A step aside

I

THE painting lesson was over, and a bevy of girls fluttered out of the studio, each bowing to the teacher, who held open the door and returned the salutes mechanically. After the rustle of petticoats had died away, he gave a parting glance at the plaster casts, the charcoal drawings, the ambitious studies in oils, then, with a sigh of relief, closed the studio door and walked down the corridor. He met a maid-servant whom he bade ask Madame Kenyon if she could see him for a few minutes, and although the English words came readily to his lips, the Frenchman was betrayed in the Madame. The maid hurried off and returned to nod and lead him to a little room, half parlor, half office, where a stout dame with gray hair sat at a desk, writing a letter.

*¢ Ah, Monsieur Valrey,” she said, smiling upon him over her shoulder, ‘‘ you have come just in time for a cup of tea with me. Pray be seated, and pardon me if I finish this letter before we begin our conversation.”

** Do not let me disturb you, Madame Kenyon,” 1 said Monsieur, in a voice that sounded very deep after her light, silvery accent. ‘The mistress of the fashionable school turned back to her letter-writing, while her teacher of drawing and painting crossed the room and seated himself by a window that looked out on Fifth Avenue. Streams of carriages flowed to and from the Park, languid ladies lying back on the cushions, haughty coachmen sitting bolt upright, high-stepping horses clanking silver chains. Monsieur Valrey regarded the show of wealth and fashion with apathy, not envy. The rich people of New York were nothing to him; he no longer even despised them. He was a tall, spare man, whose eyebrows were just touched with gray, although his hair had grown quite white. His face was shaved clean, so that the deep lines showed plainly, but failure and sorrow had aged him more than years, for in spite of his wrinkles and white hair he was not yet sixty. At thirty he had married and brought his wife to New York, hoping to win the fame and fortune denied him in France, and he won neither. Still, he struggled along gayly for a while, believing that the rich Americans must sooner or later buy his pictures, give him orders, heap wealth -and honor upon him; but the rich Americans ignored his very existence, and poor Paul Valrey drank the cup of disappointment to the dregs before the cup of poverty was forced to his lips. Finally, when his little stock of money had dwindled down to a handful of dollars, his wife bore him a child, and the doctor who attended her let Valrey paint his portrait in payment for professional services.

The portrait was excellent and brought him a few orders, and he managed to keep a loaf in the cupboard, but at last he was glad to eke out a living by teaching. He had neither reputation nor influential friends to back him, and for a long time it was a hard struggle to get pupils, but in the course of ten or twelve years he achieved some measure of fame as a teacher of drawing and painting. His appearance and manners helped him ; he was a gentleman, and although stern, he was not irascible; mothers could depend upon him not to make love to their daughters or box their sons’ ears, and a French drawing master is apt to be a trifle too gallant and far too hastytempered. He made a decent livelihood, but to a man who thinks he has a spark of genius in him, who is sure that his work which is passed over | is better than that which catches the eye of the world, above all, to a man who loves his art, it is hard to teach young ladies and gentlemen to whom painting is a mere amusement, fit for an idle hour. Valrey, however, had gone so near the brink of poverty —the poverty that lacks bread to eat and clothes to put on—that he rejoiced to be able to keep wife and child in comfort, even at the cost of painful drudgery. He was sought as a teacher; the heads of schools vied with each other to secure his services, and he saw himself growing prosperous and laying by something for the future,— he was becoming almost resigned to his fate — when his wife died. ‘Then Valrey laid down brushes and palette in despair. His daughter, who was sixteen then, was dear to him indeed, but it was the wife who had fanned his fainting hopes and encouraged him to believe that the world would some day recognize and reward his talent. After she had gone from him, the loving, helpful woman, he sank into a machine ; he gave lessons, he painted a portrait now and then, and while he did his work well, it was without enthusiasm. He taught his daughter to draw and paint, although she did not inherit his taste or talent ; he had her read and speak French with him; he educated her as well as he could, and Pauline Valrey grew up in the belief that all there was for her to do in life was to teach, and accepted her calling without dreaming of adopting any other.

When she was almost twenty he succeeded in getting her a position in Madam Kenyon’s famous school for young ladies, where he had given lessons for several years, and she began with teaching the rudiments of French and taking charge of the youngest drawing pupils. It was of her that he wished to speak to Madam Kenyon, and when the note had been written and the tea brought in, he broached the subject delicately. Pauline had been two months in the school and he wanted to know whether she gave satisfaction ; he knew Madam Kenyon too well to think that she would keep a teacher for any sentimental reason.

*« Mademoiselle Valrey has the gift of instruction,’ said Madam Kenyon, promptly. ‘I have been watching her closely since she came, and I am convinced that as she grows older she will develop into a teacher whose services will be very valuable. Moreover, Monsieur, she has such charming manners that she subdues my wild Western girls by sheer gentleness, and I hope they will take pattern by her. It is quite useless, you know, to preach manners; it is only by example that a hoyden can be trained. And my teachers must be able to do something more than correct exercises and hear recitations; they must help me to refine, Monsieur. I do not claim to send out learned women as Vassar or Girton do, but when a young lady has been with me three or four years, I expect her to conduct herself properly in a drawing-room or at a dinner - table, to speak low and use good English, to dress suitably and word a note neatly. It is harder to teach all this than to teach Greek or astronomy.”

Monsieur Valrey bowed; he had heard these remarks many times before and he only murmured, -—

‘It is indeed, Madame, far more difficult.”

He had drunk the tea, which he abhorred, and he looked at the fragile, painted cup in silence for a minute ; then he said, —

** TJ hope you will be a friend to my daughter always. She may need a friend any day, and you may need a new painting teacher.”

‘¢Oh, no, no,” Madam Kenyon exclaimed. She knew Valrey’s history; she both respected and pitied him.

He shook his head and smiled. ‘TI have not been quite well lately, and the doctor tells me that I have a heart trouble which is likely to end in sudden death. Perhaps I shall live years, perhaps only weeks. I must beg you to regard this as confidential ; my daughter does not suspect it.”

He rose and Madam held out her hand to him.

“T shall always be a friend to your daughter,” she said. “ You may depend on me.”

“Thank you. I thought it was my duty to tell you. Monsieur Dupont could take my place at any time, and he is a good teacher. ‘The assurance of your regard for my daughter’s welfare is a great comfort to me, and I hope she will make herself useful to you in your work.”

He bowed and left Madam Kenyon standing in the middle of the room. She frowned and shuddered.

“I hope he does n’t die while he is giving a lesson here,” she said. ‘The effect on the girls would be terrible. As for Monsieur Dupont, I would not have him in the house.”

Then, with a troubled face, she went back to her letter-writing.

Valrey found his daughter in the school-room, waiting for him. She helped him on with his

A STEP ASIDE. (i ereat coat; she brushed a speck off his shoulder ;. she gave him his hat and stick, and they went out together to the bustling Avenue, and walked towards the Park. She was like him, tall and slight; it was from her mother that she had inherited delicate features, a fine-grained, white _ skin, and bright brown hair and eyes. She could have sat to the most fastidious of painters for a portrait of a lady, but no painter could catch the charm of her smile, accompanied as it often was by a faint flush in her cheeks that faded while one was wondering what had lit up the pale face. She looked somewhat older than her years; she had been trained in a school that makes a girl of twenty a woman. Her mother had taught her to use a needle deftly, and she could fashion a dress or trim a bonnet to accord well with her face and figure; she had a true Frenchwoman’s knack of putting a bit of lace around her neck or tying a ribbon at her throat. For her father, she cared in a sort of maternal way, looking after his clothes and scolding him gently about his collars, and she honored him as she loved him, and since her mother’s death she had hardly had a companion save him. He was always undemonstrative, sometimes severe towards her, but she knew that she was all that kept his heart beating in his bosom.

She guessed he had spoken to Madam Kenyon about her, and finally she said : —

“ Nothing has gone wrong, papa; Madame has

‘no fault to find with me? I saw the tea taken into the Parlors and I knew that you oa have to drink a cup.”

She pressed closer to him and smiled up in his face roguishly.

“ Afternoon tea is part of the course, you know,” she added. Her keen eyes had seen through all the fashionable school-teacher’s pretenses to elegance, and Madam Kenyon would have felt a trifle uncomfortable had she suspected how her youngest teacher regarded the famous refining institution. Monsieur Valrey, however, had no sense of humor to help him bear the ills of life, and he answered gravely : —

‘** Yes, we had the tea; women seem to like such things. Madame did not find fault with you, but you must try to give satisfaction, for she pays her teachers well, and she cannot afford to have poor ones; she has a great name to keep up. You will be able to earn a good living if you are patient and industrious.”

It was a dull path he pointed out to her, but she had grown used to thinking it the only path her feet could ever tread. Most girls of her age look and long for the lover who is to rescue them from poverty, from unpleasant homes, from worry and care and trouble, and when a young man is introduced and begs the favor of a waltz, they wonder if this indeed be He. Dreams, Pauline had indulged in, but not such dreams. Her favorite was this: A man who had traveled, and who knew all about pictures, was to find his way to the little third floor room in their boarding-house that her father used as a studio. He would see the paintings there and cry out in wonder. “ They are masterpieces,” she heard him say. ‘“ They are works of genius. Monsieur, permit me to send some of my friends to view these pictures, but they must be exhibited ; they cannot hang here in obscurity.”

And then his friends would come and buy the pictures, and Papa Valrey would be sought after ; orders would flow in from all parts of the world, and he and Pauline could go back to France. She never got beyond this. France meant heaven, the beautiful France that her father loved, but which she had never seen. It vexed her to remember that New York was her birthplace, and she would not confess it unless the question were asked point-blank; she was pleased when some one discovered a French accent in her English speech. —

She and her father talked but little as they made their way up the Avenue, for it was a raw, blustering November day, and the wind blew the dust hither and thither in clouds, seeming to take a malicious delight in whirling a handful against a girl’s face. Pauline’s wisp of a veil hardly came to her nose, and she pressed her lips close together as she hurried along at her father’s side. When they reached the Park, they got into a belt-line ear, which in its round on the edge of the town would carry them to that unfashionable quarter of New York that les near the East River. They had boarded for several years with the widow Terry, whose house was one of a score called Harloe Row, in a street not far from Beekman Place. It is a quiet spot, given over to modest dwellings, and in the river just beyond lies Blackwell’s Island with its great gray buildings. The Avenue about here is lined with vulgar little shops, and the owners, not a few of whom are Germans, lounge in the doorways, lightly clad in only shirt and trousers when the weather is warm, while their wives sit by the opened windows above, and are on the alert to speak harsh words to the children playing on the sidewalk. <A groggery with a group of idlers about it, or a butcher shop with carcasses of calves and pigs suspended in the windows to tempt a feeble appetite, is on every corner. Up and down jingle the eternal horse-cars, and great drays rumble over the stone pavement from daybreak to dark. The very policemen have caught something of the bedraggled look of the neighborhood, and seem far away cousins to the neat, white-gloved wearers of the uniform, who pilot ladies through the throng of carriages below Madison Square. And Madison Square is nearly as foreign to the people of First Avenue as Mayfair or the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

In Harloe Row, just around the corner, noise and squalor give way to peace and decency, and the people who dwell in the neat brick houses hold their heads rather high when they cross the Avenue. Mrs. Terry, with whom the Valreys boarded, was a widow, who, if she had not seen better days, had at least never seen any worse ones, and prided herself somewhat on her gentility, which to the outward eye consisted chiefly in going to church dressed in black silk. Her house was too small to accommodate many boarders, and she was very particular about those whom she fed and lodged. She could go to bed soothed by a sense of perfect security and unimpeachable decorum, sure that no roistering clerk would stumble up her narrow staircase after midnight. The Valreys occupied three tiny rooms on the third floor, and on the second were the Kanes, a sedate, elderly floor- walker and his bed-ridden wife. There was room for one more boarder, and Mr. Kane had spoken about a young man of his acquaintance who would be glad to become a member of the family ; but Mrs. Terry did not like the idea of a young man, although she finally consented to receive this one on trial for a fortnight. “Mind you,” she said, “if I smell whiskey about him, out he goes. I won’t have any cigarette smoking, beer-drinking boys in my house.” ‘He has been well brought up,” Mr. Kane returned, “he is a clergyman’s son.” “ They are always scamps,” cried Mrs. Terry. It may be added just here that the late Mr. Terry had not been sober for a month before death cut him down in the bloom of manhood.

This young man, this clergyman’s son, who was to be taken on trial for a fortnight, happened to be in the dingy car that carried the Valreys homeward that November day, and he eyed them with respectful interest when they took their places near him. He had no idea who they were, nor did they suspect he was the would-be boarder whose history they had learned something of from Mr. Kane. As the car filled, Pauline was pushed nearer to him, and at last she was pressed so close to his side that when a gust of wind blew in the half-opened window behind them, a lock of her hair escaped and brushed across his cheek. His dark, thin face flushed painfully, and he shrank together so that she could raise her hand to fasten the straying lock beneath her veil again. . He was very young. He had eager, inquiring gray eyes, shaded by lashes as black as his hair, and a virgin mustache was beginning to show above a mouth that was as pure and sensitive as Pauline’s. As for her, although she hardly looked at him, she noticed his slender hands; she noticed, too, that the binding of his coat was worn off at the wrists ; she saw the patches on his shoes; nothing escaped her tranquil glance, not even his frayed collar and cuffs. She recognized in him a poor gentleman, and as she sat there beside him, her eyes fixed just above the bleared face of an old man opposite, she mentally trimmed the frayed collar and cuffs, she fastened a button that hung on by the eyelids, she mended the shabby coat,

A STEP ASIDE. re wondering if he had no mother or sister or wife to perform these little services for him.

When the car stopped to let her and her father alight, the young man alighted too, and followed them up the street to Harloe Row, even to the widow Terry’s door. ‘There Monsieur Valrey turned to look sharply at him, and taking off his hat, the young man said, his face reddening again, —

“This is Mrs. Terry’s house, unless I have made a mistake in the number. I am coming here to board. You may have heard Mr. Kane speak of me — Langmuir is my name, Hugh Langmuir.” |

His eyes met Pauline’s with wistful entreaty, and she smiled a little. So she and he came face to face for the first time, and in the minute that they stood on the doorstep, their hearts went out to each other in sympathy. They were both poor, both young, and to both the beckoning future held forth vague promises.

Il.

AuTHouGH Hugh Langmuir did not suspect that he was on trial, he comported himself so well that Mrs. Terry concluded that she could safely keep him. He was seen only at the table, and he spoke merely to answer a question ; his evenings he spent in his own room. One day, as he entered the dining-room where the household was assembled for the six o’clock dinner, the door-knob came off in his hand, and he looked at Mrs. Terry in the silent dismay of a child who has broken a tumbler and expects a sharp reproof.

“ There !”’ cried Mrs. Terry, “I have told the locksmith a dozen times to fix that knob on so as it would stay, but he always forgets it.”

“ Oh, I can fasten it on so that it will stay,” said Hugh, gathering up the screws from the floor. ‘¢ My mother thinks I ought to be a mechanic; I like to tinker. If you want me to feel quite at home, Mrs. Terry, you must let me hammer a little now and then.”

‘Gracious,’ said Mrs. Terry, with a fat laugh, | ‘hammer as much as you please.”

It was the first time he had ever spoken of himself or of his people, and the door-knob seemed to have broken the ice. He took his place at table, which was next to Mr. Kane and opposite Pauline, and presently he told about a bewildered country woman who had come up in the elevated ear with him that evening, and he made a droll story out of very slight material. Papa Valrey and Pauline smiled, but Mrs. Terry and Mr. Kane laughed heartily, while Hugh looked from face to face with unmoved countenance, only his twink- - ling eyes betraying how he enjoyed his little triumph.

‘‘ The first week that I was in New York,” he said, confidentially, ““I was mortally afraid that somebody might suspect how green and country I was, and I always walked very fast to nowhere in particular, though I was forever getting lost. In the course of a month I began to think that I had a metropolitan air, and I plucked up sufficient courage to have my boots blacked by an imp down ~ town. Herubbed hard for a while ; then he cocked his head, looked up in my face, and said, grinning like an ape, ‘ Tell you, mister, it ain’t easy to git a shine on to boots that the country mud sticks to yet. The worst of it was, I blushed in shame and the imp saw it.”

There was another laugh, but Pauline sighed wistfully, —

“T wish there was country mud on my boots. I wonder what the world is like outside of New York.”

“© Ah,” cried Hugh, “and I was always wondering what the world was like outside of my village.”

He did not go up to his room directly after dinner as he had been wont to do ; he lingered awhile in the parlor where Mrs. Terry and the Valreys spent the evenings. It was a hideous little room, with a green and red carpet, and staring white walls. ‘The pictures were mostly photographs of the Terry family, encased in shiny black frames. There was some artistic wax-work, —a cross with a wreath of flowers, standing on a bracket in the corner, and beneath it a little marble-topped table held ghastly water -lilies, which were protected from the dust by a glass shade. What saved the room from being a nightmare was the large table in the middle, covered with a cheerful crimson cloth. The green rep arm-chairs had a well-worn, comfortable look, too; and when Mrs. Terry and Pauline sat sewing by the drop-light, and Papa Valrey, who always turned his back to them so that the light came over his left shoulder, and always explained and apologized, sat near with a newspaper, the little group looked pleasant and homelike to the lonesome boy.

*¢ Sit down,” said Mrs. Terry who saw his irresolute yet longing glance, “sit down. That old chair by the window will suit you, I guess, though it is rather shaky. You can tinker that some time if you want to.”

He tried it cautiously, then drew it up to the group and read a newspaper with infinite contentment. |

Hugh was the oldest son of a clergyman who had been too poor to marry until he was past forty, and the parish he served in a village in northern New York gave him a salary which just enabled him to live and to educate his children. It was a bitter disappointment to him when Hugh left college at the end of his freshman year and declared that he would be no poor parson or lawyer or doctor. The boy was ambitious to gain wealth, and as the first step he entered the village store, kept by an old bachelor cousin, who had managed by dint of hard work to build up a large country trade and lay by a considerable fortune. He liked Hugh ; he expressed the hope that Hugh might step into his shoes some day, but the boy scorned the idea of dying a mere country store-keeper. He stayed in the village, weighing out groceries and measuring off calicoes, until he was twenty-one, and then with a hundred dollars and a letter of introduction in his pocket, he came to New York. The letter of introduction to the head of the firm that supplied his cousin with teas and coffees and spices availed him little, and it was only after weeks of weary search that he managed to get a place in the office of The Essex Manufacturing Company. He worked so well that he rose to a position which brought him a salary of fifty dollars a month, and it was on that he fed and clothed himself. Although he had never _ known many of the luxuries of life, the parsonage was a home ruled by a gentle mother, and Hugh’s year in cheap boarding-houses had been a terrible 2 experience. He was too proud to make friends quickly, too fastidious to care for coarse pleasures, and he had led a hand-to-mouth existence among people whose speech and manners irritated him, and from whose good-humored advances he shrank in disgust. ‘The sight of the little group around the drop-light in Mrs. Terry’s parlor was like a glimpse of heaven to him, and as he pretended to read, he looked often towards Pauline, who sewed industriously, conscious that the young man’s eyes were upon her, but never meeting his shy glances.

Monsieur Valrey laid down his newspaper and took off his spectacles.

“T see that Mr. Melrose has got possession of the New York and San Francisco Railroad,” he remarked in a way that invited response.

The doings of the rich Americans could still astonish him a little. Monsieur Valrey was heart | and soul a Frenchman ; he had not become a citizen of the United States in any sense of the word ; and if somebody had stopped him suddenly in the street and asked where his home was, he would probably have replied Blois, his native town, that he had not seen for thirty years and more. He cherished a vague idea of going back there one of these days; New York was merely a sojourning place.

Hugh lowered his newspaper too, and said with eager, boyish promptness, —

“ Yes, Melrose is a wonderful man, a genius in his way. He used to live up in our part of the country and my father remembers him as a barefoot boy. He always vowed he would be rich.”

“ Many a man has vowed that, Mr. Langmuir. To me, such an ambition is not the most noble.”

Hugh’s face flushed. He wondered whether the grave old Frenchman had read his thoughts at that moment. It was his ambition to be rich, and he found nothing ignoble in it. Of course a rich man must use his wealth aright, and Hugh saw himself building hospitals and endowing colleges.

“Mr. Kane comes from your part of the country, too,’ broke in Mrs. Terry. ‘Perhaps he vowed he would be rich, but he ain’t, though he is as good and hard-working a man as ever lived — better than Mr. Melrose, I guess, for from all I hear, Mr. Melrose ain’t particular how he gits money as long as he gits it. My, what a house he is putting up on Fifth Avenue! They say all the door-knobs are to be gold, with some kind of jewel in ’em.”

“If one of those came off in my hand I would keep it,” said Hugh.

Mrs. Terry sniffed. “A lot you would,” she returned in slangy scorn.

‘“‘ How is Mrs. Kane to-day?” Pauline asked the landlady.

“ Oh, she is pretty bad; she is a great sufferer. It is a comfort she is so fond of reading, for her husband can’t be with her all the time, though he is the most devoted man I ever saw. There’s hardly an evening but what he brings her home a book. Lucky they ’re cheap nowadays. She’s got a stack of ’em that high.”

Mrs. Terry held up her hand as high as she could and looked severely at Hugh.

‘Mrs. Kane used to teach school before her marriage,” he said. “I never knew her, but my ~ mother did. ‘The Kanes are old friends, though ; they came to our church. When I was a little chap I used to like to go to the Kane farm. I always got a big mug of milk and a thick piece of cake. It is a lovely farm” —

He broke off, thinking his hearers would not be interested in the reminiscences of his boyhood, but Pauline had laid down her work and was looking at him fixedly.

“Go on,” she said, imperiously. “ Tell us about it. There were great fields and herds of cows and sheep and — and” —

“ Anda wide creek running through the fields,” Hugh added, coming to her rescue as she faltered in her catalogue of rustic delights, “‘and we boys caught sunfish and went swimming. ‘The current was very strong and once Jimmy Kane ” —