Whatever the function—whether it was a cosey dinner for the congenial few, a crowded reception for the uncongenial many, or a coming-out party for some one of the eager-expectant buds just bursting into bloom—most of whom he had known from babyhood—Peter was always ready with his “Of course I'll come—” or “Nothing would delight me more—” or the formal “Mr. Grayson accepts with great pleasure,” etc., unless the event should fall upon a Saturday night; then there was certain to be a prompt refusal.
Even Miss Felicia recognized this unbreakable engagement and made her plans accordingly. So did good Mrs. McGuffey, who selected this night for her own social outings; and so did most of his intimate friends who were familiar with his habits.
On any other night you might, or you might not, find Peter at home, dependent upon his various engagements, but if you really wanted to get hold of his hand, or his ear, or the whole or any other part of his delightful body, and if by any mischance you happened to select a Saturday night for your purpose, you must search for him at the Century. To spend this one evening at his favorite club had been his custom for years—ever since he had been elected to full membership—a date so far back in the dim past that the oldest habitue had to search the records to make sure of the year, and this custom he still regularly kept up.
That the quaint old club-house was but a stone's throw from his own quarters in Fifteenth Street made no difference; he would willingly have tramped to Murray Hill and beyond—even as far as the big reservoir, had the younger and more progressive element among the members picked the institution up bodily and moved it that far—as later on they did.
Not that he favored any such innovation: “Move up-town! Why, my dear sir!” he protested, when the subject was first mentioned, “is there nothing in the polish of these old tables and chairs, rubbed bright by the elbows of countless good fellows, that appeals to you? Do you think any modern varnish can replace it? Here I have sat for thirty years or more, and—please God!—here I want to continue to sit.”
He was at his own small table in the front room overlooking the street when he spoke—his by right of long use, as it was also of Morris, MacFarlane, Wright, old Partridge the painter, and Knight the sculptor. For years this group of Centurions, after circling the rooms on meeting nights, criticising the pictures and helping themselves to the punch, had dropped into these same seats by the side of Peter.
And these were not the only chairs tacitly recognized as carrying special privileges by reason of long usage. Over in the corner between the two rooms could be found Bayard Taylor's chair—his for years, from which he dispensed wisdom, adventure and raillery to a listening coterie—King, MacDonough and Collins among them, while near the stairs, his great shaggy head glistening in the overhead light, Parke Godwin held court, with Sterling, Martin and Porter, to say nothing of still older habitues who in the years of their membership were as much a part of the fittings of the club as the smoke-begrimed portraits which lined its walls.
On this Saturday night he had stepped into the clubhouse with more than his usual briskness. Sweeping a comprehensive glance around as he entered, as if looking for some one in the hall, he slipped off his overcoat and hat and handed both to the negro servant in charge of the cloak-room.
“George.”
“Yes, Mr. Grayson.”
“If anybody inquires for me you will find me either on this floor or in the library above. Don't forget, and don't make any mistake.
“No, suh—ain't goin' to be no mistake.”
This done, the old gentleman moved to the mirror, and gave a sidelong glance at his perfectly appointed person—he had been dining at the Portmans', had left the table early, and was in full evening dress.
The inspection proved that the points of his collar wanted straightening the thousandth part of an inch, and that his sparse gray locks needed combing a wee bit further toward his cheek bones. These, with a certain rebellious fold in his necktie, having been brought into place, the guardian of the Exeter entered the crowded room, picked a magazine from the shelves and dropped into his accustomed seat.
Holker Morris and Lagarge now strolled in and drawing up to a small table adjoining Peter's touched a tiny bell. This answered, and the order given, the two renewed a conversation which had evidently been begun outside, and which was of so absorbing a character that for a moment Peter's face, half hidden by his book, was unnoticed.
“Oh!—that's you, Methusaleh, is it!” cried Morris at last. “Move over—have something?”
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 quizzical expression crossing his face—“that was the curse of it. He was born a man and had a stomach instead of being born a god 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 assets. 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 asserting 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 passed, until, thoroughly discouraged, he regained his seat only to press a bell lying among some half-empty glasses. 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 embarrassment. 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 Bass 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 class—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, unassertive—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 passed 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?”
“Principally 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 Canal, 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.
“Made pills, I expect, and washed out test tubes and retorts,” interrupted Peter, with a look on his face as if the poor professor were more to be pitied than commended.
“Did any of them dig?” asked the boy.
“What kind of digging?” inquired Peter.
“Well, the kind you spoke of the night you came to see me.”
“Oh, with their hands?” cried Peter with a laugh. “Well, now, let me see—” and his glance roved about the room. “There is Mr. Schlessinger, the Egyptologist, but of course he was after mummies, not dirt; and then there is—yes—that sun-burned young fellow of forty, talking to Mr. Eastman Johnson; he has been at work in Yucatan looking for Toltec ruins, because he told me his experience only a few nights ago; but then, of course, that can hardly be said to be—Oh!—now I have it. You see that tall man with side-whiskers, looking like a young bank president—my kind—my boy—well, he started life with a pick and shovel. The steel point of the pick if I remember rightly, turned up a nugget of gold that made him rich, but he DUG all the same, and he may again some day—you can't tell.”
It had all been a delightful experience for Jack and his face showed it, but it was not until after I left that the story of why he had come late was told. He had started several times to explain but the constant interruption of members anxious to shake Peter's hand, had always prevented.
“I haven't apologized for being late, sir,” Jack had said at last. “It was long after ten, I am afraid, but I could not help it.”
“No; what was the matter?”
“I didn't get the letter until half an hour before I reached here.”
“Why, I sent it to your uncle's house, and mailed it myself, just after you had gone out with Miss MacFarlane.”
“Yes, sir; but I am not at my uncle's house any more. I am staying with Garry Minott in his rooms; I have the sofa.”
Peter gave a low whistle.
“And you have given up your desk at the office as well?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Bless my soul, my boy! And what are you going to do now?”
“I don't know; but I will not go on as I have been doing. I can't, Mr. Grayson, and you must not ask it. I would rather sweep the streets. I have just seen poor Charley Gilbert and Mrs. Gilbert. He has not a dollar in the world, and is going West, he tells me.”
Peter reflected for a moment. It was all he could do to hide his delight.
“And what do your people say?”
“My aunt says I am an idiot, and Corinne won't speak to me.”
“And your uncle?”
“Nothing, to me. He told Garry that if I didn't come back in three days I should never enter his house or his office again.”
“But you are going back? Are you not?”
“No,—never. Not if I starve!”
Peter's eyes were twinkling when he related the conversation to me the next day.
“I could have hugged him, Major,” he said, when he finished, “and I would if we had not been at the club.”
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