Читать книгу The Key Note - Burnham Clara Louise - Страница 1

The sea glittered in all directions. The grassy field, humpy with knolls and lumpy with gray rock, sloped down toward the near-by water. Bunches of savin and bay and groups of Christmas trees flourished in the fresh June air, and exhilarating balsamic odors assailed Miss Burridge's nostrils as she stood in the doorway viewing the landscape o'er and reflectively picking her teeth with a pin.

"It's an awful sightly place to fail in, anyway," she thought.

Her one boarder came and stood beside her. She was a young woman with a creamy skin, regular features, dark, dreaming eyes, and a pleasant, slow smile.

"Are you gathering inspiration, Miss Burridge?" she asked, settling a white tam-o'-shanter on her smooth brown locks.

"I hope so, Miss Wilbur. I need it."

"How could any one help it!" was Diana Wilbur's soft exclamation, as she took a deep breath and gazed at the illimitable be-diamonded blue.

Priscilla Burridge turned her middle-aged gaze upon the enthusiasm of the twentieth year beside her.

"Do you know of any inspiration that would make me able to get the carpenter to come and jack up the saggin' corner of that piazza?" she asked. "Or get the plumber to mend the broken pipe in the kitchen?"

Miss Wilbur's dreaming gaze came back to the bony figure in brown calico.

"It seems almost sacrilege, doesn't it," she said in a voice of awe, "to speak of carpenters and plumbers in a place like this? Such odors, such crystal beauty untouched by the desecrating hand of man."

Miss Priscilla snorted. "If I don't get hold of the desecrating hand of man pretty soon, you'll be havin' a stream o' water come down on your bed, the first rain."

The girl's attitude of adoration remained unchanged.

"I noticed that little rift," she said slowly. "As I lay in bed this morning, I looked up at a spot of sapphire that seemed like a day-star full of promise of this transcendent beauty."

Miss Wilbur's pretty lips moved but little when she spoke and her slow utterance gave the effect of a recitation.

Miss Priscilla, for all her harassment, could not forbear a smile.

"I'm certainly glad you're so easily pleased, but you don't know Casco Bay as well as I do, or that day-star would look powerful stormy to you. When it rains here, all other rains are mere imitations. It comes down from the sky and up from the ground, and the wind blows it east and west, and the porch furniture turns somersets out into the field, and windows and doors go back on you and give up the fight and let the water in everywhere, while the thunder rolls like the day o' judgment."

The ardent light in the depths of the young girl's eyes glowed deeper.

"I should expect a storm here to be inexorably superb!" she declared.

Miss Priscilla heaved a sigh, half dejection, half exasperation, and turned into the house.

"Drat that plumber!" she said. "I've only had a few days of it, but I'm sick of luggin' water in from that well."

"Why, Miss Burridge," said her boarder solicitously, "I haven't fully realized – let me bring in a supply."

"No, no, indeed, Miss Wilbur," exclaimed Miss Priscilla, as she moved through the living-room of the house into the kitchen, closely followed by Diana. "It ain't that I ain't able to do it, but it makes me darned mad when I know there's no need of it."

"But I desire to, Miss Burridge," averred the young girl. "Any form of movement here cannot fail to be one of joy." She seized an empty bucket from the sink and went out the back door.

Small groves of evergreen dotted the incline behind the house, and on the right hand soon became a wood-road of stately fir and spruce, which led to a sun-warmed grassy slope which, like every hill of the lovely isle, led down to the jagged rocks that fringed its irregular shore.

"My muscular strength is not excessive," panted Diana, struggling up to the back door with her heavy bucket. "I'll fill it only half-full next time."

"You ain't goin' to fill it at all," declared Miss Priscilla emphatically, taking the pail from her. "That'll last me a long time, and when it's gone, I'll get more myself. 'T ain't that it does me a bit of hurt, but it riles me when I know there ain't any need of it."

She set the pail down beside the sink, filled the kettle from it, and set it on the oil stove while Diana sat down on the back doorstep. Then she proceeded:

"One o' the most disagreeable things about this world is that we do seem to need men. They're strong and they don't wear skirts to stumble on, and when they're willin' and clever, they certainly do fill a need; but it does seem as if they were created to disappoint women. They don't know any more about keepin' their promises than they do about the other side o' the moon."

Diana nodded. "It is observable, I think," she said, "that men's natural regard for ethics is inferior to that of women."

Miss Priscilla sniffed. "Now it isn't only the plumber and the carpenter. I came here and saw 'em both over a month ago and explained my needs; explained that I ain't calc'latin' to take in boarders to break their legs on broken piazzas, or drown 'em in their beds. I explained all this when I rented the house, and when I arrived this week I naturally expected to find those things attended to; and there's Phil Barrison, too. I've known him most of his life. He has relatives here on the island, and when I heard he was comin' to stay with 'em on his vacation, I asked him if he wouldn't be a kind of a handy-man to me and he said he would. He got here before I did, but far as I can make out he's been fishin' ever since. A lot of help he's been. Oh, I knew well enough he was a broken reed. If ever a rapscallion lived, Phil's it. 'Tain't natural for any young one to be so smart as he was. Do you believe in school he found out that by openin' and shuttin' his geography real slow, he could set the teacher to yawnin', and, of course, she'd set the rest of 'em off, and Phil just had a beautiful time. His pranks was always funny ones."

Diana Wilbur gave her slow, rare smile. "What an interesting bit of hypnosis!" she remarked.

"Hey? Well, when that boy got older, he was real ambitious to study. He's got one o' those voices that ought to belong to a cherubim instead of a limb like him, and he wanted lessons. So he got the job of janitor in our church one winter. I got onto him later. When he'd oversleep some awful cold mornin' and arrive too late to get the furnace to workin' right, that rascal would drive the mercury up and loosen the bulb of the thermometer so that when the folks came in and went over to it to see just how cold they was goin' to be, they'd see it register over sixty-five and of course they'd take their seats real satisfied."

Miss Wilbur smiled again. "Your friend certainly showed great resource and ingenuity. When those traits are joined to lofty principle, they should lift him to heights of success. Oh," – the speaker's attitude and voice suddenly changed, and she lifted her finger to impose silence on the cooking utensils which Miss Burridge was dropping into the sink, – "listen!"

Mingled with the roulade of a song sparrow on the roof, came the flute of a human voice sounding and approaching through the field.

The one road of the island swept over a height at some distance behind the house and the singer had left it, and was striding down the incline and through the meadow toward Miss Burridge's. The still air brought the song while the singer was still hidden, but at last the girl saw him, and the volume of rich tone increased. At last he came bounding up the slope over which Diana had struggled with her heavy bucket a few minutes before, and then paused at sight of the stranger.

He was a tall, broad-shouldered youth in a dark-blue flannel shirt and nondescript trousers. He was bareheaded, and locks of his thick blond hair were tumbling over his forehead. He looked at Diana with curious, unembarrassed blue eyes, and, lips parted, stopped in the act of speaking.

Miss Burridge came to the door. "Well, at last, Phil," she remarked.

"I only just heard this morning that you had come," he said. "Here's a peace offering." He lifted the two mackerel that were hanging from his hand.

"Beauties," vouchsafed Miss Burridge. "Are they cleaned?"

"Well, if you don't look a gift horse – "

"Well, now, I ain't goin' to clean 'em," said Miss Burridge doggedly. "I've been rubbed the wrong way ever since I landed – "

Philip laughed. "And you won't do it to them, eh? Well, I guess I can rub 'em the wrong way for you – " His unabashed eyes were still regarding Diana as impersonally as though they had both been children of five.

"Excuse me, I am obstructing the passage," said the girl, rising.

"This is Miss Diana Wilbur, Phil. I suppose you're Mr. Barrison now that you have sung in New York."

The young fellow bowed to the girl who acknowledged the greeting.

"What is the name of those beautiful creatures?" she asked with her usual gentle simplicity of manner.

"These? Oh, these are mackerel."

"Jewels of the deep, surely," she said.

"They are rather dressy," returned Philip.

Diana bathed him in the light of her serene brown gaze.

"I am so ignorant of the names of the denizens of the sea," she said. "I come from Philadelphia."

Philip returned her look with dancing stars in his eyes. "I'd have said Boston if you only wore eyeglasses."

"Oh, that is the humorous tradition, is it not?" she returned.

"Now, don't you drip 'em in here," said Miss Burridge, as the young fellow started to enter the kitchen door. "If you're really goin' to be clever and clean 'em, I'll give you the knife and everything right outdoors."

"Then I think I would better withdraw," said Diana hastily. "I cannot bear to see the mutilation of such a rich specimen of Nature's handiwork; but, oh, Mr. Barrison, not without one word concerning the heavenly song that floated across the field as you came. Miss Burridge calls you Phil; – 'Philomel with melody!' I should say. Au revoir. I will go down among the pebbles for a while."

She vanished, and Philip regarded Miss Burridge, who returned his gaze.

"Good night!" he said at last.

"Sh! Sh!" warned Miss Priscilla, and tiptoed across the kitchen. When she had looked from a window and seen her boarder's sweater and tam proceeding among the grassy hummocks toward the sea, she returned, bringing out the materials for Philip's operations on the fish.

"I'll bring a rhetoric instead of finny denizens of the deep, the next time I come," he continued, settling to his job.

Miss Priscilla took her boarder's deserted seat on the doorstep.

"Going to open a young ladies' seminary here, and got the teacher all secured?"

"Nothing of the kind, Phil, and there's only one explanation of her," declared Miss Priscilla impressively. "You've been in art galleries and seen these statues of Venus and Apollo and all that tribe?"

"I have."

"Well, sir, all I can think of is that one o' their Dianas got down off her perch some dark night, and managed to get hold o' some girl clothes, and came here to this island. She says she has come to recuperate from unwise vigils caused by vaulting ambition at school. I said it over to myself till I learned it."

"I should say her trouble might be indigestion from devouring dictionaries," remarked Philip.

"Well, anyway, she's a sweet girl and it's all as natural as breathing to her. At first I accused her in my own mind of affectation, but, there! she hasn't got an affected bone in her body, and she's willin' and simple as a child. You'd ought to 'a' seen her luggin' water up the hill for me this mornin'. That reminds me. You promised to give me a lift this summer when I needed it."

"At so much a lift," remarked Philip.

"Of course. Well, the first thing I want you to do is to get the carpenter and the plumber and knock their heads together, and then bring 'em here, one in each hand, so's I can have my house ready when the folks come. Why, my new stove ain't even put up. Mr. Buell, the plumber, promised me faithful he'd come this mornin'. I'm cookin' on an old kerosene stove there was here and managin' to keep Miss Wilbur from sheer starvation."

"Miss Wilbur? Is that the fair Diana? Where did you get the 'old master'? Did she find you waiting when she got off the pedestal?"

"No, I found her waiting. She came to the island on a misunderstandin'. There wasn't any one ready so early in the season to make strangers comfortable, and it seems she took a fancy to this place and I found her here sittin' on the steps when I arrived. She said she had been on the island a week and had walked up to this piazza every pleasant day, and she'd like to live here."

"Did she really say it as plain as that?"

"Well – I don't suppose those were her exact words, but she made me understand that she was willin' to come right in for better or for worse just so's she could have a room up there in front where the dawn – yes, she said something about the dawn, I forget whether it was purple or rosy – "

"Mottled, perhaps," suggested Philip.

"Well, anyway, I told her the dawn came awful early in the day this part o' the year, and that probably she'd be better satisfied in one o' the back rooms; but she was firm on the dawn, so she's got it. But I draw the line at her gettin' midnight shower-baths, and that's what she will get if that wretch of a Matt Blake don't get here before the next storm and put on the shingles."

"And I have to tell the plumber that you have to 'haul water' too. Is that it? The well is some little distance. Rather hard on the statue, wasn't it, to do the hauling? She'll wish she'd stayed in the gallery. I'll bring in a lot before I go."

"Don't go, Philip," begged Miss Priscilla. "Supposin' you don't go, not till you can leave me whole-footed. The men'll come sooner and work better if they know there's a man here. Your grandma won't care if her visit's interrupted for a little while. I'll feed you with your own mackerel and you can bet I know how to cook 'em."

"Do you think Matt Blake realizes that I'm a man?" The teeth Philip showed in his smile were an asset for a singer. "He helped teach me to walk, you know."

"Well, now, you teach him" retorted Miss Priscilla. "Show him how to walk in this direction. I don't want to make a fizzle of this thing. I found there wa'n't anybody goin' to run the place this summer, so I thought it might be a good job for me. I never took a thought that it was goin' to be so hard to get help. They tell me there ain't any servants any more; and there are enough folks writin' for rooms to fill me up entirely. I can do the cookin' myself – "

"Now, Miss Burridge, you aren't leading up to asking me to put on an apron and wait on table, are you? You must remember I'm recuperating also from a too vaulting ambition."

"Recuperatin', nothin'! You're the huskiest-lookin' thing I ever saw. No, I ain't goin' to ask you to wait on table; but I've got an idea. We're too out o' the way here for me to get college boys. They'd rather go to the mountains and so on – fashionable resorts. But I've got a niece, if she don't feel too big of herself to do that sort of thing; she might come. I'm goin' to ask her anyway. I haven't seen her for years 'cause her mother's been gone a long time and her father went out to Jersey to live, but I've no doubt she's a nice girl. Her name's Veronica. Isn't that a beater? I told my sister I couldn't see why she didn't name her Japonica and be done with it."

"It's the name of a saint," remarked Philip.

"Well, I hope she's enough of one to come and help me out. I'm goin' to ask her."

"Better get Miss Wilbur to write her about the rosy dawn and the jeweled denizens. I'm afraid you'll be too truthful and tell about the leaks. With an 'old master' and a saint, you ought to get on swimmingly."

"Well, will you stay with me a few days?" said Miss Priscilla coaxingly. "If I had a rapscallion to add to the menagerie – "

"Do you mean ménage, Miss Burridge?"

"I'll call it anything in the world you like, if you'll only stand by me, Phil."

"All right." The young fellow tossed the second cleaned fish on to the plate. "Let me wash my hands and I'll go and throw out a line for the plumber."

"You're a good boy," returned Miss Burridge, relieved. "I do think, Philip, that in the main you are a good boy! Who's that comin' over?" Miss Burridge craned her neck and narrowed her eyes the better to observe a bicycle which appeared across the field.

The apparition of any human being was exciting to one responsible for the comfort of others in this Arcadia, where modern conveniences could only be obtained by effort both spasmodic and continuous.

"Oh, it's Marley Hughes from the post-office."

A youngster of fourteen came wheeling nonchalantly over the bumps of the field, and finally jumped off his machine and came leisurely up the rise among the trees.

"I hoped you might be Matt Blake," said Miss Priscilla. "He's got as far as to have the shingles here."

"Well, I ain't," remarked Marley in the pleasant, drawling, leisurely, island voice.

"What you got for me?" inquired Miss Burridge.

"Telegram." The boy brought the store envelope from his pocket.

"Oh, I hate 'em," said Miss Burridge apprehensively.

Marley held it aggravatingly away from Philip's extended hand. "Take it back if you want me ter," he said with a grin. "It's ten cents anyway, whether you take it or not."

"Oh, yes, I've got the money right here." Miss Priscilla turned to a shelf over the sink and took a dime from a purse which lay there.

"Here." She gave it to Marley, who without more ado jumped on his wheel and coasted down among the trees and off over the soft grass.

"You open it, Phil. My spectacles ain't here anyway," said Miss Priscilla anxiously.

So Philip tore open the envelope. The look of amazement which overspread his face as the message greeted him caused Miss Burridge to exclaim fearfully: "Speak out, speak out, Phil."

"They must have taken this down wrong at the store," he said. Then he read the scrawled words slowly. "'Look in broiler oven for legs.'"

The cryptic sentence appeared to have a magical effect upon Miss Priscilla. Her face beamed and she threw up her hands in thanksgiving.

"Glory be!" she exclaimed devoutly.

"What am I stumbling on?" said Philip. "Have you taken to wiring in cipher?"

"You see" said Miss Priscilla excitedly, reaching for the telegram which Philip yielded, "it came without any legs. Mr. Buell himself looked it over on the wharf and said he couldn't find 'em anywhere; and, of course, it was a terrible anxiety to me and I wrote to them right off, and I was goin' to get Mr. Buell to set it up without the legs if necessary and stick somethin' else under. Come and help me look, Phil."

Miss Burridge seized the young fellow's arm and dragged him into the kitchen, where in one corner reposed the new stove in its shining newness, its parts piled ignominiously lop-sided. Talking all the time, its owner pulled open one door after another, as Philip disengaged them, and at last she laid hands on the missing treasure.

"Now I'll give you as good a dinner as ever comes off this stove if you'll go and get those men and bring 'em up here," she said. "Don't leave me till I'm whole-footed, Phil."

"Want feet as well as legs, do you?" he chuckled. "All right. See you later if I can get Blake and Buell. If I can't, I suppose I'd better drown myself."

"No, no, don't do that, Phil. You're better than nothing, yourself."