BARBARA'S BUZZ.
Leslie Goldthwaite's world of friendship is not a circle. Or if it is,
it is the far-off, immeasurable horizon that holds all of life and
possibility.
"You must draw the line somewhere," people say. "You cannot be
acquainted with everybody."
But Leslie's lines are only radii. They reach out to wherever there is
a sympathy; they hold fast wherever they have once been joined.
Consequently, she moves to laws that seem erratic to those for whom a
pair of compasses can lay down the limit. Consequently, her wedding
was "odd."
If Olivia Marchbanks had been going to be married there would have
been a "circle" invited. Nobody would have been left out; nobody would
have been let in. She had lived in this necromantic ring; she would
be married in it; she would die and be buried in it; and of all the
wide, rich, beautiful champaign of life beyond,--of all its noble
heights, and hidden, tender hollows,--its gracious harvest fields, and
its deep, grand, forest glooms,--she would be content, elegantly and
exclusively, to know nothing. To her wedding people might come,
indeed, from a distance,--geographically; but they would come out of a
precisely corresponding little sphere in some other place, and fit
right into this one, for the time being, with the most edifying
sameness.
From the east and the west, the north and the south, they began to
come, days beforehand,--the people who could not let Leslie
Goldthwaite be married without being there. There were no proclamation
cards issued, bearing in imposing characters the announcement of
"Their Daughter's Marriage," by Mr. and Mrs. Aaron Goldthwaite, after
the like of which one almost looks to see, and somewhat feels the need
of, the regular final invocation,--"God save the Commonwealth!"
There had been loving letters sent here and there; old Miss Craydocke,
up in the mountains, got one, and came down a month earlier in
consequence, and by the way of Boston. She stayed there at Mrs. Frank
Scherman's; and Frank and his wife and little Sinsie, the baby,--"she
isn't Original Sin, as I was," says her mother,--came up to Z----
together, and stopped at the hotel. Martha Josselyn came from New
York, and stayed, of course, with the Inglesides.
Martha is a horrible thing, girls; how do you suppose I dare to put
her in here as I do? She is a milliner. And this is how it happens.
Her father is a comparatively poor man,--a book-keeper with a salary.
There are ever so many little Josselyns; and Martha has always felt
bound to help. She is not very likely to marry, and she is not one to
take it into her calculation, if she were; but she is of the sort who
are said to be "cut out for old maids," and she knows it. She could
not teach music, nor keep a school, her own schooling--not her
education; God never lets that be cut short--was abridged by the need
of her at home. But she could do anything in the world with scissors
and needle; and she can make just the loveliest bonnets that ever were
put together.
So, as she can help more by making two bonnets in a day, and getting
six dollars for them beside the materials, she lets her step-mother
put out her impossible sewing, and has turned a little second-story
room in her father's house into a private millinery establishment. She
will only take the three dollars apiece, beyond the actual cost, for
her bonnets, although she might make a fortune if she would be
rapacious; for she says that pays her fairly for her time, and she has
made up her mind to get through the world fairly, if there is any
breathing-space left for fairness in it. If not, she can stop
breathing, and go where there is.
She gets as much to do as she can take. "Miss Josselyn" is one of the
little unadvertised resources of New York, which it is very knowing,
and rather elegant, to know about. But it would not be at all elegant
to have her at a party. Hence, Mrs. Van Alstyne, who had a little
bonnet, of black lace and nasturtiums, at this very time, that Martha
Josselyn had made for her, was astonished to find that she was Mrs.
Ingleside's sister and had come on to the marriage.
General and Mrs. Ingleside--Leslie's cousin Delight--had come from
their away-off, beautiful Wisconsin home, and brought little
three-year-old Rob and Rob's nurse with them. Sam Goldthwaite was at
home from Philadelphia, where he is just finishing his medical
course,--and Harry was just back again from the Mediterranean; so that
Mrs. Goldthwaite's house was full too. Jack could not be here; they
all grieved over that. Jack is out in Japan. But there came a
wonderful "solid silk" dress, and a lovely inlaid cabinet, for
Leslie's wedding present,--the first present that arrived from
anybody; sent the day he got the news;--and Leslie cried over them,
and kissed them, and put the beautiful silk away, to be made up in the
fashion next year, when Jack comes home; and set his picture on the
cabinet, and put his letters into it, and says she does not know what
other things she shall find quite dear enough to keep them company.
Last of all, the very day before the wedding, came old Mr. Marmaduke
Wharne. And of all things in the world, he brought her a telescope.
"To look out at creation with, and keep her soul wide," he says, and
"to put her in mind of that night when he first found her out, among
the Hivites and the Hittites and the Amalekites, up in Jefferson, and
took her away among the planets, out of the snarl."
Miss Craydocke has been all summer making a fernery for Leslie; and
she took two tickets in the cars, and brought it down beside her, on
the seat, all the way from Plymouth, and so out here. How they could
get it to wherever they are going we all wondered, but Dr. Hautayne
said it should go; he would have it most curiously packed, in a box on
rollers, and marked,--"Dr. J. Hautayne, U.S. Army. Valuable scientific
preparations; by no means to be turned or shaken." But he did say,
with a gentle prudence,--"If somebody should give you an observatory,
or a greenhouse, I think we might have to stop at _that_, dear."
Nobody did, however. There was only one more big present, and that did
not come. Dakie Thayne knew better. He gave her a magnificent copy of
the Sistine Madonna, which his father had bought in Italy, and he
wrote her that it was to be boxed and sent after her to her home.
_He_ did not say that it was magnificent; Leslie wrote that to us
afterward, herself. She said it made it seem as if one side of her
little home had been broken through and let in heaven.
We were all sorry that Dakie could not be here. They waited till
September for Harry; "but who," wrote Dakie, "could expect a military
engagement to wait till all the stragglers could come up? I have given
my consent and my blessing; all I ask is that you will stop at West
Point on your way." And that was what they were going to do.
Arabel Waite and Delia made all the wedding dresses. But Mrs.
Goldthwaite had her own carefully perfected patterns, adjusted to a
line in every part. Arabel meekly followed these, and saved her whole,
fresh soul to pour out upon the flutings and finishing.
It was a morning wedding, and a pearl of days. The summer had not gone
from a single leaf. Only the parch and the blaze were over, and
beautiful dews had cooled away their fever. The day-lilies were white
among their broad, tender green leaves, and the tube-roses had come in
blossom. There were beds of red and white carnations, heavy with
perfume. The wide garden porch, into which double doors opened from
the summer-room where they were married, showed these, among the
grass-walks of the shady, secluded place, through its own splendid
vista of trumpet-hung bignonia vines.
Everybody wanted to help at this wedding who could help. Arabel Waite
asked to be allowed to pour out coffee, or something. So in a black
silk gown, and a new white cap, she took charge of the little room up
stairs, where were coffee and cakes and sandwiches for the friends who
came from a distance by the train, and might be glad of something to
eat at twelve o'clock. Delia offered, "if she only might," to assist
in the dining-room, where the real wedding collation stood ready. And
even our Arctura came and asked if she might be "lent," to "open
doors, or anything." The regular maids of the house found labor so
divided that it was a festival day all through.
Arctura looked as pretty a little waiting-damsel as might be seen, in
her brown, two-skirted, best delaine dress, and her white, ruffled,
muslin bib-apron, her nicely arranged hair, braided up high around her
head and frizzed a little, gently, at the front,--since why shouldn't
she, too, have a bit of the fashion?--and tied round with a soft,
simple white ribbon. Delia had on a violet-and-white striped pique,
quite new, with a ruffled apron also; and her ribbon was white, too,
and she had a bunch of violets and green leaves upon her bosom. We
cared as much about their dress as they did about ours. Barbara
herself had pinched Arctura's crimps, and tied the little white bow
among-them.
Every room in the house was attended.
"There never was such pretty serving," said Mrs. Van Alstyne,
afterward. "Where _did_ they get such people?--And beautiful serving,"
she went on, reverting to her favorite axiom, "is, after all, the very
soul of living!"
"Yes, ma'am," said Barbara, gravely. "I think we shall find that true
always."
Opposite the door into the garden porch were corresponding ones into
the hall, and directly down to these reached the last flight of the
staircase, that skirted the walls at the back with its steps and
landings. We could see Leslie all the way, as she came down, with her
hand in her father's arm.
She descended beside him like a softly accompanying white cloud; her
dress was of tulle, without a hitch or a puff or a festoon about it.
It had two skirts, I believe, but they were plain-hemmed, and fell
like a mist about her figure. Underneath was no rustling silk, or
shining satin; only more mist, of finest, sheerest quaker-muslin; you
could not tell where the cloud met the opaque of soft, unstarched
cambric below it all. And from her head to her feet floated the
shimmering veil, fastened to her hair with only two or three tube-rose
blooms and the green leaves and white stars of the larger myrtle.
There was a cluster of them upon her bosom, and she held some in her
left hand.
Dr. Hautayne looked nobly handsome, as he came forward to her side
in his military dress; but I think we all had another picture of
him in our minds,--dusty, and battle-stained, bareheaded, in his
shirt-sleeves, as he rode across the fire to save men's lives. When a
man has once looked like that, it does not matter how he ever merely
_looks_ again.
Marmaduke Wharne stood close by Ruth, during the service. She saw his
gray, shaggy brows knit themselves into a low, earnest frown, as he
fixedly watched and listened; but there was a shining underneath, as
still water-drops shine under the gray moss of some old, cleft rock;
and a pleasure upon the lines of the rough-cast face, that was like
the tender glimmering of a sunbeam.
When Marmaduke Wharne first saw John Hautayne, he put his hand upon
his shoulder, and held him so, while he looked him hardly in the face.
"Do you think you deserve her, John?" the old man said. And John
looked him back, and answered straightly, "No!" It was not mere apt
and effective reply; there was an honest heartful on the lips and in
the eyes; and Leslie's old friend let his hand slip down along the
strong, young arm, until it grasped the answering hand, and said
again,--
"Perhaps, then, John,--you'll do!"
"Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?" That is what the
church asks, in her service, though nobody asked it here to-day. But
we all felt we had a share to give of what we loved so much. Her
father and her mother gave; her girl friends gave; Miss Trixie Spring,
Arabel Waite, Delia, little Arctura, the home-servants, gathered in
the door-way, all gave; Miss Craydocke, crying, and disdaining her
pocket-handkerchief till the tears trickled off her chin, because she
was smiling also and would not cover _that_ up,--gave; and nobody gave
with a more loving wrench out of a deep heart, than bluff old frowning
Marmaduke Wharne.
[Illustration]
* * * * *
Nobody knows the comfort that we Holabirds took, though, in those
autumn days, after all this was over, in our home; feeling every
bright, comfortable minute, that our home was our own. "It is so nice
to have it to love grandfather by," said Ruth, like a little child.
"Everything is so pleasant," said Barbara, one sumptuous morning.
"I've so many nice things that I can choose among to do. I feel like a
bee in a barrel of sugar. I don't know where to begin." Barbara had a
new dress to make; she had also a piece of worsted work to begin; she
had also two new books to read aloud, that Mrs. Scherman had brought
up from Boston.
We felt rich in much prospectively; we could afford things better now;
we had proposed and arranged a book-club; Miss Pennington and we were
to manage it; Mrs. Scherman was to purchase for us. Ruth was to have
plenty of music. Life was full and bright to us, this golden
autumn-time, as it had never been before. The time itself was radiant;
and the winter was stored beforehand with pleasures; Arctura was as
glad as anybody; she hears our readings in the afternoons, when she
can come up stairs, and sit mending stockings or hemming aprons.
We knew, almost for the first time, what it was to be without any
pressure of anxiety. We dared to look round the house and see what was
wearing out. We could replace things--_some_, at any rate--as well as
not; so we had the delight of choosing, and the delight of putting by;
it was a delicious perplexity. We all felt like Barbara's bee; and
when she said that once she said it for every day, all through the new
and happy time.
It was wonderful how little there was, after all, that we did want in
any hurry. We thought it over. We did not care to carpet the
dining-room; we liked the drugget and the dark wood-margins better. It
came down pretty nearly, at last, so far as household improvements
were concerned, to a new broadcloth cover for the great family table
in the brown-room.
Barbara's _bee_-havior, however, had its own queer fluctuations at
this time, it must be confessed. Whatever the reason was, it was not
altogether to be depended on. It had its alternations of humming
content with a good deal of whimsical bouncing and buzzing and the
most unpredictable flights. To use a phrase of Aunt Trixie's applied
to her childhood, but coming into new appropriateness now, Barbara
"acted like a witch."
She began at the wedding. Only a minute or two before Leslie came
down, Harry Goldthwaite moved over to where she stood just a little
apart from the rest of us, by the porch door, and placed himself
beside her, with some little commonplace word in a low tone, as
befitted the hushed expectancy of the moment.
All at once, with an "O, I forgot!" she started away from him in the
abruptest fashion, and glanced off across the room, and over into a
little side parlor beyond the hall, into which she certainly had not
been before that day. She could have "forgotten" nothing there; but
she doubtless had just enough presence of mind not to rush up the
staircase toward the dressing-rooms, at the risk of colliding with the
bridal party. When Leslie an instant later came in at the double
doors, Mrs. Holabird caught sight of Barbara again just sliding into
the far, lower corner of the room by the forward entrance, where she
stood looking out meekly between the shoulders and the floating
cap-ribbons of Aunt Trixie Spring and Miss Arabel Waite during the
whole ceremony.
Whether it was that she felt there was something dangerous in the air,
or that Harry Goldthwaite had some new awfulness in her eyes from
being actually a commissioned officer,--Ensign Goldthwaite, now,
(Rose had borrowed from the future, for the sake of euphony and
effect, when she had so retorted feet and dignities upon her last
year,)--we could not guess; but his name or presence seemed all at
once a centre of electrical disturbances in which her whisks and
whirls were simply to be wondered at.
"I don't see why he should tell _me_ things," was what she said to
Rosamond one day, when she took her to task after Harry had gone, for
making off almost before he had done speaking, when he had been
telling us of the finishing of some business that Mr. Goldthwaite had
managed for him in Newburyport. It was the sale of a piece of property
that he had there, from his father, of houses and building-lots that
had been unprofitable to hold, because of uncertain tenants and high
taxes, but which were turned now into a comfortable round sum of
money.
"I shall not be so poor now, as if I had only my pay," said Harry. At
which Barbara had disappeared.
"Why, you were both there!" said Barbara.
"Well, yes; we were there in a fashion. He was sitting by you, though,
and he looked up at you, just then. It did not seem very friendly."
"I'm sure I didn't notice; I don't see why he should tell me things,"
said whimsical Barbara.
"Well, perhaps he will stop," said Rose, quietly, and walked away.
It seemed, after a while, as if he would. He could not understand
Barbara in these days. All her nice, cordial, honest ways were gone.
She was always shying at something. Twice he was here, when she did
not come into the room until tea-time.
"There are so many people," she said, in her unreasonable manner.
"They make me nervous, looking and listening."
We had Miss Craydocke and Mrs. Scherman with us then. We had asked
them to come and spend a week with us before they left Z----.
Miss Craydocke had found Barbara one evening, in the twilight,
standing alone in one of the brown-room windows. She had come up, in
her gentle, old-friendly way, and stood beside her.
"My dear," she said, with the twilight impulse of nearness,--"I am an
old woman. Aren't you pushing something away from you, dear?"
"Ow!" said Barbara, as if Miss Craydocke had pinched her. And poor
Miss Craydocke could only walk away again.
When it came to Aunt Roderick, though, it was too much. Aunt Roderick
came over a good deal now. She had quite taken us into unqualified
approval again, since we had got the house. She approved herself also.
As if it was she who had died and left us something, and looked back
upon it now with satisfaction. At least, as if she had been the
September Gale, and had taken care of that paper for us.
Aunt Roderick has very good practical eyes; but no sentiment whatever.
"It seems to me, Barbara, that you are throwing away your
opportunities," she said, plainly.
Barbara looked up with a face of bold unconsciousness. She was
brought to bay, now; Aunt Roderick could exasperate her, but she could
not touch the nerve, as dear Miss Craydocke could.
"I always am throwing them away," said Barbara. "It's my fashion. I
never could save corners. I always put my pattern right into the
middle of my piece, and the other half never comes out, you see. What
have I done, now? Or what do you think I might do, just at present?"
"I think you might save yourself from being sorry by and by," said
Aunt Roderick.
"I'm ever so much obliged to you," said Barbara, collectedly. "Just as
much as if I could understand. But perhaps there'll be some light
given. I'll turn it over in my mind. In the mean while, Aunt Roderick,
I just begin to see one very queer thing in the world. You've lived
longer than I have; I wish you could explain it. There are some things
that everybody is very delicate about, and there are some that they
take right hold of. People might have _pocket_-perplexities for years
and years, and no created being would dare to hint or ask a question;
but the minute it is a case of heart or soul,--or they think it
is,--they 'rush right in where angels fear to tread.' What _do_ you
suppose makes the difference?"
After that, we all let her alone, behave as she might. We saw that
there could be no meddling without marring. She had been too conscious
of us all, before anybody spoke. We could only hope there was no real
mischief done, already.
"It's all of them, every one!" she repeated, half hysterically, that
day, after her shell had exploded, and Aunt Roderick had retreated,
really with great forbearance. "Miss Craydocke began, and I had to
scream at her; even Sin Scherman made a little moral speech about her
own wild ways, and set that baby crowing over me! And once Aunt Trixie
'vummed' at me. And I'm sure I ain't doing a single thing!" She
whimpered and laughed, like a little naughty boy, called to account
for mischief, and pretending surprised innocence, yet secretly at once
enjoying and repenting his own badness; and so we had to let her
alone.
But after a while Harry Goldthwaite stayed away four whole days, and
then he only came in to say that he was going to Washington to be gone
a week. It was October, now, and his orders might come any day. Then
we might not see him again for three years, perhaps.
On the Thursday of that next week, Barbara said she would go down and
see Mrs. Goldthwaite.
"I think it quite time you should," said Mrs. Holabird. Barbara had
not been down there once since the wedding-day.
She put her crochet in her pocket, and we thought of course she would
stay to tea. It was four in the afternoon when she went away.
About an hour later Olivia Marchbanks called.
It came out that Olivia had a move to make. In fact, that she wanted
to set us all to making moves. She proposed a chess-club, for the
winter, to bring us together regularly; to include half a dozen
families, and meet by turn at the different houses.
"I dare say Miss Pennington will have her neighborhood parties
again," she said; "they are nice, but rather exhausting; we want
something quiet, to come in between. Something a little more among
ourselves, you know. Maria Hendee is a splendid chess-player, and so
is Mark. Maud plays with her father, and Adelaide and I are learning.
I know you play, Rosamond, and Barbara,--doesn't she? Nobody can
complain of a chess-club, you see; and we can have a table at whist
for the elders who like it, and almost always a round game for the
odds and ends. After supper, we can dance, or anything. Don't you
think it would do?"
"I think it would do nicely for _one_ thing," said Rose, thoughtfully.
"But don't let us allow it to be the _whole_ of our winter."
Olivia Marchbanks's face clouded. She had put forward a little pawn of
compliment toward us, as towards a good point, perhaps, for tempting a
break in the game. And behold! Rosamond's knight only leaped right
over it, facing honestly and alertly both ways.
"Chess would be good for nothing less than once a week," said Olivia.
"I came to you almost the very first, out of the family," she added,
with a little height in her manner. "I hope you won't break it up."
"Break it up! No, indeed! We were all getting just nicely joined
together," replied Rosamond, ladylike with perfect temper. "I think
last winter was so _really good_," she went on; "I should be sorry to
break up what _that_ did; that is all."
"I'm willing enough to help in those ways," said Olivia,
condescendingly; "but I think we might have our _own_ things, too."
"I don't know, Olivia," said Rosamond, slowly, "about these 'own
things.' They are just what begin to puzzle me."
It was the bravest thing our elegant Rosamond had ever done. Olivia
Marchbanks was angry. She all but took back her invitation.
"Never mind," she said, getting up to take leave. "It must be some
time yet; I only mentioned it. Perhaps we had better not try to go
beyond ourselves, after all. Such things are sure to be stupid unless
everybody is really interested."
Rosamond stood in the hall-door, as she went down the steps and away.
At the same moment, Barbara, flushed with an evidently hurried walk,
came in. "Why! what makes you so red, Rose?" she said.
"Somebody has been snubbing somebody," replied Rose, holding her royal
color, like her namesake, in the midst of a cool repose. "And I don't
quite know whether it is Olivia Marchbanks or I."
"A color-question between Rose and Barberry!" said Ruth. "What have
_you_ been doing, Barbie? Why didn't you stay to tea?"
"I? I've been walking, of course.--That boy has got home again," she
added, half aloud, to Rosamond, as they went up stairs.
We knew _very_ well that she must have been queer to Harry again. He
would have been certain to walk home with her, if she would have let
him. But--"all through the town, and up the hill, in the daylight!
Or--stay to tea with _him_ there, and make him come, in the dark!--And
_if_ he imagined that I knew!" We were as sure as if she had said it,
that these were the things that were in her mind, and that these were
what she had run away from. How she had done it we did not know; we
had no doubt it had been something awful.
The next morning nobody called. Father came home to dinner and said
Mr. Goldthwaite had told him that Harry was under orders,--to the
"Katahdin."
In the afternoon Barbara went out and nailed up the woodbines. Then
she put on her hat, and took a great bundle that had been waiting for
a week for somebody to carry, and said she would go round to South
Hollow with it, to Mrs. Dockery.
"You will be tired to death. You are tired already, hammering at those
vines," said mother, anxiously. Mothers cannot help daughters much in
these buzzes.
"I want the exercise," said Barbara, turning away her face that was at
once red and pale. "Pounding and stamping are good for me." Then she
came back in a hurry, and kissed mother, and then she went away.