Читать книгу Butterfly - Kathleen Thompson Norris - Страница 7

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After all, it was something a little before ten o’clock when his car bumped over the ruts and holes in the road beyond Merchantsville, and he began to see the Mount Holly lights. Not so late, Craig reflected complacently, but that he could read and smoke for a comfortable hour in his uncle’s library before going to bed.

“Hello—all right—I hear you!” he found himself shouting suddenly, rousing himself with violence. Somebody had hailed him from the side of the road. He slowed his car—stopped—a man in a chauffeur’s uniform came running up to him.

“Hello, there—sorry to stop you, Mister,” said this person, panting, “but we’ve got some sort of engine trouble. How far is it to Mount Holly?”

“About a mile. That’s all right—take you in,” Craig said, good-naturedly, remembering now that he had passed a handsome limousine stalled beside the road some few hundred feet back. Another man now came within the range of his lights: a tall, lean man in a handsome, foreign-looking fur coat—a European.

“You will take for me a message, that my friends shall not be incommoded?” asked this man, in an imperious yet courteous voice. Craig saw a young face, rather pale, with immense, deep flaming black eyes, and long, finely shaped features. He had seen this face before, he thought—where? Where? It was a strong face, clean-shaven and thin, with some odd hint of womanliness about it. The speech had the rushing, daring fluency of the north of Europe. Russian, Craig thought, or perhaps German.

“Glad to,” he said, cordially, his mind already busy seeking the explanation of this man’s appearance here at this hour.

Instantly the other man’s face lighted brilliantly, and he clasped Craig’s left hand in both his own. More fluent, slightly incorrect English came in a glad rush. He was coming to see friends—old, old friends, in Mount Holly, he said. This good, hospitable gentleman would tell them that he was delayed? He had left the hotel in Philadelphia at eight—it was now almost ten o’clock.

“Let me take you, that’ll be better,” Craig suggested. “We can drop your man at the garage, and he can come for you later.” He opened the door of the seat beside him; the stranger, pouring forth ecstatic blessings, came around the hood to join him. Who on earth in Mount Holly, Craig pondered meanwhile, who on earth——?

“I go to the Mademoiselles Collier,” said his passenger, answering his thought.

“Ah-h-h!” said Craig. “But who the deuce are you?” he thought.

“You know them?” the other man asked, eagerly.

“Oh, very well! At least I know the older one,” Craig amended honestly.

“I go to them,” said the stranger, contentedly, “they are my mother’s friend. We shall talk of music together!”

“They’re very keen about music, I know,” said Craig, not knowing whether to be most amused, surprised, or generally confused at the position in which he found himself.

“Oh, certainly. Why not?” the foreigner said, very simply rousing himself from thought.

“They expect you, I suppose?” ventured Craig.

“Oh, certainly,” the other said again. “I send them the telegram. ‘I have your letter,’ I say. ‘I come!’ But fancy to yourself, Monsieur, that I shall have this letter only yesterday. Assassins—that will not send it to me!”

He lapsed again into silence, and Craig reflected with some bewilderment upon the effect of such an arrival upon two young girls living alone. The whole thing was very odd: the hour, the man’s youth and manner, and the fact that Miss Collier had said nothing this afternoon of expecting such a visitor.

The car turned into the town, slipped and crunched upon the hard-packed snow, turned out into Spy Street, and pushed its disproportionately big nose into Sugarhouse Lane. Both men got out, and Craig fumbled for the door in the brick wall.

This once opened, they saw that the little house was hospitably flooded with light. The porch door opened, golden radiance streamed forth, and as Craig and the stranger came up to the steps the former recognized Hilary, silhouetted in the stream of light, very charming and quaint in some prim little gown of black with white ruffles at her wrists and throat, and with her hands held out in welcome.

“Kronski!” she cried.

A great light broke in upon Craig’s mind as he placed the man; he wondered how he could have missed the likeness before. So Miss Collier’s absurd faith in Kronski was justified, after all! Perhaps these musical creatures had some understanding among themselves.

He felt himself superfluous here; but he could not turn his back upon the little drama being enacted before him.

The violinist sprang to meet Hilary, and their conversation broke into such rapid and emotional French that Craig was unable to follow it. He heard their laughter, saw their tears, and could hardly recognize, in this glowing, impetuous woman, his uncle’s demure little secretary.

Presently she could give Craig a smile of greeting; everything else was forgotten between them except that this was her home and Craig her guest. He must come in—oh, and he must meet Dora!

She drew Dora from a shy conversation with Kronski: Craig had a swift impression of somebody about Vi Vanderwort’s height, with Vi’s appealing look, only with a freshness and youth and beauty quite unknown to Vi.

He had only time to realize an extreme surprise that here, in commonplace little Mount Holly, this lovely creature could have lived all of her eighteen years, when Hilary took them all into the big room that had once been the kitchen but that was now evidently the parlour.

It was a long, high room filled with old-fashioned comfortable furniture, and with the open fireplace of white-washed bricks still occupying most of one end. An air-tight stove, hideous but effective, had been set in the great chimney opening; Craig saw an old Dutch oven’s door in the wall beside it.

About the walls sat several persons: an odd and heterogeneous lot, expectant country types with clean faces and clumsy boots for the most part, although there were one or two distinguished old faces among them. Hilary introduced them joyfully, explaining to Kronski that this was so rare a treat that she simply had to “call the neighbours in,” like the woman in the nursery rhyme.

“No, but what rhyme is this?” demanded Kronski, stopping short in his round, and looking at her for an explanation.

In reply she supplied it quite simply.

“Why, don’t you know

“Cross Patch, draw the latch,

Sit by the fire and spin!

Take a cup, and drink it up,

And call the neighbours in?”

she asked, gaily. The violinist appeared fascinated by the jingle.

“Cross, yes, but what is that patch?” he asked. “I must learn that ‘call the neighbours in!’ ”

“This is our dear good neighbour Mrs. Latimer, and Miss Latimer,” Hilary proceeded with her presentations, “and Jerry Latimer, and Doctor Stovall. And this is Madame Rider, who knows your country very well, Kronski, and Elsie Stout, whose mother is letting her stay up to meet you, because Elsie is going to be a musician one of these days—let him look at your fingers, Elsie. Isn’t that a musician’s hand for you? And dear Madama Ghecchi, who is making good Italians of us——”

The little ceremony proceeded pleasantly and easily: Craig could only marvel as the awed and flattered country neighbours responded. Where had she rounded them up, in Mount Holly, this old Italian lady and the little Frenchwoman, old Doctor Stovall with his magnificent mane of white hair, timid little Mrs. Stout trembling with pride in her fatherless daughter?

There was something homely, charming, European about it, he decided, talking to fat, panting Tom Lester, whose temperamental little wife conducted the dramatic section of the local women’s club, and memorized Alfred Noyes while rocking her heavy babies to sleep.

“Oh, this is such a rare treat, Mr. Spaulding!” said Ida Lester, eagerly and timidly, on his left. “The Collier girls are such wonderful girls ...”

Truly he began to think that they were. Hilary had established Kronski near the piano, and now Dora came into the room with a violin in her hands. She extended it to the master without speaking: Kronski got to his feet, and laid the dark wood of the instrument against his cheek as if it had been a woman’s hand, shutting his eyes. He whispered something infinitely tender, in French; Craig saw that the sisters and their guest were in a world of their own.

Immediately he returned it to Dora.

“Now you will play for me,” he said. Craig watched the girl’s flower-like face keenly; there was no affectation of hesitancy there. Hilary readily seated herself at the piano, and rippled the notes with the fingers of the adept. Crisply, exquisitely, the preliminary chords and runs fell upon the expectant air; she looked at Dora over her shoulder, and Dora began to play.

When she had finished, the listening circle pattered applause; but Kronski merely looked annoyed at the interruption. Hilary played another prelude, and Dora, whose cheeks were blazing, picked up her bow again. Craig looked at her beauty in amazement; her fair hair was somewhat loosened, and in the exquisite whiteness of her face the scarlet of lips and cheeks was almost spectacular. Her lips twitched as she played, and her babyish forehead wore a slight, anxious scowl.

At the finish it was Hilary who crashed the last chord and swept past her sister to the musician’s side. Kronski was on his feet, he had come to the piano, her hand touched his arm.

“No, but tell me, Kronski!” she begged, breathless with tension.

“Tell you that you have here the divine thing, that is what this greedy sister wishes for you, is it?” Kronski said, smiling, to Dora. “When do you come to me for some real work—I am in my studio in January again, in Munich,” he said. “You will come—when?”

“You’ll teach her—yourself——!” Hilary stammered, trying to laugh. Craig saw that her lashes were wet with happy tears. “We’ll sail in early summer,” she told him, positively.

“Oh, Hilary!” Dora said, her eyes shining.

“And then you will begin to cry, and say that you never can do the hard things I make you do, and hate my old Von Mandescheid to whom I send you for the scales and exercises!” Kronski prophesied to Dora.

“Oh, no, I won’t!” she said, happily. Kronski had the Amati in his hands, now he raised the bow, and Hilary, with a reverent expression on her face, touched a chord on the piano.

“What have we here—what have we here?” the violinist said, softly, looking over her shoulder at the scattered music.

“Will you play for us?” the girl said.

“But why not?” Kronski asked her in return, arching his heavy eyebrows at the expectant circle. “You have worked hard, Mademoiselle,” he added, watching her careless fingers.

“All my life!” she answered, flushing with pleasure.

“The Mama begins you when—at seven—at eight?”

“Oh, at four!”

His eyes gleamed.

“It should be so,” he said, approvingly, “and one sees it. Ah, my darling!” he murmured in Russian, to the violin. “And how long did the little hands practise at four?” he asked, as he lightly drew forth a casual note or two that made Hilary’s fingers turn cold with ecstasy. “What is this we have here? Wieniawski? The scherzo tarantelle—good! Shall we commence?”

There followed suddenly, like a scream in the listening silence, an introductory phrase so pure, so flashing and brilliant that Hilary quite palpably winced, and her hands shook as they began the accompaniment. Dora, even in the middle of a whispered sentence to Craig, was struck dumb, he saw her soft little mouth half-open in utter rapture, her eyes were fixed upon Kronski, she seemed transported instantly to another world. Craig felt, himself, that he could glimpse now, for the first time in his life, the full beauty of the instrument for which men had longed, and toiled, suffered and died, for a thousand years. Beauty, stupendous and immortal, was shut into that narrow box of polished wood, and at Konrad’s touch it awoke again: the beauty of all music, all power, all passion flooded the little room, and brimmed in it like molten gold.

Dora had performed charmingly; but this did not seem a performance. The violin seemed a living thing, sobbing, chuckling, murmuring, complaining; Kronski and Hilary were but shadows; priests at the altar. Craig had an almost uncomfortable sense of being actually carried away, when they abruptly stopped, and he saw Hilary laughing and wiping her eyes, and Konrad filling his lungs with a great breath, like a boy winded by a run. Whatever they said, a few brief sentences flung almost breathlessly at each other, he missed, because they spoke in French. Immediately they were off again, and the magic was repeated.

“Ah, he’s a great master!” little Dora said, solemnly. Craig thought her positive little statement rather amusing and touching. “Sis—the Dvorak!” she pleaded, aloud.

“You shall have it!” Konrad agreed, with a military bow.

The circle listened, marvelled, applauded. Craig, and Dora, sitting next to him, led the applause. But to Craig an odd enchantment, a bewildered sense of having been here in this odd, warm, cluttered room, and in this strangely assorted, strangely stimulating company before, was making even Kronski and the Amati seem of secondary importance. He thought confusedly that he liked these people; liked the very homeliness and simplicity of the whole thing, and wanted them to like him. There was a refreshing heartiness and honesty about it all——

And this young girl next to him, with her enthusiasms, her artlessness, her brown eyes and slender little shabby figure, was strangely, irresistibly appealing. There were cadences in her slightly husky young voice that he had never heard in a woman’s voice before. She charmed him, she was at once so old and so young; he wanted to laugh at and cry at her confidences. Somehow it wrung his heart when she looked at him gravely, at Kronski’s third selection, and said seriously: “Vieuxtemps, I think. Is it? Anyway,” she whispered, solemnly, “you can hear that Hilary’s improvising the accompaniment!”

Craig felt ignorant, young, alien, in this atmosphere, and he rather liked the feeling. In his own set he had been conscious for many years of a certain sense of superiority. Here, despite the absurdities, the Stout child and her pale mother, Tom Lester and his ready-tied tie, old Stovall and the high-busted, panting Italian woman, there was some quality that made him oddly desirous to shine.

After the music they were informal. Elsie Stout played “Narcissus” for Kronski, the little Frenchwoman recited something in her mother tongue about “le lendemain.” Kronski went back to the nursery rhyme; what was that about the neighbours, now?

Refreshments were now being served; and if Craig had had any wonder left, it might have been expended upon what Hilary had provided for her guests. Many of these, with the instinctive delicacy of the simple, had by this time expressed their appreciation and departed. The Latimers and the Lesters and the Stouts had gone, but the old doctor and the French and Italian women remained.

On the table, frankly drawn forth from the wall and cleared for the feast, were sardines and soda crackers, preserved plums and a large pot of tea, pickles and butter, rye bread, and ginger-snaps. Craig’s heart for some reason suffered a wrench of acute pity when he saw added to these a blue bowl of cold potatoes. Were they as poor as that?

Kronski, however, apparently saw nothing amiss. He drank his hot weak tea sugared, from a long tumbler, and when they had eaten the sardines, dipped his potatoes in the rich oil in the tin with many an appreciative word. And he could not say enough, when the time came, about the ginger-snaps.

What were they, these hot little cakes? Ginger, eh? From the South Sea Islands, eh? But where did one get these cakes?

“From any grocery,” Hilary assured him, laughing. He looked at her with pathetic faith.

“No, but I go into these groceries, why do I not see them?” he demanded. He allowed her to bring in from the kitchen all that were left in the bag, and stowed them in the pocket of his fur coat when the time came to go. It was one o’clock. “But I will sleep all day to-morrow,” he told them, reassuringly. “And then, in the evening, I shall play for you and the Butterfly!”

Craig took Madama Ghecchi home, and reached his own rooms in a state of mental confusion and bewilderment. At one moment he felt only amusement; what an evening! with its heated faces and jumbled chairs, the whine of the violin, the dominant richness of Kronski’s voice. He remembered himself eating with gusto—somehow everything had tasted very well.

The predominant impression was not flattering to his late company: this Kronski must be no more than a peasant, when all was said and done. And the girls—poor little unevenly developed, curiously handicapped creatures! Would they really follow up the family gift, and make professional musicians of themselves some day? The little one was certainly beautiful. A surer cut to wealth and fame for her would be through the moving picture world. He must not, Craig decided, become entangled with these girls; they were too simple, too fine.