Читать книгу The Key Note - Burnham Clara Louise - Страница 4

"Well, good-bye, Miss Priscilla," said Philip, coming into the kitchen a few mornings afterward. "This landlubber life won't do for me any longer."

Small Genevieve was at the sink washing dishes and Veronica was drying them.

Miss Burridge slid her last loaf of bread into the oven and then stood up and faced him.

"Philip Barrison," she said emphatically, "you have been a blessing for these weeks. I hate to see you go. Now, how much do I owe you for all the good things you've done for me?"

Philip laughed and, throwing his arms around her, gave her a hearty smack on the cheek.

"What do I owe you for popovers and corn fritters?" he rejoined. "Just don't let Veronica chew gum, nor let Genevieve flirt with Marley Hughes and we'll call it square."

Genevieve turned up her little nose and giggled, and Veronica looked scornful.

"Now, don't you tell me that Puppa liked it," he continued to her. "Besides, anybody that lives with your Aunt Pris has so many nicer things to chew there is no excuse. Oh, Miss Priscilla, how I hate to say adieu to the waffles!"

"Well, you must come real often, Phil. I heard you was goin' to give us a concert at the hall sometime this summer. Is that so? I do hope you will."

"I shouldn't wonder. My accompanist is coming to-day and we shall do a little work and a lot of fishing."

"Is he a young feller? You must bring him up to play croquet with the girls."

"Well, I don't know whether he has any experience as an Alpine climber or not."

"Why, I don't think it's such an awful bad ground. Do you, Veronica?"

"Not if he's real nice and hasn't any whiskers," replied the girl. "Heaven knows he'll be better than nothing. Such a place as this and not a beau! It's a crime."

"How about me?" inquired Philip modestly.

Veronica lifted her upper lip disdainfully. "Oh, you, with your lectures and your goddesses! What earthly good are you?"

"Cr-rushed!" exclaimed Philip.

"Talked to Mrs. Lowell all last evening on the piazza in that lovely moonlight. The idea of wasting it on a Mrs. I suppose there's a Mr. to her."

"Yes, and he's coming before the summer is over. The worst of it is she seems to like him."

"Children, children," said Miss Burridge, and she winked toward the back of Genevieve's head. Well she knew the alertness of the ears that were holding back those tight braids of hair.

"Yes, my accompanist, Barney, is a broth of a boy, but I shall tell him, Veronica, that ten o'clock is the limit, the very extreme limit."

The girl flushed and laughed. "You mind your business now, Mr. Barrison, and I'll attend to mine. I'm perfectly capable of it."

"Very well. I'll simply keep Puppa's address on my desk, and I won't use it unless I really have to," said Phil, in a conscientious tone which nearly caused Veronica to throw a cup at him.

"Go along now if you must, Philip," said Miss Priscilla. "And I do thank you, dear boy. We shall miss you every minute. Give my love to your grandmother. I wish she could get up as far as this. You tell her so."

"All right, I will. Do you know where Miss Wilbur is?"

"Aha!" said Veronica softly.

"I don't want to go without saying good-bye to her."

"I should hope not," jeered Veronica. "I suppose you won't see her again all summer."

"Oh, yes, I shall, unless Barney Kelly cuts me out."

"Sure, it's Oirish he is, thin?"

"Faith, and he is, and a bit chipped off the original blarney stone at that. Trust him not, Veronica."

"I only hope I'll get the chance, but if you're going to set him on the goddess, what sort of a look-in will I have? I've got five on my nose already."

"Five what, woman?"

"Freckles. Can't you see them from there? It will be fulsome flattery if you say you can't."

Philip squinted up his eyes and came nearer to examine.

"You remember what I said. Tell Barney they're beauty spots – 'golden kisses of the sun.'"

"Oh, ain't that pretty!" shouted Genevieve. "I'm speckled with 'em jest like a turkey egg, but I don't mind 'em the way Veronica does. I've got some powder at home and I powder over 'em."

"At your age, Genevieve!" exclaimed Philip sternly. "What shall I do with the extravagance and artificiality of this generation! Don't you know, Genevieve, that the money you spend for powder should go into the missionary box? You poor, lost, little soul!"

Genevieve giggled delightedly, and Miss Burridge, at the window, exclaimed:

"There's Miss Wilbur now, Phil, looking at the garden bed."

"If I were she," said Veronica, "I wouldn't have a word to say to you after the way you wasted last evening."

"If only she thought so, too!" groaned Philip. "But I'm not in it with her astronomy map for June. She is a hundred times more interested to know where Jupiter and Venus are than where I am – natural, I suppose – all in the family." He threw open the kitchen door and, standing on the step, threw kisses toward the group within.

"Good-bye, summer!" he sang. "Good-bye, good-bye."

The beauty of his voice had its usual effect on Diana, who stood by the strip of green, growing things, looking in his direction, her lips slightly parted over her pretty teeth.

"You see I'm good-bye-ing," he said, approaching her.

"Are you leaving us?" she returned, allowing her clasped hands to fall apart. "See how well the sweet peas are doing."

"Yes, I'm leaving you all in good shape. Do you think you can go on behaving yourselves without my watchful guardianship and Christian example?"

"I think we shall miss you. Mr. Gayne is not a fair exchange."

"Thank you. Mrs. Lowell was talking to me about that outfit last evening. She is quite stirred up about the boy."

"Yes," rejoined Diana. "I think she is a wonderful woman. She has taken him down to the beach with her again this morning. She believes that Mr. Gayne is his nephew's enemy rather than his guardian. She believes he has some reason for desiring to blight any buddings of intelligence in the boy, and uses an outrageous method of suppression over him all the time. It would be so much easier to let it go, and most of us would, I'm sure, rather than spend vacation hours in such insipid company, or have any dealings with that – that impossible uncle; but Mrs. Lowell will not relinquish her efforts."

"Yes, she is a brilliant, fearless sort of woman," said Philip. "I shouldn't wonder if she gave Gayne a disagreeable quarter of an hour before she gets through with him."

"One has to exercise care, however," returned Diana, "lest the man become angered and visit his ill-humor on the boy. I am often obliged to constrain myself to civility when I yearn to hurl – " she hesitated.

"Plates? Oh, do say you long to throw a plate at him!"

Diana gave her remote moonbeam smile.

"I must admit that 'invective' was in my mind. A rather strong word for girls to use."

"A splendid word. A good long one, too. You might try hurling polysyllables at him some day and see him blink."

Diana shook her head. "That sort of man is a pachyderm. He would never flinch at verbal missiles. Since you must go, I wish some other agreeable man would join our group and converse with him at table."

Philip smiled. "Surely you have noticed that Miss Emerson is not averse to assuming all responsibility?"

"Mr. Barrison," said Diana gravely, "I hope when I am – am elderly and unmarried, that I shall not seek to attract men."

"Miss Wilbur," returned Philip, with a solemnity fitting hers, and regarding the symmetry and grace of her lovely head, "don't spend any time worrying about that; for some inner voice assures me that you will never be elderly and unmarried."

"The future is on the knees of the gods," she returned serenely.

"Then I don't need to lose any sleep on account of your posing for one of Mr. Gayne's wonderful sketches?"

Diana brought the brown velvet of her eyes to bear fully upon him. It even seemed hopeful that a spark would glow in them.

"I loathe the man," she said slowly.

"Forgive me, divine one. Well, I must go now. Why won't you take me home? I should like you to meet my grandmother, and think of the pitfalls and mantraps of the island road if I risk myself alone: Bill Lindsay's Ford! Marley Hughes's bicycle! Lou Buell's gray mare taking him to mend somebody's broken pipe! Matt Blake's express wagon! Come and keep my courage up."

"You have a grandmother on this island?"

"I'll prove it if you'll come with me."

Diana smiled and moved along beside him. "It doesn't seem a real, mundane, earthly place to me yet," she said. "It must be wonderful to have a solid pied-à-terre here. They tell me there are many summer cottages, but they are far from our Inn and I haven't realized them yet. I am hoping my parents will consent to purchasing some ground here for me."

"Where do you usually go in summer?"

"Our cottage is at Newport, but I like better Pittsfield, where we go in the autumn."

Philip looked around at her as she moved along through the field beside him. "Is your middle name Biddle?" he asked.

"No, I have no middle name."

"I thought in Philadelphia only the descendants of the Biddles had cottages at Newport and Pittsfield."

Diana smiled. "I know that is a stock bit of humor. What was that about an Englishman who said he had seen Niagara Falls and almost every other wonder of America except a Biddle? He had not yet seen one."

"When do you laugh, Miss Wilbur?" asked Philip suddenly.

"Why, whenever anything amuses me, of course."

"Yet you like the island, although it has never amused you yet. I have lived in the house with you for two weeks and I haven't heard you laugh."

Diana looked up at him and laughed softly. "How amusing!" she said.

He nodded. "It's very good-looking, very. Do that again sometime. How did you happen to run away from family this season?"

"I was tired and almost ill, and some people at home had been here and told me about it. So I came, really incontinently. I did not wait to perfect arrangements, and when I arrived in a severe rainstorm one evening, I found great kindness at the house my friends had told me of, but no clean towels. They were going to have a supply later, but meanwhile I lost my heart to the view from our Inn piazza and Miss Burridge found me there one day and took me in for better or for worse. That explains me. Now, what explains your having a grandmother here?"

"Her daughter marrying my father, I imagine. My grandfather was a sea-captain, Cap'n Steve Dorking. He had given up the sea by the time I came along."

"Here? Were you born here?"

"Yes."

"That explains the maritime tints in your eyes. Even when they laugh the sparkle is like the sun on the water. Continue, please."

"Well, my father, who came here to fish, met my mother, fell in love, married her, and took her away. He was very clever at everything except making money, it seems, so my mother came home within a year to welcome me on to the planet. My grandfather had a small farm, and I was his shadow and one of his 'hands' until I was eight years old."

"Was it a happy life?"

"It was. I remember especially the smell of Grammy's buttery, sweet-smelling cookies, and gingerbread, and apple pies with cinnamon. It smells the same way now. Do you wonder I like to come back?"

"You stimulate my appetite," said Diana.

"Oh, she'll give you some. There were many jolly things in those days to brighten the life of a country boy. The way the soft grass felt to bare feet in the spring, and in the frosty autumn mornings when we went to the yard to milk and would scare up the cows so those same bare feet could stand in the warm place where the cows had lain. Then came winter and snowdrifts – making snow huts and coasting down the hills. Sliding and skating on the ice-filled hollows. It was all great. I'm glad I had it."

"You test my credulity, Mr. Barrison, when you speak of ice and snow in this poetic home of summer breezes."

He looked down at her. "We will have a winter house-party at Grammy's sometime and convince you."

"So at eight years of age you went out into the world?"

"Yes, at my dear mother's apron strings. My father had spent some time with us every year and at last secured a living salary and took us to town. The first thing I did in the glitter of the blinking lamp-posts was to fall in love. I prayed every night for a long time that I might marry that girl. She had long curls and I reached just to her ear. I received her wedding cards a year or so ago. I was always praying for something, but only one of my prayers has ever been answered. I was always very devout in a thunderstorm, and I prayed that I might not be struck by lightning and I never have been yet."

"When was your wonderful voice discovered?"

"Look here, Miss Wilbur, you are tempting me to a whole biography, and it isn't interesting."

"Yes, I am interested in – in your mother."

"My poor mother," said Philip, in a different tone. "When I was twelve years old my father was taken ill and soon left us. My mother had to struggle and I had to stop school and go to work. The first job I got was lathing a house. I walked seven miles into the country and put the laths on that house. I worked hard for a whole week and received twelve dollars and seventy-five cents. It was a ten-dollar gold piece, two silver dollars, fifty cents, and a quarter."

Diana lifted sympathetic eyes.

"I bought a suit of clothes and gave up the gold piece. The perfect lady clerk failed to give me credit for it and six months afterward the store sent the bill to my mother. I put up a heated argument, you may be sure, and before the matter was settled, the perfect lady clerk skipped with another woman's husband. So the powers inclined to believe me rather than her."

"Poor little boy," put in Diana. "But your music?"

"Yes. Well, our minister's wife took an interest in me and gave me lessons on the organ. I never would practice, though. I would pick out hymns with one finger while I stood on one foot and pumped the pedal with the other. It was results I was after; but the cornet allured me, and I learned to play that well enough to join the Sunday-School orchestra.

"A cousin of my mother's came to our rescue sufficiently to let me go to school, and in all my spare time I did odd jobs, some of them pretty strenuous; but I was a strong youngster, and evidently bore a charmed life, for I challenged fate on trains, on top of buildings, and in engine rooms. But I'll spare you the harrowing details. At the spring commencement of the high school, I was invited to sing a solo. I warbled good old 'Loch Lomond' and forgot the words and was mortified almost to death, but the audience was enthusiastic, I have always believed out of pity."

"No no," breathed Diana.

"Well, at any rate, they insisted on an encore, and I was so braced up by the applause and so furious at myself that I gave them 'The Owl and the Pussy Cat."'

"Oh."

"I see you don't know it. Well, next day I met a lady on the street who was very musical, it seemed, and she invited me to come to her house and talk over studying music. She said I had a great responsibility. Oh, you don't want to hear all this!"

"I do, I do."

"My mother passed away soon afterward, and the musical friend in need – good friend she was, and is – told me of a town a hundred miles away where there were vacancies she knew of in choir positions. She would give me a letter of introduction and she believed I could qualify for one of them. I didn't tell her the slimness of my cash after my dear mother's funeral expenses were paid, and she didn't know. So I traveled that hundred miles on a freight train. When I first boarded it, I crawled into the fire-box of a new engine that was being transported over that line. It grew very cold before we had gone far, and I crawled out and climbed over the coal tender and opened the hole where they put the water in. I climbed down into that empty place and lighted a match only to find that there were about twenty bums there ahead of me. I didn't stay there long, for I was good and plenty afraid; some of them looked desperate. I climbed out again and went along the train till I came to a flat-car loaded with a new threshing machine. I saw a brakeman coming along with a lantern, and I knew if he saw me he'd put me off. So I climbed into the back of the threshing machine and down into its very depths, and after a while, when I had become chilled to the marrow, the train came to a halt. I crawled out and down to the ground and ran around to get warm. They were doing some switching and I saw they added two cars to the train. One had stock in one end and hay and grain in the other. They had to leave the door open to let in air for the stock, and up I climbed and hid under the straw and slept soundly the rest of the journey. Oh, I was dirty when I arrived! But my precious letter was safe in an inside pocket, and with the contents of the little bundle I had, and the expenditure of part of my small stock of money, I made myself decent and presented my letter of introduction. The organist of one of the churches tried me out. He liked my voice so much that he engaged me and was even interested enough to let me live at his house; but three dollars a Sunday was the salary and the voice lessons I engaged would be four dollars a week, so, of course, I had to go to work at once, and I got a job in a big sash and door factory where I worked like a horse ten hours a day."

"Why, Mr. Barrison," sighed Diana, "you are a hero."

Philip laughed. "I had no leisure to think about that. Times grew very slack and there began to be great danger that I would lose my job in the factory. They said they would have to lay me off unless I would whitewash an old building they had bought to store lumber. So I was given a brush and a barrel of lime-water and told to go at it. If I lost my job, I wouldn't be able to live. So I wrapped my feet in sacks to try to keep warm – it was late November – and went at it: and there were girls, Miss Wilbur, girls! And I couldn't put it over them after Tom Sawyer's fashion. Well, I had sung there just thirteen Sundays when the blow fell. The committee told me very kindly that they wanted to try another tenor. I went home from that talk with a heart heavy as lead. I could not sleep, and near midnight I began to cry. Yes, I did cry. I was twenty-one and I had voted, but I was the most broken-hearted boy in the State. I must have cried for two or three hours, pitying myself to the utmost, up three flights of stairs in that little attic room, with the rain pouring on the roof over my head, when all at once I jumped out of bed as dry-eyed as if I'd never shed a tear and, lifting my right hand as high as possible, I made a vow. I said – So help me, God, I will become a singer if I have to walk over everybody in the attempt. I will learn to sing, and these mutts will listen to me and pay to hear me, too. Then I jumped back into bed and fell asleep instantly."

"Splendid!" said Diana. "And how did you keep the vow?"

"Well, next morning I began to figure what I must do. I knew I hadn't enough education. I remembered that three years before I had won a scholarship for twenty weeks' free tuition in a business college in Portland, and I decided that I would need fifty dollars. The same cousin who had helped me before to go to school, came across. I quit my job, paid my bills, and left for Portland, getting there at Christmas. I sang at the Christmas-tree exercises in my home church. I went to school as I planned, took care of the furnace for the rent of my room, took care of three horses, got the janitorship of a church – "

Diana looked up with a sudden smile. "And forced up the thermometer when you overslept."

Philip burst into a hearty laugh. "Did Miss Burridge give me away? I tell you I saved that church lots of coal that winter."

"Oh, continue. I did not mean to interrupt you, for now you are coming to the climax."

"Nothing very wonderful, Miss Wilbur, but I found I had that to give that people were willing to pay for, and I began going about in country places giving recitals, mixing humorous recitations in with the groups of songs, playing my own accompaniments and sometimes having to shovel a path through the snow to the town hall before my audience could come in. I wonder if Caruso ever had to shovel snow away from the Metropolitan Opera House before his friends could get in to hear him! After that I worked my way through two years at college, studying with a good voice teacher. Then came the war. I got through with little more than a scratch and was in one of the first regiments to be sent home after the armistice was signed. The lady who first discovered my voice had influential musical friends in New York. She sent me to them, and, to make a long story a little shorter, last winter I was under an excellent management, obtained a church position, and have sung at a good many recitals. The coming winter looks hopeful." Philip put his hand on his heart and bowed. "Thanking you for your kind attention – here we are at Grammy's."