CHAPTER I
NANNIE’S THEATRE PARTY
“Yes, my dear, I went to the theetter myself once when I was quite a girl, younger ’n you be, I guess. ’Twas Uncle ’Bijah Lane that took me, ’n’ he was so upsot by their hevin’ a fun’ral all acted out on the stage, that he come home and told Ma ’twa’n’t no fit place for young girls to go to, ’n’ I ain’t never ben inside a theetter sence. Doos seem good to see play-actin’ agin after all these years, I declare it doos!”—and Miss Becky took up her sewing, which she had laid down in a moment of enthusiasm.
“If you liked it half as well as I like to do it, Miss Becky, you’d like it even better than you do now,” replied Lady Macbeth, with a cheerful gusto, somewhat at odds with her tragic character.
Nannie Ray, herself still very new to 197 the delights of theatre-going, had recently seen a great actress play Lady Macbeth, and, fired with the spirit of emulation, she had been enacting the sleep-walking scene for the benefit of her country neighbour. Miss Becky Crawlin lived only half a mile down the road from the old Ray homestead, where the family were in the habit of spending six months of the year. She and Nannie had always been great cronies, Miss Becky finding a perennial delight in “that child’s goin’s on.”
The “child” meanwhile had come to be sixteen years old, but no one would have given her credit for such dignity who had seen the incongruous little figure perched upon the slippery haircloth sofa, twinkling with delight at Miss Becky’s encomiums. She wore a voluminous nightgown, from under the hem of which a pink gingham ruffle insisted upon poking itself out; her long black hair hung over her shoulders in sufficiently tragic strands; her cheeks, liberally powdered with flour, gleamed treacherously pink through a 198 chance break in their highly artificial pallor, while portentous brows of burnt cork did their best to make terrible a pair of very girlish and innocent eyes. A touch of realism which the original Lady Macbeth lacked was given by a streak of red crayon which lent a murderous significance to the small brown hand.
“I declare!” her admiring auditor went on, stitching away to make up for lost time, “I can’t see but you do’s well’s the lady I saw—only she was dressed prettier, and went round with a wreath on her head. A wreath’s always so becomin’! We used to wear ’em May Day, when I was a girl. They was made o’ paper flowers, all colours, so’s you could suit your complexion, and when it didn’t rain I must say we looked reel nice. ’Twas surprisin’, though, how quick a few drops o’ rain would wilt one o’ them paper wreaths right down so’s you could scurcely tell what ’twas meant for.”
“Tell me some more about the girl with the wreath, Miss Becky,” said Lady Macbeth, longing to curl herself up in a 199 corner, but too mindful of her tragic dignity to unbend.
“Well, she looked reel pretty, but she didn’t hev sperit enough to suit my idees. She was kind o’ lackadaisical and namby-pamby, ’n’ when her young man sarsed her she didn’t seem to hev nothin’ to say for herself. I must say ’twas a heathenish kind of a play anyway, ’n’ I ain’t surprised that Uncle ’Bijah got sot agin it. The language wa’n’t sech as I’d ben brought up to, either.”
Lady Macbeth had leaned forward and was clasping her knees, thus unconsciously widening the expanse of pink gingham visible beneath the white robe. She was glad she had modified her Shakespeare to suit her listener, though “Out, dreadful spot!” was not nearly as bloodcurdling as the original.
Miss Becky, meanwhile, had not paused in her narration.
“There was a long-winded young man,” she was saying, “him that sarsed his girl, ’n’ he went slashin’ round, killin’ folks off in a kind of an aimless way, an’––” 200
“It must have been Hamlet that you saw!” cried Nannie, much excited. “Oh, I do so want to see Hamlet!”
“Yes, Hamlet; that was it. And then there was a ghost in it that sent the shivers down my back; ’n’ a king ’n’ queen; ’n’ the king looked for all the world like Deacon Ember, Jenny Lowe’s grandpa, that died before you was born; ’n’ I declare, I did enjoy it! ’Twas jest like bein’ alive in history times! Why, I ain’t had sech shivers down my spine’s the ghost give me, sence that day, till I seen you standin’ there tryin’ to wash your hands without any water, ’n’ your eyes rollin’ fit to scare the cat!”
“Would you like to have me do it again for you, Miss Becky?” asked Nan, springing to her feet with renewed ardour. And straightway she stationed herself at the end of the little room and began propelling herself forward with occasional erratic halts.
The September sunshine came slanting through the tiny panes of glass at the window, and touched with impartial grace 201 the youthful figure of distracted mien, the worsted tidies on the haircloth sofa, and the neat alpaca occupant of the stuffed “rocker.” Again the sewing was forgotten, and Miss Becky’s glittering spectacles were fixed upon the tragic queen. As the queer little figure stalked solemnly down the room, eyes fixed in a glassy stare, hands wringing one another distressfully; as a moving wail rent the air, to the effect that “all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,” a most agreeable succession of shivers made a highway of Miss Becky’s spine.
“Why don’t you ever go to the theatre now, Miss Becky?” Nannie asked, when, having laid aside her tragic toggery, she came in her own person to take her leave. “I should think you’d like to go again.”
“Oh, yes, I should be reel tickled to go again, but I ain’t got nobody to go with, and, well—there’s other reasons besides.”
Nannie blushed to think how inconsiderate she had been to force her old friend to allude, even indirectly, to her poverty, and she walked up the dusty road to her own gate, filled with compunction. Just outside the gate was a little wilderness of goldenrod and asters. She thought what a pity it was they should get so gray with dust. Poor things, they could not help it; they had to stay where chance had planted them unless somebody picked them and carried them away, and even then they left their roots behind them. Somehow they made her think of Miss Becky, living her little narrow, stationary life all alone in the old tumble-down farmhouse. And just at this point in her reflections a delightful scheme came into her head.
Now, Nannie was the recipient of a slender monthly allowance intended for gloves and ruchings, postage stamps, and the like, and, having spent the last four months far from the allurements of city shops, she happened at this juncture to be in funds. Her stock of gloves, to be sure, was pretty well exhausted, and Christmas was only a few months away. But Miss Becky was nearer still, and Nannie had no hesitation between the 203 two claims. As a natural consequence it happened that, one pleasant day early in October, Miss Becky, in her best black bonnet, found herself steaming up to Boston, about to do Nannie “a real favour” by chaperoning her to the theatre. Miss Becky was so much impressed by the gravity of her responsibility that she hardly took in the fact that she was going to the theatre herself!
They were to see The Shaughraun—a play which her best friend had assured Nannie was “just great”; and as the train rushed up to town the young hostess was at a loss to decide whether she was happier on her own account or on Miss Becky’s. To be sure, she was just a little disappointed about Miss Becky, who seemed curiously silent and stiff; and when they came out of the station and walked up the crowded city street, the old lady held her by the sleeve and looked bewildered and frightened.
“How long is it since you’ve been in Boston?” Nannie asked, looking up into the anxious old face framed in the black 204 silk bonnet which looked twice as old-fashioned as ever before.
“Not sence Sophia was married ’n’ we came up to select her weddin’ gownd. I was quite a girl then, an’ I guess I felt more at home in a crowd than I do now. We don’t often hev much of a crowd out our way.”
They were among the first to take their seats at the theatre. Mr. Ray had got places for them only three rows back from the stage, and, once established there, Nannie felt that they were in a safe haven, where her guest could grow calm and responsive again.
At first Miss Becky was almost too overawed to speak, but after a while she got the better of the situation and began telling Nannie all about Sophia and her “true-so,” and how they got lost on their way to the station and almost missed their train, which was the only train “out” in old times.
“I do hope we sha’n’t miss our train to-night, my dear! It doos seem’s though we might ’f they don’t begin pretty soon,” 205 and the old lady—for a very old lady she seemed to have become all of a sudden—fidgeted in her chair, and looked over her shoulder to see if the seats were not filling up.
“We sha’n’t lose our train, Miss Becky,” Nannie assured her. “You know it doesn’t go until half-past five o’clock, and the play is always over before five. And even if we did miss it we could take the seven-fifteen.”
“Oh, dear, no! I sh’d feel reel bad to miss the train. Why, it gits dark by six o’clock, ’n’ ’twouldn’t be safe for us to be goin’ round the city streets after dark. We might git garroted or, or—spoken to! Dear me! I wish they would begin!”
“If it gets late, Miss Becky, we won’t wait for the end of the play,” said Nannie, while a very distinct pang seized her at thought of missing anything.
“I think that would be better!” Miss Becky cried, with evident relief. “Don’t you think it might be better to go out a little early, anyway? They’ll be such a crowd when everybody tries to go out to 206 once that we might git delayed. My! what a sight of people there is already! And up in the galleries, too! Ain’t you ’most afeared to stay in sech a crowd?”
“Oh, no, Miss Becky. It’s just like this always, and nothing ever happens.”
“Them galleries don’t look strong enough to hold many people. Why, Nannie, see! They ain’t any pillows under ’em! What do you suppose keeps ’em up?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure; but they’re safe enough.”
At this point the orchestra struck up a popular tune and silence fell upon Miss Becky. She sat, stiff and severe, gazing straight before her, and when Nannie ventured to make a remark she received only a reproving look in reply.
How strange it was, Nannie thought! She had meant to give Miss Becky such a treat, and here sat her guest, looking anxious and distressed—yes, more anxious and distressed than she looked a year ago when her cow died. But then the play had not begun yet, Nannie reflected, with a gleam of hope. When the play 207 had once begun, Miss Becky would forget all her worries and be as “tickled” as she had counted on her being. And when once the curtain had gone up, Nannie at least had no more misgivings. Her fancy was instantly taken captive, first by the charming young officer and his pretty Irish sweetheart, then by the fine old priest, then by Con himself,—dear, droll, happy-go-lucky Con, with his picturesque foibles, his bubbling humour, and his phenomenal virtues. From the moment of his entry, with “Tatters” just not at his heels, Nannie was all smiles and tears.
Miss Becky, meanwhile, sat erect as a ramrod, a look of perplexity screwing her wrinkles all out of shape. Her bonnet had got somewhat askew from her constant effort to keep an eye on those unsupported galleries, and there was a general air of discomfort about her, which was the first thing that struck Nannie when, as the curtain fell upon the first act, she turned to look at her.
“Aren’t you enjoying it, Miss Becky?” she asked, with quick anxiety. 208
“Oh, yes, I’m hevin’ a reel pleasant time. ’T ain’t through yet, is it?”
“Why, no; it’s only just begun. There’s lots more! May Colby says that Con gets them all out of all their troubles and almost gets killed himself!”
“I sh’d think ’t would take a long time. Are you sure ’t ain’t most five o’clock?”
“Oh, no; it’s only three. See! And my watch is fast, too. Wasn’t it funny about the letter?”
“Well, I didn’t quite understand about that. What made ’em laugh so?”
“Why, that was because he couldn’t read, and so he had to make it all up out of his head.”
“Well!” declared Miss Becky, with strong disapproval, “I don’t think he’d ought to hev deceived his mother that way; do you?”
This was a poser; but at that moment the orchestra came to the rescue with a new tune, and Nannie was spared the necessity of replying.
After that the play became every moment more exciting and the central figure 209 more entirely captivating, and even between the acts Nannie was preoccupied and unobservant. They had got to the prison scene, with all its ingenious intricacies of plot and stage machinery; Con had accomplished the rescue, and was scrambling over the rocks, when suddenly the sharp report of a rifle rang out, followed by another, and then another, in quick succession.
Instantly Nannie felt her arm clutched, and she heard Miss Becky saying: “You must come right away, this very minute!”
“Oh, please not, Miss Becky,” she implored.
But there was a resolute gleam in Miss Becky’s eye.
“Come right along, child,” she whispered, hoarsely, “come right along with me!”—and poor Nannie, to her consternation and chagrin, found herself absolutely obliged to follow.
The whole row of people stood up to let them pass, and every kind of look—glances of amusement and curiosity, of annoyance and of sympathy—followed the 210 oddly assorted pair, as they made their way out of the slip and then up the aisle.
Once outside the door, the tension of Miss Becky’s face relaxed, but she did not waver in her determination.
“There, child!” she cried, as they walked down the slight incline of the long passageway to the street. “There! I am glad I had strength given me to do my duty by you!”
“But, Miss Becky, there wasn’t a bit of danger,” Nannie protested, bravely keeping the tears back in her cruel disappointment. “Really, there wasn’t. Won’t you please go back with me, and just stand inside the door and see the end of it? I’m sure they’d let us stand inside the door.”
“Nannie Ray,” Miss Becky replied, looking very fiercely at the girl’s flushed cheeks and imploring eyes, “if you knew as much about firearms as I do, you wouldn’t ask such a thing. But there! It’s jest because you’re young and inexperienced that your ma wanted me to come and look after you. I guess she’ll 211 be thankful she was so foresighted when she hears of the danger you was in.”
In her exultation and relief of mind, Miss Becky marched on, regardless of jostling crowds and thronging teams. Her whole attitude had changed. She was no longer the timid, shrinking old woman; she was the responsible guardian, aware of the importance of her charge, and nothing was ever to convince her that she had not as good as saved Nannie’s life on that occasion.
Then Nannie, as became a hostess, accepted the situation with the best grace in the world.
“I tell you what let’s do, Miss Becky,” she said. “Let’s go and get some ice-cream. That is, if you like it.”
The stern old face relaxed.
“Oh, yes; I like ice-cream, especially vanilla. But—do you think we’ve got time enough?”
“We’ve got an hour and a quarter before the train goes. Let’s come in here and get it.”
From the crowded street they passed 212 in at the doorway and walked between marble counters to what seemed to Miss Becky a scene in fairyland. Ascending two or three broad steps, on each side of which an antlered stag kept guard, they stepped upon a great carpeted space, lighted from above,—a space in the middle of which was a fountain, springing high into the air, and splashing back into a round basin lined with shining shells and pebbles, over and among which goldfish swam and dove like animated jewels. Ferns and palms grew all about the basin, and in among the greenery was a little table where Nannie and her guest sat hidden safe away from the world.
“Well, this doos beat all!” the old lady exclaimed, gazing at the fountain with an expression of rapt delight—just the expression that Nannie had counted upon seeing among the wrinkles.
“Do you like it?” she asked, all her disappointment and chagrin forgotten.
“Like it? Why, it’s the most tasty place I was ever in! It’s better than any play; it’s like bein’ in a play yourself! 213 Jest see them pillows supportin’ that gallery! ’N’ them picters of tropical fruits! ’N’ this ice-cream! Why, it’s different from what we hev at the Sunday-school picnics! ’Pears to me it’s more creamy!”
Now, at last, Miss Becky had lost all thought of the passage of time. She took her ice-cream, just a little at a time, off the tip-end of her spoon, and with every mouthful the look of content grew deeper. One of the little cakes that were served with the ice-cream was a macaroon with a sugar swan upon it—“a reel little statoo of a swan,” Miss Becky called it. She could not be persuaded to eat it, but she studied it with such undisguised admiration that Nannie ventured to suggest that she take it home with her. Again Miss Becky was enchanted. She wrapped it in her pocket-handkerchief, and placed it carefully in her reticule, whence it was to emerge only to enter upon a long and admired career as a parlour ornament.
“And now, Miss Becky,” Nannie queried, as they sat there embowered in palms 214 and ferns, listening to the plash of the fountain, “didn’t you enjoy the play at all?”
“Oh, yes,” said Miss Becky, “I had a very pleasant time before they got so reckless with their guns. But—I wonder whether they take sech pains with the the-etter’s they used to? Why, when I went with Uncle ’Bijah Lane that time, they all wore the most beautiful clothes. Even the men was dressed out in velvets and satins, and they wa’n’t anybody on the stage that didn’t make a good appearance.”
“But, you know, this was a different sort of play, Miss Becky. The folks in The Shaughraun weren’t kings and queens, but just every-day people.”
“Well, s’posin’ they was! I don’t see no excuse for that man Con goin’ round lookin’ so slack. I sh’d think he might at least git a whole coat to wear when he ’pears before the public!”
“I’m afraid you’re sorry you came,” said Nannie, very meekly, feeling quite ashamed of her poor little party.
“Oh, no, I ain’t! Why, child, I’d hev 215 come barefoot to see this place here, with the founting a-splashin’ and the fishes a-gleamin’! Barefoot, I tell ye!”
It was a forcible expression, yet Nannie was not quite reassured. She still demurred.
“But the play was the principal thing, you know.”
“The play? Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Becky, thoughtfully. “I don’t know’s I’m so terrible sot on the theetter’s I thought for. I’d a good deal ruther hev you come over ’n do that sleep-walkin’ piece for me. I don’t want nothin’ better’n that. ’F I can see you act that once in a while, ’n’ hev this here Garding of Eden to think about,—a founting playin’ right in the house, ’n’ all,—I ain’t likely to want for amusement.”
The best bonnet was still very much askew, but the pleasant old face within, whose wrinkles had resumed their accustomed grooves, was irradiated with a look of unmistakable beatitude; and somehow it was borne in upon Nannie that her theatre party had been a success after all.
CHAPTER I
OLIVIA’S SUN-DIAL
“It’s all we need to make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge.”
“Hm! And why must we have the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
Here was a deadlock—a thing quite shockingly out of place in a garden, and one’s own particular garden at that!
Olivia Page could make almost anything grow, as she had abundantly proved, but even her garden-craft could hardly suffice for the setting of a sun-dial on a pedestal of snow-white marble over there where the four triangular rose-beds converged to a circle, and where the south sun would play on it all day long.
For a year Olivia had dreamed of this, and, since she was not a churlishly reticent young person, it was not the first intimation 219 her father had received of her desire. Not until to-day, however, had she asked outright for what she wanted.
“I wish you would say something more,” she remarked, glancing sidewise at the professor’s deeply corrugated countenance, which, for all their intimacy, was sometimes difficult to decipher. She had heard of girls who could twist their parents round their fingers; she wondered how they did it.
The two were sitting on the white half-circle of a bench that stood at the west boundary of the old tennis-court, just where one end of the net used to be staked up. Excepting for that break, three sides of the garden were fenced in by the high wire screen originally designed to keep the tennis balls within bounds, and now doing duty as a trellis over which a luxuriant woodbine clambered, waving its reddening tendrils in the light September breeze. Wide flowerbeds bordered the entire court, the central turf being broken only by the cluster of rose-beds at the further end. From the 220 white bench one looked across the grass to a broad flight of veranda steps, flanked on the right by a mass of white boltonia, while on the left a superb growth of New England asters reared their sturdy heads.
The garden had been a great success this year, quite the admiration of the neighbourhood. Really, Papa must be proud of it, and it was all Olivia’s doing. Who would ever guess that it had had its modest beginnings in half a dozen tin cracker-boxes with holes bored in the bottoms, where, in March, two years ago, she had planted queer little brown seeds as hard as pebbles, which Nature had straightway taken in hand, softening and expanding them down there in the dark, till they came alive, and began feeling their way up to meet the sun. Ah, the bliss of seeing those first tiny shoots turn into stems and leaflets, ready to play their part in the great spring awakening! Would Olivia ever love any flowers quite as she had loved those first seedlings, especially a certain pentstemon, which 221 blossomed “white with purple spots,” exactly as the seed-catalogue had promised?
Yes, the garden was a great success, and just now it was at one of its prettiest moments, gay with autumn colours; the rudbeckia in its glory, and the great pink blossoms of the hibiscus spreading their skirts for all the world like ladies in an old-time minuet, while over yonder the soldier spikes of the flame-flower threatened to set the woodbine afire. Olivia loved the Latin names, but somehow “tritonia” did not seem to express those spikes of burning colour. And the roses! How lovely those late hybrids were! Why, the way that Margaret Dickson drooped her head above the pansies, still blooming freely at her feet, was enough to melt the heart of a Salem gibraltar! A pity that the professor’s attention seemed for the moment to be riveted upon the toe of his boot!
“I wish you would say something more,” Olivia repeated.
“Something different, you mean,” and Doctor Page smiled, benignly and stubbornly. 222
“For instance, you might tell me why you are opposed to it.”
“You wouldn’t understand.”
“I might; you said, only the other day, that I sometimes displayed almost human intelligence!”
The professor liked to have his jokes remembered; but still he seemed inclined to temporise.
“I might say that we couldn’t afford it. It is generally conceded that Alma Mater is not a munificent provider.”
“Yes; and you might say that my great-grandfather was not an East India trader—only you don’t tell fibs.”
“Or that a sun-dial is an anachronism.”
“You are too good a Latin scholar for that.”
“So a subterfuge won’t do? Very well; then you’ll have to put up with a psychological proposition.”
“How interesting!”
The professor glanced at the expectant young face turned toward him, and he could not but admit that his estimate of its owner’s intelligence had been well within the truth. 223
“You think a sun-dial would make it the prettiest garden in Dunbridge?”
“I’m sure it would.”
“And that is what you are aiming at?”
“Yes.”
“Now, I have noticed that when you have got what you are aiming at you lose interest in it.”
“O Papa!”
“There was tennis,” he went on, marking off the list on a combative forefinger, “and cookery; there was the Polyglot Club, and the Sketching Club, and––”
“But, Papa! They were every one of them good things, and I got a lot out of them; truly, I did.”
“No doubt; but as soon as you could play tennis, or sketch a pine tree, or toss an omelette a little better than the other girls, you had squeezed your orange dry.”
“But, Papa! I’ve stuck to gardening for more than two years!” Olivia’s tone seemed to give those years the dignity of centuries.
“True; but you haven’t got your sun-dial. You will consider that the finishing 224 touch, and then before we know it you will be wanting to turn the whole thing into a sand-garden for the little micks at the Corners.”
“Not such a bad idea,” Olivia admitted unguardedly.
“There you are! The mere mention of a new scheme is enough to set you agog!”
But this was not their first fencing match, and Olivia had learned to parry.
“I thought you believed in people being open-minded,” she ventured demurely.
“And so I do; but not so open-minded that for every new idea that comes in an old one goes out.”
“Oh, the sun-dial hasn’t got away yet,” she laughed, springing to her feet and going over to the court-end of the garden, where she placed herself in the exact centre of the converging rose-beds.
“There!” she cried; “don’t you see how my white gown lights up the whole place? It’s just the high light that it needs.”
And so it was: a fact of which no one 225 was better aware than the professor. As he, too, rose and sauntered toward the house he could not deny that Olivia’s ideas were usually good. The only trouble was that she had too many of them; and here was the kernel of truth that gave substance to his whimsical argument. The beauty of the garden was not lost upon him, nor yet the skill and industry of the young gardener. But more important than either was the advantage to the girl’s health. Olivia was sound as a nut; of course she was! There could be no doubt of that. But—so had her mother seemed, until that fatal winter ten years ago. He did not fear for Olivia; why should he? Only—well, this out-of-door life was a capital thing for anybody. No, he could not have her tire of her garden.
At the foot of the veranda steps Dr. Page paused and glanced again at his daughter. She had left the rose-beds and was already intent upon her work, pulling seeds from the hollyhocks over yonder. She made a pretty picture in her white 226 gown, standing shoulder-high among the brown stalks, her slender fingers deftly gleaning from such as showed no rust. The child was really very persistent about her gardening; she had fairly earned an indulgence. Perhaps, after all, she might be trusted. He moved a few steps toward her.
“Olivia,” he said,—and the first word betrayed his relenting,—“Olivia, your sun-dial scheme is not such a bad idea. I should rather like that white-petticoat effect myself. Supposing we say that if between now and next June you don’t think of anything you want more, we’ll have it.”
“Oh, you blessèd angel! What could I want more?”
“Time will show,” the blessèd angel replied, retracing his steps toward the house—unaided by angelic wings!
“Yes,” Olivia called confidently. “It’s the sun-dial that time will show, and afterward—why, the sun-dial will show the time!”—and although he made no sign, she knew there were little puckers 227 of amused approval about her father’s mouth.
As if she could ever want anything more than a sun-dial! she thought, while she passed along the borders, harvesting her little crop. She had finished with the hollyhocks, and now she was bending over a bed of withered columbines. And there were the foxglove seeds still clinging. Really, it was almost impossible to keep up. How brilliant the salvia was to-day, and what a brave second blossoming that was of the delphinium, its knightly spurs, metallic blue, gleaming in the sun!
“No,” she declared to herself, “there will never be anything so much worth while as the garden. Why, of course there won’t; because Nature is the best thing in the world—the very best.”
“Plase, ma’am, will ye gimme a bowkay?”
Olivia turned, startled by a voice so near at hand, for she had heard no footfall on the thick turf. There, in the centre of the grass-grown space, stood two comical little midgets, their smutty yet cherubic faces blooming brightly above garments highly coloured and earthy, too, as the autumn garden-beds.
“Dear me!” Olivia laughed, “how things do sprout in a garden! Did you come right up out of the ground?”
“Plase, ma’am, a bowkay! Me mudder’s sick an’ me fader’s goned away.”
The speaker, a boy of five, stood holding by the hand something in the way of a sister, about two sizes smaller. At Olivia’s little joke, which they did not in the least understand, they had both grinned sympathetically, showing rows of diminutive teeth as white and even as snow-berries.
“Bless your little hearts, of course you shall have a bouquet! Come and choose one,”—and taking a hand of each Olivia led them slowly along the brilliant borders.
They were a bit shy at first, but they soon picked up their courage, and Patsy fell to accumulating a mass of incongruous blossoms whose colours fought each other tooth and nail. Little Biddy, more modest, as beseemed her inferior rank in 229 the scale of being, fixed her heart upon a single flame-flower which absolutely refused to reconcile itself with the ingenuous pink of her calico frock.
“How long has your mother been ill?” Olivia asked of the boy, who by this time was quite hidden behind a perfect forest of asters and larkspur and lobelia cardinalis.
“Me mudder’s always sick. She coughs an’ coughs, and den she lays on de bed long whiles.”
“And she likes flowers?”
“Yes, ma’am; me an’ Biddy picked a bowkay outen a ashba’l oncet, an’ me mudder sticked it in a tumbler an’ loved it. Come, Biddy, make de lady a bow!” Upon which the small Chesterfield stood off a few steps and gave an absurd little bob of a bow which Biddy gravely endeavoured to imitate.
“I think I’ll go with you,” said Olivia, open-minded as ever to a new interest; and hand in hand and chattering amicably, the three moved across the turf and down the long gravel walk to the dusty street. Surprising how short the distance was between 230 the sweet seclusion of the old tennis-court and the squalid quarter where these little human blossoms grew!
Olivia was thinking of that as she stood on the veranda an hour later, looking down upon the flowery kingdom to which all her interest and ambition had been pledged. Yes, it was lovely, lovely in the long afternoon light, and it would have been lovelier still with the gleaming marble she had dreamed of. She really tried to keep her mind upon it, to forget the little drama over there in the stuffy tenement. But no; she was too good a gardener for that. Was not a whole family broken and wilting for lack of means to transplant it?
The doctor had ordered Mrs. O’Trannon to Colorado, and Mike had dropped his work as “finisher”—whatever that might be—and had gone out to prepare the way for the others to follow. He had found no chance to work at his trade, but he had got a job on a ranch, where the pay was small, but the living good. A fine place it would be for the invalid and the children, when once he could get together 231 the money to send for them. But meanwhile here they were, and the winter coming on.
As Olivia stood looking down upon her beloved garden, she could not seem to see anything but brown stalks and dead blossoms. All that lavish colour looked fictitious and transitory; she had somehow lost faith in it.
Mrs. O’Trannon had been pleased with the flowers; she had grown up on a farm, she said. Sure she never’d ha’ got sick at all if she’d ha’ stayed where she belonged. But then, where would Mike have been, and the babies? And where would Mike be, and the babies, Olivia thought with a pang,—where would they be if the mother wilted and died? She turned, suddenly, and passed in at the glass doors and on to her father’s study.
At sight of the kind, quizzical face lifted at her entrance, Olivia winced a bit. About an hour and a half it must be, since he said it, and he had given her a year! As if that made any difference! she told herself, with a little defiant movement of 232 the chin, as she crossed the room and seated herself at the opposite side of the big writing-table where she could face the music handsomely.
“Well, Olivia; changed your mind yet?” the professor inquired, struck, perhaps, by the resolution of her aspect.
“Yes,” she answered, in an impressive tone, “I’ve thought of something I should prefer to a sun-dial.”
Dr. Page took off his glasses and laid them upon his open book. He did not really imagine that she was serious—such a turn-about-face was too precipitate even for Olivia; but it pleased him to meet her on her own ground.
“And what is it this time? A sixty-inch telescope? Or a diamond tiara?”
“Well, no. Those are things I had not thought of—before! It’s a kind of gardening project—a little matter of transplanting.”
“Will it cost a hundred and fifty dollars?”
“About that, I should think, to do it properly and comfortably. And—it can’t 233 wait till June. It’s the kind of transplanting that has to be done in the autumn.”
Then, dropping the little fiction, and resting her chin upon her folded hands, the better to transfix her father’s mocking countenance,—“Papa,” she said, “there’s a poor family down at the Corners,—our neighbours, you know,—and the mother is dying for want of transplanting, just like the beautiful hydrangea—you remember?—that I didn’t understand about till it was too late. I never knew what too late meant, till I saw that splendid great bush lying stone-dead on the ground when we came home from the Adirondacks last year. A great healthy hydrangea dying just for lack of the right kind of soil! And now, here is this good human woman, that might live out her life and bring up her little family, and be happy and useful for years to come. Such a nice woman she must be to name her babies Patsy and Biddy, when she might have called them Algernon and Celestina, you know, and just spoiled it all!—and such a nice, kind husband to take care of her on a big ranch 234 where there’s good air, and lots to eat, and plenty of work and not too much, and—why Papa! they might have a garden out there! who knows? What a thing that would be for the prairie! A real New England garden!”
“With a sun-dial?” the professor interposed.
For an instant Olivia’s face fell, but only for an instant.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said, with a very convincing seriousness, “that perhaps a sun-dial is not so important, after all. At any rate it’s not so important as the mother of a family; now, is it, Papa?”
“That depends upon the point of view,” the professor opined. “As a high light among the rose-bushes I should be constrained to give my vote for the sun-dial.”
Olivia sprang to her feet.
“That means that you are coming straight over with me to see Mrs. O’Trannon,” she cried, “and that you are going to have the whole family packed off to Colorado quicker’n a wink! Come along, 235 please! There’s plenty of time before dinner!”
“It’s just another of Nature’s miracles!” Olivia observed, as she and her father stood one morning in late October watching the workmen pack the sods about the beautiful pedestal, now securely planted upon its base of cement and broken stone. “It always makes me think of the wonderful things that came up in those tin cracker-boxes you used to make such fun of. There really doesn’t seem to be any place too unlikely for Nature to set things going in.”
The marble was but roughly hewn, in lines that held the suggestion of an hourglass. The top only was smoothly finished, while here and there on the curving sides the hint of a leaf, a blossom, a trailing vine, came and went with the point of view, like cloud-pictures or the pencillings of Jack Frost. It was as if a ’prentice-hand had tried to express the soul of an artist, too self-distrustful to work more boldly. 236
“Funny, how things come into your head,” Olivia went on. “Do you know, Papa, that day when I was helping Mrs. O’Trannon with her preposterous packing and suddenly came upon this miracle hidden away under an old bedquilt, the only thing I could think of was the way my first pentstemons came out, ‘white with purple spots,’ exactly as I had chosen them by the seed-catalogue. And to think that she had bought it for a dollar of that poor stone-cutter’s widow that was moving out—bought it to make pastry on because the top was smooth and cold! And then had never had time to make but one pie in the three years! I wish you could have heard her tell about it. ‘Faith, it cost me a dollar, me one pie did, an’ Mike says it’s lucky it was that I didn’t make a dozen whin they come so high! Silly b’y, that Mike!’ O Papa, isn’t it heavenly that they’re together again?”
“So you think there is nothing Nature can’t do?” Dr. Page mused, with apparent irrelevance. “How about the sun-dial itself?” 237
“Oh, Nature will attend to that, too.”
“She will, will she? And in what particular tin cracker-box should you look for it to come up?”
“It wouldn’t be polite to say,” Olivia declared, looking with unmistakable significance straight into her father’s face.
“Saucebox!” he chuckled.
And when, in early June, the brass disk of the sun-dial had begun its record of happy hours, and still Olivia toiled with unabated zeal at her garden, the rose of health blooming ever brighter in her face, a great sense of satisfaction and approval took possession of her father’s mind. But he only remarked, in a casual manner, as they sat together on the white bench one fragrant sunset hour:
“After all, I’m not sure but Nature’s biggest miracle has been performed in the saucebox.”
And Olivia, smiling softly, answered: “I told you, you know, that there isn’t any place too unlikely for Nature to set things going in!”
BAGGING A GRANDFATHER
“I’ll warrant that ’he, she, or it’ will come! Di usually bags her game!”
The speaker, Mr. Thomas Crosby, must have had implicit faith in his daughter’s prowess to venture such a confident assertion as that, for he was quite in the dark as to who “he, she, or it” might be.
It was a cozy November evening, when open fires and friendly drop-lights are in order, and the three grown-folks of the family were enjoying these luxuries. Mr. Crosby was supposed to be reading his paper, but he had a sociable way of letting fall an occasional item of interest, or of letting fall the paper itself, at the first hint of interest in the remarks of his wife and daughter.
Only within a very short time had there been three grown-folks in the family, 241 unless, indeed, we count Rollo, the Gordon setter, who had attained his majority years ago. Di, who was but just turned sixteen, really did not like to remember how very recently she had been sent to bed at eight o’clock!
Could Mr. Crosby have guessed the scheme which was occupying the active brain of the young person engaged in embroidering harmless bachelor’s buttons upon a linen centrepiece, he would have been very much astonished,—whether pleasurably or otherwise, events alone must show. And since events had been taken in hand by Di the revelation was not likely to be long delayed.
The incident which had elicited her father’s declaration of confidence was a request on Di’s part to be allowed the privilege of inviting a guest of her own choosing to the Thanksgiving dinner. The family party was to be materially reduced this year, for Mrs. Crosby’s mother and sister, their only available relatives, were at that moment sojourning in Rome, where, if they were sufficiently 242 mindful of current maxims to do as the Romans do, they were very unlikely to meet with any satisfactory combination of turkey and plum-pudding. It was with that fact in view, that Di felt a fair degree of assurance in preferring her request. They all liked each other, of course, better than they liked anybody else, but, really, one must do something a little out of the common on Thanksgiving day.
“Certainly,” Di’s mother had agreed; “you shall invite any one you choose. I have been wishing we could think of some one to ask, but people all have their own family parties on Thanksgiving day. Is it to be one of your girl friends?”
“That is my secret,” Di had replied, sedately; “but, whoever it is, he, she, or it is a very important personage, and will have to be treated with great consideration!”
“And how is that very unimportant personage, Di Crosby, going to get hold of so great a dignitary?” Mrs. Crosby had laughingly inquired. At which 243 juncture Mr. Crosby had expressed his belief that Di would bag her game.
That the prospective dinner should be incomplete was all the harder, considering the fact that the Crosbys were, by good rights, the possessors of that most desired ornament of such an occasion,—a bona fide grandfather. Not only was old Mr. Crosby living, and in excellent health, but his residence was not above a dozen blocks removed from his son’s house. And yet no grandfather had ever graced their Thanksgiving feast.
Family quarrels are an unpleasant subject at the best, and since Di herself had never learned the precise cause of the long estrangement between father and son, in which the old gentleman had decreed that his son’s wife and children should share, it is hardly worth while to recount it here. Suffice it to say, that it was a very old quarrel indeed, older than Di herself, and one to which Mr. and Mrs. Crosby never alluded.
It was six years ago, when Di, the eldest of the children, was ten years of age, that 244 she had come home from school one day, breathless with excitement.
“Mamma!” she cried, bursting into the room where her mother was changing the baby’s frock: “Mamma! Have I got a grandfather?”
Mrs. Crosby glanced furtively at the round eyes of the baby, and took the precaution of smothering him in billows of white lawn before replying, rather softly: “Yes, dear; Papa’s father is living. Why do you ask?”
“I saw him to-day.”
“You saw him? Where?”
“On the street.”
“How did you know it was he?”
“Sallie Watson asked me why I didn’t bow to my grandfather.”
“And what did you say?”
“I said: ‘Never you mind!’ And then I ran home all the way, as tight as ever I could run! Mamma, why don’t we ever see him?”
The baby’s head was just emerging from temporary eclipse, and Mrs. Crosby’s voice dropped still lower, as she answered: 245
“Because, dear, he doesn’t wish it.”
There was something so gently conclusive in this answer that little Di was silenced. Yet the look in her mother’s face had not escaped her; a wistful, hurt look, such as the child had never seen there before. And in her own mind Di asked many questions.
What did it all mean? How did it happen that her grandfather did not wish it? Why was he so different from other girls’ grandfathers? There must be something very wrong somewhere, but where was it? Since it could not possibly be with her father or mother, it must be that her grandfather was himself at fault.
The object of Di’s perplexities, Mr. Horatio Crosby, lived all alone in a very good house, and was in the habit of driving about in a very pretty victoria; people bowed to him, people who were friends of Di’s father and mother, and must therefore be creditable acquaintances. All this she soon discovered, for, having once come to know her grandfather by sight, 246 she seemed to be constantly crossing his path.
Little by little, as she grew older, Di picked up certain stray bits of information, but she never tried to piece them together. She felt that she would a little rather not know any more. A quarrel there had certainly been, some time in the dark ages before she was born, and the old man had proved himself obstinate and implacable. Friendly overtures had been made from time to time, but he had set his face against all such advances, and now, for many, many years,—as many as three or four, little Di had gathered,—the friendly overtures had ceased.
One gets used to things, and Di got used to having a grandfather who did not know her by sight. She was sure he did not know her, because once, when she was twelve years old, he had stopped her on the street to tell her that she had dropped her pocket-handkerchief. It had been very polite of the old gentleman, and she had been glad not to lose her handkerchief. Yet, as she thanked him, she gave 247 him one searching look, and she told herself that he had a very cross expression, as well as a very harsh voice.
This uncomplimentary verdict was largely due to the fact that, at this period, Di had quite made up her mind that her grandfather was a hateful, unreasonable old despot, and that it served him right never to come to the family parties, nor to have any Christmas presents, nor to have seen the baby, which Mamma said was the prettiest of all her babies, and which Di considered the most enchanting object on the face of the earth.
But again many years had passed,—four, in this instance,—and there came a time, only a few weeks previous to the opening of our story, when Di found herself constrained to modify her view of her grandfather.
It happened that she had gone with her drawing teacher, Miss Downs, to an exhibition of paintings. Among the pictures was a very striking one entitled Le Grandpère. It represented an old French peasant, just stopping off work for the 248 day, with a flock of grandchildren clinging about his knees. Miss Downs called Di’s attention to the wonderful reach of upland meadow, and the exquisite effect of the sunset light on the face of the old man; but, to Di, the meadow and the sunset light were unimportant accessories to the central idea. It was the grandfather himself that commanded all her attention,—the look of blissful indulgence on the old man’s face; his attitude of protecting affection towards one young girl in particular, on whose head the toil-stained hand rested.
“Yes,” she said, after several minutes of rapt contemplation: “Yes; the sunset is very nice, and the fields; but, oh, the old man is such a darling!”
As she spoke she turned to see how her teacher took her remark, and found herself face to face, not with Miss Downs, but with her own grandfather! She gave a little gasp of surprise, which he appeared not to notice.
“So you think him a darling, do you?” he asked, and somehow his voice did not 249 sound quite as harsh as it had done four years ago.
Miss Downs had passed on, and there was no one standing near them, no one at all in the gallery who shared Di’s knowledge of the strange situation. She felt sure that the old man had no suspicion of her identity.
“Yes, I do,” she answered boldly.
“What makes a darling of him?” the old gentleman inquired.
Di felt that this was her opportunity, and that she was letting it slip. But she could not help herself, and she only answered rather lamely:
“Oh, nothing, except that he is such a good grandfather!” Upon which she beat a hasty retreat, and fled to the protection of Miss Downs, whom she found in an adjoining room.
It was perhaps twenty minutes later that Di and her teacher passed the picture again, and, behold, there was the old gentleman standing, lost in thought, exactly on the spot where she had left him. He did not seem to be looking at the 250 picture, but Di felt certain that he was thinking of it. And, suddenly, it passed through her mind like a flash that he was sorry.
“Yes; he’s sorry,” she said to herself. “He’s sorry, and he doesn’t know how to say so!”
The more she thought of it in the days that followed,—and she seemed to be thinking pretty much all the time of the old man and the look on his face as he stood before the picture,—the more convinced she became that he was sorry and did not know how to say so.
“And he ought not to have to say so,” she told herself. “He’s an old, old man, and he ought not to have to say that he is sorry.”
The old, old man—aged sixty-five—might have taken exception to that part of her proposition touching his extreme antiquity, but we may be pretty sure that he would have cordially endorsed her opinion that the dignity of his years forbade his saying that he was sorry.
In those days Di used to walk often 251 past her grandfather’s house. It was a very big house for a single occupant. Even the stout footman, whom she had once seen at the door, did not seem stout enough, nor numerous enough to relieve the big house of its vacancy. There were heavy woollen draperies in the parlor windows, but not a hint of the pretty white muslin which a woman would have had up in no time. Once she passed the house just at dusk, after the lights were lighted. Through the long windows she looked into the empty room. Not so much as a cat or a dog was awaiting the master. In the swift glance with which she swept the interior she noted that the fireplace was boarded in. That seemed to Di indescribably dreary. Perhaps her grandfather did not sit here; perhaps he had a library somewhere, like their own. But, no; there was the portly footman entering with the evening paper, which he laid upon the table before coming to close the shutters.
“He’s too old to say he is sorry,” Di said to herself, as she turned dejectedly 252 away; “a great deal too old—and lonely—and dreary!”
And it was on that very evening that she made her little petition to her mother, and that her father declared that Di was sure to bag her game.
Old Mr. Crosby, meanwhile, was too well-used to his empty house and to his boarded-in fireplace to mind them very much, too unaccustomed to muslin curtains to miss them. Yet he had not been on very good terms with himself for the past few weeks, and that was something which he did mind particularly.
The result of his long cogitation in front of the grandfather picture had been highly uncomplimentary to the artist. He pronounced the homespun subject unworthy of artistic treatment, and he told himself that it merited just that order of criticism which it had received at the hands of the young person with the rather pretty turn of countenance, who had regarded it with such enthusiasm. Nevertheless, he did not forget the picture,—nor yet the young person! 253
It was the afternoon of Thanksgiving day, and there was a light fall of snow outside. He remembered that in old times there used always to be a lot of snow on Thanksgiving day. Things were very different in old times. He wondered what would have been thought of a man fifty years ago,—or seventeen years ago, for the matter of that,—who was giving his servants a holiday and dining at the club. As if those foreign servants had any concern in the Yankee festival! But then, what concern had he, Horatio Crosby, in it nowadays? What had he to be thankful for? Whom had he to be thankful with? He was very lucky to have a club to go to! He might as well go now, though it was still two or three hours to dinner time. He would ring for his overcoat and snow-shoes.
His hand was on the bell-rope—for Mr. Horatio Crosby was old-fashioned, and had never yet admitted an electric button to his domain.
At that moment the door opened softly—what was Burns thinking of, not to 254 knock?—and there stood, not Burns, not Nora, but a slender apparition in petticoats, with a dash of snow on hat and jacket, and a dash of daring in a pair of very bright eyes.
“Good afternoon, Grandfather,” was the apparition’s cheerful greeting, and involuntarily the old gentleman found himself replying with a “Good afternoon” of his own.
The apparition moved swiftly forward, and, before he knew what he was about, an unmistakable kiss had got itself applied to his countenance and—more amazing still—he was strongly of the impression that there had been—no robbery!
Greatly agitated by so unusual an experience, he only managed to say: “So you are––?”
“Yes; I am Di Crosby,—your granddaughter, you know, and—this is Thanksgiving day!”
“You don’t say so!” and the old man gazed down at her in growing trepidation.
“Let’s sit down,” Di suggested, feeling that she gained every point that 255 her adversary lost. “This must be your chair. And I’ll sit here. There! Isn’t this cozy?”
“Oh, very!”
The master of the house had sufficiently recovered himself to put on his spectacles, the use of which was affording him much satisfaction. He really did not know that the young girl of the day was so pretty!
“I don’t suppose you smoke a pipe,” Di remarked, in a strictly conversational tone.
“Well, no; I can’t say I do. Why?”
“I only thought I should like to light one for you. You know,” she added, confidentially, “girls always light their grandfathers’ pipes in books. And I’ve had so little practice in that sort of thing!”
“In pipes?”
“No—in grandfathers!”
There came a pause, occupied, on Di’s part, by a swift, not altogether approving survey of the stiff, high-studded room. This time it was the old gentleman who broke the silence.