CHAPTER I.

Which is of Introductory Character.

Our National Convention met in Chicago that year, and I was one of the

delegates. I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. I was now,

at five o'clock of the first day, admitting to myself that it was a

bore.

The special train, with its crowd of overstimulated enthusiasts, the

throngs at the stations, the brass bands, bunting, and buncombe all

jarred upon me. After a while my treason was betrayed to the boys by the

fact that I was not hoarse. They punished me by making me sing as a solo

the air of each stanza of "Marching Through Georgia," "Tenting To-night

on the Old Camp-ground," and other patriotic songs, until my voice was

assimilated to theirs. But my gorge rose at it all, and now, at five

o'clock of the first day, I was seeking a place of retirement where I

could be alone and think over the marvelous event which had suddenly

raised me from yesterday's parity with the fellows on the train to my

present state of exaltation.

I should have preferred a grotto in Vau Vau or some south-looking

mountain glen; but in the absence of any such retreat in Chicago, I

turned into the old art-gallery in Michigan Avenue. As I went floating

in space past its door, my eye caught through the window the gleam of

the white limbs of statues, and my being responded to the soul

vibrations they sent out. So I paid my fee, entered, and found the

tender solitude for which my heart longed. I sat down and luxuriated in

thoughts of the so recent marvelous experience. Need I explain that I

was young and the experience was one of the heart?

I was so young that my delegateship was regarded as a matter to excite

wonder. I saw my picture in the papers next morning as a youth of

twenty-three who had become his party's leader in an important

agricultural county. Some, in the shameless laudation of a sensational

press, compared me to the younger Pitt. As a matter of fact, I had some

talent for organization, and in any gathering of men, I somehow never

lacked a following. I was young enough to be an honest partisan,

enthusiastic enough to be useful, strong enough to be respected,

ignorant enough to believe my party my country's safeguard, and I was

prominent in my county before I was old enough to vote. At twenty-one I

conducted a convention fight which made a member of Congress. It was

quite natural, therefore, that I should be delegate to this convention,

and that I had looked forward to it with keen expectancy. The remarkable

thing was my falling off from its work now by virtue of that recent

marvelous experience which as I have admitted was one of the heart. Do

not smile. At three-and-twenty even delegates have hearts.

My mental and sentimental state is of importance in this history, I

think, or I should not make so much of it. I feel sure that I should not

have behaved just as I did had I not been at that moment in the

iridescent cloudland of newly-reciprocated love. Alice had accepted me

not an hour before my departure for Chicago. Hence my loathing for such

things as nominating speeches and the report of the Committee on

Credentials, and my yearning for the Vau Vau grotto. She had yielded

herself up to me with such manifold sweetnesses, uttered and unutterable

(all of which had to be gone over in my mind constantly to make sure of

their reality), that the contest in Indiana, and the cause of our own

State's Favorite Son, became sickening burdens to me, which rolled away

as I gazed upon the canvases in the gallery. I lay back upon a seat,

half closed my eyes, and looked at the pictures. When one comes to

consider the matter, an art gallery is a wonderfully different thing

from a national convention!

As I looked on them, the still paintings became instinct with life.

Yonder shepherdess shielding from the thorns the little white lamb was

Alice, and back behind the clump of elms was myself, responding to her

silvery call. The cottage on the mountain-side was ours. That lady

waving her handkerchief from the promontory was Alice, too; and I was

the dim figure on the deck of the passing ship. I was the knight and

she the wood-nymph; I the gladiator in the circus, she the Roman lady

who agonized for me in the audience; I the troubadour who twanged the

guitar, she the princess whose fair shoulder shone through the lace at

the balcony window. They lived and moved before my very eyes. I knew the

unseen places beyond the painted mountains, and saw the secret things

the artists only dreamed of. Doves cooed for me from the clumps of

thorn; the clouds sailed in pearly serenity across the skies, their

shadows mottling mountain, hill, and plain; and out from behind every

bole, and through every leafy screen, glimpsed white dryads and fleeing

fays.

Clearly the convention hall was no place for me. "Hang the speech of the

temporary chairman, anyhow!" thought I; "and as for the platform, let it

point with pride, and view with apprehension, to its heart's content; it

is sure to omit all reference to the overshadowing issue of the

day--Alice!"

All the world loves a lover, and a true lover loves all the

world,--especially that portion of it similarly blessed. So, when I

heard a girl's voice alternating in intimate converse with that of a

man, my sympathies went out to them, and I turned silently to look. They

must have come in during my reverie; for I had passed the place where

they were sitting and had not seen them. There was a piece of grillwork

between my station and theirs, through which I could see them plainly.

The gallery had seemed deserted when I went in, and still seemed so,

save for the two voices.

Hers was low and calm, but very earnest; and there was in it some

inflection or intonation which reminded me of the country girls I had

known on the farm and at school. His was of a peculiarly sonorous and

vibrant quality, its every tone so clear and distinct that it would have

been worth a fortune to a public speaker. Such a voice and enunciation

are never associated with any mind not strong in the qualities of

resolution and decision.

On looking at her, I saw nothing countrified corresponding to the voice.

She was dressed in something summery and cool, and wore a sort of

flowered blouse, the presence of which was explained by the easel before

which she sat, and the palette through which her thumb protruded. She

had laid down her brush, and the young man was using her mahlstick in a

badly-directed effort to smear into a design some splotches of paint on

the unused portion of her canvas.

He was by some years her senior, but both were young--she, very young.

He was swarthy of complexion, and his smoothly-shaven, square-set jaw

and full red lips were bluish with the subcutaneous blackness of his

beard. His dress was so distinctly late in style as to seem almost

foppish; but there was nothing of the exquisite in his erect and

athletic form, or in his piercing eye.

She was ruddily fair, with that luxuriant auburn-brown hair which goes

with eyes of amberish-brown and freckles. These latter she had, I

observed with a renewal of the thought of the country girls and the old

district school. She was slender of waist, full of bust, and, after a

lissome, sylph-like fashion, altogether charming in form. With all her

roundness, she was slight and a little undersized.

So much of her as there was, the young fellow seemed ready to absorb,

regarding her with avid eyes--a gaze which she seldom met. But whenever

he gave his attention to the mahlstick, her eyes sought his countenance

with a look which was almost scrutiny. It was as if some extrinsic force

drew her glance to his face, until the stronger compulsion of her

modesty drove it away at the return of his black orbs. My heart

recognized with a throb the freemasonry into which I had lately been

initiated, and, all unknown to them, I hailed them as members of the

order.

Their conversation came to me in shreds and fragments, which I did not

at all care to hear. I recognized in it those inanities with which youth

busies the lips, leaving the mind at rest, that the interplay of

magnetic discharges from heart to heart may go on uninterruptedly. It is

a beautiful provision of nature, but I did not at that time admire it. I

pitied them. Alice and I had passed through that stage, and into the

phase marked by long and eloquent silences.

"I was brought up to think," I remember to have heard the fair stranger

say, following out, apparently, some subject under discussion between

them, "that the surest way to make a child steal jam is to spy upon him.

I should feel ashamed."

"Quite right," said he, "but in Europe and in the East, and even here in

Chicago, in some circles, it is looked upon as indispensable, you

know."

"In art, at least," she went on, "there is no sex. Whoever can help me

in my work is a companion that I don't need any chaperon to protect me

from. If I wasn't perfectly sure of that, I should give up and go back

home."

"Now, don't draw the line so as to shut me out," he protested. "How can

I help you with your work?"

She looked him steadily in the face now, her intent and questioning

regard shading off into a somewhat arch smile.

"I can't think of any way," said she, "unless it would be by posing for

me."

"There's another way," he answered, "and the only one I'd care about."

She suddenly became absorbed in the contemplation of the paints on her

palette, at which she made little thrusts with a brush; and at last she

queried, doubtfully, "How?"

"I've heard or read," he answered, "that no artist ever rises to the

highest, you know, until after experiencing some great love. I--can't

you think of any other way besides the posing?"

She brought the brush close to her eyes, minutely inspecting its point

for a moment, then seemed to take in his expression with a swift

sweeping glance, resumed the examination of the brush, and finally

looked him in the face again, a little red spot glowing in her cheek,

and a glint of fire in her eye. I was too dense to understand it, but I

felt that there was a trace of resentment in her mien.

"Oh, I don't know about that!" she said. "There may be some other way. I

haven't met all your friends, and you may be the means of introducing me

to the very man."

I did not hear his reply, though I confess I tried to catch it. She

resumed her work of copying one of the paintings. This she did in a

mechanical sort of way, slowly, and with crabbed touches, but with some

success. I thought her lacking in anything like control over the medium

in which she worked; but the results promised rather well. He seemed

annoyed at her sudden accession of industry, and looked sometimes

quizzically at her work, often hungrily at her. Once or twice he touched

her hand as she stepped near him; but she neither reproved him nor

allowed him to retain it.

I felt that I had taken her measure by this time. She was some Western

country girl, well supplied with money, blindly groping toward the

career of an artist. Her accent, her dress, and her occupation told of

her origin and station in life, and of her ambitions. The blindness I

guessed,--partly from the manner of her work, partly from the inherent

probabilities of the case. If the young man had been eliminated from

this problem with which my love-sick imagination was busying itself, I

could have followed her back confidently to some rural neighborhood, and

to a year or two of painting portraits from photographs, and landscapes

from "studies," and exhibiting them at the county fair; the teaching of

some pupils, in an unnecessary but conscientiously thrifty effort to get

back some of the money invested in an "art education" in Chicago; and a

final reversion to type after her marriage with the village lawyer,

doctor or banker, or the owner of the adjoining farm. I was young; but I

had studied people, and had already seen such things happen.

But the young man could not be eliminated. He sat there idly, his every

word and look surcharged with passion. As I wondered how long it would

be until they were as happy as Alice and I, the thought grew upon me

that, however familiar might be the type to which she belonged, he was

unclassified. His accent was Eastern--of New York, I judged. He looked

like the young men in the magazine illustrations--interesting, but

outside my field of observation. And I could not fail to see that girl

must find herself similarly at odds with him. "But," thought I, "love

levels all!" And I freshly interrogated the pictures and statues for

transportation to my own private Elysium, forgetful of my unconscious

neighbors.

My attention was recalled to them, however, by their arrangements for

departure, and a concomitant slightly louder tone in their conversation.

"It's just a spectacular show," said he; "no plot or anything of that

sort, you know, but good music and dancing; and when we get tired of it

we can go. We'll have a little supper at Auriccio's afterward, if you'll

be so kind. It's only a step from McVicker's."

"Won't it be pretty late?" she queried.

"Not for Chicago," said he, "and you'll find material for a picture at

Auriccio's about midnight. It's quite like the Latin Quarter,

sometimes."

"I want to see the real Latin Quarter, and no imitation," she answered.

"Oh, I guess I'll go. It'll furnish me with material for a letter to

mamma, however the picture may turn out."

"I'll order supper for the Empress," said he, "and--"

"And for the illustrious Sir John," she added. "But you mustn't call me

that any more. I've been reading her history, and I don't like it. I'm

glad he died on St. Helena, now: I used to feel sorry for him."

"Transfer your pity to the downtrodden Sir John," he replied, "and make

a real living man happy."

They passed out and left me to my dreams. But visions did not return. My

idyl was spoiled. Old-fashioned ideas emerged, and took form in the

plain light of every-day common-sense. I knew the wonderfully gorgeous

spectacle these two young people were going to see at the play that

night, with its lights, its music, its splendidly meretricious

Orientalism. And I knew Auriccio's,--not a disreputable place at all,

perhaps; but free-and-easy, and distinctly Bohemian. I wished that this

little girl, so arrogantly and ignorantly disdainful (as Alice would

have been under the same circumstances) of such European conventions as

the chaperon, so fresh, so young, so full of allurement, so under the

influence of this smooth, dark, and passionate wooer with the vibrant

voice, could be otherwise accompanied on this night of pleasure than by

himself alone.

"It's none of your business," said the voice of that cold-hearted and

slothful spirit which keeps us in our groove, "and you couldn't do

anything, anyhow. Besides, he's abjectly in love with her: would there

be any danger if it were you and your Alice?"

"I'm not at all sure about him or his abjectness," replied my uneasy

conscience. "He knows better than to do this."

"What do you know of either of them?" answered this same Spirit of

Routine. "What signify a few sentences casually overheard? She may be

something quite different; there are strange things in Chicago."

"I'll wager anything," said I hotly, "that she's a good American girl of

the sort I live among and was brought up with! And she may be in

danger."

"If she's that sort of girl," said the Voice, "you may rely upon her to

take care of herself."

"That's pretty nearly true," I admitted.

"Besides," said the Voice illogically, "such things happen every night

in such a city. It's a part of the great tragedy. Don't be Quixotic!"

Here was where the Voice lost its case: for my conscience was stirred

afresh; and I went back to the convention-hall carrying on a joint

debate with myself. Once in the hall, however, I was conscripted into a

war which was raging all through our delegation over the succession in

our membership in the National Committee. I thought no more of the idyl

of the art-gallery until the adjournment for the night.