THE CONCERT.
WITHIN the church wonderful things were going on. Jerry had caught
sight of Norm as he slipped up the gallery stairs, and laid his plans
accordingly. He whispered to Nettie during the singing of the closing
hymn, thereby shocking her a little. Jerry did not often whisper in
church.
This was what he said: "Don't you need those lilies to help trim the
room to-morrow night? Let's take them home."
The moment the "amen" was spoken, he dashed out, and was at the stair
door as Norm came down.
"Norm," he said, "won't you help me carry home that tray? We want the
flowers for something special to-morrow."
Said Norm, "O bother! I can't help tote that heavy thing through the
streets."
"What's that?" asked Rick; and when the explanation was briefly made,
he added the little word of advice which so often turns the scales.
"Ho! that isn't much to do when you are going that very road. I'd do
as much as that, any day, for the little chap who gave us such a tall
row." This last was in undertone.
"Well," said Norm, "I don't care; I'll help; but how are we going to
get the things out here?"
"Come inside," answered Jerry; "we can wait in the back seat. They will
all be gone in a few minutes, then we can step up and get the salver."
Once inside the church, the rest followed easily. Mr. Sherrill who had
eyes for all that was going on, came forward swiftly and held a cordial
hand to Norm.
"Good-evening," he said; "I am glad to see you accepted my invitation.
How did our work look by gaslight?"
"It looked," said Norm, a roguish twinkle in his eye, "it looked
just as I expected it would; crooked. That there arch at the left of
the pulpit wants to be hung as much as two inches lower to match the
other."
"You don't say so!" said the minister, in good-humored surprise. "Does
it appear so from the gallery? Are my eyes as crooked as that? Let us
go up gallery and see if I can discover it."
So to the gallery they went, Norm clearing the space with a few bounds,
and taking a triumphant station where he could point out the defect to
the minister.
"That is true," Mr. Sherrill said, with hearty frankness. "You are
right and I was wrong. If I had taken your word last night the wreaths
would have looked better, wouldn't they? Well, perhaps wreaths are not
the only things which show crooked when we get higher up and look down
on them. Eh, my friend?"
Norm laughed a good-humored, rather embarrassed laugh. It was
remarkable that he should be up here holding a chatty, almost gay,
conversation with the minister. There came over him the wish that
he had behaved himself better during the service. That he had not
whispered so much, nor nudged Rick's elbow to make him laugh, just
at the moment that the minister's eye was fixed on them. He had a
half-fancy that if the evening were to be lived over again, he would
go down below and sit up straight and show this man that he could
behave as well as anybody if he were a mind to.
Not a word about the laughing and whispering said the minister. But he
said a thing which startled Norm.
"My sister has a fancy for having the church adorned with wreaths or
strings of asters in contrasting colors for next Sabbath; will you make
an appointment with me to help hang them on Saturday evening? I'll
promise to follow your eye to the half-inch."
Norm started, flushed, looked into the frank face and laughed a little,
then seeing that the answer was waited for said: "Why, I don't care if
I do, if you honestly want it."
"I honestly want it," said the minister in great satisfaction. Then
they went downstairs.
Job Smith and his wife were gone.
"I will wait for my brother," said Nettie, and her heart swelled with
pride as she said it.
How nice to have a brother to wait for, just as Miss Sherrill was
doing. At that moment the "beautiful lady" as Sate and Susie called
her, came to Nettie's side.
"Good-evening," she said pleasantly. "I hope the little girls are
well; I met your brother last night; he helped my brother to hang the
flowers. I see they are upstairs together now, admiring their work. My
brother said he was a very intelligent helper. You do not know how much
I thank you for those flowers. They helped me to sing to-night."
"I thought," said Nettie, raising her great truthful eyes to the lady's
face and speaking with an earnestness that showed she felt what she
said, "I thought you sang as though the angels were helping you. I
don't think they can sing any sweeter."
"Thank you," said Miss Sherrill; she smiled as she spoke, yet there
were tears in her eyes; the honest, earnest tribute seemed very unlike
a little girl, and very unlike the usual way of complimenting her
wonderful voice. "I saw that you liked music," she said, "I noticed you
while I was singing. Will you let me give you a couple of tickets for
the concert to-morrow evening; and will you and your brother come to
hear me sing? I am going to sing something that I think you will like."
Nettie went home behind the lilies and the boys, her heart all in
a flutter of delight. What a wonderful thing had come to her! The
concert for which the best singers in town had been so long practising,
and for which the tickets were fifty cents apiece, and which she had no
more expected to attend than she had expected to hear the real angels
sing that week, was to take place to-morrow evening, and she had two
tickets in her pocket!
Mrs. Decker was waiting for them, her nose pressed against the glass;
she started forward to open the door for the boys, before Nettie could
reach it. There was such a look of relief on her face when she saw Norm
as ought to have gone to his very heart; but he did not see it; he was
busy settling the salver in a safe place.
"Has father come in?" Nettie asked, as she followed her mother to the
back step, where she went for the dipper at Norm's call.
"Yes, child, he has, and went straight to bed. He didn't say two words;
but he wasn't cross; and he hadn't drank a drop, I believe."
"Mother," said Nettie, standing on tiptoe to reach the tall woman's
ear, and speaking in an awe-stricken whisper, "father was in church!"
"For the land of pity!" said Mrs. Decker, speaking low and solemnly.
And all through the next morning's meal, which was an unusually quiet
one, she waited on her husband with a kind of respectful reverence,
which if he had noticed, might have bewildered him. It seemed to her
that the event of the evening before had lifted him into a higher world
than hers, and that she could not tell now, what might happen.
The event of the day was the concert; all other plans were set aside
for that. At first Norm scoffed and declared that his ticket might be
used to light the fire with, for all he cared; he didn't want to go
to one of their "swell" concerts. But this talk Nettie laughed over
good-naturedly, as though it were intended for a joke, and continued
her planning as to when to have supper, and just when she and Norm must
start.
In the course of the day, that young man discovered it to be a fine
thing to own tickets for this special concert. Before noon tickets were
at a premium, and several of Norm's fellow-workmen gayly advised him to
make an honest penny by selling his. During the early morning it had
been delicately hinted by one young fellow that Norm Decker's tickets
were made of tissue paper, which was his way of saying, that he did
not believe that Norm had any; but, thanks to Nettie's thoughtful tact,
the tickets were at that very moment reposing in her brother's pocket,
and he drew them forth in triumph, wanting to know if anybody saw any
tissue paper about those. Good stiff green pasteboard with the magic
words on them which would admit two people to what was considered
on all sides the finest entertainment of the sort the town had ever
enjoyed.
"Where did you get 'em, Norm? Come, tell us, that's a good fellow.
You was never so green as to go and pay a dollar for two pieces of
pasteboard."
"They are complimentaries," said Norm, tossing off a shaving with a
careless air, as though complimentary tickets to first-class concerts
were every-day affairs with him.
"Complimentary? My eyes, aren't we big!" (I am very sorry that the boys
in Norm's shop used these slang phrases; but I want to say this for
them: it was because they had never been taught better. Not one of them
had mother or father who were grieved by such words; some of them were
so truly good-hearted that I believe if such had been the case, they
would never have used them again; and I wish the same might be said of
all boys with cultured and careful mothers.)
"How did you get 'em? Been selling tickets for the show, or piling
chairs, or what?"
"I haven't done a living thing for one of them," said Norm composedly;
and Ben Halleck came to his rescue.
"That's so, boys; or, at least if he had, it wouldn't done him no good.
They don't pay for this show in any such way. The fellows that carried
around bills were paid in money because they said they expected seats
would be scarce; and they didn't sell no tickets around the streets.
Them that wanted them had to go to the book-store and buy them. Oh, I
tell you, it's a big thing. I wouldn't mind going myself if I could be
complimented through. You see that Sherrill girl who lives at the new
minister's is a most amazing singer, and they say everybody wants to
hear her."
By this time Norm's mind was fully made up that he would go to the
concert. It is a pity Nettie could not have known it. For despite
the cheerful courage with which she received Norm's disagreeable
statements in the morning, she was secretly very much afraid that he
would not go. This would have been a great trial to her, for her little
soul was as full of music as possible; and the thought of hearing that
wonderful voice so soon again filled her with delight; but she was a
timid little girl so far as appearing among strangers was concerned,
and the idea of going alone to a concert was not to be thought of. Her
mother proposed Jerry for company, but he had gone with Job Smith into
the country and was not likely to return until too late. So Nettie made
her little preparations with a troubled heart. There was something more
to it than simply hearing fine music; it would be so like other girls
whom she knew, so like the dreams of home she had indulged in while at
Auntie Marshall's--this going out in the evening attended and cared for
by her brother.
Norm ate his dinner in haste, and was silent and almost gruff; nobody
knows why. I have often wondered why even well brought up boys, seem
sometimes to like to appear more disagreeable than at heart they are.
But by six o'clock the much-thought-about brother appeared, his face
pleasant enough.
"Well, Nannie," he said, "got your fusses and fixings all ready?"
And Nettie with beating heart and laughing eyes assured him that she
would be all ready in good time, and that she had laid his clean shirt
on his bed, and a clean handkerchief, and brushed his coat.
"Yes; and she ironed your shirt with her own hands," explained his
mother, "and the bosom shines like a glass bottle."
"O bother!" said Norm. "I don't want a clean shirt."
But he went to his attic directly after supper and put on the shirt,
and combed his hair, and rubbed his boots with Jerry's brush which he
went around the back way and borrowed of Mrs. Job Smith before he came
in to supper.
He had noticed how very neat and pretty Nettie looked as she walked
down the church isle beside him the night before; and he had also
noticed Jerry's shining boots.
His mother noticed his the moment he came down stairs. "How nice you
two do look!" she said admiringly; and then the two walked away well
pleased. It was a wonderful concert. Norm had not known that he was
particularly fond of music, but he owned to Rick the next day, that
there was something in that Sherrill girl's voice which almost lifted a
fellow out of his boots.
They had excellent seats! Nettie learned to her intense surprise that
their tickets called for reserved seats. She had studied over certain
mysterious numbers on the tickets, but had not understood them. It
appeared also that the usher was surprised.
"Can't give you any seats," was his greeting as they presented their
tickets. "Everything is full now except the reserves; you'll have to
stand in the aisle; there's a good place under the gallery. Halloo!
What's this? Reserved! Why, bless us, I didn't see these numbers. Come
down this way; you have as nice seats as there are in the hall."
It was all delightful. Lorena Barstow and two others of the
Sabbath-school class were a few seats behind them; Nettie could
hear them whispering and giggling, and for a few minutes she had an
uncomfortable feeling that they were laughing at her; as I am sorry to
say they were.
But neither this nor anything else troubled her long, for Norm's
unusual toilet having taken much longer than was planned for, they were
really among the late comers; and in a very little while the music
began. Oh! how wonderful it was. Neither Nettie nor Norm had ever heard
really fine concert music before, and even Norm who did not know that
he cared for music, felt his nerves thrill to his fingers' ends. Then,
when after the first two or three pieces Miss Sherrill appeared, she
was so beautiful and her voice was so wonderful that Nettie, try as
hard as she did, could not keep the tears from her foolish happy eyes.
I will not venture to say how much the beautiful silk dress with its
long train, and the mass of soft white lace at her throat had to do
with Miss Sherrill's loveliness, though I daresay if she had appeared
in a twelve-cent gingham like Nettie's, she might have sang just as
sweetly. Norm, however, did not believe that.
"Half of it is the fuss and feathers," he declared to Rick, next day,
looking wise. And Rick made a wise answer.
"Well, when you add the handsome voice to the fuss and feathers, I
s'pose they help, but I don't believe folks would go and rave so much
just over a blue silk dress, and some gloves, and things. They all had
to match, you see." So Rick, without knowing it, became a philosopher.
As for Nettie, she told her mother that the dress was just lovely, and
her voice was as sweet as any angel's could possibly be; but there was
a look in her eyes which was better than all the rest; and that when
she sang, "Oh that I had wings, had wings like a dove!" she, Nettie,
could not help feeling that they were hidden about her somewhere, and
that before the song was over, she might unfold them and soar away.