Winding Paths Part 58

"Anyhow, this particular one did not think I put enough expression into the tunes. He said they hardly sounded like sacred tunes at all; which wasn't surprising, when you come to think that sometimes a low note and sometimes a high note on that little tin-pot organ would take it into its head to stick, and would either boom or squeak all through the thing I was playing." Hal burst out laughing, quite unable to contain herself any longer, but the spinster went on calmly: "The tune might just as well have been 'Down by the Old Bull and Bush' then, but it wasn't my fault, because when your hands and arms and feet and eyes and ears are all struggling to keep time with a village choir that varies its pace every few bars, you've got nothing left to release a stuck note with."

"I hope you didn't tell the under-done young parson about 'The Old Bull and Bush'?" said Hal, still rocking with enjoyment and bent chiefly upon leading her on.

"I'd never heard of it then, or I might have. Even that won't reach the village I'm thinking of for a hundred years; and then they'll play it until the very birds lose heart, and think they are uncannily up to date. So they are if you count it when things come round the second time. I told him if the organ seemed to be playing 'Yankee Doodle,' I supposed it was because it felt like it; as, for twenty-five years, it had more or less pleased itself at my expense.

"But he'll be a gargoyle soon, and then he won't notice, and it will boom and squaek to its heart's content. Of course I ought to have stayed on because I matched it all, and I didn't mind the booming and squeaking as long as the choir didn't get convulsed, and stop altogether - because that was liable to catch father's attention. A gargoyle is out of place in London. It's as mad for me bo be here as that I'm here to teach music. After I became fossilised I ought to have stayed on till I died, and then that self-willed organ could have fairly squeaked itself out over my corpse. Come along and have some tea now. Poor Mr. Hayward will be getting faint."

"But you're too perfectly delicious for anything!" Hal cried, springing off the table. "Why haven't I known you for years? Why haven't I known you all my life? You must meet my cousin d.i.c.k Bruce. You absolutely _must_, with the least possible delay. He'll simply dote on you. Come along to Basil, and tell me heaps and heaps more"; and she caught her by the arm in the friendliest fashion, and half-pulled her along to the little sitting-room.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

"What a gossip you two have been having!" Basil said, and, seeing the laughter in Hal's eyes, he added, "has G been telling you some of her amazing theories, or tearing the existing order of the universe to shreds?"

"Oh, I don't know, but she's simply immense. Have you heard about the tin-pot organ that will play its own way, and the choir that gets convulsed, and the underdone young parson? She's simply got to know d.i.c.k. He wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Yes; I've heard most of it. She plays an organ of laughter for me nowadays, that makes me bless the day she was born."

The gaunt spinster positively blushed.

"Oh, that's just your way," she snapped, bashfully trying to hide her pleasure. "If I hadn't been G, a pretty, charming young woman with real music in her might have been, and you'd have liked that much better."

"No, I shouldn't. She'd have played 'Home, Sweet Home,' with variations, and 'The Maiden's Prayer ' - I know her at a glance. If you do only play scales and exercises I'm sure you manage to put a lot of character into them."

"That's only thumping; and who wants thumping ?"

"I do, when it's the universe. I'm just as much askew with it as you are, only I haven't got the wit to thump it so satisfactorily. You are going it for the two of us now."

"Still, you're not a gargoyle..." with a queer twist of her face that delighted Hal.

"I shall positively take you to d.i.c.k myself," she said, "or bring him here to you. He'll talk to you about a mother's patience, and babies; and you'll talk to him about gargoyles and organs, and Heaven only knows where you'll both get to ; but I wouldn't miss it for anything."

"I don't know who d.i.c.k may be, but if he talks to me about mothers and babies " - grimly - " I shall groan like that organ did at christenings. They may be useful in the general scheme, but beyond that I don't know how any one can put up with them at all; with their potsy-wotsy, and pucksie-ducksie, and general stickiness. It's quite enough for me that I have to knit stupid little socks for their silly little feet, for bread-and-b.u.t.ter. The most I can say for it is, that it's a more satisfactory plan than casting your bread on the waters, on the off-chance some kindly Elijah will b.u.t.ter it."

"Where are the socks, G ?" Basil asked, looking round. "I should like Hal to enjoy the edifying spectacle of your knitting babies' socks."

"You don't mean that," interrupted Hal comically. "I can't believe it."

"It's the horrible truth," a.s.serted the spinster, calmly going on with her tea -" most of them go to little black whelps in the Antipodes.

After all, it isn't any more incongruous than the music - is it ?"

"But you don't do it for the under-done young parson, surely ?"

"Goodness gracious, no. What an idea! He wiped his hands of me long ago. The wildest stretch of imagination, you see, could not picture me ever looking like an angel; so he left me to my fate!" And again the humorous twisted smile delighted her small audience.

"Have you seen Splodgkins lately ?" Basil asked.

"You say all babies are sticky and objectionable; but you must admit that sticky imp down below is better than two-thirds of the other babies in the world shining with soap polish."

"So he is"; and the grim face relaxed still further. "He was sitting in my way on the stairs this morning, and as I could not get by, I said, 'Make room, please, Master Splodgkins; you don't own the universe.' 'Eth oi doth,' he lisped. 'Noime ain't thplodums. d.a.m.n th'

ooniverth.'"

It was good to hear Basil's whole-hearted laughter.

"We ought to have had him to tea," he said regretfully. "He would have delighted Hal. He's two-and-a-halfyears old" - turning to her - "this remarkable person-age; and, like most gutter snipes, has developed as an ordinary child of four. He and G have debates occasionally. He wishes to be called D, because that is the letter on his front door, and 'Splodgkins ' hurts his dignity but he's so funny when he is indignant we can't resist teasing him."

A little wistful smile crept into the invalid's eyes.

"We have lots of fun in this dingy old barrack between us," he told Hal. "We are rarely silly enough to be dull, with so many queer, interesting folks under the same roof."

Hal felt something like a sudden lump in her throat, but she smiled brightly as she looked from one to the other, feeling somehow the better for knowing such waifs of life and circ.u.mstance, who could yet baffle Fate's pitilessness with genuine laughter.

"d.i.c.k is writing a most weird and incomprehensible book on vegetables and babies. I'm quite certain you could give him lots of ideas," she remarked to G.

"He'd better put Splodgkins in if he wants to make it sell," said she.

"Only they mightn't allow it at the libraries. Splodgkins's vocabulary is fortunately sometimes indistinguishable for his lisp."

"Splodgkins couldn't be translated," put in Basil. "He sometimes comes to tea with me and G; but he is almost too exhausting. I think he knows every bad word in the English language; but one has to forgive him because he always saves half his cake for his baby sister, and hurls violent abuse at any one who dares to disparage her.

"Are you going?..." as G got up. "I'm sure Miss Pritchard doesn't want you to leave us."

"Miss Pritchard!..." In a horrified voice.

"Never mind," said Hal quickly. "It didn't matter." Then to Basil, in explanation: "G said something about Doris's fiance, not knowing I was his sister, but I quite forget what it was. Good-bye, G," holding out a frank hand. "I think you're a delightful person, and I'm just as glad as Basil that you weren't left out of the alphabet."

A few minutes later Doris came in, looking flushed and stealthy, and the first thing Hal noticed was a loverly little diamon brooch she had not seen before.

"What a darling brooch," she exclaimed, after their greeting. "Did Dudley give you that? He might have shown it to me."

"No..." stammered Doris, turning red. "I've had it a long time. It's not real."

"Well, it's a wonderful imitation, then" said Hall a little drily - and remembered the man like a p.a.w.nbroker's shop.

Then Ethel joined them, and Hal's quick eyes saw sthe still increasing anxiety, just as surely as she saw the increased furtiveness in Doris's side-long glances. And because of all that she felt for Ethel, she trust her own care into the background resolutely, and made the evening as gay as she could while she was there.

Only afterwards she went home through the lamp-lit darkness, feeling as if some vague shadow had descended silently upon her little world.

What was this insistent, nameless fear at her own heart? Why was Lorraine weeping when she found her yesterday? Why was trouble steadily gathering on Ethel's face? What was this gossip about Doris? -

The gloom of a foggy night added to her depression. Why, in the tube railway, did all these people about her look so white and tired and lifeless? Did they just go on in their niches, in the same way that the grotesque music-teacher had gone on in hers for all those monotonous years; only to become like an uncared-for, unwanted letter of the alphabet pushed in to fill up a blank in a big city at last?

Were they all gargoyles-fixed, rigid, joyless, carved things, fastened in their respective niches, not for ornament, or for use specially, but just because the general machine seemed to require them?

And if so - why? ... why? ... why? -

It was so easy to be joyous if one was made for it. Such a little would make every one gay, if they were fashioned accordingly. What could be the good of disfiguring a beautiful world with all these vacant, expressionless, hopeless masks?

Hal did not read poetry. She was perfectly frank about being utterly bored with it. When she had anything to say, she liked to say it straight out, she explained, without twisting it about to make it rhyme with something just shoved in to fill up the line; and she preferred other people to do the same.