The Key Note
CHAPTER I
THE RAPSCALLION
The sea glittered in all directions. The grassy field, humpy with knolls and lumpy with gray rock, sloped down toward the near-by water. Bunches of savin and bay and groups of Christmas trees flourished in the fresh June air, and exhilarating balsamic odors assailed Miss Burridge's nostrils as she stood in the doorway viewing the landscape o'er and reflectively picking her teeth with a pin.
"It's an awful sightly place to fail in, anyway," she thought.
Her one boarder came and stood beside her. She was a young woman with a creamy skin, regular features, dark, dreaming eyes, and a pleasant, slow smile.
"Are you gathering inspiration, Miss Burridge?" she asked, settling a white tam-o'-shanter on her smooth brown locks.
"I hope so, Miss Wilbur. I need it."
"How could any one help it!" was Diana Wilbur's soft exclamation, as she took a deep breath and gazed at the illimitable be-diamonded blue.
Priscilla Burridge turned her middle-aged gaze upon the enthusiasm of the twentieth year beside her.
"Do you know of any inspiration that would make me able to get the carpenter to come and jack up the saggin' corner of that piazza?" she asked. "Or get the plumber to mend the broken pipe in the kitchen?"
Miss Wilbur's dreaming gaze came back to the bony figure in brown calico.
"It seems almost sacrilege, doesn't it," she said in a voice of awe, "to speak of carpenters and plumbers in a place like this? Such odors, such crystal beauty untouched by the desecrating hand of man."
Miss Priscilla snorted. "If I don't get hold of the desecrating hand of man pretty soon, you'll be havin' a stream o' water come down on your bed, the first rain."
The girl's attitude of adoration remained unchanged.
"I noticed that little rift," she said slowly. "As I lay in bed this morning, I looked up at a spot of sapphire that seemed like a day-star full of promise of this transcendent beauty."
Miss Wilbur's pretty lips moved but little when she spoke and her slow utterance gave the effect of a recitation.
Miss Priscilla, for all her harassment, could not forbear a smile.
"I'm certainly glad you're so easily pleased, but you don't know Casco Bay as well as I do, or that day-star would look powerful stormy to you. When it rains here, all other rains are mere imitations. It comes down from the sky and up from the ground, and the wind blows it east and west, and the porch furniture turns somersets out into the field, and windows and doors go back on you and give up the fight and let the water in everywhere, while the thunder rolls like the day o' judgment."
The ardent light in the depths of the young girl's eyes glowed deeper.
"I should expect a storm here to be inexorably superb!" she declared.
Miss Priscilla heaved a sigh, half dejection, half exasperation, and turned into the house.
"Drat that plumber!" she said. "I've only had a few days of it, but I'm sick of luggin' water in from that well."
"Why, Miss Burridge," said her boarder solicitously, "I haven't fully realized – let me bring in a supply."
"No, no, indeed, Miss Wilbur," exclaimed Miss Priscilla, as she moved through the living-room of the house into the kitchen, closely followed by Diana. "It ain't that I ain't able to do it, but it makes me darned mad when I know there's no need of it."
"But I desire to, Miss Burridge," averred the young girl. "Any form of movement here cannot fail to be one of joy." She seized an empty bucket from the sink and went out the back door.
Small groves of evergreen dotted the incline behind the house, and on the right hand soon became a wood-road of stately fir and spruce, which led to a sun-warmed grassy slope which, like every hill of the lovely isle, led down to the jagged rocks that fringed its irregular shore.
"My muscular strength is not excessive," panted Diana, struggling up to the back door with her heavy bucket. "I'll fill it only half-full next time."
"You ain't goin' to fill it at all," declared Miss Priscilla emphatically, taking the pail from her. "That'll last me a long time, and when it's gone, I'll get more myself. 'T ain't that it does me a bit of hurt, but it riles me when I know there ain't any need of it."
She set the pail down beside the sink, filled the kettle from it, and set it on the oil stove while Diana sat down on the back doorstep. Then she proceeded:
"One o' the most disagreeable things about this world is that we do seem to need men. They're strong and they don't wear skirts to stumble on, and when they're willin' and clever, they certainly do fill a need; but it does seem as if they were created to disappoint women. They don't know any more about keepin' their promises than they do about the other side o' the moon."
Diana nodded. "It is observable, I think," she said, "that men's natural regard for ethics is inferior to that of women."
Miss Priscilla sniffed. "Now it isn't only the plumber and the carpenter. I came here and saw 'em both over a month ago and explained my needs; explained that I ain't calc'latin' to take in boarders to break their legs on broken piazzas, or drown 'em in their beds. I explained all this when I rented the house, and when I arrived this week I naturally expected to find those things attended to; and there's Phil Barrison, too. I've known him most of his life. He has relatives here on the island, and when I heard he was comin' to stay with 'em on his vacation, I asked him if he wouldn't be a kind of a handy-man to me and he said he would. He got here before I did, but far as I can make out he's been fishin' ever since. A lot of help he's been. Oh, I knew well enough he was a broken reed. If ever a rapscallion lived, Phil's it. 'Tain't natural for any young one to be so smart as he was. Do you believe in school he found out that by openin' and shuttin' his geography real slow, he could set the teacher to yawnin', and, of course, she'd set the rest of 'em off, and Phil just had a beautiful time. His pranks was always funny ones."
Diana Wilbur gave her slow, rare smile. "What an interesting bit of hypnosis!" she remarked.
"Hey? Well, when that boy got older, he was real ambitious to study. He's got one o' those voices that ought to belong to a cherubim instead of a limb like him, and he wanted lessons. So he got the job of janitor in our church one winter. I got onto him later. When he'd oversleep some awful cold mornin' and arrive too late to get the furnace to workin' right, that rascal would drive the mercury up and loosen the bulb of the thermometer so that when the folks came in and went over to it to see just how cold they was goin' to be, they'd see it register over sixty-five and of course they'd take their seats real satisfied."
Miss Wilbur smiled again. "Your friend certainly showed great resource and ingenuity. When those traits are joined to lofty principle, they should lift him to heights of success. Oh," – the speaker's attitude and voice suddenly changed, and she lifted her finger to impose silence on the cooking utensils which Miss Burridge was dropping into the sink, – "listen!"
Mingled with the roulade of a song sparrow on the roof, came the flute of a human voice sounding and approaching through the field.
"Thou'rt like unto a flower,
So pure, so sweet, so fair – "
The one road of the island swept over a height at some distance behind the house and the singer had left it, and was striding down the incline and through the meadow toward Miss Burridge's. The still air brought the song while the singer was still hidden, but at last the girl saw him, and the volume of rich tone increased. At last he came bounding up the slope over which Diana had struggled with her heavy bucket a few minutes before, and then paused at sight of the stranger.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered youth in a dark-blue flannel shirt and nondescript trousers. He was bareheaded, and locks of his thick blond hair were tumbling over his forehead. He looked at Diana with curious, unembarrassed blue eyes, and, lips parted, stopped in the act of speaking.
Miss Burridge came to the door. "Well, at last, Phil," she remarked.
"I