xenophon curry, impresario extraordinary, sat sipping his breakfast coffee and perusing the morning paper. he looked extremely optimistic.
the day before he had shown an obliging chandlery clerk over the skipping goone, “upstairs and down,” and the clerk had an eagle eye for such missing items as deck hose and cabin door knobs; and though the clerk was but a humble clerk, and although his contribution to the progress of events was frankly minor, the impresario nevertheless felt himself appreciably nearer the realization of his daring project. he and the clerk had partaken of ice cream soda together afterward in a queer little confection emporium near the waterfront. and, all in all, it had seemed a highly important day.
another cause for optimism was the fact that rehearsals were going surprisingly well. he would make people sit up after the tour had got under way! indeed, his songbirds were artists to be proud of—not so much, perhaps, because of special genius as for their almost uncanny sticking proclivities. it was, in truth, an organization of the most amazing sort, which had built itself up gradually about xenophon curry’s vast heart. surely no organization was ever before so supremely an affair of the heart. curry had drawn his songbirds to him from all over the world. essentially a cosmopolitan himself (“i’m a dyed-in-the-wool hybrid”) he had kept open house in his heart for all sorts and conditions of people. under his wing, one by one, he had gathered the struggling, the discouraged, the heavy-laden—even a soul now and then that called itself plainly down and out. and not only songbirds, but a tiny orchestra had been drawn in, too, by patient degrees: now a violinist with aspiring soul rescued from some dreadful little café chantant in vienna; now a flute player off the hills of sicily; again a lowly snare drummer in a band somewhere in kentucky, who had a deep-seated passion for the kettles. they knew they could count on him to the last ditch, and so were willing to follow anywhere he led. it was really a little touching. certainly in no other way would it have been possible for mr. curry to do the things he had done, for, from a worldly point of view, no impresario, barring none, ever met with such shocking and consistent adversity.
over his eggs the impresario read of an auction sale to be held that afternoon at crawl hill and the list sounded promising. mr. curry made it a point to attend auctions whenever possible, for in this manner he was sometimes able to pick up odd bits to use as properties in his necessarily heterogeneous productions. he decided to stroll around and nose for bargains that might fit into the world tour.
the weather being delightful, curry literally did stroll. but when he had at length covered some considerable distance he began to ask himself where crawl hill was, after all. he remembered it vaguely, and was certain of the general neighbourhood; but just how to get there was developing into another matter. he would have to begin inquiring. he half paused. and as he did so a pleasant voice challenged him at his elbow.
the impresario turned and faced a tall, quite handsome lady, near his own age, gowned expensively and somewhat complexly. her eyes were frank, her demeanour that of one who has been much about and feels at home in the combinations of a moving life without sacrificing a rather unusual fund of freshness.
“i beg your pardon,” she said, smiling easily and just a[44] little grandly, “but i wonder if you could tell me how to get to crawl hill?”
mr. curry’s face lighted humorously. “a moment more and i might have put the same question to you.”
“oh, i see!” she observed, simply and even graciously, much as though they were old friends. “quite a coincidence—isn’t it? i thought i knew perfectly well when i started out, but this part of the city has changed so!”
“lord, hasn’t it! crawl hill used to be one of those big places”—he enlarged a little upon the circumstances, adding: “since we’re both headed for the same auction, we might walk on together, and i’ll ask the way.”
“it’s very kind of you, i’m sure!” she told him, her manner more than ever gracious.
so the stroll was thus resumed, and mr. curry was struck with the peculiar ease he felt from the very beginning in his new companion’s company. their talk, as they proceeded, widened gradually to embrace a considerable range of subjects: cheerful commonplaces—just, as a contemporary puts it, “the talk which goes up the chimney with the spark of the wood fire.” discreet, polite side-glances revealed, for him, an undoubtedly romantic lady nearly as tall as himself, vaguely lavish, just faintly overpowering in her enthusiasms, who walked along with free, hopeful stride and lifted her arching brows in an unbroken expression of communicative pleasantness. she wore a cloak made from an arabian gondura—a fabric of rusty plum with intricate embellishment of bright green braid. there were wide flowing sleeves; and underneath the cloak one now and then caught sight of confusing details; a bit of paisley, blue serge, large decorated brass buttons. her hat was an oddly shaped straw with an ample feather falling off behind.
the lady, for her part, quickly noted his air of bustling optimism and seemed responding to it with unconscious warmth; at first, it is true, she had eyed his rings and general air of the exotic with some slight twinges of doubt: but after she had received one or two of his radiant smiles it was only too[45] plain she felt it would be unhandsome to hold so small a matter against him. indeed, he seemed to perceive in her at once an element of happy tolerance, at the same time that he was very sure he caught a genuine passion for the artistic. above all he couldn’t but be impressed with the uplifting and flowing quality in her rich voice. “i learned about the auction from some friends who have been spending months in morocco, where they heard about mr. hoadley’s death and immediately thought about the lovely ‘things’ every one remembers having seen in his house here in san francisco!” her sentences, inclined to be “germanic,” moved with the liquid fluency of a wide, well-mannered river. and there were words she stressed saliently or perhaps rather lingered over; it was a little quaint. one came to listen for them. other words, too, which, by the most marvellous yet wholly artless subtlety in shading, she managed to slip within quotation marks—although, as a matter of fact, there was seldom any real reason for their being quoted. “i don’t expect to find a thing that i’ll really buy, for everything’s sure to be quite dear, you know, considering how immensely rich mr. hoadley was when he did his collecting, although it’s always pleasant to just visit these ‘sales’ and look around and perhaps pick up some little trifles that catch one’s fancy—as trifles have such an irresistible way of doing!”
