Romance Island. Gale Zona

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ you not tell me where you live?" St. George persisted, and she made no other sign.

      "New York?" went on St. George patiently. "New York? Do you live in New York?"

      There was a sudden gleam in the woman's eyes. She extended her hands quickly in unmistakable appeal. Then swiftly she caught up a hymn book, tore at its fly-leaf, and made the movement of writing. In an instant St. George had thrust a pencil in her hand and she was tracing something.

      He waited feverishly. The organ had droned through the hymn and the women broke into song, with loose lips and without restraint, as street boys sing. He saw them casting curious, sullen glances, and the Readers' Guild whispering among themselves. Miss Bella Bliss Utter, looking as distressed as a nut can look, nodded, and Mrs. Manners shook her head and they meant the same thing. Then St. George saw the attendant in the red waist descend from the platform and make her way toward him, the little American flag rising and falling on her breast. He unhesitatingly stepped in the aisle to meet her, determined to prevent, if possible, her suspicion of the message. "Is it the barbarism of a gentleman," Amory had once propounded, "or is it the gentleman-like manners of a barbarian which makes both enjoy over-stepping a prohibition?"

      "I compliment you," St. George said gravely, with his deferential stooping of the shoulders. "The women are perfectly trained. This, of course, is due to you."

      The hard face of the woman softened, but St. George thought that one might call her very facial expression nasal; she smiled with evident pleasure, though her purpose remained unshaken.

      "They do pretty good," she admitted, "but visitors ain't best for 'em. I'll have to request you"—St. George vaguely wished that she would say "ask"—"not to talk to any of 'em."

      St. George bowed.

      "It is a great privilege," he said warmly if a bit incoherently, and held her in talk about an institution of the sort in Canada where the women inmates wore white, the managers claiming that the effect upon their conduct was perceptible, that they were far more self-respecting, and so on in a labyrinth of defensive detail. "What do you think of the idea?" he concluded anxiously, manfully holding his ground in the aisle.

      "I think it's mostly nonsense," returned the woman tartly, "a big expense and a sight of work for nothing. And now permit me to say—"

      St. George vaguely wished that she would say "let."

      "I agree with you," he said earnestly, "nothing could be simpler and neater than these calico gowns."

      The attendant looked curiously at him.

      "They are gingham," she rejoined, "and you'll excuse me, I hope, but visitors ain't supposed to converse with the inmates."

      St. George was vanquished by "converse."

      "I beg your pardon," he said, "pray forgive me. I will say good-by to my friend."

      He turned swiftly and extended his hand to the strange woman behind him. With the cunning upon which he had counted she gave her own hand, slipping in his the folded paper. Her eyes, with their haunting watchfulness, held his for a moment as she mutely bent forward when he left her.

      The hymn was done and the women were seating themselves, as St. George with beating heart took his way up the aisle. What the paper contained he could not even conjecture; but there was a paper and it did contain something which he had a pleasant premonition would be invaluable to him. Yet he was still utterly at loss to account for his own presence there, and this he coolly meant to do.

      He was spared the necessity. On the platform Mrs. Manners had risen to make an announcement; and St. George fancied that she must preside at her tea-urn and try on her bonnets with just that same formal little "announcement" air.

      "My friends," she said, "I have now an unexpected pleasure for you and for us all. We have with us to-day Mr. St. George, of New York. Mr. St. George is going to sing for us."

      St. George stood still for a moment, looking into the expectant faces of Mrs. Manners and the other women of the Readers' Guild, a spark of understanding kindling the mirth in his eyes. This then accounted both for his admittance to the home and for his welcome by the women upon their errand of mercy. He had simply been very naturally mistaken for a stranger from New York who had not arrived. But since he had accomplished something, though he did not know what, inasmuch as the slip of paper lay crushed in his hand unread, he must, he decided, pay for it. Without ado he stepped to the platform.

      "I have explained to Mrs. Manners and to these ladies," he said gravely, "that I am not the gentleman who was to sing for you. However, since he is detained, I will do what I can."

      This, mistaken for a merely perfunctory speech of self-depreciation, was received in polite, contradicting silence by the Guild. St. George, who had a rich, true barytone, quickly ran over his little list of possible songs, none of which he had ever sung to an audience that a canoe would not hold, or to other accompaniment than that of a mandolin. Partly in memory of those old canoe-evenings St. George broke into a low, crooning plantation melody. The song, like much of the Southern music, had in it a semi-barbaric chord that the college men had loved, something—or so one might have said who took the canoe-music seriously—of the wildness and fierceness of old tribal loves and plaints and unremembered wooings with a desert background: a gallop of hoof-beats, a quiver of noon light above saffron sand—these had been, more or less, in the music when St. George had been wont to lie in a boat and pick at the strings while Amory paddled; and these he must have reëchoed before the crowd of curious and sullen and commonplace, lighted by that one wild, strange face. When he had finished the dark woman sat with bowed head, and St. George himself was more moved by his own effort than was strictly professional.

      "Dear Mr. St. George," said Mrs. Manners, going distractedly through her hand-bag for something unknown, "our secretary will thank you formally. It was she who sent you our request, was it not? She will so regret being absent to-day."

      "She did not send me a request, Mrs. Manners," persisted St. George pleasantly, "but I've been uncommonly glad to do what I could. I am here simply on a mission for the Evening Sentinel."

      Mrs. Manners drew something indefinite from her bag and put it back again, and looked vaguely at St. George.

      "Your voice reminds me so much of my brother, younger," she observed, her eyes already straying to the literature for distribution.

      With soft exclamatory twitters the Readers' Guild thanked St. George, and Miss Bella Bliss Utter, who was of womankind who clasp their hands when they praise, stood thus beside him until he took his leave. The woman in the red waist summoned an attendant to show him back down the long corridor.

      At the grated door within the entrance St. George found the warden in stormy conference with a pale blond youth in spectacles.

      "Impossible," the warden was saying bluntly, "I know you. I know your voice. You called me up this morning from the New York Sentinel office, and I told you then—"

      "But, my dear sir," expostulated the pale blond youth, waving a music roll, "I do assure you—"

      "What he says is quite true, Warden," St. George interposed courteously, "I will vouch for him. I have just been singing for the Readers' Guild myself."

      The warden dropped back with a grudging apology and brows of tardy suspicion, and the old man blinked his buckle eyes.

      "Gentlemen," СКАЧАТЬ