Walter laughed, and said he would go to the schoolhouse and find its mistress. May said she would see her grandfather, and ask for the Hall.
“But whom shall we get to play? Somebody said there was a melodeon in the Hall, and somebody else said—you—you played on it.”
“And you want me to play? Well, I will do what I can. I am interested, and where I can help, I will. I will see if I can’t get two or three singers.”
That day, May went to her grandfather’s. He sat by the window of his little house that looked out upon the river racing, at the base of the rough, rocky banks, toward the wide, restless sea. He was not a happy old man. True he had been a successful seaman. He had a sufficient amount of property to make him comfortable. He had no vices to regret. He had, though, known sorrow, losing wife and children. He and his housekeeper were the only ones in his home. He had been disappointed in his grandson, Woodbury, whom he desired to share his home with; and people said that old Capt. Elliott wished to give Woodbury the largest fraction of the money and other valuables he was supposed to keep in a certain bulky safe in his sitting–room. Woodbury, though, in the short interval he had tried to live at his grandfather’s, had been twice intoxicated, and the last time angry words had flamed between them like hot coals that they were throwing. He left the house in wrath, and in wrath Capt. Elliott shut the door after him. The captain was not a religious man. He was very honest, and having once been cheated by a professor of religion who was a very scanty possessor of it, wholly lacking it indeed, Capt. Elliott ever afterwards declared himself superior to the character that the church required. He shut out God from his soul, because a hypocrite shut him out from his dues. He made his honesty his all, and was a prayerless, peevish, fault–finding, selfish old man. When May called, he was still looking out of the window. The sea–wind lifted and let fall his thin, white hair, but could not lift from his stern, sharp–cut features, the shadow of a cheerless, selfish life. He heard his granddaughter’s voice, and turned to meet her. When she had made her request, he said, “For how long do you want the Hall?”
“Oh, I don’t know. We are going to begin at any rate. We want to see what interest there will be.”
“Well, yes, I s’pose you can have it. That’s what the Hall is for, to hold all kind of reason’ble meetin’s.”
Here May made a bold movement, and her blue eyes were full of courage as she asked, “And, grandfather, won’t you come too?”
“Oh, nonsense, child! I have more religion now than you could pack into St. John’s. Why, I’d be ashamed to do what some of them folks do.”
May was a strategist. She knew it was useless to argue with him. She also knew that he liked to hear her play her melodeon in the sacred parlor at home, kept in state there all the week with the dried grasses on the mantel, and the family register on the wall, and the big family Bible on the mahogany table.
“Won’t you come to hear me play?”