A CHANGE OF WIND
The affair of the brass band, with its dramatic and most unlooked-for
ending, left an unpleasant memory in the minds of the members of the
club, especially in Oliver's. His training had been somewhat different
from that of the others present, and his oversensitive nature had been
more shocked than pleased by it all. While most of the other
participants regretted the ill-feeling which had been aroused in Miss
Teetum's mind, they felt sure--in fact, they knew--that this heretofore
kind and gentle hostess could never have fanned her wrath to so white a
heat had not some other hand besides her own worked the bellows.
Suspicion first fell upon a new boarder unaccustomed to the ways of the
house, who, it was reported, had double-locked herself in at the first
crash of the drum, and who had admitted, on being cross-examined by
McFudd, that she had nearly broken her back in trying to barricade her
bedroom door with a Saratoga trunk and a wash-stand. This theory was
abandoned when subsequent inquiries brought to light the fact that Mrs.
Van Tassell, when the echoes of one of McFudd's songs had reached her
ears, had stated a week before that no respectable boarding-house would
tolerate uproars like those which took place almost nightly on the top
floor, and that she would withdraw her protection from Miss Euphemia
and leave the house at once and forever if the noise did not cease.
This dire threat being duly reported to the two Misses Teetum had--it
was afterward learned--so affected them both that Miss Ann had gone to
bed with a chill and Miss Sarah had warded off another with a bowl of
hot camomile tea.
This story, true as it undoubtedly was, did not entirely clear up the
situation. One part of it sorely puzzled McFudd. Why did Miss Euphemia
need Mrs. Van Tassell's protection, and why should the loss of it stir
Miss Ann to so violent an outburst? This question no member of the
Skylarks could answer.
The solution came that very night, and in the most unexpected way,
Waller bearing the glad tidings.
Miss Euphemia, ignoring them all, was to be married at St. Mark's at 6
P.M. on the following Monday, and Mrs. Van Tassell was to take charge
of the wedding reception in the front parlor! The groom was the strange
young man who had sat for some days beside Miss Euphemia, passing as
Miss Ann's nephew, and who really was a well-to-do druggist with a shop
on Astor Place. All of the regular boarders of the house were to be
invited.
The explosion of this matrimonial bomb so cleared the air of all doubt
as to the guilt of Mrs. Van Tassell, that a secret meeting, attended by
every member of the Skylarks, was at once held in Waller's room with
the result that Miss Ann's invitations to the wedding were unanimously
accepted. Not only would the resident members go--so the original
resolution ran--but the non-resident and outside members would also be
on hand to do honor to Miss Euphemia and her distinguished chaperone.
This amendment being accepted, McFudd announced in a sepulchral tone
that, owing to the severity of the calamity and to the peculiarly
painful circumstances which surrounded their esteemed fellow-skylarker,
the Honorable Sylvester Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, his fellow-members would
wear crape on their left arms for thirty days. This also was carried
unanimously, every man except Ruffle-shirt Tomlins breaking out into
the "Dead Man's Chorus"--a song, McFudd explained, admirably fitted to
the occasion.
When the auspicious night arrived, the several dress-suits of the
members were duly laid out on the piano and hung over the chairs, and
each gentleman proceeded to array himself in costume befitting the
occasion. Waller, who weighed 200 pounds, squeezed himself into
McFudd's coat and trousers (McFudd weighed 150), the trousers reaching
a little below the painter's knees. McFudd wrapped Waller's coat about
his thin girth and turned up the bagging legs, of the unmentionables
six inches above his shoes. The assorted costumes of the other members
were equally grotesque. The habiliments themselves were of proper cut
and make, according to the standards of the time--spike-tailed coats,
white ties, patent-leather pumps, and the customary trimmings, but the
effects produced were as ludicrous as they were incongruous, though the
studied bearing of the gentlemen was meant to prove their
unconsciousness of the fact.
The astonishment that rested on Mrs. Van Tassell's face when this
motley group filed into the parlor and with marked and punctilious
deference paid their respects to the bride, and the wrath that flashed
in Miss Euphemia's eyes, became ever after part of the traditions of
the club. Despite Mrs. Van Tassell's protest against the uproar on the
top floor, she had invariably spoken in high terms to her friends and
intimates of these very boarders--their acquaintance was really part of
her social capital--commenting at the same time upon their exalted
social and artistic positions. In fact, many of her own special guests
had attended the wedding solely in the hope of being brought into more
intimate relations with this distinguished group of painters, editors,
and musicians, some of whom were already being talked about.
When, however, McFudd stood in the corner of Miss Teetum's parlor like
a half-scared boy, pulling out the fingers of Waller's kid gloves, an
inch too long for him, and Waller, Fred, and my Lord Cockburn stumbled
over the hearth-rug one after the other, and Oliver, feeling like a
guilty man and a boor, bowed and scraped like a dancing-master; and
Bowdoin the painter, and Simmons and Fog-horn Cranch, talked platitudes
with faces as grave as undertakers, the expectant special guests
invited by Mrs. Van Tassell began to look upon her encomiums as part of
an advertising scheme to fill Miss Teetum's rooms.
The impression made upon the Teetum contingent by the appearance and
manners of the several members--even Oliver's reputation was
ruined--was equally disastrous. It was, perhaps, best voiced by the
druggist groom, when he informed Mrs. Van T. from behind his
lemon-colored glove--that "if that was the gang he had heard so much
of, he didn't want no more of 'em."
But these and other jollifications were not long to continue. Causes
infinitely more serious were at work undermining the foundations of the
Skylarks. The Lodge of Poverty, to which they all belonged, gay as it
had often been, was slowly closing its door; the unexpected, which
always hangs over life, was about to happen; the tie which bound these
men together was slowly loosening. Its members might give the grip of
fellowship to other members in other lodges over the globe, but no
longer in this one on the top floor of the house on Union Square.
One morning McFudd broke the seal of an important-looking letter
bearing a Dublin post-mark on the upper right-hand corner of the
envelope, and the family crest on its flap. For some moments he sat
still, looking straight before him. Then two tears stole out and
glistened on his lashes.
"Boys," he said, slowly, "the governor says I must come home," and he
held up a steamer ticket and a draft that barely equalled his dues for
a month's board and washing.
That night he pawned his new white overcoat with the bone buttons and
velvet collar--the one his father had sent him, and which had been the
envy of every man in the club, and invested every penny of the proceeds
in a supper to be given to the Skylarks. The invitation ran as follows:
Mr. Cornelius McFudd respectively requests the pleasure of your
presence at an informal wake to be held in honor of a double-breasted
overcoat, London cut. The body and tail will be the ducks, and the two
sleeves and velvet collar the Burgundy.
Riley's: 8 p.m. Third floor back.
The following week he packed his two tin boxes, boarded the Scotia, and
sailed for home.
The keystone having dropped out, it was not long before the balance of
the structure came down about the ears of the members. My Lord Cockburn
the following week was ordered South by the bank to look after some
securities locked up in a vault in a Georgia trust company, and which
required a special messenger to recover them--the growing uneasiness in
mercantile circles over the political outlook of the country having
assumed a serious aspect. Cockburn had to swim rivers, he wrote Oliver
in his first letter, and cross mountains on horseback, and sleep in a
negro hut, besides having a variety of other experiences, to say
nothing of several hair-breadth escapes, none of which availed him, as
he returned home after all, without the bonds.
These financial straws, indicating the direction and force of the
coming political winds, began to accumulate. The lull before the
hurricane--the stagnation in commercial circles--became so ominous that
soon the outside members and guests of the club ceased coming, being
diligently occupied in earning their bread, and then Simmons sent the
piano home--it had been loaned to him by reason of his profession and
position--and only Fog-horn Cranch, Waller, Fred, Oliver, and
Ruffle-shirt Tomlins were left. Alter a while, Waller gave up his room
and slept in his studio and got his meals at the St. Clair, or went
without them, so light, by reason of the hard times, was the demand for
sheep pictures of Waller's particular make. And later on Tomlins went
abroad, and Cranch moved West. And so the ruin of the club was
complete; and so, too, this merry band of roysterers, with one or two
exceptions, passes out of those pages.
Dear boys of the long ago, what has become of you all since those old
days in that garret-room on Union Square? Tomlins, I know, turned up in
Australia, where he married a very rich and very lovely woman, because
he distinctly stated both of those facts in an exuberant letter to
Oliver when he invited him to the wedding. "Not a bad journey--only a
step, my dear Ollie, and we shall be so delighted to see you." I know
this, to be true, for Oliver showed me the letter. Bowdoin went to
Paris, where, as we all remember, he had a swell studio opening on to a
garden, somewhere near the Arc de Triomphe, and had carriages stop at
his door, and a butler to open it, and two maids in white caps to help
the ladies off with their wraps. Poor Cranch died in Montana while
hunting for gold, and my Lord Cockburn went back to London.
But does anybody know what has become of McFudd--irresistible,
irresponsible, altogether delightful McFudd? that condensation of all
that was joyous, rollicking, and spontaneous; that devotee of the tub
and pink of neatness, immaculate, clean-shaven and well-groomed; that
soul of good-nature, which no number of flowing bowls could disturb nor
succeeding headaches dull; that most generous of souls, whose first
impulse was to cut squarely in half everything he owned and give you
your choice of the pieces, and who never lost his temper until you
refused them both. If you, my dear boy, are still wandering about this
earth, and your eye should happen to fall on these pages, remember, I
send you my greeting. If you have been sent for, and have gone aloft to
cheer those others who have gone before, and who could spare you no
longer, speak a good word for me, please, and then, perhaps, I may
shake your hand again.
With the dissolution of the happy coterie there came to Oliver many a
lonely night under the cheap lamp, the desolate hall outside looking
all the more desolate and uninviting with the piano gone and the lights
extinguished.
Yet these nights were not altogether distasteful to Oliver. Fred had
noticed for months that his room-mate no longer entered into the
frolics of the club with the zest and vim that characterized the
earlier days of the young Southerner's sojourn among them. Our hero had
said nothing while the men had held together, and to all outward
appearances had done his share not only with his singing, but in any
other way in which he could help on the merriment. He had covered the
space allotted to him on the walls with caricatures of the several
boarders below. He had mixed the salad at Riley's the night of McFudd's
farewell supper, with his sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the
cook's cap on his head. He had lined up with the others at Brown's on
the Bowery; drank his "crystal cocktails"--the mildest of
beverages--and had solemnly marched out again with his comrades in a
lock-step like a gang of convicts. He had indulged in forty-cent opera,
leaning over the iron railing of the top row of the Academy of Music,
and had finished the evening at Pfaff's, drinking beer and munching
hardtack and pickles, and had laughed and sung in a dozen other equally
absurd escapades. And yet it was as plain as daylight to Fred that
Oliver's heart was no longer centred in the life about him.
The fact is, the scribe is compelled to admit, the life indulged in by
these merry bohemians had begun to pall upon this most sensitive of
young gentlemen. It really had not satisfied him at all. This was not
the sort of life that Mr. Crocker meant, he had said to himself after a
night at Riley's when Cranch had sounded his horn so loud that the
proprietor had threatened to turn the whole party into the street. Mr.
Crocker's temperament was too restful to be interested in such
performances. As for himself, he was tired of it.
Nothing of all this did he keep from his mother. The record of his
likes and dislikes which formed the subject-matter of his daily letters
was an absorbing study with her, and she let no variation of the
weather-vane of his tastes escape her. Nor did she keep their contents
from her intimate friends. She had read to Colonel Clayton one of his
earlier ones, in which he had told her of the concerts and of the way
Cockburn had served the brew that McFudd had concocted, and had shown
him an illustration Oliver had drawn on the margin of the sheet--an
outline of the china mug that held the mixture--to which that
Chesterfield of a Clayton had replied:
"What did I tell you, madame--just what I expected of those
Yankees--punch from mugs! Bah!"
She had, too, talked their contents over with Amos Cobb, who, since the
confidence reposed in him by the Horn family, had become a frequent
visitor at the house.
"There's no harm come to him yet, madame, or he wouldn't write you of
what he does. Boys will be boys. Let him have his fling," the Vermonter
had replied with a gleam of pleasure in his eye. "If he has the stuff
in him that I think he has, he will swim out and get to higher ground;
if he hasn't, better let him drown early. It will give everybody less
trouble."
The dear lady had lost no sleep over these escapades. She, too,
realized that as long as Oliver poured out his heart unreservedly to
her there was little to fear. In her efforts to cheer him she had
sought, in her almost daily letters sent him in return, to lead his
thoughts into other channels. She knew how fond he had always been of
the society of women, and how necessary they were to his happiness, and
she begged him to go out more. "Surely there must be some young girls
in so great a city who can help to make your life happier," she wrote.
In accordance with her suggestions, he had at last put on his best
clothes and had accompanied Tomlins and Fred to some very delightful
houses away up in Thirty-third Street, and another on Washington
Square, and still another near St. Mark's Place, where his personality
and his sweet, sympathetic voice had gained him friends and most
pressing invitations to call again. Some he had accepted, and some he
had not--it depended very largely on his mood and upon the people whom
he met. If they reminded him in any way, either in manners or
appointments, of his life at home, he went again--if not, he generally
stayed away.
Among these was the house of his employer, Mr. Slade, who had treated
him with marked kindness, not only inviting him to his own house, but
introducing him to many of his friends--an unusual civility Oliver
discovered afterward--not many of the clerks being given a seat at Mr.
Slade's table. "I like his brusque, hearty manner," Oliver wrote to his
mother after the first visit. "His wife is a charming woman, and so are
the two daughters, quite independent and fearless, and entirely
different from the girls at home, but most interesting and so well
bred."
Another incident, too, had greatly pleased not only Oliver and his
mother, but Richard as well. It happened that a consignment of goods
belonging to Morton, Slade & Co. was stored in a warehouse in
Charleston, and it became necessary to send one of the clerks South to
reship or sell them, the ordinary business methods being unsafe, owing
to the continued rumblings of the now rapidly approaching political
storm--a storm that promised to be infinitely more serious than the
financial stringency. The choice had fallen on Oliver, he being a
Southerner, and knowing the ways of the people. He had advised with his
mother and stood ready to leave at an hour's notice, when Mr. Slade's
heart failed him.
"It's too dangerous, my lad," he said to Oliver. "I could trust you, I
know, and I believe you would return safely and bring the goods or the
money with you, but I should never forgive myself if anything should
happen to you. I will send an older man." And he did.
It was at this time that Oliver had received Cockburn's letter telling
him of his own experiences, and he, therefore, knew something of the
risks a man would run, and could appreciate Mr. Slade's action all the
more. Richard, as soon as he heard of it, had put down his tools, left
his work-bench, and had gone into his library, where he had written the
firm a letter of thanks, couched in terms so quaint and courtly, and so
full of generous appreciation of their interest in Oliver, that Mr.
Slade, equally appreciative, had worn it into ribbons in showing it to
his friends as a model of style and chirography.
Remembering his mother's wishes, and in appreciation of his employer's
courtesy, he had kept up this intimacy with the Slade family until an
unfortunate catastrophe had occurred, which while it did not affect his
welcome at their house, ruined his pleasure while there.
Mr. Slade had invited Oliver to dinner one rainy night, and, being too
poor to pay for a cab, Oliver, in attempting to cross Broadway, had
stepped into a mud-puddle a foot deep. He must either walk back and
change his shoes and be late for dinner--an unpardonable offence--or he
must keep on and run his chances of cleaning them in the dressing-room.
There was no dressing-room available, as it turned out, and the fat
English butler had to bring a wet cloth out into the hall (oh! how he
wished for Malachi!) and get down on his stiff knees and wipe away
vigorously before Oliver could present himself before his hostess, the
dinner in the meantime getting cold and the guests being kept waiting.
Oliver could never look at those shoes after that without shivering.
This incident had kept him at home for a time and had made him chary of
exposing himself to similar mortifications. His stock of clothes at
best was limited--especially his shoes--and as the weather continued
bad and the streets impassable, he preferred waiting for clearer skies
and safer walking. So he spent his nights in his room, crooning over
the coke fire with Fred, or all alone if Fred were at the Academy,
drawing from the cast.
On these nights he would begin to long for Kennedy Square. He had said
nothing yet about returning, even for a day's visit. He knew how his
mother felt about it, and he knew how he had seen her struggle to keep
the interest paid up on the mortgage and to meet the daily necessities
of the house. The motor was still incomplete, she wrote him, and
success was as far off as ever. The mortgage had again been extended
and the note renewed--this time for a longer term, owing to some
friend's interest in the matter whose name she could not learn. She,
therefore, felt no uneasiness on that score, although there were still
no pennies which could be spared for Olivers travelling expenses, even
if he could get leave of absence from his employers.
At these times, as he sat alone in his garret-room, Malachi's chuckle,
without cause or reminder would suddenly ring in his ears, or some low
strain from his father's violin or a soft note from Nathan's flute
would float through his brain. "Dear Uncle Nat," he would break out,
speaking aloud and springing from his chair--"I wish I could hear you
tonight."
His only relief while in these moods was to again seize his pen and
pour out his heart to his mother or to his father, or to Miss
Clendenning or old Mr. Crocker. Occasionally he would write to Sue--not
often--for that volatile young lady had so far forgotten Oliver as to
leave his letters unanswered for weeks at a time. She was singing
"Dixie," she told him in her last billet-doux, now a month old, and
wondering whether Oliver was getting to be a Yankee, and whether he
would be coming home with a high collar and his hair cut short and
parted in the middle.
His father's letters in return did not lessen his gloom. "These
agitators will destroy the country, my son, if they keep on," Richard
had written in his last letter. "It is a sin against civilization to
hold your fellow-men in bondage, and that is why years ago I gave
Malachi and Hannah and the others their freedom, but Virginia has
unquestionably the right to govern her internal affairs without
consulting Massachusetts, and that is what many of these Northern
leaders do not or will not understand. I am greatly disturbed over the
situation, and I sincerely hope your own career will not be affected by
these troubles. As to my own affairs, all I can say is that I work
early and late, and am out of debt." Poor fellow! He thought he was.
Oliver was sitting thus one night, his head in his hands, elbows on his
knees, gazing into the smouldering coals of his grate, his favorite
attitude when his mind was troubled, when Fred, his face aglow, his big
blue eyes dancing, threw wide the door and bounded in, bringing in his
clothes the fresh, cool air of the night. He had been at work in the
School of the Academy of Design, and had a drawing in chalk under his
arm--a head of the young Augustus.
"What's the matter, Ollie, got the blues?"
"No, Freddie, only thinking."
"What's her name? I'll go and see her and make it up. Out with it--do I
know her?"
Oliver smiled faintly, examined the drawing for a moment, and handing
it back to Fred, said, sadly, "It's not a girl, Freddie, but I don't
seem to get anywhere."
Fred threw the drawing on the bed and squeezed himself into the chair
beside his chum, his arm around his neck.
"Where do you want to get, old man? What's the matter--any trouble at
the store?"
"No--none that I know of. But the life is so monotonous, Fred. You do
what you love to do. I mark boxes all day till lunch-time, then I roll
them out on the sidewalk and make out dray tickets till I come home.
I've been doing that all winter; I expect to be doing it for years.
That don't get me anywhere, does it? I hate the life more and more
every day."
(Was our hero's old love of change again asserting itself, or was it
only the pinching of that Chinese shoe which his mother in her anxiety
had slipped on his unresisting foot, and which he was still wearing to
please her? Or was it the upper pressure of some inherent talent--some
gift of his ancestors that would not down at his own bidding or that of
his mother or anybody else's?)
"Somebody's got to do it, Ollie, and you are the last man hired,"
remarked Fred, quietly. "What would you like to do?"
Oliver shifted himself in the crowded chair until he could look into
his room-mate's eyes.
"Fred, old man," he answered, his voice choking, "I haven't said a word
to you about it all the time I've been here, for I don't like to talk
about a thing that hurts me, and so I've kept it to myself. Now I'll
tell you the truth just as it is. I don't want Mr. Slade's work nor
anybody else's work. I don't like business and never will. I want to
paint, and I'll never be happy until I do. That's it, fair and square."
"Well, quit Slade, then, and come with me."
"I would if it wasn't for mother. I promised her I would see this
through, and I will." As he spoke the overdue mortgage and his mother's
efforts to keep the interest paid passed in review before him.
Fred caught his breath. It astonished him, independent young Northerner
as he was, to hear a full-grown man confess that his mother's'
apron-strings still held him up, but he made no comment.
"Why not try both?" he cried. "There's a place in the school alongside
of me--we'll work together nights. It won't interfere with what you do
downtown. You'll get a good start, and when you have a day off in the
summer you can do some out-door work. Waller has told me a dozen times
that you draw better than he did when he commenced. Come along with me."
This conversation, with the other incidents of the day, or rather that
part of it which had reference to the Academy, was duly set forth in
his next letter to his mother--not as an argument to gain her consent
to his studying with Fred, for he knew it was the last thing she would
agree to--but because it was his habit to tell her everything. It would
show her, too, how good a fellow Fred was and what an interest he took
in his welfare. Her answer, three days later, sent him bounding
upstairs and into their room like a whirlwind.
"Read, Fred, read!" he cried. "I can go. Mother says she thinks it
would be the best thing in the world for me. Here, clap your eyes on
that--" and Oliver held the letter out to Fred, his finger pointing to
this passage: "I wish you would join Fred at the Academy. Now that you
have a regular business that occupies your mind, and are earning your
living, I have no objection to your studying drawing or learning any
other accomplishment. You work hard all day, and this will rest you."
The cramped foot was beginning to spread! The Chinese shoe had lost its
top button.