THE VALUE OF A PIANOLA TRAINING
On that very same evening Hollis Creek came over to the bowling
tournament, and Miss Stevens, arriving with young Hollis, promptly lost
that perfervid young man, who had become somewhat of a nuisance in his
sentimental insistence. Mr. Turner, watching her from afar, saw her
desert the calfly smitten one, and immediately dashed for the breach.
He had watched from too great a distance, however, for Billy Westlake
gobbled up Miss Josephine before Sam could get there, and started with
her for that inevitable stroll among the brookside paths which always
preceded a bowling tournament. While he stood nonplussed, looking
after them, Miss Hastings glided to his side in a matter of course way.
"Isn't it a perfectly charming evening?" she wanted to know.
"It is a regular dear of an evening," admitted Sam savagely.
In his single thoughtedness he was scrambling wildly about within the
interior of his skull for a pretext to get rid of Miss Hastings, but it
suddenly occurred to him that now he had a legitimate excuse for
following the receding couple, and promptly upon the birth of this
idea, he pulled in that direction and Miss Hastings came right along,
though a trifle silently. With all her vivacious chattering, she was
not without shrewdness, and with no trouble whatever she divined
precisely why Sam chose the path he did, and why he seemed in such
almost blundering haste. They _were_ a little late, it was true, for
just as they started, Billy and Miss Stevens turned aside and out of
sight into the shadiest and narrowest and most involved of the
shrubbery-lined paths, the one which circled about the little concealed
summer-house with a dove-cote on top, which was commonly dubbed "the
cooing place." Following down this path the rear couple suddenly came
upon a tableau which made them pause abruptly. Billy Westlake, upon
the steps of the summer-house, was upon his knees, there in the swiftly
blackening dusk, before the appalled Miss Stevens; actually upon his
knees! Silently the two watchers stole away, but when they were out of
earshot Miss Hastings tittered. Sam, though the moment was a serious
one for him, was also compelled to grin.
"I didn't know they did it that way any more," he confessed.
"They don't," Miss Hastings informed him; "that is, unless they are
very, very young, or very, very old."
"Apparently you've had experience," observed Sam.
"Yes," she admitted a little bitterly. "I think I've had rather more
than my share; but all with ineligibles."
Sam felt a trace of pity for Miss Hastings, who was of polite family,
but poor, and a guest of the Westlakes, but he scarcely knew how to
express it, and felt that it was not quite safe anyhow, so he remained
discreetly silent.
By mutual, though unspoken impulse, they stopped under the shade of a
big tree up on the lawn, and waited for the couple who had been found
in the delicate situation either to reappear on the way back to the
house, or to emerge at the other end of the path on the way to the
bowling shed. It was scarcely three minutes when they reappeared on
the way back to the house, and both watchers felt an instant thrill of
relief, for the two were by no means lover-like in their attitudes.
Billy had hold of Miss Josephine's arm and was helping her up the
slope, but their shoulders were not touching in the process, nor were
arms clasped closely against sides. They passed by the big tree
unseeing, then, as they neared the house, without a word, they parted.
Miss Stevens proceeded toward the porch, and stopped to take a
handkerchief from her sleeve and pass it carefully and lightly over her
face. Billy Westlake strode off a little way toward the bowling shed,
stopped and lit a cigarette, took two or three puffs, started on,
stopped again, then threw the cigarette to the ground with quite
unnecessary vigor, and stamped on it. Miss Hastings, without adieus of
any sort, glided swiftly away in the direction of Billy, and then a dim
glimmer of understanding came to Sam Turner that only Miss Stevens had
stood in the way of Miss Hastings' capture of Billy Westlake. He
wasted no time over this thought, however, but strode very swiftly and
determinedly up to Miss Josephine.
"I'm glad to find you alone," he said; "I want to make an explanation."
"Don't bother about it," she told him frigidly. "You owe me no
explanations whatsoever, Mr. Turner."
"I'm going to make them anyhow," he declared. "You saw me twice this
afternoon in utterly asinine situations."
"I remember of no such situations," she stated still frigidly, and
started to move on toward the house.
"But wait a minute," said Sam, catching her by the arm and detaining
her. "You did see me in silly situations, and I want you to know the
facts about them."
"I'm not at all interested," she informed him, now with absolute north
pole iciness, and started to move away again.
He held her more tightly.
"The first time," he went on, "was when Miss Hastings slipped on the
rocks and I had to catch her to keep her from falling."
"Will you kindly let me go, Mr. Turner?" demanded Miss Josephine.
"No, I will not!" he replied, and pulled her about a trifle so that she
was compelled to face him. "I don't choose to have anybody, least of
all you, think wrongly of me."
"Mr. Turner, I do not choose to be detained against my will," declared
Miss Josephine.
"Mr. Turner," boomed a deep-timbered voice right behind them, "the lady
has requested you to let her go. I should advise you to do so."
Mr. Turner was attempting to frame up a reasonable answer to this
demand when Miss Josephine prevented him from doing so.
"Mr. Princeman," said she to the interrupting gallant, "I thank you for
your interference on my behalf, but I am quite capable of protecting
myself," and leaving the two stunned gentlemen together, she once more
took her handkerchief from her sleeve and walked swiftly up to the
porch, brushing the handkerchief lightly over her face again.
"Well, I'll be damned!" said Princeman, looking after her in more or
less bewilderment.
"So will I," said Sam. "Have you a cigarette about you?"
Princeman gave him one and they took a light from the same match, then,
neither one of them caring to discuss any subject whatever at that
particular moment, they separated, and Sam hunted a lonely corner. He
wanted to be alone and gloom. Confound bowling, anyhow! It was a dull
and uninteresting game. He cared less for it as time went on, he
found; less to-night than ever. He crept away into the dim and
deserted parlor and sat down at the piano, the only friend in which he
cared to confide just then. He played, with a queer lingering touch
which had something of hesitation in it, and which reduced all music to
a succession of soft chords, _The Maid of Dundee_ and _Annie Laurie_,
_The Banks of Banna_ and _The Last Rose of Summer_, then one of the
simpler nocturnes of Chopin, and, following these, a quaint, slow
melody which was like all of the others and yet like none.
"Bravo!" exclaimed a gentle voice in the doorway, and he turned,
startled, to see Miss Stevens standing there. She did not explain why
she had relented, but came directly into the room and stood at the end
of the piano. He reached up and shook hands with her quite naturally,
and just as naturally and simply she let her hand lie in his for an
instant. How soft and warm her palm was, and how grateful the touch of
it!
"What a pleasant surprise!" she said. "I didn't know you played."
"I don't," he confessed, smiling. "If you had stopped to listen you
would have known. You ought to hear my kid brother play though. He's
a corker."
"But I did listen," she insisted, ignoring the reference to his "kid
brother." "I stood there a long time and I thought it beautiful. What
was that last selection?"
He flushed guiltily.
"It was--oh, just a little thing I sort of put together myself," he
told her.
"How delightful! And so you compose, too?"
"Not at all," he hastily assured her. "This is the only thing, and it
seemed to come just sort of naturally to me from time to time. I don't
suppose it's finished yet, because I never play it exactly as I did
before. I always seem to add a little bit to it. I do wish that I had
had time to know more of music. What little I play I learned from a
pianola."
"A what?" she gasped.
He laughed in a half-embarrassed way.
"A pianola," he repeated. "You see I've always been hungry for music,
and while my kid brother was still in college I began to be able to
afford things, and one of the first luxuries was a pianola. You know
the machine has a little lever which throws the keys in or out of
engagement, so that you can play it as a regular piano if you wish, and
if you leave the keys engaged while you are playing the rolls, they
work up and down; so by watching these I gradually learned to pick out
my favorite tunes by hand. I couldn't play them so well by myself as
the rolls played them, but somehow or other they gave me more
satisfaction."
Miss Stevens did not laugh. In some indefinable way all this made a
difference in Sam Turner--a considerable difference--and she felt quite
justified in having deliberately come to the conclusion that she had
been "mean" to him; in having deliberately slipped away from the others
as they were all going over to the bowling alleys; in having come back
deliberately to find him.
"Your favorite tunes," she repeated musingly. "What was the first one,
I wonder? One of those that you have just been playing?"
"The first one?" he returned with a smile. "No, it was a sort of
rag-time jingle. I thought it very pretty then, but I played it over
the other day, the first time in years, and I didn't seem to like it at
all. In fact, I wonder how I ever did like it."
Rag-time! And now, left entirely to his own devices and for his own
pleasure, he was playing Chopin! Yes, it made quite a difference in
Sam Turner. She was glad that she had decided to wear his roses, glad
even that he recognized them. At her solicitation Sam played again the
plaintive little air of his own composition--and played it much better
than ever he had played it before. Then they walked out on the porch
and strolled down toward the bowling shed. Half way there was a little
side path, leading off through an arbor into a shady way which crossed
the brook on a little rustic bridge, which wound about between
flowerbeds and shrubbery and back by another little bridge, and which
lengthened the way to the bowling shed by about four times the normal
distance--and they took that path; and when they reached the bowling
alley they were not quite ready to go in.
[Illustration: Sam played again the plaintive little air]
There seemed no reasonable excuse for staying out longer, however, for
the bowling had already started, and, moreover, young Tilloughby
happened to come to the door and spied them. Princeman was just
getting up to bowl for the honor and glory of Meadow Brook, and within
one minute later Miss Stevens was watching the handsome young paper
manufacturer with absorbed interest. He was a fine picture of athletic
manhood as he stood up, weighing the ball, and a splendid picture of
masculine action as he rushed forward to deliver it. Sam had to
acknowledge that himself, and out of fairness he even had to join in
the mad applause when Princeman made strike after strike. They had
Princeman up again in the last frame, and it was a ticklish moment.
The Hollis Creek team was fifty points ahead. Dramatic unities, under
the circumstances, demanded that Princeman, by a tremendous exercise of
coolness and skill, overcome that lead by his own personal efforts, and
he did, winning the tournament for Meadow Brook with a breathless few
points to spare.
But did Sam Turner care that Princeman was the hero of the hour? More
power to Princeman, for from the bevy of flushed and eager girls who
flocked about the Adonis-like victor, Miss Josephine Stevens was
absent. She was there, with him, in Paradise! Incidentally Sam made
an engagement to drive with her in the morning, and when, at the close
of that delightful evening, the carryall carried her away, she beamed
upon him; gave him two or three beams in fact, and said good-by
personally and waved her hand to him personally; nobody else was there
in all that crowd but just they two!