Part 5 (2/2)

Afterward I learned she had liked me from the first, too, and was afraid I mightn't turn out well. Lucky for me I didn't try to show off!

”I wouldn't think it a compliment to compare you to anything on earth!”

says I, meaning every word of it.

She laughed out, hearty as a boy. ”Royal!” she said, and held out her hand.

”And the hand is the hand of--?” she asked.

”Bill Saunders,” said I, thinking to take off my hat.

”I sound almost as honest as you,” said she. ”I'm Mary Smith.”

It was almost a shock to think she was Mary Smith. Since then it would be a shock to think of her as Eulalie Rosalinde De Montmorency. She didn't need it. Plain Mary Smith told of what was beneath her loveliness,--and, I'm forced to admit, her side-stepping and buck-jumping, once in a while. Oh, she could cut loose for fair, if stirred, but you could always remember with perfect faith Mary Smith.

It wasn't five minutes after we started talking that Arthur Saxton came along. The girl knew him, and said good morning in that civil, hold-off fas.h.i.+on a good woman uses to a man she thinks may come to liking her too well, or that she may come to like too well, when the facts are against any happy result. So there was three of us, that took our little share of what followed, gathered together early in the game.

I liked Saxton from the jump. He had more faults than any other man I ever seen. He was the queerest, contrariest cuss, and yet such a gentleman; he had such a way, and such talents, that when you were mad enough to kill him, you couldn't help but feel glad you knew him to get mad at. Somehow, he steered clear of meanness. There was a sort of n.o.bility in his capers, even when his best friends would have to admit they didn't seem to be of a size for a full-grown man. I don't know how to express myself. He often played a poor part; but darned if he didn't carry it off well, because it was him; I think that's the nearest I can come to it; good or bad, large or small, he was always Saxton, never attempting to put on anything different. And vain! Well, Heaven preserve us! And, on the other hand, not vain, neither. 'Twas like this. Among the things he did well enough to be high-cla.s.s was playing the violin.

He had a style and a go in it all his own, but he hadn't spent the time to learn some of the stunts that go with the trade. All the same, his natural gifts got him a job to play in concerts. The boss of the affair was a German, the kind of a man who had a soul to realize that Saxton made music, but had a head to go crazy over his slam-dashery. Now, Saxton grew excited whilst playing, and cut loose on his own hook, letting the poor perspiring Dutchman and the rest of the orchestra keep up to his trail the best they could. At these opportunities the Dutchman went home in a cab, frothing at the mouth. You see, he understood it was great stuff, as far as Saxton was concerned, so he cussed the cab-driver and the cab-horse, and the people on the street, being an honest sort of Dutchman, if limited; but, also, he had a pride in his gang, and he felt ent.i.tled to a show, here and there.

At last there come a big occasion. Saxton was half sick and loaded up on champagne and coffee to pull through the evening. I have his own word for it, the mixture done wonders. Right in the middle of a piece by a gentleman whose name I don't recall, as it's spelt with all the tail-end of the alphabet, and sounds like rip-sawing a board, Saxton throws dull care away and wanders into regions of beautiful sounds. .h.i.therto unexplored. Now and then the tall and melancholy gent with the bull-fiddle would scratch out a note or two, and the drummer got in a lick here and there, while the flute man toodle-oodled around to head off Saxy; but, on the whole, that orchestra was worse lost than so many West Pointers trying to catch an Apache who ain't longing for home. They sat and let old Saxton ramp by himself, laying low to hit her up strong on the last note. And they did,--but they misguessed the note. Saxton ground his teeth yet, recalling the finish. ”It was my best,” said he.

”I was inspired that night,--and then, for that a.s.sortment of garlic and sausage to smash me!”

Well, he heaved his fiddle at the poor leader, and called him a barrel of sauerkraut afloat on a sea of beer, right before the whole audience.

It is perhaps unnecessary to state that he and the orchestra parted company. Now he was off for Panama,--quit fiddling forever. Done with it. Going to take up a _man's_ work, he said. He didn't mention the variety, but rolled out the statement as if it was a joy. In the meantime, he was painting pictures and writing a novel. The pictures never got finished, and the novel hasn't come out, but those things didn't make him any less entertaining; and, as usual, what did get done of them was almighty well done, and done in a way only Arthur Saxton could do. I never see such a man to stamp himself on anything he put his hand to. And when he was working, if you said the least thing against the job, he wanted trouble with you; but the next day he'd smoke his pipe and tear it apart worse than you possibly could. That was Saxy: first crack, spoiled kid; second thought, clear-headed man.

The three of us, Mary and him and me, walked the deck day after day, talking of everything, from what fine weather it was to religion. Once Saxton called our attention to the wind in the rigging. Afterward I knew it sounded like Injun chants and coyotes howling, but Saxton asked if we didn't notice how much it was like the songs the children sing in play.

He said those songs must have been handed down from far-off days--when we whites were savages, hopping around hollering hye-ee yah, hye-ee yah, and calling on the ladies, dressed in a streak of red paint. I don't know about that, though. No child in this world can be as mournful enjoying himself as a cow-puncher with all night before him and seven hundred verses to get through; there's puncher songs would make a strong man curl up and die.

Now, says Saxton, what makes children and savages, who have a clear field to amuse themselves as they see fit, pick, with deliberate choice, such melancholy tunes? And he said it was because nature always. .h.i.t on that; wind in rigging, wind in trees, waterfalls, the far-off hum of the city, all sad, sad.

I asked him, if it was natural, where did we get the idea it was sad? It struck me that if a thing was natural, it was natural, not sad, nor nothin' else.

He said, because nature was sad. Mary said, no such a thing; nature wasn't sad--there were the flowers and green fields, also natural, and pleasant and cheerful to the eye; there was more blue sky than gray, and as for the savage being sad, why, that might be, but it wasn't sad to think that men were working out of savagery into civilization.

So then Saxton gave civilization one for its Ma, and talk brisked up.

Civilization stood for Dutchmen that ran orchestras to Saxton, and he didn't spare her feelings none. I was glad Civvy, old girl, was no friend of mine. According to him, of all the mistakes so foolish that to think of bettering it was like building a hole with no rim around it, civilization stood first and foremost.

Mary got red in the face and her eyes shone. They had it up one side and down the other, forgetting me entirely. Finally Saxton told her she wasn't talking honestly, that she hated civilization worse than he did, and it was plumb hypocrisy for her to set up in its defense; whereupon she replied that _she_ hadn't wasted her time and talents, anyhow; that she wasn't throwing things up the first little obstacle that came in the way. Which didn't seem to be just the answer one might expect to the charge, but finished Saxton plenty.

He drew himself up proud. ”If every topic had to turn to personalities--” said he.

”I didn't begin the personalities,” said Mary. ”You called me a fraud.”

”I never did!” cries Saxton. ”I said you were defending a cause you didn't believe in!”

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