Caleb West, Master Diver Part 15

"The poor child was impatient. When she had tried it for fifteen she would have become accustomed to it. It is the same old story, I suppose. We hear it every day. He ugly and old and selfish, never thinking of what she would like and what she longed for, keeping her shut up to sing for him when she wanted now and then to sing for herself; and then she found the door of the cage open, and out she flew. Poor little soul! I pity her. She had better have borne it; it is a poor place outside for a tired foot; and she's nothing but a child." Then musing, patting her slipper impatiently, "What sort of a man has she gone with? I couldn't see him that morning, she hung over him so close, and his head was so bandaged."

"I don't know much about him. I haven't known him long," Sanford answered carelessly.

"Good-looking, isn't he, and alive, and with something human and manlike about him?" she asked, leaning forward eagerly, her hands in her lap.

"Yes, I suppose so. He could climb like a cat, anyway," said Sanford.

"Yes, I know, Henry. I see it all. I knew it was the same old story.

She wanted something fresh and young,-some one just to play with, child as she is, some one nearer her own age to love. She was lonely.

Nothing for her to do but sit down and wait for him to come home. Poor child," with a sigh, "her misery only begins now. What else have you to tell me?"

"Nothing, except that all of the derricks tumbled. I wired you about it. They are all up now, thank goodness." He knew her interest was only perfunctory. Her mind, evidently, was still on Betty, but he went on with his story: "Everybody got soaking wet. Captain Joe was in the water for hours. But we stuck to it. Narrowest escape the men have had this summer, Kate, since the Screamer's. It's a great mercy n.o.body was hurt. I expected every minute some one would get crushed. No one but Captain Joe could have got them up that afternoon. It blew a gale for three days. When did you get here? I thought you had gone back to Medford until Sam brought me your note."

"No, I am still here, and shall be here for a week. Now, don't tell me you're going back to-night?"

"No, I'm not, but I can't say how soon; not before the masonry begins, anyhow. Jack Hardy is coming to-morrow night to my rooms. I have asked a few fellows to meet him,-Smearly and Curran, and old Bock with his 'cello, and some others. Since Jack's engagement he's the happiest fellow alive."

"They all are at first, Henry," said Mrs. Leroy, laughing, her head thrown back. The memory of Jack and Helen was still so fresh and happy a one that it instantly changed her mood.

Betty and Caleb for the moment were forgotten, while they talked of Helen's future, of the change in Jack's life, of his new housekeeping, and of the thousand and one things that interested them both,-the kind of talk that two such friends indulge in who have been parted for a week or more, and who, in the first ten minutes, run lightly over their individual experiences, so that both may start fresh again with nothing hidden in either life. When he rose to go, she kept him standing while she pinned in his b.u.t.tonhole a sprig of mignonette picked from her window-box, and said, with the deepest interest, "I can't get that poor child out of my mind. Don't be too hard on her, Henry; she's the one who will suffer most."

When Sanford reached his rooms again he sank into a chair which Sam had drawn close to the window, and sighed with content. "Oh, these days off!" he exclaimed.

The appointments of his own apartments seemed never so satisfying and so welcome as when he had spent a week with his men, taking his share of the exposure with all the discomforts that it brought. His early life had fitted him for these changes, and a certain cosmopolitan spirit in the man, a sort of underlying stratum of Bohemianism, had made it easy for him to adapt himself to his surroundings, whatever they might be. Not that his restless spirit could long have endured any life, either rough or luxurious, that repeated itself day after day. He could idle with the idlest, but he must also work when the necessity came, and that with all his might.

Sam always made some special preparation for his home-coming. To-day the awnings were hung over window and balcony, and the most delightful of luncheons had been arranged,-cuc.u.mbers smothered in ice, soft-sh.e.l.l crabs, and a roll of cream cheese with a dash of Kirsch and sugar. "I know he don't git nuffin fit for a dog to eat when he's away. 'Fo' G.o.d I don't know how he stands it," Sam was accustomed to observe to those of his friends who sometimes watched his preparations.

"Major's done been hyar 'mos' ebery day you been gone, sah," he said, drawing out Sanford's chair, when luncheon was served. "How is it, sah,-am I to mix a c.o.c.ktail _ebery_ time he comes? An' dat box ob yo' big cigars am putty nigh gone; ain't no more 'n fo'r 'r five of 'em lef." The major, Sam forgot to mention, was only partly to blame for these two shrinkages in Sanford's stores.

"What does he come so often for, Sam?" asked Sanford, laughing.

"Dat's mor' 'an I know, sah, 'cept he so anxious to git you back, he says. He come twice a day to see if you're yere. Co'se dere ain't nuffin cooked, an' so he don't git nuffin to eat, but golly! he's powerful on jewlips. I done tole him yesterday you wouldn't be back till to-morrow night. Dat whiskey's all gin out; he saw der empty bottle hisse'f; he ain't been yere agin to-day," with a chuckle.

"Always give the major whatever he wants," said Sanford. "And Sam," he called as that darky was disappearing in the pantry, "a few gentlemen will be here to supper to-morrow night. Remind me to make a list in the morning of what you will want."

The list was made out, and a very toothsome and cooling list it was,-a frozen melon tapped and filled with a pint of Pommery sec, by way of beginning. All the trays and small tables with their pipes and smokables were brought out, a music-stand was opened and set up near a convenient shaded candle, and the lid of the piano was lifted and propped up rabbit-trap fashion.

Just as the moon was rising, silvering the tops of the trees in the square below, Smearly in white flannels and flaming tie arrived fresh from his studio, where he had been at work on a ceiling for some millionaire's salon. Jack followed in correct evening dress, and Curran from his office, in a business suit. The major was arrayed in a nondescript combination of yellow nankeen and black bombazine, that would have made him an admirable model for a poster in two tints. He was still full of his experiences at the warehouse hospital after the accident to the Screamer. His little trip to Keyport as acting escort to Mrs. Leroy had not only opened his eyes to a cla.s.s of workingmen of whose existence he had never dreamed, but it had also furnished him with a new and inexhaustible topic of conversation. Every visitor at his downtown office had listened to his recital by the hour. To-night, however, the major had a new audience, and a new audience always added fuel to the fire of his eloquence.

When the subject of the work at the Ledge came up, and the sympathy of everybody was expressed to Sanford over the calamity to the Screamer,-they had not seen him since the explosion,-the major broke out:-

"You ought to have gone with us, my dear Smearly." (To have been the only eye-witness at the front, except Sanford himself, gave the major great scope.) "Giants, suh,-every man of 'em; a race, suh, that would do credit to the Vikings; bifurcated walruses, suh; amphibious t.i.tans, that can work as well in water as out of it. No wonder our dear Henry"

(this term of affection was not unusual with the major) "accomplishes such wonders. I can readily understand why you never see such fellows anywhere else; they dive under water when the season closes," he continued, laughing, and, leaning over Curran's shoulder, helped himself to one of the cigars Sam was just bringing in.

"And the major outdid himself, that day, in nursing them," interrupted Sanford. "You would have been surprised, Jack, to see him take hold.

When I turned in for the night on a cot, he was giving one of the derrickmen a sponge bath."

"Learned it in the army," said Curran, with a sly look at Smearly.

Both of them knew the origin of the major's military t.i.tle.

The major's chin was upturned in the air; his head was wreathed in smoke, the match, still aflame, held aloft with outstretched hand. He always lighted his cigars in this lordly way.

"Many years ago, gentlemen," the major replied, distending his chest, throwing away the match, and accepting the compliment in perfect good faith; "but these are things one never forgets." The major had never seen the inside of a camp hospital in his life.

The guests now distributed themselves, each after the manner of his likes: Curran full length on a divan, the afternoon paper in his hand; Jack on the floor, his back to the wall, a cushion behind his head; Smearly in an armchair; and the major bolt upright on a camp-stool near a table which held a select collection of drinkables, presided over by a bottle of seltzer in a silver holder. Sam moved about like a restless shadow, obedient to the slightest lifting of Sanford's eyebrow, when a gla.s.s needed filling or a pipe replenishing.

At ten o'clock, lugging in his great 'cello, Bock came,-short, round, and oily, with a red face that beamed with good humor, and fat puffy hands that wrinkled in pleats when he held his bow. Across a perpetually moist forehead was pasted a lock of black hair. He wore a threadbare coat spattered with spots, baggy black trousers, and a four-b.u.t.ton brown holland waistcoat, never clean,-sometimes connected with a collar so much ashamed of the condition of its companion shirt-front that it barely showed its face over a black stock that was held together by a spring. A man who was kindly and loyal; who loved all his kind, spoke six languages, wrote for the Encyclopaedia, and made a 'cello sing like an angel.

Despite his frouziness, everybody who knew Bock liked him; those who heard him play loved him. There was a pathos, a tender, sympathetic quality in his touch, that one never forgot: it always seemed as if, somehow, ready tears lingered under his bow. "With a tone like Bock's"

was the highest compliment one could pay a musician. To Sanford this man's heart was dearer than his genius.

"Why, Bock, old man," he called, "we didn't expect you till eleven."

"Yes, I know, Henri, but ze first wiolin, he take my place. Zey will not know ze difference." One fat hand was held up deprecatingly, the fingers outspread. "Everybody fan and drink ze beer. Ah, Meester Hardy, I have hear ze news; so you will leave ze brotherhood. And I hear," lowering his voice and laying his other fat hand affectionately on Jack's, "zat she ees most lofely. Ah, it ees ze best zing," his voice rising again. "When ve get old and ugly like old Bock, and so heels over head wiz all sorts of big zings to build like Mr. Sanford, or like poor Smearly paint, paint, all ze time paint, it ees too late to zink of ze settle down. Ees it not so, you man Curran over zere, wiz your newspaper over your head?" This time his voice was flung straight at the rec.u.mbent editor as a climax to his breezy salutation.

"Yes, you're right, Bock; you're ugly enough to crowd a dime museum, but I'll forgive you everything if you'll put some life into your strings. I heard your orchestra the other night, and the first and second violins ruined the overture. What the devil do you keep a lot of"-

"What ees ze matter wiz ze overture, Meester Ole Bull?" said Bock, pitching his voice in a high key, squeezing down on the divan and pinching Curran's arm with his fat fingers.

"Everything was the matter. The bra.s.s drowned the strings, and Reynier might have had hair-oil on his bow for all the sound you heard. Then the tempo was a beat too slow."

"Henri Sanford, do you hear zis crazy man zat does not know one zing, and lie flat on his back and talk such nonsense? Ze wiolin, Meester Musical Editor Curran, must be pianissimo,-only ze leetle, ze ve'y leetle, you hear. Ze aria is carried by ze reeds."

"Carried by your grandmother!" said Curran, springing from the divan.

"Here, Sam, put a light on the piano. Now listen, you pagan. Beethoven would get out of his grave if he could hear you murder his music. The three bars are so,"-touching the keys, "not so!" And thus the argument went on.

Out on the balcony, Smearly and Quigley, the marine painter, who had just come in, were talking about the row at the Academy over the rejection of Morley's picture, while the major was in full swing with Hardy, Sanford, and some of the later arrivals, including old Professor Max Shutters, the biologist, who had been so impressively introduced by Curran to the distinguished Pocomokian that the professor had at once mistaken the major for a brother scientist.

"And you say, Professor Slocomb," said the savant, his hand forming a sounding-board behind his ear, "that the terrapin, now practically extinct, was really plentiful in your day?"

"My learned suh, I have gone down to the edge of my lawn, overlooking the salt-marsh, and seen 'em crawling around like potato bugs. The n.i.g.g.ahs couldn't walk the sh.o.r.e at night without trampling on 'em.

This craze of yo'r millionaire epicures for one of the commonest sh.e.l.l-fish we have is"-

"Amphibia," suggested the professor, as if he had recognized a mere slip of the tongue. "I presume you are referring to the _Malaclemmys pal.u.s.tris_,-the diamond-back species."

"You are right, suh," said the major. "I had forgotten the cla.s.sification for the moment," with an air of being perfectly at home on the subject. "The craze for the pal.u.s.tris, my dear suh, is one of the unaccountable signs of the times; it is the beginning of the fall of our inst.i.tutions, suh. We cannot forget the dishes of peac.o.c.k tongues in the old Roman days,-a thousand peac.o.c.ks at a cou'se, suh."

The major would have continued down through Gibbon and Macaulay if Curran had not shouted out, "Keep still, every soul of you! Bock is going to give us the Serenade."

The men crowded about the piano. Smearly stood ready to turn the leaves of the music for Curran, and Jack drew a chair closer to the 'cellist.

Bock uncovered the 'cello and held it between his knees, his fat hand resting lightly on the strings. As Curran, with his foot on the pedal of the piano, pa.s.sed his hand rapidly over the keys, Bock's head sank to the level of his shoulders, his straggling hair fell over his coat collar, his raised fingers balanced for a moment the short bow, and then Schubert's masterpiece poured out the very fullness of its heart.

A profound hush, broken only by the music, fell on the room. The old professor leaned forward, both hands cupped behind his ears. Sanford and Jack smoked on, their eyes half closed, and even the major withheld his hand from the well-appointed tray and looked into his empty gla.s.s.

At a time when the spell was deepest and the listeners held their breath, the perfect harmony was broken by a discordant ring at the outer door. Curran turned his head angrily, and Sanford looked at Sam, who glided to the door with a catlike tread, opening it without a sound, and closing it gently behind him. The symphony continued, the music rising in interest, and the listeners forgot the threatened interruption.

Then the door opened again, and Sam, making a wide detour, bent over Sanford and whispered in his ear. A woman wanted to see him in the hall. Sanford started, as if annoyed, arose from his seat, and again the k.n.o.b was noiselessly turned and the door as noiselessly closed, shutting Sanford into the corridor.