The Street of the City

by Grace Livingston Hill

  The young man looked at her in growing amazement.

  “And she laughed, did she? Well, I’m glad she had the grace to do that after your insults. But now, suppose we forget all this and stop talking about it. We’ve almost reached the Academy of Music, and we certainly won’t be in any mood to enjoy the evening if we keep this up.”

  “But aren’t you going to say you are sorry for having gone with that kind of girl? Or at least offer some sort of explanation for your conduct that I can tell people who are inquiring?”

  “No,” said Willoughby, “I certainly am not. I did nothing out of the way. But even if I had it was none of their business!”

  “Val! But you can’t stop people’s mouths by saying it is none of their business!”

  “Perhaps not, but you don’t have to discuss the matter with them, and I do not intend to do so, not even through you as a go-between.”

  “Oh Val!” exclaimed Marietta in a voice of despair. “How you have changed!”

  “Now, look here, Marietta, are we on the way to a symphony concert to enjoy ourselves, or shall we go to a funeral parlor and see if we can find a place to mourn? I really haven’t time to waste a whole evening if you are going to carry on like this about something you know nothing about and is none of your affair. Come, Marietta, snap out of it, and let’s talk over the music we are going to hear.”

  “Well, if you’ll promise me just one thing,” said the girl in a melting tone.

  “Not till I know what it is,” he said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  “Well, it’s that you won’t ever do this thing again.”

  “What thing?”

  “Why, that you won’t ever go skating with that outrageous girl again. That you will not have anything more to do with her in any way.”

  “No,” said Val Willoughby sharply. “I will not promise that! If that is your condition you had better drop me off now. Perhaps you could take the tickets and find some more congenial companion to accompany you.”

  But Marietta drove on to the entrance of the Academy of Music, her head high, her mouth wearing the martyr-like downdroop of one who forgives with great effort.

  “I’m greatly disappointed in you, Val,” she said as the doorman came up to take the car to the parking space, “but I’ll forgive you, of course. You’re one of my oldest and dearest friends. But I’m grieved to death about you.” And with great obvious forbearance she took his arm and assumed her haughtiest stride.

  Val Willoughby hesitated an instant as she took his arm, and then acceded to her evident wish to go on with their plans for the evening. But he walked silently with a stern, set expression, and wished with all his heart that he had never embarked upon this undesirable expedition. However, it had to be gotten through somehow, and he felt that before they took their seats it would be best to establish some neutral topic for the duration of their private war, or the concert. So as they stepped into the main hallway and began making their way to the door that led to the aisle where their seats were located, he bent his head and said in a low tone that could not be heard by the lively throngs around them, “I suggest, Marietta, if we are to go through with this evening as first planned, that we select some neutral topic for what conversation we are likely to have and confine ourselves to that. And since we are attending a concert of some of the finest program music that is to be heard anywhere, suppose we talk about that. The music and anything relating to it.”

  “Oh, if you are going to be disagreeable,” said Marietta in her most martyr-like tone, “I suppose we can do that. Though I don’t see why you select such a dumb topic. You know I’m not awfully fond of music, and just because I thought it was my duty to try and show you what a great mistake you were making, you get angry and try to punish me by refusing to let me talk about anything I choose; I feel you are most discourteous. I didn’t think you were so touchy, Val Willoughby! Didn’t you want me to tell you the truth?”

  “Not particularly,” answered the young man haughtily, “especially as most of the things you were saying were not true.”

  She flashed an angry look on him immediately.

  “I don’t care to discuss this matter any further this evening,” he went on. “Is that plain?”

  “You’re just plain rude!” said Marietta, tossing her haughty head.

  “Sorry,” said Willoughby. “I thought you were rather rude yourself. So you see it would be better to take a neutral topic. I’ve been reading some very interesting items about the symphony we are to hear. Would you care to have me tell them to you? Don’t you think that would be better than to spend the whole evening sulking?”

  “Oh, I suppose so!” said Marietta in a furious tone. “But if you want my opinion I think you are acting like a spoiled boy!”

  They walked the rest of the way to their very fine seats in utter silence. Willoughby had a grave, almost haughty look on his face, but he was utmost courtesy as he seated Marietta, adjusted her wraps, and provided her with a program. But Marietta still had an angry frown on her face distorting its beauty into anything but charm.

  For the first few seconds after they were seated the young man applied himself to the study of the program and then quite casually began to speak about it.

  “Have you read the description of the symphony?” he asked. “It certainly promises to be quite colorful.”

  “No, of course not!” snapped Marietta. “I never do. Why waste time doing that? The music is supposed to give you the full idea, isn’t it? I never could see the sense of going to work to try to explain what it’s supposed to represent. I think it’s all nonsense anyway! As if a sound could represent people and emotions. You might as well try to explain a sky or a tree or any part of a landscape in words. It’s there, isn’t it? And what more do you want? Why be sentimental about it? I like practical things. This trying to mix literature up with art is ridiculous! It’s enough to listen to a long program without having to torture your brain trying to tell what it means. Of course it doesn’t mean anything but what your imagination makes it mean, and every person has a different idea of it. I think in these times of war they waste money printing a lot of stuff like that. It would be far better to save the money and the paper and put it into war bonds.”

  “Yes?” said Willoughby, with an amused twinkle. “Well, that’s an angle I hadn’t thought of, but of course there might be something in it. Why don’t you put that in writing and send it to the Board of Directors? But—now that it is printed and put in your hands, don’t you think it is up to you to see that it isn’t wasted? What if you and I put it to a thorough test this evening and see if there is anything we can get out of it? Just read each description carefully beforehand and then listen with it in mind and see whether it makes the music any more enjoyable. Suppose we try it. Now this first movement. It starts with a darkening sky and wind blowing the grasses and the leaves on the trees, you can hear the rising wind and then comes the patter of the rain as it begins to fall—!”

  Marietta looked at her escort in astonishment. This was a new phase of Val Willoughby, eloquent and fanciful. Why did he waste himself talking such foolish prattle as this?

  “I think that’s fantastic!” she said with a sneer. But she listened and watched him while he talked, and finally forgot her annoyance at him in admiration of his handsome face. He certainly was the best-looking one of the old crowd of men. How well he would look in a uniform! What a pity he had allowed himself to be tied up to a stupid factory when he might be in some position of high command!

  But Willoughby was talking well, and Marietta was fairly intelligent when she allowed herself time off from doing the talking herself. Somehow the story of an oncoming storm began to take form in her mind and when he came to the maiden alone on a desolate road with the rain pelting down, and then the knight on horseback coming to the rescue, she gave over thinking her own angry thoughts and began to take an interest in the tale he was telling. Not that she had as yet any idea of expecting to get the picture again
by the sound of music that she was to hear, but at least she was getting the background of the scene and the hint of a love story, which perhaps alone would have been able to interest her.

  Val Willoughby worked hard at the telling because he knew unless he could interest the girl enough to keep her quiet, the whole evening would be an awful bore to him. So now as he talked and watched a small growing interest in the girl’s face, he began to feel that perhaps it would be worthwhile after all. If he succeeded in making Marietta take an interest in music, perhaps he might hope that it would keep her tongue still about her own schemes for a little while and let others enjoy the concert. So he put the same zest into this description as he would have put into some experiment in the laboratory or some delicate execution of government devices to help win the war, and felt really encouraged as he saw her turn toward him and really begin to listen. If he had known, however, that the supreme thought in her mind had been admiration of himself, he would have been disgusted and disappointed.

  Yet, behind her observation of the way his hair waved back from his fine forehead and the curve of his pleasant lips when he smiled, there was forming in her mind that picture of darkening sky, rising wind, lovely girl against an oncoming storm, the sound of horses’ feet in the distance. Definitely Marietta would remember that picture when the music began, even against her will. Certainly it would be the first time she had ever formed a mental picture of music she was hearing. And Willoughby was at least comforted by the thought that so far she was listening to him. Perhaps she didn’t even realize she was giving him her attention. She seemed to have had her interest caught unawares.

  The people had been drifting in rapidly, until now the house was full, and though the young man had lowered his voice little by little until it was scarcely more than a murmur, Marietta had her eyes riveted to the tip of her companion’s pencil with which he had idly been sketching on the margin of his program the outline of a mountain, a gnarled tree, and wispy tall grasses with bent heads. Val wasn’t an artist. He was merely talking with his pencil for his own help as he went along. But the girl was watching and making something out of the sketch, even though it wasn’t very good, as his low voice painted the scene of the music.

  And now he was outlining a little bird on wing, flying toward shelter. Looking up they discovered that the beloved orchestra conductor had arrived at the front of the stage and was being applauded.

  With a deep breath Willoughby straightened up and sat back, feeling as tired as if he had been dragging a heavy burden up a hill. Well, at least he had kept her tongue still for a few minutes, and now he would have the opportunity to discover whether his pupil had taken in anything of what he had been trying to demonstrate. For already the conductor was in his place, and the audience had settled into utmost stillness.

  Then came the first soft notes sending forth the shimmer of the summer sky, speaking it out in the semblance of a perfect summer day.

  “Listen!” spoke Val softly, but more by the form of his lips, the lifting of his pencil, than by any sound he spoke.

  And Marietta was so far under the spell of his pencil that her eyes turned to the platform as if she expected to find that summer day spread out to view.

  He watched her. Would the music hold her to the thought, or would she grow restless?

  Then all unexpected in the soft summer sky came the distant rumble of thunder menacing, beneath the delicate thread of melody the wind instruments had brought into being, and then again and again, coming nearer each time and more insistently, and Marietta’s eyes grew wide with wonder. Nobody had ever made her see anything in music before save a tune that didn’t matter to her in the least. But this had caught her. And now Val’s pencil touched the sky over the mountains with a smudge of growing darkness, more grass bending low, branches bending, just a line here and there, and that little frightened bird winging its way as the big drops fell, and the storm went on wildly in a tumult of sound.

  On to the end of the opening number Marietta’s interest held, unaware as she was that she was listening, and when it was over and the delighted applause came she turned to Val.

  “I didn’t know music could be like that!” she said, half vexed with herself to admit it. “Where does that girl come in?” Val’s answer was with the tip of his pencil, for the silence had broken into music again with the theme of the maiden, and softly the pencil kept rhythm, till it seemed the girl was struggling, trying to breast the storm.

  It did not require words the rest of the time, nor drawing, only a sort of thought-directing on through the story, and Marietta sat through the performance like one entranced. Only when the intermission came and everybody was buzzing and talking around them, and some were stepping out into the wide corridors to smoke and meet their friends, was there opportunity to talk, then Val found Marietta was studying her program, reading it all the way through.

  By the time she had finished the conductor had returned and the music began again. Marietta listened, aware that here was something worthwhile that she had until then passed by, annoyed at herself for not having known it before, wondering if all music were like this if only one understood how to listen.

  They went quietly out with the throng, meeting now and then some they knew and nodding, but for the most part without speaking to one another. And because he knew she would expect it, he took her to a fashionable place for supper afterward, wishing in his heart this need not be, dreading now would be the time when she would start arguing again.

  But Marietta sat for the most part silent, absorbed in her own thoughts. At last she roused.

  “Well,” she said, half crossly, because she always hated to own she had been wrong, “I suppose I’ll have to thank you for opening my eyes, or rather my ears, to something great I have been missing. I certainly have enjoyed the evening for its own sake, and I hadn’t expected to enjoy it for that reason at all. I think you have a wonderful way of teaching something if you once make up your mind to do it. But watching you all this evening and seeing how skillful you are with a few crude pencil lines, and how eloquent you are with just the right words to sway my mind to listen, I still feel that I cannot bear it that you should waste your talents amusing yourself with a cheap little ignoramus like the girl you go skating with. I know you made a condition that I say no more on that subject, but the evening is over now, and I can’t bear to leave you without your promise to quit her.”

  Willoughby’s lips took on their firm line again, but he smiled indulgently and was still for a moment. Then he said quietly, “I have not changed my mind about that, Marietta, and I do not wish to discuss it further tonight. Sometime, perhaps, I shall have the pleasure of making you see the loveliness in the character of that girl you despise, just as I have had the pleasure of opening your eyes to the beauties hidden in the music to which you never really listened before. Sometime perhaps I can introduce you to the girl and make you understand what I mean.”

  “Never!” said Marietta, with the ugly prejudice coming out and sitting plainly on her face. She seemed a different girl from the one who had listened raptly to lovely pastoral strains that evening. “I shall never care to meet her as an equal.”

  “But you know, that is almost what you said about the music when I asked you if you had read the program through. Sometime perhaps you will learn that prejudice often blinds people to some of the rarest things in life. I often wonder if we don’t miss out that way in trying to learn about God and things of the other world.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Val Willoughby, stop! You make me shudder! Don’t spoil the whole evening by talk about such gruesome things! I hate solemn stuff like that!”

  So they went out to the car and drove home in a strange silence, Val greatly relieved that his evening was over and in a few minutes he might say good night and be free once more to think his own thoughts and go his own way, with no further obligations toward this girl, with whom he had surprisingly been able to spend a pleasant evening listening to thorough
ly classical music.

  So he rode to her home with her and left her at her door. Said good night gravely, received his thanks, but declined to come in and talk.

  “I’ve given you all the time I can spare tonight,” he said pleasantly. “Perhaps some other time we can have a talk about something else we don’t agree on, but it won’t be very soon. I’ve an engagement tomorrow night, and the next night, and I don’t know but I may have to go to Washington next week on government business. Good night.” He walked down the pavement to his aunt’s home, catching occasional glimpses of the frozen river with the late moon glinting it with silver touches, and wondered if he had utterly wasted this evening.

  Chapter 11

  Sometime during the pale hours when the dawn was beginning to steal into the sky and rosy lights touched the river of ice, Nurse Branner woke up and decided what to do. There ought to be a telephone in that house, and she decided that she would see that there was one. She would tell Frannie that it was necessary for her business that she be within call at any time of the day or night. That she had several “cases” in the future, and one woman in particular had asked her to let her know just where she was so that she could call her up in a sudden emergency. Frannie might think it strange, perhaps, but Frannie didn’t know much about nurses’ emergencies, of course, and she felt she could make her story quite plausible. And it was true that several old patients were in the habit of calling her occasionally, and her own sister always complained when she allowed herself to be more than a day in a house without a telephone.

  Besides, Frannie had been saying that she meant to have a telephone, so she would just tell Frannie that she was providing her with the initial cost, and if she didn’t want to retain it when the nurse left, she could always tell them to take it out. So that was settled. She would have it put in first thing Monday morning.

  Next, somebody who could do some responsible investigating ought to know about that man who had come to the back door so late, and the two shadows that had moved in the dark across the ice. This problem would not be quite so easily handled as the other. Besides, this was going to be Sunday morning pretty soon, and Sunday was a different day from the rest. People didn’t go around and put in telephones on Sunday even in emergencies, unless some very great person ordered it. And there was no one whom she could call upon to do any investigating or protecting who would actually have the right to do it, but the police, and did she have a right to go to the police? This wasn’t her house, and the householders didn’t even know she was worried.