"Yes; she's engaged to play here the whole summer." The head waiter
fumbled with the knife and fork at the place opposite, and blushed. "But
you'll hear her to-night yourself," he ended incoherently, and hurried
away, to show another guest to his, or rather her, place.
Gaites wondered why he felt suddenly angry; why he resented the head
waiter's blush as an impertinence and a liberty. After all, the fellow
was a student and probably a gentleman; and if he chose to help himself
through college by taking that menial rôle during the summer, rather
than come upon the charity of his friends or the hard-earned savings of
a poor old father, what had any one to say against it? Gaites had
nothing to say against it; and yet that blush, that embarrassment of a
man who had pulled out his chair for him, in relation to such a girl as
Miss Phyllis Desmond, incensed him so much that he could not enjoy his
supper. He did not bow to the head waiter when he held the netting-door
open for him to go out, and he felt the necessity of taking the evening
air in another stroll to cool himself off.
Of course, if the poor girl was reduced to playing in the hotel
orchestra for the money it would give her, she had come down to the
level of the head waiter, and they must meet as equals. But the thought
was no less intolerable for that, and Gaites set out with the notion of
walking away from it. At the station, however, which was in friendly
proximity to the Inn, his steps were stayed by the sound of girlish
voices, rising like sweetly varied pipes from beyond the freight-depot.
Their youth invited his own to look them up, and he followed round to
the back of the depot, where he came upon a sight which had, perhaps
from the waning light, a heightened charm. Against the curtain of low
pines which had been gradually creeping back upon the depot ever since
the woods were cut away to make room for it, four girls were posed in
attitudes instinctively dramatic and vividly eager, while as many men
were employed in getting what Gaites at once saw to be Miss Phyllis
Desmond's piano into the wagon backed up to the platform of the depot.
Their work was nearly accomplished, but at every moment of what still
remained to be done the girls emitted little shrieks, laughs, and moans
of intense interest, and fluttered in their light summer dresses against
the background of the dark evergreens like anxious birds.
At last the piano was got into the middle of the wagon, the inclined
planks withdrawn and loaded into it, and the tail-board snapped to.
Three of the men stepped aside, and one of them jumped into the front of
the wagon and gathered up the reins from the horses' backs. He called
with mocking challenge to the group of girls, "Nobody goin' to git up
here and keep this piano from tippin' out?"
A wild clamor rose from the girls, settling at last into staccato cries.
"You've got to _do_ it, Phyl!"
"Yes, Phyllis, you _must_ get in!"
"It's _your_ piano, Phyl. You've got to keep it from tipping out!"
"No, no! I won't! I can't! I'm not going to!" one voice answered to all,
but apparently without a single reference to the event; for in the end
the speaker gave her hand to the man in the wagon, and with many small
laughs and squeaks was pulled up over the hub and tire of a front wheel,
and then stood staying herself against the piano-case, with a final
lamentation of "Oh, it's a shame! I'll never speak to any of you again!
How perfectly mean! _Oh!_" The last exclamation signalized the start of
the horses at a brisk mountain trot, which the driver presently sobered
to a walk. The three remaining girls followed, mocking and cheering, and
after them lounged the three remaining men, at a respectful distance,
marking the social interval between them, which was to be bridged only
in some such moment of supreme excitement as the present.
It was no question with Gaites whether he should bring up the end of the
procession; he could not think of any consideration that would have
stayed him. He scarcely troubled himself to keep at a fit remove from
the rest; and as he followed in the deepening twilight he felt a sweet,
unselfish gladness of heart that the poor girl whom he had seen so wan
and sad in Boston should be the gay soul of this pretty triumph.
The wagon drove into the grounds of the Desmond cottage, and backed up
to the edge of the veranda. Lights appeared, and voices came from
within. One of the men, despatched to the barn for a hatchet, came
flickering back with a lantern also; lamps brought out of the house were
extinguished by the evening breeze (in spite of luminous hands held near
the chimney to shelter them), amidst the joyful applause of all the
girls and the laughter of the men. A sound of hammering rose, and then a
sound of boards rending from the clutch of nails, and then a sound of
pieces thrown loosely into a pile. There was a continual flutter of
women's dresses and emotions, and this did not end even when the piano,
disclosed from its casing and all its wraps, was pushed indoors, and
placed against the parlor wall, where a flash of lamp-light revealed it
to Gaites in final position.
He lingered still, in the shelter of some barberry-bushes at the cottage
gate, and not till the last cry of gratitude had been answered by the
unanimous disclaimer of the men rattling away in the wagon did he feel
that his pursuit of the piano had ended.