Читать книгу Ladies-In-Waiting - Wiggin Kate Douglas Smith - Страница 5

As for the country roundabout the Bexley Sands Inn, it is one of the loveliest in Devonshire. It does not waste a moment, but, realizing the brevity of week-end visits and the anxiety of tourists to see the greatest amount of scenery in the shortest space, it begins its duty at the very door of the inn and goes straight on from one stretch of loveliness to another.

If you have been there, you remember that if you turn to the right and go over the stone bridge that crosses the sleepy river, you are in the very heart of beauty. You pick your way daintily along the edge of the road, for it is carpeted so thickly with sea-pinks and yellow and crimson crow’s-foot that you scarcely know where to step. Sea-poppies there are, too, groves of them, growing in the sandy stretches that lie close to and border the wide, shingly beach. In summer the long, low, narrow stone bridge crosses no water, but just here is an acre or two of tall green rushes. You walk down the bank a few steps and sit under the shadow of a wall. The green garden of rushes stretches in front of you, with a still, shallow pool between you and it, a pool floating with blossoming water-weeds. On the edge of the rushes grow tall yellow irises in great profusion; the cuckoo’s note sounds in the distance; the sun, the warmth, the intoxication of color, make you drowsy, and you lean back among the green things, close your eyes, and then begin listening to the wonderful music of the rushes. A million million reeds stirred by the breeze bend to and fro, making a faint silken sound like that of a summer wave lapping the shore, but far more ethereal.

Thomasina Tucker went down the road, laden with books, soon after breakfast Monday morning. Appleton waited until after the post came in, and having received much-desired letters and observed with joy the week-enders setting forth, hither and thither on their return journeys, followed what he supposed to be Miss Tucker’s route; at least, it was her route on Saturday and Sunday, and he could not suppose her to harbor caprice or any other feminine weakness.

Yes, there she was, in the very loveliest nook, the stone wall at her back, and in front nice sandy levels for books and papers and writing-pad.

“Miss Tucker, may I invade your solitude for a moment? Our mutual friend, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, has written asking me to look you up as a fellow countryman and see if I can be of any service to you so far away from home.”

Tommy looked up, observed a good-looking American holding a letter in one hand and lifting a hat with the other, and bade him welcome.

“How kind of the bishop! But he is always doing kind things; his wife, too. I have seen much of them since I came to England.”

“My name is Appleton, Fergus Appleton, at your service.”

“Won’t you take a stone, or make yourself a hollow in the sand?” asked Tommy hospitably. “I came out here to read and study, and get rid of the week-enders. Isn’t Bexley Sands a lovely spot, and do you ever get tired of the bacon and the kippered herring, and the fruit tarts with Devonshire cream?”

“I can’t bear to begin an acquaintance with a lady by differing on such vital points, but I do get tired of these Bexley delicacies.”

“Perhaps you have been here too long—or have you just come this morning?”

Appleton swallowed his disappointment and hurt vanity, and remarked: “No, I came on Friday.” (He laid some emphasis on Friday.)

“The evening train is so incorrigibly slow! I only reached the hotel at ten o’clock when I arrived on Thursday night.” Miss Tucker shot a rapid glance at the young man as she made this remark.

“I came by the morning express and arrived here at three on Friday,” said Appleton.

Miss Tucker, with a slight display of perhaps legitimate temper, turned suddenly upon him. “There! I have been trying for two minutes to find out when you came, and now I know you were at my beastly concert on Friday evening!”

“I certainly was, and very grateful I am, too.”

“I suppose all through my life people will be turning up who were in that room!” said Miss Tucker ungraciously. “I must tell somebody what I feel about that concert! I should prefer some one who wasn’t a stranger, but you are a great deal better than nobody. Do you mind?”

Appleton laughed like a boy, and flung his hat a little distance into a patch of sea-pinks.

“Not a bit. Use me, or abuse me, as you like, so long as you don’t send me away, for this was my favorite spot before you chose it for yours.”

“I live in New York, and I came abroad early in the summer,” began Tommy.

“I know that already!” interrupted Appleton.

“Oh, I suppose the bishop told you.”

“No, I came with you; that is, I was your fellow passenger.”

“Did you? Why, I never saw you on the boat.”

“My charms are not so dazzling that I expect them to be noted and remembered,” laughed Appleton.

“It is true I was very tired, and excited, and full of anxieties,” said Tommy meekly.

“Don’t apologize! If you tried for an hour, you couldn’t guess just why I noticed and remembered you!”

“I conclude then it was not for my dazzling charms,” Tommy answered saucily.

“It was because you wore the only flower I ever notice, one that is associated with my earliest childhood. I never knew a woman to wear a bunch of mignonette before.”

“Some one sent it to me, I remember, and it had some hideous scarlet pinks in the middle. I put the pinks in my room and pinned on the mignonette because it matched my dress. I am very fond of green.”

“My mother loved mignonette. We always had beds of it in our garden and pots of it growing in the house in winter. I can smell it whenever I close my eyes.”

Tommy glanced at him. She felt something in his voice that she liked, something that attracted her and wakened an instantaneous response.

“But go on,” he said. “I only know as yet that you sailed from New York in the early summer, as I did.”

“Well, I went to London to join a great friend, a singer, Helena Markham. Have you heard of her?”

“No; is she an American?”

“Yes, a Western girl, from Montana, with oh! such a magnificent voice and such a big talent!” (The outward sweep of Tommy’s hands took in the universe.) “We’ve had some heavenly weeks together. I play accompaniments, and—”

“I know you do!”

“I forgot for the moment how much too much you know! I went with her to Birmingham, and Manchester, and Leeds, and Liverpool. I wasn’t really grand enough for her, but the audiences didn’t notice me, Helena was so superb. In between I took some lessons of Henschel. He told me I hadn’t much voice, but very nice brains. I am always called ‘intelligent,’ and no one can imagine how I hate the word!”

“It is offensive, but not so bad as some others. I, for example, have been called a ‘conscientious writer’!”

“Oh, are you a writer?”

“Of a sort, yes. But, as you were saying—”

“As I was saying, everything was going so beautifully until ten days ago, when Helena’s people cabled her to come home. Her mother is seriously ill and cannot live more than a few months. She went at once, but I couldn’t go with her—not very well, in midsummer—and so here I am, all alone, high and dry.”

She leaned her chin in the cup of her hand and, looking absent-mindedly at the shimmering rushes, fell into a spell of silence that took no account of Appleton.

To tell the truth, he didn’t mind looking at her unobserved for a moment or two. He had almost complete control of his senses, and he didn’t believe she could be as pretty as he thought she was. There was no reason to think that she was better to look at than an out-and-out beauty. Her nose wasn’t Greek. It was just a trifle faulty, but it was piquant and full of mischief. There was nothing to be said against her mouth or her eyelashes, which were beyond criticism, and he particularly liked the way her dark-brown hair grew round her temples and her ears—but the quality in her face that appealed most to Appleton was a soft and touching youthfulness.

Suddenly she remembered herself, and began again:

“Miss Markham and I had twice gone to large seaside hotels with great success, but, of course, she had a manager and a reputation. I thought I would try the same thing alone in some very quiet retreat, and see if it would do. Oh! wasn’t it funny!” (Here she broke into a perfectly childlike fit of laughter.) “It was such a well-behaved, solemn little audience, that never gave me an inkling of its liking or its loathing.”

“Oh, yes, it did!” remonstrated Appleton. “They loved your Scotch songs.”

“Silently!” cried Tommy. “I had dozens and dozens of other things upstairs to sing to them, but I thought I was suiting my programme to the place and the people. I looked at them during luncheon and made my selections.”

“You are flattering the week-enders.”

“I believe you are musical,” she ventured, looking up at him as she played with a tuft of sea-pinks.

“I am passionately fond of singing, so I seldom go to concerts,” he answered, somewhat enigmatically. “Your programme was an enchanting one to me.”

“It was good of its kind, if the audience would have helped me,”—and Tommy’s lip trembled a little; “but perhaps I could have borne that, if it hadn’t been for the—plate.”

“Not a pleasant custom, and a new one to me,” said Appleton.

“And to me!” (Here she made a little grimace of disgust.) “I knew beforehand I had to face the plate—but the contents! Where did you sit?”

“I was forced to stay a trifle in the background, I entered so late. It was your ‘Minstrel Boy’ that dragged me out of my armchair in the lounge.”

“Then perhaps you saw the plate? I know by your face that you did! You saw the sixpences, which I shall never forget, and the pennies, which I will never forgive! I thirst for the blood of those who put in pennies!”

“They would all have been sitting in boiling oil since Friday if I had had my way,” responded Appleton.

Tommy laughed delightedly. “I know now who put in the sovereign! I knew every face in that audience—that wasn’t difficult in so small a one—and I tried and tried to fix the sovereign on any one of them, and couldn’t. At last I determined that it was the old gentleman who went out in the middle of ‘Allan Water,’ feeling that he would rather pay anything than stay any longer. Confess! it was you!”

Appleton felt very sheepish as he met Tommy’s dancing eyes and heightened color.

“I couldn’t bear to let you see those pennies,” he stammered, “but I couldn’t get them out before the page came to take the plate.”

“Perhaps you were ‘pound foolish,’ and the others were ‘penny wise,’ but it was awfully nice of you. If I can pay my bill here without spending that sovereign, I believe I’ll keep it for a lucky piece. I shall be very rich by Saturday night, anyway.”

“A legacy due?”

“Goodness, no! I haven’t a relation in the world except one, who disapproves of me; not so much as I disapprove of him, however. No, Albert Spalding and Donald Tovey have engaged me for a concert in Torquay.”

“I have some business in Torquay which will keep me there for a few days on my way back to Wells,” said Appleton nonchalantly. (The bishop’s letter had been a pure and undefiled source of information on all points.)

“Why, how funny! I hope you’ll be there on Saturday. There’ll be no plate! Tickets two and six to seven and six, but you shall be my guest, my sovereign guest. I am going to Wells myself to stay till—till I make up my mind about a few things.”

“America next?” inquired Appleton, keeping his voice as colorless as possible.

“I don’t know. Helena made me resign my church position in Brooklyn, and for the moment my ‘career’ is undecided.”

She laughed, but her eyes denied the mirth that her lips affirmed, and Appleton had such a sudden, illogical desire to meddle with her career, to help or hinder it, to have a hand in it at any rate, that he could hardly hold his tongue.

“The Torquay concert will be charming, I hope. You know what Spalding’s violin-playing is, and Donald Tovey is a young genius at piano-playing and composing. He is going to accompany me in some of his own songs, and he wants me to sing a group of American ones—Macdowell, Chadwick, Nevin, Mrs. Beach, and Margaret Lang.”

“I hope you’ll accompany yourself in some of your own ballads!”

“No, the occasion is too grand; unless they should happen to like me very much. Then I could play for myself, and sing ‘Allan Water,’ or ‘Believe Me,’ or ‘Early One Morning,’ or ‘Barbara Allen.’”

(Appleton wondered if a claque of sizable, trustworthy boys could be secured in Torquay, and under his intelligent and inspired leadership carry Miss Thomasina Tucker like a cork on the wave of success.)

“Wouldn’t it be lunch-time?” asked Miss Tucker, after a slight pause.

“It is always time for something when I’m particularly enjoying myself,” grumbled Appleton, looking at his watch. “It’s not quite one o’clock. Must we go in?”

“Oh, yes; we’ve ten minutes’ walk,”—and Tommy scrambled up and began to brush sand from her skirts.

“Couldn’t I sit at your table—under the chaperonage of the Bishop of Bath and Wells?” And Appleton got on his feet and collected Tommy’s books.

The girl’s laugh was full-hearted this time. “Certainly not,” she said. “What does Bexley Sands know of the bishop and his interest in us? But if you can find the drawing-room utterly deserted at any time, I’ll sing for you.”

“How about a tea-basket and a walk to Gray Rocks at four o’clock?” asked Appleton as they strolled toward the hotel.

“Charming! And I love singing out of doors without accompaniment. I’m determined to earn that sovereign in course of time! Are you from New England?”

“Yes; and you?”

“Oh, I’m from New York. I was born in a row of brown-stone fronts, in a numbered street, twenty-five or thirty houses to a block, all exactly alike. I wonder how I’ve outlived my start. And you?”

“In the country, bless it,—in the eastern part of Massachusetts. We had a garden and my mother and I lived in it during all the months of my life that matter. That’s where the mignonette grew.”

“‘And He planted a garden eastward in Eden,’” quoted Tommy, half to herself.

“It’s the only Eden I ever knew! Do you like it over here, Miss Tucker, or are you homesick now that your friend is in America?”

“Oh, I’m never homesick; for the reason that I have never had any home since I was ten years old, when I was left an orphan. I haven’t any deep roots in New York; it’s like the ocean, too big to love. I respect and admire the ocean, but I love a little river. You know the made-over aphorism: ‘The home is where the hat is’? For ‘hat’ read ‘trunk,’ and you have my case, precisely.”

“That’s because you are absurdly, riotously young! It won’t suit you forever.”

“Does anything suit one forever?” asked Tommy frivolously, not cynically, but making Appleton a trifle uncomfortable nevertheless. “Anything except singing, I mean? Perhaps you feel the same way about writing? You haven’t told me anything about your work, and I’ve confided my past history, present prospects, and future aspirations to you!”

“There’s not so much to say. It is good work, and it is growing better. I studied architecture at the Beaux-Arts. I do art-criticism, and I write about buildings chiefly. That would seem rather dull to a warbler like you.”

“Not a bit. Doesn’t somebody say that architecture is frozen music?”

“I don’t get as immediate response to my work as you do to yours.”

“No, but you never had sixpences and pennies put into your plate! Now give me my books, please. I’ll go in at the upper gate alone, and run upstairs to my room. You enter by the lower one and go through the lounge, where the guests chiefly congregate waiting for the opening of the dining-room. Au revoir!”

When Tommy opened her bedroom door she elevated her pretty, impertinent little nose and sniffed the air. It was laden with a delicate perfume that came from a huge bunch of mignonette on the table. It was long-stemmed, fresh, and moist, loosely bound together, and every one of its tiny brown blossoms was sending out fragrance into the room. It did not need Fergus Appleton’s card to identify the giver, but there it was.

“What a nice, kind, understanding person he is! And how cheerful it makes life to have somebody from your own country taking an interest in you, and liking your singing, and hating those beastly pennies!” And Tommy, quickly merging artist in woman, slipped on a coatee of dull-green crêpe over her old black taffeta, and taking down her hat with the garland of mignonette from the shelf in her closet, tucked some of the green sprays in her belt, and went down to luncheon. She didn’t know where Fergus Appleton’s table was, but she would make her seat face his. Then she could smile thanks at him over the mulligatawny soup, or the filet of sole, or the boiled mutton, or the apple tart. Even the Bishop of Bath and Wells couldn’t object to that!