The Little Colonel's Chum: Mary Ware

"THE GIRLISH FIGURE ENVELOPED IN A LONG LOOSE WORKING APRON."

IN JOYCE'S STUDIO

The short winter day was almost at an end. High up in the top flat of a New York apartment house, Joyce Ware sat in her studio, making the most of those last few moments of daylight. In the downstairs flats the electric lights were already on. She moved her easel nearer the window, thankful that no sky-scraper loomed between it and the fading sunset, for she needed a full half hour to complete her work.

There were a number of good pictures on the walls, among them some really fine old Dutch interiors, but any artist would have turned from the best of them to study the picture silhouetted against the western window. The girlish figure enveloped in a long loose working apron was all in shadow, but the light, slanting across the graceful head bending towards the easel, touched the brown hair with glints of gold, and gave the profile of the earnest young face, the distinctive effect of a Rembrandt portrait.

Wholly unconscious of the fact, Joyce plied her brush with capable practised fingers, so absorbed in her task that she heard nothing of the clang and roar of the streets below, seething with holiday traffic. The elevator opposite her door buzzed up and down unheeded. She did not even notice when it stopped on her floor, and some one walked across the corridor with a heavy tread. But the whirr of her door bell brought her to herself with a start, and she looked up impatiently, half inclined to pay no attention to the interruption. Then thinking it might be some business message which she could not afford to delay, she hurried to the door, brush and palette still in hand.

"Why, Phil Tremont!" she exclaimed, so surprised at sight of the tall young man who filled the doorway that she stood for an instant in open-mouthed wonder. "Where did you drop from? I thought you were in the wilds of Oregon or some such borderland. Come in."

Joyce went back to her easel, as he slipped off his overcoat. "Don't think that because I keep on working that I'm not delighted to see you, but my orders are like time and tide. They wait for no man. This must be finished and out of the house to-night, and I've not more than fifteen minutes of good daylight left. So just look around and make yourself at home and take my hospitable will for the deed till I get through. In the meantime you can be telling me all about yourself."

"There's precious little to tell, no adventures of any kind—just the plain routine of business. But you've had changes," he added, looking around the room with keen interest. "This isn't much like the bare barn of a place I saw you in last. You must have struck oil. Have you taken a partner?"

"So I proposed to these two castaways that we go in together and make a home to suit ourselves. We were so dead tired of boarding. About that time we picked up Henry, and as Henry has a noble bank account we went into the project on a more lavish scale than we could have done otherwise."

"Henry!" ejaculated Phil, who was watching the silhouette against the window with evident pleasure.

"You don't mean to say that you do the cooking for this happy family!"

Joyce laughed at his surprised tone. "That's what makes it a happy family. No domestic service problems. With a gas range, a fireless cooker and all the conveniences of our little kitchenette, it's mere play after my Wigwam experiences. We have a woman come several times a week to clean and do extras, so I don't get more exercise than I need to keep me in good condition."

"But doesn't all this devotion to the useful interfere with your pursuit of the beautiful? Where do you find time for your art?"

"Oh, my art is all useful," sighed Joyce. "I used to dream of great things to come, but I've come down to earth now—practical designing. Magazine covers and book plates and illustrating. I can do things like that and it is work I love, and work that pays. Of course I'd rather do Madonnas than posters, but since the pot must boil I am glad there are book-covers to be done. And some day—well, I may not always have to stay tied to the earth. My wings are growing, in the shape of a callow bank account. When it is full-fledged, then I shall take to my dreams again. Already Henry and I are talking of a flight abroad together, to study and paint. In two years more I can make it, if all goes well."

The striking of a clock made her glance up, exclaiming over the lateness of the hour. "Phil," she asked, "would you mind telephoning down to the station to find out if that Washington train is on time? That's a good boy. That little sister of mine will think the sky has fallen if I'm not at the station to meet her."

"Yes, she and Betty are to spend their vacation with me. We are going out to Eugenia's to-morrow afternoon to spend Christmas eve and part of Christmas day."

"Then that was the surprise that Eugenia wrote about," said Phil, taking out his watch. "She wouldn't tell what it was, but said that it would be worth my while to come. Yes, the train is on time."

He hung up the receiver. "I won't be able to wait for it, if I get out to Eugenia's for dinner, but I can see you safely to the station on my way. It is about time we were starting if you expect to reach it."

Joyce made a final dab at her picture, dropped the brush and hurried into the next room for her wraps. It seemed to Phil that he had scarcely turned around till she was back again, hatted and gloved. The artist in the long apron had given place to a stylish tailor-made girl in a brown street-suit. Phil looked down at her approvingly as they stepped out into the wintry air together.

The great show windows were ablaze with lights by this time, and the rush of the crowds almost took her off her feet. Phil at her elbow piloted her along to a corner where they were to take a car.

"I'm glad that I happened along to take you under my wing," he said. "You ought not to be out alone on the streets at night."

"It isn't six o'clock yet," she answered. "And this is the first time that I had no escort arranged for. Mrs. Boyd always comes with me. She's little and meek, but her white hair counts for a lot. She would have gone to the station with me, but she and Lucy are dining out. We girls will be all alone to-night. I wish they were not expecting you out at Eugenia's to dinner. I'd take you back with me. I have prepared quite a company spread, things that you especially like."

"There's a telephone out to the place," he suggested. "I could easily let them know if I missed my train, and I could easily miss it—if my invitation were pressing enough."

Joyce looked up again, touched and pleased. "I'm so glad that you feel that way, for we always count you in, right after Jack and the little boys. Mamma always speaks of you as 'my other' boy, and as for Mary, she quotes you on all occasions, and thinks you are very near perfection. She is going to be so delighted when she sees you, that I'd not be a bit surprised if she should jump up and down and squeal, right in the station."

Phil, too, accustomed to thinking of Mary as he had known her at the Wigwam, could hardly believe he saw aright, when the train pulled in and she flew down the steps to throw her arms around Joyce. It was the same, lovable, eager little face that looked up into his, the same impetuous unspoiled child, yet a second glance left him puzzled. There was some intangible change he could not label, and it interested him to try to analyze it.

She was taller, of course, almost as tall as Joyce, with skirts almost as long, but it was not that which impressed him with the sense of change. It was a certain girlish winsomeness, something elusive, which cannot be defined, but which lends a charm like nothing else in all the world to the sweet unfolding of early maidenhood.

In her younger days she would have appropriated Phil as her rightful audience, and would have swung along beside him, amusing him with her original and unsolicited opinions of everything they passed. But a strange shyness seized her when she looked up and saw how much older he was in reality than he had been in her recollections. She had no answer ready when he began his accustomed teasing. Instead she clung to Joyce when they left the street-car, leaving Betty to walk with Phil as they threaded their way through the crowded thoroughfares. It was so good to be with her again, and as they hurried along she squeezed the arm linked in hers to emphasize her delight.

Joyce laughed indulgently, and stopped with her whenever she wanted to gaze in at some particularly attractive show window. When they reached the flat, Mary still kept near her, "tagging after her," as she would have expressed it in her earlier days, so much like the little sister of that time, that Joyce still failed to see how much she had changed during their separation.

"You see it's just like a doll-house," Joyce said as she led them through the tiny rooms on a tour of inspection. "All except the studio. We had a partition taken out and two rooms thrown together for that. Now the company will have to go in there and entertain themselves while I put the finishing touches to the dinner. The kitchenette will only hold one at a time."

Betty and Phil obediently went into the studio to renew their acquaintance of two years before, begun at Eugenia's wedding, and wandered around the room looking at the various specimen's of Joyce's handicraft pinned about on the walls. One of the first pauses was before a sketch of Lloyd, done from memory, a little wash drawing of her. Mary, standing in the doorway, heard Phil say, "Tell me about her, Miss Betty. She writes so seldom that I can only imagine her conquests."

For a moment Mary watched him, as he studied the sketch intently. Then she turned away to the kitchenette to help Joyce, thinking how lovely it must be to have a handsome man like that bend over your picture so adoringly, and speak of you in such a fashion.

Phil told of his work too, and his travels, and in the friendly shadows cast by the flickering firelight talked intimately of his plans and ambitions, and what he hoped ultimately to achieve.

Betty confessed shyly some of her hopes and dreams, warranted now, by the success of several short flights in essay writing and verse, and then Phil said laughingly, "Do you remember what Mary's dearest wish used to be? How we roared the day she gravely informed us that it was her highest ambition to be 'the toast of two continents,' Is it still that, Mary?"

"No," she answered, laughing with the rest, but blushing furiously. "I had just been reading the biography of a great Baltimore belle who was called that, and it appealed to me as the most desirable thing on earth to be honoured with such a title. But that was away back in the dark ages. Of course I wouldn't wish such a silly thing now."

"But aren't you going to tell us what is your greatest ambition?" persisted Phil. "We have all confessed. It isn't fair for you to withhold your confidence when we've given ours."

Mary shook her head. "I've had my lesson," she declared. "You'll never have the chance to laugh twice, and this one is such a sky-scraper it would astonish you."

When she spoke, she was thinking of that moment on the stair, under the amber window, when through the music she heard the king's call, and was first awakened to the knowledge that a high destiny awaited her. What it was to be was still unrevealed to her, but of the voice and the vision she had no doubt. Whatever it was she was sure it would be higher and greater than anything any one she knew aspired to. Yet somehow, sitting there in the friendly shadows, with the firelight shining on the earnest manly face opposite, she did not care so much about a Joan of Arc career as she had. It would be glorious, of course, but it might be lonesome. People on pedestals were shut off from dear delightful intimacies like this.

And then those lines began running through her head that she had not been able to get rid of, since the morning she read them in the magazine:

"For if he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,
And come not by the far seaway—"

She wished that she was certain that she could add that last part of the line, "Yet come he surely will!" Just then, to have one strong true face bending towards hers in the firelight, with a devotion all for her, seemed worth a lifetime of public plaudits, and having one's name handed down to posterity on monoliths and statues.

"For if he come not by the road, and come not by the hill,
And come not by the far seaway—"

"Yes, it certainly would be lonesome," she decided. She would miss the best that earth holds for a home-loving, hero-worshipping woman.

CHRISTMAS DAY AT EUGENIA'S

"Although this is only the twenty-fourth of December, my Christmas has already begun," wrote Mary in her diary next day; "for this morning when I looked out of the window everything was white with snow. It has been so long since I have seen such a sight, all the roofs and chimney tops a-glisten, that I could hardly keep away from the window long enough to dress.

"Phil stayed quite late last night. Just as he was leaving, Mrs. Boyd and Miss Lucy came home, and of course we had to stay up a little while longer to meet them. By the time Joyce had turned the davenport in the studio into a bed for me, it was past midnight, and I couldn't go to sleep for hours. There was so much to think about.

"'It gives a girl a sort of Midas touch,' Phil said last night; 'makes her able to gild even a garret and to turn any old place into a home,' He was so charmed with everything about the flat that he said he wanted to move into one right away, and make biscuits himself on a glass-topped table, and do stunts with the fireless cooker like Joyce. He has had a surfeit of cafés and hotels and boarding-houses.

"While we were at breakfast the postman came, and there were letters and packages for everybody. Lloyd sent a present to each of us. Mine was a darling little lace fan all spangled, like a cobweb with dew-drops caught in its meshes. We opened everything then and there, as we had already had part of our presents. Jack's to me was this holiday trip, and Mamma's was the shirt-waist that I travelled in from Washington.

"Joyce got a check that she hadn't expected before next month, and another one that she hadn't expected at all. It was for some initial letter sketches and tail-pieces that had been travelling around to different magazines for months. Besides, there was an order for a frontispiece for a child's magazine. She was so happy she could hardly finish her breakfast, and said now she could give me the present she had planned to give me in the beginning. She had been disappointed about some other work she had counted on, and thought she would have to cut my present down to some gloves and a book, but now she could play Santa Claus in fine style, and carry out her original intention. Just as soon as things were in order, she would take me down town and let me choose it.

"It was so exciting, not knowing what it was going to be, and hurrying along with the crowds of shoppers; everybody so smiling and happy and good-natured, no matter how much they were bumped into. I felt Christmasey down to my finger-tips, although they were nearly frozen. Last night's snow was almost a blizzard, and left it stinging cold.

"After lunch we came back to the flat to get our suit-cases. Joyce is packing hers now. In just a few minutes she will be ready, and then we will turn the key in the door and be off for Eugenia's. Mrs. Boyd and Miss Lucy have gone to Brooklyn to spend Christmas, and Miss Henrietta is away on a month's vacation."

The suburban train was crowded when the girls reached it. Even the aisles were full of bundle-laden passengers, until the first few stations were past. Then Betty and Joyce found seats together, and a fat old lady good-naturedly drew herself up as far as possible, in order that Mary might squeeze past her to the vacant seat next the window.

"I can't set there myself, on account of the cold coming in the cracks so," she wheezed apologetically. "But young people don't feel draughts, and anyway, you can put your muff up between you and it if you do."

"It is the same way at school," answered Betty. "You have no idea how popular she is, just because she is interested in everybody in that sweet friendly way."

They went on to talk of other things, so absorbed in their own conversation that they thought no more about Mary's. So they did not see that presently she turned away from her garrulous companion, and, wrapped in her own thoughts, sat gazing at the flying landscape. It was not at the snowy fields she was smiling with that happy light in her eyes, nor at the gleaming river. She was only dimly conscious of them and had forgotten entirely that it was the famous Hudson whose shore-line they were following. For once she was finding her own thoughts more interesting than the conversation of an unexplored stranger, although the old lady had taken her generously into her confidence during the first quarter of an hour. Indeed, it was one of those very confidences which had sent Mary off into her revery.

She reached forward and with some difficulty extracted a toy from the covered basket on the floor at her feet, a wooden monkey on a stick. "I'm just looking forward to seeing Pa's face when he drops that into Joe's baby's little sock."

Her own kindly old face was a study, as she slid the grotesque monkey up and down the rod, chuckling in pleased anticipation. And Mary, with her readiness to put herself into another's place, smiled with her, sharing sympathetically the anticipation of her return. Straightway in her imagination, she herself was a grandmother, going home to some adoring old Silas, who had shared her joys and troubles for over half a century.

If by the road or by the hill or by the far seaway "he" should really come, some day, then of course the Christmases they would spend together would be happier than this. Jack had always said that she would have her "innings" when she was a grandmother. All her life Mary had been dreaming romances about other people, now in a vague sweet way those dreams began to centre around herself.

It was almost dark when they left the train. Phil was at the station to meet them with a sleigh and a team of spirited black horses.

"Oh, sleighbells!" sighed Joyce, ecstatically, as she climbed into the back seat beside Betty. "I haven't been behind any since I left Plainsville. I wish we had forty miles to go. Nothing makes me feel so larky as the sound of sleighbells."

Phil glanced back over his shoulder. "It is a bare mile and a half to the house, but I told Eugenia I'd bring you home the roundabout way to make the drive longer, if you all were not cold. What do you say?"

"The long way by all means!" cried Joyce and Betty in the same breath.

Phil laughed. "The ayes have it. Even Mary's eyes, although she doesn't say anything," he added, seeing the beaming smile that crossed her face at the prospect of a longer drive. "They are shining like two stars," he went on mischievously, amused to see the colour flame up into her cheeks, and noticing how becoming it was. Then his mettlesome horses claimed his attention for awhile.

Later, as he looked back from time to time, in conversation with the older girls, his glance rested on Mary, sitting beside him as contented and happy as a kitten in those becoming furs, and he thought with satisfaction that the little Vicar was growing up to be a very pretty girl after all. Her eyes were positively starry under her long, curling lashes.

That Eugenia regarded their coming as a great event, they felt from the moment the sleigh drew up to the house. From every window streamed a welcoming light, and the front door, flung open at their approach, showed that the wide reception hall had been transformed into a bower of Christmas greens. Eugenia, radiant in her most becoming dinner gown of holly red, came running down the steps to meet them.

Ever since she had been established as mistress of this beautiful country place, she had longed for them to visit her. Guests she had in plenty, for young Doctor Tremont and his wife were noted for their lavish hospitality, but the welcome accorded her new friends and neighbours was nothing to the one reserved for these old friends of her girlhood. She wanted them to see for themselves that she had made no mistake in her weaving, and that marriage had indeed brought her the "diamond leaf" that Abdallah found only in Paradise.

"Patricia had just dropped asleep," she told them as she led the way up stairs. Not that it was the proper time, but she was always doing unexpected things. That very day she had surprised them with four new words which they had not dreamed she could say. Eliot had orders to bring her in the moment that she awakened, so they could soon see the most remarkable child in the world. Yes, Eliot was still with her, good old Eliot. She intended to keep her always. Not as a maid, however. She had earned the position of guardian angel to Patricia by all her years of devoted service, and she played her part to perfection.

As the girls followed their hostess over the house, with admiring exclamations for each room, Mary thought with inward amusement of the cold shivers she had had, as she stood with the bridal party between the Rose-gate and the flower crowned altar, listening to the solemn vow: "I, Eugenia,—take thee, Stuart—for better, for worse—" There had been no worse. It was all better, infinitely better, and the shivers had been entirely unnecessary.

Stuart came in presently, from a long round of professional visits. The young doctor had nearly as large a practise as his father, and had been riding all afternoon. Mary caught a glimpse of his meeting with Eugenia, in the hall, and when he came in, cordial as a boy in his welcome, and by numberless little courtesies showing himself the most considerate of hosts and husbands, she thought again, "This is one time it was certainly all 'for better.'"

"SHE WAS A FASCINATING LITTLE CREATURE, ALL SMILES AND DIMPLES."

Phil and Mr. Forbes came in together. To Betty, one of the pleasantest parts of her visit was this meeting with the "Cousin Carl," who had added such vistas of delight to her life by taking her to Europe the year she was threatened with blindness. His hair was grayer now than then, and the years had added a few lines to his kind face, but he was not nearly so grave. He smiled oftener, and she noticed with satisfaction his evident pride in Eugenia since she had blossomed into such a happy, enthusiastic housewife, and his devotion to little Patricia, when she was brought in for awhile just after dinner.

"There is really too much for one kid," said Phil gravely, surveying his own lavish contributions. "What can she do with them when it is all over?"

Eugenia glanced from the long row of dolls she was counting, to the assortment of stuffed animals and toys already weighting the tinsel-decked branches. "She shall keep them only a day. I have made up my mind that she shall not grow up to be the selfish child that I was before Betty came along with her Tusitala story and her Road of the Loving Heart. She is to begin to build one now, even before she is old enough to understand. This is her first Christmas tree. To-morrow she shall choose one gift from each person's assortment of offerings. To-morrow night the tree and all the rest of the presents are to be turned over to the little orphans of St. Boniface Refuge."

Since the tree was for children only, no gifts for the older people appeared among its branches, but in the night some silent-footed Kriss Kringle made his stealthy rounds, and left a gay little red and white stocking by every bedside. Mary discovered hers early in the morning, after the maid had been in to turn on the heat in the radiator, and close the windows. She wondered how it could have been placed there without her knowledge, for the slightest motion set the tiny bells on heel and toe a-jingling. She touched it several times just to start the silvery tinkle, then sitting up in bed emptied its treasures out on the counterpane. It was filled with bon-bons and many inexpensive trifles, but down in the toe was a little gold thimble, from Patricia.

It was in the chair under the stocking that she found the gloves from Eugenia, the book from "Cousin Carl" and a long box that she opened with breathless interest because Phil's card lay atop. On it was scribbled, "The 'Best Man's' best wishes for a Merry Christmas to Mary."

She laid her face down among the cool velvety petals and closed her eyes, drinking in the fragrance. Then she lifted each perfect bud and half blown flower to examine it separately, revelling in the sweetness and colour. Then the uncomfortable thought occurred to her that she was happier over this gift than she had been over the furs or the long-wished-for ring, and she began to make excuses to herself.

"Maybe if I'd always had them sent to me as Lloyd and Betty and the other girls have, it wouldn't seem such a big thing. But this is the first time. Of course it doesn't mean anything as it would if he had sent them to Lloyd. He is in love with her. Still—I'm glad he chose roses."

She touched the last one to her lips. It was so cool and sweet that she held it there a moment before she slipped out of bed and ran across the room to thrust the long stems into the water pitcher. She would ask the maid for a more fitting receptacle after awhile, but in the meantime she would keep them fresh as possible.

Stuart had an urgent round of professional visits to make and could not join them, and at the last moment some message came from the Orphanage in reference to the tree, which kept Eugenia at home to make some alteration in her plans. So when the time came to start only the four guests set out across the snowy lawn, down the woodland path leading to the village. They went Indian file at first in order that Phil might make a trail through the snow, until they reached the beaten path.

"I'll put it away in an envelope when I get back to the house," thought Mary. "When they all fade I'll save the leaves and make a potpourri of them like we made of Eugenia's wedding roses, and put them away in my little Japanese rose-jar, to keep always."

Then the music began, and she entered heartily into the beautiful Christmas service. The offering was to be divided among the various charities of the parish, it had been announced, and Mary, remembering the bright new quarter in her purse, was glad that she had earned that bit of silver herself. It made it so much more of a personal offering than if she had saved it from her allowance. She slipped her purse out of her jacket pocket as the prelude of the offertory filled the aisles and rose to the arches of the vaulted roof.

The man who carried the plate was slowly making his way towards the pew in which she sat, and with her gaze fixed on him, she began fumbling with the clasp of her purse, under cover of her muff. She had never seen such a rubicund portly gentleman, with two double chins and expansive bald spot on his crown. She held the coin between her fingers awaiting his slow approach. Just as he reached the end of their pew where Phil was sitting, she sneezed. Not a loud sneeze, but one of those inward convulsions that makes the whole body twitch spasmodically.

It sent a handful of petals from the wilted rose showering down into her lap. The coin dropped back into her purse as she made an instinctive grab to save them from going to the floor. Then blushing and embarrassed as the plate paused in front of her, she fumbled desperately in her purse to regain the dropped quarter. The instant the coin left her fingers she saw the mistake she had made, and reached out her hand as if to snatch it back. But it was too late, even if she had had the courage to reclaim it. She had dropped her English shilling into the plate instead of the quarter! Her precious talisman from the bride's cake, that she had carried as a pocket piece ever since Eugenia's wedding.

Betty, who sat next to her, was the only one who saw her confusion, and her sudden movement towards the plate after it passed. She glanced at her curiously, wondering at her agitation, but the next moment forgot it in listening to the wonderful voice that took up the solo.

But the solo, as far as Mary was concerned, might have been a siren whistle or a steam calliope. She was watching the man of the bald head and the double chins, who had walked off with her shilling. Down the central aisle went the pompous gentleman at last in company with two others, and the three plates were received by the rector and blessed and deposited on the altar, all in the most deliberate fashion, while Mary twisted her fingers and thought of desperate but impossible plans to rescue her shilling.

No feasible plan occurred to her, however. The choir passed out in slow recessional. The congregation as slowly followed. Mary loitered as long as possible, even going back for her handkerchief, which she had purposely dropped in the pew to give her an excuse to return. But her anxious glances revealed nothing. The vestry door was closed, and nobody was inside the chancel rail.

As they passed down the steps Phil turned to glance at a small bulletin board outside the door, on which the hours of the service were printed in gilt letters. "Dudley Eames, Rector," he read in a low tone. "Strange I never can remember that man's name, when Stuart is always quoting him. They are both great golf players, and were eternally making engagements with each other over the phone, when I was here last summer. I heard it often enough to remember it, I'm sure."