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Page 10
Some one began striking loud full chords on a piano in one of the rooms
below; some one with a strong masterful touch. Mary was sure it was a
man. By leaning over the banister until she almost lost her balance, she
caught a glimpse of a pair of black coat-tails swinging awkwardly over a
piano bench. Herr Vogelbaum, the musical director, must have arrived.
Probably she would meet him at dinner. That was something to look
forward to--an artist who had played before crowned heads and had been
lionized all over Germany. And then the chords rolled into something so
beautiful and inspiring that Mary knew that for the first time in her
life she was hearing really great music, played by a master. She sat
down on the steps to listen.
The self-conscious feeling that she was acting a part in a play came
back afresh, and made her hastily pull down her skirts and assume a
listening attitude. Thinking how effective she would look on a stage she
leaned back against the carved banister, clasping her hands around her
knees, and gazing up at the ruby heart in the stained glass window above
her. But in a moment both self and pose were forgotten. She had never
dreamed that the world held such music as the flood of melody which
came rolling up from below. It seemed to lift her out of herself and
into another world; a world of nameless longings and exalted ambitions,
of burning desire to do great deeds. Something was calling her--calling
and calling with the compelling note of a far-off yet insistent trumpet,
and as she gazed at the mailed hand with the spear rising triumphantly
out of the ruby heart, she began to understand. A feeling of awe crept
over her, that she, little Mary Ware, should be hearing the same call
that Edryn heard. Somewhere, some day, some great achievement awaited
her. Now she knew that that was why she had been born into the world.
That was why, too, that Providence had opened a way for her to come to
Warwick Hall, that she might learn what was to be "the North-star of her
great ambition," and how "to keep the compass needle of her soul" ever
true to it.
Clasping her hands together as reverently and humbly as if she were
before an altar, she looked up at the ruby heart, her face all alight,
whispering Edryn's answer:
"'Tis the King's call! O list!
O heart and hand of mine keep tryst--
Keep tryst or die!"
The music stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and all a-tingle with the
exalted mood in which it left her, she ran up to her room and knelt by
the window, looking out into the dusk with eager shining eyes. As yet it
was all vague and shadowy, that mysterious future which awaited her.
With what great duty to the universe she was to keep tryst she did not
know; but whatever it was she would do it at any cost. To callow wings
no flight is too high to attempt. At sixteen all things are possible.
All girls of Mary's imaginative impulsive temperament have had such
moments, under the spell of some unusual inspiration, but their dreams
are apt to vanish at contact with the earth again, as suddenly as a
bubble breaks when some material object touches it. But with Mary the
vision stayed. True, it had to retire into the background when dinner
was announced, and her over-weening curiosity brought her down to the
consideration of common everyday affairs, but she did not lose the sense
of having been set apart in some way by that supreme moment on the
stair. To the world she might be only an ordinary little Freshman, but
inwardly she knew she was a sort of Joan of Arc, called and consecrated
to some high destiny.
She went down to dinner in an uplifted frame of mind that made her
passage down the long dining room in the wake of Madam and the few
returned teachers a veritable march of triumph. The feeling that the
curtain had gone up on an interesting play in which she was chief actor
came back stronger than ever when she took her seat in one of the
high-backed ebony chairs, with the carved griffins atop, and unfolded
her napkin in the gaze of a long line of ancestral portraits.
Madam Chartley, who had been looking forward to the dinner hour with
some apprehension on the new pupil's account, knowing she would be
obliged to curb the lively little tongue if she talked at the table as
she had done in the reception room, was amazed at the change in her.
Warwick Hall had done its work. Already the little chameleon had taken
on the colour of her surroundings. Hawkins, in all his years of London
service, had never served a more demure, self-possessed little English
maiden, or one who listened with greater deference to the conversation
of her elders.
She spoke only when she was spoken to, but some of her odd, unexpected
replies made Herr Vogelbaum look up with an interest he rarely took in
anything outside of his music and his dinner. Miss Chilton was so amused
at her accounts of Arizona life, that she invited her up to her room,
and led her into a conversation that revealed her most original traits.
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