Fergus Appleton thought he saw "the singing girl" of his voyage from
New York one May day in Wells, where he went to study the cathedral.
He noticed a hansom with a pink-clad figure in the opening, looking
like a rosebud of a new and odd sort on wheels. At least, it looked
like a rosebud at the moment the doors rolled back like the leaves of
a calyx, and the flower issued, triumphant and beautiful. She was
greeted by a tall, stout young lady, who climbed into the hansom, and
the two settled themselves quickly and drove off.
Appleton's hansom followed on its own course, which chanced to be in
the same direction, and he saw the slim and the stout disappear up a
hilly street, at the top of which was a famous old house. He walked
that way in the afternoon, having nothing better to do, but could
observe no dwelling at which the two ladies might be staying. There
was a pretty cottage with a long, graveled pathway leading to it, and
a little sign on the locked gate reading: "Spring Cleaning. Please do
not knock or ring." Farther along was a more pretentious house, so
attractive that he was sorry he had never noticed it before, for the
sign "Apartments to Let" was in one of the front windows. He heard a
piano in the rear somewhere, but on reaching the front door another
sign confronted him: "The parlor maid is slightly deaf. If doorbell is
not answered at once, please step inside and ring the dinner bell on
the hall table."
This somehow required more courage than Appleton possessed, though he
determined to look at the rooms on his next visit, so he stole down
the path and went about his business, wondering why in the world he
had done such a besotted thing as to take a walk among the furnished
lodgings of the cathedral town of Wells.
The summer waxed. He had nearly finished his book, and feeling the
need of some peaceful retreat where he could do the last chapters and
work up his sketches, he took the advice of an English friend and went
down to Devonshire, intending to go from place to place until he found
a hotel and surroundings to his mind.
The very first one pleased his exacting taste, and he felt that the
Bexley Sands Inn would be the very spot in which to write; comfortable
within, a trifle too large, perhaps, and at week-ends too full of
people, but clean, well-kept, and sunny.
It was a Friday evening, and the number of guests who arrived on the
last train from Torquay was rather disturbing. The dining-room service
was not interfered with, but Appleton made up his mind to smoke his
pipe in his own sitting-room and go down to the lounge later to read
the papers, when the crowd might have dispersed. At nine o'clock,
accordingly, he descended, and was preparing to settle himself with
the last "Spectator" when the young lady in the office observed:
"There's a very good concert going on in the drawing-room, sir, if you
enjoy music. No admittance, you know; just a plate at the door as you
leave--quite optional."
Appleton bowed his thanks, filled his pipe, and taking up his
newspaper with a sensation of comfortable idleness, was beginning an
article on the situation in the Balkans, when a voice floated out from
the distant drawing-room, down the long corridor, through the
writing-room into the lounge. It was not a little voice nor a big
voice, it seemed to have no extraordinarily high notes and no low
ones, it did not arrest attention by the agility of its use; but it
was as fresh and young as a bird's and sweeter than honey in the comb.
It began by caroling "My Love's an Arbutus," went on to "The Little
Red Lark" and "The Low-Backed Car," so that Appleton, his head thrown
back in the easy-chair, the smoke wreaths from his pipe circling in
the air, the Balkans forgotten, decided that the singer was Irish.
"A pretty voice, sir," remarked the goddess of the hotel office. "I'm
sorry so many of our guests are playing bowls this evening, and
there's a bridge party of three tables in our first-floor private
sitting-room, or the young lady would have had an audience. She seems
a nice little thing, quite a stranger, with no experience."
If the singer had even a small group of hearers, they were apparently
delighted with "The Low-Backed Car," for with only a second's pause
she gave "The Minstrel Boy." A certain individual quality of tone and
spirit managed to bridge the distance between the drawing-room and
lounge; or perhaps it was the piano accompaniment, so beautifully
played that one could almost imagine it a harp; or was it that the
words were so familiar to Appleton that every syllable was understood,
so that the passion and fire of the old song suffered no loss?
"The minstrel fell, but the foeman's chain
Could not bring that proud soul under!
The harp he loved ne'er spoke again,
For he tore its chords asunder."
"It's a pity her programme is so old-fashioned," said the young lady
of the office, passing his chair to give an order to the page. "It's
true only the elderly people went in, but our week-enders are very
up-to-date in everything. There's a lot of Londoners here, and those
from Torquay are frightfully musical. If they don't get Debewssy, it
seems they think nothing of the programme."
"Well, I confess that Debussy seems a trifle alien to this time and
place," said Appleton, "and these old ballads suit my taste much
better. I think I'll take a nearer view."
He shoved his pipe into its case and strolled down the corridor,
pausing behind the heavy velvet portieres that shut off the
drawing-room. There was no buzz of conversation going on, because
there was not a sufficient number of persons to buzz. A very quiet,
stodgy audience it was, with no friendly grouping; just a few old
gentlemen here and a few old ladies there, sometimes with their
prematurely aged and chastened paid companions by their sides. There
were some girls of fifteen or sixteen, too, scattered about, a few of
them accompanied by prim governesses.
Appleton heard the entrance of some one from the anteroom beyond the
grand piano, then a few chords, struck by hands that loved the ivory
keys and evoked a reciprocal tenderness every time they touched them;
then:
"Near Woodstock Town in Oxfordshire
As I walked forth to take the air,
To view the fields and meadows round,
Methought I heard a mournful sound."
So the chronicle ran on until the crisis came:
"The lady round the meadow ran,
And gathered flowers as they sprang.
Of every sort she there did pull
Until she got her apron full."
The history of the distracted lady's unhappy passion persevered:
"The green ground served her as a bed,
The flowers a pillow for her head.
She laid her down and nothing spoke.
Alas! for love her heart was broke."
Appleton was at first too enchanted with the mischievous yet
sympathetic rendition of this tragedy to do anything but listen. The
voice, the speech, were so full of color and personality he forgot for
the moment that there would be a face behind them; but there was an
irresistible something in the line, "Until she got her apron full,"
that forced him to peep behind the curtain just in time to catch the
singer's smile.
As this is not a story of plot, suspense, or mystery, there is no
earthly use in denying that the lady in question was Miss Thomasina
Tucker, nor any sense in affirming that her appearance in Fergus
Appleton's hotel was in the nature of a dramatic coincidence, since
Americans crossing the Atlantic on the same steamer are continually
meeting in the British Isles and on the Continent.
Appleton was pleased to see the girl again because he had always liked
her face, and he was delighted to find that her voice not only
harmonized with it, but increased its charm a hundredfold. Miss Tommy
had several rather uncommon qualities in her equipment. One was that
when she sang a high note she did it without exposing any of the
avenues which led to her singing apparatus. She achieved her effects
without pain to herself or to the observer, just flinging them off as
gayly and irresponsibly as a bird on a bough, without showing any
_modus operandi_. She had tenderness also, and fire, and a sense of
humor which, while she never essayed a "comic" song, served her in
good stead in certain old ballads with an irresistibly quaint twist in
them. She made it perfectly clear that she was sorry for the poor lady
who was running around the meadow preparing her flowery bier, but the
conviction crept over you that she was secretly amused at the same
time. Appleton heard the smile in her voice before he pulled aside the
curtain and saw its counterpart on her face; heard and responded, for
when Tommy tossed a smile at you, you caught it gratefully and tossed
it back in the hope of getting a second and a third.
Another arrow in Tommy's modest quiver was the establishment of an
instantaneous intimacy between herself and her audience. The singing
of her songs was precisely like the narration of so many stories, told
so simply and directly that the most hardened critic would have his
sting removed without being aware of it. He would know that Tommy
hadn't a remarkable voice, but he would forget to mention it because
space was limited. Sometimes he would say that she was an interpreter
rather than a singer, and Tommy, for her part, was glad to be called
anything, and grateful when she wasn't brutally arraigned for the
microscopic size of her talent.
It was Tommy's captivating friendliness and the quality of her smile
that "did" for the shyest and stiffest of men, for by the time she had
finished her programme the thunderbolt, the classic, the eternal
thunderbolt, had fallen, and Fergus Appleton was in love. Tommy began
her unconscious depredations with "Near Woodstock Town" and "Phillida
Flouts Me," added fuel to the flames with "My Heart's in the
Highlands" and "Charlie Is My Darling," and reduced his heart to ashes
with "Allan Water" and "Has Sorrow Thy Young Days Shaded?" The smile
began it, but it was tears that worked the final miracle, though
moisture very rarely has this effect on fires of any sort.
Tommy was tired and a bit disheartened; Appleton, the only responsive
person in the audience, was seated in a far corner of the room,
completely hidden behind a lady of formidable width and thickness, so
the singer could not be expected to feel the tidal waves of
appreciation he was sending toward her, although they ran so high at
one moment that he could have risen to his feet and begged her to
elope with him. The rest of her hearers sat heavily, stodgily in their
seats without moving a muscle, mental, emotional, or physical. They
had no private sitting-rooms, and they might as well be where they
were as anywhere else; that was the idea they conveyed in every
feature of their expressionless faces. An old gentleman in the front
row left the room during the last song on the programme, and Appleton
was beset by, and resisted, a vulgar temptation to put out his foot
and trip him up in the doorway. When Tommy sang:
"Has hope, like the bird in the story,
That flitted from tree to tree
With the talisman's glitt'ring glory,
Has hope been that bird to thee?
On branch after branch alighting,
The gem did she still display,
And when nearest and most inviting,
Then waft the fair gem away."
"Yes, yes, a thousand times yes," answered Fergus Appleton's heart,
for the first time in his life conscious of loneliness, lack of
purpose, lack of anchorage, lack of responsibilities, lack of
everything he had never wanted before, but wanted desperately all at
once, and quite independent of logic.
He slipped out of the door and let the scattered units in the audience
assemble, pass him, and drift down the corridor toward the office and
lounge. To his astonishment and anger they dropped shillings on the
plate, and the young people sixpences and, great Heavens! even
pennies; one half-crown, the tacit apology of the old gentleman who
had left early, was the only respectable offering. Appleton took out a
sovereign, and then was afraid to put it in the collection for fear of
exciting the singer's curiosity, so he rummaged his pockets for
half-crowns and two-shilling pieces. Finding only two or three, he
changed his mind and put back the gold-piece just in time to avoid the
eye of the page, who came to take the offering back to Miss Tucker.
Appleton twisted his mustache nervously, and walked slowly toward the
anteroom with no definite idea in mind, save perhaps that she might
issue from her retreat and recognize him as she passed. (As a matter
of fact she had never once noticed him on the steamer, but the poor
wretch was unconscious of that misfortune!) The page came out, putting
something in his pocket, and left the door half open behind him.
Appleton wheeled swiftly, feeling like a spy, but not until he had
seen Miss Thomasina Tucker take a large copper coin from the plate,
fling it across the room, bury the plate of silver upside down in a
sofa cushion, and precipitate herself upon it with a little quivering
wail of shame, or disappointment, or rage, he could hardly determine
which.
Appleton followed the unfeeling, unmusical, penurious old ladies and
gentlemen back into the lounge, glaring at them as belligerently and
offensively as a gentleman could and maintain his self-respect. Then
he went into the waiting-room and embarked upon a positive orgy of
letter-writing. Looking up from the last of his pile a half-hour
later, he observed the young lady who was unconsciously preventing a
proper flow of epistolary inspiration on his part, seated at a desk in
the opposite corner. A pen was in her right hand, and in her left she
held a tiny embroidered handkerchief, rather creased. Sometimes she
bit the corner of it, sometimes she leaned her cheek upon it,
sometimes she tapped the blotting-pad with the pen-handle, very much
as if she had no particular interest in what she was doing, or else
she was very doubtful about the wisdom of it.
Presently she took some pennies from a small purse, and rising, took
her letters with her with the evident intention of posting them.
Appleton rose too, lifting his pile of correspondence, and followed
close at her heels. She went to the office, laid down threepence, with
her letters, turned, saw Fergus Appleton with the physical eye, but
looked directly through him as if he were a man of glass and poor
quality of glass at that, and sauntered upstairs as if she were
greatly bored with life.
However, the top letter of her three was addressed very plainly to the
"Bishop of Bath and Wells," and Fergus Appleton had known the bishop,
and the bishop's wife, for several years. Accordingly, the post-bag
that night held two letters addressed to the Bishop's Palace, and
there was every prospect of an immediate answer to one of them.