footsteps and looked up into Solvei Kjelland's laughing face. Blue
as a larkspur in a summer hail-storm, crisp, shimmery, sparkling
with frost, even her blonde hair tucked into a larkspur-blue storm
hat, she stood there shaking a reproachful finger at both the Young
Doctor and his patient.
"Oh, Ho! For what a pity!" she laughed. "If you had but told me
that Mrs. Tome Gallien's adventure was to be a picnic then I also
could have brought the food!"
[Illustration: "Excuse me, Miss Kjelland," he said; "but this
is not a picnic--it is a clinic."]
"Picnic?" frowned the Young Doctor. Before the plaintive bewilderment
in the dark eyes that lifted at just that instant to his an unwonted
severity crisped into his voice. "Excuse me, Miss Kjelland," he
said; "but this is not a picnic--it is a clinic."
"So? Who is a clinic?" cried Solvei Kjelland perfectly undaunted,
and swished bluely forward to join them. "It is not of course of a
propriety, Doctor Kendrue," she laughed, "that I should come thus
without the sick aunt! But in a storm so unwholesome for aunt is it
not best that I buy some good medicine?" In a shimmer of melting
snowflakes she perched herself on the arm of the first chair she
could reach, and extracting the familiar little purse from her
big blue pocket handed the Young Doctor a one-dollar bill. "Medicine
for the sick aunt!" she commandeered gaily. Then with only the most
casual glance at the piano she whirled around to scrutinize the
desolate little figure before her. If she noticed the tears she
certainly gave no sign of it.
"Ah! It is as I thought!" she triumphed. "Most surely in my mind
did I say that you would be a girl!" In one sweeping blue-eyed
glance she seemed to be appraising suddenly every individual
tone and feature of the dark, exquisite little face that lifted
so bewilderedly to hers. Then quite unexpectedly a most twinkling
smile flickered across her own sharply contrasted blondeness and
like a fine friendly child she held out her hand in greeting.
"Most certainly," she conceded, "you are more cute than I! But
also in some ways," she beamed, "I am of course more cute than you!"
While the Young Doctor waited for the skies to fall, he saw instead,
to his infinite amazement, that the little brunette though still
bewildered was returning the handshake with unquestionable
cordiality. "Awfully well-bred women were like that," he reasoned
quickly. "No matter how totally disorganized they might be by
silly things like mice or toads you simply couldn't faze them
when it came to a purely social emergency." And in a situation
which had thus precipitously reached a point so hopelessly
non-professional there seemed after all but one thing left for
him to do.
"Miss Kjelland!" he essayed with a really terrifying formality,
"This is Mrs. Kendrue!" The instant the phrase had left his
lips his very ears were crimsoning with the one possible
implication which Miss Solvei Kjelland would draw from such
an announcement, and more panic-stricken than any woman would
have been with a mouse he turned and fled for his medicine
cabinet in the very farthest corner of the room.
"Your wife?" faltered Solvei Kjelland in frank astonishment.
"S-o?" she laughed. "And I have only just come! Mix me a
quarter's worth more of the good medicine, Mr. Doctor!" she
called back over her shoulder, and dropped down on the low
stool at the other girl's feet. "Now about this piano!" she
began precipitously.
"I am not Doctor Kendrue's wife!" protested the little black
figure bewilderedly. "Why--why I thought you were his wife,"
she confided with increasing confusion.
From the direction of the medicine cabinet the sound of some
one choking was distinctly audible. Both girls rose instinctively
to meet--only the Young Doctor's perfectly inscrutable face.
"Who now is eating a Miss--mis-apprehension?" beamed Solvei.
"Mrs. Kendrue is a patient of mine," affirmed the Young Doctor
with some coldness.
"O-h," conceded the Norse girl with equal coldness. "A patient?
That is most nice. But--" As though suddenly muddled all over
again by this latest biographical announcement she threw out
her hands with a frank gesture of despair. "If this should be
a patient," she implored, "who then is the 'Other Adventure'?"
Behind the little black figure's back the Young Doctor lifted
a quick warning finger to his lips.
"S-s-h!" he signaled beseechingly to her.
On Solvei Kjelland's forehead the incongruous frown deepened
from perplexity into something very like impatience.
"Well certainly," she attested. "You are of a great sobriety
in your office, but most wild on the doorstep. As for me," she
confided, "it is of the piano and the piano only that I care!"
"That's just it," said the Young Doctor, "it is of the piano and
the piano only that Mrs. Kendrue cares!"
With her finger-tips already touching the ivory keys the Norse
girl swung sharply around.
"What is that?" she demanded.
With a sudden impish conviction that Mrs. Tome Gallien, being
already responsible for so many awkward situations in the world,
might just as well now be responsible for everything, the Young
Doctor gathered breath for his latest announcement.
"Mrs. Kendrue," he smiled with studied calm, "is the niece,--as
it were, of the lady who gave me the piano."
"What," stammered both girls in a single breath.
But it was the little widow's turn this time to be the most
dumfounded. "What," she repeated with a vague new sort of
pain. "What? You mean that Mrs. Tome Gallien gave _you_ the
piano--when--when she knew how I had been longing for it all
these months? Been haunting the warerooms day after day!" she
explained plaintively over her black shoulder to the other girl.
"Why--why do _you_ love music so?" she demanded with sudden
vehement passion of the Young Doctor. "Are you a real musician,
I mean?"
"On the contrary," bowed the Young Doctor, "I am as tender-hearted
about pianos as you are about ducks. Nothing under Heaven would
induce me to lay my rough, desecrating hand upon a piano." In an
impulse of common humanity he turned to allay the new bewilderment
in Solvei Kjelland's face. "This allusion about ducks," he explained,
"concerns another little idiosyncrasy of Mrs. Tome Gallien's."
"Yes!" quickened the little widow. "When she sent Doctor Kendrue
this wonderful piano she sent me a--a dreadful duck blind--way
down somewhere in South Carolina!"
"What is that?" puzzled Solvei Kjelland.
"Why a place to shoot!" snapped the Young Doctor. "Wild ducks,
you know! 'Quack-Quack!' A--a sporting camp!" His whole face
was suddenly alight.
"O-h! And this little Mrs. Kendrue does not sport," reflected
Solvei. In another instant her own face was all alight too.
"Oh, of what a nonsense!" she laughed. "Of what a silliness!
It is of course a mistake, most funny, most conflictable! In
some way it is that the gifts should get mixed in the mails!"
"Oh, no!" wagged the Young Doctor's head. "Oh, no!" he
reiterated with some emphasis. "Careless as I assure you many
of the post-offices are there is very little likelihood of a
grand piano and a duck blind getting mixed in the mails."
"O-h," subsided the Norse girl, but only for an instant.
"What my idea should be," she resumed cheerfully, "and what
the idea of my aunt should be, is that if you would let us
take the piano--one month, two months, three, we would in
return give you some lessons in this music, either in the piano
or of the vocal."
"U-m-m," said the Young Doctor, "Yes--yes, of course that
would undoubtedly be very humanizing and all that, but with
so much unexpected competition, as it were, one must move
very,--er--slowly in the matter. Just what--just what would
be your idea, Mrs. Kendrue?" he turned and asked quite abruptly.
"My idea?" flushed the little widow. "Why--why, of course I
didn't have any idea because I didn't even know that you
possessed the piano until just now. But if you are still
willing to part with it after--after the estate is settled,"
she hurried with evident emotion, "why, then--perhaps--I--"
Yearningly as she spoke she stepped forward to the piano and
fingered out one chord after another, soft, vibrant, experimental,
achingly minor, a timid, delicate nature's whole unconscious
appeal to life for help, love, tenderness.
"Dear me!" mused the Young Doctor.
"Oh! Do you play?" cried Solvei Kjelland ecstatically.
"Oh, no," deprecated the little widow. "I just sing. Do _you_
sing?" she in turn demanded as though her very heart jumped
with the question.
"Oh, no," said Solvei Kjelland, "I just play." Yearningly she
in turn stepped forward and struck a single chord. But there
was nothing soft or minor about this one chord. Sharp, clear,
stirring as a clarion call it rang out through the dingy room.
"Oh, dear!" thought the Young Doctor.
And as though flaming then and there with the musical fervor
so long suppressed the Norse girl swung impetuously round upon
her companion. "You do not play! And I do not sing! So let us!"
she cried excitedly and dropping down on the piano stool seemed
literally melting her fluent finger-tips into ivory-key and melody.
Indefinitely for a brilliant, chaotic moment or two, chord
heaped upon chord and harmony upon harmony, and then suddenly
to the Young Doctor's musically untutored mind it seemed as
though the crashing waves of sound were literally parting on
either side to let a little tune come through. And such a
"pleasant familiar tune" he rated it delightedly. He didn't
remember that Verdi wrote it. He didn't stop to consider that
it was from Trovatore. All he cared was that it was a tune,
and a tune that said things, and a tune that always said the
same things whether you heard it chopped through a hurdy-gurdy
on an asphalt pavement or roared stentoriously by a band at the
beach. "Home to our Mountains!" was what it said, and oh, other
things too, undoubtedly, but that was all that really mattered,
"Home to our Mountains!"
It was perfectly evident, though, that the little widow cared who
wrote it, and what it was from, and where it was going to! With
thrilling sweetness, astonishing technique, and most amazing
volume, her rich contralto voice rang suddenly through the room.
And in the precipitous jump of his heart was it any wonder that
the poor Young Doctor couldn't have told for the life of him
whether the mischief was all in one girl's voice or another
girl's finger-tips, or partly in the voice and partly in the
finger-tips--or--? "Home to our Mountains," soared the lovely
voice, then quivered suddenly, like some wounded thing, and
with her hands pressed tightly to her cheek, the little singer
sank weakly down in the first chair she could reach.
"Why, what is it!" jumped the Young Doctor.
Through a haze of tears the dark eyes lifted to his. "Oh, nothing
special," faltered the little singer. "Just everything!"
With an irrelevant crash of chords Solvei Kjelland swung
sharply round from the piano.
"Who is this Mrs. Tome Gallien, anyways?" she demanded fiercely.
"And where is her habit? And what good is she? To hold back from
people thus the things they want and stuff them all choke-up
with what they don't want,--it is a scandal I say! It is a
monstrosity!" With a quick, jerky sort of defiance she rose
to her feet and commenced straightening her blue hat and
tightening up her blue collar. "I am a failure as One Adventure,"
she laughed. "And I also get nothing! Neither the piano, nor the
medicine for the sick aunt. Give me the address of this woman,"
she demanded. "And I will write to her in my leisure and tell
her what my thoughts of her should be!"
"Do!" urged the Young Doctor. "Nothing would please her more!
When a woman has the ego that Mrs. Tome Gallien has there's
nothing in the world that tickles her vanity so as to hear just
what people think of her, be it good, bad, or indifferent." With
deliberate malice he tore a leaf from his notebook, scribbled
the desired address on it and handed it to the Norse girl. "If
it doesn't do anything else," he commended her with mock gravity,
"it may at least draw the fire!"
"'Draw the fire'?" repeated the Norse girl a bit perplexedly.
Then as though to shrug all perplexity aside she turned suddenly
to the young widow. "As for you--" she beamed. "You are a cunning
little thing! And I loves you!" With unmistakable tenderness she
stooped and kissed the astonished little singer on the forehead.
"And I hope you will soon be of a perfect wellness," she coaxed.
"And sing the perfectly whole songs to whatever piano it is that
you should love the best! As for me?" she called briskly to the
Young Doctor. "It is that you understand I am perfectly resigned?"
"Resigned to what?" frowned the Young Doctor.
"Oh, this language!" laughed Solvei. "Do you know your own words?
To? Of? It is the _from_ that I would say! Complete _from_ the
Adventure I am resigned!"
"S-s-h! S-sh!" warned the Young Doctor's frowning face once more.
Almost anxiously he accompanied her to the door. "S-sh--s-s-h!"
he implored her. "The poor little girl must never know of Mrs.
Tome Gallien's audacity in sending her here as an 'Adventure.'
With all the sorrow she's in just now, and the pain--"
"Yes, quite so," acquiesced Solvei Kjelland with perfect docility.
Then all of a blue-blonde flutter in the open doorway she turned
to call back her blithe "Good-by."
"Good-by, Doctor and Mrs. Kendrue!" she called. "What? _No_?"
she flushed at the very evident consternation in both uplifted
faces. "Good-by then, Mrs. and Doctor Kendrue!" she revised her
adieus hastily. "_What_? _N-o_?" she flared with her first real
sign of impatience. "Well then, good-by, Mrs. and _not_ Doctor
Kendrue!" she finished triumphantly, and vanished into the
snowstorm. Turning back to his somber office and his sad little
patient it seemed suddenly to the Young Doctor as though the first
blue bird had fled, leaving only a single black iris bud to presage
spring for the garden. "Blue birds were darlings!" quickened
the Young Doctor. "And yet?" Poignantly to his memory revived a
misty May time years and years ago when he had sat cross-legged
in the grass a whole day through--to watch the unfolding miracle
of a black iris bud!
In consideration of the particular speed and energy which Solvei
Kjelland applied that afternoon to her homeward plunge through
jostling traffic and resonant subways it is of interest to note
that the first thing she did on reaching her room was to sit right
down in her Larkspur-Blue coat and hat and investigate the word
"leisure" in her English Dictionary. Out of all the various
definitions given, "vacancy of mind" seemed to suit her fancy
best. "In the vacancy of my mind is it that I have promised for
this writing?" she questioned. "Of a very good wellness then!
When else should my mind or my heart be more vacated than now?"
True to this impulse she sat down that very evening to tell Mrs.
Tome Gallien just exactly what she thought of her. On some very
pale, pale yellow note paper, with the blue ink which she adored,
and in the spirited handwriting so characteristic of her nationality,
the very page was a blonde flare of personality.
MRS. TOME GALLIEN,
DEAREST MADAM (she wrote):
How do you do's, And I know all! Do not do it, I say. Do not do it.
They do not like it and if you so persist in thus teasing of them
you will most certainly defeat the one object which I am of an
inclination to suspect that you have tucked away in one side of
the mind. Is it not so?
You are of course very clever and of much wealthiness and some
pain. And, it is of course very diverting and most droll lying
thus to plan how one may yet motivate the destinies, is it, that
you say?
And it is doubtless as you well think--the little widow lady has
mourned too long, and is too delicate of the indoors, and moons
too much over the singing-voice. And this Young Doctor in his own
turn he also is a mistake, so sarcasms, so severe, and hates all
womans and all pianos both, except for minutes. And you have thought
that if thus across the little pain in the lady's bone these two
could be brought to scold about the pianos and the blind ducks
much good might yet come and of a most loving adjustingment?
But no, Madam it is a great mistake! These people are not at all
as bright as you think. And also in their hearts is there none of
that most happy greed which makes all comical things as they come
one joke! No! It is only that they see in your gifts one great
make-them-mad which if you persist in so doing with other comics
will make them cold with hate and humiliation for each other. And
when you tag the poor little lady as an Adventure you have yet
outraged complete the chivalries of the Young Doctor so that he
cannot even see in his sense that even so little a widow may yet
be a very great Adventure.
Do not do it, I say! Do not do it! It is cruel. And there is no
law but your own honor that can stop it.
If the malice is so formed that you cannot stop it but must
persist in this most foolish custom of giving people the things
what they do not want I would respectfully suggest that you send
them to me.
I am young. I am strong. And very laughing. If you can find anything
in the world at just this time that I do not want _I dare you to
send it to me!_
Yours very truly,
SOLVEI KJELLAND.
Being satiate then with justice and the English language Solvei
reverted once more to the pursuit of juvenile pedagogics and the
general discussion of human events with her own aunt and in her
own tongue.
Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, nothing except pedagogics and
the aunt even remotely threatened her horizon. And by Thursday
every gesture of her fine young body, every changing expression
of her fine young face, seemed frankly indicative of some seething
inner triumph that as yet remained unspoken. By Friday night,
however, even this self-control slipped its leash, and she closed
her eyes for sleep with a very distinct and definite expression of
emotion. "Ah!" she laughed, "that Gallien lady down yonder is good
and fixed! Yes!"
It was not until Saturday night, late, by special delivery, that
Mrs. Tome Gallien's answer came.
Stumbling sleepily down the stairs just be fore midnight to answer
the doorbell that no one else seemed awake to answer, Solvei
Kjelland received the insignificant looking envelope into her
own hands. Small as it was, heavily overshadowed by special delivery
postage, and almost quaveringly directed in a pale, fine writing
it might well have suggested to anybody a suppliant for mercy, or
at least for pity.
With a first faint twinge of remorse Solvei tore it open to
discover no contents whatever--except a railroad ticket to the
little mainland town in South Carolina where Mrs. Tome Gallien
had established her official address.
Scowlingly for a moment and in dumb perplexity the girl stood
shifting from one slippered foot to another in a really desperate
effort to decipher each word, phrase, comma, asterisk, in the
momentous little document be fore her. Then quite suddenly a smile
that was by no means mirthful flashed brilliantly across her blue
eyes and her gleaming teeth.
"_Stinged_!" said Solvei Kjelland, and gathering her big gray blanket
wrapper a little bit closer around her fled back precipitously to
her bed.
With the first faint ray of morning light perhaps she might have
waked to an instant's reassuring conviction that the whole ticket
episode was a dream if only her subconscious deductions from that
episode had not waked first on her lips like a wry taste. "The one
things in the world that I did not want--at just this time? That
lady is a witchess!" was the phrase that waked on her lips.
It was not until early the following week, however, that she called
up the Young Doctor to tell him the news.
"How do you do?" she telephoned. "This is Solvei Kjelland. And I
am to say good-by."
"Good-by? Why, what do you mean?" questioned the Young Doctor's
frankly surprised voice.
"It is that I am going away," said Solvei, "on a little--what it
is you would call a trip."
"Oh," said the Young Doctor. "Where?"
If the statement could ever be made that a Person "shrugged" his
voice Solvei certainly "shrugged" hers.
"Oh, through the tunnel!" she said. "And then off!"
"Yes, but where?" persisted the Young Doctor.
"Oh, to the Southern Carolines to visit this Mrs. Tome Gallien,"
sing-songed the girl as one who had rehearsed the line even to
the point of monotony.
"What?" cried the Young Doctor. "Why--why, what do you mean?"
"Mean?" bridled Solvei instantly. "For why should it be a meanness?
Is not this Mrs. Tome Gallien as fine a lady as I? Am I not as
fine a lady as Mrs. Tome Gallien? For why if two ladies like to
visit it should not be so? Have I not explain it all to the sick
aunt?"
"Yes, but do you really mean that you wrote to Mrs. Tome Gallien?"
stammered the Young Doctor. "What did you say? For Heaven's sake
what did you say?"
"What I did say should be sealed in my own heart," affirmed Solvei
with some coldness.
"Yes, but my dear child!" protested the Young Doctor. "You don't
seem to have any idea of just what you're going to! It's not at
all a cheerful sort of place you understand. Why even its name you
know is 'Gloom of the Sea.'"
"Even so," said Solvei, "there is no special pain in that. In my
time have I not already seen several Glooms of the Land? Why then
should I not, for sheer geography, start out to investigate a 'Gloom
of the Sea'?"
"Yes, but it's a--it's a Desert Island, you know!" persisted the
Young Doctor.
"So-o?" brightened Solvei. "And will there then be camels? N-o?"
With a soft sigh of regret her whole personality seemed to fade
for a moment into the indeterminate blur and buzz of crossed
telephone wires. Then clear as a bell her voice rang out again.
"And have you seen the little sad lady once more?" she asked.
"Why she's here in my office now," said the Young Doctor. "She
has to come almost every day."
"So?" mused the Norse girl. "And will it take the long time
perhaps to mend the little pain in the bone?"
"I certainly hope so!" laughed the Young Doctor. And for the
first time since she had heard it there was no irony in the laugh
but sheer boyish happiness.
"You do not seem quite to get the ideas of this little trip that
I should make," she reproached him briskly. "It is not just that
I go! But that I stay! It is not just for the once it would seem
but for the all time that this lady so desires me! The ticket
that she so kindly sends is but one-sided. It does not return."
"Ticket?" exclaimed the Young Doctor. "Why, this is preposterous!
You don't really mean it, surely? There's nothing that can make
you go, you know!"
"So?" said Solvei. "Did I not make the dare to her? Should I not
pay? Is it not then as you say? I have drawn the fire!" Across
the astonishing gravity of her tone a most joyous laugh broke
suddenly. "Your words are of such a mixedness," she laughed.
"Drawn? Drawn? Is it not rather as the strong banks would say,
Miss Solvei Kjelland by one lady from the South has been withdrawn
from the circulations? But I adore this America!" she confided
blithely. "Always around every corner there is something that you
did not first expect when you curled that corner."
"Yes, I know," admitted the Young Doctor. "But what about all
this Montessori study and everything? Are you going to chuck it?
And the little brother? The little lad who isn't?" he asked with
real regret.
"It will all keep," said Solvei. "It is only what is, it would
seem, that should pass."
"Oh, but Miss Kjelland," insisted the Young Doctor, "this whole
thing is absurd! I--I believe you're making it all up, just for
a joke! If you're going to be home next Sunday afternoon couldn't
I come around and--and laugh the thing out with you?"
"Next Sunday afternoon?" mused Solvei, with the manner of one who
pauses for an instant to count the days on the fingers. "And this
now, this minute, is a Tuesday?" she questioned, still speculatively.
"Yes," agreed the Young Doctor.
"No! It will not be possible!" said Solvei. "I leave!"
"Yes, but when?" asked the Young Doctor.
"Now," said Solvei. "Already it is that I can hear the taxicab
adding at the door."
"What?" cried the Young Doctor.
"Under the river!" waved Solvei's clear young voice. "Under the
river, Dr. Sam Kendrue!"
Like a gigantic gray-brown wonder bulb the northern winter is
dumped down thus at will into the sunny, plushy forcing frame of
a New York Pullman to bloom in perfect scent and glory only one
day, two days, three days later in some welcoming Southland.