The Man Between, Amelia Edith Huddleston Barr [the snowy day read aloud txt] 📗

black hair, and on the bands across her shoulders, on her corsage, on her belt, her hands, and even her slippers. Under the electric lights she looked as if she was in a golden aura, scintillating with stars. She took Fred's breath away. He was talking to Ruth, and he could not finish the word he was saying. Ruth thought he was going to faint----"

"Don't tell me such nonsense."

"Well, grandmother, this nonsense is truth. As I said before, Ruth took him aside until he got control of himself; then, as he was Dora's escort, he had to go to her. Ruth introduced them, and as she raised her soft, black eyes to his, and put her hand on his arm, something happened again, but this time it was like possession. He was the courtier in a moment, his eyes flashed back her glances, he gave her smile for smile, and then when they were seated side by side he became inspired and talked as I have told you. It is the truth, grandmother."

"Well, there are many different kinds of fools, but Fred Mostyn is the worst I ever heard tell of. Does he not know that the girl is engaged?"

"Knows it as well as I do."

"None of our family were ever fools before, and I hope Fred will come round quickly. Do you think Dora noticed the impression she made?"

"Yes, Aunt Ruth noticed Dora; and Ruth says Dora 'turned the arrow in the heart wound' all the evening."

"What rubbish you are talking! Say in good English what you mean."

"She tried every moment they, were together to make him more and more in love with her."

"What is her intention? A girl doesn't carry on that way for nothing."

"I do not know. Dora has got beyond me lately. And, grandmother, I am not troubling about the event as it regards Dora or Fred or Basil Stanhope, but as it regards Ethel."

"What have you to do with it?"

"That is just what I want to have clearly understood. Aunt Ruth told me that father and you would be disappointed if I did not marry Fred."

"Well?"

"I am sorry to disappoint you, but I never shall marry Fred Mostyn. Never!"

"I rather think you will have to settle that question with your father, Ethel."

"No. I have settled it with myself. The man has given to Dora all the love that he has to give. I will have a man's whole heart, and not fragments and finger-ends of it."

"To be sure, that is right. But I can't say much, Ethel, when I only know one side of the case, can I? I must wait and hear what Fred has to say. But I like your spirit and your way of bringing what is wrong straight up to question. You are a bit Yorkshire yet, whatever you think gets quick to your tongue, and then out it comes. Good girl, your heart is on your lips."

They talked the afternoon away on this subject, but Madam's last words were not only advisory, they were in a great measure sympathetic. "Be straight with yourself, Ethel," she said, "then Fred Mostyn can do as he likes; you will be all right."

She accepted the counsel with a kiss, and then drove to the Holland House for her father. He was not waiting, as Ruth had supposed he would be, but then she was five minutes too soon. She sent up her card, and then let her eyes fall upon a wretched beggar man who was trying to play a violin, but was unable by reason of hunger and cold. He looked as if he was dying, and she was moved with a great pity, and longed for her father to come and give some help. While she was anxiously watching, a young man was also struck with the suffering on the violinist's face. He spoke a few words to him, and taking the violin, drew from it such strains of melody, that in a few moments a crowd had gathered within the hotel and before it. First there was silence, then a shout of delight; and when it ceased the player's voice thrilled every heart to passionate patriotism, as he sang with magnificent power and feeling--

There is not a spot on this wide-peopled earth
So dear to our heart as the Land of our Birth, etc.

A tumult of hearty applause followed, and then he cried, "Gentlemen, this old man fought for the land of our birth. He is dying of hunger," and into the old man's hat he dropped a bill and then handed it round to millionaire and workingman alike. Ethel's purse was in her hand. As he passed along the curb at which her carriage stood, he looked at her eager face, and with a smile held out the battered hat. She, also smiling, dropped her purse into it. In a few moments the hat was nearly full; the old man and the money were confided to the care of an hotel officer, the stream of traffic and pleasure went on its usual way, and the musician disappeared.

All that evening the conversation turned constantly to this event. Mostyn was sure he was a member of some operatic troupe. "Voices of such rare compass and exceptional training were not to be found among non-professional people," he said, and Judge Rawdon was of his opinion.

"His voice will haunt me for many days," he said. "Those two lines, for instance--

'Tis the home of our childhood, that beautiful spot
Which memory retains when all else is forgot.

The melody was wonderful. I wish we could find out where he is singing. His voice, as I said, haunts my ear."

Ethel might have made the same remark, but she was silent. She had noticed the musician more closely than her father or Fred Mostyn, and when Ruth Bayard asked her if his personality was interesting, she was able to give a very clear description of the man.

"I do not believe he is a professional singer; he is too young," she answered. "I should think he was about twenty-five years old, tall, slender, and alert. He was fashionably dressed, as if he had been, or was going, to an afternoon reception. Above all things, I should say he was a gentleman."

Oh, why are our hearts so accessible to our eyes? Only a smiling glance had passed between Ethel and the Unknown, yet his image was prisoned behind the bars of her eyelids. On this day of days she had met Love on the crowded street, and he had


"But touched his lute wherein was audible
The certain secret thing he had to tell;
Only their mirrored eyes met silently";


and a sweet trouble, a restless, pleasing curiosity, had filled her consciousness. Who was he? Where had he gone to? When should they meet again? Ah, she understood now how Emmeline Labiche had felt constrained to seek her lover from the snows of Canada to the moss-veiled oaks of Louisiana.

But her joyous, hopeful soul could not think of love and disappointment at the same moment. "I have seen him, and I shall see him again. We met by appointment. Destiny introduced us. Neither of us will forget, and somewhere, some day, I shall be waiting, and he will come."

Thus this daughter of sunshine and hope answered herself; and why not? All good things come to those who can wait in sweet tranquillity for them, and seldom does Fortune fail to bring love and heart's-ease upon the changeful stream of changeful days to those who trust her for them.

On the following morning, when the two girls entered the parlor, they found the Judge smoking there. He had already breakfasted, and looked over the three or four newspapers whose opinions he thought worthy of his consideration. They were lying in a state of confusion at his side, and Ethel glanced at them curiously.

"Did any of the papers speak of the singing before the Holland House?" she asked.

"Yes. I think reporters must be ubiquitous. All my papers had some sort of a notice of the affair."

"What do they say?"

"One gave the bare circumstances of the case; another indulged in what was supposed to be humorous description; a third thought it might have been the result of a bet or dare; a fourth was of the opinion that conspiracy between the old beggar and the young man was not unlikely, and credited the exhibition as a cleverly original way of obtaining money. But all agreed in believing the singer to be a member of some opera company now in the city."

Ethel was indignant. "It was neither 'bet' nor 'dare' nor 'conspiracy,'" she said. "I saw the singer as he came walking rapidly down the avenue, and he looked as happy and careless as a boy whistling on a country lane. When his eyes fell on the old man he hesitated, just a moment, and then spoke to him. I am sure they were absolute strangers to each other."

"But how can you be sure of a thing like that, Ethel?"

"I don't know 'how,' Ruth, but all the same, I am sure. And as for it being a new way of begging, that is not correct. Not many years ago, one of the De Reszke brothers led a crippled soldier into a Paris cafe, and sang the starving man into comfort in twenty minutes."

"And the angelic Parepa Rosa did as much for a Mexican woman, whom she found in the depths of sorrow and poverty--brought her lifelong comfort with a couple of her songs. Is it not likely, then, that the gallant knight of the Holland House is really a member of some opera company, that he knew of these examples and followed them?"

"It is not unlikely, Ruth, yet I do not believe that is the explanation."

"Well," said the Judge, throwing his cigarette into the fire, "if the singer had never heard of De Reszke and Parepa Rosa, we may suppose him a gentleman of such culture as to be familiar with the exquisite Greek legend of Phoebus Apollo--that story would be sufficient to inspire any man with his voice. Do you know it?"

Both girls answered with an enthusiastic entreaty for its recital, and the Judge went to the library and returned with a queer-looking little book, bound in marbled paper.

"It was my father's copy," he said, "an Oxford edition." And he turned the leaves with loving carefulness until he came to the incident. Then being a fine reader, the words fell from his lips in a stately measure better than music:

"After Troy fell there came to Argos a scarred soldier seeking alms. Not deigning to beg, he played upon a lyre; but the handling of arms had robbed him of his youthful power, and he stood by the portico hour after hour, and no one dropped him a lepton. Weary, hungry and thirsty, he leaned in despair against a pillar. A youth came to him and asked, 'Why not play on, Akeratos?' And Akeratos meekly answered, 'I am no longer skilled.' 'Then,' said the stranger, 'hire me thy lyre; here is a didrachmon. I will play, and thou shalt hold out thy cap and be dumb.' So the stranger took the lyre and swept the strings, and men heard, as it were, the clashing of swords. And he sang the fall of Troy--how Hector