IV
IV
As for the country roundabout the Bexley Sands Inn, it is one of the loveliest in Devonshire. It does not waste a moment, but, realizingthe 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 theedge 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 frontnice 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 Iexpect 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 rememberedyou!”
“I conclude then it was not formydazzling 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 thatattracted 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 thanan 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! itwasyou!”
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 shallbe 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 blossomswas 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!
V
V
Their friendship grew perceptibly during the next two days, though constantly underthe espionage of the permanent guests of the Bexley Sands Inn, but on Wednesday night Miss Tucker left for Torquay, according to schedule. Fergus Appleton remained behind, partly to make up arrears in his literary work, and partly as a sop to decency and common sense. He did not deem it either proper or dignified to escort the young lady on her journey (particularly as he had not been asked to do so), so he pined in solitary confinement at Bexley until Saturday morning, when he followed her to the scene of her labors.
After due reflection he gave up the idea of the claque, and rested Tommy’s case on the knees of the gods, where it transpired that it was much safer, for Torquay liked Tommy, and the concert went off with enormous éclat. From the moment that Miss Thomasina Tucker appeared on the platform the audience looked pleased. She wore a quaint dress of white flounced chiffon, with a girdle of green, and a broad white hat with her old mignonette garland made into two little nosegays perched on either side of the transparentbrim. She could not wear the mignonette that Appleton had sent to her dressing-room, because she would have been obscured by the size of the offering, but she carried as much of it as her strength permitted, and laid the fragrant bouquet on the piano as she passed it. (A poem had come with it, but Tommy did not dare read it until the ordeal was over, for no one had ever written her a poem before. It had three long verses, and was signed “F.A.”—that was all she had time to note.)
A long-haired gentleman sitting beside Appleton remarked to his neighbor: “The girl looks like a flower; it’s a pity she has such a heathenish name! Why didn’t they call her Hope, or Flora, or Egeria, or Cecilia?”
When the audience found that Miss Tucker’s singing did not belie her charming appearance, they cast discretion to the winds and loved her. Appleton himself marveled at the beauty of her performance as it budded and bloomed under the inspiration of her fellow artists and the favor of the audience, andthe more he admired the more depressed he became.
“She may be on the threshold of a modest ‘career,’ of a sort, after all,” he thought, “and she will never give it up for me. Would she be willing to combine me with the career, and how would it work? I shouldn’t be churl enough to mind her singing now and then, but it seems to me I couldn’t stand ‘tours.’ Besides, hers is such a childlike, winsome, fragrant little gift it ought not to be exploited like a great, booming talent!”
The audience went wild over Donald Tovey’s songs. He played, and Tommy sang them from memory, and it seemed as if they had been written then and there, struck off at white heat; as if the composer happened to be at the piano, and the singer chanced with his help to be interpreting those particular verses for that particular moment.
His setting of “Jock o’Hazeldean” proved irresistible:
“They sought her baith by bower an ha’;
The ladie was not seen.”
And then with a swirl and a torrent of sound, a clangor of sword and a clatter of hoofs:
“She’s o’er the Border and awa’
Wi’ Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
Appleton didn’t see any valid reason why Tovey should kiss Tommy’s hand in responding to the third recall, but supposed it must be a composer’s privilege, and wished that he were one.
Then the crowd made its way into the brilliant Torquay sunshine, and Appleton lingered in the streets until the time came for the tea-party arranged for the artists at the hotel.
It was a gay little gathering, assisted by a charming lady of the town, who always knew the celebrated people who flock there in all seasons. Spalding and Tovey were the lions, but Miss Thomasina Tucker did not lack for compliments. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled under the white tulle brim of her hat. Her neck looked deliciously white and young, rising from its transparent chiffons,and her bunch of mignonette gave a note of delicate distinction. The long-haired gentleman was present, and turned out to be a local poet. He told Miss Tucker that she ought never to wear or to carry another flower. “Not, at all events, till you pass thirty!” he said. “You belong together—you, your songs, and the mignonette!”—at which she flung a shy upward glance at Appleton, saying: “It is this American friend who has really established the connection, though I have always worn green and white and always loved the flower.”
“You sent me some verses, Mr. Appleton,” she said, as the poet moved away. “I have them safe” (and she touched her bodice), “but I haven’t had a quiet moment to read them.”
“Just a little tribute,” Appleton answered carelessly. “Are you leaving? If so, I’ll get your flowers into a cab and drive you on.”
“No. I am going, quite unexpectedly, to Exeter to-night. Let us sit down in this corner a moment and I’ll tell you. Mr. Toveyhas asked me to substitute for a singer who is ill. The performance is on Monday and I chance to know the cantata. I shall not be paid, but it will be a fine audience and it may lead to something; after all, it’s not out of my way in going to Wells.”
“Aren’t you overtired to travel any more to-night?”
“No, I am treading air! I have no sense of being in the body at all. Mrs. Cholmondeley, that dark-haired lady you were talking with a moment ago, lives in Exeter and will take me to her house. And how nice that I don’t have to say good-bye, for you still mean to go to Wells?”
“Oh, yes! I haven’t nearly finished with the cathedral—I shall be there before you. Can I look up lodgings or do anything for you?”
“Oh, no, thank you. I shall go to the old place where Miss Markham and I lived before. The bishop and Mrs. Kennion sent us there because there is a piano, and the old ladies, being deaf, don’t mind musical lodgers.Didn’t the concert go off beautifully! Such artists, those two men; so easy to do one’s best in such company.”
“It was a triumph! Doesn’t it completely efface the memory of the plate and the pennies?”
“Yes,” Tommy answered. “I bear no ill-will to any living creature. The only flaw is my horrid name. Can’t you think of another for me? I’ve just had an anonymous note. Hear it!” (taking it from her glove):
Dear Madam:The name of Thomasina Tucker is one of those bizarre Americanisms that pain us so frequently in England. I fancy you must have assumed it for public use, and if so, I beg you will change it now, before you become too famous. The grotesque name of Thomasina Tucker belittles your exquisite art.Very truly yours,A Well Wisher.
Dear Madam:
The name of Thomasina Tucker is one of those bizarre Americanisms that pain us so frequently in England. I fancy you must have assumed it for public use, and if so, I beg you will change it now, before you become too famous. The grotesque name of Thomasina Tucker belittles your exquisite art.
Very truly yours,A Well Wisher.
Very truly yours,
A Well Wisher.
“What do you think of that?”
Appleton laughed heartily and scanned the note. “It is from some doddering oldwoman,” he said. “The name given you by your sponsors in baptism to be condemned as a ‘bizarre Americanism’!”
“I cannot think why the loyalty of my dear mother and father to Tucker, and to Thomas, should have made them saddle me with such a handicap! They might have known I was going to sing, for I bawled incessantly from birth to the age of twelve months. I shall have to change my name, and you must help me to choose. Au revoir!”—and she darted away with a handshake and a friendly backward glance from the door.
“Can I think of another name for her?” apostrophized Appleton to himself. “Can feminine unconsciousness and cruelty go farther than that? Another name for her shrieks from the very housetops, and I agree with ‘Well Wisher’ that she ought to take it before she becomes too famous; before it would be necessary, for instance, to describe her as Madame Tucker-Appleton!”
VI
VI
These are the verses:
To Miss Tommy Tucker
(with a bunch of mignonette)
A garden and a yellow wedge
Of sunshine slipping through,
And there, beside a bit of hedge,
Forget-me-nots so blue,
Bright four-o’clocks and spicy pinks,
And sweet, old-fashioned roses,
With daffodils and crocuses,
And other fragrant posies,
And in a corner, ’neath the shade
By flowering apple branches made,
Grew mignonette.
I do not know, I cannot say,
Why, when I hear you sing,
Those by-gone days come back to me,
And in their long train bring
To mind that dear old garden, with
Its hovering honey-bees,
And liquid-throated songsters on
The blossom-laden trees;
Nor why a fragrance, fresh and rare,
Should on a sudden fill the air,
Of mignonette!
Your mem’ry seems a garden fair
Of old-time flowers of song.
There Annie Laurie lives and loves,
And Mary Morison,
And Black-eyed Susan, Alice Grey,
Phillida, with her frown—
And Barbara Allen, false and fair,
From famous Scarlet Town.
What marvel such a garland rare
Should breathe sweet odors on the air,
Like mignonette?
F. A.
VII
VII
There was never such a summer of enchanting weather as that particular summer in Wells. The whole population of Somersetshire, save those who had crops requiring rain, were in a heaven of delight from morning till night. Miss Tommy Tucker was very busy with some girl pupils, and as accompanist for oratorio practice; but there were blissful hours when she “studied” the cathedral with Fergus Appleton, watching him sketch the stately Central Tower, or the Lady Chapel, or the Chain Gate. Therewere afternoon walks to Tor Hill, winding up almost daily with tea at the palace, for the bishop and his wife were miracles of hospitality to the two Americans.
Fergus Appleton had declared the state of his mind and heart to Mrs. Kennion a few days after his arrival, though after his confidence had been received she said that it was quite unnecessary, as she had guessed the entire situation the moment she saw them together.
“If you do, it is more than Miss Tucker does,” said Appleton, “for I can’t flatter myself that she suspects in the least what I am about.”
“You haven’t said anything yet?”
“My dear Mrs. Kennion, I’ve known her less than a fortnight! It’s bad enough for a man to fall in love in that absurd length of time, but I wouldn’t ask a girl to marry me on two weeks’ acquaintance. It would simply be courting refusal.”
“I am glad you feel that way about it, for we have grown greatly attached to Miss Tucker,” said the bishop’s wife. “She isso simple and unaffected, so lovable, and such good company! So alone in the world, yet so courageous and independent. I hope it will come out all right for your dear mother’s son,” she added affectionately, with a squeeze of her kind hand. “Miss Tucker is dining here to-morrow, and you must come, too, for she has offered to sing for our friends.”
Everybody agreed that Mrs. Kennion’s party for the young American singer was a delightful and memorable occasion. She gave them song after song, accompanying herself on the Erard grand piano, at which she always made such a pretty picture. It drifted into a request programme, and Tommy, whose memory was inexhaustible, seemed always to have the wished-for song at the tip of her tongue, were it English, Scotch, Irish, or Welsh. There was general laughter and surprise when Madame Eriksson, a Norwegian lady who was among the guests, asked her for a certain song of Halfdan Kjerulf’s.
“I only know it in its English translation,” Tommy said, “and I haven’t sung it for a year, but I think I remember it. Forgive me if I halt in the words:
“‘I hardly know, my darling,
What mostly took my heart,
Unless perhaps your singing
Has done the greater part.
I’ve thrilled to many voices,
The passionate, the strong,
But I forgot the singer,
And I forgot the song.
But there’s one song, my darling,
That I can ne’er forget.
I listened and I trembled,
And felt my cheek was wet;
It seemed my heart within me
Gave answer clear and low
When first I heard you sing, dear,
Then first I loved you so!’”
Tommy had sung the song hundreds of times in earlier years, and she had not the slightest self-consciousness when she began it; but just as she reached the last four lines her eyes met Fergus Appleton’s. He was seated in a far corner of the room,leaning eagerly forward, with one arm on the back of a chair in front of him. She was singing the words to the company, but if ever a man was uttering and confirming them it was Fergus Appleton at that moment. The blindest woman could see, the deafest could hear, the avowal.
Tommy caught her breath quickly, looked away, braced her memory, and finished, to the keen delight of old Madame Eriksson, who rose and kissed her on both cheeks.
Tommy was glad that her part of the evening was over, and to cover her confusion offered to sing something of her own composing, the Mother Goose rhyme of “Little Tommy Tucker Sings for His Supper,” arranged as an operatic recitative and aria. The humor of this performance penetrated even to the remotest fastnesses of the staid cathedral circle, and the palace party ended in something that positively resembled merriment, a consummation not always to be reached in gatherings exclusively clerical in character.
The bishop’s coachman always drove Miss Tucker home, and Appleton always walked to his lodgings, which were in the opposite direction, so nothing could be done that night, but he determined that another sun should not go down before he put his fate to the touch.
How could he foresee what the morning post would bring and deposit, like an unwelcome bomb, upon his breakfast tray?
His London publishers wanted to see him at once, not only on a multitude of details concerning his forthcoming book, but on a subject, as they hoped, of great interest and importance to him.
Thinking it a matter of a day or so, Appleton scribbled notes to Mrs. Kennion and Miss Tucker, with whom he was to go on an excursion, and departed forthwith to London.
Everything happened in London. The American publishers wanted a different title for the book and four more chapters to lengthen it to a size selling (at a profit)for two dollars and a half. The English publishers thought he had dealt rather slightingly with a certain very interesting period, and he remembered, guiltily, that he had been at Bexley Sands when he wrote the chapters in question. It would take three days’ labor to fill up these gaps, he calculated, and how fortunate that Miss Thomasina Tucker was safely entrenched in the heart of an ecclesiastical stronghold for the next month or two; a town where he had not, so far as he knew, a single formidable rival. He wrote her regarding his unexpected engagements, adding with legitimate pride that one of England’s foremost critics had offered to write a preface for his book; then he settled to his desk and slaved at his task until it was accomplished, when he departed with a beating heart for the town and county that held Miss Thomasina Tucker in their keeping.
Alighting at the familiar railway station, he took a hansom, intending to drop his portmanteau at his lodgings and go on to the palacefor news, but as he was driving by the deanery on the north side of Cathedral Green, he encountered Mrs. Kennion in her victoria. She signaled him with her hand and spoke to her coachman, who drew up his horses. Alighting from his hansom, he strode forward to take her welcoming hand, his face radiating the pleasure of a home-coming traveler.
“If you’ll let the cabman take your luggage, I’d like to drive you home myself. I have something to tell you,” said Mrs. Kennion, making room for him by her side.
“Nothing has happened, I hope?” he asked anxiously.
“Miss Tucker is leaving for America to-morrow morning.”
“Going away?” Appleton’s tone was one of positive dismay.
“Yes. It is all very sudden and unexpected.”
“Sailing to-morrow?” exclaimed Appleton, taking out his watch. “From where? How can I get there?”
“Not sailing to-morrow—leaving Wellsto-morrow on an early train and sailing Saturday from Southampton.”
“Oh, the world is not lost entirely, then!”—and Appleton leaned back and wiped his forehead. “What has happened? I ought never to have gone to London.”
“She had a cable yesterday from her Brooklyn church, offering her a better position in the choir, but saying that they could hold it only ten days. By post on the same day she received a letter from a New York friend—”
“Was it a Carl Bothwick?”
“No; a Miss Macleod, who said that a much better position was in the market in a church where Miss Tucker had influential friends. She was sure that if Miss Tucker returned immediately to sing for the committee she could secure a thousand-dollar salary. We could do nothing but advise her to make the effort, you see.”
“Did she seem determined to go?”
“No; she appeared a little undecided and timid. However, she said frankly that,though she had earned enough in England to pay her steamer passage to America, and a month’s expenses afterward, she could not be certain of continuing to do so much through a London winter. ‘If I only had a little more time to think it out,’ she kept saying, ‘but I haven’t, so I must go!’”
“Where is she now?”
“At her lodgings. The bishop is detained in Bath and I am dining with friends in his stead. I thought you might go and take her to dinner at the Swan, so that she shouldn’t be alone, and then bring her to the palace afterward—if—if all is well.”
“If I have any luck two churches will be lamenting her loss to-morrow morning,” said Fergus gloomily; “but she wouldn’t have consented to go if she cared anything about me!”
“Nonsense, my dear boy! You were away. No self-respecting girl would wire you to come back. She was helpless even if she did care. Here we are! Shall I send a hansom back in half an hour?”
“Twenty-five minutes will do it,” Appleton answered briskly. “You are an angel, dear lady!”
“Keep your blarney! I hope you’ll need it all for somebody else to-night! Good fortune, dear boy!”
VIII
VIII
Appleton flung the contents of his portmanteau into his closet, rid himself of the dust of travel, made a quick change, and in less than forty minutes was at the door of Miss Tucker’s lodgings.
She had a little sitting-room on the first floor, and his loud rat-a-tat brought her to the door instead of the parlor-maid.
At the unexpected sight of him she turned pale.
“Why—why, I thought it was the luggage-man. Where did you come from?” she stammered.
“From London, an hour ago. I met Mrs. Kennion on my way from the station.”
“Oh! Then she told you I am going home?”
“Yes, she told me. How could you go to America without saying good-bye, Miss Tommy?”
She flushed and looked perilously near tears.
“I wrote to you this morning as soon as I had decided,” she said. “I don’t like to dart off in this way, you can imagine, but it’s a question of must.”
He did not argue this with her; that was a bridge to be crossed when a better understanding had been reached; so, as if taking the journey as an inexorable fact, he said: “Come out and dine with me somewhere, and let us have a good talk.”
“I’m afraid I can’t. I’m eating now on a tray in my sitting-room,”—and she waved a table napkin she was holding in her hand. “I am rather tired, and Miss Scattergood gave me some bacon and an egg from the nest.”
“Give the bacon to the cat and put back the egg in the nest,” he said coaxingly. “Mrs. Kennion said: ‘Don’t let her eather last dinner alone. Take her to the Swan.’”
“Oh, I am only in my traveling-clothes and the Swan is full of strangers to-night.”
“The Green Dragon, then, near the cathedral. You look dressed for Buckingham Palace.”
She hesitated a moment, and then melted at the eagerness of his wish. “Well, then, if you’ll wait five minutes.”
“Of course; I’ll go along to the corner and whistle a hansom from the stand. Don’t hurry!”
The mental processes of Miss Thomasina Tucker had been very confused during the excitement of the last twenty-four hours.
That she loved Fergus Appleton she was well aware since the arrival of the cablegram calling her back to America. Up to that time she had fenced with her love—parried it, pricked it, thrust it off, drawn it back, telling herself that she had plenty of time to meet the issue if it came. That Fergus Appleton loved her she was alsofairly well convinced, but that fact did not always mean—everything—she told herself, with a pitiful little attempt at worldly wisdom. Perhaps he preferred his liberty to any woman; perhaps he did not want to settle down; perhaps he was engaged to some one whom he didn’t care for now, but would have to marry; perhaps he hadn’t money enough to share with a wife; perhaps he was a flirt—no, she would not admit that for an instant. Anyway, she was alone in the world, and the guardian of her own dignity. If she could have allowed matters to drift along in the heavenly uncertainty of these last days, there would have been no problem; but when she was forced to wake from her delicious dream and fly from everything that held her close and warm, fly during Fergus Appleton’s absence, without his knowledge or consent—that indeed was heart-breaking. And still her pride showed her but the one course. She was alone in the world and without means save those earned by her own exertions.A living income was offered her in America and she must take it or leave it on the instant. She could not telegraph Fergus Appleton in London and acquaint him with her plans, as if they depended on him for solution; she could only write him a warm and friendly good-bye. If he loved her as much as a man ought who loved at all, he had time to follow her to Southampton before her ship sailed. If business kept him from such a hurried journey, he could ask her to marry him in a sixpenny wire, reply paid. If he neither came nor wired, but sent a box of mignonette to the steamer with his card and “Bon voyage” written on it, she would bury something unspeakably dear and precious that had only just been born—bury it, and plant mignonette over it. And she could always sing! Thank Heaven for the gift of song!
This was Tommy’s mood when she was packing her belongings, after hearing the bishop say that Appleton could not return till noon next day. It had changed a trifle bythe time that Fergus had gone to the corner to whistle for a hansom. Her gray frieze jacket and skirt were right enough when she hastily slipped on a better blouse with a deep embroidered collar, pinned with Helena Markham’s parting gift of an emerald clover-leaf. Her gray straw hat had a becoming band of flat green leaves, and she had a tinge of color. (Nothing better for roses in the cheeks than hurrying to be ready for the right man.) Anyway, such beauty as Tommy had was always there, and when she came to the door she smote Appleton’s eyes as if she were “the first beam from the springing east.”
Once in the hansom, they talked gayly. They dared not stop, indeed, for when they kept on whipping the stream they forgot the depth of the waters underneath.
Meantime the Green Dragon, competitor of the Swan, had great need of their lavish and interesting patronage.
The Swiss head waiter, who was new toWells, was a man of waxed mustaches and sleepless ambitions. The other hotels had most of the tourists, but he intended to retrieve the fortunes of his employer, and bring prosperity back to the side streets. He adored his vocation, and would have shed his heart’s blood on the altar of any dining-room of which he had charge.
There were nine tables placed about the large room, though not more than three had been occupied in his tenure of office; but all were beautifully set with flowers and bright silver and napkins in complicated foldings. Pasteboard cards with large black numbers from one to eight stood erect on eight of the tables, and on the ninth an imposing placard bore the sign: