FullReads

“You sent me some verses, Mr. Appleton,” she said, as the poet moved away. “I have them safe” (and she touched her bodice), “but I haven’t had a quiet moment to read them.”

“Just a little tribute,” Appleton answered carelessly. “Are you leaving? If so, I’ll get your flowers into a cab and drive you on.”

“No. I am going, quite unexpectedly, to Exeter to-night. Let us sit down in this corner a moment and I’ll tell you. Mr. Tovey has asked me to substitute for a singer who is ill. The performance is on Monday and I chance to know the cantata. I shall not be paid, but it will be a fine audience and it may lead to something; after all, it’s not out of my way in going to Wells.”

“Aren’t you overtired to travel any more to-night?”

“No, I am treading air! I have no sense of being in the body at all. Mrs. Cholmondeley, that dark-haired lady you were talking with a moment ago, lives in Exeter and will take me to her house. And how nice that I don’t have to say good-bye, for you still mean to go to Wells?”

“Oh, yes! I haven’t nearly finished with the cathedral–I shall be there before you. Can I look up lodgings or do anything for you?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I shall go to the old place where Miss Markham and I lived before. The bishop and Mrs. Kennion sent us there because there is a piano, and the old ladies, being deaf, don’t mind musical lodgers. Didn’t the concert go off beautifully! Such artists, those two men; so easy to do one’s best in such company.”

“It was a triumph! Doesn’t it completely efface the memory of the plate and the pennies?”

“Yes,” Tommy answered. “I bear no ill-will to any living creature. The only flaw is my horrid name. Can’t you think of another for me? I’ve just had an anonymous note. Hear it!” (taking it from her glove):

DEAR MADAM:

The name of Thomasina Tucker is one of those bizarre
Americanisms that pain us so frequently in England. I fancy you
must have assumed it for public use, and if so, I beg you will
change it now, before you become too famous. The grotesque name
of Thomasina Tucker belittles your exquisite art.

Very truly yours,
A WELL WISHER.

“What do you think of that?”

Appleton laughed heartily and scanned the note. “It is from some doddering old woman,” he said. “The name given you by your sponsors in baptism to be condemned as a ‘bizarre Americanism’!”

“I cannot think why the loyalty of my dear mother and father to Tucker, and to Thomas, should have made them saddle me with such a handicap! They might have known I was going to sing, for I bawled incessantly from birth to the age of twelve months. I shall have to change my name, and you must help me to choose. Au revoir!”–and she darted away with a handshake and a friendly backward glance from the door.

“Can I think of another name for her?” apostrophized Appleton to himself. “Can feminine unconsciousness and cruelty go farther than that? Another name for her shrieks from the very housetops, and I agree with ‘Well Wisher’ that she ought to take it before she becomes too famous; before it would be necessary, for instance, to describe her as Madame Tucker-Appleton!”

VI

These are the verses:

TO MISS TOMMY TUCKER
(WITH A BUNCH OF MIGNONETTE)

A garden and a yellow wedge
Of sunshine slipping through,
And there, beside a bit of hedge,
Forget-me-nots so blue,
Bright four-o’clocks and spicy pinks,
And sweet, old-fashioned roses,
With daffodils and crocuses,
And other fragrant posies,
And in a corner, ‘neath the shade
By flowering apple branches made,
Grew mignonette.

I do not know, I cannot say,
Why, when I hear you sing,
Those by-gone days come back to me,
And in their long train bring
To mind that dear old garden, with
Its hovering honey-bees,
And liquid-throated songsters on
The blossom-laden trees;
Nor why a fragrance, fresh and rare,
Should on a sudden fill the air,
Of mignonette!