The Honorable Lemuel Hamilton sat in the private office of the American Consulate in Breslau, Germany, one warm day in July. The post had been brought in half an hour before, and he had two open letters on the desk in front of him. It was only ten o'clock of a bright morning, but he looked tired and worn. He was about fifty, with slightly grey hair and smoothly shaven face. He must have been merry at one time in his life, for there were many nice little laughing-wrinkles around his eyes, but somehow these seemed to have faded out, as if they had not been used for years, and the corners of his mouth turned down to increase the look of weariness and discontent.
A smile had crept over his face at his old friend Bill Harmon's spelling and penmanship, for a missive of that kind seldom came to the American Consulate. When the second letter postmarked Beulah first struck his eye, he could not imagine why he should have another correspondent in the quaintly named little village. He had read Nancy's letter twice now, and still he sat smoking and dreaming with an occasional glance at the girlish handwriting, or a twinkle of the eye at the re-reading of some particular passage. His own girls were not ready writers, and their mother generally sent their messages for them. Nancy and Kitty did not yet write nearly as well as they talked, but they contrived to express something of their own individuality in their communications, which were free and fluent, though childlike and crude.
What a nice girl this Nancy Carey must be! thought the American Consul. "This is such a jolly, confidential, gossipy, winsome little letter! Her first 'business letter' she calls it! Alas! when she learns how, a few years later, there will be no charming little confidences; no details of family income and expenditures; no tell-tale glimpses of 'mother' and 'Julia.' I believe I should know the whole family even without this photograph!--The lady sitting in the chair, to whom the photographer's snapshot has not done justice, is worthy of Nancy's praise,--and Bill Harmon's. What a pretty, piquant, curly head Nancy has! What a gay, vivacious, alert, spirited expression. The boy is handsome and gentlemanly, but he'll have to wake up, or Nancy will be the man of the family. The girl sitting down is less attractive. She's Uncle Allan's daughter, and" (consulting the letter) "Uncle Allan has nervous prostration and all of mother's money." Here Mr. Hamilton gave vent to audible laughter for the third time in a quarter of an hour. "Nancy doesn't realize with what perfection her somewhat imperfect English states the case," he thought. "I know Uncle Allan like a book, from his resemblance to certain other unfortunate gentlemen who have nervous prostration in combination with other people's money. Let's see! I know Nancy; friendly little Nancy, about fifteen or sixteen, I should judge; I know Uncle Allan's 'Julia,' who hems in photographs, but not otherwise; I know Gilbert, who is depressed at having to make his own way; the small boy, who 'is the nicest of us all'; Kitty, who beat all the others in getting to mother's shoulder; and the mother herself, who is beautiful, and doesn't say 'Bosh' to her children's ideas, and refuses to touch the insurance money, and wants Gilbert to show what 'father's son' can do without anybody's help, and who revels in the color and joy of a yellow wall paper at twenty cents a roll! Bless their simple hearts! They mustn't pay any rent while they are bringing water into the kitchen and making expensive improvements! And what Hamilton could be persuaded to live in the yellow house? To think of any one's wanting to settle down in that little deserted spot, Beulah, where the only sound that ever strikes one's ear is Osh Popham's laugh or the tinkle of a cow bell! Oh! if my own girls would write me letters like this, letting me see how their minds are growing, how they are taking hold of life, above all what is in their hearts! Well, little Miss Nancy Carey! honest, outspoken, confidential, clever little Nancy, who calls me her 'dearest Mr. Hamilton' and thanks me for letting her live in my yellow house, you shall never be disturbed, and if you and Gilbert ever earn enough money to buy it, it shall go to you cheap! There's not one of my brood that would live in it--except Tom, perhaps--for after spending three hundred dollars, they even got tired of dancing in the barn on Saturday nights; so if it can fall into the hands of some one who will bring a blessing on it, good old Granny Hamilton will rest peacefully in her grave!"
We have discoursed in another place of family circles, but it cannot be truthfully said that at any moment the Lemuel Hamiltons had ever assumed that symmetrical and harmonious shape. Still, during the first eight or ten years of their married life, when the children were young, they had at least appeared to the casual eye as, say, a rectangular parallelogram. A little later the cares and jolts of life wrenched the right angles a trifle "out of plumb," and a rhomboid was the result. Mrs. Hamilton had money of her own, but wished Lemuel to amass enough fame and position to match it. She liked a diplomatic life if her husband could be an ambassador, but she thought him strangely slow in achieving this dignity. No pleasure or pride in her husband's ability to serve his country, even in a modest position, ever crossed her mind. She had no desire to spend her valuable time in various poky Continental towns, and she had many excuses for not doing so; the proper education of her children being the chief among them. Luckily for her, good and desirable schools were generally at an easy distance from the jewellers' shops and the dressmakers' and milliners' establishments her soul loved, so while Mr. Hamilton did his daily task in Antwerp, Mrs. Hamilton resided mostly in Brussels or Paris; when he was in Zittau, in Saxony, she was in Dresden. If he were appointed to some business city she remained with him several months each year, and spent the others in a more artistic and fashionable locality. The situation was growing difficult because the children were gradually getting beyond school age, although there still remained to her the sacred duty of settling them properly in life. Agnes, her mother's favorite, was still at school, and was devoted to foreign languages, foreign manners, and foreign modes of life. Edith had grown restless and developed an uncomfortable fondness for her native land, so that she spent most of her time with her mother's relatives in New York, or in visiting school friends here or there. The boys had gone far away; Jack, the elder, to Texas, where he had lost what money his father and mother had put into his first business venture; Thomas, the younger, to China, where he was woefully lonely, but doing well in business. A really good diplomatic appointment in a large and important city would have enabled Mr. Hamilton to collect some of his scattered sons and daughters and provide them with the background for which his wife had yearned without ceasing (and very audibly) for years. But Mr. Hamilton did not get the coveted appointment, and Mrs. Hamilton did not specially care for Mr. Hamilton when he failed in securing the things she wanted. This was the time when the laughing-wrinkles began to fade away from Mr. Hamilton's eyes, just for lack of daily use; and it was then that the corners of his mouth began to turn down; and his shoulders to stoop, and his eye to grow less keen and brave, and his step less vigorous. It may be a commonplace remark, but it is not at these precise moments in life that tired, depressed men in modest positions are wafted by Uncle Sam to great and desirable heights; but to Mrs. Hamilton it appeared that her husband was simply indolent, unambitious, and unlucky; not at all that he needed to be believed in, or loved, or comforted, or helped, or braced! It might have startled her, and hurt her wifely pride, if she had seen her lonely husband drinking in little Nancy Carey's letter as if it were dew to a thirsty spirit; to see him set the photograph of the Carey group on his desk and look at it from time to time affectionately, as if he had found some new friends. It was the contentment, the hope, the unity, the pluck, the mutual love, the confidence, the ambition, of the group that touched his imagination and made his heart run out to them. "Airs from the Eden of youth awoke and stirred in his soul" as he took his pen to answer Nancy's first business communication.
Having completed his letter he lighted another cigar, and leaning back in his revolving chair clasped his hands behind his head and fell into a reverie. The various diplomatic posts that might be opened to him crossed his mind in procession. If A or B or C were possible, his wife would be content, and their combined incomes might be sufficient to bring the children together, if not quite under one roof, then to points not so far separated from each other but that a speaking acquaintance might be developed. Tom was the farthest away, and he was the dearest; the only Hamilton of the lot; the only one who loved his father.
Mr. Hamilton leaned forward abstractedly, and fumbling through one drawer of his desk after another succeeded in bringing out a photograph of Tom, taken at seventeen or eighteen. Then by a little extra search he found his wife in her presentation dress at a foreign court. There was no comfort or companionship in that, it was too furbelowed to be anybody's wife,--but underneath it in the same frame was one taken just after their marriage. That was too full of memories to hold much joy, but it stirred his heart, and made it beat a little; enough at any rate to show it was not dead. In the letter case in his vest pocket was an almost forgotten picture of the girls when they were children. This with the others he stood in a row in front of him, reminding himself that he did not know the subjects much more intimately than the photographers who had made their likenesses. He glanced from one family to the other and back again, several times. The Careys were handsomer, there was no doubt of that; but there was a deeper difference that eluded him. The Hamiltons were far more stylishly dressed, but they all looked a little conscious and a little discontented. That was it; the Careys were happier! There were six of them, living in the forgotten Hamilton house in a half-deserted village, on five or six hundred dollars a year, and doing their own housework, and they were happier than his own brood, spending forty or fifty times that sum. Well, they were grown up, his sons and daughters, and the only change in their lives now would come from wise or unwise marriages. No poverty-stricken sons-in-law would ever come into the family, with Mrs. Hamilton standing at the bars, he was sure of that! As for the boys, they might choose their mates in Texas or China; they might even have chosen them now, for aught he knew, though Jack was only twenty-six and Tom twenty-two. He must write to them oftener, all of them, no matter how busy and anxious he might be; especially to Tom, who was so far away.
He drew a sheet of paper towards him, and having filled it, another, and yet another. Having folded and slipped it into an envelope and addressed it to Thomas Hamilton, Esq., Hong Kong, China, he was about to seal it when he stopped a moment. "I'll enclose the little Carey girl's letter," he thought. "Tom's the only one who cares a penny for the old house, and I've told him I have rented it. He's a generous boy, and he won't grudge a few dollars lost to a good cause. Besides, these Careys will increase the value of the property every year they live in it, and without them the buildings would gradually have fallen into ruins." He added a postscript to his letter, saying: "I've sent you little Miss Nancy's letter, the photograph of her tying up the rambler rose, and the family group; so that you can see exactly what influenced me to write her (and Bill Harmon) that they should be undisturbed in their tenancy, and that their repairs and improvements should be taken in lieu of rent." This done and the letters stamped, he put the photographs of his wife and children here and there on his desk and left the office.
Oh! it is quite certain that Mother Carey's own chickens go out over the seas and show good birds the way home; and it is quite true, as she said, "One real home always makes another, I am sure of that!" It can even send a vision of a home across fields and forests and lakes and oceans from Beulah village to Breslau, Germany, and on to Hong Kong, China.
Mrs. Henry Lord sent out a good many invitations to the fairies for Cyril's birthday party, but Mr. Lord was at his critical point in the first volume of his text book, and forgot that he had a son. Where both parents are not interested in these little affairs, something is sure to be forgotten. Cyril's mother was weak and ill at the time, and the upshot of it was that the anger of The Fairy Who Wasn't Invited was visited on the baby Cyril in his cradle. In the revengeful spirit of that fairy who is omitted from these functions, she sent a threat instead of a blessing, and decreed that Cyril should walk in fear all the days of his life. Of course, being a fairy, she knew very well that, if Cyril, or anybody very much interested in Cyril, went to declare that there was no power whatever behind her curse, she would not be able to gratify her spite; but she knew also, being a fairy, that if Cyril got into the habit of believing himself a coward, he would end by being one, so she stood a good chance of winning, after all.
Cyril, when he came into the world, had come with only half a welcome. No mother and father ever met over his cradle and looked at him together, wondering if it were "well with the child." When he was old enough to have his red-gold hair curled, and a sash tied around his baby waist, he was sometimes taken downstairs, but he always fled to his mother's or his nurse's knee when his father approached. How many times he and his little sister Olive had hidden under the stairs when father had called mother down to the study to scold her about the grocer's bill! And there was a nightmare of a memory concerning a certain birthday of father's, when mother had determined to be gay. It was just before supper. Cyril, clad in his first brief trousers, was to knock at the study door with a little purple nosegay in his hand, to show his father that the lilac had bloomed. Olive, in crimson cashmere, was to stand near, and when the door opened, present him with her own picture of the cat and her new kittens; while mother, looking so pretty, with her own gift all ready in her hand, was palpitating on the staircase to see how the plans would work. Nothing could have been worse, however, in the way of a small domestic tragedy, than the event itself when it finally came off.
Cyril knocked. "What do you want?" came from within, in tones that breathed vexation at being interrupted.
Knock again! whispered Mrs. Lord. "Father doesn't remember that it's his birthday, and he doesn't know that it's you knocking."
Cyril knocked again timidly, but at the first sound of his father's irritable voice as he rose hurriedly from his desk, the boy turned and fled through the kitchen to the shed.
Olive held the fort, picture in hand.
It's your birthday, father, she said. "There's a cake for supper, and here's my present." There was no love in the child's voice. Her heart, filled with passionate sympathy for Cyril, had lost all zest for its task, and she handed her gift to her father with tightly closed lips and heaving breast.
All right; I'm much obliged, but I wish you would not knock at this door when I am writing,--I've told you that before. Tell your mother I can't come to supper to-night, but to send me a tray, please!
As he closed the door Olive saw him lay the picture on a table, never looking at it as he crossed the room to one of the great book-cases that lined the walls.
Mrs. Lord had by this time disappeared forlornly from the upper hall. Olive, aged ten, talked up the stairs in a state of mind ferocious in its anger. Entering her mother's room she tore the crimson ribbon from her hair and began to unbutton her dress. "I hate him! I _hate_ him!" she cried, stamping her foot. "I will never knock at his door again! I'd like to take Cyril and run away! I'll get the birthday cake and fling it into the pond; nothing shall stop me!". Then, seeing her mother's white face, she wailed, as she flung herself on the bed: "Oh, mother, mother,--why did you ever let him come to live with us? Did we _have_ to have him for a father? Couldn't you _help_ it, mother?"
Mrs. Lord grew paler, put her hand to her heart, wavered, caught herself, wavered again, and fell into the great chair by the window. Her eyes closed, and Olive, frightened by the apparent effect of her words, ran down the back stairs and summoned the cook. When she returned, panting and breathless, her mother was sitting quite quietly by the window, looking out at the cedars.
It was only a sudden pain, dear! I am all well again. Nothing is really the matter, Bridget. Mr. Lord will not be down to supper; spread a tray for him, please.
I'd like to spread a tray for him at the bottom of the Red Sea; that's where he belongs! muttered Bridget, as she descended to the kitchen to comfort Cyril.
Was it my fault, mother? asked Olive, bending over her anxiously.
Her mother drew the child's head down and leaned her own against it feebly. "No, dear," she sighed. "It's nobody's fault, unless it's mine!"
Is the pain gone?
Quite gone, dear.
Nevertheless the pain was to prove the final wrench to a heart that had been on the verge of breaking for many a year, and it was not long before Olive and Cyril were motherless.
Mr. Lord did not have the slightest objection to the growing intimacy between his children and the new family in the Yellow House, so long as he was not disturbed by it, and so long as it cost him nothing. They had strict orders not to play with certain of their village acquaintances, Mr. Lord believing himself to be an aristocrat; the fact being that he was almost destitute of human sympathy, and to make a neighbor of him you would have had to begin with his grandfather and work for three generations. He had seen Nancy and Gilbert at the gates of his place, and he had passed Mrs. Carey in one of his infrequent walks to the post-office. She was not a person to pass without mental comment, and Mr. Lord instantly felt himself in the presence of an equal, an unusual fact in his experience; he would not have known a superior if he had met one ever so often!
A very fine, unusual woman, he thought. "She accounts for that handsome, manly boy. I wish he could knock some spirit into Cyril!"
The process of "knocking spirit" into a boy would seem to be inconsistent with educational logic, but by very different methods, Gilbert had certainly given Cyril a trifling belief in himself, and Mother Carey was gradually winning him to some sort of self-expression by the warmth of her frequent welcomes and the delightful faculty she possessed of making him feel at ease.
Come, come! said the petrels to the molly-mocks in "Water Babies." "This young gentleman is going to Shiny Wall. He is a plucky one to have gone so far. Give the little chap a cast over the ice-pack for Mother Carey's sake."
Gilbert was delighted, in a new place, to find a boy friend of his own age, and Cyril's speedy attachment gratified his pride. Gilbert was doing well these summer months. The unceasing activity, the authority given him by his mother and sisters, his growing proficiency in all kinds of skilled labor, as he "puttered" about with Osh Popham or Bill Harmon in house and barn and garden, all this pleased his enterprising nature. Only one anxiety troubled his mother; his unresigned and mutinous attitude about exchanging popular and fashionable Eastover for Beulah Academy, which seat of learning he regarded with unutterable scorn. He knew that there was apparently no money to pay Eastover fees, but he was still child enough to feel that it could be found, somewhere, if properly searched for. He even considered the education of Captain Carey's eldest son an emergency vital enough to make it proper to dip into the precious five thousand dollars which was yielding them a part of their slender annual income. Once, when Gilbert was a little boy, he had put his shoulder out of joint, and to save time his mother took him at once to the doctor's. He was suffering, but still strong enough to walk. They had to climb a hilly street, the child moaning with pain, his mother soothing and encouraging him as they went on. Suddenly he whimpered: "Oh! if this had only happened to Ellen or Joanna or Addy or Nancy, I could have borne it _so_ much better!"
There was a good deal of that small boy left in Gilbert still, and he endured best the economies that fell on the feminine members of the family. It was the very end of August, and although school opened the first Monday in September, Mrs. Carey was not certain whether Gilbert would walk into the old-fashioned, white painted academy with the despised Beulah "hayseeds," or whether he would make a scene, and authority would have to be used.
I declare, Gilly! exclaimed Mother Carey one night, after an argument on the subject; "one would imagine the only course in life open to a boy was to prepare at Eastover and go to college afterwards! Yet you may take a list of the most famous men in America, and I dare say you will find half of them came from schools like Beulah Academy or infinitely poorer ones. I don't mean the millionaires alone. I mean the merchants and engineers and surgeons and poets and authors and statesmen. Go ahead and try to stamp your school in some way, Gilly!--don't sit down feebly and wait for it to stamp you!"
This was all very well as an exhibition of spirit on Mother Carey's part, but it had been a very hard week. Gilbert was sulky; Peter had had a touch of tonsillitis; Nancy was faltering at the dishwashing and wishing she were a boy; Julia was a perfect barnacle; Kathleen had an aching tooth, and there being no dentist in the village, Was applying Popham remedies,--clove-chewing, roasted raisins, and disfiguring bread poultices; Bill Harmon had received no reply from Mr. Hamilton, and when Mother Carey went to her room that evening she felt conscious of a lassitude, and a sense of anxiety, deeper than for months. As Gilbert went by to his own room, he glanced in at her door, finding it slightly ajar. She sat before her dressing table, her long hair flowing over her shoulders, her head bent over her two hands. His father's picture was in its accustomed place, and he heard her say as she looked at it: "Oh, my dear, my dear! I am so careworn, so troubled, so discouraged! Gilbert needs you, and so do I, more than tongue can tell!" The voice was so low that it was almost a whisper, but it reached Gilbert's ears, and there was a sob strangled in it that touched his heart.
The boy tiptoed softly into his room and sat down on his bed in the moonlight.
Dear old Mater! he thought. "It's no go! I've got to give up Eastover and college and all and settle down into a country bumpkin! No fellow could see his mother look like that, and speak like that, and go his own gait; he's just got to go hers!"
Meantime Mrs. Carey had put out the lamp and lay quietly thinking. The last words that floated through her mind as she sank to sleep were those of a half-forgotten verse, learned, she could not say how many years before:--
You can glad your child or grieve it!
You can trust it or deceive it;
When all's done
Beneath God's sun
You can only love and leave it.
Another person presumably on the way to Shiny Wall and Peacepool, but putting small energy into the journey, was that mass of positively glaring virtues, Julia Carey. More than one fairy must have been forgotten when Julia's christening party came off. No heart-to-heart talk in the twilight had thus far produced any obvious effect. She had never, even when very young, experienced a desire to sit at the feet of superior wisdom, always greatly preferring a chair of her own. She seldom did wrong, in her own opinion, because the moment she entertained an idea it at once became right, her vanity serving as a pair of blinders to keep her from seeing the truth. The doctors did not permit any one to write to poor Allan Carey, so that Julia's heart could not be softened by continual communication with her invalid father, who, with Gladys Ferguson, constituted the only tribunal she was willing to recognize. Her consciousness of superiority to the conditions that surrounded her, her love of luxury, the silken selfishness with which she squirmed out of unpleasant duties, these made her an unlikable and undesirable housemate, and that these faults could exist with what Nancy called her "everlasting stained-glass attitude" made it difficult for Mother Carey to maintain a harmonious family circle. It was an outburst of Nancy's impetuous temper that Mrs. Carey had always secretly dreaded, but after all it was poor Kathleen who precipitated an unforgettable scene which left an influence behind it for many months.
The morning after Mother Carey's interview with Gilbert she looked up as her door was pushed open, and beheld Julia, white and rigid with temper, standing on the threshold.
What is the matter, child? exclaimed her aunt, laying down her work in alarm.
Close behind Julia came Kathleen, her face swollen with tears, her expression full of unutterable woe.
Julia's lips opened almost automatically as she said slowly and with bitter emphasis, "Aunt Margaret, is it true, as Kathleen says, that my father has all your money and some of Uncle Peter's?"
Something snapped in Mother Carey! One glance at Kathleen showed only too well that she had committed the almost unpardonable sin of telling Julia what had been carefully and tenderly kept from her. Before she could answer Kathleen had swept past Julia and flung herself on the floor near her mother.
Oh, mother, I can't say anything that will ever make you understand. Julia knows, she knows in her heart, what she said that provoked me! She does nothing but grumble about the work, and how few dresses we have, and what a drudge she is, and what common neighbors we have, and how Miss Tewksbury would pity her if she knew all, and how Uncle Allan would suffer if he could see his daughter living such a life! And this morning my head ached and my tooth ached and I was cross, and all at once something leaped out of my mouth!
Tell her what you said, urged Julia inexorably.
Sobs choked Kathleen's voice. "I said--I said--oh! how can I tell it! I said, if her father hadn't lost so much of my father's and my mother's money we shouldn't have been so poor, any of us."
Kathleen, how could you! cried her mother.
If Julia wished to precipitate a tempest she had succeeded, and her face showed a certain sedate triumph.
Oh! mother! don't give me up; don't give me up! wailed Kathleen. "It wasn't me that said it, it was somebody else that I didn't know lived inside of me. I don't expect you to forgive it or forget it, Julia, but if you'll only try, just a little bit, I'll show you how sorry I feel. I'd cut myself and make it bleed, I'd go to prison, if I could get back to where I was before I said it! Oh! what shall I do, mother, if you look at me like that again or say 'How could you!'"
There was no doubting Kathleen's remorse; even Julia saw that.
Did she tell the truth, Aunt Margaret? she repeated.
Come here, Julia, and sit by me. It is true that your Uncle Peter and I have both put money into your father's business, and it is true that he has not been able to give it back to us, and perhaps may never do so. There is just enough left to pay your poor father's living expenses, but we trust his honor; we are as sorry for him as we can be, and we love him dearly. Kathleen meant nothing but that your father has been unfortunate and we all have to abide by the consequences; but I am amazed that my daughter should have so forgotten herself as to speak of it to you! (Renewed sobs from the prostrate Kathleen).
Especially, said Julia, "when, as Gladys Ferguson says, I haven't anybody in the world but you, to turn to in my trouble. I am a fatherless girl" (her voice quivered here), "and I am a guest in your house."
Mrs. Carey's blood rose a little as she looked at poor Kitty's shaken body and streaming eyes, and Julia's unforgiving face. "You are wrong there, Julia. I fail to see why you should not take your full share of our misfortunes, and suffer as much as we, from our too small income. It is not our fault, it is not yours. You are not a privileged guest, you are one of the family. If you are fatherless just now, my children are fatherless forever; yet you have not made one single burden lighter by joining our forces. You have been an outsider, instead of putting yourself loyally into the breach, and working with us heart to heart. I welcomed you with open arms and you have made my life harder, much harder, than it was before your coming. To protect you I have had to discipline my own children continually, and all the time you were putting their tempers to quite unnecessary tests! I am not extenuating Kathleen, but I merely say you have no right to behave as you do. You are thirteen years old, quite old enough to make up your mind whether you wish to be loved by anybody or not; at present you are not!"
Never had the ears of the Paragon heard such disagreeably plain speech. She was not inclined to tears, but moisture began to appear in her eyes and she looked as though a shower were imminent. Aunt Margaret was magnificent in her wrath, and though Julia feared, she admired her. Not to be loved, if that really were to be her lot, rather terrified Julia. She secretly envied Nancy's unconscious gift of drawing people to her instantly; men, women, children,--dogs and horses, for that matter. She never noticed that Nancy's heart ran out to meet everybody, and that she was overflowing with vitality and joy and sympathy; on the contrary, she considered the tribute of affection paid to Nancy as a part of Nancy's luck. Virtuous, conscientious, intelligent, and well-dressed as she felt herself to be, she emphatically did not wish to be disliked, and it was a complete surprise to her that she had not been a successful Carey chicken.
Gladys Ferguson always loved me, she expostulated after a brief silence, and there was a quiver in her voice.
Then either Gladys has a remarkable gift of loving, or else you are a different Julia in her company, remarked Mother Carey, quietly, raising Julia's astonishment and perturbation to an immeasurable height.
Now, Kathleen, continued Mother Carey, "Mrs. Godfrey has often asked you to spend a week with Elsie, and you can go to Charlestown on the afternoon train. Go away from Julia and forget everything but that you have done wrong and you must find a way to repair it. I hope Julia will learn while you are away to make it easier for you to be courteous and amiable. There is a good deal in the Bible, Julia, about the sin of causing your brother to offend. Between that sin and Kathleen's offence, there is little, in my mind, to choose!"
Yes, there is! cried Kathleen. "I am much, much worse than Julia. Father couldn't bear to know that I had hurt Julia's feelings and hurt yours too. I was false to father, and you, and Uncle Allan, and Julia. Nothing can be said for me, _nothing_! I am so ashamed of myself that I shall never get over it in the world. Oh, Julia, could you shake hands with me, just to show me you know how I despise myself?"
Julia shook hands considerably less like a slug or a limpet than usual, and something very queer and unexpected happened when her hand met poor Kitty's wet, feverish little paw and she heard the quiver in her voice. She suddenly stooped and kissed her cousin, quite without intention. Kathleen returned the salute with grateful, pathetic warmth, and then the two fell on Mother Carey's neck to be kissed and cried over for a full minute.
I'll go to the doctor and have my ugly tooth pulled out, exclaimed Kathleen, wiping her eyes. "If it hadn't been for that I never could have been so horrible!"
That would be all very well for once, answered her mother with a tired smile, "but if you pluck out a supposed offending member every time you do something wrong, I fear you will not have many left when you are an old lady!"
Mother! said Kathleen, almost under her breath and not daring to look up, "couldn't I stay at home from Charlestown and show you and Julia, here, how sorry I am?"
Yes, let her, Aunt Margaret, and then I can have a chance to try too, pleaded Julia.
Had the heavens fallen? Had the Paragon, the Pink of Propriety and Perfection, confessed a fault? Had the heart of the smug one, the prig, melted, and did she feel at last her kinship to the Carey chickens? Had she suffered a real grievance, the first amongst numberless deeds of tenderness, and having resented it like an "old beast," forgiven it like a "new" one? It certainly seemed as if Mother Carey that week were at her old trade of making things make themselves. Gilbert, Kathleen, and Julia had all fought their way under the ice-pack and were getting a glimpse of Shiny Wall.
Mother Carey walked down the village street one morning late in August, while Peter, milk pail in hand, was running by her side and making frequent excursions off the main line of travel. Beulah looked enchanting after a night of rain, and the fields were greener than they had been since haying time. Unless Mr. Hamilton were away from his consular post on a vacation somewhere on the Continent, he should have received, and answered, Bill Harmon's letter before this, she was thinking, as she looked at the quiet beauty of the scene that had so endeared itself to her in a few short months.
Mrs. Popham had finished her morning's work and was already sitting at her drawing-in frame in the open doorway, making a very purple rose with a very scarlet centre.
Will you come inside, Mis' Carey? she asked hospitably, "or do you want Lallie Joy to set you a chair on the grass, same as you had last time?"
I always prefer the grass, Mrs. Popham, smiled Mrs. Carey. "As it's the day for the fishman to come I thought we'd like an extra quart of milk for chowder."
I only hope he'll make _out_ to come, was Mrs. Popham's curt response. "If I set out to _be_ a fishman, I vow I'd _be_ one! Mr. Tubbs stays to home whenever he's hayin', or his wife's sick, or it's stormy, or the children want to go to the circus!"
Mrs. Carey laughed. "That's true; but as your husband reminded me last week, when Mr. Tubbs disappointed us, his fish is always fresh-caught, and good."
Oh! of course Mr. Popham would speak up for him! returned his wife. "I don't see myself as it makes much diff'rence whether his fish is good or bad, if he stays to home with it! Mebbe I look on the dark side a little mite; I can't hardly help it, livin' with Mr. Popham, and he so hopeful."
He keeps us all very merry at the Yellow House, Mrs. Carey ventured.
Yes, he would, remarked Mrs. Popham drily, "but you don't git it stiddy; hopefulness at meals, hopefulness evenin's, an' hopefulness nights!--one everlastin' stiddy stream of hopefulness! He was jest so as a boy; always lookin' on the bright side whether there was any or not. His mother 'n' father got turrible sick of it; so much sunshine in the house made a continual drouth, so old Mis' Popham used to say. For her part, she said, she liked to think that, once in a while, there was a cloud that was a first-class cloud; a thick, black cloud, clean through to the back! She was tired to death lookin' for Ossian's silver linin's! Lallie Joy's real moody like me; I s'pose it's only natural, livin' with a father who never sees anything but good, no matter which way he looks. There's two things I trust I shan't hear any more when I git to heaven,--that's 'Cheer up Maria!' an' 'It's all for the best!' As for Mr. Popham, he says any place'll be heaven to him so long as I ain't there, callin' 'Hurry up Ossian!' so we have it, back an' forth!"
It's a wonderful faculty, seeing the good in everything, sighed Mrs. Carey.
Wonderful tiresome, returned Mrs. Popham, "though I will own up it's Ossian's only fault, and he can't see his own misfortunes any clearer than he can see those of other folks. His new colt run away with him last week and stove the mowin' machine all to pieces. 'Never mind, Maria!' he says, 'it'll make fust-rate gear for a windmill!' He's out in the barn now, fussin' over it; you can hear him singin'. They was all here practicin' for the Methodist concert last, night, an' I didn't sleep a wink, the tunes kep' a-runnin' in my head so! They always git Ossian to sing 'Fly like a youthful hart or roe, over the hills where spices grow,' an' I tell him he's too old; youthful harts an' roes don't fly over the hills wearin' spectacles, I tell him, but he'll go right on singin' it till they have to carry him up on the platform in a wheeled chair!"
You go to the Congregational church, don't you, Mrs. Popham? asked Mrs. Carey. "I've seen Lallie and Digby at Sunday-school."
Yes, Mr. Popham is a Methodist and I'm a Congregationalist, but I say let the children go where they like, so I always take them with me.
Mrs. Carey was just struggling to conceal her amusement at this religious flexibility on Mrs. Popham's part, when she espied Nancy flying down the street, bareheaded, waving a bit of paper in the air.
Are you 'most ready to come home, Muddy? she called, without coming any nearer.
Yes, quite ready, now Lallie has brought the milk. Good morning, Mrs. Popham; the children want me for some new enterprise.
You give yourself most too much to 'em, expostulated Mrs. Popham; "you don't take no vacations."
Ah, well, you see 'myself' is all I have to give them, answered Mrs. Carey, taking Peter and going to meet Nancy.
Mother, said that young person breathlessly, "I must tell you what I didn't tell at the time, for fear of troubling you. I wrote to Mr. Hamilton by the same post that Mr. Harmon did. Bill is so busy and such a poor writer I thought he wouldn't put the matter nicely at all, and I didn't want you, with all your worries, brought into it, so I wrote to the Consul myself, and kept a copy to show you exactly what I said. I have been waiting at the gate for the letters every day for a week, but this morning Gilbert happened to be there and shouted, 'A letter from Germany for you, Nancy!' So all of them are wild with curiosity; Olive and Cyril too, but I wanted you to open and read it first because it may be full of awful blows."
Mrs. Carey sat down on the side of a green bank between the Pophams' corner and the Yellow House and opened the letter,--with some misgivings, it must be confessed. Nancy sat close beside her and held one edge of the wide sheets, closely filled.
Why, he has written you a volume, Nancy! exclaimed Mrs. Carey. "It must be the complete story of his life! How long was yours to him?" "I don't remember; pretty long; because there seemed to be so much to tell, to show him how we loved the house, and why we couldn't spend Cousin Ann's money and move out in a year or two, and a lot about ourselves, to let him see we were nice and agreeable and respectable."
I'm not sure all that was strictly necessary, commented Mrs. Carey with some trepidation.
This was Lemuel Hamilton's letter, dated from the office of the American Consul in Breslau, Germany.
MY DEAR MISS NANCY,--As your letter to me was a purely "business" communication I suppose I ought to begin my reply: "Dear Madam, Your esteemed favor was received on the sixth inst. and contents noted," but I shall do nothing of the sort. I think you must have guessed that I have two girls of my own, for you wrote to me just as if we were sitting together side by side, like two friends, not a bit as landlord and tenant.
Mother Carey's eyes twinkled. She well knew Nancy's informal epistolary style, and her facile, instantaneous friendliness!
Every word in your letter interested me, pleased me, touched me. I feel that I know you all, from the dear mother who sits in the centre--
What does he mean by that?
I sent him a snap shot of the family.
_Nancy_! What for?
So that he could see what we were like; so that he'd know we were fit to be lifelong tenants!
Mrs. Carey turned resignedly to the letter again.
From the dear mother who sits in the centre, to the lovable little Peter who looks as if he were all that you describe him! I was about his age when I went to the Yellow House to spend a few years. Old Granny Hamilton had lived there all her life, and when my mother, who was a widow, was seized with a serious illness she took me home with her for a long visit. She was never well enough to go away, so my early childhood was passed in Beulah, and I only left the village when I was ten years old, and an orphan.
Oh, dear! interpolated Nancy. "It seems, lately, as if nobody had both father and mother!"
Granny Hamilton died soon after my mother, and I hardly know who lived in the house for the next thirty years. It was my brother's property, and a succession of families occupied it until it fell to me in my turn. I have no happy memories connected with it, so you can go ahead and make them for yourselves. My only remembrance is of the west bedroom, where my mother lived and died.
The west bedroom; that isn't the painted one; no, of course it is the one where I sleep, said Mrs. Carey. "The painted one must always have been the guest chamber."
She could only move from bed to chair, and her greatest pleasure was to sit by the sunset window and look at the daisies and buttercups waving in that beautiful sloping stretch of field with the pine woods beyond. After the grass was mown, and that field was always left till the last for her sake, she used to sit there and wait for Queen Anne's lace to come up; its tall stems and delicate white wheels nodding among the grasses.
Oh! I do _like_ him! exclaimed Nancy impetuously. "Can't you _see_ him, mother? It's so nice of him to remember that they always mowed the hayfield last for his mother's sake, and so nice of him to think of Queen Anne's lace all these years!"
Now as to business, your Cousin Ann is quite right when she tells you that you ought not to put expensive improvements on another person's property lest you be disturbed in your tenancy. That sort of cousin is always right, whatever she says. Mine was not named Ann; she was Emma, but the principle is the same.
Nancy! asked Mrs. Carey, looking away from the letter again, "did you say anything about your Cousin Ann?"
Yes, some little thing or other; for it was her money that we couldn't spend until we knew we could stay in the house. I didn't describe her, of course, to Mr. Hamilton; I just told him she was very businesslike, and yes, I remember now, I told him you said she was a very fine person; that's about all. But you see how clever he is! he just has 'instinks,' as Mr. Popham says, and you don't have to tell him much about anything.
If you are intending to bring the water from the well into the house and put a large stove in the cellar to warm some of the upper rooms; if you are papering and painting inside, and keeping the place in good condition, you are preserving my property and even adding to its value; so under the circumstances I could not think of accepting any rent in money.
No rent! Not even the sixty dollars! exclaimed Nancy.
Look; that is precisely what he says.
There never was such a dear since the world began! cried Nancy joyously. "Oh! do read on; there's a lot more, and the last may contradict the first."
Shall I tell you what more the Careys may do for me, they who have done so much already?
So much! quoted Nancy with dramatic emphasis. "Oh, he _is_ a dear!"
My son Tom, when he went down to Beulah before starting for China, visited the house and at my request put away my mother's picture safely. He is a clever boy, and instead of placing the thing in an attic where it might be injured, he tucked it away,--where do you think,--in the old brick oven of the room that is now, I suppose, your dining room. It is a capital hiding-place, for there had been no fire there for fifty years, nor ever will be again. I have other portraits of her with me, on this side of the water. Please remove the one I speak of from its wrappings and hang it over the mantel shelf in the west bedroom.
My bedroom! I shall love to have it there, said Mother Carey.
Then, once a year, on my mother's birthday,--it is the fourth of July and an easy date to remember,--will my little friend Miss Nancy, or any of the other Careys, if she is absent, pick a little nosegay of daisies and buttercups (perhaps there will even be a bit of early Queen Anne's lace) and put it in a vase under my mother's picture? That shall be the annual rent paid for the Yellow House to Lemuel Hamilton by the Careys!
Tears of joy sprang to the eyes of emotional Nancy. She rose to her feet and paced the greensward excitedly.
Oh, mother, I didn't think there could be another such man after knowing father and the Admiral. Isn't it all as wonderful as a fairy story?
There's a little more; listen, dear.
As to the term of your occupancy, the Careys may have the Yellow House until the day of my death, unless by some extraordinary chance my son Tom should ever want it as a summer home.
Oh, dear! there comes the dreadful 'unless'! 'My son Tom' is our only enemy, then! said Nancy darkly.
He is in China, at all events, her mother remarked cheerfully.
Tom is the only one who ever had a bit of sentiment about Beulah, and he was always unwilling that the old place should be occupied by strangers. The curious thing about the matter is that you and yours do not seem to be strangers to me and mine. Do you know, dear little Miss Nancy, what brought the tears to my eyes in your letter? The incident of your father's asking what you could do to thank the Yellow House for the happy hour it had given you on that summer day long ago, and the planting of the crimson rambler by the side of the portico. I have sent your picture tying up the rose,--and it was so charming I was loath to let it go,--with your letter, and the snap shot of the family group, all out to my son Tom in China. He will know then why I have let the house, to whom, and all the attendant circumstances. Trust him never to disturb you when he sees how you love the old place. The planting of that crimson rambler will fix Tom, for he's a romantic boy.
The planting of the rose was a heavenly inspiration if it does 'fix Tom!' We'll call Tom the Chinese Enemy. No, we'll call him the Yellow Peril, laughed Nancy in triumph.
I am delighted with the sample of paper you have chosen for the front hall.
I don't see why you didn't go over to Germany yourself, Nancy, and take a trunk of samples! cried Mrs. Carey, wiping the tears of merriment from her eyes. "I can't think what the postage on your letter must have been."
Ten cents, Nancy confessed, "but wasn't it worth it, Muddy?--Come, read the last few lines, and then we'll run all the way home to tell the others."
Send me anything more, at any time, to give me an idea of the delightful things you are doing. I shall be proud if you honor me with an occasional letter. Pray give my regards to your mother, whom I envy, and all the "stormy petrels," whom I envy too.
Believe me, dear Miss Nancy,
Yours sincerely,
LEMUEL HAMILTON.
I can't remember why I told him about Mother Carey's chickens, said Nancy reflectively. "It just seemed to come in naturally. The Yellow Peril must be rather nice, as well as his father, even if he is our enemy. That was clever of him, putting his grandmother in the brick oven!" And here Nancy laughed, and laughed again, thinking how her last remark would sound if overheard by a person unacquainted with the circumstances.
A delightful, warm, kind, friendly letter, said Mother Carey, folding it with a caressing hand. "I wish your father could have read it."
He doesn't say a word about his children, and Nancy took the sheets and scanned them again.
You evidently gave him the history of your whole family, but he confines himself to his own life.
He mentions 'my son Tom' frequently enough, but there's not a word of Mrs. Hamilton.
No, but there's no reason there should be, especially!
If he loved her he couldn't keep her out, said Nancy shrewdly. "She just isn't in the story at all. Could any of us write a chronicle of any house we ever lived in, and leave you out?"
Mrs. Carey took Nancy's outstretched hands and was pulled up from the greensward. "You have a few 'instinks' yourself, little daughter," she said with a swift pat on the rosy cheek. "Now, Peter, put your marbles in the pocket of your blue jeans, and take the milk pail from under the bushes; we must hurry or there'll be no chowder."
As they neared Garden Fore-and-Aft the group of children rushed out to meet them, Kitty in advance.
The fish man didn't come, she said, "and it's long past his time, so there's no hope; but Julia and I have the dinner all planned. There wasn't enough of it to go round anyway, so we've asked Olive and Cyril to stay, and we've set the table under the great maple,--do you care?"
Not a bit; we'll have a real jollification, because Nancy has some good news to tell you!
The dinner isn't quite appropriate for a jollification, Kitty observed anxiously. "Is the news good enough to warrant opening a jar or a can of anything?"
Open all that doth hap to be closed, cried Nancy, embracing Olive excitedly. "Light the bonfires on the encroaching hills. Set casks a-tilt, and so forth."
It's the German letter! said Gilbert at a venture.
What is the dinner, Kitty? Mother Carey asked.
New potatoes and string beans from the aft garden. Stale bread made into milk toast to be served as a course. Then, not that it has anything to do with the case, but just to give a style to the meal, Julia has made a salad out of the newspaper.
Nancy created a diversion by swooning on the grass; a feat which had given her great fame in charades.
It was only the memory of Julia's last newspaper salad! she murmured when the usual restoratives had been applied. "Prithee, poppet, what hast dropped into the dish to-day?"
Julia was laughing too much to be wholly intelligible, but read from a scrap in her apron pocket: "'Any fruit in season, cold beans or peas, minced cucumber, English walnuts, a few cubes of cold meat left from dinner, hard boiled eggs in slices, flecks of ripe tomatoes and radishes to perfect the color scheme, a dash of onion juice, dash of paprika, dash of rich cream.' I have left out the okra, the shallot, the estragon, the tarragon, the endive, the hearts of artichoke, the Hungarian peppers and the haricot beans because we hadn't any;--do you think it will make any difference, Aunt Margaret?"
It will, said Nancy oracularly, "but all to the good."
Rather a dull salad I call it, commented Gilbert. "Lacks the snap of the last one. No mention of boned sprats, or snails in aspic, calves' foot jelly, iced humming birds, pickled edelweiss, or any of those things kept habitually in the cellars of families like ours. No dash of Jamaica ginger or Pain-killer or sloe gin or sarsaparilla to give it piquancy. Unless Julia can find a paper that gives more up-to-date advice to its country subscribers, we'll have to transfer her from the kitchen department to the woodshed."
Julia's whole attitude, during this discussion of her recent culinary experiments, was indicative of the change that was slowly taking place in her point of view. The Careys had a large sense of humor, from mother down as far as Peter, who was still in the tadpole stage of it. They chaffed one another on all occasions, for the most part courteously and with entire good nature. Leigh Hunt speaks of the anxiety of certain persons to keep their minds quiet lest any motion be clumsy, and Julia's concern had been of this variety; but four or five months spent in a household where mental operations, if not deep, were incredibly quick, had made her a little more elastic. Mother Carey had always said that if Julia had any sense of humor she would discover for herself what a solemn prig she was, and mend her ways, and it seemed as if this might be true in course of time.
What'll we do with all the milk? now demanded Peter, who had carried it all the way from the Pophams', and to whom it appeared therefore of exaggerated importance.
Angel boy! cried Nancy, embracing him. "The only practical member of the family! What wouldst thou suggest?"
Drink it, was the terse reply.
And so't shall be, my liege! Fetch the beaker, lackey, identifying Cyril with a royal gesture. "Also crystal water from the well, which by the command of our Cousin Ann will speedily flow in a pipe within the castle walls. There are healths to be drunk this day when we assemble under the Hamilton maple, and first and most loyally the health of our American Consul at Breslau, Germany!"
If the summer months had brought many changes to the dwellers in the Yellow House and the House of Lords, the autumn was responsible for many more. Cousin Ann's improvements were set in motion and were promised to be in full force before cold weather set in, and the fall term at Beulah Academy had opened with six new, unexpected, and interesting students. Happily for the Careys and happily for Beulah, the old principal, a faithful but uninspired teacher, had been called to Massachusetts to fill a higher position; and only a few days before the beginning of the term, a young college man, Ralph Thurston, fresh from Bowdoin and needing experience, applied for and received the appointment. The thrill of rapture that ran like an electric current through the persons of the feminine students when they beheld Ralph Thurston for the first time,--dignified, scholarly, unmistakably the gentleman,--beheld him mount the platform in the assembly room, and knew him for their own, this can better be imagined than described! He was handsome, he was young, he had enough hair (which their principals seldom had possessed), he did not wear spectacles, he had a pleasing voice, and a manner of speaking that sent tremors of delight up and down a thirteen-year-old spine. He had a merry wit and a hearty laugh, but one had only to look at him closely to feel that he had borne burdens and that his attainments had been bought with a price. He was going to be difficult to please, and the girls of all ages drew deep breaths of anticipation and knew that they should study as never before. The vice-principal, a lady of fine attainments, was temporarily in eclipse, and such an astounding love for the classics swept through young Beulah that nobody could understand it. Ralph Thurston taught Latin and Greek himself, but parents did not at first observe the mysterious connection between cause and effect. It was all very young and artless and innocent; helpful and stimulating too, for Thurston was no budding ladies' man, but a thoroughly good fellow, manly enough to attract the boys and hold their interest.
The entrance of the four Careys and two Lords into the list of students had an inspiring effect upon the whole school. So far as scholarship was concerned they were often outstripped by their country neighbors, but the Careys had seen so much of the world that they had a great deal of general culture, and the academy atmosphere was affected by it. Olive, Nancy, and Gilbert went into the highest class; Kathleen, Julia, and Cyril into the one below.
The intimacy of Nancy and Olive was a romantic and ardent one. Olive had never had a real companion in her life; Nancy's friends dotted the universe wherever she had chanced to live. Olive was uncommunicative, shy, and stiff with all but a chosen few; Nancy was at ease in all assemblies. It was Nancy's sympathy and enthusiasm and warmth that attracted Olive Lord, and it was the combination of Olive's genius and her need of love, that held Nancy.
Never were two human creatures more unlike in their ways of thought. Olive had lived in Beulah seven years, and knew scarcely any one because of her father's eccentricities and his indifference to the world; but had you immured Nancy in a convent she would have made a large circle of acquaintances from the window of her cell, before a month passed over her head. She had an ardent interest in her fellow creatures, and whenever they strayed from the strict path of rectitude, she was consumed with a desire to set them straight. If Olive had seen a drunken man lying in a ditch, she would scarcely have looked at him, much less inquired his name. Nancy would have sat by until he recovered himself, if possible, or found somebody to take him to his destination. As for the delightful opportunity of persuading him of his folly, she would have jumped at the chance when she was fifteen or sixteen, but as she grew older she observed a little more reticence in these delicate matters, at least when she was endeavoring to reform her elders. She had succeeded in making young Nat Harmon stop cigarette smoking, but he was privately less convinced of the error of his ways than he was bewitched by Nancy. She promised readily to wear a blue ribbon and sit on the platform in the Baptist Chapel at the Annual Meeting of the Junior Temperance League. On the eve of the affair she even would gladly have made a speech when the president begged her to do so, but the horror-stricken Olive succeeded in stopping her, and her mother firmly stood by Olive.
Oh! all right; I don't care a bit about it, Muddy, she answered nonchalantly. "Only there is something splendid about rising from a band of blue-ribboned girls and boys and addressing the multitude for a great cause." "What do you know about this great cause, Nancy dear, at your age?"
Oh, not much! but you don't have to know much if you say it loud and clear to the back settees. I've watched how it goes! It was thrilling when we gave 'Esther the Beautiful Queen' in the Town Hall; when we waved our hands and sang 'Haman! Haman! Long live Haman!' I almost fainted with joy.
It was very good; I liked it too; but perhaps if you 'faint with joy' whenever your feet touch a platform, it will be more prudent for you to keep away! and Mother Carey laughed.
Very well, madam, your will is my law! When you see the youth of Beulah treading the broad road that leadeth to destruction, and looking on the wine when it is red in the cup, remember that you withheld my hand and voice!
Gilbert and Cyril were much together, particularly after Cyril's standing had been increased in Beulah by the news that Mr. Thurston thought him a remarkable mathematician and perhaps the leading student in his class. Cyril himself, too pale for a country boy of fourteen, narrow-shouldered, silent, and timid, took this unexpected fame with absolute terror, but Olive's pride delighted in it and she positively bloomed, in the knowledge that her brother was appreciated. She herself secretly thought books were rather a mistake when paints and brushes were at hand, and it was no wonder that she did not take high rank, seeing that she painted an hour before school, and all day Saturday, alternating her work on the guest chamber of the Yellow House with her portrait of Nancy for Mother Carey's Christmas present.
Kathleen and Julia had fallen into step and were good companions. Kathleen had never forgotten her own breach of good manners and family loyalty; Julia always remembered the passion of remorse that Kathleen felt, a remorse that had colored her conduct to Julia ever since. Julia was a good plodder, and Mr. Thurston complimented her on the excellence of her Latin recitations, when he had his wits about him and could remember that she existed. He never had any difficulty in remembering Nancy. She was not, it must be confessed, especially admirable as a _verbatim et literatim_ "reciter." Sometimes she forgot entirely what the book had said on a certain topic, but she usually had some original observation of her own to offer by way of compromise. At first Mr. Thurston thought that she was trying to conceal her lack of real knowledge, and dazzle her instructor at the same time, so that he should never discover her ignorance. Later on he found where her weakness and her strength lay. She adapted, invented, modified things naturally,--embroidered all over her task, so to speak, and delivered it in somewhat different shape from the other girls. (When she was twelve she pricked her finger in sewing and made a blood-stain on the little white mull apron that she was making. The stuff was so delicate that she did not dare to attempt any cleansing process, and she was in a great hurry too, so she embroidered a green four leaf clover over the bloodstain, and all the family exclaimed, "How like Nancy!") Grammar teased Nancy, algebra and geometry routed her, horse, foot, and dragoons. No room for embroidery there! Languages delighted her, map-drawing bored her, and composition intoxicated her, although she was better at improvising than at the real task of setting down her thoughts in black and white. The class chronicles and prophecies and songs and poems would flow to her inevitably, but Kathleen would be the one who would give new grace and charm to them if she were to read them to an audience.
How Beulah Academy beamed, and applauded, and wagged its head in pride on a certain day before Thanksgiving, when there were exercises in the assembly room. Olive had drawn The Landing of the Pilgrims on the largest of the blackboards, and Nancy had written a merry little story that caused great laughter and applause in the youthful audience. Gilbert had taken part in a debate and covered himself with glory, and Kathleen closed the impromptu programme by reciting Tennyson's--
O young Mariner,
You from the haven
Under the sea-cliff,
You that are watching
The gray Magician
With eyes of wonder,...
follow the Gleam.
Great the Master,
And sweet the Magic,
When over the valley,
In early summers,
Over the mountain,
On human faces,
And all around me,
Moving to melody
Floated the Gleam.
O young Mariner,
Down to the haven,
Call your companion,
Launch your vessel
And crowd your canvas,
And, ere it vanishes
Over the margin,
After it, follow it,
Follow the Gleam.
Kathleen's last year's brown velveteen disclosed bronze slippers and stockings,--a novelty in Beulah,--her hair fell in such curls as Beulah had rarely beheld, and her voice was as sweet as a thrush's note; so perhaps it is not strange that the poem set a kind of fashion at the academy, and "following the gleam" became a sort of text by which to study and grow and live.
Thanksgiving Day approached, and everybody was praying for a flurry of snow, just enough to give a zest to turkey and cranberry sauce. On the twentieth it suddenly occurred to Mother Carey that this typical New England feast day would be just the proper time for the housewarming, so the Lord children, the Pophams, and the Harmons were all bidden to come at seven o'clock in the evening. Great preparations ensued. Rows of Jack o' Lanterns decorated the piazza, and the Careys had fewer pumpkin pies in November than their neighbors, in consequence of their extravagant inroads upon the golden treasures of the aft garden. Inside were a few late asters and branches of evergreen, and the illumination suggested that somebody had been lending additional lamps and candles for the occasion. The original equipment of clothes possessed by the Careys on their arrival in Beulah still held good, and looked well by lamplight, so that the toilettes were fully worthy of so important a function.
Olive's picture of Nancy was finished, and she announced the absolute impossibility of keeping it until Christmas, so it reached the Yellow House on Thanksgiving morning. When it was unwrapped by Nancy and displayed for the first time to the family, Mother Carey's lips parted, her eyes opened in wonder, but no words came for an instant, in the bewilderment of her mind. Olive had written the title "Young April" under the picture. Nancy stood on a bit of dandelion-dotted turf, a budding tree in the background, her arm flung over the neck of a Jersey calf. The calf had sat for his portrait long before, but Nancy had been added since May. Olive, by a clever inspiration, had turned Nancy's face away and painted her with the April breeze blowing her hair across her cheek. She was not good at painting features, her art was too crude, but somehow the real thing was there; and the likeness to Nancy, in figure, pose, and hair, was so unmistakable that her mother caught her breath. As for the calf, he, at least, was distinctly in Olive's line, and he was painted with a touch of genius.
It is better of the calf than it is of you, Nancy, said Gilbert critically.
Isn't Mr. Bossy lovely? his sister responded amiably. "Wouldn't he put any professional beauty out of countenance? I am proud to be painted beside him! Do you like it, Muddy dear?"
Like it? she exclaimed, "it is wonderful! It must be sent to Boston for criticism, and we must invent some way of persuading Mr. Lord to give Olive the best instruction to be had. This picture is even better than anything she has done in the painted chamber. I shouldn't wonder a bit, Nancy, if little Beulah were to be very proud of Olive in the years to come!"
Nancy was transported at her mother's praise. "I felt it, I knew it! I always said Olive was a genius," she cried, clapping her hands. "Olive is 'following the gleam'! Can't you feel the wind blowing my hair and dress? Don't you see that the calf is chewing his cud and is going to move in just a minute? Olive's animals are always just going to move!--Oh, Muddy dear! when you see Olive nowadays, smiling and busy and happy, aren't you glad you stretched your wings and took her under them with the rest of us? And don't you think you could make a 'new beast' out of Mr. Henry Lord, or is he too old a beast even for Mother Carey?"
That was just what Mother Carey was wondering when Nancy spoke, and as the result of several hours' reflection she went out for a walk just before dusk and made her way towards The Cedars with a package under her cloak.
She followed the long lane that led to the house, and knocked at the front door rather timidly. In her own good time Mrs. Bangs answered the knock and admitted Mrs. Carey into the dreariest sitting room she had ever entered.
I am Mrs. Carey from the Hamilton house, she said to Mrs. Bangs. "Will you ask Mr. Lord if he will see me for a moment?"
Mrs. Bangs was stupefied at the request, for, in her time, scarcely a single caller from the village had crossed the threshold, although there had been occasional visitors from Portland or Boston.
Mrs. Carey waited a few moments, silently regarding the unequalled bareness, ugliness, and cheerlessness of the room. "Olive has a sense of beauty," she thought, "and Olive is sixteen; it is Olive who ought to make this place different from what it is, and she can, unless her father is the stumbling-block in the way."
At this moment the possible stumbling-block, Henry Lord, Ph.D., came in and greeted her civilly. His manner was never genial, for there was neither love in his heart nor warm blood in his veins; but he was courteous, for he was an educated fossil, of good birth and up-bringing. He had been dissecting specimens in his workroom, and he looked capable of dismembering Mother Carey; but bless your heart, she had weapons in her unseen armory that were capable of bringing confusion to his paltry apparatus!--among others a delicate, slender little sword that pierced deep on occasion.
Henry Lord was of medium height; spare, clean-shaven, thin-lipped, with scanty auburn hair, high forehead, and small keen eyes, especially adapted to the microscope, though ill fitted to use in friendly conversation.
We are neighbors, Professor Lord, though we have never met, said Mrs. Carey, rising and giving him her hand.
My children know you better than I, he answered, "and I feel it very kind in you to allow them to call on you so frequently." They had lived at the Yellow House for four months save at meal times, but as their father was unaware of the number and extent of their visits Mrs. Carey thought it useless to speak of them, so she merely said:
It is a great pleasure to have them with us. My children have left many friends behind them in Massachusetts and elsewhere, and might have been lonely in Beulah; besides, I often think the larger the group (within certain limits), the better chance children have of learning how to live.
I should certainly not have permitted Olive and Cyril to attend the local academy but for your family, said Professor Lord. "These country schools never have any atmosphere of true scholarliness, and the speech and manners of both teachers and pupils are execrable."
I dare say that is often the case. If the academies could furnish such teachers as existed fifty years ago; and alas! if we parents could furnish such vigorous, determined, ambitious, self-denying pupils as used to be sent out from country homes, we should have less to complain of. Of course we are peculiarly fortunate here in Beulah.
Mr. Lord looked faintly amused and infinitely superior. "I am afraid, my dear lady," he remarked, "that you have not had long enough experience to comprehend the slenderness of Mr. Philpot's mental equipment."
Oh, Mr. Philpot resigned nearly three months ago, said Mrs. Carey easily, giving Henry Lord, Ph.D., her first stab, and a look of amusement on her own behalf. "Ralph Thurston, the present principal, is a fine, unusual fellow."
Really? The children have never mentioned any change, but I regret to say I am absent-minded at meals. The death of my wife left many gaps in the life of the household.
So that you have to be mother and father in one! (Stab two: very delicately delivered.)
I fear I am too much of a student to be called a good family man.
So I gathered. (Stab three. She wanted to provoke curiosity.)
Mr. Lord looked annoyed. He knew his unpopularity, and did not wish any village gossip to reach the ears of strangers. "You, my dear madam, are capable of appreciating my devotion to my life work, which the neighbors naturally wholly misunderstand," he said.
I gathered nothing from the neighbors, responded Mrs. Carey, "but a woman has only to know children well to see at a glance what they need. You are so absorbed in authorship just now, that naturally it is a little hard for the young people; but I suppose there are breathing places, 'between books'?"
There are no breathing places between mine; there will be six volumes, and I am scarcely half through the third, although I have given seven years to the work. Still, I have an excellent housekeeper who attends to all our simple needs. My children are not fitted for society.
No, not quite. (Stab four). "That is the reason they ought to see a good deal of it, but they are very fine children and very clever."
I am glad you think so, but they certainly write bad English and have no general knowledge whatsoever.
Oh, well, that will come, doubtless, when you have more time with them. (Stab five.) "I often think such mysterious things as good speech and culture can never be learned in school. I shouldn't wonder if that were our department, Dr. Lord!" (Stab six.) "However, you will agree, modest parent as you are, that your Olive is a genius?"
I have never observed it, replied her father. "I cannot, of course, allow her to practice on any musical instrument, because my studies demand quiet, but I don't think she cares for music."
She draws and paints, however, in the most astonishing way, and she has a passionate energy, and concentration, and devotion to her work that I have never seen coupled with anything but an extraordinary talent. She is destined to go very far, in my opinion.
Not too far, I hope, remarked Mr. Lord, with an icy smile. "Olive can paint on plush and china as much as she likes, but I am not partial to 'careers' for young women."
Nor am I; save when the gift is so commanding, so obvious, that it has to be reckoned with;--but I must not delay my business any longer, nor keep you from your work. We are having a housewarming this evening at seven. Olive and Cyril are there now, helping in the preparations, and I want to know if they may stay to supper, and if you can send for them at half past nine or ten.
Certainly they may stay, though I should think your supper table could hardly stand the strain.
Where there are five already, two more make no difference, save in better appetite for all, said Mother Carey, smiling and rising.
If you will allow me to get my hat and coat I will accompany you to the main road, said Mr. Lord, going to the front hall, and then opening the door for Mrs. Carey. "Let me take your parcel, please."
He did not know in the least why he said it and why he did it. The lady had interfered with his family affairs to a considerable extent, and had made several remarks that would have appeared impertinent, had they not issued from a very winsome, beautiful mouth. Mrs. Ossian Popham or Mrs. Bill Harmon would have been shown the door for saying less, yet here was Henry Lord, Ph.D., ambling down the lane by Mother Carey's side, thinking to himself what a burden she lifted from his shoulders by her unaccountable interest in his unattractive children. He was also thinking how "springy" was the lady's step in her short black dress, how brilliant the chestnut hair looked under the black felt hat, and how white the skin gleamed above the glossy lynx boa. A kind of mucilaginous fluid ran in his veins instead of blood, but Henry Lord, Ph.D., had his assailable side nevertheless, and he felt extraordinarily good natured, almost as if the third volume were finished, with public and publishers clamoring for its appearance.
I don't know where Olive could have got any such talent as you describe, he said, as they were walking along the lane. "She had some lessons long ago, I remember, and her mother used to talk of her amusing herself with pencil and paint, but I have heard nothing of it for years."
Ask to see her sketches when you are talking with her about her work some day, suggested Mother Carey. (Stab seven.) "As a matter of fact she probably gets her talent from you."
From me! Printed letters fail to register the amazement in Professor Lord's tone.
Why not, when you consider her specialty?
_What_ specialty?
Really, a slender sword was of no use with this man; a bludgeon was the only instrument, yet it might wound, and she only wanted to prick. Had the creature never seen Olive sketching, nor noted her choice of subjects?
She paints animals; paints nothing else, if she can help it; though she does fairly well with other things. Is it impossible that your study of zoology--your thought, your absorption for years and years, in the classification, the structure, the habits of animals--may have been stamped on your child's mind? She has an ardor equal to your own, only showing itself in a different manner. You may have passed on, in some mysterious way, your knowledge to Olive. She may have unconsciously blended it with some instinct for expression of her own, and it comes out in pictures. Look at this, Professor Lord. Olive gave it to me to-day.
They stood together at the gate leading out into the road, and Mrs. Carey unwrapped the painting and poised it against the top of the gate.
Olive's father looked at it for a moment and then said, "I am no judge of these things, technically or otherwise, but it certainly seems very creditable work for a girl of Olive's age."
Oh, it is surely more than that! My girl Nancy stands there in the flesh, though her face is hidden. Look at the wind blowing, look at the delightful, the enchanting calf; above all look at the title! Who in the world but a little genius could have composed that sketch, breathing youth in every inch of it,--and called it 'Young April'! Oh! Professor Lord, I am very bold, because your wife is not living, and it is women who oftenest see these budding tendencies in children; forgive me, but do cherish and develop this talent of Olive's.
The eyes the color of the blue velvet bonnet were turned full upon Henry Lord, Ph.D. They swam in tears and the color came and went in her cheek; she was forty, but it was a lovely cheek still.
I will think it over, he replied with some embarrassment as he wrapped the picture again and handed it to her. "Meantime I am certainly very much obliged to you. You seem to have an uncommon knowledge of young people. May I ask if you are, or have been, a teacher?" "Oh, no!" Mrs. Carey remarked with a smile, "I am just a mother,--that's all! Good night."
The housewarming was at its height, and everybody agreed once in every ten minutes that it was probably the most beautiful party that had ever happened in the history of the world.
Water flowed freely through Cousin Ann's expensive pipes, that had been buried so deep in their trenches that the winter frosts could not affect them. Natty Harmon tried the kitchen pump secretly several times during the evening, for the water had to run up hill all the way from the well to the kitchen sink, and he believed this to be a continual miracle that might "give out" at any moment. The stove in the cellar, always alluded to by Gilbert as the "young furnace," had not yet been used, save by way of experiment, but it was believed to be a perfect success. To-night there was no need of extra heat, and there were great ceremonies to be observed in lighting the fires on the hearthstones. They began with the one in the family sitting room; Colonel Wheeler, Ralph Thurston, Mr. and Mrs. Bill Harmon with Natty and Rufus, Mr. and Mrs. Popham with Digby and Lallie Joy, all standing in admiring groups and thrilling with delight at the order of events. Mother Carey sat by the fireplace; little Peter, fairly radiant with excitement, leaning against her knee and waiting for his own great moment, now close at hand.
"_When ye come into a house, salute it; and if the house be worthy, let your peace come upon it_. _To all those who may dwell therein from generation to generation may it be a house of God, a gate of heaven_.
"_For every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God, seeing that he giveth to every one of us life and breath and all good things_.
Mother Carey spoke these words so simply and naturally, as she looked towards her neighbors one after another, with her hand resting on Peter's curly head, that they hardly knew whether to keep quiet or say Amen.
Was that the Bible, Osh? whispered Bill Harmon.
Don't know; 'most everything she says sounds like the Bible or Shakespeare to me.
In the hush that followed Mother Carey's salutation Gilbert approached with a basket over his arm, and quickly and neatly laid a little fire behind the brass andirons on the hearth. Then Nancy handed Peter a loosely bound sheaf, saying: "To light this fire I give you a torch. In it are herbs of the field for health of the body, a fern leaf for grace, a sprig of elm for peace, one of oak for strength, with evergreen to show that we live forever in the deeds we have done. To these we have added rosemary for remembrance and pansies for thoughts."
Peter crouched on the hearth and lighted the fire in three places, then handed the torch to Kathleen as he crept again into his mother's lap, awed into complete silence by the influence of his own mystic rite. Kathleen waved the torch to and fro as she recited some beautiful lines written for some such purpose as that which called them together to-night.
"Burn, fire, burn! Flicker, flicker, flame! Whose hand above this blaze is lifted Shall be with touch of magic gifted, To warm the hearts of chilly mortals Who stand without these open portals. The touch shall draw them to this fire, Nigher, nigher, By desire. Whoso shall stand on this hearth-stone, Flame-fanned, Shall never, never stand alone. Whose home is dark and drear and old, Whose hearth is cold, This is his own. Flicker, flicker, flicker, flame! Burn, fire, burn![1]
"[Footnote 1: Florence Converse.]
Next came Olive's turn to help in the ceremonies. Ralph Thurston had found a line of Latin for them in his beloved Horace: _Tibi splendet focus_ (For you the hearth-fire shines). Olive had painted the motto on a long narrow panel of canvas, and, giving it to Mr. Popham, stood by the fireside while he deftly fitted it into the place prepared for it. The family had feared that he would tell a good story when he found himself the centre of attraction, but he was as dumb as Peter, and for the same reason.
Olive has another lovely gift for the Yellow House, said Mother Carey, rising, "and to carry out the next part of the programme we shall have to go in procession upstairs to my bedroom."
Guess there wan't many idees to give round to other folks after the Lord made _her_! exclaimed Bill Harmon to his wife as they went through the lighted hall.
Gilbert, at the head of the procession, held Mother Hamilton's picture, which had been taken from the old brick oven where "my son Tom" had hidden it. Mother Carey's bedroom, with its bouquets of field flowers on the wall paper, was gaily lighted and ready to receive the gift. Nancy stood on a chair and hung the portrait over the fireplace, saying, "We place this picture here in memory of Agatha, mother of Lemuel Hamilton, owner of the Yellow House. Underneath it we lay a posy of pressed daisies, buttercups, and Queen Anne's lace, the wild flowers she loved best."
Now Olive took away a green garland covering the words "_Mater Cara_," that she had painted in brown letters just over the bricks of the fireplace. The letters were in old English text, and a riot of buttercups and grasses twined their way amongst them.
_Mater Cara_ stands for 'mother dear,' said Nancy, "and thus this room will be full of memories of two dear mothers, an absent and a present one."
Then Kathleen and Gilbert and Julia, Mother Carey and Peter bowed their heads and said in chorus: "_O Thou who dwellest in so many homes, possess thyself of this. Thou who settest the solitary in families, bless the life that is sheltered here. Grant that trust and peace and comfort may abide within, and that love and light and usefulness may go out from this house forever. Amen_."
There was a moment's silence and then all the party descended the stairs to the dining room.
Ain't they the greatest? murmured Lallie Joy, turning to her father, but he had disappeared from the group.
The dining room was a blaze of glory, and great merriment ensued as they took their places at the table. Mother Carey poured coffee, Nancy chocolate, and the others helped serve the sandwiches and cake, doughnuts and tarts.
Where is Mr. Popham? asked Nancy at the foot of the table. "We cannot be happy without Mr. Popham."
At that moment the gentleman entered, bearing a huge object concealed by a piece of green felt. Approaching the dining table, he carefully placed the article in the centre and removed the cloth.
It was the Dirty Boy, carefully mended!
The guests naturally had no associations with the Carey Curse, and the Careys themselves were dumb with amazement and despair.
I've seen this thing layin' in the barn chamber in a thousand pieces all summer! explained Mr. Popham radiantly. "It wan't none o' my business if the family throwed it away thinkin' it wan't no more good. Thinks I to myself, I never seen anything Osh Popham couldn't mend if he took time enough and glue enough; so I carried this little feller home in a bushel basket one night last month, an' I've spent eleven evenin's puttin' him together! I don't claim he's good 's new, 'cause he ain't; but he's consid'able better'n he was when I found him layin' in the barn chamber!"
Thank you, Mr. Popham! said Mrs. Carey, her eyes twinkling as she looked at the laughing children. "It was kind of you to spend so much time in our behalf."
Well, I says to myself there's nothin' too good for 'em, an' when it comes Thanksgivin' I'll give 'em one thing more to be thankful for!
Quit talkin', Pop, will yer? whispered Digby, nudging his father. "You've kep' us from startin' to eat 'bout five minutes a'ready, an' I'm as holler as a horn!"
It was as cheery, gay, festive, neighborly, and friendly a supper as ever took place in the dining room of the Yellow House, although Governor Weatherby may have had some handsomer banquets in his time. When it was over all made their way into the rosy, bowery, summer parlor. Soon another fire sparkled and snapped on the hearth, and there were songs and poems and choruses and Osh Popham's fiddle, to say nothing of the supreme event of the evening, his rendition of "Fly like a youthful hart or roe, over the hills where spices grow," to Mother Carey's accompaniment. He always slipped up his glasses during this performance and closed his eyes, but neither grey hairs nor "specs" could dim the radiant smile that made him seem about fifteen years old and the junior of both his children.
Mrs. Harmon thought he sang too much, and told her husband privately that if he was a canary bird she should want to keep a table cover over his head most of the time, but he was immensely popular with the rest of his audience.
Last of all the entire company gathered round the old-fashioned piano for a parting hymn. The face of the mahogany shone with delight, and why not, when it was doing everything (almost everything!) within the scope of a piano, and yet the family had enjoyed weeks of good nourishing meals on what had been saved by its exertions. Also, what rational family could mourn the loss of an irregularly shaped instrument standing on three legs and played on one corner? The tall silver candle sticks gleamed in the firelight, the silver dish of polished Baldwins blushed rosier in the glow. Mother Carey played the dear old common metre tune, and the voices rang out in Whittier's hymn. The Careys all sang like thrushes, and even Peter, holding his hymn book upside down, put in little bird notes, always on the key, whenever he caught a familiar strain.
"Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold; Once more, with harvest-song and shout Is Nature's bloodless triumph told.
" "We shut our eyes, the flowers bloom on; We murmur, but the corn-ears fill; We choose the shadow, but the sun That casts it shines behind us still.
" "O favors every year made new! O gifts with rain and sunshine sent! The bounty overruns our due, The fulness shames our discontent.
"There was one watcher of all this, and one listener, outside of the Yellow House, that none of the party suspected, and that was Henry Lord, Ph.D.
When he left Mrs. Carey at the gate at five o'clock, he went back to his own house and ordered his supper to be brought him on a tray in his study. He particularly liked this, always, as it freed him from all responsibility of serving his children, and making an occasional remark; and as a matter of fact everybody was as pleased as he when he ate alone, the occasional meals Olive and Cyril had by themselves being the only ones they ever enjoyed or digested.
He studied and wrote and consulted heavy tomes, and walked up and down the room, and pulled out colored plates from portfolios, all with great satisfaction until he chanced to look at the clock when it struck ten. He had forgotten to send for the children as he had promised Mother Carey! He went out into the hall and called Mrs. Bangs in a stentorian voice. No answer. Irritated, as he always was when crossed in the slightest degree, he went downstairs and found the kitchen empty.
Her cub of a nephew has been staying to supper with her, guzzling and cramming himself at my expense, he thought, "and now she has walked home with him! It's perfect nonsense to go after a girl of sixteen and a boy of thirteen. As if they couldn't walk along a country road at ten o'clock! Still, it may look odd if some one doesn't go, and I can't lock the house till they come, anyway."
He drew on his great coat, put on his cap, and started down the lane in no good humor. It was a crisp, starlight night and the ground was freezing fast. He walked along, his hands in his pockets, his head bent. As he went through the gate to the main road he glanced up. The Yellow House, a third of a mile distant, was a blaze of light! There must have been a candle or a lamp in every one of its windows, he thought. The ground rose a little where the house stood, and although it could not be seen in summer because of the dense foliage everywhere, the trees were nearly bare now.
My handsome neighbor is extravagant, he said to himself with a grim smile. "Is the illumination for Thanksgiving, I wonder? Oh, no, I remember she said the party was in the nature of a housewarming."
As he went up the pathway he saw that the shades were up and no curtains drawn anywhere. The Yellow House had no intention of hiding its lights under bushels that evening, of all others; besides, there were no neighbors within a long distance.
Standing on the lowest of the governor's "circ'lar steps" he could see the corner where the group stood singing, with shining faces:--
"Once more the liberal year laughs out O'er richer stores than gems or gold.
"Mother Carey's fine head rose nobly from her simple black dress, and her throat was as white as the deep lace collar that was her only ornament.
Nancy he knew by sight, and Nancy in a crimson dress was singing her thankful heart out. Who was the dark-haired girl standing by her side, the two with arms round each other's waists,--his own Olive! He had always thought her unattractive, but her hair was smoothly braided and her eyes all aglow. Cyril stood between Gilbert and Mother Carey. Cyril, he knew, could not carry a tune to save his life, but he seemed to be opening his lips and uttering words all the same. Where was the timid eye, the "hangdog look," the shrinking manner, he so disliked in his son? Great Heavens! the boy laid his hand on Mrs. Carey's shoulder and beat time there gently with a finger, as if a mother's shoulder could be used for any nice, necessary sort of purpose.
If he knocked at the door now, he thought, he should interrupt the party; which was seemingly at its height. He, Henry Lord, Ph.D., certainly had no intention of going in to join it, not with Ossian Popham and Bill Harmon as fellow guests.
He made his way curiously around the outside of the house, looking in at all the windows, and by choosing various positions, seeing as much as he could of the different rooms. Finally he went up on the little back piazza, attracted by the firelight in the family sitting room. There was a noble fire, and once, while he was looking, Digby Popham stole quietly in, braced up the logs with a proprietary air, swept up the hearth, replaced the brass wire screen, and stole out again as quickly as possible, so that he might not miss too much of the party.
They seem to feel pretty much at home, thought Mr. Lord.
The fire blazed higher and brighter. It lighted up certain words painted in dark green and gold on the white panel under the mantelpiece. He pressed his face quite close to the window, thinking that he must be mistaken in seeing such unconnected letters as T-i-b-i, but gradually they looked clearer to him and he read distinctly "Tibi splendet focus."
Somebody knows his Horace, thought Henry Lord, Ph.D., as he stumbled off the piazza. "'For you the hearth-fire glows,' I shan't go in; not with that crew; let them wait; and if it gets too late, somebody else will walk home with the children."
For you the hearth-fire glows.
He picked his way along the side of the house to the front, every window sending out its candle gleam.
For you the hearth-fire glows.
From dozens of windows the welcome shone. Its gleams and sparkles positively pursued him as he turned his face towards the road and his own dark, cheerless house. Perhaps he had better, on the whole, keep one lamp burning in the lower part after this, to show that the place was inhabited?
For you the hearth-fire glows.
He had "bricked up" the fireplace in his study and put an air-tight stove in, because it was simply impossible to feed an open fire and write a book at the same time. He didn't know that you could write twice as good a book in half the time with an open fire to help you! He didn't know any single one of the myriad aids that can come to you from such cheery, unexpected sources of grace and inspiration!
For you the hearth-fire glows.
Would the words never stop ringing in his ears? Perhaps, after all, it would look queer to Mrs. Carey (he cared nothing for Popham or Harmon opinion) if he left the children to get home by themselves. Perhaps--
FOR YOU THE HEARTH-FIRE GLOWS.
Henry Lord, Ph.D., ascended the steps, and plied the knocker. Digby Popham came out of the parlor and opened the front door.
Everybody listened to see who was the late comer at the party.
Will you kindly tell Miss Olive and Master Cyril Lord that their father has called for them?
Mr. Lord's cold, severe voice sounded clearly in the parlor, and every word could be distinctly heard.
Gilbert and Nancy were standing together, and Gilbert whispered instantly to his sister: "The old beast has actually called for Olive and Cyril!"
Hush, Gilly! He must be a 'new beast' or he wouldn't have come at all! answered Nancy.
December, January, and February passed with a speed that had something of magic in it. The Careys had known nothing heretofore of the rigors of a State o' Maine winter, but as yet they counted it all joy. They were young and hearty and merry, and the air seemed to give them all new energy. Kathleen's delicate throat gave no trouble for the first time in years; Nancy's cheeks bloomed more like roses than ever; Gilbert, growing broader shouldered and deeper chested daily, simply revelled in skating and coasting; even Julia was forced into an activity wholly alien to her nature, because it was impossible for her to keep warm unless she kept busy.
Mother Carey and Peter used to look from a bedroom window of a clear cold morning and see the gay little procession start for the academy. Over the dazzling snow crust Olive and Cyril Lord would be skimming to meet the Careys, always at the same point at the same hour. There were rough red coats and capes, red mittens, squirrel caps pulled well down over curly and smooth heads; glimpses of red woolen stockings; thick shoes with rubbers over them; great parcels of books in straps. They looked like a flock of cardinal birds, Mother Carey thought, as the upturned faces, all aglow with ruddy color, smiled their morning good-bye. Gilbert had "stoked" the great stove in the cellar full of hard wood logs before he left, and Mrs. Carey and Peter had a busy morning before them with the housework. The family had risen at seven. Julia had swept and dusted; Kathleen had opened the bedroom windows, made the washstands tidy, filled the water pitchers, and changed the towels. Gilbert had carried wood and Peter kindlings, for the fires that had to be laid on the hearths here and there. Mother had cooked the plain breakfast while Nancy put the dining room in order and set the table, and at eight o'clock, when they sat down to plates piled high with slices of brown and white bread, to dishes of eggs or picked-up cod fish, or beans warmed over in the pot, with baked potatoes sometimes, and sometimes milk toast, or Nancy's famous corn muffins, no family of young bears ever displayed such appetites! On Saturday mornings there were griddle cakes and maple syrup from their own trees; for Osh Popham had shown them in the spring how to tap their maples, and collect the great pails of sap to boil down into syrup. Mother Carey and Peter made the beds after the departure of the others for school, and it was pretty to see the sturdy Peter-bird, sometimes in his coat and mittens, standing on the easiest side of the beds and helping his mother to spread the blankets and comforters smooth. His fat legs carried him up and downstairs a dozen times on errands, while his sweet piping voice was lifted in a never ending stream of genial conversation, as he told his mother what he had just done, what he was doing at the present moment, how he was doing it, and what he proposed to do in a minute or two. Then there was a lull from half past ten to half past eleven, shortened sometimes on baking days, when the Peter-bird had his lessons. The old-fashioned kitchen was clean and shining by that time. The stove glistened and the fire snapped and crackled. The sun beamed in at the sink window, doing all he could for the climate in the few hours he was permitted to be on duty in a short New England winter day. Peter sat on a cricket beside his mother's chair and clasped his "Reading without Tears" earnestly and rigidly, believing it to be the key to the universe. Oh! what an hour of happiness to Mother Carey when the boy would lift the very copy of his father's face to her own; when the well-remembered smile and the dear twinkle of the eyes in Peter's face would give her heart a stab of pain that was half joy after all, it was so full to the brim of sweet memories. In that warm still hour, when she was filling the Peter-bird's mind and soul with heavenly learning, how much she learned herself! Love poured from her, through voice and lips and eyes, and in return she drank it in thirstily from the little creature who sat there at her knee, a twig growing just as her bending hand inclined it; all the buds of his nature opening out in the mother-sunshine that surrounded him. Eleven thirty came all too soon. Then before long the kettle would begin to sing, the potatoes to bubble in the saucepan, and Mother Carey's spoon to stir the good things that had long been sizzling quietly in an iron pot. Sometimes it was bits of beef, sometimes mutton, but the result was mostly a toothsome mixture of turnips and carrots and onions in a sea of delicious gravy, with surprises of meat here and there to vary any possible monotony. Once or twice a week dumplings appeared, giving an air of excitement to the meal, and there was a delectable "poor man's stew" learned from Mrs. Popham; the ingredients being strips of parsnip, potatoes cut in quarters, a slice or two of sweet browned pork for a flavor, and a quart of rich milk, mixed with the parsnip juices into an appetizing sauce. The after part of the dinner would be a dish of baked apples with warm gingerbread, or sometimes a deep apple pandowdy, or the baked Indian pudding that was a syrupy, fragrant concoction made of corn meal and butter and molasses baked patiently in the oven for hours.
Mother had the dishes to wash after she had tucked the Peter-bird under the afghan on the sitting room sofa for his daily nap, but there was never any grumbling in her heart over the weary days and the unaccustomed tasks; she was too busy "making things make themselves." If only there were a little more money! That was her chief anxiety; for the unexpected, the outside sources of income were growing fewer, and in a year's time the little hoard would be woefully small. Was she doing all that she could, she wondered, as her steps flew over the Yellow House from attic to cellar. She could play the piano and sing; she could speak three languages and read four; she had made her curtsy at two foreign courts; admiration and love had followed her ever since she could remember, and here she was, a widow at forty, living in a half-deserted New England village, making parsnip stews for her children's dinner. Well, it was a time of preparation, and its rigors and self-denials must be cheer fully faced. She ought to be thankful that she was able to get a simple dinner that her children could eat; she ought to be thankful that her beef and parsnip stews and cracker puddings and corn bread were being transmuted into blood and brawn and brain-tissue, to help the world along somewhere a little later! She ought to be grateful that it was her blessed fortune to be sending four rosy, laughing, vigorous young people down the snowy street to the white-painted academy; that it was her good luck to see four heads bending eagerly over their books around the evening lamp, and have them all turn to her for help and encouragement in the hard places. Why should she complain, so long as the stormy petrels were all working and playing in Mother Carey's water garden where they ought to be; gathering strength to fly over or dive under the ice-pack and climb Shiny Wall? There is never any gate in the wall; Tom the Water Baby had found that out for himself; so it is only the plucky ones who are able to surmount the thousand difficulties they encounter on their hazardous journey to Peacepool. How else, if they had not learned themselves, could Mother Carey's chickens go out over the seas and show good birds the way home? At such moments Mrs. Carey would look at her image in the glass and say, "No whimpering, madam! You can't have the joys of motherhood without some of its pangs! Think of your blessings, and don't be a coward!--
"Who sweeps a room as by God's laws Makes that and th' action fine.
"Then her eyes would turn from blue velvet to blue steel, and strength would flow into her from some divine, benignant source and transmute her into father as well as mother!
Was the hearth fire kindled in the Yellow House sending its glow through the village as well as warming those who sat beside it? There were Christmas and New Year's and St. Valentine parties, and by that time Bill Harmon saw the woodpile in the Carey shed grow beautifully less. He knew the price per cord,--no man better; but he and Osh Popham winked at each other one windy February day and delivered three cords for two, knowing that measurement of wood had not been included in Mother Carey's education. Natty Harmon and Digby Popham, following examples a million per cent better than parental lectures, asked one afternoon if they shouldn't saw and chop some big logs for the fireplaces.
Mrs. Carey looked at them searchingly, wondering if they could possibly guess the state of her finances, concluded they couldn't and said smilingly: "Indeed I will gladly let you saw for an hour or two if you'll come and sit by the fire on Saturday night, when we are going to play spelling games and have doughnuts and root beer."
The Widow Berry, who kept academy boarders, sent in a luscious mince pie now and then, and Mrs. Popham and Mrs. Harmon brought dried apples or pumpkins, winter beets and Baldwin apples. It was little enough, they thought, when the Yellow House, so long vacant, was like a beacon light to the dull village; sending out its beams on every side.
She ain't no kind of a manager, I'm 'fraid! said Bill Harmon. "I give her 'bout four quarts and a half of kerosene for a gallon every time she sends her can to be filled, but bless you, she ain't any the wiser! I try to give her as good measure in everything as she gives my children, but you can't keep up with her! She's like the sun, that shines on the just 'n' on the unjust. Hen Lord's young ones eat their lunch or their supper there once or twice a week, though the old skinflint's got fifty thousand dollars in the bank."
Never mind, Bill. said Osh Popham; "there's goin' to be an everlastin' evenupness somewheres! Probably God A'mighty hez his eye on that woman, and He'll see her through. The young ones are growin' up, and the teacher at the academy says they beat the devil on book learnin'! The boy'll make a smart man, pretty soon, and bring good wages home to his mother. The girls are handsome enough to pick up husbands as soon as they've fully feathered out, so it won't be long afore they're all on the up grade. I've set great store by that family from the outset, and I'm turrible glad they're goin' to fix up the house some more when it comes spring. I'm willin' to work cheap for such folks as them."
You owe 'em somethin' for listenin' to you, Osh! Seems if they moved here jest in time to hear your stories when you'd 'bout tuckered out the rest o' the village!
It's a pity you didn't know a few more stories yourself, Bill, retorted Mr. Popham; "then you'd be asked up oftener to put on the back-log for 'em, and pop corn and roast apples and pass the evenin'. I ain't hed sech a gay winter sence I begun settin' up with Maria, twenty years ago."
She's kept you settin' up ever since, Osh! chuckled Bill Harmon.
She has so! agreed Osh cheerfully, "but you ain't hardly the one to twit me of it; bein' as how you've never took a long breath yourself sence you was married! But you don't ketch me complainin'! It's a poor rule that won't work both ways! Maria hurried me into poppin' the question, and hurried me into marryin' her, an' she ain't let up on me a minute sence then; but she'll railroad me into heaven the same way, you see if she don't. She'll arrive 'head o' time as usual and stan' right there at the bars till she gits Dig 'n' Lallie Joy 'n' me under cover!"
She's a good woman, an' so's my wife, remarked Bill sententiously; "an' Colonel Wheeler says good women are so rigged inside that they can't be agreeable all the time. The couple of 'em are workin' their fingers to the bone for the school teacher to-day; fixin' him up for all the world as if he was a bride. He's got the women folks o' this village kind o' mesmerized, Thurston has."
He's a first-rate teacher; nobody that ain't hed experience in the school room is fitted to jedge jest how good a teacher Ralph Thurston is, but I have, an' I know what I 'm talkin' about.
I never heard nothin' about your teachin' school, Osh.
"There's a good deal about me you never heard; specially about the time afore I come to Beulah, 'cause you ain't a good hearer, Bill! I taught the most notorious school in Digby once, and taught it to a finish; I named my boy Digby after that school! You see my father an' mother was determined to give me an education, an' I wa'n't intended for it. I was a great big, strong, clumsy lunkhead, an' the only thing I could do, even in a one-horse college, was to play base ball, so they kep' me along jest for that. I never got further than the second class, an' I wouldn't 'a' got there if the Faculty hadn't 'a' promoted me jest for the looks o' the thing. Well Prof. Millard was off in the country lecturin' somewheres near Bangor an' he met a school superintendent who told him they was awful hard up for a teacher in Digby. He said they'd hed three in three weeks an' had lost two stoves besides; for the boys had fired out the teachers and broke up the stoves an' pitched 'em out the door after 'em. When Prof. Millard heard the story he says, 'I've got a young man that could teach that school; a feller named Ossian Popham.' The superintendent hed an interview with me, an' I says: 'I'll agree to teach out your nine weeks o' school for a hundred dollars, an' if I leave afore the last day I won't claim a cent!' 'That's the right sperit,' says the Supe, an' we struck a bargain then an' there. I was glad it was Saturday, so 't I could start right off while my blood was up. I got to Digby on Sunday an' found a good boardin' place. The trustees didn't examine me, an' 't was lucky for me they didn't. The last three teachers hed been splendid scholars, but that didn't save the stoves any, so they just looked at my six feet o' height, an' the muscle in my arms, an' said they'd drop in sometime durin' the month. 'Look in any time you like after the first day,' I says. 'I shall be turrible busy the first day!' I went into the school house early Monday mornin' an' built a good fire in the new stove. When it was safe to leave it I went into the next house an' watched the scholars arrive. The lady was a widder with one great unruly boy in the school, an' she was glad to give me a winder to look out of. It was a turrible cold day, an' when 't was ten minutes to nine an' the school room was full I walked in as big as Cuffy. There was five rows of big boys an' girls in the back, all lookin' as if they was loaded for bear, an' they graded down to little ones down in front, all of 'em hitchin' to an' fro in their seats an' snickerin'. I give 'em a surprise to begin with, for I locked the door when I come in, an' put the key in my pocket, cool as a cucumber.
" "I never said a word, an' they never moved their eyes away from me. I took off my fur cap, then my mittens, then my overcoat, an' laid 'em in the chair behind my desk. Then my undercoat come off, then my necktie an' collar, an' by that time the big girls begun to look nervous; they 'd been used to addressin', but not undressin', in the school room. Then I wound my galluses round my waist an' tied 'em; then I says, clear an' loud:' I'm your new teacher! I'm goin' to have a hundred dollars for teachin' out this school, an' I intend to teach it out an' git my money. It's five minutes to nine. I give you just that long to tell me what you're goin' to do about it. Come on now!' I says, 'all o' you big boys, if you're comin', an' we'll settle this thing here an' now. We can't hev fights an' lessons mixed up together every day, more 'n 's necessary; better decide right now who's boss o' this school. The stove's new an' I'm new, an' we call'ate to stay here till the end o' the term!' Well, sir, not one o' that gang stirred in their seats, an' not one of 'em yipped! I taught school in my shirt sleeves consid'able the first week, but I never hed to afterwards. I was a little mite weak on mathematics, an' the older boys an' girls hed to depend on their study books for their information,--they never got any from me,--but every scholar in that Digby school got a hundred per cent in deportment the nine weeks I taught there!""
"It was a wild Friday night in March, after days of blustering storms and drifting snow. Beulah was clad in royal ermine; not only clad, indeed, but nearly buried in it. The timbers of the Yellow House creaked, and the wreaths of snow blew against the windows and lodged there. King Frost was abroad, nipping toes and ears, hanging icicles on the eaves of houses, and decorating the forest trees with glittering pendants. The wind howled in the sitting room chimney, but in front of the great back-log the bed of live coals glowed red and the flames danced high, casting flickering shadows on the children's faces. It is possible to bring up a family by steam heat, and it is often necessary, but nobody can claim that it is either so simple or so delightful as by an open fire!
The three cats were all nestled cosily in Nancy's lap or snuggled by her side. Mother Carey had demurred at two, and when Nancy appeared one day after school with a third, she spoke, with some firmness, of refusing it a home. "If we must economize on cats," cried Nancy passionately, "don't let's begin on this one! She doesn't look it, but she is a heroine. When the Rideout's house burned down, her kittens were in a basket by the kitchen stove. Three times she ran in through the flames and brought out a kitten in her mouth. The tip of her tail is gone, and part of an ear, and she's blind in one eye. Mr. Harmon says she's too homely to live; now what do you think?"
I think nobody pretending to be a mother could turn her back on another mother like that, said Mrs. Carey promptly. "We'll take a pint more milk, and I think you children will have to leave something in your plates now and then, you polish them until it really is indecent."
To-night an impromptu meeting of the Ways and Means Committee was taking place by the sitting room fire, perhaps because the family plates had been polished to a terrifying degree that week.
Children, said Mother Carey, "we have been as economical as we knew how to be; we have worked to the limit of our strength; we have spent almost nothing on clothing, but the fact remains that we have scarcely money enough in our reserve fund to last another six months. What shall we do?"
Nancy leaped to her feet, scattering cats in every direction.
Mother Carey! she exclaimed remorsefully. "You haven't mentioned money since New Year's, and I thought we were rubbing along as usual. The bills are all paid; what's the matter?"
That is the matter! answered Mrs. Carey with the suspicion of a tear in her laughing voice, "The bills _are_ paid, and there's too little left! We eat so much, and we burn so much wood, and so many gallons of oil'"
The back of the winter's broken, mother dear! said Gilbert, as a terrific blast shook the blinds as a terrier would a rat. "Don't listen to that wind; it 's only a March bluff! Osh Popham says snow is the poor man's manure; he says it's going to be an early season and a grand hay crop. We'll get fifty dollars for our field."
That will be in July, and this is March, said his mother. "Still, the small reversible Van Twiller will carry us through May, with our other income. But the saving days are over, and the earning days have come, dears! I am the oldest and the biggest, I must begin."
Never! cried Nancy. "You slave enough for us, as it is, but you shall never slave for anybody else; shall she, Gilly?"
Not if I know it! answered Gilbert with good ringing emphasis.
Another winter I fear we must close the Yellow House and--
The rest of Mother Carey's remark was never heard, for at Nancy's given signal the four younger Careys all swooned on the floor. Nancy had secretly trained Peter so that he was the best swooner of the family, and his comical imitation of Nancy was so mirth-compelling that Mother Carey laughed and declared there was no such thing as talking seriously to children like hers.
But, Muddy dear, you weren't in earnest? coaxed Nancy, bending her bright head over her mother's shoulder and cuddling up to her side; whereupon Gilbert gave his imitation of a jealous puppy; barking, snarling, and pushing his frowzly pate under his mother's arm to crowd Nancy from her point of vantage, to which she clung valiantly. Of course Kitty found a small vacant space on which she could festoon herself, and Peter promptly climbed on his mother's lap, so that she was covered with--fairly submerged in--children! A year ago Julia used to creep away and look at such exhibitions of family affection, with a curling lip, but to-night, at Mother Carey's outstretched hand and smothered cry of "Help, Judy!" she felt herself gathered into the heart of the laughing, boisterous group. That hand, had she but known it, was stretched out to her because only that day a letter had come, saying that Allan Carey was much worse and that his mental condition admitted of no cure. He was bright and hopeful and happy, so said Mr. Manson;--forever sounding the praises of the labor-saving device in which he had sunk his last thousands. "We can manufacture it at ten cents and sell it for ten dollars," he would say, rubbing his hands excitedly. "We can pay fifty dollars a month office rent and do a business of fifty thousand dollars a year!" "And I almost believe we could!" added Mr. Manson, "if we had faith enough and capital enough!"
Of course you know, darlings, I would never leave Beulah save for the coldest months; or only to earn a little money, said Mrs. Carey, smoothing her dress, flattening her collar, and pinning up the braids that Nancy's hugs had loosened.
I must put my mind on the problem at once, said Nancy, pacing the floor. "I've been so interested in my Virgil, so wrapped up in my rhetoric and composition, that I haven't thought of ways and means for a month, but of course we will never leave the Yellow House, and of course we must contrive to earn money enough to live in it. We must think about it every spare minute till vacation comes; then we'll have nearly four months to amass a fortune big enough to carry us through the next year. I have an idea for myself already. I was going to wait till my seventeenth birthday, but that's four months away and it's too long. I'm old enough to begin any time. I feel old enough to write my Reminiscences this minute."
You might publish your letters to the American Consul in Breslau; they'd make a book! teased Gilbert.
Very likely I shall, silly Gilly, retorted Nancy, swinging her mane haughtily. "It isn't every girl who has a monthly letter from an Admiral in China and a Consul in Germany."
You wouldn't catch me answering the Queen of Sheba's letters or the Empress of India's, exclaimed Gilbert, whose pen was emphatically less mighty than his sword. "Hullo, you two! what are you whispering about?" he called to Kathleen and Julia, who were huddled together in a far corner of the long room, gesticulating eloquently.
We've an idea! We've an idea! We've found a way to help! sang the two girls, pirouetting back into the circle of firelight. "We won't tell till it's all started, but it's perfectly splendid, and practical too."
And so ladylike! added Julia triumphantly.
How much? asked Gilbert succinctly.
The girls whispered a minute or two, and appeared to be multiplying twenty-five first by fifteen, and then again by twenty.
From three dollars and seventy-five cents to four dollars and a half a week according to circumstances! answered Kathleen proudly.
Will it take both of you?
Yes.
All your time?
More nods and whispers and calculation.
No, indeed; only three hours a day.
Any of my time?
Just a little.
I thought so! said Gilbert loftily. "You always want me and my hammer or my saw; but I'll be busy on my own account; you'll have to paddle your own canoe!"
You'll be paid for what you do for us, said Julia slyly, giving Kathleen a poke, at which they both fell into laughter only possible to the very young.
Then suddenly there came a knock at the front door; a stamping of feet on the circular steps, and a noise of shaking off snow.
Go to the door, Gilbert; who can that be on a night like this,--although it is only eight o'clock after all! Why, it's Mr. Thurston!
Ralph Thurston came in blushing and smiling, glad to be welcomed, fearful of intruding, afraid of showing how much he liked to be there.
Good-evening, all! he said. "You see I couldn't wait to thank you, Mrs. Carey! No storm could keep me away to-night."
What has mother been doing, now? asked Nancy. "Her right hand is forever busy, and she never tells her left hand a thing, so we children are always in the dark."
It was nothing much, said Mrs. Carey, pushing the young man gently into the high-backed rocker. "Mrs. Harmon, Mrs. Popham, and I simply tried to show our gratitude to Mr. Thurston for teaching our troublesome children."
How did you know it was my birthday? asked Thurston.
Didn't you write the date in Lallie Joy's book?
True, I did; and forgot it long ago; but I have never had my birthday noticed before, and I am twenty-four!
It was high time, then! said Mother Carey with her bright smile.
But what did mother do? clamored Nancy, Kathleen and Gilbert in chorus.
She took my forlorn, cheerless room and made it into a home for me, said Thurston. "Perhaps she wanted me to stay in it a little more, and bother her less! At any rate she has created an almost possible rival to the Yellow House!"
Ralph Thurston had a large, rather dreary room over Bill Harmon's store, and took his meals at the Widow Berry's, near by. He was an orphan and had no money to spend on luxuries, because all his earnings went to pay the inevitable debts incurred when a fellow is working his way through college.
Mrs. Carey, with the help of the other two women, had seized upon this stormy Friday, when the teacher always took his luncheon with him to the academy, to convert Ralph's room into something comfortable and cheerful. The old, cracked, air-tight stove had been removed, and Bill Harmon had contributed a second-hand Franklin, left with him for a bad debt. It was of soapstone and had sliding doors in front, so that the blaze could be disclosed when life was very dull or discouraging. The straw matting on the floor had done very well in the autumn, but Mrs. Carey now covered the centre of the room with a bright red drugget left from the Charlestown house-furnishings, and hung the two windows with curtains of printed muslin. Ossian Popham had taken a clotheshorse and covered it with red felting, so that the screen, so evolved could be made to hide the bed and washstand. Ralph's small, rickety table had been changed for a big, roomy one of pine, hidden by the half of an old crimson piano cloth. When Osh had seen the effect of this he hurried back to his barn chamber and returned with some book shelves that he had hastily glued and riveted into shape. These he nailed to the wall and filled with books that he found in the closet, on the floor, on the foot of the bed, and standing on the long, old-fashioned mantel shelf.
Do you care partic'larly where you set, nights, Ossian? inquired Mrs. Popham, who was now in a state of uncontrolled energy bordering on delirium. "Because your rockin' chair has a Turkey red cushion and it would look splendid in Mr. Thurston's room. You know you fiddle 'bout half the time evenin's, and you always go to bed early."
Don't mind me! exclaimed Ossian facetiously, starting immediately for the required chair and bringing back with it two huge yellow sea shells, which he deposited on the floor at each end of the hearth rug.
How do you like 'em? he inquired of Mrs. Carey.
Not at all, she replied promptly.
You don't? he asked incredulously. "Well, it takes all kinds o' folks to make a world! I've been keepin' 'em fifteen years, hopin' I'd get enough more to make a border for our parlor fireplace, and now you don't take to 'em! Back they go to the barn chamber, Maria; Mis' Carey's bossin' this job, and she ain't got no taste for sea shells. Would you like an old student lamp? I found one that I can bronze up in about two minutes if Mis' Harmon can hook a shade and chimbly out of Bill's stock."
They all stayed in the room until this last feat was accomplished; stayed indeed until the fire in the open stove had died down to ruddy coals. Then they pulled down the shades, lighted the lamp, gave one last admiring look, and went home.
It had meant only a few hours' thought and labor, with scarcely a penny of expense, but you can judge what Ralph Thurston felt when he entered the door out of the storm outside. To him it looked like a room conjured up by some magician in a fairy tale. He fell into the rocking-chair and looked at his own fire; gazed about at the cheerful crimson glow that radiated from the dazzling drugget, in a state of puzzled ecstasy, till he caught sight of a card lying near the lamp,--"A birthday present from three mothers who value your work for their boys and girls."
He knew Mrs. Carey's handwriting, so he sped to the Yellow House as soon as his supper was over, and now, in the presence of the whole family, he felt tongue-tied and wholly unable to express his gratitude.
It was bed time, and the young people melted away from the fireside.
Kiss your mother good-night, sweet Pete, said Nancy, taking the reluctant cherub by the hand. "'_Hoc opus, hic labor est_,' Mr. Thurston, to get the Peter-bird upstairs when once he is down. Shake hands with your future teacher, Peter; no, you mustn't kiss him; little boys don't kiss great Latin scholars unless they are asked."
Thurston laughed and lifted the gurgling Peter high in the air. "Good night, old chap!" he said "Hurry up and come to school!"
I'm 'bout ready now! piped Peter. "I can read 'Up-up-my-boy-day-is-not-the-time-for-sleep-the-dew-will-soon-be-gone' with the book upside down,--can't I, Muddy?"
You can, my son; trot along with sister.
Thurston opened the door for Nancy, and his eye followed her for a second as she mounted the stairs. She glowed like a ruby to-night in her old red cashmere. The sparkle of her eye, the gloss of her hair, the soft red of her lips, the curve and bend of her graceful young body struck even her mother anew, though she was used to her daughter's beauty. "She is growing!" thought Mrs. Carey wistfully. "I see it all at once, and soon others will be seeing it!"
Alas! young Ralph Thurston had seen it for weeks past! He was not perhaps so much in love with Nancy the girl, as he was with Nancy the potential woman. Some of the glamour that surrounded the mother had fallen upon the daughter. One felt the influences that had rained upon Nancy ever since she had come into the world, One could not look at her, nor talk with her, without feeling that her mother--like a vine in the blood, as the old proverb says--was breathing, growing, budding, blossoming in her day by day.
The young teacher came back to the fireplace, where Mother Carey was standing in a momentary brown study.
I've never had you alone before, he stammered, "and now is my chance to tell you what you've been to me ever since I came to Beulah."
You have helped me in my problems more than I can possibly have aided you, Mrs. Carey replied quietly. "Gilbert was so rebellious about country schools, so patronizing, so scornful of their merits, that I fully expected he would never stay at the academy of his own free will. You have converted him, and I am very grateful."
Meantime I am making a record there, said Ralph, "and I have this family to thank for it! Your children, with Olive and Cyril Lord, have set the pace for the school, and the rest are following to the best of their ability. There is not a shirk nor a dunce in the whole roll of sixty pupils! Beulah has not been so proud of its academy for thirty years, and I shall come in for the chief share in the praise. I am trying to do for Gilbert and Cyril what an elder brother would do, but I should have been powerless if I had not had this home and this fireside to inspire me!"
_Tibi splendet focus_! quoted Mrs. Carey, pointing to Olive's inscription under the mantelpiece. "For you the hearth fire glows!"
Have I not felt it from the beginning? asked Ralph. "I never knew my mother, Mrs. Carey, and few women have come into my life; I have been too poor and too busy to cultivate their friendship. Then I came to Beulah and you drew me into your circle; admitted an unknown, friendless fellow into your little group! It was beautiful; it was wonderful!"
What are mothers for, but to do just that, and more than all, for the motherless boys?
Well, I may never again have the courage to say it, so just believe me when I say your influence will be the turning-point in my life. I will never, so help me God, do anything to make me unworthy to sit in this fireglow! So long as I have brains and hands to work with, I will keep striving to create another home like this when my time comes. Any girl that takes me will get a better husband because of you; any children I may be blessed with will have a better father because I have known you. Don't make any mistake, dear Mrs. Carey, your hearth fire glows a long, long distance!
Mother Carey was moved to the very heart. She leaned forward and took Ralph Thurston's young face, thin with privation and study, in her two hands. He bent his head instinctively, partly to hide the tears that had sprung to his eyes, and she kissed his forehead simply and tenderly. He was at her knees on the hearth rug in an instant; all his boyish affection laid at her feet; all his youthful chivalry kindled at the honor of her touch.
And there are women in the world who do not care about being mothers!