The Key Note: A Novel

by Clara Louise Burnham

As Kelly finished his harangue with a gesture of both hands, the girls were laughing and Diana was quite flushed.

"What a fool you are, Barney," said Philip calmly, still biting the honey out of the red clover. "He plays like a house afire," he added, turning to the girls. "You will be delighted."

"Oh, yes," said Kelly. "On the road I get a group. I play the Chopin and Grieg things that the girls practice at home, and they get out their vanity cases and prink and wait for Barrison to come on again."

"Oh, cut it out, you idiot!" exclaimed Philip, jumping up. "I don't believe they're going to get one of those mackerel. Let's amuse little Veronica and go up and have a game of croquet."

Meanwhile Mr. Gayne had again taken his nephew with him to the farm.

"In spite of all I say," he told the boy, "you will bother those ladies at the Inn. So if you come along with me, I'll know where you are." And the lad answered him not at all, but plodded up the road.

He did, however, think of some of the things Mrs. Lowell had said to him. Some of the love and courage that emanated from her gave him a novel certainty that he was not altogether friendless, and the wild roses that began to peep at him from the roadside suggested the idea that she would like it if he brought some home to her. In the idle hours of the afternoon he might gather some, and some of the myriad daisies and Indian paintbrush that decked the fields. But his heart sank at the prospect of what his uncle would say if he attempted to carry back a bouquet when they returned.

Gayne forbade the boy to enter the house when they reached their destination, just as he had done in the morning. So Bertie, his hands in his pockets, wandered about the surrounding fields and in the spruce groves, and picked up the shells the crows had dropped and emptied. Once he found a ridge of grass unusually long and green, and heard a whispering, and investigating found a narrow brook which murmured as it flowed. He followed along its bank until he came to the cove it had named, and watched the sparse stream cascade over the granite and fall thinly down its steep wall. The wet rock glistened in the sun, it seemed to the boy as if with tears. He threw himself down beside it and, leaning on his elbow, rested his head on his hand. Through the cut between this island and the next, boats were passing coming in from the foaming waves of the sea to the quiet waters of the sound. Life, beauty, peace. The boy closed his eyes. The longing to portray it all rose in him like an anguish. He felt his old torpidity to be better than this. Why should his new friend stir up a craving for the impossible? She meant to be kind. She seemed really to like him; and she had liked his drawing and had wanted him to do more. She would find that it was impossible, and he hoped that she would make no more effort. He squeezed his eyelids together to keep back stinging drops. He felt shame at his own weakness. Uncle Nick had said he had no more backbone than a jellyfish and he felt this was true. He had no physical strength to defend himself, none to take his fortunes into his own hands, as he felt most boys would do, run away and do something to keep himself from starvation.

For years he had been fed as an animal might have been fed: at any hour that suited Cora, and with anything she might happen to have in the house. He was undernourished, neglected, crushed, and spiritless. He despised his weakness as much as his uncle despised him, and he was conscious that it was a new estimate of himself that he was now making, an estimate due to the awakening of thought that had come to him through that lady who meant to be kind. He felt very bitterly toward her as he lay there, his eyes closed to the loveliness of sea and sky.

He had lain there half an hour when Matt Blake came across from the road and passed near him.