she was speaking Bianchi stepped back, and took the tips of the woman’s fingers within his own. When she had finished he thrust out one foot and, with the bow of an impresario introducing a new songstress, said:
“Gentlemen of the Stone Mugs, I have the honor of presenting you to the Countess Kovalski.”
Again the woman courtesied, sweeping the floor with her black velvet skirt, broke out into a laugh, handed her cloak and scarf to Bianchi, who threw them over the shoulders of the lay figure, and moved toward the table, Fred, as host, drawing out a chair for her.
“Oh!–what lovely beginnings–” she continued, examining the sketches with her lorgnette, after the members had made their salutations, “Let me make one. I studied two years with Achenbach. You did not know that Bianchi, did you? There are so many things you do not know, you lovely man.” She was as much at home as if she had been there every evening of her life.
Still, with the same joyous self-contained air she settled herself in Fred’s proffered chair, picked up one of Jack’s brushes, reached over his shoulder, and with a “please-hold-still, thank you,” scooped up a little yellow ochre from his palette, and unloaded it on a corner of a tile. Then, stripping off her bracelets, she piled them in a heap before her, selected a Greek coin dangling from the end of one of them, propped it up on the table and began to paint; the men, all of whom were too astonished to resume their work, crowding about her, watching the play of her brush; a brush so masterful in its technique that before the picture was finished the room broke out in unrestrained applause.
During all this time she was talking in German to Crug, or in French to Waller, only stopping to light a fresh cigarette which she took from a jewelled case and laid beside her. She could, no doubt, have as easily lapsed into Russian, Choctaw, or Chinese had there been any such strange people about.