The House of Toys Part 18

He thought she was taking one of those naps which are the prerogative of age at any hour, and began to tiptoe away. But she started and sat upright, her face turned toward him.

"Who is it?" she asked. "But I know. You are Mr. Quentin, of course. I am Jonathan's mother." She smiled.

But something was wrong with that smile. It seemed incomplete.

"You may come in."

She held out a hand. David advanced and took it. She caught his in both of hers, in a soft lingering clasp.

She smiled again. "It is a good strong hand. You are quite tall, aren't you?"

"Almost six feet."

"And broad, too?"

"Rather, I believe."

He tried to speak lightly, but a hard lump was gathering in his throat.

For he knew what was wrong with that smile. She was blind.

"I am glad of that." She nodded brightly. "I am very fond of large men.

It has been my cross that Jonathan took his size from me and not from his father. I could walk under his arm and not even graze his sleeve."

She drew him down beside her.

"Do you mind if I touch your face?"

"It isn't much of a face, you know." But that lump was very stubborn.

She reached up and pa.s.sed both hands over his face, a light caressing touch he scarcely felt.

"Now," she smiled, "I see you. You are quite mistaken. It is a good true face and I like it very much. Ah!" She had touched his lashes.

"You are feeling sorry for me. But you must not," she chided gently. "I don't like people to be sorry for me."

To that David had no answer. But on an impulse--or it may have been an inspiration--as the little hands left his face, he brushed one lightly with his lips.

She beamed--always with that pathetic lack--just as Jonathan did when something pleased him.

"That was very pretty." She nodded again. "I see I am to like Jonathan's new friend very much. You know, you have quite won him. He talks of you all the time. You like him, do you not?" The smile had become quite wistful.

"Better all the time," David answered promptly and with truth.

"I am glad of that. And it is good of you to come here. We have so few visitors--I suppose," she sighed, "because we aren't very interesting. I am afraid Jonathan gets very lonely sometimes, having to spend most of his evenings here with no one but me. Not," she made haste to add, "that he isn't always good to me."

"I think he is good to every one."

"You have found that out? It is because he had a great disappointment once, I think."

"One would never guess that."

"No. Of course, when one has had a disappointment or been made to suffer, one makes up for that by trying to make the world brighter for others."

"It seems," said David, "that some people do that."

"He wanted to play the violin professionally. He had studied hard and his teachers said that he had talent. But his father forbade it. He said it wasn't a man's work to fiddle in public. My husband," she sighed, "was a very firm man and wanted Jonathan to learn the business.

So Jonathan went to the technical school here and studied engineering.

Jonathan," she added proudly, "had been well brought up and knew that his parents were wiser than he."

"I see," said David.

"But I think," the little lady went on, after a pause, "we didn't know how hard it was for him. I understand better now. Sometimes, though he doesn't suspect, I hear it in his playing. Then I wonder if we were wiser than he--and if I was selfish. Of course, the music would have taken him away so much and it would have been very lonely for me--and very dark. Sometimes I wonder if that wasn't his real reason for giving up his music."

David was silent.

"You say nothing." Even without eyes to give meaning, her smile was wistful as a child's. "Are you thinking he would have been happier--or better off--in the work he wanted than in taking care of me?"

"I think," said David, "he is happy because he stayed with you."

"He has said so himself." She sighed. "I wonder--I wonder!"

For a little they said nothing, David thinking very hard.

"And now," she said at last, "you may tell me what you think of Miss Summers."

"Why," he answered, "she seems very attractive."

"Jonathan has led me to believe so. And a gentlewoman, should you say?"

"I think so," said David, who had not thought of it at all. "Oh, yes, undoubtedly."

"That is my opinion. And she sings very nicely." Jonathan's mother sighed again.

There was a dinner that included creations not found in cheap boarding-houses: fried chicken, for example, tender and flaky and brown, and crisp waffles with honey, and sweet potatoes in the southern style.

It was cooked and served by a white-haired old negress whose round eyes popped with pride at the destruction David wrought. She listened shamelessly, fat bosom aquiver, to her radiant master's quips, commenting, "Mistuh Jon'than,--_chuckle_--ef yo' ain'--_chuckle_--de beatenes' evuh!" and warned David in a stage whisper to save room for a miracle of a pudding to come. Mrs. Radbourne opened the casket of her memory to display several well polished anecdotes of a day when the world must have been very bright indeed, full of light and color; chiefest jewel of which concerned a meeting with the elder Booth, from which occasion her husband--that very firm man--had emerged with credit. If, as some wise man has said, wit is all a matter of the right audience, then David must have been very witty indeed. And across the table from him sat a pair of slate-gray eyes, still aglow with that sense of adventure.

Then there were cigars, mild and very good, smoked on the porch; both ladies protesting that they liked the fragrance of tobacco. And then the host, with the air of having come to the real business of the meeting, rose and said:

"Shall we have some music now?"

"Oh, by all means!" said David politely, wondering how much credence he ought to place in the advance notices.

They went into the parlor, where Jonathan turned to Miss Summers, "Do you feel like singing this evening?"

"Yes," she said, and went at once to the piano.

She played a few chords softly. And then her voice rose in a low crooning note that went straight to David's heart.

For she sang as the thrush sings--because G.o.d had put music in her heart and shaped her throat to give forth pure rich liquid sounds and meant her to be revealed through song. And that evening, in the simple little slumber song she sang first, there was no faltering or roughened note to tell that part of her gift had been taken from her. While she sang, there was nothing in the world but melody and the rest of which she sang . . . and the singer.