I
Xenophon Curry, impresario extraordinary, sat sipping his breakfast
coffee and perusing the morning paper. He looked extremely optimistic.
The day before he had shown an obliging chandlery clerk over the
_Skipping Goone_, “upstairs and down,” and the clerk had an eagle eye
for such missing items as deck hose and cabin door knobs; and though
the clerk was but a humble clerk, and although his contribution to the
progress of events was frankly minor, the impresario nevertheless felt
himself appreciably nearer the realization of his daring project. He and
the clerk had partaken of ice cream soda together afterward in a queer
little confection emporium near the waterfront. And, all in all, it had
seemed a highly important day.
Another cause for optimism was the fact that rehearsals were going
surprisingly well. He would make people sit up after the tour had got
under way! Indeed, his songbirds were artists to be proud of—not so much,
perhaps, because of special genius as for their almost uncanny sticking
proclivities. It was, in truth, an organization of the most amazing
sort, which had built itself up gradually about Xenophon Curry’s vast
heart. Surely no organization was ever before so supremely an affair of
the heart. Curry had drawn his songbirds to him from all over the world.
Essentially a cosmopolitan himself (“I’m a dyed-in-the-wool hybrid”)
he had kept open house in his heart for all sorts and conditions of
people. Under his wing, one by one, he had gathered the struggling, the
discouraged, the heavy-laden—even a soul now and then that called itself
plainly down and out. And not only songbirds, but a tiny orchestra had
been drawn in, too, by patient degrees: now a violinist with aspiring
soul rescued from some dreadful little café chantant in Vienna; now a
flute player off the hills of Sicily; again a lowly snare drummer in
a band somewhere in Kentucky, who had a deep-seated passion for the
kettles. They knew they could count on him to the last ditch, and so
were willing to follow anywhere he led. It was really a little touching.
Certainly in no other way would it have been possible for Mr. Curry to do
the things he had done, for, from a worldly point of view, no impresario,
barring none, ever met with such shocking and consistent adversity.
Over his eggs the impresario read of an auction sale to be held that
afternoon at Crawl Hill and the list sounded promising. Mr. Curry made
it a point to attend auctions whenever possible, for in this manner
he was sometimes able to pick up odd bits to use as properties in his
necessarily heterogeneous productions. He decided to stroll around and
nose for bargains that might fit into the world tour.
The weather being delightful, Curry literally did stroll. But when
he had at length covered some considerable distance he began to ask
himself where Crawl Hill was, after all. He remembered it vaguely, and
was certain of the general neighbourhood; but just how to get there was
developing into another matter. He would have to begin inquiring. He half
paused. And as he did so a pleasant voice challenged him at his elbow.
The impresario turned and faced a tall, quite handsome lady, near his own
age, gowned expensively and somewhat complexly. Her eyes were frank, her
demeanour that of one who has been much about and feels at home in the
combinations of a moving life without sacrificing a rather unusual fund
of freshness.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, smiling easily and just a little grandly,
“but I wonder if you could tell me how to get to Crawl Hill?”
Mr. Curry’s face lighted humorously. “A moment more and I might have put
the same question to you.”
“Oh, I _see_!” she observed, simply and even graciously, much as though
they were old friends. “Quite a _coincidence_—isn’t it? I thought I knew
_perfectly_ well when I started _out_, but this part of the city has
changed so!”
“Lord, hasn’t it! Crawl Hill used to be one of those big places”—he
enlarged a little upon the circumstances, adding: “Since we’re both
headed for the same auction, we might walk on together, and I’ll ask the
way.”
“It’s very kind of you, I’m _sure_!” she told him, her manner more than
ever gracious.
So the stroll was thus resumed, and Mr. Curry was struck with the
peculiar ease he felt from the very beginning in his new companion’s
company. Their talk, as they proceeded, widened gradually to embrace
a considerable range of subjects: cheerful commonplaces—just, as a
contemporary puts it, “the talk which goes up the chimney with the spark
of the wood fire.” Discreet, polite side-glances revealed, for him, an
undoubtedly romantic lady nearly as tall as himself, vaguely lavish, just
faintly overpowering in her enthusiasms, who walked along with free,
hopeful stride and lifted her arching brows in an unbroken expression
of communicative pleasantness. She wore a cloak made from an Arabian
gondura—a fabric of rusty plum with intricate embellishment of bright
green braid. There were wide flowing sleeves; and underneath the cloak
one now and then caught sight of confusing details; a bit of Paisley,
blue serge, large decorated brass buttons. Her hat was an oddly shaped
straw with an ample feather falling off behind.
The lady, for her part, quickly noted his air of bustling optimism and
seemed responding to it with unconscious warmth; at first, it is true,
she had eyed his rings and general air of the exotic with some slight
twinges of doubt: but after she had received one or two of his radiant
smiles it was only too plain she felt it would be unhandsome to hold so
small a matter against him. Indeed, he seemed to perceive in her at once
an element of happy tolerance, at the same time that he was very sure
he caught a genuine passion for the artistic. Above all he couldn’t but
be impressed with the uplifting and flowing quality in her rich voice.
“I learned about the auction from some _friends_ who have been spending
months in Morocco, where they _heard_ about Mr. Hoadley’s death and
immediately thought about the lovely ‘things’ every one remembers having
seen in his house here in San Fran_cisco_!” Her sentences, inclined to
be “Germanic,” moved with the liquid fluency of a wide, well-mannered
river. And there were words she stressed saliently or perhaps rather
lingered over; it was a little quaint. One came to listen for them. Other
words, too, which, by the most marvellous yet wholly artless subtlety
in shading, she managed to slip within quotation marks—although, as
a matter of fact, there was seldom any real reason for their being
quoted. “I don’t expect to find a _thing_ that I’ll really _buy_, for
everything’s sure to be quite _dear_, you know, considering how immensely
rich Mr. Hoadley was when he did his _collecting_, although it’s always
pleasant to just visit these ‘sales’ and look around and perhaps pick
up some little trifles that catch one’s _fancy_—as trifles have such an
irresistible way of _doing_!”