Chapter XVI: Hawthorne House Abloom

Prue was the first to sober somewhat after the first delirium of joy had been vented.

“I feel as though we’d all been hung up to die, and some one had come along and cut every single rope, just as we were going to squirm our last squirm,” she said, which graphic bit of inelegance made Isabel exclaim in protest:

“Oh, Prue!”

“It’s just like that, a what-do-you-call-it? A relieve?” Prue persisted, ignoring Isa.

“A reprieve,” Mark told her. “So it is, Prue! In stories some one comes riding madly, his horse white with foam, just as the hero is standing blindfolded against the wall, waiting to be shot--they don’t hang heroes in stories. The rider turns out to be the king’s messenger. He waves a paper in the air, shouting: ‘Reprieve! Reprieve!’ The king has found out the hero is innocent, and has sent the messenger with the reprieve; he gets there barely in time. It’s always like that in stories. This is like that! Is Ichabod the king’s messenger? But I don’t dare be glad till after he has told the lawyers what he knows. Let’s wait till daddy’s had him down to their office and they say we’re all right. _Then_ let’s raise the roof!”

It needed no more than a suggestion that everything might not be all right to quiet the little girls; it would be worse to be disappointed than not to have hoped, as it always is.

Mr. Hawthorne went away to the city in the earliest train that left Greenacres in the morning. He would not return until the second day, and the four children were in difficulties with the intervening time.

How to fill the weary hours till they could know positively that the cruel parting was not to be--they would not consider Ichabod Rudd’s testimony being useless to the Hawthornes--was a hard question to solve.

Prue withdrew herself from her playmates. She said she “did not want to see Mark till she knew that she could see him right along.” She set her bureau drawers in apple-pie order, though they did not need tidying; Prue was an orderly child. She got her mother to give her long-promised lessons in cutting and putting together a middy blouse--altogether, Prudence filled in her time in ways so useful as to be absorbing, which kept her from fretting too much and gave her the pleasant sense of being “womanly” under affliction of mind.

Isabel, on the other hand, haunted Mark’s footsteps. She was not capable of thinking of anything else than of his loss, and now that in so short a time she was to know whether or not she should lose him, now that there was likelihood of keeping him, she could bear the strain of waiting only by keeping him in sight, and dogged his footsteps as Bunkie followed hers.

Poppy did not bear the delay at all. It had to be put up with, but she did not _bear_ it; she fumed her way through the two days, getting so cross that even Motherkins herself, so patient and understanding, found it hard to excuse her, though she knew that the child’s nerves were on edge.

But Mark, sunny, even-tempered Mark, would not admit that there was anything to worry over. He alone of the four was his natural self while his father was gone to get the evidence that was going to make such a tremendous difference in his life.

With Pincushion on his shoulder, where she best loved to be, Mark went calmly about his work and play.

“No good fussing, Isa Bell,” he said, smiling into Isa’s worried eyes and using the twist of her name which he had invented by way of caress.

“You don’t care, Mark Jack-in-the-Box!” Isabel reproached him.

“Don’t I, though! Maybe I care too much to dare to begin to be afraid it will come out wrong,” said Mark, and Isa caught a note in the boy’s voice that betrayed that his anxiety was intense.

When the train was due on which Mr. Hawthorne’s return was hoped for, Poppy went down to the end of the driveway and climbed up on the stone post. There she sat like a statue, eyes set rigidly, looking in the direction from which Mr. Hawthorne would come, although it was long before he could appear.

Isabel and Prue had come up to the Hawthorne house to be there when the decision of their fate was made known. They and Mark prowled up and down, from room to room, unable to keep still. Motherkins tried to hem a napkin, but her hands trembled and her thread knotted a great deal; her sewing was not a success.

At last Poppy came tearing into the house.

“They’ve come! They’ve come!” she shouted. “Ichybod’s along. _Oh_, gosh!”

Everybody who heard her echoed what Poppy meant when she exclaimed: “_Oh_, gosh!” It didn’t sound prayerful, but Poppy’s feeling when she said it made it a prayer for good news.

“Hello, daddy!” shouted Mark, without turning to see the expression on his father’s face. If he were the bearer of ill-tidings Mark wanted one cheerful greeting to reach him before his family knew it; afterward no one would be able to speak quite cheerfully.

But as Gilbert Hawthorne came into the room, followed by queer little Ichabod Lemuel Rudd, before any of the children had ventured to look at him, Motherkins cried:

“Oh, Gilbert! Oh, my son!”

Then the children turned to see. Motherkins sat erect, leaning forward in her chair, her work fallen, her hands clasped, her face radiant.

One glance at Mr. Hawthorne, and they all knew the gist of what he had to tell. He looked triumphantly young and happy; his eyes were beaming. He strode over and caught up little Motherkins, as he might have swung Poppy, high in his arms.

“Surest thing in the world, Motherkins!” he cried, laughing in joyous excitement. “Ichabod told what he knew, and the lawyers cross-examined him--Maurice Ditson’s fellows were present, too--and he couldn’t be tripped up; besides, he had his proofs! And Ditson’s lawyers advised him to drop it as quick, and considerably quicker, than he could! He should be grateful not to be prosecuted for attempted felony. Of course, nobody wants to bother with him, but it’s not a pretty thing to have known about a man that he has tried to steal!”

“I wouldn’t of told,” said Ichabod, in a worried voice, “but I knew my dear old friend, the kindest friend a man ever had, would have wanted me to. He’d have blamed me if I hadn’t. I wish Maurice wasn’t his son; I wish his name wasn’t Ditson! But often and often his father wished the same. He was a sore trial to his father, a sorrow that ate right into him. I know he’d say I must stop his doing any more harm, if I could.”

“Surely he would! Whether we were to gain or lose by it, I should say the same, you faithful Ichabod!” said Motherkins, touching the queer little man’s arm, and as he revered Motherkins beyond all words, this consoled him for the pain of doing something that distressed him to do.

“And we are safe, Gilbert dear?” she added, turning to her son.

“Completely safe, and for always,” said Mr. Gilbert. “Mark, old chum-son, I haven’t spoken to you. Good news, laddie; everything is all right.”

“Pretty good to hear, daddy,” said Mark. “I’m too glad to know how glad I am.”

Isabel, Prue and Poppy had stood motionless, soundless, listening and watching.

Now Isabel stirred, pale from excitement, and seized Prue around the neck, hugging her till she choked her.

“They--are--not--going! They--are--not--going--away--at--all!” Isa said slowly, in a sort of rapturous trance.

This set free Poppy’s pent-up emotion; she realized that what Isa said was true.

With a shriek that made everybody jump, Poppy threw herself over on her hands and cartwheeled all around the room and out of it before Motherkins, a little shocked, could stop her. Out of the room she went and down the hall. Then they heard her singing at the top of her really wonderfully beautiful voice, the song growing fainter, and they knew she was running around the house, just as Bunkie and Pincushion ran when they wanted to have a celebration.

The words of her song reached them; they were simply these:

“Oh, whoop, whoop, whoop, whoopity whoopity whoop. And whoop, oh, whoop, _oh_, whoop! Forever whoop, whoop, whoop, amen!”

“What we’re going to do,” announced Isabel after they had laughed at Poppy, “is to trim this house all over with all the flowers we can get! We’re going to take Hurrah--please, Motherkins!--and get flowers from every one we can. And we’re just going to hang them all over Hawthorne House to show it how we feel about it’s staying Hawthorne House.”

“Second the motion!” cried Mark, starting up ready to go.

“Oh, but, Isabel, Hurrah may meet paper in the road!” objected Motherkins.

“Not in such a neat town as Greenacres! Oh, Motherkins, we took him all the time before that one day when it happened, so please don’t be afraid!” Isa pleaded.

“We must take some risks,” Mr. Hawthorne said, to Isa’s intense relief, when his mother looked at him for an opinion. “We don’t have papers flying around our streets; Isa is right. The children must have a vent, little mother!”

So in a short time the buckboard, with its three girls and a boy, started off to get a load of flowers. Poppy had thoughtfully taken the clothes basket, and Mark played at juggling with a bushel basket, seated on the end of the buckboard, facing outward and dangling his slender legs, as he always did.

At the Wayne and the Lindsay houses there were many flowers, so many that it seemed likely that the children could not pick them in time to go farther.

Mrs. Lindsay had run across to her neighbor’s to enjoy the children’s good news with her, and she said:

“Helen, we will gather all the flowers that we have, you and I, and take them up to Hawthorne House, while the children go on begging for more; shall we?”

And Mrs. Wayne had answered:

“Yes, Margaret; we couldn’t keep away, could we? Aren’t you quite beside yourself to see dear little Mrs. Hawthorne with her last anxiety forever laid at rest? The dear little soul! I’ve been so troubled over it all!”

“Drive on, then, Merry Beggars, and ask all Greenacres to give you blossoms!” cried Mrs. Lindsay, looking like a happy child herself.

Flowers! Isabel, Prue and Mark had to walk beside the buckboard, there were so many! They had no expectation of what happened, but everybody loved Motherkins, the whole town knew how sad her life had been and rejoiced that another sorrow had not fallen upon her, so the Greenacres women showed this feeling by stripping their gardens of all their bloom to adorn Hawthorne House for its rejoicing.

Walking up the street, with Poppy’s red hair topping masses of red blossoms in the buckboard abreast of them in the road, Isabel and Prue met Kathie and Dolly coming around the corner of a side street, turning in the direction in which they were going.

All four little girls stopped and looked at one another, half smiling, hesitatingly, sheepishly. None of them had the slightest desire not to speak, but no one knew whether the others felt like answering.

“Hello,” said Isabel, realizing that something must be done by somebody; it would never do for every one to stand there always, waiting for some one else to break the ice.

“Hello. Are you mad?” asked Kathie.

“We never were, so we’re not now,” said Prue reasonably.

“I was,” Kathie said, “but I’m over it. I’d like to make up.”

“We only wanted to know who it was went into that room; we only asked,” Prue said unwisely.

“But if we get to talking about that we shall not make up,” Isabel interposed.

“Call it made up and let it go at that,” Mark advised. “Every one agreed?”

“Yes. Agreed!” the four little girls repeated.

“Come on up to the house. We’re going to trim it up and be glad. We know now who it was climbed up into the Club Room; the same one who took the coins and returned them; the queer little man we saw in the woods. Oh, it is a wonderful story!” cried Isabel, taking Kathie’s arm, who at once pulled it away to put it around Isabel’s waist in closer token of reconciliation.

“Tell it,” Kathie said, and Isabel told it, frequently helped and hindered by Prue’s and Mark’s additions, or Kathie and Dolly’s exclamations.

“And we’re going to trim the house with flowers everywhere; in all the rooms, anyway. It looks as though we had enough to trim all the trees outside, but they don’t reach as far as you’d think when you see them like that.” Isabel ended the story of the narrow escape and the queer little man, with a gesture toward the buckboard, heaped high with blossoms.

“There are our mothers with more!” cried Prue, as they turned into the driveway and caught sight of Mrs. Wayne and Mrs. Lindsay on the lawn, shaking out and assorting the baskets of flowers which they had got Prue’s big brother to help them bring to Hawthorne House.

It was lucky that Kathie and Dolly had come up to the rejoicing. There were such quantities of flowers to place! Everybody talked at once, but it did not matter; nobody waited for, nor wanted a reply.

With amazing speed Hawthorne House was set abloom. In every room there were flowers, masses of flowers, and over the front door, on the ledge of its old-fashioned transom, Mr. Hawthorne had the bright idea of setting bowls, from which long festoons of vines and blossoms of nasturtiums made a glory that looked almost as if a bonfire were blazing there.

At last it was done; Hawthorne House was abloom!

“Well, it truly does look glad!” sighed Isabel in profound contentment, leaning her head, all ringed with her disordered dark hair, against her mother.

“What shall we do with Ichabod Lemuel Rudd, children?” asked Mr. Hawthorne. “Quick before he comes! He is alone in the world. Mr. Ditson looked after him, but since his death the queer, devoted little chap has gone solitary, with a lonely heart. And he saved us from the loss of this house and one another. Who can suggest a plan for him, to be told him when he comes back?”

“I can!” said Poppy instantly. “Adopt him, like you did me, and we’ll give up the Club Room, and it can be his, and he can shin up outside whenever he wants to.”

Mark laughed, but he said: “Pops hit it! There’s room enough for the queer little man in this great place, and we all like him a whole lot now.”

“Mother?” queried Mr. Hawthorne, turning to little Motherkins.

Motherkins smiled her placid smile, eyes and lips warm with it.

“I adopted Bunkie when he was hurt--to be sure, Isabel took him afterward--but I did adopt him! And Poppy, too. And then I had no home that was my own, and no certainty of enough for myself. I think we ought to give a share of our happiness to Ichabod Lemuel Rudd--I’m sure he’ll give us as much as we do him, in another way! And think of the pleasure of calling his name!”

“Trust Motherkins to cover up her goodness with a laugh!” cried her son.

“A laugh doesn’t cover up goodness; I think it often proves it, Gilbert--that kind of laughter!” said Mrs. Lindsay.

“He’s coming; tell him, Mark,” murmured Motherkins.

“Ichabod, we--I mean Motherkins and my father--well, all of us--oh, gracious! Say, Ichabod, we want you to live with us, here, you know; take that room we had to play in, where you climbed in and slept, you know. Live with us right along; will you?” Mark said rapidly after he had hesitated for a beginning; he blushed painfully, embarrassed by his office.

“Oh, jiminy cats! Oh, what’ll I say? I--I--I appreciate it,” said poor Ichabod, and burst into tears. He was indeed a lonely, longing little creature, and it seemed to him that heaven had almost opened when Mark voiced a desire on the part of these dear people to befriend him.

“I’ll do things; I’ll help; you shall never be sorry,” he managed to say, gulping down great sobs.

“Do you remember, Prue and Poppy, the day we opened the Club Room, we said it was just opening it, and we didn’t know what would go into it?” whispered Isabel, drawing Prue and Poppy’s heads together, the better to hear her. “It was true, wasn’t it? Isn’t it nice to have the dear little queer man, who so needs it and all of us, go into it?”

“I feel that there is ice cream somewhere!” said Mr. Hawthorne, sniffing the air. “I smell ice cream and beau-ti-ful cream puffs somewhere! Come on and find them, all of you! I guess there’s an ice cream freezer full, and that it holds four gallons--one vanilla, one chocolate, one strawberry, one caramel! Come and see how well I can guess!”

“Because you know!” shouted Poppy with shrill ecstasy. “Oh, you great Mark’s-daddy! You treated!”

“It’s the house,” Mr. Daddé corrected her solemnly. “The house treats us all--treats us the best it can. Let’s cheer the house gratefully, thankful it’s to hold us all together.”

The cheers arose, loud and prolonged, and Bunkie and Semper Fidelis barked their parts in them, while Cushla-machree, alias Pincushion, ran up a tree to be on the safe side, in case it meant danger.

Mark caught Isabel’s hand; she understood and took hold of Prue, Prue of Poppy, Poppy of Kathie, Kathie of Dolly, Dolly of Mrs. Lindsay, she of Mrs. Wayne, and Isabel completed the circle by taking Mr. Hawthorne’s hand in her other hand.

“Oh, gracious, there’s Ichabod!” cried Poppy, and widened the circle to let in the queer little man, just as they had widened their home circle to take him in.

Then, with shrieks of joy, they danced around and around Motherkins, and Isabel put the meaning of the dance into words:

“We’re all together, all together, all together forever and for aye,” she sang.

The others joined in her song, and thus they wheeled and danced, grown-ups and children, quite dementedly singing the words that mean so much when people love one another:

“We are all together, all together, all together forever and for aye!”

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:

Italicized text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.

Perceived typographical errors have been corrected.

Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.

Archaic or variant spelling has been retained.