Chapter XX: East and West

AMID the bulk of trunks and packing cases filling the scant space of the Patty-Pans, Laura's importance loomed impressively. There was much to be done to get the family belongings ready to vacate the little apartment on the date set, but though carpets were being taken up, books packed, walls dismantled of pictures, the whole dismal process of moving getting done, Laura's sublime sense of what had befallen her had the effect of narrowing down the entire process to making the genius of the family ready for Germany.

"She's pitched on high C--for the high seas--and she drowns out all the other instruments," said Happie, compunctious for feeling disgusted on the eve of a long separation.

The little girl's outfit was to be simple, for once in Germany she would be more really a little girl than she had been at home, and a student little girl at that, whose needs are few. But Laura dove into literature with a view to getting points on the outfitting of the heroine who crosses the ocean, and she emerged with convictions as to steamer chairs, steamer trunks, steamer rugs, sal volatile and numerous other accessories, down to a cap and veil.

"I should like a veil that fluttered on the breeze when I leaned over the rail to watch the--the dolphins," she said.

"My goodness! Dolphins, Laura! Drawing Neptune's chariot, or just out on a lark?" cried Happie. "Porpoises, more likely! And it would be better if they were porpoises, because you know the Mock Turtle told Alice that no wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. He said: 'If any fish came to me and told me he was going on a journey, I should say: with what porpoise?'" Happie laughed with as much enjoyment as if she were seven years old, having her Alice read to her for the first time. She knew most of both the Alice books by heart--not that one can know Alice any other way!

Laura frowned. "I am not a fish, though I am going on a long, long journey," she said. "And I am glad to say there is plenty of purpose in my journey."

"But you know the Mock Turtle replied that he meant what he said, when Alice suggested that he meant 'purpose,' not porpoise. However, you never did like Lewis Carroll! As to a veil, Laura, that you shall have. I'll buy you--no! I'll give you one! Don't you remember that lovely pale ecru thing I found? The one with chenille dots? I'll give you that, and it shall flutter on the breeze, just as much as e'er you please, every near-by nose 'twill tease, till the seasick ones shall sneeze, while the por-phins sport at ease--isn't that a lonely rhyme to get started on?" cried Happie.

"Very lovely, and perfectly idiotic!" said Laura, walking out of the room in rigid disgust.

Laura's offense at ridicule never lasted long, chiefly because she had the genius' chronic craving for sympathy. She came back after half an hour dragging with her a Smyrna rug, very much worn, but which in the course of its wearing had worn more on the Scollard nerves than on itself. It was one of those ugly gifts to which the most fortunate mortals are sometimes liable from their friends.

"Do you think I could use this as a steamer rug, Happie?" Laura asked anxiously.

Happie looked up and out of the packing-case which for the moment swallowed her. Her laugh was so contagious that Aunt Keren came into the room laughing, and Margery ran in ready to join the fun.

"Only see, Auntie Keren and Margery, what Laura wants to take with her for a steamer rug!" cried Happie. "That dreadful, worn floor rug--Smyrna at that!"

"You funny little Exportation!" smiled Miss Keren. "That would hardly do. You won't need a chair and a rug, for you won't sit mummified on the voyage. Be satisfied with your delightful new flat trunk, that is the only steamer appurtenance you need. Are you going down to close the tea room this afternoon, girls?"

"Yes, Aunt Keren. The three E's are coming in, and the expressman is coming after our boxes. We are to send them right to the new house, aren't we?" Happie arose, dusting fragments of pine from her knees as she spoke.

"Yes, except the books that you are giving to the hospital; better send them direct," replied Miss Keren. "I am going there now. I'll stay till the boxes arrive. Don't you think you ought to be getting started?"

"Immejit, ma'am!" said Happie. She was such a happy Happie these eventful and promising days that she could not talk sober sense.

Margery was ready that moment, so Happie and Gretta and Laura hurried on their hats and took Polly and Penny down to superintend shipping away the furnishings of the tea room, and to witness the ceremony of finally locking the door.

It was already a denuded tea room, the melancholy wreck of its pretty self. It had been a successful room, and more than an important one. The girls looked around its walls and stripped book-shelves, and wondered if any other venture could have to its credit in such a speedy closing so many vitally important results as this one showed. The reuniting of the von Siegeslieds, Laura's consequent good fortune, the endowment of Ralph for college--these good things were the direct consequence of the "Tea Room and Circulating Library Conducted by Six Girls."

Margery took the card bearing this legend from its hooks with a reminiscent smile, half pensive, yet wholly glad. Gentle Margery bore a thankful and a happy heart in these days. Not quite six months had passed since the Scollards had come back to town, and this half year had been teeming with good fortune for them all, but it had brought to Margery--Robert.

A step outside made her look up just as she was creeping out of the deep window in which their announcement card had hung. An old lady, very small and somewhat bent, clad in deep mourning, was entering. She was so unlike her old self that for an instant Margery did not recognize in her Mrs. Jones-Dexter.

"I wanted to come here once more. The Charlefords told me you were giving up here to-day," she said as Margery sprang to place a chair for her.

She looked up in the girl's face and Margery could hardly meet the wistful, tear-dimmed eyes. She knew they both remembered that Margery had been little Serena's loving admiration.

"We are very glad to see you, Mrs. Jones-Dexter. But we are not going away, except for the summer. In the autumn we are coming back to live with Miss Bradbury in Fifty-eighth Street. Perhaps we shall see you then?" said Margery, trying to give the pitiable old lady time to gain the self-control for which she was struggling.

"Ah, yes, I hope to see you, all of you, as long as I live," she said. "I have brought you something to-day, each of you. It seems rather like a parting, this breaking up of your pleasant little tea room, even though we shall meet elsewhere next year. I wanted your little Penny to have all of Serena's prettiest gowns and ribbons, if you will permit me to send them to her. She is younger, but my child was small of her age, and they will fit her. And I want Polly to take care of her dolls, with Penny's help, and this little ring is for Polly. And to Laura I have brought this pin. Serena was too young to wear it, but she cared for it a great deal. And somehow I thought that Happie would be fond of this worn little copy of Stevenson's "Garden of Verse." Serena used to sleep with it under her pillow. And you, Margery, will take this miniature of my child. It is wonderfully like her, and it is beautiful as a work of art. You loved her and so will doubly care for it. You and Happie are to take, each of you, one of these chains--Serena has worn them both. Don't thank me!" Mrs. Jones-Dexter put up her hand to check Margery. "Such gifts are not for ordinary words. Now, as to Ralph. You know that I have settled upon him what was Serena's income?"

"We know it with unspeakable pleasure, dear Mrs. Jones-Dexter," replied Margery folding together the case that hid the lovely child face looking up to her from the ivory as it used to smile at her up-stairs.

"Tell me truthfully. You like Ralph Gordon? You think he is a good sort of boy?" asked the old lady making ready to go.

"He is the best boy I have ever known--except our best-of-best Bob!" said Margery warmly. "He is upright, truthful, kind and tender as a girl, full of fun, but reliable, and a model son and brother. We think there never could be better boys than both the Gordons--but Ralph is--well, Ralph is the elder. Perhaps Snigs--Charley, will be just as fine at his age."

"Good! I mean to do a great deal for him--for them all--if I approve them. I knew that your opportunity of judging them was better than mine could be," said Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "My pretty Margery, did you know that my grandnephew, whom you praise so warmly, has a boy's love for your Happie?"

"Dear me, no, Mrs. Jones-Dexter!" cried Margery looking over to where Happie was busy with Gretta, putting into boxes the last remaining cups for the expressman's taking.

"He has," nodded Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "It is too early to be important, but it might be!"

"We girls have been brought up not to play at romance. Happie and Ralph are fond of each other, as Happie and Bob are--not as much so, of course, but in that same frank, chummy way," said Margery. "Mother doesn't like to have us think of romance--till it comes!" Margery stopped, with a laugh and a blush.

"As it has, and early too, to you!" commented Mrs. Jones-Dexter. "Quite right your mother is! Yet Ralph is dreaming of Happie. We will keep our own counsel, Maid Margery, and hope that the dream may grow into something more than a boy's first romance, if my grandnephew is the boy you think him. Happie, Gretta, come here and say how do you do and good-bye to me! I am going. Laura, _bon voyage_, little girl! Kiss me, Polly and Penny." She stooped to kiss the children, and Polly gave her a gratuitous hug, moved by the expression in the desolate old eyes. But Penny did not get her kiss. Dropping her veil over her face Mrs. Jones-Dexter fled from Penny's warm, living embrace.

There was not time to dwell on the sadness aroused by this visit, for the expressman arrived earlier than he was expected, and proved to be so dense-minded that Margery and Happie committed their boxes to his care with the firm conviction that the cups and other tea room belongings would go to the hospital and the books to the new house, in spite of the cards attached to them and the girls' reiterated charges.

The three E's swept down like three of the four winds at the last moment, just when the girls were giving them up. They were standing taking mental farewell of the now empty room, bare of all save Mrs. von Siegeslied's piano. This stood crated and ready for its voyage to Germany. It had been too integral a part of the reunion of the husband and wife to be abandoned. Had it not been for this piano the mysterious Herr Lieder would not have haunted the tea room, nor been discovered as but the disguise of the Herr Baron von Siegeslied.

"We can't stay one single second," panted Edith Charleford, proving her words by dropping on an empty box, the only remaining seat, and fanning herself with the hat she promptly removed. "We got late going to a photographer and getting our pictures taken. Those strip pictures, Hapsie--six views of the face in the cutest ovals, all for twenty-five cents! We had them done to give Laura, and they are so nice we are going to get some printed for you. Here are yours, Laura. Take them over to the Vaterland, and remember we when these you see! Please look at the left profile on the strip of me! I had no idea the right side of my face was so different!"

"Let me see, Laura!" cried Happie, crowding up. "It isn't, Edith. It's alike. It's the left side that is different!"

"Happie, you are such a delicious idiot!" sighed Edith with the most sincerely complimentary intentions. "There isn't one of the girls says the lovely nonsense foolish things you do. That's why we can't get along without you all summer! Do you know what? I've got mamma to promise to go up to one of the hotels--you're to select it--in your mountains, for awhile this year. We'd like to see Crestville, the Ark and our Happiness this summer."

"Hurrah!" remarked Happie. "We are worth seeing, all three of us. Gretta and I will drive up to call on you in state at the big hotel, and when you return the call you shall come down and play in our barn and ride on our hay wagon in no state at all."

"Hurrah!" echoed Edith. "That sounds fine. Now we must go home. Oh, there are the boys; that nice, independent, kind-hearted Ralph Gordon, your Bob--and Margery's Robert! Is my hat on straight, Eleanor? And am I mashing my bows with my hat pins?"

"No, only trying to," remarked Elsie with a glance that pointed her remark. Elsie did not disdain slang nor a pun.

"Gretta, there is a package mother sent you. She said that you were not to think she considered it in any sense payment for what you did for me last winter. But she did want to give you some remembrance, since you wouldn't go to school."

Gretta almost laughed. "That would have been a reminder!" she said as she took the small square package. She opened it while the others were diverted by the arrival of the boys. It was a dark green leather case, in which rested a beautiful tiny watch. The watch was held by a pin, its design the seal of the State of Pennsylvania, dark blue and green enamel on a gold ground. A card lay on the satin cushion of the box. On it was written: "To Miss Angela Key-Stone, from Elsie Barker and her grateful mother."

Gretta closed the box. Bob looked at her, wondering at the pleasure in her face and thinking, as he thought of late more often than ever: "My, but Gretta's a beauty!"

He said aloud: "We four came to take you girls home from the ex-tea room for the last time. Nice little place, we're sorry to say good-bye!"

The girls gathered in the doorway. They looked back as Margery put her key in the lock--the key that she was to relinquish to an agent in the morning--just as she had done when, nearly half a year ago, they had come down to see that everything was in order for their opening. But then Robert had not been there!

"All together say good-bye, and then, Margery, shut and lock the door!" cried Bob. "Now then: One, two, three--Good-bye!"

Margery pulled the door together, turned her key took it out and handed it to Bob, tried the door to make sure it was fast, and they all walked away. The tea room was no more!

There were not many days left in the Patty-Pans. Mrs. Scollard was at home to attend to the duties with which they were filled, at home for good and all, in fact. The foreign correspondence was over and done with. It all seemed like a dream, but to prove that it was not one there was the new house down in Fifty-eighth Street to which frequent visits were necessary, and the trunks into which she was packing summer clothing for the Ark.

Laura began to realize the great change that lay before her as these last days slipped past. Her pompous manner began to shrink; in its place came a timidity and wistfulness that was most becoming. Laura forgot that she was a genius and remembered only that she was a little girl about to separate from the best mother in the world for the first time and for a long time. Although she had grown too tall for rocking, she fell into the habit of creeping into her mother's room every night at dusk to be held in her low chair and rocked as if she had been three instead of thirteen. Her heels scraped on the floor, bare except for a rug left out to lay in front of the bed, but if the heels scraped, Laura's arms were tight around her mother's neck, and mother and daughter talked and talked, laying in a store of confidence and advice against the days of separation. There was so much that was comforting and intimate in these twilight confidences that they consoled Mrs. Scollard for the coming parting, even while they made her feel that she could ill spare this queer and somewhat remote child from out her little flock.

At last there came the morning when, everything finished, the Scollards were to leave the Patty-Pans. Jeunesse Dorée was protestingly strapped in his basket; the two least children were ready, Polly in charge of the yellow cat, Penny intrusted with Phyllis Lovelocks, Polly's doll; Penny's family was never fit to travel in the public eye. Laura's ship sailed in the forenoon, and from Hoboken, so that her family was to see her off, dine as best they could in their station and take the train for Crestville which left at two in the afternoon.

Bob was going with them. He was tempted to regret the added twelve months which entailed upon him the responsibility of increased age, and prevented his spending an uninterrupted summer in the country, as he had done the preceding year.

Miss Keren, crisp and brisk as usual in the excitement of marshaling her adopted family forever out of the pleasant little flat into a life of greater leisure and more opportunity, tied the strings of her little black straw bonnet with a snap. Then she picked up her gloves and turned from the window, with its background of jutting wall, which had been serving her as a mirror in lieu of mirrors packed and being moved out and into the vans below.

"Now, Laura, little girl, bid your old Aunt Keren good-bye, for I am going down to the Fifty-eighth Street house to receive these vans when they get there. I will meet you at the station, Charlotte, on the Hoboken side, of course. If anything happened that I didn't get there--as I shall unless these drivers are more than slow!--go right on to Crestville, and send Don Dolor down to the noon train to meet me to-morrow. Good-bye, Laura child. Remember to work hard at your music, but harder at your character. God bless you, dear."

Miss Keren walked away without a backward glance at the little Patty-Pans. But its proper tenants gave it many last looks as they slowly filed out. It had been home for nearly six years, and, "be it ever so flat, home is home," as Bob truthfully said. The Scollards left their own furniture slowly starting away from the house. The janitor and the hall boy waved them a farewell, but the Gordon flat was blank.

First among the crowd on the dock of the great white liner was Ralph, and just behind him was Snigs with their mother, and to their right all of Happie's E's, Robert Gaston and the von Siegeslieds, waiting the coming of the Scollards.

There was not much time for lingering; the Scollards were somewhat later in arriving than they had meant to be. The entire party crowded over the gangway and on to the swarming deck of the ship, amid the groups of gay, tearful, excited and tired people about to sail or to say good-bye.

There was time to inspect the stateroom which Laura was to share with Mrs. von Siegeslied, time to peep at the salon, and rapidly to glance at the decks and then to return to the stateroom to admire the flowers which had been sent by her pupils to her who had been Mrs. Stewart, and whose interesting change of name and fortune had been an absorbing topic for a day or two among her friends.

"Must you go, mamma?" asked Laura, looking white and helpless.

"I go west and you go east, Laura. Suppose I leave you here? Then after a little while Mrs. von Siegeslied will bring you out on deck and you will see us and wave to us as you steam out and we watch you from the dock!" proposed Mrs. Scollard cheerfully.

But Laura felt her mother's arms tighten around her as the little girl clutched her. "I'll say good-bye to you all here: Penny first," said Laura.

Penny kissed her again and again as Laura devoured the Scollard baby's soft cheek. Next Polly, quiet and staid and deeply impressed, kissed good-bye this first sister to leave her. Happie hugged Laura speechlessly and relinquished her to Margery, who folded her in her arms in an embrace almost maternal.

"I'll kiss you good-bye, Robert, because you may be my brother while I'm gone," sobbed Laura, overcome by this leave taking.

Robert kissed the child and put into her hot hands a small package. "A consolation prize; open it after you start," he whispered.

Ralph, Snigs, Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Charleford, all the E's, bade Laura good-bye with warm good wishes.

"Mamma, dear, dearest mamma!" whispered Laura, and mother and daughter held each other close for a minute.

"But I'm glad, I'm very glad I'm going, and I shall come back famous!" declared Laura bravely, though tears made the prophecy difficult.

The Scollards drew up in line on the dock. Bob had joined them. He had lingered to say good-bye to Laura after the others, with a word of elder brotherly council that he had not cared to let any one else hear.

The great white ship swung out of the slip and into the open stream. The bright May sunshine lighted her clean scrubbed decks and illumined the pale and tear-stained, yet jubilant face of the little aspirant for glory. Laura waved her hands to her assembled family, held fast on one side by Mrs. von Siegeslied's arm, and on the other by the hand of him who had been Herr Lieder, laid caressingly and with a promise in its touch, on her shoulder.

"We are a fortunate family!" declared Happie. "The six luckiest girls in the world."

"And boy," supplemented Bob. "Laura eastward, we westward! Now to dine, and then: Ho for Crestville and our mountains and green fields once more!"

* * * * * *

Transcriber's note:

page 22 Magaret changed to Margaret (our beloved sisters
Margaret and Keren-happuch)

page 43 solt changed to soft (Laura's a soft, faded pink)

page 137 forgiveingly changed to forgivingly (with a soul far from
forgivingly at peace)

page 190 hasband changed to husband (Elizabeth Spencer and her
husband)

page 194 sphagetti changed to spaghetti (steaming dishful of
spaghetti)

page 283 Leider changed to Lieder (You are her husband, Herr Lieder)

Happie, Happy, Hapsie are used as nicknames for Keren-happach.