V

Their friendship grew perceptibly during the next two days, though constantly under the espionage of the permanent guests of the Bexley Sands Inn, but on Wednesday night Miss Tucker left for Torquay, according to schedule. Fergus Appleton remained behind, partly to make up arrears in his literary work, and partly as a sop to decency and common sense. He did not deem it either proper or dignified to escort the young lady on her journey (particularly as he had not been asked to do so), so he pined in solitary confinement at Bexley until Saturday morning, when he followed her to the scene of her labors.

After due reflection he gave up the idea of the claque, and rested Tommy’s case on the knees of the gods, where it transpired that it was much safer, for Torquay liked Tommy, and the concert went off with enormous éclat. From the moment that Miss Thomasina Tucker appeared on the platform the audience looked pleased. She wore a quaint dress of white flounced chiffon, with a girdle of green, and a broad white hat with her old mignonette garland made into two little nosegays perched on either side of the transparent brim. She could not wear the mignonette that Appleton had sent to her dressing-room, because she would have been obscured by the size of the offering, but she carried as much of it as her strength permitted, and laid the fragrant bouquet on the piano as she passed it. (A poem had come with it, but Tommy did not dare read it until the ordeal was over, for no one had ever written her a poem before. It had three long verses, and was signed “F.A.”—that was all she had time to note.)

A long-haired gentleman sitting beside Appleton remarked to his neighbor: “The girl looks like a flower; it’s a pity she has such a heathenish name! Why didn’t they call her Hope, or Flora, or Egeria, or Cecilia?”

When the audience found that Miss Tucker’s singing did not belie her charming appearance, they cast discretion to the winds and loved her. Appleton himself marveled at the beauty of her performance as it budded and bloomed under the inspiration of her fellow artists and the favor of the audience, and the more he admired the more depressed he became.

“She may be on the threshold of a modest ‘career,’ of a sort, after all,” he thought, “and she will never give it up for me. Would she be willing to combine me with the career, and how would it work? I shouldn’t be churl enough to mind her singing now and then, but it seems to me I couldn’t stand ‘tours.’ Besides, hers is such a childlike, winsome, fragrant little gift it ought not to be exploited like a great, booming talent!”

The audience went wild over Donald Tovey’s songs. He played, and Tommy sang them from memory, and it seemed as if they had been written then and there, struck off at white heat; as if the composer happened to be at the piano, and the singer chanced with his help to be interpreting those particular verses for that particular moment.

His setting of “Jock o’Hazeldean” proved irresistible:

 
“They sought her baith by bower an ha’;
The ladie was not seen.”
 

And then with a swirl and a torrent of sound, a clangor of sword and a clatter of hoofs:

 
“She’s o’er the Border and awa’
Wi’ Jock o’ Hazeldean.”
 

Appleton didn’t see any valid reason why Tovey should kiss Tommy’s hand in responding to the third recall, but supposed it must be a composer’s privilege, and wished that he were one.

Then the crowd made its way into the brilliant Torquay sunshine, and Appleton lingered in the streets until the time came for the tea-party arranged for the artists at the hotel.

It was a gay little gathering, assisted by a charming lady of the town, who always knew the celebrated people who flock there in all seasons. Spalding and Tovey were the lions, but Miss Thomasina Tucker did not lack for compliments. Her cheeks glowed and her eyes sparkled under the white tulle brim of her hat. Her neck looked deliciously white and young, rising from its transparent chiffons, and her bunch of mignonette gave a note of delicate distinction. The long-haired gentleman was present, and turned out to be a local poet. He told Miss Tucker that she ought never to wear or to carry another flower. “Not, at all events, till you pass thirty!” he said. “You belong together—you, your songs, and the mignonette!”—at which she flung a shy upward glance at Appleton, saying: “It is this American friend who has really established the connection, though I have always worn green and white and always loved the flower.”

“You sent me some verses, Mr. Appleton,” she said, as the poet moved away. “I have them safe” (and she touched her bodice), “but I haven’t had a quiet moment to read them.”

“Just a little tribute,” Appleton answered carelessly. “Are you leaving? If so, I’ll get your flowers into a cab and drive you on.”

“No. I am going, quite unexpectedly, to Exeter to-night. Let us sit down in this corner a moment and I’ll tell you. Mr. Tovey has asked me to substitute for a singer who is ill. The performance is on Monday and I chance to know the cantata. I shall not be paid, but it will be a fine audience and it may lead to something; after all, it’s not out of my way in going to Wells.”

“Aren’t you overtired to travel any more to-night?”

“No, I am treading air! I have no sense of being in the body at all. Mrs. Cholmondeley, that dark-haired lady you were talking with a moment ago, lives in Exeter and will take me to her house. And how nice that I don’t have to say good-bye, for you still mean to go to Wells?”

“Oh, yes! I haven’t nearly finished with the cathedral—I shall be there before you. Can I look up lodgings or do anything for you?”

“Oh, no, thank you. I shall go to the old place where Miss Markham and I lived before. The bishop and Mrs. Kennion sent us there because there is a piano, and the old ladies, being deaf, don’t mind musical lodgers. Didn’t the concert go off beautifully! Such artists, those two men; so easy to do one’s best in such company.”

“It was a triumph! Doesn’t it completely efface the memory of the plate and the pennies?”

“Yes,” Tommy answered. “I bear no ill-will to any living creature. The only flaw is my horrid name. Can’t you think of another for me? I’ve just had an anonymous note. Hear it!” (taking it from her glove):

Dear Madam:

The name of Thomasina Tucker is one of those bizarre Americanisms that pain us so frequently in England. I fancy you must have assumed it for public use, and if so, I beg you will change it now, before you become too famous. The grotesque name of Thomasina Tucker belittles your exquisite art.

Very truly yours,

A Well Wisher.

“What do you think of that?”

Appleton laughed heartily and scanned the note. “It is from some doddering old woman,” he said. “The name given you by your sponsors in baptism to be condemned as a ‘bizarre Americanism’!”

“I cannot think why the loyalty of my dear mother and father to Tucker, and to Thomas, should have made them saddle me with such a handicap! They might have known I was going to sing, for I bawled incessantly from birth to the age of twelve months. I shall have to change my name, and you must help me to choose. Au revoir!”—and she darted away with a handshake and a friendly backward glance from the door.

“Can I think of another name for her?” apostrophized Appleton to himself. “Can feminine unconsciousness and cruelty go farther than that? Another name for her shrieks from the very housetops, and I agree with ‘Well Wisher’ that she ought to take it before she becomes too famous; before it would be necessary, for instance, to describe her as Madame Tucker-Appleton!”

VI

These are the verses:

To Miss Tommy Tucker

(with a bunch of mignonette)

 
A garden and a yellow wedge
Of sunshine slipping through,
And there, beside a bit of hedge,
Forget-me-nots so blue,
Bright four-o’clocks and spicy pinks,
And sweet, old-fashioned roses,
With daffodils and crocuses,
And other fragrant posies,
And in a corner, ’neath the shade
By flowering apple branches made,
Grew mignonette.
 
 
I do not know, I cannot say,
Why, when I hear you sing,
Those by-gone days come back to me,
And in their long train bring
To mind that dear old garden, with
Its hovering honey-bees,
And liquid-throated songsters on
The blossom-laden trees;
Nor why a fragrance, fresh and rare,
Should on a sudden fill the air,
Of mignonette!
 
 
Your mem’ry seems a garden fair
Of old-time flowers of song.
There Annie Laurie lives and loves,
And Mary Morison,
And Black-eyed Susan, Alice Grey,
Phillida, with her frown—
And Barbara Allen, false and fair,
From famous Scarlet Town.
What marvel such a garland rare
Should breathe sweet odors on the air,
Like mignonette?
 

F. A.

VII

There was never such a summer of enchanting weather as that particular summer in Wells. The whole population of Somersetshire, save those who had crops requiring rain, were in a heaven of delight from morning till night. Miss Tommy Tucker was very busy with some girl pupils, and as accompanist for oratorio practice; but there were blissful hours when she “studied” the cathedral with Fergus Appleton, watching him sketch the stately Central Tower, or the Lady Chapel, or the Chain Gate. There were afternoon walks to Tor Hill, winding up almost daily with tea at the palace, for the bishop and his wife were miracles of hospitality to the two Americans.

Fergus Appleton had declared the state of his mind and heart to Mrs. Kennion a few days after his arrival, though after his confidence had been received she said that it was quite unnecessary, as she had guessed the entire situation the moment she saw them together.

“If you do, it is more than Miss Tucker does,” said Appleton, “for I can’t flatter myself that she suspects in the least what I am about.”

“You haven’t said anything yet?”

“My dear Mrs. Kennion, I’ve known her less than a fortnight! It’s bad enough for a man to fall in love in that absurd length of time, but I wouldn’t ask a girl to marry me on two weeks’ acquaintance. It would simply be courting refusal.”

“I am glad you feel that way about it, for we have grown greatly attached to Miss Tucker,” said the bishop’s wife. “She is so simple and unaffected, so lovable, and such good company! So alone in the world, yet so courageous and independent. I hope it will come out all right for your dear mother’s son,” she added affectionately, with a squeeze of her kind hand. “Miss Tucker is dining here to-morrow, and you must come, too, for she has offered to sing for our friends.”

Everybody agreed that Mrs. Kennion’s party for the young American singer was a delightful and memorable occasion. She gave them song after song, accompanying herself on the Erard grand piano, at which she always made such a pretty picture. It drifted into a request programme, and Tommy, whose memory was inexhaustible, seemed always to have the wished-for song at the tip of her tongue, were it English, Scotch, Irish, or Welsh. There was general laughter and surprise when Madame Eriksson, a Norwegian lady who was among the guests, asked her for a certain song of Halfdan Kjerulf’s.

“I only know it in its English translation,” Tommy said, “and I haven’t sung it for a year, but I think I remember it. Forgive me if I halt in the words:

 
“‘I hardly know, my darling,
What mostly took my heart,
Unless perhaps your singing
Has done the greater part.
I’ve thrilled to many voices,
The passionate, the strong,
But I forgot the singer,
And I forgot the song.
But there’s one song, my darling,
That I can ne’er forget.
I listened and I trembled,
And felt my cheek was wet;
It seemed my heart within me
Gave answer clear and low
When first I heard you sing, dear,
Then first I loved you so!’”
 

Tommy had sung the song hundreds of times in earlier years, and she had not the slightest self-consciousness when she began it; but just as she reached the last four lines her eyes met Fergus Appleton’s. He was seated in a far corner of the room, leaning eagerly forward, with one arm on the back of a chair in front of him. She was singing the words to the company, but if ever a man was uttering and confirming them it was Fergus Appleton at that moment. The blindest woman could see, the deafest could hear, the avowal.

Tommy caught her breath quickly, looked away, braced her memory, and finished, to the keen delight of old Madame Eriksson, who rose and kissed her on both cheeks.

Tommy was glad that her part of the evening was over, and to cover her confusion offered to sing something of her own composing, the Mother Goose rhyme of “Little Tommy Tucker Sings for His Supper,” arranged as an operatic recitative and aria. The humor of this performance penetrated even to the remotest fastnesses of the staid cathedral circle, and the palace party ended in something that positively resembled merriment, a consummation not always to be reached in gatherings exclusively clerical in character.

The bishop’s coachman always drove Miss Tucker home, and Appleton always walked to his lodgings, which were in the opposite direction, so nothing could be done that night, but he determined that another sun should not go down before he put his fate to the touch.

How could he foresee what the morning post would bring and deposit, like an unwelcome bomb, upon his breakfast tray?

His London publishers wanted to see him at once, not only on a multitude of details concerning his forthcoming book, but on a subject, as they hoped, of great interest and importance to him.

Thinking it a matter of a day or so, Appleton scribbled notes to Mrs. Kennion and Miss Tucker, with whom he was to go on an excursion, and departed forthwith to London.

Everything happened in London. The American publishers wanted a different title for the book and four more chapters to lengthen it to a size selling (at a profit) for two dollars and a half. The English publishers thought he had dealt rather slightingly with a certain very interesting period, and he remembered, guiltily, that he had been at Bexley Sands when he wrote the chapters in question. It would take three days’ labor to fill up these gaps, he calculated, and how fortunate that Miss Thomasina Tucker was safely entrenched in the heart of an ecclesiastical stronghold for the next month or two; a town where he had not, so far as he knew, a single formidable rival. He wrote her regarding his unexpected engagements, adding with legitimate pride that one of England’s foremost critics had offered to write a preface for his book; then he settled to his desk and slaved at his task until it was accomplished, when he departed with a beating heart for the town and county that held Miss Thomasina Tucker in their keeping.

Alighting at the familiar railway station, he took a hansom, intending to drop his portmanteau at his lodgings and go on to the palace for news, but as he was driving by the deanery on the north side of Cathedral Green, he encountered Mrs. Kennion in her victoria. She signaled him with her hand and spoke to her coachman, who drew up his horses. Alighting from his hansom, he strode forward to take her welcoming hand, his face radiating the pleasure of a home-coming traveler.

“If you’ll let the cabman take your luggage, I’d like to drive you home myself. I have something to tell you,” said Mrs. Kennion, making room for him by her side.

“Nothing has happened, I hope?” he asked anxiously.

“Miss Tucker is leaving for America to-morrow morning.”

“Going away?” Appleton’s tone was one of positive dismay.

“Yes. It is all very sudden and unexpected.”

“Sailing to-morrow?” exclaimed Appleton, taking out his watch. “From where? How can I get there?”

“Not sailing to-morrow—leaving Wells to-morrow on an early train and sailing Saturday from Southampton.”

“Oh, the world is not lost entirely, then!”—and Appleton leaned back and wiped his forehead. “What has happened? I ought never to have gone to London.”

“She had a cable yesterday from her Brooklyn church, offering her a better position in the choir, but saying that they could hold it only ten days. By post on the same day she received a letter from a New York friend—”

“Was it a Carl Bothwick?”

“No; a Miss Macleod, who said that a much better position was in the market in a church where Miss Tucker had influential friends. She was sure that if Miss Tucker returned immediately to sing for the committee she could secure a thousand-dollar salary. We could do nothing but advise her to make the effort, you see.”