Katrine Part 16

DERMOTT DISCOVERS A NEW SIDE TO FRANK'S CHARACTER

The next morning news came to McDermott that his land on the Silver Fork was no longer desired by the newly formed company. It was nearly a fortnight, however, before he learned the railroad was to be built on the Ravenel side of the river.

The information came with abruptness from John Marix, a gaminlike broker, who encountered McDermott in the elevator to their mutual offices.

"Say, McDermott," he cried, with a cheerful laugh, "Ravenel didn't do a thing to you, did he? _He didn't do a thing to you!_" he repeated, with a lively chuckle.

McDermott's eyes were bland on the instant. He did not understand the little man's meaning. What he did understand, always understood, however, was that he must never be taken off guard in the game of life.

"I am the football of the Street," he said, with a kind of cheerful despondency. "Everybody does me!"

"Yes they do!" the other responded, derisively. "It's because you've done everybody that we're glad somebody's got even for a minute!

But"--dropping the bantering tone--"this Ravenel is something of a wonder. I was at the meeting of the new company to-day. He's full of the scheme, knows every foot of the land, and is willing to put a whole bunch of money into it. We've elected him president of the concern."

By the same afternoon the facts of the case were in McDermott's possession, and the following morning, upon seeing Frank about to enter the De Peyster offices, he advanced toward him, hand outstretched. He was entirely unprepared for the manner in which he was received. Frank nodded to him slightingly, with the scant courtesy he might have accorded a domestic whom he disliked, and said, with directness, looking him squarely in the eyes, "I don't care to shake hands with you, McDermott."

Dermott regarded him steadily in return, the gray gleam in his eyes a bit brighter, the lines of his mouth harder. Whatever the grave faults of these two men may have been, there was not a whit of cowardice between them as they stood facing each other.

"So!" said Dermott. "So!" And yet a third time he repeated "so!"--his tone one of grave consideration. "Had another done what ye have just done, Mr. Ravenel," he said, at length, "this little episode might not have ended so gayly. But for you I have so slight a respect that there's nothing you could do to me that would make me call ye to account for it." And, raising his hat high and jauntily, he said, with a laugh: "Good-morning, Ravenel!"

Frank turned white at the words, but the Irishman had disappeared in an elevator, and any immediate action seemed impossible and theatric. In the short time he had spent in New York he had learned many things, and the narrow, tiled halls of an office building twenty-three stories high, in Wall Street, did not seem the fitting background for a personal encounter to which the hills of North Carolina might have lent themselves with picturesqueness.

He sat thinking the matter over in the club that night with two things fixed in his mind. First, that he would go to see Katrine in Paris immediately; of the outcome of such a meeting he took no thought whatever. Second, that he would put this railroad scheme through; already the feeling of power, of the consciousness of unsystematized ability, was stirring within him.

The affair with McDermott rankled, however, and it was with drawn brows and tightened lips that he answered a telephone call--a call which changed both of the plans which he had so carefully arranged.

His mother's doctor at Bar Harbor had rung him up to say Mrs. Ravenel was seriously ill and wanted him to come to her at once. He started at midnight, to find his mother in a high fever, unconscious of his arrival, and facing an operation, as the only chance to save her life.

He had been to her always, as she herself put it, "a perfect son," and for the next three months, which made the time well into December, he proved the words true, living by her bedside, and allowing himself scant sleep from the watching and service. It was when she was far toward the recovery of her health and her old-time beauty that he spoke to her of his newly formed intentions with characteristic unwordiness.

"I am going into business, mother," he said, "with Philip de Peyster."

She was knitting at the time, counting st.i.tches on large needles, and she went placidly on with the counting until the set was finished, when she looked up pleasantly. "You think it will amuse you?" she asked, with the kind interest which she might have shown concerning a polo game in which he was to play.

"I am beginning to think a man should have some fixed duties in life,"

Frank explained.

"Yes, certainly," Mrs. Ravenel answered. "The Bible says something like that, I believe. What are you thinking of doing?"

"Buying and selling things, like railroads and mines," he answered, smiling at her indifference.

"I'm glad it's Phil de Peyster you are going to buy and sell things with," Mrs. Ravenel said. "His mother was maid of honor at my wedding, and a charming girl, Patty Beauregarde, of Charleston. And I am delighted at anything you do to make you happy, Frank. I have thought you have not been very gay of late. There is, perhaps, a trouble--"

"What an idea!" he answered.

"Will you have offices and things?" Mrs. Ravenel inquired, vaguely. "I have always had ideas for office furnishings, you know."

"If you could see Phil's office, mother, I think you would weep. It's very dirty, and he likes it. It's the dust of his great-grandfathers."

"Well, dearest," Mrs. Ravenel said, "if it amuses you, I'm glad you thought of doing it," and she folded up her work and put it into her bag. "Life's a rather dreary affair at best," she concluded, "and anything that interests one is a positive boon."

XV

JOSEF

There is in the Faubourg St. Honore, not far from the Hotel of the Silver Scissors, an old house set far back in a court-yard of its own. A gray stone wall, the height of the first two stories, protects both garden and house from the eyes of the pa.s.ser-by; and, save for the sound of singing, the place seems uninhabited most of the time.

On a misty morning in late November Katrine clapped the knocker of this old house with fear in her heart, for her future hung on the word of the great teacher who lived here, Josef, whose genius, generosity, and brutal frankness were the talk of the musical world. A Brittany peasant woman opened the door with no salutation whatever, for the huge Brigitte, in her white _coiffe_ and blue flannel frock, spoke in awed whispers only, when the master was at home.

"Mademoiselle Dulany?" she asked.

Katrine nodded an affirmative.

"The master is expecting you," Brigitte said, leading the way up a wide oak staircase to the second floor, which had been made into one great room. It was a bare place, with no draperies and little furniture. Two grand pianos stood at one end near a small platform, like a model-stand.

There were photographs of some great singers on the walls, and a few chairs huddled together.

In the corner at a desk a woman was writing from the dictation of a man who stood gazing out of the window. He turned at Katrine's entrance. She has seen his picture frequently, and knew on the instant that it was Josef, the greatest teacher in Europe--in the world.

"You may go, Zelie," he said to the woman. "I shall not need you till to-morrow." And the dismissal over, he came forward toward Katrine as she stood by the entrance, uncertain what to do.

He was a man about fifty years of age, below the medium height, heavily built, and dressed in black, with a waistcoat b.u.t.toned to the collar like a priest's. His hair was iron-gray, his eyes brown, and the pupils of them widened and contracted when he spoke. He had a clean-shaven face of ivory paleness, a sensuous mouth and chin, and when he looked at Katrine she understood his power, for it seemed to her as though he could see backward to her past and forward to all of her future.

Being alone with her, he motioned her to a seat by the window, near which he remained standing.

"I have been hearing that you have a voice. I have heard great things concerning it. I hope they are true." His tone implied that he had small belief that they were. "You have a serious drawback. You are too rich."

She started at this. "The management of your income, however, is given to me, as I suppose you know. Will you be so good as to remove your jacket and hat, and walk up and down the room several times?"

Katrine obeyed.

"Good!" he said, at the first turn; and at the last, "_Very_ good!

Sing," he said, as abruptly as he had issued his former order.

In the after years she was given to making light of her choice, but the command was scarcely spoken before she began, in her lovely, sonorous voice, the song which it was her heritage to sing well:

"'Tis the most distressful country that ever I have seen, They're hanging men and women there for wearing of the green."

As she sang the three great stanzas, Josef stood motionless, his lips drawn, his eyes half shut, his face like a wooden man's; but his hands trembled, and as she ended her singing he opened the piano and seated himself in front of it. "Take the notes I strike," he said, "little--very little--so--so--so!" he sang.

Up and down, over and over, listening with his head turned to one side like a dog, he had her sing the tones, saying only, "Once more!" and "yet again!" and "over--over--over!" At last, with a sigh, he closed the instrument. "I am not one given to extravagance in language," he said, "but you have the greatest _natural_ voice I have ever heard. It is almost placed. Sit down a minute, I want to talk to you. Two kinds of pupils I have had in my life: those with voice and no temperament, and those with temperament and no voice. G.o.d seldom gives both; if He does, it is the great artist that may be made. To be great one must have both.

But even with both given, one must have the ability to work, to work like a galley-slave, to work when all the world is resting, at the dead of night, in the small hours of the morning. When all the others have let go, you must hold on, till your head is tired and your body aches and you faint by the wayside; but you must never let go, you must learn to endure to the end. You will understand me. It is the _mental_ part of which I speak. I do not mean that you are to wear your voice or your body out practising. It's something far harder. You must learn to surrender yourself, to lose your life to have it!" He looked at her keenly. She was drinking his words in, as it were, and the expression on her face a.s.sured even him. "Do you want me," he said, suddenly coming nearer, "to tell you about yourself; what I see in you?"

She bent her head, quivering from head to foot, before the power of this man, who seemed uncanny in his knowledge.

"You have had some great sorrow. It is an unhappy love-affair. I understand." Here he smiled his critical, unfathomable, remote smile.