Four Girls and a Compact Part 6

He was not old, not alone and forlorn and c.u.mbering the earth. He was young and straight and loyal, defying suffering and death, with glory and fame, perhaps, on there ahead. His country needed him--he was marching through Georgia for his country.

Billy played it over and over, untiring. A lump grew in her throat at the sight of the old face down there on the lower step. For so much was written on the old face!

Suddenly Old '61 got up and began to march, swinging his old legs out splendidly. Down the walk, down the road, he went, as far as the music went, then came marching splendidly back. Head up, shoulders squared, the "boys" marching invisible beside him and before him and behind him, he was no longer Old '61, but Young '61.

The next day Billy ate her breakfast quietly, helped clear away the things, and went quietly away. She did not stop to read Laura Ann's gay-painted "Compact" on the screen door. It might even have been noticed, if anyone cared to notice, that she did not look at it, that she hurried a little through the door, as if to avoid it.

Old '61 was waiting at the gate. She smiled at the eager invitation she read in his face.

"No," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, "no, I'm not going to play it this time. I'm going to teach you to play it! I shall be going back to the city before long, and then what will you do when you want to hear it? Perhaps you couldn't keep the tune in your head. I'm going to show you an easy way to play it--just the air. I shall have to try it myself first, of course. But I'm sure you can learn how, if you'll practice faithfully." It was queer how her music-teacher tone crept back into her voice. She laughed to herself to hear it. "Practice faithfully"

sounded so natural to say!

She sat down at the organ and experimented thoughtfully, trying to reduce the old man's beloved tune to its very lowest terms. After quite a long time she nodded and smiled.

Then began Old '61s music lessons. It was terrible work, like earning a living with the sweat of the brow. But the two of them--the young woman and the old man--bent to it heroically. For an hour, that first time, the cramped old fingers felt their way over the keyboard; for an hour Billy bent over them, patiently pointing the way. She had forgotten that she was not to think of piano-notes now--that she had signed the Wicked Compact. She had forgotten everything but her determination to teach Old '61 to play "Marching through Georgia." And Old '61 had, in his turn, forgotten things--that he was old, alone, a c.u.mberer, everything but his determination to learn It.

It was not a scientific lesson. It did not begin with first principles and creep slowly upward; it began in the middle, in a splendid, haphazard, ambitious way. The stiff old hands were gently placed in position for the first notes of the tune, the stiff old fingers were pressed gently down, one at a time. Over and over and over the process was repeated. It was learning by sheer brute patience and love.

"That's all for the first lesson," Billy announced at the end of the hour. "You've got those first notes well enough to practice them.

To-morrow we'll go a little bit farther." But she did not know the long, patient hours between now and then that the old man would "practice,"

crooked painfully over the keys. She did not reckon on the miracle that might be wrought out of intense desire.

The next morning Old '61 at the gate proclaimed proudly:

"I've got it! I've got it! I can play an' sing fur as we've b'en!

It's ringin' in my head all the time."

"Did the birds wake you up singing it?" Billy asked, smilingly. She, herself, was all eagerness to learn of her pupil's progress. The lesson began at once. Already, she found, the miracle had begun to work. The old man sat down to the organ with a flourish that, if it had not been full of pathos, would have been a little comedy act. After a brief preliminary search the old fingers found their place and pounded out triumphantly the few notes they had been taught.

"Good! good!" applauded the teacher heartily. "Why, you do it splendidly! Now we'll go on a little farther--this finger on this note, this one here, your thumb _here_." She stationed them carefully and the second lesson began. It was nearer two hours than one when it ended.

"Where have _you_ been, Billy?" Loraine asked at lunch. They had all been describing their individual pursuits and experiences of the morning.

"Oh, to a place," answered Billy lightly.

"What place?" Loraine persisted curiously.

"Well," laughed Billy, "if you must know, I've been marching through--oh, a _place_!" she concluded hastily, repenting herself.

"It was a pretty hard place, and I'm hungry as a bear. Wish somebody'd say, 'Won't you have another piece of pie?'"

"Won't you have another piece of pie?" laughed Loraine, and nothing further was said of an embarra.s.sing nature.

The summer days grew into summer weeks. Patiently and joyously Old '61 plodded his way to the sea. He practiced nearly all his waking hours, and when he was not at the little organ, practicing, he went about humming the beloved words. Pride and love, rather than any melody of his cracked old voice, made a tune of them.

His progress astonished his teacher. Her praise was impetuous enough for further and greater exertions. One day Billy said the next time should be an exhibition, when he should play it all--from "Atlanta to the sea"--with her as audience, not helping, but sitting in a chair listening.

She came to the Exhibition in a white dress, with sweet-peas at her waist. Her smiles at the foot of the steps changed to something like a sob when she discovered that Old '61 had been decorating the organ and the little porch. He, himself, was brushed and radiant, his old face the face of a little child.

"The audience will sit on the steps," Billy said, a little tremulously.

"Right here. Make believe I'm rows and rows of people! Now will you please favor us by 'Marching through Georgia'?".

He went at once to the little gayly-bedecked instrument and began to play. The dignity and pride of the shabby old figure redeemed its shabbiness--the fervor of the pounded notes redeemed the tune. The audience--in "rows and rows,"--listened gravely, and at the end burst into genuine applause. The sound swelled and multiplied oddly, and then they saw the three figures at the gate who had listened, too. Billy was discovered!

CHAPTER V.

They escorted Billy home. It was rather a silent walk until the end.

Loraine spoke first.

"One less in the B-Hive," she said sadly.

"Yes, I suppose I'm dropped now," responded Billy, not uncheerfully.

"Of course I've got to take the consequences of my--my crime. But I don't care!" she added with vivacity. "I'd rather live alone in a ten-story house than have missed that Exhibition!"

"Yes," mused Laura Ann thoughtfully, "it was a beautiful one. I'm glad _I_ didn't miss it. When I think of what it stood for--"

She broke off suddenly and slipped her hand into Billy's arm. Another short silence. Then Laura Ann finished: "All the work and patience it stood for, day after day--girls, when I think of that I feel--"

"I know--all of us know," T.O. hastily interposed. "That's about the way we all feel, I guess. No use talking about it, though. Billy's broken the Compact and we're under oath to drop her."

"Not till we go back to work," Loraine put in emphatically, "and then she can live next door and come in every night to tea! There's nothing in the Compact against that, is there? Well, then, I invite you, Billy, for the very first tea!"

"I accept!" laughed Billy. She did not seem at all depressed. In her ears rang the pounding refrain of Old '61 marching through Georgia.

Nothing more was said on this subject. A little picnic had been planned for the afternoon, and they went briskly about making preparations for it, as soon as they got back to Mrs. Camp's little green house. While they worked they discussed Amelia.

"If she hadn't gone with her mother we'd have taken her to the picnic with us," the Talented One said, over her egg-beating. "I wonder if Amelia likes picnics?"

"Don't! You make me feel creepy," Laura Ann laughed. "What _I_ wonder is how she'd have looked if she'd ever been born. I lay awake one night trying to imagine Amelia."

"Blue eyes and golden hair," Loraine chimed in dreamily, "and a little dimple in her chin."

"You needn't any of you lie awake nights imagining. I can tell you," the Talented One said. "She has blue eyes, but her hair is brown and the dimples are in her cheeks. Her hair just waves a little away from the parting--it is always parted. She sits very still, sewing patchwork--her mother told me," added the Talented One quietly. "She said she wished she knew how to paint so she could paint Amelia's picture. She told me where she'd like to have it hung--here in the dining-room, between the windows. Amelia'd always been very real, she said, but the picture would make her realer."

"Did she ever say what kind of dresses Amelia wears?" asked Laura Ann without looking up from her stirring.

"No, I never asked, but they must be white dresses, I think,--Amelia is such an innocent little thing," laughed T.O. softly. It was odd how they always laughed or talked softly when it was about little make-believe Amelia.

The picnic was in the woods, in a lovely little spot Loraine had discovered in her wanderings. A brook babbled noisily through the spot.

They spread their lunch at the foot of a forest giant and ate it luxuriously to the tune the brook sang. It was hard to believe they had ever been toilers in a great city.

"There never were any public schools," murmured Loraine, lying back and gazing into the thick mesh of leaves overhead. "n.o.body ever said 'Teacher! Teacher!' to me."