Читать книгу The Key Note - Burnham Clara Louise - Страница 3

"You, Veronica," said Miss Burridge one morning, looking out of the kitchen window. "I feel sorry for that young boy."

"I told you you would. Old Nick should worry what his nephew does with himself all day."

"Veronica!" Miss Priscilla gave the girl a warning wink and motioned with her hand toward the sink where Genevieve, her hair in a tight braid and her slender figure attired in a scanty calico frock, was looking over the bib of an apron much too large for her, and washing the breakfast dishes.

"Excuse me," said Veronica demurely. "I meant to say Mr. Gayne. Genevieve, you must never call Mr. Gayne 'Old Nick.' Do you hear?"

"Veronica!" pleaded Miss Burridge.

"Oh, we all know Mr. Gayne," said Genevieve, in her piercing, high voice which always seemed designed to be heard through the tumult of a storm at sea.

"He has been here before, then?" asked Miss Burridge.

"Pretty near all last summer. He comes to paint, you know."

"No, I didn't know he was an artist."

"Oh, yes, he paints somethin' grand, but I never saw any of his pitchers."

"Was his nephew with him last summer?"

"No, I don't believe so. I never saw anybody around with him. He spent most of his time up to the Dexter farm. He said he could paint the prettiest pitchers there. It was him seen the first ghost."

"What are you talking about, Genevieve?" asked Miss Burridge, while Veronica busied herself drying the glass and silver.

"Oh, yes," she put in. "That is the haunted farm. Mr. Barrison was telling me about it."

"Yep," said Genevieve. "Folks had said so a long time and heard awful queer noises up there, but Mr. Gayne was the first who really seen the spook."

"I'm not surprised that he had a visitor," said Veronica. "Dollars to doughnuts, it had horns and hoofs and a tail."

"That's what Uncle Zip said," remarked Genevieve. "He said 't wa'n't anything but an old stray white cow."

Veronica laughed, and her aunt met her mischievous look with an impressive shake of the head. "Mind me, now," she said, and Veronica did not pursue the subject.

The long porch across the front of the Inn made, sometimes a sunny, and sometimes a foggy, meeting-place for the members of the family. It boasted a hammock and some weather-beaten chairs, and Miss Myrna Emerson was not tardy in discovering the one of these which offered the most comfort. She was a lady of uncertain age and certain ideas. One of the latter was that it was imperative that she should be comfortable.

"I should think Miss Burridge would have some decent chairs here," she said one morning, dilating her thin nostrils with displeasure as she took possession of the most hopeful of the seats.

The remark was addressed to Diana who was perched on the piazza rail.

"Doubtless they will be added," she said, "should Miss Burridge find that her undertaking proves sufficiently remunerative."

"She charges enough, so far as that goes," declared Miss Emerson curtly, but finding the chair unexpectedly comfortable, she settled back and complained no further.

Philip was out on the grass painting on a long board the words "Ye Wayside Inn." Herbert Gayne stood watching him listlessly. His uncle was stretched in the hammock. Mrs. Lowell came out upon the porch. Mr. Gayne moved reluctantly, but he did arise. Men usually did exert themselves at the advent of this tall, slender lady with the radiant smile and laughing eyes.

"Perhaps you would like the hammock, Mrs. Lowell," he said perfunctorily.

"Offer it to me some time later in the day," she responded pleasantly, and he tumbled back into the couch with obvious relief.

Mrs. Lowell approached the rail and observed Philip's labors.

"Where are you going to hang that sign?" she asked in her charming voice. "Across the front of the house, I judge."

"Oh, no," replied Philip. "We can't hope to attract the fish. I am going to hang it at the back where Bill Lindsay's flivver will feel the lure before it gets here."

"Across the back of the house," cried Miss Emerson in alarm. "I hope nowhere near my window."

"The sign will depend from iron rings," explained Diana.

"I know they'll squeak," said Miss Emerson positively; "and if they do, Mr. Barrison, you'll simply have to take it down."

No one replied to this warning. So Miss Emerson dilated her nostrils again with an air of determination and leaned back in her chair.

The eyes of both Mrs. Lowell and Diana were upon the young boy whose watching face betrayed no inspiration from the fresh morning. He had an ungainly, neglected appearance from his rough hair to his worn shoes. His clothes were partially outgrown and shabby.

"Bert," called his uncle from the hammock. The boy looked up. "Come here. Don't you hear me?" The boy started toward the piazza steps with a shuffling gait.

"You're slower than molasses in January," said Mr. Gayne lazily. "Go up to my room and get my field-glasses. They're on the dresser, I think."

Without a word the boy went into the house and Diana and Mrs. Lowell exchanged a look. Each was hoping the messenger would be successful and not draw upon himself a reprimand from the dark, impatient man smoking in the hammock.

The boy returned empty-handed. "They – they weren't there," he said.

"Weren't where, stu – " Mr. Gayne encountered Mrs. Lowell's gaze as he was in the middle of his epithet. Her eyes were not laughing now, and he restrained himself. "Weren't on the dresser, do you mean?" he continued in a quieter tone. "Well, didn't you look about any?"

"Yes, sir. I looked on the – the trunk and on the – the floor."

Mr. Gayne emitted an inarticulate sound which, but for the presence of the ladies, would evidently have been articulate. "Oh, well," he groaned, rising to a sitting posture on the side of the hammock, "I suppose I shall have to galvanize my old bones and go after them myself."

His nephew's blank look did not change. He stood as if awaiting further orders, and his listless eyes met Mrs. Lowell's kindly gaze.

"It is good fun to look through field-glasses in a place like this, isn't it, Bertie?" she said.

The boy's surprise at being addressed was evident. "I – I don't know," he replied.

His uncle laughed. "That's all the answer you'll ever get out of him, Mrs. Lowell. He's the champion don't-know-er."

The boy's blank look continued the same. It was evident that his uncle's description of him was nothing new.

"I don't believe that," said Mrs. Lowell. "I think Bertie and I are going to be friends. I like boys."

The look she was giving the lad as she spoke seemed for a moment to attract his attention.

"You won't – you won't like me," he said in his usual wooden manner.

"Children and fools," laughed his uncle, rising from the hammock.

"Mr. Gayne!" exclaimed Diana, electrified out of her customary serenity.

The man's restless, dark eyes glanced quickly from the face of one woman to another, even alighting upon Miss Emerson whose countenance only gave its usual indication that the lady had just detected a very unpleasant odor.

He laughed again, good-naturedly, and as he passed his nephew gave him a careless, friendly pat on the shoulder. The unexpected touch startled the boy and made him cringe.

"Bert believes honesty is the best policy," he said. "Don't you, Bert?"

"Yes, sir," replied the boy automatically.

"Sit down here a minute, won't you, Bertie?" asked Mrs. Lowell, making a place beside her on the piazza rail. The boy obeyed. "Have you ever seen this great ocean before?"

"No. Yes. I don't know."

"Why, yes, you do know, of course," said Mrs. Lowell, with a soft little laugh, very intimate and pleasant. "You know whether you have seen the ocean before."

The boy regarded her, and in the surprise of being really challenged to think, he meditated.

"No," he said, at last. "I've never been here before."

"Isn't it a beautiful place?" asked Mrs. Lowell.

"I don't know," returned the boy after a hesitation. Then he looked down on the grass at Philip.

"Do you want to go back and watch Mr. Barrison paint?"

"Yes."

"All right. Run along. We'll talk some other time."

The boy rose and shuffled across the porch and down the steps.

"Mrs. Lowell, it is heart-breaking!" exclaimed Diana softly.

Her companion nodded.

"The situation is incomprehensible," said Diana. "It seems as if Mr. Gayne had some ulterior design which impelled him to stultify any outcropping of intelligence in his nephew. Have you not observed it from the moment of their arrival?"

"Yes, and before we arrived. I noticed them on the train."

"If there's anything I can't bear to have around, it's an idiot," said Miss Emerson. "It gives me the creeps. If he hangs about much, I shall complain to Miss Burridge."

The sweep of the ocean and the rush of the wind made her remark inaudible beyond the piazza. Mrs. Lowell turned to her.

"I think we all have a mission right there, perhaps, Miss Emerson. The boy is not an idiot. I have observed him closely enough to be convinced of that. He is a plant in a dark cellar, and I wonder how many years he has been there. His uncle's methods turn him into an automaton. If you keep your arm in a sling a few weeks you know it loses its power to act. The boy's brain seems to have been treated the same way. His uncle's every word holds the law over him that he cannot think, or reason, and that he is the stupidest creature living."

"That is true," said Diana. "That is just what he does."

Miss Emerson sniffed. "Well, I didn't come up to Maine on a mission. I came to rest, and I don't propose to have that gawk prowling around where I am."

Nicholas Gayne appeared, his binoculars in his hand. "Would you ladies like to look at the shipping?" he said, approaching. His manner was ingratiating, and Diana conquered the resentment filling her heart sufficiently to accept the glasses from his hand. He was conscious that he had not made a good impression. "The mackerel boats are going out to sea after yesterday's storm," he remarked. "You will see how wonderfully near you can bring them."

Diana adjusted the glass and exclaimed over its power. Miss Emerson jumped up from her chair.

"That's something I want to see," she said, and Diana handed her the glass while Nicholas Gayne scowled at the spinster's brown "transformation." He was not desirous of propitiating Miss Emerson, who, however, pressed him into the service of helping her adjust the screws to suit her eyes, and was effusive in her appreciation of the effect.

"You surely are a benefactor, Mr. Gayne," she said at last, with enthusiasm.

"Let me be a benefactor to Mrs. Lowell, too," he returned, and the lady yielded up the glass.

"That is the great Penguin Light beyond Crag Island," he said, as Mrs. Lowell accepted the binoculars. "The trees hide it in the daytime, it is so distant, but at night you will see it flash out."

"It is so interesting that you are familiar here, Mr. Gayne," said Miss Emerson. "You must tell us all about the island and show us the prettiest places."

The owner of the binoculars stirred restlessly under the appealing smile the lady was bestowing upon him.

"For myself, I just love to walk," she added suggestively.

"I don't do much walking," he returned shortly. "I come here to sketch."

"Oh, an artist!" exclaimed Miss Emerson, clasping her hands in the extremity of her delight. "Do you allow any one to watch you work? Such a pleasure as it would be."

"It isn't, though," said Nicholas Gayne with an uncomfortable side-glance at his admirer. "My daubs aren't worth watching."

"Oh, that will do for you to say," she returned archly. "I have done some sketching myself. Perhaps I could persuade you to take a pupil."

"Nothing doing," returned the artist hastily. "We all come up here to rest, don't we?" he added.

"Oh, I suppose so," sighed Miss Emerson. "But I do hope you will give me the great pleasure of seeing your work sometime." She sank back into her chair with a sigh.

"That is a very fine glass," remarked Mrs. Lowell as she returned it to its owner. His brow cleared as he received it.

"Well, I must be off," he said. "I mustn't waste time under these favoring skies."

"Oh, Miss Wilbur," said Miss Emerson, addressing the young girl. "Wouldn't it be lovely if Mr. Gayne would let us go with him and watch him sketch?"

"I am quite ignorant of his art," returned Diana, rising from her seat. "And I still have a great deal of exploring to do on my own account."

Nicholas Gayne cast an admiring glance at the statuesque lines of her face and figure.

"Perhaps you will let me make a sketch of you one of these days, Miss Wilbur." He approached the piazza rail as he spoke and his voice carried down to where Philip was painting under the eyes of the silent, watching boy.

Philip looked up, and, catching the expression with which Gayne seemed to be appraising the young girl, he ruined one of the n's in Inn so that it had to be painted out and done over.

Veronica, her duties finished for the time being, sallied out of doors and approaching Philip looked curiously at his work.

"There's nothing the matter with that," she said encouragingly, and the others came down from the piazza to praise the painter. Miss Emerson followed, but she looked at the sign doubtfully.

"One can't help being sensitive, can one?" she said to Gayne. "And the wind blows so hard all the time up here, I'm afraid that sign is going to squeak."

"Show me your window," said Philip good-naturedly, "and I'll see if we can't avoid it."

So they all went around to the back of the house where Philip had his ladder waiting and the sign was finally placed to the satisfaction of everybody except Miss Emerson, who considered it on probation.

Nicholas Gayne was still conscious that he had not made a pleasing impression in his treatment of his nephew and it was no part of his programme to attract attention. He approached the boy now.

"What are you going to do with yourself, Bert?"

"I don't know," was the answer.

"Want to come with me?"

"No, sir."

"Well, that's plain enough," said Gayne, laughing and looking around on the company.

"He's a very foolish boy," said Miss Emerson, "when he has an opportunity to watch you sketch."

"Oh, Mr. Gayne!" cried Veronica. "Don't go until you tell us about the haunted farm."

"Where did you ever hear about that?" asked the artist, looking with some favor on Veronica's round and dimpled personality. "I thought you were a stranger here."

"I am, but Genevieve Wilks has just been telling me that you really saw the spook."

Gayne laughed. "When I came up here last summer, I was told about the haunted farm, and, of course, I was interested in it at once. There are some particularly good views from there. So, naturally, I became one of the ha'nts myself and spent a lot of time with them."

"Oh, but tell us what it looked like," persisted Veronica. "Did you really think you saw one?"

"What a subject for this time of a clear, sunny day," said Gayne, lightly. "Wait until the thunder rolls some stormy night," and, lifting his cap, he hurried away through the field, his sketch-book under his arm.

Diana looked after his receding form.

"It is odd how little like an artist Mr. Gayne looks," she said.

"You mean he should have long hair and dreamy eyes?" asked Philip.

"I think it is the eyes," replied Diana thoughtfully. "I cannot picture his looking with concentration and persistence at anything."

"Oh, I've seen him make a pretty good stab at it," said Philip dryly, thinking of the manner in which he had on several occasions seen him stare at Diana.

At this point the dull boy found his tongue.

"I wouldn't go up there," he said haltingly.

"Up where?" asked Mrs. Lowell encouragingly.

"Up to that farm. It's full of nettles that sting, and then, when it's dark, ghosts."

The group exchanged glances.

"Who told you that?" asked Philip.

"Uncle Nick."

It did not increase the general admiration of Mr. Gayne that he should take such means for securing safety from his nephew's companionship.

Mrs. Lowell took the boy's arm. "I want to go down to the water," she said. "Will you go with me?"

"Are you afraid to go alone?" he asked.

"I should like it better if you went with me."

He allowed himself to be led around the house, then on among the grassy hummocks and clump of bay and savin and countless blueberry bushes.

"Do you see what quantities of blueberries we are going to have?" asked Mrs. Lowell.

"Are we?"

"Yes. These are berry bushes. Do you like blueberries?"

"I don't know."

Mrs. Lowell laughed and shook the arm she was still holding. "You do know, Bertie," she said. "You must have eaten lots of blueberries." Her merry eyes held his dull ones as she spoke. "I don't like to hear you say you don't know, all the time."

"What difference does it make?" he returned.

"All the difference in the world. The most important thing in life is for us to know. There are such quantities of beautiful things for us to know. This day, for instance. We can know it is beautiful, can't we?"

When they reached the stony beach, she released his arm and sat down among the pebbles. He did not look at them or at the sea; but at her. She wore a blue dress and her brown hair was ruffling in the wind.

"Do you like stones?" she asked.

"I – " he began.

She lifted her hand and laughed again into his eyes. "Careful!" she said. "Don't say you don't know."

The boy's look altered from dullness to perplexity. "But I don't – " he began slowly.

"Then find out right now," she said, lifting a hand full of the smooth pebbles while the tide seethed and hissed near them. She held out her hand to him.

"Pick out the prettiest," she said, and he began pulling them over with his forefinger.

"I love stones," she went on. "See how the ocean has polished them for us. Years and years of polishing has gone to these, and yet we can pick them up on a bright summer morning and have them for our own if we want them."

"There's one sort of green," said Bertie. "Green. That's like me. Uncle Nick says I'm green."

"Uncle Nick doesn't know everything," said Mrs. Lowell quietly, as she took the pebble he had chosen and, laying her handkerchief on the beach, placed the green pebble upon it. "Now, see if we can find some that you can see the light through. There is one now. See, that one is almost transparent. It is translucent. That is what translucent means. Isn't it a pretty word – and a pretty stone? Hold it up to your eye."

The boy obeyed, a slight look of interest coming into his face. Mrs. Lowell studying him realized what an attractive face his might be. It was as if the promising bud of a flower had been blighted in mid-opening.

"Let us put all the best pebbles on my handkerchief and take them home with us. Have you a father and mother, Bertie?"

"No."

"Do you remember them?"

The boy hesitated and glanced into the kind face bent toward him. Its expression gave the lonely lad a strange sensation. A lump came into his throat and moisture suddenly gathered in his eyes. He swallowed the lump.

"Uncle Nick doesn't want me – to talk about her," he stammered.

"Your mother, do you mean, Bertie?"

The tender tone was too much for the boy. He had to swallow faster and nodded. In a minute two drops ran down his cheeks. He ignored them and began throwing pebbles into the water.

The figure that he made in his outgrown trousers and faded old sweater, trying to control himself, moved his companion, and the sign of his emotion encouraged her. Perhaps he was not so stupid as he seemed.

"I think it would be nice to make a collection of stones while we are here," she said. "I'm sure Miss Burridge will let us have a glass jar. See this one."

Bertie dashed the back of his hand across his eyes and turned to look at the small pebble she offered.

"Isn't that a little beauty?"

"I – "

"Careful!" his companion smiled as she said it and pretended to frown at him in such a merry way that the hint of a smile appeared on his face.

"Uncle Nick likes to have me say I don't know. He says it's honest."

"Well, no two people could be more different than Uncle Nick and me. I want you to know, and I want you to say so, because it's what we all have a right to. It is what God wants of us; and, Bertie, if you ever feel like talking about your mother to me, you must do so."

The boy glanced up at her, then down at the pebbles which he pulled over in silence.

"Where do you and your uncle live?"

"In Newark."

"Do you go to school there?"

"No."

"Where do you go to school?"

"Nowhere."

"Where did you learn to read and write then, Bertie?"

"In school. I went when – when she was here."

"Your mother?"

"Yes."

"And have you brothers and sisters?"

"No. Just Uncle Nick."

"Does he give you studies to learn?" Mrs. Lowell's catechism was given in such gentle, interested tones that the answers had come easily up to now.

Now the boy hesitated, and she began to expect the stereotyped answer which he had learned was most pleasing, and the easiest way out with his uncle.

"I – " he began, and caught her look. "Sometimes," he added. "But Uncle Nick says it isn't any use – and I don't care anyway, because – she isn't here."

Again Mrs. Lowell could see the spasm in his throat and face. It passed and left the usual dull listlessness of expression.

"Your mother was very sweet," said Mrs. Lowell quietly, and some acknowledgment lighted his eyes as he suddenly looked up at her. "I know that because she made such a deep impression on the little boy she left. How old were you, Bertie, in that happy time when she was here?"

"I – it was Christmas, and there have been – five Christmases since. I remember them on my fingers, and one hand is gone."

Mrs. Lowell met his shifting look with the steady, kind gaze which was so fraught with sympathy that his forlorn, neglected soul turned towards its warmth like a struggling flower to the sun.

"I'll tell you what I think would be beautiful, Bertie," she said. "And it is for you to do everything you do for her, just as if she were here, or as if you were going to see her to-morrow. Did she ever talk to you about God?"

"Yes. I said prayers that Christmas – and I got a sled."

"Do you ever say prayers now?"

"No. It – it doesn't do any good if you – if you live with Uncle Nick. He – he won't let God give you – anything."

"Let me tell you something wonderful, Bertie. Nobody – not even Uncle Nick – can stand between you and God. You know the way your mother loved you? God loves you that way, too. Like a Father and Mother both. So, whenever you think of your mother's love, think of God's love, too. It is just as real. In fact, it was God, you know, who made her love you."

The boy looked up at this.

"Yes. So, whenever you think of God, remember that 'I don't know' must never come into your thought. You do know, and you can know better every day."

"Uncle Nick won't like it if I know anything."

"Dear child!" burst from Mrs. Lowell at this unconscious revelation of blight. "We will have a secret from Uncle Nick. I am so glad you have told me about your dear mother, and now you are going to start doing everything in the way you think would make her happy if she were here. I am sure she loved everything beautiful. She loved flowers and birds and this splendid ocean that is going to catch us in a minute if we don't move back. What do you say to letting it catch us! Supposing we take off our shoes and stockings and wade. Doesn't that foam look tempting?"

Color rose in the speaker's cheeks as she finished, and the vitality in her voice was infectious.

"It's – it'll be cold," said the boy.

"Let it. Come on, it will be fun."

She was already taking off her shoes and he followed suit. It gave her a pang to see the holes in his faded socks, but she caught up her skirts and he pulled up his trousers and shrinkingly followed her. The June water was still reminiscent of ice, and she squealed as the foam curled around her ankles, and Bertie hopped up and down until color came into his face, too. The incoming tide, noisier and noisier, drove them farther and farther up the beach, until finally they sat down together on a rock at a safe distance from the water, and the sunlight fell hotly on their glistening feet.

"That was fun!" said Mrs. Lowell, laughing and breathing fast. "Do you know how to swim, Bertie?"

"I – no, I don't."

"That would be a nice thing to learn while you are here. You learn and then teach me."

"Me? Teach you?"

"Of course. Why not? There's a cove in the island where they all swim."

Bertie looked off on the billows. "Would my mother like that?" he asked.

"I'm sure she would, and she would like the collection of stones we are going to make, and she would like you to help Miss Burridge by weeding the garden that they have started. There are so many delightful things to do in the world, and you are going to do them all – for her."

"All for her," echoed Bertie. "And not tell Uncle Nick," he added.

"No. You and I will keep the secret."

Mrs. Lowell looked at him with a smile, and the neglected boy, his dull wits stimulated by this amazing experience of comradeship, smiled back at her, the smile of the little child who in that far-away happy Christmas had received a sled.