Part 14

The voice was grating and unlovely as before, but again he felt amazed at the marvelous method of the singer, and the spirit with which she gave the song called forth an encore, after which she got out of the cart and passed around the basket. When she came to Randall, he purposely fumbled several seconds with his change, hoping that she might look up at him, but when she persistently looked down, he fancied that if she saw him, she was ashamed to reveal herself to him. Well she might be, he thought, and tossing some loose coins into the basket, he was about to walk away, when he heard a man standing near say some words to the woman as she held out her basket to him, which roused such fury in Randall’s soul, that before the insult had died upon the fellow’s lips, he found himself seized by the shoulders, and hurled aside with a blow from so powerful an arm that it sent him staggering against a tree. At the same instant, Randall saw the woman, with a movement of fright, run swiftly toward the cart. Before she reached the cart, however, the man at the piano had sprung from his place, and had rushed after the fellow whose words had caused the disturbance, but who, warned by the punishment which he had already received, had made the best use of his time and had escaped. Seeing this, the pianist turned and, coming toward Randall, said in a voice of controlled agitation, “I am very much obliged to you, sir, for what you did.”

Randall, who was in a state of disgust at the whole performance, waved aside the man’s thanks, and rapidly walked away.

During the weeks that followed, Randall was a prey to conflicting impressions, that kept him in a continual state of excitement and restlessness. He had got up an interest in the working of the mission chapel, and the evident help which it gave to those poor working people, and it pleased him to find a really satisfactory object for the expenditure of some of his spare cash, so he went to church every Sunday there, and contributed liberally to the work. He did not deceive himself as to the prime object of his attendance. He knew it was because his beautiful neighbor went there, but his interest in the work was sincere. He had more than once encountered the young girl in coming and going from the church, and upon these occasions it was his habit to lift his hat and to bow respectfully, just as it was her habit to return this greeting by a brilliant and beautifying blush. It made her adorably lovely, and as she now habitually removed her veil before entering the church, and did not replace it until after leaving, he had the full benefit of it. If he chanced to meet her on the street away from the church, she was always closely veiled, but usually he managed to bow to her, as she was entering or leaving.

But if the experiences of his Sundays gave him pleasure, it was more than counterbalanced by the pain he felt in the experiences of his week days. Try as he might to avoid the humiliating spectacle (and he did make a great effort) he was liable at any turn to run against that rusty cart, sleepy old pony, and the pair of musicians. He had had a sort of hope that the experience with the brute who had insulted the girl would stop these performances for the future, but he found that they went on just the same as ever. He could only conclude from this, that the man who performed with her was oblivious of, or indifferent to, her need of protection.

Randall did not always sit near her in church. Sometimes he even forced himself to take a seat where he could not look at her at all, but it was something to him to feel her nearness. One Sunday, however, he thought he had won the right to treat himself to an unusual indulgence of proximity, so on entering the church, after she had taken her usual place, he quietly walked into the seat on a line with her, and took his place near the end, where he was only separated from her by the partition dividing the pews. Never in his life had his manner been more quiet and composed, than as he sat there, profoundly still, with his eyes fixed attentively upon the preacher. He knew that she had recognized him, and he was perfectly confident that she blushed, but no one observing him would have seen in his manner anything but the coldest composure. It was, none the less, a very sweet consciousness to sit there quietly, close by her side, and he half fancied it was also pleasure to her. During the sermon he was acutely aware of her, and of every slightest movement that she had made in shifting her position, or moving her feet upon the footstool. And once, only once, he heard her breathe a little sigh, the sound of which stirred him to tenderness.

After the sermon the hymn was given out, and it proved to be the one that had been sung on the occasion of his first coming here. When the young girl rose with the open book in her hand, she observed that he had no book, and with a movement at once frank and timid she offered him hers, glancing up at him as she did so. He shook his head, declining to deprive her of it, but at the same time he caught hold of its extreme corner nearest him and continued to hold it so, until she saw his meaning, and took hold of the opposite corner. Then in a carefully modulated and sympathetic voice, which had great sweetness and charm without remarkable power, he began to sing. Admiring women had been touched by his voice before to-day, and it was no wonder if it touched with power the woman standing at his side. He hoped it did, at least, but he could divine nothing, as her little shabby thumb supported the book unwaveringly until the hymn was ended.

Walking homeward that day, Randall looked his present condition in the face more boldly and honestly than he had ever done before, and the result of it was that he owned that he was in love.

Having made this acknowledgment to himself, that he was really in love, he faced the possible consequences squarely also, and he came to the conclusion that his only safety was in flight. As for marrying a street singer, whom he had seen insulted by a common rough, and who had a voice as rasping to him as a peacock’s, he might be more or less of a fool in his love of having his own way, but he was not such a fool as that!

The contradicting facts, that she was as beautiful as a dream, and had, as he believed, a nature both exalted and refined--did not by any means seem to him a sufficient compensation, and he made up his mind to go abroad for several months, and to come back with this little episode quite eradicated from his mind.

He carried out his plan so far as the trip was concerned, and even as to its results he felt that he had been fairly successful. Certainly the absurdity of having fallen in love with a street singer with an abominable voice was sufficiently clear to him, and change of scene and absence had done their work in weakening the spell which this girl had laid upon him. In spite of all this, however, he was not sufficiently self-secure to run any risks. He would not have dared to go to church, and he had made up his mind to look out for new lodgings immediately, and until these should be secured, not to go to the front windows.

These resolutions he religiously kept. He had taken no vow, however, not to look toward the opposite house in going up and down the street, and this he always did, half hoping and half fearing to see that lovely vision in rose-color, who still remained the most beautiful picture in the world to his mind. He never caught a glimpse of her, however, and so far had seen and heard nothing of the street singers, a thing which, of course, might be accounted for by the fact that the cool weather of autumn had set in, and there was no chance of drawing a crowd in the streets to listen to singing of that sort.

During his trip abroad Randall had given himself a perfect feast of music. Convinced more strongly than ever that “love’s young dream” was not for him, he was determined to make the most of the next best thing, and to fill his soul with music. To lose the opportunities which Europe offered him for this had been his greatest regret in coming home, and after indulgence in the very richest forms of musical delight he felt more or less impatient of the concerts and recitals of which he read in the columns of the home newspapers.

One afternoon at his club, he heard some men discussing a concert which was to take place that evening, and they suggested to him to go. It seemed that Mensenn, a well-known manager, had discovered a wonderful new voice, possessed by a young girl living in the city. Only the name of Mensenn would have drawn Randall into a thing like this, and even with that important recommendation of the new singer he felt dubious and half-reluctant, but that evening, having nothing better to do, and having within him a great thirst for music, he went to the great concert hall to see what he could do, to satisfy it.

It was rather a surprise to him that Mensenn had ventured on the biggest hall in the city for the launching of this _débutante_ and yet he reflected that Mensenn was a man who generally knew what he was about.

Randall was a somewhat erratic and unaccountable fellow, careful and economical about money on certain lines, and recklessly prodigal in others. Where the indulgence of his love for music was concerned, he never counted it, and this evening, after reading the programme and seeing several favorites among the selections, he felt inclined to do his very utmost to get pleasure out of this concert by hearing it under the best conditions that he could secure. The chief of these was either sympathetic companionship, or solitude, and as he could not command the first, he would the latter, so he got a small curtained box in good sight and sound of the stage, and took his place in it alone.

The concert opened with a very good performance of violin and violoncello, with piano accompaniment. The players were not great artists, but Randall got enough out of it to stir the deep, emotional feelings within, that made him simply yearn and hunger for more--more music and sweeter, more life and fuller! The next performance was to introduce the new singer, Miss Bianca May.

He sat quite screened from view behind his curtain, and waited with mingled hope and doubting for her to come out. And now she appeared, Mensenn leading her. She was tall, she was dressed in white, she was supremely beautiful. His heart gave a great leap; the blood seemed to surge forward in his veins, and then to rush back in a way that gave him a sense of suffocation. She was walking forward with a step and a carriage that he recognized. She was looking around the house with great, pure, innocent and timid eyes that he had looked into before! She was his opposite neighbor--Tommy’s little mistress!

Her beauty was positively enthralling, but oh, her voice! At the thought of that, he turned cold with dread, and then hot with angry protest. What _did_ Mensenn mean? How _could_ he let her adorn her loveliness like this, to be led as a victim to the sacrifice? He knew the character of the audience assembled, and he knew that they were not people to be inveigled into the toleration of such a voice by mere beauty. The very fact that she had such a beautiful and correct method would make the thing all the more an insult to their intelligence. He was almost beside himself with anger and mortification. He longed passionately to rush upon the stage and drag her away, and to hide her beautiful, unconscious face against his heart, before she had come to feel the contempt and indignation which the audience, now spellbound by her beauty, would very soon have ready for her.

Across the wild confusion of these frantic, angry thoughts a sound fell, a sound so sweet, so powerful, so exquisite, that it was like the voice of peace, speaking with a strong, commanding influence to his soul. It was a voice that satisfied, for the first time in his life, the utmost ideal of Randall’s soul! Not only was it the perfect method that he knew, but the voice, itself, was so gloriously exquisite, so fine, so clear, so passionately sweet, that his soul was wrapt in ecstacy. It was almost too cruelly sweet. Randall shuddered, and, when the song ended, he dropped his face in his hands and gave a sort of sob.

Then there came from the audience an absolute storm of applause. So tempestuous and excited was it, that the girl was evidently divided between pleasure and fright, and when Mensenn came to her and led her from the stage, she was so visibly shaken that she could not, at once, respond to the encore. It seemed to Randall cruel--it made him madly indignant that they should make this demand upon her, and while the clapping and calling was at its height, he left his box, and made his way into the street.

For an hour or more he walked about trying to secure some degree of calmness, and to solve this inscrutable mystery. What was the secret of this miraculous change of voice? Had it all been a clever imitation of inferiority and discordant sound that she had practiced behind her mask? How could it be possible to so disguise the voice of a lark or of an angel such as this? And what could have been the object? Whatever it was, the creature who had long ago won his love, and who had now by the possession of this voice deepened that love to adoration, was the woman he must have for his wife, if work of man and prayers to heaven could accomplish it! The fact that she had been a masked street singer, the uncertain quantity of her relation toward the man who had played with her in that character,--all these things vanished, and Randall was possessed by the headlong wish, which dominated everything else, of getting access to her immediately, and begging her to become his wife.

He made his way back at last to the concert hall, and found the audience just dispersing. He had not wished to hear her sing again; he felt that it would be more than he could bear, but he had a definite purpose in view as he made his way to the rear of the stage. Here he met several men whom he knew, coming away.

“It’s no use, my boy!” said one of these. “Old Mensenn is immovable. He not only will not introduce us, but he refuses, for the present, to answer any questions. Perhaps he’s wise, for after such an ovation as this, if she showed up, she’d run the risk of being eaten alive. The women are as mad over her as the men.” Randall hurried on, however, and catching sight of the well-known face of old Mensenn, approached him with a certain confidence. The man had known him long, and, as Randall hoped, in a way that had made him trust him. Every effort which he made was perfectly useless, however. It was evident that no exception to his decision was to be made.

Randall was turning away half-resentfully when a man, small and unremarkable in appearance, came from a long, dark passage and, seeing him, stopped a second, and then, as if recognizing him, approached rapidly and said:

“You do not know me, but you rendered me and mine a service once, which I can never forget. You are the man who punished the brute who offered an insult to the being dearest to me in the world. I saw you from behind my mask, and have often wished that I could thank you properly for what you did. Will you call to see me to-morrow afternoon at four, and let me introduce you to my daughter that she may thank you, too?” And while Randall stood astonished and delighted, the man gave the address of the house opposite his own, and then walked away.

Randall, on his way home, felt, in spite of his joy at this stroke of fortune, as puzzled and confused in mind as ever. It was an untold relief to learn that the man with whom the woman he loved had sung in the public streets was her father, but oh, how could he have let her do it? What sort of a father could he be? And yet his somewhat pathetic face had beamed with tenderness during the few seconds in which he had spoken to him. Well, one great burden had been rolled away from his heart by the discovery of this relationship between the street singer and her companion; another had gone with the discovery that that awful sound of discord was not her natural voice; and the one that still remained, the fact that she had been a masked street singer, lay heavy on his heart still, but contrasted with the love he had for this woman, that burden he was more than ready to carry.

The next afternoon at precisely four, he rang at the door of the opposite house, and asked for Mr. May. The servant led him up several flights of stairs to the very top of the house, and then along a dark passage leading to the back building, and here she knocked at a door, and then turned and left him. A man’s voice called “Come in!” and Randall opened the door and saw his new acquaintance sitting at a table writing, and at his side his old acquaintance seated on a low chair engaged in stroking Tommy, who was greatly grown. He did not see the kitten at first, because of the fact that the young girl was dressed in deep, intense black, which swathed her to her throat and wrists. It made the brilliant loveliness of her face, however, all the more startling, as she rose to her feet, still holding Tommy, and recognized him with her usual tribute of a rosy blush. His appearance was evidently a surprise to her, though it soon became evident that her father had prepared her for the reception of a stranger, and had told her to what cause the visit was due.

The father, himself, a somewhat feeble and timid man, explained that they were in the shadow of a recent bereavement, his wife, and the girl’s mother, having died only a month or so ago. He alluded to it in a low and sorrowful voice, and ended with the words:

“You can understand, therefore, all the more, why I should have wished for the opportunity of thanking you for resenting the affront that was offered to her, by that brute, when she was exposing herself, for the sake of our child, to the dangers which such a position made inevitable. It was all that our dear daughter might be nurtured in refined and wholesome conditions, for the preservation of her health and her innocence, and the development of her voice, which has fulfilled, at last, all our hopes concerning it, when the dear mother, who so passionately loved her has passed beyond the knowledge of it.”

“Don’t say so, Father,” said the young girl, gently. “I felt her very near to me, last night. It was that thought which kept me up and enabled me to sing my best.”

As she spoke, she drew a little nearer to him, and putting Tommy on the floor, she took her father’s hand in hers and held it, while he talked to their visitor, and told his story, in a simple, frank, unworldly way that very soon put Randall in possession of the whole situation. It was made very clear to him that the mother had been the master spirit of this trio, and that this mild and ineffectual little man was very helpless without her. His lack of worldly prudence showed plainly enough in the fact that he took this stranger so fully into his confidence on the sole ground that he had once defended his dead wife from an insult. The girl, herself, too, seemed to find nothing strange in the situation, as she sat by and listened to her father’s recital of his wife’s labor of love and sacrifices.

She had once possessed a superb voice, herself, it seemed, and had received the most perfect and thorough training in a great European _conservatoire_, being herself an Italian, but before she had sung in public at all, a severe attack of throat trouble had ruined her voice forever, and she had come to America to give lessons, and in a southern town had met and married her husband. Then had begun a long life of vicissitudes of various kinds, culminating in the street-singing performances, a necessity to which they had been reduced, at last, by positive want. In this way she had eked out the little that she could make by taking pupils at a small price, and by the little jobs of writing and bookkeeping which the man himself could get, until the time should be ripe for her daughter’s _début_.

All this was told to Randall with the utmost simplicity, and Bianca, herself, sitting by, seemed pleased that he should know it. When at last he rose to go, it was like the parting of friends, and he asked and received permission to come again. He longed almost intolerably to ask her now, to-day, to be his wife, and he chafed under the necessity of delay.

And the delay, in point of fact, was not very long. When hearts are young and trusting, why should it be? And Bianca had had an instinct of blind trust in him from the first. He got Mensenn to say a good word for him; he cultivated the father and took pains to make him acquainted with the details of his life, position and circumstances; and then, at last, he felt that he had only Bianca’s consent to win.

How would she answer him? How did she feel toward him? He asked himself these questions with agitated hope and fear. Her very friendliness and frankness half frightened him at times.