The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 14

As Oliver lay with wide-open eyes, going over every incident of the evening, he remembered, with a certain touch of exultant pride, a story his father had told him of the great Poe, and he fell to wondering whether the sweetness of his own song, falling on ears stunned by the jangle of the night, had not produced a similar effect. Poe, his father had said, on being pressed for a story in the midst of a night of revelry in a famous house on Kennedy Square, had risen from his seat and repeated the Lord's Prayer with such power and solemnity that the guests, one and all, stunned and sobered, had pushed their chairs from the table and had left the house. He remembered just where his father sat when he told the story and the impression it had made upon him at the time. He wished Kennedy Square had been present to-night to have heard him and to have seen the impression his song had made upon those gathered about him.

Kennedy Square! What would dear old Richard Horn, with his violin tucked lovingly under his chin, and gentle, white-haired Nathan, with his lips caressing his flute, have thought of it all, as they listened to the uproar of c.o.c.kburn's coal-scuttle? And, that latter-day Chesterfield, Colonel John Howard Clayton, of Pongateague, whose pipe-stemmed Madeira gla.s.ses were kept submerged in iced finger-bowls until the moment of their use, and whose rare Burgundies were drunk out of ruby-colored soap-bubbles warmed to an exact temperature. What would this old aristocrat have thought of McFudd's mixture and the way it was served?

No! It was just as well that Kennedy Square, at the moment of Oliver's triumph, was fast asleep.

CHAPTER IX

MISS TEETUM'S LONG TABLE

The prying sun peeped through the dingy curtains of Fred's bedroom on the morning after Oliver's revels, stencilling a long slant of yellow light down its grimy walls, and awaking our young hero with a start.

Except for the shattered remnants of the basins and pitchers that he saw as he looked around him, and the stringy towels, still wet, hanging over the backs of the chairs, he would not have recognized it as the same room in which he had met such brilliant company the night before--so kindly a glamour does the night throw over our follies.

With the vision of the room and its tokens of their frolic came an uneasy sense of an unpleasant remembrance. The thrill of his own triumph no longer filled his heart; only the memory of the uproar remained. As he caught sight of the broken pieces of china still littering the carpet, and recalled McFudd's sprawling figure, a slight color suffused his cheek.

The room itself, in the light of day, was not only cold and uninviting, but so bare of even the commonest comforts that Oliver shivered. The bottoms were half out of the chairs; the painted wash-stand stood on a square of chilly oil-cloth; the rusty grate and broken hearth were unswept of their ashes; the carpet patched and threadbare. He wondered, as he studied each detail, how Miss Teetum could expect her boarders to be contented in such quarters.

He saw at a glance how much more cosey and restful the room might be made with the addition of a few touches here and there; a colored print or two--a plaster cast--a bit of cheap stuff or some gay-colored cushions. It surprised him, above all, to discover that Fred, who was studying art and should, therefore, be sensitive to such influences, was willing to live amid such desolate surroundings.

When he stepped out into the square hall, the scene of the night's revelry, and glanced about him, the crude bareness and reckless disorder that the merciful glow of the gas-light and its attendant shadows had kindly concealed, stood out in bold relief under the white light of the day now streaming through an oval skylight immediately above the piano. The floor was strewn with the various properties of the night's performance--overturned stools, china mugs, bits of lemon-peel, stumps of cigars, and stray pipes; while scattered about under the piano and between the legs of the chairs, and even upon the steps of the staircase, were the pieces of coal which Fog-horn Cranch and Waller, who held the scuttle, had pounded into bits when they produced that wild jangle which had added so much of dignity and power to the ba.s.s notes of the Dead Man's Chorus.

These cold facts aroused in Oliver a sense of repugnance which he could not shake off. It was as if the head of some jolly clown of the night before had been suddenly thrust through the canvas of the tent in broad daylight, showing the paint, the wrinkles beneath, the yellow teeth, and the coa.r.s.e mouth.

Oliver was about to turn back to Fred's room, this feeling of revolt strong upon him, when his attention was arrested by a collection of drawings that covered almost every square inch of the ceiling. To his astonishment he discovered that what in the smoke of the night before he had supposed to be only hasty sketches scrawled over the white plaster, were in reality, now that he saw them in a clearer atmosphere, effective pictures in pastel, oil, and charcoal. That the basis of these cartoons was but the grimy stain made by the water which had beaten through the rickety sash during the drive and thrash of winter storms, flooding the whitewashed ceiling and trickling down the side-walls in smears of brown rust, did not lessen their value in his eyes.

Closer inspection showed him that these discolorations--some round or curved, others straight or angular--had been altered and amended as the signatures indicated by the deft pencils of Waller, Fred, Bowdoin, and the others, into flying Cupids, Dianas, Neptunes, and mermaids fit to grace the ceiling of a salon if properly enlarged; while the up-and-down smears had suggested the opportunity for caricaturing half the boarders of the house. Every fresh leak and its accompanying stains evidently presented a new problem to the painters, and were made the subject of prolonged study and much consultation before a brush was permitted to touch them, the point apparently being to help the discolorations express themselves with the fewest possible touches.

In addition to these decorations overhead, Oliver found, framed in on the cleaner plaster of the side-walls, between broad bands of black paint, several taking bits of landscape in color and black and white; stretches of coast with quaint boats and dots of figures; winter wood interiors with white plaster for snow and sc.r.a.pings of charcoal for tree-trunks, each one marked with that sure crispness of touch which denotes the master-hand. Moreover, the panels of all the doors, as well as their jambs and frames, were ornamented with sketches in all mediums, ill.u.s.trating incidents in the lives of the various boarders who occupied the rooms below, and who--so Fred told him afterward--stole into this sacred spot on the sly, to gloat over the night's work whenever a new picture was reported and the rightful denizens were known to be absent.

As he stood absorbed before these marvels of brush and pencil, scrutinizing each one in turn, his sense of repulsion for the debris on the floor gave way to a feeling of enthusiasm. Not only were the sketches far superior to any he had ever seen, but the way in which they were done and the uses of the several mediums were a revelation to him. It was only when Fog-horn Cranch's big voice roused him to consciousness that he realized where he was. The auctioneer was coming out of his room, resplendent in a striped suit, gaiters, and white necktie--this being his real-estate day.

"My dear fellow," Cranch shouted, bringing his hand down on Oliver's shoulder, "do you know you've got a voice like an angel's?"

Before Oliver could reply, My Lord c.o.c.kburn joined them, his first word one of pleasure at meeting him, and his second a hope that he would know him better; then Fred ran out, flinging on his coat and laughing as he came. Under these combined influences of praise and good-cheer Oliver's spirits rose and his blood began once more to surge through his veins. With his old-time buoyancy he put his arm through Fred's, while the two tramped gayly down the four flights of stairs to be ushered into the long, narrow, stuffy dining-room on the bas.e.m.e.nt floor, there to be presented to the two Misses Teetum, who as the young men entered bent low over their plates in unison. This perfunctory salute our young gentleman acknowledged by bowing grandly in return, after which he dropped into a seat next to Fred's--his back to a tin box filled with plates, placed over the hot-air register--drew out a damp napkin from a bone ring, and took a bird's-eye view of the table and its occupants.

The two Misses Teetum sat one at either end--Miss Ann, thin, severe, precise; Miss Sarah, stout, coy, and a trifle kittenish, as doubtless became a young woman of forty-seven, and her sister's junior by eight years. Miss Ann had evidently pa.s.sed the dead-line of middle age, and had given up the fight, and was fast becoming a very prim and very proper old lady, but Miss Sarah, being out of range, could still smile, and nod her head, and shake her curls, and laugh little, hollow, girlish laughs, and otherwise disport herself in a light and kittenish way, after the manner of her day and age. All of which betrayed not only her earnest desire to please, but her increasing anxiety to get in under matrimonial cover before one of Father Time's sharpshooters picked her off, and thus ended her youthful career.

The guests seated on either side of these two presiding G.o.ddesses, Oliver was convinced, as he studied the double row of faces, would have stretched the wondering eyelids of Kennedy Square to their utmost limits.

Old Mr. Lang, who with his invalid wife occupied the room immediately below Fred's, and who had been so nearly drowned out the night before because of McFudd's acrobatic tendencies, sat on Fred's left. Properly clothed and in his right mind, he proved to be a most delightful old gentleman, with gold spectacles and snow-white side-whiskers, and a welcoming smile for everyone who entered. Fred said that the smile never wavered even when the old gentleman had been up all night with his wife.

Across the table, with her eye-gla.s.ses trained on Oliver, half concealed by a huge china "compoteer" (to quote the waitress), and at present filled with last week's fruit, caulked with almonds, sat Mrs.

Southwark Boggs--sole surviving relic of S. B., Esq. This misfortune she celebrated by wearing his daguerreotype, set in plain gold, as a brooch with which she fastened her crocheted collar. She was a thin, faded, funereal-looking person, her body encased in a black silk dress, which looked as if it had been pressed and ironed over night, and her hands in black silk mitts which reached to her knuckles.

On Mrs. Boggs's right sat Bates--a rising young lawyer with political tendencies--one of the first men to cut his hair so "Zou-Zou" that it stood straight up from his forehead; and next to him Morgan, the editor, who pored over ma.n.u.script while his coffee got cold; and then Nelson, and Webster, and c.u.mmings all graded in Miss Ann's mind as being eight, or ten, or twelve-dollar-a-week men, depending on the rooms that they occupied, and farther along, toward Miss Sarah, Cranch and c.o.c.kburn--five-dollar boys these (Fred was another), with the privilege of lighting their own c.o.ke fires, and of tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the wicks and filling the bulbs of their own burning-fluid lamps. And away down in the far corner, crumpled up in his chair, crouched the cheery little hunchback, Mr. Crumbs, who kept a book-stall on Astor Place, where Bayard Taylor, Irving, Halleck, Bryant, and many another member of the Century Club used to spend their late afternoons delving among the old volumes on his shelves.

All these regular boarders, including Fog-horn Cranch and Fred, breakfasted at eight o'clock. Waller, the painter, and Tomlins, the swell, breakfasted at nine. As to that descendant of the Irish kings, Mr. Cornelius McFudd, he rose at ten, or twelve, or two, just as the spirit (and its dilutions of the night before) moved or r.e.t.a.r.ded him, and breakfasted whenever Miss Ann or Miss Sarah, who had presided continuously at the coffee-urn from eight to ten, could spare one of her two servants to carry a tray to his room.

Last and by no means least, with her eyes devouring every expression that flitted across the new arrival's face, there beamed out beside Miss Ann, a tail, willowy young person, whom Fred, in answer to an inquiring lifting of Oliver's eyebrows, designated as the belle of the house. This engaging young woman really lived with her mother, in the next street, but flitted in and out, dining, or breakfasting, or spending a week at a time with her aunts, the Misses Teetum, whenever an opportunity offered--the opportunity being a vacant and non-paying room, one of which she was at the time enjoying.

This fair damsel, who was known to the boarders on the top floor as "our Phemy," and to the world at large as Miss Euphemia Teetum--the real jewel in her name was Phoebe, but she had reset it--had been especially beloved, so Fred informed Oliver, by every member of the club except Waller, who, having lived in boarding-houses all his life, understood her thoroughly. Her last flame--the fire was still smouldering--had been the immaculate Tomlins, who had won her heart by going into raptures, in one of his stage whispers, over the cla.s.sic outlines of her face. This outburst resulted in Miss Euphemia appearing the following week in a silk gown, a Greek fillet and no hoops--a costume which Waller faithfully portrayed on the side-wall of the attic the night of her appearance--the fillet being reproduced by a strip of bra.s.s which the artist had torn from his easel and nailed to the plaster, and the cla.s.sic curves of her hair by a ripple of brown paint.

This caricature nearly provoked a riot before the night was over, the whole club, including even the fun-loving McFudd, denouncing. Waller's act as an outrage. In fact, the Hibernian himself had once been so completely taken off his feet--it was the first week of his stay--by the winning ways of the young lady, that Miss Ann had begun to have high hopes of Euphemia's being finally installed mistress in one of those shadowy estates which the distinguished Hibernian described with such eloquence. That these hopes did not materialize was entirely due to c.o.c.kburn, who took pains to enlighten the good woman upon the intangible character of the Hibernian's possessions, thus saving the innocent maiden from the clutches of the bold, bad adventurer. At least, that had been c.o.c.kburn's account of it when he came upstairs.

But it was at dinner that same night--for Oliver at Fred's pressing invitation had come back to dinner--that the full galaxy of guests and regulars burst upon our hero. Then came not only Miss Euphemia Teetum in a costume especially selected for Oliver's capture, but a person still more startling and imposing--so imposing, in fact, that when she entered the room one-half of the gentlemen present made little backward movements with the legs of their chairs, as if intending to rise to their feet in honor of her presence.

This prominent figure in fashionable life, who had now settled herself on the right of Miss Ann--the post of honor at the table--and who was smiling in so gracious and condescending a manner as her eye lighted on the several recipients of her favor, was none other than the distinguished Mrs. Schuyler Van Ta.s.sell, of Tarrytown, another bird of pa.s.sage, who had left her country-seat on the Hudson to spend the winter months in what she called the delights of "upper-tandem." She belonged to an ancient family--or, at least, her husband did--he was under the sod, poor soul, and therefore at peace--and, having inherited his estate--a considerable one--was to be treated with every distinction.

These several personages of low and high degree interested our young gentleman quite as much as our young gentleman interested them. He made friends with them all--especially with the ladies, who all agreed that he was a most charming and accomplished youth. This good opinion became permanent when Oliver had paid each in turn the compliment of rising from his seat when any one of them entered the room, as much a habit with the young fellow as the taking off of his hat when he came into a house, but which was so rare a courtesy at Miss Teetum's that each recipient appropriated the compliment as personal to herself.

These sentiments of admiration were shared, and to an alarming degree, by Miss Euphemia herself, who, on learning later that Oliver had decided to occupy half of Fred's room through the winter, had at once determined to remain during the week, the better to lay siege to his heart. This resolution, it is fair to Oliver to say, she abandoned before dinner was over, when her experienced eye detected a certain amused if not derisive smile playing around the corners of Oliver's mouth; a discovery which so impressed the young woman that she left him severely alone ever after.

And so it was that Oliver unpacked his trunk--the same old hair trunk, studded with bra.s.s nails, that had held his father's wardrobe at college--spread out and tacked up the various knick-knacks which his mother and Sue and Miss Clendenning had given him when he had left the old home, and began to make himself comfortable on the top floor of Miss Teetum's boarding-house on Union Square.

CHAPTER X

MCFUDD'S BRa.s.s BAND

Our hero had been installed at Miss Teetum's for a month or more, when one night at dinner a tiny envelope about the size of a visiting-card was brought in by the middle-aged waitress and laid beside Simmons's plate. The envelope contained six orchestra seats at the Winter Garden and was accompanied by a note which read as follows: "Bring some of the boys; the piece drags."

The musician studied the note carefully and a broad smile broke over his face. As one of the first violins at the Winter Garden, with a wide acquaintance among desirable patrons of the theatre, he had peculiar facilities for obtaining free private boxes and orchestra chairs not only at his own theatre, but often at Wallack's in Broome Street and the old Bowery. Simmons was almost always sure to have tickets when the new piece needed booming, or when an old play failed to amuse and the audiences had begun to shrink. Indeed, the mystery of Mrs. Schuyler Van Ta.s.sell's frequent appearance in the left-hand proscenium box at the Winter Garden on Friday nights--a mystery unexplained among the immediate friends in Tarrytown, who knew how she husbanded her resources despite her accredited wealth--was no mystery at all to the guests at Miss Teetum's table, who were in the habit of seeing just such tiny envelopes handed to Simmons during soup, and duly pa.s.sed by him to that distinguished leader of society. Should more than two tickets be enclosed, Mrs. Van T. would, perhaps, invite. Mr.

Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, or some other properly attired person, to accompany her--never Miss Ann or the little hunchback, who dearly loved the play, but who could seldom afford to go--never anybody, in fact, who wore plain clothes or looked a compromising acquaintance.

On this night, however, p.u.s.s.y Me-ow Simmons, ignoring Mrs. Van Ta.s.sell, turned to Oliver.

"Ollie," he whispered--the formalities had ceased between the members of the Skylarks--"got anything to do to-night?"

"No; why?"

And then, Simmons, with various imaginary poundings of imaginary canes on the threadbare carpet beneath his chair, and with sundry half-smothered bursts of real laughter in which Fred and Oliver joined, unfolded his programme for the evening--a programme which was agreed to so rapturously that the trio before dinner was over excused themselves to their immediate neighbors and bounded upstairs, three steps at a time. There they pulled the Walrus out of his bed and woke up McFudd, who had gone to sleep before dinner, and whom n.o.body had called. Then having sent my Lord c.o.c.kburn to find Ruffle-shirt Tomlins, who by this time was paying court to Miss Euphemia in the front parlor, and having pinned a ticket to Mr. Fog-horn Cranch's door, with instructions to meet them in the lobby the moment he returned, they all slipped on their overcoats, picked up their canes, and started for the theatre.

Six young fellows, all with red blood in their veins, steel springs under their toes and laughter in their hearts! Six comrades, pals, good-fellows, skipping down the avenue as gay as colts and happy as boys--no thought for to-day and no care for to-morrow! Each man with a free ticket in his pocket and a show ahead of him. No wonder the bluecoats looked after them and smiled; no wonder the old fellow with the shaky legs, waiting at the corner for one of the squad to help him over, gave a sigh as he watched McFudd, with cane in air, drilling his recruits, all five abreast. No wonder the tired shop-girls glanced at them enviously as they swung into Broadway chanting the "Dead Man's Chorus," with Oliver's voice sounding clear as a bell above the din of the streets.

The play was a melodrama of the old, old school. There was a young heroine in white, and a handsome lover in top-boots and white trousers, and a cruel uncle who wanted her property. And there was a particularly brutal villain with leery eyes, ugly mouth, with one tooth gone, and an iron jaw like a hull-dog's. He was attired in a fur cap, brown corduroy jacket, with a blood-red handkerchief twisted about his throat, and he carried a bludgeon. When the double-dyed villain proceeded in the third act to pound the head of the lovely maiden to a jelly at the instigation of the base uncle, concealed behind a painted tree-trunk, and the lover rushed in and tried to save her, every pair of hands except Oliver's came together in raptures of applause, a.s.sisted by a vigorous hammering of canes on the floor.

"Pound away, Ollie," whispered Simmons; "that's what we came for; you are spoiling all our fun. The manager is watching us. Pound away, I tell you. There he is inside that box."

"I won't," said Oliver, in a tone of voice strangely in contrast with the joyousness of an hour before.

"Then you won't get any more free tickets," muttered Simmons in surprise.