Part 3 (2/2)

”I hope so too,” said Anthony March.

John went out and closed the drawing-room door behind him. Then he left the house without going up-stairs and saying h.e.l.lo to Paula and sitting down on the edge of her bed, as he had meant to do, and telling her all about his talk with the piano tuner.

It really was late and he must be getting started. Only why had he closed the drawing-room door so carefully behind him? So that his wife shouldn't be disturbed by the infernal racket those fellows always made tuning pianos? Or so that she mightn't even know, until he had finished his work and gone, that Anthony March had come back at all? And not knowing, should not come down _en negligee_ and ask whether he had brought his songs for her. Had he brought them? Certainly John had given him a good enough chance to say so. And if he had brought them and Paula did not come, would he leave them for her with Nat? Or would he carry them away in his little black satchel?

All the way out to the hospital John kept turning Anthony March over in his mind and the last thing to leave it was what had been the first impression of all. The fine strength of that hand and wrist which tuned grand pianos with a T wrench.

He hated himself for having shut the door.

And as it happened this act did not prevent Paula from finding March. The tyrant who looked after her hair had given her an appointment that morning at ten. So, a little before that hour and just as March was finis.h.i.+ng off his job, she came down, dressed for the street. She came into the drawing-room and with good-humored derision, smiled at him.

”I knew you'd come and do it,” she told him.

”It isn't going to be so bad,” he answered. ”Moszkowski, Chaminade,--quite a little of Chopin for that matter,--will go pretty well on it.”

”Did you bring my songs?” she asked.

From the chair that he had thrown his blouse upon, he produced a flat package neatly wrapped in brown paper. And as she went over to the window with it, tearing the wrappers away as she walked, he went back to his work at the piano.

”Don't do that,” she said, as he struck a chord or two. ”I can't read if you do.” But almost instantly she added with a laugh, ”Oh, all right, go ahead. I can't read this anyway. Why, it's frightful!” She came swiftly toward the piano and stood the big flat quires of score paper on the rack. ”Show me how this goes,” she commanded, but he pushed back a little with a gesture almost of fright.

”No,” he protested sharply. ”I can't. I can't begin to play that stuff.”

She remained standing beside his shoulder, looking at the score.

”They're strange words,” she said, and began reading them to herself, half aloud, haltingly.

”'Low hangs the moon. It rose late, It is lagging--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.'”

”Walt Whitman,” he told her. ”They're all out of a poem called _Sea-Drift_.”

She went on reading, now audibly, now with a mere silent movement of the lips, half puzzled, half entranced, and catching--despite her protest that she could not read the music,--some intimations of its intense strange beauty.

”' ..._do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?... Loud I call to you, my love ... Surely you must know who is here ... O rising stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise ... with some of you ...

O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere_ ...'”

With a shake of the head, like one trying to stop the weaving of a spell, she turned the pages back to the beginning.

”This means Novelli,” she said. ”I'll get him. I'll get him this morning.

He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to you.

Where do you live?”

He got up for a paper and pencil and wrote out an address and a telephone number. She was still staring at that first page of the score when he brought it back to her.

”I've never heard any of those songs myself,” he told her.

At that she looked around at him, looked steadily into his face for a moment and then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out both hands and took him by the shoulders. ”Well, you're going to hear them this time, my dear,” she said. As she moved away, she added in a more matter-of-fact tone, ”Just as soon as we can work them up, in a few days perhaps. I'll let you know.”

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