The Fortunes of Oliver Horn Part 39

Oliver read the letter through and put his lips to the signature. In all his life he had never failed to kiss his mother's name at the bottom of her letters. The only difference was that now he kissed them with an added reverence. The fact of his having proved himself right and her wrong in the choice of his profession made loyalty with him the more tender.

"Dear, dear mother!" he said to himself. "You have had so much trouble lately, and you have been so plucky through it all." He stopped, looked dreamily across the room, and added with a sigh: "But she has not said one word about Madge; not one single word. She doesn't answer that part of my letter; she doesn't intend to."

Then he opened the other communication which read:

"Dear Mr. Horn: Please call here in the morning. I have some good news for you.

"John Snedecor."

Oliver turned the picture-dealer's letter over, peered into the envelope as if he expected to find some trace of the good news tucked away in its corners, lifted the tray holding his frugal breakfast, and laid it on the floor outside his door ready for the janitor's morning round. Then, picking up his hat, he locked his door, hung an "out card"

on the k.n.o.b, and, strolling downstairs, stepped into the fresh morning air. He knew the dealer well. He had placed two of old Mr. Crocker's pictures with him--one of which had been sold.

When he reached Snedecor's gallery he found the big window surrounded with a crowd gazing intently at an upright portrait in a glittering gold frame, to which was affixed an imposing-looking name-plate bearing the inscription:

"THE WOMAN IN BLACK, BY OLIVER HORN"

So this was Snedecor's good news!

Oliver made his way through the crowd and into the open door of the shop--the shop was, in front, the gallery in the rear--and found the proprietor leaning over a case filled with artists' supplies.

"Has she had it FRAMED, Snedecor?" asked Oliver, with a light laugh.

"Not to any alarming extent! I made that frame for Mr. Peter Fish. She sent it here for sale, and Fish bought it. He's wild about it. Says it's the best thing since Sully. He wants you to paint his daughter; that's what I wanted to see you about. Great card for you, Mr. Horn. I congratulate you!"

Oliver gave a low whistle. His own good fortune was for the moment forgotten in his surprise at the woman's audacity. Selling a sketch painted by one of the club! one which had virtually been GIVEN to her.

"Poor Bianchi! He does pick up the queerest people. I wonder if she was out of stockings," he said half-aloud.

"Oh, you needn't worry about the Madame; she won't suffer for clothes as long as she's got that pair of eyes in her head. You just ought to have seen her handle old Fish. It was beautiful. But, see here now, you don't want to make old Peter a present of this portrait of his daughter. He's good for a thousand, I tell you. She got a cracking price for that one," and he pointed to the picture.

Again Oliver laughed.

"A cracking price? She must have needed the money bad." The more he thought of it the funnier it seemed.

Snedecor looked surprised. He was thinking of Fish's order and the amount of his commission. Most of Oliver's remarks were unintelligible to him--especially his reference to the stockings.

"What shall I say to him?" Snedecor asked at last.

"Oh, nothing in particular. Just send him to my studio. I'll be in all to-morrow morning."

"Well, but don't you think you'd better go and see him yourself now?

He's too big a bug to run after people. That kind of thing don't come every day, you know; you might lose it. Why, he lives right near you in that swell house across the Square."

"Oh, I know him very well," said Oliver, nodding his head. "No, let him come to-morrow to me; it won't hurt him to walk up three flights of stairs. I'm busy to-day. Now I think of it, there's one thing, though, you CAN tell him, and please be particular about it--there will be no advance over my regular price. I don't care to compete with her ladys.h.i.+p."

Without waiting to hear the dealer's protest he stepped outside the shop and joined the crowd about the window, elbowing each other for a better view of the portrait. No one recognized him. He was too obscure for that. They might after this, he thought with an exultant throb, and a flush of pride crossed his face.

As he walked down Broadway a sense of the humor of the whole situation came over him. Here for years he had been working day and night; running the gauntlet of successive juries and hanging committees, with his best things rejected or skied until his Tam-o'-Shanter girl made a hit; worrying, hoping against hope, racking his brain as to how and when and where he would find the path which would lead him to commercial success--a difficult task for one too proud to beg for favors and too independent to seek another's aid--and here, out of the clear sky, had come this audacious Bohemienne, the pet of foyer and studio--a woman who presented the greatest number of contrasts to the things he held most dear in womankind--and with a single stroke had cleared the way to success for him. And this, too, not from any love of him, nor his work, nor his future, but simply to settle a board-bill or pay for a bonnet.

Again Oliver laughed, this time so loudly that the man in front turned and looked at him.

"A cracking price," he kept repeating to himself, "a cracking price, eh? and out of old Peter Fis.h.!.+ Went fis.h.i.+ng for minnows and hooked a whale, and another little fish for me! I wonder what she baited her hook with. That woman's a genius."

Suddenly he caught sight of the sign of a Long Island florist set up in an apothecary's window between the big green and red gla.s.s globes that lined its sides.

Turning on his heel he entered the door.

"Pick me out a dozen red j.a.ponicas," he said to the boy behind the counter.

Oliver waited until each short-stemmed blossom was carefully selected, laid on its bed of raw cotton, blanketed with the same covering, and packed in a paper box. Then, taking a card from his pocket, he wrote upon its back: "Most grateful thanks for my share of the catch,"

slipped it into an envelope, addressed it to "The fair Fisher, The Countess Kovalski," and, with a grim smile on his face, kept on down Broadway toward the dingy hotel, the resort of all the Southerners of the time, to arrange for rooms for his father and Nathan Gill.

Having, with his card and his j.a.ponicas, dismissed the Countess from his mind, and to a certain extent his obligations, the full importance of this new order of Peter Fish's began to take possession of him. The color rose in his cheeks and an old-time spring and lightness came into his steps. He knew that such a commission, and from such a man, would at once gain for him a recognition from art patrons and a standing among the dealers. Lasting success was now a.s.sured him in the line he had chosen for his life's work. It only remained for him to do the best that was in him. Better than all, it had come to him unasked and without any compromising effort on his own part.

He knew the connoisseur's collection. It filled the large gallery adjoining his extensive home on Was.h.i.+ngton Square and was not only the best in the city, containing as it did examples of Sir Thomas Lawrence, Sir Joshua Reynolds, Chrome, Sully, and many of the modern French school--among them two fine Courbets and a Rousseau--but it had lately been enriched by one or more important American landscapes, notably Sanford Gifford's "Catskill Gorge" and Church's "Tropics"--two canvases which had attracted more than usual attention at the Spring Exhibition of the Academy. An order, therefore, for a family portrait from so distinguished a patron not only gave weight and dignity to the work of any painter he might select, but it would unquestionably influence his many friends and acquaintances to go and do likewise.

As Oliver, his eyes aglow, his whole heart filled with joy, stepped quickly down the street the beauty of the day made him throw back his shoulders and drink in long deep breaths, as if he would fill his very pores with its vitality. These early spring days in New York--the most beautiful the world over; not even in Italy can one find better skies--always affected him in this way. There was a strength-giving quality in the ozone, a brilliancy in the suns.h.i.+ne, and a tempered coolness in the air to be found nowhere else. There was, too, a certain picturesqueness in the sky-line of the houses--a sky-line fringed with jets of white steam from the escape-pipes of numerous fires below, which appealed to his artistic sense. These curling plumes that waved so triumphantly in the sparkling morning light, or stirred by the wind, flapped like milk-white signal flags, breaking at last into tatters and shreds, blurring the edges of chimney and cornice, were a constant source of delight to the young painter. He would often stop to watch their movements, and as often determine to paint them at the first opportunity. They seemed to express to him something of the happy freedom of one released from pent-up toil; a freedom longed for in his own heart, and which had rarely been his since those blessed days under Moose Hillock, when he and Margaret roamed the woods together.

Still a third cause of rejoicing--and this sent a flutter around his heart--was the near prospect of meeting his dear old father, whom he had not seen for months; not since his last visit home, and whose long years of struggle and waiting seemed now to be so nearly ended.

With these last joyous thoughts filling his mind, he stepped quickly through the corridor of the hotel, approached the desk, and had just given the names of his father and Nathan to the clerk, when a man behind the counter interrupted him with:

"Just arrived. Got in this morning. There they are by the window."

Two quaint-looking old gentlemen were gazing out upon the rush of Broadway--two old gentlemen so unusual that even the habitues of the place, those who sat tilted back all day chipping the arms of their chairs with their pen-knives, or sipping countless toddies and juleps, were still staring at them in undisguised astonishment. One--it was Nathan--wore a queer hat, bushy, white hair, and long, pen-wiper cloak: it was the same cloak, or another just like it; the same, no doubt; few new clothes had been bought during the war. And the other--and this was his own dear father--wore a buff waistcoat, high white silk scarf, and brown frock coat, with velvet collar. Neither of them were every-day sights around the corridors of the New York Hotel: even among a collection of human oddities representing every State in the South.

"We thought it best to take the night train, my son," said Richard, starting up at Oliver's caressing touch--he had put both hands on his father's shoulders. "You got your dear mother's letter of course. Oh, I'm so glad to see you! Sit down here alongside of us. How well you are looking, my son," and he patted him lovingly on the arm. "What a whirl it all is! Nathan and I have been here for hours; we arrived at six o'clock. Did you ever see anything like it? The people never seem to stop coming. Ah! this is the place for you, my boy. Everything is so alive, so full of purpose, so intense, so delightful and inspiring to me. And such a change in the years since I was here."

He had brought the motor with him. It lay at the moment in a square box inside the office-railing. Not the big one which he had just perfected--that one was at home under the window in the old shop, in the back yard in Kennedy Square--but a smaller working model made of pine wood, with gla.s.s-tumblers for jars and imitation magnets wrapped round with thread instead of wire--the whole unintelligible to the layman, but perfectly clear to the scientist. He had with him, too, packed in a small carpet-bag, which lay within reach of his hand, all the patents which had been granted him as the work progressed--besides a huge bundle of papers, such as legal doc.u.ments, notices from the scientific journals, and other data connected with the great Horn Galvanic Motor, which was soon to revolutionize the motive power of the world. Tucked away in his inside pocket, ready for instant use, was Amos Cobb's letter, introducing "the distinguished inventor, Mr.

Richard Horn, of Kennedy Square," etc., etc., to the group of capitalists who were impatiently waiting his arrival, and who were to furnish the unlimited sums of money necessary in its development--unlimited sums being ready for any scheme, no matter how chimerical, in the flush times through which the country was then pa.s.sing.

"I have succeeded at last, my boy, as I wrote you," continued Richard, with glowing eyes. "Even that small motor at home--the one you know--that one has a lifting power of a hundred pounds. All that is necessary now is to increase the size of the batteries and the final result is a.s.sured. Let me show you this"--and, oblivious of the many eyes fastened on him, he drew toward him the black carpet-bag and took out a sheet of paper covered with red and blue lines. "You see where the differences are. And you see here"--and he pointed out the details with his thin white finger--"what I have done since I explained to you the new additions. This drawing, when carried out, will result in a motor with a lifting capacity of ten tons. Ah, Oliver, I cannot tell you what a great relief has come to me now that I know my life's work is crowned with success."

Nathan was quite as happy. Richard was his sun-G.o.d. When the light of hope and success flashed in the inventor's quiet, thoughtful face, Nathan basked in its warmth and was radiant in its glow. He needed all the warmth he could get, poor old man. The cold chill of the days of fear and pain and sorrow had well-nigh shrivelled him up; he showed it in every line of his body. His shoulders were much more bent; his timid, pipe-stem legs the more shaky; the furrows about his face deeper; the thin nose more transparent. All during the war he had literally lived in Richard. The cry of the "extras" and the dull tramp of marching troops, and the rumbling of cars laden with army supplies had jarred on his sensitive ear as would discordant notes in a quartette. Days at a time he would hide himself away in Richard's workshop, helping him with his bellows or glue-pot, or piling the coals on the fire of his forge. The war, while it lasted, paralyzed some men to inaction--Nathan was one of them.

"At last, Oliver, at last!" Nathan whispered to Oliver when Richard's head was turned for a moment. "Nothing now but plain sailing. Ah! it's a great day for dear Richard! I couldn't sleep last night on the train for thinking of him."

As Oliver looked down into Nathan's eyes, glistening with hope and happiness, he wondered whether, after all these long years of waiting, his father's genius was really to be rewarded? Was it the same old story of success--one so often ending in defeat and gloom, he thought, or had the problem really been solved? He knew that the machine had stood its initial test and had developed a certain lifting power; his father's word a.s.sured him of that; but would it continue to develop in proportion to its size?

He turned again toward Richard. The dear face was a-light with a new certainty; the eyes brilliant, the smiles about the lips coming and going like summer clouds across the sun. Such enthusiasm was not to be resisted. A fresh hope rose in the son's heart. Could this now almost a.s.sured success of his father's help him with Madge? Would their long waiting come any nearer to being ended? Would the sum of money realized be large enough to pay off the dreaded mortgage, and there still be enough for the dear home and its inmates?

He knew how large this hoped-for sum must be, and how closely his own and his mother's honor were involved in its cancellation. Her letter had indeed stated the facts--this motor was now their only hope outside the work of his own brush.

Perhaps, after all, his lucky day had come. The first gleam of light had been this order of Peter Fish's to paint his daughter, and now here, sitting beside him, was his father with a letter in his pocket addressed to Amos Cobb from one of the richest men in New York, who stood ready to pay a small fortune for the motor. Then he thought of his mother. What a delight it would be when she could be freed from the millstone that had hung around her neck for years.

He must go and tell Margaret and take his father and Nathan with him.

Yes, his lucky day HAD come.