V—A SONG IN THE NIGHT
In the twenty-four years of John Travis’s life he had not done much but please himself. There was never any special pinch in the Travis household, any choice of two things, with the other to be given up entirely. His father was an easy-going man, his mother an amiable society woman, proud, of course, of her good birth. As I said before, excesses were not to John’s taste. He didn’t look like a fastidious young fellow, but the Travises were clean, wholesome people. Perhaps this was where their good blood really showed itself.
Mr. Travis had a little leaning toward the law for his son; the young fellow fancied he had a little leaning toward medicine. He dallied somewhat with both; he wrote a few pretty society verses; he etched very successfully, and he painted a few pictures, which roused an art ambition within him. He fell in love with a sweet girl in the winter, and in the late summer they had quarrelled and gone separate ways.
There had been another factor in his life,—his cousin, Austin Travis, some twelve years older than himself, his father’s eldest brother’s only child, and the eldest grandson. Travis farm had been his early home; and there John, the little boy, had fallen in love with the big boy.
Austin was one of the charming society men that women delight in. Every winter girls tried their best for him; and John was made much of on his account, for they were almost inseparable. It was Austin who soothed his uncle’s disappointment in the law business. It was Austin who compelled the rather dilatory young fellow to paint in earnest.
Austin had planned a September tour. They would spend a few days with grandmother, and then go to the Adirondacks. He knew a camping-out party of artists and designers that it would be an advantage for John to meet.
John had packed his traps and sent them down to the boat, that was to go out at six. There was nothing special to do. He would walk down, and presently stop in at Brentano’s, then take the car. He was very fond of seeing people group themselves together and change like a kaleidoscope. But his heart was sore and indignant, and then his quick eye fell on the withered rose-buds in the shrunken hand of the child, and after that adventure he had barely time to catch his boat.
He hardly knew himself as he sat on the deck till past midnight. Two little poverty-stricken waifs had somehow changed his thoughts, his life. When he was a little boy at Travis Farm a great many curious ideas about heaven had floated through his brain. And when his grandmother sang in her soft, limpid voice,—
“There is a land of pure delight,
Where saints immortal reign;
Infinite day excludes the night,
And pleasures banish pain,”
he used to see it all as a vision. Perhaps his ideas were not much wiser than those of poor little ignorant Bess. He had travelled with Pilgrim; he had known all the people on the way, and they were real enough to him at that period.