Part 24 (1/2)
”You look as if your name ought to be Algernon.”
”Why?” he asked, laughing.
”Oh, I don't know. It's the name of a man in a book I read--an Englishman. You're English, you said.”
”Half English,” said Peter.
”What's the other half?”
”Russian.” He knew that he ought to be lying to her, but somehow he couldn't.
”Russian! I thought Russians all had long hair and carried bombs.”
”Some of 'em do. I'm not that kind. The half of me that's English is the biggest half, and the safest.”
”I'm glad of that. I'd hate to think of you as bein' a Bolshevik.”
”H-m. So would I.”
”But Russia's where you get your music from, isn't it? The band leader at Gla.s.sboro is a Russian. He can play every instrument. Did you learn music in Russia?”
Beth was now treading dangerous ground and so it was time to turn the tables.
”Yes, a little,” he said, ”but music has no nationality. Or why would I find a voice like yours out here?”
”Twenty miles from nowhere,” she added scornfully.
”How did you come here, Beth? Would you mind telling me? You weren't born here, were you? How did you happen to come to Black Rock?”
”Just bad luck, I guess. n.o.body'd ever come to Black Rock just because they want to. We just came. That's all.”
”Just you and Aunt Tillie? Is your father dead?” he asked.
She closed her eyes a moment and then clasped her knees again.
”I don't like to talk about family matters.”
”Oh, I----”
And then, gently, she added,
”I never talk about them to any one.”
”Oh, I'm sorry,” said Peter, aware of the undercurrent of sadness in her voice. ”I didn't know that there was anything painful to you----”
”I didn't know it myself, until you played it to me, just now, the piece with the sad, low voices, under the melody. It was like somebody dead speakin' to me. I can't talk about the things I feel like that.”
”Don't then----Forgive me for asking.”
He laid his fingers softly over hers. She withdrew her hand quickly, but the look that she turned him found his face sober, his dark eyes warm with sympathy. And then with a swift inconsequential impulse born of Peter's recantation,