He and Mr. Langley had been intimate friends, so that Mr. Langley would be able to tell one all about him. Alice was pleased to reflect that since her mother had met and liked Mr. Langley there was no bar against her becoming more friendly with him. She wondered how long she must wait before she should feel free to question him concerning Richard Cartwright. The girl sighed as it came to her that he, too, would most likely insist upon talking about Reuben instead. She would probably hear the famous tale of the cat in the primeval pine tree again and other less familiar incidents connected with the model youth; but surely after he had exhausted the list—and she would be patience itself—he would be ready to speak of the older and more interesting Cartwright.
The outline of the cottage was charmingly picturesque. As Alice turned into the lane to-day it struck her afresh and more strongly than ever. As a matter of fact, it was the first time she had approached it when her heart had not been burdened with the sense of her mother’s unhappiness. Relieved of that burden, dimly aware, indeed, of her mother’s very pleasant preoccupation and quite forgetting her father, who had always been a stranger to her, Alice saw with new eyes and sped on with a light step and a sense of well-being that she had never known before.
The little porch with settees built in invited the comer to pause to contemplate the outlook. Alice had never before had leisure to heed or even to feel the invitation, but to-day she accepted gratefully. Throwing herself down, she gazed happily out through a break in the wall of foliage bordering the lane to the distant hills. But very shortly, content changed to vague melancholy which became poignant. The lilac and blue of those lovely folded hills convinced her that Dick Cartwright had had even that in mind when he planned this cottage and this porch. And he must have sat here where she was sitting now on many a day at sunset and in the early dusk and under the evening stars thinking of the organ, which must have seemed to come nearer and nearer, and dreaming out melodies to play thereon.
The girl clasped her hands. How terribly sad his fate had been! He had lost everything and died and been forgotten. Perhaps if he had had the organ to comfort him, he wouldn’t have felt the death of his wife so desperately, and wouldn’t have taken to drink and met his death. If only someone had given it to him! There were so many people in the world to whom the cost of a pipe organ would have meant little or nothing. Why, once her own father could have given away any number of them easier than she and her mother could dispense coppers to-day. She could have done it herself.
Well, there was nothing to do now except to make some atonement for the cruel fate that had come upon Richard Cartwright. It wasn’t her fault, but it might have been, and the least she could do would be to make whatever amends might be possible now. Being the daughter of a convict, she would of course never marry, and she would devote her life to the memory of this genius who had died betimes. She would fulfil her duty to her mother but all her leisure thought and time and money (she would earn some in a manner to be determined later) would go towards reviving his memory and keeping it green. She would build the organ just as he had planned and then—why not turn the cottage into a sort of museum—the Richard Cartwright Memorial? Or perhaps better than a museum, it might be a kind of musical centre where famous organists would give concerts in his memory to the people of the countryside who hadn’t appreciated him in life and where poor young men might come to practise and improvise.
Immensely cheered, Alice took the keys from the pocket of her jacket to enter the cottage and see if the whole lower floor could be made into one apartment. But in her eagerness, she put the wrong key in the lock. The second key, marked Shop opened a small separate building hidden in the shrubbery in the rear. There was a shop at Miss Penny’s too, and she had said every house had had one in her girlhood, and this one, which did not match the cottage, evidently belonged to an earlier dwelling. It occurred suddenly to Alice that she might find something there belonging to Dick Cartwright, some memorials to be put behind glass in a cabinet near the organ.
The sun had dropped below the horizon, but the girl felt she could make an hurried survey before dusk—indeed, she must. She ran quickly through the thicket to the door of the shop and succeeded in turning the key in the rusty lock. She stole softly in, awe rather than dread hushing her steps.
The first view was disappointing. The place was piled full of old boxes and crates and stacks of yellowed newspapers. But in the corner she caught glimpses of odd chairs and stands and bits of furniture which might prove of interest if one could ever get at them. A narrow stairway with ladder-like ascent told her what a more observant person would have implied from the window in the gable above the door—that there was a second storey.
Catching her skirts in her hand, Alice climbed up. Her spirits rose the moment her head cleared the railing above. She stepped directly into a little chamber which had not been converted into a store room or dumping ground and stood still to gaze about. It must have been left as it was when Dick Cartwright went away.
There was a long carpenter’s bench with an iron contrivance fastened at the end on one long side, and a smaller table opposite containing rusty tins with a swinging shelf above holding buckets that had once contained paint. A stand and a rocking chair stood near the window at the further end and a dark bench or couch was drawn into the shadow of the rafters. A secretary with drawers below the writing shelf and shelves above with glass doors stood near the other window which looked towards the house. A chair stood before it—how many years had it stood there?—and careless of dust, Alice seated herself in it.