Part 11

“No, you teasing mother--Levitsky--and when Mr. Crichton took me up to introduce me, the hero just glanced me over with his cold blue eyes, and looked about as much pleased with new company as the real lion does at the menagerie. Then, I began to play. And what followed I don’t know--except that the people were as still as mice, and that I forgot even Levitsky standing there, so tall and weary, between the folding doors. And then--and then--everybody clapped, and I played again; and, when I had finished, papa, who was close behind me, took my violin away. Next Levitsky came straight through the crowd, and took me by the hand, and said--oh! what _do_ you suppose he said to your good-for-nothing child? ‘Mademoiselle, you have all the rest, if only you persevere till you master the technique.’ His eyes were no longer like steel; they shone on me with the softest, friendliest gleam. That terrible golden mane of his could never frighten me again, I think. He was as gentle as you are, mother dear; and there we stood talking till he left, and papa said I must come away, too.”

“You will say I was, for once, fit to take care of your treasure, won’t you, Molly?” supplemented Terence, who had followed the family swan upstairs. “When you see the state of excitement she is in, you will agree that if that little head isn’t turned to-night she’ll indeed be a lucky girl. Levitsky showed pretty plainly that it wasn’t by any means a thing of every day for him to meet with the likes of her; and when _he_ roared, of course all the little animals chimed in. I suppose, there’ll be no living in the house with Kathleen after this.”

“Oh, yes! I shall be so good, so amiable, everybody can live at peace with me,” cried Kathleen, throwing off her fur-trimmed wrap and revealing her beauty to the eyes that never tired of it. “But here we are, mother, neglecting a most important duty. In the fullness of his pride, this heedless daddy of mine has gone and invited two or three men to come in here presently for supper.”

“Terence!” said Mrs. Blair, reproachfully.

“It’s only Malvolio, Molly dear, and little Catullus Clarke--”

“Such a beautiful new poet, Mr. Clarke is, mother, with night-black, silky hair and chiseled features--don’t you remember papa’s review of his book Sunday before last--here it is, this dark-green duck of a booklet, with every modern idea in the make-up--”

“But my dears, however will Mr. Catullus Clarke bring himself to consort with a Welsh rarebit?” interrupted the housekeeper, with some severity. “And to save my life, that is all I can think of to offer him.”

“He’ll tackle it fast enough,” said Terence, comfortably. “But don’t fash yourself, Molly; there’ll be oysters to stew in the big chafing-dish. Maurice stopped behind us to fetch them from our old friend Felsenberg’s, whose place was open and in full blast as we passed. Come downstairs now, and get things ready in the dining-room, for it isn’t every day we celebrate our daughter’s first step in the temple of Fame, I’d have you remember, ma’am.”

“And, mother,” put in Kathleen, as they adjourned below for action, “you will never guess whom I met at Crichton’s! Mrs. Beaumoris and her older daughter, who is a fanatic for music.”

“Lottie Beaumoris?” said Molly, remembering with a blush her envious soliloquy of a little while ago.

“Yes, you know she is by way of being a patroness of talent, and the daughter is one of the little fishes that swim after Levitsky. They were amazingly condescending to me, not in the least identifying your child. Here comes the wonderful part, mother. Mrs. Beaumoris has engaged me to play at an afternoon party on the 25th, when Levitsky’s to be the star! I saw in a minute that the master had suggested me, and felt perfectly overwhelmed with thankfulness. And the price, mamma--the price I am to be paid is stunning. Perhaps Mrs. Beaumoris may not think so, for I noticed she hesitated when she offered it--but she little knew how my spirit bounded at the offer. Let me whisper, dear; I don’t mean that any one else shall hear.”

And bending her stately head to the level of Molly’s little pink ear, she breathed into it a sum which, to the simple notions of the mother, seemed more than generous, although, as Mrs. Beaumoris afterward boasted, she was “getting this new girl for half price.”

“Is Kathleen telling of her latest captive?” said Maurice, arriving with his can of oysters, to find their little dining-room aglow with warmth and comfort.

“Nonsense, Morry,” said his sister.

“Yes, but it’s true, she has got her net over not only the great Levitsky, but a man who can help her on tremendously, if he chooses to. And he does choose apparently, since he asked me when he might call here--and by the same token, I told him we’d be having a bit of supper later on, and would be glad to have him drop in.”

“Morry!” said both women, in a breath.

“Well, now, mother, isn’t it my business to look after Kathleen’s musical interests? And didn’t Crichton tell me this fellow was no end of a swell in musical high society? The first time I noticed him was in the train of those Beaumoris females, who appealed to him for everything. But he couldn’t take his eyes off my little sister after she began to play.”

“I never even saw him,” exclaimed Kathleen. “Or, stop! could that have been the beautiful Raphael-faced creature who was standing between the doors during my first piece?”

“I suppose _you_ might call him Raphael-faced,” said Maurice, with a brother’s fine scorn of his sister’s enthusiasm for any man. “But _I_ looked at him purely in a business light, as an impresario of young genius. He talked to me some time, and accepted my invitation to drop in. I don’t know, now that I come to think of it, what there is about Thorndyke, but it’s something not quite--well, I give it up. Judge for yourselves when he arrives.”

And now, all was in readiness for the impromptu feast. On the hob of the grate fire, a kettle, indispensable to the impending brew of Terence’s famous punch, simmered assurance of speedy boiling. Terence--trusting to no one the concoction of a Welsh rarebit, for which he had won renown at Trinity College, Dublin, now years too many ago to be mentioned--was already at work over a chafing-dish. Kathleen, her cheeks crimson, her lips of the true pomegranate tint parted with delight--a large damask napkin pinned over the front of her made-over black satin--was peeling a lemon for the punch. In this branch of culinary service she was admitted to be an adept--so thin, so even, so unbroken the golden spirals she produced!

Maurice, perched on the arm of his sister’s chair, fell into lively whispering--for, to Kathleen, almost before his mother, the boy was accustomed to carry his hopes and fears. To him also that evening had fallen a stroke of good fortune. Had not he heard from Mr. Malvolio, the art-critic of the _Regulator_, that ---- had spoken to him of putting the illustrations of Horner’s book into the hands of “that young Blair?” And was not ---- the member of the great publishing firm most to be relied upon for the distribution of covetable plums?

Mrs. Blair, glancing back as she went into the pantry to prepare for her oyster stew, thought the old clock under which her children sat--whose broad face had looked down for so many years on the councils of her family--had never seen a fresher, a more winsome pair, eager to confront the great world on their own account.

The father, affecting not to be conscious of Morry’s confidence to Kathleen, recalled the days when he had peeped in on them at early morning in their nursery, to find both youngsters sitting in the same crib, with heads together and tongues wagging industriously over their forecasts for a day, then as wide and broad to them as was the future now. Neither of his children, Terence decided with satisfaction, had parted with the simple straightforwardness of that primal period.

Mr. Malvolio, whose ring startled Maurice from his perch, and sent him to open the front door, considered himself well favored in being admitted to one of Blair’s little off-hand suppers. As the famous critic and dictator upon matters of pictorial art came into the room, his pallid, mask-like face, and snaky, black locks disheveled over a high forehead, suggested rather a ghost at the feast than a would-be reveler.

After him presently arrived Mr. Catullus Clarke, whose overcoat and galoches had but just been deposited in the little hall, when a third ring made itself audible.

“That’s Thorndyke, probably,” said Maurice, hastening away--the maid servants of the Blair household having been long abed and slumbering.

“Maurice has asked an important stranger to join us,” said Mrs. Blair, with a little air of apology to Malvolio.

“Thorndyke--I should think so,” said Malvolio, but interrupted himself upon the entrance of Kathleen’s “Raphael-faced” young man.

He had been going to say that Thorndyke was much oftener visible in houses of the Beaumoris variety than in the haunts of upper Bohemia, but this struck him as hardly a gracious observation, even among the easy-going Blairs.

The first appearance of the musical virtuoso confirmed, in her mother’s eyes, Kathleen’s description of him. There was an expression singularly unworldly and winning about his fair, handsome face. In his hand he bore a cluster of rare white orchids, fringed with maiden hair fern--“a real Beaumoris bouquet,” said proud Molly to herself--which, with an almost reverential air, upon being presented to that young lady by her brother, he offered to Kathleen.

This act of public tribute from an oracle of such repute in the world where she aspired to shine filled the girl with tremulous delight. It also disposed her to think more than kindly of the giver. But Thorndyke did not follow up his advantage by pressing himself upon her further notice. He talked in turn with Terence Blair, Mrs. Blair, and Malvolio; tasted and praised Molly’s oysters, declined Terence’s punch, and settled down in a corner to await further developments.

At this point of the proceedings still another ring was heard--brisk, fearless, insistent, the sort of ring Jack might have caused to resound through the Giant’s castle.

“Who can that be?” asked Mrs. Blair. Terence, to whom she addressed herself, did not reply in words, but, with a sly smile twinkling about his eyes and lips, referred her to Kathleen.

Kathleen, engaged in conversation with Mr. Malvolio, whose quaint drolleries of speech gave her continual pleasure, turned around with a movement half impatient, half resigned.

“Ask Morry,” she said. But Maurice, quite under the spell of Mr. Thorndyke, was listening with delight to that gentleman’s discourse upon some theme evidently kindling to the imagination.

“Morry _would_ invite him, mother,” the girl went on, with a trifle of petulance in her voice. “It is only just Colin.”

II

“Only just Colin!” Behold a youth, tall, heavily built, powerful, his head leaning a little forward from the shoulders, his brown, healthy face adorned with the expression of good will toward mankind that, after all, is the one unfading charm of the human countenance. It was because of his trust in things that Colin never felt abashed, greeting the great and the lowly alike with honest good-fellowship. Although in the eyes of a critical woman of the world his person might have been found lacking in certain exterior signs deemed by her class indispensable, his looks and manner when he came into a room carried with them irresistible attraction. An ex-hero of the university, where Maurice had been his devoted chum and follower, the echo of Colin’s achievements in athletics had not yet died out in the two years since he had graduated. Take Jock Blair, for example, at present a junior under the wing of the same alma mater, and seat him at table in Colin’s company; a babbling and confident young fellow enough in ordinary society, Jock would be stricken dumb and reverent in the presence of this composite Napoleon and Wellington.

Now a hard worker in his first year at the law, not even those outsiders, chill of blood, who affect to contemn the practice of manly sports among healthy young collegians, could have found ground for a charge against Colin that he was subordinating brain to muscle. Under his new teaching, he had done more than well. To the physical animation acquired in college he had many times given thanks for helping him to endure this later life, in which a walk uptown after working hours was the chief outlet for his tremendous energy of body.

When we have said additionally that Colin was of a very short purse, and had no backing of family in New York--seeing that his relatives were unimportant residents of a small Western town--that he was hopelessly in love with Kathleen Blair, and that at college he had been dubbed Colin chiefly because his real name was John Walter Mackintosh, the tale is told.

Knowing that his charmer was that night to undergo the ordeal of proving her quality as a violinist before the supreme Herr Levitsky, our young man had moved heaven and earth to get an invitation to Crichton’s musicale; having succeeded in which, he had passed through a tumult of emotions regarding a proper appearance for the occasion.

Maurice, sharing his confidence, had lent sage advice. Colin, who perhaps for no other reason would have taken on himself a debt, had secured upon the installment plan of payment a new suit of evening clothes, the genial sartor who provided them supplying, out of the fullness of his sympathy, facings for the coat of a better quality of silk than was nominated in the bond. At the instigation also of the more knowing Maurice, the aspirant had next repaired to a much advertised “Fire Sale” of “Gents’ Furnishings,” where he had laid in a dozen white linen ties, “imperceptibly damaged,” and six hemstitched pocket handkerchiefs. This done, there was yet a mighty obstacle to overcome. For two interminable days Colin had not seen his way clear to the possession of a pair of patent leather shoes. Over and again he had surveyed wistfully his rough ordinary footwear, and reluctantly decided that it would not do. The jest of the bootmaker to whom he had ventured a remonstrance as to the high price of his wares, that it “took extra leather to cover some men’s feet,” was iron entering Colin’s soul.

At this critical juncture, somebody had been called in haste from the law office claiming the services of Mr. Mackintosh, to draw up an old woman’s death-bed will. To Colin had been assigned the task, and also, to his eternal gratitude, the small fee resulting. The speed made by him uptown that day after office hours, to reach the bootmaker before his shop should be closed, recalled to our hero some of his efforts at sprinting between hoarsely cheering crowds of college sympathizers.

Two minutes after he was invested in all his hardly-won integuments, Colin had forgotten them. He had long been planning how to present Kathleen with some flowers to wear at the musicale. Knowing her favorites, he had purchased a sheaf of those “naiad-like lilies of the vale, whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,” at a cost that would deprive him of luncheon money for some days; then, with a strong desire to see her pleasure in them, had walked around to the Blair’s house carrying the gift in person.

On the doorstep his courage had failed. Kathleen, sternly intent on checking his too rapid advance, might, and no doubt would, decline his offering. So rather miserably, the big young man had turned around again and marched away with his pasteboard box. At the corner, he bethought him of a recent speech of hers--that “better than anything but music,” she loved flowers. This renewed his prowess. Again he stormed the lady’s portal, and again fell away, discouraged, in apprehension of her frown. The scrutiny of a passing policeman served to weaken his last remnant of resolution.

The lilies, returning with him to his lodging, were, with continuing uncertainty, carried on to Crichton’s studio. There Mr. Mackintosh, proving to be the first arrival, had judged it best to remain secluded in the cloak-room, until a number of men, passing in, gave him countenance to enter the scene of entertainment. His vague plan of contriving to intercept Kathleen on her arrival, and putting the flowers in Morry’s hands, with the request that she should wear them, had now vanished into thin air. He wished at last he had never burdened himself with the confounded things.

What Colin felt while Kathleen had witched her audience with youth and loveliness and talent may be divined by the reader. Perhaps by ruffling the leaves of the book of Memory, some chronicle may still be found there, uneffaced, to suggest the proud tingling in the young man’s veins! The little lock of darkest hair, that while she wielded the bow had the habit of breaking cover and falling down upon a fine jetty eyebrow, the rich flush in her cheek swept by the lashes of down-dropping eyes, the noble unconsciousness of her face and figure, thrilled him with a more passionate resolve than ever to win her for his own.

When she had finished playing, and the crowd thronged about her to indorse the master’s verdict, Colin had kept aloof. He did not want to spoil the hour by commonplace; and indeed his heart was too full for utterance. Maurice, just then running upon him in the throng, had bidden his friend to supper. Colin, fed with new hope, had returned again to the dressing-room, intending to take a walk until it should be time to present himself at the Blairs’. Between two men talking over the performance of the evening as they lighted their cigars, he heard Kathleen discussed in terms that he considered daringly impertinent. Although the phrases used were chiefly those of custom upon the appearance of a new performer in her field, one of the men lent to them an emphasis so offensive that Colin had much ado to restrain himself from flying at the offender and choking him backward into a pile of hats.

Tempted to leave his now oppressive offering for beauty’s shrine in Crichton’s fireplace, he took up again his box of flowers and went out into the night. How far he wandered through the chill, deserted streets in the effort to make time pass ere he thought it proper to appear before his goddess, Colin did not realize. When he could bear no longer not seeing her, he had rung Mr. Blair’s door-bell; but when he was asked into the supper room, where they were all assembled, the spurned and imprisoned lilies were tucked away on the lower shelf of the hat-rack, behind the galoches of Mr. Catullus Clarke.

“And where will you sit, Mr. Mackintosh?” asked Mrs. Blair, holding out a kind hand of welcome to her new guest, who accordingly dropped into the chair nearest her own.

Colin could hardly speak. In the stranger guest, ensconced in intimate conversation with Maurice, he recognized one of the men he had desired to knock down in the dressing-room at Crichton’s!

“Now, we may notice in Clarke’s poems,” Mr. Malvolio was saying with wicked relish, “what Emerson once remarked about Oxford. ‘Nothing new or true, and no matter.’”

“I do not pretend to solve my own problems, my dear fellow,” returned the poet, languidly, as he lay back at ease in a large arm-chair, surveying his patent-leather toes; “I only state them to average intelligence, and then pray for the interposition of the Power that brought speech out of Balaam’s ass to give understanding to some of my readers.”

“Indeed, yours is the dearest little book we have had this month, Mr. Clarke,” exclaimed Kathleen; “and your poster is the wildest and weirdest in my collection.”

“Then I have not printed in vain, Miss Blair,” answered the bardling, looking at her with admiring eyes. In reality he was entirely happy.

It was only being overlooked that ever caused Catullus pain.

“Gather your roses, while you may, Clarke,” resumed Malvolio, cheerfully. “Presently the twentieth century will throw upon you mysterious folk a searchlight in which even you will stand revealed, and then your occupation will be gone. You owe Blair a debt of gratitude, by the way, for slating you so discreetly a couple of weeks ago. It’s immensely clever how he manages to let his authors think the failure to appreciate lies in him only, and that the world at large is ablaze over their productions. Now, in that thing about you, for instance, the readers of book reviews--I wonder who they are?--must have thought Blair a schoolboy who had accidentally tangled an Olympic deity in the tail of his kite. It was only after they had paid one fifty for the volume, I dare say, that they found out the truth.”

“Don’t spoil my wife’s supper by talking shop over it,” said Terence reprovingly. “To come here for the purpose of discussing modern literature--”

“You flatter Clarke,” interrupted Malvolio.

“Is hardly my idea of entertainment. You might as well invite a letter-carrier to take a walk for pleasure.”

“Or ask Malvolio to talk about Monet--” said Clarke.

“Who has seen ‘Heart of Topaz’?” asked Terence of his guests.

“I, says the fly, with my little eye,” answered Malvolio. “It is a pretty peep-show; but she is only Mrs. Tanqueray done into Japanese. If we are to have that lady at all on our stage, let her come in the strong, original guise of Pinero’s heroine. Although you, my dear Miss Blair, must stay away when she appears--”

“Now _I_ protest,” said Mrs. Blair. “But at this rate, we shall never find a subject of conversation upon which we agree.”

“I beg your pardon,” exclaimed Malvolio, whose glass Terence had just filled with a steaming golden mixture of innocent appearance.

“There is one, and that one uppermost in all our minds, yet deepest in our hearts--”

“Hear, hear!” murmured Mr. Clarke.

“I need not,” went on the speaker, arising and holding his glass in his right hand, while upon his saturnine countenance gleamed an attempt at angelic amiability, “say many words to emphasize the pleasure Miss Blair’s triumph has given to-night to her hearers. Up to the present time, I must confess, I have known the young lady chiefly in her capacity of sub-critic to her father. On various occasions like the present, I have profited by her opinions upon the topics of the hour; and I can truly say: ‘Now, by the salt wave of the Mediterranean, a sweet touch, a quick venue of wit; snip, snap, quick, and home; it rejoiceth my intellect: true wit.’ But to-night she has soared into a region whither I may not follow her, save with the reverential eyes of an earth-bound loiterer; she has been accepted among the musical elect, and henceforward I can only offer my homage from below. Tho’ such as it is--the tribute of enchanted ignorance--it is hers most heartily; and I ask you all to join with me in drinking the health of the ‘Woman who has won!’”

“The woman who has won!” repeated Thorndyke, significantly, in Kathleen’s ear. He had crossed over for the first time to be near her, and his gaze was radiant.

“Now, why couldn’t I say some of those fine-sounding things?” poor Colin was grumbling inwardly, as he saw Kathleen break into well-pleased smiles and bend blushing in the direction of her extoller. “Old Malvolio has no business to take this on himself, considering he’s no more musical sense than a turnip. That’s my trouble, after all. I can’t keep up with the phrase-makers in their eternal patter. And that man she is talking to her now! How am I to tell Morry or her father the way I heard him speak of her a while ago? How did he get here, anyway? Anybody can get in with Kathleen better than I, it seems. If she’d give me only one of the sweet looks she wastes upon all these literary freaks”--such, we grieve to say, was the classification made by Mr. Mackintosh of the rank and file of the Blairs’ associates--“I’d--”