The Flirt | Page 8

insolence?"
"Hedrick, Hedrick!" said Mrs. Madison sadly.
Cora turned to the girl by the window with a pathetic gesture. "Laura----" she said, and hesitated.
Laura Madison looked up into her sister's troubled eyes.
"I feel so morbid," said Cora, flushing a little and glancing away. "I wish----" She stopped.
The silent Laura set aside her work, rose and went out of the room. Her cheeks, too, had reddened faintly, a circumstance sharply noted by the terrible boy. He sat where he was, asprawl, propped by his arms behind him, watching with acute concentration the injured departure of Cora, following her sister. At the door, Cora, without pausing, threw him a look over her shoulder: a full-eyed shot of frankest hatred.
A few moments later, magnificent chords sounded through the house. The piano was old, but tuned to the middle of the note, and the keys were swept by a master hand. The wires were not hammered; they were touched knowingly as by the player's own fingers, and so they sang--and from out among the chords there stole an errant melody. This was not "piano-playing" and not a pianist's triumphant nimbleness--it was music. Art is the language of a heart that knows how to speak, and a heart that knew how was speaking here. What it told was something immeasurably wistful, something that might have welled up in the breast of a young girl standing at twilight in an April orchard. It was the inexpressible made into sound, an improvisation by a master player.
"You hear what she's up to?" said Hedrick, turning his head at last. But his mother had departed.
He again extended himself flat upon the floor, face downward, this time as a necessary preliminary to rising after a manner of his own invention. Mysteriously he became higher in the middle, his body slowly forming first a round and then a pointed arch, with forehead, knees, and elbows touching the floor. A brilliantly executed manoeuvre closed his Gothic period, set him upright and upon his feet; then, without ostentation, he pro- ceeded to the kitchen, where he found his mother polishing a sugar-bowl.
He challenged her with a damnatory gesture in the direction of the music. "You hear what Cora's up to? "
Mrs. Madison's expression was disturbed; she gave her son a look almost of appeal, and said, gently:
"I believe there's nothing precisely criminal in her getting Laura to play for her. Laura's playing always soothes her when she feels out of sorts--and--you weren't very considerate of her, Hedrick. You upset her."
"Mentioning Ray Vilas, you mean?" he demanded.
"You weren't kind."
"She deserves it. Look at her! YOU know why she's got Laura at the piano now."
"It's--it's because you worried her," his mother faltered evasively. "Besides, it is very hot, and Cora isn't as strong as she looks. She said she felt morbid and----"
"Morbid? Blah!" interrupted the direct boy. "She's started after this Corliss man just like she did for Vilas. If I was Dick Lindley I wouldn't stand for Cora's----"
"Hedrick!" His mother checked his outburst pleadingly. "Cora has so much harder time than the other girls; they're all so much better off. They seem to get everything they want, just by asking: nice clothes and jewellery--and automobiles. That seems to make a great difference nowadays; they all seem to have automobiles. We're so dreadfully poor, and Cora has to struggle so for what good times she----"
"Her?" the boy jibed bitterly. "I don't see her doing any particular struggling." He waved his hand in a wide gesture. "She takes it ALL!"
"There, there!" the mother said, and, as if feeling the need of placating this harsh judge, continued gently: "Cora isn't strong, Hedrick, and she does have a hard time. Almost every one of the other girls in her set is at the seashore or somewhere having a gay summer. You don't realize, but it's mortifying to have to be the only one to stay at home, with everybody knowing it's because your father can't afford to send her. And this house is so hopeless," Mrs. Madison went on, extending her plea hopefully; "it's impossible to make it attractive, but Cora keeps trying and trying: she was all morning on her knees gilding those chairs for the music-room, poor child, and----"
"`Music-room'!" sneered the boy. "Gilt chairs! All show-off! That's all she ever thinks about. It's all there is to Cora, just show-off, so she'll get a string o' fellows chasin' after her. She's started for this Corliss just exactly the way she did for Ray Vilas!"
"Hedrick!"
"Just look at her!" he cried vehemently. "Don't you know she's tryin' to make this Corliss think it's HER playin' the piano right now?"
"Oh, no----"
"Didn't she do that with Ray Vilas?" he demanded quickly. "Wasn't that exactly what she did the first time he ever came here--got Laura to play and made him think it