Rose of Dutcher's Coolly Part 30

"Professor belongs to the University settlement--down near the Indiana line," explained Paul to Rose.

"Anybody'd think, to hear you north siders talk, that Fifty-second street was at the uttermost parts of the earth."

"It is."

"Well, we don't have weekly burglaries on our side."

"We no longer sing 'Lily Dale' and the Sankey hymns up here."

All this banter was amusing to Rose. It opened to her the inner social landmarks of the city. She didn't know before that there was a west side and a north side to the city.

Professor Roberts bubbled over with fun. He was curiously like some of the men Rose had known at Bluff Siding. His chin whiskers, his mirthful eyes, and his hearty laughter were familiar as a dandelion. What could he be professor of, she thought--and asked her neighbor.

Paul told her. "He's professor of geology and paleontology, and knows, besides, a tremendous lot about bugs and animals. He made a trip up into the Yukon country last year. He was gone eighteen months, with no one but a couple of Indian guides. He's a big fellow, for all he's so jolly and everyday in his manners."

The talk that went on was a revelation to the country girl. The three men addressed themselves to Isabel, and every conceivable subject received some sort of mention. Roberts joked incessantly, and Dr.

Sanborn held him a good second, while Mason said the most enigmatical things in his smooth, melodious ba.s.s. His face lost its heavy look under the eyes, and his smile was very attractive--though he never laughed.

Rose sat with the other young people, absorbed in the touch and go, brilliancy and fun of the talk. It was wonderful to Rose that one little woman could sit so masterful and at ease before three such keen conversationalists as these men seemed to her.

After dinner they took on a quieter tone. Mason asked the privilege of ruminating over his coffee and cigar.

"Ruminate, yes; but don't make it an excuse for going to sleep," said Isabel. "You must wake up at any rate and tell us a story before the evening is over."

She got Roberts started on his recent trip to see the Indian snake dance at Walpi, and they listened breathlessly till he rounded up safely half-an-hour later. Then Dr. Sanborn was called upon.

"Come, Doctor, we must have your song!"

"His song!" exclaimed Roberts.

"_One_ song?" asked Mason.

"One song alone is all he knows, and the only way he acquired that was by d.a.m.nable iteration. It was a cheerful lay sung by his nurse in the hospital during a spell of brain fever," explained Isabel.

"Is this thing unavoidable?" asked Mason in illy concealed apprehension.

"Thus we earn our dinner," replied Roberts. "To what length this love of food will carry a man!"

"Well, let's have the agony over at once."

The Doctor lifted his tall frame to the perpendicular as if pulled by a string, and, marching to the piano, waited for Etta to play the chords.

His face was expressionless, but his eyes laughed.

His voice shook the floor with the doleful cadences of a distressing ballad about a man who murdered his wife because she was "untrew," and was afterwards haunted by a "figger in white with pityous eyes and cries." He eventually died of remorse and the ballad ended by warning all men to refrain from hasty judgments upon their wives.

"Amen! So say we all!" Professor Roberts heartily agreed. A lively discussion was precipitated by Mason, who said "the man must be judged by the facts before him at the time the deed was done, not afterwards.

I've no doubt there are wives whose murder would be justifiable homicide."

Isabel interrupted it at last by saying: "That will do, that is quite enough. You are on the road to vituperation."

"Miss Dutcher, you will sing for us, won't you?"

"O, I don't sing." Rose turned upon her in terror.

"Really and truly?"

"Really and truly."

"Then you play?"

"I have no accomplishments at all. All the music I can make is a whistle and a jewsharp, I a.s.sure you."

This set Roberts off. "Ah! _La Belle Siffleuse!_ we will hear you whistle. Dr. Sanborn, Miss Dutcher can whistle."

Rose shrank back. "O, I can't whistle before company; I learned on the farm, I was alone so much."

They fell upon her in entreaties, and at last she half promised.

"If you won't look at me--"

"Turn down the gas!" shouted Roberts.

They made the room dim. There was a little silence, and then into the room crept a keen little sweet piping sound. It broadened out into a clear fluting and entered upon an old dance tune. As she went on she put more and more go into it, till Roberts burst out with a long-drawn nasal cry, "Sash-ay all!" and Rose broke down into a laugh. Everybody shouted "Bravo!"

Roberts exulted. "O, but I'd like to see an old-fas.h.i.+oned country dance again. Give us another old-fas.h.i.+oned tune."

"I don't know that I do them right," said Rose. "I hear the fiddlers playing them."

"More! more!" cried Roberts. "I like those old things. Mason here pretends not to know them, but he's danced them many a time."

Rose whistled more of the old tunes. "Haste to the Wedding," "Honest John," "Polly Perkins," and at last reached some fantastic furious tunes, which she had caught from the Norwegian fiddlers.

Then she stopped and they turned up the light. She looked a little ashamed of her performance, and Isabel seemed to understand it, so she said:

"Now that is only fooling, and I'm going to ask Miss Dutcher to read some of her verses to us. Dr. Thatcher writes me that she does verses excellently well." This sobered the company at once, as it well might, and Rose was in despair.

"O no, don't ask me to do that, please."

"This is your chance, rise to it," insisted Isabel.

"If you will I'll sing my song again for you," Sanborn said.

At last Rose gave up resistance. Her heart beat so terribly hard she felt smothered, but she recited a blank verse poem. It was an echo of Tennyson, of course, not exactly "Enoch Arden," but reminiscent of it, but the not too critical taste of Dr. Sanborn and Prof. Roberts accepted it with applause.

Mason stole a sly look at Isabel, who did not give up. She asked for one more and Rose read a second selection, a spasmodic, equally artificial graft, a supposedly deeply emotional lyric, an echo of Mrs. Browning, with a third line which went plumping to the deeps of pa.s.sion after a rhyme. It had power in it, and a sort of sincerity in the reading which carried even Isabel away--besides that, her magnificent figure was a poem in itself.

"What a voice you have!" she said as she seized her by the hands. "You read beautifully--and you write well, too."

Rose noticed that Mr. Mason, the large man, said nothing at all. In the midst of the talk the maid approached Isabel.