II
“Only just Colin!” Behold a youth, tall, heavily built, powerful, his head leaning a little forward from the shoulders, his brown, healthy face adorned with the expression of good will toward mankind that, after all, is the one unfading charm of the human countenance. It was because of his trust in things that Colin never felt abashed, greeting the great and the lowly alike with honest good-fellowship. Although in the eyes of a critical woman of the world his person might have been found lacking in certain exterior signs deemed by her class indispensable, his looks and manner when he came into a room carried with them irresistible attraction. An ex-hero of the university, where Maurice had been his devoted chum and follower, the echo of Colin’s achievements in athletics had not yet died out in the two years since he had graduated. Take Jock Blair, for example, at present a junior under the wing of the same alma mater, and seat him at table in Colin’s company; a babbling and confident young fellow enough in ordinary society, Jock would be stricken dumb and reverent in the presence of this composite Napoleon and Wellington.
Now a hard worker in his first year at the law, not even those outsiders, chill of blood, who affect to contemn the practice of manly sports among healthy young collegians, could have found ground for a charge against Colin that he was subordinating brain to muscle. Under his new teaching, he had done more than well. To the physical animation acquired in college he had many times given thanks for helping him to endure this later life, in which a walk uptown after working hours was the chief outlet for his tremendous energy of body.
When we have said additionally that Colin was of a very short purse, and had no backing of family in New York—seeing that his relatives were unimportant residents of a small Western town—that he was hopelessly in love with Kathleen Blair, and that at college he had been dubbed Colin chiefly because his real name was John Walter Mackintosh, the tale is told.
Knowing that his charmer was that night to undergo the ordeal of proving her quality as a violinist before the supreme Herr Levitsky, our young man had moved heaven and earth to get an invitation to Crichton’s musicale; having succeeded in which, he had passed through a tumult of emotions regarding a proper appearance for the occasion.
Maurice, sharing his confidence, had lent sage advice. Colin, who perhaps for no other reason would have taken on himself a debt, had secured upon the installment plan of payment a new suit of evening clothes, the genial sartor who provided them supplying, out of the fullness of his sympathy, facings for the coat of a better quality of silk than was nominated in the bond. At the instigation also of the more knowing Maurice, the aspirant had next repaired to a much advertised “Fire Sale” of “Gents’ Furnishings,” where he had laid in a dozen white linen ties, “imperceptibly damaged,” and six hemstitched pocket handkerchiefs. This done, there was yet a mighty obstacle to overcome. For two interminable days Colin had not seen his way clear to the possession of a pair of patent leather shoes. Over and again he had surveyed wistfully his rough ordinary footwear, and reluctantly decided that it would not do. The jest of the bootmaker to whom he had ventured a remonstrance as to the high price of his wares, that it “took extra leather to cover some men’s feet,” was iron entering Colin’s soul.
At this critical juncture, somebody had been called in haste from the law office claiming the services of Mr. Mackintosh, to draw up an old woman’s death-bed will. To Colin had been assigned the task, and also, to his eternal gratitude, the small fee resulting. The speed made by him uptown that day after office hours, to reach the bootmaker before his shop should be closed, recalled to our hero some of his efforts at sprinting between hoarsely cheering crowds of college sympathizers.
Two minutes after he was invested in all his hardly-won integuments, Colin had forgotten them. He had long been planning how to present Kathleen with some flowers to wear at the musicale. Knowing her favorites, he had purchased a sheaf of those “naiad-like lilies of the vale, whom youth makes so fair, and passion so pale,” at a cost that would deprive him of luncheon money for some days; then, with a strong desire to see her pleasure in them, had walked around to the Blair’s house carrying the gift in person.
On the doorstep his courage had failed. Kathleen, sternly intent on checking his too rapid advance, might, and no doubt would, decline his offering. So rather miserably, the big young man had turned around again and marched away with his pasteboard box. At the corner, he bethought him of a recent speech of hers—that “better than anything but music,” she loved flowers. This renewed his prowess. Again he stormed the lady’s portal, and again fell away, discouraged, in apprehension of her frown. The scrutiny of a passing policeman served to weaken his last remnant of resolution.
The lilies, returning with him to his lodging, were, with continuing uncertainty, carried on to Crichton’s studio. There Mr. Mackintosh, proving to be the first arrival, had judged it best to remain secluded in the cloak-room, until a number of men, passing in, gave him countenance to enter the scene of entertainment. His vague plan of contriving to intercept Kathleen on her arrival, and putting the flowers in Morry’s hands, with the request that she should wear them, had now vanished into thin air. He wished at last he had never burdened himself with the confounded things.