CHAPTER VIII
MUSIC IN THE TWILIGHT
In Cousin Penelope's wake, for she did not quite dare to walk at herside, as she had walked with Aunt Eunice, Caroline went down to thedining room.
To feel as she felt on entering that cool, orderly room, with its whitepaint and dark paper, its old portraits and its severe, highly polisheddark furniture, you would need to have lived for six months with CousinDelia, whose dining room furniture was all of golden oak, carved inendless curves and curlicues, and who kept a piece of fly-paper on thegolden oak sideboard, between the blue glass lemonade set and the platedsilver cake dish.
With a sense almost of going to church, Caroline slipped into the placeat the table to which Aunt Eunice smilingly motioned her. There was nocloth on the table, just drawn-work doilies of sheer white linen, and onthe largest doily in the center was a crystal bowl with pale smallroses. The glasses were almost as thin as soap-bubbles, and the silverwas thin, and highly polished, and plain. All this Caroline had noted inthe first instant, and in the second she noted with relief that therewas no butler after all, only the good-humored maid, Sallie. Then shetook courage, and decided that, even though there were several knivesand forks and spoons at her place, she would be all right if she beganat each end and worked inward.
Probably in all her life Caroline had never eaten a meal that tasted sogood as that first dinner at The Chimnies. There was a clear,well-flavored soup, in a deep plate covered with Chinese figures inlettuce green and raspberry pink. With the soup were little golden-hueddice which were like glorified bread crumbs. Then there were slices ofpink ham, with fat as white as marble, amber brown balls of potato,delicate small peas, a crisp salad of lettuce and ice cold cucumber,with pale, firm cheese and salty toasted crackers, and last of alllittle tarts of fresh strawberries, topped with whipped cream.
Caroline ate, silently and earnestly. She had eaten her last threemeals, remember, out of a shoe box.
Very early, with the soup, Aunt Eunice asked her if she would like aglass of milk.
"Yes, please, thank you," said Caroline, "if it isn't too much trouble."
After that, conversation so far as concerned Caroline, ceased to exist.She ate, and was glad that no one noticed her, or so she thought. Butsomeone must have noticed her, it seemed. For when Caroline was halfthrough her little tart, eating in careful small bites, as her motherhad taught her, and holding her fork nicely, Cousin Penelope spoke outof a clear sky.
"She really favors our side of the family, doesn't she, Mother?"
"Jacqueline?"
"Yes. The resemblance is striking. Just look at Great-aunt JoannaGildersleeve."
For the life of her Caroline couldn't help looking round, in thedirection in which Aunt Eunice and Cousin Penelope both were looking.She half expected to see another great-aunt standing right at her elbow.But instead she only saw, hanging upon the wall above the sideboard, theportrait of a rather forbidding lady in a cap, with a curtain parting ona landscape just behind her.
"I don't quite see the likeness," murmured Aunt Eunice.
"It's something in the inner curve of the eyebrow and the set of thenostrils," Cousin Penelope explained patiently. "It's almost indefinablebut quite unmistakable."
Aunt Eunice did not dispute the point. Neither, you may be sure, didCaroline.
When dinner was over they went into a large, square room that opened offthe dining room. All round the room were shelves of books inmany-colored bindings, and there was a great writing-table across thewestern window. There was a fireplace, masked with an old-fashionedfire-screen on which a landscape was worked in faded silks, and abovethe fireplace was a marble mantel on which were a pair of bronze vases.But there was no piano!
Caroline sat down in a low chair, which Aunt Eunice recommended to her,and wished that she had Mildred in her arms. She began to feel very muchalone, with these people who were really not her people, and a littlebit frightened. Older folk than Caroline have felt that way, in astrange place, among strange faces, with the day ending, and no way ofknowing what the next day may bring.
Sallie brought in a tray, with matches and a spirit-lamp, a canisterthat savored of rich coffee-berries, a little glass coffee machine, halffilled with crystal clear hot water, two cups, thin as egg-shells, andsmall almost as eggs.
Aunt Eunice put the machine together, measured the coffee, as if sheperformed a religious ceremony, and set the lamp beneath the globe ofwater.
"Of course you don't take coffee, my dear," she spoke kindly toCaroline. "Go look in the drawer of the table over there. I think you'llfind a box of candied ginger. Help yourself!"
Caroline took courage, as she saw Aunt Eunice smile.
"If you don't mind," she whispered, "I'd rather--_have_ you a piano?"
She felt that Cousin Penelope, cool and aloof in her chair by thewindow, looked at her, surprised and not altogether pleased.
"Of course, dear," said Aunt Eunice readily. "Right across the hall inthe long parlor. You can find your way?"
"Oh, yes," Caroline nodded hastily.
She wanted to get to the piano quickly, before Cousin Penelopeinterfered. For she felt that Cousin Penelope was sitting up verystraight and about to speak.
"Run along!" said Aunt Eunice. Did she, too, feel that Penelope wasrising to remark?
Caroline "ran along." She went so fast that she was almost out ofearshot when Penelope expressed herself:
"Mother! That child--strumming on my piano!"
"She won't hurt the piano fatally, my dear," said Aunt Eunice, placidlybut with unexpected firmness. "Poor little shy thing! She's lonely andhomesick, as any one can see, and if the piano gives her pleasureto-night, who would begrudge it?"
No one, evidently, while Aunt Eunice was around. Penelope sank back inher chair, but there was a little crease, not at all becoming, in herhigh white forehead.
Meantime Caroline had "found her way," easily enough, across the halland into the long parlor, which was as long as the book room and thedining room put together. Such a big room, with pictures that frowned onher through the twilight that was deepening, here on the east side ofthe house. But neither the bigness of the room, nor the dimness of itcould daunt Caroline, for at the farther end she saw the polished bulkof a grand piano.
She flew to it across the dark polished floor and the dusky rugs. Therehad been no piano at Cousin Delia's, only a talking machine. CousinDelia liked a fox trot or a coon song as well as the next one.
Caroline sat down on the piano bench. She poised her hands for a secondover the white keys, almost afraid to touch them lest they melt away andvanish. Then very softly but firmly she struck a chord, and another, andanother. How the piano sang in its deep, golden throat! Such a piano asher precious Muzzy had dreamed of having some time for their very own!Caroline struck more chords, and ran a scale to limber her littlefingers, which had grown the least bit stiff with lack of exercise.
"The dear little thing!" cooed Aunt Eunice over her coffee machine. "Ifshe isn't practicing her scales."
She cast an appealing look at Penelope, but Penelope in the windowlooked unplacated.
Caroline found the pedals with her feet. She could just reach them. Shecould make the piano talk, now loud, now low. She played very softly alullaby that her mother had made up, just for her--a very simplething--one of the first that she had ever learned. The stiffness wasgoing from her fingers. She and this beautiful, wonder working, deepthroated piano were friends. She began to play the last thing that hermother had taught her, a rhapsody of Brahms.
In the library Aunt Eunice paused in her placid sipping of her coffee,and looked amazed, for Penelope had sat up in her chair, with a quick,passionate movement that was not like Penelope.
"Mother!" There was something like awe in Penelope's voice. "That childcan play."
"Quite so, dear."
"But it isn't parrot-playing, Mother--there's more than her funny littlebit of ragged techniqu
e--there's feeling--listen now!"
They listened, while their coffee cooled. Full, round golden notes sangthrough the old dim house, now loud, now low. Night winds blew--bellstolled--echoes wakened in a vast cathedral aisle beneath a myriadjewel-like stained windows.
"Why, Penelope! Don't!" Aunt Eunice soothed suddenly, as if the Penelopewho swallowed her hard sobs was again a little child.
"I can't help it, Mother. Don't you see? There _is_ something after allin the power of the soul. That Delane woman--that horsy, tangoingCalifornia girl----"
"Penelope!"
"She's dead, I know. I shouldn't speak like that. But she had no musicin her, and Jack hadn't a note of it. But I--I----"
"Yes, dear."
"Jack was my favorite cousin," Penelope whispered. "You know how much Icared for him. Even when that Delane girl took him away. And now Jack'schild--my music is in her--and by that much she's mine, not hers,--she'smine!"