The Mystery of Murray Davenport Part 8

Davenport's only reply was a short laugh.

"Suppose you had the money, and could live as you liked, where would _you_ go?" demanded Larcher, slightly nettled.

"I would live a varied life. Probably it would have four phases, generally speaking, of unequal duration and no fixed order. For one phase, the chief scene would be a small secluded country-house in an old walled garden. There would be the home of my books, and the centre of my walks over moors and hills. From this, I would transport myself, when the mood came, to the intellectual society of some large city--that of London would be most to my choice. Mind you, I say the _intellectual_ society; a far different thing from the Society that spells itself with a capital S."

"Why not of New York? There's intellectual society here."

"Yes; a trifle fussy and self-conscious, though. I should prefer a society more reposeful. From this, again, I would go to the life of the streets and byways of the city. And then, for the fourth phase, to the direct contemplation of art--music, architecture, sculpture, painting;--to haunting the great galleries, especially of Italy, studying and copying the old masters. I have no desire to originate. I should be satisfied, in the arts, rather to receive than to give; to be audience and spectator; to contemplate and admire."

"Well, I hope you may have your wish yet," was all that Larcher could say.

"I _should_ like to have just one whack at life before I finish,"

replied Davenport, gazing thoughtfully into the shadow beyond the lamplight. "Just one taste of comparative happiness."

"Haven't you ever had even one?"

"I thought I had, for a brief season, but I was deceived." (Larcher remembered the talk of an inconstant woman.) "No, I have never been anything like happy. My father was a cold man who chilled all around him. He died when I was a boy, and left my mother and me to poverty. My mother loved me well enough; she taught me music, encouraged my studies, and persuaded a distant relation to send me to the College of Medicine and Surgery; but her life was darkened by grief, and the darkness fell over me, too. When she died, my relation dropped me, and I undertook to make a living in New York. There was first the struggle for existence, then the sickening affair of that play; afterward, misfortune enough to fill a dozen biographies, the fatal reputation of ill luck, the brief dream of consolation in the love of woman, the awakening,--and the rest of it."

He sighed wearily and turned, as if for relief from a bitter theme, to the book in his hand. He read aloud, from the sonnet out of which they had already been quoting:

'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising--Haply I think on thee; and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate; For thy sweet love--'

He broke off, and closed the book. "'For thy sweet love,'" he repeated.

"You see even this unhappy poet had his solace. I used to read those lines and flatter myself they expressed my situation. There was a silly song, too, that she pretended to like. You know it, of course,--a little poem of Frank L. Stanton's." He went to the piano, and sang softly, in a light baritone:

'Sometimes, dearest, the world goes wrong, For G.o.d gives grief with the gift of song, And poverty, too; but your love is more--'

Again he stopped short, and with a derisive laugh. "What an a.s.s I was! As if any happiness that came to Murray Davenport could be real or lasting!"

"Oh, never be disheartened," said Larcher. "Your time is to come; you'll have your 'whack at life' yet."

"It would be acceptable, if only to feel that I had realized one or two of the dreams of youth--the dreams an unhappy lad consoled himself with."

"What were they?" inquired Larcher.

"What were they not, that is fine and pleasant? I had my share of diverse ambitions, or diverse hopes, at least. You know the old Lapland song, in Longfellow:

_'For a boy's will is the wind's will, And the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.'"_

CHAPTER VI.

THE NAME OF ONE TURL COMES UP

A month pa.s.sed. All the work in which Larcher had enlisted Davenport's cooperation was done. Larcher would have projected more, but the artist could not be pinned down to any definite engagement. He was non-committal, with the evasiveness of apathy. He seemed not to care any longer about anything. More than ever he appeared to go about in a dream.

Larcher might have suspected some drug-taking habit, but for having observed the man so constantly, at such different hours, and often with so little warning, as to be convinced to the contrary.

One cold, clear November night, when the tingle of the air, and the beauty of the moonlight, should have aroused any healthy being to a sense of life's joy in the matchless late autumn of New York, Larcher met his friend on Broadway. Davenport was apparently as much absorbed in his inner contemplations, or as nearly void of any contemplation whatever, as a man could be under the most stupefying influences. He politely stopped, however, when Larcher did.

"Where are you going?" the latter asked.

"Home," was the reply; thus amended the next instant: "To my room, that is."

"I'll walk with you, if you don't mind. I feel like stretching my legs."

"Glad to have you," said Davenport, indifferently. They turned from Broadway eastward into a cross-town street, high above the end of which rose the moon, lending romance and serenity to the house-fronts. Larcher called the artist's attention to it. Davenport replied by quoting, mechanically:

"'With how slow steps, O moon, thou clim'st the sky, How silently, and with how wan a face!'"

"I'm glad to see you out on so fine a night," pursued Larcher.

"I came out on business," said the other. "I got a request by telegraph from the benevolent Bagley to meet him at his rooms. He received a 'hurry call' to Chicago, and must take the first train; so he sent for me, to look after a few matters in his absence."

"I trust you'll find them interesting," said Larcher, comparing his own failure with Bagley's success in obtaining Davenport's services.

"Not in the slightest," replied Davenport.

"Then remunerative, at least."

"Not sufficiently to attract _me_," said the other.

"Then, if you'll pardon the remark, I really can't understand--"

"Mere force of habit," replied Davenport, listlessly. "When he summons, I attend. When he entrusts, I accept. I've done it so long, and so often, I can't break myself of the habit. That is, of course, I could if I chose, but it would require an effort, and efforts aren't worth while at this stage."

With little more talk, they arrived at the artist's house.

"If you talk of moonlight," said Davenport, in a manner of some kindliness, "you should see its effect on the back yards, from my windows. You know how half-hearted the few trees look in the daytime; but I don't think you've seen that view on a moonlight night. The yards, taken as a whole, have some semblance to a real garden. Will you come up?"

Larcher a.s.sented readily. A minute later, while his host was seeking matches, he looked down from the dark chamber, and saw that the transformation wrought in the rectangular s.p.a.ce of back yards had not been exaggerated. The shrubbery by the fences might have sheltered fairies. The boughs of the trees, now leafless, gently stirred. Even the plain house-backs were clad in beauty.

When Larcher turned from the window, Davenport lighted the gas, but not his lamp; then drew from an inside pocket, and tossed on the table, something which Larcher took to be a stenographer's note-book, narrow, thick, and with stiff brown covers. Its unbound end was confined by a thin rubber band. Davenport opened a drawer of the table, and essayed to sweep the book thereinto by a careless push. The book went too far, struck the arm of a chair, flew open at the breaking of the overstretched rubber, fell on its side by the chair leg, and disclosed a pile of bank-notes. These, tightly flattened, were the sole contents of the covers. As Larcher's startled eyes rested upon them, he saw that the topmost bill was for five hundred dollars.

Davenport exhibited a momentary vexation, then picked up the bills, and laid them on the table in full view.

"Bagley's money," said he, sitting down before the table. "I'm to place it for him to-morrow. This sudden call to Chicago prevents his carrying out personally some plans he had formed. So he entrusts the business to the reliable Davenport."

"When I walked home with you, I had no idea I was in the company of so much money," said Larcher, who had taken a chair near his friend.

"I don't suppose there's another man in New York to-night with so much ready money on his person," said Davenport, smiling. "These are large bills, you know. Ironical, isn't it? Think of Murray Davenport walking about with twenty thousand dollars in his pocket."

"Twenty thousand! Why, that's just the amount you were--" Larcher checked himself.

"Yes," said Davenport, unmoved. "Just the amount of Bagley's wealth that morally belongs to me, not considering interest. I could use it, too, to very good advantage. With my skill in the art of frugal living, I could make it go far--exceedingly far. I could realize that plan of a congenial life, which I told you of one night here. There it is; here am I; and if right prevailed, it would be mine. Yet if I ventured to treat it as mine, I should land in a cell. Isn't it a silly world?"