“Oh, we ’ain’t played tunes; we just have been trying it—like to see how it goes. It’s got an awful sweet sound.”
“And you ought to hear me play a tune on it, ma.”
“You! For the land’s sake!”
“Yes, me—that never did play a tune in my life. Anybody can play on that organ.” He turned politely to Pauline, as to include her in the conversation. “You see, Miss Beaumont, we’re a musical family that can’t sing. We can’t, as they say, carry a tune to save our immortal souls. The trouble isn’t with the voice; it’s with our ears. We can hear well enough, too, but we haven’t an ear for music. I took lessons once, trying to learn to sing, but the teacher finally braced up to tell me that he hadn’t the conscience to take my money. ‘What’s the matter?’ says I. ‘You’ve lots of voice,’ says he, ‘but you haven’t a mite of ear.’ ‘Can’t anybody teach me to sing?’ says I. ‘Not unless they hypnotize you, like Trilby,’ says he. So I gave it up. But next I thought I would learn to play; for if there’s one thing ma and the boys and I all love, it’s music. And just then, as luck would have it, this teacher wanted to sell his cabinet organ, which is in perfect shape and a fine instrument. And I was craving to buy it, but I knew it was ridiculous, when none of us can play. But I kept thinking. Finally it came to me. I had seen those zither things with numbers on them; why couldn’t he paint numbers on the keys of the organ just that way, and make music to correspond? And that’s just the way we’ve done. You’re very musical. I—I’ve often listened to your playing. What do you think of it?” He looked at her wistfully.
“I think it very ingenious—very,” said Pauline. She had risen now, and she thanked Mrs. Armstrong, and said she must go home. In truth, she was in a panic at the thought of what she had done. Henriette never would understand. Her heart beat guiltily all the way home.
There were three Beaumonts—Henriette, Mysilla, and Pauline. Henriette and Mysilla were twins, who had dressed alike from childhood’s hour, although Mysilla was very plain, a colorless blonde, of small stature and painfully thin, while Henriette was tall, with a stately figure and a handsome dark face that would have looked well on a Roman coin. Yet Henriette was a woman of good taste, and she spent many a night trying to decide on a gown which would suit equally well Mysie’s fair head and her glossy black one. Both the black and the brown head were gray now, but they still wore frocks and hats alike. Henriette held that it was the hall-mark of a good family to clothe twins alike, and Henriette did not have her Roman features for nothing. Mysilla had always adored and obeyed Henriette. She gloried in Henriette’s haughty beauty and grace, and she was as proud of both now that Henriette was a shabby elderly woman, who had to wear dyed gowns and darned gloves, as in the days when she was the belle of the Iowa capital, and poor Jim Perley fought a duel with Captain Sayre over a misplaced dance on her ball-card. Henriette promised to marry Jim after the duel, but Jim died of pneumonia that very week. For Jim’s sake, John Perley, his brother, was good to the girls. Pauline was a baby when her father died. She never remembered the days of pomp, only the lean days of adversity. John Perley obtained a clerkship for her in a music-store. Henriette gave music lessons. She was a brilliant musician, but she criticised her pupils precisely as she would have done any other equally stupid performers, and her pupils’ parents did not always love the truth. Mysilla took in plain sewing, as the phrase goes. She sometimes (since John Perley had given them a sewing-machine) made as much as four dollars a week. They invariably paid their rent in advance, and when they had not money to buy enough to eat they went hungry. They never cared to know their neighbors, and Pauline cringed as she imaged Henriette’s sarcasms had she seen her sister drinking the Armstrongs’ California port. Henriette had stood in the hall corner and waved Pauline fiercely and silently away while the unconscious Mrs. Armstrong thumped at the broken bell outside, and at last departed, remarking, “Well, they must be gone, or dead!”
Therefore rather timidly Pauline opened the door of the little room that was both parlor and dining-room. Any one could see that the room belonged to people who loved music. The old-fashioned grand-piano was under protection of busts of Bach, Beethoven, and Wagner; and Mysie’s violin stood in the corner, near a bookcase full of musical biographies. An air of exquisite neatness was like an aroma of lavender in the room, and with it was fused a prim good taste, such as might properly belong to gentlewomen who had learned the household arts when the rule of three was sacred, and every large ornament must be attended by a smaller one on either side. And an observer of a gentle mind, furthermore, might have found a kind of pathos in the shabbiness of it all; for everything fine was worn and faded, and everything new was coarse. The portrait of the Lieutenant-Governor faced the door. For company it had on either side small engravings of Webster and Clay. Beneath it was placed the tea-table, ready spread. The cloth was of good quality, but thin with long service. On the table a large plate of bread held the place of importance, with two small plates on either corner, the one containing a tiny slice of suspiciously yellow butter, and the other a cone of solid jelly. Such jelly they sell at the groceries out of firkins. A glass jug of tea stood by a plated ice-water jug of a pattern highly esteemed before the war. Henriette was stirring a small lump of ice about the sides of the tea-jug. She greeted Pauline pleasantly.
“Iced tea?” said Pauline. “I thought we were to have hot tea and sausages and toast. I gave Mysie twenty-five cents for them this morning.” She did not say that it was the money for more than one day’s luncheon.
“Yes, Mysie said something about it,” said Henriette, “but it didn’t seem worth while to burn up so much wood merely to heat the water for tea; and toast uses up so much butter.”
“But I gave Mysie a dollar to buy a little oil-stove that we could use in summer; and there was the sausage; I don’t mean to find fault, sister Etty, but I’m ravenously hungry.”