Leerie

by Ruth Sawyer

At one time of the day only did the merriment flag—that was at dusk. “Don’t like it—never did like it,” he confessed. “Something about it that gets onto my chest and turns me gloomy. Don’t suppose you ever smelled the choke-damp, did you? Well, that’s the feeling. Say, boss, wouldn’t be a bad plan to shine up that old safety of yours and give us more light in the old pit. Mother quit about this time o’ day, and it seems like I can’t forget it.”

The next day the coal magnate took a turn for the worse. The heart specialist and the house doctor glowered ominously at Sheila as they came to make their unwelcome rounds, and Sheila hurried them out of the room as speedily as she could. Then it was that she thought of the fiddlers three. An out-of-town orchestra played biweekly at the sanitarium. They were young men, most of them, still apprentices at their art, and she knew they would be glad enough for extra earnings. They were due that evening, and she would engage the services of three violins for the dusk hour the old man dreaded. She did not accomplish this without a protest from the business office, warnings from the two physicians, and shocked comments from the habitual gossips of the sanitarium. But Sheila held her ground and fought for her way against their combined attacks. “Of course I know he’s dying. Don’t care if the whole San faints with mortification. I’m going to see he dies the way he wants to—keep it merry till the end.”

To the Reverend Mr. Grumble, who requested—nay, demanded—admittance, she turned a deaf ear while she held the door firmly closed behind her. “Can’t come in. Sorry, he doesn’t want you. If you must say a last prayer to comfort yourself, say it in some other room. It will do Old King Cole just as much good and keep him much happier. Now, please go!”

So it happened that only Peter was present when the musicians arrived. Sheila ushered them in with a flourish. “Old King Cole, your fiddlers three. Now what shall they play?”

Lucky for the indwellers of the sanitarium that the magnate’s room was in the tower and therefore little sound escaped. It is improbable if the final ending would ever have been known to any but those present, whose discretion could have been relied upon, but for the fact that Miss Jacobs stood with her ear to the keyhole for fully ten minutes. It was surprising how quickly everybody knew about it after that. It created almost as much scandal as Sheila’s own exodus had three years before. Many had the temerity to take the lift to the third floor and pace with attentive ears the corridor that led to the tower. These came back to fan the flame of shocked excitement below. The doctors and Mr. Grumble came to Miss Maxwell to interfere and put an end to this ungodly and unprofessional humoring of one departing soul. But the superintendent of nurses refused. She had put the case in Sheila’s hands, and she had absolute faith in her. So all that was left to the busybodies and the scandalmongers was to hear what they could and give free rein to their tongues.

There was, however, one mitigating fact: they could listen, and they could talk, but they could not look beyond the closed door of the tower room. That vivid, appalling picture was mercifully denied them. With a heaping bowl of egg-nog beside him, and his brierwood between his lips, the coal magnate beat time on the bedspread with a fast-failing strength, while he grinned happily at Sheila. Beside him Peter lounged in a wheel-chair, smoking for company, while grouped about the foot of the bed in the attitude of a small celestial choir stood the fiddlers three.

All the good old tunes, reminiscent of younger days of mining-camps and dance-halls, they played as fast as fingers could fly and bows could scrape. “Dan Tucker,” “Money Musk,” “The Irish Washerwoman,” and “Pop Goes the Weasel” sifted in melodic molecules through the keyhole into the curious and receptive ears outside. And after them came “Captain Jinks” and “The Blue Danube,” “Yankee Doodle” and “Dixie.”

“Some boss!” muttered the magnate, thickly, the brierwood dropping on the floor. “Just one solid streak of anthracite—clear through. Now give us something else—I don’t care—you choose it, boss.”

So Leerie chose “The Star-spangled Banner” and “Marching Through Georgia,” and as dusk crept closer about them, “Suwanee River” and “The Old Kentucky Home.”

“Nice, sleepy old tunes,” mumbled the coal magnate. “Guess I’ve napped over-time.” He opened one eye and looked at Sheila, half amused, half puzzled. “Say, boss, light up that little old lamp o’ yours and take me down; the shaft’s growing pretty black.”