Her country

Out on the edge of the city were large places, screened from the road by hedges which had been fifty, a hundred years sometimes, in the growing. Behind one such lay a sunshiny garden, lovely in the June Sunday morning. Down the gravel of a path a girl in a white frock walked, swinging a shallow basket in which scissors rattled from side to side. The girl kept a critical eye, walking, on the wall of Dorothy Perkins roses which, growing over a tall broken lattice, separated the garden from the grounds next door.

“You adorable nobodies, you’re like pink music,” she addressed the million little blooms, and halted, erect and poised, glorying in flowers and sunlight.

Two men watched her. “A colt,” spoke the older, smiling lazily.

“I don’t know. I like long, adolescent lines. You don’t see them after eighteen. Honor’s seventeen. I like her figure.”

“Figure! As much figure as a string.” The older man leaned back in his wicker chair and gazed through half-closed lids at the girl, much like a tall, thin angel of Botticelli, shimmering white against shimmering pink.

With that she turned and came lightly towards them across the grass. “What do you think? Is there anything here fit to send McIvor?”

“Why it’s all lovely, Honor--our rose-garden,” the boy said, looking at her in surprise. “Fit to send him! Why, the Mannering rose-garden’s famous. Has been for a hundred years--isn’t it a hundred years, father?”

“Near enough.” Eric Mannering, the fifth, knocked the ashes from his cigar and considered the end of it with absorption. “What’s the matter with the roses, Honor?” He was half amused, half bored. “Why aren’t they good enough for--McIvor, the singer?”

“Nothing’s good enough for McIvor, the singer,” the girl shot at him, quoting the half-contemptuous tone as well as the words. “The roses used to be wonderful, of course. You say they were a show when you were a youngster. But--why, you know better than I do, dad, that roses are an expensive accomplishment. The fine ones are run out; it’s only the hardy ordinary ones that live through neglect. They’re sweet and adorable, but they’re--well, commonplace.”

Mannering took a puff at his cigar and regarded his daughter. “McIvor should not be too fastidious in roses. His normal occupation was as a mill-hand.”

“He’s a messenger from heaven now.” The girl’s wide eyes flamed at the indifferent, half-open eyes of the man. “He’s--he’s--” she stammered with wrath. “He’s one of the great ones of the earth. He has, perhaps, the most wonderful voice in the world.”

Mannering laughed easily. “Yes? Even that doesn’t bowl me over entirely. A professional musician! An ex-mill-hand! And my daughter searches her garden for flowers worthy of him! It strikes me as amusing.”

“Don’t badger the kid, father,” the young man remonstrated, and as he rose and walked a few steps, it was visible that he was very lame. “You know how keen she is about music.”

Eric Mannering reflected again deeply, on the subject, apparently, of the end of his boot. Quite at his leisure he announced: “The Mannerings have always been fond of music. And good at it. But Honor is the first who has wanted to go into the trade.”

Honor rippled young laughter. “Dad, you can be nasty when you want to,” she commented, and dropped on the warm earth and sat there, cross-legged, like a child, like a faun, looking up at him with laughter in her gray eyes. Her fair, loose hair blew about her face. “Now, father,” she admonished him, pushing a strand of pale gold out of her eyes, “you’ve got to be good. You’ve got to be guided by your intelligent children, by Eric and me. Especially by me. You know that you’re not built to fight the world. You’re beautiful, and entrancing to talk to, and finished and accomplished beyond words. But you can’t do a thing with money except squander it--that’s the plain truth. And you’ve squandered and squandered, till we’re all in a hole. We’re in debt, and the rose-garden isn’t kept up, and the house needs painting and window-shades, and Eric had to sell mother’s rubies to pay his way through law school, and now I’ve come along with a voice that people say is worth money. And there’s not ten cents to develop it. And I will develop it. I will have my chance. If my voice is what Stroble says, two thousand now--next year and the year after--would mean huge sums. The real voices make--almost anything. A hundred thousand a year--almost anything! I could do all the things that are needed--here.” She stared about at the lovely, neglected garden, at the long, low, stone house with its vague air of lack of care. “It’s silly to hamper me, not to help me, when it’s on the cards that I could make a fortune for us all.”

“I hate to hear you talk in that commercial way, Honor,” her brother flashed at her. “You’ve a gift and you’ve a right to want to use it. But to think of art in terms of money--almost wholly in terms of money, as you do! It’s degrading. Also, I’m the one to retrieve the family fortunes. I’m older and a man. It’s up to me. Next year I’ll be through law school and in practise, and you’ll see! I’ll work like ten horses. I’ll make good. I must. And I’ll take care of you and father.”

Mannering, his cigar in his long fingers, stretched his arms to their width with a yawn. “Thank you both so much,” he said. He laughed. “But do I look decrepit? And who owns Garden Court? I or you two? Yet it’s beautiful to see such energy with such youth. And money-making power--though a bit visionary. Eric, do you happen to know any young lawyers who have heaped up immediate fortunes at their profession? I don’t. Honor’s scheme seems to me more businesslike. Only two small ifs between her and a hundred thousand a year. If she has a marvellous voice, and if she can get it trained. If I consent is not in the catalogue, is it, Honor?”

The girl sitting before him on the ground, long arms folded, long legs crossed, shook her head. “Not a bit, dad,” she assured him, and though her eyes danced, she meant it.

Mannering smiled lazily. “Odd how I don’t influence my offspring,” he commented impersonally. “I didn’t want Eric to sell those rubies, but he would. And I suppose that length of mediæval saint, lined throughout with pure paganism, squatting on the lawn like a toad--I suppose Honor will do exactly as her mature judgment decides. Won’t you, Honor?”

“Uh-huh,” the girl agreed.

“There’s one thing--you won’t get two thousand dollars out of me, or one thousand, for a musical education, for I haven’t got it. What are you going to do about that?”

“I’m going to earn it.” The young lips set tight as her gray glance shot up to the man’s lazy eyes.

“How?”

“A job.”

“What?”

“Secretary for Mr. Barron.”

Mannering whistled softly. He smiled, amused. “When?”

“Monday.”

“Nonsense.” Mannering scratched a match with deliberation and lighted a fresh cigar. “You know nothing about business.”

“But I do. You know I’ve been in town three days a week for six months.”

“Yes.”

“I told you I was studying. You didn’t bother to ask what I was studying. I was at a business college. I’ve taken my course.”

“The devil you say!”

“Uh-huh.” She sprang lightly to her feet. “Mr. Barron knew about it. I told you I had a secret with him and you took no interest. Now--will you be good? I’m going to make money. And save it, for myself. And in two years I’ll have enough to go to New York and study music, and make my own career, and no thanks to anybody.”

Mannering stopped smoking and stared again at the polished toe of his russet shoe. He was silent for a long minute; then he laughed. “The whole scheme is distasteful to me,” he stated in pleasant, even tones. “But I don’t see that I can prevent it. I won’t squabble. I can’t stand family quarrels, but I’m not proud of what you’ve done. There has been an Honor Mannering in this house for a century, but never an Honor Mannering in a business college. Business! Secretary to the head of a knitting-mill! Honor Mannering! Can’t you feel the grotesqueness, the sordidness of it?”

“Not a scrap, dad,” answered the girl blithely. “Of course, I’d rather go at the music now, and leave out the business. But I can’t, so why bother? Mr. Barron’s giving me a thousand a year if I make good. And I will make good. I’ll make so good that I think he’ll give me more the second year. Don’t you see, father--I’ve got to have money! Even--music is just for that. I’m so sick of debt and pretending and keeping up appearances--having a car and a chauffeur and fine clothes, and skimping on meals and the servants’ wages and letting the house go to pieces! It’s demoralizing. You won’t make money; Eric can’t, for ever so long. I’ve got to. And I’ve this voice which has got to do it for me. You see?”

“Not I,” announced Mannering with a shrug. “No woman of my house ever found it incumbent on her before to make money.”

“Honor,” demanded the boy, “is that why you’re taking flowers to McIvor? You’re not--trying to work him?”

The girl laughed, tossed up her head defiantly. “If he should hear me sing--and say to himself: ‘That’s a good voice; it’s the girl next door; can I help her develop that voice?’ what harm’s that? Eric, how horrid you are to pin me! I dare say--when I said I’d bring some roses for McIvor--when he came to the Barrons from the hospital--why--I’m not ashamed if I did think of that, partly. That he might help about my voice. Why shouldn’t he? Musicians are glad to discover a new big voice. So I shall sing in the garden if I please. And if McIvor hears me and asks me to sing for him--who knows what might happen? Now I’m going to get the best roses we have. And I’ll sing too, if I choose. Too bad he’s not there yet; he can’t hear me.”

She ran across the grass with the confident ease of a boy, and suddenly, as she stood again at the rose-hedge her voice, full, strong, effortless, filled all the air with jubilant music.