Margaret Vance tried to give herself some reason for going to call upon
the Dryfooses, but she could find none better than the wish to do a kind
thing. This seemed queerer and less and less sufficient as she examined
it, and she even admitted a little curiosity as a harmless element in her
motive, without being very well satisfied with it. She tried to add a
slight sense of social duty, and then she decided to have no motive at
all, but simply to pay her visit as she would to any other eligible
strangers she saw fit to call upon. She perceived that she must be very
careful not to let them see that any other impulse had governed her; she
determined, if possible, to let them patronize her; to be very modest and
sincere and diffident, and, above all, not to play a part. This was easy,
compared with the choice of a manner that should convey to them the fact
that she was not playing a part. When the hesitating Irish serving-man
had acknowledged that the ladies were at home, and had taken her card to
them, she sat waiting for them in the drawing-room. Her study of its
appointments, with their impersonal costliness, gave her no suggestion
how to proceed; the two sisters were upon her before she had really
decided, and she rose to meet them with the conviction that she was going
to play a part for want of some chosen means of not doing so. She found
herself, before she knew it, making her banjo a property in the little
comedy, and professing so much pleasure in the fact that Miss Dryfoos was
taking it up; she had herself been so much interested by it. Anything,
she said, was a relief from the piano; and then, between the guitar and
the banjo, one must really choose the banjo, unless one wanted to devote
one's whole natural life to the violin. Of course, there was the
mandolin; but Margaret asked if they did not feel that the bit of shell
you struck it with interposed a distance between you and the real soul of
the instrument; and then it did have such a faint, mosquitoy little tone!
She made much of the question, which they left her to debate alone while
they gazed solemnly at her till she characterized the tone of the
mandolin, when Mela broke into a large, coarse laugh.
"Well, that's just what it does sound like," she explained defiantly to
her sister. "I always feel like it was going to settle somewhere, and I
want to hit myself a slap before it begins to bite. I don't see what ever
brought such a thing into fashion."
Margaret had not expected to be so powerfully seconded, and she asked,
after gathering herself together, "And you are both learning the banjo?"
"My, no!" said Mela, "I've gone through enough with the piano. Christine
is learnun' it."
"I'm so glad you are making my banjo useful at the outset, Miss Dryfoos."
Both girls stared at her, but found it hard to cope with the fact that
this was the lady friend whose banjo Beaton had lent them. "Mr. Beaton
mentioned that he had left it here. I hope you'll keep it as long as you
find it useful."
At this amiable speech even Christine could not help thanking her. "Of
course," she said, "I expect to get another, right off. Mr. Beaton is
going to choose it for me."
"You are very fortunate. If you haven't a teacher yet I should so like to
recommend mine."
Mela broke out in her laugh again. "Oh, I guess Christine's pretty well
suited with the one she's got," she said, with insinuation. Her sister
gave her a frowning glance, and Margaret did not tempt her to explain.
"Then that's much better," she said. "I have a kind of superstition in
such matters; I don't like to make a second choice. In a shop I like to
take the first thing of the kind I'm looking for, and even if I choose
further I come back to the original."
"How funny!" said Mela. "Well, now, I'm just the other way. I always take
the last thing, after I've picked over all the rest. My luck always seems
to be at the bottom of the heap. Now, Christine, she's more like you. I
believe she could walk right up blindfolded and put her hand on the thing
she wants every time."
"I'm like father," said Christine, softened a little by the celebration
of her peculiarity. "He says the reason so many people don't get what
they want is that they don't want it bad enough. Now, when I want a
thing, it seems to me that I want it all through."
"Well, that's just like father, too," said Mela. "That's the way he done
when he got that eighty-acre piece next to Moffitt that he kept when he
sold the farm, and that's got some of the best gas-wells on it now that
there is anywhere." She addressed the explanation to her sister, to the
exclusion of Margaret, who, nevertheless, listened with a smiling face
and a resolutely polite air of being a party to the conversation. Mela
rewarded her amiability by saying to her, finally, "You've never been in
the natural-gas country, have you?"
"Oh no! And I should so much like to see it!" said Margaret, with a
fervor that was partly voluntary.
"Would you? Well, we're kind of sick of it, but I suppose it would strike
a stranger."
"I never got tired of looking at the big wells when they lit them up,"
said Christine. "It seems as if the world was on fire."
"Yes, and when you see the surface-gas burnun' down in the woods, like it
used to by our spring-house--so still, and never spreadun' any, just like
a bed of some kind of wild flowers when you ketch sight of it a piece
off."
They began to tell of the wonders of their strange land in an antiphony
of reminiscences and descriptions; they unconsciously imputed a merit to
themselves from the number and violence of the wells on their father's
property; they bragged of the high civilization of Moffitt, which they
compared to its advantage with that of New York. They became excited by
Margaret's interest in natural gas, and forgot to be suspicious and
envious.
She said, as she rose, "Oh, how much I should like to see it all!" Then
she made a little pause, and added:
"I'm so sorry my aunt's Thursdays are over; she never has them after
Lent, but we're to have some people Tuesday evening at a little concert
which a musical friend is going to give with some other artists. There
won't be any banjos, I'm afraid, but there'll be some very good singing,
and my aunt would be so glad if you could come with your mother."
She put down her aunt's card on the table near her, while Mela gurgled,
as if it were the best joke: "Oh, my! Mother never goes anywhere; you
couldn't get her out for love or money." But she was herself overwhelmed
with a simple joy at Margaret's politeness, and showed it in a sensuous
way, like a child, as if she had been tickled. She came closer to
Margaret and seemed about to fawn physically upon her.
"Ain't she just as lovely as she can live?" she demanded of her sister
when Margaret was gone.
"I don't know," said Christine. "I guess she wanted to know who Mr.
Beaton had been lending her banjo to."
"Pshaw! Do you suppose she's in love with him?" asked Mela, and then she
broke into her hoarse laugh at the look her sister gave her. "Well, don't
eat me, Christine! I wonder who she is, anyway? I'm goun' to git it out
of Mr. Beaton the next time he calls. I guess she's somebody. Mrs. Mandel
can tell. I wish that old friend of hers would hurry up and git well--or
something. But I guess we appeared about as well as she did. I could see
she was afraid of you, Christine. I reckon it's gittun' around a little
about father; and when it does I don't believe we shall want for callers.
Say, are you goun'? To that concert of theirs?"
"I don't know. Not till I know who they are first."
"Well, we've got to hump ourselves if we're goun' to find out before
Tuesday."
As she went home Margaret felt wrought in her that most incredible of the
miracles, which, nevertheless, any one may make his experience. She felt
kindly to these girls because she had tried to make them happy, and she
hoped that in the interest she had shown there had been none of the
poison of flattery. She was aware that this was a risk she ran in such an
attempt to do good. If she had escaped this effect she was willing to
leave the rest with Providence.