“Oh,” breathed Azalea, “was she good to you, Keefe? You were so little—so dreadfully little! Was she good to you?”
A slight color had come back to Keefe’s face. His lips were no longer so blue and unnatural as they had been. He put out his hand and caught a little fold of Azalea’s frock between his fingers and held on to it as children hold onto the dresses of the women they depend upon.
“She was good to me,” he said simply, “with a wise goodness which did not let me be spoiled. She was not a married woman. Her name was Harriet Foster, and the name tells what she was like, simple and straightforward and practical. She had lost all of her family and was tired of living alone. She had been looking for some time for a child to help fill her life, and when she saw me, she seemed satisfied. I was satisfied, too, and not at all afraid of her even at first.”
“Won’t you rest awhile now, Keefe?” broke in Azalea, trying desperately to do her duty. Keefe looked at the parted lips and shining eyes which betrayed her breathless inquisitiveness, and shook his head.
“Miss Foster did not make me her son by legal adoption,” he went on. “She left my name as it was. Bridget had named me Keefe, which was her name before she was married, and dear old Mike had lent me the honorable name of O’Connor. So Keefe O’Connor I remained. But instead of the foul basement home I had known, here was a quiet, staid, respectable home; a three-storied red brick structure, cared for by self-respecting servants, furnished with pleasingold furniture, and presided over by Harriet Foster. She had a group of quiet, gracious friends like herself, whom she entertained at tea once a week, bringing me in to be shown off. I passed their teacups and sang little songs for them sometimes, and after I had begun to draw, was told to show them my drawings.”
“Did you love her?” broke in Azalea. “Did she seem like a mother to you?”
“Love her? I felt contented with her; but she seldom kissed me even when I was a little fellow. She taught me to be very self-reliant and thorough, and gave me a fine discipline. We liked to be together. It was always a great day when we went out to the sea, or to the picture galleries. We could laugh together and be patient together over troubles. If that is loving, then we loved each other. But no, she didn’t seem like a mother to me. She seemed like Miss Foster, and that is what I called her.”
“Oh, poor little boy!”
“Not so poor, Azalea, not so poor. Children aren’t poor when they’re given a chance to be themselves and aren’t driven from pillar to post by some tyrant. Miss Foster let me grow up to be myself. She fed me, clothed me, housed me,and taught me her ideas of honor and kindness and right living. When she found that I wanted to be an artist, she put me in the way of becoming one. I lived with her till I was seventeen years of age. Then she, too, like my poor little mother and dear blowsy Bridget O’Connor, left me, and since then, I have been alone.”
“Alone!” repeated Azalea beneath her breath. “And never a word of your sister all these years, Keefe?”
She smiled at him so beautifully, bending forward, questioning him as it seemed, so almost gayly, that he looked at her in amazement.
“Not a word, Azalea, in all these years—not one word. I used to hope and pray to meet her, but after a time I tried to put it out of my mind. I didn’t want it to undermine me. We Irish are queer folk, Azalea. We can wear ourselves out with longing. I didn’t want to do that. Miss Foster had left me a little fortune; enough to let me keep on with my art studies and to give me a little start in life. I had to leave the comfortable old house where I had spent such contented years, because that went to make a home for old ladies. But I lived on well enough in my attic—Oh, don’t be frightened at the word.I lived in an attic by choice. Then perhaps I overworked. At any rate, the doctor said I must get out of the city and live in these mountains for two or three years. So here I am, piling up canvases in Miles McEvoy’s barn and as happy as anyone need be, especially since I met you—you people, Zalie. It may seem odd to you, but these few weeks here with the Rowantrees and ‘you-all’ at Oriole’s Nest, have been the happiest of my life.”
“I don’t think it odd at all,” cried Azalea. “Oh, Keefe, I think it the most natural thing in the world.”
“Why?” he asked, astonished at her tone. But she remembered that dragged and wearied heart of his and putting her lips tight together, would say nothing. He had to take her smiling silences for his answer.
Then, before he could urge her, some one stood on the doorstep without the room. Azalea, seeing the shadow fall across the floor guessed who it was.
“Oh, you!” she cried happily, “you, of all people! Come in, Mrs. Rowantree. Keefe’s fallen ill and Aunt Zillah said that you’d be just the person to know what to do for him.”
“I hope I’ll know,” said Mary Cecily in her sweet Irish voice, “but how can we be sure of that at all? Still, it’s myself that must confess to some experience, what with the rearing of the four children and the being so far from a medical man. What’s ailing you, Mr. Keefe, dear?” she asked with beautiful gentleness, stooping over him, sister-fashion, and taking his hand in hers.
And then Azalea knew beyond all doubt! She wondered that she had not always known. Each had reminded her of the other, and yet with a strange stupidity she had not realized it, no doubt because it had seemed so certain that they must be strangers whose paths never had crossed.
She tried to be calm, to take the scene as a matter of course, but those two who had so longed for each other being there, so near, so unlike in some ways, yet so like with their sad-glad faces, made her put her hands to her eyes to hide the sight of them. She almost forgot that they did not yet know. She all but forgot Keefe’s heart and his need for quiet.
“I didn’t know they’d sent for you, Mrs. Rowantree, and I’m sorry you’ve been put to the trouble,” Keefe was saying.
“I met Miss Carin down the road and I know what a hero you’ve been, lad,” she said under her breath. “It was beautiful—helping a man out of his ‘prison house of pain’ like that. Maybe you’ll have to pay by being laid up for a time, but I know you’re thinking to yourself that it’s worth it.”
Keefe nodded. “If poor Panther gets well—”
“Ah, I hope for that—I pray for that—the poor man!”
Keefe said nothing more. He seemed very weary. Mary Cecily sat beside him, looking down at him, and he, half-closing his eyes, watched her changeful face. Azalea had sunk on the doorstep and sat there, her heart beating so she thought the others must hear it. All her thoughts and wishes were pouring out toward them, willing them to speak.
Somewhere in the woodland a hermit thrush sent out its liquid, lovely note. It seemed above all sounds in the world, the one that suited the moment.
“Why don’t they speak? Why don’t they speak?” Azalea asked the question over and over to herself. “Theymustspeak. They willbe so happy when they know! Oh, how lonely they’ve been. Oh, poor dears! Butwhydon’t they speak?”
It seemed as if the very air palpitated with her passionate desire.
Then: “I wish you were my sister, Mrs. Rowantree,” said the boy’s wistful voice. “I’ve just been telling Miss Azalea how I once had a sister. Matey, she was called. Isn’t it a sweet little name? We were on a ship crossing the sea, my sister and my little mother and myself. It’s just a little bit of a boy I was—”
Azalea heard a low cry of utter happiness, of amazed, yet undoubting faith. She slipped from the room and ran down the path. Her tears fell as she fled, but her heart was singing.
The hermit thrush kept up its deep and tender song, but Azalea was certain that the words being spoken in that room were more beautiful and wonderful by far.
Azalea never forgot how quietly and sweetly that night came down. The mountain, so old—older than the peaks of the Rockies or the Sierras—lay beneath the stars with an air of placidity as comforting to the spirit as great music or great words.
Within the room where Keefe rested, the shadows deepened till Azalea and the others could no longer see his long form on the sofa, nor the little dark head of Mary Cecily bent to touch his.
“To think of finding some one on the earth who really, really belongs to you,” said Azalea. “Oh, Carin, how happy they are!”
“Aren’t they!” sighed Carin sympathetically. “Oh, dear, Azalea, it makes me homesick for papa and mamma. Yet here we are, only half through the term of school we promised to teach.”
“You can’t say that it’s been dull,” repliedAzalea with a fluttering little laugh. “Just think of all that has happened these short three weeks.”
“I ought,” murmured Mr. Rowantree, who had supped with them, and who sat with them now on the porch, “to be riding home to Constance and the other children. Paralee kindly promised that she would look in on them and help them get a bit of something to eat, but now I really must be getting along. They’ve never been alone before after nightfall.”
“You’re going to leave Mrs. Rowantree here then?” asked Aunt Zillah. “Oh, that’s good of you. I don’t believe those two could bear to be separated. I know I couldn’t bear to have them.”
“Of course they must stay together,” answered Mr. Rowantree. “Ah, what a brave, bright little creature my Mary Cecily is, Miss Pace! Folks think I don’t appreciate her because I’m a lazy, dreamy fool who hasn’t found out how to take hold of life over here, but perhaps some day I’ll be able to show them that I’m not quite such a useless creature as they think me. I know my faults better than anyone else knows them; and the worst fault of them all is not beingproperly ashamed of myself. I always was too indifferent to what others thought; but since you came, Miss Pace, with these fine unselfish girls, I—well, I’ve seen myself pretty much as others must see me and I confess I don’t like the picture.”
“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” cried Aunt Zillah, distressed, “I’m sure—”
“Don’t trouble yourself to say a single polite thing, ma’am. Leave me the virtue of my repentance. Now, about my little wife’s brother in there; he must come to Rowantree Hall to-morrow morning. Miles McEvoy can drive him over the way he took Panther to the station, lying out on the straw in the wagon box. Keefe’s a fine fellow, no manner of doubt about that. I took to him from the first.”
“Have you seen the pictures Keefe has up in Mr. McEvoy’s barn?” asked Aunt Zillah. “It’s a great pleasure and profit to look at them. I’m sure when Mr. and Mrs. Carson see them they’ll be all for having an exhibit of them down at Lee. Many artists come there, as you know, and it’s the habit of the tourists to attend their exhibits. Sometimes they purchase very freely.”
“It would be a fine thing for him if somethingof the sort could be done,” said Mr. Rowantree. “My only fear is that Mary Cecily may have another philandering male for her to care for. That really would be one too many. I declare,” he added humorously, “if it came to that, I think it might drive me to work!”
Azalea could not repress a little laugh, but Carin maintained disapproving silence. She liked Mr. Rowantree—nobody could help liking him—but she certainly did not approve of him, and it was not in her to ease off the situation as Azalea could. Azalea had grown up among vagabonds, and if she recognized in the magnificent Rowantree a new variety of the tribe, it only made her tolerant of him.
“But youdolike to teach, don’t you, Mr. Rowantree?” she said encouragingly. “Paralee met me and told me what a wonderful day it had been for them all, and how you came it over that poor silly Mr. McIntosh. If only you had been given a chance to teach, maybe—” she hesitated, not quite seeing where her speech would lead her.
“Maybe I would have stirred my old stumps, eh, Miss Azalea, and not sat around on my gallery giving a bad imitation of a Southernplanter, while my lion-hearted little wife used her wit and her strength to provide for the lot of us? Well, now, maybe you’re right. And that reminds me of a plan we evolved among us to-day. That nice red-headed boy—whatever his name is—helped shape the notion.”
He told them the idea of the moonlight school and instantly Azalea was on fire with enthusiasm.
“Oh, Mr. Rowantree,” she cried, “what a splendid thought—what a shining, glittering thought! It looks just like a king, dressed in white and jewels and with a crown on its head. Let’s make it come true. Carin, you’re the wonderful one for doing things. All I can do is to exclaim, but you go off and do them. Make this come true, Carin! I couldn’t bear to have it stay merely a dream.”
“It is a glorious idea,” said Carin. “I suppose men and women were quite happy in the old days, Mr. Rowantree, in ignorance. My father says some of the old, unlettered peasants were very wise, and that they had valuable knowledge they passed on from father to son. But in these days it certainly does seem terrible for a man or woman not to know how to reador write, particularly here in our country where everyone should have a chance.”
“That’s it,” cried Aunt Zillah, who was a great patriot; “in this glorious country where everyone ought to be given a chance! That’s the promise we’ve held out to those who come to our shores, and it’s that which helps me to overlook so many things that seem wrong in our dear land. Greedy we may be, and disgraced by the scheming and grafting of our politicians, but after all, it is here that the ignorant are educated and the lowly learn to lift up their heads. Oh, I’m proud to be an American, and if I had my life to live over again I would devote it to some cause that would help on the real Americanism. Now, here’s Azalea, God bless her. She’s going to work among the mountaineers. What could be more fitting? The child has just the nature for the task, and her experiences have helped her to understand many things that a more carefully sheltered girl could not have understood.”
“I hope she’ll marry happily and keep in her own home,” said Mr. Rowantree shortly, while Azalea colored scarlet and was grateful for the gloom that hid her face. “I’m an old-fashionedman and I like to see a woman in her home. As one of the chief of Miss Azalea’s friends I do not desire a public career for her.”
Even in the dusk Miss Zillah’s head could be seen shaking emphatically.
“Well,” she said, “if you’re an old-fashioned man, Mr. Rowantree, I suppose I’m what could be called an old-fashioned woman. But this I will say: I believe in women using their powers, and I think a woman of intelligence and health has the ability to look after her home and do something else besides. Azalea may marry or she may not, but in any event I hope she’ll use her influence and some of her best thought in behalf of these poor people ’round about us. I’m not a great one for foreign missions—although I’ve no objection to them—but I do say that life is twice as wonderful and beautiful when one helps on her fellow beings. There never was a place in the world where missionary work was needed more than it is right here in our own beloved state of North Carolina. It’s a kind and gracious old state, and as beautiful as anything that lies beneath the sky, but it’s got some poor, neglected members of the human family in it, and I’m all for helping them on. Ilove Azalea, and have great confidence in her, and that’s why I want to see her give herself to a useful and important work. If she wasn’t of much account, I shouldn’t think that it mattered what she did; but she’s of much account, and so, if she were mine I would give her to this service of her kind as I would give a son, if I had one, to fight and die for his country.”
Miss Zillah’s gentle voice had gathered to itself unusual power, and its tones, charged with feeling, penetrated to the shadowy room where Keefe and Mary Cecily were. Mary Cecily laughed softly as she arose from the low chair where she had been sitting, and Keefe echoed her. Perhaps it struck them as amusing that anybody should find it necessary to worry about anything now, when suddenly, to them, the world seemed so completely right.
“How are you in there?” queried Rowantree. “I’m thinking of driving home the night, Mary Cecily, and leaving you here with Keefe.”
“Oh, would Mary Cecily be happy away from the little ones?” asked Keefe. “Really, I’m much better—fifty percent better, I assure you. It’s not necessary for—for my sister to stay with me.” His voice caught onthe words. “My sister” was not easily uttered.
“Indeed, I’ve no thought of leaving you, brother dear—no thought at all. It’s as my husband says. He can ride home to the children; and very good and dear it is of him to think of it. The two of us will be along in the morning, as you were planning a while back. Be off, Bryan dear. There’s only Paralee with the children, and she’s strange to them. Tell them all that’s happened to me to-day, and let Constance know that I’m bringing home an own uncle—the very one she’d have chosen, I’m sure.”
Azalea drew back into the shadow of the house. So in the morning they would be off—Keefe and his bright little sister—carrying their rich romance with them, and the Oriole’s Nest would be the poorer for their going! They would be gloriously happy together, telling each other all that had happened in the years they had been apart. They would go farther, those two, with their eager, answering minds, and would talk not only of what they had done, but of what they had thought and felt. Each would be turning out the riches of his mind forthe other to see—holding up their fancies as if they were embroidered clothes, and each marveling at what the other had to show. They would be telling to each other the poetry they knew; and Keefe would be making pictures while Mary Cecily watched. And how the two of them would love the children and admire their graceful ways! Azalea could see how they would look, all the family of them, sitting about the blazing fire in that queer “drawing-room.” Keefe’s pictures would be put up on the wall—the whole place would be plastered with them—and they would be talking about this one and that, and where it was painted. Then they would be singing together, and whistling and dancing—heaven only knew what they would or wouldn’t do.
Azalea felt the hot tears of shameless envy crowding out from under her lids, and hated herself for them. She to help on her fellow-men? She to work to add to the goodness and happiness of the world, when she grudged these two their simple happiness, after so many years of tears and longing and heartache? Could a more miserable, absurd, abject girl than herselfbe found anywhere, she wondered. She thanked heaven that the friends there beside her did not dream how ignoble she was.
Rowantree meantime had said good night and had mounted and ridden away. They watched the light of his lantern flitting like a firefly among the trees and at last disappearing entirely in the night.
The McEvoys came with the milk, and lingered to learn the news. As they walked away Miss Zillah and her girls could hear their soft singsong voices in kindly unison.
“They’re right sweet folks,” Miss Zillah declared, sighing unaccountably. “At first they did seem queer to me, but now I’ve grown to be as fond of them as if they were old neighbors. They’re a good example of a happy married pair, too. I don’t know as I ever heard them really disagree about a thing; and though those medicine bottles must be a terrible trial to Mr. McEvoy, he never says a word about them, except, of course, to tease Mis’ Cassie a little now and then.”
“There haven’t been any new bottles bought since we came up here, I notice,” said Carin. “I suppose we’ve kept Mis’ Cassie so busy that shehasn’t had time to take thought about them.”
“I’ve a fine little plan that I’d like to carry into execution,” said Miss Zillah. “Down home I have quite a number of pretty mantel ornaments I bought long ago when—when I thought I was going to have a little home of my own. I—I never told you about that, my dears, but it seems a good time to do it now, this being such a wonderful day for us all. You see, I had my wedding clothes made, and I was to marry one of the kindest, fairest-minded men that ever lived in the world. And he—he was killed, dears—thrown from his horse and killed.”
Azalea had still kept in the background, those hurt and lonely tears hot beneath her lids; and now, at the story of another’s sorrow, she frankly let them fall. Curiously, though, they were not so hot and bitter as she had thought they would be.
“Why, Aunt Zillah,” she murmured, “we never guessed! Yet we might have known. There always was something about you so gentle and sweet—we might have known that you’d had sorrow.”
“Few live to my age without having sorrow, Zalie, but my sorrow came in my youth, and ittook the zest out of life for a time. However, it was a sweet sorrow. I’ve always been able to keep my lover young and kind in my memory. But what I started to say was, that I put away and never have used the things I got for that little home I meant to have. Now, I’m going to write sister Adnah and ask her to send me my mantel ornaments. They’re very pretty and chaste,” went on Miss Zillah quaintly. “Little shepherds and shepherdesses, piping to each other, and all dressed in the softest pink and blue, and a clock to match. I even have an embroidered cover for the mantel, done in cross stitch and in pastel colors to go with the ornaments. If I give these to Mis’ Cassie and induce her to put them in the spare room she’ll stick the medicine bottles away out of sight.”
“They’ll go in that mess under the house,” agreed Carin. “And it will be a grand day for the McEvoys when they do. Oh, Aunt Zillah, how tired and sleepy I am—almost too tired and sleepy to go to bed.”
“I feel just the same way,” said Azalea. “Yet I hate to leave the night to itself, it’s so lovely. Sometimes I think I’ll sleep days and keep awake nights, I love the night so much.”
“Come,” said Miss Zillah with the voice of authority, “don’t be talking nonsense. We will get to our beds.”
So they slipped in softly behind the great chimney and the pretty screens to their own quaint makeshift of bedroom, leaving Mary Cecily on a cot near her brother. The windows and doors all stood open to the night, and the girls could hear the soft rustlings of the wood and the tinkle of the brook. The whippoorwills were very distant and their insistent cry sounded sweet and mournful, though it could be hectoring enough when it was near at hand. But nothing was hectoring this night, except that foolish, wistful longing in Azalea’s restless young heart, because Keefe and Mary Cecily were so happy in themselves, and because it was taken for granted that she, Azalea, was always to be so brave and so eager for service, and was to be a missionary to the mountain folk and was never to have any joy of her own—no real, selfish, glorious joy! Yet only the other day she had told Carin how clearly the finger of fate pointed to her as one set apart to “do good.” She would never marry, she had said—never, never—because she could not marry a “gentleman” andbecause she would marry no one who could not lay claim to that name. And they had taken her at her word—or at least, they had almost done so. She was to be Azalea McBirney, the adopted daughter of the mountain folk, the little sister to all the unfortunates, and was to live apart and be good!
Azalea lay quite on the edge of her bed, very straight and rigid, and looked up at the stars through her open window. They were cold, unsympathetic looking stars! Azalea had not previously noticed how very haughty and remote they could appear, or how indifferent they could be to the woes and doubts, the frets and flurries of one self-centered young person called Azalea McBirney—one reneging, horrid young person, who was secretly going back on all her declarations of faith and service, and wanting nothing in the world so much as merely to be happy!
Life, decided Azalea, was a puzzle. Once it had seemed simple. Some things had plainly been right to do; others, as plainly wrong. In those days she had believed she had only, at any time, to listen to her conscience to find out precisely what she ought to do, and therefore whatshe wanted to do. Because, of course, she wanted to do what was right.
Now she was finding out that there were all sorts of matters which were neither right nor wrong, about which she had to decide. At present she was tormented with a longing to share in the joy and in the lives of Keefe and Mary Cecily. Something in them called to her. Their quick gayety, their sudden sadnesses, their caring about pictures and poetry more than they did about food or work, or sleep, or any usual, dutiful thing, made them seem the very kin of her soul. She couldn’t account for it. It was merely a fact. She began to understand that there might have been something of the sort in her own poor little mother. When she took to wandering the roads with a cheap “show” perhaps it was not merely necessity, but some half-formed dream of wildness and gayety and art that had led her on. She too had loved the night and laughter and dancing, singing and pictures. Not anything evil—Oh, no, on the contrary, only happily, brightly good things, things that lightened the heart and set the brain moving so that glittering little thoughts shone in it like stars in the night.
The Carsons, gentle and kind, formal and polite, were Azalea’s tried and trusted friends; the McBirneys, generous and loving, lived in the inner chamber of her heart; Annie Laurie was a gallant girl and her own true friend; but the soft gay laughter of Keefe and Mary Cecily was as fairy bells in her ears, and that night she could hear nothing else, it seemed—not even the voices of the dear old friends—for the tinkling of them.
So, very stiff, very straight, very miserable, she lay upon her edge of the bed and counted the hours. Carin, soft as a kitten, curled down well in the center of the mattress and slept as babies sleep.
“What’s come over me?” demanded Azalea of herself. “Haven’t I any heart? Haven’t I any sense? Can’t I see anybody else happy without being jealous of them? Am I an Everlasting Pig?”
Haughty and remote stars do not answer questions like that. Along in the latter part of the night Azalea fell asleep with the question hanging in the fast-chilling air. When she awoke, the day was already bright, and outside the door sounded the voice of Miles McEvoymaking arrangements to carry Mary Cecily and Keefe to Rowantree Hall.
Azalea sprang out of bed with decision. Her lips were set in a hard little line.
“Come, Carin,” she said, “we mustn’t be late to school. Let’s settle down now for a long hard pull. We’ll teach school as we never did before. There’s only three weeks more ahead of us and we mustn’t waste a minute.”
“My goodness,” yawned Carin, prettily, “you sound like a call to arms. All right, comrade, I’m with you. Shall we wear our pink ginghams?”
“What does it matter what we wear?” demanded Azalea sternly. “We’re here toteach school. Nobody cares how we look.”
At that Carin sat up in bed bristling with protest.
“What’s come over you, Zalie?” she demanded. “Of course the children care how we look. Looking as well as we can is part of our work. You know you’ve often said so yourself. But, dear me, why should I worry about you, you old Zalie thing? You always look lovely.”
Her friends thought so that morning, certainly.Her eyes were a touch too bright, perhaps, her cheeks a shade too red, and there was something a little too vivid and throbbing about her. Try as hard as she could to keep in the background, she could not succeed.
“You’re a flaming Azalea this morning, my dear,” whispered Mary Cecily just before she took her seat beside her brother in McEvoy’s wagon for the rough journey to Rowantree Hall. Keefe was white and spent-looking, but a glorious happiness shone in his eyes.
“No one is to worry about me,” were his words at parting with his friends at the Oriole’s Nest. “If it’s sick I am, it must be with gratitude and bliss. Never will I forget your goodness to me at this house; and now here I am, going—home!” He turned swimming eyes on his sister.
As they drove off he raised himself on one elbow—he was reclining on the clean straw in the wagon box—to catch one last glimpse of “the flaming Azalea.” But she was out of sight—absurdly and irritatingly out of sight. There were only Miss Zillah and the golden-headed Carin to wave good-bye.
“Only two more little days,” said Azalea, “and then we are through.”
“Little days, little days,” sang Carin in a tune of her own. “Only two more little days.”
“You use strange expressions,” remarked Miss Zillah to her girls. “Why do you say ‘little days’? Why not ‘short days’?”
“When I love anything,” explained Azalea, “I call it little.”
“Then you do love these days? I’m glad. I was afraid—”
“Aunt Zillah, dear—afraid?”
“Afraid you were tired, my girl. You’re tanned, of course, and so not pale, but you do seem rather weary.”
“Oh, I’m tired, but school teachers have a perfect right to be tired. Six weeks of teaching children who haven’t been in the habit of learningisrather an order, now, isn’t it, Aunt Zillah?But they’velearned! All this last week they’ve studied like mad trying to get as much as they could before school closed. Even that queer, cross Mr. McIntosh has worked as if his life depended on it.”
“His young shote depended on it, you remember,” laughed Carin. “Mr. Rowantree has lost his wager with him and will have to hand over the brace of ducks.”
“So much the worse for Mary Cecily and the babies,” sighed Azalea. “Well, they’ll have plenty this year, anyway. The farm is really doing well, and it will do better next year now that Jake Panther is to take it over to work it on shares. He hasmuchmore in him than I thought at first. Now that he sees there’s some hope ahead for the Panthers, he’s a changed fellow. He’s roofed the cabin he and his grandmother live in, and set up a doorstep, and put out a rain barrel and made all sorts of improvements. Even Grandma Panther herself doesn’t look quite such a witch as she did.”
“Oh, but Paralee is the prize,” said Carin. “Since the great news came from Asheville that her father would soon be as strong and active as ever he was, and since dear Aunt Zillah fittedher out in decent clothes, and Jake got his regular job, she walks and looks like one who has just discovered what it is to be alive.”
“I hope it will all come right about her going to the Industrial School at Hardinge. You wrote to your father and mother about it, Carin, didn’t you?”
“Of course I did, Zalie. That’s the third time you’ve asked me that question. I’m just as sure father will send her away to school as I am that he’ll open up the moonlight school and put Mr. Rowantree at the head of it. Oh, I do wish those dear people of mine would come! There’s so much I want to show them and tell them about. We must take them over to Rowantree Hall the very first thing.”
“There’s a large package waiting for me at Bee Tree,” said Miss Zillah. “Little Dibblee Sikes stopped in to tell me. It must be my mantel ornaments. I want to see them on Mis’ Cassie’s spare room shelf before we go.”
“Come, Carin we must be off,” cried Azalea, snatching her parasol from its hook. “Good-bye, Aunt Zillah. Only two more little days—little days—little days.”
“Silly one!” cried Carin, gathering up herparasol also and trailing after her. “Why is your heart so thistledownish?”
“How do I know? How do I know?” answered Azalea, still lilting. “Except because I like my little days.”
It had come to that, simply. She liked her little days of hard work. She had broken the back of rebellion that memorable day when Keefe rode away to his great happiness with his sister, and she had been left, bereft of these two “charmers of the world” as she called them, to do her hard stint of work. In a way, Carin followed where she led. If Azalea’s enthusiasm for the teaching had faltered, Carin’s would have faltered too. But Azalea’s devotion to her work had steadily increased since she had fought her fight with envy and selfishness. She had been able to summon to her aid the hidden powers of her will, and these had sustained her even through these last hot, nerve-wearying days of her teaching. Now she felt herself to be the victor over that indolent, brooding, indulgent self which had more than once in her life tried to get the upper hand.
Not a pupil in the school but had made headway. Some of them had done extraordinarilywell. Dibblee Sikes had cried whenever the last day of school was mentioned; but he cheered up when Azalea assured him that there should be a “moonlight school” for his mother.
“Maybe,” said Azalea, “it can be arranged so that there will be a day school all winter long for you youngsters.”
“But you’ll not be here, ma’am,” said Dibblee. “No one can learn us like you and Miss Carin. There’s been teachers here that just yelled at us and we got so skeered we couldn’t learn nothin’. All the fun we had was running away from school.”
“You shan’t have that kind of a teacher, I promise,” Azalea assured him. “Oh, Dibblee, if only I knew enough I’d stay right here and teach you all the time; but, you see, I have to go to school myself for a long time yet. As I am now, I should soon run out of learning and you would get ahead of me.” She laughed gayly and Dibblee laughed with her. There was much laughter about the schoolhouse these days, and it was no longer because some one had blundered or met with an accident. They laughed now because they were happy, because their shyness had ceased to be a torment to them,and because they felt that they were more like other children—not strange, not some one who needed a “missionary” to help them on. Of all the services that Azalea and Carin had been able to perform for them, the bestowing upon them of self-esteem was the greatest. Just how this result had been attained it would be hard to say. Perhaps it was the gentleness, the unfailing politeness of their young teachers and their way of seeming as “kin” to these shy, wild, suspicious young creatures, that had done it.
“It’s like teaching squirrels to eat from the hand,” Azalea had said more than once to Carin.
Little had been seen of the Rowantrees and nothing of Keefe since the day Keefe went to his sister’s home, but they were all, even the children, coming to school for the “last day.” The parents of the pupils were coming too, not only that they might, like parents the world over, swell with pride over the accomplishments of their offspring, but also because word had been sent broadcast that the moonlight school would be under discussion.
There were few flowers left on the mountain side by this time, but the prettiest imaginable decorations had been contrived with spurge andgalax, rhododendron leaves and vines. The place was really a bower, and the children were clean and fresh for the occasion. Indeed, it may well be doubted if certain of them had ever been so freshened and decorated as on this day. Their young teachers had led them to believe that they were to expect high festival, and they themselves were in the most charming of their white frocks, with the little strings of gold beads which Mrs. Carson had given them at Christmas.
The event held one throbbing secret. It was a cold secret, although it arose from a warm impulse. By the greatest perseverance, Aunt Zillah had managed to get a wagonload of ice and a number of ice cream freezers up from Lee, and now, with the eager aid of the McEvoys, delicious ice cream, made after Miss Zillah’s own receipt, smooth as satin and tempting as nectar, filled the great freezers which bulked mysteriously beneath their gunny sack wrappings in the shade of the schoolhouse. Moreover, in the little cupboard where Azalea and Carin kept their stores, were six of the most noble, decorative and triumphant cakes which Miss Zillah ever had concocted.
“I don’t know much about educating the young,” she told the girls and Mis’ Cassie, “but when it comes to feeding them, I understand the matter perfectly. Anyone who has reared a girl like Annie Laurie is bound to know something about that.” She sighed a little, for the day held one drawback. She did long to have her niece share in the pleasures of this closing time and to have her see what had been accomplished, and she had written begging Annie Laurie to come, but the girl had replied vaguely. Business at the dairy was very brisk. She was working early and late to get her hand in completely before her valuable assistant, Sam Disbrow, left for Rutherford Academy.
“It will be a month yet before he goes,” Aunt Zillah had said almost petulantly. “I should have thought Annie Laurie might have spared us one day.”
Mr. and Mrs. Carson were already at Lee, having run down to open up the house.
“There seems to be no end of things to do,” Mr. Carson wrote his daughter. “Do you really think you need us up there, kitten? What difference will a few hours make? HaveMcEvoy pack up your possessions, and hasten to us.”
“He doesn’t mean a word of it,” Carin declared. “He and mother are simply dying to get up here and see what we’ve done. Whenever papa sounds dull and prosy like that I know he’s planning something delightful. It isn’t normal for him to be stupid. He’s up to something, you’ll see.”
But as the “last day,” hot, with gay clouds, came, and the pupils appeared an hour too early, and the Rowantree’s old surrey swung from the thick shade of the old wood road, all indicating that the hour was at hand, Carin began to have her doubts. For once in the history of the world, her parents were going to be stupid and sensible and economical! They were going to act like other people! She was horribly disappointed in them, and kept very busy so as not to be alone with Azalea and let her see how disappointed she was.
There really was a great deal to do, for the parents of the pupils required much polite consideration. School did not call that morning until half after ten o’clock. The time precedingthat was spent in talking about the moonlight school. There seemed to be a general desire for it, although some of the neighbors were exceedingly shy about expressing their desires.
“I’m ready to teach it,” Mr. Rowantree declared. “And I’ll do it for the smallest sum possible.”
The mountain folk may or may not have approved of Mr. Rowantree, but there was none who doubted his ability to teach them anything they might wish to know. Indeed, they always had held a great opinion of his bookishness; and now they seemed to find him more likable than they had imagined possible. His fine and gracious manners never relaxed, no matter with whom he talked, and where they had once been offended and annoyed by this display of elegance, it now seemed different to them, since the young teachers, who evidently approved of him, had themselves such pretty, fine ways, and yet were so simple and friendly.
The truth was, the folk of Sunset Gap were beginning to take a new view of various matters. For almost the first time in their existence they had been brought into close contact with people from the outer world, and their fears andprejudices had, in the light of their summer’s experience, been dying a rapid and painless death.
The morning hours were given up to a hasty review of the work done, that the parents might see something of what their children had been learning. The young teachers secretly hoped that their audience would be so pleased that they would take measures to establish a school of their own volition.
Now Azalea and now Carin, flushed, eager and slightly tremulous, led on their classes through the review of reading, spelling, geography, history and arithmetic, while crowded about the windows and the platform sat the parents, their tanned faces smiling and interested. Miss Zillah in her lavender lawn, her curls fresh as flowers, beamed upon them from the platform. Little Mary Cecily Rowantree and her brood was at the rear, where her young ones could ease their feelings by turning somersaults in the school doorway or by chasing an alarmed bunny.
Mr. Rowantree moved about from place to place, lending an academic aspect to the scene. Seated on the low, broad window sill, gay andlithe as a faun, was Keefe, with whom Azalea and Carin had been able to exchange little more than a nod. He still showed the effects of his illness, his eyes looked unnaturally large and his mouth was strangely sensitive; but he was more charming than ever. He had a sketching pad and pencil with him, and in the most engaging manner he sketched the heads of those in the room. He seemed very far away to Azalea—very much a creature of some brighter, lighter world than that in which she dwelt. She felt in her heart that he was going on to things of which she would know nothing—to a successful life in some great city. He would know artists and the most interesting sort of folks. He would live in strange, delightful places; he would travel. She and Sunset Gap would be only a fading, picturesque thought in his memory.
But all that foolish fretting and fuming, she told herself severely, was over and done with. She was Azalea McBirney, with her chosen work to do. Things were as they were; not dreams, not charming visions, but just plain facts, plain needs, plain work. Moreover, life was all the better for being as it was. If the body needed simple bread more than candies, sothe spirit needed the plain bread of life more than delicacies.
So she bent brain, spirit, eyes, hands, lips to the labor of the day. She determined to draw from each of her pupils a quick and eager response. She threw herself into the hour’s performance, and had the profound satisfaction of feeling those minds which a few weeks before had been so aloof, so chilled, so closed, open to her influence as flowers open to the sun.
From time to time more neighbors came and clustered about the windows without, leaning on the sills and listening to the program. Neither Azalea nor Carin paid much attention to these soft comings and goings, these quiet unobtrusive movements of the people without there in the heat of the changing day. There was some fear of rain; Azalea heard the people whispering about it; she herself noted how the light in the room changed from bright sunlight to soft shadow. She hoped, of course, that the rain would hold off; and yet she couldn’t help thinking how charming Keefe would look there on the window ledge, with the silver rain falling between him and the trees; and she remembered that first wonderful day at the Rowantrees,when they all had eaten on the gallery with the rain making a silver curtain between them and the rest of the world.
It was time for the nooning—the famous nooning that was to hold Aunt Zillah’s surprise—and Azalea was just bringing the exercises to an end, when she saw an extraordinary sight. Carin, the proper, the correct, the ladylike, who had been seated on the platform near an open window, was suddenly seen to plunge through the window like the most madcap child in the whole school. Not a sound came from her, but with her bright hair tumbling about her from the violence of her leap to the ground, she was speeding down the path. What was worse and more astonishing, Aunt Zillah, the very mirror of what was decorous, had looked, and was now speeding after her, only she was swung down from the window by the sympathetic Keefe, who apparently had the key to her extraordinary conduct. In spite of the titter of delight that shook the school, Azalea preserved her dignity, but out of the corner of her eye she saw Mr. and Mrs. Carson, and Carin homing to them like a swift dove;and Annie Laurie running with outstretched arms to meet her Aunt Zillah.
Azalea didn’t say even in her inmost heart: “And there’s nobody for me.” She was through with that sort of “grumping” and did not mean ever to give way to it again. Besides, in a day or two she would be driving up the dear familiar road with Pa McBirney, and coming upon the well-loved clearing with the little house that was her home, and listening to Jim’s questions, and feeling Ma McBirney’s kind eyes on her, and then she would go creeping up to her own sweet, odd room in the loft that looked up the mountain side, and she would be happy. Yes, of course she would be happy. That was her life. Every one had his own life. Mary Cecily had hers and Keefe had his, and Carin had hers—
All of this time she was talking, was neatly and cheerfully bringing the exercises to a close, and her well-trained pupils were doing their best to give her their attention and not to let their eyes wander down the road to view the interesting scenes taking place there.
“Miss Pace,” said Azalea clearly, “has a luncheon prepared for you which you are allasked to help prepare in the grove. Everyone is invited—everyone. No one is to go away.”
No one had the slightest intention of going away. What was the use of doing that when already Paralee and Mis’ Cassie and Mis’ Sikes and others of the neighbors who had been pressed into service, were bringing forth platters of sandwiches and cold meat loaf and pickles and salad; and Miles McEvoy was starting a fire among the well-blackened stones of a rude fireplace in the schoolyard, and Mrs. McIntosh was mixing coffee in the huge pot.
“And now,” said Azalea to herself, “it is the moment for me to go and meet my friends.”
She walked out of the schoolroom door quite properly, meaning to remember every step of the way that she was only the schoolteacher, and not Carin with loving parents, nor Aunt Zillah with a devoted niece—but just at her most dignified and self-conscious moment she was caught about the waist by Annie Laurie’s strong arms and lifted entirely off her feet. Yes, right there before her pupils and all the people she had been hoping to impress with her discretion, was swung quite clear of the ground andhugged till she literally heard a little crack in her ribs!
“I suppose you thought I wasn’t coming up here to see how things were going on, didn’t you, you funny little old schoolma’am?” demanded Annie Laurie’s strong bright tones. “Me—as inquisitive as a house cat—not to come nosing! That’s too ridiculous. Well, here I am, anyway!”
Here she very much was, tall and glowing and quite grown up in her pretty blue linen, with her wide hat with the cornflowers. And here were Mr. and Mrs. Carson, ready to greet Azalea as if she were almost their own. Oh, it was good to have Mrs. Carson’s arm about her waist—good to be in the encircling gentleness and protection of her calm love!
But there really wasn’t a moment to waste in talk. Azalea told them that. Her mind swung back to its duties.
“After luncheon,” she said, “we’ll visit.”
Carin remembered her responsibilities, too; and Aunt Zillah was suddenly in a hospitable flurry. But there really was no call for haste. Sunset Gap was not used to it. There always had been, in the experience of its inhabitants,plenty of time for everything. There was time to eat, certainly. People sat about in little groups and partook of Aunt Zillah’s delicious repast, and they waited on each other graciously, forgetting, it seemed, all about their shyness and their terrific pride and their old quarrels.
But the great moment came when the generous freezers yielded up their strange confection, and for the first time in their lives the folk at Sunset Gap knew the taste of that odd little miracle among foods, ice cream in August weather. Some tasted it suspiciously; some ate it injudiciously; some knew it for a good thing from the first second; some doubted till they had sampled the second saucer; but all realized that this would be an occasion to tell of; and that if the truth of the statements were doubted, they had witnesses to prove that they had eaten frozen food the hottest day of the year.
That afternoon came the “exercises” and like last day exercises in schools the world over, what they involved of anguish, triumph, amusement and disaster it would take long to relate, and the record would be of no interest save to those who had suffered and rejoiced with the day’s events.
They were shortened—fortunately, no doubt—by the approach of the storm which had threatened all day. The watchers without grew restless; the horses stamped and tugged at their hitching, and Azalea, bringing the session quickly and happily to an end, begged for one second’s hearing for Mr. Carson.
“He has something very important to say to you,” she cried, her voice reaching out above the heads of her restive audience. “You must listen, because it is something that may make all your future lives happier.” She smiled at them beautifully, and they paused, half risen from their seats to listen.
Charles Carson had but a brief word.
“The moonlight school of which you have been talking, friends, will be opened here next month. It will hold every night that the moon shines the year round for the next twelve months. Each person who enters has the privilege of paying what he can for his instruction. If he cannot pay, he shall have the instruction nevertheless. Mr. Rowantree, your neighbor, a scholarly man and one whom many a university would be proud to have on its list of teachers, will be your leader. May it be for your greatgood and joy! I believe it will be, for no joy in this world is greater than the joy of knowledge.”
“Three cheers for Mr. Carson,” cried Keefe. “Come now!Whoop—whoop—hurrah!”
The neighbors and the children gave the cheer heartily if somewhat awkwardly, and when Keefe called “Three cheers for your teachers, Miss Carson and Miss McBirney,” they became rather lustier; and when he came to, “Three cheers for Miss Pace,” remembering the dainties she had provided, they were aroused to a hoarse enthusiasm. They wanted to be polite; to shake hands; to say thank you; but the storm was muttering. Azalea waved them all away laughingly.
“Why say good-bye?” she cried. “We’ll never forget you and you’ll never forget us, but we mustn’t stop to talk about it. The storm’s coming. Run—or stay.”
The thunder drowned her voice.
“Come, Azalea,” cried Keefe; “don’t stop to lock up. Some of the people will be wanting to stay in the schoolhouse, probably. Here, put on my coat and run.”
“But you mustn’t run, Keefe,” warned Azalea.“Your heart—mustn’t you be careful of that?”
The boy laughed lightly and held out his hand, and Azalea, taking it, felt herself flying along through the darkening paths of the woods.
Safe in the Oriole’s Nest, the Carsons, the Rowantrees, the Paces and Keefe and Azalea, made many plans that evening of wild summer rain. It had been arranged that they were all to be accommodated for the night between the McEvoys’ and the cottage, so since none was leaving, there was no need for haste. Not a person there was of the sort who feels that nightfall bids him to bed. They did as they pleased with their day and their night, and this night they wished to talk. The little Rowantrees, Gerald and the weary Constance, Moira and Michael, the twins, were nested in the hammocks and on the couches, and in the lightning-pierced gloom, with the storm crashing and thundering about them, the others sat long, talking over each other’s affairs with a frankness which might not have been easy under other circumstances.
Keefe made it known that he was going to New York, taking his summer’s product of pictures with him, to “try himself out.” He had something to work for now; there was some zest to life; he wanted to make a success of himself for the sake of Mary Cecily and the children. Annie Laurie was to attend to her dairy, and being now ready to take up advanced studies, was to study the University Extension Course by herself.
“Miss Parkhurst, your governess,” said Mrs. Carson to Carin, “is not coming back, my dear. She is to live nearer her mother and sister and teach school. That means that our plans for you must be changed. We shall send you to the Roanoke Academy for Young Ladies. After you have had two years there you may take up your study of painting, if you wish to do so, in some art school. In the meantime, you will have art instruction at the school.”
“But, mamma,” cried Carin, “that means—why, that means that Azalea and Annie Laurie and I will not study together any more. Why, it means breaking up the Triple Alliance!”
“Never worry about changes,” said Mrs. Carson in her silvery voice. “It is the changes thatmake life interesting. Good has always come to you, Carin, and good will continue to come. Annie Laurie has already chosen what she wishes to do. We have decided what we think best for you. There remains only Azalea to care for. How is it with you, Azalea? What do you wish to do?”
“I mean,” said Azalea, her heart trembling a little in spite of her efforts to be calm and philosophic, “to prepare myself to take charge of the mountain industries at Lee. Just how I can best fit myself for this work I do not know. I mustn’t desert Mother McBirney, must I? I can’t put any expense on my dear family, but I can stay at home and learn weaving of Mother McBirney and basket-making of dear old Haystack Thompson, and go to Jug Town and find out how to make pottery. I can pick up my education, don’t you see?”
She sat tall, slight and very girlish-looking, by the table on which rested the reading lamp. Her vivid face, thrown into relief by the soft glow, had, to all those present, a sweet and gracious familiarity. They loved her, wanted her with them, wanted her to help them make up the sum of good things that is called “home.”There was not one person there who wanted to spare her, yet here she was with her little declaration of independence.
“Come up to New York,” whispered Keefe, fascinated, “and study at the School of Design.”
Azalea shook her head.
“I’d like to make my own way,” she said valiantly. “It—it would make me happier than anything else. I’d rather not be sent anywhere. I’d rather cut my own path.”
“So proud,” smiled Mr. Carson whimsically. “Would it hurt you to accept help from those who love you, Azalea?”
“Is it pride?” asked Azalea with a bright thoughtfulness. “I’m sure I don’t think it is. I want to use my own will, Mr. Carson, to see what I can spin out of myself. If it should happen to be a wonderful silver web how pleased I would be!”
“Oh, you’re so young, Azalea, dear,” mourned Miss Zillah. “Don’t go to taking too much risk. Don’t be too independent.”
“No, don’t, Azalea,” pleaded Carin. “Let papa and mamma make some plan for you.”
“They understand me better than you do, Carin love,” said her friend. “They know whata joy it is to make one’s own plans and carry them out. Annie Laurie knows, too, don’t you, dear?”
Annie Laurie nodded her fine ruddy head. She knew. Keefe knew too, for he was like an eagle in his love of freedom. They all gave way before Azalea finally. She was no longer a little girl to be petted and given presents to, and to be consoled for her orphanage by the hospitality they could offer. She was a young woman, poor, united to humble people, gifted with a strange, fine talent—a talent for living and for making things seem rich and wonderful—and it was their business to let her have her way. She had grown up during the summer. She realized it herself, and knew as the rest of them could not, what the influences had been which had brought that transformation to pass. Henceforth, she would have her own way to make, her own sorrows to endure, her own peculiar joys to seek. Until now one hand after another had guided her; she had clung to skirts, so to speak. But she had grown past that; she must walk alone.
She looked about her at the rude but charming room, and at the faces of her kind and dearfriends. She seemed to see herself, too, as she sat there, a girl with a curious past and a strange present. As for her future! She shrugged her shoulders gayly—as her poor little dead mother sometimes had done—and spread out her hands with a wide gesture.
“It’s to be Azalea for herself,” she said with a brave little laugh. “Wish her luck!”