第21章

On this bright and cheerful Tuesday morning he walked with a blithe step unhesitatingly down the main street to "Thurston's," and entered without any show of repugnance the door next to the window wherein, flanked by dangling banjos and key-bugles built in pyramids, was displayed the sign, "Pianos on the Instalment Plan."He was recognized by some responsible persons, and treated with distinguished deference.They were charmed with the intelligence that he desired a piano, and fascinated by his wish to pay for it only a little at a time.

They had special terms for clergymen, and made him feel as if these were being extended to him on a silver charger by kneeling admirers.

It was so easy to buy things here that he was a trifle disturbed to find his flowing course interrupted by his own entire ignorance as to what kind of piano he wanted.

He looked at all they had in stock, and heard them played upon.

They differed greatly in price, and, so he fancied, almost as much in tone.It discouraged him to note, however, that several of those he thought the finest in tone were among the very cheapest in the lot.

Pondering this, and staring in hopeless puzzlement from one to another of the big black shiny monsters, he suddenly thought of something.

"I would rather not decide for myself," he said, "I know so little about it.If you don't mind, I will have a friend of mine, a skilled musician, step in and make a selection.

I have so much confidence in--in her judgment."He added hurriedly, "It will involve only a day or two's delay."The next moment he was sorry he had spoken.What would they think when they saw the organist of the Catholic church come to pick out a piano for the Methodist parsonage?

And how could he decorously prefer the request to her to undertake this task? He might not meet her again for ages, and to his provincial notions writing would have seemed out of the question.And would it not be disagreeable to have her know that he was buying a piano by part payments?

Poor Alice's dread of the washerwoman's gossip occurred to him, at this, and he smiled in spite of himself.

Then all at once the difficulty vanished.Of course it would come all right somehow.Everything did.

He was on firmer ground, buying the materials for the new book, over on the stationery side.His original intention had been to bestow this patronage upon the old bookseller, but these suavely smart people in "Thurston's" had had the effect of putting him on his honor when they asked, "Would there be anything else?" and he had followed them unresistingly.

He indulged to the full his whim that everything entering into the construction of "Abraham" should be spick-and-span.He watched with his own eyes a whole ream of broad glazed white paper being sliced down by the cutter into single sheets, and thrilled with a novel ecstasy as he laid his hand upon the spotless bulk, so wooingly did it invite him to begin.He tried a score of pens before the right one came to hand.When a box of these had been laid aside, with ink and pen-holders and a little bronze inkstand, he made a sign that the outfit was complete.Or no--there must be some blotting-paper.He had always used those blotting-pads given away by insurance companies--his congregations never failed to contain one or more agents, who had these to bestow by the armful--but the book deserved a virgin blotter.

Theron stood by while all these things were being tied up together in a parcel.The suggestion that they should be sent almost hurt him.Oh, no, he would carry them home himself.So strongly did they appeal to his sanguine imagination that he could not forbear hinting to the man who had shown him the pianos and was now accompanying him to the door that this package under his arm represented potentially the price of the piano he was going to have.

He did it in a roundabout way, with one of his droll, hesitating smiles.The man did not understand at all, and Theron had not the temerity to repeat the remark.

He strode home with the precious bundle as fast as he could.

"I thought it best, after all, not to commit myself to a selection," he explained about the piano at dinner-time."In such a matter as this, the opinion of an expert is everything.

I am going to have one of the principal musicians of the town go and try them all, and tell me which we ought to have.""And while he's about it," said Alice, "you might ask him to make a little list of some of the new music.

I've got way behind the times, being without a piano so long.Tell him not any VERY difficult pieces, you know.""Yes, I know," put in Theron, almost hastily, and began talking of other things.His conversation was of the most rambling and desultory sort, because all the while the two lobes of his brain, as it were, kept up a dispute as to whether Alice ought to have been told that this "principal musician" was of her own sex.

It would certainly have been better, at the outset, he decided; but to mention it now would be to invest the fact with undue importance.Yes, that was quite clear;only the clearer it became, from one point of view, the shadier it waxed from the other.The problem really disturbed the young minister's mind throughout the meal, and his abstraction became so marked at last that his wife commented upon it.

"A penny for your thoughts!" she said, with cheerful briskness.

This ancient formula of the farm-land had always rather jarred on Theron.It presented itself now to his mind as a peculiarly aggravating banality.