VII
A moment later Bob Cummings appeared and greeted Grace with unfeigned surprise and pleasure.
“I’ll say we don’t need to be introduced! Grace and I are old friends,” he said, still unable to conceal his mystification at finding Grace established on terms of intimacy in his neighbor’s house.
“I inveigled Grace here without telling her it was to be a musical evening,” said Miss Reynolds.
“Oh, I’d have come just the same!” laughed Grace.
“We’ll cut the music now,” said Cummings. “It will be a lot more fun to talk. I tell you, Grace, it’s a joy to have a place of refuge like this! Miss Reynolds is the kindest woman in the world. I’ve adopted her as my aunt.”
He bowed to Miss Reynolds, and glanced from one to the other with boyish eagerness for their approval.
“That’s the first I’ve heard of it,” Miss Reynolds retorted with a grieved air. “Why don’t you tell him, Grace, that being an aunt sounds too old. You might both adopt me as a cousin!”
Grace and Bob discussed the matter with mock gravity and decided that there was no good reason why they shouldn’t be her cousin.
“Then you must call me Cousin Beulah!” said Miss Reynolds. Her nephews and nieces were widely scattered she said, and she didn’t care for her lawful cousins.
Grace talked much more freely under the stimulus of Bob’s presence. It appeared that Miss Reynolds had not known Bob until she moved into the neighborhood and their acquaintance had begun quite romantically. Miss Reynolds had stopped him as he was passing her house shortly after she moved in and asked him whether he knew anything about trees. Some of the trees on her premises were preyed upon by malevolent insects and quite characteristically she had halted him to ask whether he could recommend a good tree doctor.
“You looked intelligent; so I took a chance,” Miss Reynolds explained. “And the man you recommended didn’t hurt the trees much—only two died. I’ve bought a tree book and hereafter I’ll do my own spraying.”
When Miss Reynolds spoke of Mrs. Cummings she referred to her as Evelyn, explaining to Grace that she was the daughter of an old friend. Evelyn, it appeared, was arranging a Thanksgiving party for one of the country clubs. Bob said she was giving a lot of time to it; it was going to be a brilliant affair. Then finding that Grace did not know Evelyn and remembering that in all likelihood her guest wouldn’t be invited to the entertainment, Miss Reynolds turned the talk into other channels. It was evident that Bob was a welcome visitor to Miss Reynolds’s house and that she understood and humored him and indulged and encouraged his chaffing attitude toward her. That he should make a practice of escaping from a company at home that did not interest him was just like Bob! He was lucky to have a neighbor so understanding and amiable as Miss Reynolds. Perhaps again and often she would meet Bob at Miss Reynolds’s when he found Evelyn irksome. Grace rose and changed her seat, as though by so doing she were escaping from an idea she felt to be base, an affront to Miss Reynolds, an insult to Bob.
“The piano’s waiting, Bob”; and Miss Reynolds led the way to the music room across the hall.
Bob began, as had always been his way, Grace remembered, by improvising, weaving together snatches of classical compositions, with whimsical variations. Then, after a pause, he sat erect, struck into Schumann’s Nachtstuck, and followed it with Handel’s Largo and Rubenstein’s Melody in F, all associated in her memory with the days of their boy-and-girl companionship. He shook his head impatiently, waited a moment and then a new mood laying hold of him he had recourse to Chopin, and played a succession of pieces that filled the room with color and light. Grace watched the sure touch of his hands, marveling that he had been so faithful to the music that was his passion as a boy. It had always been his solace in the unhappy hours to which he had been a prey as far back as she could remember. There was no questioning his joy in the great harmonies. He was endowed with a talent that had been cultivated with devotion, and he might have had a brilliant career if fate had not swept him into a business for which his temperament wholly unfitted him.
While he was still playing Miss Reynolds was called away by callers and left the room quietly.
“You and Bob stay here,” she whispered to Grace. “These are people I have to see.”
When Bob ended with a Chopin valse, graceful and capricious, that seemed to Grace to bring the joy of spring into the room, he swung round, noted Miss Reynolds’s absence and then the closed door.
“My audience reduced one-half!” he exclaimed ruefully. “At this rate I’ll soon be alone.”
“Don’t stop! Those last things were marvelous!”
“Just one more! Do you remember how I cornered you one day in our old house—you were still wearing pigtails—and told you I’d learned a new piece and you sat like a dear angel while I played this—my first show piece?”
It was Mendelssohn’s Spring Song, and she thrilled to think that he hadn’t forgotten. The familiar chords brought back vividly the old times; he had been so proud and happy that day in displaying his prowess.
Her praise was sweet to him then, and she saw that it was grateful to him now.
“You play wonderfully, Bob; it’s a pity you couldn’t have kept on!”
“We can’t do as we please in this world,” he said, throwing himself into a chair and reaching for the cigarettes. “But I get a lot of fun out of my music. I’m not sorry I stuck to it as I did from the time I could stretch an octave. Are you spending the night with Miss Reynolds?”
“No; we’re not quite that chummy. Miss Reynolds said she’d send me home.”
“Not on your life she won’t! I’m going to run you out in my roadster. That’s settled. I don’t have to show up at home till midnight, so there’s plenty of time. You and Cousin Beulah seem to get on famously.”
Grace gave a vivacious account of the beginning of her acquaintance with Miss Reynolds, not omitting the ten dollar tip.
He laughed; then frowned darkly.
“I’ve been troubled about this thing ever since I met you today,” he said doggedly; “your having to quit college, I mean. I feel guilty, terribly guilty.”
“Please, Bob! don’t spoil my nice evening by mentioning those things again. I know it wasn’t your fault. So let’s go on being friends just as though nothing had happened.”
“Of course. But it’s rotten just the same. You can hardly see me without——”
She raised her hand warningly.
“Bob, I’d be ashamed if anything could spoil our friendship. I’m perfectly satisfied that you had nothing to do with father’s troubles. So please forget it.”
She won him back to good nature—she had always been able to do that—and they talked of old times, of the companions of their youth in the park neighborhood. This was safe ground. The fact that they were harking back to their childhood and youth emphasized the changed circumstances of both the Durlands and the Cummingses. It didn’t seem possible that he was married; it struck her suddenly that he didn’t appear at all married; and with this came the reflection that he was the kind of man who should never marry. He should have kept himself free; he had too much temperament for a harmonious married life.
“You don’t know Evelyn,” he remarked a little absently. And then as though Grace’s not knowing Evelyn called for an explanation he added: “She was away at school for a long time.”
“What’s she like, Bob?” Grace asked. “A man ought to be able to draw a wonderful picture of his wife.”
“He should indeed! Let me see. She’s fair; blue eyes; tall, slender; likes to have something doing; wins golf cups; a splendid dancer.... Oh, pshaw! You wouldn’t get any idea from that!” he said with an uneasy laugh. “She’s very popular; people like her tremendously.”
“I’m sure she’s lovely, Bob. Is she musical?”
“Oh, she doesn’t care much for music; my practicing bores her. She used to sing a little but she’s given it up.”
He hadn’t said that he hoped she might meet Evelyn; and for a moment Grace resented this. She was a saleswoman in a department store and Evelyn had no time for an old friend of her husband who sold ready-to-wear clothing. A snob, no doubt, self-centered and selfish; Bob’s failure to suggest a meeting with his wife made it clear that he realized the futility of trying to bring them together.
“You haven’t missed me a bit!” cried Miss Reynolds appearing suddenly. “Is the music all over?”
“Oh, we’ve been reminiscing,” said Grace. “And you missed the best of Bob’s playing.”
“I’m sorry those people chose tonight for their call. It was Judge Sanders, my lawyer, and his wife, old friends—but I didn’t dare smoke before them! You’ve got to stay now while I have a cigarette.”
When Grace said presently that she must go and Miss Reynolds reached for the bell to ring for her car, Bob stayed her hand.
“That’s all fixed! I’ll run around and bring my car and I’ll take Grace home. Please say you don’t mind!”
“Of course, I don’t mind; but you needn’t think you’re establishing a precedent. The next time Grace comes I’ll lock the door against you and all the rest of the world!”
While Bob went for his car Miss Reynolds warned Grace that she was likely to ask her to the house again.
“You’ll be doing me a favor by coming, dear. And remember, if there’s ever anything I can do for you you’re to tell me. That’s a promise. I should be sorry if you didn’t feel that you could come to me with anything.”