The Key Note

"And there is a piano!" said Diana, wistfully looking across the room at the ancient square instrument.

"That is a very polite name for it," remarked Philip.

"Oh, Mr. Barrison, could you, won't you, sing some song of the sea?" The girl clasped her hands in prospect. "I'm your guest, you know. It is not quite possible to refuse."

"Of the sea, eh?" Philip looked at his watch. "I think we have time before the boat comes. I'll make a bargain with you. I'll sing you a song if you will go down to the boat with me and meet my accompanist."

"Oh, is your accompanist coming?"

"Even so. But when is an accompanist not an accompanist? Answer: When he comes to the sea to fish. I've lured you far from home and dinner, so you come to the boat with me and I'll send you home in Bill Lindsay's chariot."

"Very well, but – please sing!"

"Oh, yes. A song of the sea is the order, I understand. Meanwhile, I accompany myself on the harp."

Philip moved over to the piano. It was placed so he could look over the case at his listeners. He ran his fingers over the yellow keys which gave out a thin, tinkling sound, and then plunged into song:

"The owl and the pussy cat went to seaIn a beautiful pea-green boat,They took some honey and plenty of moneyWrapped up in a five-pound note.The owl looked up to the stars aboveAnd sang to a small guitar,'Oh, lovely Pussy, Oh, Pussy, my love,What a beautiful Pussy you are!'"* * * * * *

Philip had never seen Diana look as lovely as when he finished and rose. There was no doubt now that she could laugh. His enunciation was perfect, and the alternations of sentimentality and fire with which he had delivered the nonsense made it thrilling in the little room where his velvet, vibrant tones at moments shook the shells on the mantelpiece, while they flowed around the listener's heart.

"That was delectable," laughed Diana, applauding, her eyes moist with excitement.

"Yes, ain't that a funny tune?" said Mrs. Dorking, looking with affectionate pride at her grandson as he emerged around the end of the piano.

"We have to be off, Grammy," he said, "or Barney will be lost in the shuffle."

Mrs. Dorking rose and urged Diana warmly to come again, and the girl promised that she would do so. When they were outside she spoke:

"Is your Aunt Maria your grandmother's sister?"

"Oh, no." Philip laughed. "She is a good village-aunt who helps in the home. She likes to look harassed and overworked, but she adores having charge of the house since my grandfather's death, and is devoted to Grammy. Barney Kelly will have to look out for himself, for Aunt Maria is an excellent cook and Kelly would be inclined to umbumpum if he didn't mortify the flesh. He's a Canuck and one of the best fellows going."

"And are those summer cottages?" asked Diana, her glance sweeping over an adjacent field. It was high ground sloping gradually to the sea, and was dotted with shingled cottages of varying shapes and sizes.

"Yes, that was my grandfather's pasture, and many a time I've gone there for the cows. But one woman after another besieged him for the ground, and he sold it off."

"If I had some land here, I would prefer to be more isolated," said Diana.

"Then you would better speak quick," said Philip. "The country seems to have its eye on Casco Bay. There comes the boat around the point now."

They hastened their pace and went down a flight of steps which led to the wharf. It was a busy spot full of people and trunks and barrels and boxes. Everybody greeted Philip and looked at Diana, and Philip presently descried the peering face of a man on the upper deck of the approaching boat. He was dressed in a double-breasted suit of a fine check and carried a stick which, presently descrying Philip's blond head, he shook in his direction and, picking up his bag, turned and went downstairs at the call: "Land from the lower deck." The newcomer was evidently alive all over and impatient of the delay to the moment when he could run up the gangplank. From time to time he shook his stick toward Philip, and gazed at the girl beside him. At last he gained the wharf, set down his bag and shook hands with Philip. Being presented to Miss Wilbur, he took off his hat and disclosed tight curly hair, close-clipped and groomed to the last degree of shine.

"Perfectly heavenly sail we've had down, or up, I don't know which it is," he exclaimed with a burr to his r's which increased the enthusiastic effect of his speech.

"I told you it was paradise," said Philip.

"And you proved it by bringing one o' the angels with you," returned Kelly, smiling at Diana.

She regarded him with her usual serenity. "I see that, like Mr. Barrison, you enjoy using hyperbole," she said.

"Really," returned Kelly curiously. "Am I that clever? Yes, old chap, here's my check. I have a box somewhere around these diggings."

"Now, wait a minute," said Philip. "I lured Miss Wilbur down here with me to meet you and now I must return her honorably to her dinner. Oh, Bill."

He pushed through the crowd to where the motor stood, the center of new arrivals. "Save one seat, Bill," he said. "Lady for Miss Burridge's."

There was some good-natured crowding, but there being two more passengers for Miss Burridge's, Diana was squeezed in, and Barney Kelly, his hat waving from his hand, quite eclipsed Philip in the attentiveness with which he bade her godspeed.

"Who's the Vere de Vere?" he asked when Bill Lindsay had whipped up his engine and moved off.

"A young lady from Philadelphia," returned Philip, a trifle stiffly.

"Aren't touchy about her, are you? Great Scott, boy, you haven't had time! Now, if it had been me, a day's enough. Fire and tow. Fire and tow. You'd supply the tow all right, old cotton-top, but I'll be hanged if I can see where she'd provide the spark. Don't you touch that bag, Barrison," for Philip had caught up his guest's suitcase. "Like a condemned fool, I put the scores in it instead of in the box. There must be some horse here that wouldn't take it quite so much to heart as I do."

"All right," said Philip. "It can come up with your trunk. Here, Matt," – for the too-popular carpenter was expressman as well, – "this is my friend Mr. Kelly. He aids and abets me when I shriek at the public and he's loaded up his bag with music. Bring it along with his trunk, will you? Here's the check. Mr. Blake, Barney."

The newcomer shook hands with the long-legged, long-armed thin man in his shirtsleeves, and Matt Blake appraised the stranger out of his blue, grave, shrewd island eyes.

"Just crazy about this place already, Mr. Blake, just crazy about it," the newcomer assured him, and Matt Blake nodded his old straw hat and listed the volatile Barney as "another nut."

It was about a week afterward that opportunity found Mrs. Lowell and Nicholas Gayne together one evening in the living-room of the Inn. It was cool and a wood fire blazed on the hearth, but the night was still inviting and had lured the others to put on wraps and stay out of doors.

When Mrs. Lowell came in, Gayne was in a wicker rocker before the fire, his legs stretched out, and, as the lady entered, he drew them in and rose.

"You are choosing the better part, too, are you?" he said, not doubting that his presence was proving as much of an attraction as the fire. Two other men had arrived, teachers from a boys' school, Evans and Pratt by name, and it was probable that Miss Emerson was figuratively sitting at the feet of one of them and asking questions about the stars. At all events, she was out of doors. Nicholas Gayne had looked up apprehensively at Mrs. Lowell's entrance, fearing the worst; and his relief caused him to be quite effusive in his welcome of the lady and the manner in which he brought forward a chair for her.

"Have you had a good day?" she asked as she seated herself and he fell back into his rocker.

"It has been a nice day, yes."

"I meant as to your work."

"My work?"

"Yes, your sketching."

"Oh. Oh, yes, of course. Fine. Very clear. Very good views."

"I suppose you elaborate these in your studio in town."

"What? Oh, well – it isn't much of a studio at that. It is more or less on the side – my art work. I – I make no pretensions. Everybody's got to have a fad to be truly happy, haven't they? I like to scrawl and daub a little."

"You are modest. I've been expecting you would show us some of these views. This place is surely one to tempt the artist. Doubtless you have seen some of Frederic Waugh's canvases done from the sketches he made here."

"Eh? Who? Oh, yes, of course," replied Gayne lamely. "Strange that that Miss Wilbur should ever have struck this island. I understand she's the daughter of the steel man. I suppose she's slumming." Gayne laughed.

Mrs. Lowell could not force a responsive smile. "She is a very charming girl." After a pause: "I've had several talks with your nephew, Mr. Gayne."

Her companion shook off the ash from his cigar into the fire.

"You did the talking, I'm sure," he responded dryly, and his manner made her determined to be doubly careful how she proceeded.

"This place should build him up," she said. "He seems a rather fragile boy."

"Yes. He grew too fast; makes him rather weedy. Too bad he didn't keep pace mentally. He's weedy there, too."

"I should think it might be well to have him tutored for an hour a day while he is here." Mrs. Lowell tried to speak carelessly as she kept her eyes on the blaze.

"How could you find a tutor in a place like this?" was the response. "Surely Mr. Pratt and Mr. Evans – I understand they are teachers – wouldn't take kindly to the task of trying to find Bert's brains while they're on their vacation."

"No, I was thinking of a very simple plan. Miss Burridge's niece, Veronica, would perhaps be glad to work with the boy an hour a day. She has a good common education."

"Nothing doing, Mrs. Lowell." Nicholas Gayne sat up in his chair and evidently put a constraint upon himself. "You come upon this problem as a new one and you think you understand it, but you don't. You think it's not hopeless, but it is. The boy began by being backward and he's got worse and worse all his life. He couldn't keep up with any class in school and I finally took him out. Oh, I've done my best, believe me. I had a tutor come to the house for a while, but I was finally convinced that Bert hadn't the equipment to think with. Of course, there's schools for deficient children, but have you got any idea what they cost? I'm a poor man. I couldn't pay what they tax you. Bert'll end up in an institution, that's the place for him; but I'm soft-hearted. I'll keep him with me as long as I can. The doctors all warn you that it isn't safe. That kind of weak intellect is liable to take a dangerous turn any time. There's thousands of cases where relations have insisted on keeping morons like Bert near them too long. I only hope I shan't. Just take my advice, Mrs. Lowell, and don't have much to say to the boy. He gets along best when he's left alone. It doesn't do to try to wake up that kind of a brain. There's no normal balance there, and any sharpening is liable to make it take a wrong shoot. I've been on this problem five years, and, believe me, I know something about it."

The speaker's voice grew more and more blustering as he proceeded, and Mrs. Lowell could feel her limbs trembling with the intensity of her own feeling and the necessity for concealing her thoughts from him.

"He is your brother's child, I understand," she said quietly, when Gayne had made his last emphatic gesture and sunk back in his chair, red in the face.

"Yes, he is. These things are awful in a family."

"Awful," echoed Mrs. Lowell.

The next morning, after breakfast, she went to Diana's room and knocked. The girl welcomed her in. She was shaking a blanket.

"I do enjoy making my bed so much," she said. "I learned how at school."

"Then let me watch you do it while I talk to you." The visitor sat down, and Diana went on in the most earnest manner to tuck in sheets and pat and smooth pillows as if her life depended on the squareness of corners.

"I had a talk with Mr. Gayne last night."

"I observed you through the window. I felt a certainty that you were not happy."

"It was an ordeal, but I verified my suspicions – my worst suspicions. The man is planning to get his nephew out of the way, to have him shut up."

Diana left the flap of a pillow-case to its fate and faced her caller.

"To incarcerate him!"

"Yes. In an asylum. Some state institution. He has been training the boy toward that end. You have seen it. I have seen it. What is his motive? That is the question."

"Don't you think it may be merely to rid himself of a burden which hampers his life?"

"But his own flesh and blood!" exclaimed Mrs. Lowell. "Does any one live who would go to such lengths without a greater reason? Miss Wilbur, let us see what the man does in these daily rambles of his. I am convinced that his artistic pose is a cloak. He didn't even know who Frederic Waugh was."

"Oh, but to accompany the creature!" protested Diana.

"No, of course, we shouldn't find out anything by accompanying him except that he cannot sketch, and I'm sure of that already. But let us go to walk this morning, and why not visit the haunted farm?"

"No reason except that he knows we are aware that he haunts the place, which, if I were a ghost, would make it immune from my visits."

"Yes, but he cannot expect us to remember or care where he goes. I feel I must be doing something about this, no matter how slight, and – and don't let Miss Emerson join us as we go out."

"Perish the thought!" said Diana devoutly.

"God will not let this outrage take place," said Mrs. Lowell, her thought leaping back from Miss Emerson to the neglected boy. "I wish I could ask Bertie to go with us, but I feel I must be very careful not to let his uncle suspect the depth of my interest."

"Miss Emerson is very timorous about horned cattle," said Diana. "We can remember that. Sunburn, too. She has a great dread of becoming tanned."

With these encouraging considerations the two amateur detectives stole downstairs. Mrs. Lowell went to the kitchen where Veronica was as usual at this hour drying the breakfast dishes.

"Miss Veronica," she said, "would you do a little missionary work this morning?"

"I'd like to hear about it first," was the cautious reply.

"Veronica is ready for every good word and work, Mrs. Lowell," put in Miss Burridge, "but she's a busy child."

"I know that, but I wondered if she could give half an hour to playing a game of croquet with Bert Gayne."

"Oh, land!" exclaimed the girl, aghast. "He won't want to."

"That's the point, Miss Veronica," – Mrs. Lowell looked with her loving, radiant gaze into the young girl's eyes. "We want to make him know that young people don't shrink from him. He knows that I don't. I want him to know that an attractive young girl like you doesn't either. You can see that his mind is sick. He has had great sorrow."

"Sure!" said Veronica. "It's sorrow enough to have that uncle of his."

"Ve-ronica!" exclaimed Miss Burridge with one of her warning looks at the back of Genevieve's head.

"You know now what I meant by calling it missionary work," said Mrs. Lowell. "Think about it if you have time. You will find the boy dull and distrustful. I have great hopes of you. Try to make him bright and trustful. I know it can't be done in a minute." The speaker again smiled confidentially into the girl's eyes.

Diana appeared in the entrance.

"Miss Emerson is in the hammock," she said softly. "Shall we take the back way?"

They slipped out the kitchen door and Veronica scrubbed a plate already dry.

"Mrs. Lowell is the sweetest, prettiest, most darling woman I ever saw," she stated.

"But nothin' like that Miss Diana," uttered Genevieve in, for her, a lowered voice. "She's so grand it scares me when she looks at me, and Matt Blake says her father owns the whole of Pennsylvania."

Veronica turned up an already aspiring nose and grunted disparagingly. It was hard to forgive Diana for being a goddess and not chewing gum.

CHAPTER VI

THE HAUNTED FARM

"'Where every prospect pleases,'" said Diana, "'and only man is vile.'"

They had crossed the field and come up to the height of the road which commanded an extensive view of the bay and other islands. They stood still for a minute.

"Are you at all interested in metaphysics, Miss Diana?" asked her companion.

"I think I am. I am interested in everything."

"I don't like the latter half of that quotation," said Mrs. Lowell. "It stands to reason that God couldn't create anything vile."

"No, of course," agreed the girl. "It is man who makes himself vile."

"God's man couldn't do that either," returned Mrs. Lowell. "There is no potentiality in him for vileness."

"Then," said Diana, "how do you explain Mr. Gayne and his like?"

"He is a man whose real selfhood is buried under a mass of selfishness and cruelty, the beliefs of error and mortality. God doesn't even know what the poor creature believes, and all his mistakes and blundering will have to be blotted out finally by suffering, unless he should learn to turn to the Love that is always available; for God can't know anything unlike Himself."

"Your ideas are quite new to me," said the girl. "I am an Episcopalian."

Mrs. Lowell smiled. She understood this final tone.

"Then you are satisfied, I see."

"So far as religion goes, yes."

"Religion goes all the way, my dear girl."

They turned to the right and continued their walk.

"The islanders call this direction 'up-along,' Mr. Blake told me," said Diana. "If we had turned south we should have gone 'down-along.' Isn't that quaint? Mr. Barrison's grandmother lives down-along. He took me to see her the other day, the sweetest old lady."

"That refreshing young man hails from here, then?"

"Yes. He is the Viking type, is he not? I can picture him in the prow of one of those strange Norse ships. Physically he seems an anachronism."

Mrs. Lowell smiled. "Physically, perhaps, but colloquially he is certainly an up-to-the-minute American."

"He is an eminent singer and has shown himself a hero in arriving at that point."

"A hero, really?"

"Yes, but most unconsciously so."

"He is certainly as unaffected and straightforward as a child," said Mrs. Lowell. "I hope he will sing for us."

"I have heard him once," said Diana. "It was merely a nonsense song, because he had only an heirloom of a piano – a harp he called it, and I imagine harpsichords did sound similar to that. Now, we are on a high point of the island, Mrs. Lowell."

They paused again and, looking off, saw a vast ocean in all directions, foam breaking on its ledges. Mrs. Lowell drew a long breath of delight.

"'Every prospect pleases,'" she said.

"Does it not seem a pity," returned Diana, "that it is our duty to hunt for a vile, imitation man?"

Mrs. Lowell laughed. "He is scarcely even an imitation," she replied. "But come," she sighed, "let us go after him. I wonder what gave this farm its reputation." They walked on.

"I'll ask Mr. Blake," began Diana. "Oh, here he comes now."

The carpenter was returning down the island preparing to take up his freight duties on the wharf. Diana accosted him and introduced him to Mrs. Lowell.

The latter shook hands with Matt, her radiant smile beaming, "I am glad to meet you, Mr. Blake," she said. "You seem to be Miss Wilbur's oracle. She is always quoting you, and I am rather curious about this farm up here. Why do they call it haunted?"

"Oh," said Blake, "let any place be left empty a few years, and windows get loose, and blinds bang, and it's called haunted."

"I suppose that is often true," said Mrs. Lowell. "It is an abandoned farm, then?"

"Yes, for many years."

"I don't know why I have never inspected it," said Diana, "when who knows but it is the very homestead for me?"

Matt Blake shook his head and smiled. "The old house is crumbling away. There is a part of it that'll keep the rain off, and there Mr. Gayne keeps his stuff."

"Stuff?" echoed Mrs. Lowell interrogatively.

"Brushes and paints and pencils and all his outfit," said Blake.

"Oh, oh, yes," replied the lady. "You know in the West a squatter claims complete rights to the land he has settled on. I hope Mr. Gayne hasn't established an ownership up there that will make us seem like intruders. We thought we would like to see this exciting place."

"'Tain't exciting," said Matt Blake with another shake of the head. "It's asleep and snoring, the Dexter farm is."

"Who does own the place?" asked Diana with interest.

"It would take a pretty smart lawyer to find that out," was the reply. "It's been in litigation longer than it's been haunted. There's three women, I believe, pullin' and haulin' on it."

"I think I might pull and haul, too, if I find I like it," said Diana with her most dreamy serenity, and Matt Blake laughed.

"Well, you won't," he returned. "'Twould give a body the Injun blues to live there. How Mr. Gayne can stand it even in the daytime is a mystery to me; and there don't either o' the claimants really want it. They live around the State somewheres. I s'pose it would be hard to buy 'em out at that, because landowners here seem to think the island's goin' to turn into a regular Newport and that they'll make a fortune if they only hang on."

"Do not speak such desecrating words!" begged Diana. "Do not hint at waking the island from its alluring, scented dream."

Matt Blake gave her a patient stare. "Just as you say," he returned. He had already, as a fruit of many interviews with Diana, given her up as a conundrum. He tipped his hat and continued on his way.

The two companions pursued theirs, and soon came to where a rather steep hill led down to the northern beach.

"Now, we do not go down there unless we wish to be 'set across.' That is what they call it: set across to the next island, our near neighbor."

"We must do it some day," replied Mrs. Lowell, looking at that other green hill rising out of the sea.

As they stood gazing, they saw a man run across the rocks on its shore and hail a rowboat which came to meet him.

"It is within rowing distance, isn't it?" said Mrs. Lowell.

"Yes. Little Genevieve told me, one can always find some fisherman who is willing to act as a ferry." Diana looked about. "I think we shall be obliged to ask our path to the farm. Let us go to that cottage over there. It is probably on our way."

They proceeded to a house near the road where cats and chickens seemed equally numerous, and knocked.

"Will you tell us how to get to the Dexter farm?" asked Diana of the woman who answered the summons.

The woman pointed. "You go right up that way to Brook Cove and you'll really be on the farm then if you keep to the right bank. You'll see the old house near a big willow tree."

They thanked her and moved on.

"What pleasant voices these people have," said Diana. "They have not been obliged to shout above clanging trolleys and auto horns."

"No; all except Genevieve," returned Mrs. Lowell. "I should guess that she had been brought up in a boiler factory."

"Yet it is a piercing sweetness," protested Diana.

Mrs. Lowell laughed. "The island can do no wrong, eh?"

"Perhaps I am somewhat partial," admitted the girl.

They sprang along over the rough hillside, and at last came to a deep, precipitous cleft in its shore. The rocky sides of the hollow were decked with clumps of clinging shrub and evergreen and the clear water lapped a miniature beach.

"Why Brook Cove?" asked Mrs. Lowell. "I suppose there must be one about here. What a mystery the springs are in the midst of all this salt water. Miss Burridge says everybody has a well."

Diana gave her her most dreamy and seraphic look.

"Angels fold their wings and restIn this haven of the blest,"

she replied.

"I wish only angels did," sighed Mrs. Lowell. "You remind me of our errand."

"Don't you think we might spare a few minutes for repose?" asked Diana, looking wistfully at the bank where the grass grew close and green to the very edge of the chasm.

"You want to sit down and let your feet hang over," laughed Mrs. Lowell. "You may as well confess it."