Chapter VI: Part 6

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--”

His meditations were cut short by Kathleen herself, who, supple as a snake, had glided unnoticed to his elbow.

“You are the only one among us who has a long face,” she said to him, softly, while across and around the table now resounded a fusillade of merry sayings and laughter. “Is it because you disapprove of my playing in public?”

“Disapprove of you? Oh! good gracious, no!” he answered, incoherently. “I am proud to the core of my heart. But that doesn’t mean I like to think of you on a platform. It makes me wretched, and that’s the honest truth. You ought to be shut in from vulgar gazers in a little world of your own; and the question of dirty money oughtn’t to enter into your art.”

“Perhaps not,” said the more practical Kathleen; “but, after all, ‘dirty money’ puts the hallmark upon accomplishment. And as to the vulgar gazers and hearers, they light the torch of genius. When I was last at the opera, in those good seats in the parquet Mr. Toner sent papa, I watched the artists closely, and saw that every one of them was working with all his or her might to do the best possible; and whenever there came a burst of real applause--not that little rainfall of claps one hears from the gallery alone, but the kind that comes, quick as near-by thunder after lightning, from the body of the house--the ease and spontaneity of the performance was increased. The very muscles of their bodies seem to feel the tension, and their faces to grow more luminous.”

“That may be true,” said poor Colin, who was again out of his depth; “but somehow, I don’t fancy you among them. I had rather see you in the boxes with those nice girls who sit up by their mammas, and have fellows dropping in to call on them.”

“Please don’t!” cried she, with unaffected earnestness. “I can’t imagine any life that would suit me less than theirs. Sometimes, on a winter’s night when daddy and I hurry by them in the lobby, on our way to catch a cable car to get home in, I think maybe I might enjoy wearing one of their long fluffy white wraps like plumage--that look like seraphs’ overcoats--and having a footman in a fur cape to call my carriage. But really, I don’t want riches or fashion; I want opportunity only, and travel, and all the music I can get, and flowers like those orchids, and a new evening frock--and such nice things as Mr. Thorndyke has been saying to me about my touch, and--and to see my parents take a little rest from work. But that’s what I talk about to Morry, not to you. When his ship and mine come in, you’ll see what we shall do with our cargoes.”

Thus it was always. While she filled every chink and cranny of Colin’s dreams of the future, he had no part in hers. Swallowing his pain, he tried to find something to say to her about his pleasure in her success. He dared not venture in this place to criticise their new guest.

“Oh! thank you,” she said, studying his appearance, apparently for the first time. “And to return the compliment, I ought to tell you that you look--really very nice.”

“Morry put me up to it,” he said, glowing with pleasure. “We had a council over my old evening rig that had been through three years of the University before it came to New York; and he decided I could no longer pass muster.”

“Yes, I like you in these clothes,” she said, critically. “But I think--though I’m not certain--your collar should not turn down so low--and I’m quite sure your hair is too long.”

“Really?” he exclaimed, smiling ecstatically. It was so precious to have her speak to him in this proprietary way, even though he knew, too well, alas! that she was inspired by less than the interest of a sister. He would have been thankful, indeed, to have a part of Maurice’s share in her regard.

“Yes, really,” she said. “But for those minor points, I believe you are smart enough to appear in the gilded halls of Mrs. Beaumoris, where, by the way, I am to make my début on the twenty-fifth as a paid performer.”

“You! oh, no!” he exclaimed, impetuously, his brown face reddening.

“And why not, pray?” she answered, proudly resentful of his protest. “What has become of your theories about the dignity of honest toil?”

“It’s not that--only--it is a chariot of fire that is coming to snatch you away from me,” he said, simply, and in spite of herself Kathleen was touched.

Colin, seeing his advantage, tried to follow it up. But it is the misfortune of those in his peculiar state, that the very force of their desire to be agreeable to the beloved object defeats their chances of success. He could find nothing appropriate to say, and felt as he looked--large, lumbering, disconsolate.

No wonder Kathleen flitted away from him to laugh and chaff lightly with the others. Even little Catullus, with his poses and bushy hair and solemn fripperies, made the time pass for her more trippingly than did Morry’s friend.

Terence, however, in his element as a host, presiding with rare grace and tact over their frugal feast, understood better than any one the art of amalgamating divers elements in a party. To their number was presently added Duval of the _Clarion_, who had just been writing his critique of the last new play at the ---- Theater, that would help to form opinion on the subject next morning at many breakfast tables. Talk took itself wings, and soon was stirring with mirthful impulse.

Then Terence, who possessed a tenor voice that might have coined ducats for his family where his pen won them a bare livelihood, sang some of his Irish melodies--not Tom Moore’s only, but Lover’s, and the like. Gazing for an inspiration at his pretty Kathleen, he trolled out the delicious by-gone serenade that carried his wife back many a long year, and brought to her eyes the tears of tenderest sentiment.

“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining
Because they’ve nothing else to do?

“The flowers late were open keeping,
To try a rival blush with you;
But their Mother Nature set them sleeping,
With their rosy faces washed in dew.

“The wicked watch dog loud is growling;
He takes me for a thief, you see;
He knows I’d steal you, Molly darling,
And then transported I should be.

“Oh! Molly Bawn, why leave me pining,
All lonely waiting here for you,
When the stars above are brightly shining,
Because they’ve nothing else to do?”

Of all Mr. Blair’s listeners the only one who wore an expression not in sympathy with the pretty tuneful old song was Catullus; and even he, sitting in a Yellow Book attitude, exhibited the grace of magnanimous forbearance. So rapt were the others in the charm of listening, they paid no heed to “a new step on the floor” of the adjoining room. It was a pattering little step, much as if a mouse was scuttling through the house; and at once the door opened, and in came a tiny, bright-eyed old lady, fully dressed and wide-awake, although her cap was a tiny bit askew.

“Granny!” cried her family in a voice.

“You didn’t think, Terry, my boy, that I could stop upstairs in bed, and hear you sing the old songs down below,” answered Granny, unabashed.

“You’re like the ‘good ould Oirish gintlemen, all of the oulden toime,’ Granny,” said Maurice, bringing forward her especial chair. “Don’t you remember how he was supposed to be defunct, and his friends were ‘waking’ him, and the candles were lighted around his bed? The corpse stood all the rest, but when the whisky corks began to pop, he just sprang up and shouted, ‘Whoop! Murther! d’ye think I’ll be lying here dead, when such good stuff as that is flying around my head?’”

“For shame, saucy boy,” said Granny, giving her pet a little tap upon his hand that still clasped hers. “No supper, thanks; I couldn’t survive it, really; and not a wee drop of the punch, even. Just go on with your nonsense, good people, and let me listen. But first come here, Kathleen, child, and tell me how you stood your trial.”

“Let me settle your dear old cap, then,” replied Kathleen, proceeding to put her offer into execution. “It’s all right about me, Granny; I’m a gold mine, as you’ll say when you know what Mrs. Beaumoris is going to pay me for playing at her party. And as to what Herr Levitsky said, that will keep for to-morrow. Now, papa, we want ‘Widow Malone,’ as only you can sing it.”

“And afterward,” added Thorndyke, with effusion uncommon in that measured personage, “Miss Blair will surely not refuse to give us a taste of her quality on the violin.”

Therefore, in due course, Miss Blair, standing under the old clock, lifted her fiddle-bow, and lo! the air about them thrilled with exquisite sound. What she chose first to reproduce was the quaint German Christmas hymn, “Joseph, lieber, Joseph, mein,” written by Calvisius five hundred years before. Then without warning she broke into Granny’s favorite Irish jig, playing it with such resistless vim and merriment that every foot in the room began involuntarily to keep time, and every face wreathed itself into a smile. As quickly again the measure changed, and now Kathleen was back in Crichton’s studio, and her hour of triumph was lived again.

“You are a real witch,” said Colin, finding himself near her after this. “You have got all these people crazy about you. While you played, I was wondering if you’ll ever be satisfied with any one man for an audience.”

He turned, annoyed. There, behind him, stood Mr. Thorndyke, silent, inscrutable.

“Indeed, and I will!” Kathleen said, merrily.

“And what must he be or do to deserve it?”

“Be?” exclaimed the girl. “Like the donkey, all ears. And do? Give me a Stradivarius!”

A little later, when the company broke up and the guests went their several ways, Mackintosh, espying his forgotten flowers, had no longer the impulse to offer them to Kathleen. The events of the evening and the attentions of Thorndyke had made her recede further than ever from his reach.

“Will you ask your mother to have these lilies?” he said, awkwardly thrusting the box upon Maurice in the hall, and hurrying out of the house.

When Colin reached the spot he by courtesy called home he let himself in with a latch-key at a mean-looking door, and climbed three flights of stairs to his den. This was not exactly the traditional hall-bedroom of the struggling clerk, but a variant, in the shape of a middle room, lighted and aired by a small skylight in the roof only. In other respects it was as cheerless as a ragged carpet, lame furniture, and mismatched crockery could make it; but Colin thought little of personal comfort, and the gloom of his meditation as he threw himself upon a creaking chair beside his iron bed was not due to the young man’s meager surroundings. For almost the first time in his life, he felt a sense of impotency in meeting the future in fair fight; and his ordinary trustful spirit rebelled against thus leaving his affairs to “lie on the knees of the gods!”

“Give her a Stradivarius!” he said aloud, bitterly. And, somehow, with the phrase mingled a haunting thought of the man with the angel face, who had in Colin’s hearing spoken words concerning Kathleen that were not in the least angelic.

III

The words, “Give her a Stradivarius,” had hardly been spoken aloud by young Mackintosh when he was surprised by a knocking upon the board partition dividing his attic room from the one adjoining it. After a pause, during which he listened, the knocking was renewed.

Colin, remembering that his neighbor was an infirm and melancholy looking old fellow, whom he sometimes met wearily climbing the stairs with a loaf of bread and a brown paper bag of comestibles hugged to his breast, fancied himself called upon for help. He had but just removed his coat and, putting it on, hastily ran out into the entry, and tapped at the door of the next room.

A feeble voice called to him to come in. The interior resembled Colin’s own in lack of comfort. A gas-jet was burning, which revealed, lying dressed upon the bed close to the partition wall, the man he had often seen--gentle-faced, though hollow-eyed, and evidently racked by some chronic malady.

“I beg your pardon, sir,” said Colin’s neighbor, “but I must have been dreaming. I awoke suddenly, believing I heard some one distinctly say, ‘Give her a Stradivarius!’ And so I knocked on the wall, the way I used to call my nephew when he lived with me.”

“I did say those words,” answered Colin, blushing. “I was thinking aloud.”

“I beg pardon again, sir,” said the man, sitting up on the bed with an eager expression. “This is a coincidence I think you will agree is remarkable. I had fallen asleep thinking of a Stradivarius. I was dreaming of it. In fact, I rarely think of anything else, in these days. For to have owned something that in my present poverty would have been a little fortune, and to have had it stolen from me by my--Good God! I can’t speak of him. It’s too base for words. Mr. Mackintosh, I’m ashamed of myself. You see, I know your name. Mine is Rupert Thorndyke.”

“That seems somehow familiar,” said Colin, racking his brain to recall where he had heard the two names combined.

“No doubt, like most of us working folks, you read about the doings of the fine people who constitute high society in this town. Well, among them you have often seen that name. The other Rupert Thorndyke is as young and pushing and successful as I am old and timid and collapsed. He is away up among the tiptops, Mr. Mackintosh--dines and wines with the millionaires, and gives parties at his own rooms. I eat bread and ham out of a paper bag upon yonder table, and am thankful when I can afford a bottle of beer or Rhine wine to wash it down. But he’s of my own blood. My brother’s son, and my only living relative--named for me, to my sorrow. When his father was in business with me in musical instruments at--Broadway I was the senior partner, and we prospered for many years. Then my brother got into speculations, and I had to make good the money he lost. Rupert, who was a clever dog, had been sent by me to the University. Well, my brother died of a broken heart; and Rupert came to live with me for a while. Got me to send him to Europe once or twice, which I could ill afford to do. He was such a handsome fellow, had such a winning way with him, one could refuse him nothing. Then some of his former classmates at college voted him into a fashionable club. I paid the entrance fee and dues, keeping my homely self out of sight of his grand companions. Mr. Mackintosh, you will wonder at my want of self-control. But you’re a gentleman, and have got a heart, too--I can see it. I’ve often wanted to make your acquaintance.”

“Go on, if it relieves you, Mr. Thorndyke,” said the young man, dropping upon a chair beside the bed.

“Then you will honor me by drinking a glass of claret,” said the other, arising with some difficulty from his recumbent position. “I am rather stiff with rheumatic pains, as you see. I lay down here before dinner to rest a while, and must have slept till now. Pray share my good luck. My employer--for I am serving where I once ruled, Mr. Mackintosh--gave me a bottle of Pontet Canet in honor of his birthday.”

“I have just supped, thank you,” said Colin, unwilling to hurt him by refusal. “But I’ll have a glass of wine with you with pleasure.”

The old man, shuffling about, produced glasses and a bottle, together with a Bologna sausage and some biscuits. As he sat munching and sipping opposite Colin at table, his dull eyes brightened with the feast.

“Good stuff, this,” he went on. “I’ll warrant the great Mr. Rupert Thorndyke has no more relish for his supper with the rich and exclusive Mrs. Beaumoris after the theater to-night! My employer gives me his morning paper when he has done with it, Mr. Mackintosh, and I bring it home, and under this gas-jet read the fashionable intelligence. I always know what’s going on in society. Look at this old ledger; I have cut out and pasted in it all that is said about my namesake--where he goes, and what he does. Rupert is a musical virtuoso--hand in glove with all the artists, who sing and play at his rooms for nothing. The fine ladies attend, too, and admire the beautiful upholstery and decorations that I paid for when I was flush. Rupert has a collection of musical instruments, ‘small but unrivaled,’ so the papers say. Mr. Mackintosh, I’d give a year of my life to look over that collection and make sure of my--my--lost Stradivarius.”

“Do you mean to say--” began Colin, indignantly.

“When I failed in business I had saved that violin to be sold only in case of dire emergency. Rupert, better than another, knew its value. He always coveted it, but though I had squeezed myself dry to supply him, I would not give this up. For a long time, I should tell you, I kept on terms with my nephew. I never obtruded myself, but I saw him from time to time, taking a fool’s pride in the grand gentleman I had created.”

His head drooped forward. He seemed lost in reverie. Colin, who had begun this adventure with indifference, felt his suspicions awaken and grow keen with the man’s story.

“A pride I am afraid your nephew did not appreciate, Mr. Thorndyke,” said the young man finally, to arouse him.

“Eh! Oh! of course not,” exclaimed the instrument-maker, coming out of his trance. “I was thinking of what a handsome fellow Rupert is. His eyes are so blue, his smile so open, his manner so winning, no one under God’s heaven would take him to be a--oh! _is_ he that? Has my brother’s boy fallen so low? He might have turned on the hand that fed and reared him; he might have shaken me off because I am poor and commonplace and rusty; but I can’t believe--yet what must I believe? Listen, Mr. Mackintosh, to the proofs. After my failure, as I said, I had put away my precious Stradivarius in its case, in a trunk in the one room I kept--better than this, but still, one room only. I had to go over to Philadelphia, once, to see a man from whom I hoped to collect a few hundreds owing me. I came back rejoiced because I had got nearly the whole sum. The maid at the boarding-house said nobody had called or asked for me in my absence. I went straight to the trunk, and opened it to put away my cash. I found the violin-case empty--the treasure gone! Just as I was about to give the alarm to the house, I saw on the floor under the edge of the trunk, this--”

He took from his pocket an unset scarabeus, jade-green in hue, that might have been worn in a man’s ring or pin.

“It was his. I had often seen him wear it in a scarf. He had showed it to me on his first return from Cairo. How could I alarm the boarding-house, or set the police upon the track of Rupert? Rupert a th-- Oh, no! I won’t say the word! Not till it’s proved will I call him so. I found traces of wax on my latch-key of the house door, that I had been in the habit of throwing, with my other keys, on the dressing-table every night. Rupert had recently sent a man there with a note enclosing me a present of twenty-five dollars. While I wrote the answer the man must have taken the impression of my keys. Mr. Mackintosh, I had mistrusted that gift of money, though I kept it to pay my way to Philadelphia, and my board. Although I had given Rupert all, it was the first he had given me. I returned it to him the day after my discovery of the loss, with two lines, “Take your money, and give me back my Stradivarius.” He answered in such a brutal tone it makes me sick to think of it, disclaiming all knowledge of my Stradivarius. I burnt his letter, but these words are sunk into my heart, ‘From this time forth I refuse to see or to speak to one who has done me this foul wrong.’ That was two years ago, Mr. Mackintosh--two years ago. I have not prospered since; I am living on a pittance of pay because the times are hard, and my employer has nothing like the business _we_ used to have. Are you cold, sir? If so, I can light the gas-stove. I keep it for _very_ cold weather generally. My nephew, as I said, has gone to a play to-night, to see Sara Bernhardt, with a party invited by Mrs. Beaumoris. His friends are very exclusive, and he is a great favorite--or perhaps it was last night he went to the theater; I am losing my memory, you see.”

“How does he continue to cut such a dash without fortune?” asked Colin, anxious to satisfy himself without exciting the poor old fellow’s suspicion.

“Nobody knows exactly. He was always lucky in speculation, and very daring. I gave him money to start with--all I could spare--and he went on and on. Yes, he must have a good purse to live as he does. I don’t envy Rupert; but oh! if I had the courage to go to-night and try to get into his rooms--to say I am his uncle and could wait till he came in--and then search there, and find out--”

“Perhaps he has sold the Stradivarius,” said Colin.

“Oh, don’t say that, Mr. Mackintosh. I hope against hope that he’s keeping it as the gem of his collection--that I may one day look at it again. I’d know it in a hundred. There is a tiny vein of color in the wood, that looks like a hand with an outstretched finger, on the right side, near the bridge of the instrument. Enough for any one--for you, for instance, who know nothing of violins, to identify it by. But I’d know my beauty, as far as I could see her!”

As he filled a cracked glass with grape-juice for the third time and tossed it off, Colin saw that unusual treat had affected his poor old brain.

“_In vino veritas_, Mr. Mackintosh,” he resumed, smiling wistfully. “I’ve told you my story as it hasn’t passed my lips since I got my death wound. You go into society, don’t you? I judge from this,” touching the sleeve of Colin’s evening coat.

“To a very limited degree,” said Mackintosh, feeling much abashed.

“Because, I thought if you do, it might come in your way to help me.” But in the act of making this suggestion the instrument-maker forgot what he had begun to say. He wandered, grew drowsy; and Colin, soon aiding him to bed, left him there sound asleep.

The pathos of this incident dwelt with Mackintosh for days. He longed to tell Kathleen, whose interest, he knew, would be keenly aroused in view of the object of the old artisan’s mania. But in one way or another Colin failed to see any of the Blair family. He continued to meet Thorndyke on the stairs, and to exchange greetings with him. There was, however, no repetition of the first attempt at confidence. Thorndyke, as if aware that he had betrayed too much, looked shy of further converse with his stalwart and friendly young neighbor. Colin had almost begun to think the whole story a dream.

At last, when the need to look upon Kathleen’s bright face became overpowering, Colin turned, late one afternoon, through a softly falling veil of snow in the direction of the Blairs’ house. As he shook off the feathered flakes upon their door mat, he pleased himself by believing he would be asked to walk at once into the cosy intimacy of the family room, where at that hour Kathleen and her mother were wont to meet for tea.

Kathleen would be wearing her gown of brown serge, with the slashes of crimson, that so well became her glowing brunette beauty--looking like the genius of home! Mrs. Blair would put away her galley slips and blue pencil, and come over to the tea-table beside the coal fire. Both of these gentle creatures would turn upon him the gaze of friendliest interest.

Colin’s gateway of hope, in the shape of Mr. Blair’s front door, moved inward. Behind it stood an elderly woman, endeavoring to dry her parboiled hands upon a checked apron before receiving the visitor’s card between thumb and finger.

“Yes, sir, gone out; both Miss Kathleen and the madam,” she said, with bursting pride. “It was in a cab that I fetched meself from the stable. Some kind of a grand music party, where our young lady was goin’ to play, sir; and they’d not be out of it till after six. No. 6--Fifth Avenue, sir, they told the coachman. Perhaps you’d be knowin’ the house, Mr. Mackintosh?”

Colin, blessing his stupidity in forgetting that this was Kathleen’s important twenty-fifth, retraced his steps. Down fell his air-castle of a quiet hour with her. Vanished his fond imagining of some token from her of sweet half-hidden regret that they had been so long apart. With cruel clearness of sight he beheld the true ambition of her life. By the time he should have taken a slow step higher in his profession, Kathleen would have soared into an empyrean, whither he could not follow. Henceforward a fret and fever for public approbation would possess her young being; she would be forever unfitted to plod through life at a poor man’s side--and, spite of his great love, Colin had no mind to be the appendage of a successful public favorite.

Doggedly, obstinately, the young fellow tramped far uptown, welcoming the sting of wind and snow in his face. Near the confines of the Park he found himself, his bare hands in the pockets of his overcoat, his face reddened with cold, his jaw set, his eyes heavy, brought to a halt before the house indicated to him by the Blair’s voluble maid.

There could be no doubt that a festivity was in progress behind the brick and marble front here presented to the avenue. Over a carpet running out to the curbstone, guests were passing to and from their carriages, beneath the shelter of an awning lighted by pendent lanterns. Spite of the snow, the aperture on either side the tunnel of striped canvas was blocked, not only by footmen comfortably humped in mountains of black fur, but by the lookers-on, who seem to be never tired of this common phase of a city’s pleasuring.

Colin, on the outer edge of one flank of the vagrant army, stood for a while, governed by some impulse he could not have explained. Among his comrades were one or two women and children, miserably clad, content to stand gaping at the show. Colin, to all appearance one of their class, excited no surprise, except that a tawdry girl wearing an old feather boa coquettishly around her throat asked him with some vexation not to go crowding other folks out of the places they had got before he came.

A lady effecting her exit from the house, was met by a young man who had just jumped out of a hansom, whom she greeted in accents maternally affectionate.

“So late, Mr. Thorndyke?” she said, in staccato reproach. “It’s almost over now, and Levitsky will play no more. But Anatolia is just about to sing her last. Nothing would tempt me to leave, but that Nita, poor girl, is at home with a bad throat.”

“It’s a success, then?” said (ignoring Nita) the young man, at whom Colin Mackintosh gazed eagerly, seeking to be convinced of his identity with the thief of the Stradivarius.

He was handsome, golden-haired, open-faced, smiling. What a brave nephew for the old neighbor on the attic landing! But Colin did not know his Christian name, and that--

“Ha, Rupert,” said a man, coming out. “Why are you behind time? There’s a new girl playing on the violin that I know will please your fastidious fancy.”

The lady’s trim little brougham now stopping the way, the two young men aided her footman to introduce her goodly bulk within its open door. At this achievement, the group around the awning uttered an “A--a--h!” of satisfaction, and the carriage drove away.

“Any new violinist that is worth the asking you may count upon at my party on Wednesday night,” said Thorndyke, carelessly. “And as I know the young person in question fairly well, I have little doubt of getting her to do what I wish. If you are _épris_, Clarkson, drop in and I’ll give you a chance at her.”

“All right, old chap, good-by.”

As the two men separated, Colin clenched his fists.

* * * * *

None too soon for Kathleen’s eager ambition had arrived the day of her appearance before an audience that would make or mar her hope of establishing herself as a performer, at semi-private concerts.

Punctual to the hour appointed by her patroness, the rusty cab, that in the eyes of the Blairs’ maid servant had conferred style upon their dwelling by pulling up in front of it, had deposited at the Beaumoris portal the young violinist and her mother.

In a wide hall, beneath orange trees ranged against tapestries of great age and fabulous value, they were received by two automata in claret and silver livery, whose mission on gala days it was to forever point out to guests the way toward distant cloak-rooms. The fiddle-case, no less than the hesitating manner of their entry, betraying our ladies to these potentates, they were hurried with scant courtesy upstairs, and bidden to wait in the morning-room until the pleasure of the mistress concerning them should be ascertained.

Kathleen saw the flush on her mother’s cheek at the moment when Molly caught the gleam in her child’s eye.

“Don’t mind, darling.”

“It’s a mistake, of course, dearest,” were spoken simultaneously. Thereupon the two grasped hands for a little reassuring squeeze, and looked around them comforted.

Neither had seen anything comparable to this boudoir, its fantastic furnishings gathered from every quarter of the globe, its floor strewn with skins and rugs soft as velvet, its litter of costly curios, and cushions heaped upon gilded couches. Kathleen, getting up to pace the room with a free, impatient step, paused oftenest before the clusters of long-stemmed roses that hung their royal heads over the rim of tall crystal vases, and the gems of pictures upon the satin background of the walls. Then standing amazed by the writing-table, with its fittings and toys of beaten silver, she whispered, merrily:

“What a contrast to our war-worn old writing things at home. Upon this blotter one could only write invitations to a Vere de Vere.”

She was interrupted by a Frenchwoman, whose entry, with the glib assurance that Madame would see them shortly, conveyed more of comradeship than of respect.

There was a long wait. Kathleen, wearied of her splendid prison, employed her time by falling upon a novel, of whose contents she possessed herself after the rapid fashion of the reader accustomed to absorb new books.

Mrs. Blair took up no volume. In silence she sat thinking of the days when she and Lottie Earl, now the owner of this stately domicile, had been schoolmates and bosom friends. To shut her eyes to the Beaumoris luxury was to conjure up Lottie’s early home in Clinton Place, whither Molly had often repaired by invitation to spend Saturdays. The sad-colored walls hung with dreary landscapes in oil, upon which no eye was ever seen to cast a fleeting glance; the carpet and curtains flowered garishly, the basement dining-room, the little girls exchanging vows of friendship!

A more tender memory was that of the day when Lottie’s mother had died. Was it not Molly for whom they had sent to soothe and console the terrified child? Molly’s faithful breast upon which Lottie that night had sobbed herself to sleep?

The door again opened. This time it was Mrs. Beaumoris in person, attired for the reception of her guests--Mrs. Beaumoris, perplexed, annoyed, an open letter in her hand. It was an easier matter for this lady to recognize fresh, bright-eyed Molly Christian, who, under the impulse of fond retrospect, now sprang up to greet her, than for Molly to identify her old playmate in this faded woman, with the pale hair elaborately crimped, the cold, restless blue eyes--the prim, unsmiling mouth!

Mrs. Blair’s affectionate words died upon her lips. She faltered, blushed, and drew back with a pang at the plain indication that her surprise was as unwelcome as it was ill-timed.

“You--you--are Miss Blair’s mother?” said Mrs. Beaumoris, in tones she could not make other than thin and chill. “Why was I not told of this before?”

“Because--because,” began Molly, and emotion overpowered her, cutting short her speech.

“My mother thought it could naturally make no difference whose child you had hired to play before your guests,” said Kathleen, sweeping grandly into the breach. “But we are quite ready to go away now, if the arrangement does not please you.”

“Of course not,” exclaimed their hostess, recovering herself. “You will excuse me if I am a little upset, when I tell you that not fifteen minutes ago I received this letter from Madame Claudia’s manager, saying the tiresome creature has a cold and can’t sing this afternoon. All I could do was to send off my maid in a cab, offering Claudia’s terms to Anatolia, who’ll come, I’m pretty sure, if for nothing but a chance to supplant Claudia. Anatolia can’t stand being last year’s favorite, and really she sang adorably in Faust last week, when Claudia was ill, don’t you think so--or did you not chance to hear her? If she comes, she’ll be here for the end of the first half of the programme. Your daughter will play just before her--and will no doubt have encores. Levitsky says everything that is nice of you, Miss--er--you have no professional name, I believe?”

“My name is Kathleen Blair,” said the girl, carrying her head high. Into her heart, for the first time in her life, entered the wandering demon of revenge. She longed to be in a position to return impertinence!

Kathleen’s second number upon the programme of Mrs. Beaumoris’s concert left no doubt of her success. Levitsky himself had conducted her before the audience. Madame Anatolia had coquettishly (in view of the audience) presented the girl with her corsage bouquet of violets. As Kathleen retired again into the little room serving as a harbor for the performers, the musical Miss Beaumoris (who kept outsiders from intruding there), looking very sour, asked Miss Blair to allow Mr. Rupert Thorndyke to compliment her upon her achievement.

Kathleen possessed just enough of the spice of Mother Eve to see that this courtesy on the part of Miss Beaumoris had been wrung from her by the newcomer. Madame Anatolia, whom Mr. Thorndyke saluted with an air of cordial intimacy, leaned over and whispered in the young girl’s ear:

“Take care how you enjoy the dangerous delight of his company in _this_ house. They consider him their own particular property.”

Molly Blair, standing guard over her beautiful and successful child, could not understand the reckless toss of Kathleen’s head, the defiance of her curled lip.

“That lends zest!” Kathleen answered to Anatolia, who smiled. The prima donna, knowing the world as she did, had no objection to enjoy a small comedy behind the scenes. Nor was she disappointed. Rupert Thorndyke, with an air of entire unconsciousness, refrained from again turning toward the musical Miss Beaumoris. With his handsome head bent over the newly risen star, he exerted all his powers of fascination. He was no longer the cool, indifferent person who had dropped in at the Blair’s little supper. Kathleen, excited, inclined to accept him at his face value as a favored frequenter of the Beaumoris’s house, and finding herself not a little under the spell of his charm of manner and sympathy of taste, enjoyed retaining him. Until the time Mrs. and Miss Blair left the Beaumoris’s house he was in close attendance at their side. And when they parted he had obtained Mrs. Blair’s rather dazzled permission to call upon them the next day.

Thorndyke, meaning to put these ladies in their carriage, was recalled on the portal by the imperious Miss Beaumoris, who had, she said, to consult him about a protégé of hers she desired to launch at his musicale on Wednesday.

“Until to-morrow, then,” said Rupert Thorndyke, regretfully turning back.

“Mother, he is absolutely beautiful!” said Kathleen, with a girl’s ecstasy, as they went down to stand on the sodden carpet waiting for their cab to come up. “I think he must be some prince in disguise, or something! Such a noble air, such aristocratic features! And better than all, mummy dearest, he has confided to me that he gives music parties at his rooms, and we’re asked to the next one, on Wednesday.”

“I suppose it is all right,” said Molly. “Or, of course, the Beaumorises would not be having him.”

“They can’t always get him, as you saw,” said Kathleen, laughing. “I hope it was not wicked to be as glad as I was when I saw their two cross faces while he talked so long to me. But never mind the man, mother. There is a joy still greater in store for me. He says if I’ll play for him on Wednesday, I may handle his Stradivarius!”

The cab that had brought Miss Blair to the scene of her triumphs was not forthcoming. The hoarse calls for it up and down the line were unavailing.

“It’s but a step to the street-car, mother, if we run for it,” cried Kathleen, gayly, peering into the half-darkness at the open side of the awning.

“I will take you home, if you don’t mind,” said a voice out of the crowd, and Colin edged his way toward them!

Colin was cold and out of humor. But he had lingered on, and this was his reward.

“How delightful to see you!” exclaimed his lady-love, heartily, and was indorsed by her mamma. “So strange you should be passing just at this minute! It will be ever so much nicer having you, of course. Now let us run, and jam ourselves into the next car.”

Mrs. Blair being seated with the violin-case on her lap, the two young people stood side by side in the crowded aisle of a Madison Avenue car going downtown. Colin heard from his eager comrade the full account of her exhilarating afternoon. It made him sad, even while his generous heart rejoiced in her rejoicing, to see that she was already embarked with sails filled and pennons flying upon the broad sea that would separate them. And he wondered she said nothing about the person whose name excited his keenest curiosity.

Perhaps Kathleen felt guilty of having hailed rather too gladly Mr. Rupert Thorndyke’s distinguished homage. But even Madame Anatolia had told her that his verdict was of importance in the musical world.

“We all bow to him,” had said the good-natured donna; “and he is badly spoiled, of course. Don’t let your feelings get involved, like that poor, ugly Miss Beaumoris. Thorndyke is a mystery--and, I’m afraid, _volage_!”

Kathleen had laughed! She had no fear for herself.

* * * * *

“And you are to keep on with this kind of thing?” now said Colin, discontentedly.

“Of course!” exclaimed she. “Two ladies have already booked my humble services; although one of them _did_ say, in excuse for herself, that anything Mrs. Beaumoris started is sure to run on for a while.”

“I shall never hear you perform,” he went on. “So I’ll try to forget it. If I had my way, I’d carry you off to a cloud-castle and keep you shut in from all these insolent people.”

“But you can’t, Master Colin, so be satisfied,” said she, coloring a little at the fervor he could not exclude from his tones. “And as to hearing me, you shall have an opportunity without delay. Let us see if you are so eager to accept it.”

“I will go wherever you bid me,” he replied, more and more under the charm of her close vicinity.

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

“How one’s eloquence is jolted out of one by this!” she said, as they swung around the curve into the tunnel. “Well, here is your chance. Next week we are invited to a very exclusive musicale. Levitsky’s to be there, and Anatolia--and I’m to play (think of it, Colin!) on a Stradivarius! Wait, don’t interrupt me. We were asked to bring my father, or brother, as our escort, and neither papa, nor Morry can get off, I know. Papa has a club meeting, and Morry’s slaving, day and night, to finish ----’s illustrations. So, if you’ll take us to the party, we’ll be only too much obliged.”

“I will, of course. But tell me--it is a matter of the deepest interest--who is to furnish your Stradivarius?”

“It belongs to the gentleman who is to give the party, and Madame Anatolia says his rooms and collection of musical instruments are ‘things to be seen.’ He is one of the favorites of fortune, and is coming to call on us in form to-morrow--and his name is--Rupert Thorndyke!”

“I thought so,” said Colin, turning pale with excitement, and perhaps a little jealousy.

“What, you, too, know about the wonderful Mr. Thorndyke? Oh! but, of course, I remember, you met him at supper at our house when he brought me those white orchids, and you gave mamma some lilies. Don’t you think his face is like one of the angels in the photograph over papa’s chair in the library? Now, don’t laugh--it is, exactly. Mr. Thorndyke isn’t in the least my idea of a man of fashion. He is almost artless--and his eyes are _so_ blue. Colin, what in the world is the matter with you?”

“I do know something of your Mr. Rupert Thorndyke,” said the young man, his face darkening. “But I shan’t tell you yet. It is borne in upon me that a better occasion will come. And if you really accept my escort, I shall accompany you with pleasure to this gentleman’s party. A poor outsider, more or less, cannot spoil his harmonious entertainment.”

* * * * *

Kathleen, wondering at all this, reached home, the ladies bidding Colin good-by upon their doorstep. That evening, when Malvolio dropped in to see Terence Blair, the news of Kathleen’s advance up the ladder of fame was communicated to him.

“Sure and Kathleen’s the boldest little girl,” commented Granny. “It’s my belief she’d have no fear to be called on to play before the President himself.”

“I know little about Rupert Thorndyke,” said Terence; “but there’s no doubt he will have only the best talent in his sling. But you, Malvolio, who know everything--”

“Excepting the reason for Catullus Clarke,” interpolated the art critic.

“--should be able to define for us the place of our new patron in the arts.”

Malvolio shrugged, tossing his snaky locks to one side of his high, white forehead.

“Rupert Thorndyke’s secret will never be fathomed until they dissect him,” he said; “and then in the core of his heart will be found the one word ‘Self.’ He is a monumental egoist, in the guise of a seraph. He is brilliant and treacherous, unstable as water, holding no convictions long enough to make anything he says or does of lasting value. I am certain that he is half-educated, half-baked in all respects. I believe most of his ‘experiences’ of life to be clever adaptations from things other people have done, or told, or printed. But he is vastly good company, and I’d be deuced glad if he were coming to dine with me to-morrow. As to his status, he is apparently well off--has one foot in Bohemia, the other in society--and comes from nobody knows where. Lastly, we are informed that he might marry the oldest Miss Beaumoris, and does not aspire to do so!”

The blushes dyed Kathleen’s cheeks at the confirmation of Colin’s warning.

“Then you think, Mr. Malvolio, our girl had better not be seen at his party?” said Mrs. Blair, anxiously.

“My _dear_ madame! On the contrary. I should like amazingly to be seen there myself. It is sure to be a rare treat to eye and ear. The women will be of the highest world only. The men judiciously combined. But I have always had an idea that Thorndyke will some day come a cropper. I feel like that fellow that followed the menagerie around in order to be there the day the lion-tamer should get eaten by the lions. The day the accident occurred was the one he was kept away. I have a conviction I shan’t see Thorndyke’s discomfiture--but I could wish that, to round out my theory of him, the fates might accord to me this privilege.”

Kathleen, who would not have admitted to her mother even, the thrill of excitement she had been in since receiving the first fruits of Thorndyke’s homage, went to bed that night, feeling chastened in her pride. With her last waking thoughts of the irresistible Thorndyke, blended the image of loyal Colin, whom, after consultation with their maid-servant, she now knew to have been waiting outside Mrs. Beaumoris’s awning for her in the falling snow.