CHAPTER XXI.THREE YEARS LATER.—THE RESULT.
THREE years have passed since Isabelle ran gayly over the fields to greet her mother and to receive the first money she had ever earned in her life.
The little check made out in her mother’s name for “the unknown painter of the Wistaria panel” had been used to supply its possessor with an assortment of the best dusters, brushes, and chamois appliances for the care of bric-à-brac and articles of virtu, and the balance had been expended in colors and canvases.
Miss Joanna had been as good as her word. The dinner-party had been a complete success, with Mrs. Beckwith and her elder daughter among the guests, and with no end of admiring phrases concerning the graceful decorations of the old house falling upon the decorator’s grateful ears. Whereupon Miss Brook had started the ball rolling in a quiet way, and within a few days Isabelle had already been called upon threetimes to “help” some distracted hostess prepare for a social entertainment.
Those who called upon her once, invariably did so the second time; and before the end of her “first season,” as Bonny teasingly called her sister’s early experiments, Miss Beckwith had become the fashion, but, fortunately, a “fashion” so thoroughly useful and agreeable that she was destined to outlive the common existence of “fads” and to be looked upon as a necessity in New Windsor festivities.
Now three years had slipped away. “Almost imperceptibly, isn’t it, Motherkin? We have been, we always are, so busy that it doesn’t seem any time from one spring to another;” and there was to be a little dinner-party at The Lindens itself.
“The list of guests is a short one, but big enough to cover our dearest friends, after all; and that’s all a body, a work-a-day body, wants of any company. If we hadn’t ‘waived formality for once’ and invited Mr. Dolloway to dine with his ‘betters,’ we should have had an odd number at table, and if there’s anything I dislike it is a lop-sided table.”
“Come, Beatrice! No trespassing on my preserves! I am the judge of what a table should be,and if our third guest had proved as ‘contrary’ as I fully expected, I was going to crown my eighth chair with laurel and set it up to the ‘Success of The Lindens and the Family Industry!’ However, I’d rather see a happy human face at the table’s foot than any laurel wreath; and there they all come!” As she spoke, Isabelle gave a satisfied glance about the “peace-room,” and the banquet therein prepared.
“I don’t wonder you’re proud, Belle! Every dish of which we shall partake has been prepared by your own fingers, as well as almost all the lovely things in this room, except, of course, my masterpiece of honey. The Bees, the Lieutenant, and your Humble Servant claim credit for that golden pyramid! Ah, yes, and the Eggs, and the Chickens, and the Boned Turkey,—these are the Motherkin’s! But all the rest— They’re at the door, dear! Come and receive them.”
Arm in arm the sisters passed to the wide porch, and stood there smiling welcome upon the three aged figures which came slowly up the driveway.
“Ah, ha, my dears! That’s what I like! A welcome at the open door! That’s hearty and old-fashioned, and as it should be. Betweenfriends, my dears, between friends. Of course, in a stately assemblage one must do as custom dictates. And may I be allowed to pay you both a bit of a compliment on this happy occasion!”
“Allowed or not, brother Chidly, you are certain to pay it; but they’ll bear it. They’ll bear it without spoiling by it,” said Miss Joanna, gayly. “Once in a way it does no harm to tell a girl she’s pretty, when the beauty is offset, as in our dear ones here, by such good common-sense. Three years, is it? Three days it almost seems to me! Time goes so fast when one is old; though I’m not really old yet, am I? Nor Chidly here, nor Dolloway, who consented, at last, to sit down to our feast with us. Ah! here’s the Mother!”
At this moment Mrs. Beckwith—one had to look twice to be sure that this round, plump matron was really the once fragile Mrs. Beckwith—appeared to add her welcome to her daughters’. She leaned proudly, as any mother might, upon the arm of a tall, broad-shouldered youth of twenty, whose upper lip had just become interesting to himself and an unfailing source of amusement to Mistress Beatrice! But the air of real manliness, the honest courage and determination of the bright eyes under the heavy brows,told of a character strong enough to afford an occasional weakness, even to suspecting a mustache where mustache there was none.
On the mother’s other side walked Robert, for once separated from the rifle which had been his latest gift from the adoring Mr. Dolloway, who declared again and again—and nobody had the heart to contradict him—that if it had not been for that now historic “spanking,” administered upon the occasion of his first meeting with “Humpty-Dumpty,” a valuable citizen would have been lost to the world.
Did “Bob” resent this? Not a bit. He had long since learned to look upon his old comrade as the most delightful, generous, indulgent person in existence; and he now forsook his mother to clap Mr. Dolloway upon the shoulder, exclaiming: “Say, Partner! Why didn’t you take that honey out of that hive last night? If we’re going to let you share in the business, you mustn’t expect to shirk, you know.”
“Robert! that is impertinent.”
“Well, I don’t mean it that way. Partner knows. But he told me to go off and practise shooting at that sardine box on the lane gate-post and he’d tend to the honey things for Bon. But he didn’t, andIgot the lecture ’stead ofhim.”
“Well,” retorts “the partner,” “I had to watch the way you scored, didn’t I? If I hadn’t you’d ’a’ claimed more’n I had myself! I wasn’t going to allow that, you may believe!”
The others exchanged smiles. If there was any among the group who showed signs of that second childhood which is given to great age, it was gruff, kindly, honest old John. He did not feel, he rarely appeared, any older than his young and constant companion. He still “served” Mr. Brook, but would have been dumfounded had that generous old “master” actually requested any service; and it was a saying in the neighborhood that “Dolloway owned the whole Brook household.” Which was not quite true; though this is true, that Mr. Chidly and Miss Joanna, feeling profoundly grateful for the wonderful vitality and soundness of intellect with which a good God and right living had blessed their own old age, felt also a parental interest and care over the more restricted powers of this venerable, faithful friend.
“The bees! I haven’t seen the apiary for a week!” exclaimed Mr. Brook. “If it will not delay our hostess, let us visit that before the busy workers have retired for the night. I am never tired, never, of watching these tiny creatures, nor of learning from them. By the way, Beatrice, thatlittle article of yours on ‘The Mechanism of the Bee’s Sting’ has just been published in the ‘Magazine of Natural History’ for this month. Did you know it?”
Bonny made a little grimace, and pointed proudly toward the orderly city of hives, which now really deserved the name of apiary, and which had acquired a reputation throughout many States, so that the “Beckwith” supplies of all sorts of bee-stock were in good demand among the markets; which was only the beginning of what this ambitious girl of seventeen hoped to accomplish. “For I will not stop, if I can possibly help it, till I have earned and saved enough to give my little brother a college education. The rest of us have had to do without, but there’s no reason why we shouldn’t have one scholar in the family!”
To which Robert listened with perfect complacency and the reflection that if he did “go to college he’d be the champion of the football team, anyhow!”
He bade fair to excel in anything athletic, certainly, and, for Bonny’s sake, let us hope he will in things scholastic. He did, indeed, stand at the head of his class at the public school he attended, and his mathematical powers were excellent. But, at his age, there is no calculating with exactnesswhat he may prove to be in the years to come.
As they turned houseward again, after a close inspection of the well-kept apiary, Mrs. Beckwith slipped an arm about her younger daughter’s waist. “What is this I hear, dearie? Have you taken to writing for the press?”
“If I had, Motherkin, I should have had to tell you at once. But it was this way: Mr. Brook is kind enough to say I can put things quite clearly on paper, with my little typewriter; and I happened to please him with some notes I made. So nothing would answer but I must write them out more fully and let him send them to the magazine he mentioned. Of course, they wouldn’t refuse to publish anythinghesent! So—that’s all there is to that story! Therefore, little Madam, don’t lay the flattering unction to your soul that you are the parent of a literary creature. You are not; only of a common-sense, happy, healthy, hard-working little girl!”
There was a close pressure of the hand, and Mrs. Beckwith rejoined her guests. Talk about queens! That little woman, with the soft gray hair and the loving smile upon her lips, thought that there was never a human being so rich and so blessed as she.
In five minutes more they were all seated at the well-arranged table, the sight of which, Miss Joanna declared, “would give even a dyspeptic an appetite!”
Yet Mr. Brook’s eyes wandered about the apartment curiously. “I never enter this room but I find something new in it to admire. Joanna, look behind you, please!”
Miss Brook wheeled swiftly about. What Chidly discovered admirable was always doubly so to his sister.
“The chrysanthemum tapestry! The dream embodied at last!”
Just as her children wished, there hung upon the wall beside the wide hearthplace, “where somebody could appreciate it,” the vision Mrs. Beckwith had seen in Mr. Brook’s basket of chrysanthemums so long ago.
“Until to-day, a secret even from us, for whom she wrought it all!” cried Isabelle, eagerly. “Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it perfect?”
Mr. Dolloway’s opinion had not yet been called for; but he was “the privileged member” everywhere, and he coolly left the table, putting on his horn-bowed spectacles as he did so. “Well, Master, I thought I was right, even without my glasses! But I will say them is the best pictersyou an’ Miss Brook has ever had took! Who done ’em?”
“Who could do them, who could use a needle so exquisitely, who in this world, but our own blessed little mother?” answered Bonny, enthusiastically.
“The needle! you don’t tell me them faces issewed?”
“Certainly. Every particle of the work is done with a needle,—the needle of a genius! her children think.”
“An’ I should think they might!” returned the old man, fixing his eyes solemnly upon Mrs. Beckwith, who had always had his highest veneration, but who now seemed to have been suddenly lifted off from the common earth and placed upon a pedestal; and so overwhelmed in thought was he that he began to eat his dinner without a word, even one “reminiscence” of his beloved “California.”
“Well, my dears, are you all satisfied, quite satisfied, with our experiment?” asked Mr. Brook, as they finally grouped about the fireplace, preparatory to saying good-night. “Three years must have proved the wisdom of it, seems to me.”
“Indeed, it has, dear friend. We are all well, happy, and I believe useful. Isabelle has, throughher domestic talents,—the very last she dreamed that she possessed three years ago,—found entrance into the households of the rich, and has there learned that no amount of money can give happiness. She has by a despised faculty been enabled to cultivate her highest; and it is one of the good things we have to tell you to-night, that her last picture will be hung, ‘on its own merits’and on the line!at the forthcoming exhibition in the National Gallery. This coming year she proposes to go into town regularly for the instruction which she desires, and which her ‘servant wages’ will pay for. But, Roland, speak for yourself. Mother does not wish to monopolize the talk.”
“I have nothing to tell, Motherkin, except that I have had a few bits of verse accepted at theCriterion, and am therefore satisfied that it was a golden opportunity you offered me of coming into the country and learning to be—a man! And I am grateful for the hard work which kept me from writing trash till I could write some simple thing the people would care to hear.”
“An’ I—I have got a hundred dollars in the bank!” cried Robert “the mercenary,” at which all laughed.
“How about you, my Bonny? Do you regret that the only chance you have to sing is in the house of God and in your own home?”
“Surely,” exclaimed Miss Joanna, “she cannot regret that! For, if she did but know it, more people come to church of a Sunday to hear her rich young voice in her solos than to hear the pastor’s sermon. The one last Sabbath was heart-moving.”
“The more shame to them, then! And to me that I cannot do better. No, I regret nothing, save my own limitations. But, like my sister, I think I will also treat myself to a few lessons this coming year, and try to do ever so much finer work. Though I shall never sing any more really—out of my heart and because I can’t help it, you know—than I do now. Nor, if the chance were offered me, which it won’t be, would I exchange my life here for that of anyprima-donnaliving!”
“Preemer donners are awful rich, Bonny!” admonished Robert.
“Well, so are you, small sir, if you had sense enough to believe it! So are we all, I think.”
“Amen!” said Miss Joanna, earnestly.
But Mrs. Beckwith quietly rose and struck a few chords on the well-used instrument besideher. There was a moment’s hush; then out upon the gathering twilight floated the first strains of the familiar Doxology.
Bonny led them, but the other voices followed swiftly. Even the cracked, quavering tenor—that once had been—of old John Dolloway feared not to yield its tribute of sweet “Praise God!” to Him who had been, who ever would be, to each and all of them so close a Friend.