The Yoke of the Thorah. Harland Henry

      IT was the last day of November, 1882. The sun had not shone at all that day. The wind, sharp-edged, had blown steadily from the northeast. The clouds, leaden of hue and woolly of texture, had hung very close to the earth. Weather-wise people had predicted snow—the first snow of the season; but none had fallen. Rheumatic people had had their tempers whetted. Impressionable people, among them Elias Bacharach, had been beset by the blues.

      Elias had tried hard to absorb himself in his work; but without success. His colors would not blend. His brushes had lost their cunning. His touch was uncertain. His eye was false. At two o'clock he had given up in despair, and sent his model home. Then he sat down at the big window of his studio, and looked off across the tree-tops into the lowering north. A foolish thing to do. It was a cheerless prospect. In the clouds he could trace a hundred sullen faces. The tree-tops shivered. The whistling wind, the noises of the street, the drone of a distant hand-organ, mingled in dreary, enervating counterpoint. His own mood darkened. Though he had every reason to be contented—though he had youth, art, independence, excellent health, sufficient wealth, and not a care in the world—he was nervous and restless and depressed. The elements were to blame. Under gray skies, which of us has not had pretty much the same experience?

      By and by Elias got up.

      “I'll go out,” he said, “and walk it off.”

      He went out. For a while he walked aimlessly hither and thither. But walking did not bring the hoped-for relief. He and the world were out of tune. The men and women whom he passed were one and all either commonplace or ugly. The sounds that smote his ears were inharmonious. The wind sent a chill to his bones; besides, it bore a disagreeable odor of petroleum from the refineries across the river. “I might as well—I might better—have remained within-doors,” was his reflection. Presently, however, he found himself in Union Square. This reminded him that there was a little matter about which he wanted to see Matthew Redwood, the costumer. Elias had lately read Mistral's “Mirèio.” The poem had fired his enthusiasm. He was bent upon making Mirèio the subject of a picture. But, he had asked himself, what style of costume do the Provençal peasant women wear? He had determined to consult Redwood. Now, being in Redwood's neighborhood, he would call upon the old man, and state the question.

      Redwood's place was just below Fourteenth Street, on Fourth Avenue. The house had formerly been a dwelling-house. In the process of its degeneracy, it had most likely passed through the boarding-house stage. At present it was given over without reserve to commerce. A German drinking-shop occupied the basement, impregnating the air round about with a smell of stale lager beer. Redwood used the parlors—large, lofty apartments, with paneled walls and frescoed ceilings—and the floors above. The frescoes, of course, dated from the dwelling-house epoch. Their hues were sadly faded. Here and there, in patches, the paint had peeled off. Three pallid cupids, wretchedly out of drawing, floated around the plaster medallion from which the gas fixture depended. Elias never entered here without thinking of the curious secrets those cupids might have whispered, if they had been empowered to open their painted lips. What scenes of joy and sorrow had they not looked down upon in the past? Merry-makers had danced beneath them; women had wept beneath them; lovers had wooed their mistresses beneath them; what else? The intimate inner life of a family, of a home, had gone on beneath them. How many domestic quarrels had they watched? How many weddings? How many funerals? What strange stories had they not overheard? Of what strange doings had they not been mute witnesses? Between the windows stood a tall pier-glass. Its gilt frame was chipped and tarnished. A milky film, like that which obscures the eyes of an aged man, had gathered over its surface. The quicksilver was veined, like a leaf. It had a very knowing look, this ancient mirror, as though, if it had chosen, it could have startled you with ghostly effigies of the forms and faces that it had reflected in by-gone years. Elias Bacharach, who enjoyed having his fancy stirred, was always glad of an excuse to drop in at Redwood's.

      Elias climbed Redwood's stoop, and opened the door. It had been dark enough outside. Inside it was darker still. It took a little while for Elias's eyesight to accommodate itself to the change. Then the first object of which it became conscious was the sere and yellow pier-glass between the windows. Far in its mottled depths—down, that is to say, at the remotest and darkest end of the room—he saw Matthew Redwood, the costumer, in conversation with a young girl. The young girl's face, a spot of light amid the surrounding shadows, had an instantaneous and magnetic effect upon Elias Bacharach's gaze. He quite forgot his old friends, the cupids. Turning about, and drawing as near to the couple as discretion would warrant, he made the young girl the victim of a fixed, eager stare.