Part 28 (1/2)

Perhaps you happened to see her when she stepped out on that vast stage, looking tinier than she really was, with the lights s.h.i.+ning on her satin-smooth hair and white neck, with the coral comb and the carved bracelets making bright spots of color. Do you remember how her wide green skirts spread about her as she made her deep curtsy? Do you remember her smile? Or were you rustling your program until you heard that deep contralto voice of hers beginning with,

”What I am going to do for you I shall have to explain a little.”

There was a bald grouchy human in the front row, he honestly believed she was talking just to him! He leaned forward. ”I am going to do some songs for you but I can't exactly sing--” The bald man grunted, he considered that plain foolishness and it was! ”But I can play this lute a little--and I can whistle--”

”Louder!” called the voices at the rear.

She lifted her chin defiantly.

”Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Maybe some of them are deaf like the Wheezy's friends, oh dear! How slowly I must speak!” she admonished herself in her thoughts. Her knees were shaking. But her voice lifted itself a bit; she enunciated carefully,

”These are not new songs, they are just songs you know. So you'd better not look at me while I do them. You'd better shut your eyes and pretend--oh, I _do_ hope you're good at pretending--you must pretend that you are seeing the first person you heard sing these songs for you when you were little. The first one I heard, Marthy sang. Marthy was lean and small and ra-ther old. She lived over our stable in the cleanest rooms! With red geraniums in the windows!”

Oh, do you remember the adorable way she took you into her confidence?

Do you remember how strangely familiar she seemed?

”Marthy used to sing 'Cherry Ripe.' Do you know it?” she asked so anxiously that one sympathetic soul murmured ”yes” and hid her confusion in a cough as Mademoiselle Folly began,

”It's about a young man who thinks his sweetheart's lips are like big ripe cherries, so he sings,

”'Cherry Ripe, Cherry Ripe, Who will buy my cherries?'”

She hummed the tune tentatively. She swung the narrow green ribbon of the lute over her shoulders and her fingers touched the strings. And then suddenly the soft flute-like trill of her wonderful whistle was wafted out toward them.

Ah, who can describe the miracle, the mystery whereby her simple songs made them all feel young again! She was just a little seamstress, aged twenty-seven, who had lived an unreal life of sentiment and dreams and memories and they were just a sophisticated, tired, jaded audience.

Some of them twisted their lips and scoffed. Some of them weren't especially moved by ”Cherry Ripe,” but the bald man in the front row pattered his hands together before she was through bowing and noisily told his neighbors,

”Gee, that's the stuff. You can't beat the old stuff! S'lovely stuff--”

A few pioneers about him pattered too. It was enough to encourage Felicia. She smiled.

She was still frightened but her voice was firmer. ”If you liked that one, maybe you will like the song about Robin Adair. There was a young woman a long time ago, who loved a man named Robin Adair. You see he went on a journey, I imagine a long journey--” Ah, Felice! he'd gone on a very long journey, that Robin Adair! A journey that a generation of rag-times and turkey-trots and walkin'-dogs had almost obliterated.

Yet from the tone of her voice they suddenly were very sorry that Robin had gone a journey. ”So the young lady sang a song asking

'What's this dull town to me?

Robin's not here--'

Like this it goes.”

This time she did not use the lute but put it down carefully and folded her hands quietly together. Her own repose made it easy for her listeners to rest until the last questioning trill had died away. The applause was louder this time. Some of them were talking delightedly and the rising murmur of their approval warmed her trembling heart.

”Another! Another!” called her excitable bald friend.

”It's vairee good of you to like them. Do you think you'd enjoy a French one now? That is if it isn't ten minutes. They told me to do this for ten minutes--”

The intimate way she took them into her thoughts made even the most sceptical of them lean back and smile. If they felt like questioning the genuineness of her feeling it could only be explained on the ground of consummate art and either way it was something they didn't want to lose.

”Margot taught me this one. It is about a forest. I heard it first vairee early in the morning, the first morning I evaire did see a forest. Pretend you can see it. It was spring before the leaves had come but the tops of the trees were swaying and the branches had the colors you see when you dream--and the wind was warm and sweet and sighing. And on a maple tree a blackbird whistled--so--and in the s.h.i.+ning melted snow-pools the little green frogs made this kind of noises--and down in the old stone stable two little new lambs were crying--it was a wonderful spring! You must pretend you can see Margot sitting in a gray stone doorway sorting seed in a little broken brown basket. Margot is ra-ther brown herself, but she has gray hair and black eyes and she's fat and she wears a blue dress, vairee old and clean and faded and a big white ap.r.o.n. Her voice isn't pretty I'm afraid, but her song is. Her song is the oldest song I've evaire heard. There was a Frenchman, Maitre Guerdon, who made it a long time ago. He was a fine gentleman with ruffles of lace on his sleeves and he had a lute--perhaps like this--” she picked up hers again ”and what he says in his song is that he wants every shepherdess to hasten to pleasure and to be vairee careful about time for Youth alone has time to have fun with. Because, as he tells them, time slips through your fingers like water and then you have nothing left but a sorry old sad feeling. So the best thing that you and the shepherdesses can do is to run around in the spring forests and spend all the time you can--” her voice faltered ”--loving--”

The absurdity of the thing never struck them. Most of them couldn't have endured a forest ten minutes. But she had them completely under her spell and it suddenly seemed the most fascinating thing in this world to be young and ”--run around in a spring forest--loving--”