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The Pursuit Of The Piano
by
What remained for him to do was to arrange for his departure by the first train in the morning; and he was subjectively accounting to the landlord for his abrupt change of mind after he had engaged his room for a week, while he was intent with all his upper faculties upon the graceful poses and movements of Miss Axewright. There was something so appealing in the pressure of her soft chin as it held the violin in place against her round, girlish throat that Gaites felt a lump in his own larger than his Adam’s-apple would account for to the spectator; the delicately arched wrist of the hand that held the bow, and the rhythmical curve and flow of her arm in playing, were means of the spell which wove itself about him, and left him, as it were, bound hand and foot. It was in this helpless condition that he rose at the urgence of a friendly young fellow who had chosen himself master of ceremonies, and took part in the dancing; and at the end of the first half of the programme, while the other dancers streamed out on the verandas and thronged the stairways, he was aware of dangling his chains as he lounged toward the ladies of the orchestra. The volunteer master of ceremonies had half shut himself across the piano in his eager talk with Miss Desmond, and he readily relinquished Miss Axewright to Gaites, who willingly devoted himself to her, after Miss Desmond had risen in acknowledgment of his bow. He had then perceived that she was not nearly so tall as she had seemed when seated; and a woman who sat tall and stood low was as much his aversion as if his own abnormally long legs did not render him guilty of the opposite offence.
Miss Desmond must have had other qualities and characteristics, but in his absorption with Miss Axewright’s he did not notice them. He saw again the pretty, pathetic face, the gentle brown eyes, the ordinary brown hair, the sentient hands, the slight, graceful figure, the whole undistinguished, unpretentious presence, which had taken his fancy at Boston, and which he now perceived had kept it, under whatever erring impressions, ever since.
“I think we have met before, Miss Axewright,” he said boldly, and he had the pleasure of seeing her pensive little visage light up with a responsive humor.
“I think we have,” she replied; and Miss Desmond, whose habitual state seemed to be intense inattention to whatever directly addressed itself to her, cut in with the cry:
“You have met before!”
“Yes. Two weeks ago, in Boston,” said Gaites. “Miss Axewright and I stopped at the S. B. & H. C. freight-depot to see that your piano started off all right.”
He explained himself further, and, “Well, I don’t see what you did to it,” Miss Desmond pouted. “It just got here this afternoon.”
“Probably they ‘throwed a spell’ on it, as the country people say,” suggested the master of ceremonies. “But all’s well that end’s well. The great thing is to have your piano, Miss Phyllis. I’m coming up to-morrow morning to see if it’s got here in good condition.”
“That’s some compensation,” said the girl ironically; and she added, with the kind of repellent lure with which women know how to leave men the responsibility of any reciprocal approach, “I don’t know whether it won’t need tuning first.”
“Well, I’m a piano-tunist myself,” the young fellow retorted, and their banter took a course that left Miss Axewright and Gaites to themselves. The dancers began to stray in again from the stairways and verandas.
“Dear me!” said Miss Desmond, “it’s time already;” and as she dropped upon the piano-stool she called to Miss Axewright with an authority of tone which Gaites thought augured well for her success as a teacher, “Millicent!”
VIII.
The next morning when Gaites came down to breakfast he had a question which solved itself contrary to his preference as he entered the dining-room. He was so early that the head waiter had to jump from his own unfinished meal, and run to pull out his chair; and Gaites saw that he left at his table the landlord’s family, the clerk, the housekeeper, and Miss Axewright. It appeared that she was not only staying in the hotel, but was there on terms which indeed held her above the servants, but separated her from the guests.