Clara Burnham - The Key Note

"Yes, she is a brilliant, fearless sort of woman," said Philip. "I shouldn't wonder if she gave Gayne a disagreeable quarter of an hour before she gets through with him."

"One has to exercise care, however," returned Diana, "lest the man become angered and visit his ill-humor on the boy. I am often obliged to constrain myself to civility when I yearn to hurl – " she hesitated.

"Plates? Oh, do say you long to throw a plate at him!"

Diana gave her remote moonbeam smile.

"I must admit that 'invective' was in my mind. A rather strong word for girls to use."

"A splendid word. A good long one, too. You might try hurling polysyllables at him some day and see him blink."

Diana shook her head. "That sort of man is a pachyderm. He would never flinch at verbal missiles. Since you must go, I wish some other agreeable man would join our group and converse with him at table."

Philip smiled. "Surely you have noticed that Miss Emerson is not averse to assuming all responsibility?"

"Mr. Barrison," said Diana gravely, "I hope when I am – am elderly and unmarried, that I shall not seek to attract men."

"Miss Wilbur," returned Philip, with a solemnity fitting hers, and regarding the symmetry and grace of her lovely head, "don't spend any time worrying about that; for some inner voice assures me that you will never be elderly and unmarried."

"The future is on the knees of the gods," she returned serenely.

"Then I don't need to lose any sleep on account of your posing for one of Mr. Gayne's wonderful sketches?"

Diana brought the brown velvet of her eyes to bear fully upon him. It even seemed hopeful that a spark would glow in them.

"I loathe the man," she said slowly.

"Forgive me, divine one. Well, I must go now. Why won't you take me home? I should like you to meet my grandmother, and think of the pitfalls and mantraps of the island road if I risk myself alone: Bill Lindsay's Ford! Marley Hughes's bicycle! Lou Buell's gray mare taking him to mend somebody's broken pipe! Matt Blake's express wagon! Come and keep my courage up."

"You have a grandmother on this island?"

"I'll prove it if you'll come with me."

Diana smiled and moved along beside him. "It doesn't seem a real, mundane, earthly place to me yet," she said. "It must be wonderful to have a solid pied-à-terre here. They tell me there are many summer cottages, but they are far from our Inn and I haven't realized them yet. I am hoping my parents will consent to purchasing some ground here for me."

"Where do you usually go in summer?"

"Our cottage is at Newport, but I like better Pittsfield, where we go in the autumn."

Philip looked around at her as she moved along through the field beside him. "Is your middle name Biddle?" he asked.

"No, I have no middle name."

"I thought in Philadelphia only the descendants of the Biddles had cottages at Newport and Pittsfield."

Diana smiled. "I know that is a stock bit of humor. What was that about an Englishman who said he had seen Niagara Falls and almost every other wonder of America except a Biddle? He had not yet seen one."

"When do you laugh, Miss Wilbur?" asked Philip suddenly.

"Why, whenever anything amuses me, of course."

"Yet you like the island, although it has never amused you yet. I have lived in the house with you for two weeks and I haven't heard you laugh."

Diana looked up at him and laughed softly. "How amusing!" she said.

He nodded. "It's very good-looking, very. Do that again sometime. How did you happen to run away from family this season?"

"I was tired and almost ill, and some people at home had been here and told me about it. So I came, really incontinently. I did not wait to perfect arrangements, and when I arrived in a severe rainstorm one evening, I found great kindness at the house my friends had told me of, but no clean towels. They were going to have a supply later, but meanwhile I lost my heart to the view from our Inn piazza and Miss Burridge found me there one day and took me in for better or for worse. That explains me. Now, what explains your having a grandmother here?"

"Her daughter marrying my father, I imagine. My grandfather was a sea-captain, Cap'n Steve Dorking. He had given up the sea by the time I came along."

"Here? Were you born here?"

"Yes."

"That explains the maritime tints in your eyes. Even when they laugh the sparkle is like the sun on the water. Continue, please."

"Well, my father, who came here to fish, met my mother, fell in love, married her, and took her away. He was very clever at everything except making money, it seems, so my mother came home within a year to welcome me on to the planet. My grandfather had a small farm, and I was his shadow and one of his 'hands' until I was eight years old."

"Was it a happy life?"

"It was. I remember especially the smell of Grammy's buttery, sweet-smelling cookies, and gingerbread, and apple pies with cinnamon. It smells the same way now. Do you wonder I like to come back?"

"You stimulate my appetite," said Diana.

"Oh, she'll give you some. There were many jolly things in those days to brighten the life of a country boy. The way the soft grass felt to bare feet in the spring, and in the frosty autumn mornings when we went to the yard to milk and would scare up the cows so those same bare feet could stand in the warm place where the cows had lain. Then came winter and snowdrifts – making snow huts and coasting down the hills. Sliding and skating on the ice-filled hollows. It was all great. I'm glad I had it."

"You test my credulity, Mr. Barrison, when you speak of ice and snow in this poetic home of summer breezes."

He looked down at her. "We will have a winter house-party at Grammy's sometime and convince you."

"So at eight years of age you went out into the world?"

"Yes, at my dear mother's apron strings. My father had spent some time with us every year and at last secured a living salary and took us to town. The first thing I did in the glitter of the blinking lamp-posts was to fall in love. I prayed every night for a long time that I might marry that girl. She had long curls and I reached just to her ear. I received her wedding cards a year or so ago. I was always praying for something, but only one of my prayers has ever been answered. I was always very devout in a thunderstorm, and I prayed that I might not be struck by lightning and I never have been yet."

"When was your wonderful voice discovered?"

"Look here, Miss Wilbur, you are tempting me to a whole biography, and it isn't interesting."

"Yes, I am interested in – in your mother."

"My poor mother," said Philip, in a different tone. "When I was twelve years old my father was taken ill and soon left us. My mother had to struggle and I had to stop school and go to work. The first job I got was lathing a house. I walked seven miles into the country and put the laths on that house. I worked hard for a whole week and received twelve dollars and seventy-five cents. It was a ten-dollar gold piece, two silver dollars, fifty cents, and a quarter."

Diana lifted sympathetic eyes.

"I bought a suit of clothes and gave up the gold piece. The perfect lady clerk failed to give me credit for it and six months afterward the store sent the bill to my mother. I put up a heated argument, you may be sure, and before the matter was settled, the perfect lady clerk skipped with another woman's husband. So the powers inclined to believe me rather than her."

"Poor little boy," put in Diana. "But your music?"

"Yes. Well, our minister's wife took an interest in me and gave me lessons on the organ. I never would practice, though. I would pick out hymns with one finger while I stood on one foot and pumped the pedal with the other. It was results I was after; but the cornet allured me, and I learned to play that well enough to join the Sunday-School orchestra.