A Court of Inquiry Part 13

She shook her head. "They've heard me often, but never you, I think.

Besides, it wakes the babies, you know, for me to sing."

"You don't need to sing high notes, Azalea," I urged. "I'd like nothing so well as the lullaby you sang to the babies."

But she shook her head again. "That's their song," she said. "You were specially privileged to hear it at all. But I can't do it for company.

Come, Arthur--please."

So the Cashier sang. The Philosopher and I found it necessary to avoid each other's eyes as he did it. The Cashier could roar 'The Toreador,'

no doubt of that. The voice of the bull of Bashan would have been as the summer wind in the trees beside it. Where so much volume came from we could not tell, as we looked at the thin frame of the performer. Why the babies did not wake up will ever remain a mystery. Why Azalea did not desert her accompaniment to press her hands over bursting ear drums I cannot imagine, for it was with difficulty that I surrendered my own to the shock. But Azalea played on to the end, and looked up into the Cashier's flushed face at the last note with a smile of proprietary triumph. Then she turned about to us.

"That fairly takes me off my feet!" cried the Philosopher. I groped hurriedly for a compliment which would match the equivocal fervour of this, but I could not equal it.

"How much you must enjoy singing together," I said, "when the babies are awake,"--and felt annoyed that I could have said it, for I could really not imagine the two voices together.

Azalea glowed. The Cashier grinned. He is as quick-witted as he is good-humoured. "You're a clever pair," he chuckled.

"I've trained him myself," said Azalea. "When I knew him first he'd never thought of singing. I only discovered his voice by accident. It needs much more work with it, of course, but it's powerful, and it has a quality that will improve with cultivation."

The Cashier patted her shoulders. "Now you sing some soft little thing for them, my girl," he commanded--and looking up at him again, Azalea obeyed. She chose an old ballad, one with no chance in it to show the range of her voice. She sang it exquisitely, and the Cashier stood by and turned her music as if he considered it a high privilege. Yet, half-way through, the little Dot woke up. Azalea broke off in the middle of a bar, and fled up the stairs.

"The truth is, I'm afraid," said the Cashier, looking after her with an expression on his face which indicated that he wanted to flee, too, "nothing really counts in this house but the babies."

"They--and something else," suggested the Philosopher gently.

The Cashier looked at him. He nodded. "Yes--and something else," he agreed with his bright smile.

We came away rather late. The Philosopher looked up at the house as the door closed upon the warm farewells which had sent us out into the night. "It's a little bit of a house, isn't it?" he commented.

I looked up, too--at the nursery windows where the faintest of night-lights showed. "Yes, it's very small," I agreed. "Yet quite big enough, although it holds so much."

"One would hardly have said, four years ago, that anything smaller than the biggest musical auditorium in the city would have been big enough to hold Azalea's voice," he mused.

"If you could have heard her sing her lullaby to those babies," I replied, as we walked slowly on, "you would have said her voice would be wasted on a concert audience."

"It seems a pleasant home."

"It _is_ one."

"Somehow, one distrusts the ability of musical prodigies to make pleasant homes."

"I wonder why. Shouldn't the knowledge of any art make one appreciative of other arts?"

"It took some time for a certain exhibition of the domestic art to strike in, at your home, that summer," said the Philosopher. "But I believe Azalea came to envy our Hepatica at the last, didn't she?"

"Indeed she did. And she's never got over envying her her accomplishments. She asked me ever so many questions to-day about Hepatica's housekeeping. I wish I had had a chance before I went to tell her that I was sure her will to succeed would make her home as dear a one as even Hepatica's could be."

"One thing is sure--as long as she lets the Cashier do the singing in the limelight, while she looks after the babies, there'll be no occasion for their friends to demand more music of an evening than is good for her pride of spirit," chuckled the Philosopher. "What--are we at our station already? I say--let's not make a quick trip by train--let's make a slow one, by cab."

"By cab! It would take two hours! No, no--here comes our train."

"This is the first time we've gone anywhere since you've been here without two alert chaperons--younger than myself," grumbled the Philosopher.

"The more reason, then, that we should give them no anxiety on my account."

"I'd like to walk the whole way," said he.

I laughed as I obeyed the signal of an impatient guard and rushed upon the train. "Now, talk to me," said I, as we took our seats.

"My lungs weren't built for the Toreador song," he objected.

IV

ALTHEA AND THE PROMOTER

What an interesting fellow our host is! He is almost more interesting because of the qualities he does not possess, than because of the qualities that he does possess.

--_Arthur Christopher Benson._

"'_Be it ever so humble_,'" quoted the Skeptic under his breath to me, "'_there's no place like_----'"

Hepatica turned and gave him a smiling look which nevertheless conveyed warning. He needed it. The Skeptic was in a mad and merry mood to-night, and no glance shot at him which, being interpreted, meant that we were under our hosts' roof, had thus far been of avail. "We are not under their roof," he argued defiantly, in reply to one of these silent remonstrances. "This isn't their roof. This is the roof of the Hotel Amazon. That's a very different thing. So different that if I lived under it I'd----"

But the Promoter was approaching us again, with the news that dinner had just been announced as served. He immediately led the way with me, Hepatica followed with the Philosopher, and Althea and the Skeptic brought up the rear. It was on the great staircase that the Skeptic, pausing to gaze upward, at a command from the Promoter, who had just bid him observe certain mural decorations done by the distinguished hand of some man of whom I fear none of us had ever heard, murmured the well-known words concerning the humble home.

"I always like to walk down this staircase when I'm not in a hurry," I had heard Althea saying to the Skeptic behind us, "to get the effect from the landing. Isn't it wonderful?"

We all paused upon the landing, which was about thirty feet square. The Skeptic, leaning against the marble bal.u.s.trade, gazed out over the scene with an air of prostrating himself before a shrine. Awe and wonder dominated his aspect. Only we who were familiar with a certain curving line over his left eyebrow knew that he was longing to break into an apostrophe on the magnificence before him which would have alienated Althea and her husband forevermore.

"These columns are of the purest (something) marble," declared the Promoter, laying his hand upon one of them. He rather mumbled the name, and I think none of us were able to recognize it.

"Indeed!" said the Skeptic, and laid his hand upon the column. "It seems stout."

"It's the same that is used in the Royal Palace at Athens," added the Promoter.

"That must be why it feels so Greece-y to the touch," murmured the Skeptic; but, luckily, n.o.body heard him but myself.

In due course of time, proceeding across a gorgeous lobby and traversing an impressive corridor, pa.s.sing lackeys in livery and guests in evening finery, we arrived at the doorway of the most elaborately ornate dining hall I had ever seen. The Promoter paused in the doorway to let the first impression sink in.

"I could have had our dinner served in a private dining-room, of course," said he to us, "but Althea and I decided that you would enjoy this better. There's nothing like it anywhere. It's absolutely cosmopolitan. People from all over the world are dining here to-night--are every night. Every tenth man is worth his millions. Notice the third table on the right as we go by. That's Joseph L. Chrysler, the iron magnate. With his party is a French actress--worshipped on both sides the water. Keep your eyes peeled."

A bowing potentate motioned us forward. A bending waiter put us in our places. Orchids decorated our table. An extraordinarily expensive orchestra celebrated our arrival with strains from a popular opera then raging. People all around glanced at us and immediately away again. I suppose we showed by our appearance that we were the possessors neither of millions nor of world-renowned accomplishments.

The Promoter leaned back in his chair with the demeanour of a large and puffy young frog on the edge of a pool. He settled his white waistcoat and looked from side to side with the superior glance of a man who owns the whole thing. Althea, in her place, also wore a self-conscious air of being hostess to a party which must appreciate the privilege of dining under such auspices.

Our table was a circular one, and the Skeptic sat upon my right. The Promoter at my left occupied himself with Hepatica much of the time--Hepatica had never looked lovelier than to-night, though her simple, white evening frock was not cut half so low as Althea's pink, embroidered one, nor cost half so much as my plain pale-gray. Althea devoted herself to the Philosopher--she and the Skeptic had never got on very well. Meanwhile the Skeptic was saying things into my ear, under cover of the orchestra and the loud hum of talk.