it. She told him. Part of her experience she kept back, a true part; the
other, no less true, she described. With deft fingers she went over the
somberly woven web of the hours, and plucking here a bright thread and
there a bright thread, rewove these into a smaller picture, on which
fell the day's far-separated sunbeams; the rays were condensed now and
made a solid brightness.
This is how she painted for him a bright picture out of things not many
of which were bright. The teacher of the portrait class, to begin, had
been very considerate. He had arranged that she should leave her things
with the janitor's wife down-stairs, and not go up-stairs and take them
off behind some screens in a corner of the room where the class was
assembled. That would have been dreadful, to have to go behind the
screens to take off her hat and gloves. Then instead of sending word for
her to come up, he himself had come down. As he led the way past the
confusing halls and studios, he had looked back over his shoulder just a
little, to let her know that not for a moment did he lose thought of
her. To have walked in front of her, looking straight ahead, might have
meant that he esteemed her a person of no consequence. A master so walks
before a servant, a superior before an inferior. Out of respect for her,
he had even lessened the natural noisiness of his feet on the bare
floor. If you put your feet down hard in the house, it means that you
are thinking of yourself and not of other people. He had mounted the
stairs slowly lest she get out of breath as she climbed. When he
preceded her into the presence of the class, he had turned as though he
introduced to them his own mother. In everything he did he was really a
man; that is, a gentleman. For being a gentleman is being really a man;
if you are really a man, you _are_ a gentleman.
As for the members of the class, they had been beautiful in their
treatment of her. Not a word had been exchanged with them, but she could
_feel_ their beautiful thoughts. Sometimes when she glanced at them,
while they worked, such beautiful expressions rested on their faces.
Unconsciously their natures had opened like young flowers, and as at the
hearts of young flowers there is for each a clear drop of honey, so in
each of their minds there must have been one same thought, the
remembrance of their mothers. Altogether it was as though they were
assembled there in honor of her, not to make use of her.
As to posing itself, one had not a thing to do but sit perfectly still!
One got such a good rest from being too much on one's feet! And they had
placed for her such a splendid carved-oak chair! When she took her seat,
all at once she had felt as if at home again. There were immense
windows; she had had all the fresh air she wished, and she did enjoy
fresh air! The whole roof was a window, and she could look out at the
sky: sometimes the loveliest clouds drifted over, and sometimes the
dearest little bird flew past, no doubt on its way to the park. Last,
but not least, she had not been crowded. In New York it was almost
impossible to secure a good seat in a public place without being nudged
or bumped or crowded. But that had actually happened to her. She had had
a delightful chair in a public place, with plenty of room in every
direction. How fortunate at last to remember that she might pose! It
would fit in perfectly at times when she did not have to go out for
needlework or for the other demands. Dollars would now soon begin to be
brought in like their bits of coal, by the scuttleful! And then the
piano! And then the teacher and the lessons! And _then_, and _then_--
Her happy story ended. She had watched the play of lights on his face as
sometimes he, though hungry, with fork in the air paused to listen and
to question. Now as she finished and looked across the table at the
picture of him under the lamplight, she was rewarded, she was content;
while he ate his plain food, out of her misfortunes she had beautifully
nourished his mind. He did not know this; but she knew it, knew by his
look and by his only comment:
"You had a perfectly splendid time, didn't you?"
She laughed to herself.
"Now, then," she said, coming to what had all along been most in her
consciousness--"now, then, tell me about _your_ day. Begin at the moment
_you_ left _me_."
He laid down his napkin,--he could eat no more, and there was nothing
more to eat,--and he folded his hands quite like the head of the house
at ease after a careless feast, and began his story.
Well, he had had a splendid day, too. After he had left her he had gone
to the dealer's on the avenue with the unsold papers. Then he had
crossed over to the cathedral, and for a while had watched the men at
work up in the air. He had walked around to the choir school, but no one
was there that morning, not a sound came from the inside. Then he had
started down across the park. As he sat down to count his money, a man
who had climbed up the hillside stopped and asked him a great many
questions: who taught him music and whether any one had ever heard him
sing. This stranger also liked music and he also went to the cathedral,
so he claimed. From that point the story wound its way onward across the
busy hours till nightfall.
It was a child's story, not an older person's. Therefore it did not draw
the line between pleasant and unpleasant, fair and unfair, right and
wrong, which make up for each of us the history of our checkered human
day. It separated life as a swimmer separates the sea: there is one
water which he parts by his passage. So the child, who is still wholly a
child, divides the world.
But as she pondered, she discriminated. Out of the long, rambling
narrative she laid hold of one overwhelming incident, forgetting the
rest: a passing stranger, hearing a few notes of his voice, had stopped
to question him about it. To her this was the first outside evidence
that her faith in his musical gift was not groundless.
When he had ended his story she regarded him across the table with
something new in her eyes--something of awe. She had never hinted to him
what she believed he would some day be. She might be wrong, and thus
might start him on the wrong course; or, being right, she might never
have the chance to start him on the right one. In either case she might
be bringing to him disappointment, perhaps the failure of his whole
life.
Now she still hid the emotion his story caused. But the stranger of the
park had kindled within her that night what she herself had long tended
unlit--the alabaster flame of worship which the mother burns before the
altar of a great son.
An hour later they were in another small attic-like space next to the
supper-room. Here was always the best of their evening. No matter how
poor the spot, if there reach it some solitary ray of the great light of
the world, let it be called your drawing-room. Where civilization sends
its beams through a roof, there be your drawing-room. This part of the
garret was theirs.
In one corner stood a small table on which were some tantalizing books
and the same lamp. Another corner was filled by the littlest, oldest
imaginable of six-octave pianos, the mythical piano ancestor; on it were
piled some yellowed folios, her music once. Thus two different rays of
civilization entered their garret and fell upon the twin mountain-peaks
of the night--books and music.
Toward these she wished regularly to lead him as darkness descended over
the illimitable city and upon its weary grimy battle-fields. She liked
him to fall asleep on one or the other of these mountain-tops. When he
awoke, it would be as from a mountain that he would see the dawn. From
there let him come down to the things that won the day; but at night
back again to things that win life.
They were in their drawing-room, then, as she had taught him to call it,
and she was reading to him. A knock interrupted her. She interrogated
the knock doubtfully to herself for a moment.
"Ashby," she finally said, turning her eyes toward the door, as a
request that he open it.
The janitor of the building handed in a card. The name on the card was
strange to her, and she knew no reason why a stranger should call. Then
a foolish uneasiness attacked her: perhaps this unwelcome visit bore
upon her engagement at the studio. They might not wish her to return;
that little door to a larger income was to be shut in their faces.
Perhaps she had made herself too plain. If only she had done herself a
little more justice in her appearance!
She addressed the janitor with anxious courtesy:
"Will you ask him to come up?"
With her hand on the half-open door, she waited. If it should be some
tradesman, she would speak with him there. She listened. Up the steps,
from flight to flight, she could hear the feet of a man mounting like a
deliberate good walker. He reached her floor. He approached her door and
she stepped out to confront him. A gentleman stood before her with an
unmistakable air of feeling himself happy in his mission. For a moment
he forgot to state this mission, startled by the group of the two. His
eyes passed from one to the other: the picture they made was an unlooked
for revelation of life's harmony, of nature's sacredness.
"Is this Mrs. Truesdale?" he asked with appreciative deference.
She stepped back.
"I am Mrs. Truesdale," she replied in a way to remind him of his
intrusion; and not discourteously she partly closed the door and waited
for him to withdraw. But he was not of a mind to withdraw; on the
contrary, he stood stoutly where he was and explained:
"As I crossed the park this morning I happened to hear a few notes of a
voice that interested me. I train the voice, Madam. I teach certain
kinds of music. I took the liberty of asking the owner of the voice
where he lived, and I have taken the further liberty of coming to see
whether I may speak with you on that subject--about his voice."
This, then, was the stranger of the park whom she believed to have gone
his way after unknowingly leaving glorious words of destiny for her.
Instead of vanishing, he had reappeared, following up his discovery into
her very presence. She did not desire him to follow up his discovery.
She put out one hand and pressed her son back into the room and was
about to close the door.
"I should first have stated, of course," said the visitor, smiling
quietly as with awkward self-recovery, "that I am the choir-master of
the Cathedral of St. John the Divine."
Stillness followed, the stillness in which painful misunderstandings
dissolve. The scene slowly changed, as when on the dark stage of a
theater an invisible light is gradually turned, showing everything in
its actual relation to everything else. In truth a shaft as of celestial
light suddenly fell upon her doorway; a far-sent radiance rested on the
head of her son; in her ears began to sound old words spoken ages ago to
another mother on account of him she had borne. To her it was an
annunciation.
Her first act was to place her hand on the head of the lad and bend it
back until his eyes looked up into hers; his mother must be the first to
congratulate him and to catch from his eyes their flash of delight as he
realized all that this might mean: the fulfilment of life's dream for
him.
Then she threw open the door.
"Will you come in?"
It was a marvelous welcome, a splendor of spiritual hospitality.
The musician took up straightway the purpose of his visit and stated it.
"Will you, then, send him to-morrow and let me try his voice?"
"Yes," she said as one who now must direct with firm responsible hand
the helm of wayward genius, "I will send him."
"And if his voice should prove to be what is wanted," continued the
music-master, though with delicate hesitancy, "would he be--free? Is
there any other person whose consent--"
She could not reply at once. The question brought up so much of the
past, such tragedy! She spoke with composure at last:
"He can come. He is free. He is mine--wholly mine."
The choir-master looked across the small room at his pupil, who, upon
the discovery of the visitor's identity, had withdrawn as far as
possible from him.
"And you are willing to come?" he asked, wishing to make the first
advance toward possible acquaintanceship on the new footing.
No reply came. The mother smiled at her awe-stricken son and hastened to
his rescue.
"He is overwhelmed," she said, her own faith in him being merely
strengthened by this revelation of his fright. "He is overwhelmed. This
means so much more to him than you can understand."
"But you will come?" the choir-master persisted in asking. "You _will_
come?"
The lad stirred uneasily on his chair.
"Yes, sir," he said all but inaudibly.
His inquisitive, interesting friend of the park path, then, was himself
choir-master of St. John's! And he had asked him whether _he_ knew
anything about the cathedral! Whether _he_ liked music! Whether _he_
knew how boys got into the school! He had betrayed his habit of idly
hanging about the old building where the choir practised and of singing
with them to show what he could do and would do if he had the chance;
and because he could not keep from singing. He had called one of the
Apostles Jim! And another Apostle Pete! He had rejoiced that Gabriel had
not been strong enough to stand up in a high wind!
Thus with mortification he remembered the day. Then his thoughts were
swept on to what now opened before him: he was to be taken into the
choir, he was to sing in the cathedral. The high, blinding, stately
magnificence of its scenes and processions lay before him.
More than this. The thing which had long been such a torture of desire
to him, the hope that had grown within him until it began to burst open,
had come true; his dream was a reality: he was to begin to learn music,
he was to go where it was being taught. And the master who was to take
him by the hand and lead him into that world of song sat there quietly
talking with his mother about the matter and looking across at him,
studying him closely.
No; none of this was true yet. It might never be true. First, he must be
put to the test. The man smiling there was sternly going to draw out of
him what was in him. He was going to examine him and see what he
amounted to. And if he amounted to nothing, then what?
He sat there shy, silent, afraid, all the hardy boldness and business
preparedness and fighting capacity of the streets gone out of his mind
and heart. He looked across at his mother; not even she could help him.
So there settled upon him that terror of uncertainty about their gift
and their fate which is known only to the children of genius. For
throughout the region of art, as in the world of the physical, nature
brings forth all things from the seat of sensitiveness and the young of
both worlds appear on the rough earth unready.
"You _do_ wish to come?" the choir-master persisted in asking.
"Yes, sir," he replied barely, as though the words sealed his fate.
The visitor was gone, and they had talked everything over, and the
evening had ended, and it was long past his bedtime, and she waited for
him to come from the bedroom and say good night. Presently he ran in,
climbed into her lap, threw his arms around her neck and pressed his
cheek against hers.
"Now on this side," he said, holding her tightly, "and now on the other
side, and now on both sides and all around."
She, with jealous pangs at this goodnight hour, often thought already of
what a lover he would be when the time came--the time for her to be
pushed aside, to drop out. These last moments of every night were for
love; nothing lived in him but love. She said to herself that he was the
born lover.
As he now withdrew his arms, he sat looking into her eyes with his face
close to hers. Then leaning over, he began to measure his face upon her
face, starting with the forehead, and being very particular when he got
to the long eyelashes, then coming down past the nose. They were very
silly and merry about the measuring of the noses. The noses would not
fit the one upon the other, not being flat enough. He began to indulge
his mischievous, teasing mood:
"Suppose he doesn't like my voice!"
She laughed the idea to scorn.
"Suppose he wouldn't take me!"
"Ah, but he _will_ take you."
"If he wouldn't have me, you'd never want to see me any more, would
you?"
She strained him to her heart and rocked to and fro over him.
"This is what I could most have wished in all the world," she said,
holding him at arm's-length with idolatry.
"Not more than a fine house and servants and a greenhouse and a carriage
and horses and a _new_ piano--not more than everything you used to
have!"
"More than anything! More than anything in this world!"
He returned to the teasing.
"If he doesn't take me, I'm going to run away. You won't want ever to
see me any more. And then nobody will ever know what becomes of me
because I couldn't sing."
She strained him again to herself and murmured over him:
"My chorister! My minstrel! My life!"
"Good night and pleasant dreams!" he said, with his arms around her neck
finally. "Good night and sweet sleep!"
* * * * *
Everything was quiet. She had tipped to his bedside and stood looking at
him after slumber had carried him away from her, a little distance away.
"My heavenly guest!" she murmured. "My guest from the singing stars of
God!"
Though worn out with the strain and excitements of the day, she was not
yet ready for sleep. She must have the luxuries of consciousness; she
must tread the roomy spaces of reflection and be soothed in their
largeness. And so she had gone to her windows and had remained there
for a long time looking out upon the night.
The street beneath was dimly lighted. Traffic had almost ceased. Now and
then a car sped past. The thoroughfare along here is level and broad and
smooth, and being skirted on one side by the park, it offers to speeding
vehicles the illusive freedom of a country road. Across the street at
the foot of the park a few lights gleamed scant amid the April foliage.
She began at the foot of the hill and followed the line of them upward,
upward over the face of the rock, leading this way and that way, but
always upward. There on the height in the darkness loomed the cathedral.
Often during the trouble and discouragement of years it had seemed to
her that her own life and every other life would have had more meaning
if only there had been, away off somewhere in the universe, a higher
evil intelligence to look on and laugh, to laugh pitilessly at every
human thing. She had held on to her faith because she must hold on to
something, and she had nothing else. Now as she stood there, following
the winding night road over the rock, her thoughts went back and
searched once more along the wandering pathway of her years; and she
said that a Power greater than any earthly had led her with her son to
the hidden goal of them both, the cathedral.
The next day brought no disappointment: he had rushed home and thrown
himself into her arms and told her that he was accepted. He was to sing
in the choir. The hope had become an actuality.
Later that day the choir-master himself had called again to speak to her
when the pupil was not present. He was guarded in his words but could
not conceal the enthusiasm of his mood.
"I do not know what it may develop into," he said,--"that is something
we cannot foretell,--but I believe it will be a great voice in the
world. I do know that it will be a wonderful voice for the choir."
She stood before him mute with emotion. She was as dry sand drinking a
shower.
"You have made no mistake," she said. "It is a great voice and he will
have a great career."
The choir-master was impatient to have the lessons begin. She asked for
a few days to get him in readiness. She reflected that he could not make
his first appearance at the choir school in white linen knickerbockers.
These were the only suitable clothes he had.
This school would be his first, for she had taught him at home, haunted
by a sense of responsibility that he must be specially guarded. Now just
as the unsafe years came on for him, he would be safe in that fold. When
natural changes followed as follow they must and his voice broke later
on, and then came again or never came again, whatever afterward befell,
behind would be the memories of his childhood. And when he had grown to
full manhood, when he was an old man and she no longer with him,
wherever on the earth he might work or might wander, always he would be
going back to those years in the cathedral: they would be his safeguard,
his consecration to the end.
* * * * *
Now a few days later she stood in the same favorite spot, at her
windows; and it was her favorite hour to be there, the coming on of
twilight.
All day until nearly sundown a cold April rain had fallen. These
contradictory spring days of young green and winter cold the pious folk
of older lands and ages named the days of the ice saints. They really
fall in May, but this had been like one of them. So raw and chill had
been the atmosphere of the grateless garret that the window-frames had
been fastened down, their rusty catches clamped.
At the window she stood looking out and looking up toward a scene of
splendor in the heavens.
It was sunset, the rain was over, the sky had cleared. She had been
tracing the retreating line of sunlight on the hillside opposite. First
it crossed the street to the edge of the park, then crossed the wet
grass at the foot of the slope; then it passed upward over the bowed
dripping shrubbery and lingered on the tree-tops along the crest; and
now the western sky was aflame behind the cathedral.
It was a gorgeous spectacle. The cathedral seemed not to be situated in
the city, not lodged on the rocks of the island, but to be risen out of
infinite space and to be based and to abide on the eternity of light.
Long she gazed into that sublime vision, full of happiness at last, full
of peace, full of prayer.
Standing thus at her windows at that hour, she stood on the pinnacle of
her life's happiness.
From the dark slippery street shrill familiar sounds rose to her ear and
drew her attention downward and she smiled. He was down there at play
with friends whose parents lived in the houses of the row. She laughed
as those victorious cries reached the upper air. Leaning forward, she
pressed her face against the window-pane and peered over and watched
the group of them. Sometimes she could see them and sometimes not as
they struggled from one side of the street to the other. No one, whether
younger or older, stronger or weaker, was ever defeated down there;
everybody at some time got worsted; no one was ever defeated. All the
whipped remained conquerors. Unconquerable childhood! She said to
herself that she must learn a lesson from it once more--to have always
within herself the will and spirit of victory.
With her face still against the glass she caught sight of something
approaching carefully up the street. It was the car of a physician who
had a patient in one of the houses near by. This was his hour to make
his call. He guided the car himself, and the great mass of tons in
weight responded to his guidance as if it possessed intelligence, as if
it entered into his foresight and caution: it became to her, as she
watched it, almost conscious, almost human. She thought of it as being
like some great characters in human life which need so little to make
them go easily and make them go right. A wise touch, and their enormous
influence is sent whither it should be sent by a pressure that would not
bruise a leaf.
She chid herself once more that in a world where so often the great is
the good she had too often been hard and bitter; that many a time she
had found pleasure in setting the empty cup of her life out under its
clouds and catching the showers of nature as though they were drops of
gall.
All at once her attention was riveted on an object up the street. Around
a bend a few hundred yards away a huge wild devil of a thing swung
unsteadily, recklessly, almost striking the curb and lamp-post; and
then, righting itself, it came on with a rush--a mindless destroyer. Now
on one side of the street, now in the middle, now on the other side;
gliding along through the twilight, barely to be seen, creeping nearer
and nearer through the shadows, now again on the wrong side of the
street where it would not be looked for.