Chapter V: Part 5

“After all, it’s no more than you, and Stephen Luttridge, and lots of nice, clever men who deserve just as much of the pleasure of life as I do, are doing every day,” she said one evening, when her father told her she was a chip off the old block as far as working was concerned. “And while you are endowing me with your attributes, daddy, give me your pluck and--something higher, please. Even if I weren’t getting paid for it at the best market rates, I’d never begrudge this summer, that’s brought me to know my own dear father as he is. Thank goodness, there comes Stephen to take me for a walk. All this bottled-up energy of mine is fearful if I get no physical outlet in the day. Daddy, I forgot to tell you, I’ve been brushing up my Spanish latterly. I’ve had two lessons a week from a cheap and solemn little don Stephen found for me. So many of my Mexican letters are in Spanish I found it almost necessary to know their language better. To-day my little professor made me his farewell, and we had a conversation in his own tongue that would have startled you--I really think I talked faster than he did--if not so grammatically.”

“I don’t doubt it,” replied her father, looking at her admiringly. If Olive had told him she had taken a prize for an essay in any branch of science after two months of study he would hardly have doubted her.

It was harder work when the heat of July struck the city. Olive, yielding to her father’s solicitation, went off then for a week to a friend in the country, but came back determined not to try the experiment again. She was out of all touch with the people she met at the Claverings’ house party. Kind as they meant to be to her, she had lost the shibboleth, the habit of thought and speech, that could make her one of their circle. And if, on her return to town, thoughts would intrude of wide, smooth-shaven emerald lawns, great forest trees parting to reveal vistas of hill and lake, flower-beds blazoning the turf, rides on horseback, days on the golf links, and long, delightful country walks, she had courage to put them aside. But all this happened to be at the time of Luttridge’s holiday; when, seeing how much he needed change from office work, Olive had, in her own bright, imperious way, insisted that her lover should go off to the Maine woods for a fortnight’s fishing, without regard to her. And Stephen, albeit reluctantly, had acquiesced. One morning, as she sat down to her desk, the ancient Aztecs seemed for a while to be more than ever distressingly remote and uninteresting; then the maid came in with a long chapter of complaints about the iniquities of the janitor and butcher boy. When that was over, Olive’s eye fell upon her calendar. It was the day when, the year before, the Foljambes had been giving their great ball at Newport, accounts of which were cabled over sea, and had filled the atmosphere of the Western Hemisphere. Of what consequence were the Foljambes now to the world that had courted them?

“Evidently,” thought Olive, dashing into her papers, with an heroic attempt to fix her mind upon them, “it does me no good to go a-junketing. Between me and my other life a gulf is fixed that I should be wiser not to attempt to bridge.”

A ring at the gong-bell of the flat! So sharp a ring as to make her start like a guilty creature. This interruption brought her to the discovery that, for the first time since her change of abode and habit, she had been crying over “things.” Katrina’s arrival with a dingy card revealed the name of a Mexican, an ex-journalist, employed by Mrs. Rushmore to make certain researches of which the result was to be reported to Olive herself. In her capacity of editor, the latter had already received several communications from this Mr. Ramirez.

“But there are two,” whispered Olive, who, from her little study divided by curtains from their only reception-room, could distinctly hear voices and footsteps.

“Yes, m’m; but one of the gentlemen didn’t give a card. He’s a--a person, m’m--not a caller, and he’s jabbering away for dear life in French or Eyetalian or Rooshan, or some o’ them desperate tongues, to the other one, m’m. Shall I say you’ll be out directly, Miss Foljambe?”

“Yes, Katrina, and bring me a glass of water,” said Olive, meekly. She was glad to remain alone for a little while, subduing her nervous fit, and swabbing the marks of tears around her eyes. In her present unwonted resentment against existing circumstances she was even inclined to eschew the ancient Aztecs and the whole splendid inheritance they have left to posterity in the New World.

“It is really the heat that has got the better of me,” she thought. “But how much worse for poor Katrina in that little burning-glass of a kitchen! I am ashamed of myself. I will, positively, never do so any more.”

The voices of her waiting visitors, at first subdued to the ordinary pitch of a stranger’s tones upon entering an unfamiliar place, here forced themselves upon her aural consciousness. The men were speaking in Spanish, and certainly not of the matters Olive was expected to hold in common interest with Ramirez.

“It is not the first time, Juan, that you have tempted me with ventures; and they have always come to nothing. I haven’t the money to spare, I tell you; and that’s flat.”

“There is no mistake this time, Ramirez. If I could only make you believe me! If you do not accept, I go to Señor Mores, who, when he knows the facts, will take me up quickly. Think of it! A beggarly sum in hand, we buy out the San Miguel stock from a man who does not know its value, and our fortunes are made forever.”

San Miguel stock! In a flash it came to Olive that her father was the chief owner of San Miguel stock.

“Why do you think I came to New York?” went on the eager speaker. “For the pleasure of that long, bone-breaking journey across the continent, eh? Or to pass a month in this city, where a poor man is ruined by charges if he demands to eat or drink? Why did I fasten myself to you to-day, and follow you here, when you showed no desire for my company? Because I wanted to get ahead of another man who will arrive to-morrow morning. Am I to fail because you, my oldest friend, will not help me to raise the money? It is not a ‘fake,’ as you call it in English. I swear to you that I speak the truth. San Miguel is up, up--on the top of the wave. In two days the newspapers will have the news of their rich find. Here is a telegram I received on arrival at my hotel, a few hours since. The secret was to be kept only till Latimer, the clever man of their syndicate, should have had time to reach New York and visit Mr. Foljambe.”

“Foljambe! Caramba! Hold your tongue!” hissed Ramirez.

There was a sudden hush. The conversation passed into whispers. Olive, trembling with excitement, slipped back into her bedroom, put on her hat, seized gloves and parasol, and darted out to the rear of the flat to interview Katrina.

“I cannot receive those men now, Katrina,” said the young lady, breathlessly. “Give me full time to get out of their way, and then--but not until they call you--tell them I am not at home.”

“It’s not sneak-thieves they’d be, Miss Foljambe, and you goin’ to call up the police?” the maid asked with natural emotion.

“No, no, Katrina. They will do no harm. But I cannot stop to see them. It is a matter of important business for me to attend to. Something I have found out that I must see my father about, without delay. Mind, you are on no account to give these men, if they ask for it, Mr. Foljambe’s address downtown.”

“Trust me, miss,” said the woman, importantly. “They’d never be gettin’ me to let on where they’d find the master, poor gentleman, after all the troubles he’s had already.”

Olive, considering every moment’s delay of the men a clear gain, and reckless of the evident belief of her honest handmaiden that she was going to warn her father to flee from the myrmidons of justice, hurried out of the front door.

Katrina, anxious to fulfill the trust imposed in her, tarried inconceivably long; when Ramirez, his patience exhausted, rang her up for the fourth or fifth time, the woman sauntered into the room wearing an air of defiance blended with cunning. Between Ramirez’s scant supply of colloquial English and Katrina’s voluble mystifications the two men were fairly routed. The Mexican, putting his papers upon the table, finally beat a retreat.

But he reckoned without his enemy.

“Maybe it’s me you think would be serving yer dirty summonses upon the master!” cried she, as, exploding with wrath, she picked up the envelope and thrust it back on him.

“Come away, Ramirez; the creature is certainly mad,” said the other, nervously. To his mind this delay about trivialities, when he had a fortune in his grasp, was insanity on Ramirez’s part as well.

* * * * *

Fleet of foot and full of courage, Olive sped upon her way. Reaching the nearest station of the elevated railway she boarded a car and fell into a seat, looking back in actual fear of finding herself overtaken by the two Mexicans whom she had eluded. After all, was it not a will-o’-the-wisp she was pursuing? As it often happened to her in acting upon impulse, the first cool moment--though that did not come until the train was well on the way downtown--brought its pangs of self-distrust.

But nothing could go wrong about visiting her own dear father and confiding in him her--A sudden jarring of the wheels upon the rails, a shock--what was it? Olive, together with the other passengers in her end of the car, was shot forward violently, all falling in a heap. Then came a crash, a sound of shivered glass, some screams from frightened women, and at last a full stop--after which people picked themselves up and wondered whether or not they were badly hurt.

Coming around a curve they had run into the rear end of a train stopped unexpectedly ahead of them because of a breakdown of its engine. There were no serious bodily injuries, but there was much agitation and every prospect of a long delay before the track could be cleared and the train could proceed. Olive, the worse only for a badly battered hat, a broken sunshade, some damage to her clothes, and a scratch across her brow, had her hands full for a time with pacifying other more nervous women and crying children, who could not be persuaded they were not doomed to fall into the street below.

When at last she had succeeded in getting to the plank-walk along the side of the railway track, and had thus, with the assistance of a train hand, reached the next station, she descended to the level of Mother Earth with her feelings somewhat dashed. In her forlorn plight she was not fit to be seen on the streets, and indeed the condition of her hat was so shocking as to make her hesitate to enter a public vehicle. There was not a cab in sight, but after a rapid walk to Broadway she discovered a great wholesale warehouse where, when she had explained that she had just been in a collision on the railway, they allowed her to purchase a cheap straw hat that was at least better than the one she discarded.

More delays! The cable-car, into which she finally got, ran along peacefully enough to just below Canal Street, where a block occurred, necessitating an attempt at possession of her soul in patience until the moments grew to feel like hours.

Unable to endure it longer, she sprang to the ground, crossing through a jam of vehicles to the sidewalk, then stood looking up and down for a cab. Everybody stared at her, until she was afraid she might be arrested upon a charge of drunkenness, because of her excitement and of her battered appearance.

Her face flamed with heat and exertion. The wound in her forehead streaked her handkerchief with blood. It was very near mid-day. Lacking a parasol, the sun’s ardor seemed to her more oppressive than it had ever been before. And, as ill-luck would have it, the passing cabs at that hour, in midsummer, and in that portion of the town, were so few and far between, that not one, not already occupied, came along until she was ready to cry with anxiety. It was the first time she had ever been there alone.

Poor Olive felt her courage oozing out at her finger tips. After all, would not she be laughed at by her father as a mistaken busybody, concerning herself with affairs of which she had no knowledge? And as the sun beat upon a pavement swarming with alien folk who jostled and stared at her, she almost gave up in despair.

“You make some mistakes, my impetuous little Olive,” had Stephen Luttridge said to her a few days before they parted, “and--perhaps--commit some follies. But your intuitions are the keenest, your pluck the best, I have ever seen in a woman. And I promise you now, I am going to stand by them both, so long as we both shall live.”

How Olive had glowed with pride at her lover’s eulogy! As it here came to her memory, she turned bravely around facing the Battery, and started to walk.

The pain in her head was growing; she felt a sensation of dizziness. In all that crowd, pressing her onward or coming to meet her, there was not a familiar face, or one to whom she could appeal.

At this moment, a blue-coated officer crossed the line of her uncertain vision. Olive ran forward, laying her hand upon his arm, and besought him to get a carriage for her. The man, scrutinizing her closely, ended--to his eternal credit, be it said--by speaking civilly.

“There’s one coming now, Miss, if you think you’d be fit to drive alone. Perhaps you’d better step into a drug store till your head cools down a bit.”

“Oh! no, no. I am all right, officer; I only want to get to my father’s office, No. -- Wall Street, please. Tell the driver to take me quickly, and I’ll thank you very, very much.”

Once inside the friendly hansom, Olive’s courage flowed back in a full stream. For half a mile or more she lay at ease upon the cushions, fanned herself, arranged her hat and veil anew, thought of her father’s kind pity for her mischances, and rejoiced in finding him--when, presto! the horse was down upon his knees and badly damaged, the passenger shooting forward, her wrist twisted in the attempt to prevent herself from falling further.

A crowd gathered about them. Olive, assisted to alight, protested that she was not hurt; and a good Samaritan, who saw the girl’s pallid cheeks, led her into a neighboring doorway, summoning another cab.

“You must let me take you to your destination, though,” said the gentleman who had aided her. “I happen to have daughters of my own about your age, and should be very sorry to have one of them left to shift for herself under these circumstances.”

“It can’t be so very far now to my father’s office in Wall Street,” replied Olive, suppressing the pain of her injured wrist. “I am dreadfully anxious to get to my father’s place of business.”

She mentioned his name, and the gentleman took off his hat--but was evidently puzzled by her forlorn appearance.

“I have good reason to know Martin Foljambe,” he said, courteously. “But for his generous action a few months ago--something he need not have done, but chose to do--I should have been hard hit. My name is Whitwell, and I beg you to give yourself no further concern, Miss Foljambe. I shall surrender you safely to your father’s keeping in a very little while.”

“Oh, if it is not too late!” exclaimed she, for the first time losing her self-control.

“You are late for luncheon, if that’s what you mean; but I dare say Mr. Foljambe will look out for you. It is always a treat to my young women to descend upon me for their mid-day meal, and I am well broken in to supplying them.”

When they stopped before the desired building and Olive offered him her purse to pay the cab, her kind friend declined, of course, to receive it, but observed that her cheeks had again grown very white. In crossing the hall to the elevator he made her lean upon his arm, and as they shot up to the floor upon which Martin Foljambe now transacted his affairs, in the office of his assignee, her escort felt that she was trembling painfully.

“I am growing weaker,” thought poor Olive to herself. “How wretched to frighten papa like this. Oh, I must not, I will not faint! I will hold out till I tell him about San Miguel.”

“Courage, my child,” said Mr. Whitwell. “In one moment you’ll be there.”

At the end of a long corridor they saw the names they had come in search of.

“He is in, Miss Foljambe,” said the young man to whom she had put the query, “but I am sorry to say our orders are that Mr. Foljambe is not to be interrupted. He is receiving some gentlemen on important business.”

“Two foreigners?” asked the girl, forcing herself to speak calmly.

“I think so, Miss Foljambe. I was out at lunch when they called, but I understood they are Spanish gentlemen, and Mr. Foljambe’s orders were most explicit that he is not to be disturbed.”

Olive never knew how her strength held out to march past the astonished clerk, tap at the door of her father’s room, and follow this up by entering the forbidden portal. Quite two hours had passed since she had quitted her home upon her mission of warning. There had been full time for “Juan” to induce Ramirez to decide upon their plan of action, find out Mr. Foljambe’s habitat downtown, and proceed without interruption to the spot.

As already stated, Foljambe had decided that the mine was worthless, and had advised his assignee to sell the San Miguel stock at whatever price it would fetch. When, therefore, the two Mexicans had appeared--offering for it a merely nominal sum, to be sure, but accompanying their proposition with the guileless explanation that, as Juan lived near the mine and had a little money, he was willing to risk something on the venture of becoming part owner of the property, though it seemed to be of no real value--Martin considered himself in luck. He thought that here was a windfall, though certainly not a large one.

While Ramirez, interpreting for his friend Juan, was in the very act of urging an immediate acceptance, so that a matter of so little importance might be closed without further bother, and while Foljambe was holding back with an attempt to prove his indifference, making excuse that the assignee would arrive presently and they could then decide the matter, Olive had burst into the room.

“I beg your pardon, papa,” she said, frightened and faltering; “there has been a little accident, and I must speak to you alone.”

Foljambe, much startled, put his arm around his daughter’s shoulders, placed her in a chair, and requested his visitors to wait in another room until the return of the gentleman through whose hands the matter must pass. As they went out Ramirez darted upon the almost fainting girl a look of suspicion and resentment.

“What is it, my dear?” asked the father, anxiously. “What in the world has brought you down here alone, and in this condition?”

“Your friend, Mr. Whitwell, papa. He is waiting outside, I think; but never mind him or my appearance or anything, till I ask you if you have sold your San Miguel stock.”

“Good heavens!” cried Martin; “and what do you know, you kitten, about San Miguel stock?”

“Only that it’s up--up--on the top of the wave,” she cried, breathlessly, repeating what Juan had told in her hearing to Ramirez. “That they have made a rich strike of ore. This man I saw here just now has crossed the continent at top speed to buy you out; and another person--somebody called Latimer, who, he says, is the clever man of the syndicate--will be in New York to-morrow morning for the same purpose. Oh, papa, if you have sold San Miguel it will break my heart!”

“By George, I haven’t; but you were just in time!” cried Foljambe, greatly excited. “It’s the closest call I ever had in all my business life. How on earth you found out, Olive, beats me. But if it’s true--good heavens, child, how did you find it out?”

“They were at our house this morning--talking together in Spanish,” she said, her voice beginning to sound to her further and further away--“and I remembered what you had told me about San Miguel. I started without waiting a minute to find you, but the elevated train broke down, and there was a block on the cable cars--it was very hot--then my hansom horse fell down, and I hurt my wrist--I’m afraid, papa, it’s beginning to make me feel--a little weak.”

She could articulate no longer. Her words trailed off into incoherency. The long strain had been too much for her. For the first time in her life, Olive fainted dead away.

Juan and Ramirez knew their game was up--knew it before a message came to them from the room where Mr. Foljambe was occupied in restoring his daughter to consciousness, where Mr. Whitwell, summoned to come in, was explaining the circumstances of his encounter with the little heroine.

For the visit and proposition of Mr. Latimer, which occurred the morning following that of Ramirez and his friend, Mr. Foljambe was sufficiently prepared. Latimer’s surprise when his offer to buy was declined outright, as was also his rapid increase of the amount first suggested as a fair equivalent for worthless stock, all this is written on the tablets of Martin Foljambe’s memory. He will probably never cease chuckling over it as a pendant to his daughter’s clever interference.

Olive went on with the Rushmore memorial (which in due time appeared in print, with great credit to the editor) until her father, coming in one unbearably hot evening, gave her the welcome tidings that San Miguel had set him on his feet again.

“We shall be rich again, my girl, thanks to your grit and common-sense,” he added, bending over the sofa, where she reclined, rather languid and overdone and trembling with excitement. “And about the first use I shall make of spare funds will be to set up you and Stephen. I take it, from what your mother writes, Lilian will marry that Captain Ramsdell. I don’t care a hang about his being next in succession to a baronet, but I do like his asking her when he thought she had lost her money.”

“The bell!” cried Olive, springing to her feet as the welcome annunciator sounded. “Glad as I am of your splendid news, papa, I am gladder still that to-night has brought Stephen back.”

“I had quite forgotten that little circumstance,” remarked Martin, as she flew by him like a whirlwind to meet her lover in the hall.

THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS

THE STOLEN STRADIVARIUS

In a low chair, drawn up to secure the full light of a Welsbach burner, a little woman sat darning stockings. Although full forty years of age, she was astonishingly young and fresh. Her dark hair, twisted in a shining coil at the back of a small, well-shaped head, her rosy lips and white teeth, the look of alert interest in her hazel eyes, the plain but becomingly arranged dress, all suggested that her present condition of solitude was incidental rather than habitual.

The room in which Mrs. Blair’s deft needle repaired the havoc of stalwart feet in their daily walks to and from the money-getting haunts of men, was clearly the resort of culture untainted by vulgarity. On the second floor of a small three-story dwelling in a street unknown to modern fashion, years of use as a family gathering place had toned its modest belongings into harmonious attractiveness. If the furniture was worn, it better accorded with the russet and dun hues of the old books covering half the walls; and the drawn curtains of faded crimson stuff did not rebuke the faint odor of tobacco that lingered in their folds. Above the books hung numerous good engravings, photographs, and etchings that lifted thought and piqued imagination with suggestions of the wide world’s beauty and romantic history. In the most isolated corner a substantial table, littered with papers, a letter-press, a stray pipe or two, a big common-sense inkstand and writing pad, with a rack of books of reference, betrayed the snug harbor of a male brain-worker; while a stand of blossoming plants in a south window, a tea-table set with bits of quaint silver, and a couple of becushioned wicker chairs indicated a woman’s idea of _dulce domum_.

This room was, in fact, the common property of a busy married pair and their busy children, who rightly considered their reunions in its pleasant precincts to be a fair equivalent for other things denied them by Dame Fortune.

The house and its furniture, with a small sum of ready money, had been the portion given to Molly Christian on her marriage, two-and-twenty years before, with Terence Blair. He was a good-looking, well-bred, clever Irishman, who, coming over to the New World to make a living out of journalism, had at once anchored himself happily by falling in love with and winning the prettiest and best-balanced girl of his acquaintance in New York.

Mr. Christian, Molly’s father, after so contributing to his daughter’s needs, had wisely put what remained of his fortune into an annuity that supported the amiable but unpractical gentleman until his death two years before our story opens. This disposition of his funds had been indorsed by Mr. Christian’s family and friends with more satisfaction because of his previous persistency of faith in certain silver and copper mines that had given him every facility for cultivating the process known as throwing good money after bad.

Although Molly’s handsome Terence had not, according to her expectation of him, quite set the world of his craft on fire, he had made a respectable livelihood; and she and their children adored him for his sweet, cheery temper and easy-going ways. Late in her life he had imported to live with them a lively little old Irish mother--styled by the juniors “Granny”--who proved to be just the dash of flavor needful to complete their family salad. Petulant, affectionate, witty, and light-hearted, Granny had bravely helped her daughter-in-law to bear the increasing burden of domestic life on a limited income in a community where upon working people there is a call for every dollar before it is well in hand.

As the children had grown up, and their varied mental gifts cried aloud for the best education of the times, Molly had, indeed, had much ado to make both ends meet. Luckily for her, the strain of keeping up appearances was not among her trials.

When the Blairs had married, possessing between them means enough to give and take the hospitality of that simpler period, they were a part of the circle that in those days codified the social laws of the metropolis. Mistress Molly, a whilom belle of her set, did not lack for attentions, and Terence was popular. But very soon, it became apparent to the young couple that they were straining overmuch to keep abreast with people who affected to put aside the hum-drum ways of their Revolutionary, or Dutch, or Puritan ancestors; that the growing elaboration of life among their kind must drive the Blairs either to accept without returning, or not to accept at all. So Molly let go the threads of gossamer that bound her to her world, and little by little the Blairs had drifted into insignificance. To Terence, with his insular density as to the shades of difference in American society, it had not seemed a mighty matter to give up Molly’s friends; but she was a woman, and at first it had cost her a few natural pangs. Now for nearly twenty years she and Terence had lived their own life, and on the whole had done very well without the things forsaken.

How was it, then, that to-night, as the little house-mother sat at her homely task, her thoughts, roving over the field of her interests, general and special, had settled with a tinge of wistfulness upon a very trivial matter? In an evening newspaper she had chanced to read the account of a ball, given the night before for the young daughter of one of her friends of early years, when the _débutante_ had literally walked upon flowers.

“Lilies of the valley strewing the floor of the alcove where Tilly Beaumoris stood beside her mother to receive! And for my girl, to-night of all nights, when she plays her violin before Levitsky, not so much as a posy to wear in her best frock!” This was the arrow that pierced Mrs. Molly’s armor!

Yes, it was Kathleen, bright, radiant Kathleen--her nineteen-year-old daughter, the sunshine and perfume of their home--who had begun to disturb the long-standing family peace.

What Molly had cheerfully accepted for herself, she now, like a true American parent, began to think might be bettered for Kathleen.

An hour before, she had seen the child--heaven in her face--set forth with her father for a musicale in the studio of an artist, who had promised to fetch there to hear her play the great Herr Levitsky himself, whose verdict made or marred an aspirant in her field. And Molly had no sort of doubt as to Kathleen’s rare talent for the violin.

The only cloud upon Kathleen’s horizon had been that mamma must stop behind.

Molly had pleaded--though Kathleen quite understood it to be a pious fiction--that she really could not make the effort to go to Crichton’s musicale; that she was better off at home; that she would certainly be nervous, and that Kathleen would see it, and fail to play as well. Kathleen knew--and Molly knew she knew--that the frugal little lady’s only remaining evening gown was too hopelessly decrepit to make another appearance in public without the renovation requiring time and outlay just then impossible to bestow on it. As for its alternate--the old black satin surviving the days of a fuller purse--that had “suffered a sea change” into modern conformity with gores, and gathers, and what not, and was at the moment rippling sheenfully from Kathleen’s own slender waist, the bodice veiled in transparent gauze of the same somber hue, through which the girl’s white throat and splendid shoulders gleamed with a pearly luster.

What Kathleen had done to bridge over the insincerity of her mother’s excuses, was to put her strong, round arms about Molly’s neck and half blind her with enthusiastic kisses.

Maurice, coming a moment later into the room--Molly’s oldest son, Maurice, with his six foot one of young manhood set off by cheap broadcloth, speckless linen, and the ruddy hues of health and modesty--had repeated Kathleen’s onslaught; and lastly Terence, always laggard, wearing his high hat of ceremony, and struggling into his overcoat as he hurried in, had kissed her good-by, and bade her be of good cheer, since their girl was sure to do them credit.

Ah, well! What did anything matter so long as she had these?

No, no, she did not envy her old friend, Lottie Earl, now the important Mrs. Beaumoris of the society newspapers, or covet ever so little that lady’s grand establishments in town and country, her yacht, her travels, and her vogue. It had been only a silly passing fancy of Molly’s about the waste of all those lilies, because Kathleen had asked for a few to brighten her gala toilet, and could not be gratified in view of the winter woolens needed for poor, dear Jock--who was serenely wearing his last year’s rags in a snow-drift up at college!

Then merry Jock passed in review in his mother’s anxious thoughts--Jock, whom the family were putting through the university by dint of constant self-denial and petty economy. And then, Maurice, whose clever drawings were beginning to be sought for by the editors; his hopes and ambitions, his loving confidence in her, flooded her heart with tender meditation. Next, Terence had his turn, and there was a space for Granny. And before all of these images of her worship, Molly poured a libation of love that made her as happy as a queen. Gone now were the barbed thoughts of a little while before. How “they” would laugh at her next day, when she confessed her feelings as to Mrs. Beaumoris, for to the Blairs most sentiments were common property. Terence, his eyes full of quizzical enjoyment, would call her a little socialist. Maurice, throwing back his head in a jolly laugh, would declare, provided the Blanks gave him Horner’s new novel to illustrate, Mrs. Beaumoris was welcome to strew forty thousand lilies upon her daughter’s pathway. Granny would let fly some cheerful satire, and Kathleen--well, if to-night Levitsky approved of Kathleen’s playing, after this the girl would be too well satisfied with her lot in life to bestow even a transient sigh upon anything lacking!

As the clock on the mantelshelf chimed eleven Mrs. Blair started in surprise. Her stockings were all done, and piled beside her in neat rolls; and still there was time to run over those last proofs of Terence’s, so that he, poor dear, might get to bed for once in decent time.

It was not for the intellectual treat that Molly Blair, her rather overtasked hazel eyes radiating contentment, next set herself, with the careful facility of one trained to the work, to read over the pile of galley slips representing part of her husband’s new book on the Romance Languages, then running through the press. Truth to tell, in her zeal of sympathy she almost knew the paragraphs by heart.

So deeply immersed in her occupation was Mr. Blair’s proofreader, however, that by and by, although Molly had meant to listen for the welcome sound, a latch-key was turned in the hall lock below, and she did not hear it. A moment later, a whirlwind, apparently, bore into her presence a young creature with the brightest eyes and ripest lips in the world.

“Oh! little mother, darling!” cried Kathleen, breathlessly, “how shall I tell you my good news? It was like a fairy tale; and Maurice thinks so, too. He’s just as glad as I am, I can see; only we’ve not had time to talk it over. Well--to begin with--_he_ was there--”

“Who, Maurice?” asked Molly, happily.

“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.