BOOKS BY MARY R. S. ANDREWS

Published by CHARLES SCRIBNER’S SONS

HER COUNTRY

BY Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews

NEW YORK Charles Scribner’s Sons 1918

Copyright, 1918, by Charles Scribner’s Sons

Copyright, 1918, by the Butterick Publishing Co.

Published May, 1918

[Pg 1]

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[Pg 2] 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[Pg 3] 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[Pg 4] 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.[Pg 5] 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[Pg 6] 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[Pg 7] 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[Pg 8] 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[Pg 9] 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[Pg 10] 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[Pg 11] 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.”

[Pg 12]

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?[Pg 13] 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[Pg 14] 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[Pg 15] 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.

She had made a mistake. McIvor was there. From the hospital in the city where his valuable throat had been under treatment for a week, the Barrons’ big car had brought him to the Barrons’ house an hour ago. Ten years back the great musician was spending his days shifting machinery in Henry Barron’s knitting-mill, unconscious of the Golconda mine waiting, unused, in his voice. He sang in the noon-hour, sometimes, for his mates, and on a day Barron heard[Pg 16] him. Barron, music lover, philanthropist, and not ignorant, recognized the gift of his workman as remarkable, and for love of music and of mankind gave the beautiful voice a chance, and found that it was a great voice. Between the two men had grown a friendship. When McIvor’s throat got troublesome it was natural that Barron should arrange with the famous specialist who ruled over the hospital in his city, and natural that as soon as the operation was safely done McIvor should come to Barron’s house for his convalescence.

Carefully covered from even the June breezes, luxurious on a wide divan among pillows, he lay now on the gallery and revelled in the soft air and flowers and country stillness, and considered thoughtfully, as he often[Pg 17] did, the contrast of his early life with this, for McIvor liked all things lovely, and never forgot who had opened the gates of such a world to him. His beauty-loving eyes lingered on the tall lattice all but hidden with extravagant masses of Dorothy Perkins roses. The lattice ran for two hundred yards, a wall of glory, and that it was broken here and there counted unto it for righteousness to McIvor. That gave atmosphere, history. Anybody could have a new lattice. As he regarded the large hole approvingly, through it suddenly floated the music of heaven. The singer, tingling in every temperamental nerve, regarded it so.

“My God!” whispered McIvor reverently.

It seemed nothing less than the[Pg 18] touch of a divine hand that after his hideous week of suffering he should alight in this lovely place, cradled in peace, and music should come to him through a wall of roses. It was one of his own songs she was singing, one of the simple, hackneyed, undying Scotch melodies which his mother had taught him thirty years ago by the Firth of Tay, to which he went back gladly still from difficult operatic work of which he had come to be past master. He lifted himself on his elbow among the pillows, and his face was brilliant.

The voice brooded among the low notes, clearly, happily. It went on:

[Pg 19]

McIvor waited, anxious to see what would happen when the air jumped inches of scale.

The high notes floated to him, full and clean, and then dropped deliciously to the croon of the world-old love-song.

McIvor, leaning on his elbow, revelling in the flooding sounds, frowned. He shook his head. “It’s a pity,” he murmured, and then shouted, “Henry—Henry!” He shouted at the top of his lungs.

Henry Barron, reading inside, dropped his magazine and dashed through the open door. “What in[Pg 20] the name of heaven’s the matter? You’re not ill?”

McIvor did not smile. “Ill—no. Who’s that singing?”

“Oh!” Barron looked relieved. “Now see here, old man—you’re there to rest, not to get excited. Dr. Thomas said you were to do no talking or even thinking for two hours.”

“Dr. Thomas go to the devil. That voice—who is it?”

“Little Honor Mannering, next door. It’s a fine voice—yet——”

“Exactly,” McIvor caught him up. “Something lacking. But a great music machine, the throat that’s doing that peaches and cream. I want her to sing for me. I want to see what’s the trouble—why that voice isn’t a miracle. Can you get her to——”

[Pg 21]

Barron was looking into the sunlight of his drive. “Here she comes,” he said.

The white, tall, thin figure was moving, facile of movement as the voice, up the broad gravel; the shallow basket, rioting color, swept casually back and forth in the girl’s hand. Barron went down the steps.

“For Mr. McIvor,” she called, swinging the mass of reds and pinks at him as she came. “I wish they were better. They’re all we have, but they’re only common roses.”

“The sweetest kind,” said Barron, and the girl stood gazing at him, her eyes shining with the romance of bringing flowers to a hero.

“When’s he coming?” she demanded. “I’m going to stand in our garden and sing and sing till he asks me[Pg 22] to do ‘Carmen’ for him. Do tell him to, Mr. Barron. When’s he coming?”

“He’s here,” some one spoke from the gallery, back of the flower-boxes. The girl stood rooted. “And ‘Carmen’ has been sung by worse voices. Seldom better.”

“Oh,” groaned Barron, “he ought not to be stirred up; come and see him, then, but don’t stay over a minute.”

The girl came, breathless, shy a bit, but blissful.

“To-morrow morning, then, you’ll sing for him,” said Barron three minutes later. “And now go away, my dear, for he mustn’t get tired.”

In the Barron drawing-room, while McIvor’s secretary played an accompaniment, the girl stood next morning and sang.

[Pg 23]

McIvor lay outside among his pillows and stared at the tossing pink veil clothing the broken lattice. The girl sang as confidently as any bird in a tree, taking the difficult changes and the trying high notes without any effort. Her voice was astonishing in its power. McIvor looked at her as she came smiling through the door.

“You’d do for a church organ,” he said. “Where does all that noise come from, you wisp of a child? Turn sideways.” She whirled, laughing. “I see. You fooled me. You’ve got the deep chest of a prima donna. Healthy, aren’t you?”

She nodded. “As strong as my brother. Never ill since measles. I can run up-hill and not get winded.”

“You’re fit,” said McIvor. The girl looked at him, waited.

[Pg 24]

In a moment: “You’d be awfully good—if you’d tell me about my voice,” she brought out, and flushed. The surface hardness which she had forced on herself did not go deep yet. Quickly she went on, and her young face grew oddly keen. “You see—Mr. McIvor—I’ve got to make money. And I’ve been told—my voice was—good for it. Not a little money—lots! I hate—getting along—being hard up. If you’d say—that I’ve got a real voice——”

McIvor drew his brows together. “Make money! And you seventeen!” he said as if to himself, but his eyes were stern. “Miss Mannering, you are going the wrong way to be an artist. Art is an exacting mistress. The price she asks for success is one’s heart. If ye cannot give that, if ye[Pg 25] cannot love music for music’s sake”—McIvor dropped into Scotchness at odd times; it was a sign of strong feeling—“ye’ll not be great. Ye certainly hae a fine organ for singin’; it’s a grand machine God has gi’en ye. But I know now what’s troublin’ me about your voice—the soul’s not there. An’ gi’en ye persist in wantin’ money first, the soul will not find its way in. Ye’ll be no true singer. It’s mechanical, that lovely big voice of ye, and it’ll move no man. What the true singer wants is to stir the hearts of people and send them awa’ to help the world, because his music has helped them. Would na’ ye like to do that?”

Honor’s soft mouth was firm. “No,” she said. “I don’t care. I want their money.” McIvor shook his head.

[Pg 26]

The girl stared at him. She was fearless and obstinate. Not easily did she let go a purpose. “Mr. McIvor,” she said at last, “you don’t understand. I’ve got to make money. And my voice is my one way. Thank you for listening. You know everything, and I very little, but—people who can judge have told me I could do a lot with my voice—and I’m going to. You say yourself it’s a good—machine. I’ve—I’ve—” She was half sobbing with angry distress. Yet she was determined. “I’ve planned my career, and I’ll stick to it. I’ll succeed. I’ll make lots of money. You’ll see.”

Suddenly she whirled and, springing down the steps, ran full tilt across the lawn to a break in the lattice, and dropping to the ground, slid through like a rabbit.

[Pg 27]

McIvor looked up at Barron. The two men laughed a little, and then the musician sighed. “The poor baby,” he said. “She’s got so much, and she’s likely goin’ to throw it away. Money! At seventeen! An’ she with the face of a seraph and a voice out of ten million!”

“Perhaps she’ll grow up. She’s only a baby,” Barron considered, and went on to explain a bit to the other how things were at the Mannerings, and the influences that had shaped the motherless girl.

“If,” said McIvor, “she has the right stuff, life will come along some day with a big emotion, and money and such trash will go smash. And the world will get one of its great music-makers. But a singer without a soul is no good.”

[Pg 28]

Two years after the McIvor episode the Mannering household had changed little outwardly. But young Eric had been now for a year a practising lawyer, with a beginning of a reputation already, and Honor, secretary to Henry Barron, president of the Empire Knitting Mills, was a capitalist. She had fifteen hundred dollars salted away in a savings-bank.