# Arpeggio Courts

"Here'll be—" said Arpeggio, "and here'll be—and here—" It doesn't matter what. It never does matter what. Five minutes afterward the visitor would not be able to recite the position of a single herb. But the gardener still knows.
"Yes. Oh yes. Yes, I see," she said, as a visitor should say. Not much of a conversation, but not the only uses of a conversation are to converse.
Arpeggio Courts
BY ZONA GALE
SPRING winds, spring rains, in the air a fragrance of springs long past, unforgotten, young—say, a fragrance of super-springs! Arpeggio Shadd walked down Cook Street. Becker & Broom displayed in their window spring overcoats. Close to the glass leaned a colored print of a haberdasher's heaven—six Apollos, in garments creased and seamed and pressed by a law, if not moral, then infinitely compelling. With them, in bright relief, a heavenly maid, rose-pink, trim, trig, chic—and so on, down the lilting list. And one was handing her down white steps to a white boat, while a white swan drooped a languid eye. Arpeggio paused, studied this picture, sighed, sniffed the spring wind, entered Becker & Broom's, and bought a light spring overcoat.
"I'll wear it," he said. … "What? … No. Do the old one up and I'll tote it along. … What? … Shucks, no. No need to deliver 'way out to my place."
Wearing the new overcoat and carrying the goodly bulk of the old, he emerged upon the sidewalk. And there she was!
She had stepped from a car at the curb—a car not so new or so recently painted as to cry out a passionate prosperity, nor yet so dingy as to confess its owner's mute anxieties. It was a well-bred car, unsensational, perfectly groomed, inconspicuous until you looked, and then revealing itself conspicuously faultless. In a word, it was like the lady from its depths emerging.
"Isn't it Mr. Shadd?" she asked.
It was fortunate that it was Mr. Shadd, because if it had not been, Arpeggio would have claimed it.
"Sure," said he, blankly—but with a pleased, pleased blankness.
"Edith Granger," she said, and he was aware of a white glove.
Arpeggio brought his right hand about his bundle, so that the bundle lay at ease upon his chest. Then he remembered.
"Guess you'd better not shake," said he. "I been sharpenin' my lead-pencil. Your glove looks awful clean."
She did not laugh. A thousand blessings on the woman who does not necessarily laugh. Or do I mean unnecessarily?
"You're very thoughtful," she said, only. "And I hear you're town commissioner. Won't you come to see me some time? We're here for the summer."
Late that night Arpeggio was still awake, defining to himself what he might have said. What a doorway for grace, for ease, for the quick flush of pleasure, the eager, grateful, gracious flowing word! And how had he used that moment? He had answered the lady:
Sure.
And what a lady! He visioned her as she had stood before him on Cook Street, beneath the early awnings of Becker & Broom. Oh, fair! He saw her moving in a bewilderment of exquisitely fitting broadcloth, of little imperious hat, of snowy glove. Her look, her bow, her air—what memories they made. And he was to go to see her. … "Sure." He writhed.
"Goin' to wear your new overcoat for every day?" his mother inquired, mildly, next morning, as he was departing.
"I dun'no' as I mind if I do, seein' you name it, mother," he answered, in jocund vein.
She went to the door and looked after him and his new coat.
"Seemed like Arpeggio didn't act like himself," she thought. "I hope he ain't comin' down with somethin'."
The junior commissioner, it was true, did give signs that day of coming down with something. It was not only that he was inattentive at the commissioners' daily meeting. He was often that. Stack Mayhew and Dodd Purcell, the other two commissioners, had to keep all tallies while Arpeggio merely scrutinized the general score. But now and again that morning, in his abstractions, Arpeggio smiled; and once or twice he shut his teeth and pointed his eyes as at some spasm of memory; and sometimes his lips moved, as if he were rehearsing speech.
"Hain't it? Hain't it? Hain't it?" Stack demanded of him, voice and irritation mounting.
"Hain't what?" Arpeggio rejoined, dreamily.
"Time—to—start—the sprinklin' cart!" Stack emitted. "What's the matter with you? Got the pip?"
"Who? Me?" said Arpeggio. "Shut up. I didn't know I was in the room. Say! Either of you fellows heard who's come home to the Grangers'?"
Dodd Purcell lifted his head and told, with the importance, masked as casualness, of the born gossip.
"Mis' T. M. Granger and her darter," said he. "They aim to pass the summer to home. Somebody had ought to get 'em for subscriptions to the band concerts.
"Yah!" said Stack. "I hear the darter's set on gettin' a public liberary for Banning doorin' the summer. We hain't no time to fool with liberaries—not now."
"Is she?" said Arpeggio. "Is she?" And stroked his hair, which was trained straight back from brow to crown. "Is she?" said he, fatuously.
"The question is," said Stack, "who's goin' to run it, now Stover's bust his leg."
"I don't think," Arpeggio offered, mildly—"I don't think Miss Granger would like that. With or without legs, Stover's no man to run a liberary."
"For the love of mud!" Stack Mayhew thundered. "Run the sprinkler!"
"Oh yes. Mud. To be sure. Mud," said Arpeggio, and looked out the window.
This thought of a library gave Arpeggio a center for his vague, new energy. As a matter of course, he was passively interested. He had a vast reverence for books, though he read but few. Occasionally he bought a book, but he rarely read even that. "I get 'em to have around," he said once, "but readin's a chore." Now, however, he became actively interested. What kind of a town was this not to have a library?
Three days later, at two in the afternoon, Arpeggio appeared at his home. His mother was not there, the house stood pleasantly open to the sun, his doves were pecking on the door-stone. Arpeggio carried a bundle which he opened on the dining-room table: A new light felt hat; a cravat, red on one side, black on the other; a little pin—the head of a deer, in gold. In his sloping-roofed bedroom, the open window filled with budding maple boughs, Arpeggio spent an hour in bathing and dressing. Some time after three he went forth. The day was warm, but he carried his light spring overcoat. Gloves he could not quite assume, but he had them in his pocket. "All the feel of 'em and none of the nuisance," he thought. He wore his cravat red side out.
Yes! Afternoon was the time to make this call. If he went in the evening, Miss Granger might believe that something was meant.
The house of the Grangers was a mid-Victorian brick. Or it was a Grant-and-Hayes brick? Why predicate all these American doings of the poor Victoria? It had finials galore; iron endowments tipped the ridge-pole; there was a cupola. The veranda, originally a name, had been widened and had become a place, with ways of willow and cretonne, of flower-boxes and little wind harps. It was like a beautiful modern jabot on the breast of an old belle. Arpeggio rang and trembled. Why in thunder had he come? Should he ring again, or thank Heaven and run away?
The door was opened by Something Pink. She was little and breathless, with that charming breathlessness which some women have in their leisure.
"How j' do?" she said.
"Is Miss Granger in?" Arpeggio put it earnestly. He was eagerness, tenseness, expectation incarnate. He was bright-eyed, he was ready. The next moment he had drooped to the lightly given blow:
"No, she hain't."
Incredible. Arpeggio stared. Not in? After all the trouble to which he had been to bathe and bedizen? In this utterly unforeseen catastrophe, what course was open to him? He gazed the length of the veranda and took his resolution.
"I'll wait," he said, and went down in a willow chair.
The Something Pink hesitated for a breath, then leaned her plump little body past the casement and examined Arpeggio. Not an agent. A real nice gentleman, though queer. Obviously a gentleman whose mind was made up. She considered the case. She was in the house alone. Well, then, leave him wait. She retired, closed and bolted the door. Safety for her and his own devices for him.
The day was sultry, a daring leap of May into the provinces of summer. Arpeggio, in his eagerness, had walked rapidly; he was very warm. He laid his overcoat on a swing, added his hat, slipped down in his chair to ruminate on the delights of library planning, and fell asleep. The drowsy air drew him deep along the paths he chose. In half an hour, That Which Was Pink, bethinking herself of him, tiptoed to the parlor window, peered through the lace curtains, and looked far down Arpeggio's throat. She drew herself up, her eyes snapped; she marched to the door, unbolted it with a noise, and confronted Arpeggio rousing. For who could be afraid of a gentleman asleep?
"Now, then," she said, crisply, "I'd like to know where you think you are?"
"Bless me!" said Arpeggio, vaguely, "bless me! Don't," he appealed to her, "tell me I was asleep." He colored grievously. "Has Miss Granger come in?"—his tone pleaded for a negative.
"Well, I should think she 'ain't. If she is, I dun'no' what I'd get."
What a universe! what a universe! So complex that a gentleman cannot even take a siesta without involving a lady whom he has never before seen. Arpeggio studied this lady.
"Are you the help?" he inquired, delicately.
"Help yourself!" She flashed it back. "I'm a trained one—from a agency."
For some unknown cause, Arpeggio brought out his rare, his beguiling smile, and smiled it, and continued to regard her.
"Perhaps," he said, "I'd better tell you who I am. I'm Shadd, one of the Banning commissioners. I called to see your mistress on the idear of a new town liberary."
That got her. A commissioner. That was something like a policeman. A new town library. That was something remote, glittering, beyond the ken of her. She was silent, and her look changed. Beneath that change Arpeggio throve. He became indulgent, saw what a pretty little thing she was—neat, flaxen, and oh, so pink—cheek and mouth and frock.
"What's your name?" he inquired.
"Mamie," she replied, respectfully, as one who might know what it is to say "sir."
"Mamie," said Arpeggio, and looked across the young green of the lawn, where shadows lay waving under the young green of the branches. A warm wind bore something that smells the way perfume ought to smell, and doesn't. "Mamie," said Arpeggio, "sit down. I want to talk to you."
She obeyed, all her indignant demeanor softened to passivity.
"Do you like to read?" Arpeggio wished to know.
Mamie stiffened. He wanted to do her good!
"When I do," she said, "I get a book and read it—on my own."
"Precisely," Arpeggio approved her. "But that book—where do you get it?"
Mamie was put to it. Where, in fact, did she get it?
"Off'n Miss Granger," she mumbled.
"Precisely," Arpeggio pursued. "And if Miss Granger had no books, you would have no book. That's what I come to see you about. This here town has got to have a liberary."
"That's what Miss Granger told her ma," said Mamie.
"Precisely," said Arpeggio for the third time, and smiled so enchantingly that Mamie smiled back. Then Arpeggio closed his sociological investigations and said, gently—and for no reason—unless it was the young greenness of May, "Mamie, where do you live?"
Instantly her eyes welled, brimmed. Lo, she was one of those women whose eye can brim and never leak. Admirable creatures. For between that brimming and that leaking a man's heart can slip away, nor find the trail return.
"Champain County," said Mamie—oh, wistful.
"Little lonely?" Arpeggio inquired.
She nodded, looking down.
"Farm, was it?" he divined.
It was a farm. Mamie told about it. The spring, the dairy, the herd, the orchard, the school-house dances, the bareback rides. She was, then, that frequent Middle West phenomenon—(it would seem so much more feminine to say phenomena!)—the daughter of a country landowner who has become such a devoted beast of burden that the yoke is an heirloom. And since to have graduated from eighth grade is acknowledged to fit young women for something better than life on the hill farm, these find for themselves in the towns opportunities to "work out."
"Little homesick for the farm?" Arpeggio at length deduced. "I tell you what. How'd you like to go out and spend a day by yourself on some farm around? Sure. I can fix it. I'll speak to Miss Granger," added Arpeggio. Mamie palpitated. "Sure," Arpeggio sustained it.
More than an hour had passed in talk. Two hours had passed since Arpeggio's arrival. The sweet May day went on about its concerns of perfume and wisdom. Wagons went by, dogs trotted and barked, some one was beating a carpet. Over on the next street a band of strolling musicians, with May in their blood, throbbed and breathed in rhythms.
Arpeggio leaned back in his chair and rocked, and smiled at Mamie. "Gosh! this is nice," he observed.
The word brought her fluttering back from her absorbed contemplation of commissionerhood. She must go.
"Oh, set still," Arpeggio besought her. "I want you should tell me what books you'd like to like to read."
When the Angelus sounded on the rich air, Arpeggio reluctantly rose. "Well," he said, "you c'n tell Miss Granger I come. Yes, Shadd. Tell her I'll happen in again. And, Mamie—"
Yes? She was tiptoe, shining, and, oh, so pink!
"Don't you go and forget I'm goin' to send you out to the farm for a day!"
Was she likely to forget?
"Tell you what: If you want a little country, you go over some time and see my garden. I got a big garden—nice strawberry-bed in it. Nobody 'd be there. Just drop in on it if you want."
Oh, but she'd like that. Indeed she would. She bloomed anew at any thought for her.
"Good-by, Mamie!" He put out his hand.
She touched it, withdrew, fled.
Arpeggio strolled to the gate and up the golden road. "Wasted the hull afternoon," he thought—"and what of it?"
He stepped into the kitchen of his home just as his mother set hot johnnycake on the table.
"Ma," he said, "I been to call on Miss Granger."
"That's nice," she observed, placidly—and in that instant christened her first grandchild. "What kind of a girl has she got to be?"
"Pretty," said Arpeggio, dreamily. "Little. Shy. Her upper lip smiles first. Her name's Mamie."
"I thought her name was Edith," said his mother, as one who now remembered that she was wrong.
"Nope," said Arpeggio. "Mamie."
After supper he lifted the bracket-lamp to an end of the dining-table, spread a newspaper, found the ink on the clock-shelf and the pen in a shaving-mug in the cupboard, brought sheets of paper and envelopes from under the big Bible, and set himself to write a letter.
   Miss Granger, my dear Friend [he said]:—Understanding that you have quite considerable of a liberary in your home, beg your leave to look through same for a much-needed volume. It being all a person can do to live in a place when same does not yield a public liberary.
   Hopeing this will not interfere with you, it being very necessary, I am, indeed,
   A. Shadd, City Commissioner.
He walked down to the post-office, holding his letter and humming. This ought to start the subject of a library naturally. This would permit him to repeat his visit without it looking as if something was meant. Returning, he walked round by the Granger home. It was brightly lighted, and bore an air of pleasant preoccupation in a multitude of affairs—that air which effectually shuts out the casual passer from participation. What delicate things were they doing? What was she doing? Arpeggio recalled her smile, her white, white glove. She had a pleasing hand to shake. But he had not taken her hand! That hand was Mamie's. He passed the house and slipped within the May night, dreaming miscellaneous dreams.
When three days had passed without reply, Arpeggio took account of himself. What was the matter with him, anyway? Women! Women had no part in his life. He was forty-six. He was absorbed in that part of his commissionership which had to do with the people—not the mathematics of his town. He was intent on his doves and his strawberries. What had set him thinking about Edith Granger, anyway? He put on his old hat and went down to the office, business in his eye, his gait, his air. Women, indeed—and he a commissioner.
Stack Mayhew stood over the commissioners' table with a letter whose superscription he was frankly scrutinizing.
"Here's some female wants her taxes dawdled down to nothin'," Stack hazarded, and tossed the letter.
Arpeggio caught, divined, retired to a window and rapturously read: She had been in town for a few days. Certainly he was free to use the library whenever he wished. Perhaps they might talk of this matter of a town library?
A delicious interval of wistful waiting having brought him no confidence, Stack lost his hold. "That's it. Grin like a Cheshire cheese and keep your mouth shut," he grumbled.
"It can't be done, Stack. It's ag'in' nature," Arpeggio earnestly refuted this charge.
Two o'clock found Arpeggio on his way to the Grangers'—cravat red side out as before. As before, Mamie answered his summons and glowed softly. Oh yes, Miss Granger had said that he was to be shown straight to the library.
A pleasant room, with not enough books to put one in some helpless minority, he felt. Open windows, softly stirring muslin curtains, on the table a basket of colored work. Her work!
"All right, Mr. Shadd?" Mamie inquired.
Oh yes; all right. Oh, right indeed!
Left alone, Arpeggio wandered from shelf to shelf, breathing the air of the room, staring at the pictures. Her house. He had not asked for her. Arpeggio's conception of a house was a place whose inmates wander through all the rooms at any moment. That was the way his mother did. He remained in momentary expectation. A dozen times he started, turned to the door, let his smile die. Where was she? In half an hour the door did indeed open. It admitted a box of odorous polishing stuff and Mamie.
"Will I bother you if I do the andirons?" she asked, demurely.
"No, no," he said, and took down a book at random.
Mamie went on her knees before the empty fireplace. Over the top of his volume Arpeggio watched her and waited for Edith Granger.
The book which he had elected to consult proved to be Savings and Saving Institutions. That, he found, was its fascinating title. Arpeggio loathed figures, and his attention wandered. He devised ways in which to open and continue conversations regarding the founding of public libraries in cities of the second class. What an opportunity for the expression of public spirit. What a benefit to the town to come. What a delicious little knot of hair above a delicately white neck. …
   [Illustration: "DO YOU LIKE IT—THIS KIND OF A JOB?"]
Arpeggio paused. The deduction did not seem direct, but it was absolute. He was staring at the symbols.
"Mamie," said Arpeggio, abruptly, "how about that day at the farm?"
The delicious knot of hair disappeared and her bright face was there. "Oh," she said, "that 'll be all right."
No reply at all. But the uses of a reply are not merely to reply.
"What's this you're doing?" he would know, and walked to the empty fire-place and stared down at the andirons winking under her deft hands.
"A-polishing 'em," she explained. She did not say why this process should be necessary at this moment. She only polished, absorbedly.
"So," said Arpeggio, musing, "you're a trained one, are you? Do you like it—this kind of a job?"
"Why, no sir!" She lifted a surprised face. "Like this? No, sir." (There came the "sir" at last, of which she had been capable all along.)
"What all do you want to do?" Arpeggio looked down at her, and there crossed his mind something of the infinite pathos and the infinite glory of all the little pink-and-white spots in the world liking to do something.
"I want to raise plants," said Mamie, "and see 'em grow."
"Bless me!" said Arpeggio.
Now there is a community of feeling between two who discover each other to love Japanese prints, to follow mountain-climbing, to collect old furniture, to believe in a better democracy, but these are as nothing compared to that well of feeling uncovered when two recognize in each other the natural lover of the soil. Arpeggio had never dreamed of this in a woman. To be sure, his mother pottered among her flower-pots, but hers was no passion. Here was a passion.
"You must come and see my strawberry-bed," he said.
Mamie looked up, looked down, polished. The door opened and Arpeggio whirled. But there advanced no one whose look, whose bow, whose air made memories. A gray lady was this, gray of gown, of hair, of manner, who paused inquiringly before this tableau.
"Mrs. Granger," said Arpeggio, and his ease became exaggerated and billowed about him as a cloak. "Mrs. Granger, I am Shadd, one of the town commissioners." And, as usual, he all but whispered that word "commissioners." "Your daughter says I can—"
"Ah, yes," said the lady. "She tells me that you, too, are interested in the possibilities of a library for Banning."
Arpeggio leaped within the opening. He was, he was. If only somebody would set it going. He couldn't set it going himself. He had set too many things going already. But if some disinterested party, now, was to circulate a petition, get signers, raise some money—why, then, he, Shadd, would tend to the commission end of it fair and plenty. Fair and plenty, he impressively repeated.
Mrs. Granger listened, nodded. She was a brisk little being, for all her grayness. As she listened, a dawn broke in her face—for hers was one of the faces of earth on which dawns can break, and these faces are not numerous. Not nearly so numerous, indeed, as the dawns which would break were there enough positive faces to act, so to say, as negatives. It was not that she was public-spirited, either. It was chiefly that she was brisk. Many brisk ladies pass for ladies of public spirit. With many brisk business men it is the same. Mrs. Granger listened exactly as she might have listened to a new recipe. To both she could respond—by reason of her briskness.
"I don't know," she said, "but that might be something that I could do. But," she added, "you must not let me interrupt you. Mamie, you might have taken some other time—"
"Not at all," said Arpeggio in general.
The lady took up the basket of colored work (not her work at all, then) and departed. Arpeggio stood blindly looking along the backs of books. Was it possible that he was not to see her?
It was the possible, the realized. He did not see her. He lingered shamelessly, fingering many leaves. And as he lingered, and fingered, he talked idly with Mamie, polishing. Ah, how she polished!
"When will you come to see my garden?" said he.
"Thursday's my day out," replied Mamie, with startling directness, and Arpeggio was surprised into saying:
"Then—this Thursday?"
Yes, this Thursday. That much was settled. He resumed his waiting, gave it up, departed.
He went out into the idle afternoon, his consciousness in some odd disturbance. She had not come. Mrs. Granger would start the library ball rolling. Poor, pretty little thing! (Did he mean Mrs. Granger, would one hazard?)
"Ma," said Arpeggio that evening, as he buttered his waffles, "Mrs. Granger is going to help out on the liberary."
She christened her second grandchild and handed the brown-sugar syrup.
"You never saw anybody like to see things grow the way she says she does," Arpeggio pursued after a time.
Mrs. Shadd stirred her hot water and listened.
"She's coming over to see our strawberry-bed."
"Oh!" said Mrs. Shadd. "When?" Through her thought ran like lightning the best dishes, the embroidered center-piece, the China tea.
"Thursday," said Arpeggio, dreamily. "This Thursday. Thursday," he added, "is her day out. I guess I could stand another four waffles, ma."
On Thursday she came to the Shadds' alone, as a matter of course. It occurred neither to her nor to Arpeggio that he should fetch her. In fact, she arrived before he did, and sat with Mrs. Shadd in the arbor. They got on famously. Mrs. Shadd, who was not quite clear who her guest was, regretted having got out her poplin.
"I needn't have been nervous," she reflected. "She's just folks. No gloves, even."
Arpeggio came home. There is nothing sweeter, nothing more fundamental than the delight with which a man shows the garden of his hand. In nothing else, save when a man or a woman exhibits a baby, is there such obvious coordination between the human being and great nature. Neither could have proceeded without the other. The race could not persist without this co-operation. There is, in a man's display of his garden, some reflection of that terrific minute of man's second sublime triumph, when at last he controlled his food. No more skulking in marsh or jungle or thicket. He had it! He could make it grow. Something of that second sublime triumph is in the face of every man who says, "Come and see my garden." The first sublime triumph, when he reared himself erect, has entirely faded, save momentarily in a smile, while he watches his baby do it over again.
"Come and see my garden," said Arpeggio. (Poor little thing! He would try to give her a little pleasure, anyhow.)
And Mrs. Shadd, discreetly lingering to put on the kettle, watched the two through the pantry window. She noted Arpeggio's smile, his vivacity, his twist of shoulder, his bending of the head.
"Is it that?" she thought.
Out in the garden there was May, there were plum-blossoms, there was slanting four-o'clock sun. Little green shoots and sprouts and buds signaled their victories. The doves cooed as if they would never have everything said.
"Here'll be—" said Arpeggio, "and here'll be—and here—" It doesn't matter what. It never does matter what. Five minutes afterward the visitor would not be able to recite the position of a single herb. But the gardener still knows.
"Yes. Oh yes. Yes, I see," said Mamie, as a visitor should say.
Not much of a conversation, but not the only uses of a conversation are to converse.
"Nice, ain't it?" Arpeggio appealed, when they had been the slow rounds.
Oh, it was. There was no doubt about that. Mamie leaned against a plum-tree, looked up into the branches, saw gold sun threading that treasure of white against the blinding blue.
"It's spring, all right," she observed, from a full heart.
"You bet," said Arpeggio, and filled his eyes with looking.
This is the immemorial vernal lyric, and it does not much matter how it gets itself said.
"Oh, my!" said Mamie, "I just do love to make things grow."
"That's me," said Arpeggio.
Mrs. Shadd came down the path, her hands under her apron. "When you two are ready for tea—any time," she announced, elliptically.
Tea. Mamie bent her little finger in all the elegance she knew, lifting it high from biscuit, glass, or teacup handle. She was tense, bit her lip, said "I should say" to everything, laughed a great deal, looked at Arpeggio not at all. Which sounds like a list of symptoms. As for Arpeggio, that shoulder of his continued its eloquent gesturing.
"My! this has just been elegant," said Mamie at parting.
"How about going to see that farm?" Arpeggio wanted to know.
"I have every third Sunday off," Mamie promptly imparted, "and next Sunday's the one."
"Suppose I look up a farm for then?" Arpeggio offered.
"You're awful good to take me," quoth Mamie. "I've been awful homesick. It would be so nice—" Her look was a completion.
Good to take her. Arpeggio paused at that, and turned it, Mamie having gone. When had he said that he was to take her? He had meant to send her, chivalrously. (Little homesick thing!) So she expected to be taken. Oh, very well. After all, why not?
On Saturday, at nine in the morning, he walked into the office, to find his two brother commissioners, like nature, in a state of flux.
"Listen at this," Stack accosted him, an arm waving. "A bloomin' lot o' women trapsin' the streets of Banning, gettin' everybody all het up over a new town liberary. They're at it."
"So?" said Arpeggio, looking over the seed catalogues which constituted his mail. "A new one? What they goin' to do with the old liberary, Stack?"
"Don't you go bein' fi-cetious," said Mr. Mayhew, in warning. "Us commissioners and this hull town 'd be all right if it wasn't for this darned uplift."
Dodd Purcell carressed his nose with all five fingers. "It 'll get things awful upset to hev 'em plump down on us with a proposition of that kind now, with the treasury what it is. Turn it down, and the best people go ag'in' you. Make an appropriation, and the taxpayers raise Ebenezer."
"Gettin' your hymns and your swearin' mixed some, ain't you? Gosh! Look at them strawberries," said Arpeggio, brandishing a cover of blood-red fruit.
"Old hens, pussy-footin' around," Stack grumbled.
"Hold on," said Arpeggio. "That ain't zo-ology."
"Well," said Mr. Mayhew, "we want to leave it be known that we won't countenance no such goin'-ons, no matter how much they subscribe and petition and go buttin' in."
"Sure we do," agreed Mr. Purcell. "Squench the thing in the bud."
They looked expectantly at Arpeggio.
"Got to get me about fifty new strawberry plants," said Arpeggio, dreamily. "Any of you fellows know anything about these here nursery folks?"
It is noticeable that when in any community a proposal is inaugurated or championed by the best-looking automobile about, that proposal finds followers. Here is no cause for cynicism. How better could that automobile be occupied? In Banning there was the Granger automobile, and forthwith Merrills and Listers and Dents and Bards and Cordys fell in line, agreed to canvass the town, held little living-room meetings, buttonholed husbands, sent committees to interview business houses—just generally revolted against having no town library in Banning. Since the town was, there had been no town library there. These same families had gone about bookless. Now, the moment having struck, the library began to emerge from somewhere. Echoes of its emergence reached Arpeggio, echoes of the activities of Mrs. Granger. Arpeggio was bewildered. Here was something which he had used as a tool. His own purpose remained unaccomplished, and lo, here was the tool working on its own hook. For not once in those days did eye of his fall again on Miss Edith Granger.
   [Illustration: "DO YOU THINK SO, MR. SHADD?"]
And how wildly had his heart beat every time he passed her home. On the Sunday, for example, when he did his chivalrous part and took out, for a breath of her native country air, Miss Mamie Short. It was on that day that he discovered her name to be Short. He hired the little red cart and the fat black mare with which (though of this he was innocent) young Banning went forth to pay its visits to the girls on the hill farms about. At ten in the morning he drove to the door of the Grangers' home and called for Mamie. On the back seat, in her poplin, sat Mrs. Shadd. "The ride 'll do ma good," Arpeggio had thought. He went boldly to the front door, no other course occurring to him. He hoped ardently that Miss Edith Granger would chance to open the door. He should have liked her to know that he was doing this pleasant turn to this homesick little maid of hers. And then—he should so like to see this elusive idol. Not once—never once since her brief and glorious dawning before Becker & Broom's—had his eyes rejoiced in her. He had worshiped dumbly, distantly, wistfully ever. Even now it was not she who appeared at his ring. It was Mamie herself—Mamie, in a party hat with a gay blue feather. But to Arpeggio she looked exquisitely bedight.
"Well, Mamie!" said he, patronizingly. Some way, with his vehicle and his mother at the gate, he felt himself to be every inch the commissioner, bestowing bounties.
"Yes, sir," said Mamie, glowing. It was almost impossible to think of her as the haughty young person who, not a fortnight ago, had rebuked the sleeping Arpeggio.
They were off, down miles of May. The apple orchards were at the noon of their exquisite life. The air was an ecstasy of fragrance. That day the oriole had come, and from heights and nearnesses sounded that full-throated call, flashed that drop and dart of orange, that cry and gesture and vigor of abundant life. Life! That was it. Arpeggio flapped the reins and clucked. Mamie ah'd in very rapture. Mrs. Shadd broke into low humming. May!
Where were they going? Arpeggio knew a farm. He was not inordinately clear how to get there, and this made vagrant wanderings in many a secret road. Their drive was charmingly prolonged. It was past noon when they turned into the spacious yard, set round like a room with furniture of wagons and flower-beds and troughs and farm machinery and bridal-apple trees and sleepy cats.
"Oh, murder!" said Mamie, rapturously.
She sat holding her elbows, rocking a bit, gazing about in utter happiness.
"Like it?" asked Arpeggio, complacently, as if he had turned it out with a wave of his hand. He was somewhat unnerved to see again that welling and brimming of her deep eyes. "Nice little thing," he said to himself, and held up his hand to help her down. She slipped from the seat trustingly and absently, like a child, gave him her full weight, stood where he set her, like a kitten.
"Oh, murder me!" she said, beneath her breath.
They took their basket up in the orchard. Arpeggio had his mother's arm; Mamie ran ahead, genuinely forgetful of all. Under a low blossoming tree they spread what they had brought. And there is no more need to enumerate what they had brought than to count the blossoms on the tree.
When she had eaten, Mamie climbed that tree like a squirrel, and sat in the branches; ran far down through the lanes of trees as if she would clasp them all; buried her face in a dozen friendly boughs. She was like no other. Arpeggio watched her, marveling. As he knew the genus "young lady," she appeared in parlors in silk waists, with neat, freshly combed hair, and talked about actual happenings. Or she danced, went walking, played croquet. Once all these had been for him transcended by a ravishing creature, of elegance of manner, who had descended from a car and outstretched to him a white glove. But this child, with her soul shining through her face, tumbling and sporting and quivering and kindling—who had ever seen anything like this?
Arpeggio was profoundly stirred. He walked about among the trees, examined the bark, picked off a web or two, chewed grass, and finally overtook Mamie, where she ran.
"You like the country, don't you?" he observed.
"I just do. I could die in the country.
"Oh, don't do that."
"I hope I don't."
"My, but you must miss the country."
"Don't I, though? Ain't this grand?"
Arpeggio looked down in her pink-and-white face, against the pink-and-white branches.
"How'd you like to live in the country?" he heard himself say.
She colored, swiftly, burningly, beautifully, and met his eyes full. And she was eloquently silent.
"I kind of would," he said, weakly, and leaped in the air to catch at a bough, tantalizingly high. "Wonder where mother is?" questioned Arpeggio, and trotted away through the trees to find out. He felt rather out of breath and uncertain. "I must pay attention," he admonished himself.
He wandered off to a lonely spot and set himself deliberately to dream of Edith Granger. She was like a queen—that was it. She was like a queen. How he would love to see her in her home. Was he never to see her in her home? He imagined her coming down these bright aisles of bloom, in her perfect broadcloth, her imperious little hat, her white, white gloves. … Something, though, was the matter with this. He suspended his imaginings. In those same bright aisles he saw some one framed, some one racing, hatless, laughing, waving a buxom arm at him as she ran over the fresh grass, shaking back her hair. It was not in this way that Edith Granger would visit an orchard in spring. But it was a very good way!
His mother came wandering by and stood beside him. "Heard anything about the liberary lately?" she wanted to know, a bit wistfully.
"No," said Arpeggio. "Mother, I wish 't you'd get yourself a blue calico like Mamie's. What? Ain't it calico? Well, anyhow, I'd kind of like to see it around the house."
They drove home in the long May twilight, and as they reached the Grangers' gate Mamie leaned and put both her warm, firm hands on Arpeggio's, over the lines.
"You done the grandest thing ever," she said—hands and lips and eyes, and was out before he could alight.
Arpeggio lifted his hat with the careful deliberation which this ceremony demanded, turned to nod his good-night, looked after Mamie, and swept with his glance that magic house. No one on the veranda, no one at a window. … Edith Granger, Edith Granger, where did she keep herself? He drove away and thought about those rooms wherein she moved. He thought about the kitchen.
"She'll have to get supper now," he thought. "I wonder what sort of a meal she gets up?"
But what had this to do with Edith Granger?
Two days later a telephone message came to Mr. Dodd Purcell, senior member of the Banning commission. Might Mrs. Granger and a committee of women wait upon the commissioners? Yes, they meant now. If they were in session. They were in session. The rattled Mr. Purcell had granted an audience and had hung up the receiver before he knew what had happened to him.
"For the love of mud!" said Stack Mayhew, "why didn't you say we was all full up? Or goin' out in the country? Or none of us wasn't here?"
"Yes, why didn't I? Why didn't I?" repeated Mr. Purcell, moodily. "Why didn't you answer it your smart-Alec self? My brains ain't oozin' down my forehead on tap, same as some."
"You bet they ain't," said Stack. "They're spongin' out the inside o' your head. That's what they're for. Dum it! I wish 't I was dead."
"Same here," said Dodd, energetically, enigmatically.
They all produced pocket combs. They all wiped their shoes with their handkerchiefs. They each carried out a cuspidor and hid it in the back entry. And the ladies were upon them.
Arpeggio, facing the door as they entered, felt a kind of faintness. Mrs. Granger was leading. In the background was a dull assortment of Bards and Cordys. Blooming between these and her mother came Edith Granger.
She was in some exquisitely colored cotton which Arpeggio would have called calico. A wide hat shaded her face, half hid her treasure of bright hair. She was white-gloved, and at once, behind her mother, she advanced to the commissioners and put out her hand. So did the other women. And each commissioner, rubbing his hand first on his coat, shook hands.
Stack Mayhew was distinctly the beau of the occasion. He it was who remembered to bring forward chairs while Dodd stood idle, and Arpeggio stared adoringly at Edith Granger.
Brisk, capable, poised, Mrs. Granger introduced the matter. As they were aware, Banning was sadly, shamefully in need of a library. The point, since she was speaking to gentlemen of education, needed no exposition. They would assume that the matter in hand might be treated directly, and this Mrs. Granger would ask should be done by her daughter, whose project originally the library had been.
Arpeggio turned full his gaze upon his adorata. Oh, beautiful! His soul summoned him. He earnestly hoped that the moment would last forever. She laid on the table a parasol of lace, a bag of golden meshes, a mere flake of cambric, a flower that she carried.
"Gentlemen [she was speaking], what we have to propose we hope will meet with your favor. We can assure you it has met with the favor of those whose co-operation we have secured. …"
Here Arpeggio lost the thread. He lost it in the flood of the sense of another world in which this lady moved. It was not alone the exquisite daintiness, the cut and fall of fabric (so different from those of Mrs. Shadd). It was not alone the bright assurance of her. Nor yet was it this alien and disconcerting speech of her, so varied, in its lightest value of intonation, from that which Arpeggio knew. Again, it was not the soft hand with its single glittering jewel, exposed when she drew off a glove to bring forth a paper which she spread before them; nor was it even the little silver glass which she lifted to her eyes. What was it? All these it may have been. In any case, it seemed to Arpeggio that he looked at her up immeasurable galleries of space. She was other—in another world. He worshiped helplessly at the feet of that bright perfection. And as he worshiped, farther and farther did the lady seem to withdraw—or was it that he fell through the deep distance, and might—he saw it now—never dare to dream of mounting to her side?
"Don't you think so, Mr. Shadd?" at length he heard her say.
He leaned forward, staring at her. "What was that?" he said, stupidly.
Stack, the beau, glared at him. "Sure he thinks so," said Stack, and both he and Arpeggio colored when the ladies laughed. A check lay on the table before them. It was a check for a thousand dollars. This was the amount which the women had collected and themselves given, and it was to be expended by the commissioners and a committee of the women to assemble the nucleus of a library. And the hope was, they made clear, that there would be an appropriation from the city to house that library. They waited for no reply. They rose, bade the men, with their thanks, a good morning, and turned to the door. But first Miss Granger paused by Mr. Shadd, seated comfortably in his chair.
"Did you find what you wanted in our library? Yes? I was so sorry to have been engaged that day, when you came. Won't you come again?"
"Sure," said Arpeggio, graciously. She was beyond the threshold before it occurred to him to scramble to his feet. Stack, the beau, was showing them out.
Stack, the beau, came back from the door, and he was rubbing his hands. "Nice, sensible lot of ladies," said he. "Up and down sort. No nonsense. Real ladies, each and every one. And this is what I call puttin' up a proposition." He fondled the check.
Mr. Purcell was caressing his nose with his five fingers. "Do you know," said he, "sometimes I think some ladies does some things as good as some men could."
Their look consulted Arpeggio. He had sunk back in his chair, and was staring at nothing at all. At their "How about it?" he gave no sign.
"Everything's different from what I supposed," he said, heavily. He went and gazed out the window. So she had been in the house that day when he had waited for her in the library! But had he waited for her?
For the first time he perceived that it was not for her that he had waited.
They were to hold a mass meeting in the town hall to discuss the public library. Stack and Dodd and Arpeggio were to sit on the platform. Miss Edith Granger was to preside.
As Mr. Arpeggio Shadd left his home on the evening of the meeting and walked down the long, quiet street, golden in the slanting, after-supper light, he was aware that the faint sweetness of the spring was merging into the green depths of June. June always stirred him. June was no mere promise. It was as if something had come to pass.
His house was on the edge of town, and where the road forked—part to know what it was to be a street, and the rest to keep on forever as a country highway—he divined a figure idling.
"Mamie!" he said.
She did him the exquisite deference of a smile, a flush, a fluttering of the hands.
"Where you goin' to?" he demanded.
Oh, she was on her way to the meeting. Miss Granger had been afraid that there might not be many out. But first she, Mamie, had just had to run away—and smell the country.
"I'm glad you run this way," said Arpeggio.
Mamie, looking guilty, covered it with a laugh. She had to run some way, didn't she? Was he going to the meeting?
Yes, he was going. Or was he going? He looked up at the soft masses of the trees in the westering light, green giving back gold in the slant sun. He looked along the country highway and he sighed. Mamie was silent. He looked at her. A catbird sang out from the thicket and mysteriously this seemed to decide him.
"Mamie," he said, "let's not go to that meeting."
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1938, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 85 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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