"What"s the matter?" She looked wonderingly at the girl"s crimson face.
"Don"t ask me! but don"t expect me to be friends with that woman again!"
"Have you had words--have you quarrelled with Dr. Harpe?"
"Yes--yes; we quarrelled! But don"t ask me any more! I won"t--I can"t tell you!" the girl replied fiercely as she rushed on and slammed the door of her room behind her.
In her office, Dr. Harpe was sitting by the window panic-stricken, sick with the fear of the one thing in the world of which she was most afraid, namely, Public Opinion.
She was deaf to the night sounds of the town; to the thick, argumentative voices beneath her window; to the scratched phonograph squeaking an ancient air in the office of the Terriberry House; to the banging of an erratic piano in the saloon two doors above; to the sleepy wails of the butcher"s urchin in the tar-paper shack one door below, and to a heap of snarling dogs fighting in the deep, white dust of the street.
She glanced through the window and saw without seeing, the deputy-sheriff escorting an unsteady prisoner down the street followed by a boisterous crowd. In a way she was dimly conscious that there was something familiar in the prisoner"s appearance, but the impression was not strong enough to rouse her from her preoccupation, and she turned to walk the floor without being cognizant of the fact that she was walking.
She suddenly threw both hands aloft.
"I"ve got it!" she cried exultingly. "The very thing to counteract her story. It"ll work--it always does--and I know that I can do it!"
In her relief she laughed, a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it as quickly as it came.
Addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!
La tua soave imagine chi mai, chi mai scordar potra!
Del ciel l"auzzurro fulgido, la placida marina, Qual core non imebria, non bea non bea divolutta!
In tela terra el "aura favellano d"amore; Te sola al mio dolore conforto io sognero Oh! addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!
Addio care memorie del tempo ah! che fuggi!
The voice rang out like a golden bell, vibrating, as sweetly penetrating. The strange words fell like the notes of the meadow lark in spring, easy, liquid, yet with the sureness of knowledge.
The incoherent argument beneath the window ceased, the piano and the phonograph were silenced, the wailing urchin dried its tears and all the raw little town of Crowheart seemed to hold its breath as the wonderful tenor voice rose and fell on the soft June night.
Adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!
Thy wondrous pictures in the sea, will ever fill my memory!
Thy skies of deepest, brightest blue, thy placid waves so soft and clear; With heaving sigh and bitter tear, I bid a last, a sad adieu!
Adieu the fragrant orange grove, the scented air that breathes of love Shall charm my heart with one bright ray, in dreams, wher"er I stray; Oh, adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!
Adieu each soul-felt memory, of happy days long pa.s.sed away!
The old street-song of Italy, the song of its people, never held a stranger audience in thraldom. If the song had been without words the result would have been the same, almost, for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which vaguely they believed.
Only those who have lived in isolated places can understand what music means to those who year after year are without it. Any sound that is not an actual discord becomes music then and the least gentle listen with pathetic eagerness. A worn phonograph screeching the popular songs of a past decade holds the rapt attention of such. It reminds them of that world they left long ago, a world which in the perspective of waning years looks all song and laughter, good company, good clothes, good food, and green things everywhere.
Therefore it is little wonder that this voice of marvellous sweetness and power rising unexpectedly out of the moonlit night should lay an awed hush upon the music-starved town. To some it brought a flood of memories and lumps in aching throats while many a weather-beaten face was lifted from mediocrity by a momentary exultation that was of the soul.
That a human voice unaided by a visible personality could throw such a spell upon the listeners seems rather a tax upon credulity; but the singer himself appeared to have no misgivings. His face wore a look of smiling, mocking confidence as he stood with one hand on his hip, the other grasping a bar of the iron grating which covered the single window of Crowheart"s calaboose, pouring forth the golden notes with an occasional imperious toss of his head and a flash of his black eyes which made him look like a royal prisoner.
When the last note had died away, Dr. Harpe breathed an e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n.
"The Dago Duke!"
"He sings like an angel," said "Slivers," a barkeep.
"And fights like a devil," replied Dan Treu, the deputy-sheriff. "He turned a knife in Tinhorn"s shoulder."
VI
"THE CHURCH RACKET"
Dr. Harpe went downstairs the next morning with her straight upper lip stretched in the set smile with which she met a crisis. "Hank"
Terriberry pa.s.sed through the hall as she descended the stairs and she watched him breathlessly.
"Mornin", Doc." He nodded in friendly nonchalance and her heart leaped in relief.
He knew nothing of the quarrel!
"Wait a minute, Mr. Terriberry," she called, and he stopped. "Say, what church do you belong to? What are you?"
Mr. Terriberry suffered from pyorrhea, and the row of upper teeth which he now displayed in a genial grin looked like a garden-rake, due to his shrinking gums.
"I"m a Presbyterian, Doc, but I don"t work at it. Why?"
"Let"s get together and build a church. I"ll go around with a subscription paper myself and raise the money. I feel lost without a church, I honestly do. It"s downright heathenish."
"That"s so," Mr. Terriberry agreed heartily, "there"s something d.a.m.ned respectable about a church. It makes a good impression upon strangers to come into a town and hear a church bell ringin", even if n.o.body goes.
Doc, you"re all right," he patted her shoulder approvingly; "you"re a rough diamond; you can put me down for $50."
When Mr. Terriberry had gone his pious way, Dr. Harpe smiled and reiterated mentally: "There"s nothing like the church racket; it always works."
She pa.s.sed on into the dining-room where the Dago Duke who had sung himself out of the calaboose sprang to his feet and, laying his hand upon his heart, bowed low in a burlesqued bow of deference.
"A tribute to your skill and learning, madam."
She stared at him stonily and his white teeth flashed.
How she hated him! yet she felt helpless before his impudence and audacity. He had "presence," poise, and she knew instinctively that to whatever lengths she might go in retaliation he would go further. She would only bring upon herself discomfiture by such a course. She knew that she had forfeited his respect; more than that, she felt that she had incurred a deep and lasting enmity which seemed to her out of all proportion to the cause.
His horseback companion of the previous day was breakfasting beside him and she found the young man"s cold, impersonal scrutiny as hard to bear as the Dago Duke"s frank impudence as she swaggered to her seat at the end of the long dining-room and faced them. He was as different in his way from the men about him as the Dago Duke, yet he differed, too, from that conspicuous person. He seemed self-contained, reserved to the point of reticence, but with a quiet a.s.surance of manner as p.r.o.nounced as the other"s effrontery. He was dressed in a blue flannel shirt and worn corduroys. His face was tanned but it was the sunburned face of an invalid. There were hollows in his cheeks and a tired look in his gray eyes. Having critically examined her, Dr. Harpe observed that he seemed to forget her.
Essie Tisdale pa.s.sed her without a glance, but Mrs. Terriberry came behind with the breakfast of fried potatoes and the thin, fried beefsteak on the platter which served also as a plate, from which menu the Terriberry House never deviated by so much as a mutton chop.
"I"m sorry you and Essie fell out," said Mrs. Terriberry apologetically as she placed the dishes before her. "But she seems awful set on not waitin" on you."
Dr. Harpe dropped her eyes for an instant.
"It"s up to her."
"She"s as good-natured as anybody I ever saw but she"s high-strung, too; she"s got a temper."