Miss Pat at Artemis Lodge Part 4

"Something's bound to happen," she repeated determinedly, and she took Judith's arm and skipped a couple of steps along the dim platform, much to that young lady's horror.

"It's simply bound to happen, Judy," she said out loud, but to Judith's puzzled questions she would give no answer save a little confident laugh.

CHAPTER IV

TANCREDI'S TWO PUPILS

And something did actually happen. It was in the most unexpected way and it came from a quarter that caused Patricia to believe in modern miracles.

She had gone with some quaking to her appointment with Madame Tancredi, and she was waiting alone in the anteroom--Elinor having left her for some necessary shopping until the lesson should be over--when the maid ushered in a girl in sumptuous street clothes, carrying a music roll of extravagant design.

Patricia loved pretty clothes and pretty people, and the girl was undeniably pretty in a dark, tropical way. She moved with graceful, gliding steps and her face under the wide drooping velvet hat looked amiable as well as comely.

Patricia wanted to speak to her, but was uncertain as to the propriety of the act. The girl solved her difficulty, however, by choosing a chair near Patricia's, and, settling easily in it with an accustomed air of being agreeable, smiled pleasantly and spoke in a most melodious voice.

"Are you the new pupil?" she asked, apparently less from curiosity than a desire to break the silence. "I have heard that Madame was expecting someone recommended by Milano, but since she didn't tell me any more than just that much, I may be mistaken."

Patricia eagerly a.s.sured her that she was indeed the expected student, adding a rather anxious question as to the manner of instructor she was to have in Madame Tancredi.

The girl laughed a tinkling laugh which showed her faultless little white teeth and waved her hand in quite the foreign manner.

"Tancredi is very well as teachers go," she said with an indifference that seemed superhuman to the quivering Patricia, who immediately set her up in her mind as authority on matters musical.

"I've never studied before," she confessed, with a tinge of confusion.

"I am afraid Madame will find me awfully stupid."

The girl looked at her with a lightening of her amiable, indifferent air. "Are you really so very young as all that?" she asked in some surprise. "You look very childish in this dim light, but I thought you must be old enough to have studied somewhere before this. Tancredi doesn't usually take rank amateurs."

Patrica felt very small indeed before this calm criticism, but she confessed bravely, though with flus.h.i.+ng cheeks. "I am past seventeen,"

she said resolutely. "And I've been waiting six months to begin study."

And then at the encouraging look on the other's face she rushed into a rather jumbled account of her aspirations, her trials and lastly her disappointment of yesterday in being refused admittance at Artemis Lodge on the score of lack of room.

The girl listened closely, and Patricia thought she nodded approval at the names of Bruce Hayden and Greycroft, and showed a keener interest when Milano's visit to Rockham was hastily mentioned. She made few comments, however, and when the gong rang, rose to go into the studio with graceful alacrity.

At the threshold she paused to say, "If you are here when I come out, I should like to see you again," and then with a return of her amiable, indifferent air, she pa.s.sed into the inner sanctum, leaving the impulsive Patricia wors.h.i.+ping at her shrine.

Some sounds of liquid melody found their way out through the heavy doors, and helped to make the tedious half hour pa.s.s like magic.

Patricia was thankful she had made a mistake in the time and had arrived so much too soon, since it gave her the opportunity of having even this small glimpse into the world of music before she ventured into it herself.

The girl came out, and her expression was heightened into positive radiance. Evidently her lesson had been a good one and she had been praised.

Coming over to where Patricia still sat, she stood for a moment looking down on her. Then she smiled her slow smile and held out her hand.

"I am Rosamond Merton," she said, "and I know that you are Patricia Kendall. I am living at the Lodge while I study with Madame. I have three rooms there. Will you come and stay with me for a month?"

Patricia gasped. "Why--" she began in some confusion. "Oh, you're awful kind, but--but--you don't know me at all."

Rosamond Merton smiled again, but did not withdraw her hand. "Which means that you don't know me," she replied, not at all affronted. "Ask Tancredi who I am, and--if you are still in doubt, come to see me at the Lodge. I like you, Miss Patricia Kendall, and I mean that you shall like me."

Patricia was so overcome by these magnanimous words that she shook hands with great heartiness, promising to visit Miss Merton and vowing appreciation of her kindness.

"Though I can't come and stay with you, you know," she said as she rose in response to the gong which was now summoning her. "I'm simply crazy to stay at Artemis Lodge, but I couldn't sponge on a perfectly absolutely strange girl." Then fearing that this might sound ungracious, she added hastily, "Though there isn't anyone I'd like to visit better than you."

The frank admiration in her tone pleased the girl and she took up her m.u.f.f and gloves with a gratified air. "I warn you that I am hard to discourage when I've set my mind on a thing," she said lightly as she turned to go. "You will come to see me this afternoon, I am sure."

She was gone before Patricia could reply and since the door into the studio was opening softly, there was no other course for Madame Milano's protege than to walk as calmly as she might straight into the fiery furnace, leaving all thoughts of Rosamond Merton behind her.

Tancredi proved a rather good-natured portly woman with a taste for exaggerated garments which suggested the operatic stage. She met Patricia on the threshold, and patted her shoulder kindly as she led her into the large bare apartment.

"So, so. You are a very young one," she said with a strong foreign accent, yet with great kindness. "Milano did not prepare me for this.

Sit there, little one, while I look thee over."

She pushed Patricia to the piano bench, and settled herself on the opposite settee by the music stand, and though her scrutiny was amazingly thorough, Patricia was surprised to find that it did not disconcert her in the least. Madame Tancredi was the exact opposite of her friend Milano in all save the kindly spirit of the true artist. She was stout and heavy, where Milano was swift and graceful; she was frankness itself where Milano was cryptic; and, finally, she was the owner of a very lively curiosity.

Patricia feared lest her precious half hour go by in catechism, and was beginning to feel a bit downcast over the length and variety of the questions put to her by the smiling Tancredi, when suddenly, with a jingle of her chatelaines and bangles, she rose and beckoned to a screened corner where, unnoticed by Patricia, a dark-haired young woman had been copying music.

"The Heather Song, Marcon," she said briefly. "This young lady requests the Heather Song."

As a matter of fact, Patricia had done no more than to confess with reluctance that she had tried it by herself at Greycroft, strumming the accompaniment with careless fingers. She heard, with a sort of dismay, the das.h.i.+ng introduction rendered faultlessly by the competent Marcon, and she stood beside the s.h.i.+ning grand piano in no very pleasant frame of mind.

Her throat grew dryer with every moment and when it was her time to burst into the rippling, tender song, she heard a trembling little voice, which she could hardly recognize for her own, stumble faintly into the melody.

It was too much for her tried nerves. She broke down utterly, turning away from the piano with a sob, and, flinging out her hands in a despairing gesture, cried out that she could not sing, that she never should be able to sing and that she might as well go.

Tancredi was too much used to the emotions of the geniuses and near-geniuses, whose temperamental outbreaks she had learned by heart, not to understand what was the matter.

Waving the composed Marcon out of her room, she pushed Patricia to the stool with no very gentle hand. "There now, my little one. Sing for me in your own way," she commanded. "Rome was not builded in one day. You are too much excited--and you so young," she ended with a softening of pity in her rich tones.

Somehow that accusation of youthfulness was the spur that drove Patricia to victory. Raising her head with a toss of determination, she ran her hands over the keys first lightly and then with growing certainty of herself, while, unseen by her, Tancredi nodded and smiled to herself in high good humor.

The song bubbled out in Patricia's best notes, rippling in silver waves through a golden atmosphere of pure melody. She sang it to the end and then sat mutely on the bench, with her anxieties returning slowly as the silence grew.

When she could bear it no longer she turned a pale face to where Tancredi sat staring into s.p.a.ce.

"S--shall I try it again?" she faltered uncertainly.

Tancredi shook her head silently. "That will be enough of songs for the present, my treasure," she said, in a strange tone, of which Patricia could make nothing.

Presently she rose and walked the length of the apartment with something very like triumph on her heavy face, at which the puzzled Patricia wondered all the more, though she waited docilely enough on her stool in front of the great s.h.i.+ning piano.

After a few turns, Tancredi came suddenly to her where she sat and took her chin in her warm, soft padded fingers, staring sharply into her face as though to read her whole being at a glance. Decidedly, she was a woman of unusual moods, for she stooped and kissed the anxious, girlish face, first on one cheek and then on the other.

"There, my little one, we are friends now," she said, releasing her, "and you shall sometimes sing for me some of those songs when it is needed to cheer your heart. But otherwise you shall not sing--no, not for the king himself should he ask it."