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THE KEY NOTE
A Novel
by
CLARA LOUISE BURNHAM
[Illustration: Logo]
Boston and New York
Houghton Mifflin Company
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1921
Copyright, 1921, by Clara Louise Burnham
All Rights Reserved
TO
JOSEPHINE
CONTENTS
I. THE RAPSCALLION 1
II. VERONICA 19
III. A FRIENDLY PACT 45
IV. BIOGRAPHY 70
V. A FIRELIGHT INTERVIEW 90
VI. THE HAUNTED FARM 110
VII. ANOTHER WOUND 125
VIII. SKETCHES 137
IX. A WORKING PLAN 151
X. NICHOLAS GAYNE CONFIDES 164
XI. THE NEWPORT LETTER 181
XII. COUSIN HERBERT 194
XIII. THE LAW 208
XIV. THE WILL 222
XV. A SUDDEN JOURNEY 234
XVI. THE NEW CLIENT 246
XVII. THE HEIR 262
XVIII. DIANA'S IDEAL 276
XIX. MOONLIGHT 293
XX. REUNION 303
XXI. GOOD-BYES 317
XXII. THE DINNER PARTY 329
XXIII. THE MOON-GODDESS 345
THE KEY NOTE
CHAPTER I
THE RAPSCALLION
The sea glittered in all directions. The grassy field, humpy with knolls
and lumpy with gray rock, sloped down toward the near-by water. Bunches
of savin and bay and groups of Christmas trees flourished in the fresh
June air, and exhilarating balsamic odors assailed Miss Burridge's
nostrils as she stood in the doorway viewing the landscape o'er and
reflectively picking her teeth with a pin.
"It's an awful sightly place to fail in, anyway," she thought.
Her one boarder came and stood beside her. She was a young woman with a
creamy skin, regular features, dark, dreaming eyes, and a pleasant, slow
smile.
"Are you gathering inspiration, Miss Burridge?" she asked, settling a
white tam-o'-shanter on her smooth brown locks.
"I hope so, Miss Wilbur. I need it."
"How could any one help it!" was Diana Wilbur's soft exclamation, as she
took a deep breath and gazed at the illimitable be-diamonded blue.
Priscilla Burridge turned her middle-aged gaze upon the enthusiasm of
the twentieth year beside her.
"Do you know of any inspiration that would make me able to get the
carpenter to come and jack up the saggin' corner of that piazza?" she
asked. "Or get the plumber to mend the broken pipe in the kitchen?"
Miss Wilbur's dreaming gaze came back to the bony figure in brown
calico.
"It seems almost sacrilege, doesn't it," she said in a voice of awe, "to
speak of carpenters and plumbers in a place like this? Such odors, such
crystal beauty untouched by the desecrating hand of man."
Miss Priscilla snorted. "If I don't get hold of the desecrating hand of
man pretty soon, you'll be havin' a stream o' water come down on your
bed, the first rain."
The girl's attitude of adoration remained unchanged.
"I noticed that little rift," she said slowly. "As I lay in bed this
morning, I looked up at a spot of sapphire that seemed like a day-star
full of promise of this transcendent beauty."
Miss Wilbur's pretty lips moved but little when she spoke and her slow
utterance gave the effect of a recitation.
Miss Priscilla, for all her harassment, could not forbear a smile.
"I'm certainly glad you're so easily pleased, but you don't know Casco
Bay as well as I do, or that day-star would look powerful stormy to you.
When it rains here, all other rains are mere imitations. It comes down
from the sky and up from the ground, and the wind blows it east and
west, and the porch furniture turns somersets out into the field, and
windows and doors go back on you and give up the fight and let the water
in everywhere, while the thunder rolls like the day o' judgment."
The ardent light in the depths of the young girl's eyes glowed deeper.
"I should expect a storm here to be inexorably superb!" she declared.
Miss Priscilla heaved a sigh, half dejection, half exasperation, and
turned into the house.
"Drat that plumber!" she said. "I've only had a few days of it, but I'm
sick of luggin' water in from that well."
"Why, Miss Burridge," said her boarder solicitously, "I haven't fully
realized--let me bring in a supply."
"No, no, indeed, Miss Wilbur," exclaimed Miss Priscilla, as she moved
through the living-room of the house into the kitchen, closely followed
by Diana. "It ain't that I ain't able to do it, but it makes me darned
mad when I know there's no need of it."
"But I desire to, Miss Burridge," averred the young girl. "Any form of
movement here cannot fail to be one of joy." She seized an empty bucket
from the sink and went out the back door.
Small groves of evergreen dotted the incline behind the house, and on
the right hand soon became a wood-road of stately fir and spruce, which
led to a sun-warmed grassy slope which, like every hill of the lovely
isle, led down to the jagged rocks that fringed its irregular shore.
"My muscular strength is not excessive," panted Diana, struggling up to
the back door with her heavy bucket. "I'll fill it only half-full next
time."
"You ain't goin' to fill it at all," declared Miss Priscilla
emphatically, taking the pail from her. "That'll last me a long time,
and when it's gone, I'll get more myself. 'T ain't that it does me a bit
of hurt, but it riles me when I know there ain't any need of it."
She set the pail down beside the sink, filled the kettle from it, and
set it on the oil stove while Diana sat down on the back doorstep. Then
she proceeded:
"One o' the most disagreeable things about this world is that we do seem
to need men. They're strong and they don't wear skirts to stumble on,
and when they're willin' and clever, they certainly do fill a need; but
it does seem as if they were created to disappoint women. They don't
know any more about keepin' their promises than they do about the other
side o' the moon."
Diana nodded. "It is observable, I think," she said, "that men's natural
regard for ethics is inferior to that of women."
Miss Priscilla sniffed. "Now it isn't only the plumber and the
carpenter. I came here and saw 'em both over a month ago and explained
my needs; explained that I ain't calc'latin' to take in boarders to
break their legs on broken piazzas, or drown 'em in their beds. I
explained all this when I rented the house, and when I arrived this week
I naturally expected to find those things attended to; and there's Phil
Barrison, too. I've known him most of his life. He has relatives here on
the island, and when I heard he was comin' to stay with 'em on his
vacation, I asked him if he wouldn't be a kind of a handy-man to me and
he said he would. He got here before I did, but far as I can make out
he's been fishin' ever since. A lot of help he's been. Oh, I knew well
enough he was a broken reed. If ever a rapscallion lived, Phil's it.
'Tain't natural for any young one to be so smart as he was. Do you
believe in school he found out that by openin' and shuttin' his
geography real slow, he could set the teacher to yawnin', and, of
course, she'd set the rest of 'em off, and Phil just had a beautiful
time. His pranks was always funny ones."
Diana Wilbur gave her slow, rare smile. "What an interesting bit of
hypnosis!" she remarked.
"Hey? Well, when that boy got older, he was real ambitious to study.
He's got one o' those voices that ought to belong to a cherubim instead
of a limb like him, and he wanted lessons. So he got the job of janitor
in our church one winter. I got onto him later. When he'd oversleep some
awful cold mornin' and arrive too late to get the furnace to workin'
right, that rascal would drive the mercury up and loosen the bulb of the
thermometer so that when the folks came in and went over to it to see
just how cold they _was_ goin' to be, they'd see it register over
sixty-five and of course they'd take their seats real satisfied."
Miss Wilbur smiled again. "Your friend certainly showed great resource
and ingenuity. When those traits are joined to lofty principle, they
should lift him to heights of success. Oh,"--the speaker's attitude and
voice suddenly changed, and she lifted her finger to impose silence on
the cooking utensils which Miss Burridge was dropping into the
sink,--"listen!"
Mingled with the roulade of a song sparrow on the roof, came the flute
of a human voice sounding and approaching through the field.
"Thou'rt like unto a flower,
So pure, so sweet, so fair--"
The one road of the island swept over a height at some distance behind
the house and the singer had left it, and was striding down the incline
and through the meadow toward Miss Burridge's. The still air brought the
song while the singer was still hidden, but at last the girl saw him,
and the volume of rich tone increased. At last he came bounding up the
slope over which Diana had struggled with her heavy bucket a few minutes
before, and then paused at sight of the stranger.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered youth in a dark-blue flannel shirt and
nondescript trousers. He was bareheaded, and locks of his thick blond
hair were tumbling over his forehead. He looked at Diana with curious,
unembarrassed blue eyes, and, lips parted, stopped in the act of
speaking.
Miss Burridge came to the door. "Well, at last, Phil," she remarked.
"I only just heard this morning that you had come," he said. "Here's a
peace offering." He lifted the two mackerel that were hanging from his
hand.
"Beauties," vouchsafed Miss Burridge. "Are they cleaned?"
"Well, if you don't look a gift horse--"
"Well, now, I ain't goin' to clean 'em," said Miss Burridge doggedly.
"I've been rubbed the wrong way ever since I landed--"
Philip laughed. "And you won't do it to them, eh? Well, I guess I can
rub 'em the wrong way for you--" His unabashed eyes were still regarding
Diana as impersonally as though they had both been children of five.
"Excuse me, I am obstructing the passage," said the girl, rising.
"This is Miss Diana Wilbur, Phil. I suppose you're Mr. Barrison now
that you have sung in New York."
The young fellow bowed to the girl who acknowledged the greeting.
"What is the name of those beautiful creatures?" she asked with her
usual gentle simplicity of manner.
"These? Oh, these are mackerel."
"Jewels of the deep, surely," she said.
"They are rather dressy," returned Philip.
Diana bathed him in the light of her serene brown gaze.
"I am so ignorant of the names of the denizens of the sea," she said. "I
come from Philadelphia."
Philip returned her look with dancing stars in his eyes. "I'd have said
Boston if you only wore eyeglasses."
"Oh, that _is_ the humorous tradition, is it not?" she returned.
"Now, don't you drip 'em in here," said Miss Burridge, as the young
fellow started to enter the kitchen door. "If you're really goin' to be
clever and clean 'em, I'll give you the knife and everything right
outdoors."
"Then I think I would better withdraw," said Diana hastily. "I cannot
bear to see the mutilation of such a rich specimen of Nature's
handiwork; but, oh, Mr. Barrison, not without one word concerning the
heavenly song that floated across the field as you came. Miss Burridge
calls you Phil;--'Philomel with melody!' _I_ should say. Au revoir. I
will go down among the pebbles for a while."
She vanished, and Philip regarded Miss Burridge, who returned his gaze.
"_Good night!_" he said at last.
"Sh! Sh!" warned Miss Priscilla, and tiptoed across the kitchen. When
she had looked from a window and seen her boarder's sweater and tam
proceeding among the grassy hummocks toward the sea, she returned,
bringing out the materials for Philip's operations on the fish.
"I'll bring a rhetoric instead of finny denizens of the deep, the next
time I come," he continued, settling to his job.
Miss Priscilla took her boarder's deserted seat on the doorstep.
"Going to open a young ladies' seminary here, and got the teacher all
secured?"
"Nothing of the kind, Phil, and there's only one explanation of her,"
declared Miss Priscilla impressively. "You've been in art galleries and
seen these statues of Venus and Apollo and all that tribe?"
"I have."
"Well, sir, all I can think of is that one o' their Dianas got down off
her perch some dark night, and managed to get hold o' some girl clothes,
and came here to this island. She _says_ she has come to recuperate from
unwise vigils caused by vaulting ambition at school. I said it over to
myself till I learned it."
"_I_ should say her trouble might be indigestion from devouring
dictionaries," remarked Philip.
"Well, anyway, she's a sweet girl and it's all as natural as breathing
to her. At first I accused her in my own mind of affectation, but,
there! she hasn't got an affected bone in her body, and she's willin'
and simple as a child. You'd ought to 'a' seen her luggin' water up the
hill for me this mornin'. That reminds me. You promised to give me a
lift this summer when I needed it."
"At so much a lift," remarked Philip.
"Of course. Well, the first thing I want you to do is to get the
carpenter and the plumber and knock their heads together, and then bring
'em here, one in each hand, so's I can have my house ready when the
folks come. Why, my new stove ain't even put up. Mr. Buell, the
plumber, promised me faithful he'd come this mornin'. I'm cookin' on an
old kerosene stove there was here and managin' to keep Miss Wilbur from
sheer starvation."
"Miss Wilbur? Is that the fair Diana? Where did you get the 'old
master'? Did she find you waiting when she got off the pedestal?"
"No, I found her waiting. She came to the island on a misunderstandin'.
There wasn't any one ready so early in the season to make strangers
comfortable, and it seems she took a fancy to this place and I found her
here sittin' on the steps when I arrived. She said she had been on the
island a week and had walked up to this piazza every pleasant day, and
she'd like to live here."
"Did she really say it as plain as that?"
"Well--I don't suppose those were her exact words, but she made me
understand that she was willin' to come right in for better or for worse
just so's she could have a room up there in front where the dawn--yes,
she said something about the dawn, I forget whether it was purple or
rosy--"
"Mottled, perhaps," suggested Philip.
"Well, anyway, I told her the dawn came awful early in the day this part
o' the year, and that probably she'd be better satisfied in one o' the
back rooms; but she was firm on the _dawn_, so she's got it. But I draw
the line at her gettin' midnight shower-baths, and that's what she will
get if that wretch of a Matt Blake don't get here before the next storm
and put on the shingles."
"And I have to tell the plumber that you have to 'haul water' too. Is
that it? The well is some little distance. Rather hard on the statue,
wasn't it, to do the hauling? She'll wish she'd stayed in the gallery.
I'll bring in a lot before I go."
"Don't go, Philip," begged Miss Priscilla. "Supposin' you don't go, not
till you can leave me whole-footed. The men'll come sooner and work
better if they know there's a man here. Your grandma won't care if her
visit's interrupted for a little while. I'll feed you with your own
mackerel and you can bet I know how to cook 'em."
"Do you think Matt Blake realizes that I'm a man?" The teeth Philip
showed in his smile were an asset for a singer. "He helped teach me to
walk, you know."
"Well, now, you teach _him_" retorted Miss Priscilla. "Show him how to
walk in this direction. I don't want to make a fizzle of this thing. I
found there wa'n't anybody goin' to run the place this summer, so I
thought it might be a good job for me. I never took a thought that it
was goin' to be so hard to get help. They tell me there ain't any
servants any more; and there are enough folks writin' for rooms to fill
me up entirely. I can do the _cookin'_ myself--"
"Now, Miss Burridge, you aren't leading up to asking me to put on an
apron and wait on table, are you? You must remember I'm recuperating
also from a too vaulting ambition."
"Recuperatin', nothin'! You're the huskiest-lookin' thing I ever saw.
No, I ain't goin' to ask you to wait on table; but I've got an idea.
We're too out o' the way here for me to get college boys. They'd rather
go to the mountains and so on--fashionable resorts. But I've got a
niece, if she don't feel too big of herself to do that sort of thing;
she might come. I'm goin' to ask her anyway. I haven't seen her for
years 'cause her mother's been gone a long time and her father went out
to Jersey to live, but I've no doubt she's a nice girl. Her name's
Veronica. Isn't that a beater? I told my sister I couldn't see why she
didn't name her Japonica and be done with it."
"It's the name of a saint," remarked Philip.
"Well, I hope she's enough of one to come and help me out. I'm goin' to
ask her."
"Better get Miss Wilbur to write her about the rosy dawn and the jeweled
denizens. I'm afraid you'll be too truthful and tell about the leaks.
With an 'old master' and a saint, you ought to get on swimmingly."
"Well, will you stay with me a few days?" said Miss Priscilla coaxingly.
"If I had a rapscallion to add to the menagerie--"
"Do you mean ménage, Miss Burridge?"
"I'll call it anything in the world you like, if you'll only stand by
me, Phil."
"All right." The young fellow tossed the second cleaned fish on to the
plate. "Let me wash my hands and I'll go and throw out a line for the
plumber."
"You're a good boy," returned Miss Burridge, relieved. "I do think,
Philip, that in the main you are a good boy! Who's that comin' over?"
Miss Burridge craned her neck and narrowed her eyes the better to
observe a bicycle which appeared across the field.
The apparition of any human being was exciting to one responsible for
the comfort of others in this Arcadia, where modern conveniences could
only be obtained by effort both spasmodic and continuous.
"Oh, it's Marley Hughes from the post-office."
A youngster of fourteen came wheeling nonchalantly over the bumps of the
field, and finally jumped off his machine and came leisurely up the rise
among the trees.
"I hoped you might be Matt Blake," said Miss Priscilla. "He's got as far
as to have the shingles here."
"Well, I ain't," remarked Marley in the pleasant, drawling, leisurely,
island voice.
"What you got for me?" inquired Miss Burridge.
"Telegram." The boy brought the store envelope from his pocket.
"Oh, I hate 'em," said Miss Burridge apprehensively.
Marley held it aggravatingly away from Philip's extended hand. "Take it
back if you want me ter," he said with a grin. "It's ten cents anyway,
whether you take it or not."
"Oh, yes, I've got the money right here." Miss Priscilla turned to a
shelf over the sink and took a dime from a purse which lay there.
"Here." She gave it to Marley, who without more ado jumped on his wheel
and coasted down among the trees and off over the soft grass.
"You open it, Phil. My spectacles ain't here anyway," said Miss
Priscilla anxiously.
So Philip tore open the envelope. The look of amazement which overspread
his face as the message greeted him caused Miss Burridge to exclaim
fearfully: "Speak out, speak out, Phil."
"They must have taken this down wrong at the store," he said. Then he
read the scrawled words slowly. "'Look in broiler oven for legs.'"
The cryptic sentence appeared to have a magical effect upon Miss
Priscilla. Her face beamed and she threw up her hands in thanksgiving.
"Glory be!" she exclaimed devoutly.
"What am I stumbling on?" said Philip. "Have you taken to wiring in
cipher?"
"You _see_" said Miss Priscilla excitedly, reaching for the telegram
which Philip yielded, "it _came_ without any _legs_. Mr. Buell himself
looked it over on the wharf and said he couldn't find 'em anywhere; and,
of course, it was a terrible anxiety to me and I wrote to them right
off, and I was goin' to get Mr. Buell to set it up without the legs if
necessary and stick somethin' else under. Come and help me look, Phil."
Miss Burridge seized the young fellow's arm and dragged him into the
kitchen, where in one corner reposed the new stove in its shining
newness, its parts piled ignominiously lop-sided. Talking all the time,
its owner pulled open one door after another, as Philip disengaged them,
and at last she laid hands on the missing treasure.
"Now I'll give you as good a dinner as ever comes off this stove if
you'll go and get those men and bring 'em up here," she said. "Don't
leave me till I'm whole-footed, Phil."
"Want feet as well as legs, do you?" he chuckled. "All right. See you
later if I can get Blake and Buell. If I can't, I suppose I'd better
drown myself."
"No, no, don't do that, Phil. _You're_ better than nothing, yourself."