A Cathedral Singer

[Illustration]

A Cathedral Singer

BY JAMES LANE ALLEN

Author of "The Sword of Youth, " "The Bride of the Mistletoe, " "TheKentucky Cardinal, " "The Choir Invisible, " etc. 

WITH FRONTISPIECE BY SIGISMOND DE IVANOWSKI

NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1916 Copyright, 1914, 1916, by THE CENTURY CO. 

_Published, March, 1916_

TO PITY AND TO FAITH

A Cathedral Singer

I

Slowly on Morningside Heights rises the Cathedral of St. John theDivine: standing on a high rock under the Northern sky above the longwash of the untroubled sea, above the wash of the troubled waves of men. 

It has fit neighbors. Across the street to the north looms themany-towered gray-walled Hospital of St. Luke--cathedral of our ruins, of our sufferings and our dust, near the cathedral of our souls. 

Across the block to the south is situated a shed-like two-story buildingwith dormer-windows and a crumpled three-sided roof, the studios of theNational Academy of Design; and under that low brittle skylight youthtoils over the shapes and colors of the visible vanishing paradise ofthe earth in the shadow of the cathedral which promises an unseen, aneternal one. 

At the rear of the cathedral, across the roadway, stands a low stonewall. Just over the wall the earth sinks like a precipice to a greenvalley bottom far below. Out here is a rugged slope of rock and verdureand forest growth which brings into the city an ancient presence, nature--nature, the Elysian Fields of the art school, the potter's fieldof the hospital, the harvest field of the church. 

This strip of nature fronts the dawn and is called Morningside Park. Past the foot of it a thoroughfare stretches northward and southward, level and wide and smooth. Over this thoroughfare the two opposite-movingstreams of the city's traffic and travel rush headlong. Beyond thethoroughfare an embankment of houses shoves its mass before the eyes, and beyond the embankment the city spreads out over flats where humanbeings are as thick as river reeds. 

Thus within small compass humanity is here: the cathedral, the hospital, the art school, and a strip of nature, and a broad highway along which, with their hearth-fires flickering fitfully under their tents of stone, are encamped life's restless, light-hearted, heavy-hearted Gipsies. 

 * * * * *

It was Monday morning and it was nine o'clock. Over at the NationalAcademy of Design, in an upper room, the members of one of the women'sportrait classes were assembled, ready to begin work. Easels had beendrawn into position; a clear light from the blue sky of the last ofApril fell through the opened roof upon new canvases fastened to theframes. And it poured down bountifully upon intelligent young faces. Thescene was a beautiful one, and it was complete except in one particular:the teacher of the class was missing--the teacher and a model. 

Minutes passed without his coming, and when at last he did enter theroom, he advanced two or three steps and paused as though he meantpresently to go out again. After his usual quiet good-morning with hissober smile, he gave his alert listeners the clue to an unusualsituation:

"I told the class that to-day we should begin a fresh study. I had notmyself decided what this should be. Several models were in reserve, anyone of whom could have been used to advantage at this closing stage ofthe year's course. Then the unexpected happened: on Saturday a stranger, a woman, came to see me and asked to be engaged. It is this model that Ihave been waiting for down-stairs. "

Their thoughts instantly passed to the model: his impressive manner, hisrespectful words, invested her with mystery, with fascination. Hiscountenance lighted up with wonderful interest as he went on:

"She is not a professional; she has never posed. In asking me to engageher she proffered barely the explanation which she seemed to feel dueherself. I turn this explanation over to you because she wished, Ithink, that you also should not misunderstand her. It is the fee, then, that is needed, the model's wage; she has felt the common lash of thepoor. Plainly here is some one who has stepped down from her place inlife, who has descended far below her inclinations, to raise a small sumof money. Why she does so is of course her own sacred and delicateaffair. But the spirit in which she does this becomes our affair, because it becomes a matter of expression with her. This self-sacrifice, this ordeal which she voluntarily undergoes to gain her end, shows inher face; and if while she poses, you should be fortunate enough to seethis look along with other fine things, great things, it will be youraim to transfer them all to your canvases--if you can. "

He smiled at them with a kind of fostering challenge to theirover-confident impulses and immature art. But he had not yet fullybrought out what he had in mind about the mysterious stranger and hecontinued:

"We teachers of art schools in engaging models have to take from humanmaterial as we find it. The best we find is seldom or never what wewould prefer. If I, for instance, could have my choice, my studentswould never be allowed to work from a model who repelled the student orleft the student indifferent. No students of mine, if I could have myway, should ever paint from a model that failed to call forth the finestfeelings. Otherwise, how can your best emotions have full play in yourwork; and unless your best emotions enter into your work, what will yourwork be worth? For if you have never before understood the truth, try torealize it now: that you will succeed in painting only through the bestthat is in you; just as only the best in you will ever carry youtriumphantly to the end of any practical human road that is worth thetravel; just as you will reach all life's best goals only through yourbest. And in painting remember that the best is never in the eye, forthe eye can only perceive, the eye can only direct; and the best isnever in the hand, for the hand can only measure, the hand can onlymove. In painting the best comes from emotion. A human being may lackeyes and be none the poorer in character; a human being may lack handsand be none the poorer in character; but whenever in life a person lacksany great emotion, that person is the poorer in everything. And so inpainting you can fail after the eye has gained all necessary knowledge, you can fail after your hand has received all necessary training, eitherbecause nature has denied you the foundations of great feeling, orbecause, having these foundations, you have failed to make them thefoundations of your work. 

"But among a hundred models there might not be one to arouse suchemotion. Actually in the world, among the thousands of people we know, how few stir in us our best, force us to our best! It is the rarestexperience of our lifetimes that we meet a man or a woman who literallydrives us to the realization of what we really are and can really dowhen we do our best. What we all most need in our careers is the one whocan liberate within us that lifelong prisoner whose doom it is to remaina captive until another sets it free--our best. For we can never set ourbest free by our own hands; that must always be done by another. "

They were listening to him with a startled recognition of their inmostselves. He went on to drive home his point about the stranger:

"I am going to introduce to you, then, a model who beyond all the othersyou have worked with will liberate in you your finer selves. It is arare opportunity. Do not thank me. I did not find her. Life's stormshave blown her violently against the walls of the art school; we mustsee to it at least that she be not further bruised while it becomes hershelter, her refuge. Who she is, what her life has been, where she comesfrom, how she happens to arrive here--these are privacies into which ofcourse we do not intrude. Immediately behind herself she drops a curtainof silence which shuts away every such sign of her past. But there areother signs of that past which she cannot hide and which it is ourprivilege, our duty, the province of our art, to read. They are writtenon her face, on her hands, on her bearing; they are written all overher--the bruises of life's rudenesses, the lingering shadows of darkdays, the unwounded pride once and the wounded pride now, theunconquerable will, a soaring spirit whose wings were meant for theupper air but which are broken and beat the dust. All these are sublimethings to paint in any human countenance; they are the footprints ofdestiny on our faces. The greatest masters of the brush that the worldhas ever known could not have asked for anything greater. When youbehold her, perhaps some of you may think of certain brief but eternalwords of Pascal: 'Man is a reed that bends but does not break. ' Such isyour model, then, a woman with a great countenance; the fighting face ofa woman at peace. Now out upon the darkened battle-field of thiswoman's face shines one serene sun, and it is that sun that brings outupon it its marvelous human radiance, its supreme expression: the loveof the mother. Your model is the beauty of motherhood, the sacredness ofmotherhood, the glory of motherhood: that is to be the portrait of herthat you are to paint. "

He stopped. Their faces glowed; their eyes disclosed depths in theirnatures never stirred before; from out those depths youthful, tendercreative forces came forth, eager to serve, to obey. He added a fewparticulars:

"For a while after she is posed you will no doubt see many differentexpressions pass rapidly over her face. This will be a new and painfulexperience to which she will not be able to adapt herself at once. Shewill be uncomfortable, she will be awkward, she will be embarrassed, she will be without her full value. But I think from what I discoveredwhile talking with her that she will soon grow oblivious to hersurroundings. They will not overwhelm her; she will finally overwhelmthem. She will soon forget you and me and the studio; the one rulingpassion of her life will sweep back into consciousness; and then outupon her features will come again that marvelous look which has almostremodeled them to itself alone. "

He added, "I will go for her. By this time she must be waitingdown-stairs. "

As he turned he glanced at the screens placed at that end of the room;behind these the models made their preparations to pose. 

"I have arranged, " he said significantly, "that she shall leave herthings down-stairs. "

It seemed long before they heard him on the way back. He came slowly, asthough concerned not to hurry his model, as though to save her from thedisrespect of urgency. Even the natural noise of his feet on the barehallway was restrained. They listened for the sounds of her footsteps. In the tense silence of the studio a pin-drop might have beennoticeable, a breath would have been audible; but they could not hearher footsteps. He might have been followed by a spirit. Those feet ofhers must be very light feet, very quiet feet, the feet of thewell-bred. 

He entered and advanced a few paces and turned as though to make way forsome one of far more importance than himself; and there walked forwardand stopped at a delicate distance from them all a woman, bareheaded, ungloved, slender, straight, of middle height, and in life's middleyears--Rachel Truesdale. 

She did not look at him or at them; she did not look at anything. It wasnot her role to notice. She merely waited, perfectly composed, to betold what to do. Her thoughts and emotions did not enter into the sceneat all; she was there solely as having been hired for work. 

One privilege she had exercised unsparingly--not to offer herself forthis employment as becomingly dressed for it. She submitted herself tobe painted in austerest fidelity to nature, plainly dressed, her hairparted and brushed severely back. Women, sometimes great women, have inhistory, at the hour of their supreme tragedies, thus demeanedthemselves--for the hospital, for baptism, for the guillotine, for thestake, for the cross. 

But because she made herself poor in apparel, she became most rich inher humanity. There was nothing for the eye to rest upon but her bareself. And thus the contours of the head, the beauty of the hair, theline of it along the forehead and temples, the curvature of the brows, the chiseling of the proud nostrils and the high bridge of the nose, themolding of the mouth, the modeling of the throat, the shaping of theshoulders, the grace of the arms and the hands--all became conspicuous, absorbing. The slightest elements of physique and of personality cameinto view powerful, unforgetable. 

She stood, not noticing anything, waiting for instructions. With thecourtesy which was the soul of him and the secret of his genius forinspiring others to do their utmost, the master of the class glanced ather and glanced at the members of the class, and tried to draw themtogether with a mere smile of sympathetic introduction. It was anattempt to break the ice. For them it did break the ice; all respondedwith a smile for her or with other play of the features that meantgracious recognition. With her the ice remained unbroken; she withheldall response to their courteous overtures. Either she may not havetrusted herself to respond; or waiting there merely as a model, shedeclined to establish any other understanding with them whatsoever. Sothat he went further in the kindness of his intention and said:

"Madam, this is my class of eager, warm, generous young natures who areto have the opportunity of trying to paint you. They are mere beginners;their art is still unformed. But you may believe that they will puttheir best into what they are about to undertake; the loyalty of thehand, the respect of the eye, the tenderness of their memories, consecration to their art, their dreams and hopes of future success. Nowif you will be good enough to sit here, I will pose you. "

He stepped toward a circular revolving-platform placed at the focus ofthe massed easels: it was the model's rack of patience, the mount ofhumiliation, the scaffold of exposure. 

She had perhaps not understood that this would be required of her, thisindignity, that she must climb upon a block like an old-time slave at anauction. For one instant her fighting look came back and her eyes, though they rested on vacancy, blazed on vacancy and an ugly red rushedover her face which had been whiter than colorless. Then as though shehad become disciplined through years of necessity to do the unworthythings that must be done, she stepped resolutely though unsteadily uponthe platform. A long procession of men and women had climbed thitherfrom many a motive on life's upward or downward road. 

He had specially chosen a chair for a three-quarter portrait, stately, richly carved; about it hung an atmosphere of high-born things. 

Now, the body has definite memories as the mind has definite memories, and scarcely had she seated herself before the recollections of formeryears revived in her and she yielded herself to the chair as though shehad risen from it a moment before. He did not have to pose her; she hadposed herself by grace of bygone luxurious ways. A few changes in thearrangement of the hands he did make. There was required some separationof the fingers; excitement caused her to hold them too closely together. And he drew the entire hands into notice; he specially wished them to beappreciated in the portrait. They were wonderful hands: they lookedeloquent with the histories of generations; their youthfulness seemedcenturies old. Yet all over them, barely to be seen, were the marks oflife's experience, the delicate but dread sculpture of adversity. 

For a while it was as he had foreseen. She was aware only of thebrutality of her position; and her face, by its confused expressions andquick changes of color, showed what painful thoughts surged. Afterward achange came gradually. As though she could endure the ordeal only byforgetting it and could forget it only by looking ahead into thehappiness for which it was endured, slowly there began to shine out uponher face its ruling passion--the acceptance of life and the love of themother glinting as from a cloud-hidden sun across the world's storm. When this expression had come out, it stayed there. She had forgottenher surroundings, she had forgotten herself. Poor indeed must have beenthe soul that would not have been touched by the spectacle of her, thrilled by her as by a great vision. 

There was silence in the room of young workers. Before them, on the faceof the unknown, was the only look that the whole world knows--the loveand self-sacrifice of the mother; perhaps the only element of our betterhumanity that never once in the history of mankind has been misunderstoodand ridiculed or envied and reviled. 

Some of them worked with faces brightened by thoughts of devoted mothersat home; the eyes of a few were shadowed by memories of mothersalienated or dead. 

II

That morning on the ledge of rock at the rear of the cathedral Naturehinted to passers what they would more abundantly see if fortunateenough to be with her where she was entirely at home--out in thecountry. 

The young grass along the foot of this slope was thick and green;imagination missed from the picture rural sheep, their fleeces wet withApril rain. Along the summit of the slope trees of oak and ash and mapleand chestnut and poplar lifted against the sky their united foreststrength. Between the trees above and the grass below, the embankmentspread before the eye the enchantment of a spring landscape, with latebare boughs and early green boughs and other boughs in blossom. 

The earliest blossoms on our part of the earth's surface are nearlyalways white. They have forced their way to the sun along a frozen pathand look akin to the perils of their road: the snow-threatened lily ofthe valley, the chill snowdrop, the frosty snowball, the bleak hawtree, the wintry wild cherry, the wintry dogwood. As the eye swept the parkexpanse this morning, here and there some of these were as the lasttokens of winter's mantle instead of the first tokens of summer's. 

There were flushes of color also, as where in deep soil, on a projectionof rock, a pink hawthorn stood studded to the tips of its branches withleaf and flower. But such flushes of color were as false notes of theearth, as harmonies of summer thrust into the wrong places and becomediscords. The time for them was not yet. The hour called for hardyadventurous things, awakened out of their cold sleep on the rocks. Theblue of the firmament was not dark summer blue but seemed the sky'sfirst pale response to the sun. The sun was not rich summer gold butflashed silver rays. The ground scattered no odors; all was the buddingyouth of Nature on the rocks. 

Paths wind hither and thither over this park hillside. Benches areplaced at different levels along the way. If you are going up, you mayrest; if you are coming down, you may linger; if neither going up norcoming down, you may with a book seek out some retreat of shade andcoolness and keep at a distance the millions that rush and crush aroundthe park as waters roar against some lone mid-ocean island. 

About eleven o'clock that morning, on one of these benches placed whererock is steepest and forest trees stand close together and vines arerank with shade, a sociable-looking little fellow of some ten hardywell-buffeted years had sat down for the moment without a companion. Hehad thrown upon the bench beside him his sun-faded, rain-faded, shapeless cap, uncovering much bronzed hair; and as though by thissimple act he had cleared the way for business, he thrust onecapable-looking hand deep into one of his pockets. The fingers closedupon what they found there, like the meshes of a deep-sea net filledwith its catch, and were slowly drawn to the surface. The catchconsisted of one-cent and five-cent pieces, representing the sales ofhis morning papers. He counted the coins one by one over into the palmof the other hand, which then closed upon the total like another net, and dropped the treasure back into the deep sea of the other pocket. 

His absorption in this process had been intense; his satisfaction withthe result was complete. Perhaps after every act of successful bankingthere takes place in the mind of man, spendthrift and miser, a momentarylull of energy, a kind of brief _Pax vobiscum_ my soul and stomach, my twin masters of need and greed! And possibly, as the lad depositedhis earnings, he was old enough to enter a little way into this adultand despicable joy. Be this as it may, he was not the next instant upagain and busy. He caught up his cap, dropped it not on his head but onone of his ragged knees; planted a sturdy hand on it and the othersturdy hand on the other knee; and with his sturdy legs swinging underthe bench, toe kicking heel and heel kicking toe, he rested brieflyfrom life's battle. 

The signs of battle were thick on him, unmistakable. The palpable sign, the conqueror's sign, was the profits won in the struggle of thestreets. The other signs may be set down as loss--dirt and raggednessand disorder. His hair might never have been straightened out with acomb; his hands were not politely mentionable; his coarse shoes, whichseemed to have been bought with the agreement that they were never towear out, were ill-conditioned with general dust and the special grimeof melted pitch from the typical contractor's cheapened asphalt; one ofhis stockings had a fresh rent and old rents enlarged their grievances. 

A single sign of victory was better even than the money in thepocket--the whole lad himself. He was strongly built, franklyfashioned, with happy grayish eyes, which had in them some of the coldwarrior blue of the sky that day; and they were set wide apart in acompact round head, which somehow suggested a bronze sphere on a columnof triumph. Altogether he belonged to that hillside of nature, himself ahuman growth budding out of wintry fortunes into life's April, openingon the rocks hardy and all white. 

But to sit there swinging his legs--this did not suffice to satisfy hisheart, did not enable him to celebrate his instincts; and suddenly fromhis thicket of forest trees and greening bushes he began to pour forth athrilling little tide of song, with the native sweetness of some humanlinnet unaware of its transcendent gift. 

Up the steep hill a man not yet of middle age had mounted from theflats. He was on his way toward the parapet above. He came on slowly, hat in hand, perspiration on his forehead; that climb from base tosummit stretches a healthy walker and does him good. At a turn of theroad under the forest trees with shrubbery alongside he stoppedsuddenly, as a naturalist might pause with half-lifted foot beside adense copse in which some unknown species of bird sang--a young birdjust finding its notes. 

It was his vocation to discover and to train voices. His definite workin music was to help perpetually to rebuild for the world thatever-sinking bridge of sound over which Faith aids itself inwalking-toward the eternal. This bridge of falling notes is as Nature'sbridge of falling drops: individual drops appear for an instant in therainbow, then disappear, but century after century the great archstands there on the sky unshaken. So throughout the ages the bridge ofsacred music, in which individual voices are heard a little while andthen are heard no longer, remains for man as one same structure of rockby which he passes over from the mortal to the immortal. 

Such was his life-work. As he now paused and listened, you might haveinterpreted his demeanor as that of a professional musician whose earsbrought tidings that greatly astonished him. The thought had at oncecome to him of how the New York papers once in a while print a story ofthe accidental finding in it of a wonderful voice--in New York, whereyou can find everything that is human. He recalled throughout thehistory of music instances in which some one of the world's famoussingers had been picked up on life's road where it was roughest. Wasanything like this now to become his own experience? Falling on his earwas an unmistakable gift of song, a wandering, haunting, unidentifiednote under that early April blue. He had never heard anything like it. It was a singing soul. 

Voice alone did not suffice for his purpose; the singer's face, personality, manners, some unfortunate strain in the blood, might debarthe voice, block its acceptance, ruin everything. He almost dreaded towalk on, to explore what was ahead. But his road led that way, and threesteps brought him around the woody bend of it. 

There he stopped again. In an embrasure of rock on which vines wereturning green, a little fellow, seasoned by wind and sun, with acountenance open and friendly, like the sky, was pouring out his fullheart. 

The instant the man came into view, the song was broken off. The sturdyfigure started up and sprang forward with the instinct of business. Whenany one paused and looked questioningly at him, as this man now did, itmeant papers and pennies. His inquiry was quite breathless:

"Do you want a paper, Mister? What paper do you want? I can get you oneon the avenue in a minute. "

He stood looking up at the man, alert, capable, fearless, ingratiating. The man had instantly taken note of the speaking voice, which is often asafer first criterion to go by than the singing voice itself. Hepronounced it sincere, robust, true, sweet, victorious. And very quicklyalso he made up his mind that conditions must have been rare andfortunate with the lad at his birth: blood will tell, and blood toldnow even in this dirt and in these rags. 

His reply bore testimony to how appreciative he felt of all that facedhim there so humanly on the rock. 

"Thank you, " he said, "I have read the papers. "

Having thus disposed of some of the lad's words, he addressed a pointedquestion to the rest:

"But how did you happen to call me mister? I thought boss was what youlittle New-Yorkers generally said. "

"I'm not a New-Yorker, " announced the lad, with ready courtesy and goodnature. "I don't say boss. We are Southerners. I say mister. "

He gave the man an unfavorable look as though of a mind to take his truemeasure; also as being of a mind to let the man know that he had nottaken the boy's measure. 

The man smiled at being corrected to such good purpose; but before hecould speak again, the lad went on to clinch his correction:

"And I only say mister when I am selling papers and am not at home. "

"What do you say when not selling papers and when you are at home?"asked the man, forced to a smile. 

"I say 'sir, ' if I say anything, " retorted the lad, flaring up, butstill polite. 

The man looked at him with increasing interest. Another word in thelad's speech had caught his attention--Southerner. 

That word had been with him a good deal in recent years; he had notquite seemed able to get away from it. Nearly all classes of people inNew York who were not Southerners had been increasingly reminded thatthe Southerners were upon them. He had satirically worked it out in hisown mind that if he were ever pushed out of his own position, it wouldbe some Southerner who pushed him. He sometimes thought of the whole NewYork professional situation as a public wonderful awful dinner at whichalmost nothing was served that did not have a Southern flavor as from akind of pepper. The guests were bound to have administered to them theirshares of this pepper; there was no getting away from the table and nogetting the pepper out of the dinner. There was the intrusion of theSouth into every delicacy. 

"We are Southerners, " the lad had announced decisively; and there theflavor was again, though this time as from a mere pepper-box in a schoolbasket. Thus his next remark was addressed to his own thoughts as wellas to the lad:

"And so _you_ are a Southerner!" he reflected audibly, looking down atthe Southern plague in small form. 

"Why, yes, Mister, we are Southerners, " replied the lad, with a gay andcareless patriotism; and as giving the handy pepper-box a shake, hebegan to dust the air with its contents: "I was born on an old Southernbattle-field. When Granny was born there, it had hardly stopped smoking;it was still piled with wounded and dead Northerners. Why, one of theworst batteries was planted in our front porch. "

This enthusiasm as to the front porch was assumed to be acceptable tothe listener. The battery might have been a Cherokee rose. 

The man had listened with a quizzical light in his eyes. 

"In what direction did you say that battery was pointed?"

"I didn't say; but it was pointed up this way, of course. "

The man laughed outright. 

"And so you followed in the direction of the deadly Southern shell andcame north--as a small grape-shot!"

"But, Mister, that was long ago. They had their quarrel out long ago. That's the way we boys do: fight it out and make friends again. Don'tyou do that way?"

"It's a very good way to do, " said the man. "And so you sell papers?"

"I sell papers to people in the park, Mister, and back up on the avenue. Granny is particular. I'm not a regular newsboy. "

"I heard you singing. Does anybody teach you?"

"Granny. "

"And so your grandmother is your music teacher?"

It was the lad's turn to laugh. 

"Granny isn't my grandmother; Granny is my mother. "

Toppling over in the dust of imagination went a gaunt granny image; inits place a much more vital being appeared just behind the form of thelad, guarding him even now while he spoke. 

"And so your mother takes pupils?"

"Only me. "

"Has any one heard you sing?"

"Only she. "

It had become more and more the part of the man during this colloquy tosmile; he felt repeatedly in the flank of his mind a jab of the comicspur. Now he laughed at the lad's deadly preparedness; businesscompetition in New York had taught him that he who hesitates a moment islost. The boy seemed ready with his answers before he heard the man'squestions. 

"Do you mind telling me your name?"

"My name is Ashby. Ashby Truesdale. We come from an old English family. What is your name, and what kind of family do you come from, Mister?"

"And where do you live?"

The lad wheeled, and strode to the edge of the rock, --the path alongthere is blasted out of solid rock, --and looking downward, he pointed tothe first row of buildings in the distant flats. 

"We live down there. You see that house in the middle of the block, thelittle old one between the two big ones?"

The man did not feel sure. 

"Well, Mister, you see the statue of Washington and Lafayette?"

The man was certain he saw Washington and Lafayette. 

"Well, from there you follow my finger along the row of houses till youcome to the littlest, oldest, dingiest one. You see it now, don't you?We live up under the roof. "

"What is the number?"

"It isn't any number. It's half a number. We live in the half that isn'tnumbered; the other half gets the number. "

"And you take your music lessons in one half?"

"Why, yes, Mister. Why not?"

"On a piano?"

"Why, yes, Mister; on _my_ piano. "

"Oh, you have a piano, have you?"

"There isn't any sound in about half the keys. Granny says the time hascome to rent a better one. She has gone over to the art school to-day topose to get the money. "

A chill of silence fell between the talkers, the one looking up and theother looking down. The man's next question was put in a more guardedtone:

"Does your mother pose as a model?"

"No, Mister, she doesn't pose as a model. She's posing as herself. Shesaid I must have a teacher. Mister, were _you_ ever poor?"

The man looked the boy over from head to foot. 

"Do you think you are poor?" he asked. 

The good-natured reply came back in a droll tone:

"Well, Mister, we certainly aren't rich. "

"Let us see, " objected the man, as though this were a point which hadbetter not be yielded, and he began with a voice of one reckoning upitems: "Two feet, each cheap at, say, five millions. Two hands--fivemillions apiece for hands. At least ten millions for each eye. Aboutthe same for the ears. Certainly twenty millions for your teeth. Fortymillions for your stomach. On the whole, at a rough estimate you musteasily be worth over one hundred millions. There are quite a number ofold gentlemen in New York, and a good many young ones, who would gladlypay that amount for your investments, for your securities. "

The lad with eager upturned countenance did not conceal his amusementwhile the man drew this picture of him as a living ragged gold-mine, asactually put together and made up of pieces of fabulous treasure. Achild's notion of wealth is the power to pay for what it has not. Thewealth that childhood _is_, escapes childhood; it does not escape theold. What most concerned the lad as to these priceless feet and handsand eyes and ears was the hard-knocked-in fact that many a time heached throughout this reputed treasury of his being for a five-centpiece, and these reputed millionaires, acting together and doing theirlevel best, could not produce one. 

Nevertheless, this fresh and never-before-imagined image of hisself-riches amused him. It somehow put him over into the class ofenormously opulent things; and finding himself a little lonely on thatnew landscape, he cast about for some object of comparison. Thus hismind was led to the richest of all near-by objects. 

"If I were worth a hundred million, " he said, with a satisfied twinklein his eyes, "I would be as rich as the cathedral. "

A significant silence followed. The man broke it with a grave surprisedinquiry:

"How did you happen to think of the cathedral?"

"I didn't happen to think of it; I couldn't help thinking of it. "

"Have you ever been in the cathedral?" inquired the man more gravelystill. 

"Been in it! We go there all the time. It's our church. Why, good Lord!Mister, we are descended from a bishop!"

The man laughed outright long and heartily. 

"Thank you for telling me, " he said as one who suddenly feels himself tohave become a very small object through being in the neighborhood ofsuch hereditary beatitudes and ecclesiastical sanctities. "Are you, indeed? I am glad to know. Indeed, I am!"

"Why, Mister, we have been watching the cathedral from our windows foryears. We can see the workmen away up in the air as they finish onepart and then another part. I can count the Apostles on the roof. Youbegin with James the Less and keep straight on around until you come outat Simon. Big Jim and Pete are in the middle of the row. " He laughed. 

"Surely you are not going to speak of an apostle as Pete! Do you thinkthat is showing proper respect to an apostle?"

"But he was Pete when he was little. He wasn't an apostle then anddidn't have any respect. "

"And you mustn't call an apostle Big Jim! It sounds dreadful!"

"Then why did he try to call himself James the Greater? That soundsdreadful too. As far as size is concerned he is no bigger than theothers: they are all nine and a half feet. The Archangel Gabriel on theroof, he's nine and a half. Everybody standing around on the outside ofthe roof is nine and a half. If Gabriel had been turned a little to oneside, he would blow his trumpet straight over our flat. He didn't blowanywhere one night, for a big wind came up behind him and blew him downand he blew his trumpet at the gutter. But he didn't stay down, " boastedthe lad. 

Throughout his talk he was making it clear that the cathedral was aneighborhood affair; that its haps and mishaps possessed for him theflesh and blood interest of a living person. Love takes mentalpossession of its object and by virtue of his affection the cathedralhad become his companion. 

"You seem rather interested in the cathedral. Very much interested, "remarked the man, strengthening his statement and with increasedattention. 

"Why, of course, Mister. I've been passing there nearly every day sinceI've been selling papers on the avenue. Sometimes I stop and watch themasons. When I went with Granny to the art school this morning, she toldme to go home that way. I have just come from there. They are buildinganother one of the chapels now, and the men are up on the scaffolding. They carried more rock up than they needed and they would walk to theedge and throw big pieces of it down with a smash. The old house theyare using for the choir school is just under there. Sometimes when theclass is practising, I listen from the outside. If they sing high, Ising high; if they sing low, I sing low. Why, Mister, I can sing upto--"

He broke off abruptly. He had been pouring-out all kinds of confidencesto his new-found friend. Now he hesitated. The boldness of his naturedeserted him. The deadly preparedness failed. A shy appealing look cameinto his eyes as he asked his next question--a grave question indeed:

"_Mister, do you love music?_"

"Do I love music?" echoed the startled musician, pierced by thespear-like sincerity of the question, which seemed to go clean throughhim and his knowledge and to point back to childhood's springs offeeling. "Do I love music? Yes, some music, I hope. Some kinds of music, I hope. "

These moderate, chastened words restored the boy's confidence andcompletely captured his friendship. Now he felt sure of his comrade, and he put to him a more searching question:

"Do _you_ know anything about the cathedral?"

The man smiled guiltily. 

"A little. I know a little about the cathedral, " he admitted. 

There was a moment of tense, anxious silence. And now the whole secretcame out:

"Do you know how boys get into the cathedral choir school?"

The man did not answer. He stood looking down at the lad, in whose eyesall at once a great baffled desire told its story. Then he pulled outhis watch and merely said:

"I must be going. Good morning. " He turned his way across the rock. 

Disappointment darkened the lad's face when he saw that he was toreceive no answer; withering blight dried up its joy. But he recoveredhimself quickly. 

"Well, I must be going, too, " he said bravely and sweetly. "Goodmorning. " He turned his way across the rock. But he had had a good timetalking with this stranger, and, after all, he _was_ a Southerner; andso, as his head was about to disappear below the cliff, he called backin his frank human gallant way:

"I'm glad I met you, Mister. "

The man went up and the boy went down. 

The man, having climbed to the parapet, leaned over the stone wall. Thetops of some of the tall poplar-trees, rooted far below, were on a levelwith his eyes. Often he stopped there to watch them swaying like uprightplumes against the wind. They swayed now in the silvery April air with aripple of silvery leaves. His eyes sought out intimately the barelyswollen buds on the boughs of other forest trees yet far from leaf. Theylingered on the white blossoms of the various shrubs. They found thepink hawthorn; in the boughs of one of those trees one night in Englandin mid-May he had heard the nightingale, master singer of the non-humanworld. Up to him rose the enchanting hillside picture of grass and mossand fern. It was all like a sheet of soft organ music to hisnature-reading eyes. 

While he gazed, he listened. Down past the shadows and the greenness, through the blossoms and the light, growing fainter and fainter, went awandering little drift of melody, a haunting, unidentified sound underthe blue cathedral dome of the sky. He reflected again that he had neverheard anything like it. It was, in truth, a singing soul. 

Then he saw the lad's sturdy figure bound across the valley to joinfriends in play on the thoroughfare that skirts the park alongside therow of houses. 

He himself turned and went in the direction of the cathedral. 

As he walked slowly along, one thing haunted him remorsefully--theupturned face of the lad and the look in his eyes as he asked thequestion which brought out the secret desire of a life: "Do you know howboys get into the cathedral choir school?" Then the blight ofdisappointment when there was no answer. 

The man walked thoughtfully on, seemingly as one who was turning overand over in his mind some difficult, delicate matter, looking at it onall sides and in every light, as he must do. 

Finally he quickened his pace as though having decided what ought to bedone. He looked the happier for his decision. 

III

That night in an attic-like room of an old building opposite MorningsidePark a tiny supper-table for two stood ready in the middle of the floor;the supper itself, the entire meal, was spread. There is a victory whichhuman nature in thousands of lives daily wins over want, that though itcannot drive poverty from the scene, it can hide its desolation by thegenius of choice and of touch. A battle of that brave and desperate kindhad been won in this garret. Lacking every luxury, it had the charm oftasteful bareness, of exquisite penury. The supper-table of cheap woodroughly carpentered was hidden under a piece of fine long-usedtable-linen; into the gleaming damask were wrought clusters ofsnowballs. The glare of a plain glass lamp was softened by a too costlysilk shade. Over the rim of a common vase hung a few daffodils, toocostly daffodils. The supper, frugal to a bargain, tempted the eye andthe appetite by the good sense with which it had been chosen andprepared. Thus the whole scene betokened human nature at bay butvictorious in the presence of that wolf, whose near-by howl startles thepoor out of their sleep. 

Into this empty room sounds penetrated through a door. They proceededfrom piano-keys evidently so old that one wondered whether possibly theyhad not begun to be played on in the days of Beethoven, whether theywere not such as were new on the clavichord of Bach. The fingers thatpressed them were unmistakably those of a child. As the hands wanderedup and down the keyboard, the ear now and then took notice of a brokenstring. There were many of these broken strings. The instrument plainlyannounced itself to be a remote, well-nigh mythical ancestor of themodern piano, preternaturally lingering on amid an innumerable deafeningprogeny. It suggested a superannuated human being whose loudestutterances have sunk to ghostly whispers in a corner. 

Once the wandering hands stopped and a voice was heard. It sounded asthough pitched to reach some one in an inner room farther away, possiblya person who might just have passed from a kitchen to a bedroom to makesome change of dress. It was a very affectionate voice, very true andsweet, very tender, very endearing. 

"Another string snapped to-day. There's another key silent. There won'tbe any but silent keys soon. "

There must have been a reply. Responding to it, the voice at the pianosounded again, this time very loyal and devoted to an object closer athand:

"But when we do get a better one, we won't kick the old one down-stairs. It has done _its_ best. "

Whereupon the musical ancestor was encouraged to speak up again while hehad a chance, being a very honored ancestor and not by any means dead insome regions. Soon, however, the voice pleaded anew with a kind ofpatient impatience:

"I'm awfully hungry. Aren't you nearly ready?"

The reply could not be heard. 

"Are you putting on the dress _I_ like?"

The reply was not heard. 

"Don't you want me to bring you a daffodil to wear at your throat?"

The reply was lost. For a few minutes the progenitor emptied his ancientlungs of some further moribund intimations of tone. Later came anotherprotest, truly plaintive:

"You couldn't look any nicer! I'm awfully hungry!"

Then all at once there was a tremendous smash on the keys, a joyoussmash, and a moment afterward the door was softly opened. 

Mother and son entered the supper-room. One of his arms was around herwaist, one of hers enfolded him about the neck and shoulders; they werelaughing as they clung to one another. 

The teacher of the portrait class and his pupils would hardly haverecognized their model; the stranger on the hillside might not at oncehave identified the newsboy. For model and newsboy, having laid asidethe masks of the day which so often in New York persons find itnecessary to wear, --- the tragic mask, the comic mask, the callous, coarse, brutal mask, the mask of the human pack, the mask of the humansty, --model and newsboy reappeared at home with each other as nearlywhat in truth they were as the denials of life would allow. 

There entered the room a woman of high breeding, with a certainPallas-like purity and energy of face, clasping to her side her onlychild, a son whom she secretly believed to be destined to greatness. Shewas dressed not with the studied plainness and abnegation of the modelin the studio, but out of regard for her true station and her motherlyresponsibilities. Her utmost wish was that in years to come, when heshould look back upon his childhood, he would always remember withpride his evenings with his mother. During the day he must see herdrudge, and many a picture of herself on a plane of life below her ownshe knew to be fastened to his growing brain; but as nearly as possibleblotting these out, daily blotting them out one by one, must be theevening pictures when the day's work was done, its disguises dropped, its humiliations over, and she, a serving-woman of fate, reappearedbefore him in the lineaments of his mother, to remain with himthroughout his life as the supreme woman of the human race, his idoluntil death, his mother. 

She now looked worthy of such an ideal. But it was upon him that herheart lavished every possible extravagance when nightly he had laidaside the coarse half-ragged fighting clothes of the streets. In thoseafter years when he was to gaze backward across a long distance, he mustbe made to realize that when he was a little fellow, it was his motherwho first had seen his star while it was still low on the horizon; andthat from the beginning she had so reared him that there would bestamped upon his attention the gentleness of his birth and a mother'sresolve to rear him in keeping with this through the neediest hours. 

While he was in his bath, she, as though she were his valet, had laidout trim house shoes and black stockings; and as the spring-night had abreath of summer warmth, of almost Southern summer warmth, she had putout also a suit of white linen knickerbockers. Under his broad sailorcollar she herself had tied a big, soft, flowing black ribbon of thefinest silk. Above this rose the solid head looking like a sphere on acolumn of triumph, with its lustrous bronzed hair, which, as she brushedit, she had tenderly stroked with her hands; often kissing the bronzedface ardent and friendly to the world and thinking to herself of thedouble blue in his eyes, the old Saxon blue of battle and the old Saxonblue of the minstrel, also. 

It was the evening meal that always brought them together after theseparation of the day, and he was at once curious to hear how everythinghad gone at the art school. With some unsold papers under his arm he hadwalked with her to the entrance, a new pang in his breast about her thathe did not understand: for one thing she looked so plain, so common. Atthe door-step she had stopped and kissed him and bade him good-by. Herquiet quivering words were:

"Go home, dear, by way of the cathedral. "

If he took the more convenient route, it would lead him into one of thecity's main cross streets, beset with dangers. She would be able to sitmore at peace through those hours of posing if she could know that hehad gone across the cathedral grounds and then across the park as alonga country road bordered with young grass and shrubs in bloom and foresttrees in early leaf. She wished to keep all day before her eyes thepicture of him as straying that April morning along such a countryroad--sometimes the road of faint far girlhood memories to her. 

Then with a great incomprehensible look she had vanished from him. Butbefore the doors closed, he, peering past her, had caught sight of thewalls inside thickly hung with portraits of men and women in richcolors and in golden frames. Into this splendid world his mother hadvanished, herself to be painted. 

Now as he began ravenously to eat his supper he wished to hear all aboutit. She told him. Part of her experience she kept back, a true part; theother, no less true, she described. With deft fingers she went over thesomberly woven web of the hours, and plucking here a bright thread andthere a bright thread, rewove these into a smaller picture, on whichfell the day's far-separated sunbeams; the rays were condensed now andmade a solid brightness. 

This is how she painted for him a bright picture out of things not manyof which were bright. The teacher of the portrait class, to begin, hadbeen very considerate. He had arranged that she should leave her thingswith the janitor's wife down-stairs, and not go up-stairs and take themoff behind some screens in a corner of the room where the class wasassembled. That would have been dreadful, to have to go behind thescreens to take off her hat and gloves. Then instead of sending word forher to come up, he himself had come down. As he led the way past theconfusing halls and studios, he had looked back over his shoulder just alittle, to let her know that not for a moment did he lose thought ofher. To have walked in front of her, looking straight ahead, might havemeant that he esteemed her a person of no consequence. A master so walksbefore a servant, a superior before an inferior. Out of respect for her, he had even lessened the natural noisiness of his feet on the barefloor. If you put your feet down hard in the house, it means that youare thinking of yourself and not of other people. He had mounted thestairs slowly lest she get out of breath as she climbed. When hepreceded her into the presence of the class, he had turned as though heintroduced to them his own mother. In everything he did he was really aman; that is, a gentleman. For being a gentleman is being really a man;if you are really a man, you _are_ a gentleman. 

As for the members of the class, they had been beautiful in theirtreatment of her. Not a word had been exchanged with them, but she could_feel_ their beautiful thoughts. Sometimes when she glanced at them, while they worked, such beautiful expressions rested on their faces. Unconsciously their natures had opened like young flowers, and as at thehearts of young flowers there is for each a clear drop of honey, so ineach of their minds there must have been one same thought, theremembrance of their mothers. Altogether it was as though they wereassembled there in honor of her, not to make use of her. 

As to posing itself, one had not a thing to do but sit perfectly still!One got such a good rest from being too much on one's feet! And they hadplaced for her such a splendid carved-oak chair! When she took her seat, all at once she had felt as if at home again. There were immensewindows; she had had all the fresh air she wished, and she did enjoyfresh air! The whole roof was a window, and she could look out at thesky: sometimes the loveliest clouds drifted over, and sometimes thedearest little bird flew past, no doubt on its way to the park. Last, but not least, she had not been crowded. In New York it was almostimpossible to secure a good seat in a public place without being nudgedor bumped or crowded. But that had actually happened to her. She had hada delightful chair in a public place, with plenty of room in everydirection. How fortunate at last to remember that she might pose! Itwould fit in perfectly at times when she did not have to go out forneedlework or for the other demands. Dollars would now soon begin to bebrought in like their bits of coal, by the scuttleful! And then thepiano! And then the teacher and the lessons! And _then_, and _then_--

Her happy story ended. She had watched the play of lights on his face assometimes he, though hungry, with fork in the air paused to listen andto question. Now as she finished and looked across the table at thepicture of him under the lamplight, she was rewarded, she was content;while he ate his plain food, out of her misfortunes she had beautifullynourished his mind. He did not know this; but she knew it, knew by hislook and by his only comment:

"You had a perfectly splendid time, didn't you?"

She laughed to herself. 

"Now, then, " she said, coming to what had all along been most in herconsciousness--"now, then, tell me about _your_ day. Begin at the moment_you_ left _me_. "

He laid down his napkin, --he could eat no more, and there was nothingmore to eat, --and he folded his hands quite like the head of the houseat ease after a careless feast, and began his story. 

Well, he had had a splendid day, too. After he had left her he had goneto the dealer's on the avenue with the unsold papers. Then he hadcrossed over to the cathedral, and for a while had watched the men atwork up in the air. He had walked around to the choir school, but no onewas there that morning, not a sound came from the inside. Then he hadstarted down across the park. As he sat down to count his money, a manwho had climbed up the hillside stopped and asked him a great manyquestions: who taught him music and whether any one had ever heard himsing. This stranger also liked music and he also went to the cathedral, so he claimed. From that point the story wound its way onward across thebusy hours till nightfall. 

It was a child's story, not an older person's. Therefore it did not drawthe line between pleasant and unpleasant, fair and unfair, right andwrong, which make up for each of us the history of our checkered humanday. It separated life as a swimmer separates the sea: there is onewater which he parts by his passage. So the child, who is still wholly achild, divides the world. 

But as she pondered, she discriminated. Out of the long, ramblingnarrative she laid hold of one overwhelming incident, forgetting therest: a passing stranger, hearing a few notes of his voice, had stoppedto question him about it. To her this was the first outside evidencethat her faith in his musical gift was not groundless. 

When he had ended his story she regarded him across the table withsomething new in her eyes--something of awe. She had never hinted to himwhat she believed he would some day be. She might be wrong, and thusmight start him on the wrong course; or, being right, she might neverhave the chance to start him on the right one. In either case she mightbe bringing to him disappointment, perhaps the failure of his wholelife. 

Now she still hid the emotion his story caused. But the stranger of thepark had kindled within her that night what she herself had long tendedunlit--the alabaster flame of worship which the mother burns before thealtar of a great son. 

An hour later they were in another small attic-like space next to thesupper-room. Here was always the best of their evening. No matter howpoor the spot, if there reach it some solitary ray of the great light ofthe world, let it be called your drawing-room. Where civilization sendsits beams through a roof, there be your drawing-room. This part of thegarret was theirs. 

In one corner stood a small table on which were some tantalizing booksand the same lamp. Another corner was filled by the littlest, oldestimaginable of six-octave pianos, the mythical piano ancestor; on it werepiled some yellowed folios, her music once. Thus two different rays ofcivilization entered their garret and fell upon the twin mountain-peaksof the night--books and music. 

Toward these she wished regularly to lead him as darkness descended overthe illimitable city and upon its weary grimy battle-fields. She likedhim to fall asleep on one or the other of these mountain-tops. When heawoke, it would be as from a mountain that he would see the dawn. Fromthere let him come down to the things that won the day; but at nightback again to things that win life. 

They were in their drawing-room, then, as she had taught him to call it, and she was reading to him. A knock interrupted her. She interrogatedthe knock doubtfully to herself for a moment. 

"Ashby, " she finally said, turning her eyes toward the door, as arequest that he open it. 

The janitor of the building handed in a card. The name on the card wasstrange to her, and she knew no reason why a stranger should call. Thena foolish uneasiness attacked her: perhaps this unwelcome visit boreupon her engagement at the studio. They might not wish her to return;that little door to a larger income was to be shut in their faces. Perhaps she had made herself too plain. If only she had done herself alittle more justice in her appearance!

She addressed the janitor with anxious courtesy:

"Will you ask him to come up?"

With her hand on the half-open door, she waited. If it should be sometradesman, she would speak with him there. She listened. Up the steps, from flight to flight, she could hear the feet of a man mounting like adeliberate good walker. He reached her floor. He approached her door andshe stepped out to confront him. A gentleman stood before her with anunmistakable air of feeling himself happy in his mission. For a momenthe forgot to state this mission, startled by the group of the two. Hiseyes passed from one to the other: the picture they made was an unlookedfor revelation of life's harmony, of nature's sacredness. 

"Is this Mrs. Truesdale?" he asked with appreciative deference. 

She stepped back. 

"I am Mrs. Truesdale, " she replied in a way to remind him of hisintrusion; and not discourteously she partly closed the door and waitedfor him to withdraw. But he was not of a mind to withdraw; on thecontrary, he stood stoutly where he was and explained:

"As I crossed the park this morning I happened to hear a few notes of avoice that interested me. I train the voice, Madam. I teach certainkinds of music. I took the liberty of asking the owner of the voicewhere he lived, and I have taken the further liberty of coming to seewhether I may speak with you on that subject--about his voice. "

This, then, was the stranger of the park whom she believed to have gonehis way after unknowingly leaving glorious words of destiny for her. Instead of vanishing, he had reappeared, following up his discovery intoher very presence. She did not desire him to follow up his discovery. She put out one hand and pressed her son back into the room and wasabout to close the door. 

"I should first have stated, of course, " said the visitor, smilingquietly as with awkward self-recovery, "that I am the choir-master ofthe Cathedral of St. John the Divine. "

Stillness followed, the stillness in which painful misunderstandingsdissolve. The scene slowly changed, as when on the dark stage of atheater an invisible light is gradually turned, showing everything inits actual relation to everything else. In truth a shaft as of celestiallight suddenly fell upon her doorway; a far-sent radiance rested on thehead of her son; in her ears began to sound old words spoken ages ago toanother mother on account of him she had borne. To her it was anannunciation. 

Her first act was to place her hand on the head of the lad and bend itback until his eyes looked up into hers; his mother must be the first tocongratulate him and to catch from his eyes their flash of delight as herealized all that this might mean: the fulfilment of life's dream forhim. 

Then she threw open the door. 

"Will you come in?"

It was a marvelous welcome, a splendor of spiritual hospitality. 

The musician took up straightway the purpose of his visit and stated it. 

"Will you, then, send him to-morrow and let me try his voice?"

"Yes, " she said as one who now must direct with firm responsible handthe helm of wayward genius, "I will send him. "

"And if his voice should prove to be what is wanted, " continued themusic-master, though with delicate hesitancy, "would he be--free? Isthere any other person whose consent--"

She could not reply at once. The question brought up so much of thepast, such tragedy! She spoke with composure at last:

"He can come. He is free. He is mine--wholly mine. "

The choir-master looked across the small room at his pupil, who, uponthe discovery of the visitor's identity, had withdrawn as far aspossible from him. 

"And you are willing to come?" he asked, wishing to make the firstadvance toward possible acquaintanceship on the new footing. 

No reply came. The mother smiled at her awe-stricken son and hastened tohis rescue. 

"He is overwhelmed, " she said, her own faith in him being merelystrengthened by this revelation of his fright. "He is overwhelmed. Thismeans so much more to him than you can understand. "

"But you will come?" the choir-master persisted in asking. "You _will_come?"

The lad stirred uneasily on his chair. 

"Yes, sir, " he said all but inaudibly. 

His inquisitive, interesting friend of the park path, then, was himselfchoir-master of St. John's! And he had asked him whether _he_ knewanything about the cathedral! Whether _he_ liked music! Whether _he_knew how boys got into the school! He had betrayed his habit of idlyhanging about the old building where the choir practised and of singingwith them to show what he could do and would do if he had the chance;and because he could not keep from singing. He had called one of theApostles Jim! And another Apostle Pete! He had rejoiced that Gabriel hadnot been strong enough to stand up in a high wind!

Thus with mortification he remembered the day. Then his thoughts wereswept on to what now opened before him: he was to be taken into thechoir, he was to sing in the cathedral. The high, blinding, statelymagnificence of its scenes and processions lay before him. 

More than this. The thing which had long been such a torture of desireto him, the hope that had grown within him until it began to burst open, had come true; his dream was a reality: he was to begin to learn music, he was to go where it was being taught. And the master who was to takehim by the hand and lead him into that world of song sat there quietlytalking with his mother about the matter and looking across at him, studying him closely. 

No; none of this was true yet. It might never be true. First, he must beput to the test. The man smiling there was sternly going to draw out ofhim what was in him. He was going to examine him and see what heamounted to. And if he amounted to nothing, then what?

He sat there shy, silent, afraid, all the hardy boldness and businesspreparedness and fighting capacity of the streets gone out of his mindand heart. He looked across at his mother; not even she could help him. 

So there settled upon him that terror of uncertainty about their giftand their fate which is known only to the children of genius. Forthroughout the region of art, as in the world of the physical, naturebrings forth all things from the seat of sensitiveness and the young ofboth worlds appear on the rough earth unready. 

"You _do_ wish to come?" the choir-master persisted in asking. 

"Yes, sir, " he replied barely, as though the words sealed his fate. 

The visitor was gone, and they had talked everything over, and theevening had ended, and it was long past his bedtime, and she waited forhim to come from the bedroom and say good night. Presently he ran in, climbed into her lap, threw his arms around her neck and pressed hischeek against hers. 

"Now on this side, " he said, holding her tightly, "and now on the otherside, and now on both sides and all around. "

She, with jealous pangs at this goodnight hour, often thought already ofwhat a lover he would be when the time came--the time for her to bepushed aside, to drop out. These last moments of every night were forlove; nothing lived in him but love. She said to herself that he was theborn lover. 

As he now withdrew his arms, he sat looking into her eyes with his faceclose to hers. Then leaning over, he began to measure his face upon herface, starting with the forehead, and being very particular when he gotto the long eyelashes, then coming down past the nose. They were verysilly and merry about the measuring of the noses. The noses would notfit the one upon the other, not being flat enough. He began to indulgehis mischievous, teasing mood:

"Suppose he doesn't like my voice!"

She laughed the idea to scorn. 

"Suppose he wouldn't take me!"

"Ah, but he _will_ take you. "

"If he wouldn't have me, you'd never want to see me any more, wouldyou?"

She strained him to her heart and rocked to and fro over him. 

"This is what I could most have wished in all the world, " she said, holding him at arm's-length with idolatry. 

"Not more than a fine house and servants and a greenhouse and a carriageand horses and a _new_ piano--not more than everything you used tohave!"

"More than anything! More than anything in this world!"

He returned to the teasing. 

"If he doesn't take me, I'm going to run away. You won't want ever tosee me any more. And then nobody will ever know what becomes of mebecause I couldn't sing. "

She strained him again to herself and murmured over him:

"My chorister! My minstrel! My life!"

"Good night and pleasant dreams!" he said, with his arms around her neckfinally. "Good night and sweet sleep!"

 * * * * *

Everything was quiet. She had tipped to his bedside and stood looking athim after slumber had carried him away from her, a little distance away. 

"My heavenly guest!" she murmured. "My guest from the singing stars ofGod!"

Though worn out with the strain and excitements of the day, she was notyet ready for sleep. She must have the luxuries of consciousness; shemust tread the roomy spaces of reflection and be soothed in theirlargeness. And so she had gone to her windows and had remained therefor a long time looking out upon the night. 

The street beneath was dimly lighted. Traffic had almost ceased. Now andthen a car sped past. The thoroughfare along here is level and broad andsmooth, and being skirted on one side by the park, it offers to speedingvehicles the illusive freedom of a country road. Across the street atthe foot of the park a few lights gleamed scant amid the April foliage. She began at the foot of the hill and followed the line of them upward, upward over the face of the rock, leading this way and that way, butalways upward. There on the height in the darkness loomed the cathedral. 

Often during the trouble and discouragement of years it had seemed toher that her own life and every other life would have had more meaningif only there had been, away off somewhere in the universe, a higherevil intelligence to look on and laugh, to laugh pitilessly at everyhuman thing. She had held on to her faith because she must hold on tosomething, and she had nothing else. Now as she stood there, followingthe winding night road over the rock, her thoughts went back andsearched once more along the wandering pathway of her years; and shesaid that a Power greater than any earthly had led her with her son tothe hidden goal of them both, the cathedral. 

The next day brought no disappointment: he had rushed home and thrownhimself into her arms and told her that he was accepted. He was to singin the choir. The hope had become an actuality. 

Later that day the choir-master himself had called again to speak to herwhen the pupil was not present. He was guarded in his words but couldnot conceal the enthusiasm of his mood. 

"I do not know what it may develop into, " he said, --"that is somethingwe cannot foretell, --but I believe it will be a great voice in theworld. I do know that it will be a wonderful voice for the choir. "

She stood before him mute with emotion. She was as dry sand drinking ashower. 

"You have made no mistake, " she said. "It is a great voice and he willhave a great career. "

The choir-master was impatient to have the lessons begin. She asked fora few days to get him in readiness. She reflected that he could not makehis first appearance at the choir school in white linen knickerbockers. These were the only suitable clothes he had. 

This school would be his first, for she had taught him at home, hauntedby a sense of responsibility that he must be specially guarded. Now justas the unsafe years came on for him, he would be safe in that fold. Whennatural changes followed as follow they must and his voice broke lateron, and then came again or never came again, whatever afterward befell, behind would be the memories of his childhood. And when he had grown tofull manhood, when he was an old man and she no longer with him, wherever on the earth he might work or might wander, always he would begoing back to those years in the cathedral: they would be his safeguard, his consecration to the end. 

 * * * * *

Now a few days later she stood in the same favorite spot, at herwindows; and it was her favorite hour to be there, the coming on oftwilight. 

All day until nearly sundown a cold April rain had fallen. Thesecontradictory spring days of young green and winter cold the pious folkof older lands and ages named the days of the ice saints. They reallyfall in May, but this had been like one of them. So raw and chill hadbeen the atmosphere of the grateless garret that the window-frames hadbeen fastened down, their rusty catches clamped. 

At the window she stood looking out and looking up toward a scene ofsplendor in the heavens. 

It was sunset, the rain was over, the sky had cleared. She had beentracing the retreating line of sunlight on the hillside opposite. Firstit crossed the street to the edge of the park, then crossed the wetgrass at the foot of the slope; then it passed upward over the boweddripping shrubbery and lingered on the tree-tops along the crest; andnow the western sky was aflame behind the cathedral. 

It was a gorgeous spectacle. The cathedral seemed not to be situated inthe city, not lodged on the rocks of the island, but to be risen out ofinfinite space and to be based and to abide on the eternity of light. Long she gazed into that sublime vision, full of happiness at last, fullof peace, full of prayer. 

Standing thus at her windows at that hour, she stood on the pinnacle ofher life's happiness. 

From the dark slippery street shrill familiar sounds rose to her ear anddrew her attention downward and she smiled. He was down there at playwith friends whose parents lived in the houses of the row. She laughedas those victorious cries reached the upper air. Leaning forward, shepressed her face against the window-pane and peered over and watchedthe group of them. Sometimes she could see them and sometimes not asthey struggled from one side of the street to the other. No one, whetheryounger or older, stronger or weaker, was ever defeated down there;everybody at some time got worsted; no one was ever defeated. All thewhipped remained conquerors. Unconquerable childhood! She said toherself that she must learn a lesson from it once more--to have alwayswithin herself the will and spirit of victory. 

With her face still against the glass she caught sight of somethingapproaching carefully up the street. It was the car of a physician whohad a patient in one of the houses near by. This was his hour to makehis call. He guided the car himself, and the great mass of tons inweight responded to his guidance as if it possessed intelligence, as ifit entered into his foresight and caution: it became to her, as shewatched it, almost conscious, almost human. She thought of it as beinglike some great characters in human life which need so little to makethem go easily and make them go right. A wise touch, and their enormousinfluence is sent whither it should be sent by a pressure that would notbruise a leaf. 

She chid herself once more that in a world where so often the great isthe good she had too often been hard and bitter; that many a time shehad found pleasure in setting the empty cup of her life out under itsclouds and catching the showers of nature as though they were drops ofgall. 

All at once her attention was riveted on an object up the street. Arounda bend a few hundred yards away a huge wild devil of a thing swungunsteadily, recklessly, almost striking the curb and lamp-post; andthen, righting itself, it came on with a rush--a mindless destroyer. Nowon one side of the street, now in the middle, now on the other side;gliding along through the twilight, barely to be seen, creeping nearerand nearer through the shadows, now again on the wrong side of thestreet where it would not be looked for. 

A bolt of horror shot through her. She pressed her face quickly againstthe window-panes as closely as possible, searching for the whereaboutsof the lads. As she looked, the playing struggling mass of them wentdown in the road, the others piled on one. She thought she knew whichone, --he was the strongest, --then they were lost from her sight, as theyrolled in nearer to the sidewalk. And straight toward them rushed thatdestroyer in the streets. She tried to throw up the sashes. She tried tolean out and cry down to him, to wave her hands to him with warning asshe had often done with joy. She could not raise the sashes. She had notthe strength left to turn the rusty bolts. Nor was there time. Shelooked again; she saw what was going to happen. Then with frenzy shebegan to beat against the window-sashes and to moan and try to stifleher own moans. And then shrill startled screams and piteous cries cameup to her, and crazed now and no longer knowing what she did, she struckthe window-panes in her agony until they were shattered and she thrusther arms out through them with a last blind instinct to wave to him, toreach him, to drag him out of the way. For some moments her arms hungthere outside the shattered window-glass, and a shower of crimson dropsfrom her fingers splashed on the paving-stones below. She kept on wavingher lacerated hands more and more feebly, slowly; and then they weredrawn inward after her body which dropped unconscious to the garretfloor. 

IV

It was a gay scene over at the art school next morning. Even before theaccustomed hour the big barnlike room, with a few prize pictures offormer classes scattered about the walls, and with the old academyeasels standing about like a caravan of patient camels ever loaded withnew burdens but ever traveling the same ancient sands of art--evenbefore nine o'clock the barnlike room presented a scene of eager healthyanimal spirits. On the easel of every youthful worker, nearly finished, lay the portrait of the mother. In every case it had been differentlydone, inadequately done; but in all cases it had been done. Hardly couldany observer have failed to recognize what was there depicted. Beyondsmearings and daubings of paint, as past the edges of concealing clouds, one caught glimpses of a serene and steadfast human radiance. There onebeheld the familiar image of that orb which in dark and pathless hourshas through all ages been the guardian light of the world--the mother. 

The best in them had gone into the painting of this portrait, and theconsciousness of our best gives us the sense of our power, and theconsciousness of our power yields us our enthusiasm; hence theexhilaration and energy of the studio scene. 

The interest of the members of the class was not concerned solely withthe portrait, however: a larger share went to the model herself. Theyhad become strongly bound to her. All the more perhaps because she heldthem firmly to the understanding that her life touched theirs only atthe point of the stranger in need of a small sum of money. Repulsed andbaffled in their wish to know her better, they nevertheless became awarethat she was undergoing a wonderful transformation on her own account. The change had begun after the ordeal of the first morning. When shereturned for the second sitting, and then at later sittings, they hadremarked this change, and had spoken of it to one another--that she wasas a person into whose life some joyous, unbelievable event has fallen, brightening the present and the future. Every day some old cloudy careseemed to loose itself from its lurking-place and drift away from hermind, leaving her face less obscured and thus the more beautifullyrevealed to them. Now, with the end of the sittings not far off, whatthey looked forward to with most regret was the last sitting, when she, leaving her portrait in their hands, would herself vanish, taking withher both the mystery of her old sorrows and the mystery of this newhappiness. 

Promptly at nine o'clock the teacher of the class entered, greeted them, and glanced around for the model. Not seeing her, he looked at hiswatch, then without comment crossed to the easels, and studied again theprogress made the previous day, correcting, approving, guiding, encouraging. His demeanor showed that he entered into the mountingenthusiasm of his class for this particular piece of work. 

A few minutes were thus quickly consumed. Then, watch in hand once more, he spoke of the absence of the model:

"Something seems to detain the model this morning. But she has sent meno word and she will no doubt be here in a few minutes. "

He went back to the other end of the studio and sat down, facing themwith the impressiveness which belonged to him even without speech. Theyfixed their eyes on him with the usual expectancy. Whenever as now anunforeseen delay occurred, he was always prompt to take advantage of theinterval with a brief talk. To them there were never enough of thesebrief talks, which invariably drew human life into relationship to theart of portraiture, and set the one reality over against the otherreality--the turbulence of a human life and the still image of it on thecanvas. They hoped he would thus talk to them now; in truth he had theair of casting about in his mind for a theme best suited to the moment. 

 * * * * *

That mother, now absent, when she had blindly found her way to him, asking to pose, had fallen into good hands. He was a great teacher andhe was a remarkable man, remarkable even to look at. Massively built, with a big head of black hair, olive complexion, and bluntly pointed, black beard, and with a mold of countenance grave and strong, he lookedlike a great Rembrandt; like some splendid full-length portrait byRembrandt painted as that master painted men in the prime of his power. With the Rembrandt shadows on him even in life. Even when the sun beatdown upon him outdoors, even when you met him in the blaze of the citystreets, he seemed not to have emerged from shadow, to bear on himselfthe traces of a human night, a living darkness. There was light withinhim but it did not irradiate him. 

Once he had been a headlong art student himself, starting out to becomea great painter, a great one. After years abroad under the foremostmasters and other years of self-trial with every favorable circumstancehis, nature had one day pointed her unswerved finger at his latestcanvas as at the earlier ones and had judged him to the quick: you willnever be a great painter. If you cannot be content to remain less, quit, stop!

Thus youth's choice and a man's half a lifetime of effort and ambitionended in abandonment of effort not because he was a failure but becausethe choice of a profession had been a blunder. A multitude of men toppleinto this chasm and crawl out nobody. Few of them at middle age in thedarkness of that pit of failure can grope within themselves for somesecond candle and by it once more become illumined through and through. He found _his_ second candle, --it should have been his first, --and helighted it and it became the light of his later years; but it did notillumine him completely, it never dispelled the shadows of the flamethat had burned out. What he did was this: having reached the end of hisown career as a painter, he turned and made his way back to the fieldsof youth, and taking his stand by that ever fresh path, always, asstudents would rashly pass him, he halted them like a wise monitor, describing the best way to travel, warning of the difficulties of thecountry ahead, but insisting that the goal was worth the toil and thetrouble; searching secretly among his pupils year after year for signsof what he was not, a great painter, and pouring out his sympathies onall those who, like himself, would never be one. 

Now he sat looking across at his class, the masterful teacher of them. They sat looking responsively at him. Then he took up his favoritetheme:

"Your work on this portrait is your best work, because the model, as Istated to you at the outset would be the case, has called forth yourfiner selves; she has caused you to _feel_. And she has been able to dothis because her countenance, her whole being, radiates one of the greatpassions and faiths of our common humanity--the look of reverentmotherhood. You recognize that look, that mood; you believe in it; youhonor it; you have worked over its living eloquence. Observe, then, theresult. Turn to your canvases and see how, though proceedingdifferently, you have all dipped your brushes as in a common medium;how you have all drawn an identical line around that old-time humanlandmark. You have in truth copied from her one of the greatbeacon-lights of expression that has been burning and signaling throughages upon ages of human history--the look of the mother, the angel ofself-sacrifice to the earth. 

"While we wait, we might go a little way into this general matter, sinceyou, in the study of portraiture, will always have to deal with it. Thislook of hers, which you have caught on your canvases, and all the othergreat beacon-lights of human expression, stand of course for the innerenergies of our lives, the leading forces of our characters. But, asages pass, human life changes; its chief elements shift their relativeplaces, some forcing their way to the front, others being pushed to therear; and the prominent beacon-lights change correspondingly. Ancientones go out, new ones appear; and the art of portraiture, which is theundying historian of the human countenance, is subject to this shiftinglaw of the birth and death of its material. 

"Perhaps more ancient lights have died out of human faces than modernlights have been kindled to replace them. Do you understand why? Thereason is this: throughout an immeasurable time the aim of nature was tomake the human countenance as complete an instrument of expression as itcould possibly be. Man, except for his gestures and wordless sounds, forages had nothing else with which to speak; he must speak with his face. And thus the primitive face became the chronicle of what was going onwithin him as well as of what had taken place without. It was hisearliest bulletin-board of intelligence. It was the first parchment tobear tidings; it was the original newspaper; it was the rude, but vivid, primeval book of the woods. The human face was all that. Ages more hadto pass before spoken language began, and still other ages beforewritten language began. Thus for an immeasurable time nature developedthe face and multiplied its expressions to enable man to make himselfunderstood. At last this development was checked; what we may call thenatural occupation of the face culminated. Civilization began, and assoon as civilization began, the decline in natural expressiveness beganwith it. Gradually civilization supplanted primeval needs; it contrivedother means for doing what the face alone had done frankly, marvelously. When you can print news on paper, you may cease to printnews on the living countenance. Moreover, the aim of civilization is todevelop in us the consciousness not to express, but to suppress. Its aimis not to reveal, but to conceal, thought and emotion; not to make thecountenance a beacon-light, but a muffler of the inner candle, whateverthat candle for the time may be. All our ruling passions, good or bad, noble or ignoble, we now try publicly to hide. This is civilization. Andthus the face, having started out expressionless in nature, tendsthrough civilization to become expressionless again. 

"How few faces does any one of us know that frankly radiate the greatpassions and moods of human nature! What little is left of this ancienttremendous drama is the poor pantomime of the stage. Search crowds, search the streets. See everywhere masked faces, telling as little aspossible to those around them of what they glory in or what they suffer. Search modern portrait galleries. Do you find portraits of either men orwomen who radiate the overwhelming passions, the vital moods, of ourgalled and soaring nature? It is not a long time since the Middle Ages. In the stretch of history centuries shrink to nothing, and the MiddleAges are as the earlier hours of our own historic day. But has there notbeen a change even within that short time? Did not the medievalportrait-painters portray in their sitters great moods as no painterportrays them now? How many painters of to-day can find great moods inthe faces of their sitters?

"And so I come again to your model. What makes her so remarkable, sosignificant, so touching, so exquisite, so human, is the fact that herface seems almost a survival out of a past in which the beacon-lights ofhumanity did more openly appear on the features. In her case onebeacon-light most of all, --the greatest that has ever shone on the facesof women, --the one which seems to be slowly vanishing from the faces ofmodern women--the look of the mother: that transfiguration of thecountenance of the mother who believed that the birth of a child was thedivine event in her existence, and the emotions and energies of whoselife centered about her offspring. How often does any living painterhave his chance to paint that look now! Galleries are well filled withportraits of contemporary women who have borne children: how often amongthese is to be found the portrait of the mother of old?"

He rose. The talk was ended. He looked again at his watch, and said:

"It does not seem worth while to wait longer. Evidently your model hasbeen kept away to-day. Let us hope that no ill has befallen her and thatshe will be here to-morrow. If she is here, we shall go on with theportrait. If she should not be here, I shall have another model ready, and we shall take up another study until she returns. Bring freshcanvases. "

He left the room. They lingered; looking again at their canvases, understanding their own work as they had not hitherto and more stronglythan ever drawn toward their model whom that day they missed. Slowly andwith disappointment and with many conjectures as to why she had notcome, they separated. 

V

It was Sunday. All round St. Luke's Hospital quiet reigned. The day wasvery still up there on the heights under the blue curtain of the sky. 

When he had been hurled against the curb on the dark street, had beenrolled over and tossed there and left there with no outcry, no movement, as limp and senseless as a mangled weed, the careless crowd whichsomewhere in the city every day gathers about such scenes quicklygathered about him. In this throng was the physician whose car stoodnear by; and he, used to sights of suffering but touched by that tragedyof unconscious child and half-crazed mother, had hurried them in hisown car to St. Luke's--to St. Luke's, which is always open, alwaysready, and always free to those who lack means. 

Just before they stopped at the entrance she had pleaded in the doctor'sear for a luxury. 

"To the private ward, " he said to those who lifted the lad to thestretcher, speaking as though in response to her entreaty. 

"One of the best rooms, " he said before the operation, speaking asthough he shouldered the responsibility of the further expense. "And aroom for her near by, " he added. "Everything for them! Everything!"

 * * * * *

So there he was now, the lad, or what there was left of him, this quietSunday, in a pleasant room opposite the cathedral. The air was likeearly summer. The windows were open. He lay on his back, not seeinganything. The skin of his forehead had been torn off; there was abandage over his eyes. And there were bruises on his body and bruises onhis face, which was horribly disfigured. The lips were swollen two orthree thicknesses; it was agony for him to speak. When he realized whathad happened, after the operation, his first mumbled words to her were:

"They will never have me now. "

About the middle of the forenoon of this still Sunday morning, when thedoctor left, she followed him into the hall as usual, and questioned himas usual with her eyes. He encouraged her and encouraged himself:

"I believe he is going to get well. He has the will to get well, he hasthe bravery to get well. He is brave about it; he is as brave as he canbe. "

"Of course he is brave, " she said scornfully. "Of course he is brave. "

"The love of such a mother would call him back to life, " he added, andhe laid one of his hands on her head for a moment. 

"Don't do that, " she said, as though the least tenderness toward herselfat such a moment would unnerve her, melt away all her fortitude. 

Everybody had said he was brave, the head nurse, the day nurse, thenight nurse, the woman who brought in the meals, the woman who scrubbedthe floor. All this had kept her up. If anybody paid any kind of tributeto him, realized in any way what he was, this was life to her. 

After the doctor left, as the nurse was with him, she walked up and downthe halls, too restless to be quiet. 

At the end of one hall she could look down on the fragrant leafy park. Yes, summer was nigh. Where a little while before had been only whiteblossoms, there were fewer white now, more pink, some red, many to matchthe yellow of the sun. The whole hillside of swaying; boughs seemed toquiver with happiness. Her eyes wandered farther down to the row ofhouses at the foot of the park. She could see the dreadful spot on thestreet, the horrible spot. She could see her shattered window-panes upabove. The points of broken glass still seemed to slit the flesh of herhands within their bandages. 

She shrank back and walked to the end of the transverse hall. Across theroad was the cathedral. The morning service was just over. People werepouring out through the temporary side doors and the temporary frontdoors so placidly, so contentedly! Some were evidently strangers; asthey reached the outside they turned and studied the cathedral curiouslyas those who had never before seen it. Others turned and looked at itfamiliarly, with pride in its unfolding form. Some stopped and lookeddown at the young grass, stroking it with the toes of their fine shoes;they were saying how fresh and green it was. Some looked up at the sky;they were saying how blue it was. Some looked at one another keenly;they were discussing some agreeable matter, being happy to get back toit now after the service. Not one of them looked across at the hospital. Not a soul of them seemed to be even aware of its existence. Not a soulof them!

Particularly her eyes became riveted upon two middle-aged ladies inblack who came out through a side door of the cathedral--slow-pacedwomen, bereft, full of pity. As they crossed the yard, a gray squirrelcame jumping along in front of them on its way to the park. One stoopedand coaxed it and tried to pet it: it became a vital matter with both ofthem to pour out upon the little creature which had no need of it theirpent-up, ungratified affection. With not a glance to the window whereshe stood, with her mortal need of them, her need of all mothers, ofeverybody--her mortal need of everybody! Why were they not there at hisbedside? Why had they not heard? Why had not all of them heard? Why hadanything else been talked of that day? Why were they not all massedaround the hospital doors, tearful with their sympathies? How could theyhold services in the cathedral--the usual services? Why was it notcrowded to the doors with the clergy of all faiths and the laymen ofevery land, lifting one outcry against such destruction? Why did theynot stop building temples to God, to the God of life, to the God whogave little children, until they had stopped the massacre of children, His children in the streets!

Yes; everybody had been kind. Even his little rivals who had fought withhim over the sale of papers had given up some of their pennies and hadbought flowers for him, and one of them had brought their gift to themain hospital entrance. Every day a shy group of them had gathered onthe street while one came to inquire how he was. Kindness had rained onher; there was that in the sight of her that unsealed kindness in everyheart. 

She had been too nearly crazed to think of this. Her bitterness andanguish broke through the near cordon of sympathy and went out againstthe whole brutal and careless world that did not care--to legislaturesthat did not care, to magistrates that did not care, to juries that didnot care, to officials that did not care, to drivers that did not care, to the whole city that did not care about the massacre in the streets. 

Through the doors of the cathedral the people streamed out unconcerned. Beneath her, along the street, young couples passed, flushed with theirclimb of the park hillside, and flushed with young love, young health. Sometimes they held each other's hands; they innocently mocked her agonywith their careless joy. 

One last figure issued from the side door of the cathedral hurriedly andlooked eagerly across at the hospital--looked straight at her, at thewindow, and came straight toward the entrance below--the choir-master. She had not sent word to him or to any one about the accident; but he, when his new pupil had failed to report as promised, had come down tofind out why. And he, like all the others, had been kind; and he wascoming now to inquire what he could do in a case where nothing could bedone. She knew only too well that nothing could be done. 

 * * * * *

The bright serene hours of the day passed one by one with nature'scarelessness about the human tragedy. It was afternoon and near the hourfor the choral even-song across the way at the cathedral, the temporarywindows of which were open. 

She had relieved the nurse, and was alone with him. Often during thesedays he had put out one of his hands and groped about with it to touchher, turning his head a little toward her under his bandaged eyes, andapparently feeling much mystified about her, but saying nothing. Shekept her bandaged hands out of his reach but leaned over him in responseand talked ever to him, barely stroking him with the tips of herstiffened fingers. 

The afternoon was so quiet that by and by through the opened windows adeep note sent a thrill into the room--the awakened soul of the organ. And as the two listened to it in silence, soon there floated over tothem the voices of the choir as the line moved slowly down the aisle, the blended voices of the chosen band, his school-fellows of the altar. By the bedside she suddenly rocked to and fro, and then she bent overand said with a smile in her tone:

"_Do you hear? Do you hear them?_"

He made a motion with his lips to speak but they hurt him too much. Sohe nodded: that he heard them. 

A moment later he tugged at the bandage over his eyes. 

She sprang toward him:

"O my precious one, you must not tear the bandage off your eyes!"

"I want to see you!" he mumbled. "It has been so long since I saw you!What's the matter with you? Where are your hands? Why don't you put yourarms around me?"

VI

The class had been engaged with another model. Their work was forced andlistless. As days passed without the mother's return, their thought andtheir talk concerned itself more and more with her disappearance. Whyhad she not come back? What had befallen her? What did it all mean?Would they ever know?

One day after their luncheon-hour, as they were about to resume work, the teacher of the class entered. He looked shocked; his look shockedthem; instant sympathy ran through them. He spoke with difficulty:

"She has come back. She is down-stairs. Something had befallen herindeed. She told me as briefly as possible and I tell you all I know. Her son, a little fellow who had just been chosen for the cathedralchoir school was run over in the street. A mention of it--the usualstory--was in the papers, but who of us reads such things in the papers?They bore us; they are not even news. He was taken to St. Luke's, andshe has been at St. Luke's, and the end came at St. Luke's, and all thetime we have been here a few yards distant and have known nothing of it. Such is New York! It was to help pay for his education in music that shefirst came to us, she said. And it was the news that he had been chosenfor the choir school that accounts for the new happiness which we sawbrighten her day by day. Now she comes again for the same small wage, but with other need, no doubt: the expenses of it all, a rose-bush forhis breast. She told me this calmly as though it caused her no grief. Itwas not my privilege, it is not our privilege, to share her unutterablebereavement. 

"She has asked to go on with the sittings. I have told her to cometo-morrow. But she does not realize all that this involves with theportrait. You will have to bring new canvases, it will have to be a newwork. She is in mourning. Her hands will have to be left out, she hashurt them; they are bandaged. The new portrait will be of the head andface only. But the chief reason is the change of expression. The lightwhich was in her face and which you have partly caught upon yourcanvases, has died out; it was brutally put out. The old look is gone. It is gone, and will never come back--the tender, brooding, reverenthappiness and peace of motherhood with the child at her knee--thatgreat earthly beacon-light in women of ages past. It was brutally putout but it did not leave blankness behind it. There has come in itsplace another light, another ancient beacon-light on the faces of womenof old--the look of faith in immortal things. She is not now the motherwith the tenderness of this earth but the mother with the expectation ofeternity. Her eyes have followed him who has left her arms and gone intoa distance. Ever she follows him into that distance. Your portrait, ifyou can paint it, will be the mother with the look of immortal things inher face. "

 * * * * *

When she entered the room next morning, at the sight of her in mourningand so changed in every way, with one impulse they all rose to her. Shetook no notice, --perhaps it would have been unendurable to notice, --butshe stepped forward as usual, and climbed to the platform withoutfaltering, and he posed her for the head and shoulders. Then, to studythe effect from different angles, he went behind the easels, passingfrom one to another. As he returned, with the thought of giving herpleasure, he brought along with him one of the sketches of herself andheld it out before her. 

"Do you recognize it?" he asked. 

She refused to look at first. Then arousing herself from herindifference she glanced at it. But when she beheld there what she hadnever seen--how great had been her love of him; when she beheld therethe light now gone out and realized that it meant the end of happy dayswith him, she shut her eyes quickly and jerked her head to one sidewith a motion for him to take the picture away. But she had beenbrought too close to her sorrow and suddenly she bent over her handslike a snapped reed and the storm of her grief came upon her. 

They started up to get to her. They fought one another to get to her. They crowded around the platform, and tried to hide her from oneanother's eyes, and knelt down, and wound their arms about her, andsobbed with her; and then they lifted her and guided her behind thescreens. 

"Now, if you will allow them, " he said, when she came out with them, oneof them having lent her a veil, "some of these young friends will gohome with you. And whenever you wish, whenever you feel like it, comeback to us. We shall be ready. We shall be waiting. We shall all beglad. "

On the heights the cathedral rises--slowly, as the great houses of man'sChristian faith have always risen. 

Years have drifted by as silently as the winds since the first rock wasriven where its foundations were to be laid, and still all day on theclean air sounds the lonely clink of drill and chisel as the blastingand the shaping of the stone goes on. The snows of winters have drifteddeep above its rough beginnings; the suns of many a spring have meltedthe snows away. Well nigh a generation of human lives has alreadymeasured its brief span about the cornerstones. Far-brought, many-tongued toilers, toiling on the rising walls, have dropped theirwork and stretched themselves in their last sleep; others have climbedto their places; the work goes on. Upon the shoulders of the images ofthe Apostles, which stand about the chancel, generations ofpigeons--the doves of the temple whose nests are in the niches--upon theshoulders of the Apostles generations of pigeons born in the niches havedescended out of the azure as with the benediction of shimmering wings. Generations of the wind-borne seeds of wild flowers have lodged in lowcrevices and have sprouted and blossomed, and as seeds again have beenblown further on--harbingers of vines and mosses already on theirvenerable way. 

A mighty shape begins to answer back to the cathedrals of other landsand ages, bespeaking for itself admittance into the league of theworld's august sanctuaries. It begins to send its annunciation onwardinto ages yet to be, so remote, so strange, that we know not in whatsense the men of it will even be our human brothers save as they arechildren of the same Father. 

Between this past and this future, the one of which cannot answerbecause it is too late and the other of which can not answer because itis too soon--between this past and this future the cathedral stands in apresent that answers back to it more and more. For a world of living-menand women see kindled there the same ancient flame that has been thelight of all earlier stations on that solitary road of faith which runsfor a little space between the two eternities--a road strewn with thedust of countless wayfarers bearing each a different cross of burden butwith eyes turned toward the same Cross of hope. 

As on some mountain-top a tall pine-tree casts its lengthened shadowupon the valleys far below, round and round with the circuit of the sun, so the cathedral flings hither and thither across the whole land itsspiritual shaft of light. A vast, unnumbered throng begin to hear of it, begin to look toward it, begin to grow familiar with its emerging form. In imagination they see its chapels bathed in the glories of the morningsun; they remember its unfinished dome gilded at the hush of sunsets. Between the roar of the eastern and of the western ocean its organspeaks of a Divine peace above mortal storm. Pilgrims from afar, knownonly to themselves as pilgrims, being pilgrim-hearted but notpilgrim-clad, reach at its gates the borders of their Gethsemane. Bowedas penitents, they hail its lily of forgiveness and the resurrection. 

Slowly the cathedral rises, in what unknown years to stand finished!Crowning a city of new people, let it be hoped, of better laws. Finishedand standing on its rock for the order of the streets, for order in theland and order throughout the world, for order in the secret places ofthe soul. Majestical rebuker of the waste of lives, rebuker of a countrywhich invites all lives into it and wastes lives most ruthlessly--liveswhich it stands there to shelter and to foster and to save. 

So it speaks to the distant through space and time; but it speaks alsoto the near. 

Although not half risen out of the earth, encumbering it rough andshapeless, already it draws into its service many who dwell around. These seek to cast their weaknesses on its strength, to join their briefday to its innumerable years, to fall into the spiritual splendor of itas out in space small darkened wanderers drop into the orbit of a sun. Anguished memories begin to bequeath their jewels to its shrine; dimmedeyes will their tears to its eyes, its windows. Old age with one foot inthe grave drags the other resignedly about its crypt. In its choir soundthe voices of children herded in from the green hillside of life'sApril. 

 * * * * *

Rachel Truesdale! Her life became one of these near-by lives which itblesses, a darkened wanderer caught into the splendor of a spiritualsun. It gathered her into its service; it found useful work for her todo; and in this new life of hers it drew out of her nature the lastthing that is ever born of the mother--faith that she is separated alittle while from her children only because they have received the giftof eternal youth. 

Many a proud happy thought became hers as time went on. She had had hershare in its glory, for it had needed him whom she had brought into theworld. It had called upon him to help give song to its message and tobuild that ever-falling rainbow of music over which human Hope walksinto the eternal. 

Always as the line of white-clad choristers passed down the aisle, amongthem was one who brushed tenderly against her as he walked by, whom noone else saw. Rising above the actual voices and heard by her alone, upto the dome soared a voice dearer, more thrilling, than the rest. 

Often she was at her window, watching the workmen at their toil as theybrought out more and more the great shape on the heights. Often shestood looking across at the park hillside opposite. Whenever spring cameback and the slope lived again with young leaves and white blossoms, always she thought of him. Always she saw him playing in an eternalApril. When autumn returned and leaves withered and dropped, she thoughtof herself. 

Sometimes standing beside his piano. 

Having always in her face the look of immortal things. 

 * * * * *

The cathedral there on its rock for ages saying:

"_I am the Resurrection and the Life_. "

THE END