very fond. She lived with a very young husband, and a very new baby, in
a tiny cottage near the big Irish family, and pleased Mrs. Costello by
asking her advice on all domestic matters, and taking it. She made the
Costello children welcome at all hours in her tiny, shining kitchen, or
sunny little dining-room. She made them candy and told them stories. She
was a minister’s daughter, and wise in many delightful, girlish,
friendly ways.
And in return Mrs. Costello did her many a kindly act, and sent her
almost daily presents in the most natural manner imaginable.
But Mrs. Church made Alanna very unhappy about the raffled desk. It so
chanced that it matched exactly the other furniture in Mrs. Church’s
rather bare little drawing-room, and this made her eager to win it.
Alanna, at eight, long familiar with raffles and their ways, realized
what a very small chance Mrs. Church stood of getting the desk. It
distressed her very much to notice that lady’s growing certainty of
success.
She took chance after chance. And with every chance she warned Alanna of
the dreadful results of her not winning; and Alanna, with a worried line
between her eyes, protested her helplessness afresh.
'She _will_ do it, dad!' the little girl confided to him one evening,
when she and her book and her pencil were on his knee. 'And it _worries_
me so.'
'Oh, I hope she wins it,' said Teresa ardently. 'She 's not a Catholic,
but we’re praying for her. And you know people who aren’t Catholics,
dad, are apt to think that our fairs are pretty--pretty money-making,
you know!'
'And if only she could point to that desk,' said Alanna, 'and say that
she won it at a Catholic fair.'
'But she won’t,' said Teresa, suddenly cold.
'I’m _praying_ she will,' said Alanna suddenly.
'Oh, I don’t think you ought, do you, dad?' said Teresa gravely. 'Do you
think she ought, mommie? That’s just like her pouring her holy water
over the kitten. You oughtn’t to do those things.'
'I ought to,' said Alanna, in a whisper that reached only her father’s
ear.
'You suit me, whatever you do,' said Mayor Costello, 'and Mrs. Church
can take her chances with the rest of us.'
Mrs. Church seemed to be quite willing to do so. When at last the great
day of the fair came, she was one of the first to reach the hall, in the
morning, to ask Mrs. Costello how she might be of use.
'Now wait a minute, then!' said Mrs. Costello cordially. She
straightened up as she spoke, from an inspection of a box of fancy-work.
'We could only get into the hall this hour gone, my dear, and 't was a
sight, after the Native Sons' Banquet last night. It’ll be a miracle if
we get things in order for to-night. Father Crowley said he’d have three
carpenters here this morning at nine, without fail; but not one’s come
yet. That’s the way!'
'Oh, we’ll fix things,' said Mrs. Church, shaking out a dainty little
apron.
Alanna came briskly up, and beamed at her. The little girl was driving
about on all sorts of errands for her mother, and had come in to report.
'Mother, I went home,' she said, in a breathless rush, 'and told Alma
four extra were coming to lunch, and here are your big scissors, and I
told the boys you wanted them to go out to Uncle Dan’s for greens, they
took the buckboard, and I went to Keyser’s for the cheesecloth, and he
had only eighteen yards of pink, but he thinks Kelley’s have more, and
there are the tacks, and they don’t keep spool-wire, and the electrician
will be here in ten minutes.'
'Alanna, you’re the pride of me life,' said her mother, kissing her.
'That’s all now, dearie. Sit down and rest.'
'Oh, but I 'd rather go round and see things,' said Alanna, and off she
went.
The immense hall was filled with the noise of voices, hammers, and
laughter. Groups of distracted women were forming and dissolving
everywhere around chaotic masses of boards and bunting. Whenever a
carpenter started for the door, or entered it, he was waylaid, bribed,
and bullied by the frantic superintendents of the various booths.
Messengers came and went, staggering under masses of evergreen, carrying
screens, rope, suit-cases, baskets, boxes, Japanese lanterns, freezers,
rugs, ladders, and tables.
Alanna found the stage fascinating. Lunch and dinner were to be served
there, for the five days of the fair, and it had been set with many
chairs and tables, fenced with ferns and bamboo. Alanna was charmed to
arrange knives and forks, to unpack oily hams and sticky cakes, and
great bowls of salad, and to store them neatly away in a green room.
The grand piano had been moved down to the floor. Now and then an
audacious boy or two banged on it for the few moments that it took his
mother’s voice or hands to reach him. Little girls gently played 'The
Carnival of Venice' or 'Echoes of the Ball,' with their scared eyes
alert for reproof. And once two of the 'big' Sodality girls came up,
assured and laughing and dusty, and boldly performed one of their
convent duets. Some of the tired women in the booths straightened up and
clapped, and called, '_Encore_!'
Teresa was not one of these girls. Her instrument was the violin;
moreover, she was busy and absorbed at the Children of Mary’s booth,
which by four o’clock began to blossom all over its white-draped pillars
and tables with ribbons and embroidery and tissue paper, and cushions
and aprons and collars, and all sorts of perfumed prettiness.
The two priests were constantly in evidence, their cassocks and hands
showing unaccustomed dust.
And over all the confusion, Mrs. Costello shone supreme. Her brisk, big
figure, with skirts turned back, and a blue apron still further
protecting them, was everywhere at once; laughter and encouragement
marked her path. She wore a paper of pins on the breast of her silk
dress, she had a tack-hammer thrust in her belt. In her apron-pockets
were string, and wire, and tacks. A big pair of scissors hung at her
side, and a pencil was thrust through her smooth black hair. She advised
and consulted and directed; even with the priests it was to be observed
that her mild, 'Well, Father, it seems to me,' always won the day. She
led the electricians a life of it; she became the terror of the
carpenters' lives.
Where was the young lady that played the violin going to stay? Send her
up to Mrs. Costello’s.--Heavens! We were short a tablecloth! Oh, but
Mrs. Costello had just sent Dan home for one.--How on earth could the
Male Quartette from Tower Town find its way to the hall? Mrs. Costello
had promised to tell Mr. C. to send a carriage for them.
She came up to the Children of Mary’s booth about five o’clock.
'Well, if you girls ain’t the wonders!' she said to the tired little
Sodalists, in a tone of unbounded admiration and surprise. 'You make me
ashamed of me own booth. This is beautiful.'
'Oh, do you think so, mother?' said Teresa wistfully, clinging to her
mother’s arm.
'I think it’s grand!' said Mrs. Costello, with conviction. There was a
delighted laugh. 'I’m going to bring all the ladies up to see it.'
'Oh, I’m so glad!' said all the girls together, reviving visibly.
'An’ the pretty things you got!' went on the cheering matron. 'You’ll
clear eight hundred if you’ll clear a cent. And now put me down for a
chance or two; don’t be scared, Mary Riordan; four or five! I’m goin' to
bring Mr. Costello over here to-night, and don’t you let him off too
easy.'
Everyone laughed joyously.
'Did you hear of Alanna’s luck?' said Mrs. Costello. 'When the Bishop
got here, he took her all around the hall with him, and between this one
and that, every last one of her chances is gone. She couldn’t keep her
feet on the floor for joy. The lucky girl! They’re waitin' for you,
Tess, darlin', with the buckboard. Go home and lay down a while before
dinner.'
'Aren’t you lucky!' said Teresa, as she climbed a few minutes later into
the back seat with Jim, and Dan pulled out the whip.
Alanna, swinging her legs, gave a joyful assent. She was too happy to
talk, but the other three had much to say.
'Mother thinks we’ll make eight hundred dollars,' said Teresa.
'_Gee_!' said the twins together; and Dan added, 'If only Mrs. Church
wins that desk, now!'
'Who’s going to do the drawing of numbers?' Jimmy wondered.
'Bishop,' said Dan; 'and he’ll call down from the platform, "Number
twenty-six wins the desk." And then Alanna’ll look in her book, and pipe
up and say, "Daniel Ignatius Costello, the handsomest fellow in the
parish, wins the desk."'
'Twenty-six is Harry Plummer,' said Alanna seriously, looking up from
her chance-book; at which they all laughed.
'But take care of that book,' warned Teresa, as she climbed down.
'Oh, I will!' responded Alanna fervently.
And through the next four happy days she did, and took the precaution of
tying it by a stout cord to her arm.
Then on Saturday, the last afternoon, quite late, when her mother had
suggested that she go home with Leo and Jack and Frank and Gertrude and
the nurses, Alanna felt the cord hanging loose against her hand, and
looking down, saw that the book was gone.
She was holding out her arms for her coat when this took place, and she
went cold all over. But she did not move, and Minnie buttoned her in
snugly, and tied the ribbons of her hat with cold, hard knuckles,
without suspecting anything.
Then Alanna disappeared, and Mrs. Costello sent the maids and babies on
without her. It was getting dark and cold for the small Costellos.
But the hour was darker and colder for Alanna. She searched and she
hoped and she prayed in vain. She stood up, after a long hands-and-knees
expedition under the tables where she had been earlier, and pressed her
right hand over her eyes, and said aloud in her misery, 'Oh, I can’t
have lost it! I _can’t_ have. Oh, don’t let me have lost it!'
She went here and there as if propelled by some mechanical force, a
wretched, restless little figure. And when the dreadful moment came when
she must give up searching, she crept in beside her mother in the
carriage, and longed only for some honorable death.
When they all went back at eight o’clock, she recommenced her search
feverishly, with that cruel alternation of hope and despair and
weariness that everyone knows. The crowds, the lights, the music, the
laughter, and the noise, and the pervading odor of popcorn were not
real, when a shabby brown little book was her whole world, and she could
not find it.
'The drawing will begin,' said Alanna, 'and the Bishop will call out the
number! And what’ll I say? Everyone will look at me; and how can I say
I’ve lost it! Oh, what a baby they’ll call me!'
'Father’ll pay the money back,' she said, in sudden relief. But the
impossibility of that swiftly occurred to her, and she began hunting
again with fresh terror.
'But, he can’t! How can he? A hundred names; and I don’t know them, or
half of them.'
Then she felt the tears coming, and she crept in under some benches, and
cried.
She lay there a long time, listening to the curious hum and buzz above
her. And at last it occurred to her to go to the Bishop, and tell this
old, kind friend the truth.
But she was too late. As she got to her feet, she heard her own name
called from the platform, in the Bishop’s voice.
'Where’s Alanna Costello? Ask her who has number eighty-three on the
desk. Eighty-three wins the desk! Find little Alanna Costello!'
Alanna had no time for thought. Only one course of action occurred to
her. She cleared her throat.
'Mrs. Will Church has that number, Bishop,' she said.
The crowd about her gave way, and the Bishop saw her, rosy, embarrassed,
and breathless.
'Ah, there you are!' said the Bishop. 'WHO has it?'
'Mrs. Church, your Grace,' said Alanna, calmly this time.
'Well, did you _ever_!' said Mrs. Costello to the Bishop.
She had gone up to claim a mirror she had won--a mirror with a gold
frame, and lilacs and roses painted lavishly on its surface.
'Gee, I bet Alanna was pleased about the desk!' said Dan in the
carriage.
'Mrs. Church nearly cried,' Teresa said. 'But where’d Alanna go to? I
couldn’t find her until just a few minutes ago, and then she was so
queer!'
'It’s my opinion she was dead tired,' said her mother. 'Look how sound
she’s asleep! Carry her up, Frank. I’ll keep her in bed in the morning.'
* * * * *
They kept Alanna in bed for many mornings, for her secret weighed on her
soul, and she failed suddenly in color, strength, and appetite. She grew
weak and nervous, and one afternoon, when the Bishop came to see her,
worked herself into such a frenzy that Mrs. Costello wonderingly
consented to her entreaty that he should not come up.
She would not see Mrs. Church, or go to see the desk in its new house,
or speak of the fair in any way. But she did ask her mother who swept
out the hall after the fair.
'I did a good deal meself,' said Mrs. Costello, dashing one hope to the
ground.
Alanna leaned back in her chair, sick with disappointment.
One afternoon, about a week after the fair, she was brooding over the
fire. The other children were at the matinée, Mrs. Costello was out, and
a violent storm was whirling about the nursery windows.
Presently, Annie, the laundress, put her frowsy head in at the door. She
was a queer, warm-hearted Irish girl; her big arms were still steaming
from the tub, and her apron was wet.
'Ahl alone?' said Annie with a broad smile.
'Yes; come in, won’t you, Annie?' said little Alanna.
'I cahn’t. I’m at the toobs,' said Annie, coming in nevertheless. 'I was
doin' all the tableclot’s and napkins, an’ out drops your little buke!'
'My--what did you say?' said Alanna, very white.
'Your little buke,' said Annie.
She laid the chance-book on the table, and proceeded to mend the fire.
Alanna sank back in her chair. She twisted her fingers together, and
tried to think of an appropriate prayer.
'Thank you, Annie,' she said weakly, when the laundress went out. Then
she sprang for the book. It slipped twice from her cold little fingers
before she could open it.
'Eighty-three!' she said hoarsely. 'Sixty--seventy--eighty-three!'
She looked and looked and looked. She shut the book and opened it again,
and looked. She laid it on the table, and walked away from it, and then
came back suddenly, and looked. She laughed over it, and cried over it,
and thought how natural it was, and how wonderful it was, all in the
space of ten blissful minutes.
And then, with returning appetite and color and peace of mind, her eyes
filled with pity for the wretched little girl who had watched this same
sparkling, delightful fire so drearily a few minutes ago.
Her small soul was steeped in gratitude. She crooked her arm and put her
face down on it, and sank to her knees.
SPENDTHRIFTS
BY LAURA SPENCER PORTOR
I
THE story I am about to tell I have never told before. The events in it
took place when I was a child of fifteen, an oldish child of fifteen. I
had a taste for books and dreams, and a kind of adoring love of older
people; a predilection, too, for romance and wonderment. There were many
things I meant to do some day.
Among my lesser resolves was one that I had held for a good many years:
I mean the resolve some day to be a passenger in the absurd
old-fashioned 'bus that had made its daily journey, ever since I could
remember, from my home town to a small town quite off the railroad, and
some twelve miles away, the county-seat of that county in which my home
was situated.
The 'bus was an extraordinary-looking vehicle. It had the air of a huge
beetle. It creaked and rattled when it was in action. It had enormous
dipping springs. It lunged and rolled a bit from side to side as it
went. Its top bulged and had ribs across it and a low iron railing
around it, convenient for the lashing of ropes to hold the packages of
all kinds and sizes with which it usually went laden. There was a door
at the back and there were two steps by which to enter. It had the air
of being a distinguished character, even among the antiquated and
entirely individual types of vehicle still common then in the little
old-fashioned town.
This air was, no doubt, due chiefly to the large oval pictures painted,
not without some skill, on its sides. One of these depicted the rescue
of Daniel Boone by Kenton, who with the butt of a large musket was
perpetually about to brain a murderous Indian; the other dealt with
Smith’s unchanging obligation to Pocahontas.
I hardly think Keats had more lasting enjoyment of his Grecian urn with
'brede of marble men and maidens overwrought' than I of those pictures,
where, not less than in the more classic example, I saw perpetually
preserved what I took to be the most thrilling and desirable of moments,
death forever arrested by unending loyalty and undying affection.
But, interesting as all this was, it was by no means the heart of that
strange fascination with which, for so many years, I contemplated the
old beetling vehicle. Its fascination lay for me in its daily journey to
parts beyond the bounds of my narrow horizon. It plied faithfully every
week-day of the year, an envoy extraordinary, ambassador
plenipotentiary, between another world and mine. Some day I should see
that world and know it.
It must not be supposed, however, that I had in mind only the town to
which the 'bus journeyed, the mere inconsiderable county seat.
Children’s imaginations, especially when the child is just emerging into
all the glorious possibilities of womanhood, deal, not in towns, but in
worlds. The world outside my own narrow bounds of life--that was what I
meant to see and experience.
I can think of only one thing, besides the old 'bus, which roused my
fancy to an equal degree, namely, the herds of dumb cattle which were
driven past my home always once, and sometimes twice a week, to the
stockyards which lay somewhere on the outskirts of my home town. If I
close my eyes, I can still hear on hot afternoons the dark herds
trampling past, a mass of broad backs and spreading horns and wide
foreheads,--and dull or occasionally frightened eyes,--and the hurrying
hoofs, scuffling the dust.
I had never seen the stockyards. I was never informed very particularly
about them, and by some instinct, I suppose, I never inquired too
carefully. But I knew this for another world also, and dread as it was,
it fascinated me. I believe the hurrying herds stood to me for a kind of
world of fearful reality that I meant some day to look into, and the old
picture-painted 'bus for a world of romance, yonder, yonder over the dip
of the horizon, which not less, some day, I was determined to know.
Just how I came to take my resolve, and the events which precipitated
it--all this has no bearing on the story. The story begins just where I
stood that hot day in June waiting for the 'bus by the dusty mullens
beside the pike. I had walked a good mile outside the town so that none
of the townspeople would see the beginning of my adventure.
The 'bus was late, I think, even allowing for my anxiety. It came in
sight at last, at a slow beetling pace. I held up a slim finger. But not
until he was alongside did the driver begin to draw in the long reins. I
ran after the 'bus a few paces, opened the door, climbed the high steps
with a beating heart, and got in.
The driver peeked through the little peek-hole in the roof to make sure
I was safe; then he called to his horses, and the vehicle lunged ahead.
The only other passengers were an old man, unknown to me, who carried a
basket of eggs, and an old woman who lived somewhere outside the town
and whom I recognized as one we called the 'horse-radish woman.' She
stood always on a Saturday at one corner of our town market, grinding
and selling horse-radish roots, blinking with red eyes, and always
wiping the tears from them before she could make you your change. I
recognized her of course at once, but whether she knew me, I do not
know. If she did, she gave not the least evidence of it, but looked out
absently with squinted red-lidded eyes at the country as we jogged
along.
The lovely rolling Kentucky land began to spread out on all sides. Long
white curves of the pike flowed slowly behind us and were seen in
glimpses through the open front windows ahead of us. Dust rose and
settled over us.
A little while before we got to Latonia, the old horse-radish woman,
with a tin cup she carried, knocked on the ceiling of the 'bus near the
driver’s peep-hole, to warn him that she wished to get out. When we
arrived at Latonia and the horses were having water at the big trough,
the old man with the basket of eggs also left.
But I was going all the way to the county seat and I considered these
passengers much below my own level as travelers. They were merely making
a convenience of the 'bus, you see, which just happened to go past their
homes; whereas I was off for adventure, my home quite in the other
direction, and the world spread wide before me.
It was with a tourist’s pleasure, then, that I looked at that little
grouping of houses and the elm-and poplar-shaded pike, which in those
days was called, and I believe is still called, Latonia; and at the old
Latonia Springs Hotel. It was a typical relic of Southern before-the-war
hotel architecture, with its white pillars, its long verandas, its wide
doorway, its large lawn sombred by very old shade trees.
I had known something of travel. I had lived in France for two years, at
school; but there I had always had some one to go about with me. Here,
on the contrary, I was alone. I liked the flavor of the adventure; it
was novel, and very stimulating. This journey, however poor a thing it
might seem to others, had Audrey’s superlative virtue: it was mine own.
The old hotel, then, already romantic enough, took on an additional
romance in my eyes.
The driver came around now from sponging his horses' heads and noses at
the trough.
'Going all the way, are you?'
I nodded.
'Well, you can get out and stretch your legs if you like, for we’ll be
here ten minutes.'
But I did not 'like.' In the 'bus I felt safe enough; but if I got
out--adventurous spirit though I was--I knew with unconquerable shyness
that everybody would be staring at me.
I contented myself with watching the lazy coming and going of a few
people; a dog snapping at flies; some chickens taking dust-baths in the
road.
What a still, lazy place it was! Some one asked the time. The driver’s
watch had stopped. Nobody knew; it appeared not to matter. This seemed
no place for clocks. A stout lame man, having the look of a Southern war
veteran, stopped on his cane in the middle of the road, looked around
carefully at the outlying country and the shadows, then took a
calculating glance at the heavens.
'Well, I should reckon, colonel,' he said, addressing the stage-driver,
'it mout be about twenty-two minutes past two. You gen’lly get here
about two, but you was a bit late to-day, a leetle bit late, I should
say maybe to the amount of about twelve minutes.'
He leaned on his cane again and began dotting his way slowly and heavily
through the dust toward the hotel.
I could not have told whether he was in jest or earnest. But as I look
back on it now, it seems to me curiously fitting that the little town
should have had so scant dependence on timepieces, for it lay away from
all the world, and there was so little to occupy the attention, that the
houses, the dusty pike, with its slowly lengthening and slowly
shortening shadows, the fields beyond, with their great sycamores and
maples, and the sky so little interrupted from edge to edge, must each,
indeed, have been to those who had so long observed them, a sundial to
make clocks seem mere bustling contrivances.
A big fly sailed in one of the 'bus windows, round and round, droning,
and then out; it went with every effect of careful choice and
deliberation, to settle on the nose of the old dog that lay, alternately
napping and snapping, four feet in the sun.