THE GIRL WITH THE GUITAR
THE last strains of the ill-treated, ill-fated "Intermezzo" had died away, and after them had died away also the rumbling of the wheels of the murderous barrel-organ that had so gaily executed that, along with the nine other tunes of its repertory, to the admiration of the housemaid at the window of the house opposite, and the crowing delight of the two babies next door.
The young man drew a deep breath of relief, and lighted the wax candles in the solid silver candlesticks on his writing-table, for now the late summer dusk was falling, and that organ, please Heaven, made full the measure of the day's appointed torture. There had been five organs since dinner—and seven in the afternoon—one and all urgently thumping their heavy melodies into his brain, to the confusion of the thoughts that waited there, eager to marshal themselves, orderly and firm, into the phalanx of an article on "The Decadence of Criticism."
He filled his pipe, drew paper towards him, dipped his pen, and wrote his title on the blank page. The silence came round him, soothing as a beloved presence, the scent of the may bushes in the suburban gardens stole in pleasantly through the open windows. After all, it was a "quiet neighbourhood" as the advertisement had said—at any rate, in the evening: and in the evening a man's best efforts—
Thrum, tum, tum—Thrum, tum, tum came the defiant strumming of a guitar close to the window. He sprang to his feet—this was, indeed, too much! But before he could draw back the curtains and express himself to the intruder, the humming of the guitar was dominated by the first words of a song—
"Oh picerella del vieni al' mare
Nella barchetta veletto di fiore
La biancha prora somiglia al' altare
Tutte le stelle favellan d' amor,"
and so forth. The performer was evidently singing "under her voice," but the effect was charming. He stood with his hand on the curtain, listening—and with a pleasure that astonished him. The song came to an end with a chord in which all the strings twanged their best. Then there was silence—then a sigh, and the sound of light moving feet on the gravel. He threw back the curtain and leaned out of the window.
"Here!" he called to the figure that moved slowly towards the gate. She turned quickly, and came back two steps. She wore the dress of a Contadina, a very smart dress indeed, and her hands looked small and white.
"Won't you sing again?" he asked.
She hesitated, then struck a chord or two and began another of those little tuneful Italian songs, all stars and flowers and hearts of gold. And again he listened with a quiet pleasure.
"I should like to hear her voice at its full strength," he thought—and now it was time to give the vagrant a few coppers, and, shutting the window, to leave her to go on to the next front garden.
Never had any act seemed so impossible. He had watched her through the singing of this last song, and he had grown aware of the beauty of her face's oval—of the fine poise of her head—and of the grace of hands and arms.
"Aren't you tired?" he said. "Wouldn't you like to sit down and rest? There is a seat in the garden at the side of the house."
Again she hesitated. Then she turned towards the quarter indicated and disappeared round the laurel bushes.
He was alone in the house—his people and the servants were in the country; the woman who came to "do for him" had left for the night. He went into the dining-room, dark with mahogany and damask, found wine and cake in the sideboard cupboard, put them on a tray, and took them out through the garden door and round to the corner where, almost sheltered by laburnums and hawthorns from the view of the people next door, the singer and her guitar rested on the iron seat.
"I have brought you some wine—will you have it?"
Again that strange hesitation—then quite suddenly the girl put her hands up to her face and began to cry.
"Here—I say, you know—don't—" he said. "Oh, Lord! This is awful. I hardly know a word of Italian, and apparently she has no English. Here, signorina, ecco, prendi—vino—gatto— No, gatto's a cat. I was thinking of French. Oh, Lord!"
The Contadina had pulled out a very small handkerchief, and was drying her eyes with it. She rose.
"No—don't go," he said eagerly. "I can see you are tired out. Sai fatigueé non è vero? Io non parlate Italiano, sed vino habet, et cake ante vous partez."
She looked at him and spoke for the first time.
"It serves me right," she said in excellent, yet unfamiliar, English. "I don't understand a single word you say! I might have known I couldn't do it, though it's just what girls in books would do. It would have turned out all right with them. Let me go—thank you very much. I am sure you meant to be kind." And then she began to cry again.
"Look here," he said, "this is all nonsense, you know. You are tired out—and there's something wrong. What is it? Do drink this, and then tell me. Perhaps I can help you."
She drank obediently. Then she said: "I have not had anything to eat since last night—"
He hurriedly cut cake and pressed it upon her. He had no time to think, but he was aware that this was the most exciting adventure that had ever happened to him.
"It's no use—and it all sounds so silly."
"Ah—but do tell me!" His voice was kinder than he meant it to be. Her eyes filled again with tears.
"You don't know how horrid everyone has been. Oh—I never knew before what devils people are to you when you're poor—"
"Is it only that you're poor? Why, that's nothing. I'm poor, too."
She laughed. "I'm not poor—not really."
"What is it, then? You've quarrelled with your friends, and— Ah, tell me—and let me try to help you."
"You are kind—but— Well, then—it's like this. My father brought me to England from the States a month ago: he's 'made his pile': it was in pork, and I always wish he'd made it of something else, even canned fruit would be better, but that doesn't matter— We didn't know anyone here, of course, and directly we got here, he was wired for—business—and he had to go home again."
"But surely he didn't leave you without money."
Her little foot tapped the gravel impatiently.
"I'm coming to that," she said. "Of course he didn't. He told me to stay on at the hotel, and I did—and then one night when I was at the theatre my maid—a horrid French thing we got in Paris—packed up all my trunks and took all my money, and paid the bill, and went. The hotel folks let her go—I can't think how people can be so silly. But they wouldn't let me stay, and I wired to papa—and there was no answer, and I don't know whatever's the matter with him. I know it all sounds as if I was making it up as I go along—"
She stopped short, and looked at him through the dusk. He did not speak, but whatever she saw in his face it satisfied her. She said again: "You are kind."
"Go on," he said, "tell me all about it."
"Well, then, I went into lodgings; that wicked woman had left me one street suit—and to-day they turned me out because my money was all gone. I had a little money in my purse—and this dress had been ordered for a fancy ball—it is smart, isn't it?—and it came after that wretch had gone—and the guitar, too—and I thought I could make a little money. I really can sing, though you mightn't think it. And I've been at it since five o'clock—and I've only got one shilling and seven pence. And no one but you has ever even thought of thinking whether I was tired or hungry or anything—and papa always took such care of me. I feel as if I had been beaten."
"Let me think," he said. "Oh—how glad I am that you happened to come this way."
He reflected a moment. Then he said—
"I shall lock up all the doors and windows in the house—and then I shall give you my latch-key, and you can let yourself in and stay the night here—there is no one in the house. I will catch the night train, and bring my mother up to-morrow. Then we will see what can be done."
The only excuse for this rash young man is to be found in the fact that while he was feeding his strange guest with cake and wine she was feeding, with her beauty, the first fire of his first love. Love at first sight is all nonsense, we know—we who have come to forty year—but at twenty-one one does not somehow recognise it for the nonsense it is.
"But don't you know anyone in London?" he asked in a sensible postscript.
It was not yet so dark but that he could see the crimson flush on her face.
"Not know, she said. "Papa wouldn't like me to spoil my chances of knowing the right people with any foolishness like this. There's no one I could let know. You see, papa's so very rich, and at home they expect me to—to get acquainted with dukes and things—and—"
She stopped.
"American heiresses are expected to marry English dukes," he said, with a distinct physical pain at his heart.
"It wasn't I who said that," said the girl, smiling; "but that's so, anyhow." And then she sighed.
"So it's your destiny to marry a duke, is it?" the young man spoke slowly. "All the same," he added irrelevantly, "you shall have the latch-key."
"You are kind," she said for the third time, and reached her hand out to him. He did not kiss it then, only took it in his, and felt how small and cold it was. Then it was taken away.
He says that he only talked to her for half an hour—but the neighbours, from whose eyes suburban hawthorns and laburnums are powerless to conceal the least of our actions, declare that he sat with the guitar player on the iron seat till well after midnight; further, that when they parted he kissed her hand, and that she then put her hands on his shoulders—"quite shamelessly, you know"—and kissed him lightly on both cheeks. It is known that he passed the night prowling in our suburban lanes, and caught the 6.25 train in the morning to the place where his people were staying.
The lady and the guitar certainly passed the night at Hill View Villa, but when his mother, very angry and very frightened, came up with him at about noon, the house looked just as usual, and no one was there but the char-woman.
"An adventuress! I told you so!" said his mother at once—and the young man sat down at his study table and looked at the title of his article on " The Decadence of Criticism." It was surely a very long time ago that he had written that. And he sat there thinking, till his mother's voice roused him.
"The silver is all right, thank goodness," she said, "but your banjo girl has taken a pair of your sister's silk stockings, and those new shoes of hers with the silver buckles—and she's left these."
She held out a pair of little patent leather shoes, very worn and dusty—the slender silken web of a black stocking, brown with dust, hung from her hand. He answered nothing. She spent the rest of that day in searching the house for further losses, but all things were in their place, except the silver-handled button-hook—and that, as even his sister owned, had been missing for months.
Yet his family would never leave him to keep house alone again: they said he is not to be trusted. And perhaps they are right. The half dozen pairs of embroidered silk stockings and the dainty French silver-buckled shoes, which arrived a month later addressed to Miss , Hill View Villa, only confirmed their distrust. He must have had them sent—that tambourine girl could never have afforded these—why, they were pure silk—and the quality! It was plain that his Castanet girl—his mother and sister took a pleasure in crediting her daily with some fresh and unpleasing instrument—could have had neither taste, money, nor honesty to such a point as this.
As for the young man, he bore it all very meekly, only he was glad when his essays on the decadence of things in general led to a berth on the staff of a big daily, and made it possible for him to take rooms in town—because he had grown weary of living with his family, and of hearing so constantly that She played the bones and the big drum and the concertina, and that She was a twopenny adventuress who stole his sister's shoes and stockings. He prefers to sit in his quiet room in the Temple, and to remember that she played the guitar and sang sweetly—that she had a mouth like a tired child's mouth, that her eyes were like stars, and that she kissed him — on both cheeks—and that he kissed—her hand only—as the scandalised suburb knows.