“Is that so? Well, I never noticed you lockin’ the door when I used to trot around three times a week.... Oh, well, there, there! let’s don’t fight about what can’t be helped—I mean what’s past and gone. If Seymour and Esther have had a rumpus probably ’twon’t last long.... I don’t know, though; she’s pretty fussy. All the Townsends are hard to please. You’ve got to step just so or they’ll light on you. Look how that Griffin boy was hangin’ around; and now where is he? Don’t come nigh the place.”
Nabby sniffed. “He never amounted to anything,” she declared. “I knew perfectly well Esther’d hand him his walkin’ ticket when she got ready. Mercy on us, Varunas Gifford, you ain’t puttin’ old Lisha Cook’s grandson in the same barrel with Mr. Covell, are you?”
The overture began just then and the curtain rose soon afterward. The group of tars adjacent to the rickety canvas bulwarks of the good ship “Pinafore” announced that they sailed the ocean blue, taking care to obey orders and not lean against those bulwarks. They welcomed their gallant captain, who in turn informed them that he never swore a big, big D. Abbie Makepeace glanced anxiously at the Rev. Mr. Colton when she heard this; but, as he was smiling, she decided it might be proper to smile a little, too. Rackstraw and Josephine and Dick Deadeye and Sir Joseph and all the rest made their entrances and were greeted with applause. The performance swung on, gaining momentum and spirit as the performers recovered from stage fright. The voice of the prompter was heard not too frequently and none of the scenery fell down, although it suffered from acute attacks of the shivers. A great success, from beginning to end.
But, whereas at the Old Folks’ Concert, Esther Townsend had scored the unquestioned hit of the evening; on this occasion her triumph was shared by another. If, as Josephine, she was applauded and encored and acclaimed, so also was Seymour Covell as Ralph Rackstraw. If some of the mothers and fathers in that hall could have read the minds of their daughters while that handsome sailor was on the stage, they might have been surprised and disturbed. Covell was entirely at ease. There was no awkwardness or stage fright in his acting or singing. His voice rang strong and true, he played his part with grace and dash, and when in the final chorus, arrayed in the glittering uniform of a captain in the Royal Navy, he clasped Josephine in his arms and tunefully declared that the “clouded sky was now serene,” even the demurely proper Miss Makepeace was conscious of a peculiar thrill beneath the bosom of her black silk. The fascinating young gentleman from Chicago was before, as well as behind, the footlights the hero of the performance.
Esther, in spite of the applause and encores, the floral tributes and the praise of her associates behind the scenes, was conscious that she was not doing her best. Even in the midst of her most important scenes she found her thoughts wandering miserably. Memories of the happy evening of the concert kept intruding upon her mind. When the bouquets were handed her by Mr. Gott she accepted them smilingly, but with no inward enthusiasm. Her uncle’s floral tribute was even more beautiful and expressive than on the former occasion and from her Aunt Reliance came a bunch of old-fashioned posies which were lovely and fragrant. A magnificent cluster of carnations bore the card of Seymour Covell. She scarcely looked at them; she and Mr. Covell had had an unpleasant scene in the parlor that afternoon. He might not have meant to be presuming—he had protested innocence of any such intention and had contritely begged her pardon—but she was not in a forgiving mood. It had been a horrid day and the evening was just as detestable. She cared little for the approval of her friends and nothing whatever for the flowers they gave her. There were no tea roses among them. Bob Griffin was not in the audience. She had looked everywhere for him but he was not there. There was no reason why he should be, of course. Considering the way he had treated her he would have been brazen indeed to come.
She bore the congratulations and handshakes as best she could, but she whispered to her uncle that she was very tired and begged to be taken home as soon as possible. The Snows were left at their door and she and Foster Townsend and Nabby and Varunas rode back to the mansion together. Seymour Covell remained at the hall. He had promised to help in the “clearing up.” He suggested that he be permitted to walk home when the clearing up was over, but to this Captain Townsend would not consent. “Varunas will drive back for you,” he said. An argument followed, for Covell insisted that he might not be ready to leave for two hours or more and Gifford must not be kept from his bed so long. It ended in a compromise. Varunas was to drive the span to the hall once more, hitch the horses in one of the sheds at the rear, and return to the mansion on foot.
“By the time you’re through, Seymour,” declared the captain, “you won’t want to do any more walking. You’ll be glad enough to ride. It won’t do the horses any harm to stand in the shed a warm night like this.”
Esther went to her own room, almost immediately after her arrival at the big house. She was too weary even to talk, she told her uncle. Townsend announced his own intention of “turning in” at once. “No need for any of us to sit up for Seymour,” he added. “I told Varunas he needn’t, either. Seymour will do his own unharnessing. He is handy with horses and he’ll attend to the span; he told me he would.”
So, within an hour after the fall of the final curtain, the Townsend mansion was, except for the hanging lamp burning dimly in the front hall, as dark as most of the other houses in Harniss. The lights in the town hall were extinguished just before midnight. The rattle of the last carriage wheel along the main road or the depot road or the Bayport road died away. From the window of the bedroom in their house on the lower road Mr. Tobias Eldridge peered forth for his usual good-night look at the sky and the weather.
“Clear as a bell,” announced Tobias. “Never see so many stars in my life, don’t know as I ever did. Lights things up pretty nigh much as moonlight.”