IT was the last day of November, 1882. The sun had not shone at all that day. The wind, sharp-edged, had blown steadily from the northeast. The clouds, leaden of hue and woolly of texture, had hung very close to the earth. Weather-wise people had predicted snow—the first snow of the season; but none had fallen. Rheumatic people had had their tempers whetted. Impressionable people, among them Elias Bacharach, had been beset by the blues.
Elias had tried hard to absorb himself in his work; but without success. His colors would not blend. His brushes had lost their cunning. His touch was uncertain. His eye was false. At two o’clock he had given up in despair, and sent his model home. Then he sat down at the big window of his studio, and looked off across the tree-tops into the lowering north. A foolish thing to do. It was a cheerless prospect. In the clouds he could trace a hundred sullen faces. The tree-tops shivered. The whistling wind, the noises of the street, the drone of a distant hand-organ, mingled in dreary, enervating counterpoint. His own mood darkened. Though he had every reason to be contented—though he had youth, art, independence, excellent health, sufficient wealth, and not a care in the world—he was nervous and restless and depressed. The elements were to blame. Under gray skies, which of us has not had pretty much the same experience?
By and by Elias got up.
“I’ll go out,” he said, “and walk it off.”
He went out. For a while he walked aimlessly hither and thither. But walking did not bring the hoped-for relief. He and the world were out of tune. The men and women whom he passed were one and all either commonplace or ugly. The sounds that smote his ears were inharmonious. The wind sent a chill to his bones; besides, it bore a disagreeable odor of petroleum from the refineries across the river. “I might as well—I might better—have remained within-doors,” was his reflection. Presently, however, he found himself in union Square. This reminded him that there was a little matter about which he wanted to see Matthew Redwood, the costumer. Elias had lately read Mistral’s “Mirèio.” The poem had fired his enthusiasm. He was bent upon making Mirèio the subject of a picture. But, he had asked himself, what style of costume do the Proven?al peasant women wear? He had determined to consult Redwood. Now, being in Redwood’s neighborhood, he would call upon the old man, and state the question.
Redwood’s place was just below Fourteenth Street, on Fourth Avenue. The house had formerly been a dwelling-house. In the process of its degeneracy, it had most likely passed through the boarding-house stage. At present it was given over without reserve to commerce. A German drinking-shop occupied the basement, impregnating the air round about with a smell of stale lager beer. Redwood used the parlors—large, lofty apartments, with paneled walls and frescoed ceilings—and the floors above. The frescoes, of course, dated from the dwelling-house epoch. Their hues were sadly faded. Here and there, in patches, the paint had peeled off. Three pallid cupids, wretchedly out of drawing, floated around the plaster medallion from which the gas fixture depended. Elias never entered here without thinking of the curious secrets those cupids might have whispered, if they had been empowered to open their painted lips. What scenes of joy and sorrow had they not looked down upon in the past? Merry-makers had danced beneath them; women had wept beneath them; lovers had wooed their mistresses beneath them; what else? The intimate inner life of a family, of a home, had gone on beneath them. How many domestic quarrels had they watched? How many weddings? How many funerals? What strange stories had they not overheard? Of what strange doings had they not been mute witnesses? Between the windows stood a tall pier-glass. Its gilt frame was chipped and tarnished. A milky film, like that which obscures the eyes of an aged man, had gathered over its surface. The quicksilver was veined, like a leaf. It had a very knowing look, this ancient mirror, as though, if it had chosen, it could have startled you with ghostly effigies of the forms and faces that it had reflected in by-gone years. Elias Bacharach, who enjoyed having his fancy stirred, was always glad of an excuse to drop in at Redwood’s.
Elias climbed Redwood’s stoop, and opened the door. It had been dark enough outside. Inside it was darker still. It took a little while for Elias’s eyesight to accommodate itself to the change. Then the first object of which it became conscious was the sere and yellow pier-glass between the windows. Far in its mottled depths—down, that is to say, at the remotest and darkest end of the room—he saw Matthew Redwood, the costumer, in conversation with a young girl. The young girl’s face, a spot of light amid the surrounding shadows, had an instantaneous and magnetic effect upon Elias Bacharach’s gaze. He quite forgot his old friends, the cupids. Turning about, and drawing as near to the couple as discretion would warrant, he made the young girl the victim of a fixed, eager stare.
She was worth staring at. From under the brim of her bonnet escaped an abundance of golden hair—true golden hair, that gleamed like a mesh of sunbeams. In rare and beautiful contrast to this, she had a pair of luminous brown eyes, set like living jewels beneath dark eyebrows and a snowy forehead. Add a rose-red, full-lipped mouth, white teeth, and faintly blushing cheeks; and you have the elements from which to form a conception of her. She was chatting vivaciously with the master of the premises. In response to some remark of his, she laughed. Her laugh was as crisp, as merry, as melodious, as a chime of musical glasses. Who could she be, and what, Elias wondered. Probably an actress. Few ladies, unless actresses, had dealings with the costumer, Redwood. Yet, at the utmost, she was not more than seventeen years old; and her natural and unsophisticated bearing seemed in no wise suggestive of the green-room. Ah! now she was going. “Good-by,” Elias heard her say, in a voice that started a quick vibration in his heart; and next moment she swept past, within a yard of him, and crossed the threshold, and was gone. For an instant, never so delicate and impalpable a perfume, shaken from her apparel, lingered upon the air. Elias stood still, facing the door through which she had disappeared.
“Ah, good-day, Mr. Bacharach; what can I do for you?” old Redwood asked, coming up and offering his hand.
“You can tell me who that wonderful young lady is,” it was on the tip of Elias’s tongue to reply: but he stopped himself. Without clearly knowing why, he was loth to reveal to another the interest and the admiration that she had aroused in him. He was afraid that his motive might be misconstrued, afraid of compromising his dignity, of appearing too easily susceptible in the old man’s eyes. So he put down his curiosity, and began about Mirèio, demanding enlightenment on the score of Proven?al costumes.
“Proven?al costumes,” the old man repeated, with a twang that savored of New Hampshire; “South-French, we say in the trade. Why, certainly. I’ve got a whole lot of lithographs, that show all the varieties. But they’re up to my house. You couldn’t make it convenient to come and look at them there, could ye? Then I’d lend you those that struck your fancy.”
“That’s very kind of you,” said Elias. “Where do you live? And when would it suit you to have me call?”
“I live up in West Sixty-third Street, No.——; and you might drop in most any evening after dinner—to-night, if you’ve got nothing better to do.”
“Very well; to-night, then,” agreed Elias, and bade the old man good afternoon.
He went back to his studio. He had got rid of his blues; but he could not get rid of his vision of the golden-haired young lady. That, fleeting as it had been, had photographed itself upon his retina. Again and again he heard her tinkling laughter. Again and again he breathed the evanescent, penetrating perfume that she had left behind her upon quitting the costumer’s shop. Excepting his mother, now dead, and the models whom he employed, Elias Bacharach had never known a woman, young or old, upon terms of greater intimacy than those required for bowing in the street, or paying one or two formal calls a year. Until to-day, indeed, he had never even seen a woman whom he had desired to know more closely. But this young girl with the golden hair had taken singular possession of his fancy. A score of questions concerning her presented themselves for solution. Her name? He ran over all the women’s names that he could think of, from Abigail down to Zillah, seeking for one that seemed to fit her. None struck him as delicate or musical enough. Her condition in life? Was she, after all, an actress? If so, at what theater? He did not care much for the theater as a general thing; but if he only knew at which one she performed, he would certainly go to see her. Her age? Had he been right in setting it down at seventeen? Where did she live? Who were her family? Would he, Elias Bacharach, ever come face to face with her again? What were the chances of his some time having an opportunity to make her acquaintance? Perhaps he knew somebody who knew her, and could introduce him to her. Only, he was ignorant of her name, and therefore powerless to institute inquiries. How stupid he had been not to ask Redwood; how absurdly timid and self-conscious! But it was not yet too late. He would ask him at his house in the evening. Then, having identified her, it might be possible, by one means or another, to procure a presentation. Delightful prospect! How he would enjoy talking to her, and hearing her talk, and all the while feasting his eyes upon the delicious loveliness of her face! He wondered whether her character accorded with her appearance. Was she as sweet and as pure and as bright, as she was beautiful? He wondered—But it would take too long to tell all the wonderment of which she was subject. When evening came, Elias promised himself, old Redwood should gratify his thirst for information.