CHAPTER XIII. CYRIL AND A WEDDING
The twelfth was a beautiful day. Clear, frosty air set the blood to tingling and the eyes to sparkling, even if it were not your wedding day; while if it were—
It was Marie Hawthorn's wedding day, and certainly her eyes sparkled and her blood tingled as she threw open the window of her room and breathed long and deep of the fresh morning air before going down to breakfast.
“They say 'Happy is the bride that the sun shines on,'” she whispered softly to an English sparrow that cocked his eye at her from a neighboring tree branch. “As if a bride wouldn't be happy, sun or no sun,” she scoffed tenderly, as she turned to go down-stairs.
As it happens, however, tingling blood and sparkling eyes are a matter of more than weather, or even weddings, as was proved a little later when the telephone bell rang.
Kate answered the ring.
“Hullo, is that you, Kate?” called a despairing voice.
“Yes. Good morning, Bertram. Isn't this a fine day for the wedding?”
“Fine! Oh, yes, I suppose so, though I must confess I haven't noticed it—and you wouldn't, if you had a lunatic on your hands.”
“A lunatic!”
“Yes. Maybe you have, though. Is Marie rampaging around the house like a wild creature, and asking ten questions and making twenty threats to the minute?”
“Certainly not! Don't be absurd, Bertram. What do you mean?”
“See here, Kate, that show comes off at twelve sharp, doesn't it?”
“Show, indeed!” retorted Kate, indignantly. “The wedding is at noon sharp—as the best man should know very well.”
“All right; then tell Billy, please, to see that it is sharp, or I won't answer for the consequences.”
“What do you mean? What is the matter?”
“Cyril. He's broken loose at last. I've been expecting it all along. I've simply marvelled at the meekness with which he has submitted himself to be tied up with white ribbons and topped with roses.”
“Nonsense, Bertram!”
“Well, it amounts to that. Anyhow, he thinks it does, and he's wild. I wish you could have heard the thunderous performance on his piano with which he woke me up this morning. Billy says he plays everything—his past, present, and future. All is, if he was playing his future this morning, I pity the girl who's got to live it with him.”
“Bertram!”
Bertram chuckled remorselessly.
“Well, I do. But I'll warrant he wasn't playing his future this morning. He was playing his present—the wedding. You see, he's just waked up to the fact that it'll be a perfect orgy of women and other confusion, and he doesn't like it. All the samee,{sic} I've had to assure him just fourteen times this morning that the ring, the license, the carriage, the minister's fee, and my sanity are all O. K. When he isn't asking questions he's making threats to snake the parson up there an hour ahead of time and be off with Marie before a soul comes.”
“What an absurd idea!”
“Cyril doesn't think so. Indeed, Kate, I've had a hard struggle to convince him that the guests wouldn't think it the most delightful experience of their lives if they should come and find the ceremony over with and the bride gone.”
“Well, you remind Cyril, please, that there are other people besides himself concerned in this wedding,” observed Kate, icily.
“I have,” purred Bertram, “and he says all right, let them have it, then. He's gone now to look up proxy marriages, I believe.”
“Proxy marriages, indeed! Come, come, Bertram, I've got something to do this morning besides to stand here listening to your nonsense. See that you and Cyril get here on time—that's all!” And she hung up the receiver with an impatient jerk.
She turned to confront the startled eyes of the bride elect.
“What is it? Is anything wrong—with Cyril?” faltered Marie.
Kate laughed and raised her eyebrows slightly.
“Nothing but a little stage fright, my dear.”
“Stage fright!”
“Yes. Bertram says he's trying to find some one to play his rôle, I believe, in the ceremony.”
“Mrs. Hartwell!”
At the look of dismayed terror that came into Marie's face, Mrs. Hartwell laughed reassuringly.
“There, there, dear child, don't look so horror-stricken. There probably never was a man yet who wouldn't have fled from the wedding part of his marriage if he could; and you know how Cyril hates fuss and feathers. The wonder to me is that he's stood it as long as he has. I thought I saw it coming, last night at the rehearsal—and now I know I did.”
Marie still looked distressed.
“But he never said—I thought—” She stopped helplessly.
“Of course he didn't, child. He never said anything but that he loved you, and he never thought anything but that you were going to be his. Men never do—till the wedding day. Then they never think of anything but a place to run,” she finished laughingly, as she began to arrange on a stand the quantity of little white boxes waiting for her.
“But if he'd told me—in time, I wouldn't have had a thing—but the minister,” faltered Marie.
“And when you think so much of a pretty wedding, too? Nonsense! It isn't good for a man, to give up to his whims like that!”
Marie's cheeks grew a deeper pink. Her nostrils dilated a little.
“It wouldn't be a 'whim,' Mrs. Hartwell, and I should be glad to give up,” she said with decision.
Mrs. Hartwell laughed again, her amused eyes on Marie's face.
“Dear me, child! don't you know that if men had their way, they'd—well, if men married men there'd never be such a thing in the world as a shower bouquet or a piece of wedding cake!”
There was no reply. A little precipitately Marie turned and hurried away. A moment later she was laying a restraining hand on Billy, who was filling tall vases with superb long-stemmed roses in the kitchen.
“Billy, please,” she panted, “couldn't we do without those? Couldn't we send them to some—some hospital?—and the wedding cake, too, and—”
“The wedding cake—to some hospital!”
“No, of course not—to the hospital. It would make them sick to eat it, wouldn't it?” That there was no shadow of a smile on Marie's face showed how desperate, indeed, was her state of mind. “I only meant that I didn't want them myself, nor the shower bouquet, nor the rooms darkened, nor little Kate as the flower girl—and would you mind very much if I asked you not to be my maid of honor?”
“Marie!”
Marie covered her face with her hands then and began to sob brokenly; so there was nothing for Billy to do but to take her into her arms with soothing little murmurs and pettings. By degrees, then, the whole story came out.
Billy almost laughed—but she almost cried, too. Then she said:
“Dearie, I don't believe Cyril feels or acts half so bad as Bertram and Kate make out, and, anyhow, if he did, it's too late now to—to send the wedding cake to the hospital, or make any other of the little changes you suggest.” Billy's lips puckered into a half-smile, but her eyes were grave. “Besides, there are your music pupils trimming the living-room this minute with evergreen, there's little Kate making her flower-girl wreath, and Mrs. Hartwell stacking cake boxes in the hall, to say nothing of Rosa gloating over the best china in the dining-room, and Aunt Hannah putting purple bows into the new lace cap she's counting on wearing. Only think how disappointed they'd all be if I should say: 'Never mind—stop that. Marie's just going to have a minister. No fuss, no feathers!' Why, dearie, even the roses are hanging their heads for grief,” she went on mistily, lifting with gentle fingers one of the full-petalled pink beauties near her. “Besides, there's your—guests.”
“Oh, of course, I knew I couldn't—really,” sighed Marie, as she turned to go up-stairs, all the light and joy gone from her face.
Billy, once assured that Marie was out of hearing, ran to the telephone.
Bertram answered.
“Bertram, tell Cyril I want to speak to him, please.”
“All right, dear, but go easy. Better strike up your tuning fork to find his pitch to-day. You'll discover it's a high one, all right.”
A moment later Cyril's tersely nervous “Good morning, Billy,” came across the line.
Billy drew in her breath and cast a hurriedly apprehensive glance over her shoulder to make sure Marie was not near.
“Cyril,” she called in a low voice, “if you care a shred for Marie, for heaven's sake call her up and tell her that you dote on pink roses, and pink ribbons, and pink breakfasts—and pink wedding cake!”
“But I don't.”
“Oh, yes, you do—to-day! You would—if you could see Marie now.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nothing, only she overheard part of Bertram's nonsensical talk with Kate a little while ago, and she's ready to cast the last ravelling of white satin and conventionality behind her, and go with you to the justice of the peace.”
“Sensible girl!”
“Yes, but she can't, you know, with fifty guests coming to the wedding, and twice as many more to the reception. Honestly, Cyril, she's broken-hearted. You must do something. She's—coming!” And the receiver clicked sharply into place.
Five minutes later Marie was called to the telephone. Dejectedly, wistful-eyed, she went. Just what were the words that hummed across the wire into the pink little ear of the bride-to-be, Billy never knew; but a Marie that was anything but wistful-eyed and dejected left the telephone a little later, and was heard very soon in the room above trilling merry snatches of a little song. Contentedly, then, Billy went back to her roses.
It was a pretty wedding, a very pretty wedding. Every one said that. The pink and green of the decorations, the soft lights (Kate had had her way about darkening the rooms), the pretty frocks and smiling faces of the guests all helped. Then there were the dainty flower girl, little Kate, the charming maid of honor, Billy, the stalwart, handsome best man, Bertram, to say nothing of the delicately beautiful bride, who looked like some fairy visitor from another world in the floating shimmer of her gossamer silk and tulle. There was, too, not quite unnoticed, the bridegroom; tall, of distinguished bearing, and with features that were clear cut and-to-day-rather pale.
Then came the reception—the “women and confusion” of Cyril's fears—followed by the going away of the bride and groom with its merry warfare of confetti and old shoes.
At four o'clock, however, with only William and Bertram remaining for guests, something like quiet descended at last on the little house.
“Well, it's over,” sighed Billy, dropping exhaustedly into a big chair in the living-room.
“And well over,” supplemented Aunt Hannah, covering her white shawl with a warmer blue one.
“Yes, I think it was,” nodded Kate. “It was really a very pretty wedding.”
“With your help, Kate—eh?” teased William.
“Well, I flatter myself I did do some good,” bridled Kate, as she turned to help little Kate take the flower wreath from her head.
“Even if you did hurry into my room and scare me into conniption fits telling me I'd be late,” laughed Billy.
Kate tossed her head.
“Well, how was I to know that Aunt Hannah's clock only meant half-past eleven when it struck twelve?” she retorted.
Everybody laughed.
“Oh, well, it was a pretty wedding,” declared William, with a long sigh.
“It'll do—for an understudy,” said Bertram softly, for Billy's ears alone.
Only the added color and the swift glance showed that Billy heard, for when she spoke she said:
“And didn't Cyril behave beautifully? 'Most every time I looked at him he was talking to some woman.”
“Oh, no, he wasn't—begging your pardon, my dear,” objected Bertram. “I watched him, too, even more closely than you did, and it was always the woman who was talking to Cyril!”
Billy laughed.
“Well, anyhow,” she maintained, “he listened. He didn't run away.”
“As if a bridegroom could!” cried Kate.
“I'm going to,” avowed Bertram, his nose in the air.
“Pooh!” scoffed Kate. Then she added eagerly: “You must be married in church, Billy, and in the evening.”
Bertram's nose came suddenly out of the air. His eyes met Kate's squarely.
“Billy hasn't decided yet how she does want to be married,” he said with unnecessary emphasis.
Billy laughed and interposed a quick change of subject.
“I think people had a pretty good time, too, for a wedding, don't you?” she asked. “I was sorry Mary Jane couldn't be here—'twould have been such a good chance for him to meet our friends.”
“As—Mary Jane?” asked Bertram, a little stiffly.
“Really, my dear,” murmured Aunt Hannah, “I think it would be more respectful to call him by his name.”
“By the way, what is his name?” questioned William.
“That's what we don't know,” laughed Billy.
“Well, you know the 'Arkwright,' don't you?” put in Bertram. Bertram, too, laughed, but it was a little forcedly. “I suppose if you knew his name was 'Methuselah,' you wouldn't call him that—yet, would you?”
Billy clapped her hands, and threw a merry glance at Aunt Hannah.
“There! we never thought of 'Methuselah,'” she gurgled gleefully. “Maybe it is 'Methuselah,' now—'Methuselah John'! You see, he's told us to try to guess it,” she explained, turning to William; “but, honestly, I don't believe, whatever it is, I'll ever think of him as anything but 'Mary Jane.'”
“Well, as far as I can judge, he has nobody but himself to thank for that, so he can't do any complaining,” smiled William, as he rose to go. “Well, how about it, Bertram? I suppose you're going to stay a while to comfort the lonely—eh, boy?”
“Of course he is—and so are you, too, Uncle William,” spoke up Billy, with affectionate cordiality. “As if I'd let you go back to a forlorn dinner in that great house to-night! Indeed, no!”
William smiled, hesitated, and sat down.
“Well, of course—” he began.
“Yes, of course,” finished Billy, quickly. “I'll telephone Pete that you'll stay here—both of you.”
It was at this point that little Kate, who had been turning interested eyes from one brother to the other, interposed a clear, high-pitched question.
“Uncle William, didn't you want to marry my going-to-be-Aunt Billy?”
“Kate!” gasped her mother, “didn't I tell you—” Her voice trailed into an incoherent murmur of remonstrance.
Billy blushed. Bertram said a low word under his breath. Aunt Hannah's “Oh, my grief and conscience!” was almost a groan.
William laughed lightly.
“Well, my little lady,” he suggested, “let us put it the other way and say that quite probably she didn't want to marry me.”
“Does she want to marry Uncle Bertram?” “Kate!” gasped Billy and Mrs. Hartwell together this time, fearful of what might be coming next.
“We'll hope so,” nodded Uncle William, speaking in a cheerfully matter-of-fact voice, intended to discourage curiosity.
The little girl frowned and pondered. Her elders cast about in their minds for a speedy change of subject; but their somewhat scattered wits were not quick enough. It was little Kate who spoke next.
“Uncle William, would she have got Uncle Cyril if Aunt Marie hadn't nabbed him first?”
“Kate!” The word was a chorus of dismay this time.
Mrs. Hartwell struggled to her feet.
“Come, come, Kate, we must go up-stairs—to bed,” she stammered.
The little girl drew back indignantly.
“To bed? Why, mama, I haven't had my supper yet!”
“What? Oh, sure enough—the lights! I forgot. Well, then, come up—to change your dress,” finished Mrs. Hartwell, as with a despairing look and gesture she led her young daughter from the room.
CHAPTER XIV. M. J. MAKES ANOTHER MOVE
Billy came down-stairs on the thirteenth of December to find everywhere the peculiar flatness that always follows a day which for weeks has been the focus of one's aims and thoughts and labor.
“It's just as if everything had stopped at Marie's wedding, and there wasn't anything more to do,” she complained to Aunt Hannah at the breakfast table. “Everything seems so—queer!”
“It won't—long, dear,” smiled Aunt Hannah, tranquilly, as she buttered her roll, “specially after Bertram comes back. How long does he stay in New York?”
“Only three days; but I'm just sure it's going to seem three weeks, now,” sighed Billy. “But he simply had to go—else he wouldn't have gone.”
“I've no doubt of it,” observed Aunt Hannah. And at the meaning emphasis of her words, Billy laughed a little. After a minute she said aggrievedly:
“I had supposed that I could at least have a sort of 'after the ball' celebration this morning picking up and straightening things around. But John and Rosa have done it all. There isn't so much as a rose leaf anywhere on the floor. Of course most of the flowers went to the hospital last night, anyway. As for Marie's room—it looks as spick-and-span as if it had never seen a scrap of ribbon or an inch of tulle.”
“But—the wedding presents?”
“All carried down to the kitchen and half packed now, ready to go over to the new home. John says he'll take them over in Peggy this afternoon, after he takes Mrs. Hartwell's trunk to Uncle William's.”
“Well, you can at least go over to the apartment and work,” suggested Aunt Hannah, hopefully.
“Humph! Can I?” scoffed Billy. “As if I could—when Marie left strict orders that not one thing was to be touched till she got here. They arranged everything but the presents before the wedding, anyway; and Marie wants to fix those herself after she gets back. Mercy! Aunt Hannah, if I should so much as move a plate one inch in the china closet, Marie would know it—and change it when she got home,” laughed Billy, as she rose from the table. “No, I can't go to work over there.”
“But there's your music, my dear. You said you were going to write some new songs after the wedding.”
“I was,” sighed Billy, walking to the window, and looking listlessly at the bare, brown world outside; “but I can't write songs—when there aren't any songs in my head to write.”
“No, of course not; but they'll come, dear, in time. You're tired, now,” soothed Aunt Hannah, as she turned to leave the room.
“It's the reaction, of course,” murmured Aunt Hannah to herself, on the way up-stairs. “She's had the whole thing on her hands—dear child!”
A few minutes later, from the living-room, came a plaintive little minor melody. Billy was at the piano.
Kate and little Kate had, the night before, gone home with William. It had been a sudden decision, brought about by the realization that Bertram's trip to New York would leave William alone. Her trunk was to be carried there to-day, and she would leave for home from there, at the end of a two or three days' visit.
It began to snow at twelve o'clock. All the morning the sky had been gray and threatening; and the threats took visible shape at noon in myriads of white snow feathers that filled the air to the blinding point, and turned the brown, bare world into a thing of fairylike beauty. Billy, however, with a rare frown upon her face, looked out upon it with disapproving eyes.
“I was going in town—and I believe I'll go now,” she cried.
“Don't, dear, please don't,” begged Aunt Hannah. “See, the flakes are smaller now, and the wind is coming up. We're in for a blizzard—I'm sure we are. And you know you have some cold, already.”
“All right,” sighed Billy. “Then it's me for the knitting work and the fire, I suppose,” she finished, with a whimsicality that did not hide the wistful disappointment of her voice.
She was not knitting, however, she was sewing with Aunt Hannah when at four o'clock Rosa brought in the card.
Billy glanced at the name, then sprang to her feet with a glad little cry.
“It's Mary Jane!” she exclaimed, as Rosa disappeared. “Now wasn't he a dear to think to come to-day? You'll be down, won't you?”
Aunt Hannah smiled even while she frowned.
“Oh, Billy!” she remonstrated. “Yes, I'll come down, of course, a little later, and I'm glad Mr. Arkwright came,” she said with reproving emphasis.
Billy laughed and threw a mischievous glance over her shoulder.
“All right,” she nodded. “I'll go and tell Mr. Arkwright you'll be down directly.”
In the living-room Billy greeted her visitor with a frankly cordial hand.
“How did you know, Mr. Arkwright, that I was feeling specially restless and lonesome to-day?” she demanded.
A glad light sprang to the man's dark eyes.
“I didn't know it,” he rejoined. “I only knew that I was specially restless and lonesome myself.”
Arkwright's voice was not quite steady. The unmistakable friendliness in the girl's words and manner had sent a quick throb of joy to his heart. Her evident delight in his coming had filled him with rapture. He could not know that it was only the chill of the snowstorm that had given warmth to her handclasp, the dreariness of the day that had made her greeting so cordial, the loneliness of a maiden whose lover is away that had made his presence so welcome.
“Well, I'm glad you came, anyway,” sighed Billy, contentedly; “though I suppose I ought to be sorry that you were lonesome—but I'm afraid I'm not, for now you'll know just how I felt, so you won't mind if I'm a little wild and erratic. You see, the tension has snapped,” she added laughingly, as she seated herself.
“Tension?”
“The wedding, you know. For so many weeks we've been seeing just December twelfth, that we'd apparently forgotten all about the thirteenth that came after it; so when I got up this morning I felt just as you do when the clock has stopped ticking. But it was a lovely wedding, Mr. Arkwright. I'm sorry you could not be here.”
“Thank you; so am I—though usually, I will confess, I'm not much good at attending 'functions' and meeting strangers. As perhaps you've guessed, Miss Neilson, I'm not particularly a society chap.”
“Of course you aren't! People who are doing things—real things—seldom are. But we aren't the society kind ourselves, you know—not the capital S kind. We like sociability, which is vastly different from liking Society. Oh, we have friends, to be sure, who dote on 'pink teas and purple pageants,' as Cyril calls them; and we even go ourselves sometimes. But if you had been here yesterday, Mr. Arkwright, you'd have met lots like yourself, men and women who are doing things: singing, playing, painting, illustrating, writing. Why, we even had a poet, sir—only he didn't have long hair, so he didn't look the part a bit,” she finished laughingly.
“Is long hair—necessary—for poets?” Arkwright's smile was quizzical.
“Dear me, no; not now. But it used to be, didn't it? And for painters, too. But now they look just like—folks.”
Arkwright laughed.
“It isn't possible that you are sighing for the velvet coats and flowing ties of the past, is it, Miss Neilson?”
“I'm afraid it is,” dimpled Billy. “I love velvet coats and flowing ties!”
“May singers wear them? I shall don them at once, anyhow, at a venture,” declared the man, promptly.
Billy smiled and shook her head.
“I don't think you will. You all like your horrid fuzzy tweeds and worsteds too well!”
“You speak with feeling. One would almost suspect that you already had tried to bring about a reform—and failed. Perhaps Mr. Cyril, now, or Mr. Bertram—” Arkwright stopped with a whimsical smile.
Billy flushed a little. As it happened, she had, indeed, had a merry tilt with Bertram on that very subject, and he had laughingly promised that his wedding present to her would be a velvet house coat for himself. It was on the point of Billy's tongue now to say this to Arkwright; but another glance at the provoking smile on his lips drove the words back in angry confusion. For the second time, in the presence of this man, Billy found herself unable to refer to her engagement to Bertram Henshaw—though this time she did not in the least doubt that Arkwright already knew of it.
With a little gesture of playful scorn she rose and went to the piano.
“Come, let us try some duets,” she suggested. “That's lots nicer than quarrelling over velvet coats; and Aunt Hannah will be down presently to hear us sing.”
Before she had ceased speaking, Arkwright was at her side with an exclamation of eager acquiescence.
It was after the second duet that Arkwright asked, a little diffidently.
“Have you written any new songs lately?”
“No.”
“You're going to?”
“Perhaps—if I find one to write.”
“You mean—you have no words?”
“Yes—and no. I have some words, both of my own and other people's; but I haven't found in any one of them, yet—a melody.”
Arkwright hesitated. His right hand went almost to his inner coat pocket—then fell back at his side. The next moment he picked up a sheet of music.
“Are you too tired to try this?” he asked.
A puzzled frown appeared on Billy's face.
“Why, no, but—”
“Well, children, I've come down to hear the music,” announced Aunt Hannah, smilingly, from the doorway; “only—Billy, will you run up and get my pink shawl, too? This room is colder than I thought, and there's only the white one down here.”
“Of course,” cried Billy, rising at once. “You shall have a dozen shawls, if you like,” she laughed, as she left the room.
What a cozy time it was—the hour that followed, after Billy returned with the pink shawl! Outside, the wind howled at the windows and flung the snow against the glass in sleety crashes. Inside, the man and the girl sang duets until they were tired; then, with Aunt Hannah, they feasted royally on the buttered toast, tea, and frosted cakes that Rosa served on a little table before the roaring fire. It was then that Arkwright talked of himself, telling them something of his studies, and of the life he was living.
“After all, you see there's just this difference between my friends and yours,” he said, at last. “Your friends are doing things. They've succeeded. Mine haven't, yet—they're only trying.”
“But they will succeed,” cried Billy.
“Some of them,” amended the man.
“Not—all of them?” Billy looked a little troubled.
Arkwright shook his head slowly.
“No. They couldn't—all of them, you know. Some haven't the talent, some haven't the perseverance, and some haven't the money.”
“But all that seems such a pity-when they've tried,” grieved Billy.
“It is a pity, Miss Neilson. Disappointed hopes are always a pity, aren't they?”
“Y-yes,” sighed the girl. “But—if there were only something one could do to—help!”
Arkwright's eyes grew deep with feeling, but his voice, when he spoke, was purposely light.
“I'm afraid that would be quite too big a contract for even your generosity, Miss Neilson—to mend all the broken hopes in the world,” he prophesied.
“I have known great good to come from great disappointments,” remarked Aunt Hannah, a bit didactically.
“So have I,” laughed Arkwright, still determined to drive the troubled shadow from the face he was watching so intently. “For instance: a fellow I know was feeling all cut up last Friday because he was just too late to get into Symphony Hall on the twenty-five-cent admission. Half an hour afterwards his disappointment was turned to joy—a friend who had an orchestra chair couldn't use his ticket that day, and so handed it over to him.”
Billy turned interestedly.
“What are those twenty-five-cent tickets to the Symphony?”
“Then—you don't know?”
“Not exactly. I've heard of them, in a vague fashion.”
“Then you've missed one of the sights of Boston if you haven't ever seen that long line of patient waiters at the door of Symphony Hall of a Friday morning.”
“Morning! But the concert isn't till afternoon!”
“No, but the waiting is,” retorted Arkwright. “You see, those admissions are limited—five hundred and five, I believe—and they're rush seats, at that. First come, first served; and if you're too late you aren't served at all. So the first arrival comes bright and early. I've heard that he has been known to come at peep of day when there's a Paderewski or a Melba for a drawing card. But I've got my doubts of that. Anyhow, I never saw them there much before half-past eight. But many's the cold, stormy day I've seen those steps in front of the Hall packed for hours, and a long line reaching away up the avenue.”
Billy's eyes widened.
“And they'll stand all that time and wait?”
“To be sure they will. You see, each pays twenty-five cents at the door, until the limit is reached, then the rest are turned away. Naturally they don't want to be turned away, so they try to get there early enough to be among the fortunate five hundred and five. Besides, the earlier you are, the better seat you are likely to get.”
“But only think of standing all that time!”
“Oh, they bring camp chairs, sometimes, I've heard, and then there are the steps. You don't know what a really fine seat a stone step is—if you have a big enough bundle of newspapers to cushion it with! They bring their luncheons, too, with books, papers, and knitting work for fine days, I've been told—some of them. All the comforts of home, you see,” smiled Arkwright.
“Why, how—how dreadful!” stammered Billy.
“Oh, but they don't think it's dreadful at all,” corrected Arkwright, quickly. “For twenty-five cents they can hear all that you hear down in your orchestra chair, for which you've paid so high a premium.”
“But who—who are they? Where do they come from? Who would go and stand hours like that to get a twenty-five-cent seat?” questioned Billy.
“Who are they? Anybody, everybody, from anywhere? everywhere; people who have the music hunger but not the money to satisfy it,” he rejoined. “Students, teachers, a little milliner from South Boston, a little dressmaker from Chelsea, a housewife from Cambridge, a stranger from the uttermost parts of the earth; maybe a widow who used to sit down-stairs, or a professor who has seen better days. Really to know that line, you should see it for yourself, Miss Neilson,” smiled Arkwright, as he reluctantly rose to go. “Some Friday, however, before you take your seat, just glance up at that packed top balcony and judge by the faces you see there whether their owners think they're getting their twenty-five-cents' worth, or not.”
“I will,” nodded Billy, with a smile; but the smile came from her lips only, not her eyes: Billy was wishing, at that moment, that she owned the whole of Symphony Hall—to give away. But that was like Billy. When she was seven years old she had proposed to her Aunt Ella that they take all the thirty-five orphans from the Hampden Falls Orphan Asylum to live with them, so that little Sallie Cook and the other orphans might have ice cream every day, if they wanted it. Since then Billy had always been trying—in a way—to give ice cream to some one who wanted it.
Arkwright was almost at the door when he turned abruptly. His face was an abashed red. From his pocket he had taken a small folded paper.
“Do you suppose—in this—you might find—that melody?” he stammered in a low voice. The next moment he was gone, having left in Billy's fingers a paper upon which was written in a clear-cut, masculine hand six four-line stanzas.
Billy read them at once, hurriedly, then more carefully.
“Why, they're beautiful,” she breathed, “just beautiful! Where did he get them, I wonder? It's a love song—and such a pretty one! I believe there is a melody in it,” she exulted, pausing to hum a line or two. “There is—I know there is; and I'll write it—for Bertram,” she finished, crossing joyously to the piano.
Half-way down Corey Hill at that moment, Arkwright was buffeting the wind and snow. He, too, was thinking joyously of those stanzas—joyously, yet at the same time fearfully. Arkwright himself had written those lines—though not for Bertram.
CHAPTER XV. “MR. BILLY” AND “MISS MARY JANE”
On the fourteenth of December Billy came down-stairs alert, interested, and happy. She had received a dear letter from Bertram (mailed on the way to New York), the sun was shining, and her fingers were fairly tingling to put on paper the little melody that was now surging riotously through her brain. Emphatically, the restlessness of the day before was gone now. Once more Billy's “clock” had “begun to tick.”
After breakfast Billy went straight to the telephone and called up Arkwright. Even one side of the conversation Aunt Hannah did not hear very clearly; but in five minutes a radiant-faced Billy danced into the room.
“Aunt Hannah, just listen! Only think—Mary Jane wrote the words himself, so of course I can use them!”
“Billy, dear, can't you say 'Mr. Arkwright'?” pleaded Aunt Hannah.
Billy laughed and gave the anxious-eyed little old lady an impulsive hug.
“Of course! I'll say 'His Majesty' if you like, dear,” she chuckled. “But did you hear—did you realize? They're his own words, so there's no question of rights or permission, or anything. And he's coming up this afternoon to hear my melody, and to make a few little changes in the words, maybe. Oh, Aunt Hannah, you don't know how good it seems to get into my music again!”
“Yes, yes, dear, of course; but—” Aunt Hannah's sentence ended in a vaguely troubled pause.
Billy turned in surprise.
“Why, Aunt Hannah, aren't you glad? You said you'd be glad!”
“Yes, dear; and I am—very glad. It's only—if it doesn't take too much time—and if Bertram doesn't mind.”
Billy flushed. She laughed a little bitterly.
“No, it won't take too much time, I fancy, and—so far as Bertram is concerned—if what Sister Kate says is true, Aunt Hannah, he'll be glad to have me occupy a little of my time with something besides himself.”
“Fiddlededee!” bristled Aunt Hannah.
“What did she mean by that?”
Billy smiled ruefully.
“Well, probably I did need it. She said it night before last just before she went home with Uncle William. She declared that I seemed to forget entirely that Bertram belonged to his Art first, before he belonged to me; and that it was exactly as she had supposed it would be—a perfect absurdity for Bertram to think of marrying anybody.”
“Fiddlededee!” ejaculated the irate Aunt Hannah, even more sharply. “I hope you have too much good sense to mind what Kate says, Billy.”
“Yes, I know,” sighed the girl; “but of course I can see some things for myself, and I suppose I did make—a little fuss about his going to New York the other night. And I will own that I've had a real struggle with myself sometimes, lately, not to mind—his giving so much time to his portrait painting. And of course both of those are very reprehensible—in an artist's wife,” she finished, a little tremulously.
“Humph! Well, I don't think I should worry about that,” observed Aunt Hannah with grim positiveness.
“No, I don't mean to,” smiled Billy, wistfully. “I only told you so you'd understand that it was just as well if I did have something to take up my mind—besides Bertram. And of course music would be the most natural thing.”
“Yes, of course,” agreed Aunt Hannah.
“And it seems actually almost providential that Mary—I mean Mr. Arkwright is here to help me, now that Cyril is gone,” went on Billy, still a little wistfully.
“Yes, of course. He isn't like—a stranger,” murmured Aunt Hannah. Aunt Hannah's voice sounded as if she were trying to convince herself—of something.
“No, indeed! He seems just like one of the family to me, almost as if he were really—your niece, Mary Jane,” laughed Billy.
Aunt Hannah moved restlessly.
“Billy,” she hazarded, “he knows, of course, of your engagement?”
“Why, of course he does, Aunt Hannah everybody does!” Billy's eyes were plainly surprised.
“Yes, yes, of course—he must,” subsided Aunt Hannah, confusedly, hoping that Billy would not divine the hidden reason behind her question. She was relieved when Billy's next words showed that she had not divined it.
“I told you, didn't I? He's coming up this afternoon. He can't get here till five, though; but he's so interested! He's about as crazy over the thing as I am. And it's going to be fine, Aunt Hannah, when it's done. You just wait and see!” she finished gayly, as she tripped from the room.
Left to herself, Aunt Hannah drew a long breath.
“I'm glad she didn't suspect,” she was thinking. “I believe she'd consider even the question disloyal to Bertram—dear child! And of course Mary”—Aunt Hannah corrected herself with cheeks aflame—“I mean Mr. Arkwright does—know.”
It was just here, however, that Aunt Hannah was mistaken. Mr. Arkwright did not—know. He had not reached Boston when the engagement was announced. He knew none of Billy's friends in town save the Henshaw brothers. He had not heard from Calderwell since he came to Boston. The very evident intimacy of Billy with the Henshaw brothers he accepted as a matter of course, knowing the history of their acquaintance, and the fact that Billy was Mr. William Henshaw's namesake. As to Bertram being Billy's lover—that idea had long ago been killed at birth by Calderwell's emphatic assertion that the artist would never care for any girl—except to paint. Since coming to Boston, Arkwright had seen little of the two together. His work, his friends, and his general mode of life precluded that. Because of all this, therefore, Arkwright did not—know; which was a pity—for Arkwright, and for some others.
Promptly at five o'clock that afternoon, Arkwright rang Billy's doorbell, and was admitted by Rosa to the living-room, where Billy was at the piano.
Billy sprang to her feet with a joyous word of greeting.
“I'm so glad you've come,” she sighed happily. “I want you to hear the melody your pretty words have sung to me. Though, maybe, after all, you won't like it, you know,” she finished with arch wistfulness.
“As if I could help liking it,” smiled the man, trying to keep from his voice the ecstatic delight that the touch of her hand had brought him.
Billy shook her head and seated herself again at the piano.
“The words are lovely,” she declared, sorting out two or three sheets of manuscript music from the quantity on the rack before her. “But there's one place—the rhythm, you know—if you could change it. There!—but listen. First I'm going to play it straight through to you.” And she dropped her fingers to the keyboard. The next moment a tenderly sweet melody—with only a chord now and then for accompaniment—filled Arkwright's soul with rapture. Then Billy began to sing, very softly, the words!
No wonder Arkwright's soul was filled with rapture. They were his words, wrung straight from his heart; and they were being sung by the girl for whom they were written. They were being sung with feeling, too—so evident a feeling that the man's pulse quickened, and his eyes flashed a sudden fire. Arkwright could not know, of course, that Billy, in her own mind, was singing that song—to Bertram Henshaw.
The fire was still in Arkwright's eyes when the song was ended; but Billy very plainly did not see it. With a frowning sigh and a murmured “There!” she began to talk of “rhythm” and “accent” and “cadence”; and to point out with anxious care why three syllables instead of two were needed at the end of a certain line. From this she passed eagerly to the accompaniment, and Arkwright at once found himself lost in a maze of “minor thirds” and “diminished sevenths,” until he was forced to turn from the singer to the song. Still, watching her a little later, he noticed her absorbed face and eager enthusiasm, her earnest pursuance of an elusive harmony, and he wondered: did she, or did she not sing that song with feeling a little while before?
Arkwright had not settled this question to his own satisfaction when Aunt Hannah came in at half-past five, and he was conscious of a vague disappointment as he rose to greet her. Billy, however, turned an untroubled face to the newcomer.
“We're doing finely, Aunt Hannah,” she cried. Then, suddenly, she flung a laughing question to the man. “How about it, sir? Are we going to put on the title-page: 'Words by Mary Jane Arkwright'—or will you unveil the mystery for us now?”
“Have you guessed it?” he bantered.
“No—unless it's 'Methuselah John.' We did think of that the other day.”
“Wrong again!” he laughed.
“Then it'll have to be 'Mary Jane,'” retorted Billy, with calm naughtiness, refusing to meet Aunt Hannah's beseechingly reproving eyes. Then suddenly she chuckled. “It would be a combination, wouldn't it? 'Words by Mary Jane Arkwright. Music by Billy Neilson'! We'd have sighing swains writing to 'Dear Miss Arkwright,' telling how touching were her words; and lovelorn damsels thanking Mr. Neilson for his soul-inspiring music!”
“Billy, my dear!” remonstrated Aunt Hannah, faintly.
“Yes, yes, I know; that was bad—and I won't again, truly,” promised Billy. But her eyes danced, and the next moment she had whirled about on the piano stool and dashed into a Chopin waltz. The room itself, then, seemed to be full of the twinkling feet of elves.