The drawing master had come to realize that,in looking at Paul,one saw only his white teeth and the forced animation of his eyes.One warm afternoon the boy had gone to sleep at his drawing board,and his master had noted with amazement what a white,blue-veined face it was;drawn and wrinkled like an old man's about the eyes,the lips twitching even in his sleep.
His teachers left the building dissatisfied and unhappy;humiliated to have felt so vindictive toward a mere boy,to have uttered this feeling in cutting terms,and to have set each other on,as it were,in the gruesome game of intemperate reproach.One of them remembered having seen a miserable street cat set at bay by a ring of tormentors.
As for Paul,he ran down the hill whistling the Soldiers'Chorus from Faust,looking wildly behind him now and then to see whether some of his teachers were not there to witness under his light-heartedness.As it was now late in the afternoon and Paul was on duty that evening as usher at Carnegie Hall,he decided that he would not go home to supper.
When he reached the concert hall the doors were not yet open.It was chilly outside,and he decided to go up into the picture gallery—always deserted at this hour—where there were some of Raffelli's gay studies of Paris streets and an airy blue Venetian scene or two that always exhilarated him.He was delighted to find no one in the gallery but the old guard,who sat in one corner,a newspaper on his knee,a black patch over one eye and the other closed.Paul possessed himself of the place and walked confidently up and down,whistling under his breath.After a while he sat down before a blue Rico and lost himself.When he bethought him to look at his watch,it was after seven o'clock,and he rose with a start and ran downstairs,making a face at Augustus Caesar,peering out from the cast-room,and an evil gesture at the Venus of Milo as he passed her on the stairway.
When Paul reached the ushers'dressing-room half a dozen boys were there already,and he began excitedly to tumble into his uniform.It was one of the few that at all approached fitting,and Paul thought it very becoming-though he knew the tight,straight coat accentuated his narrow chest,about which he was exceedingly sensitive.He was always excited while he dressed,twanging all over to the tuning of the strings and the preliminary flourishes of the horns in the music-room;but tonight he seemed quite beside himself,and he teased and plagued the boys until,telling him that he was crazy,they put him down on the floor and sat on him.
Somewhat calmed by his suppression,Paul dashed out to the front of the house to seat the early comers.He was a model usher.Gracious and smiling he ran up and down the aisles.Nothing was too much trouble for him;he carried messages and brought programs as though it were his greatest pleasure in life,and all the people in his section thought him a charming boy,feeling that he remembered and admired them.As the house filled,he grew more and more vivacious and animated,and the color came to his cheeks and lips.It was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul were the host.Just as the musicians came out to take their places,his English teacher arrived with checks for the seat which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season.She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets,and a hauteur which subsequently made her feel very foolish.Paul was startled for a moment,and had the feeling of wanting to put her out;what business had she here among all these fine people and gay colors?He looked her over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be a fool to sit downstairs in such togs.The tickets had probably been sent her out of kindness,he reflected,as he put down a seat for her,and she had about as much right to sit there as he had.
When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh of relief,and lost himself as he had done before the Rico.It was not that symphonies,as such,meant anything in particular to Paul,but the first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious spirit within him;something that struggled there like the Genius in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman.He felt a sudden zest of life;the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendor.When the soprano soloist came on,Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teacher's being there,and gave himself up to the peculiar intoxication such personages always had for him.The soloist chanced to be a German woman,by no means in her first youth,and the mother of many children;but she wore a satin gown and a tiara,and she had that indefinable air of achievement,that world-shine upon her,which always blinded Paul to any possible defects.
After a concert was over,Paul was always irritable and wretched until he got to sleep—and tonight he was even more than usually restless.He had the feeling of not being able to let down;of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all.During the last number he withdrew and,after hastily changing his clothes in the dressing-room,slipped out to the side door where the singer's carriage stood.Here he began pacing rapidly up and down the walk,waiting to see her come out.
Over yonder the Schenley,in its vacant stretch,loomed big and square through the fine rain,the windows of its twelve stories glowing like those of a lighted cardboard house under a Christmas tree.All the actors and singers of any importance stayed there when they were in the city,and a number of the big manufacturers of the place lived there in the winter.Paul had often hung about the hotel,watching the people go in and out,longing to enter and leave schoolmasters and dull care behind him forever.
