It was a June day. Not one of those perfervid June days that simulate the heat of July, and try to show the corn what June can do, but one of Shakespeare’s lovely and temperate days, just warm enough to unfurl the rose petals of the Armstrong rose-trees and ripen the grass flowers in the Beaumonts’ unmowed yard.
The Beaumonts lived in the north end of town, at the terminus of the street-car line. They did not live in the suburbs because they liked space and country air, nor in order to have flowers and a kitchen-garden of their own, like the Armstrongs opposite, but because the rent was lower. The Beaumonts were very poor and very proud. The Armstrongs were neither poor nor proud. Joel Armstrong, the head of the family, owned the comfortable house, with its piazzas and bay-windows, the small stable and the big yard. There was a yard enclosed in poultry-netting, and a pasture for the cow, and the elderly family horse that had picked up so amazingly under the influence of good living and kindness that no one would suspect how cheaply the car company had sold him.
Armstrong was the foreman of a machine-shop. Every morning at half-past six Pauline Beaumont, who rose early, used to see him board the street-car in his foreman’s clothes, which differs from working-men’s clothes, though only in a way visible to the practised observer. He always was smoking a short pipe, and he usually was smiling. Mrs. Armstrong was a comely woman, who had a great reputation in the neighborhood as a cook and a nurse. In the family were three boys—if one can call the oldest a boy, who was a young carpenter, just this very day setting up for master-builder. The second boy was fifteen, and in the high-school, and the youngest was ten. There were no daughters; but for helper Mrs. Armstrong had a stout young Swede, who was occasionally seen by the Beaumonts hiding broken pieces of glass or china in a convenient ravine. The Beaumont house was much smaller than the Armstrongs’, nor was it in such admirable repair and paint; but then, as Henriette Beaumont was used to say, “They had not a carpenter in the family.”
It will be seen that the Beaumonts held themselves very high above the Armstrongs. They could not forget that twenty-five years ago their father had been Lieutenant-Governor, and they had been accounted rich people in the little Western city. Father and fortune had been lost long since. They were poor, obscure, working hard for a livelihood; but they still kept their pride, which only increased as their visible consequence diminished. Nevertheless, Pauline often looked wistfully across at the Armstrongs’ little feasts and fun, and always walked home on their side of the street. Pauline was the youngest and least proud of the Beaumonts.
To-day, as usual, she came down the street, past the neat low fence of the Armstrongs; but instead of passing, merely glancing in at the lawn and the house, she stopped; she leaned her shabby elbows on the gate, where she could easily see the dining-room and sniff the savory odors floating from the kitchen. “Oh, doesn’t it smell good?” she murmured. “Chickens fried, and new potatoes, and a strawberry shortcake. They have such a nice garden.” She caught her breath in a mirthless laugh. “How absurd I am! I feel like staying here and smelling the whole supper! Yesterday they had waffles, and the day before beefsteak—such lovely, hearty things!”
She was a tall girl, too thin for her height, with a pretty carriage and a delicate irregular face, too colorless and tired for beauty, but not for charm. Her skin was fine and clear, and her brown hair very soft. Her gray eyes were alight with interest as she watched the finishing touches given the table, which was spread with a glossy white cloth, and had a bowl of June roses in the centre. Mrs. Armstrong, in a new dimity gown and white apron, was placing a great platter of golden sponge-cake on the board. She looked up and saw Pauline. The girl could invent no better excuse for her scrutiny (which had such an air of prying) than to drop her head as if in faintness—an excuse, indeed, suggested by her own feelings. In a minute Mrs. Armstrong had stepped through the bay-window and was on the other side of the fence, listening with vivid sympathy to Pauline’s shamefaced murmur: “Excuse me, but I feel so ill!”
“It’s a rush of blood to the head,” cried Mrs. Armstrong, all the instincts of a nurse aroused. “Come right in; you mustn’t think of going home. Land! you’ll like as not faint before I can get over to you. Hold on to the fence if you feel things swimming!”
“SHE LEANED HER SHABBY ELBOWS ON THE GATE”
Pauline, in her confusion, grew red and redder, while, despite inarticulate protestations, she was propelled into the house and on to a large lounge.
“Lay your head back,” commanded the nurse, appearing with an ammonia-bottle in one hand and a fan in the other.
“It’s nothing—nothing at all,” gasped Pauline, between shame and the fumes of ammonia. “The day was a little warm, and I walked home, and I was so busy I ate no lunch”—as if that were a change from her habits—“and all at once I felt faint. But I’m all right now.”
“Well, I don’t wonder you’re faint,” cried Mrs. Armstrong; “you oughtn’t to do that way. Now you just got to lie still—— Oh, that’s only Ikey. Ikey, you get a glass of wine for this lady; it’s Miss Beaumont.”
The tall young man in the gray suit and the blue flannel shirt blushed a little under his sunburn as he bowed. “Pleased to meet you, miss,” said he, promptly, before he disappeared.
“This is a great day for us,” continued the mother, releasing the ammonia from duty, and beginning to fan vigorously. “Ike has set up as master-builder—only two men, and he does most of the work; but he’s got a house all to himself, and the chance of some bigger ones. We’re having a little celebration. You must excuse the paper on the lounge; I put it down when we unpacked the organ.”
“Oh, did the organ come?” said the son.
“It surely did, and we’ve played on it already.”
“Why, did you get the music? Was it in the box, too?”
“Oh, we ’ain’t played tunes; we just have been trying it—like to see how it goes. It’s got an awful sweet sound.”
“And you ought to hear me play a tune on it, ma.”
“You! For the land’s sake!”
“Yes, me—that never did play a tune in my life. Anybody can play on that organ.” He turned politely to Pauline, as to include her in the conversation. “You see, Miss Beaumont, we’re a musical family that can’t sing. We can’t, as they say, carry a tune to save our immortal souls. The trouble isn’t with the voice; it’s with our ears. We can hear well enough, too, but we haven’t an ear for music. I took lessons once, trying to learn to sing, but the teacher finally braced up to tell me that he hadn’t the conscience to take my money. ‘What’s the matter?’ says I. ‘You’ve lots of voice,’ says he, ‘but you haven’t a mite of ear.’ ‘Can’t anybody teach me to sing?’ says I. ‘Not unless they hypnotize you, like Trilby,’ says he. So I gave it up. But next I thought I would learn to play; for if there’s one thing ma and the boys and I all love, it’s music. And just then, as luck would have it, this teacher wanted to sell his cabinet organ, which is in perfect shape and a fine instrument. And I was craving to buy it, but I knew it was ridiculous, when none of us can play. But I kept thinking. Finally it came to me. I had seen those zither things with numbers on them; why couldn’t he paint numbers on the keys of the organ just that way, and make music to correspond? And that’s just the way we’ve done. You’re very musical. I—I’ve often listened to your playing. What do you think of it?” He looked at her wistfully.
“I think it very ingenious—very,” said Pauline. She had risen now, and she thanked Mrs. Armstrong, and said she must go home. In truth, she was in a panic at the thought of what she had done. Henriette never would understand. Her heart beat guiltily all the way home.
There were three Beaumonts—Henriette, Mysilla, and Pauline. Henriette and Mysilla were twins, who had dressed alike from childhood’s hour, although Mysilla was very plain, a colorless blonde, of small stature and painfully thin, while Henriette was tall, with a stately figure and a handsome dark face that would have looked well on a Roman coin. Yet Henriette was a woman of good taste, and she spent many a night trying to decide on a gown which would suit equally well Mysie’s fair head and her glossy black one. Both the black and the brown head were gray now, but they still wore frocks and hats alike. Henriette held that it was the hall-mark of a good family to clothe twins alike, and Henriette did not have her Roman features for nothing. Mysilla had always adored and obeyed Henriette. She gloried in Henriette’s haughty beauty and grace, and she was as proud of both now that Henriette was a shabby elderly woman, who had to wear dyed gowns and darned gloves, as in the days when she was the belle of the Iowa capital, and poor Jim Perley fought a duel with Captain Sayre over a misplaced dance on her ball-card. Henriette promised to marry Jim after the duel, but Jim died of pneumonia that very week. For Jim’s sake, John Perley, his brother, was good to the girls. Pauline was a baby when her father died. She never remembered the days of pomp, only the lean days of adversity. John Perley obtained a clerkship for her in a music-store. Henriette gave music lessons. She was a brilliant musician, but she criticised her pupils precisely as she would have done any other equally stupid performers, and her pupils’ parents did not always love the truth. Mysilla took in plain sewing, as the phrase goes. She sometimes (since John Perley had given them a sewing-machine) made as much as four dollars a week. They invariably paid their rent in advance, and when they had not money to buy enough to eat they went hungry. They never cared to know their neighbors, and Pauline cringed as she imaged Henriette’s sarcasms had she seen her sister drinking the Armstrongs’ California port. Henriette had stood in the hall corner and waved Pauline fiercely and silently away while the unconscious Mrs. Armstrong thumped at the broken bell outside, and at last departed, remarking, “Well, they must be gone, or dead!”
Therefore rather timidly Pauline opened the door of the little room that was both parlor and dining-room. Any one could see that the room belonged to people who loved music. The old-fashioned grand-piano was under protection of busts of Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner; and Mysie’s violin stood in the corner, near a bookcase full of musical biographies. An air of exquisite neatness was like an aroma of lavender in the room, and with it was fused a prim good taste, such as might properly belong to gentlewomen who had learned the household arts when the rule of three was sacred, and every large ornament must be attended by a smaller one on either side. And an observer of a gentle mind, furthermore, might have found a kind of pathos in the shabbiness of it all; for everything fine was worn and faded, and everything new was coarse. The portrait of the Lieutenant-Governor faced the door. For company it had on either side small engravings of Webster and Clay. Beneath it was placed the tea-table, ready spread. The cloth was of good quality, but thin with long service. On the table a large plate of bread held the place of importance, with two small plates on either corner, the one containing a tiny slice of suspiciously yellow butter, and the other a cone of solid jelly. Such jelly they sell at the groceries out of firkins. A glass jug of tea stood by a plated ice-water jug of a pattern highly esteemed before the war. Henriette was stirring a small lump of ice about the sides of the tea-jug. She greeted Pauline pleasantly.
“Iced tea?” said Pauline. “I thought we were to have hot tea and sausages and toast. I gave Mysie twenty-five cents for them this morning.” She did not say that it was the money for more than one day’s luncheon.
“Yes, Mysie said something about it,” said Henriette, “but it didn’t seem worth while to burn up so much wood merely to heat the water for tea; and toast uses up so much butter.”
“But I gave Mysie a dollar to buy a little oil-stove that we could use in summer; and there was the sausage; I don’t mean to find fault, sister Etty, but I’m ravenously hungry.”
“Of course, child,” Henriette agreed, benignly; “you are always hungry. But I think you’ll agree I was lucky not to have bought that stove and those sausages this morning. Who do you think is coming to this town next week? Theodore Thomas, with his own orchestra! And just as I was going into that store to buy your stove—though I didn’t feel at all sure it wouldn’t explode and burn the house down—John Perley came up and gave me a ticket, an orchestra seat; and I said at once, ‘The girls must go too’; but I hadn’t but twenty-five cents, and no more coming in for a week. Then it occurred to me like a flash, there was this money you had given me; and, Paula, I made such a bargain! The man at Farrell’s, where they are selling the tickets, will get us three seats, not very far back in the gallery, for my orchestra seat and the money, and we shall have enough money left to take us home in the street cars. Now do you understand?” concluded Henriette, triumphantly.
“Yes, sister Etty; it will be splendid,” responded Pauline, but with less enthusiasm than Henriette had expected.
“Aren’t you glad?” she demanded.
“Oh yes, I’m glad; but I’m so dead tired I can hardly talk,” said Pauline, as she left the room. She felt every stair as she climbed it; but her face cleared at the sight of Mysie coming through the hall.
“It’s a lovely surprise, Mysie, isn’t it?” she cried, cheerfully. She always called Mysie by her Christian name, without prefix. Henriette, although of the same age, was so much more important a person that she would have felt the unadorned name a liberty. But nobody was afraid of Mysie. Pauline wound one of her long arms about her waist and kissed her.
Mysie gave a little gasp of mingled pleasure and relief, and the burden of her thoughts slipped off in the words, “I knew you ’lotted on that oil-stove, Paula, but Etty said you would want me to go—”
“I wouldn’t go without you,” Pauline burst in, vehemently, “and I’d live on bread and jelly for a week to give you that pleasure.”
“There was the sausage, too; I did feel bad about that; you ought to have good hot meals after working all day.”
“No more than you, Mysie.”
“I’m not on my feet all day. And I did think of taking some of that seventy-five cents we have saved for the curtains, but I didn’t like to spend any without consulting you.”
“It’s your own money, Mysie; but anyhow I suppose we need the curtains. Go on down; Henriette’s calling. I’ll be down directly.” But after she heard her sister’s uncertain footstep on the stair she stood frowning out of the window at the Armstrong house. “It’s hideous to think it,” she murmured, “but I don’t care—we have so much music and so little sausage! I wish I had the money for my ticket to the concert to spend on meat!”
Then, remorsefully, she went down-stairs, and after supper she played all the evening on the piano; but the airs that she chose were in a simple strain—minstrel songs of a generation ago, like “Nelly was a lady” and “Hard times come again no more,” from a battered old book of her mother’s.
“Wouldn’t you like to try a few Moody and Sankeys?” Henriette jeered after a while. “Foster seems to me only one degree less maudlin and commonplace. He makes me think of tuberoses!” Pauline laughed and went to the window. The white porcupine of electric light at the corner threw out long spikes of radiance athwart the narrow sidewalk, and a man’s shadow dipped into the lighted space. The man was leaning his arms on the fence. “Foolish fellow!” Pauline laughed softly to herself. That night, shortly after she had dropped asleep, she was awakened out of a dream of staying to supper with the Armstrongs, and beholding the board loaded with broiled chickens and plum-pudding, by a clutch on her shoulder. “It was quite accidental,” she pleaded; “it really was, sister Etty!” For her dream seemed to project itself into real life, and there was Henriette, a stern figure in flowing white, bending over her.
“Wake up!” she cried. “Listen! There’s something awful happening at the Armstrongs’.”
Pauline sat up in bed as suddenly as a jack-in-the-box. Then she gave a little gasp of laughter. “They are all right,” said she; “they are playing on their organ. That’s the way they play.”
The organ ceased to moan, and Henriette returned to her couch. In ten minutes she was back again, shaking Pauline. “Wake up!” she cried. “How can you sleep in such a racket? He has been murdering popular tunes by inches, and now what he is doing I don’t know, but it is awful. You know them best. Get up and call to them that we can’t sleep for the noise they make.”
“I suppose they have a right to play on their own organ.”
“They haven’t a right to make such a pandemonium anywhere. If you won’t do something, I’m going to pretend I think it’s cats, and call ‘Scat!’ and throw something at them.”
“You wouldn’t hit anything,” Pauline returned, in that sleepy tone which always rouses a wakeful sufferer’s wrath. “Better shut your window. You can’t hear nearly so well then.”
“Yes, sister, I’ll shut the window,” Mysie called from the chamber, as usual eager for peace.
“You let that window alone,” commanded Henriette, sternly. A long pause—Henriette seated in rigid agony at the foot of the bed; the Armstrongs experimenting with the Vox Humana stop. “Pauline, do you mean to say that you can sleep? Pauline! Pauline!”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Pauline.
“I am going to take my brush—no, I shall take your brush, Pauline Beaumont—and hurl it at them!”
“Oh, sister, please don’t,” begged Mysie from within, like the voices on a stage.
Henriette spoke not again; she strode out of the room, and did even as she had threatened. She flung Pauline’s brush straight at the organist sitting before the window. Whether she really meant to injure young Armstrong’s candid brow is an open question; and, judging from the result, I infer that she did not mean to do more than scare her sister; therefore she aimed afar. By consequence the missile sped straight into the centre of the window. But not through it; the window was raised, and a wire screen rattled the brush back with a shivering jar.
“What’s that? A bat?” said Armstrong, happily playing on. His father and mother were beaming upon him in deep content—his father a trifle sleepy, but resolved, the morrow being Sunday, to enjoy this musical hour to the full, his mother seated beside him and reading the numbers aloud.
“You see, Ikey,” she had explained, “that’s what makes you slow. While you’re reading the numbers, you lose ’em on the organ; and while you’re finding the numbers on the keys, you loose ’em on the paper. I’ll read them awful low, so no one would suspect, and you keep your whole mind on those keys. Now begin again; I’ve got a pin to prick them—2-4-3, 1-3—no, 1-8, 1-8—it’s only one 1-8; guess we better begin again.”
So Mrs. Armstrong droned forth the numbers and Ikey hammered them on the organ, pumping with his feet, whenever he did not forget. The two boys slept peacefully through the weird clamor. The neighbors, with one exception, were apparently undisturbed. That exception, named Henriette Beaumont, heard with swelling wrath.
“I’ve thrown the brush,” said she. No response from the pillow. “Now I’m going to throw the broken-handled mug,” continued Henriette, in a tone of deadly resolve; “it’s heavy, and it may kill some one, but I can’t help it!” Still a dead silence. Crash! smash! The mug with the broken handle had sped against the weather-boarding.
“Now what was that?” cried Ike, jumping up. Before he was on his feet a broken soap-dish had followed the mug. Up flew the sash, and Ike was out of the window. “What are you doing that for? What do you mean by that?” he yelled, to which the dark and silent house opposite naturally made no reply. Ike was out in the road now, and both his parents were after him. The elder Armstrong had been so suddenly wakened from a doze that he was under the impression of a fire somewhere, and let out a noble shout to that effect. Mrs. Armstrong, convinced that a dynamite bomb had missed fire, gathered her skirts tightly around her ankles—as if bombs could run under them like mice—and helped by screaming alternately “Police!” and “Murder!”
Henriette gloated silently over the confusion. It did her soul good to see Ike Armstrong running along the sidewalk after supposititious boys.
The Armstrongs did not return to the organ. Henriette heard their footsteps on the gravel, she heard the muffled sound of voices; but not again did the tortured instrument excite her nerves, and she sank into a troubled slumber. As they sat at breakfast the next morning, and Henriette was calculating the share due each cup from the half-pint of boiled milk, the broken bell-wire jangled. Pauline said she would go.
“It can’t be any one to call so early in the morning,” said Henriette; “you may go.”
“‘SOMEBODY THREW THESE THINGS AT OUR WINDOW’”
It was young Armstrong, in his Sunday clothes. Pauline’s only picture of him had been in his work-a-day garb; it was curious how differently he impressed her, fresh from the bath and the razor, trigly buttoned up in a perfectly fitting suit of blue and brown, with a dazzling rim of white against his shapely tanned throat, and a crimson rose in his button-hole. “How handsome he is!” thought Pauline. She had never been satisfied with her own nose, and she looked at the straight bridge of his and admired it. She was too innocent and ignorant herself to notice how innocently clear were his eyes; but she thought that they looked true and kind, and she did notice the bold lines of his chin and jaw, and the firm mouth under his black mustache. Unaccountably she grew embarrassed; he was looking at her so gravely, almost sternly, his new straw hat in one hand, and the other slightly extended to her and holding a neat bundle.
He bowed ceremoniously, as he had seen actors bow on the stage. “Somebody threw these things at our window last night,” said he; “I think they belong to you. I couldn’t find all the pieces of the china.”
“They weren’t all there,” stammered Pauline, foolishly; and then a wave of mingled confusion and irritation at her false position—there was her monogram on the ivory brush!—and a queer kind of amusement, swept over her, and dyed her delicate cheek as red as Armstrong’s rose. And suddenly he too, flushed, and his eyes flashed.
“I’m sorry I disturbed your sister,” said he, “but I hope she will not throw any more things at us. We will try not to practise so late another night. Good-morning.”
“I am sorry,” said Pauline; “tell your mother I’m sorry, please. She was so kind to me.”
“Thank you,” Armstrong said, heartily; “I will.” And somehow before he went they shook hands.
Pauline gave the message, but she felt so guilty because of this last courtesy that she gave it without reproach, even though her only good brush disclosed a pitiful crack.
“Well, you know why I did it,” said Henriette, coolly; “and does the man suppose his playing isn’t obnoxious any hour of the day as well as night? But let us hope they will be quiet awhile. Paula, have you any money? We ought to go over those numbers for the concert beforehand, and we must get Verdi’s Requiem. Mysie has some, but she wants it to buy curtains.”
“I’m sorry, sister Etty, but I haven’t a cent.”
“Then the curtains will have to wait, Mysie,” said Henriette, cheerfully, “for we must have the music to-morrow.”
Mysie threw a deprecating glance at Pauline. “There was a bargain in chintzes,” she began, feebly, “but of course, sister, if Paula doesn’t mind—”
“I don’t mind, Mysie,” said Pauline.
Why should she make Mysie unhappy and Henriette cross for a pair of cheap curtains? The day was beautiful, and she attended church. She was surprised, looking round at the choir, to discover young Armstrong in the seat behind her. She did not know that he attended that church. But surely there was no harm in a neighbor’s walking home with Mysie and her. How well and modestly he talked, and how gentle and deferential he was to Mysie! Mysie sighed when he parted from them, a little way from the house.
“That young man is very superior to his station,” she declared, solemnly; “he must be of good though decayed family.”
“His grandfather was a Vermont farmer, and ours was a Massachusetts farmer,” retorted Pauline; “I dare say if we go back far enough we shall find the Armstrongs as good as we—”
“Oh, pray don’t talk that way before Etty, dear,” interrupted Mysie, hurriedly: “she thinks it so like the anarchists; and if you get into that way of speech, you might slip out something before her. Poor Etty, I wish she felt as if she could go to church. I hope she had a peaceful morning.”
Ah, hope unfounded! Never had Miss Henriette Beaumont passed a season more rasping to her nerves. Looking out of the window, she saw both the younger Armstrongs and their mother. The boys had been picking vegetables.
“Now, boys,” called Mrs. Armstrong, gayly, “let’s come and play on the organ.”
Henriette’s soul was in arms. Unfortunately she was still in the robes of rest (attempting to slumber after her tumultuous night), and dignity forbade her shouting out of the window.
The two boys passed a happy morning experimenting on the different stops, and improvising melodies of their own. “Say, mummy, isn’t that kinder like a tune?” one or the other would exclaim. Mrs. Armstrong listened with pride. The awful combination of discords fell sweetly on her ear, which was “no ear for music.”
“It’s just lovely to have an organ,” she thought.
When Miss Beaumont could bear no more she attired herself and descended the stairs. Then the boys stopped. In the afternoon several friends of the Armstrongs called. They sang Moody and Sankey hymns, until Henriette was pale with misery.
“I think I prefer the untutored Armstrong savages themselves, with their war-cries,” she remarked.
“Perhaps they will get tired of it,” Mysie proffered for consolation. But they did not tire. They never played later than nine o’clock at night again, but until that hour the music-loving and unmusical family played and sang to their hearts’ content. And the Beaumonts saw them at the Thomas concert, Ike and his mother and Jim, applauding everything. Henriette said the sight made her ill.
“‘NOW, BOYS, LET’S COME AND PLAY ON THE ORGAN’”
Time did not soften her rancor. She caught cold at the concert, and for two weeks was confined to her chamber with what Mrs. Armstrong called rheumatism, but Henriette called gout. During the time she assured Mysie that what she suffered from the Armstrong organ exceeded anything that gout could inflict.
“Do let me speak to Mrs. Armstrong,” begged Mysie.
“I spoke to that boy, the one with the freckles, myself yesterday,” replied Henriette, “out of the window. I told him if they didn’t stop I would have them indicted.”
“Why, how did you see him?” Mysie was aghast, but she dared not criticise Henriette.
“He came here with a bucket of water. Said his mother saw us taking water out of the well, and it was dangerous. The impertinent woman, she actually offered to send us water from their cistern every day.”
“But I think that was—was rather kind, sister, and it would be dreadful to have typhoid fever.”
“I would rather die of typhoid fever than have that woman bragging to her vulgar friends that she gives the Beaumonts, Governor Beaumont’s daughters, water! I know what her kindness means.” Thus Henriette crushed Mysie. But when the organ began, and it was evident that Tim Armstrong intended to learn “Two Little Girls in Blue,” if it took him all the afternoon, Mysie rose.
“Mysie,” called Henriette, “don’t you go one step to the Armstrongs’.”
Mysie sat down, but in a little while she tried again.
“I wish you’d let Paula, then; she is going by there every day, and she has had no dispute with them. She often stops to talk.”
“Talk to whom?” said Henriette, icily.
“Oh, to any of them—Tim or Pete or Mrs. Armstrong.”
“Does she talk to them long?”
“Oh no, not very long—just as she goes by. I think you’re mistaken, sister. They don’t think such mean things. Truly they are—nice; they seem very fond of each other, and they almost always give Paula flowers.”
“What does she do with the flowers?”
“She puts them in the vases, and wears them.”
“Do they give her anything else?” Henriette’s tone was so awful that Mysie dropped her work.
“Do they?” persisted Henriette.
“They sent over the magazines a few times, but that was just borrowing, and once they—they—sent over some shortcake and some—bread.”
Henriette sat bolt-upright in bed, reckless of the pain every movement gave her.
“Mysilla Beaumont, do you see where your sister is drifting? Are you both crazy? But I shall put a stop to this nonsense this very day. I am going to write a note to John Perley, and you will have to take it. Bring me the paper. If there isn’t any in my desk, take some out of Pauline’s.”
“Oh, Henriette,” whimpered Mysie, “what are you going to do?”
“You will soon see, and you will have to help me. After they have been disgraced and laughed at, we’ll see whether she will care to lean over their fence and talk to them.”
It was true that Pauline did talk to the Armstrongs; she did lean over the Armstrong fence. It had come to pass by degrees. She knew perfectly well it was wrong. Henriette never allowed her to have any acquaintances. But Henriette could not see her from the bed, and Mysie did not mind; and so she fell into the habit of stopping at the Armstrong gate to inquire for Mrs. Armstrong’s turkeys, or to ask advice about the forlorn little geraniums which fought for life in the Beaumont yard, or to lend her own nimble fingers to the adorning of Mrs. Armstrong’s bonnets. She saw Ike often. Once she actually ventured to enter “those mechanics’” doors and play on the detested organ. Her musical gifts could not be compared to her sister’s. A sweet, true voice, op no great compass, a touch that had only sympathy and a moderate facility—these the highly cultivated Beaumonts rated at their very low artistic value; but the ignorant Armstrongs listened to Pauline’s hymns in rapture. The tears filled Mrs. Armstrong’s eyes: impulsively she kissed the girl. “Oh, you dear child!” she cried. Ike said nothing. Not a word. He was standing near enough to Pauline to touch the folds of her dress. His fingers almost reverently stroked the faded pink muslin. He swallowed something that was choking him. Joel Armstrong nodded and smiled. Then his eyes sought his wife’s. He put out his hand and held hers. When the music was done and the young people were gone, he puffed hard on his dead pipe, saying, “It’s the best thing that can happen to a young man, mother, to fall in love with a real good girl, ain’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
“And I guess you’d have the training of this one, mother; and there’s plenty of room in the lot opposite that’s for sale to build a nice little house. They’d start a sight better off than we did.”
“But we were very happy, Joe, weren’t we?”
“That we were, and that we are, Sally,” said Armstrong. “Come on out in the garden with your beau; we ain’t going to let the young folks do all the courting.”
Mysie and Henriette saw the couple walking in the garden, the husband’s arm around his wife’s waist, and the soft-hearted sister sighed.
“Oh, sister, don’t you kinder wish you hadn’t done it?” she whispered. “They didn’t mean any harm.”
“Harm? No. I dare say that young carpenter would be willing to marry Pauline Beaumont!” cried Henriette, bitterly.
Mysie shook her gray head, her loose mouth working, while she winked away a tear. “I don’t care, I don’t care”—thus did she inwardly moan out a spasm of dire resolution—“I’m just going to tell Pauline!”
Perhaps what she told set the cloud on the girl’s pretty face; and perhaps that was why she looked eagerly over the Armstrong fence every night; and the cloud lifted at the sound of Mrs. Armstrong’s mellow voice hailing her from any part of the house or yard.
But one night, instead of the usual cheerful stir about the house, she found the Swede girl alone in the kitchen, weeping over the potatoes. To Pauline’s inquiries she returned a burst of woe. “They all tooken to chail—all!” she wailed. “I don’t know what to do if I get supper. The mans come, the police mans, and tooken them all away. I hela verlden! who ever know such a country? Such nice peoples sent to chail for play on the organ—their own organ! They say they not play right, but I think to send to chail for not play right on the organ that sha’n’t be right!”
Pauline could make nothing more out of her; but the man on the corner looked in at one particularly dolorous burst of sobs over poor Tim and poor Petey and tendered his version: “They’ve gone, sure enough, miss. Your sisters have had them arrested for keeping and committing a nuisance. Now, I ain’t stuck on their organ-playing, as a general rule, myself, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a nuisance. But the Fullers ain’t on the best of terms; old Fuller is a crank, and there’s politics between him and Armstrong and the Delaneys, who have just moved into the neighborhood, mother and daughter—very musical folks, they say, and nervous; they have joined in with your sister—”
“Where have they gone?” asked Pauline, who was very pale.
“To the police court. They were mighty cunning, if you’ll excuse me, miss. They picked out that old German crank, Von Reibnitz, who plays in the Schubert Quartet, and loves music better than beer.”
The man was right. Henriette had chosen her lawgiver shrewdly. At this very moment she was sitting in one of the dingy chairs of the police court, with the mien of Marie Antoinette on her way to execution. Mysie sat beside her in misery not to be described; for was she not joined with Henriette in the prosecution of the unfortunate Armstrongs? and had she not surreptitiously partaken of hot rolls and strawberry jam that very day, handed over the fence to her by Mrs. Armstrong? She could not sustain the occasional glare of the magistrate’s glasses; and, unable to look in the direction of the betrayed Armstrongs, for the most part she peered desolately at the clerk. The accused sat opposite. Mr. Armstrong and Ike were in their working-clothes. Hastily summoned, they had not the meagre comfort of a toilet. The father looked about the court, a perplexed frown replacing at intervals a perplexed grin. When he was not studying the court-room, he was polishing the bald spot on his head with a large red handkerchief, or rubbing the grimy palms of his hands on the sides of his trousers. He had insisted upon an immediate trial, but his wits had not yet pulled themselves out of the shock of his arrest. The boys varied the indignant solemnity of bearing which their mother had impressed on them with the unquenchable interest of their age. Mrs. Armstrong had assumed her best bonnet and her second-best gown. She was a handsome woman, with her fair skin, her wavy brown hair, and brilliant blue eyes; and the reporter looked at her often, adding to the shame and fright that were clawing her under her Spartan composure. But she held her head in the air bravely. Not so her son, who sat with his hands loosely clasped before him and his head sunk on his breast through the entire arraignment.
Behind the desk the portly form of the magistrate filled an arm-chair to overflowing, so that the reporter wondered whether he could rise from the chair, should it be necessary, or whether chair and he must perforce cling together. His body and arms were long, but his legs were short, so he always used a cricket, which somehow detracted from the dignity of his appearance. He had been a soldier, and kept a martial gray mustache; but he wore a wig of lustrous brown locks, which he would push from side to side in the excitement of a case, and then clap frankly back into place with both hands. There was no deceit about Fritz Von Reibnitz. He was a man of fiery prejudices, but of good heart and sound sense, and he often was shrewder than the lawyers who tried to lead him through his weaknesses. But he had a leaning towards a kind of free-hand, Arabian justice, and rather followed the spirit of the law than servilely questioned what might be the letter. Twirling his mustachios, he leaned back in his chair and studied the faces of the Armstrong family, while the clerk read the information slowly—for the benefit of his friend the reporter, who felt this to be one of the occasions that enliven a dusty road of life.
“State of Iowa, Winfield County. The City of Fairport vs. Jos. L. Armstrong, Mrs. J. L. Armstrong, Isaac J. Armstrong, Peter Armstrong, and Timothy Armstrong. The defendants” (the names were repeated, and at each name the mother of the Armstrongs winced) “are accused of the crime of violating Section 2 of Chapter 41 of the ordinances of said city. For that the defendants, on the 3d, the 10th, the 15th, and 23d day of July, 18—, in the city of Fairport, in said county, did conspire and confederate together to disturb the public quiet of the neighborhood, and in pursuance of said conspiracy, and aiding and abetting each other, did make, then and there, loud and unusual noises by playing on a cabinet organ in an unusual and improper manner, and by singing boisterously and out of tune; and did thereby disturb the public quiet of the neighborhood, contrary to the ordinances in such case provided.”
“You vill read also the ordinance, Mr. Clerk,” called the magistrate, with much majesty of manner, frowning at the same time on the younger lawyers, who were unable to repress their feelings, while the reporter appeared to be taken with cramps.
The clerk read:
“Every person who shall unlawfully disturb the public quiet of any street, alley, avenue, public square, wharf, or any religious or other public assembly, or building public or private, or any neighborhood, private family, or person within the city, by giving false alarms of fire” (Mrs. Armstrong audibly whispered to her husband, “We never did that!”), “by loud or unusual noises” (Mrs. Armstrong sank back in her corner, and Joseph Armstrong very nearly groaned aloud), “by ringing bells, blowing horns or other instruments, etc., etc., shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor, and punished accordingly.”
Then up rose the attorney for the prosecution to state his case. He narrated how the Armstrong family had bought an organ, and had played upon it almost continually since the purchase, thereby greatly annoying and disturbing the entire neighborhood. He said that no member of the Armstrong family knew more than two changes on the organ, and that several of them, in addition to playing, were accustomed to sing in a loud and disagreeable voice (the Armstrong family were visibly affected), and that so great was the noise and disturbance made by the said organ that the prosecuting witness, Miss Beaumont, who was sick at the time, had been agitated and disturbed by it, to her great bodily and mental damage and danger. That although requested to desist, they had not desisted (Tim and Pete exchanged glances of undissembled enjoyment), and therefore she was compelled in self-defence to invoke the aid of the law.
Ike listened dully. There was no humor in the situation for him. He felt himself and his whole family disgraced, dragged before the police magistrate just like a common drunk and disorderly loafer, and accused of being a nuisance to their neighborhood; the shame of it tingled to his finger-tips. He would not look up; it seemed to him that he could never hold up his head again. No doubt it would all be in the paper next morning, and the Armstrongs, who were so proud of their honest name, would be the laughing-stock of the town. Somebody was saying something about a lawyer. Ike scowled at the faces of the young attorneys lolling and joking outside the railing. “I won’t fool away any money on those chumps,” he growled; “I want to get through and pay my fine and be done.”
Somebody laughed; then he saw that it was the sheriff of the county, a good friend of his. He looked appealingly up at the strong, dark face; he grasped the big hand extended.
“I’m in a hole, Mr. Wickliff,” he whispered.
“Naw, you’re not,” replied Wickliff; “you’ve a friend in the family. She got onto this plot and came to me a good while ago. We’re all ready. I’ve known her since she was a little girl. Know ’em all, poor things! Say, let me act as your attorney. Don’t have to be a member of the bar to practise in this court. Y’Honor! If it please y’Honor, I’d like to be excused to telephone to some witnesses for the defence.”
Ike caught his breath. “A friend in the family!” He did not dare to think what that meant. And Wickliff had gone. They were examining the prosecuting witnesses. Miss Mysilla Beaumont took the oath, plainly frightened. She spoke almost in a whisper. Her evident desire to deal gently with the Armstrongs was used skilfully by the young attorney whom John Perley (his uncle) had employed. Behold (he made poor Mysie’s evidence seem to say) what ear-rending and nerve-shattering sounds these barbarous organists must have produced to make this amiable lady protest at law! Mysie fluttered out of the witness-box in a tremor, nor dared to look where Mrs. Armstrong sat bridling and fanning herself. Next three Fullers deposed to more or less disturbance from the musical taste of the Armstrongs, and the Delaney daughter swore, in a clarion voice, that the playing of the Armstrongs was the worst ever known.
“It ain’t any worse than her scales!” cried Mrs. Armstrong, goaded into speech. The magistrate darted a warning glance at her.
Miss Henriette Beaumont was called last. Her mourning garments, to masculine eyes, did not show their age; and her grand manner and handsome face, with its gray hair and its flashing eyes, caused even the magistrate’s manner to change. Henriette had a rich voice and a beautiful articulation. Every softly spoken word reached Mrs. Armstrong, who writhed in her seat. She recited how she had spent hours of “absolute torment” under the Armstrong instrumentation, and she described in the language of the musician the unspeakable iniquities of the Armstrong technique. Her own lawyer could not understand her, but the magistrate nodded in sympathy. She said she was unable to sleep nights because of the “horrible discords played on the organ—”
“I declare we never played it but two nights, and they weren’t discords; they were nice tunes,” sobbed Mrs. Armstrong.
The justice rapped and frowned. “Silence in der court!” he thundered. Then he glared on poor Mrs. Armstrong. “Anybody vot calls hisself a laty ought to behave itself like sooch!” he said, with strong emphasis. The attorneys present choked and coughed. In fact, the remark passed into a saying in police-court circles. Miss Henriette stepped with stately graciousness to her seat.
“Und now der defence,” said the justice—“der Armstrong family. Vot has you got to say?”
“Let me put some witnesses on first, Judge,” called Wickliff, “to show the Armstrongs’ character.” He was opening the door, and the hall behind seemed filled.
“Oh, good land, Ikey, do look!” quavered Mrs. Armstrong; “there’s pa’s boss, and the Martins that used to live in the same block with us, and Mrs. O’Toole, and all the neighbors most up to the East End, and—oh, Ikey! there’s Miss Pauline herself! Our friends ’ain’t deserted us; I knew perfectly well they wouldn’t!”
Ike did look up then—he stood up. His eyes met the eyes of his sweetheart, and he sat down with his cheeks afire and his head in the air.
“In the first place,” said Wickliff, assuming an easy attitude, with one hand in a pocket and the other free for oratorical display, “I’ll call Miss Beaumont, Miss Henriette Beaumont, for the defence.” Miss Beaumont responded to the call, and turned a defiant stare on the amateur attorney.
“You say you were disturbed by the Armstrongs’ organ?”
“I was painfully disturbed.”
“Naturally you informed your neighbors, and asked them to desist playing the organ?”
“I did.”
“How many times?”
“Once.”
“To whom did you speak?”
“I told the boys to tell their mother.”
“Are you passionately fond of music?”
“I am.”
“Are you sensitive to bad music—acutely sensitive?”
“I suppose I am; a lover of music is, of necessity.”
The magistrate nodded and sighed.
“Are you of a particularly patient and forbearing disposition?” Henriette directed a withering glance at the tall figure of the questioner.
“I am forbearing enough,” she answered. “Do I need to answer questions that are plainly put to insult me?”
“No, madam,” said the magistrate. “Mr. Wickliff, I rules dot question out.”
Nothing daunted, Wickliff continued: “When you gave the boys warning, where were they?”
“In my house.”
“How came they there?”
“They had brought over a bucket of water.”
“Why?”
“Because we had only well-water, they said.”
“That was rather kind on the part of Mrs. Armstrong, don’t you think? In every respect, besides playing the organ, she was a kind neighbor, wasn’t she?”
“I don’t complain of her.”
“Wasn’t she rather noted in the neighborhood as a lady of great kindness? Didn’t she often send in little delicacies—flowers, fruit, and such things—gifts that often pass between neighbors to different people?”
“She may have. I am not acquainted with her.”
“Hasn’t she sent in things at different times to you?”
Henriette’s throat began to form the word no; then she remembered the shortcake, she remembered the roses, she remembered her oath, and she choked. “I don’t know much about it; perhaps she may have,” said she.
“That will do,” said Wickliff. “Call Miss Mysilla Beaumont.” Wickliff’s respectful bearing reassured the agitated spinster. He wouldn’t detain her a moment. He only wanted to know had neighborly courtesies passed between the two houses. Yes? Had Mrs. Armstrong been a kind and unobtrusive neighbor?
“Oh yes, sir; yes, indeed,” cried poor Mysie.
“Were you yourself much disturbed by the organ?”
“No, sir,” gasped Mysie, with one tragic glance at her sister’s stony features. She knew now what Jeanie Deans must have suffered.
“That will do,” said Wickliff.
Then a procession of witnesses filed into the narrow space before the railing. First the employer of the elder Armstrong gave his high praise of his foreman as a man and a citizen; then came the neighbors, declaring the Armstrong virtues—from Mrs. Martin, who deposed with tears that Mrs. Armstrong’s courage and good nursing had saved her little Willy’s life when he was burned, to Mrs. O’Toole, an aged little Irish woman, who recited how the brave young Peter had rescued her dog from a band of young torturers. “And they had a tin can filled with fire-crackers, yer Honor (an’ they was lighted), tied to the poor stoompy tail of him; but Petey he pulled it aff, and he throwed it ferninst them, and he made them sorry that day, he did, for it bursted. He’s a foine bye, and belongs to a foine family!”
“Aren’t you a little prejudiced in favor of the Armstrongs, Mrs. O’Toole?” asked the prosecuting attorney, as Wickliff smilingly bade him “take the witness.”
“Yes, sor, I am,” cried Mrs. O’Toole, huddling her shawl closer about her wiry little frame. “I am that, sor, praise God! They paid the rint for me whin me bye was in throuble, and they got him wur-rk, and he’s doin’ well this day, and been for three year. And there’s many a hot bite passed betwane us whin we was neighbors. Prejudeeced! I’d not be wuth the crow’s pickin’s if I wasn’t; and the back of me hand and the sowl of me fut to thim that’s persecuting of thim this day!”
“Call Miss Pauline Beaumont,” said Wickliff. “That will do, grandma.”
Pauline’s evidence was very concise, but to the point. She did not consider the Armstrong organ a nuisance. She believed the Armstrongs, if instructed, would learn to play the organ. If the window were shut the noise could not disturb any one. She had the highest respect and regard for the Armstrongs.
“There’s my case, your Honor,” said Wickliff, “and I’ve confidence enough in it and in this court to leave it in your hands. Say the same, Johnny?”—to the young lawyer. Perley laughed; he was beginning to suspect that not all the case appeared on the surface. Perhaps the Beaumont family peace would fare all the better if he kept his hands off. He said that he had no evidence to offer in rebuttal, and would leave the case confidently to the wisdom of the court.
“And I’ll bet you a hat on one thing, Amos,” he observed in an undertone to the amateur attorney on the other side, “Fritz’s decision on this case may be good sense, but it will be awful queer law.”
“Fritz has got good sense,” said Amos.
The magistrate announced his decision. He had deep sympathy, he said, for the complainant, a gifted and estimable lady. He knew that the musical temperament was sensitive as the violin—yes. But it also appeared from the evidence that the Armstrong family were a good, a worthy family, lacking only a knowledge of music to make them acceptable neighbors. Therefore he decided that the Armstrong family should hire a competent teacher, and that, until able to play without giving offence to the neighbors, they should close the window. With that understanding he would find the defendants not guilty; and each party must pay its own costs.
Perley glanced at Amos, who grinned and repeated, “Fritz has got good sense.”
“I’d have won my hat,” said Perley, “but I’m not kicking. Just look at Miss Beaumont, though.”
Henriette had listened in stony calm. She did not once look at Pauline, who was standing at the other side of the room. “Come, sister,” she said to Mysie. Mysie turned a scared face on Henriette. She drew her aside.
“Did you hear what he said?” she whispered. “Oh, Henriette, what shall we do? We shall have to pay the costs—”
“The Armstrongs will have to pay them too,” said Henriette, grimly.
“Theirs won’t be so much, because none of their witnesses will take a cent; but the Fullers and Miss Delaney want their fees, and it’s a dollar and a half, and there’s—”
“We shall have to borrow it from John Perley,” said Henriette.
“But he isn’t here, and maybe they’ll put us in jail if we don’t pay. Oh, Henriette, why did you—”
This, Mysie’s first and last reproach of her sovereign, was cut short by the approach of Pauline.
At her side walked young Armstrong. And Pauline, who used to be so timid, presented him without a tremor.
“I wanted to tell you, Miss Beaumont,” said Ike, “that I did not understand that we were disturbing you so much when you were sick. Not being musical, we could not appreciate what we were making you suffer. But I beg you to believe, ma’am, that we are all very sorry. And I didn’t think it no more than right that I should pay all the costs of this case—which I have done gladly. I hope you will forgive us, and that we may all of us live as good neighbors in future. We will try not to annoy you, and we have engaged a very fine music-teacher.”
“They have engaged me,” said Pauline. And as she spoke she let the young man very gently draw her hand into his arm.
