86
CHAPTER II
THE MINIATURE
“What makes you keep looking at me, Eleanor Merritt? You’re not a bit of a good model!”
Thus reproved, Eleanor once more fixed her eyes upon a very bad oil-portrait of Great-grandfather Burtwell, an elderly man of a wooden countenance, in stock and choker, surmounting an expanse of black broadcloth which occupied two-thirds of the canvas.
The girls were established in what was known as the spare-room of the Burtwell house, which, with its north light and usual freedom from visitors made a very good studio. Madge was painting a miniature of Eleanor. The diminutive size of her undertaking was causing her a good deal of embarrassment, and she was consequently87inclined to be rather severe with her sitter.
“You know I am not going to have many more chances of looking at you for a year to come,” Eleanor urged, in a tone of meek dejection.
“And I can’t see you, even now,” Madge persisted, “if you don’t turn more toward the light.”
There was silence again for some minutes, while Madge painted steadily on. Difficult as was this new task which she had set herself, she was captivated with it. However the miniature might turn out as a likeness, she felt sure that each stroke of her brush was making a prettier picture of it. The eyes already had the real Eleanor look, and the hair was “pretty nice.” The mouth was troublesome, to be sure, and to-day she did not feel inspired to improve it, and had turned her attention to less important details.
“You’ve got such a pretty ear!” she remarked presently, as she touched its outermost rim with a hair line, cocking her head to one side, the while, in a very88professional manner; “Did you ever notice what a pretty ear you have?”
“Better be careful how you talk about it,” Eleanor laughed, “for fear it should begin to burn!”
The artist looked in some trepidation at the feature in question, but its soft hue did not deepen. She took the precaution, however, to change the subject; to one which she often chose, indeed, for the sake of the animation it brought into the pretty face of her model. Eleanor’s “repose” sometimes bothered her.
“What shall you do the first day in Paris?” Madge asked.
“I shall write to you.”
“Good gracious! You won’t write to me before you have seen the Louvre!”
“I shall write to you the very first minute. And then I shall write again that same evening, and tell you whether there really is a Louvre! If there shouldn’t be one, you know, I shouldn’t feel so like a pig in being there without you!”
“You needn’t feel like a pig, as far as that goes,” said Madge. “I couldn’t89have gone to Paris if I had won the prize.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I had it out with Father this morning. He says it’s not a mere matter of money; that if he and Mother thought well of my going, they could manage it.”
“O Madge! Can’t you make them think well of it?”
“I’m afraid not. Father never did really believe in my going in for art, and I think he believes in it less now than he ever did. He says I’ve been at it for three years, and I haven’t painted a pretty picture yet. And he says he doesn’t see what good it’s going to do me in after-life; that if I marry I sha’n’t keep it up, and there wouldn’t be any good in my trying to;—which is, of course a mistake, only I can’t make him believe that it is,—and he says that if I don’t marry, I’ve got to earn my living sooner or later.”
“Why, but that’s just it, Madge! You’re going to be able to earn your living! You’re sure to!”90
But Madge was again engrossed in her work. The afternoon would soon draw to a close, and if she wished to carry out her designs upon that ear it behooved her to stop talking. Though her little picture was an oval of three inches by four, it had cost her more strokes than any canvas of ten times the size had ever done. And Eleanor was to sail in a fortnight!
At last the light began to fade, and Madge knew that she must stop.
“What do you suppose Father said to me this morning?” she asked, as she washed out her brushes and put her paint-box in order.
“I can’t imagine.”
“Well, he said that when any good judge thought my pictures worth paying for in good hard cash, it would be time to think of sending me ‘traipsing over the world with my paint-pot.’ He said that if I would come to him with a fifty-dollar bill of my own earning he should begin to think there was some sense in my art-talk.”
“Did he really say that? Why, Madge, who knows?”91
Madge had shut up her paint-box and moved to the window, where she was gloomily looking down into her neighbours’ backyards.
“If you mean Noah’s Dove,” she said, “You might as well give him up. He’s come back for the thirteenth time.”
Now “Noah’s Dove” was the name which Madge had bestowed upon a small bundle of pen-and-ink sketches which she had been sending about to the illustrated papers for two or three months past, and which had earned their name by the persistency with which they had found their way back again. The girls had both thought them funny and original; indeed Eleanor, with the partiality of one’s best friend, did not hesitate to pronounce them better than many of the things that got accepted. Up to this time, however, no editor had seemed disposed to recognise their merits, and they had been repeatedly and ignominiously rejected.
“But you’ll keep on sending them, won’t you, Madge?” Eleanor insisted.
“Of course I shall, as long as there is a92picture-paper left in the country; though the postage does cost an awful lot!”
The sun had set, and a tinge of rosy colour was spreading across the northern sky behind the chimneys. The girls stood silent for a moment, watching the colour deepen, while a wistful look came into Eleanor’s face.
“After all, Madge,” she said; “it must be nice to have somebody think for you, even when he doesn’t think the way you want him to.”
“Oh, of course, Father’s a dear. I don’t suppose I would swap him off, even for Paris!”
“I wish I could even remember my father or my mother, or anybody that really belonged to me!” Eleanor said; then, feeling that she was making an appeal for sympathy, a thing which she was principled against doing, she turned her eyes away from the tender, beguiling colour behind the chimneys, and looked, instead, at the big oil portrait on the wall. “It’s something to have even a painted grandfather of your own!” she declared.93
“How I should love to give you mine!” laughed Madge. “He’s such a horrible daub, and I should so like to have the frame when it comes time to exhibit! You would not insist upon having him in a frame, would you, Nell?”
Presently the girls went down-stairs together and Eleanor stayed to tea, and told the family all about her Paris plans, and how she felt like a pig to be going without Madge. And all the time, as she talked to these kindly, sympathetic people, it seemed to her that Madge was even more to be envied than she; and she wished she knew how to say so in an acceptable manner. But Eleanor found as much difficulty as most of us do, in expressing our best and truest thoughts, and so the Burtwell family never knew what a heart-warming impression they had made upon their guest.
Eleanor had lived for the past three years with a married cousin, a daughter of the not particularly congenial or affectionate Aunt Sarah, now deceased, who had brought her up from babyhood. The94gentle, sensitive girl, with the artistic temperament, had never been happy with her cousin, though the latter was far from suspecting the fact. Mrs. Hamilton Hicks was fond of Eleanor, or imagined herself to be so, and she always gave her young cousin her due share of credit, in view of the fact that they had “never had any words together.” Nevertheless, she had acceded very readily to the Paris plan, and had herself taken pains to find a suitable chaperon for the young traveller.
The result was, that on the fifteenth of September Eleanor went forth into the great world in company with a lively and voluble Frenchwoman, a lady whom she had seen but twice before in her life, who had promised to establish her in a good private family in Paris. And since Mrs. Hamilton Hicks had negotiated the arrangement, its success was a foregone conclusion.
When Madge left the railway station after bidding Eleanor good-bye, and stepped out into the crowded city thoroughfare,95the world seemed to her very empty and desolate, in spite of the multitude of her fellow-creatures who jostled against her. She could think of nothing but Eleanor, standing on the platform of the car as the train moved out of the station, and she was desperately sorry to have lost the last sight of her friend’s tearful face, because of a curious blur that had come over her own eyes at the moment. At the recollection, she mechanically put her hand into her pocket in search of the miniature which she usually carried about with her. She had left it at home lest she should lose it in the crowded railway station. It gave her a pang not to find it, and she made up her mind then and there that she would never go without it again.
The moment she reached her own room she seized the picture and had a good look at it. She had placed it in the inner gilt rim of an old daguerreotype, which set it off very nicely. She had discarded the hard leather daguerreotype case, as being too clumsy to carry about in her pocket,96and in its place had made a sort of pocket-book of red morocco which was a sufficient protection for the glass, in her careful keeping.
She had never liked the picture so well as she did to-day, for she thought of it now for the first time, not as a work of art, but as a likeness, and imperfect as it was, even from that point of view, it gave her very great pleasure to look at it. Yes, decidedly, she must always have it by her hereafter; and she slipped it into her pocket while she made herself ready for tea.
But supposing she should have her pocket picked! A pickpocket, she reflected, might, in the hastiness which must always characterise his operations, mistake the little leather case for a purse, and then—how should she ever get the precious miniature back again? “Not that he would want to keep it,” she said to herself, as she took it out once more for a parting look,—“unless he should lose his heart to that ear!”—and she regarded the tiny pink object with pardonable97pride. But with the best intentions in the world, how would he be able to restore it? She must put her address in the case; that would be a simple matter.
An hour later, the family were gathered about the great round table in the pleasant sitting-room, pursuing their various avocations by the light of an excellent argand burner. Mr. Burtwell was reading his evening paper, imparting occasional choice bits to his wife and his eldest daughter, Julia, who were dealing with a heap of mending. The two younger children were playing lotto, while Ned was having a hand-to-hand tussle with his Cicero, a foeman likely to prove worthy of his steel.
Madge had taken out a sheet of paper, with a view to inscribing her address upon it. The mere act of doing so had called up to her mind so vivid an impression of the thief for whose information it was destined, that she suddenly felt impelled to address to him a few words of admonition. With an agreeable sense of the absurdity of her performance, she began a letter to98this figment of her imagination, and this is what she wrote:
“Dear Pickpocket,
“For, as I shall never leave this miniature about anywhere, you must be a pickpocket if it falls into your hands. To begin with, then; it is not a good miniature at all, and there is no use in your trying to sell it. In fact, it is a very bad miniature, as you will see if you know anything about such things, which you probably don’t. But it is very valuable to me, and so I hope you will return it to me as soon as you find out how bad it is. You probably won’t want to bring it yourself,—I’m sure I should not think you would!—but you can perfectly well send it by express, and you can let them collect charges on delivery, unless you think that, under the circumstances, you ought to prepay them. My address is,
Miss Margaret Burtwell,” etc.
Madge read over her production with an amusement and satisfaction which quite filled, for the moment, the aching99void of which she had been so painfully conscious. The letter occupied but one-half the sheet, and, as the young artist’s eye fell upon the blank third page, she was seized with an irresistible impulse to draw a picture on it.
The figure of the pickpocket was by this time so vivid to her mind, that she began making a pen-and-ink sketch of him, as a dark-browed villain in the act of rifling the pocket of a very haughty young woman proceeding along the street with an air of extreme self-consciousness. The drawing was on a very small scale, and when it was finished to her satisfaction there was still half the page unoccupied. Madge hastily wrote under the sketch the words: “The Crime,” and a moment later she was engrossed in the execution of a still more dramatic design, representing the criminal in the hands of two stalwart policemen, being ignominiously dragged through the street toward a sort of mediæval fortress, with walls some twenty feet thick, upon which was inscribed in enormous characters, “JAIL.” Still more action100was given the drawing by the introduction of two or three small and gleeful ragamuffins, dancing a derisive war-dance behind the captive, and of two dogs of doubtful lineage, barking like mad on the outskirts of the group. Under this picture was inscribed, “The Consequences of Crime,” and at the bottom of the page appeared the words, “Behold and tremble!”
“What’s Artful Madge up to?” asked Ned, as he closed his Latin Dictionary with a bang.
“Writing a letter,” Madge replied, composedly.
“To the Prize Pig?”
“The what?”
“The Prize Pig! You know Eleanor said she felt like a pig to be going to Paris without you, and as she got the prize––”
“You impudent boy!”
“Not in the least. I’m only witty.”
“Witty!”
“Yes,—I’ve heard wit defined as the unexpected.”
“The dictionary doesn’t define it so,101and good manners don’t define impudence as wit.”
“We’re not discussing impudence, we’re discussing wit. And I know positively that wit is defined as the unexpected.”
“Let’s have your authority,” said Mr. Burtwell, who had not heard the first part of the discussion.
“Let us see what the dictionary says,” suggested Julia, who was the scholar of the family.
“Very well; and what will you bet that I’m not right?”
“We don’t bet in this family,” said Mr. Burtwell, with decision.
“Oh, well, that’s only a form of speech. What will you do for me, Madge, if I’m right?”
“I’ll put you into an allegorical sketch.”
“Good! I always wondered that you didn’t make use of such good material in the artful line!”
The wire dictionary-stand, containing the portly form of Webster Unabridged, was instantly brought up to the light, and102there was half a minute’s silence while Ned turned the leaves.
“Score me one!” he shouted, in high glee. “Listen to Webster! ‘Wit. 3. Felicitous association of objects not usually connected, so as to produce a pleasant surprise.’ Quite at your service, my artful relative, whenever you would like a sitting!”
“I protest! You haven’t won!”
“Haven’t won, indeed! I leave it to the gentlemen of the jury. Is not the name of Prize Pig for Miss Eleanor Merritt a ‘felicitous association of objects not usually connected’?”
“No! The association is infelicitous, and consequently it does not produce a ‘pleasant surprise.’”
The family listened with the amused tolerance with which they usually left such discussions to the two chief wranglers.
“I maintain,” insisted Ned, “that the association of objects is felicitous, and must be, because it was instituted by Miss Eleanor Merritt herself. She won the prize, and she said she was a pig.”103
“But it doesn’t produce a pleasant surprise,” Madge objected.
“I beg your pardon! Ithasproduced a pleasant surprise, as I can testify, for I have experienced it myself. What is your verdict, Mother?”
“My verdict is, that it’s a pity, as I always thought it was, that you are not to be a lawyer, and that Madge can’t do better than practise her drawing by making the allegorical sketch.”
That Mrs. Burtwell should be on Ned’s side was a foregone conclusion, and Madge appealed to her father.
“Father, is calling Eleanor Merritt a prize pig a form of wit?”
“Pretty poor wit I should call it!”
“Father is on my side!” shouted Ned. “He says it’s poor wit, which is only one way of saying that it is wit!”
“Can wit be poor?” asked Julia.
“Father says it can.”
“Then it isn’t wit!” Madge protested.
“I should like to know why not. Old Mr. Tanner is a poor man, but he’s a man for all that, and votes at elections104for the highest bidder. And your logic’s poor, but I suppose you’d call it logic!”
“I have an idea!” cried Madge. “I’m going to make my fortune out of you! I’m going to make a pair of excruciatingly funny pictures of you! The first shall be calledThe Student and Logic, and the second shall be calledLogic and the Student!In the first the student shall be patting Logic on the head, and in the second,—oh, it’s an inspiration!”
And forthwith Madge seized a large sheet of paper and began work.
“I’m not sure that this won’t be the beginning of a series,” she declared. “When it’s finished I shall send it to a funny paper and get fifty dollars for it,—and when I have got fifty dollars for it, Father will send me to Paris; won’t you, Daddy, dear?”
“What’s that? What’s that?” asked Mr. Burtwell.
“When I get fifty dollars,—or more!—for my Student, you will send me to Europe!”
“Oh, yes! And when you’re Queen105of England I shall be presented at Court! Listen to what the paper says: ‘The Honourable Jacob Luddington and family have just returned from an extensive foreign tour. The two Miss Luddingtons were presented at the Court of St. James, where their exceptional beauty and elegance are said to have made a marked impression.’ Good for the Honourable Jacob! His father was my father’s chore-man, and here are his daughters hobnobbing with crowned heads!”
From which digression it is fair to conclude that Mr. Burtwell did not attach any great importance to his daughter’s question or to his own answer. But Madge put away the promise in the safest recesses of her memory as carefully as she had tucked the letter to her “dear pickpocket” inside the red morocco pocket-book. It seemed as if the one were likely to be called for about as soon as the other,—“which means never at all!” she said to herself, with a profound sigh.
“The throes of creation have begun,” Ned chuckled; and then, as he watched106his sister’s business-like proceedings, marvelling the while at what he secretly considered her quite phenomenal skill, he let himself be sufficiently carried away by enthusiasm to remark, “I say, Madge, you’re no fool at that sort of thing, if youarea girl!”
107
CHAPTER III
NOAH’S DOVE
“I really think, Miss Burtwell, you might be a little more careful,” Miss Isabella Ricker wailed, in a tone of hopeless remonstrance. It was the third time that morning that Madge had knocked against her easel, and human nature could bear no more.
“I think so too,” said Madge, in a voice as dejected as her victim’s own. “If I only knew how to prowl more intelligently, I would, I truly would.”
“Tie yourself to your own easel,” suggested Delia Smith; “then that will have to go first.”
“You’re a good one to talk!” cried Mary Downing. “You’ve upset my things twice this very morning!”
“Put those two behind each other,”108Josephine Wilkes suggested. “It will be a lesson to them.”
“And who’s going to sit behind the rear one?” somebody asked.
“Harriet Wells,” Delia Smith proposed. “Mr. Salome said ‘very good’ to her this morning; she must be proof against adversity.”
“No one is proof against adversity,” Madge declared, in a tragic tone; but her remark passed unheeded. The girls were already at work again, and nothing short of another wreck was likely to distract their attention. The scrape of a palette-knife, the tread of a prowler, or the shoving of a chair to one side, were the only sounds audible in the room, excepting when the occasional roar of an electric car or the rattle of a passing waggon came in at the open window. It was the first warm day in April.
Artful Madge’s sententious observation with regard to adversity was the fruit of bitter experience. Misfortune’s arrows had been raining thick and fast about her, and although she was holding her ground109against them very well, she felt that adversity was a subject on which she was fitted to speak with authority.
In the first place, her Student series was proving to be quite as much of a Noah’s Dove as the first set of sketches which had so signally failed to find a permanent roosting-place in an inhospitable world. Only yesterday the familiar parcel had made its appearance on the front-entry table, that table which, for a year past, she had never come in sight of without a quicker beating of the heart. If she ever did have a bit of success, she often reflected, that piece of ancestral mahogany was likely to be the first to know of it. How often she had dreamed of the small business envelope, addressed in an unfamiliar hand, which might one day appear there! It would be half a second before she should take in the meaning of it. Then would come a premonitory thrill, instantly justified by a glance at the upper left-hand corner of the envelope, where the name of some great periodical would seem literally blazoned forth, however110small the type in which it was printed. And then,—oh, then! the tearing open of the envelope, the unfolding of the sheet with trembling fingers, the check! Would it be for $10 or $15 or even $25, and might there be a word of editorial praise or admonition? Foolish, foolish dreams! And there was that hideous parcel, which she was getting to hate the very sight of! As she squeezed a long rope of burnt-sienna upon her palette, she made up her mind that she would wait a week before exposing herself to another disappointment. Perhaps the Student would improve with keeping, like violins and old masters. Certainly if he was anything like his prototype he needed maturing.
Meanwhile the model’s mouth was proving as troublesome to paint as Eleanor’s had been, and as Madge grew more and more perplexed with the problem of it she thought of the miniature with a fresh pang. For she had lost it! Three days ago it had somehow slipped from her possession. Had she left it lying on the table in the Public Library? Nobody111there had seen anything of it. But on the very day of her loss she had been at the Library, examining the current numbers of all the illustrated papers, in the hope of gleaning some hint as to editorial tastes. She remembered reading Eleanor’s last letter there, the letter in which her friend had written that she was to have two years more of Paris. She had read the letter through twice, and then she had taken out the miniature and had a good look at it. To think of Eleanor, having two more years of Paris! And it had all come about so simply! She had merely persuaded her cousin, Mr. Hicks, to advance a few hundred dollars till she should be of age and at liberty to sell a bond.
“There isn’t anybody that believes in me,” Madge had told herself; and then she had thought of something that Mr. Salome had said to her a few days ago, something that she would have considered it very unbecoming to repeat, even to Eleanor, but the memory of which, thus suddenly recalled, had filled her with such112hopefulness that she had sped homeward to the mahogany table almost with a conviction of success. Was it in that sudden rush of hopefulness, so mistaken, alas, so groundless, that she had left the little morocco case lying about? Or had she pulled it out of her pocket with her handkerchief? Or had she really had her pocket picked?
What wonder that in the stress of anxious speculation she was making bad work of her painting! This would never do! She took a long stride backwards, and over went Miss Ricker’s long-suffering easel, prone upon the floor, carrying with it a neighbouring structure of similar unsteadiness, which was, however, happily empty, save for a couple of jam-pots filled with turpentine and oil! These plunged with headlong impetuosity into space, forming little rivers of stickiness, as they rolled half-way across the room. Everybody rushed to the rescue, while Miss Ricker gazed upon the catastrophe with stony displeasure.
By a miracle, the canvas, though “butter-side-down,”113had escaped unscathed. Not until she was assured of this did the culprit speak.
“I’m a disgrace to the class,” she said, “and expulsion is the only remedy. Tell Mr. Salome that I have forfeited every right to membership, and it’s quite possible that I may never exaggerate another detail as long as I live.”
“Time’s up in two minutes,” Mary Downing remarked, in her matter-of-fact voice, as she dabbed some yellow-ochre upon her subject’s chin. “I rather think you’ll come back to-morrow.”
“But I do think it’s somebody’s else turn to work behind her,” said Josephine Wilkes.
Miss Ricker gave a faint, assenting smile.
“I think Miss Ricker is very much indebted to Artful Madge,” Harriet Wells declared. “There isn’t another girl in the class who could have knocked that easel over without damaging the picture.”
“Practice makes perfect,” some one observed; and then, time being called,114everybody began talking at once, and wit and wisdom were alike lost upon the company.
But Artful Madge was not to be lightly consoled.
“Mother,” she said, that same afternoon, as she came into the little sitting-room over the front entry, where her mother was stitching on the sewing-machine, “I think I should like to do something useful. I’m kind of tired of art.”
Madge had been helping wash the luncheon dishes, and was beginning to wonder whether her talents were not, perhaps, of a purely domestic order.
“I should think youwouldbe tired of it!” said Mrs. Burtwell, in perfect good faith, as she snipped the thread at the end of a seam. “How you can make up your mind to spend all your days bedaubing your clothes with those nasty paints passes my comprehension.”
“But sometimes I daub the canvas,” Madge protested, with unwonted meekness, as she drew a grey woollen sock over115her hand, and pounced upon a small hole in the toe; and at that very instant, which Madge was whimsically regarding as a possible turning-point in her career, the doorbell rang.
“A gintleman to see you, Miss,” said Nora, a moment later, handing Madge a card.
“To see me?” asked Madge, incredulously, as she read the name, “Mr. Philip Spriggs! Are you sure he didn’t ask for Father?”
But Nora was quite clear that she had not made a mistake.
“Who is it, Madge?” Mrs. Burtwell queried.
“It’s probably a book agent,” said Madge, as she went down-stairs to the parlour, rather begrudging the interruption to her darning bout.
Standing by the window, hat in hand, was an elderly man of a somewhat severe cast of countenance, as unsuggestive as possible, in his general appearance, of the comparatively frivolous name which a satirical fate had bestowed upon him.116
As Madge entered the room he observed, without advancing a step toward her: “You are Miss Burtwell, I suppose. I came to answer your letter in person.”
“My letter?” asked Madge, with a confused impression that something remarkable was going forward.
“Yes; this one,”—and he drew from his pocket the red morocco miniature case.
“Oh!” cried Madge, “how glad I am to have it!—and how kind you are to bring it!—and, oh! that dreadful letter!”
The three aspects of the case had chased each other in rapid succession through her mind, and each had got its-self expressed in turn.
Mr. Spriggs did not relax a muscle of his face.
“I found this on a table in the Public Library,” he stated. “Your directions were so explicit that I could do no less than be guided by them.”
There was something so solemn, almost judicial, about her guest that Madge became quite awestruck.
“Won’t you please take a seat?” she117begged, humbly. “I think I could apologise better if you were to sit down.”
“Then you consider that there is occasion to apologise?” he asked, taking the proffered chair, and resting his hat upon the floor.
“Indeed, yes!” said Madge. “It’s perfectly dreadful to think of the letter having fallen into the hands of any one so—” and she broke short off.
“So what?” asked Mr. Spriggs.
“Why, so dignified and so—very different from—” but again she found herself unable to finish her sentence.
“From a ‘dear pickpocket?’” he suggested.
“Did I say ‘dear pickpocket’?” cried Madge in consternation. “I didn’t know I said ‘dear.’”
“I suppose you desired to make a favourable impression, in order to get your picture back. There are some very good points about the picture,” he remarked, as he took it out of the case and examined it. “There’s a good deal of drawing in it, and considerable colour.”118
“Do you know about pictures?” asked Madge with eager interest.
“Not much. I’ve heard more or less art-jargon in my day; that’s all.”
Madge looked at him suspiciously.
“I am sure you will agree with me that I don’t know much,” he continued, “when I tell you that I prefer your pen-and-ink work to the miniature. ‘The Consequences of Crime’ is full of humour; and I have been given to understand that you can’t produce an effect without skill,—what you would probably dignify with the name of technique. The second small boy on the right is not at all bad.”
“You do know about art!” cried Madge. “I rather think you must be an artist.”
Mr. Spriggs did not exactly change countenance; he only looked as if he were either trying to smile or trying not to. Madge wished she could make out just what were the lines and shadows in his face that produced this singular expression.
“Have you never thought of doing anything for the papers?” he asked.119
“Thought of it! I’ve spent four dollars and sixty-one cents in postage within the last ten months, and he always comes back to the ark!”
“‘He’? Comes back where?”
“To the ark. I call the package ‘Noah’s Dove’ because it never finds a place to roost.”
“The original dove did, after a while.” Mr. Spriggs spoke as if he were taking the serious, historical view of the incident. “I imagine yours will, one of these days. Have you got anything you could show me?”
“Would you really care to see?”
“I can’t tell till you show me,” he said cautiously; but this time there was something so very like a smile among the stern features that Madge could see just what the line was that produced it.
She flew to her room, and seized Noah’s Dove, and in five minutes that much-travelled bird had spread his wings,—all six of them,—for the delectation of this mysterious critic.
Madge watched him, as he leaned back120in his chair and examined the sketches. He seemed inclined to take his time over them, and she felt sure that her Student had never before been so seriously considered.
At last Mr. Spriggs laid the drawings upon the table and fixed his thoughtful gaze upon the artist. His contemplation of her countenance was prolonged a good many seconds, yet Madge did not feel in the least self-conscious; it never once occurred to her that this severe old gentleman was thinking of anything but her Student. She found herself taking a very low view of her work, and quite ready to believe that perhaps, after all, those unappreciative editors knew what they were about.
“Have you ever sent these to theGay Head?” her visitor inquired casually.
“Oh, no! I should not dare send anything to theGay Head!”
“Why not?”
“Why! Because it’s the best paper in the country. It would never look at my things.”121
“It certainly won’t if you never give it a chance. You had better try it,” he went on, in a tone that carried a good deal of weight. “You know they can do no worse than return it; and I should think, myself, that theGay Headwas quite as well worth expending postage-stamps on as any other paper. Mind; I don’t say they’ll take your things,—but it’s worth trying for. By the way,” he added as he rose to go; “I wouldn’t send No. 5 if I were you; it’s a chestnut.”
He had picked up his hat and stood on his feet so unexpectedly that Madge was afraid he would escape her without a word of thanks.
“Oh, please wait just a minute,” she begged. “I haven’t told you a single word of how grateful I am. I feel somehow as if,—as if,—the worst were over!” This time Mr. Spriggs smiled broadly.
“And you will send Noah’s Dove to theGay Head?”
“Yes, I will, because you advise me to. But you mustn’t think I’m conceited enough to expect him to roost there.”122
And that very evening the dove spread his wings,—only five of them now,—and set forth on the most ambitious flight he had yet ventured upon.
In the next few days Madge found her thoughts much occupied with speculations regarding her mysterious visitor; everything about him, his name, his errand, both the matter and the manner of his speech, roused and piqued her curiosity. It was clear that he knew a great deal about art. And yet, if he were an artist, she would certainly be familiar with his name. Whatever his calling, he was sure to be distinguished. Those judicial eyes would be severe with any work more pretentious than that of a mere student; that firm, discriminating hand,—she had been struck with the way he handled her sketches,—would never have signed a poor performance. Perhaps it was Elihu Vedder in disguise,—or Sargent, or Abbey! Since the descent of the fairy-godmother upon the class a year ago, no miracle seemed impossible. And yet, the miracle which actually befell would have seemed,123of all imaginable ones, the most incredible. It took place, too, in the simplest, most unpremeditated manner, as miracles have a way of doing.
One evening, about a week after the return of the miniature, the family were gathered together as usual about the argand burner. It was a warm evening, and Ned, who was to devote his energies to the cause of electrical science, when once he was delivered from the thraldom of the classics, had made some disparaging remarks about the heat engendered by gas.
“By the way,” said Mr. Burtwell, “that, reminds me! I have a letter for you, Madge. I met the postman just after I left the door this noon, and he handed me this with my gas bill. Who’s your New York correspondent?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Madge, with entire sincerity, for it was far too early to look for any word from theGay Head.
The letter had the appearance of a friendly note, being enclosed in a square124envelope, undecorated with any business address. Madge opened it, and glanced at the signature, which was at the bottom of the first page. The blood rushed to her face as her eye fell upon the name: “Philip Spriggs, Art Editor of theGay Head.”
She read the letter very slowly, with a curious feeling that this was a dream, and she must be careful not to wake herself up. This was what she read:
“My dear Miss Burtwell,
“We like Noah’s Dove as much as I thought we should. We shall hope to get him out some time next year. Can’t you work up the pickpocket idea? That small boy, the second one from the right, is nucleus enough for another set. In fact, it is the small-boy element in your Student that makes him original—and true to life. We think that you have the knack, and count upon you for better work yet. We take pleasure in handing you herewith a check for this.
“Yours truly,“Philip Spriggs.”
125
The check was a very plain one on thin yellow paper, not in the least what she had looked for from a great publishing-house; but the amount inscribed in the upper left-hand corner of the modest slip of paper seemed to her worthy the proudest traditions of theGay Headitself. The check was for sixty dollars.
As Madge gradually assured herself that she was awake, the first sensation that took shape in her mind was the very ridiculous one of regret that the mahogany table should have been deprived of its legitimate share in this great event. And then she remembered that it was her father himself who had handed her the letter.
She was still wondering how she should break the news to him, when she found herself giving an odd little laugh, and asking, “Father, what is your favourite line of ocean steamers?”
Mr. Burtwell, who had really felt no special curiosity as to his daughter’s correspondent, was once more immersed in his evening paper. He looked up, at her126words, as all the family did, and was struck by the expression of her face.
“What makes you ask that?” he demanded sharply.
“Because I know you always keep your promises, and—there’s a letter you might like to read.”
Mr. Burtwell took the letter, frowning darkly, a habit of his when he was puzzled or anxious. He read the letter through twice, and then he examined the check. He did not speak at once. There was something so portentous in this deliberation, and something so very like emotion in his kind, sensible face, that even Ned was awed into respectful silence.
At last Mr. Burtwell turned his eyes to his daughter’s face, where everything, even suspense itself, seemed arrested, and said, in a matter-of-fact tone:
“I think you had better go by the North German Lloyd. Shall you start this week?”
“Oh, you darling!” cried Madge, throwing her arms about her father’s neck, regardless127of letter and check, which, being still in his hands, were called upon to bear the brunt of this attack; “How can I ever make up my mind to leave you?”
The Ideas of Polly
CHAPTER I
DAN’S PLIGHT
“Well, Mis’ Lapham, Iamsorry to hear it, Imustsay! Itdoosseem’s though you’dhadyour share of affliction!”
Mrs. Henry Dodge always emphasised a great many of her words, which habit gave to her remarks an impression of peculiar sincerity and warmth; a perfectly correct impression, too, it must be admitted. Her needle, moreover, being quite as energetic as her tongue, she was a valuable member of the sewing-circle, at which function she was now assisting with much spirit.
Mrs. Lapham accepted this tribute to her many trials with becoming modesty. She was a dull, colourless woman whose sole distinction lay in the visitations of132affliction, and it is not too much to affirm that she was proud of them. She was sewing, not too rapidly, on a very long seam, which occupation was typical of her course of life. She sighed heavily in response to her neighbour’s words of sympathy, and said:
“It did seem hard that it should have been Dan, just as he was beginning to be a help to his uncle, and all. But I s’pose we’d ought to have been prepared for it.”
“There’s been quite a pause in the death-roll,” the Widow Criswell observed. She was engaged in sewing a button on a boy’s jacket with a black thread.
“How long is it since Eliza went?” asked Miss Louisa Bailey, pursuing the widow’s train of thought.
“Seven years this month. She began to cough at Christmas, and by Washington’s Birthday she was in her grave.”
“And Jane? They didn’t go very far apart, did they?”
“No, Jane died eleven months before Eliza; and their mother went three years133before that, and their father when Dan was a baby; that’s goin’ on sixteen years.”
“Well, youhavehad a hard time, Iwillsay!” exclaimed Mrs. Dodge. “Your Martha losing her little girl, and John’s wife breaking her collar-bone, and all, and nowthisto be gone through with! Ishouldthink you’d feeldiscouraged!”
“I do; real discouraged. But I s’pose it’s no more than I’d ought to expect, with such an inheritance.”
“Have there been many cases of lung-trouble on your side of the family, Mrs. Lapham?” Miss Bailey inquired with respectful interest.
“No; Sister Fitch was the first case.”
For a few seconds, conversation languished, and only the snip of Mrs. Royce’s scissors could be heard, and the soft rustle of cotton cloth. The sewing-circle was going on in the church vestry where there was a faint odour from the kerosene lamps, which had just been lighted. The Widow Criswell was the first to break the silence.134
“Polly ain’t showed no symptoms yet, has she?” she asked, testing one of the buttons as if sceptical of her thread.
“Well, no; not yet. But then Dan seemed as smart as anybody six months ago, and just look at him to-day!”
The mental eyes of a score of women were turned upon Dan, as he was daily seen, round-shouldered and hollow-chested, toiling along the snowy country roads to and from school, coughing as he went. The topic was not an uncongenial one to the members of the sewing-circle, who had really very little to talk about. So absorbed were they, indeed, in the discussion of poor Dan’s fate, and of the long list of casualties that had preceded it, that no one noticed the entrance of a young girl, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, who had come to help with the supper. There was an air of peculiar freshness about her, and as she stood in her blue dress and white apron near the door, her ruddy brown hair shining in the lamp-light, the effect was like the opening of a window in a close room. Her step was arrested in135the act of coming forward, and, as she paused to listen, the pretty colour was quite blotted out of her cheeks.
“I don’t think Dan’s will be a lingering case,” Mrs. Lapham was saying. “The lingering cases are the most trying.”
Polly stood motionless. Was it true then, that which she had dreaded, that which she had shrunk from facing? Was it more than a cold that Dan had got? Was Dan really ill? Her Dan? Really ill? Her heart was beating like a trip-hammer, but no one seemed to hear it.
“Queer that the doctors don’t find any cure for lung-trouble,” Mrs. Royce was saying. “Seems as though there must be some way of stopping it, if you could only find it out.”
“Have you tried Kinderling’s Certain Cure?” asked Mrs. Dodge. “They do say that it’sveryefficacious.”
“Well, no,” said Mrs. Lapham; “I don’t hold much to medicines myself; but if I did I should think it just a wilful waste to try them for Dan. The136boy’s doomed, to begin with, and there’s no help for it.”
“Thereisa help for it, thereshallbe a help for it!” cried a voice, vibrating with youthful energy and emotion. “I don’t see how you can talk so, Aunt Lucia! Danisn’tdoomed! hesha’n’tdie! I won’tlethim die!”
The women looked at Polly and then they looked at one another, fairly abashed by the girl’s spirit; all, that is, excepting Aunt Lucia, who was not impressionable enough to feel anything but the superficial rudeness of Polly’s outbreak.
“That’ll do, Polly,” she said, with a spiritless severity. “This is no place for a display of temper.”
The colour had come back into the girl’s face now, and there were hot tears in her eyes. She turned without a word and left the room, nor was she seen again among the waitresses who came to hand the tea.
Polly was rather ashamed of having run away from the sewing-circle, and she had serious thoughts of going back. It was137the first time in her life that she had allowed herself to be routed by circumstances; but somehow she felt as if she could not find it in her heart to hand about tea and seed-cakes, sandwiches and quince-preserve, to people who could think such dreadful thoughts of Dan. And then, besides, she knew what a pleasant surprise it would be for Dan to have her all to himself for an evening. Uncle Seth would be sure to go for his weekly game of checkers with Deacon White, and she could help Dan with his algebra and Latin, and see that he was warm and “comfy,” and perhaps find that he did not cough so much as he did the evening before.
They had a very cozy evening, she and Dan, just as she had planned it in every particular but one, namely, the cough. There was no improvement in that since the night before, and for the first time the boy spoke of it.
“I say, Polly! Isn’t it stupid, the way this cold hangs on? Do you remember how long it is since I caught it?”138
“Why, no, Dan. It does seem a good while, doesn’t it? I guess it must be about over by this time. Don’t you know how suddenly those things go?”
Dan, who was on his way to bed, had stopped, close to the air-tight stove, to warm his hands.
“I wish it were summer, Polly,” he said, with a wistful look in his great black eyes that cut Polly to the heart. “It’s been such a cold winter; and a fellow gets kind of tired of barking all the time.”
“It’ll be spring before you know it, Dan, you see if it isn’t, and you’ll forget you ever had a cold in your life.”
And when, half an hour later, the evening was over, and Polly was safe in her bed, she buried her head in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.
But tears and bewailings were not a natural resource with Polly, whose forte was action. Her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? Something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. What it was she had not the faintest idea, but139then it was her business to find out. Here was she, eighteen years old, strong and hearty, and with good practical common sense, the natural guardian and protector of her younger brother. It was time she bestirred herself!
As a first step, she got up with the sun and dressed herself, and then she slipped down-stairs to the parlour where such of her father’s books as had been rescued from auction were lodged; her father had been the village doctor. All the medical works had been sold, and many other volumes besides, but among those remaining was an old encyclopædia which had proved to Polly a mine of information on many subjects. As she took down the third volume, she heard a portentousMeaouw!and there, outside the window, stood Mufty, the grey cat, rubbing himself against the frosty pane. Polly opened the window and Mufty sprang in, bringing a puff of frosty air in his wake. Without so much as a word of thanks he walked over to the stove. Finding it, however, cold, as only an empty air-tight stove can be cold, he140strolled, with a disengaged air, beneath which lurked a very distinct intention, toward the only warm object in the room, namely, Polly in her woollen gown. She had the volume open on the table before her, and was deep in its perusal, murmuring as she read.
“Appears to have committed its ravages from the earliest time,” Polly read, “and its distribution is probably universal, though far from equal.”
At this point Mufty lifted himself lightly in the air, after the manner peculiar to cats, and landed in Polly’s lap. After switching his tail across her eyes once or twice, and rubbing himself against the book in rather a disturbing way, he at last settled down, and began purring vigorously in token of satisfaction. The room was very cold, and Polly, without interrupting her reading, was glad to bury her hands in the thick fur. Presently the colour in her cheeks grew brighter and her breath came quicker. Therewasa way, after all! People had been saved, people a good deal sicker than Dan,—saved by a141change of climate. What could be simpler? Just to pick Dan up and carry him off! And such fun, too!
“Mufty,” she whispered, excitedly, “Mufty, what should you say to Dan and me going away and never coming back again?”
“Brrrrr, brrrrr,” quoth Mufty.
“I knew you would approve! You know how necessary it is, and you think it best to do it; don’t you, Mufty?”
“Brrrr, brrrrrrrrrr,” quoth Mufty, again.
“O Mufty, what a darling you are, to approve! And there isn’t really any one’s opinion that I care more about!”
She got up and went to the window, while Mufty, not to be dislodged, hastily established himself across her shoulder, his fore paws well down her back, his tail contentedly waving before her eyes. The picture which he thus turned his back upon was a wintry one.
“Cold morning, isn’t it, Mufty?” said Polly. “No kind of a climate for a delicate person.”142
“Brrrr, brrrrrr!” Mufty was digging a claw into her shoulder to adjust himself more comfortably.
“Ow!” cried Polly. Then, lifting him down: “Mufty, you’re a very intelligent cat, and I haven’t a doubt that your judgment is as penetrating as your claws. All the same, I guess you’d better get down and come with me and help Susan get the breakfast. Don’t you hear her shaking down the kitchen stove?”
Whereupon Mufty, finding himself dropped upon the coldly unsympathetic ingrain carpet, desisted from further encouraging remarks.
Polly was a schoolgirl still, though she was nearing the dignity of graduation. She had no special taste for study, but she cherished the Yankee reverence for education, and although it was not quite clear to her how Latin declensions and algebraic symbols were to help her in after-life, she committed them to memory with a very good grace, and enjoyed all the satisfaction of work for work’s sake.
It happened, therefore, that the pursuit of learning interfered for several hours with the far more important object which she had at heart to-day; and it was not until two o’clock that she found herself at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was straining to accomplish.