Chapter IV: Part 4

“Oh, something so horrid happened yesterday! I meant to keep it to myself, but I can’t.” Betty’s cheeks were red, her eyes were flashing. “I was at Mrs. Kennedy’s, with those books, and she asked if there was anything the matter with father, he had been looking so worn lately. She thought outsiders always noticed those things more quickly than the family.”

“The idea!” said Mrs. Harlow, indignantly.

“Then when I was in the hall I heard them talking; I couldn’t help it. They said—she and Mrs. Bradley—what a pity it was when a man didn’t get on well in business, and Mrs. Tower said she was always so sorry for the wife of an unsuccessful man; it must be so dreadful, if you had any ambition, to see your husband a failure. She said she never could really respect a man who showed himself deficient. I was so angry I could hardly walk home. I went up-stairs and cried. I wanted to burst right in and tell them how nobly father had behaved when that old Johnson absconded, and how he was trying to pay up all the back debts. But I knew it wasn’t any use——”

“Deficient!” Mrs. Harlow’s eyes glittered. “Your father’s brain—well, your father’s brain is far beyond most people’s. How he can make all those calculations the way he does——” She paused. Her own education dated back of the modern era. She was sound on the arithmetic of her butcher’s and grocer’s books, but beyond that all figures looked to her much like a drop of water seen through a microscope.

“There’s the whistle!” said Betty, suddenly jumping up and making for the train to meet her best friend.

The subject of this conversation had meanwhile been wending his way to the town. He perhaps had looked forward to a time of pecuniary ease and leisure, when, instead of tinkering round the house, he might play golf. But no one, not even his wife, quite understood what a holiday meant to Mr. Harlow.

To escape for a solid block of sunlit secular hours out of the grimy, artificially lighted, badly ventilated office, with its white, tired-looking clerks, and its association of intricate, harassing toil—to escape from this to the peacefulness of green grass, and the click of the lawn-mower, and the flickering of shade from the new leaves of the elms that arched the street, and the sweet voices of little children calling to one another, was to go back into a little corner of the emerald fields of boyhood.

Mr. Harlow was not in the least old; he was indeed barely middle-aged; yet there were moments when he knew that he was not so young as he had been. On the spring morning of a holiday the thought, even if it came, was robbed of its shadow.

His face had the kind smile that children always trusted, as he stopped to pick up a tiny, curly-haired girl who had fallen in his way. The action showed him the letter, which he had forgotten, still in his hand.

He opened and read it as he walked, stopped short and read it again with knitted brows. Then he walked on and on, as one deep in thought, until he came to the other side of the village. He did not go near the stores, but strolled instead towards a large, unoccupied house that stood surrounded by lawns and trees, well apart from its neighbours. There was a clear view of the hills from the porch. Mr. Harlow walked round the house and through the garden, and sat on the porch steps, still deep in thought.

“I did not know what had become of you,” said his wife, running down the walk to meet him as he once more came in through the gate. “Why, it’s after twelve o’clock! I was afraid something had happened to you! I suppose you’ve been talking all this time to somebody.” She did not give him an opportunity to answer, but drew him up beside her to one of the piazza chairs. “I know you won’t have time to mend all those things I asked you to, without taking up all your afternoon, and I don’t want you to do that. But I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to fix the leg of the refrigerator.”

“It would be better to buy a new one, wouldn’t it?” asked Mr. Harlow, impartially.

“‘Better to buy a new one!’ I only wish I could. How queer you act, David! Aren’t you going to put the netting on the screens now? I think you’ll have time before dinner; it’s to be at one o’clock to-day.”

“I can’t do the screens now, Min. The store was shut when I went to buy the nails. Who’s that talking to Betty?”

“It’s Sylvia; she has come out for a couple of days. And, O David, a telegram came for Betty while you were gone, from Harry Leroy. He’ll be on to-night, and he’s not going back to Indiana any more. He has a position here with his cousin.”

“Hum!” Mr. Harlow looked doubtfully considerate. “How old is Betty? Fifteen?”

“She will be nineteen in September.”

“Oh, well, she’s nothing but a child yet,” said Mr. Harlow, in a tone that defied denial.

“Nothing but a child,” assented his wife, cheerfully.

There was a pause. “How old were you when we were married, Min?”

“Twenty. It was entirely too young.”

“I remember,” Mr. Harlow’s voice was reflective, “my mother told me she was married at seventeen and my grandmother was married at fifteen; and I had an aunt who——”

“If you remember any more I’ll go in the house!” said his wife, indignantly. “What is the matter with you, David? Where have you been this morning?”

“Well, Min, I’ve something to tell you. I——” he stopped, his voice altered and his eyes became suddenly alert. “Hello! What’s that over there?”

“Smoke, isn’t it?” she answered, her gaze following his towards the horizon. “It seems to me I can smell it.”

“Looks like a fire, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, but I don’t hear any fire-bells.”

Mr. Harlow rose. “Two-thirds of our beloved volunteer fire department are off on a picnic or a procession or something to-day. I’m going over to that smoke on the old bicycle, and find out what’s the matter.”

“You’d a great deal better stay at home!” his wife called after him, but he was gone.

She still sat on the piazza. A few moments later a rider sped past, and then another. Then the fire-bells began to ring at last—clang! clang! clang, clang, clang!

The fire was on the outskirts of the village, in a different direction from that which Mr. Harlow had taken in the morning. The smoke rose a blacker and blacker column in the distance, interspersed with sudden bursts of flame. The crackling sound of burning wood, the occasional sound of something falling, and hoarse voices calling to one another were borne faintly yet unmistakably upon the air.

“I’m going to the fire!” It was Betty, hat in hand, who had rushed down-stairs breathless. “Come on, Syl! Oh, isn’t it exciting! Just look at that blaze! There go our boys!”

The street was filled with an outpouring of bicycles with their riders, and with boys and men coming in from the various games, Herbert in one set, Jack in another. The village was rapidly becoming deserted. Mrs. Harlow began to wish she might go, too, but she guaged the distance and forbore.

The fire had started in some outhouses, and helped by a sudden breeze, had leaped merrily over intervening space towards a large barn that stretched out red and imposing over one end of the field. Beyond that was a dwelling-house. The barn, which was new, while piled at one end with fodder, was as yet untenanted by any animals, as Mr. Harlow thankfully discovered on reaching the place.

The stir in the village had not extended to these outlying fields, which were all deserted, as became a holiday. A woman stood in the doorway of the house, watching the blaze. One man was running off, shouting for help, and another was carrying two buckets of water towards the barn.

He came up to Mr. Harlow and put the buckets on the ground.

“There ain’t any use in carryin’ water,” he said, “not a mite o’ use, only it seemed sort o’ natural to do it. Just look at those flames!”

“The engine ought to hurry up if it’s going to do any good,” said Mr. Harlow.

“Can’t do a particle of good if it does come. There ain’t any water here—that is, not more than a teacupful; well and cistern’s dry as a bone.”

“The house will not catch,” said Mr. Harlow; “the wind is the other way. You are sure there was no one in the barn?”

“Sure,” said the man.

They were gazing at the flames, which enveloped one end of the structure. Another moment, and there was a deafening crash through the roar of the fire; half of the barn had fallen in, and revealed beyond, high up on one of the big beams of the rafters, the white faces and crouching forms of six little children, huddled close together. Playing in the loft, they had climbed higher and higher back, to get out of reach of the flames.

A cry of horror broke from the two onlookers. The next instant the man, wildly shrieking for help, followed Mr. Harlow, who sped towards the barn.

The flames that had left one part of the building still untouched were rapidly curling round it, lighting up the faces of the children. The roof sloped with a sharp pitch, but there were a couple of projecting ledges below it.

Mr. Harlow had been an athlete in his day. In spite of his large, heavily built frame, he was still quick of motion, sure of foot, keen of eye. He took off his coat and threw it on the ground, and then in some way he was climbing up the barn.

He disappeared, then reappeared again inside. Swinging himself up on a blackened rafter, he held with one hand to a support above, and with the other lifted one half-insensible child from her perch, and swung her over into the waiting grasp of a fireman below, for the engine had come up, and the field was black with the whole swarming village population, gathering larger and larger forces each minute.

Six times did Mr. Harlow’s strong arm plunge forward and encircle a helpless, drooping little form in the sight of the field of breathless spectators.

As the last one was safely handed over, a sharp breath of relief came from the crowd. Then there was a leaping flame, and a cloud of smoke surged up and hid him from view.

* * * * *

“The doctor says he’ll be all right soon. Really, mother, we’re not keeping anything from you.”

Betty, with high-keyed voice, flaming cheeks and wild eyes, was under the impression that she was pacifically calm of demeanour. She had been taken home in a friend’s buggy.

“There’s not the least cause for worry. He’s only suffocated a little, you know, from the smoke, and of course his hands are burned a little, and his feet; and he’s not quite conscious yet, but he’s all right. I was to tell you that particularly, but you’re always so nervous! They’ll have him home here soon. Herbert’s with him, and Syl is bringing his coat. And—O mother!”

Betty fell into Mrs. Harlow’s arms, and they wept together.

“It was the most glorious thing you ever saw!” said the daughter, brokenly. “Syl and I reached the field just after Herbert and Jack, and we heard some one saying, ‘Yes, six children in there, but there’s a man trying to get them out.’

“And then we saw a figure in the barn, through the smoke, and Herbert cried, ‘It’s father! it’s father!’ and ran forward, and Jack and I just screamed, ‘It’s father! Oh, it’s father!’ And oh, you ought to have heard everybody, mother,—I’ll never forget it,—and Jack cheered, but I could only cry, ‘It’s father!’ And then there was a sort of a crash, and then lots of people came up and told us he’d be all right soon, and Mr. Nevin put me in his buggy and brought me home. But if you’d seen how surprised everybody was to find it was father! What’s the matter with you, mother?”

“Oh, nothing,” said the mother. She had drawn her form from her daughter’s embrace and was standing erect. “It doesn’t surprise me in the least. I always knew how brave your father was. Why, when we were engaged he saved a man from—O Betty, Betty, here they come!”

It was a cavalcade led by Jack, with outriders on bicycles and followers on foot, surrounding an ancient barouche, on one seat of which Mr. Harlow was solicitously propped up by his son Herbert, his white face, grotesque with scorched hair, smiling quizzical encouragement at his wife.

“I’m all right,” he said, in response to her faltering, “O David!” “Such nonsense! I don’t know what all this fuss is about.”

“We know, Mrs. Harlow,” said the doctor, as he helped his charge out of the carriage and up-stairs, still protesting, with bandages on his hands and feet. He professed himself as fit as a fighting cock to the wife who sat by his side and gazed at him, while Betty and Herbert received visitors and reporters below with the condescension of those of the blood to the lesser nobility.

“Yes, it’s the third time.” Betty’s voice had become attuned to the recital as the afternoon wore on towards dusk. “Once he rescued a man from the rapids in the St. Lawrence River—my uncle said it was one of the most daring deeds he ever witnessed; and another time he stopped a runaway horse, and saved two women from being dashed against a stone wall. And another time, when he was quite a boy, he had a fight with two burglars in the dark, and forced them—— What is it Herbert wants, Syl? I’ll go up-stairs and see. Will you just take this jelly that Mrs. Scovel brought over, and put it where Jack can’t get at it?”

“Mother!” She opened the door of the ‘throne-room,’ where the invalid, propped, up among his pillows, with a napkin under his chin, had the air of an enormous infant as his wife fed him with beef tea.

“Mother, there’s another reporter down-stairs. Herbert says he wants one of father’s pictures. There’s the telegraph boy riding up—it’s the sixth message we’ve had. Jack, bring it to me here! I’ll open it. It says, ‘Just heard the news. Love and congratulations for our hero.’ It’s from Aunt Kitty. Herbert wired her at once.”

“It’s the most fool business I ever heard of,” said the man in the bed, helplessly. “If I’d done anything, I wouldn’t mind, but——”

“Yes, dear, don’t excite yourself,” said his wife, in soothing tone. “Betty——” She gave her daughter a warning glance.

“I hope we’re through with all this tommy rot,” said Mr. Harlow, as Betty’s footsteps retreated.

He did not hear her voice again going on fluently to a fresh batch of visitors: “Once he rescued a man on the St. Lawrence River from a stone wall—I mean the rapids, one of the most daring deeds——”

“Min!”

“Yes, David.”

“Get my coat. Who’s that at the door now?”

It was Herbert’s voice this time. “What year was father born in?”

“Great Scott!” moaned the invalid. “Go down and tell ’em you don’t know. Shut that door! Get my coat, Min, and in the inner left-hand side pocket—don’t hold it upside down; you’ll let all my keys fall out; there, I told you so—some of that change rolled under the bed—never mind, look for it later. The left-hand pocket, I said——” Twenty-one years of matrimony had not availed to teach Mrs. Harlow the intricacy of her husband’s pockets. “Not that one; there, now you’ve hit it! Take that letter out.”

“Why, it’s the one you got from Tom this morning!”

“Yes; open it, and read for yourself. Tell me how it strikes you.”

As Mrs. Harlow read, the colour rose in her face. “Tom wishes to retire from active business—yes, that’s what Kitty’s letter said. I should think he’d have to, when—O David, he says if you’ll take his place in the firm—he has long been thinking of such an arrangement—David!”

“Ah, don’t take my hand, dear!” He winced instinctively, but his tone was very gentle. “Foolish woman, stop kissing those bandages.”

“O David, now your worries will all be over at last! The children had been planning how they could help you. I wonder what it will seem like to be able to buy anything new once more. And perhaps we could take the Morris house!”

“That’s just what I had been thinking of. I was over there prowling round the place this morning. I thought we’d go down and look at it again together after dinner. And I’m glad for your sake, Min, that I’m not such a failure as it seemed, after all, dear. You won’t have to be ashamed of your husband. What’s that noise?”

There was the roll of drums and the sound of flying footsteps, mingled with Betty’s hysterical tones:

“O mother! O mother! Look out of the window! The procession is stopping outside!”

Like the Lady of Shalott, Mrs. Harlow made three paces through the room to look beyond her threshold. Before her dazed vision rose ranks and ranks of men, crowding the street before her doorway, with the flag in front.

Some one was waving the flag, and Herbert was speaking, and then there was a cheer, and another, and another, and yet another; but she was not standing by the window; her face was down by her husband’s.

“Oh,” she breathed, with a loving scorn in her choking voice, as she touched the bandaged hand that tried to seek hers, “I don’t need to have you climb up burning barns and rescue children, I don’t need to have you ‘successful,’ as they call it, to know who you are! If every one despised you, if you were so poor you had to—dig—wells, I’d still know you were the dearest, the bravest, the best, the most wonderful man in all the world! I’m just too proud of you to live!”

The Portion of the Youngest

The Portion of the Youngest

“Big weddings are horrid. I think it’s a great deal nicer to elope—my grandmother eloped, and she was only sixteen at the time, nearly two years younger than I.”

“That is a very foolish way to talk, Tina; times are quite different, now.”

“I don’t see why! Anyway, I hate weddings. I only care for dances. Momsey, aren’t you going to let me go to this dance? What difference does it make if I’m _not_ out? All my friends are to be there—the Clarks, and Edith Bayne and Francis Fanshawe. Daddy said I could go before he went away, and I’ve been counting on it all the time, and now you won’t let me!”

Tina sat on an ottoman in the centre of the big, mahogany-furnished, old-fashioned room, with her light hair falling over one ear and her large, clear, blue eyes fixed tragically on the face of the parent who sat busily sewing. Tina’s slim shoulders were hunched forward and her feet crossed in the attitude which always brought forth her mother’s rebuke:

“Don’t sit that way, dear; it’s very unladylike. How often have I told you, Tina, that if you get in the habit of sitting like that when we’re alone you’ll do it when you don’t realize it.”

Mrs. Malison’s voice had the tone of a well-worn persistency. She was a young-looking woman for her years, and still handsome enough to make the resemblance to her youngest daughter very apparent even to the obstinate little curve of the short upper lip. The answer was almost as automatic:

“I wouldn’t _care_! Momsey, why won’t you let me go to the dance?”

“Now, Tina, what is the use of teasing mother any more about that?” said the second daughter, coming into the room. Elinor was small and dark, with finely marked eyebrows, regular features, and an expression of great intelligence, wrecked at times by a shattering wave of nervousness. At the moment she carried in her hand a bird’s bathtub, filled with water, destined for the cage over by the window, where a brown and dishevelled canary hung mopingly from a perch. She went on:

“You know perfectly well that mother thinks you’ve been staying up a great deal too late in the evening. You cannot study and go out at the same time. And she told you she didn’t approve of your being so much with Francis Fanshawe—none of us do. He may be a nice enough boy, but he isn’t our kind. We all of us think you’d better let the acquaintance drop.”

“Oh, if you don’t want me to do _anything_!” Tina’s eyes began to sparkle ominously. “It doesn’t make the slightest difference to me when you talk that way about my friends. I like them, no matter what you and Annette say. You’ve always been down on Francis! And I don’t care whether I keep on with my studies or not.”

“Tina!” Elinor carefully inserted the bathtub in the cage before flinging herself volubly upon the subject. “Tina, you can’t mean that—you want to be educated, I hope! Besides, you’ll enjoy coming out into society a great deal more later, and if you’re seen everywhere now, people will be taking you for much older than you are.”

“I wouldn’t care!” Tina’s defiant tone took on an increasing rapidity. “I don’t see what good it does to be educated, anyway. People like you just as well when you’re silly. I think it’s dreadfully stupid to go to college the way you did and get so critical, and never see any fun in things, and analyze everybody the way you do Robert Harper, so that you never know whether you like him or not. I wish you’d take enough interest in him to get him to shave off that horrid, little, black mustache—it makes him look so sleek! I don’t care for what they teach in books. It doesn’t do me any good to learn about the ancient Egyptians and the battles of the Civil War, and write Enoch Arden over upside down; I hate Enoch Arden, he makes me so _cross_—— I care for automobiles, and skating and having a good time with my friends, and _dancing_. And it’s no use telling me I’ll enjoy myself more later. I want to enjoy myself now! Maybe there won’t _be_ any ‘later’; maybe I’ll be dead.”

“I wonder how you make a bird take a bath,” said Elinor in an absorbed tone. She regarded the canary with a baffled eye. “I’ve had the water warm and I’ve had it cold; I’ve put the tub in every position I can think of, and left it there for half a day at a time, and he only hops around and looks at it.” Her voice rose in sudden, nervous excitement. “I don’t know _what_ to do. He hasn’t taken a bath in a week. He _must_ take a bath!”

“You get in and show him how,” jibed Tina, with a delighted childish giggle. She jumped up from the ottoman, swooping her arms down to embrace the mother, who still sat sewing. “All right momsey, I’m to go to the dance; it’s all settled. Let me try Tweetums, Elinor!” she ran over to the cage, brushing her sister to one side. Tina seemed to take the light with her when she moved; it clung around her bright hair, and radiated from her fair skin and her dear eyes, and even lurked, shimmering, in the folds of her sky-blue gown. She stood with upraised head touching the gilded wires of the cage, talking in tender, caressing sound to the little feathered rebel, with a lure of sugar crumbs upon her red lips, until he came to peck at them. What made the transition—what magic was hers? There was a sudden splash, a shower of raindrops over her laughing, triumphant face as she started back, before she ran from the room. Tina had the winning way.

“I thought I heard Tina in here,” said a taller sister, entering by another door. Annette was perhaps not so pretty as the other two, but she had a large, blonde gentleness, very reposefully attractive. She had been engaged for four years to a charming fellow, whose only lack was that of money, consequent on a dependent mother and sisters. The lovers had preserved the spirit of romance by varying the manifestations of it—for the last twelvemonth spending their time with note-book and pencil, raptly ciphering out the future possibilities of a livelihood for two on the narrowest known limit. Although Annette and Joseph had seen each other nearly every evening during this probation her soft eyes suffused and her soft cheeks rosed as virginally on the thousandth time he appeared as on the first.

She held up a garment now as she spoke. “I want to give this new waist to Tina to mend. Just see where she’s torn it! I found it under her desk.”

“Now, Annette, if you’ve been putting her room to rights again——!” Elinor held up her hands in despair.

“I couldn’t stand seeing it the way it was,” said Annette apologetically.

“Yes, of course, that’s the way you spoil her. I’m sure you and I were brought up very differently. Here, give me a needle and thread, she’ll never mend that waist. Mother, now you’ve let Tina think she’s going to the dance, that settles it; you can’t go back on it now: but I think she ought to understand that _this_ is absolutely the last time.”

“She seemed to take it so to heart,” said the mother weakly. She tried to rally herself intelligently. “Of course I don’t mind her accepting invitations occasionally; she’s nearly eighteen; but the girls who are not out have more going on than the girls that are. And that young Fanshawe—he seems a stupid sort of a boy, to me; but he does such reckless things I do _not_ like to have Tina with him.”

“Oh, mother, he’s all right, really, he’s only young.” Annette’s tone was gently protesting. “He’s so much richer than the others that he can do more things—that’s all; she’ll soon get tired of him. All the boys in that set are devoted to Tina. When a girl is as pretty as she is——” The three looked at each other in the pause that followed, but each saw only the image of the beloved youngest.

Tina, indeed, was in that stage of rebellion at life in which she could see no meaning in any law of her elders; her young desire controverted all their worldly experience. What was the use of saying she couldn’t want to do things when she patently did? Refusal hardened her; reason was only that which darkeneth understanding. She resented any appeal to her affection, not because she had little, but because she had so much that she fought being mastered by it, and thrown into those hated fits of weeping and contrition. She stormily wanted what she wanted. Yet if she were left untrammelled she showed unexpected glimpses of a heart passionately loving and tender; an undercurrent as old as the world, as deep as life, profoundly affecting. Tina was the only one of the family who had “temperament,” a fact dimly perceived only in the desire to shield the child from something unknown. At present there was the uneasy feeling that this something might be a youthful attachment for Francis Fanshawe.

To the critical eye, young Fanshawe, an orphan, was simply a stolid and uninteresting young fellow of twenty-one, tall, heavily built, and reddish in hair and complexion. Elinor characterized him as “thuddy,” a word coined by the family to indicate the quality of weight. He had no expression, and was tongue-tied in the presence of his elders, even the sympathetic Annette failing to elicit response from him, though with the youth of his own “set” Francis seemed to be voluble enough in the loud exchange of catch phrases and slangy interjections which made their happy intercourse, and he and Tina could talk by the hour together in a murmuring undertone. He was rather dangerously well off in a community where only the fathers had money, a fact in itself calculated to affect his reputation. But his light-blue eyes could look squarely into yours, and he had a good grip of the hand. He was undoubtedly a nice enough boy if you liked that kind, though Elinor could only wonder that anybody did. She herself only liked people who interested and stimulated.

With Elinor a lover was a creature to be analyzed mercilessly under the suspicion that otherwise he might get some power over one by sheer force of his affection; he was pictured in all sorts of impossible situations to test his attraction, every barrier was erected that ingenuity could devise. The way Elinor “treated” Robert was one of the stock subjects of interest and reprehension in the family, though Robert, intelligent, darkly good-looking and ineffective, was simply pleased if she was pleasant, and patiently snubbed when she wasn’t. Annette and Joseph—that patently good fellow who had had the courage of his convictions four years ago—enjoyed their little confidences of amused laughter over the situation. Still, precedent had made an engagement of marriage something to be very thoughtfully entered into, or necessarily prolonged. When it came to Tina——

Mrs. Malison wrote to her husband, as he did to her, every night during his long absences from home. She reposed so thoroughly in theory on his judgment that neither of them realized that in practice she decided everything. Her resolution to restrict the girl’s gaieties was suddenly hardened by the events of the dance, though it was twenty-four hours before she got a chance to express it, Tina having slept until the late afternoon in defiance of her pledge to study, and visitors taking up the rest of the day. One visitor, indeed, was partly responsible for the mother’s steadily increasing purpose; kind, elderly, little Miss Ward in her neat black jacket, trimmed with a mysterious ginger-coloured fur, being one of those amiable conversationalists who scatter the seeds of discomfort wherever they tread. Mrs. Malison, although she knew from aforetime what she had to expect, couldn’t help the usual thrill of exasperation at the opening sentence:

“How fleshy you are growing! I said the other day as you were passing, ‘I hardly knew Mrs. Malison, she’s getting so stout; it’s easy to see that she doesn’t let things worry _her_!’ Your husband looked very badly, I think, when he was here last. I want to apologize for not coming before to congratulate Miss Elinor on her engagement to Mr. Harper.”

“My dear Miss Ward, you have been misinformed”—Mrs. Malison felt that she was holding herself well in hand—“Elinor would be very much obliged to you, I’m sure—but there is no engagement.”

“Well, now, isn’t that singular!” Miss Ward’s small features indicated a deep and wondering interest. “I certainly understood from Mrs. Painter that Ethel said it was announced; I know she mentioned that every one was talking of it. I was there yesterday looking at the things Mrs. Painter brought over from the other side—beautiful, aren’t they? She gave me a lovely little framed photograph from some place in Italy—Sorrento, I think; you can get them here for a quarter, but of course it’s the _thought_ you value. She showed me the most exquisite laces—and hats——! Six of them; perfect dreams. How pretty _your_ hat looks this year; you’ve had such good wear out of it, too, haven’t you? I’m sure _I_ never mind if a thing isn’t in the newest style! Oh, by the way, my sister was one of the chaperons with you last night at the young people’s dance. She said Miss Tina evidently enjoyed herself if one could judge by her actions—quite a case, isn’t she! And so noticeable-looking, too. Of course, when she gets as old as your other daughters she’ll sober down; I’m sure, as I told my sister, you never see them doing anything conspicuous.”

Conspicuous! The word of all others calculated to bring the blood to a mother’s cheek. Mrs. Malison trembled almost visibly with her effort at self-control, as she switched the conversation further afield, though she saw as plainly as on the night before the lighted ballroom and the tall, lissome, white-clad figure of Tina, with gleaming golden hair and scintillating eyes, “holding hands” with Francis Fanshawe in ring-around-a-rosy fashion, now high above her head, now swinging low down, as the two went flying across the floor, not once, but many times, with an exaggerated, heel-and-toe, boy-and-girl sportiveness after every one else was seated and the music had grown as freakishly mad as they. Mrs. Malison had not realized at first that it was Tina. Then, after that whispered rebuke they had disappeared until it was nearly time to go home, emerging finally, on being sent for, from a palm-hidden corner of the enclosed balcony, Tina with very flushed cheeks, hazy eyes and a general air of having been Called Back, too plain to be mistaken—a perfectly open, childlike defiance of inevitable comment that made one moan in ludicrous dismay. There is nothing so patently open to criticism as innocence. Even through the “thuddiness” of Francis there showed the glitter of an eye which told of the spirit within. Mrs. Malison’s annoyance had culminated when she spoke to Tina on the second morning. She was fully nerved for struggle. This thing had to stop.

“Tina, I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak to you about the ball. I was very much displeased with your behaviour; _very_ much displeased! I felt obliged to write to your father about it. I cannot allow you to go to another dance this winter.”

“All right; I don’t want to,” said Tina uninterestedly.

She had thrown herself down on the wicker lounge beside a black poodle stretched out on the Roman-striped coverlet, and putting her arms around the animal surveyed her mother from this position. Mrs. Malison’s eyes feasted on the picture.

“Tina, you are entirely too young to do as you please. You know nothing about the consequences. After this you are to attend to your studies. I don’t wish you to be seen with Francis Fanshawe any more; and I don’t wish you to invite him here.”

“He’s not coming,” said Tina briefly. “Momsey, I want a new grey suit! I know I had this green one last month, but I hate it. All my friends are getting grey suits now.”

“Tina, have you quarrelled with Francis?”

“No.”

Mrs. Malison looked uncomfortably puzzled.

“Then—— Has he done anything you don’t like, dear?”

“No.”

“There isn’t anything that you’re keeping from me?” In spite of denial, Mrs. Malison felt the tenacity of some purpose that she could not fathom.

“No; oh, _no_!” Tina raised her voice at the sight of her two sisters in the doorway. “You can come in; momsey’s finished scolding me. I want a new grey suit—all my friends have grey suits!”

“Well, of all things!” Elinor’s tone was exasperated. “Another new suit—when Annette and I have been wearing our old ones all winter! That’s so like you, Tina, never considering where the money is to come from.”

“I don’t care where the money comes from! Annette, don’t you think I can have it?”

“It seems a little foolish, dear—unless you could wear it later in the season,” began Annette pacifically. “By the way, I heard you say that Francis wasn’t coming here. I thought he was going to take you and Edith to the school concert to-night.”

“No; Robert’s going to take us,” said Tina. She detached herself from her sisters’ embrace and ran away, with the black poodle after her.

“Robert,” repeated Elinor meditatively; she sat down in the chair her mother had just vacated and stared at Annette. “How very odd! Robert has never taken Tina anywhere. She must have written to him. That child does the most unexpected things! I was wondering last night if I would care for Robert if he were quite different. Some men have such a brutal streak in them. On the other hand, you like a man to know his own mind and keep to it.”

“Yes, indeed,” assented Annette absently. She dropped down on the lounge. “Joseph and I were figuring last night that if we had two dollars more a month we might really get married. That would include the twenty-five cents a week for doctor’s bills—I suppose we ought to allow that.” She stopped a moment to switch onto another track. “It seemed to me there was something odd in Tina’s manner this morning, Elinor; I think she has some plan about Francis!”

As that week went on, and the next and the next, it became apparent to all that there was a change in the dear little youngest. She threw herself into her studies with exemplary conscientiousness, she performed her small, appointed tasks with the modicum of fractiousness. She went out nowhere. She was as lively and capricious as she had always been, and although she celebrated her eighteenth birthday, seemed younger than ever; but through it all there was an odd change—an absence of earnestness when she was earnest, an absence of mirth when she was mirthful. In some unexplained way Tina wasn’t with them; something ineffably bright and soul-inspiring had dropped out of the household. The loss of it made a growing little undercurrent of uneasiness, of anxiety. Through all the daily living there is in every home a fateful knowledge of the unexpressed.

It is impossible to hide one’s secrets. The whole family felt sure that Tina was thinking of Francis Fanshawe, though she never even looked out of the window when he spun past it, as sometimes happened, in his big, white motor car, filled with a gay crowd of bugle-blowing boys. Elinor, with the tacit consent of her elders, actually wrote a note inviting him to the house. He came, indeed, but Tina refused to see him, playing checkers up-stairs in the library with Robert, who had a meditative, humorous way of beating her, while Elinor, perforce, did the entertaining. The big youth was not unpleasing, as she owned afterwards, though he said next to nothing, but his blue eyes looked unusually appreciative and he gripped her hand so hard when he left that her fingers were nearly welded into each other.

It was at the end of the month that Tina came into her mother’s room one morning with an unexpected rush, her golden head thrown back, the black poodle barking delightedly at her heels. There was a note in her voice which had not been there in these four weeks past, as she said:

“Momsey, I’ve something to say to you.”

“Well, come over here, dear. I want to hook you up; your dress is all open in the back. I wish you would be more careful. Isn’t it time for you to go to your lessons?”

“I’m not going to study any more, mother.”

“My dear child, what do you mean?”

“I’ve decided that I want to get married,” said Tina—“to Francis.” A wave of colour rose suddenly over her lovely face, and she made an annoyed motion as if to brush it away. “Annette knows I want to marry him. I wanted her to tell you, but she said you wouldn’t like it unless I told you myself. So now I’m telling you. And I hope you won’t mind very much, for Francis and I will never care for any one else.”

“Oh, my dear child!” said Mrs. Malison. Mother and daughter looked at each other with the same expression of dominant will. “This is, of course, nonsense, Tina.” She braced herself as one does against a coming blow so appalling that one cannot stop to fear the weight of it; all one’s energies must be used to fend it off.

“It distresses me to hear you talk like this; you don’t mean it—you don’t know _what_ it means; but it distresses me, Tina!”

“There, I knew you’d say that!” cried Tina in poignant remonstrance. She dropped into her favourite attitude of hunched up shoulders, her lips set in scornful bitterness. “Every one lectures me and scolds me—nobody wants me to do anything I like except Francis. Even Robert lectures me, though he’s such a muff with Elinor! I know none of you like Francis. I know you all despise him, but he’s a thousand times nicer to me than any one else is. He likes me to have everything I want.”

“Oh, Tina!” said poor Mrs. Malison, her heart pierced with twenty daggers. “Of course, I’m not saying—— If you still care for him in a couple of years, then, perhaps, your father and I may consider it. But you can’t know your own mind now, my darling. You have seen nothing of life; marriage is a very serious thing.”

“Then I don’t want to wait until I know about life, if it’s as horrid as you say it is!” said Tina, hotly. “I don’t want to wait until I change my mind. I’ll never change it. I made Francis stay away on purpose all last month to see what it would be like—and I _hated_ it—and so did he.” Tina’s voice had the ring of a passionate conviction, her blue eyes had a sombre depth of melancholy in them. “Why do we have to wait for years and years like Annette and Joseph when it isn’t necessary? Mother, why can’t Francis and I be married? My grandmother was married at sixteen.”

“And would you leave your father and me, Tina, when we’ve taken care of you, and loved you, so much?” Mrs. Malison’s voice shook, she fastened her eyes on her daughter with anguish. Tina’s mouth took on the obstinate curve which the too obvious appeal to her affections always brought there. She didn’t even take the trouble to answer as she tapped irritatingly on the floor with her small foot. The silence conveyed even more forcibly than words that it was a recognized fact that people left their parents when they married without discredit attaching to them—it was part of the plan. Even through her wretchedness Mrs. Malison drearily acquiesced in the received view of the matter! but for Tina—her baby—— Ah, that was a different thing.

For Tina’s own good this time she must not have her way.

The mother went around all day with a stone on her heart, that made her face white and drawn and breathing difficult, while Annette and Elinor talked excitedly and incessantly with household avocations half done, and sought the dear little wayward sister separately afterwards, Annette with mute caresses, and larges pieces of bread and jam to supplement the lack of a breakfast, and Elinor with intelligent reasoning as she put the child’s collar straight and fastened her belt. Tina had never dressed herself alone in her life. “I thought I cared for Tommy Burns, Tina, when I was seventeen, and as for even looking at him now——! When it comes down to it, dear, what men have you ever seen?”

“I’ve seen—Robert,” said Tina dangerously, under her breath.

Elinor’s arms fell away from her office of tiring woman; she stood staring.

“Robert——?”

Tina’s eyes gleamed with a daring, revealing, lightning flash: “Well, if you’re never nice to a person yourself, Elinor——” She escaped to the doorway for a parting shot.

“Yes, _Robert_!” she called back elfishly, and fled, passing her mother with no recognition, and actually going out in young Fanshawe’s car with him for all the afternoon, only coming back in time for dinner, which was a state function, with guests, and going to bed immediately afterwards.

It is strange how one untoward event disrupts all the working order of the mind; that which has given joy loses its flavour, that which has been counted on as sure becomes fluctuant. Everything has to arrange itself anew. If Elinor wrote a note to a Robert who had neglected to appear, it was not from the dictates of reason, but from a novel and jealous desire for his presence. If Annette and Joseph sat up unusually late after the guests had departed it was, perhaps, because figuring over a housekeeping text-book wasn’t as satisfying as sometimes, and they had to keep at it a little longer to capture the pleasure of that future living together. Even to the most unselfish, the most vernally patient of lovers waiting may show a grim face, all “bare of bliss” at times, especially when confronted with a boy of twenty-one who has money and to spare for that leap over the matrimonial barriers. It was only after thoroughly studying a mysterious way of Approaching a Butcher, by which, although special cuts and roasts were so much a pound, you got a whole diagrammic ox for a dollar, that that prophetic feeling of happiness mingled once more with the lovers’ goodnight kiss. Heaven only knows what delicate sentiment was embedded in those visionary steaks and chops!

Long after Joseph had gone Mrs. Malison and Annette talked in the mother’s room, with low, painfully murmuring voices, taking counsel together into the small hours. It was three of the clock when the hurrying of soft footsteps and a touch at the chamber door startled them, and then a piteous voice:

“Momsey; oh, momsey!”

The mother was up on the instant, opening the door; by the light in the hall, Tina’s eyes, ice-blue, stared at her over the lace frills of her night-dress. “I came to tell you—if you feel like that—the way you looked to-day—I’ll tell Francis I won’t marry him; it will _kill_ me; but if you are happy it doesn’t make any difference. I can’t _stand_ seeing you look like that! It will kill me, but you’ll be happier, any way.”

“Oh, dear me!” said Mrs. Malison in despair—anxiety lent roughness to her voice. “This is nonsense, Tina. Come up-stairs this minute. The idea! with nothing on your feet—you’ll get your death of cold.” She led the girl to her own bed, tucking the soft form with resolute fingers, and lying down herself afterwards under the coverlet with her cheek against Tina’s chill flesh.

“Oh, Tina, as if mother could ever be glad if you were unhappy! It’s just because I fear that if you have what you want that it will only be for your unhappiness that I look as I do. If your father were only at home!”

Tina gave a movement of impatience, though she lay close cuddled in her mother’s arms. “I think it would have been a great deal better if we had eloped—Francis and I,” she murmured.

“Tina!” The mother gave a horrified gasp.

“Well, I do think so—it would have saved everything, all the feeling so badly, and the talk, and everything. Francis and I wanted to go off in the automobile this afternoon and get married then, and settle it all at once. People never seem to mind a bit after it’s all over—the Boggses made such a fuss about Lucy’s marrying that widower and now nobody says a word about it. She comes to Sunday-night’s tea with _his_ children.”

“But you didn’t elope, my darling,” said Mrs. Malison, searching for the one crumb of comfort.

“Francis thought you might mind.”

“That was _very_ right of Francis.”

“And he was afraid the car would break down; he had to take it to the garage for repairs.”

“Oh, dear!” sighed the poor mother once more.

It was only after Tina seemed to be asleep that she stole down-stairs again to drop into an uneasy slumber herself.

This battle was going to be a long and weary fray.

They were all down unusually early to breakfast but Tina.

“Don’t waken Miss Tina,” Mrs. Malison warned the maid.

“Sure she’s not in the house, ma’am.” Emma’s tone was glibly important. “Bridget said as how Miss Tina slipped out at six o’clock this morning; she came down the stairs a tiptoe in her new grey shuit. ’Twas towards the trolley car she wint.”

It had happened then already—the blow had fallen! The headstrong child had gone. Mrs. Malison whispered the words with lips that could hardly frame the words. Other people’s daughters had deceived them and done this thing—she had felt shamed for them—but hers! The room went around with her, some one was bringing her water. She saw the scared faces of Annette and Elinor bending over her—the moments seemed like dreary years as they passed.

The square, marble-pillared clock, in its old-fashioned glass case on the mantel, chimed eight musically as Tina came into the room. Her blue hat with its white feathers was pushed sideways on her rumpled hair, and the new grey suit was wrinkled and spotted with clay from an enormous pot of daisies hugged tightly in her arms. She set it down hastily on the white cloth of the breakfast table, and leaned back, panting, against the mahogany sideboard laden with its tall old silver; the light from the parting of the heavy curtains leaped towards her, and held her in its shining embrace.

“I didn’t know that was going to be so heavy. The trolleys were _so_ slow, they wouldn’t connect. I went to get the flowers for you, momsey, because you’re so fond of them.”

Her eyes took swift tally of the group, unheeding of their exclamations. “Please leave the room, Emma——” she went on speaking with a defiant hardness, broken now and then by an odd, piteous little catch in her young voice:

“I suppose you thought I’d eloped. I promise you now that I won’t; I won’t get married until you and daddy say I can. I’ll wait _forever_ if you say so. I can’t bear to hurt any one’s feelings. But I’ll never be happy here at home any more, and I’ll never care for anybody here. I may act as if I cared, but I won’t, really! I’ll only care for Francis—as he cares for me.” The wind from some far source seemed to shake her with its ruthless power. “You think I’m so young—you make me younger than I really am so that I don’t know how to tell you what I mean—to tell you so that you’ll understand. When I’m with Francis he doesn’t need to speak, he doesn’t even need to be _near_ me; but I’m just so happy!” Her voice had changed to the exquisite cadence of love. “It’s my _own_ life! And whether I’m glad or sorry, I want to spend it with him. I want to be with him anyway—I want to be with him if I _die_ for it!”

She put her hand on her heart with a quick, passionate gesture, her ice-blue eyes had in them that look which is as old as the world, as deep as life. She stepped past the weeping sisters to throw herself on her knees by her mother, to hide her bright head upon her mother’s breast, to reach her young arms up to clasp around her mother’s neck as she whispered:

“Oh, mother, mother, _you ought to know_!”

* * * * *

“It certainly was a beautiful wedding!” Little Miss Ward was calling once more at the Malisons; her voice was earnestly kind. “How lovely Miss Annette and Miss Elinor looked. I never saw girls keep their looks so well! And Miss Elinor engaged, too, at _last_! Every one was so surprised at Miss Tina’s getting married so soon. Mr. Fanshawe seemed very happy, I shouldn’t wonder if there really was more to him than people think; he shook my hand so—_cordially_, it’s a little lame yet. And as for the bride”—Miss Ward lowered her voice tenderly—“well, Mrs. Grandison said, when she saw that child’s sweet, young face going up the aisle, there was something so pathetic about it that she just broke down and gave up and cried, when she thought of all that might be before her. Have you ever thought what a lottery life is?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Malison. She had indeed! For good or for evil the portion of the youngest was Tina’s. She had had, as always, her own way.

Polly Townsend’s Rebellion

Polly Townsend’s Rebellion

The goings forth and the comings back of the head of a suburban household are the pendulum by which all the rest of the time swings. Polly Townsend, in a short white duck skirt, with a cheerful red bow in her light hair, was putting the finishing touches to the dinner-table in the now permanent absence of the “girl,” and listening for the returning footstep of her husband with more than her usual sense of expectation, which lately had been braced to divine what that footstep might imply as to the day’s success or non-success.