"Can you tell me, madam," asked Gaites of an obviously approachable
tabby next the chimney-corner, "which of the musicians is Miss Desmond?"
He had hurried back to the Inn, and got himself early into a dress suit
that proved wholly inessential, and was down among the first at the hop.
This function, it seemed, was going on in the parlor, which summed in
itself the character of ball-room as well as drawing-room. The hop had
now begun, and two young girl couples were doing what they could to
rebuke the sparse youth of Lower Merritt Inn for their lack of eagerness
in the evening's pleasure by dancing alone. Gaites did not even notice
them, he was so intent upon the ladies of the orchestra, concerning whom
he was beginning to have a troubled mind, not to say a dark misgiving.
"Oh," the approachable tabby answered, "it's the one at the piano. The
violinist is Miss Axewright, of South Newton. They were at the
Conservatory together in Boston, and they are such friends! Miss Desmond
would never have played here--intends to take pupils in Portland in the
winter--if Miss Axewright hadn't come," and the pleasant old tabby
purred on, with a velvety pat here, and a delicate scratch there. But
Gaites heard with one ear only; the other was more devotedly given to
the orchestra, which also claimed both his eyes. While he learned, as
with the mind of some one else, that the Desmonds had been very much
opposed to Phyllis's playing at the Inn, but had consented partly with
their poverty, because they needed everything they could rake and scrape
together, and partly with their will, because Miss Axewright was such a
nice girl, he was painfully adjusting his consciousness to the fact that
the girl at the piano was not the girl whom he had seen at Boston and
whom he had so rashly and romantically decided to be Miss Phyllis
Desmond. The pianist was indeed Miss Desmond, but to no purpose, if the
violinist was some one else; it availed as little that the violinist was
the illusion that had lured him to Lower Merritt in pursuit of Miss
Desmond's piano, if she were really Miss Axewright of South Newton.
What remained for him to do was to arrange for his departure by the
first train in the morning; and he was subjectively accounting to the
landlord for his abrupt change of mind after he had engaged his room for
a week, while he was intent with all his upper faculties upon the
graceful poses and movements of Miss Axewright. There was something so
appealing in the pressure of her soft chin as it held the violin in
place against her round, girlish throat that Gaites felt a lump in his
own larger than his Adam's-apple would account for to the spectator; the
delicately arched wrist of the hand that held the bow, and the
rhythmical curve and flow of her arm in playing, were means of the spell
which wove itself about him, and left him, as it were, bound hand and
foot. It was in this helpless condition that he rose at the urgence of a
friendly young fellow who had chosen himself master of ceremonies, and
took part in the dancing; and at the end of the first half of the
programme, while the other dancers streamed out on the verandas and
thronged the stairways, he was aware of dangling his chains as he
lounged toward the ladies of the orchestra. The volunteer master of
ceremonies had half shut himself across the piano in his eager talk with
Miss Desmond, and he readily relinquished Miss Axewright to Gaites, who
willingly devoted himself to her, after Miss Desmond had risen in
acknowledgment of his bow. He had then perceived that she was not nearly
so tall as she had seemed when seated; and a woman who sat tall and
stood low was as much his aversion as if his own abnormally long legs
did not render him guilty of the opposite offence.
Miss Desmond must have had other qualities and characteristics, but in
his absorption with Miss Axewright's he did not notice them. He saw
again the pretty, pathetic face, the gentle brown eyes, the ordinary
brown hair, the sentient hands, the slight, graceful figure, the whole
undistinguished, unpretentious presence, which had taken his fancy at
Boston, and which he now perceived had kept it, under whatever erring
impressions, ever since.
"I think we have met before, Miss Axewright," he said boldly, and he had
the pleasure of seeing her pensive little visage light up with a
responsive humor.
"I think we have," she replied; and Miss Desmond, whose habitual state
seemed to be intense inattention to whatever directly addressed itself
to her, cut in with the cry:
"You have met _before_!"
"Yes. Two weeks ago, in Boston," said Gaites. "Miss Axewright and I
stopped at the S. B. & H. C. freight-depot to see that your piano
started off all right."
He explained himself further, and, "Well, I don't see what you did to
it," Miss Desmond pouted. "It just got here this afternoon."
"Probably they 'throwed a spell' on it, as the country people say,"
suggested the master of ceremonies. "But all's well that end's well. The
great thing is to have your piano, Miss Phyllis. I'm coming up to-morrow
morning to see if it's got here in good condition."
"That's _some_ compensation," said the girl ironically; and she added,
with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men
the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, "I don't know whether it
won't need tuning first."
"Well, I'm a piano-tunist myself," the young fellow retorted, and their
banter took a course that left Miss Axewright and Gaites to themselves.
The dancers began to stray in again from the stairways and verandas.
"Dear me!" said Miss Desmond, "it's time already;" and as she dropped
upon the piano-stool she called to Miss Axewright with an authority of
tone which Gaites thought augured well for her success as a teacher,
"Millicent!"