“Only just Colin!” Behold a youth, tall, heavily built, powerful, his
head leaning a little forward from the shoulders, his brown, healthy
face adorned with the expression of good will toward mankind that,
after all, is the one unfading charm of the human countenance. It
was because of his trust in things that Colin never felt abashed,
greeting the great and the lowly alike with honest good-fellowship.
Although in the eyes of a critical woman of the world his person
might have been found lacking in certain exterior signs deemed by
her class indispensable, his looks and manner when he came into a
room carried with them irresistible attraction. An ex-hero of the
university, where Maurice had been his devoted chum and follower, the
echo of Colin’s achievements in athletics had not yet died out in the
two years since he had graduated. Take Jock Blair, for example, at
present a junior under the wing of the same alma mater, and seat him
at table in Colin’s company; a babbling and confident young fellow
enough in ordinary society, Jock would be stricken dumb and reverent
in the presence of this composite Napoleon and Wellington.
Now a hard worker in his first year at the law, not even those
outsiders, chill of blood, who affect to contemn the practice of
manly sports among healthy young collegians, could have found ground
for a charge against Colin that he was subordinating brain to muscle.
Under his new teaching, he had done more than well. To the physical
animation acquired in college he had many times given thanks for
helping him to endure this later life, in which a walk uptown after
working hours was the chief outlet for his tremendous energy of body.
When we have said additionally that Colin was of a very short purse,
and had no backing of family in New York--seeing that his relatives
were unimportant residents of a small Western town--that he was
hopelessly in love with Kathleen Blair, and that at college he had
been dubbed Colin chiefly because his real name was John Walter
Mackintosh, the tale is told.
Knowing that his charmer was that night to undergo the ordeal of
proving her quality as a violinist before the supreme Herr Levitsky,
our young man had moved heaven and earth to get an invitation to
Crichton’s musicale; having succeeded in which, he had passed through
a tumult of emotions regarding a proper appearance for the occasion.
Maurice, sharing his confidence, had lent sage advice. Colin, who
perhaps for no other reason would have taken on himself a debt, had
secured upon the installment plan of payment a new suit of evening
clothes, the genial sartor who provided them supplying, out of the
fullness of his sympathy, facings for the coat of a better quality
of silk than was nominated in the bond. At the instigation also
of the more knowing Maurice, the aspirant had next repaired to a
much advertised “Fire Sale” of “Gents’ Furnishings,” where he had
laid in a dozen white linen ties, “imperceptibly damaged,” and six
hemstitched pocket handkerchiefs. This done, there was yet a mighty
obstacle to overcome. For two interminable days Colin had not seen
his way clear to the possession of a pair of patent leather shoes.
Over and again he had surveyed wistfully his rough ordinary footwear,
and reluctantly decided that it would not do. The jest of the
bootmaker to whom he had ventured a remonstrance as to the high price
of his wares, that it “took extra leather to cover some men’s feet,”
was iron entering Colin’s soul.
At this critical juncture, somebody had been called in haste from
the law office claiming the services of Mr. Mackintosh, to draw up
an old woman’s death-bed will. To Colin had been assigned the task,
and also, to his eternal gratitude, the small fee resulting. The
speed made by him uptown that day after office hours, to reach the
bootmaker before his shop should be closed, recalled to our hero
some of his efforts at sprinting between hoarsely cheering crowds of
college sympathizers.
Two minutes after he was invested in all his hardly-won integuments,
Colin had forgotten them. He had long been planning how to present
Kathleen with some flowers to wear at the musicale. Knowing her
favorites, he had purchased a sheaf of those “naiad-like lilies of
the vale, whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,” at a cost
that would deprive him of luncheon money for some days; then, with a
strong desire to see her pleasure in them, had walked around to the
Blair’s house carrying the gift in person.
On the doorstep his courage had failed. Kathleen, sternly intent on
checking his too rapid advance, might, and no doubt would, decline
his offering. So rather miserably, the big young man had turned
around again and marched away with his pasteboard box. At the corner,
he bethought him of a recent speech of hers--that “better than
anything but music,” she loved flowers. This renewed his prowess.
Again he stormed the lady’s portal, and again fell away, discouraged,
in apprehension of her frown. The scrutiny of a passing policeman
served to weaken his last remnant of resolution.
The lilies, returning with him to his lodging, were, with continuing
uncertainty, carried on to Crichton’s studio. There Mr. Mackintosh,
proving to be the first arrival, had judged it best to remain
secluded in the cloak-room, until a number of men, passing in, gave
him countenance to enter the scene of entertainment. His vague plan
of contriving to intercept Kathleen on her arrival, and putting the
flowers in Morry’s hands, with the request that she should wear
them, had now vanished into thin air. He wished at last he had never
burdened himself with the confounded things.
What Colin felt while Kathleen had witched her audience with youth
and loveliness and talent may be divined by the reader. Perhaps by
ruffling the leaves of the book of Memory, some chronicle may still
be found there, uneffaced, to suggest the proud tingling in the young
man’s veins! The little lock of darkest hair, that while she wielded
the bow had the habit of breaking cover and falling down upon a fine
jetty eyebrow, the rich flush in her cheek swept by the lashes of
down-dropping eyes, the noble unconsciousness of her face and figure,
thrilled him with a more passionate resolve than ever to win her for
his own.
When she had finished playing, and the crowd thronged about her to
indorse the master’s verdict, Colin had kept aloof. He did not want
to spoil the hour by commonplace; and indeed his heart was too full
for utterance. Maurice, just then running upon him in the throng, had
bidden his friend to supper. Colin, fed with new hope, had returned
again to the dressing-room, intending to take a walk until it should
be time to present himself at the Blairs’. Between two men talking
over the performance of the evening as they lighted their cigars,
he heard Kathleen discussed in terms that he considered daringly
impertinent. Although the phrases used were chiefly those of custom
upon the appearance of a new performer in her field, one of the men
lent to them an emphasis so offensive that Colin had much ado to
restrain himself from flying at the offender and choking him backward
into a pile of hats.
Tempted to leave his now oppressive offering for beauty’s shrine in
Crichton’s fireplace, he took up again his box of flowers and went
out into the night. How far he wandered through the chill, deserted
streets in the effort to make time pass ere he thought it proper to
appear before his goddess, Colin did not realize. When he could bear
no longer not seeing her, he had rung Mr. Blair’s door-bell; but when
he was asked into the supper room, where they were all assembled, the
spurned and imprisoned lilies were tucked away on the lower shelf of
the hat-rack, behind the galoches of Mr. Catullus Clarke.
“And where will you sit, Mr. Mackintosh?” asked Mrs. Blair, holding
out a kind hand of welcome to her new guest, who accordingly dropped
into the chair nearest her own.
Colin could hardly speak. In the stranger guest, ensconced in
intimate conversation with Maurice, he recognized one of the men he
had desired to knock down in the dressing-room at Crichton’s!
“Now, we may notice in Clarke’s poems,” Mr. Malvolio was saying with
wicked relish, “what Emerson once remarked about Oxford. ‘Nothing new
or true, and no matter.’”
“I do not pretend to solve my own problems, my dear fellow,” returned
the poet, languidly, as he lay back at ease in a large arm-chair,
surveying his patent-leather toes; “I only state them to average
intelligence, and then pray for the interposition of the Power that
brought speech out of Balaam’s ass to give understanding to some of
my readers.”
“Indeed, yours is the dearest little book we have had this month,
Mr. Clarke,” exclaimed Kathleen; “and your poster is the wildest and
weirdest in my collection.”
“Then I have not printed in vain, Miss Blair,” answered the bardling,
looking at her with admiring eyes. In reality he was entirely happy.
It was only being overlooked that ever caused Catullus pain.
“Gather your roses, while you may, Clarke,” resumed Malvolio,
cheerfully. “Presently the twentieth century will throw upon you
mysterious folk a searchlight in which even you will stand revealed,
and then your occupation will be gone. You owe Blair a debt of
gratitude, by the way, for slating you so discreetly a couple of
weeks ago. It’s immensely clever how he manages to let his authors
think the failure to appreciate lies in him only, and that the
world at large is ablaze over their productions. Now, in that thing
about you, for instance, the readers of book reviews--I wonder who
they are?--must have thought Blair a schoolboy who had accidentally
tangled an Olympic deity in the tail of his kite. It was only after
they had paid one fifty for the volume, I dare say, that they found
out the truth.”
“Don’t spoil my wife’s supper by talking shop over it,” said Terence
reprovingly. “To come here for the purpose of discussing modern
literature--”
“You flatter Clarke,” interrupted Malvolio.
“Is hardly my idea of entertainment. You might as well invite a
letter-carrier to take a walk for pleasure.”
“Or ask Malvolio to talk about Monet--” said Clarke.
“Who has seen ‘Heart of Topaz’?” asked Terence of his guests.
“I, says the fly, with my little eye,” answered Malvolio. “It is a
pretty peep-show; but she is only Mrs. Tanqueray done into Japanese.
If we are to have that lady at all on our stage, let her come in the
strong, original guise of Pinero’s heroine. Although you, my dear
Miss Blair, must stay away when she appears--”
“Now _I_ protest,” said Mrs. Blair. “But at this rate, we shall never
find a subject of conversation upon which we agree.”
“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Malvolio, whose glass Terence had just
filled with a steaming golden mixture of innocent appearance.
“There is one, and that one uppermost in all our minds, yet deepest
in our hearts--”
“Hear, hear!” murmured Mr. Clarke.
“I need not,” went on the speaker, arising and holding his glass
in his right hand, while upon his saturnine countenance gleamed an
attempt at angelic amiability, “say many words to emphasize the
pleasure Miss Blair’s triumph has given to-night to her hearers. Up
to the present time, I must confess, I have known the young lady
chiefly in her capacity of sub-critic to her father. On various
occasions like the present, I have profited by her opinions upon the
topics of the hour; and I can truly say: ‘Now, by the salt wave of
the Mediterranean, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit; snip, snap,
quick, and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.’ But to-night
she has soared into a region whither I may not follow her, save
with the reverential eyes of an earth-bound loiterer; she has been
accepted among the musical elect, and henceforward I can only offer
my homage from below. Tho’ such as it is--the tribute of enchanted
ignorance--it is hers most heartily; and I ask you all to join with
me in drinking the health of the ‘Woman who has won!’”
“The woman who has won!” repeated Thorndyke, significantly, in
Kathleen’s ear. He had crossed over for the first time to be near
her, and his gaze was radiant.
“Now, why couldn’t I say some of those fine-sounding things?”
poor Colin was grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen break into
well-pleased smiles and bend blushing in the direction of her
extoller. “Old Malvolio has no business to take this on himself,
considering he’s no more musical sense than a turnip. That’s my
trouble, after all. I can’t keep up with the phrase-makers in their
eternal patter. And that man she is talking to her now! How am I to
tell Morry or her father the way I heard him speak of her a while
ago? How did he get here, anyway? Anybody can get in with Kathleen
better than I, it seems. If she’d give me only one of the sweet looks
she wastes upon all these literary freaks”--such, we grieve to say,
was the classification made by Mr. Mackintosh of the rank and file of
the Blairs’ associates--“I’d--”
His meditations were cut short by Kathleen herself, who, supple as a
snake, had glided unnoticed to his elbow.
“You are the only one among us who has a long face,” she said to him,
softly, while across and around the table now resounded a fusillade
of merry sayings and laughter. “Is it because you disapprove of my
playing in public?”
“Disapprove of you? Oh! good gracious, no!” he answered,
incoherently. “I am proud to the core of my heart. But that doesn’t
mean I like to think of you on a platform. It makes me wretched,
and that’s the honest truth. You ought to be shut in from vulgar
gazers in a little world of your own; and the question of dirty money
oughtn’t to enter into your art.”
“Perhaps not,” said the more practical Kathleen; “but, after all,
‘dirty money’ puts the hallmark upon accomplishment. And as to the
vulgar gazers and hearers, they light the torch of genius. When I
was last at the opera, in those good seats in the parquet Mr. Toner
sent papa, I watched the artists closely, and saw that every one of
them was working with all his or her might to do the best possible;
and whenever there came a burst of real applause--not that little
rainfall of claps one hears from the gallery alone, but the kind that
comes, quick as near-by thunder after lightning, from the body of the
house--the ease and spontaneity of the performance was increased.
The very muscles of their bodies seem to feel the tension, and their
faces to grow more luminous.”
“That may be true,” said poor Colin, who was again out of his depth;
“but somehow, I don’t fancy you among them. I had rather see you in
the boxes with those nice girls who sit up by their mammas, and have
fellows dropping in to call on them.”
“Please don’t!” cried she, with unaffected earnestness. “I can’t
imagine any life that would suit me less than theirs. Sometimes, on
a winter’s night when daddy and I hurry by them in the lobby, on
our way to catch a cable car to get home in, I think maybe I might
enjoy wearing one of their long fluffy white wraps like plumage--that
look like seraphs’ overcoats--and having a footman in a fur cape
to call my carriage. But really, I don’t want riches or fashion;
I want opportunity only, and travel, and all the music I can get,
and flowers like those orchids, and a new evening frock--and such
nice things as Mr. Thorndyke has been saying to me about my touch,
and--and to see my parents take a little rest from work. But that’s
what I talk about to Morry, not to you. When his ship and mine come
in, you’ll see what we shall do with our cargoes.”
Thus it was always. While she filled every chink and cranny of
Colin’s dreams of the future, he had no part in hers. Swallowing his
pain, he tried to find something to say to her about his pleasure in
her success. He dared not venture in this place to criticise their
new guest.
“Oh! thank you,” she said, studying his appearance, apparently for
the first time. “And to return the compliment, I ought to tell you
that you look--really very nice.”
“Morry put me up to it,” he said, glowing with pleasure. “We had a
council over my old evening rig that had been through three years of
the University before it came to New York; and he decided I could no
longer pass muster.”
“Yes, I like you in these clothes,” she said, critically. “But I
think--though I’m not certain--your collar should not turn down so
low--and I’m quite sure your hair is too long.”
“Really?” he exclaimed, smiling ecstatically. It was so precious to
have her speak to him in this proprietary way, even though he knew,
too well, alas! that she was inspired by less than the interest of
a sister. He would have been thankful, indeed, to have a part of
Maurice’s share in her regard.
“Yes, really,” she said. “But for those minor points, I believe you
are smart enough to appear in the gilded halls of Mrs. Beaumoris,
where, by the way, I am to make my début on the twenty-fifth as a
paid performer.”
“You! oh, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously, his brown face reddening.
“And why not, pray?” she answered, proudly resentful of his protest.
“What has become of your theories about the dignity of honest toil?”
“It’s not that--only--it is a chariot of fire that is coming to
snatch you away from me,” he said, simply, and in spite of herself
Kathleen was touched.
Colin, seeing his advantage, tried to follow it up. But it is the
misfortune of those in his peculiar state, that the very force of
their desire to be agreeable to the beloved object defeats their
chances of success. He could find nothing appropriate to say, and
felt as he looked--large, lumbering, disconsolate.
No wonder Kathleen flitted away from him to laugh and chaff lightly
with the others. Even little Catullus, with his poses and bushy hair
and solemn fripperies, made the time pass for her more trippingly
than did Morry’s friend.
Terence, however, in his element as a host, presiding with rare grace
and tact over their frugal feast, understood better than any one the
art of amalgamating divers elements in a party. To their number was
presently added Duval of the _Clarion_, who had just been writing his
critique of the last new play at the ---- Theater, that would help to
form opinion on the subject next morning at many breakfast tables.
Talk took itself wings, and soon was stirring with mirthful impulse.
Then Terence, who possessed a tenor voice that might have coined
ducats for his family where his pen won them a bare livelihood,
sang some of his Irish melodies--not Tom Moore’s only, but Lover’s,
and the like. Gazing for an inspiration at his pretty Kathleen, he
trolled out the delicious by-gone serenade that carried his wife back
many a long year, and brought to her eyes the tears of tenderest
sentiment.
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining
Because they’ve nothing else to do?
“The flowers late were open keeping,
To try a rival blush with you;
But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,
With their rosy faces washed in dew.
“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;
He takes me for a thief, you see;
He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,
And then transported I should be.
“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining,
Because they’ve nothing else to do?”
Of all Mr. Blair’s listeners the only one who wore an expression
not in sympathy with the pretty tuneful old song was Catullus; and
even he, sitting in a Yellow Book attitude, exhibited the grace of
magnanimous forbearance. So rapt were the others in the charm of
listening, they paid no heed to “a new step on the floor” of the
adjoining room. It was a pattering little step, much as if a mouse
was scuttling through the house; and at once the door opened, and
in came a tiny, bright-eyed old lady, fully dressed and wide-awake,
although her cap was a tiny bit askew.
“Granny!” cried her family in a voice.
“You didn’t think, Terry, my boy, that I could stop upstairs in
bed, and hear you sing the old songs down below,” answered Granny,
unabashed.
“You’re like the ‘good ould Oirish gintlemen, all of the oulden
toime,’ Granny,” said Maurice, bringing forward her especial chair.
“Don’t you remember how he was supposed to be defunct, and his
friends were ‘waking’ him, and the candles were lighted around his
bed? The corpse stood all the rest, but when the whisky corks began
to pop, he just sprang up and shouted, ‘Whoop! Murther! d’ye think
I’ll be lying here dead, when such good stuff as that is flying
around my head?’”
“For shame, saucy boy,” said Granny, giving her pet a little tap
upon his hand that still clasped hers. “No supper, thanks; I couldn’t
survive it, really; and not a wee drop of the punch, even. Just go on
with your nonsense, good people, and let me listen. But first come
here, Kathleen, child, and tell me how you stood your trial.”
“Let me settle your dear old cap, then,” replied Kathleen, proceeding
to put her offer into execution. “It’s all right about me, Granny;
I’m a gold mine, as you’ll say when you know what Mrs. Beaumoris
is going to pay me for playing at her party. And as to what Herr
Levitsky said, that will keep for to-morrow. Now, papa, we want
‘Widow Malone,’ as only you can sing it.”
“And afterward,” added Thorndyke, with effusion uncommon in that
measured personage, “Miss Blair will surely not refuse to give us a
taste of her quality on the violin.”
Therefore, in due course, Miss Blair, standing under the old clock,
lifted her fiddle-bow, and lo! the air about them thrilled with
exquisite sound. What she chose first to reproduce was the quaint
German Christmas hymn, “Joseph, lieber, Joseph, mein,” written by
Calvisius five hundred years before. Then without warning she broke
into Granny’s favorite Irish jig, playing it with such resistless
vim and merriment that every foot in the room began involuntarily to
keep time, and every face wreathed itself into a smile. As quickly
again the measure changed, and now Kathleen was back in Crichton’s
studio, and her hour of triumph was lived again.
“You are a real witch,” said Colin, finding himself near her after
this. “You have got all these people crazy about you. While you
played, I was wondering if you’ll ever be satisfied with any one man
for an audience.”
He turned, annoyed. There, behind him, stood Mr. Thorndyke, silent,
inscrutable.
“Indeed, and I will!” Kathleen said, merrily.
“And what must he be or do to deserve it?”
“Be?” exclaimed the girl. “Like the donkey, all ears. And do? Give me
a Stradivarius!”
A little later, when the company broke up and the guests went their
several ways, Mackintosh, espying his forgotten flowers, had no
longer the impulse to offer them to Kathleen. The events of the
evening and the attentions of Thorndyke had made her recede further
than ever from his reach.
“Will you ask your mother to have these lilies?” he said, awkwardly
thrusting the box upon Maurice in the hall, and hurrying out of the
house.
When Colin reached the spot he by courtesy called home he let himself
in with a latch-key at a mean-looking door, and climbed three
flights of stairs to his den. This was not exactly the traditional
hall-bedroom of the struggling clerk, but a variant, in the shape
of a middle room, lighted and aired by a small skylight in the roof
only. In other respects it was as cheerless as a ragged carpet, lame
furniture, and mismatched crockery could make it; but Colin thought
little of personal comfort, and the gloom of his meditation as he
threw himself upon a creaking chair beside his iron bed was not due
to the young man’s meager surroundings. For almost the first time in
his life, he felt a sense of impotency in meeting the future in fair
fight; and his ordinary trustful spirit rebelled against thus leaving
his affairs to “lie on the knees of the gods!”
“Give her a Stradivarius!” he said aloud, bitterly. And, somehow,
with the phrase mingled a haunting thought of the man with the angel
face, who had in Colin’s hearing spoken words concerning Kathleen
that were not in the least angelic.