“I hear your voice across the years of waiting;
Out of the past it softly calls to me:
True love knows neither ebbing nor abating;
How long, dear heart, must we two parted be?”
sang Constance, a lingering, old-world sadness in her pure perfect
tones. For a moment after the last note died out on the white balmy
night no one spoke. Only the steady, even purr of the Oriole’s engine
broke the potent stillness which had fallen upon the sextette of young
folks.
“That was a very sad song, Mrs. Lawrence Constance Armitage,” complained
Danny with a subdued gurgle. “It almost made we weep, but not quite. I
happened to recall in time that I wasn’t in the same class with dear
heart; that I had never been parted from dear heart, or any other old
dear. That put a smother on my weeps.”
“Glad something did.” Laurie had accompanied Constance’s song on the
guitar. He now sat playing over softly the last few plaintive measures
of the song.
“It’s a beautiful song, Connie,” Marjorie said with the true
appreciation of the music lover. “I love those last four lines, even if
they are awfully hopeless. I never heard you sing it before. What is it
called?”
“‘_Sehnsucht._’ That means in German ‘longing.’ I found it last winter
in a collection of old German love songs. I liked it so much that I
tried to put the words into English. It’s the only time I ever attempted
to write verse. It turned out better than I had expected.” There was a
tiny touch of pride in the answer.
“Connie used to sing it often for an encore last winter. Then she always
had to sing it again. People never seemed to get enough of that
particular song.” Laurie’s voice expressed his own adoring pride in
Constance.
“I don’t wonder. The music is the throbbing, I-can’t-live-without-you
kind, same as the words. It gets even me. You all know how sentimental I
am—not,” Jerry declared.
“Why, may I ask, does it get you?” briskly began Danny. “Why——”
“You may ask, but that’s all the good it will do you,” Jerry retorted
with finality. “Let me take the wheel awhile, Hal. You may sing a little
for the gang. I may not admire some points about you, but I’ll say you
can sing, even if you are my brother.”
“Oh, let me sing,” begged Danny. “You never heard me at my best.”
“I hope I never shall.” Jerry did not even trouble to glance at the
modest aspirant for vocal glory. “Don’t speak to me, if you can help it.
Just hearing you speak might get on my nerves and make me fall
overboard.” She rose carefully in her seat in order to change places
with Hal.
Hal had taken no part in the discussion which had followed Constance’s
song. He was leaning over the wheel, his clean-cut features almost
sternly set as he sent the Oriole speeding through a gently rippling
sea. His thoughts were moodily centered on Marjorie. Danny’s and Jerry’s
untimely interruption upon his impulsive declaration of love was in the
nature of a misfortune to him. His first feeling of vexation in the
matter had deepened into one of dejection as he listened to Connie’s
song. He could not help wondering darkly if that was the way it would be
with him. Would it become his lot to long some day for Marjorie, and
vainly, across the years? He was sure of his love for her. He was sure
it would never ebb nor abate. What about her love for him? Hal had
nothing but doubts.
Last fall he had reluctantly come to the conclusion that Marjorie did
not care in the least for him, other than in the way of friendship. It
was only since she had come to Severn Beach that he had begun to take
heart again. He had been her devoted companion, as of old, on all of the
pleasure sails, drives and jaunts which the sextette of Sanford young
folks had enjoyed. It had sometimes seemed to Hal that Marjorie was a
trifle more gracious to him than of yore. He felt that she was fond of
him in a comradely way. He could not recall an occasion since he had
known Marjorie when she had accepted the attentions of another Sanford
boy. That was one thing he might be glad of.
The white glory of the night, the tender beauty of the girl he adored,
her avowed enthusiastic preference for work above all else in life had
crystallized Hal’s troubled resolve to ask Marjorie the momentous
question which, somehow, he had never before found the right opportunity
for asking. And Jerry and Danny had “butted in” and spoiled it! This was
his rueful reflection as he silently allowed Jerry to replace him at the
wheel.
“I won’t be stingy with the wheel,” he soberly assured his sister, “but
you’d better ask Dan-yell to sing.”
“Never. I have too much consideration for the rest of the gang,” Jerry
retorted.
“And I have myself to consider,” flung back Danny. “I wouldn’t sing if
Jerry-miar dropped to her knees on the sand and begged me to.
Understand, every one of you, I can sing, warble, carol, chant or trill.
There is no limit to my vocal powers. There was a time when I might
possibly have been persuaded to sing. That time is past.”
“Thank you, Jerry,” Laurie said very solemnly.
“You’re welcome,” chuckled Jerry. “Glad I could be so useful.”
“O, don’t be too ready to laugh. I may sing just for spite,” Danny
warned. “To sing, or not to sing? That is the question.”
“Take time to think it over, Danny,” laughed Marjorie. “While you are
thinking Connie will sing the song of Brahms I like so much. Please,
Connie, sing ‘The Summer Fields,’” she urged. “Then you’ll sing, won’t
you, Hal?” She turned coaxingly to Hal who had seated himself beside her
on one of the built-in benches of the motor boat.
“Maybe,” Hal made half reluctant promise. He was wishing he dared take
Marjorie’s slim hands, lying tranquilly in her lap, and imprison them in
his own.
Glancing frankly up at him Marjorie glimpsed in his eyes a bright intent
look which hardly pleased her. It was an expression which was quite new
to his face. She thought, or rather, feared she understood its meaning.
“He’ll go on with what he started to say to me the very first chance he
has,” was her dismayed reflection. “Oh, dear; I wish he wouldn’t.”
Laurie had already begun a soft prelude to “The Summer Fields.” Marjorie
had immediately looked away from Hal and out on the moonlit sea. She had
the impression that Hal’s eyes were still upon her. She felt the hot
blood rise afresh to her cheeks. For a brief instant she was visited by
a flash of resentment. Why, oh, why, must Hal spoil their long, sincere
friendship by trying to turn it into a love affair?
Again Constance’s golden tones rose and fell, adding to the enchantment
of the night. Marjorie’s instant of resentment took swift wing as she
listened to the wistful German words for which the great composer had
found such a perfect setting. She was glad she loved music and moonlight
and poetry and all the beautiful bits of life. She did not wish life to
mean the kind of romance Hal meant. Her idea of romance meant the glory
of work and the stir of noble deeds.
“Now it’s your turn, Hal. It’s not fair to make me do all the singing.
Jerry claims she can’t sing, and she won’t let Danny sing. Laurie makes
me do his share of it. Marjorie can sing, but she thinks she can’t. That
leaves only you, and you haven’t a ghost of an excuse. Go ahead now. Be
nice and sing the Boat Song.” Constance ended coaxingly.
“All right, Connie. Instruct your husband to play a few bars of it
strictly in tune and I’ll see what I can do.” Hal straightened up
suddenly on the bench with an air of pretended importance.
“See to it that your singing’s strictly in tune,” Laurie advised. “I can
be trusted to do the rest.” Already his musician’s fingers were finding
the rhythmic introduction to Tosti’s “Boat Song.”
“The night wind sighs,
Our vessel flies,
Across the dark lagoon.”
Hal took up the swinging measures of the song in his clear, sweet tenor
and sent it ringing across the water. Tonight he came into a new and
sombre understanding of the song. Never before had he realized the
undercurrent of doubt it contained. Perhaps Tosti had composed the song
out of his own lover’s hopes and fears. Unconsciously Hal’s weight of
troubled doubt went into an impassioned rendering.
Laurie and Constance understood perfectly his unintentional betrayal of
his feelings. Danny, razor keen of perception, also grasped the
situation. This time he had nothing to say.
“And here am I,
To live or die;
As you prove hard or kind;
Prove hard or kind.”
Jerry sat looking unduly solemn as Hal tunefully voiced the sentimental,
worshipping lines and took up the echoing refrain. When the song ended
an odd silence fell which no one of them seemed willing to shatter.
Connie and Laurie were frankly holding hands, their young faces touched
with a romance born of music and moonlight. Danny was staring intently
at Jerry as though absorbed in her management of the wheel.
Marjorie sat bathed in moonlight, looking unutterably lovely and trying
her utmost not to appear self-conscious. She was under the blind
impression that she alone understood what lay behind Hal’s song. In
reality she understood less concerning the strength of his love and
devotion for her than did those who had been their intimate girl and
boyhood friends. She did, however, detect a certain melancholy tinge to
his singing which gave her a peculiar conscience-stricken feeling.
“No, I don’t care to sing any more tonight,” he said, when Laurie came
out of his dream and asked him to sing an old Spanish serenade. “I’m not
in a singing humor.”
“Poor old Hal,” Jerry was thinking as she gave the wheel an impatient
turn by way of showing her disapproval. “He does love her so! Marjorie’s
the sweetest girl ever, but she’s hard, not kind, when it comes to love.
She’s a regular stony heart.”