CHAPTER II.PINK PETALS AND BRIGHT VISIONS.
“YES, Mother; if you cannot persuade Beatrice to behave herself upon the street, I really think she should not be allowed to go out. Her goings on are very mortifying to me, and she is sure to get us into some dreadful sort of scrape yet, worse than that small-pox scare last week—”
“Sweet maiden, all severe! Don’t! That is a sensitive point with your unfortunate sister! The less said upon it the more agreeable!” interrupted Bonny, skipping across the narrow parlor of the Beckwith home, whither they had just returned, and catching the tall Isabelle around the waist with a persuasive little hug.
“What have you been doing now, Beatrice?” asked the gentle little widow, looking up from a piece of wonderful embroidery, and fixing a half-amused, half-apprehensive gaze upon the younger girl’s face.
“Nothing, dear Motherkin, but a simple act ofcharity. I happened to see a funny old gentleman tumble down in the middle of the street, and I pulled him out of harm’s way. Isn’t that a right sort of thing to do?”
“But that is only the beginning,” added Belle. “She was not contented with a really kind and brave rescue, but she must go off with her protégé into a store and tell him all about ourselves, and—”
“Isabelle! Not ‘all.’ I merely told him where we lived. And it was really an act of charity to ourselves. He will make a delightful and very salable model for Motherkin’s embroidery. Lend me your pencil, dear. Let me show you!”
“Beatrice, have you done this foolish thing? Did you go with any stranger into a shop?”
“Please don’t interrupt the flow of art, Motherkin!”
“If you did, you must never do so again. Leave the person you have assisted to go his way and you go yours. And of all people to get into such affairs you are certainly the most unfortunate child I ever knew.”
“I’ll try to be good, Mother dear. Only it will be very difficult. He was a nice old man. This looks very like him. You must do his legs in burnt sienna. See? And his coat—his coatwas like a ‘picter.’ All tight down the back and very high-shouldered as to sleeves, which also were very long and narrow. Do his coat in Prussian blue. His ‘weskit’ was yellow ochre, touched up with umber; and his hat—alas! his hat had disappeared! His face—Motherkin, he had a nice face. A good face, a—”
“Like the tramp you let into the house, while we were out, to steal our last half-dozen silver spoons! He, I remember, ‘had a good face, a really intellectual face’!” remarked Belle, gibingly. Her good nature was now quite restored by the pleasure of finding some excuse for teasing Beatrice, who liked to tease them all.
“There, Motherkin! Isn’t that ‘sweetly pretty’? Can you not work him into a landscape of trees and cows and clouds and other country things?” demanded Bonny, ignoring her sister, and laying the really clever little sketch in her mother’s lap.
“How do you get on with your singing, dear?” asked that lady, smiling, and taking time from her work to pat the soft cheek of her merry daughter.
“Badly. There is a terrible discrepancy between my chest notes and my head notes. When T try to stretch one up and the other down, somethingappears to give way—cr-r-rick-crac-c-k-screech! Shall I illustrate, Mother dear?”
“No, no, I beg! My nerves are in bad condition to-day. But if you’ll sing something without nonsense, I shall be glad to hear you. It would rest me, I think.”
Beatrice’s gay face sobered instantly, and Isabelle laid down her book. “Are you so tired, Motherkin?”
“Oh! no, indeed! Only it is a bit monotonous stitching, stitching all day with nobody to talk to. Never mind. Here comes Roland. I wonder why so early.”
The inquiry was in her eyes as she raised them to meet her son’s when he entered, full three hours before his usual time of home-coming. But she saw instantly that he was not ill, and, that anxiety allayed, she smiled brightly upon him. “Well, my boy! what good fortune has given you a holiday?”
“Ill, not good fortune, Mother. I—I have been discharged. I have lost my place.”
Then, indeed, did a significant silence fall upon the family group. Lost his place! Could anything have been more unfortunate!
“Why, ‘Laureate,’ have you been writing more soap-poetry?”
“No, Bonny; but I had a row with the boss, and he talked to me so rudely that I made up my mind no gentleman would stand it. So I bolted. That’s all. I was going to leave, anyway, after the holidays.”
“Oh, you were, eh? Going into soap-poetry for a business? If it pays as well as your first venture—”
“Be still.”
“Yes, my dear. But I’ll just make a note of your new words. You will have quite a vocabulary if you keep on. ‘Row,’ ‘boss,’ ‘bolted,’ will rhyme admirably with ‘cow,’ ‘toss,’ ‘moulted.’ I shall take to writing for soap-prizes myself soon. I’ve always had a notion that my genius would develop in a direction not at present suspected by my family. Mother thinks I am an embryo prima-donna; Belle knows I am a fine dressmaker; Bob is sure I was born for no other purpose than to make boys’ kites, and Roland must acknowledge he never would have won the soap-poem prize if I hadn’t furnished at least one missing rhyme. But—”
“Bonny, do keep still! If I were as fond of talking as you, I’d—”
“Talk! Hark! There goes the door-bell. I hope nobody has come to call, for—” The chatterboxdid not wait to express her inhospitable reasons, but darted down the narrow passage to answer the summons, and was back almost directly, bearing in her arms the basket of chrysanthemums which Mr. Brook’s messenger had just brought.
“Beatrice!”
“For mercy’s sake!”
“What in the world!”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the delighted girl, dancing about so that nobody could get more than a glance at her burden of lovely blossoms, until she finally dropped in a little heap at her mother’s feet and placed the basket on the drawing she had laid upon her mother’s knee. “Such a handy table your lap makes, Motherkin!” she often remarked; but the truth was that everything must be shared with this sympathizing woman or it lost in value.
“Isn’t it lovely, lovely?”
“Lovely, indeed! But it cannot possibly be meant for you, dear. Where did it come from? How did you get it?”
“Of course it is meant for me. It came from the store I visited in company with my old gentleman. And I took it out of a messenger boy’s hand. Oh! the beauties! the darlings! Now,Miss Isabelle Beckwith, don’t you wish you had not been so impatient? Maybe his royal highness—he must be that, at least, or he couldn’t afford such a gift—would have sent you one wee blossom all for yourself.”
“But I do not understand. I do not know that it is right for you to keep it, dear,” remarked Mrs. Beckwith, between the rapid exclamations which fell from the lips of all three young people.
“Now, Motherkin! Of course it’s right! It’s the very prettiest compliment I ever had in all my life. Don’t go for to spoil it with your proper notions, that’s a good Mother! But—see here! Here’s abillet-doux! or I’m a sinner!”
If Mr. Philipse Chidly Brook could have witnessed the delight with which his offering was received, and could have heard the running comments bestowed upon it, he would have been repaid a thousand times. For when his courtly little note, with its old-fashioned writing, was read aloud, even the careful mother had no further reproof for her adventure-loving Beatrice, not all whose chivalrous escapades ended as comfortably as this.
Fair, Kind, and Most Respected Miss,—Allow me to present you with this slight token of my gratitude;which I hope to express more fully when I call, this evening, to make my regards to your Mother and her family.I have the honor to subscribe myselfYour Obedient Servant,Philipse Chidly Brook.OfNew Windsor, N. Y.,November Twenty-third, Eighteen hundred and eighty-one.ToMiss Beatrice Beckwith.
Fair, Kind, and Most Respected Miss,—Allow me to present you with this slight token of my gratitude;which I hope to express more fully when I call, this evening, to make my regards to your Mother and her family.
I have the honor to subscribe myself
Your Obedient Servant,Philipse Chidly Brook.
OfNew Windsor, N. Y.,November Twenty-third, Eighteen hundred and eighty-one.
ToMiss Beatrice Beckwith.
“My obedient servant! My blessed old Prince of Givers! That’s what he should have signed. Seventy-five cents each, Motherkin mine! All lavished on your troublesome girl!”
Mrs. Beckwith did not immediately reply. She took the note from Bonny’s hand and gazed at it musingly, as if trying to clear some confusion of memory. “I have heard that name before—somewhere—besides in history. Let me think!”
“I hope you will hear it again—‘somewhere’! Here comes my ‘Humpty-Dumpty’! I was wishing he could enjoy this.”
“Hello! Bon! What the dickens is that?”
“Hello! Bob! It’s chrysanthemums, not dickens!”
“Whose is it?”
“Mine!”
“Stuff! That can’t be yours! Where did you get it?”
“It can be mine, it shall be mine, it is mine. It is a reward of merit, the first instalment of many I hope to receive.”
“Tell a feller!” pleaded the eight-year-old boy, who was very like Beatrice, only that his hair was a little rougher, his dark eyes even brighter, his general appearance a trifle more dilapidated.
“I have told a ‘feller,’ and if a ‘feller’ can’t believe I am not to blame.”
“Don’t bother! Tell the hull concern!”
Beatrice slipped her arm around the little chap as affectionately as if his costume were not plentifully bedaubed with street mud, and kissed his retroussé nose squarely on its tip; after which she gave him a history of the afternoon’s incident, told as only Bonny would have told it.
“Jimminy-cracky! He must be richer’n thunder!”
“Robert! Where do you learn such talk? Why will you use such words?”
“Dunno, Mother. They seem to grow somehow. Say, Bon! That basket is worth a heap of money!”
“My brother, you should not look a gift horse in the mouth!”
“You’re doing it yourself, aren’t you? I saw you counting all the time you were talking. So was I. But some of ’em seemed to get away. I bet they is more’n forty. S’pose they cost much as five cents apiece?”
“Five cents! Seventy-five is the price of that particular shade everywhere. Think of it! Do it,—a nice little sum for a nice little boy for a nice little girl who pulled a nice little man out of a nice little crowd on a nice little corner of a nice—”
“Bonny, Bonny! Don’t be silly! But, indeed, I don’t wonder! The sight of so much beauty has raised my own spirits till I feel able to fight the world afresh—for you, my children! But Bonny is right; don’t, don’t ‘count the teeth’ of this lovely ‘gift horse,’ dears. Put the basket on that white cloth I just finished embroidering, right in the centre of the table. Then let us gather about it and study it. We will all work the better for the lesson.”
“Motherkin! you are the dearest, wisest body in the world. Here’s your chair—right up front. And say! let’s every one tell what she or he sees in the flowers. I suppose that present represents something different to each; don’t you?”
“I suppose with all your practical sense you are still a fanciful child!” responded Mrs. Beckwith, smiling fondly upon the active Beatrice, who was, indeed, her mother’s “right hand” of dependence in their every-day life.
“Well, if I am, I think it is a case of heredity—like I was reading about in last night’s paper. When you were left to make faces at fortune, with four troublesome youngsters pulling at your skirts, you might have dropped your mouth-corners and put on a doleful expression—but you did not. You just rolled up your sleeves and put on your thimble and shut your eyes to the old dame’s frowns and went to work. I remember, Motherkin, once when ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ was in the cradle, and I was rocking him to sleep, you sang so loud and so long that I told you I wouldn’t rock him any more if you didn’t keep still; and you turned on me with such a look! Your eyes were full of tears and your lips were trembling; but yet you were smiling as brave as could be. ‘I dare not stop, darling!’ you said; ‘if I did I should cry!’ I tell you, Motherkin, I never forgot that, and I never will! But what do you see in the ‘posy,’ dear Mother?”
“I see an old-fashioned garden, with an old-fashioneddame walking in it. An old-fashioned gentleman is bending before her, and presenting her with chrysanthemums—of just this shade. It is early winter—or late, late fall. There is hoar-frost on the dead leaves in the path, hoar-frost upon the hair of these two people, and a touch of winter’s cold has nipped their thin cheeks. Yet they smile and are lovingly courteous still. They know that the chrysanthemums will fade; that the hoar-frost will change to ice on which they must slip downwards over the dead-leaf path—out of sight. But they will be brave and beautiful to the end; and their memory will be like the strange and spicy fragrance of their chosen flowers.”
“Oh, how pretty, Mother! Call the picture ‘Artemisias.’ That is the old-time name for ‘Mums.’ And I hope when it is done some rich, rich person who has leisure to study the meaning of beautiful things will buy your drapery and hang it on a wall alone, close to a cheery wood fire; and that he will sit down before it many times and learn all that you have put into it.”
“Belle, next! What says the basket to you, Miss Beauty?”
“I see a big, big ball-room. It is filled withhandsome women and gentlemanly men. They are all, like Bonny’s ‘rich one,’ at leisure and at rest. They say courteous things to one another, and they feel them. The women have never known what it means to wear patched shoes and soiled gloves. They have travelled everywhere. They know everything that happy mortals need to know. They have never heard that there was poverty in the world which they could not relieve, nor suffering they could not soothe. They have never had their tempers spoiled and their faces lined by want of any sort. I am there in the midst of them, as care-free, as beautiful, as soft-spoken as any of them. As happy, too. I wear a lovely gown of just that chrysanthemum shade, but no jewels. I have the blossoms in my hair, on my corsage, in my hands. I love them. I am wholly, wholly content. I have nothing left to wish for.”
“Happy mortal! Come, ‘Laureate’! But cut it short. Because, you know, my poet, you are inclined to be a little long-drawn-out sometimes.”
“Hush! impious spirit! Fright not the muse away!” retorted Roland, in a very unpoetic tone. “I am in Japan. There are lovely fountains, perfect gardens, beautiful maidens—and lots oftime! I don’t get up in the morning till I choose. I write soap or even stove-polish poems, unrebuked by my irreverent sister. I have plenty of money to buy my mother gowns covered with embroidery which she doesn’t have to do herself, and to fill the cupboard with food which she doesn’t have to cook. There are wonderful kites which Bonny does not make, but which ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ does fly, from the top of a funny little house as tall as a table, into a blue sky which rests on the top of his head—”
“Enough! Now, Bob?”
“Oh! I dunno. No school, fer one thing. No grammar talk when I get home. Plenty of fire-crackers an’ pistols an’ guns an’ turkey an’ everything I want! Say, Bonny Beckwith! Ain’t we never a going to have any supper?”
“At once, small sir. It is a matter of economy to feed you immediately you feel the need of being fed. The longer the delay the greater the cavity. Now, dreamers, all move back, please. Your humble servant has the floor, and must have the table, seeing that it is the only one the house of Beckwith possesses.”
With a smile they all pushed back; but the gentle widow laid her hand caressingly upon Beatrice’s shoulder with the question: “Had thechrysanthemums no visions for your eyes, sweetheart?”
“Heaps of ’em, Motherkin! But some other time.”
“No fair, no fair, Bon! What do you want?”
“A home in the country!”
“Whew! I reckon I’ll get my Japanese tour first!” said Roland, as he placed the basket of flowers upon the top of the sewing-machine amid a pile of unmended stockings. “Gracious! How much depends upon surroundings! That isn’t half as suggestive up there!”
“Hark! What’s that row in the street? Hear that awful thumping!” cried Bob, seizing his hat and bounding down the stairs, two steps at a time.
Bonny also hurried to the window, but turned from it in instant dismay.
“For the goodness’ sake! It’s my old gentleman, and a policeman has him by the collar!” And before anybody could interpose she had followed her small brother.