THE CALL
Among the excitements of Tory’s visit to New York was a call she was to
make upon an artist friend of her father’s.
Pleased with several of the sketches Tory had made during the past
summer in camp, Mr. Drew desired an opinion upon her work from some one
whose judgment he trusted. He knew himself to be too interested to be
a good critic of his daughter’s gift. Now and then he believed himself
too severe, that he expected more artistic gift than was possible in
one of Tory’s age. Again he feared that his own devotion blinded him to
conspicuous faults in her work.
So Tory brought with her a letter from her father to Philip Winslow.
She was to call by appointment on a certain afternoon at his studio in
the downtown section of the city.
Dorothy accompanied her, and the two girls discovered the house without
difficulty, an old, somewhat dilapidated building, with the paint
peeling from the house and a long flight of steps leading from the
front door.
Philip Winslow was not a successful artist from the standpoint of
worldly prosperity. His painting had never met with the recognition
that his fellow-artists believed should have been his. He had, however,
chosen to do the character of work he liked without consideration of
the public.
More popular and with a reputation in two continents, nevertheless
Tory’s father considered his friend a greater painter than himself. If
it were possible and he were willing at any time to accept her as a
pupil, Mr. Drew greatly desired Tory to study with the other man. Armed
with half a dozen sketches and her letter, Tory and Dorothy started up
the long flight of steps. The house was five stories high. One saw from
a large north window of glass that the studio was at the top.
The girls had been going out constantly ever since their arrival,
not only in the daytime, but nightly visits with Mr. Fenton to the
different theaters.
The excitement seemed not to have had any disastrous effect upon Tory;
she was gayer and more full of energy and enthusiasm with each passing
hour.
The same thing was not true of Dorothy McClain. Dorothy was an outdoor
person who had always lived in a small village. The crowding, the
noises and the restlessness of the city she found very tiring.
On this especial expedition Tory had not considered it wise that
Dorothy accompany her. At lunch she had observed how pale and weary she
looked, suggesting that Dorothy lie down and try to sleep while she was
making her visit.
The proposal required a good deal of unselfishness upon Tory’s part.
Very especially she wished to have Dorothy with her during the
approaching interview.
She was nervous over meeting a strange artist and exhibiting her own
work. The visit in itself would not have troubled her. She had heard
her father talk of Philip Winslow many times. He owned several of
the other man’s pictures. What was embarrassing was to show him her
sketches. As each hour passed and the time drew nearer she became more
convinced they had better have been relegated to the trash basket.
She could not be sorry, therefore, when Dorothy utterly declined to
consider the idea of giving up the trip. She had never been inside an
artist’s studio in her entire existence, and she wanted to know what
this artist thought of Tory’s gift.
Moreover, Mr. Fenton had a business engagement at the same hour and
would not have been willing to permit Tory to keep her appointment
alone.
In the climb up the stairs Dorothy chanced to be in the lead. Now and
then she seemed tired and stopped for a moment to rest and get her
breath.
The character of the place was not the surprise to Tory that it was
to the other girl. In Paris and London Tory had been in old houses
converted into lodgings as poor and dark as the present one. She knew
that one might open a door and find an apartment artistically furnished
and extremely comfortable. Again, one might chance upon a room bare and
sordid, if its occupant had been in ill luck and unable to dispose of a
picture, a poem, or a play that he had thought he would be pretty sure
to sell.
At the end of the third flight of steps suddenly Dorothy sat down. She
was biting her lips and had grown so pale that Tory was alarmed.
“Good gracious, Dorothy dear, what is the matter? Can’t you go on? Had
we best go back downstairs? Are you about to faint?”
Dorothy shook her head and smiled. It was so like Tory to ask half a
dozen questions at once.
“No, nothing so dreadful as fainting. I had a sharp pain in my side and
think I had best sit still a little while.”
Dorothy’s color did not grow better. Instead, she became whiter and
caught hold of the railing for support, leaning her head against the
banister.
The other girl hesitated. Should she continue on up the two additional
flights of stairs and ask Mr. Winslow to come to their aid? Certainly
Dorothy would to faint if nothing were done to revive her! Yet she
really ought not to be left alone at present even for a few moments.
Tory glanced up and down the stairs, hoping some one might be
approaching from one or the other direction to whom she could appeal
for help.
She saw no one. She did, however, observe a door near the landing where
Dorothy was seated standing ajar. From inside she could hear faint
sounds of music, so some one must be at home.
Tory was accustomed to acting upon impulse. She did not mention to
her companion what she intended doing. She walked over and knocked on
this door. No one replied. At the same instant the notes of music grew
louder so that the musician could scarcely have heard.
Tory pushed the door open.
She then looked inside the room, planning to explain her behavior as
soon as she could attract any one’s attention.
She beheld a figure seated at a piano, with hands upon the keys and
apparently oblivious of the world.
“Lance McClain, it cannot be you!” the girl exclaimed.
There was still no answer. Dorothy McClain heard and managed to get up
and come toward the door which Tory had now opened widely.
Both girls recognized Lance, although his back was turned toward them.
He looked thinner. A sheet of music was on the rack before him and his
head was upturned. Neither girl wished to disturb him at present, not
until he had finished what he was playing. They did not move or speak
again.
Dorothy was not familiar with the music; she only realized that it
was more beautiful and more ambitious than anything Lance had ever
attempted to play at home.
Tory recognized the Andante from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. She had
heard it played by an orchestra and appreciated that the music was too
great for Lance’s meager training.
Still, there was something in his playing that held her spellbound and
brought tears to her eyes and to Dorothy’s, who now had completely
forgotten her discomfort of a short time before.
One heard the movement that sounds like the rippling of many waters,
then the siren call from the depth of the water and of life itself. At
last the beautiful, triumphant finale.
When Lance McClain ended he dropped his head on his hands.
“Lance!” Dorothy said softly.
This time Lance jumped up as if in a sudden panic of fear.
“Good gracious, Dot! It can’t be you! I am not dreaming! I have had
several confounded dreams about you and father and Don lately. But you
must be real, because here is Tory with you and it may not be polite
of me, but I am obliged to say I have not dreamed about her. Who told
you where to find me? I am as mad as a hornet and gladder than I have
ever been over more than one or two things in my life.
“You did not hear me trying to murder that Andante, did you? I hope
not. Wasn’t it awful the mistakes I made?”
This was Lance, there was no doubting it, trying to carry off a
difficult and painful situation with his old humor.
Nevertheless he kept his arm tight about Dorothy’s shoulders and at
this instant buried his head in her shoulder like a child.
“No use, Lance. I have already seen how badly you look,” Dorothy
protested. “Please let us sit down somewhere while I tell you what you
won’t believe. We found you merely by accident. Tory and I are in New
York for a few days’ holiday with Mr. Fenton. I know Mr. Fenton has
been trying to find news of you to take back to father, but has not
succeeded. Tory, will you please tell how we happened to come to this
building? One thing, Lance, I am glad to find you have such a charming
room.”
Dorothy sank down on a divan piled with sofa cushions, Lance and Tory
sitting down beside her.
“You don’t think these are my quarters, do you, Dot? That would be too
good to be true.”
Tory made her explanation very brief.
“Then if this is _not_ your room, tell us everything from the hour you
left home. What are you doing here and whose piano were you playing? I
don’t believe you have had a real meal since you ran away.”
“Don’t call it running away, please, Dot? Say I had to answer a desire
that was too strong to be resisted.
“I am afraid you and Tory will be disappointed at what I have to tell
you. I wrote to several places in New York and had secured a position
here before I lit out from home. It does not pay much and I knew father
would never believe I could live on so small a sum. I understood he
could not afford to give me anything outside and I have managed to
live, somehow!” Lance murmured under his breath. “I am busy at odd
hours and sometimes I have an afternoon free. This chanced to be one of
them.”
The boy’s expression altered.
“I have not yet told you of my good luck, and I have had more than
I deserve. You might as well know the truth. I am nothing but a
messenger boy. One afternoon I came here to this room and heard some
one playing on the piano, some one who really understood music. There
wasn’t any doubt of that blessed fact.
“I suppose I stood entranced, listening. Anyhow the musician seemed to
guess how much I cared. We began talking and I was pretty homesick and
wretched and must have poured out everything I was feeling at the time.
The result was we became friends. I suppose I have the right to say
friends. He gave me permission to come here and play on his piano when
I had an opportunity. I have a key to the door and can come and go when
I like. Something bigger and more wonderful, I am studying music with
him two evenings a week. He gives me a lesson for as long a time as he
can spare.”
There was a new tone in Lance’s voice, a boyish admiration the two
girls had never known him to feel for any one before.
Tory recalled a phrase from “The Idylls of the King”: “By all the sweet
and sudden passion of youth, Toward greatness in its elder.”
“What is your friend’s name, Lance?” Dorothy asked with added
gentleness.
Lance had found not all, but a part of what he sought!
Lance shook his head.
“I had rather not tell you. I must ask permission first. Dorothy, I am
afraid there is not much chance for me. I’ll never learn to be a real
musician. I am nearly sixteen and too old.”
“Nonsense, Lance McClain!” Tory interrupted, not having taken much part
in the conversation until the present moment. “Come on now upstairs
with Dorothy and me. We are keeping Mr. Winslow waiting. I shall need
your society to give me courage. Afterwards you are to come back with
Dorothy and me to our hotel to dinner. I will disappear for a while and
you and Dorothy can have a real talk.”