minutes she was back again, shaking Pauline. “Wake up!” she cried. “How
can you sleep in such a racket? He has been murdering popular tunes by
inches, and now what he is doing I don’t know, but it is _awful_. You
know them best. Get up and call to them that we can’t sleep for the noise
they make.”
“I suppose they have a right to play on their own organ.”
“They haven’t a right to make such a pandemonium anywhere. If you won’t
do something, I’m going to pretend I think it’s cats, and call ‘Scat!’
and throw something at them.”
“You wouldn’t hit anything,” Pauline returned, in that sleepy tone which
always rouses a wakeful sufferer’s wrath. “Better shut your window. You
can’t hear nearly so well then.”
“Yes, sister, I’ll shut the window,” Mysie called from the chamber, as
usual eager for peace.
“You let that window alone,” commanded Henriette, sternly. A long
pause—Henriette seated in rigid agony at the foot of the bed; the
Armstrongs experimenting with the Vox Humana stop. “Pauline, do you mean
to say that you can sleep? Pauline! _Pauline!_”
“What’s the matter now?” asked Pauline.
“I am going to take my brush—no, I shall take _your_ brush, Pauline
Beaumont—and hurl it at them!”
“Oh, sister, please don’t,” begged Mysie from within, like the voices on
a stage.
Henriette spoke not again; she strode out of the room, and did even as
she had threatened. She flung Pauline’s brush straight at the organist
sitting before the window. Whether she really meant to injure young
Armstrong’s candid brow is an open question; and, judging from the
result, I infer that she did not mean to do more than scare her sister;
therefore she aimed afar. By consequence the missile sped straight into
the centre of the window. But not through it; the window was raised, and
a wire screen rattled the brush back with a shivering jar.
“What’s that? A bat?” said Armstrong, happily playing on. His father and
mother were beaming upon him in deep content—his father a trifle sleepy,
but resolved, the morrow being Sunday, to enjoy this musical hour to the
full, his mother seated beside him and reading the numbers aloud.
“You see, Ikey,” she had explained, “that’s what makes you slow. While
you’re reading the numbers, you lose ’em on the organ; and while you’re
finding the numbers on the keys, you loose ’em on the paper. I’ll read
them awful low, so no one would suspect, and you keep your whole mind on
those keys. Now begin again; I’ve got a pin to prick them—2-4-3, 1-3—no,
1-8, 1-8—it’s only one 1-8; guess we better begin again.”
So Mrs. Armstrong droned forth the numbers and Ikey hammered them on
the organ, pumping with his feet, whenever he did not forget. The two
boys slept peacefully through the weird clamor. The neighbors, with one
exception, were apparently undisturbed. That exception, named Henriette
Beaumont, heard with swelling wrath.
“I’ve thrown the brush,” said she. No response from the pillow. “Now I’m
going to throw the broken-handled mug,” continued Henriette, in a tone of
deadly resolve; “it’s heavy, and it may kill some one, but I can’t help
it!” Still a dead silence. _Crash! smash!_ The mug with the broken handle
had sped against the weather-boarding.
“Now what was _that_?” cried Ike, jumping up. Before he was on his feet a
broken soap-dish had followed the mug. Up flew the sash, and Ike was out
of the window. “What are you doing that for? What do you mean by that?”
he yelled, to which the dark and silent house opposite naturally made no
reply. Ike was out in the road now, and both his parents were after him.
The elder Armstrong had been so suddenly wakened from a doze that he was
under the impression of a fire somewhere, and let out a noble shout to
that effect. Mrs. Armstrong, convinced that a dynamite bomb had missed
fire, gathered her skirts tightly around her ankles—as if bombs could run
under them like mice—and helped by screaming alternately “Police!” and
“Murder!”
Henriette gloated silently over the confusion. It did her soul good to
see Ike Armstrong running along the sidewalk after supposititious boys.
The Armstrongs did not return to the organ. Henriette heard their
footsteps on the gravel, she heard the muffled sound of voices; but
not again did the tortured instrument excite her nerves, and she sank
into a troubled slumber. As they sat at breakfast the next morning, and
Henriette was calculating the share due each cup from the half-pint of
boiled milk, the broken bell-wire jangled. Pauline said she would go.
“It can’t be any one to call so early in the morning,” said Henriette;
“you may go.”
[Illustration: “‘SOMEBODY THREW THESE THINGS AT OUR WINDOW’”]
It was young Armstrong, in his Sunday clothes. Pauline’s only picture of
him had been in his work-a-day garb; it was curious how differently he
impressed her, fresh from the bath and the razor, trigly buttoned up in a
perfectly fitting suit of blue and brown, with a dazzling rim of white
against his shapely tanned throat, and a crimson rose in his button-hole.
“How handsome he is!” thought Pauline. She had never been satisfied with
her own nose, and she looked at the straight bridge of his and admired
it. She was too innocent and ignorant herself to notice how innocently
clear were his eyes; but she thought that they looked true and kind, and
she did notice the bold lines of his chin and jaw, and the firm mouth
under his black mustache. Unaccountably she grew embarrassed; he was
looking at her so gravely, almost sternly, his new straw hat in one hand,
and the other slightly extended to her and holding a neat bundle.
He bowed ceremoniously, as he had seen actors bow on the stage. “Somebody
threw these things at our window last night,” said he; “I think they
belong to you. I couldn’t find all the pieces of the china.”
“They weren’t all there,” stammered Pauline, foolishly; and then a wave
of mingled confusion and irritation at her false position—there was her
monogram on the ivory brush!—and a queer kind of amusement, swept over
her, and dyed her delicate cheek as red as Armstrong’s rose. And suddenly
he too, flushed, and his eyes flashed.
“I’m sorry I disturbed your sister,” said he, “but I hope she will not
throw any more things at us. We will try not to practise so late another
night. Good-morning.”
“I _am_ sorry,” said Pauline; “tell your mother I’m sorry, please. She
was so kind to me.”
“Thank you,” Armstrong said, heartily; “I will.” And somehow before he
went they shook hands.
Pauline gave the message, but she felt so guilty because of this last
courtesy that she gave it without reproach, even though her only good
brush disclosed a pitiful crack.
“Well, you know why I did it,” said Henriette, coolly; “and does the man
suppose his playing isn’t obnoxious any hour of the day as well as night?
But let us hope they will be quiet awhile. Paula, have you any money? We
ought to go over those numbers for the concert beforehand, and we must
get Verdi’s Requiem. Mysie has some, but she wants it to buy curtains.”
“I’m sorry, sister Etty, but I haven’t a cent.”
“Then the curtains will have to wait, Mysie,” said Henriette, cheerfully,
“for we must have the music to-morrow.”
Mysie threw a deprecating glance at Pauline. “There was a bargain in
chintzes,” she began, feebly, “but of course, sister, if Paula doesn’t
mind—”
“I don’t mind, Mysie,” said Pauline.
Why should she make Mysie unhappy and Henriette cross for a pair of
cheap curtains? The day was beautiful, and she attended church. She was
surprised, looking round at the choir, to discover young Armstrong in
the seat behind her. She did not know that he attended that church. But
surely there was no harm in a neighbor’s walking home with Mysie and her.
How well and modestly he talked, and how gentle and deferential he was to
Mysie! Mysie sighed when he parted from them, a little way from the house.
“That young man is very superior to his station,” she declared, solemnly;
“he must be of good though decayed family.”
“His grandfather was a Vermont farmer, and ours was a Massachusetts
farmer,” retorted Pauline; “I dare say if we go back far enough we shall
find the Armstrongs as good as we—”
“Oh, pray don’t talk that way before Etty, dear,” interrupted Mysie,
hurriedly: “she thinks it so like the anarchists; and if you get into
that way of speech, you _might_ slip out something before her. Poor Etty,
I wish she felt as if she could go to church. I hope she had a peaceful
morning.”
Ah, hope unfounded! Never had Miss Henriette Beaumont passed a season
more rasping to her nerves. Looking out of the window, she saw both the
younger Armstrongs and their mother. The boys had been picking vegetables.
“Now, boys,” called Mrs. Armstrong, gayly, “let’s come and play on the
organ.”
Henriette’s soul was in arms. Unfortunately she was still in the robes
of rest (attempting to slumber after her tumultuous night), and dignity
forbade her shouting out of the window.
The two boys passed a happy morning experimenting on the different stops,
and improvising melodies of their own. “Say, mummy, isn’t that kinder
like a _tune_?” one or the other would exclaim. Mrs. Armstrong listened
with pride. The awful combination of discords fell sweetly on her ear,
which was “no ear for music.”
“It’s just lovely to have an organ,” she thought.
When Miss Beaumont could bear no more she attired herself and descended
the stairs. Then the boys stopped. In the afternoon several friends of
the Armstrongs called. They sang Moody and Sankey hymns, until Henriette
was pale with misery.
“I think I prefer the untutored Armstrong savages themselves, with their
war-cries,” she remarked.
“Perhaps they will get tired of it,” Mysie proffered for consolation.
But they did not tire. They never played later than nine o’clock at
night again, but until that hour the music-loving and unmusical family
played and sang to their hearts’ content. And the Beaumonts saw them at
the Thomas concert, Ike and his mother and Jim, applauding everything.
Henriette said the sight made her ill.
[Illustration: “‘NOW, BOYS, LET’S COME AND PLAY ON THE ORGAN’”]
Time did not soften her rancor. She caught cold at the concert, and for
two weeks was confined to her chamber with what Mrs. Armstrong called
rheumatism, but Henriette called gout. During the time she assured Mysie
that what she suffered from the Armstrong organ exceeded anything that
gout could inflict.
“Do let me speak to Mrs. Armstrong,” begged Mysie.
“I spoke to that boy, the one with the freckles, myself yesterday,”
replied Henriette, “out of the window. I told him if they didn’t stop I
would have them indicted.”
“Why, how did you see him?” Mysie was aghast, but she dared not criticise
Henriette.
“He came here with a bucket of water. Said his mother saw us taking
water out of the well, and it was dangerous. The impertinent woman, she
actually offered to send us water from their cistern every day.”
“But I think that was—was rather kind, sister, and it would be dreadful
to have typhoid fever.”
“I would rather _die_ of typhoid fever than have that woman bragging to
her vulgar friends that she gives the Beaumonts, Governor Beaumont’s
daughters, _water_! I know what her _kindness_ means.” Thus Henriette
crushed Mysie. But when the organ began, and it was evident that Tim
Armstrong intended to learn “Two Little Girls in Blue,” if it took him
all the afternoon, Mysie rose.
“Mysie,” called Henriette, “don’t you go one step to the Armstrongs’.”
Mysie sat down, but in a little while she tried again.
“I wish you’d let Paula, then; she is going by there every day, and she
has had no dispute with them. She often stops to talk.”
“Talk to whom?” said Henriette, icily.
“Oh, to any of them—Tim or Pete or Mrs. Armstrong.”
“Does she talk to them long?”
“Oh no, not very long—just as she goes by. I think you’re mistaken,
sister. They don’t think such mean things. Truly they are—nice; they seem
very fond of each other, and they almost always give Paula flowers.”
“What does she do with the flowers?”
“She puts them in the vases, and wears them.”
“Do they give her anything else?” Henriette’s tone was so awful that
Mysie dropped her work.
“Do they?” persisted Henriette.
“They sent over the magazines a few times, but that was just borrowing,
and once they—they—sent over some shortcake and some—bread.”
Henriette sat bolt-upright in bed, reckless of the pain every movement
gave her.
“Mysilla Beaumont, do you see where your sister is drifting? Are you both
crazy? But I shall put a stop to this nonsense this very day. I am going
to write a note to John Perley, and you will have to take it. Bring me
the paper. If there isn’t any in my desk, take some out of Pauline’s.”
“Oh, Henriette,” whimpered Mysie, “_what_ are you going to do?”
“You will soon see, and you will have to help me. After they have been
disgraced and laughed at, we’ll see whether she will care to lean over
their fence and talk to them.”
It was true that Pauline did talk to the Armstrongs; she did lean over
the Armstrong fence. It had come to pass by degrees. She knew perfectly
well it was wrong. Henriette never allowed her to have any acquaintances.
But Henriette could not see her from the bed, and Mysie did not mind; and
so she fell into the habit of stopping at the Armstrong gate to inquire
for Mrs. Armstrong’s turkeys, or to ask advice about the forlorn little
geraniums which fought for life in the Beaumont yard, or to lend her
own nimble fingers to the adorning of Mrs. Armstrong’s bonnets. She saw
Ike often. Once she actually ventured to enter “those mechanics’” doors
and play on the detested organ. Her musical gifts could not be compared
to her sister’s. A sweet, true voice, op no great compass, a touch that
had only sympathy and a moderate facility—these the highly cultivated
Beaumonts rated at their very low artistic value; but the ignorant
Armstrongs listened to Pauline’s hymns in rapture. The tears filled Mrs.
Armstrong’s eyes: impulsively she kissed the girl. “Oh, you dear child!”
she cried. Ike said nothing. Not a word. He was standing near enough to
Pauline to touch the folds of her dress. His fingers almost reverently
stroked the faded pink muslin. He swallowed something that was choking
him. Joel Armstrong nodded and smiled. Then his eyes sought his wife’s.
He put out his hand and held hers. When the music was done and the young
people were gone, he puffed hard on his dead pipe, saying, “It’s the best
thing that can happen to a young man, mother, to fall in love with a real
good girl, ain’t it?”
“Yes, I guess it is.”
“And I guess you’d have the training of this one, mother; and there’s
plenty of room in the lot opposite that’s for sale to build a nice little
house. They’d start a sight better off than we did.”
“But we were very happy, Joe, weren’t we?”
“That we were, and that we are, Sally,” said Armstrong. “Come on out in
the garden with your beau; we ain’t going to let the young folks do all
the courting.”
Mysie and Henriette saw the couple walking in the garden, the husband’s
arm around his wife’s waist, and the soft-hearted sister sighed.
“Oh, sister, don’t you kinder wish you _hadn’t done it_?” she whispered.
“They didn’t mean any harm.”
“Harm? No. I dare say that young carpenter would be willing to marry
Pauline Beaumont!” cried Henriette, bitterly.
Mysie shook her gray head, her loose mouth working, while she winked away
a tear. “I don’t care, I don’t care”—thus did she inwardly moan out a
spasm of dire resolution—“I’m just going to tell Pauline!”
Perhaps what she told set the cloud on the girl’s pretty face; and
perhaps that was why she looked eagerly over the Armstrong fence every
night; and the cloud lifted at the sound of Mrs. Armstrong’s mellow voice
hailing her from any part of the house or yard.
But one night, instead of the usual cheerful stir about the house, she
found the Swede girl alone in the kitchen, weeping over the potatoes.
To Pauline’s inquiries she returned a burst of woe. “They all tooken to
chail—all!” she wailed. “I don’t know what to do if I get supper. The
mans come, the police mans, and tooken them all away. _I hela verlden!_
who ever know such a country? Such nice peoples sent to chail for play on
the organ—their own organ! They say they not play right, but I think to
send to chail for not play right on the organ that sha’n’t be right!”
Pauline could make nothing more out of her; but the man on the corner
looked in at one particularly dolorous burst of sobs over poor Tim
and poor Petey and tendered his version: “They’ve gone, sure enough,
miss. Your sisters have had them arrested for keeping and committing
a nuisance. Now, I ain’t stuck on their organ-playing, as a general
rule, myself, but I wouldn’t go so far as to call it a nuisance. But the
Fullers ain’t on the best of terms; old Fuller is a crank, and there’s
politics between him and Armstrong and the Delaneys, who have just moved
into the neighborhood, mother and daughter—very musical folks, they say,
and nervous; they have joined in with your sister—”
“Where have they gone?” asked Pauline, who was very pale.
“To the police court. They were mighty cunning, if you’ll excuse me,
miss. They picked out that old German crank, Von Reibnitz, who plays in
the Schubert Quartet, and loves music better than beer.”
The man was right. Henriette had chosen her lawgiver shrewdly. At this
very moment she was sitting in one of the dingy chairs of the police
court, with the mien of Marie Antoinette on her way to execution. Mysie
sat beside her in misery not to be described; for was she not joined
with Henriette in the prosecution of the unfortunate Armstrongs? and had
she not surreptitiously partaken of hot rolls and strawberry jam that
very day, handed over the fence to her by Mrs. Armstrong? She could not
sustain the occasional glare of the magistrate’s glasses; and, unable to
look in the direction of the betrayed Armstrongs, for the most part she
peered desolately at the clerk. The accused sat opposite. Mr. Armstrong
and Ike were in their working-clothes. Hastily summoned, they had not
the meagre comfort of a toilet. The father looked about the court, a
perplexed frown replacing at intervals a perplexed grin. When he was not
studying the court-room, he was polishing the bald spot on his head with
a large red handkerchief, or rubbing the grimy palms of his hands on
the sides of his trousers. He had insisted upon an immediate trial, but
his wits had not yet pulled themselves out of the shock of his arrest.
The boys varied the indignant solemnity of bearing which their mother
had impressed on them with the unquenchable interest of their age. Mrs.
Armstrong had assumed her best bonnet and her second-best gown. She was
a handsome woman, with her fair skin, her wavy brown hair, and brilliant
blue eyes; and the reporter looked at her often, adding to the shame
and fright that were clawing her under her Spartan composure. But she
held her head in the air bravely. Not so her son, who sat with his hands
loosely clasped before him and his head sunk on his breast through the
entire arraignment.
Behind the desk the portly form of the magistrate filled an arm-chair
to overflowing, so that the reporter wondered whether he could rise
from the chair, should it be necessary, or whether chair and he must
perforce cling together. His body and arms were long, but his legs were
short, so he always used a cricket, which somehow detracted from the
dignity of his appearance. He had been a soldier, and kept a martial gray
mustache; but he wore a wig of lustrous brown locks, which he would push
from side to side in the excitement of a case, and then clap frankly
back into place with both hands. There was no deceit about Fritz Von
Reibnitz. He was a man of fiery prejudices, but of good heart and sound
sense, and he often was shrewder than the lawyers who tried to lead him
through his weaknesses. But he had a leaning towards a kind of free-hand,
Arabian justice, and rather followed the spirit of the law than servilely
questioned what might be the letter. Twirling his mustachios, he leaned
back in his chair and studied the faces of the Armstrong family, while
the clerk read the information slowly—for the benefit of his friend the
reporter, who felt this to be one of the occasions that enliven a dusty
road of life.
“State of Iowa, Winfield County. The City of Fairport _vs._ Jos. L.
Armstrong, Mrs. J. L. Armstrong, Isaac J. Armstrong, Peter Armstrong,
and Timothy Armstrong. The defendants” (the names were repeated, and at
each name the mother of the Armstrongs winced) “are accused of the crime
of violating Section 2 of Chapter 41 of the ordinances of said city.
For that the defendants, on the 3d, the 10th, the 15th, and 23d day of
July, 18—, in the city of Fairport, in said county, did conspire and
confederate together to disturb the public quiet of the neighborhood, and
in pursuance of said conspiracy, and aiding and abetting each other, did
make, then and there, loud and unusual noises by playing on a cabinet
organ in an unusual and improper manner, and by singing boisterously
and out of tune; and did thereby disturb the public quiet of the
neighborhood, contrary to the ordinances in such case provided.”
“You vill read also the ordinance, Mr. Clerk,” called the magistrate,
with much majesty of manner, frowning at the same time on the younger
lawyers, who were unable to repress their feelings, while the reporter
appeared to be taken with cramps.
The clerk read:
“Every person who shall unlawfully disturb the public quiet of any
street, alley, avenue, public square, wharf, or any religious or other
public assembly, or building public or private, or any neighborhood,
private family, or person within the city, by giving false alarms of
fire” (Mrs. Armstrong audibly whispered to her husband, “We _never_ did
that!”), “by loud or unusual noises” (Mrs. Armstrong sank back in her
corner, and Joseph Armstrong very nearly groaned aloud), “by ringing
bells, blowing horns or other instruments, etc., etc., shall be deemed
guilty of a misdemeanor, and punished accordingly.”
Then up rose the attorney for the prosecution to state his case. He
narrated how the Armstrong family had bought an organ, and had played
upon it almost continually since the purchase, thereby greatly annoying
and disturbing the entire neighborhood. He said that no member of the
Armstrong family knew more than two changes on the organ, and that
several of them, in addition to playing, were accustomed to sing in a
loud and disagreeable voice (the Armstrong family were visibly affected),
and that so great was the noise and disturbance made by the said organ
that the prosecuting witness, Miss Beaumont, who was sick at the time,
had been agitated and disturbed by it, to her great bodily and mental
damage and danger. That although requested to desist, they had not
desisted (Tim and Pete exchanged glances of undissembled enjoyment), and
therefore she was compelled in self-defence to invoke the aid of the law.
Ike listened dully. There was no humor in the situation for him. He
felt himself and his whole family disgraced, dragged before the police
magistrate just like a common drunk and disorderly loafer, and accused
of being a nuisance to their neighborhood; the shame of it tingled to
his finger-tips. He would not look up; it seemed to him that he could
never hold up his head again. No doubt it would all be in the paper next
morning, and the Armstrongs, who were so proud of their honest name,
would be the laughing-stock of the town. Somebody was saying something
about a lawyer. Ike scowled at the faces of the young attorneys lolling
and joking outside the railing. “I won’t fool away any money on those
chumps,” he growled; “I want to get through and pay my fine and be done.”
Somebody laughed; then he saw that it was the sheriff of the county, a
good friend of his. He looked appealingly up at the strong, dark face; he
grasped the big hand extended.
“I’m in a hole, Mr. Wickliff,” he whispered.
“Naw, you’re not,” replied Wickliff; “you’ve a friend in the family. She
got onto this plot and came to me a good while ago. We’re all ready.
I’ve known her since she was a little girl. Know ’em all, poor things!
Say, let _me_ act as your attorney. Don’t have to be a member of the bar
to practise in _this_ court. Y’Honor! If it please y’Honor, I’d like to
be excused to telephone to some witnesses for the defence.”