Part 20 (2/2)

”Certainly, if you care to.”

”If I could play--” he said, wistfully, ”if I could play like that old man in the church I could thank you.”

”Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but--”

”Yes,” said Bibbs. ”It was the greatest happiness I've ever known.”

It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty, and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything especially significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. ”You'll come after dinner, then?”

”Yes,” he said, not moving. ”Would you mind if I stood here until time to come in?”

She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the response of laughter and a gay gesture of her m.u.f.f toward the lighted windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.

That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.

Music can come into a blank life, and fill it. Everything that is beautiful is music, if you can listen.

There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano. There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.

There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to a sparkling sea. The air about such a woman is bracing, and when she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that the world doesn't like you. You think that perhaps you are a great fellow, after all. Then you come away and feel like a boy who has fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher. You'll be whipped for it--and ought to be.

There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.

But they do not have the ”Greek profile.” I do not believe Helen of Troy had a ”Greek profile”; they would not have fought about her if her nose had been quite that long. The Greek nose is not the adorable nose. The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch shorter.

Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the piano. Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a machine-shop into music. But not if he had to work in it. Wagner was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.

There is a mystery about pianos, it seems. Sometimes they have to be ”sent away.” That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.

”Sent away” is a euphuism for ”sent to prison.” But pianos are not sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is sent to them. Why are pianos ”sent away”--and where?

Sometimes a glorious day s.h.i.+nes into the most ordinary and useless life. Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing. And the night after such a day is l.u.s.trous and splendid with the memory of it. Music and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things G.o.d can give us. To bring them all in one day to one who expected nothing--ah! the heart that received them should be as humble as it is thankful. But it is hard to be humble when one is so rich with new memories. It is impossible to be humble after a day of glory.

Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter than the Greek nose. It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.

There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a conquering hero. But the sick tramp had better remember that's what he is. Take care, take care! Humble's the word!

CHAPTER XVII

That ”mystery about pianos” which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until after midnight in the library, talking. And in all that time they found not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed with everything and with every phase of everything that they discussed--no extraordinary state of affairs in a family which has always ”held up its head,”

only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can do is to look on helplessly at the processes of its own financial dissolution. For that was the point which this despairing couple had reached--they could do nothing except look on and talk about it. They were only vaporing, and they knew it.

”She needn't to have done that about her piano,” vapored Mr. Vertrees.

”We could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with the--the dealer.”

”She thought that it might be--annoying for you,” Mrs. Vertrees explained. ”Really, she planned for you not to know about it until they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this morning. She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--”

”Well?” he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.

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