Peter Part 18

Peter looked up smiling: "Not now, Holker. I will later."

Morris kept on talking. Lagarge, his companion--a thin, cadaverous-looking man with a big head and the general air of having been carved out of an old root--a great expert in ceramics--listening intently, bobbing his head in toy-mandarin fashion whenever one of Holker's iconoclasms cleared the air.

"Suppose they did pay thirty thousand dollars for it," Holker insisted, slapping his knee with his outspread palm. "That makes the picture no better and no worse. If it was mine, and I could afford it, I would sell it to anybody who loved it for thirty cents rather than sell it to a man who didn't, for thirty millions. When Troyon painted it he put his soul into it, and you can no more tack a price to that than you can stick an auction card on a summer cloud, or appraise the perfume from a rose garden. It has no money value, Legarge, and never will have. You might as well list sunsets on the Stock Exchange."

"But Troyon had to live, Holker," chimed in Harrington, who, with the freedom accorded every member of the club--one of its greatest charms--had just joined the group and sat listening.

"Yes," rejoined Morris, a quizzjeal expression crossing his face--"that was the curse of it. He was born a man and had a stomach instead of being born a G.o.d without one. As to living--he didn't really live--no great painter really lives until he is dead. And that's the way it should be--they would never have become immortal with a box full of bonds among their a.s.sets. They would have stopped work. Now they can rest in their graves with the consciousness that they have done their level best."

"There is one thing would lift him out of it, or ought to," remarked Harrington, with a glance around the circle. "I am, of course, speaking of Troyon."

"What?" asked Morris.

"The news that Roberts paid thirty thousand dollars for a picture for which the painter was glad to get three thousand francs," a reply which brought a roar from the group, Morris joining in heartily.

The circle had now widened to the filling of a dozen chairs, Morris's way of putting things being one of the features of club nights, he, as usual, dominating the talk, calling out "Period"--his way of notifying some speaker to come to a full stop, whenever he broke away from the facts and began soaring into hyperbolics--Morgan, Harrington and the others laughing in unison at his sallies.

The clouds of tobacco smoke grew thicker. The hum of conversation louder; especially at an adjoining table where one lean old Academician in a velvet skull cap was discussing the new impressionistic craze which had just begun to show itself in the work of the younger men. This had gone on for some minutes when the old man turned upon them savagely and began ridiculing the new departure as a cloak to hide poor drawing, an outspoken young painter a.s.serting in their defence, that any technique was helpful if it would kill off the snuff-box school in which the man under the skull cap held first place.

Morris had lent an ear to the discussion and again took up the cudgels.

"You young fellows are right," he cried, twisting his body toward their table. The realists have had their day; they work a picture to death; all of them. If you did but know it, it really takes two men to paint a great picture--one to do the work and the other to kill him when he has done enough."

"Pity some of your murderers, Holker, didn't start before they stretched their canvases," laughed Harrington.

And so the hours sped on.

All this time Peter had been listening with one ear wide open--the one nearest the door--for any sound in that direction. French masterpieces Impressionism and the rest of it did not interest him to-night.

Something else was stirring him--something he had been hugging to his heart all day.

Only the big and little coals in his own fireplace in Fifteenth Street, and perhaps the great back-log, beside himself, knew the cause. He had not taken Miss Felicia into his confidence--that would never have done--might, indeed, have spoilt everything. Even when he had risen from Morris's coterie to greet Henry MacFarlane--Ruth's father--his intimate friend for years, and who answered his hand-shake with--"Well, you old rascal--what makes you look so happy?--anybody left you a million?"--even then he gave no inkling of the amount of bottled sunshine he was at the precise moment carrying inside his well-groomed body, except to remark with all his twinkles and wrinkles scampering loose:

"Seeing you, Henry--" an answer which, while it only excited derision and a sly thrust of his thumb into Peter's ribs, was nevertheless literally true if the distinguished engineer did but know it.

It was only when the hours dragged on and his oft-consulted watch marked ten o'clock that the merry wrinkles began to straighten and the eyes to wander.

When an additional ten minutes had ticked themselves out, and then a five and then a ten more, the old fellow became so nervous that he began to make a tour of the club-house, even ascending the stairs, searching the library and dining-room, scanning each group and solitary individual he pa.s.sed, until, thoroughly discouraged, he regained his seat only to press a bell lying among some half-empty gla.s.ses. The summoned waiter listened attentively, his head bent low to catch the whispered order, and then disappeared noiselessly in the direction of the front door, Peter's fingers meanwhile beating an impatient staccato on the arm of his chair.

Nothing resulting from this experiment he at last gave up all hope and again sought MacFarlane who was trying to pound into the head of a brother engineer some new theory of spontaneous explosions.

Hardly had he drawn up a chair to listen--he was a better listener to-night, somehow, than a talker, when a hand was laid on his shoulder, and looking up, he saw Jack bending over him.

With a little cry of joy Peter sprang to his feet, both palms outstretched: "Oh!--you're here at last! Didn't I say nine o'clock, my dear boy, or am I wrong? Well, so you are here it's all right." Then with face aglow he turned to MacFarlane: "Henry, here's a young fellow you ought to know; his name's John Breen, and he's from your State."

The engineer stopped short in his talk and absorbed Jack from his neatly brushed hair, worn long at the back of his neck, to his well-shod feet, and held out his hand.

"From Maryland? So am I; I was raised down in Prince George County. Glad to know you. Are you any connection of the Breens of Ann Arundle?"

"Yes, sir--all my people came from Ann Arundle. My father was Judge Breen," answered Jack with embarra.s.sment. He had not yet become accustomed to the novelty of the scene around him.

"Now I know just where you belong. My father and yours were friends.

I have often heard him speak of Judge Breen. And did you not meet my daughter at Miss Grayson's the other day? She told me she had met a Mr.

Breen from our part of the country."

Jack's eyes danced. Was this what Peter had invited him to the club for?

Now it was all clear. And then again he had not said a word about his being in the Street, or connected with it in any way. Was there ever such a good Peter?

"Oh, yes, sir!--and I hope she is very well."

The engineer said she was extremely well, never better in her life, and that he was delighted to meet a son of his old friend--then, turning to the others, immediately forgot Jack's existence, and for the time being his daughter, in the discussion still going on around him.

The young fellow settled himself in his seat and looked about him--at the smoke-stained ceiling, the old portraits and quaint fittings and furniture--more particularly at the men. He would have liked to talk to Ruth's father a little longer, but he felt dazed and ill at ease--out of his element, somehow--although he remembered the same kind of people at his father's house, except that they wore different clothes.

But Peter did not leave him long in meditation. There were other surprises for him upstairs, in the small dining-room opening out of the library, where a long table was spread with eatables and drinkables--salads, baby sausages, escaloped oysters, devilled crabs and other dishes dear to old and new members. Here men were met standing in groups, their plates in their hands, or seated at the smaller tables, when a siphon and a beer bottle, or a mug of Ba.s.s would be added to their comfort.

It was there the Scribe met him for the second time, my first being the Morris dinner, when he sat within speaking distance. I had heard of him, of course, as Peter's new protege--indeed, the old fellow had talked of nothing else, and so I was glad to renew the acquaintance. I found him to be like all other young fellows of his cla.s.s--I had lived among his people, and knew--rather shy, with a certain deferential air toward older people--but with the composure belonging to unconscious youth--no fidgeting or fussing--modest, una.s.sertive--his big brown eyes under their heavy lashes studying everything about him, his face brightening when you addressed him. I discovered, too, a certain indefinable charm which won me to him at once. Perhaps it was his youth; perhaps it was a certain honest directness, together with a total lack of all affectation that appealed to me, but certain it is that not many minutes had pa.s.sed before I saw why Peter liked him, and I saw, too, why he liked Peter.

When I asked him--we had found three empty seats at a table--what impressed him most in the club, it being his first visit, he answered in his simple, direct way, that he thought it was the note of good-fellowship everywhere apparent, the men greeting each other as if they really meant it. Another feature was the dress and faces of the members--especially the authors, to whom Peter had introduced him, whose books he had read, and whose personalities he had heard discussed, and who, to his astonishment, had turned out to be shabby-looking old fellows who smoked and drank, or played chess, like other ordinary mortals, and without pretence of any kind so far as he could detect.

"Just like one big family, isn't it, Mr. Grayson?" the boy said. "Don't you two gentlemen love to come here?"

"Yes."

"They don't look like very rich men."

"They're not. Now and then a camel crawls through but it is a tight squeeze," remarked Peter arching his gray, bushy eyebrows, a smile hovering about his lips.

The boy laughed: "Well, then, how did they get here?"

"Princ.i.p.ally because they lead decent lives, are not puffed up with conceit, have creative brains and put them to some honest use," answered Peter.

The boy looked away for a moment and remarked quietly that about everybody he knew would fail in one or more of these qualifications.

Then he added:

"And now tell me, Mr. Grayson, what most of them do--that gentleman, for instance, who is talking to the old man in the velvet cap."

"That is General Norton, one of our most distinguished engineers. He is Consulting Engineer in the Croton Aqueduct Department, and his opinion is sought all over the country. He started life as a tow-boy on the Erie Ca.n.a.l, and when he was your age he was keeping tally of dump-cars from a cut on the Pennsylvania Railroad."

Jack looked at the General in wonderment, but he was too much interested in the other persons about him to pursue the inquiry any further.

"And the man next to him--the one with his hand to his head?"

"I don't recall him, but the Major may."

"That is Professor Hastings of Yale," I replied--"perhaps the most eminent chemist in this or any other country."

"And what did he do when he was a boy?" asked young Breen.