BERESFORD BROADACRES,
_April_ 15, 19–.
PENELOPE, in the old sense, is no more! No mound of grass and daisies
covers her; no shaft of granite or marble marks the place where she
rests;—as a matter of fact she never does rest; she walks and runs and
sits and stands, but her travelling days are over. For the present, in a
word, the reason that she is no longer “Penelope,” with dozens of
portraits and three volumes of “Experiences” to her credit, is, that she
is Mrs. William Hunt Beresford.
As for Himself, he is just as much William Hunt Beresford as ever he was,
for marriage has not staled, nor fatherhood withered, his infinite
variety. There may be, indeed, a difference, ever so slight; a new
dignity, and an air of responsibility that harmonizes well with the inch
of added girth at his waist-line and the grey thread or two that
becomingly sprinkle his dark hair.
And where is Herself, the vanished Penelope, you ask; the companion of
Salemina and Francesca; the traveller in England, Scotland, Ireland, and
Wales; the wanderer in Switzerland and Italy? Well, if she is a thought
less irresponsible, merry, and loquacious, she is happier and wiser. If
her easel and her palette are not in daily evidence, neither are they
altogether banished from the scene; and whatever measure of cunning
Penelope’s hand possessed in other days, Mrs. Beresford has contrived to
preserve.
If she wields the duster occasionally, in alternation with the
paint-brush and the pen, she has now a new choice of weapons; and as for
models,—her friends, her neighbours, even her enemies and rivals, might
admire her ingenuity, her thrift, and her positive genius in selecting
types to paint! She never did paint anything beautifully but children,
though her backgrounds have been praised, also the various young things
that were a vital part of every composition. She could never draw a
horse or a cow or an ox to her satisfaction, but a long-legged colt, or a
newborn Bossy-calf were well within her powers. Her puppies and kittens
and chickens and goslings were always admired by the public, and the fact
that the mothers and fathers in the respective groups were never quite as
convincing as their offspring,—this somehow escaped the notice of the
critics.
Very well, then, what was Penelope inspired to do when she became Mrs.
Beresford and left the Atlantic rolling between the beloved Salemina,
Francesca, and herself? Why, having “crossed the sea and back”
repeatedly, she found “the sit-fast acres” of the house of Beresford
where she “left them” and where they had been sitting fast for more than
a hundred years.
“Here is the proper place for us to live,” she said to Himself, when they
first viewed the dear delightful New England landscape over together.
“Here is where your long roots are, and as my roots have been in half a
hundred places they can be easily transplanted. You have a decent income
to begin on; why not eke it out with apples and hay and corn and Jersey
cows and Plymouth Rock cocks and hens, while I use the scenery for my
pictures? There are backgrounds here for a thousand canvases, all within
a mile of your ancestral doorstep.”
“I don’t know what you will do for models in this remote place,” said
Himself, putting his hands in his pockets and gazing dubiously at the
abandoned farm-houses on the hillsides; the still green dooryards on the
village street where no children were playing, and the quiet little brick
school-house at the turn of the road, from which a dozen half-grown boys
and girls issued decorously, looking at us like scared rabbits.
“I have an idea about models,” said Mrs. Beresford.
And it turned out that she had, for all that was ten years ago, and
Penelope the Painter, merged in Mrs. Beresford the mother, has the three
loveliest models in all the countryside!
Children, of course, are common enough everywhere; not, perhaps, as
common as they should be, but there are a good many clean, well-behaved,
truthful, decently-featured little boys and girls who will, in course of
time, become the bulwarks of the Republic, who are of no use as models.
The public is not interested in, and will neither purchase nor hang on
its walls anything but a winsome child, a beautiful child, a pathetic
child, or a picturesquely ragged and dirty child. (The latter type is
preferably a foreigner, as dirty American children are for some reason or
other quite unsalable.)
All this is in explanation of the foregoing remarks about Mrs.
Beresford’s ingenuity, thrift, and genius in selecting types to paint.
The ingenuity lay in the idea itself; the thrift, in securing models that
should belong to the Beresford “sit-fast acres” and not have to be
searched for and “hired in” by the day; and the genius, in producing
nothing but enchanting, engrossing, adorable, eminently “paintable”
children. They are just as obedient, interesting, grammatical, and
virtuous as other people’s offspring, yet they are so beautiful that it
would be the height of selfishness not to let the world see them and turn
green with envy.
When viewed by the casual public in a gallery, nobody of course believes
that they are real until some kind friend says: “No, oh, no! not ideal
heads at all; perfect likenesses; the children of Mr. and Mrs. Beresford;
Penelope Hamilton, whose signature you see in the corner, _is_ Mrs.
Beresford.”
When they are exhibited in the guise of, and under such titles as: “Young
April,” “In May Time,” “Girl with Chickens,” “Three of a Kind” (Billy
with a kitten and a puppy tumbling over him), “Little Mothers” (Frances
and Sally with their dolls), “When all the World is Young” (Billy,
Frances, and Sally under the trees surrounded by a riot of young
feathered things, with a lamb and a Jersey calf peeping over a fence in
the background), then Himself stealthily visits the gallery. He stands
somewhere near the pictures pulling his moustache nervously and listening
to the comments of the bystanders. Not a word of his identity or
paternity does he vouchsafe, but occasionally some acquaintance happens
to draw near, perhaps to compliment or congratulate him. Then he has
been heard to say vaingloriously: “Oh, no! they are not flattered; rather
the reverse. My wife has an extraordinary faculty of catching
likenesses, and of course she has a wonderful talent, but she agrees with
me that she never quite succeeds in doing the children justice!”
Here we are, then, Himself and I, growing old with the country that gave
us birth (God bless it!) and our children growing up with it, as they
always should; for it must have occurred to the reader that I am
Penelope, Hamilton that was, and also, and above all, that I am Mrs.
William Hunt Beresford.
_April_ 20, 19–.
Himself and I have gone through the inevitable changes that life and
love, marriage and parenthood, bring to all human creatures; but no one
of the dear old group of friends has so developed as Francesca. Her last
letter, posted in Scotland and delivered here seven days later, is like a
breath of the purple heather and brings her vividly to mind.
In the old days when we first met she was gay, irresponsible, vivacious,
and a decided flirt,—with symptoms of becoming a coquette. She was
capricious and exacting; she had far too large an income for a young girl
accountable to nobody; she was lovely to look upon, a product of cities
and a trifle spoiled.
She danced through Europe with Salemina and me, taking in no more
information than she could help, but charming everybody that she met.
She was only fairly well educated, and such knowledge as she possessed
was vague, uncertain, and never ready for instant use. In literature she
knew Shakespeare, Balzac, Thackeray, Hawthorne, and Longfellow, but if
you had asked her to place Homer, Schiller, Dante, Victor Hugo, James
Fenimore Cooper, or Thoreau she couldn’t have done it within a hundred
years.
In history she had a bowing acquaintance with Napoleon, Washington,
Wellington, Prince Charlie, Henry of Navarre, Paul Revere, and Stonewall
Jackson, but as these gallant gentlemen stand on the printed page, so
they stood shoulder to shoulder, elbowing one another in her pretty head,
made prettier by a wealth of hair, Marcel-waved twice a week.
These facts were brought out once in examination, by one of Francesca’s
earliest lovers, who, at Salemina’s request and my own, acted as her
tutor during the spring before our first trip abroad, the general idea
being to prepare her mind for foreign travel.
I suppose we were older and should have known better than to allow any
man under sixty to tutor Francesca in the spring. Anyhow, the season
worked its maddest pranks on the pedagogue. He fell in love with his
pupil within a few days,—they were warm, delicious, budding days, for it
was a very early, verdant, intoxicating spring that produced an unusual
crop of romances in our vicinity. Unfortunately the tutor was a scholar
at heart, as well as a potential lover, and he interested himself in
making psychological investigations of Francesca’s mind. She was
perfectly willing, for she always regarded her ignorance as a huge joke,
instead of viewing it with shame and embarrassment. What was more
natural, when she drove, rode, walked, sailed, danced, and “sat out” to
her heart’s content, while more learned young ladies stayed within doors
and went to bed at nine o’clock with no vanity-provoking memories to lull
them to sleep? The fact that she might not be positive as to whether
Dante or Milton wrote “Paradise Lost,” or Palestrina antedated Berlioz,
or the Mississippi River ran north and south or east and west,—these
trifling uncertainties had never cost her an offer of marriage or the
love of a girl friend; so she was perfectly frank and offered no
opposition to the investigations of the unhappy but conscientious tutor,
meeting his questions with the frankness of a child. Her attitude of
mind was the more candid because she suspected the passion of the teacher
and knew of no surer way to cure him than to let him know her mind for
what it was.
When the staggering record of her ignorance on seven subjects was set
down in a green-covered blank book, she awaited the result not only with
resignation, but with positive hope; a hope that proved to be
ill-founded, for curiously enough the tutor was still in love with her.
Salemina was surprised, but I was not. Of course I had to know anatomy
in order to paint, but there is more in it than that. In painting the
outsides of people I assure you that I learned to guess more of what was
inside them than their bony structures! I sketched the tutor while he
was examining Francesca and I knew that there were no abysmal depths of
ignorance that could appall him where she was concerned. He couldn’t
explain the situation at all, himself. If there was anything that he
admired and respected in woman, it was a well-stored, logical mind, and
three months’ tutoring of Francesca had shown him that her mental
machinery was of an obsolete pattern and that it was not even in good
working order. He could not believe himself influenced (so he confessed
to me) by such trivial things as curling lashes, pink ears, waving hair
(he had never heard of Marcel), or mere beauties of colour and line and
form. He said he was not so sure about Francesca’s eyes. Eyes like
hers, he remarked in confidence, were not beneath the notice of any man,
be he President of Harvard University or Master of Balliol College, for
they seemed to promise something never once revealed in the green
examination book.
“You are quite right,” I answered him; “the green book is not all there
is of Miss Monroe, but whatever there is is plainly not for you”; and he
humbly agreed with my dictum.
Is it not strange that a man will talk to one woman about the charms of
another for days upon days without ever realizing that she may possibly
be born for some other purpose than listening to him? For an hour or
two, of course, any sympathetic or generous-minded person can be
interested in the confidences of a lover; but at the end of weeks or
months, during which time he has never once regarded his listener as a
human being of the feminine gender, with eyes, nose, and hair in no way
inferior to those of his beloved,—at the end of that time he should be
shaken, smitten, waked from his dreams, and told in ringing tones that in
a tolerably large universe there are probably two women worth looking at,
the one about whom he is talking, and the one to whom he is talking!
_May_ 12, 19–.
To go on about Francesca, she always had a quick intelligence, a sense of
humour, a heart, and a conscience; four things not to be despised in the
equipment of a woman. The wit she used lavishly for the delight of the
world at large; the heart had not (in the tutor’s time) found anything or
anybody on which to spend itself; the conscience certainly was not
working overtime at the same period, but I always knew that it was there
and would be an excellent reliable organ when once aroused.
Of course there is no reason why the Reverend Ronald MacDonald, of the
Established Church of Scotland, should have been the instrument chosen to
set all the wheels of Francesca’s being in motion, but so it was; and a
great clatter and confusion they made in our Edinburgh household when the
machinery started! If Ronald was handsome he was also a splendid fellow;
if he was a preacher he was also a man; and no member of the laity could
have been more ardently and satisfactorily in love than he. It was the
ardour that worked the miracle; and when Francesca was once warmed
through to the core, she began to grow. Her modest fortune helped things
a little at the beginning of their married life, for it not only made
existence easier, but enabled them to be of more service in the
straggling, struggling country parishes where they found themselves at
first.
Francesca’s beautiful American clothes shocked Ronald’s congregations now
and then, and it was felt that, though possible, it was not very
probable, that the grace of God could live with such hats and shoes, such
gloves and jewels as hers. But by the time Ronald was called from his
Argyllshire church to St. Giles’s Cathedral in Edinburgh there was a
better understanding of young Mrs. MacDonald’s raiment and its relation
to natural and revealed religion. It appeared now that a clergyman’s
wife, by strict attention to parochial duties; by being the mother of
three children all perfectly well behaved in church; by subscribing
generously to all worthy charities; by never conducting herself as
light-mindedly as her eyes and conversation seemed to portend,—it
appeared that a woman _could_ live down her clothes! It was a Bishop, I
think, who argued in Francesca’s behalf that godliness did not
necessarily dwell in frieze and stout leather and that it might flourish
in lace and chiffon. Salemina and I used to call Ronald and Francesca
the antinomic pair. Antinomics, one finds by consulting the authorities,
are apparently contradictory poles, which, however, do not really
contradict, but are only correlatives, the existence of one making the
existence of the other necessary, explaining each other and giving each
other a real standing and equilibrium.
_May_ 7, 19–.
What immeasurable leagues of distance lie between Salemina, Francesca,
and me! Not only leagues of space divide us, but the difference in
environment, circumstances, and responsibilities that give reality to
space; yet we have bridged the gulf successfully by a particular sort of
three-sided correspondence, almost impersonal enough to be published, yet
revealing all the little details of daily life one to the other.
When we three found that we should be inevitably separated for some
years, we adopted the habit of a “loose-leaf diary.” The pages are
perforated with large circular holes and put together in such a way that
one can remove any leaf without injuring the book. We write down, as the
spirit moves us, the more interesting happenings of the day, and once in
a fortnight, perhaps, we slip a half-dozen selected pages into an
envelope and the packet starts on its round between America, Scotland,
and Ireland. In this way we have kept up with each other without any
apparent severing of intimate friendship, and a farmhouse in New England,
a manse in Scotland, and the Irish home of a Trinity College professor
and his lady are brought into frequent contact.
Inspired by Francesca’s last budget, full of all sorts of revealing
details of her daily life, I said to Himself at breakfast: “I am not
going to paint this morning, nor am I going to ‘keep house’; I propose to
write in my loose-leaf diary, and what is more I propose to write about
marriage!”
When I mentioned to Himself the subject I intended to treat, he looked up
in alarm.
“Don’t, I beg of you, Penelope,” he said. “If you do it the other two
will follow suit. Women cannot discuss marriage without dragging in
husbands, and MacDonald, La Touche, and I won’t have a leg to stand upon.
The trouble with these ‘loose leaves’ that you three keep for ever in
circulation is, that the cleverer they are the more publicity they get.
Francesca probably reads your screeds at her Christian Endeavour meetings
just as you cull extracts from Salemina’s for your Current Events Club.
In a word, the loosened leaf leads to the loosened tongue, and that’s
rather epigrammatic for a farmer at breakfast time.”
“I am not going to write about husbands,” I said, “least of all my own,
but about marriage as an institution; the part it plays in the evolution
of human beings.”
“Nevertheless, everything you say about it will reflect upon me,” argued
Himself. “The only husband a woman knows is her own husband, and
everything she thinks about marriage is gathered from her own
experience.”
“Your attitude is not only timid, it is positively cowardly!” I
exclaimed. “You are an excellent husband as husbands go, and I don’t
consider that I have retrograded mentally or spiritually during our ten
years of life together. It is true nothing has been said in private or
public about any improvement in me due to your influence, but perhaps
that is because the idea has got about that your head is easily turned by
flattery.—Anyway, I shall be entirely impersonal in what I write. I
shall say I believe in marriage because I cannot think of any better
arrangement; also that I believe in marrying men because there is nothing
else _to_ marry. I shall also quote that feminist lecturer who said that
the bitter business of every woman in the world is to convert a trap into
a home. Of course I laughed inwardly, but my shoulders didn’t shake for
two minutes as yours did. They were far more eloquent than any loose
leaf from a diary; for they showed every other man in the audience that
you didn’t consider that _you_ had to set any ‘traps’ for _me_!”
Himself leaned back in his chair and gave way to unbridled mirth. When
he could control his speech, he wiped the tears from his eyes and said
offensively:—
“Well, I didn’t; did I?”
“No,” I replied, flinging the tea-cosy at his head, missing it, and
breaking the oleander on the plant-shelf ten feet distant.
“You wouldn’t be unmarried for the world!” said Himself. “You couldn’t
paint every day, you know you couldn’t; and where could you find anything
so beautiful to paint as your own children unless you painted me; and it
just occurs to me that you never paid me the compliment of asking me to
sit for you.”
“I can’t paint men,” I objected. “They are too massive and rugged and
ugly. Their noses are big and hard and their bones show through
everywhere excepting when they are fat and then they are disgusting.
Their eyes don’t shine, their hair is never beautiful, they have no
dimples in their hands and elbows; you can’t see their mouths because of
their moustaches, and generally it’s no loss; and their clothes are stiff
and conventional with no colour, nor any flowing lines to paint.”
“I know where you keep your ‘properties,’ and I’ll make myself a mass of
colour and flowing lines if you’ll try me,” Himself said meekly.
“No, dear,” I responded amiably. “You are very nice, but you are not a
costume man, and I shudder to think what you would make of yourself if I
allowed you to visit my property-room. If I ever have to paint you (not
for pleasure, but as a punishment), you shall wear your everyday
corduroys and I’ll surround you with the children; then you know
perfectly well that the public will never notice you at all.” Whereupon
I went to my studio built on the top of the long rambling New England
shed and loved what I painted yesterday so much that I went on with it,
finding that I had said to Himself almost all that I had in mind to say,
about marriage as an institution.
_June_ 15, 19–.
We were finishing luncheon on the veranda with all out of doors to give
us appetite. It was Buttercup Sunday, a yellow June one that had been
preceded by Pussy Willow Sunday, Dandelion Sunday, Apple Blossom, Wild
Iris, and Lilac Sunday, to be followed by Daisy and Black-Eyed Susan and
White Clematis and Goldenrod and Wild Aster and Autumn Leaf Sundays.
Francie was walking over the green-sward with a bowl and spoon, just as
our Scottish men friends used to do with oat-meal at breakfast time. The
Sally-baby was blowing bubbles in her milk, and Himself and I were
discussing a book lately received from London.
Suddenly I saw Billy, who had wandered from the table, sitting on the
steps bending over a tiny bird’s egg in his open hand. I knew that he
must have taken it from some low-hung nest, but taken it in innocence,
for he looked at it with solicitude as an object of tender and fragile
beauty. He had never given a thought to the mother’s days of patient
brooding, nor that he was robbing the summer world of one bird’s flight
and one bird’s song.
“Did you hear the whippoorwills singing last night, Daddy?” I asked.
“I did, indeed, and long before sunrise this morning. There must be a
new family in our orchard, I think; but then we have coaxed hundreds of
birds our way this spring by our little houses, our crumbs, and our
drinking dishes.”
“Yes, we have never had so many since we came here to live. Look at that
little brown bird flying about in the tall apple-tree, Francie; she seems
to be in trouble.”
“P’r’haps it’s Mrs. Smiff’s wenomous cat,” exclaimed Francie, running to
look for a particularly voracious animal that lived across the fields,
but had been known to enter our bird-Eden.
“Hear this, Daddy; isn’t it pretty?” I said, taking up the “Life of
Dorothy Grey.”
Billy pricked up his ears, for he can never see a book opened without
running to join the circle, so eager he is not to lose a precious word.
“The wren sang early this morning” (I read slowly). “We talked about it
at breakfast and how many people there were who would not be aware of it;
and E. said, ‘Fancy, if God came in and said: “Did you notice my wren?”
and they were obliged to say they had not known it was there!’”
Billy rose quietly and stole away behind the trees, returning in a few
moments, empty-handed, to stand by my side.
“Does God know how many eggs there are in a bird’s nest, mother?” he
asked.
“People have so many different ideas about what God sees and takes note
of, that it’s hard to say, sonny. Of course you remember that the Bible
says not one sparrow falls to the ground but He knows it.”
“The mother bird can’t count her eggs, can she, mother?”
“Oh! Billy, you do ask the hardest questions; ones that I can never
answer by Yes and No! She broods her eggs all day and all night and
never lets them get cold, so she must know, at any rate, that they are
going to _be_ birds, don’t you think? And of course she wouldn’t want to
lose one; that’s the reason she’s so faithful!”
“Well!” said Billy, after a long pause, “I don’t care quite so much about
the mother, because sometimes there are five eggs in a weeny, weeny nest
that never could hold five little ones without their scrunching each
other and being uncomfortable. But if God should come in and say: ‘Did
you take my egg, that was going to be a bird?’ I just couldn’t bear it!”
_June_ 15, 19–.
Another foreign mail is in and the village postmistress has sent an
impassioned request that I steam off the stamps for her boy’s album,
enriched during my residence here by specimens from eleven different
countries. (“Mis’ Beresford beats the Wanderin’ Jew all holler if so be
she’s be’n to all them places, an’ come back alive!”—so she says to
Himself.) Among the letters there is a budget of loose leaves from
Salemina’s diary, Salemina, who is now Mrs. Gerald La Touche, wife of
Professor La Touche, of Trinity College, Dublin, and stepmother to
Jackeen and Broona La Touche.
It is midsummer, College is not in session, and they are at Rosnaree
House, their place in County Meath.
Salemina is the one of our trio who continues to move in grand society.
She it is who dines at the Viceregal Lodge and Dublin Castle. She it is
who goes with her distinguished husband for week-ends with the Master of
the Horse, the Lord Chancellor, and the Dean of the Chapel Royal.
Francesca, it is true, makes her annual bow to the Lord High Commissioner
at Holyrood Palace and dines there frequently during Assembly Week; and
as Ronald numbers one Duke, two Earls, and several Countesses and Dowager
Countesses in his parish, there are awe-inspiring visiting cards to be
found in the silver salver on her hall table,—but Salemina in Ireland
literally lives with the great, of all classes and conditions! She is in
the heart of the Irish Theatre and the Modern Poetry movements,—and when
she is not hobnobbing with playwrights and poets she is consorting with
the Irish nobility and gentry.
I cannot help thinking that she would still be Miss Peabody, of Salem,
Massachusetts, had it not been for my generous and helpful offices, and
those of Francesca! Never were two lovers, parted in youth in America
and miraculously reunited in middle age in Ireland, more recalcitrant in
declaring their mutual affection than Dr. La Touche and Salemina!
Nothing in the world divided them but imaginary barriers. He was not
rich, but he had a comfortable salary and a dignified and honourable
position among men. He had two children, but they were charming, and
therefore so much to the good. Salemina was absolutely “foot loose” and
tied down to no duties in America, so no one could blame her for marrying
an Irishman. She had never loved any one else, and Dr. La Touche might
have had that information for the asking; but he was such a bat for
blindness, adder for deafness, and lamb for meekness that because she
refused him once, when she was the only comfort of an aged mother and
father, he concluded that she would refuse him again, though she was now
alone in the world. His late wife, a poor, flighty, frivolous invalid,
the kind of woman who always entangles a sad, vague, absent-minded
scholar, had died six years before, and never were there two children so
in need of a mother as Jackeen and Broona, a couple of affectionate,
hot-headed, bewitching, ragged, tousled Irish darlings. I would
cheerfully have married Dr. Gerald myself, just for the sake of his
neglected babies, but I dislike changes and I had already espoused
Himself.
However, a summer in Ireland, undertaken with no such great stakes in
mind as Salemina’s marriage, made possible a chance meeting of the two
old friends. This was followed by several others, devised by us with
incendiary motives, and without Salemina’s knowledge. There was also the
unconscious plea of the children working a daily spell; there was the
past, with its memories, tugging at both their hearts; and above all
there was a steady, dogged, copious stream of mental suggestion emanating
from Francesca and me, so that, in course of time, our middle-aged couple
did succeed in confessing to each other that a separate future was
impossible for them.
They never would have encountered each other had it not been for us;
never, never would have become engaged; and as for the wedding, we
forcibly led them to the altar, saying that we must leave Ireland and the
ceremony could not be delayed.
Not that we are the recipients of any gratitude for all this! Rather the
reverse! They constantly allude to their marriage as made in Heaven,
although there probably never was another union where creatures of earth
so toiled and slaved to assist the celestial powers.
I wonder why middle-aged and elderly lovers make such an appeal to me!
Is it because I have lived much in New England, where “ladies-in-waiting”
are all too common,—where the wistful bride-groom has an invalid mother
to support, or a barren farm out of which he cannot wring a living, or a
malignant father who cherishes a bitter grudge against his son’s chosen
bride and all her kindred,—where the woman herself is compassed about
with obstacles, dragging out a pinched and colourless existence year
after year?
And when at length the two waiting ones succeed in triumphing over
circumstances, they often come together wearily, soberly, with half the
joy pressed out of life. Young lovers have no fears! That the future
holds any terrors, difficulties, bugbears of any sort they never seem to
imagine, and so they are delightful and amusing to watch in their gay and
sometimes irresponsible and selfish courtships; but they never tug at my
heart-strings as their elders do, when the great, the long-delayed moment
comes.
Francesca and I, in common with Salemina’s other friends, thought that
she would never marry. She had been asked often enough in her youth, but
she was not the sort of woman who falls in love at forty. What we did
not know was that she had fallen in love with Gerald La Touche at
five-and-twenty and had never fallen out,—keeping her feelings to herself
during the years that he was espoused to another, very unsuitable lady.
Our own sentimental experiences, however, had sharpened our eyes, and we
divined at once that Dr. La Touche, a scholar of fifty, shy, reserved,
self-distrustful, and oh! so in need of anchor and harbour,—that he was
the only husband in the world for Salemina; and that he, after giving all
that he had and was to an unappreciative woman, would be unspeakably
blessed in the wife of our choosing.
I remember so well something that he said to me once as we sat at
twilight on the bank of the lake near Devorgilla. The others were rowing
toward us bringing the baskets for a tea picnic, and we, who had come in
the first boat, were talking quietly together about intimate things. He
told me that a frail old scholar, a brother professor, used to go back
from the college to his house every night bowed down with weariness and
pain and care, and that he used to say to his wife as he sank into his
seat by the fire: “Oh! praise me, my wife, praise me!”
My eyes filled and I turned away to hide the tears when Dr. Gerald
continued absently: “As for me, Mistress Beresford, when I go home at
night I take my only companion from the mantelshelf and leaning back in
my old armchair say, ‘Praise me, my pipe, praise me!’”
And Salemina Peabody was in the boat coming toward us, looking as
serenely lovely in a grey tweed and broad white hat as any good sweet
woman of forty could look, while he gazed at her “through a glass darkly”
as if she were practically non-existent, or had nothing whatever to do
with the case.
I concealed rebellious opinions of blind bats, deaf adders, meek lambs,
and obstinate pigs, but said very gently and impersonally: “I hope you
won’t always allow your pipe to be your only companion;—you, with your
children, your name and position, your home and yourself to give—to
somebody!”
But he only answered: “You exaggerate, my dear madam; there is not enough
left in me or of me to offer to any woman!”
And I could do nothing but make his tea graciously and hand it to him,
wondering that he was able to see the cup or the bread-and-butter
sandwich that I put into his modest, ungrateful hand.
However, it is all a thing of the past, that dim, sweet, grey romance
that had its rightful background in a country of subdued colourings, of
pensive sweetness, of gentle greenery, where there is an eternal
wistfulness in the face of the natural world, speaking of the springs of
hidden tears.
Their union is a perfect success, and I echo the Boots of the inn at
Devorgilla when he said: “An’ sure it’s the doctor that’s the satisfied
man an’ the luck is on him as well as on e’er a man alive! As for her
ladyship, she’s one o’ the blessings o’ the wurruld an’ ’t would be an
o’jus pity to spile two houses wid ’em.”
_July_ 12, 19–.
We were all out in the orchard sunning ourselves on the little haycocks
that the “hired man” had piled up here and there under the trees.
“It is not really so beautiful as Italy,” I said to Himself, gazing up at
the newly set fruit on the apple boughs and then across the close-cut hay
field to the level pasture, with its rocks and cow paths, its blueberry
bushes and sweet fern, its clumps of young sumachs, till my eyes fell
upon the deep green of the distant pines. “I can’t bear to say it,
because it seems disloyal, but I almost believe I think so.”
“It is not as picturesque,” Himself agreed grudgingly, his eye following
mine from point to point; “and why do we love it so?”
“There is nothing delicious and luxuriant about it,” I went on
critically, “yet it has a delicate, ethereal, austere, straight-forward
Puritanical loveliness of its own; but, no, it is not as beautiful as
Italy or Ireland, and it isn’t as tidy as England. If you keep away from
the big manufacturing towns and their outskirts you may go by motor or
railway through shire after shire in England and never see anything
unkempt, down-at-the-heel, out-at-elbows, or ill-cared-for; no
broken-down fences or stone walls; no heaps of rubbish or felled trees by
the wayside; no unpainted or tottering buildings—”
“You see plenty of ruins,” interrupted Himself in a tone that promised
argument.
“Yes, but ruins are different; they are finished; they are not tottering,
they _have_ tottered! Our country is too big, I suppose, to be ‘tidy,’
but how I should like to take just one of the United States and clear it
up, back yards and all, from border line to border line!”
“You are talking like a housewife now, not like an artist,” said Himself
reprovingly.
“Well, I am both, I hope, and I don’t intend that any one shall know
where the one begins or the other leaves off, either! And if any
foreigner should remark that America is unfinished or untidy I shall deny
it!”
“Fie! Penelope! You who used to be a citizen of the world!”
“So I am still, so far as a roving foot and a knowledge of three
languages can make me; but you remember that the soul ‘retains the
characteristic of its race and the heart is true to its own country, even
to its own parish.’”
“When shall we be going to the other countries, mother?” asked Billy.
“When shall we see our aunt in Scotland and our aunt in Ireland?” (Poor
lambs! Since the death of their Grandmother Beresford they do not
possess a real relation in the world!)
“It will not be very long, Billy,” I said. “We don’t want to go until we
can leave the perambulator behind. The Sally-baby toddles now, but she
must be able to walk on the English downs and the Highland heather.”
“And the Irish bogs,” interpolated Billy, who has a fancy for detail.
“Well, the Irish bogs are not always easy travelling,” I answered, “but
the Sally-baby will soon be old enough to feel the spring of the Irish
turf under her feet.”
“What will the chickens and ducklings and pigeons do while we are gone?”
asked Francie.
“An’ the lammies?” piped the Sally-baby, who has all the qualities of
Mary in the immortal lyric.
“Oh! we won’t leave home until the spring has come and all the young
things are born. The grass will be green, the dandelions will have their
puff-balls on, the apple blossoms will be over, and Daddy will get a kind
man to take care of everything for us. It will be May time and we will
sail in a big ship over to the aunts and uncles in Scotland and Ireland
and I shall show them my children—”
“And we shall play ‘hide-and-go-coop’ with their children,” interrupted
Francie joyously.
“They will never have heard of that game, but you will all play
together!” And here I leaned back on the warm haycock and blinked my
eyes a bit in moist anticipation of happiness to come. “There will be
eight-year-old Ronald MacDonald to climb and ride and sail with our
Billy; and there will be little Penelope who is named for me, and will be
Francie’s playmate; and the new little boy baby—”
“Proba’ly Aunt Francie’s new boy baby will grow up and marry our girl
one,” suggested Billy.
“He has my consent to the alliance in advance,” said Himself, “but I dare
say your mother has arranged it all in her own mind and my advice will
not be needed.”
“I have not arranged anything,” I retorted; “or if I have it was nothing
more than a thought of young Ronald or Jack La Touche in—another
quarter,”—this with discreetly veiled emphasis.
“What is another quarter, mother?” inquired Francie, whose mental agility
is somewhat embarrassing.
“Oh, why,—well,—it is any other place than the one you are talking about.
Do you see?”
“Not so very well, but p’r’aps I will in a minute.”
“Hope springs eternal!” quoted Francie’s father.
“And then, as I was saying before being interrupted by the entire family,
we will go and visit the Irish cousins, Jackeen and Broona, who belong to
Aunt Salemina and Uncle Gerald, and the Sally-baby will be the centre of
attraction because she is her Aunt Salemina’s godchild—”
“But we are all God’s children,” insisted Billy.
“Of course we are.”
“What’s the difference between a god-child and a God’s child?”
“The bottle of chloroform is in the medicine closet, my poor dear; shall
I run and get it?” murmured Himself _sotto voce_.
“Every child is a child of God,” I began helplessly, “and when she is
somebody’s godchild she—oh! lend me your handkerchief, Billy!”
“Is it the nose-bleed, mother?” he asked, bending over me solicitously.
“No, oh, no! it’s nothing at all, dear. Perhaps the hay was going to
make me sneeze. What was I saying?”
“About the god—”
“Oh, yes! I remember! (_Ka-choo_!) We will take the Irish cousins and
the Scotch cousins and go all together to see the Tower of London and
Westminster Abbey. We’ll go to Bushey Park and see the chestnuts in
bloom, and will dine at Number 10, Dovermarle Street—”
“I shall not go there, Billy,” said Himself. “It was at Number 10,
Dovermarle Street that your mother told me she wouldn’t marry me; or at
least that she’d have to do a lot of thinking before she’d say Yes; so
she left London and went to North Malvern.”
“Couldn’t she think in London?” (This was Billy.)
“Didn’t she always want to be married to you?” (This was Francie.)
“Not always.”
“Didn’t she like _us_?” (Still Francie.)
“You were never mentioned,—not one of you!”
“That seems rather queer!” remarked Billy, giving me a reproachful look.
“So we’ll leave the Irish and Scotch uncles and aunts behind and go to
North Malvern just by ourselves. It was there that your mother concluded
that she _would_ marry me, and I rather like the place.”
“Mother loves it, too; she talks to me about it when she puts me to bed.”
(Francie again.)
“No doubt; but you’ll find your mother’s heart scattered all over the
Continent of Europe. One bit will be clinging to a pink thorn in
England; another will be in the Highlands somewhere,—wherever the
heather’s in bloom; another will be hanging on the Irish gorse bushes
where they are yellowest; and another will be hidden under the seat of a
Venetian gondola.”
“Don’t listen to Daddy’s nonsense, children! He thinks mother throws her
heart about recklessly while he loves only one thing at a time.”
“Four things!” expostulated Himself, gallantly viewing our little group
at large.
“Strictly speaking, we are not four things, we are only four parts of one
thing;—counting you in, and I really suppose you ought to be counted in,
we are five parts of one thing.”
“Shall we come home again from the other countries?” asked Billy.
“Of course, sonny! The little Beresfords must come back and grow up with
their own country.”
“Am I a little Beresford, mother?” asked Francie, looking wistfully at
her brother as belonging to the superior sex and the eldest besides.
“Certainly.”
“And is the Sally-baby one too?”
Himself laughed unrestrainedly at this.
“She is,” he said, “but you are more than half mother, with your
unexpectednesses.”
“I love to be more than half mother!” cried Francie, casting herself
violently about my neck and imbedding me in the haycock.
“Thank you, dear, but pull me up now. It’s supper-time.”
Billy picked up the books and the rug and made preparations for the brief
journey to the house. I put my hair in order and smoothed my skirts.
“Will there be supper like ours in the other countries, mother?” he
asked. “And if we go in May time, when do we come back again?”
Himself rose from the ground with a luxurious stretch of his arms,
looking with joy and pride at our home fields bathed in the afternoon
midsummer sun. He took the Sally-baby’s outstretched hands and lifted
her, crowing, to his shoulder.
“Help sister over the stubble, my son.—We’ll come away from the other
countries whenever mother says: ‘Come, children, it’s time for supper.’”
“We’ll be back for Thanksgiving,” I assured Billy, holding him by one
hand and Francie by the other, as we walked toward the farmhouse. “We
won’t live in the other countries, because Daddy’s ‘sit-fast acres’ are
here in New England.”
“But whenever and wherever we five are together, especially wherever
mother is, it will always be home,” said Himself thankfully, under his
breath.