"Crack! Crack! Crack! Take that, you black hound, and that, and that!"
Uncle Tom cringed under the blows of an imaginary lash, and Legree seated himself at the long table. A bearded man at the head promptly became little Eva, with a piping voice. "Uncle Tom, dear Uncle Tom, I fear I am going to die in the last act."
The faithful slave gulped at his claret and water and replied tearfully, "Dar, dar, Miss Eba, yo" bre"k dis pore ole man"s heart!"
"And, dear Uncle Tom, remember that the colored quartet will slink in and sing "Rock of Ages" while I am dying on a camp bed in the parlor.
Think of that, you black hound!"
"Indeed, that is what I am apprehending, Miss St. Clair," returned Uncle Tom, this time in polished accents and with marked urbanity. "And you are doubtless aware that I shall have to be present and listen to it.
Come, then, little one! If you must die, come with me into the back yard where the quartet can"t find us, and I will feed you to the nice hungry bloodhounds. They"ve had nothing since tea."
Ewing listened, aghast. He had once gone with Ben in Durango to see "Uncle Tom"s Cabin," and both of them had wept at its heartrending crisis. It embarra.s.sed him now to hear its pathos blasphemed, embarra.s.sed him because he felt a sort of shamed mirth. He was glad that Ben was not by.
Piersoll and his publisher still discussed literature. Layton was now setting forth the superior state of the latter-day author over those of the past.
"Those old fellows had no market--publishers were a sleepy lot. Think what could have been done with "Paradise Lost," ill.u.s.trated by Hulston with about fifty half tones and marginal decorations, and an elegant binding, properly advertised with testimonials from clergymen and leading actresses and senators and prominent college presidents. I tell you, gentlemen," he concluded, earnestly, "this is the golden age of letters!"
This phrase unhappily reaching the big table in a moment of quiet, made an instant sensation.
"The golden age of letters!" was echoed in concert by eight men who arose solemnly and bowed to the embarra.s.sed Layton. He tried to smile tolerantly, as if he knew a joke when he saw one. They sat down and turned to stare at him with extravagant awe, catching his eye when they could and drinking to the golden age. Piersoll grinned cheerfully at them. Ewing was puzzled.
"I like this place for its literary atmosphere," said one loudly, gazing over the head of Layton. "Don"t you all just love literature?" "Oh, I simply adore it!" answered the next man. "I really can"t say what I should do without books. I think they improve the mind."
Now they hitched their chairs about so that they could regard Layton more easily, though they affected to be unconscious of his presence.
"It _does_ seem to me that literature is good to read," ventured another conservatively, "but then, _I_ love music and flowers and the little birds."
"I should die without literature," insisted another--"it"s so good and excellent. Oh, why do not more people read literature and be decent!"
"Now you take Henry James," began another, judicially, "he"s a bright writer, but he can"t touch the great throbbing heart of the public like Hall Caine can."
"What _is_ a Hall Caine can?" demanded the whiskered person bluntly. "I thought they kept "em in jars."
Layton rose, genially bidding his host and Ewing good night. The men at the long table rose with him, bowed ceremoniously, and chanted "the golden age of letters" as he pa.s.sed--all but one, who sobbed bitterly because poor Shakespeare had not lived to see it.
Ewing was still dazed, but he had slowly been growing cheerful. He felt that he could almost understand this strange fooling. He would have been glad to observe it still from a distance, but Piersoll took him to the long table when Layton had gone. The others made room for them, and Ewing responded somewhat timidly to the introductions that Piersoll performed. He was a little anxious lest he be made a part or target of their sport and show himself awkward under the ordeal. For the moment, however, there were remarks about the undesirability of "tradesmen" as guests of the club.
"I know a lovely delicatessen merchant," said one brightly, "a most interesting person. He says this is the golden age of cooked provisions.
I must have him round the next time Layton is brought in."
"I can get a plumber from over on Eighth Avenue," volunteered another.
"We might have a "trade" night, if Layton will come. Of course they"ll talk about nothing but how to sell their wares, but they"ll have a good time together."
Presently they forsook this theme, and Ewing found himself talking to Chalmers, an ill.u.s.trator with whose work he had long been familiar.
Though Chalmers drew Western subjects, Ewing was amazed at his confession that he had never been west of Jersey City. Chalmers, on the other hand, was delighted to learn that Ewing had so long been a part of that life which he had portrayed from afar, and was at once profuse with offers of help when Ewing explained his situation. He was eager to see his work, and would install him in a studio.
"I know the place for you," he exclaimed, after a moment"s reflection.
"There"s a vacant studio in our building on Forty-second Street. Billy Glynn told me to sublet it and sell the stuff the first chance I had.
You can move in right off if you like it."
Ewing thanked him warmly. It was pleasant to find that the recent Simon Legree had his human side. Two of the other men at the table had studios in the same building: Crandall, who made pictures for a comic weekly, and Baldwin, who was a magazine ill.u.s.trator. They became, like Chalmers, solicitous to oblige the newcomer, and were attentive to Piersoll when he praised, with a quick word or two, the drawings of Ewing. He felt immensely drawn to these men who had dropped their bantering to be kind to him.
The crowd of diners had thinned out until only a few lingered over their coffee. From one or another of these scattered groups would come a burst of laughter at the climax of a story, or a bar of song from one who had reached his playtime of the day, and recked not if he advertised this.
It was an hour of ease in the Monastery, when its inmates expanded in the knowledge that Sunday lay before them. To some, at least, this could be a day of rest.
A musical member came from the rear room to the piano near the long table to play a Liszt rhapsody. When this performer had gone back to his seat one of the men from the big table--he who had lately enacted Little Eva, and whose t.i.tle of "The Brushwood Boy" Ewing at once related to his beard--seated himself at the instrument.
"Heard a great song over on Third Avenue last night," he began. "Wish I could remember--something like this--" His fingers searched for the melody. Ewing caught a transient strain of it and thrilled to recognize Ben"s favorite, a thing he might be singing to his guitar in the far-off lonely cabin at that very moment.
""The Fatal Wedding,"" he ventured to the performer.
"Sure--that"s it! "The Fatal Wedding." Wish you fellows could have heard it--rich! How did it go, now?"
Ewing recklessly hummed the opening bars.
"Go ahead, if you know it!" This came from several of the men. He protested. He would have liked to sing it, yet feared to do so before an audience whose ridicule he had learned to dread. He considered the song to be irreproachable and could understand the apparent enthusiasm about it, but he doubted his worth as a vocalist.
"I don"t believe I"d better try it," he began; "I know the words--it"s the favorite song of an old-time cowboy I"ve lived with, and he does it right. I couldn"t give anything more than a poor imitation of him."
The inciting calls were renewed.
"Go on! Do your worst! Show us how your friend does it! Silence in the back of the hall!"
Piersoll smiled encouragingly and the accompanist struck the opening chords, having at last recalled the air. Ewing diffidently took his place at the end of the piano, with apologetic protests. "I"ll do my best, but you should hear Ben Crider sing this."
The little audience listened with unfeigned delight as he sang of the handsome stranger who wooed the village beauty, only to desert her for "a lady proud and haughty" who had "houses, jewels, land, and gold at her command." The words moved his hearers. Had he not promised them to render the song in his friend"s manner? They felt he was achieving this with rare art. Almost unconsciously, indeed, he sang the song in Ben"s best manner, with a sob in the voice and even with Ben"s strained, sad face as he reached the pitiful climax:
"While they were honeymooning in a mansion on the hill, Kind friends were laying Nellie out behind the mill."
He moved quickly back to his chair almost before the first shouts of laughter dismayed him. He blushed and glanced appealingly from face to face as the applause was swelled by the groups in the rear room. He and Ben had considered this no song to be laughed at. It was too sad. Yet he saw that the applause was a friendly tribute to his performance.
Piersoll was pounding him joyously between the shoulders and Chalmers was urging him to do Ben Crider singing the "Fatal Wedding" at their next club smoker. Baldwin demanded the last verse again, and Ewing sang it, from his chair this time, redoubling his efforts to bring out its pathos.
In the new applause that deafened him he felt rea.s.sured. At least they were not laughing at _him_. He joined weakly in the merriment. The G.o.ds had blessed him with a gift for silence at critical moments. He asked no questions.
As the mirth subsided voices were heard unctuously rehearsing choice lines from the song. A pa.s.sion for the ballad pathetic had been aroused.
Some one called on Chalmers.
"Chalmers has written a song himself--give it to us, Chalmers--the one you sang up at Needham"s the other night." Chalmers took his place and bowed low as the accompanist poised eager hands above the key-board.
"Gentlemen, with your kind attention, I"ll give you a little thing called "Nothing but Mother"--words and music by a party that doesn"t want his real name known because the folks back home might hear of it.
Let her go, Professor!"
In a tw.a.n.gy, nasal voice, not unlike Ben"s, enunciating his words with the fastidious and strained precision of the music-hall balladist, he began:
"The courtroom, it was crowded, All the witnesses was there; The Judge he sat a-frowning In his highly cushioned chair.
They was trying a old lady For the stealing of a horse; They had hauled her to the station, _They_ had dragged her there by force!"
The last line had been achieved with intense, pa.s.sionate emphasis.
Ewing, listening intently, felt the p.r.i.c.king of a nameless suspicion.
The song seemed right enough, and yet some queer, ulterior emotion stirred within him. The air continued in a stirring minor, adapted to the dramatic action: