Augusta Huiell Seaman - The Curious Affair at Heron Shoals (Augusta Huiell Seaman) (Literary Thoughts Edition)

As she was skirting one end, she suddenly stopped short in her tracks. A young boy, invisible till that moment, was sitting with his back against one of the capstans, a pad supported on his knees, a pencil in his hand. He had not heard her approach, and in a swift, appraising glance, she was able to take stock of him before herself being seen.

He was a slender-looking boy of twelve or thereabouts. He had a mat of thick, short, curly black hair. The color of his eyes she could not see for the moment, as he had them bent over his work, but she later discovered them to be an intense, deep blue, accentuated by long, dark lashes. But it was his pale, thin face that interested her most, for it was a very beautiful face and its expression was wistful, “sad,” as Marty herself called it. So different was his whole appearance from what she had imagined that she experienced a shock of keen surprise. In the instant that she stood motionless and unobserved, she could not make up her mind whether to go forward and greet him or retreat unnoticed back home and wait for his coming there.

But suddenly he seemed to sense her presence and looked up from his work. In another instant he had scrambled to his feet, dropping his pad and pencil. As she involuntarily came toward him, he held out his hand shyly and said,

“How do you do? I guess you’re Marty Greene, aren’t you? I’m Ted Burnett.”

“Why—why—how did you know my name?” stammered Marty, taking his hand. She noticed that his hand, though thin and fragile-looking, had a surprisingly muscular grip. His face lit up with a little smile as he answered:

“Professor Sedgwick has told us all about you—and all about the place here. I feel as if I knew you already quite well!”

Marty was rather stunned. This was something quite different from what she had expected. Far from being the self-important young musical “prodigy” she had expected, he was just a shy young boy trying to be polite. Casting about for some suitable reply, her eye lit on the pad and pencil he had dropped, and he followed her questioning glance.

“I was just working out a little counterpoint,” he informed her. “I got tired walking on the beach and Dad thought I’d better sit here and rest, so I thought I’d work on that counterpoint Monsieur gave me to do. But I didn’t get much done. I’d rather watch the sea and the gulls and the teeter-snipe.”

Marty hadn’t the least idea what “counterpoint” was, but she glanced down at the pad and saw that it was lined with rows and rows of musical staves, on which he had been placing notes and chords.

“Who is Monsieur?” she inquired curiously.

“Oh, I thought you knew!” he said quickly. “He’s Monsieur Aubert, my music-professor. He’s up there at the Station now, having an awful time with the two pianos. He says the moving them down here put them in terrible condition.” Suddenly he changed the subject, commenting shyly, “I like your parrot—Methuselah! I’ve never been near a real, live parrot before—except in the zoo. This one talks so well—and he nearly bit my finger off at lunch time when I tried to give him a cracker. Monsieur tried talking French to him and Methuselah acted very queerly. Didn’t squawk at him at all but just sat staring at him as if he somehow were trying to understand! He’s a queer bird, isn’t he?”

This information rather astonished Marty, who had always sensed that there was something curious about Methuselah and particularly about her grandmother’s reluctance to talk about his origin. Odd that this boy should have hit on the same idea almost at once! She was about to reply that Thusy certainly was queer, when she happened to glance toward the fisherman off at the edge of the surf.

“Look!” she cried. “Your father’s just caught a big fish—I think it’s a striped-bass! Let’s go down and look at it!” And they both hurried off to join Mr. Burnett who had that moment landed his prize—a seven-pounder, and was busy disengaging the hook. Looking up, he saw the pair and called out:

“This is Marty, I know. How do you do? I feel as if I knew you very well already from Professor Sedgwick’s talks about you.” Then he dropped the fish on the sand, wiped his hands on the towel or cloth that all surf-fishermen seemed to have draped on them for that purpose, and held out his hand to Marty.

“Isn’t he a beauty?” he cried, pointing to the bass, whose jewel-like sides glittered in the afternoon sun. “Must be more than six pounds if he weighs an ounce—and he certainly gave me a bit of a battle! I promised Mrs. Greene I’d bring her back a fish for supper, but I guess she didn’t think I’d have ‘beginner’s luck,’ for she said she’d have something else anyway, in case they weren’t biting. We can all make a meal out of this fellow!” The remark about her grandmother suddenly recalled to Marty the fact that she was expected back at home directly on her return from school, so she said something to that effect and offered to carry the fish back with her, that it need not get stale lying on the sand.

But Mr. Burnett laughingly replied, “Indeed I shan’t burden you with this big fellow! A fisherman as proud as I am of his catch always wants to carry it himself. In any case, it’s getting late and the sun is well down and it’s growing a bit chilly. Ted ought to go in, too, so we’ll all go back together.”

While he reeled in his line, and strung a piece of cord through the big fish’s gills, in order to carry it more easily, Marty had a chance to take stock of this new-comer also. She decided that he was a very handsome man, big and stalwart, with a shock of arresting gray hair and clear, penetrating gray eyes. His manner was friendly and wholly natural, and she knew she was going to like him. And as they trudged back across the wide beach to the Station, she was inwardly marveling that, so far, not a word had been said about the talents of the young musical prodigy-no reference at all to his playing. Nor was there the slightest suggestion of “high-hatting anybody” (as she privately called it) or the assuming of any supercilious airs. “Maybe I was mistaken,” she thought. “Maybe it isn’t going to be like that at all!”

As they were crossing the high dunes by the path a short distance from the Station, Professor Aubert came to the door and beckoned and called to Ted to come in for a few moments to try the pianos with him.

“Run along, Ted!” said Mr. Burnett. “You can come back later with Monsieur. But don’t let him keep you too long. We don’t want to keep supper waiting!” The boy left them, and Marty and Mr. Burnett pursued their way together. As they approached the long, winding lane that led to the old house, Mr. Burnett, who had been chatting with Marty about her school activities, suddenly switched the subject and began:

“Now that Ted isn’t with us and we can be alone for a few moments, I want to have a bit of a talk with you, Marty, about that little fellow.”

“Here it comes!” thought Marty. “Now he’s going to tell me what a talented child he is!” She quite regretted that thought later.

“You see,” went on Mr. Burnett, “I feel that I know you very well, through the many fine things I’ve heard about you from Professor Sedgwick. And as the circumstances about Ted are worrying me a great deal, I feel as if I could safely confide in your good judgment. Ted is a rather peculiar little fellow. He has a great musical gift, so I’m told—I know very little about music myself—and he has inherited it directly from his mother, who was a very great and successful musician in the years before I married her. She gave up her musical career when she married me, but when she found that her little son had also inherited her gift, she devoted her time to training him in it, beginning almost from the time he could toddle. And since he seemed to be making such marvelous strides, she was planning to have him give a public recital in New York this year, when he would be twelve.”