STRAINS FROM NATHAN'S FLUTE
It was one of those Friday evenings, then, when the smell of roast
apples steeping in hot toddy came wafting out the portals of Malachi's
pantry--a smell of such convincing pungency that even the most
infrequent of frequenters having once inhaled it, would have known at
the first whiff that some musical function was in order. The night was
to be one of unusual interest.
Nathan Gill and Max linger were expected, and Miss Lavinia Clendenning,
completing with Richard a quartette for 'cello, flute, piano, and
violin, for which Unger had arranged Beethoven's Overture to "Fidelio."
Nathan, of course, arrived first. On ordinary occasions another of
those quaint ceremonies for which the house was famous would always
take place when the old flute-player entered the drawing-room--a
ceremony which brought a smile to the lips of those who had watched it
for years, and which to this day brings one to those who recall it.
Nathan, with a look of quizzical anxiety on his pinched face, would
tiptoe cautiously into the room, peering about to make sure of
Richard's presence, his thin, almost transparent fingers outspread
before him to show Richard that they were empty. Richard would step
forward and, with a tone of assumed solicitude in his voice, would say:
"Don't tell me, Nathan, that you have forgotten your flute?" and
Nathan, pausing for a moment, would suddenly break into a smile, and
with a queer little note of surprise in his throat, and a twinkle in
his eye, would make answer by slowly drawing from his coat-tail pocket
the three unjointed pieces, holding them up with an air of triumph and
slowly putting them together. Then these two old "Merry-Andrews" would
lock arms and stroll into the library, laughing like school-boys.
To-night, however, as Nathan had been specially invited to play, this
little ceremony was omitted. On entering the hall the musician gave his
long, black, pen-wiper cloak and his hat to Malachi, and supporting
himself by his delicate fingers laid flat on the hall-table, extended
first one thin leg, and then the other, while that obsequious darky
unbuttoned his gaiters. His feet free, he straightened himself up,
pulled the precious flute from his coat-tail pocket and carefully
joined the parts. This done, he gave a look into the hall-mirror,
puffed out his scarf, combed his straight white hair forward over his
ears with his fingers, and at Malachi's announcement glided through the
open doorway to Mrs. Horn's chair, the flute in his hand held straight
out as an orator would have held his roll.
The hostess, who had been sitting by the fire, her white gossamer shawl
about her spare shoulders, rose from her high-backed chair and, laying
aside her knitting-needles and wools, greeted the musician with as much
cordiality--and it must be confessed with as much ceremony--as if she
had not seen him a dozen times that week. One of the charms of the Horn
mansion lay in these delightful blendings of affection and formality.
"Am I a little early?" he asked with as much surprise as if he were not
as certain to be early when music was concerned as he was to be late in
everything else. "Yes, my dear madam--I see that I am early, unless
Miss Lavinia is late."
"You never could be too early, Nathan. Lavinia will be here in a
moment," she answered, with a smile, resuming her seat.
"I'm glad that I'm ahead of her for once," he replied, laughing. Then,
turning to the inventor, who had come forward from where he had been
studying the new score, he laid his hand affectionately on Richard's
shoulder, as a boy would have done, and added: "How do you like Unger's
new arrangement?--I've been thinking of nothing else all day."
"Capital! Capital!" answered Richard, slipping his arm into Nathan's,
and drawing him closer to the piano. "See how he has treated this
adagio phrase," and he followed the line with his finger, humming the
tune to Nathan. "The modulation, you see, is from E Major to A Major,
and the flute sustains the melody, the effect is so peculiarly soft and
the whole so bright with passages of sunshine all through it--oh, you
will love it."
While these two white-haired enthusiasts with their heads together were
studying the score, beating time with their hands, after the manner of
experts to whom all the curious jumble of dots and lines that plague so
many of us are as plain as print, Malachi was receiving Miss
Clendenning in the hall. Indeed, he had answered her knock as Nathan
was passing into the drawing-room.
The new arrival bent her neck until Malachi had relieved her of the
long hooded cloak, gave a quick stamp with her little feet as she shook
out her balloon skirts, and settled herself on the hall-settee while
Malachi unwound the white worsted "nubia" from her aristocratic throat.
This done, she, too, held a short consultation with the hall-mirror,
carefully dusting, with her tiny handkerchief, the little pats of
powder still left on her cheeks, and with her jewelled fingers
smoothing the soft hair parted over her forehead, and tightening
meanwhile the side-combs that kept in place the clusters of short curls
which framed her face. Then, with head erect and a gracious recognition
of the old servant's ministrations, she floated past Malachi, bent
double in her honor.
"Oh, I heard you, Nathan," she laughed, waving her fan toward him as
she entered the room. "I'm not one minute late. Did you ever hear such
impudence, Sallie, and all because he reached your door one minute
before me," she added, stooping to kiss Mrs. Horn. Punctuality was one
of the cardinal virtues of this most distinguished, prim, precise, and
most lovable of old maids. "You are really getting to be dreadful, Mr.
Nathan Gill, and so puffed up--isn't he, Richard?" As she spoke she
turned abruptly and faced both gentlemen. Then, with one of her
rippling laughs--a laugh that Richard always said reminded him of the
notes of a bird--she caught her skirts in her fingers, made the most
sweeping of courtesies and held out her hands to the two gentlemen who
were crossing the room to meet her.
Richard, with the bow of a Cavalier, kissed the one offered him as
gallantly as if she had been a duchess, telling her he had the rarest
treat in store for her as soon as Unger came, and Nathan with mock
devotion held the other between his two palms, and said that to be
scolded by Miss Clendenning was infinitely better than being praised by
anybody else. These pleasantries over, the two old gallants returned to
the piano to wait for Max Unger and to study again the crumpled pages
of the score which lay under the soft light of the candles.
The room relapsed once more into its wonted quiet, broken only by the
whispered talk of well-bred people careful not to disturb each other.
Mrs. Horn had begun to knit again. Miss Clendenning stood facing the
fire, one foot resting on the fender.
This wee foot of the little lady was the delight and admiration of all
the girls about Kennedy Square, and of many others across the seas,
too--men and women for that matter. To-night it was encased in a black
satin slipper and in a white spider-web stocking, about which were
crossed two narrow black ribbons tied in a bow around the ankle--such a
charming little slipper peeping out from petticoats all bescalloped and
belaced! Everything in fact about this dainty old maid, with her trim
figure filling out her soft white fichu, still had that subtlety of
charm which had played havoc with more than one heart in her day. Only
Sallie Horn, who had all the dear woman's secrets, knew where those
little feet had stepped and what hopes they had crushed. Only Sallie
Horn, too, knew why the delicate finger was still bare of a plain gold
ring. The world never thought it had made any difference to Miss
Lavinia, but then the world had never peeped under the lower lid of
Miss Clendenning's heart.
Suddenly the hushed quiet of the room was broken by a loud knock at the
front door, or rather by a series of knocks, so quick and sharp that
Malachi started from his pantry on the run.
"That must be Max," said Richard. "Now, Lavinia, we will move the
piano, so as to give you more room."
Mrs. Horn pushed back her chair, rose to her feet, and stood waiting to
receive the noted 'cellist, without whom not a note could be sounded,
and Miss Clendenning took her foot from the fender and dropped her
skirts.
But it was not Max!
Not wheezy, perspiring old Max Unger after all, walking into the room
mopping his face with one hand and with the other lugging his big
'cello, embalmed in a green baize bag--he would never let Malachi touch
it--not Max at all, but a fresh, rosy-cheeked young fellow of
twenty-two, who came bounding in with a laugh, tossing his hat to
Malachi--a well-knit, muscular young fellow, with a mouth full of white
teeth and a broad brow projecting over two steel-blue eyes that were
snapping with fun.
With his coming the quiet of the place departed and a certain breezy
atmosphere permeated the room as if a gust of cool wind had followed
him. With him, too, came a hearty, whole-souled joyousness--a
joyousness of so sparkling and so radiant a kind that it seemed as if
all the sunshine he had breathed for twenty years in Kennedy Square had
somehow been stored away in his boyish veins.
"Oh, here you are, you dear Miss Lavinia," he cried out, his breath
half gone from his dash across the Square. "How did you get here first?"
"On my two feet, you stupid Oliver," cried Miss Lavinia, shaking her
curls at him. "Did you think somebody carried me?"
"No, I didn't; but that wouldn't be much to carry, Miss Midget." His
pet name for her. "But which way did you come? I looked up and down
every path and--"
"And went all the way round by Sue Clayton's to find me, didn't you?
Oh, you can't throw dust in the Midget's eyes, you young rascal!" and
she stretched up her two dainty hands; drew his face toward her, and
kissed him on the lips.
"There--" and she patted his cheek--"now tell me all about it, you dear
Ollie. What did you want to see me for?" she added with one of those
quick divinations that made her so helpful a confidante. Then, in a
lowered voice--"What has Sue done?"
"Nothing--not one thing. She isn't bothering her head about me. I only
stopped there to leave a book, and--"
Mrs. Horn, with laughing, inquiring eyes, looked up from her chair at
Miss Clendenning, and made a little doubting sound with her lips.
Black-eyed Sue Clayton, with her curls down her back, home from
boarding-school for the Easter holidays, was Oliver's latest flame. His
mother loved to tease him about his love-affairs; and always liked him
to have a new one. She could see farther into his heart she thought
when the face of some sweet girl lay mirrored in its depths.
Oliver heard the doubting sound his mother made, and, reaching over her
chair, flung his arms about her neck and kissed her as if she had been
a girl.
"Now, don't you laugh, you dear old motherkins," he cried, drawing her
nearer to him until her face touched his. "Sue don't care a thing about
me, and I did promise her the book, and I ran every step of the way to
give it to her--didn't I, Uncle Nat?" he added, gayly, hoping to divert
the topic. "You were behind the sun-dial when I passed--don't you
remember?" He shrank a little from the badinage.
The old musician heard the question, but only waved his flute behind
him in answer. He did not even lift his head from beside Richard's at
the score.
Oliver waited an instant, and getting no further reply, released his
hold about his mother's neck, now that he had kissed her into silence,
and turned to Miss Clendenning again.
"Come, Miss Lavinia--come into the library. I've something very
important to talk to you about. Really, now; no nonsense about it!
You've plenty of time--old Max won't be here for an hour, he's always
late, isn't he, mother?"
Miss Clendenning turned quietly, lifted her eyes in a martyr-like way
toward Mrs. Horn, who shook her head playfully in answer, and with
Oliver's arm about her entered the library. She could never refuse any
one of the young people when they came to her with their secrets--most
important and never-to-be-postponed secrets, of course, that could
hardly wait the telling. Her little tea-room across the Square, with
its red damask curtains, its shiny brass andirons, easy-chairs and
lounges, was really more of a confessional than a boudoir. Many a
sorrow had been drowned in the cups of tea that she had served with her
own hand in egg-shell Spode cups, and many a young girl and youth who
had entered its cosey interior with heavy hearts had left it with the
sunshine of a new hope breaking through their tears. But then everybody
knew the bigness of Miss Clendenning's sympathies. It was one of the
things for which they loved her.
She, of course, knew what the boy wanted now. If it were not to talk
about Sue Clayton it was sure to be about some one of the other girls.
The young people thought of nothing else but their love-affairs, and
talked of nothing else, and the old people loved to live their youth
over again in listening. It was one of the traditional customs of
Kennedy Square.
Miss Clendenning settled herself in a corner of the carved haircloth
sofa, touched her side-combs with her finger to see that they were in
place, tucked a red cushion behind her back, crossed her two little
feet on a low stool, the two toes peeping out like the heads of two
mice, and taking Oliver's hand in hers said, in her sweet, coaxing
voice:
"Now, you dear boy, it is Sue, isn't it?"
"No!"
"Not Sue? Who then?"
"Mr. Crocker."
"What Mr. Crocker?" She arched her eyebrows and looked at him in
surprise. The name came as a shock. She knew of Mr. Crocker, of course,
but she wanted Oliver to describe him. Surely, she thought, with a
sudden sense of alarm, the boy has not fallen in love with the daughter
of that shabby old man.
"Why, the landscape-painter--the one father knows. I have been taking
drawing lessons of him and he says I've got a lot of talent and that
all I want is practice. He says that if I begin now and draw from the
cast three or four hours a day that by the end of the year I can begin
in color; and then I can go to New York and study, and then to Paris."
The little lady scrutinized him from under her eyelids. The boy's
enthusiasm always delighted her; she would often forget what he was
talking about, so interested was she in following his gestures as he
spoke.
"And what then?"
"Why then I can be a painter, of course. Isn't that a great deal better
than sitting every day in Judge Ellicott's dingy office reading
law-books? I hate the law!"
"And you love Mr. Crocker?"
"Yes, don't you?"
"I don't know him, Ollie. Tell me what he is like."
"Well, he isn't young any more. He's about father's age, but he's a
splendid old man, and he's so poor! Nobody buys his pictures, nor
appreciates him, and, just think, he has to paint portraits and dogs
and anything he can get to do. Don't you think that's a shame? Nobody
goes to see him but father and Uncle Nat and one or two others. They
don't seem to think him a gentleman." He was putting the case so as to
enlist all her sympathies at once.
"He has a daughter, hasn't he?" She was probing him quietly and without
haste. Time enough for her sympathies to work when she got at the facts.
"Yes, but I don't like her very much, for I don't think she's very good
to him." Miss Clendenning smothered a little sigh of relief; there was
no danger; thank Heaven, in that direction! What, then, could he want,
she thought to herself.
"And he's so different from anybody I ever met," Oliver continued. "He
doesn't talk about horses and duck-shooting and politics, or music or
cards like everyone you meet, except Daddy, but he talks about pictures
and artists and great men. Just think, he was a young student in
Dusseldorf for two years, and then he shouldered a knapsack and tramped
all through Switzerland, painting as he went, and often paying for his
lodgings with his sketches. Then he was in Paris for ever so long, and
now he is here, where--"
"Where you tell me he is painting dogs for a living," interrupted Miss
Clendenning. "Do you think, you young scapegrace, that this would be
better than being a lawyer like Judge Ellicott?" and she turned upon
him with one of her quick outbursts of mock indignation.
"But I'm not going to paint dogs," he replied, with some impatience. "I
am going to paint women, like the Sir Peter Lely that Uncle John
Tilghman has. Oh, she's a beauty! I took Mr. Crocker to see her the
other day. It had just been brought in from the country, you know. You
should have heard him go on. He says there's nobody who can paint a
portrait like it nowadays. He raved about her. You know it is Uncle
John Tilghman's grandmother when she was a girl." His voice suddenly
dropped to a more serious tone as he imparted this last bit of
information.
Miss Clendenning knew whose grandmother it was, and knew and loved
every tone in the canvas. It had hung in the Tilghman Manor-House for
years and was one of its most precious treasures, but she did not
intend to stop and discuss it now.
"Mr. Crocker wants me to copy it just as soon as I draw a little
better. Uncle John will let me, I know."
Miss Clendenning tapped her foot in a noiseless tattoo upon the stool,
and for a time looked off into space. She wanted to draw him out, to
know from what depth this particular enthusiasm had sprung. She was
accustomed to his exuberance of spirits, it was one of the many things
she loved him for. If this new craze were but an idle fancy, and he had
had many of them, it would wear itself out, and the longer they talked
about it the better. If, however, it sprang from an inborn taste, and
was the first indication of a hitherto undeveloped talent forcing
itself to the surface, the situation was one demanding the greatest
caution. Twigs like Oliver bent at the wrong time might never
straighten out again.
"And why did you come to me about this, Ollie; why don't you talk to
your father?"
"I have. He doesn't object. He says that Mr. Crocker is one of the rare
men of the time, and that only inexperience among the people here
prevents him from being appreciated. That's what he goes to see him
for. It isn't father that worries me, it's mother. I know just whet
she'll say. She's got her heart set on my studying law, and she won't
listen to anything else. I wouldn't object to the law if I cared for
it, but I don't. That's what makes it come so hard."
"And you want me to speak to your mother?"
"Yes, of course. That's just what I DO want you to do. Nobody can help
me but you," he cried with that coaxing manner which would have seemed
effeminate until one looked at his well-built, muscular body and the
firm lines about his mouth. "You tell her of all the painters you knew
in London when you lived there, and of what they do and how they are
looked up to, and that some of them are gentlemen and not idlers and
loafers. Mother will listen to you, I know, and maybe then when I tell
her it won't be such a shock to her. Do you know it is incomprehensible
to me, all this contempt for people who don't do just the same things
that their grandfathers did. And how do I know, too, that they are
right about it all? It seems to me that when a man is born a gentleman
and is a gentleman he can follow any occupation he pleases. Instead of
his trade making him respectable he should make IT so." He spoke with a
virility she had never suspected in him before, this boy whom she had
held in her arms as a baby and who was still only the child to her.
"But, Ollie," she interrupted, in some surprise, "you must never forget
that you are your father's son. No one is absolutely independent in
this world; everyone has his family to consider." She was becoming not
only interested now, but anxious. Mr. Crocker had evidently been
teaching the boy something besides the way to use his pencil. Such
democratic ideas were rare in Kennedy Square.
"Yes, I know what you mean." He had sprung from his seat now and was
standing over her, she looking up into his face. "You mean that it is
all right for me to go into old Mr. Wardell's counting-house because he
sells coffee by the cargo, but that I can't take a situation in
Griggson's grocery here on the corner because he sells coffee by the
pound. You mean, too, that it is possible for a man to be a professor
or president of a college and still be a gentleman, but if he teaches
in the public school he is done for. You mean, too, that I could saw
off a patient's leg and still be invited to Uncle Tilghman's house to
dinner, but that if I pulled out one of his teeth I could only eat in
his kitchen."
Miss Clendenning threw back her head and laughed until the combs in her
side-curls needed refastening, but she did not interrupt him.
"I can't get this sort of thing into my head and I never will. And
father doesn't believe in it any more than I do, and I don't think that
mother would if it wasn't for a lot of old people who live around this
square and who talk of nothing all day but their relations and think
there's nobody worth knowing but themselves. Now, you've GOT to talk to
mother; I won't take no for an answer," and he threw himself down
beside her again. "Come, dear Midget, hold up your right hand and
promise me now, before I let you go," he pleaded in his wheedling way
that made him so lovable to his intimates, catching her two hands in
his and holding them tight.
Of course she promised. Had she ever refused him anything? And Oliver,
a boy again, now that his confessions were made, kissed her joyously on
both cheeks and instantly forgetting his troubles as his habit was when
prospects of relief had opened, he launched out into an account of a
wonderful adventure Mr. Crocker once had in an old town in Italy, where
he was locked up over-night in a convent by mistake; and how he had
slept on his knapsack in the chapel, and what the magistrate had said
to him the next day, and how he had to paint a portrait of that
suspicious officer to prove he was a painter and a man of the best
intentions. In his enthusiasm he not only acted the scene, but he
imitated the gesture and dialect of the several parties to the escapade
so perfectly that the little lady, in her delight over the story, quite
forgot her anxiety and even the musicale itself, and only remembered
the quartette when Malachi, bowing obsequiously before her, said:
"Dey's a-waitin' for you, Miss Lavinia. Mister Unger done come and
Marse Richard say he can't wait a minute."
When she and Oliver entered the drawing-room the 'cellist was the
centre of the group. He was stripping off the green baize cover from
his instrument and at the same time was apologizing, in his broken
English, for being so late. Richard was interrupting him with
enthusiastic outbursts over the new score which still lay under the wax
candles lighting the piano, and which he and Nathan, while waiting for
the musician, had been silently practising in sundry bobs of their
heads and rhythmic beatings of their hands.
"My dear Max," Richard continued, with a hand on the musician's
shoulder, patting him in appreciation as he spoke, "we will forgive you
anything. You have so exactly suited to the 'cello the opening theme.
And the flute passages!--they are exquisitely introduced. We will let
Miss Clendenning decide when she hears it--" and he turned Unger's head
in the direction of the advancing lady. "Here she comes now; you, of
course, know the fine quality of Miss Clendenning's ear."
Herr Unger placed his five fat fingers over his waist-baud, bowed as
low to Miss Lavinia as his great girth would permit, and said:
"Ah, yes, I know. Miss Clendenning not only haf de ear she haf de life
in de end of de finger. De piano make de sound like de bird when she
touch it."
The little lady thanked him in her sweetest voice, made a courtesy, and
extended her hand to Max, who kissed it with much solemnity, and
Richard, putting his arm around the 'cellist's fat shoulders, conducted
him across the room, whereupon Nathan, with the assumed air of an old
beau, offered his crooked elbow to Miss Clendenning as an apology for
having reached the house before her. Then, seating her at the piano
with a great flourish, he waved his hand to Oliver, who had drawn up a
chair beside his mother, and with a laugh, cried:
"Here, you young love; come and turn the leaves for Miss Lavinia. It
may keep you from running over other people in the dark, even if they
are accused of hiding behind sun-dials."
With the beginning of the overture Mrs. Horn laid down her work, and
drawing her white gossamer shawl about her shoulders gave herself up to
the enjoyment of the music. The overture was one of her favorites--one
she and Richard had often played together as a duet in their younger
days.
Leaning back in her easy-chair with half-closed eyes, her clear-cut
features in silhouette against the glow of the fire, her soft gray
curls nestling in the filmy lace that fell about her temples, she
expressed, in every line of her face and figure, that air of graceful
repose which only comes to those highly favored women who have all
their lives been nurtured in a home of loving hands, tender voices, and
noiseless servants--lives of never-ending affection without care or
sorrow.
And yet had you, even as she sat there, studied carefully this central
figure of the Horn mansion--this practical, outspoken, gentle-voiced,
tender wife and mother, tenacious of her opinions, yet big enough and
courageous enough to acknowledge her mistakes; this woman, wise in
counsel, sympathetic in sorrow, joyous with the young, restful with the
old, you would have discovered certain lines about her white forehead
which advancing years alone could not have accounted for.
These lines seemed all the deeper to-night. Only a few hours before,
Richard had come to her, while Malachi was arranging his clothes, with
the joyful news of a new device which he had developed during the day
for his motor. He could hardly wait to tell her, he had said. The news
was anything but joyful to her. She knew what it meant--she knew what
sums had been wasted on the other devices, involving losses which at
this time they could so little afford. She was glad, therefore, to free
her mind for the moment from these anxieties; glad to sit alone and
drink in the melodies that the quartette set free.
As she sat listening, beating time noiselessly with her thin, upraised
hand, her head resting quietly, a clear, silvery note--clear as a
bird's--leaped from Nathan's flute, soared higher and higher, trembled
like a lark poised in air, and died away in tones of such exquisite
sweetness that she turned her head in delight toward the group about
the piano, fixing her gaze on Nathan. The old man's eyes were riveted
on the score, his figure bent forward in the intensity of his
absorption, his whole face illumined with the ecstasy that possessed
him. Then she looked at Richard, standing with his back to her, his
violin tucked under his chin, his body swaying in rhythm with the
music. Unger sat next to him, his instrument between his knees, his
stolid, shiny face unruffled by the glorious harmonies of Beethoven.
Then her glance rested on Oliver. He was hanging over the piano
whispering in Miss Clendenning's ear, his face breaking into smiles at
her playful chidings. If the pathos of the melody had reached him he
showed no sign of its effects.
Instantly there welled up in her heart a sudden gush of tenderness--one
of those quick outbursts that often overwhelm a mother when her eyes
rest on a son whose heart is her own--an outburst all the more
intensified by the melody that thrilled her. Why should her heart have
been troubled? Here was her strong hope! Here was her chief reliance!
Here the hope of the future. How could she doubt or suffer when this
promise of the coming day was before her in all the beauty and strength
of his young manhood.
With the echoes of Nathan's flute still vibrating in her, and with her
mind filled with the delight of these fresh hopes, she suddenly
recalled the anxious look on her boy's face as he led Miss Clendenning
into the library--a new look--one she had never seen before. Still
under the quickening spell of the music she began to exaggerate its
cause. What had troubled him? Why had he told Lavinia, and not her? Was
there anything serious?--something he had kept from her to save her
pain?
From this moment her mind became absorbed in her boy. With restless,
impatient fingers she began thrumming on the arm of her chair. Oliver
would tell her, she knew, before many hours, but she could not
wait--she wanted to know at once.
With the ending of the first part of the overture, and before the two
gentlemen had laid down their instruments to grasp Unger's hands, she
called to Miss Clendenning, who sat at the piano alone, Oliver having
slipped away unobserved.
Miss Clendenning raised her eyes in answer. "Come over and sit by me,
dear, while the gentlemen rest."
Miss Clendenning picked up her white silk mits and fan lying beside the
candles, and moved toward the fireplace. Malachi saw her coming--he was
always in the room during the interludes--and with an alacrity common
to him when the distinguished little lady was present, drew up a low
chair beside his mistress and stood behind it until she took her seat.
Miss Clendenning smoothed out her skirt and settled herself with the
movement of a pigeon filling her nest. Then she laid her mits in her
lap and fanned herself softly.
"Well, Sallie, what is it? Did you ever hear Nathan play so well!" she
asked, at last.
"What did Oliver want, my dear?" replied Mrs. Horn, ignoring her
question. "Is there anything worrying him, or is Sue at the bottom of
it!"
The little woman smiled quizzically. "No, Sallie--not Sue--not this
time. That little rattle-brain's affections will only last the week
out. Nothing very important--that is, nothing urgent. We were talking
about the Tilghman portraits and the Lely that Cousin John has brought
into town from Claymore Manor, and what people should and should not do
to earn their living, and what professions were respectable. I thought
one thing and Ollie thought another. Now, what profession of all others
would you choose for a young man starting out in life?"
"What has he been telling you, Lavinia? Does he want to leave Judge
Ellicott's office?" Mrs. Horn asked, quietly, She always went straight
to the root of any matter.
"Just answer my question, Sallie."
"I'd rather he'd be a lawyer, of course; why?"
"Suppose he won't, or can't?"
"Is that what he told you, Lavinia, on the sofa?" She was leaning
forward, her cheek on her hand, her eyes fixed on the blazing logs.
"He told me a great many things, half of them boy's talk. Now answer my
question; suppose he couldn't study law because his heart wasn't in it,
what then?"
"I know, Lavinia, what you mean." There was an anxious tone now in the
mother's voice. "And Oliver talked to you about this?" As she spoke she
settled back in her chair and a slight sigh escaped her.
"Don't ask me, Sallie, for I'm not going to tell you. I want to know
for myself what you think, so that I can help the boy."
Mrs. Horn turned her head and looked toward Richard. She had suspected
as much from some hints that Judge Ellicott had dropped when she had
asked him about Oliver's progress. "He is still holding down his chair,
Madam." She thought at the time that it was one of the Judge's
witticisms, but she saw now that it had a deeper meaning. After some
moments she said, fixing her eyes on Miss Clendenning:
"Well, now, Lavinia, tell me what YOU think. I should like your
opinion. What would you wish to do with him if he were your son?"
Miss Lavinia smiled and her eyes half-closed. For a brief moment there
came to her the picture of what such a blessing would have been. Her
son! No! It was always somebody else's son or daughter to whom her
sympathy must go.
"Well, Sallie," she answered--she was leaning over now, her hands in
her lap, apparently with lowered eyelids, but really watching Mrs.
Horn's, face from the corner of her eye--"I don't think we can make a
clergyman out of him, do you?" Mrs. Horn frowned, but she did not
interrupt. "No, we cannot make a parson out of him. I meant, my love,
something in surplices, not in camp-meetings, of course. Think of those
lovely pink cheeks in a high collar and Bishop's sleeves, wouldn't he
be too sweet for anything?" and she laughed one of her little cooing
laughs. "Nor a doctor," she continued, with a slight interrogation in
her tone, "nor a shopkeeper, nor a painter"--and she shot a quick
glance from under her arching eyebrows at her companion--but Mrs.
Horn's face gave no sign--"nor a musician. Why not a musician, Sallie,
he sings like an angel, you know?" She was planting her shafts all
about the target, her eyes following the flight of each arrow.
Mrs. Horn raised her head and laid her hand firmly on Miss
Clendenning's wrist.
"We won't have him a shopkeeper, Lavinia," she said with some
positiveness, "nor a barber, nor a painter, nor a cook, nor a dentist.
We'll try and keep him a gentleman, my dear, whatever happens. As for
his being a musician, I think you will agree with me, that music is
only possible as an accomplishment, never when it is a profession. Look
at that dear old man over there"--and she pointed to Nathan, who was
bending forward running over on his flute some passages from the score,
his white hair covering his coat-collar behind--"so absolutely unfitted
for this world as he is, so purposeless, so hopelessly inert. He
breathes his whole soul into that flute and yet--"
"And a good deal comes out of it sometimes, my dear--to-night, for
instance," laughed Miss Lavinia. "Did you catch those bird-like notes?"
"Yes, and they thrilled me through and through, but sweet as they are
they haven't helped him make a career."
At this moment Richard called to Unger, who had been sitting on the
sofa in the library, "cooling off," he said, as he mopped his head with
a red handkerchief, one of Malachi's cups in his hand.
Miss Lavinia caught sight of the 'cellist's advancing figure and rose
from her seat. "I must go now," she said, "they want to play it again."
She moved a step forward, gave a glance at her side-curls in the oval
mirror over the mantel, stopped hesitatingly, and then bending over
Mrs. Horn said, thoughtfully, her hand on her companion's shoulder,
"Sallie, don't try to make water run uphill. If Ollie belonged to me
I'd let him follow his tastes, whatever they were. You'll spoil the
shape of his instep if you keep him wearing Chinese shoes," and she
floated over to join the group of musicians.
Mrs. Horn again settled herself in her chair. She understood now the
look on Oliver's face. She was right then; something was really
worrying him. The talk with Miss Lavinia had greatly disturbed her--.
so much so that she could not listen to the music. Again her eyes
rested on Oliver, who had come in and joined the group at the piano,
all out of breath with his second run across the Square--this time to
tell Sue of Miss Clendenning's promise. He was never happy unless he
was sharing what was on his mind with another, and if there was a girl
within reach he was sure to pour it into her willing ears.
Mrs. Horn looked at him with a pang about her heart. From which side of
the house had come this fickleness, this instability and love of change
in Oliver's character? she asked herself--a new interest every day--all
the traditions of his forefathers violated. How could she overcome it
in him? how make him more practical? Years before, when she had thought
him proud, she had sent him to market and had made him carry home the
basket on his arm, facing the boys who laughed at him. He had never
forgotten the lesson; he was neither proud nor lazy any more. But what
could she do in a situation like this?
Harassed by these doubts her eyes wandered over Oliver's slender,
well-knit muscular figure as he stood whispering to Miss Clendenning.
She noticed the fine, glossy hair brushed from the face and worn long
in the neck, curling behind the ears. She noted every movement of his
body: the graceful way in which he talked with his hands, using his
fingers to accentuate his words, and the way in which he shrugged his
shoulders--the shrug of a Frenchman, although not a drop of their blood
could be found in his veins--and in the quick lifting of the hand and
the sidelong glance of the eye, all so characteristic of Richard when
some new thought or theory reached his brain for the first time.
Gradually and unconsciously she began to compare each feature of
Oliver's face with that of the father who stood beside him: the alert
blue, eyes; overhanging brow and soft silkiness of the
hair--identically the name, even the way it lay in the neck. And again
she looked at Richard, drawing the bow as if in a dream.
Instantly a thought entered her mind that drove the blood from her
cheeks. These vacillations of her husband's! This turning from one
thing to another--first the law, then these inventions that never lead
anywhere, and now Oliver beginning in the same way, almost in the same
steps! Could these traits be handed down to the children? Would Oliver
be like Richard in----
Instinctively she stopped short before the disloyal thought could form
itself in her brain, straightened herself in her chair, and closed her
lips tight.
The music ceased; Nathan laid his flute on the piano; Unger rose from
his seat, and Richard turned to talk to Miss Clendenning. But she was
unmindful of it all--she still sat in her chair, her eyes searching the
blazing logs, her hands in her lap.
Only Malachi with his silver tray recalled her to consciousness.