CHAPTER VIII THE CALL

AMONG the excitements of Tory’s visit to New York was a call she was to make upon an artist friend of her father’s.

Pleased with several of the sketches Tory had made during the past summer in camp, Mr. Drew desired an opinion upon her work from some one whose judgment he trusted. He knew himself to be too interested to be a good critic of his daughter’s gift. Now and then he believed himself too severe, that he expected more artistic gift than was possible in one of Tory’s age. Again he feared that his own devotion blinded him to conspicuous faults in her work.

So Tory brought with her a letter from her father to Philip Winslow. She was to call by appointment on a certain afternoon at his studio in the downtown section of the city.

Dorothy accompanied her, and the two girls discovered the house without difficulty, an old, somewhat dilapidated building, with the80 paint peeling from the house and a long flight of steps leading from the front door.

Philip Winslow was not a successful artist from the standpoint of worldly prosperity. His painting had never met with the recognition that his fellow-artists believed should have been his. He had, however, chosen to do the character of work he liked without consideration of the public.

More popular and with a reputation in two continents, nevertheless Tory’s father considered his friend a greater painter than himself. If it were possible and he were willing at any time to accept her as a pupil, Mr. Drew greatly desired Tory to study with the other man. Armed with half a dozen sketches and her letter, Tory and Dorothy started up the long flight of steps. The house was five stories high. One saw from a large north window of glass that the studio was at the top.

The girls had been going out constantly ever since their arrival, not only in the daytime, but nightly visits with Mr. Fenton to the different theaters.

The excitement seemed not to have had any disastrous effect upon Tory; she was gayer and more full of energy and enthusiasm with each passing hour.

81 The same thing was not true of Dorothy McClain. Dorothy was an outdoor person who had always lived in a small village. The crowding, the noises and the restlessness of the city she found very tiring.

On this especial expedition Tory had not considered it wise that Dorothy accompany her. At lunch she had observed how pale and weary she looked, suggesting that Dorothy lie down and try to sleep while she was making her visit.

The proposal required a good deal of unselfishness upon Tory’s part. Very especially she wished to have Dorothy with her during the approaching interview.

She was nervous over meeting a strange artist and exhibiting her own work. The visit in itself would not have troubled her. She had heard her father talk of Philip Winslow many times. He owned several of the other man’s pictures. What was embarrassing was to show him her sketches. As each hour passed and the time drew nearer she became more convinced they had better have been relegated to the trash basket.

She could not be sorry, therefore, when Dorothy utterly declined to consider the idea of giving up the trip. She had never been82 inside an artist’s studio in her entire existence, and she wanted to know what this artist thought of Tory’s gift.

Moreover, Mr. Fenton had a business engagement at the same hour and would not have been willing to permit Tory to keep her appointment alone.

In the climb up the stairs Dorothy chanced to be in the lead. Now and then she seemed tired and stopped for a moment to rest and get her breath.

The character of the place was not the surprise to Tory that it was to the other girl. In Paris and London Tory had been in old houses converted into lodgings as poor and dark as the present one. She knew that one might open a door and find an apartment artistically furnished and extremely comfortable. Again, one might chance upon a room bare and sordid, if its occupant had been in ill luck and unable to dispose of a picture, a poem, or a play that he had thought he would be pretty sure to sell.

At the end of the third flight of steps suddenly Dorothy sat down. She was biting her lips and had grown so pale that Tory was alarmed.

“Good gracious, Dorothy dear, what is the83 matter? Can’t you go on? Had we best go back downstairs? Are you about to faint?”

Dorothy shook her head and smiled. It was so like Tory to ask half a dozen questions at once.

“No, nothing so dreadful as fainting. I had a sharp pain in my side and think I had best sit still a little while.”

Dorothy’s color did not grow better. Instead, she became whiter and caught hold of the railing for support, leaning her head against the banister.

The other girl hesitated. Should she continue on up the two additional flights of stairs and ask Mr. Winslow to come to their aid? Certainly Dorothy would to faint if nothing were done to revive her! Yet she really ought not to be left alone at present even for a few moments.

Tory glanced up and down the stairs, hoping some one might be approaching from one or the other direction to whom she could appeal for help.

She saw no one. She did, however, observe a door near the landing where Dorothy was seated standing ajar. From inside she could hear faint sounds of music, so some one must be at home.

84 Tory was accustomed to acting upon impulse. She did not mention to her companion what she intended doing. She walked over and knocked on this door. No one replied. At the same instant the notes of music grew louder so that the musician could scarcely have heard.

Tory pushed the door open.

She then looked inside the room, planning to explain her behavior as soon as she could attract any one’s attention.

She beheld a figure seated at a piano, with hands upon the keys and apparently oblivious of the world.

“Lance McClain, it cannot be you!” the girl exclaimed.

There was still no answer. Dorothy McClain heard and managed to get up and come toward the door which Tory had now opened widely.

Both girls recognized Lance, although his back was turned toward them.

He looked thinner. A sheet of music was on the rack before him and his head was upturned. Neither girl wished to disturb him at present, not until he had finished what he was playing. They did not move or speak again.

85 Dorothy was not familiar with the music; she only realized that it was more beautiful and more ambitious than anything Lance had ever attempted to play at home.

Tory recognized the Andante from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony. She had heard it played by an orchestra and appreciated that the music was too great for Lance’s meager training.

Still, there was something in his playing that held her spellbound and brought tears to her eyes and to Dorothy’s, who now had completely forgotten her discomfort of a short time before.

One heard the movement that sounds like the rippling of many waters, then the siren call from the depth of the water and of life itself. At last the beautiful, triumphant finale.

When Lance McClain ended he dropped his head on his hands.

“Lance!” Dorothy said softly.

This time Lance jumped up as if in a sudden panic of fear.

“Good gracious, Dot! It can’t be you! I am not dreaming! I have had several confounded dreams about you and father and Don lately. But you must be real, because here is Tory with you and it may not be polite86 of me, but I am obliged to say I have not dreamed about her. Who told you where to find me? I am as mad as a hornet and gladder than I have ever been over more than one or two things in my life.

“You did not hear me trying to murder that Andante, did you? I hope not. Wasn’t it awful the mistakes I made?”

This was Lance, there was no doubting it, trying to carry off a difficult and painful situation with his old humor.

Nevertheless he kept his arm tight about Dorothy’s shoulders and at this instant buried his head in her shoulder like a child.

“No use, Lance. I have already seen how badly you look,” Dorothy protested. “Please let us sit down somewhere while I tell you what you won’t believe. We found you merely by accident. Tory and I are in New York for a few days’ holiday with Mr. Fenton. I know Mr. Fenton has been trying to find news of you to take back to father, but has not succeeded. Tory, will you please tell how we happened to come to this building? One thing, Lance, I am glad to find you have such a charming room.”

Dorothy sank down on a divan piled with sofa cushions, Lance and Tory sitting down beside her.

87 “You don’t think these are my quarters, do you, Dot? That would be too good to be true.”

Tory made her explanation very brief.

“Then if this is not your room, tell us everything from the hour you left home. What are you doing here and whose piano were you playing? I don’t believe you have had a real meal since you ran away.”

“Don’t call it running away, please, Dot? Say I had to answer a desire that was too strong to be resisted.

“I am afraid you and Tory will be disappointed at what I have to tell you. I wrote to several places in New York and had secured a position here before I lit out from home. It does not pay much and I knew father would never believe I could live on so small a sum. I understood he could not afford to give me anything outside and I have managed to live, somehow!” Lance murmured under his breath. “I am busy at odd hours and sometimes I have an afternoon free. This chanced to be one of them.”

The boy’s expression altered.

“I have not yet told you of my good luck, and I have had more than I deserve. You might as well know the truth. I am nothing88 but a messenger boy. One afternoon I came here to this room and heard some one playing on the piano, some one who really understood music. There wasn’t any doubt of that blessed fact.

“I suppose I stood entranced, listening. Anyhow the musician seemed to guess how much I cared. We began talking and I was pretty homesick and wretched and must have poured out everything I was feeling at the time. The result was we became friends. I suppose I have the right to say friends. He gave me permission to come here and play on his piano when I had an opportunity. I have a key to the door and can come and go when I like. Something bigger and more wonderful, I am studying music with him two evenings a week. He gives me a lesson for as long a time as he can spare.”

There was a new tone in Lance’s voice, a boyish admiration the two girls had never known him to feel for any one before.

Tory recalled a phrase from “The Idylls of the King”: “By all the sweet and sudden passion of youth, Toward greatness in its elder.”

“What is your friend’s name, Lance?” Dorothy asked with added gentleness.

89 Lance had found not all, but a part of what he sought!

Lance shook his head.

“I had rather not tell you. I must ask permission first. Dorothy, I am afraid there is not much chance for me. I’ll never learn to be a real musician. I am nearly sixteen and too old.”

“Nonsense, Lance McClain!” Tory interrupted, not having taken much part in the conversation until the present moment. “Come on now upstairs with Dorothy and me. We are keeping Mr. Winslow waiting. I shall need your society to give me courage. Afterwards you are to come back with Dorothy and me to our hotel to dinner. I will disappear for a while and you and Dorothy can have a real talk.”