Part 2

Vox had his hands full with his job, and at times his arms full too. His companion insisted that the Bowery sidewalk, covered with sleet, was a toboggan-slide, and that he was tumbling off the sled. What could Vox do with his protégé? He couldn't walk him or slide him all night. A policeman proposed to relieve him of his anxiety by taking them both to the station-house, but was persuaded not to perform this heroic exploit by the man's assurance that his pal's legs hadn't any snakes in them, and by Vox's demonstration that he could stand alone. Then Vox thought of the story of the good Samaritan, with rising respect for the priest that passed by on the other side. Next, having got into the charity business, he envied the Samaritan at least his ass, "instead," as Vox soliloquized, "of making an ass of myself." He thought of taking the fellow to some hotel, paying for his lodging, and hiring the clerk to see that he was properly sobered off in the morning; but concluded that, whatever might have been the case on the road to Jericho, there was no innkeeper on the Bowery whom he could trust with such a commission, or who would trust him to call in the morning and pay the bill. He could take him back to Brady's Harbor, he thought; but when they turned about the man declared that he wouldn't walk up a toboggan-slide, and sat down on the sidewalk for another ride.

The flash of a passing cab let a little light in upon his problem. Hailing the driver, with whose help he got his load into the vehicle, he told him to drive to No. -- Madison Avenue, where he had his own day quarters--elegant rooms, fitted up for his instruction of the fashionable "daughters of music" at six dollars an hour. Sweezy, the janitor, was roused up, and with his assistance Vox was able to congratulate himself that he had gone "one better" on the good Samaritan, in that he had lodged his man in finer chambers. He could not help laughing at the incongruousness of the snoring mass and the elegant divan on which it lay. He thought of Bottom the weaver, with the ass's head, in the lap of Titania, and, as he piled the cushions so that the fellow would not tumble off, addressed him in the words of the fairy:

"Come, sit thee down upon this flowery bed, While I thy amiable cheeks do coy, And stick musk roses in thy sleek smooth head, And kiss thy fair large ears, my gentle joy."

But tears are near to laughter, and as Vox contemplated his completed work he had to sit down a moment and cry.

"It's a hard sight, sir," said Sweezy, "but bless you, Mr. Vox, the best of us has just sich among our closest friends. I wish, sir, as how it was my own boy, Tommy, you had found the night." And Sweezy cried too.

Sweezy promised to take an early look at the man in the morning when he turned on the steam heat. Vox went away to his boarding-house around the corner, vexed at the doctor for getting him into such a scrape, yet feeling down in the depths of his heart a satisfaction that more than half compensated him for his rough experience. He fell asleep thinking of the good Samaritan, Bottom with the ass's head, Salvation Army lasses, and the Prohibition party; and, in the midst of a horrid dream, woke up imagining himself drunk and about to fall off a precipice.

Before breakfast next morning he went around to the rooms to look after his charge. The fellow had vamosed. Sweezy was taking account of the furniture, and, though nothing was missing, and only a lamp-shade broken, declared that Vox had been victimized by a sharper:

"A regular sharper, sir. I thought so when you brought him in. You ought to have knowed, sir, at a glance of him, what he was. You've nussed, sir, a wiper in your bosom, and it's a mercy, sir, a mercy if he hasn't stung you no worse. Is your pocket-book with you? You ought at least to have took off his boots. That spot on the cover will never come out without piecing."

Vox contemplated the scene of his first charity exploit much as Bonaparte did the battle-field of Waterloo. He had but one remark to make, which was:

"Sweezy, don't you open your head about this business."

Vox was not in an amiable mood when he met the doctor the next Sunday night. He debated with him the inadvisability of decent people attempting to do slumming in the name of either religion or charity. He took the ground that the men who had themselves been rescued from the dens of the city were the only ones to do this work, as they train chetahs to hunt their own kind, and reformed thieves to become detectives.

The doctor was half inclined to agree with him, not so much from conviction as from seeing the disgust the business had wrought in the mind of his friend. Yet he excused himself for having led Vox into this experience on the ground that it is Christian duty to try to rescue the fallen, even though one does not accomplish anything.

"I don't believe in your theory," said Vox, warmly. "Let buzzards clean up the offal, but decent birds had better follow their sweeter instincts and keep away. One thing is certain: I am not going to light on such moral carrion again."

It was more than a month later when a respectable-looking stranger called upon Vox at his rooms. The singer was engaged at the time arranging with a lady of the Four Hundred for the vocal culture of her daughters. The visitor quietly awaited his leisure. He was very genteel in appearance. If one had been critical he might have thought that for such a stinging cold day an ulster would have been more suitable than the light fall overcoat he wore; and some might have observed that it was not the fashion that season to wear one's outer garment so short that the tails of the under-coat protruded. But Vox was occupied with the stranger's face, which was exceedingly prepossessing.

"Mr. Vox, I believe?"

"My name, sir. What can we do for each other?"

"If I am not mistaken in the person, you once did me a great service."

"You must be mistaken in the person," said Vox, "or else I have done it unconsciously, for I have no recollection of our having met."

The man seemed puzzled. "Possibly!" he said, slowly, as he scanned the singer's features.

"Undoubtedly it is so," said Vox, and, seeing the man's perplexity, quickly added, in the most genial manner, "I am sorry it is so, for I should be glad to remember that I had served you. Possibly I may do so in the future."

The man hesitatingly began to withdraw. Near the door he stopped, and, glancing about the room, half to himself and half as an apology to Vox, said, "Perhaps I have dreamed it. But will you allow me to ask you a question? Do you ever sing Mazzini's 'Muleteers'?"

"Often," replied Vox. "This, you mean," and he struck up the first line. His visitor instantly joined him. Vox stopped as quickly.

"Good heavens!" he exclaimed. "There are not two voices in the world like that." Putting his hand on the man's shoulder, he peered into his face. He could not recall the features, for the dim light in Brady's Harbor and the general slouch of the fellow that night had not really allowed him to see his face fully. He imagined how this man might look with a week's beard on his chin, an untrimmed mustache covering his fine lips, and a dirty derby concealing his forehead.

"Are you that man?"

"I am; or, rather, I was that man. But I hope--thanks to God and you--I am a very different man to-day. I came to tell you my gratitude for a kindness which I had come to doubt one man ever rendered to another, and to apologize for my bestial treatment of you. I was not a man then, Mr. Vox, only a beast; and, if you will believe me, I was not accountable, for I knew no better. I have the vaguest remembrance of that night, as of many another night. When I awoke at daylight in these rooms I had just sense enough to know that somebody had befriended me or played a trick on me, and to be ashamed to meet him, whoever he was. So I sneaked away. When I was sobered I couldn't recall the place. But the 'Muleteers' rang in my ears, and your voice, every note, the tone and quality. I had heard you sing elsewhere, and knew that but one voice, that of Vox, could have sung in that way. And now it has taken a month for me to get up manliness enough to come and do the decent thing."

"Don't talk in that way," said Vox, coloring as if he were receiving abuse instead of praise. "I did nothing that any man would not do for another. A man would be inhuman, a mere brute, not to--"

Then he thought of what he had lately said to the doctor about buzzards and benevolent slummers, and he felt like a hypocrite again.

"But don't talk about the past. Let it go. Isn't there something I can do for you now?" glancing at the man's threadbare coat.

"Yes, there is one favor I would like very much to have you do me. I have had a hard struggle with myself these few weeks. I resolved that I would not drink again. I have kept my purpose, but it has been like being tied to a wild beast in a cage. More than once I have started out for a drink, but have come back without it. It is hard to feel that you are all alone in the fight, that nobody knows of it. It's like making that cane stand by itself."

"But you have friends," said Vox, kindly.

"Friends that have ceased to be friends are worse than strangers," replied the man, in an abstracted sort of way. "My friends don't believe in me; I've got to make new friends, who don't know how weak I am. Perhaps they will believe in me for a while at least, and that will give a man some strength. But to be all alone in a fearful struggle! Oh, it's the loneliness that takes all the heart out of one. You know how one voice steadies another in singing. Drunk as I was when I sang with you, I believe I sang every note correctly; but alone I couldn't have rendered three notes true. I want you to let me rest for a while on your confidence, your good wishes, Mr. Vox; and to let me drop in once in a while, just to tell you that I am all right yet."

"My good fellow, you can come, and you can stay with me just as much as you want to," said Vox; and for all that he knew that this was a very rash thing to say to a stranger, he would have resented any one's telling him so.

"No," replied the man, "I shall not intrude upon you; but may I ask you to keep this pledge I have written? The paper is crumpled; that's because I have taken it out so often when the temptation was pretty strong. It was something like a friend; and I could say to it, 'You see I have kept faith with you, bit of paper, and I will.' So I would start out on another campaign. But if you will keep it for me I will feel better. I can think then that somebody knows what I am doing."

Vox took the paper. It was written in fine penmanship, and signed "Charles Downs."

"Downs? Charles Downs? Not Downs who used to be in the Mendelssohn? The tenor at St. Martha's? And you are speaking of being grateful to me for a common act of humanity! Why, man, I owe more to you than I can ever repay. It was hearing you sing once that gave me my first ambition to be a singer. I began to save my money that night that I might take lessons. I even tried to find you; but you had gone, nobody knew where."

"I was on the road to hell then," said Downs. "Thank Heaven you didn't find me; I might have injured you by my example. But no, I think not. You were not inclined my way."

The two men sat in silence for a few moments. Thought was becoming oppressive. Vox was of that mercurial disposition that cannot keep solemn long at a time. His vent-valves worked easily.

"Come," said he, "let's try the old song."

If he had deliberated he would not have chosen a reminder of the past. But there was something irresistible about Vox, and Downs joined with him as they rollicked through the "Muleteers."

Sweezy stood in the doorway listening.

"That," said Vox, "is the greatest compliment a man can have. Sweezy there has no more music in him than a horse; but see! we have woven the spell about him. I believe we do sing well together. What couldn't we do if we would practise together? Now I will keep this pledge for you, Downs, if you will promise to come every day at twelve and sing with me. We will lunch together, and I will see that you don't get a drop to drink."

"I can't."

"Why not?"

"I have engaged to go to work."

"Where?"

"Enlisted."

"What! Enlisted? To throw yourself away again?" Vox gripped the arms of Downs as if he were a prisoner. "Where have you enlisted?"

"In the street-sweeping brigade."

"Great guns!" said Vox.

"No, great brooms!" replied his friend. "I need outdoor work; there I will get it. I need to keep away from other men; and on the street I will be left to my own company as nicely as if I were a hermit. Besides, there will be a poetic fitness in one who has lived so dirty a life as I have giving himself up to the work of cleaning things. Then, too, I can see life; and that will be interesting. Nothing is so fascinating to one who has had my experience as the sight of a crowd, if only one can himself keep out of it." With that Downs sang:

"'Hurry along, sorrow and song; All is vanity under the sun. Velvet and rags: so the world wags, Until the river no more shall run.'"

Vox readily upset the street-sweeping project by showing Downs how he could be helpful to him in certain musical matters he had on foot, and even guaranteed to turn over to him several of his pupils who were trying to develop tenor voices.

The next Sunday night after service the doctor took the singer's arm at the church door with his usual chirpy invitation, "Come, Phil, don't let Mrs. Cupp's pepper and mustard get cold, or the cheese get away from us."

"Walk around the block with me first, doctor; I've got something to tell you which I'd rather you would hear when you can't see my face."

"Why, what have you been doing now that you are ashamed of, Phil? Oh, I know. You have proposed to the soprano, or been perpetrating some other trick on your bachelor friends. I'll forgive you at the start, however, because"--lowering his voice until there was a frog in it--"because I know something about--but it's none of your business, Phil, so I won't tell you anything about it. No disappointment, my boy?"

"No."

"Then count on me to marry you for nothing, and throw in the benediction besides."

"It's no love-affair," said Vox. "Cupid might as well break his arrows on a rhinoceros as shoot at me. It's that drunken fellow. I've been awfully taken in."

"What! has he turned up? Fleeced you again?"

"Well, not exactly fleeced me, but scorched me; he has heaped coals of fire on my head. I want to take back all I have said against him, and everything I said against slumming."

He then related what the reader knows. Having worked off the steam of his extra emotion, he accompanied the doctor to the study. Here Vox gave a description of his new friend: "a well-educated man, a splendid all-round musician, a fine business man; has a wife who won't live with him, nor even let him see her--he has treated her so outrageously; but he loves her tenderly. He was once employed by Silver & Co., who thought so much of him that they were making proposals for his entering the firm when they began to suspect his rum habit. His name is Downs."

"Downs? With Silver & Co.?" The names set the doctor thinking. At length, coming out of his reverie, he picked up from the study-table a piece of marble, a bit of a fluted column he had found amid the ruins of the Temple of Diana at Ephesus. He traced on it with the pen the word D-o-w-n-s. Then he rubbed the word out with his finger; but a black spot was left that he could not get off the marble.

"There! that's the way I would spoil the job if I should try to restore the ruins of Downs. Phil, stick to that man. I'll leave him to you. He's your parish. With your voice and his love of music, you ought to make him follow you as the rocks followed Orpheus. That's the meaning of the old legend--you can sing the hardest wretch into heaven. Try it, Phil."

The doctor spent a half-hour next day in Silver & Co.'s office. Just what he and Silver talked about we cannot say; but Silver was overheard to remark, as the doctor was leaving, "My wife thinks the world of the little woman, and when those two women are satisfied with his reformation, all right."

There never was a finer program for a musicale than that which, some six months later, packed the upper Carnegie Hall with the elite of the music-lovers of New York. Vox was the drawing card, for he had become, if not the celebrity, at least the fad, of the season. "Oh, Vox! he's just splendid!" was as familiarly heard as the clicking of afternoon tea-cups everywhere between Flushing and Orange Mountain. On the occasion referred to he had achieved a sevenfold encore for one performance. To the surprise of everybody, however, when he appeared to acknowledge the ovation, he led another man with him to the footlights; one who might have been his twin brother, for there was just that sort of difference between them that ought to exist between a tenor and a baritone--the former a little slighter in form and features. Curiosity was not allowed to get to the whispering-point when they rendered the Graben-Hoffman duet, "I feel thy angel spirit."

The applause was furious. Nothing like it had been heard for six months outside of Brady's Harbor. Vox gracefully stepped a little to the rear. The audience caught his meaning, and the room rang with the cry of "Tenor! tenor!"

Vox slipped to the piano, and played the chords of "Salva di Mora" from Gounod's "Faust." And how grandly Downs sang it! If Deacon Brisk had been there, even he, with his "star-twinkling" and "roof-splitting" metaphors, could not have described it.

"If Faust sang like that," said an elderly gentleman in the audience to his wife, "no wonder he won the heart of Marguerite." And he pressed his wife's hand, which somehow had got into his.

"Hush, John," replied the woman. Then she put a handkerchief to her eyes instead of her lorgnette.

"He's all right again," said the man, and he squeezed his wife's arm, and nudged her nervously.

"John, don't!" And the woman glanced at the woman next to her, as if that individual might care what cooing these old doves indulged in.

This other woman wore a half-veil, one of those vizors with which women hide their beauty or their freckles from the gaze of the curious. Not seeing her face, one cannot say what was transpiring behind the veil; but the veil shook as if some convulsive emotion might be working itself out, or struggling to keep itself in.

When Downs left the stage Vox hugged him as a bear would her cub. "Come," said he, "let's go out in the room and talk to the Silvers."

"The Silvers here!" exclaimed Downs, in consternation.

"They were here, but I believe they have left. Yes, their seats are empty. Now that's too bad."

"No wonder they left when they saw me on the stage. Vox, you know that they know all about me. They would kick me off their doorstep if I were a beggar. You've disgraced yourself by bringing me here, as I told you you would. The Silvers, of all the people in the world! I wouldn't have sung if I had suspected their being here."

"Well, you did sing. Thank God for it, too," replied his friend.

The next Sunday night at the hobnob Vox tried to make a report to the doctor of the progress of his protégé.

"Oh, he sang magnificently! I tell you, that man is reinstated in this community. Do you know, doctor, the Silvers were both there?"

"Indeed!" ejaculated his friend, pulling Caleb's tail, and laughing at the dog's surprise. Then he pulled it again, and laughed at the dog's jump as if he had never seen such antics before.

"See here, doctor, you don't seem to care about Downs. That dog is more to you than a human being. But you've got to listen to me."

Vox got rapturous in his account of Downs's success, and ended with, "I couldn't help wishing that his wife had been there to see him--handsome, healthy, true man in every feature and tone of voice. She would have had to fall in love again, or I'll forswear all faith in the sex."

The doctor rolled himself on the sofa in such glee that the dog accepted his master's antics as a challenge to more of his own, and pounced upon him.

"What's the matter with you now?" asked the singer, in amazement.

"Why, his wife was there," roared the doctor.

"The thunder she was!" Vox jumped up as if he had been sitting in an electric chair.

Caleb growled to hear such language in the presence of his patron saint.

"I beg your pardon, doctor, but how do you know she was there?"

"Why, I suppose she was, because Mrs. Silver promised to go and take her to hear _you_ sing." And the doctor laughed so loud and hilariously that the collie crept under the lounge, as if in fear of some more serious explosion.

"And you have been playing the hypocrite with me all the time?" Vox was nettled. "If I had known that I wouldn't have sung a note, nor would I have let Downs do it, either."

"Yet you just said you wish she had been there. Don't you see that had you known you would have spoiled your own job?" said the doctor, working out of his hysteria. "But, Phil, I'm hungry with preaching and laughing at you. Light up the chafing-dish, put in plenty of red pepper, and when your cockles are warmed you may read this," tossing him a note.

Vox read:

"DEAR DOCTOR: When I heard Downs sing the other night, I felt sure that your judgment of him was correct, and that he is a new man. Mrs. Downs has been with him for several days. God bless that little woman! She has borne up bravely during her trial; never lost heart; and now she has her reward. Of course Downs has his old place with us. I want to know that Mr. Vox. Bring him around to dine with us Wednesday night. If my wife can persuade them, we will have Mr. and Mrs. Downs too.

"Yours faithfully, "JOHN SILVER."

While Vox was reading the note Caleb came out from under the lounge, and putting his head in the singer's lap, gazed as worshipfully into his face as he had ever gazed into that of his master.

* * * * * * * *

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End of Project Gutenberg's The Baritone's Parish, by James M. Ludlow