The Happy Venture/Chapter 9
CHAPTER IX
FAME COMES COURTING
AT first, each day in the old house had been an adventure. That could not last, for even the most exciting surroundings become familiar when they are lived in day after day. Still, there are people who think every dawn the beginning of a new adventure, and Felicia, in spite of pots and pans, was rather of this opinion.
It was, for instance, a real epoch in her life when the great old rose-bush below the living-room windows budded and then bloomed. She had watched it anxiously for weeks, and tended it as it had not been tended for many years. It bloomed suddenly and beautifully,—"out of sheer gratitude," Ken said,—and massed a great mound of delicate color against the silver shingles of the west wall. It bore the sweet, small, old-fashioned roses that flower a tender pink and fade gracefully to bluish white. Felicia gathered a bunch of them for the Maestro, who had bidden the three to come for tea. Neither Ken nor Felicia had, as yet, met Kirk's mysterious friend, and were still half inclined to think him a creature of their brother's imagination.
And, indeed, when they met him, standing beside the laden tea-table on the terrace, they thought him scarcely more of an actuality, so utterly in keeping was he with the dreaming garden and the still house. Felicia, who had not quite realized the depth of friendship which had grown between this old gentleman and her small brother, noted with the familiar strangeness of a dream the proprietary action with which the Maestro drew Kirk to him, and Kirk's instant and unconscious response. These were old and dear friends; Ken and Felicia had for a moment the curious sensation of being intruders in a forgotten corner of enchanted land, into which the likeness of their own Kirk had somehow strayed. But the feeling passed quickly. The Maestro behind the silver urn was a human being, after all, talking of the Sturgis Water Line—a most delightful human being, full of kindliness and humor. Kirk was really their own, too. He leaned beside Felicia's chair, stirring his tea, and she slipped an arm about him, just to establish her right of possession.
The talk ran on the awakening of Applegate Farm, the rose-bush, lessons in the orchard, many details of the management of this new and exciting life, which the Maestro's quiet questioning drew unconsciously from the eager Sturgises.
"We've been talking about nothing but ourselves, I'm afraid," Felicia said at last, with pink cheeks. She rose to go, but Kirk pulled her sleeve. No afternoon at the Maestro's house was complete for him without music, it seemed, and it was to the piano that the Maestro must go; please, please! So, through the French windows that opened to the terrace, they entered the room which Kirk had never been able to describe, because he had never seen it. Ken and Phil saw it now—high and dim and quiet, with book-lined walls, and the shapes of curious and beautiful things gleaming here and there from carved cabinet and table.
The Maestro sat down at the piano, thought for a moment, and then, smiling, rippled into the first bars of a little air which none of his listeners had ever before heard. Eerily it tripped and chimed and lilted to its close, and the Maestro swung about and faced them, smiling still, quizzically.
"What does it mean?" he asked. "I am very curious to know. Is it merely a tune—or does it remind you of something?"
The Sturgises pondered. "It's like spring," Felicia said; "like little leaves fluttering."
"Yes, it is," Ken agreed. "It's a song of some sort, I think—that is, it ought to have words. And it's spring, all right. It's like—it's like—"
"It's like those toads!" Kirk said suddenly. "Don't you know? Like little bells and flutes, far off—and fairies."
The Maestro clapped his hands.
"I have not forgotten how, then," he said. "It has words, Kenelm. I hope—I hope that you will not be very angry with me."
He played the first twinkling measures again, and then began to sing:
"Down in the marshes the sounds begin
Of a far-away fairy violin,
Faint and reedy and cobweb thin."
Cobweb thin, the accompaniment took up the plaintive chirping till the Maestro sang the second verse.
"I say," said Ken, bolt upright in his chair. "I say!"
"Are you angry?" asked the Maestro. He flung out his hands in a pleading gesture. "Will he forgive me, Kirk?"
"Why, why—it's beautiful, sir!" Ken stammered. "It's only—that I don't see how you ever got hold of those words. It was just a thing I made up to amuse Kirk. He made me say it to him over and over, about fifty-nine times, I should say, till I'm sure I was perfectly sick of it."
"Having heard it fifty-nine times," said the old gentleman, "he was able to repeat it to me, and I took the opportunity to write it off on a bit of paper, because, my dear boy, I liked it."
"A lovely, scrumptious tune," said Kirk. "It makes it nicer than ever."
"What do you say," said the Maestro, "to our giving this unsurpassed song to the world at large?"
"Do you mean having it printed?" Felicia asked quickly. "Oh, what fun!"
She beamed at Ken, who looked happy and uncomfortable at once.
"I'm afraid I'm too unknown, sir," he said. "I—I never thought of such a thing."
"Perhaps," said the Maestro, with a smile, "the composer is sufficiently well known to make up for the author's lack of fame."
Ken's face grew a shade redder. "Of course," he stammered. "Oh, I beg your pardon."
"Then the permission is granted?"
Quite naturally, Ken granted it, with what he thought ill-worded thanks, and the Sturgises walked home across the meadow without knowing on what they trod.
"A real author!" Felicia said. "I told you that was n't a pome, when I first heard it."
But Ken chose to be severe and modest, and frowned on the "Toad Song"—as it was familiarly called—for a topic of conversation. And as weeks slid by, the whole affair was almost forgotten at Applegate Farm.
Those were weeks during which the Maestro, from the shadowy hero of Kirk's tales, became a very real part of this new life that was slowly settling to a familiar and loved existence. The quiet garden and the still old house became as well known to Ken and Felicia as to their brother, and, indeed, the Maestro might often have been seen in the living-room at Applegate Farm, listening to Kirk's proud performance on the Melodeon, and eating one of Phil's cookies.