CHAPTER X
"SEEING IS BELIEVING"
"Well!" gasped Happie. "My mercy me! It's that Robert Gaston!"
She said it aloud entirely forgetful of where she was, even of what she was, in the amazing discovery of the identity of her rescuer. She told her mother afterwards that it was nothing but good fortune and her size that kept her from falling into a teapot, a little like the Dormouse, and only the lack of space that kept her from dropping to the floor.
She stood near Mrs. Jones-Dexter as the amazing conviction rushed over her that Robert Gaston did not resemble her mental portrait of him in any particular, and that he was actually there and had been helping her serve tea for an hour. Mrs. Jones-Dexter looked up disapprovingly. "Do you mean to say that you have been allowing a young man whom you did not know to help you, Miss Secunda?" she demanded sternly. She had fallen into the habit of calling Margery and Happie and Laura "Prima, Secunda and Tertia."
Happie gazed at her blankly. "That isn't the worst of it," she said. "The worst of it is that Margery does know him, and that he is really very, very nice. I thought he'd be perfectly unbearable, but anybody could bear him easily. Oh, dear, oh, dear! Margery will like him—I do myself!"
Mrs. Jones-Dexter stared at Happie for an instant, then she laughed. "I think I see!" she observed. "My dear, be consoled. There might be a degree of badness beyond this. Prima might see his charm and you not see it. That would be far worse. And take an old woman's advice; don't grudge your sisters happiness of their own selection. It's better to float with currents than to beat yourself to tatters trying to stem them. If Prima is drifting away, drift after her, don't hold back."
Happie did not heed this excellent advice, based on Mrs. Jones-Dexter's personal experiences. She was watching Margery as she replied to Robert's questions, and understood his laughing glances towards herself, surmising that he was relating to Margery the story of his latest hour of usefulness.
Herr Lieder stopped playing, disturbed, perhaps, with the quick telepathic instinct of a musician, by Laura's perturbation, which was nearly as great as Happie's, when she saw Margery greet the stranger and guessed his identity.
Herr Lieder went away quickly without a word, as he had preferred doing at the end of his first playing. After he had gone the people who had been lingering in the tea room stirred sighingly, and there was a rustle of general departure, leaving space and opportunity for Margery to come down the room with Robert Gaston to where Happie and Gretta exchanged rapid whispers till the approaching pair were at hand, when Gretta hastily slipped away to safety in the rear.
"Happie, dear," Margery began, "I must introduce to you my friend, Mr. Gaston, but he already knows you. This is my Happiness-sister, Mr. Gaston, of whom I used to speak so often—who let me go away to be idle and happy all summer, while she stayed in the Ark, and bore the brunt of a great deal that was hard."
"And who did such great kindness thereby to a young man from Baltimore and his sister Mary, of whom she had never heard," added Robert Gaston, taking Happie's hand with that mixture of old-fashioned formality and boyish simplicity which was his charm. "I hope Miss Happie is going to give me her friendship, quite independent of Miss Margery,—the way it was begun!" he added with a twinkle.
Happie looked painfully embarrassed. "It won't matter about my friendship, I am three years younger than Margery," she said awkwardly and not too relevantly.
"Do you regard the affections of your family through the wrong end of a telescope, Miss Happie? I want the friendship of all the Scollards, down to the dancing-school pupils there, who are devoutly wishing I'd take myself off and let their sisters lead them to class," said Robert Gaston, passing over Happie's awkwardness so lightly that she was grateful. "I must carry out their desires."
"You didn't know me the other day, in Mr. Felton's office?" asked Happie.
"Not a bit," declared Robert. "Wasn't it a jolly chance that let me box that impertinent stripling's ears for you? Not knowing you were you, I mean! But you see I knew whom to expect when I came here; I mean, that I should find the unknown Scollards here. I came intending to surprise you all,—I flatter myself I succeeded! When I came down the steps I saw you, Miss Happie, flying about, and I said to myself: 'By all that's wonderful! My little Lady Disdain of the office is Miss Margery's sister Happie!' And so you are," he ended with a satisfied laugh that made Happie smile up at him reluctantly.
"Yes," she admitted grudgingly. "I am Keren-happuch Scollard. And you certainly were very nice, both in boxing ears and serving tea." This time she smiled cordially, and Margery said as she put her arm over Happie's shoulder: "This is the dearest of the Scollards. You are coming to see mother, and the Patty-Pans?"
"As soon as you will let me," returned Robert Gaston. "To-night? Thank you. Perhaps your mother will let me borrow her two eldest daughters to show me the way to the Charlefords' to-morrow night? I am anxious to recall myself to Mrs. Charleford as soon as possible."
"Auntie Cam does not forget old friends, Mr. Gaston," said Margery. "I am sure you have lots of messages to deliver to her from your mother. I thought Auntie Cam and Mrs. Gaston were very fond of each other."
"To be sure I have, so many messages that I can't carry them alone. You and Miss Happie will have to help me. And I have messages from mother to you, 'the dove-eyed little girl'—you remember mother's name for you? And from Mary! Dear me, I can't remember half of Mary's, but my consolation is that she will write you all that she told me to say and no end more!" Robert glanced at Margery, and Happie saw the look of satisfaction with which he noted her fluttering, delighted embarrassment as he hinted his mother's and sister's admiration for her. Happie's heart sank. He was nice, very nice. Nothing but actually seeing him could have convinced her of how charming he was. But that was just the trouble; here he was already charming Margery, her own Margery, away into an atmosphere which rebellious fifteen-years-old Happie could not breathe.
Robert saw Happie's face cloud, as she turned away. "Please introduce me to the lesser Scollards, the musical child, and your two Sweet P's, and then I must leave the tea room and its maidens. Where is the owner of the Ark? Miss Margery wrote me the wonderful story of finding the will in the little worn-off horsehair trunk, up in the garret that snowy day. Is your Miss Gretta here? Please let me know you all, and then when I come to-night I shall be among old friends. Remember I'm an exile from the hospitable South and take me into your kindness, Miss Happie," he pleaded, with such a funny assumption of pathos that Happie dimpled again. She took him in charge for presentations to Gretta, Laura and the two little girls, with whom Margery immediately afterwards departed up-stairs, giving a pleasant little informal nod to the menacing friend, that somewhat reassured Happie for the moment.
Robert Gaston did not linger longer than was required to win the hearty liking of Gretta and Laura. He had an instinctive sense of the right thing to say to put every one at ease. Gretta found herself replying to him without fear, though she was still the shyest of the shy. Laura was instantly won by the suggestion that she sing and play some of her own compositions to her sister's friend that night.
"I think I will make a song of your coming, unknown, among us, defending Happie, and bearing tea to the thirsty and fainting in our hour of need," said queer Laura in all sincerity.
The tea room was deserted, save for a woman who sipped her tea with a novel propped up before her, and a man who took immense swallows, scalded himself, wiped away the tears and fell to figuring frantically; forgot the tea was hot, scalded himself with another hasty mouthful, repeating the performance thrice over to the fascinated marvel of the girls, who watched him with ill-suppressed giggles.
With only two, and two such absorbed customers, Happie, Gretta and Laura had no hesitation in discussing Robert Gaston, the one subject in the world just then, and they gave themselves up to it unreservedly, elbows on table, chins in hands, over in a corner that suggested privacy. From comparing notes on his personal appearance—regarded by Happie differently, more analytically, since she knew him for himself—and agreeing that in face, air and manner there could hardly be a finer gentleman, they went on to praise his kindliness and universal good qualities till Happie dropped her arms on the table and her face on them, and groaned dismally.
"What's the matter?" demanded Laura, rather frightened.
"Never mind, Happie, he may be rude and disagreeable to Margery," suggested Gretta with an amused twist of the lips, understanding Happie's groan better than Laura did.
"Oh, yes, it's likely!" said Happie from the muffling bend of her elbow. "Of course a blind man could see the end of this."
"You mean it's going to be a romance?" inquired Laura. "Of course any one would care for Margery—I should think they would love her madly, she is so very calm herself. I'm sure I don't see what you're groaning about, Happie. Only think how perfectly beautiful Margery would look under a bridal veil, walking slowly to the strains of heavenly music! I'll write the music. I guess I'll have it a chanted march, something like the Lohengrin one. I'll write the words, too. Do you suppose the tea room will make enough money for us by that time so we can afford to hire a lot of boys in white surplices to walk ahead, chanting? No, I'd rather have them in velvet knee breeches, with buckles——"
"Like Bobby Shafto," interrupted Happie, but she laughed.
"And girls in—silver and pink!" cried Laura triumphantly, having hesitated for an instant. "All chanting my lovely epitaphalium."
"Your what? Oh, Laura, what are you talking about? Epitaphs are for graves!" protested Happie.
"Maybe that isn't the right word," said Laura with heightened color. "I believe it's epithalami-something, now I think of it. I was looking over the poets in our bookcase, and I saw they used to write epithalami-things for weddings. I thought I'd remember it in case any of you girls were married some day. Only I should write music too. I believe I'll go now and compose something impertinent for Mr. Gaston's coming."
"Oh, Laura Scollard, you are enough to make Jeunesse Dorée laugh! Wouldn't you rather be sensible than clever? What can you mean by impertinent music? Are you trying to say pertinent?" cried Happie, forgetting her forebodings in a peal of such merry laughter that it won a glance from the lady of the propped-up-novel.
"It doesn't matter," said Laura, walking away towards the piano with sufficient dignity to have compensated for Mrs. Malaprop's crooked tongue.
Laura sat thoughtful before the key board for a while, then began to strike chords reminiscent of the Lohengrin Wedding March, at the same time singing below her breath words that were so satisfactory to herself that her color mounted in the pride of conscious poesy.
Margery came down from Mrs. Stewart's just when this composition, of which she was innocently unsuspicious, was well under way.
"Laura, dear," she said pausing at the piano. "Mrs. Stewart's pianist has not come; she has no music for her class this afternoon. Won't you come up and play for her? I told her I was sure that we could spare you here."
"Oh, Margery, no, I don't want to! I should despise playing dance music the whole afternoon. I am doing something important, too," Laura protested, instantly clouding.
"Laura, my dear! How can you say you don't want to help Mrs. Stewart, when she is taking Polly and Penny into her class so kindly!" rebuked Margery.
"But not me!" cried Laura, betraying the feeling of some days' standing. "Besides, she told you she took our children for Aunt Keren's sake. I should think that let us off from caring about it."
"Laura! Nothing would let us off, as you put it, from our share of the obligation. It is Polly and Penny, not Aunt Keren, who are benefited by the dancing class. In any case, if there were no Polly and Penny, wouldn't you be glad to do a kindness for sweet little Mrs. Stewart? Dear Laura, you positively must fight hard against selfishness; be at least as ready to give as to receive. And, however you feel about playing for Mrs. Stewart this afternoon, I must insist on your doing so."
Margery rarely put forth her claim of obedience as the elder sister whom circumstances had given a large share of the mother's headship over the family, but when she did assert herself there was something in gentle Margery that got the obedience she asked.
Laura arose somewhat sulkily, quite unwillingly, but she arose at once, and went towards the door. "If you only knew what I was composing!" she grumbled.
"Something that I shall care a great deal about, I'm sure, and something that will be all the better for my little sister's sacrifice, as all art gains from the artist's gain in character," said Margery, putting her arm around Laura affectionately. Laura's brow cleared. If there were a person in the world whom she loved better than her important little self, that person was Margery.
"Oh, Margery, I don't mean to be unkind to people, but I don't seem to care one bit about them. I don't see how you can care for everybody's bothers, the way you do," said Laura candidly.
"And I'm afraid you think that comes from your being wholly taken up with your little talents, my Laura, and are a wee bit proud of it," said Margery wisely, "when the truth is that the greatest artist, like the highest art, has a sympathy for sorrow, and a knowledge of human hearts far beyond that of ordinary mortals. Wait. I must tell Happie that I have carried you off, and that I will come back soon myself."
It was a listless Laura that began to play the two-step which Mrs. Stewart placed before her on the piano rack, a Laura not converted to zeal in her service by the little lady's warm thanks for her coming. But after a few minutes, as the rhythm of many feet chimed with the music, Laura began to play with more spirit, and when the first dance was ended, and she had got Mrs. Stewart's consent to turning the piano a very little so that she might see the dancers, Laura forgot that she was a genius—with a big G—wrested from her task of composing an epithalamium, and became only a little girl of thirteen who played remarkably well, and dearly loved dancing.
Even the half hour in which the children were arranged in line to practice the waltz step up to a certain crack in the floor and back again to their starting point, did not dismay Laura. She played her waltz over and over, but her eyes were dreamy, with the far-away look that Margery, had she been there, would have understood, as a signal of inspiration, and her cheeks were red with excitement.
Laura was watching little Serena Jones-Dexter, filled with the thought of Ralph and Snigs, the unknown cousins, and fired with enthusiasm for the child's loveliness.
"Now, partners, if you please, children, and waltz!" Mrs. Stewart announced, looking at her watch, and giving the longed-for signal for her little pupils to test their practice in proper waltzing. She stepped over and placed another waltz before Laura, to give the children the incentive of new music, unassociated with drill. But Laura did not see the notes before her. She began to play something so pretty, so dreamy, so full of the spirit of the waltz that Mrs. Stewart forgot her duty to listen, wondering where the little girl had found it.
She looked at Laura. With her usually pale face aflame, her eyes fastened on Serena as she floated around like a bit of milkweed silk, Laura was playing, not looking at the keys, her fingers guided by instinct. And when the waltz was ended at the clapping of the little dancing mistress's hands, Laura's face bowed suddenly forward, dropped into her hands, and she burst out crying tempestuously.
"My dear, what is it?" cried Mrs. Stewart, frightened, as she hastened to her. Serena ran over to the piano also. "I must take care of her, because she is lovely Miss Margery's sister," she said. And she gravely put one of her tiny hands over Laura's clasped ones and stroked it.
"There isn't anything the mat-matter," sobbed Laura, struggling to control herself. "Only that was so beautiful."
"Yes, dear; that was a charming waltz," said poor little Mrs. Stewart trying to meet the occasion. "I don't remember hearing it before."
"You never did," grieved Laura. "That is just it. I made it up. And now nobody can ever hear it again, because I played it and played it, in a dream. And it was so beautiful! It was your waltz, Serena, it was the Waltz of the Lost Cousins."
Mrs. Stewart looked dismayed, as well she might, lacking the clue to Laura's idea. "Did you really improvise that pretty waltz, Laura?" she asked.
"Yes, thinking of Serena, and what she doesn't know," returned mysterious Laura. "I am all right now. Shall I play another dance?"
"If you please, dear, the lanciers. We always end with a square dance, and a lively chassé which I call 'good-night,'" replied Mrs. Stewart. "There is your sister Happie, come up for you."
"I should like to invent a dance for you—Serena alone, and then with all the other children, like a song and its chorus. I think I should call it the Dance-of-the-Thistle-Down," said Laura. "Serena is so little, and so light, and so white. Please let me have the lanciers music, Mrs. Stewart."
"My dear Laura, your young head is filled with nothing but your dreams of music, I am afraid," said Mrs. Stewart, pulling out the sheet Laura asked for, and feeling inadequate to dealing with this strange little girl.
"I don't think I care much for anything else," said Laura, and Happie, who had joined them, frowned.
Mrs. Stewart shook her head. "There are other things, nevertheless. I knew some one once who was an extraordinary musician; I never heard any one else play as he played. Yet for the sake of his music he wrecked not only his life, but another life, and his one little child died for want of his care. Don't ever put your skill, not even your art, above love that makes the music of the world, Laura. It is a fearful thing to have made another suffer as this poor man made one suffer—and suffered himself, suffered himself, I am sure!" Mrs. Stewart said these words very low, as if she had forgotten her surroundings, the girls, even that she was speaking.
Then she aroused herself, and announced the lanciers, of which Laura played the opening bars.
Gretta had reversed the usual order of things by going to fetch Bob from the office to the tea room, whence they would all go home together.
Bob took Happie's arm as they started out and told her, with many chuckles, the compliments paid her by Mr. Felton's two elder clerks and how much they regretted that she had been but a substitute among them.
"For Hapsie is not harmed by taffy as Laura is," Bob thought admiringly.
Happie laughed, then she looked very sober. "I have real news for you," she said holding him back from the rest of the little band, though Margery and Penny were separated from them by Gretta, Laura and Polly. "Whom do you suppose the young man who boxed Dan Lipton's ears for me is?"
"The spirit of Perseus, or Launcelot, or some of those maiden rescuers," hazarded Bob.
"Not one bit!" cried Happie instantly. "He's a dragon that wants to devour the sweetest girl in the world, instead of being Perseus to save her. He is Robert Gaston." She nodded hard towards Margery to point her allusion to dragons.
"My soles and uppers!" ejaculated Bob.
Happie told the story of his coming, and how he had helped in the crowded hour of Herr Lieder's playing. "And he is coming this very night to see us all in the Patty-Pans. And mark my words, Robert Scollard: when we let him in to-night we shall never be able to drive him out again."
Whatever the future held to fulfil or to disprove Happie's prophecy, Robert Gaston was admitted that night. He went away leaving a critical group won over to his favor. Even Mrs. Scollard, keenly observant of Margery's friend, liked him greatly.
Happie wound up her vociferous little one-day clock in her mother's room, whither she had strolled at bedtime.
"Well, Happie?" hinted Mrs. Scollard, smiling at Happie's grave face.
"Well, mother," echoed Happie. "I could never have believed he would be so nice if I had not seen it."
CHAPTER XI
THE ELASTIC PATTY-PANS
"Everything looks like gray wadding, Margery, but I believe we've over-slept," remarked Happie on Sunday morning to her bedfellow, whose reply was a moan of sleepy protest. But Happie, who when she did wake up woke thoroughly and at once, tumbled out of bed and taking her small clock to the spot where the universal grayness was lightest, fell to shaking it energetically.
"It's stopped!" she announced. "It's wearing out. The only way it will go now is to lay it over on its face or tip it up on one side, somewhat upsidedownish. I set it up straight last night, and it has stopped. There's hardly any light in the airshaft here, but I think we've slept until near the day after to-morrow."
"But it still feels just like to-day," protested Margery. "I can't wake up, Hapsie, and we're not the only ones—the whole flat is still."
"I'm going to get dressed and find out what day it is. Oh, Margery! There's the whistle! The janitor has come for the ashes. It must be nine o'clock, at least. I'll pop on slippers and something above them, and go attend to him. I think it is storming," said Happie, ready to leave the room almost as soon as she had spoken.
It was not storming in the sense most people use the word, that is, neither snow nor rain was falling, but the wind was blowing a gale, as Happie discovered when she got out into the kitchen where she could see the leaden sky which looked as though the whole world were under a great tank.
The rattling of the dumb waiter, Happie calling to Gretta in her tiny rear room and Margery conscientiously bestirring herself after her sister had arisen, woke the rest of the family and it was not long before the entire eight Scollards—counting Gretta a Scollard for the convenience of the census—were up and out of the various little Patty-Pan chambers tardily to begin the dark day.
It was a formidable day to begin. Blinding dust clouds gathered and eddied down the wide avenue of this newer part of New York. People fought for foothold around corners, shrinking from the penetrating cold of a wind sharper in its chilling powers than any recording instrument could register.
"I'm glad that we are on the fourth floor to-day," remarked Margery after breakfast, as she alternated face and back to the steam radiator. "Heat ascends, and this is the sort of day when one wants all the heat there is."
"Unless it comes in the shape of a conflagration," suggested Bob, smoothing the ear and the ruffled feelings of Jeunesse Dorée tickled by the morning paper as he sat on the boy's lap. "Wouldn't this be a great old day for a fire, though?"
"Oh, Bob, don't suggest it!" begged his mother. "It's my abiding horror. I think the new janitor is careful."
"The newest janitor, mother," amended Happie. "He's only this January's janitor. That was the new one who departed after the Christmas harvest. Don't you remember?"
Bob groaned. "Are we likely to forget it, Happie?" he demanded. "When I denied myself ties and books I wanted in order to pay him tribute in a good-sized Christmas gift? And I'm sure he scorned it, because he told me what fine, rich, generous people all the other tenants were. And then he went off, and as an investment to secure us comfort my rare five dollar bill yielded nothing."
Mrs. Scollard laughed. "Janitors are sadly demoralizing to the spirit of generosity," she said. "Margery and Happie, you are letting Gretta wash the breakfast dishes with only Polly to help. Laura, you agreed to make beds if you might be excused from dishwashing."
The girls scattered at this hint. Even Laura, the reluctant, never needed a second bidding from her mother.
After a little while the bell rang, somewhat to the consternation of the belated Scollard family. But when Penny opened the door her gurgle of laughter brought her seniors, confident that no very formidable visitors had arrived. Bob took by the coat collar one of the two who had come, crying, "Come in here, you Peary, you! What do you mean by ringing the bell and giving me nervous prostration?"
The callers were Ralph and Snigs, each in a heavy overcoat with the collar turned up, a hat pulled far over his face, a scarf wound time and again around his head, gloves on, boots with trousers tucked into them, and a thick veil protecting his complexion from the winds roaring outside of the narrow hall which the boys had to cross to reach the opposite flat. Snigs bore Whoop-la, their tiger cat, and Ralph was the spokesman for this arctic-looking trio.
"Please, kind ladies, our mother is gone to see a sick friend—we think she may come home sicker than the friend was, owing to the weather! We thought we would blow in on you for shelter—the wind's on our side, and we feel tremulous-spined. Will you please let us sit by your gilt radiator, if you haven't a hearthstone?" he pleaded.
"You shall share the warmth of our gilt radiators and have a gilt-edged welcome, you raving lunatics!" Bob replied for his family. "Get out of these trappings of woe, and tell us if you ever saw a windier, grayer, meaner day in all your lives."
"I had thought so," returned Ralph, letting Bob hold his great-coat while he dropped out of it, "but now I am not sure." He bowed low to Happie, just coming in, the depth of the bow increased by the sudden removal of the weighty coat. "Across the hall we are not Happie—we have not—we need to be Happie—— Say, what do you mean by having a name that leads a fellow into the dandiest kind of a compliment, and then goes back on him?" he demanded. "I thought that was coming out a regular top-notcher of a poetical speech, and look at it!"
Happie laughed. "I didn't choose my name, Ralph, and you can't blame me for its failing you. It was bright of you to come over here on this dreary day, even if you can't make bright and flattering speeches. When the wind blows like this I'm always frightened and lonesome feeling. Look at Dorée and Whoop-la! For the first time they touched noses," cried Happie.
"Dorée always wanted to touch one nose—Whoop-la's nose, but with his claw," observed Snigs. "Polly, please take out my veil pin; it's caught in my curls."
As Snigs stooped, Polly loosened his veil, quite convulsed over this remark, for Snigs' hair was as short and straight as hair well could be. Polly considered Ralph and Snigs the funniest boys in the world, and approaching to Bob as the best boy.
"Your mother has gone away, you said? For the day?" asked Mrs. Scollard. And as the Gordon boys assented, she cried: "Then we will have a long, cozy shut-in day! You are both to dine with us—roast beef, Gretta's prize mashed potatoes, and any other vegetables you choose from our fertile garden of tins in the pantry. And salad—that is Happie's specialty! I will make tomato soup since it is so cold and blustering, and perhaps, if you are all very, very good, a spicy, plummy steamed pudding, if we can coax Margery to give us one of her foamy sauces! I think we can defy the weather, even the wind and the weather. I have a volume of stories that no one can resist for the afternoon. Why, we shall have the best kind of a cozy, uneventful home day!"
"We always have the best kind of home days with you, dear Mrs. Scollard," said Ralph, dropping his nonsense to beam gratefully at this dear woman.
"It's nice sometimes to know no one can come," remarked Laura with her back to the others as she looked out of the window at the dreary street. And as she spoke the bell rang.
"Who can it be! It's the lower bell. Polly, go touch the button, like the duck you are!" cried Happie. "I don't see how it can be company, on such a morning and Sunday besides." She went towards the door to be ready to open it when the bold adventurer should have come up the three flights of stairs which intervened between the street and the Patty-Pans.
It was so long before the person appeared that the Scollards began to think their bell had been rung by mistake, and Happie went out to see if there were any one on the way up. She put her head in at the door again.
"Yes, some one is coming," she said. "A woman all wrapped up so that I can't tell whether or not it is some one we know. And she comes as slow as she can move."
It sounded mysterious, and the Scollards within the flat listened eagerly for the first word from their representative at the door which should give them a clue to this arrival.
"Why, Auntie Keren! It isn't you! I didn't know you the least bit in the world!" they heard Happie cry at last.
Happie came back with her hand slipped through Miss Bradbury's arm. Mrs. Scollard came swiftly forward to greet her guest, whose advent from the lower dwelling-part of the city in such severe weather was at least unexpected.
Miss Bradbury, always eccentric or indifferent in matters of dress, looked remarkable, even for her. A heavy coat, an automobiling coat as the Scollards saw on a second glance, very much too large for her, enveloped her shapelessly. A small black hat—Miss Bradbury always wore a bonnet of obsolete elderly style—did not reveal its inappropriateness until the long veil enshrouding it was removed. Beneath these Miss Bradbury presented the sober propriety of the plain black silk gown in which, in fair or foul weather, she invariably went to church.
She could not have been to church, for not only was it too early and she was enveloped in the automobiling coat, but she carried in her arms leather boxes which looked like silver cases and seemed heavy, and in one hand was an open basket containing photographs, old fashioned daguerreotypes, and a small black book.
Miss Bradbury's face was very pale, she looked exhausted, and yielded up her burdens to the boys as though they had been burdens indeed.
"Dear Miss Keren, it did not need proof that you were not a fair weather friend, but it is very good of you to brave the exposure of coming up town in such a wind as this," said Mrs. Scollard, gently divesting Miss Keren of her extraordinary garments. She felt instantly sure that something was seriously wrong with her.
"You don't look well, dear Auntie Keren," said Margery. "Have you been ill? Happie and I thought you looked less strong than usual when you were here a week ago."
"I have had a cold. It had grippish characteristics, among others that of being uncommonly weakening," said Miss Keren. "Charlotte, I shall have to ask you for a cup of hot tea at once."
"Coffee would be better, and just as easily made," said Mrs. Scollard. "That's right, Polly, you are going to ask Gretta to attend to it." For Polly had started towards the kitchen at the first hint of her Aunt Keren's desire, ready as usual to be helpful.
Miss Keren sank into the chair which Happie pulled up to the radiator. She put her feet on the hot pipes with a grateful sigh. Happie stooped to them.
"Let me take off your rubbers, Auntie Keren," she said.
"I haven't any," said Miss Keren briefly.
"Oh, Auntie Keren! On such a day as this, and after being ill with a cold!" said Happie reproachfully.
"I never thought to ask for them, child, and they forgot to lend me any," said Miss Keren.
Margery, Happie and their mother involuntarily glanced at one another. All three had the same thought: that Miss Keren was still ill and feverish, and that her mind was affected.
"I can go to a hotel," said Miss Keren, so irrelevantly that there seemed to be no doubt of the correctness of this surmise.
"A hotel, dear Miss Keren?" echoed Mrs. Scollard. Bob and the Gordon boys looked at her with an expression that plainly told her all three were ready to go for a doctor on the spot.
"To tell the truth I don't feel equal to it, neither in mind nor in body," said Miss Keren. "But I don't want to impose upon you. I know this tiny nest of Patty-Pans is hardly big enough for your large family, Charlotte. I am sorry to say—sorry for your sake, because I know you will not have the heart to refuse me—that there isn't another place on the face of the earth where I feel that I could bear to be to-day, and I want you all. Will you take me in, until I have time and strength to face the situation?"
Again the Scollards exchanged glances, but this time with a different meaning. This did not sound like delirium. Miss Keren was not usually incoherent, but there was something other than mental derangement behind these remarks.
"Miss Keren, I don't quite understand," began Mrs. Scollard. "I think you mean that you want to stay here with us to-night? You know that we are always delighted to have you with us, at any time, anywhere, and the elastic Patty-Pans can always take in another. Don't you remember how long you stayed here—so blessedly good to us when I was ill, not a year ago? And now there is only Gretta added to our family. She uses that little room at the end of the flat which we used to keep for a storeroom—she preferred it to crowding Margery and Happie. Bob can take that, Gretta can come into the older girls' room, and you can take Bob's room. You did mean that you didn't want to go home to-night, didn't you?"
"No, I meant nothing of the kind," said Miss Keren in her old manner. "I should be particularly glad to go home to-night. What I meant is that I have no home to go to. I was burned out early this morning."
The Scollards drew a gasping breath and exclaimed, "Oh!" in concert. Gretta, coming in with Miss Keren's coffee just in time to hear her announcement, nearly dropped the tray, and Polly, following behind her with the sugar-bowl, did drop that, and squares of cut sugar scattered in all directions.
"Aunt Keren, how dreadful!" cried Margery. "Have you saved anything?"
"Don't tell us about it yet. Drink your coffee," said Mrs. Scollard.
"I saved what I have on, and what I brought with me in my arms," said Miss Keren. "The outer garments that I wore were loaned me by people I do not know. I have their address to return the clothing," she added with her whimsical twist of the lips. "Ah! That is good coffee, Gretta child. Will you take me into the Ark again? My furniture is there still. You and I might 'go back to our mountains,' as the gypsy Azucena begs to do in Trovatore, and spend the winter in that refuge."
"I will go with you, Miss Bradbury, certainly," said Gretta gravely.
"Oh, well, perhaps it won't be necessary. We shall all go there in the spring," said Miss Keren. "That hot coffee will enable me to face the calamity, Charlotte. Thank you, and Gretta. Now, dear annexed family, listen to my tale of woe! This morning, just after breakfast, I made myself ready for church as I always do, and then sat down to my paper for the interval between my preparations and time to start. I don't think I can tell you precisely what happened, but there arose a great hue and cry throughout the house that it was on fire. My children, it is incredible how rapidly the fire spread and burned! I could save nothing, except the smaller pieces of silver that had been in the family for several generations, a few likenesses, and my mother's little worn Bible. I helped my maids get out their belongings first, of course, and then there was no time left. I came out into the street precisely as you see me now, with the boxes and the basket I carried when I came—and how I carried them I do not see, for they are heavy and what with the grippe and the shock my strength seemed melted away. People in the neighborhood were kind and muffled me in the extraordinary garment you saw—an automobile coat! I am sure the people in the subway thought me an uncertain number in the Rogues' Gallery, for they stared all the way up town at this singular old person in a sporting coat that did not fit her, burdened with unmistakable cases of silver. However, I was allowed to go unmolested! That is all my story, my dears. I am burned out. The dignified apartment house to which I clung, is a skeleton only—needless to say it was supposed to be fireproof!—and here am I, begging your hospitality."
Happie flew at her with streaming eyes. "Dearest Auntie Keren, it is perfectly, horribly awful!" she cried. "But nothing matters as long as you are safe."
"Were you well insured, Aunt Keren?" inquired Bob, just as his mother asked, "How did the fire originate?"
"Do hear the man of business!" cried Miss Keren. "I carried a good insurance, Bob, but money can never compensate me for what is gone. The dear inanimate friends of my lifetime, that seemed so animated with good will to me, and with which I had been so long glad and sorry! My chairs, my couches, and above all my pictures, my books. Most of my household goods were handed down to me by those who consecrated them to me—ah, no, money does not do anything for one in such a case except buy merely useful articles to replace the others; it gives one things with bodies only, where the old ones had heart and soul! I am quite ashamed to mind so much, I who am old enough to understand that transitory things cannot long affect me."
No one spoke. Happie stroked Miss Keren's hand, bundled up at her feet, a figure of tearful and loving sympathy. Bob, Ralph and Snigs avoided one another's eyes; each knew what he should see if he looked at the other two.
"You asked what caused the fire, Charlotte," said Miss Keren, breaking the silence. "A tenant on a lower floor—the one below mine—was washing gloves in gasoline in her bath-room. The gas was lighted, but the door was open, so there was no danger. However, some one called her, and when she went out of the bath-room she closed the door behind her. The fumes of the gasoline ignited from the gas in the heated, close little room—and the whole house went. Such a pity! I liked the house; it was more distinctive than newer apartments."
"Words cannot say how sorry I am, dear Miss Keren," said Mrs. Scollard. "But I am sure you know how we all feel. It has been; there is no curing it, and we must do our best to help you in enduring it. I am so glad that you came straight here! It is a greater happiness to me than you can gauge, to know that my mother's beloved friend comes to me as if I were her daughter."
"Yes, Charlotte, you are my nearest of kin, although I have blood relatives," said Miss Keren. "Happie, stop crying. Tears won't put out a fire that has done its work, my dear. And I shall have to go to the hotel after all if you prove an Unhappie. Don't you know that after a nervous shock the patient must be cheered?"
"Yes, and I think we'll have a jolly time, between the Patty-Pans and the Next Flat!" cried Ralph, speaking for the first time since Miss Keren arrived. "Now Snigs and I can try to show you how gratefully we remember the good times we had, thanks to you, up in Crestville last summer! We'll entertain you till you won't know there ever was a fire, and you'll lose your grippe! And, see here, Mrs. Scollard, please ma'am! Bob is coming over to sleep in our camp. You know how much room we have, our flat being the same size as this one, and our family three, instead of eight. So let Bob sleep over there, and Miss Bradbury can take his room and we'll all be as merry as a marriage bell. I wonder why people say that? Every wedding I ever saw was the dreariest thing I ever struck."
"Thank you, Ralph," smiled Mrs. Scollard. "I will accept that offer on the spot. Come now, girls, let us begin to get dinner. We were going to have a particularly nice dinner, Miss Keren, so you came on precisely the right day. Come, Margery and Gretta! And Happie, you may attend to the dining-room."
"Let Laura look after the dining room, Charlotte. I want Happie. I am not sure that I feel quite well," said Miss Keren unexpectedly.
Happie flushed with pleasure, and forgot her grief over Auntie Keren's losses in the joy of knowing that she was a comfort, knowledge that is a keen joy to almost any one, but was especially so to loving Happie.
"Oh, I am so glad that you like to have me by you!" she said, laying her cheek on Miss Keren's hand.
The fingers of the hand moved upward, trying to pat the cheek pressed too closely to allow them to do so, but Miss Keren did not speak.
Ralph spoke for her. "Queer, but Happie is like some of those patent medicines—good for what ails you, and for what ails everybody, eh, Bob?"
"Right you are, neighbor mine!" said Bob emphatically.
CHAPTER XII
THE TWO KEREN-HAPPUCHS
Miss Keren said that she "did not know how to be ill." It was owing to this ignorance—which some people might have called pluck—that she did not succumb to the effect of the shock she had undergone.
As it was, she was able to get up every day and sit in the warmest corner of the Patty-Pans parlor, trying not to be any trouble to Happie.
For Happie found her hands full in the month that followed Aunt Keren's arrival. The tea-room saw her no more. If she had allowed herself to think about it she would have been sorry for this. She enjoyed what Bob called for short "The Six Maidens," more and more, got on better with all sorts and conditions of women than Margery did, and had the cheerful conviction that she was, of all the girls, the one most essential to the tea-room's success. But she did not allow herself to recognize her uneasiness in being so long away, for Aunt Keren wanted her, and there was little enough that any of the Scollards could do to show their sense of loving gratitude to Aunt Keren.
Happie was established as housekeeper and attendant, also as amanuensis to their guest, and there were not many minutes in the short February days in which she found time to regret anything. Every morning she saw depart her mother and Bob, together as always, and later Margery, Gretta and Laura, sometimes with one, sometimes with both of the younger children. Then, left alone, Happie flew from one task to another till nightfall brought back the family to an orderly and prepared Patty-Pans and a tired Happie who tried to keep the latter item out of sight.
Aunt Keren began to have visitors when people found out where she had taken refuge, elderly and impressive ladies who toiled up the three flights that led to the Patty-Pans, their furs hanging, their breath short, to present themselves at the door, pantingly reproachful in their tone as they asked for Miss Bradbury. Miss Bradbury's lawyer came, the insurance adjuster came, several times, and Aunt Keren had such heavy mails that Happie daily sat down to the task of replying to her letters with dismay. Most of these letters were appeals for help; for money for every imaginable charity, individual and collective, and for the weight of Miss Bradbury's name on boards and committees and lists of "patronesses." Happie began to realize that Aunt Keren, for all her eccentricities of plain garments, must be known widely as a fountain of beneficence. As Happie drew checks, under Aunt Keren's instruction, for her to sign, she began to see that Miss Keren could not be an elderly lady of straightened means, in which light the young Scollards had always looked on her, for her donations in this month alone were mounting up amazingly.
One afternoon the two Keren-happuchs were at work on the elder's correspondence by two o'clock, lunch having been over and out of the way early because it was the day for Polly and Penny to go to dancing school, to which Laura had taken them, remaining at home that morning for the purpose.
Miss Keren watched Happie's absorbed face as she sealed the note in which she had gently refused the request of a young woman for help to go abroad and cultivate her genius for art, and drew up Miss Keren's check book to make out a check of ten dollars for coal and groceries to a family which was, it seemed, among her constant dependents.
"Happie," said Miss Keren, so suddenly out of a silence of several minutes that the end of Happie's figure nine, as she wrote the year date, went far below the line in the jump she gave, "Happie, if you had an income, what would you do?"
Happie looked at her adopted aunt unseeingly, as she considered. Then she dimpled and laughed. "I should live on it, Aunt Keren," she said.
"Live within it, if you wanted to be happy in reality, and not in name only," said Miss Keren. "What do you think you would do first if money, a fairly large income, fell into your hands?"
"First of all I should give motherums warning that she had to stop foreign corresponding for that firm down in town. Then I should hunt up a house and set her in it, and not let her do one thing but be dear and sweet and idle for an endless time. Then I should buy Margery lots of lovely things—she is so pretty! Maybe I wouldn't, though, for I can see that she looks altogether too pretty in Robert Gaston's eyes now! But maybe I would, and then take her abroad where he couldn't see her. Then I'd begin Laura's musical education—that really is important. And get a splendid, life-size doll for Penny, and lots of things for good little Polly, and send them to a fine school—and for my dearest old Bob—oh, I don't know! Buy him a partnership in a great business, or something. Why, Aunt Keren?"
Miss Keren had listened to Happie's list of benefactions with a smile in her eyes. "For no reason, Keren-happuch, my dear, except that your doing these things for me made me wonder how you would use money if you had it," she said. "And nothing for Happie?"
"Oh, I suppose I should buy her lots of things between times; every time I went out, probably. And I know I should buy her cases and cases of books," said Happie, resuming her task. "But I'm sure I shall always have to grub along, because I don't mind doing it as much as most girls. I believe I've a contented mind, Aunt Keren."
"There is no doubt of that, my namesake, and you have no idea what a blessing it is. Cultivate it all your life. It can be cultivated or lost, Happie. Dear me, the bell! Just when we were so comfortably settled for a long afternoon! It is some one for me, almost certainly. I must fly, Happie, and you will ask the visitor to wait for me a few moments." Aunt Keren went through to her room, which had been Bob's before her coming, and Happie opened the door after she had hastily gathered up the scattered papers on which she had been at work. But she dropped Aunt Keren's check book in her hurry, and it lay in long black evidence on the lightest figure of the rug.
Two ladies confronted Happie as she obeyed the summons of the upper bell. They were handsomely clad, and there was something familiar in both faces, which, nevertheless, Happie was sure that she had not seen before. With this haunting familiarity there was a certain hardness in the visitors' expression which was repellent. They were about the same age—well into their thirties—and carried their years with the jauntiness of intentional youth.
Happie ushered them into the small parlor, which they seemed to fill in every corner, and asked whom she should say had come to see Miss Bradbury.
"Say her nieces, Miss Helen and Miss Irene Bradbury," said one of the two. "Wait a moment, what is your name?"
"I am one of the daughters of Miss Bradbury's friend, Mrs. Scollard; the second one, Happie," said Happie. Something antagonistic in this very different Miss Bradbury's manner kept her from saying that she was Keren-happuch, named after the strangers' aunt.
"Happie! Then you are the one whom they called after Aunt Keren? Is Happie your abbreviation of Keren-happuch?" asked Miss Irene Bradbury.
"Yes," said Happie. "Shall I call Miss Bradbury?"
"Wait one moment," said Miss Irene Bradbury very low. "I see that you are very young, but you are not a child, and there is something that I wish to say to you. Miss Bradbury's family are greatly annoyed by her taking refuge in this little Harlem flat, after having already carried your entire family with her into the country for a summer that stretched out into half the year. It is extraordinary, the fancy that a woman of her usual sense and strength of mind has taken to people of this sort——"
"What sort, Miss Bradbury?" Happie quietly interrupted her. "My grandmother was Miss Bradbury's dearest friend."
"People who are not her kindred," said Miss Irene Bradbury, somewhat confused. "We understand your part of it—perhaps not your part since you are so young—but your mother's. We wish you to know, and to repeat to your mother, that we shall not allow her plans to succeed. If Aunt Keren should will away her fortune to you, to any of your family, we shall break the will, and we shall leave no means untried to prevent her continuing under your mother's influence. That is all. Repeat what I have said to your mother, but you will not gain anything by repeating it to Miss Bradbury."
Happie had turned white under these remarks, but she looked Miss Irene Bradbury over from head to foot with a scorn she richly deserved.
"I shall certainly spare Aunt Keren the annoyance of knowing that one of her own nieces could insult her namesake in the home she has chosen to come to in her trouble," said Happie. Her naturally quick temper did not flare up, but in its stead burned a righteous indignation that made her young eyes rather awful, and Miss Bradbury quailed before them. "My mother—well, you do not know my mother, so there may be some excuse for you, though I can't imagine any. We have all thought Miss Bradbury poor, until now." Happie's eye fell upon the check book, and Miss Helen's following it, she started to pick it up, but Happie forestalled her. "Pardon me, that is not for any one to see," she said. "There is nothing for me to reply to the insults you have heaped upon my mother and upon us all. If you have anything more to say, you will please tell your aunt your plan is to prevent her doing as she likes. And I don't envy you if you do tell her. I will send her in to see you, since you are here, and I don't want her to guess how badly you have behaved. She is not at all well. But while she is visiting us you will please not come here again to see her. If you come I shall not let you in."
Happie walked out of the little room, head up, and with an air that was little less than regal. Inwardly she was in a tumult. It was inconceivable that these two women could have stayed her in her own Patty-Pans parlor to subject her to such treatment! That they did not know her beautiful mother, to whom they imputed such baseness, hardly bettered it. What right had they so to suspect the daughter of Miss Bradbury's dearest friend?
"Aunt Keren, it is your two nieces, Miss Helen and Miss Irene Bradbury. If you don't need my help I won't wait; I am in a wee hurry." Happie steadied her voice to say this at Miss Keren's door, and scuttled away. She dared not risk letting Miss Keren see her tell-tale face, nor hear her voice in one avoidable word.
As soon as she heard Miss Keren go through the hall to the parlor Happie flew to her own room and threw herself face downward on the bed. She pulled the pillows down over her head and burrowed further in under them. The tears that she had been holding back burst forth in a tropical tempest; wounded affection, pride, a cruel sense of injustice against which she was helpless, righteous wrath that her mother could be so misjudged, so outraged, combined to make the tears the bitterest that sunny Happie had ever shed. She cried and cried, and, because she was suffocating herself to keep the sound of her crying down, she kicked her feet and dove further under the pillows till the chance of sweet sleep that night in that particular bed seemed very slender.
Miss Bradbury's nieces did not make a long call. If Happie had not been in such violent contradiction to her nickname she might have discovered from the tones carried out through the little flat by its telescopic construction, that the call was not a particularly pleasant one. As the rustle of skirts and the fall of feet announced the fact that Aunt Keren was conducting her guests to the door, Happie restrained her sobs and lay still, under the fear of being heard, in spite of her upheaval of the pillows.
"You have known me quite long enough, Irene Bradbury," Aunt Keren was saying in her clear-cut accent, and with a vigor of which she had not seemed capable since coming to the Patty-Pans, "to know that if you had set about defeating your own ends you could not have taken a surer method than the one you have employed this afternoon."
"I hope, Aunt Keren," retorted her niece with unmistakable temper, "that your physician is competent. A shock such as you have had requires more than ordinary skill. I should be glad to have him consult with my physician."
"I think mine is quite competent to pronounce on the effect of the shock," said Miss Keren. "It will be made perfectly clear to every one interested that I have sustained no real harm; I will see to that. Don't trouble to come to see me again, Irene. When I need you, I will send for you."