Read Online Grand Canary by A. J. Cronin - Free Book Online Page B

frown.
    â€˜Can’t you sing something?’ she protested. ‘I mean, couldn’t you entertain your Maker and us – both at the same time?’
    Dibs let out his usual laugh, but Susan’s eyes darkened and her lips became quite pale; she seemed struggling for words when Robert spoke.
    Looking directly at Elissa he said:
    â€˜I’ll sing for you, Mrs Baynham, since you ask us. We aren’t that unobliging after all. I’ll sing something you might like to hear. And I guess God won’t mind hearing it either.’
    He swung round with a half-conscious, vaguely ceremonial air and in an undertone said a few words to Susan sitting bolt upright, rigid as a rock. For a full ten seconds, it seemed as if she would not stir, then, with a movement, almost of resignation, her body slackened, her hands reached out to the keyboard, she began to play. It was the negro spiritual ‘All God’s Children,’ and as the thin melodious treble of the cheap harmonium rose into the saloon Robert began to sing.
    His voice was good, a baritone which, though it boomed a little in its lower and vibrated in its upper reaches, had nevertheless richness and resonance. And with full eye and straining throat he tried hard to sing his best, which made him rather emotional, even theatrical. But nothing of his mannerisms could destroy the touching beauty of the air, echoing in that cabined space and soaring outwards to dissolve thinly upon the vast dimensions of the moving sea.
    Corcoran listened with lifted battered ear and faintly nodding head – to him it was a tune; Dibs, his upper lip retracted questioningly to show his yellowish teeth, was thinking of his lunch; Elissa’s sulky inanimation betrayed nothing but a bored contempt. But Mary, curled upon the settee, her slender legs bent under her blue serge skirt which, drawn tautly back exposed the beauty of her thigh, listened like someone in a dream. Her eyes were utterly remote, quite heedless of the singer. Her expression, a moment ago so eager and intrepid, was now forlorn; upon her lovely face there lay a queer lost look. Shadows all fretted and perplexing floated across her vision; in her ears a fountain surged and splashed; white moonshine mingled with the fountain’s note. Again she felt herself trembling as upon a deep chasm of discovery.
    Suddenly the voice rose and for the last time fell to silence. No one spoke. Mary was too moved to speak. Then deliberately Elissa yawned behind her hand.
    â€˜Thank you so much,’ she said languidly. ‘I heard Robeson sing that. He did it quite beautifully.’
    Tranter flushed to his ears with mortification; Susan got up with the abruptness of an automaton, began to collect her music.
    Then Mary said:
    â€˜It was lovely – lovely.’ She hesitated, seeking to shape her thought, ‘Something behind it – that meaning you can’t find on the surface of things.’
    â€˜Faith and yer right, lady,’ said Corcoran gallantly. ‘There’s more goes on below the surface than works out by rule of three. Things you’d never dream about – the queerest things ye can’t for the life of ye explain.’
    There was a short silence. Then Mary rose and without a word went out of the saloon.
    On deck the rain had ceased. Leaning across the rail she felt the clean wind come crisping through her parted teeth with a sound like the sighing of a great seashell. For no reason whatever her emotion was intense. That meaning you couldn’t find on the surface of things! Oh, she was stupid, too stupid for words. But she couldn’t help herself. Blindly she reached out her arms. With palms uppermost and thin fingers uncurled, she surrendered her whole soul to the listening horizon.
    Below, the group had not held together: Corcoran and Dibs had vanished separately to their cabins, and Susan, too, stood now in the middle of the floor, her music clasped under her arm, her