THE END OF THE INTERREGNUM
THE Grafton children stood in a row, watching their father and Barbara
establish David in the big Morris chair, on the occasion of his first
trip downstairs. Joy and awe were struggling for supremacy in their
hearts, but were carefully concealed after the fashion of young America.
“Well, David,” said Jack, jocularly, “you look just exactly like a
collapsed balloon. Remember how nice and round you used to be? Now,
hurry up and get there again. It was becoming.”
“He reminds me of the pictures of the famine-sufferers in India,”
remarked Gassy. “How their ribs did stick out, and how funny their
hands were,—like claws.”
“David looks to me like the sweetest small boy ever made,” said
Barbara, quietly, as she bent down to kiss the pale lips of the little
fellow, and tucked the afghan around him more closely.
“Puzzle,—find David!” called Jack. And indeed, the child seemed lost
in the huge chair, his wasted little face wearing a faint smile of
contentment at being the centre of so much attention.
“If you children continue to talk so loudly, you will have to leave,”
said Dr. Grafton, as he prepared to depart. “Barbara, you will see that
David has all the quiet he needs, of course.”
The Kid raised himself from the floor, where he had been wriggling in
the imaginary likeness of a boa constrictor.
“Everybody talks about David,” he said jealously. “Aren’t I the baby
any more?”
“You’ll always be a baby,” consoled Jack; “a great big baby, even when
you are as old as I am. So don’t worry.”
Gassy laughed, and the Kid looked puzzled. “Babies always cry,” he said
reflectively.
“Yes?” said Jack.
“Then you must be a baby too,” added the Kid, with triumph, “’cause I
saw you cry when we first saw David. I didn’t cry at all.”
“No, you young sinner,” returned his elder brother. “You’ve made a
picnic of the whole thing. I’ll bet a cookie you’ve had a good half of
every bit of food that has been sent to David. Hasn’t he, Barbara?”
“People have been very kind,” said his sister, disregarding his
question. “But really, if Miss Bates brings another installment of
preserved plums, I don’t know what I shall do. David can’t eat them,
and I’ve explained it to her; but she insists that they are the
best things possible for him, and brings them every other day, with
unvarying regularity.”
“Let them come,” said Jack, “and Charles and I will advance to the
onslaught, and deliver David from the attacks of the enemy. Plums,
chicken-broth—even quail—let them continue to flow in abundantly, and
fail to mention to Auburn that David is not an ostrich.”
“I guess Mrs. Willowby understands,” observed Gassy, impersonally.
“She asked me if David enjoyed the wine jelly she sent yesterday, and
I said I didn’t know, but that Jack said it was the best he had ever
tasted.”
“Thunder!” exclaimed Jack, turning very red. “Gassy, you do bear away
the palm for unpalatable honesty. Why is it, I wonder, that every
really honest person is disagreeable, too?”
“Letters!” said Dr. Grafton, reappearing opportunely. “Two for you,
Barbara, one from your mother, marked ‘Personal,’ and the other
postmarked New York. David, how would you like to see your mother
again?”
The little boy looked up and smiled at his father. “I wish she’d come,”
he said. “She’s never seen me since I was a sufferer from India. I was
a balloon when she left.”
“Well, you will soon have a chance to show her how fast you are getting
well,” replied the doctor, smiling. “I wrote her the whole story of
last month, the other day, since she is so much stronger, and here is
her answer. She will be at home at six o’clock this very afternoon.”
The children all exclaimed at once, even Gassy, who threw her
arms around Jack’s neck and hugged him, quite forgetting her usual
self-repression, and his recent thrust at her honesty.
“Hurray!” cried Jack, joyfully, escaping from Gassy and twirling a
small chair in air. “It seems too good to be true.”
Barbara said nothing. She glanced at her father, who returned her look
with one of understanding. They were both thinking of the home-coming
as it might have been.
“I forget about mother, some,” remarked the Kid. “Was she as nice as
Barbara?”
David answered him. “They’re both the same kind,” he said quaintly,
“but mother’s mother. That’s all the difference.”
“We must have a house clean and pretty enough for mother to come back
to,” said Barbara, smiling at the invalid. “Gassy, you will have to
help a little; there will be so much to do. Jack, take care of David
for a little while, please.”
“I don’t mind helping,” said Gassy, as they left the room together.
“I’d sweep the whole house, if it would bring mother back. I wonder
how she’ll think I look, with my hair bobbity. Mercy, Barbara; you
dropped one of your letters. Here it is.”
“I’ll open it now,” said Barbara, sitting down on the stairs. “Why,
it’s from the Infant.”
The Infant’s letter was short and to the point.
“You haven’t written me or the other girls for three months,” it
began; “and I shall punish you. I shan’t tell you that Atalanta is
engaged, and that the Sphinx is too, though how it happened, I don’t
see. The man must have been able to answer some of her mathematical
riddles, or he never could have reached her heart. And I won’t tell
you about my summer abroad,—not a word,—nor how Knowledge is going to
be a post-grad. at Columbia, and visit me at the end of every week.
You don’t deserve a line, Barbara Grafton! But I am writing to tell
you that I just heard—no matter how—that you refused the Eastman
Scholarship, and to ask you mildly whether you are insane. With all
your talent and ability, Babbie, how could you refuse it? Every one
always knew that you should have had it in the first place. Now you
surely are not going to stay in that little town of yours that you have
so often ridiculed. There is only one reason by which I can account for
it, and I don’t think you can be in love.”
Barbara laughed aloud, and folded up the letter. “To think that I
wanted it so much,” she said aloud, unconsciously. “What if I had not
been here this autumn!”
“Hadn’t been here?” repeated Gassy. “Why, Barbara! Did you ever think
of leaving us?”
Barbara threw an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “I wouldn’t leave
you for anything,” she said.
They had reached the kitchen, and had fallen to work together. “It’s
too bad we haven’t a servant,” said Gassy, “though you do cook very
well now, Barbara. Only I’d like mother to come home and find a girl in
the kitchen.”
“It’s too bad, indeed,” returned Barbara, cheerfully. “But remember how
we were helped when David was ill; and think how Mrs. Willowby gave
up her own maid to us for so long, and of all that Susan did. I’m so
happy over David that I don’t mind cooking nowadays. And you are a nice
little assistant, Gassy.”
The nice little assistant glowed with pleasure. “Know why?” she
inquired.
“No; why?”
“Hair!” replied Gassy, laconically. “Hair and clothes. You were pretty
good to me that dreadful day when the hair went, and you make me look
so much nicer. I like you very much, Barbara,”—Gassy never used the
word “love,”—“and I don’t think college has hurt you one bit, no matter
what Miss Bates says. It’s just as Jack says,—your A. B. stands for A
Brick, instead of A Bachelor.”
“Did he say that?” said Barbara, laughing at the unexpected conclusion,
as she leaned over and patted the stiff little shoulder near her.
“You’re a dear little sister,” she said. “Who’s that?”
A loud knock had sounded at the door.
“Come in!” called Barbara.
The door opened slowly; a puffing man, carrying a small trunk, entered,
and dropped it heavily on the floor. It was the Vegetable Man.
“Why—what—” began Barbara.
The Vegetable Man smiled at her serenely. “She’s comin’,” he said,
and disappeared, leaving Barbara and Gassy staring at each other in
astonishment.
Suddenly the door reopened, and there appeared the Vegetable Man’s
daughter, as untidy and breezy as ever.
“I’ve come back,” she said. “I heerd you was wantin’ help, so I come
over. Guess I’ll _stay, this_ time. Shall I hang my hat here?”
“But—your husband—” began Barbara.
“_Him? Why_, don’t you know?” returned the Vegetable Man’s daughter,
serenely. “I didn’t like ’im after we was married. He drank. So I come
home.”
“Drank!” cried Gassy, in horror.
The Vegetable Man’s daughter nodded. “Like a fish!” she added. “’Twan’t
a day before he began. Stood it two months, I did, an’ then I lit out.
Come home, an’ it wasn’t excitin’ enough for me, so when I heerd you
was still without, I come over ag’in. Miss Barbara, if you don’t tell
me what to git for dinner, there won’t be no time for gittin’.”
Barbara started. “You took me so by surprise, Libbie,” she said, “that
I can scarcely think. I’m delighted to have you back, especially since
mother is coming home to-day.”
“Want to know!” ejaculated the girl. “Landed right in the middle of
excitement, didn’t I?”
“Yes; and we’re going to celebrate with a grand supper,” put in Gassy,
thinking it best to break the news at once.
“You bet!” cried the Vegetable Man’s daughter, cheerfully. “Nothing’s
too good for your ma. Now, Miss Barbara, what meat? Or do you still go
without?”
Barbara hesitated. In that moment’s hesitation there was involved
more than the ordering of a dinner. Theory had its last battle with
Practicality, and came out with drooping colors. But Dr. Grafton would
have been relieved in regard to the stability of Barbara’s sense of
humor, if he could have heard the laugh with which she admitted her own
defeat. “I will order some steak,” she said.
“It’s too good to be true,” she said joyfully to Gassy, as they left
the kitchen. “I declare, I scarcely know where I am, I am so glad.
Isn’t it beautiful when things unexpectedly work out right?”
“Glad the Vegetable Man’s daughter’s husband drank?” inquired Gassy.
Barbara laughed again, and did not answer.
The morning flew by as if Father Time had suddenly borrowed the
wings of Mercury. Barbara dusted and straightened the rooms, putting
everything in immaculate order. Many little duties, which had been
disregarded during David’s illness, suddenly came to her recollection,
and the girl essayed to finish them all. She resolved that her reign
should end in a blaze of glory, and that her mother should see that
the Interregnum had not been entirely discreditable to the House of
Grafton. Gassy, a willing assistant, performed unwonted miracles in
the way of dusting, at the same time keeping up an unending flow of
conversation.
They were putting the finishing touches to the living-room, where David
still sat, waited upon cheerfully by the Kid, when the doorbell rang
vigorously. The door opened without ceremony and a strident voice in
the hall called, “Barbara Grafton!”
“It’s Miss Bates!” exclaimed Barbara, in a low tone. “Run and take her
into the library, Gassy.”
But it was too late.
“Oh, here you are!” said Miss Bates, appearing in the doorway. “I came
right in because I thought you were probably not dressed to answer the
bell. Barbara, I brought in some more plums because I know David ought
to eat ’em to build him up.”
“I am so sorry,” said Barbara. “But father says they are still too much
for him.”
“Your father don’t know, Barbara; no, he don’t. Men never know about
such things. Now there ain’t much sugar in ’em—”
“Never mind!” interposed the Kid, courageously. “Never mind, Miss
Bates, I’ll eat ’em. Jack says”—
“Hey?” ejaculated the spinster.
“Charles,” warned Barbara, “you—”
“Jack says to let you give ’em and we’ll eat ’em,” continued the Kid,
determined to finish his sentence.
Miss Bates glared at him. “Barbara,” she said, “I don’t know why it
is, but I get insulted by these children every time I put my nose into
this house. Now I don’t want to complain, but I’ve a mind to tell you
what Charles did to me last night. I was laying the table for supper,
and I’d left the window open for air, and all of a sudden that child’s
head was in the window, and he says, ‘Mercy on us, Birdine, is that all
you’ve got for supper?’”
The Kid disappeared under the sofa like a whipped dog. Barbara closed
her lips tight, to keep from smiling.
“Well, of course,” put in Gassy, “the Kid is always used to plenty of
food, you see.”
Miss Bates glared again. “Is that why he wants to eat up my plums?” she
inquired. “No, Barbara, I’ll take ’em back, since you won’t let David
eat ’em. And I want to tell you now, that I don’t intend to come to
this house again under any circumstances, since these children are so
rude, till your ma comes home, no matter _how_ long it is!”
“But she’s coming home to-day!” burst from both David and Gassy, in
dismayed unison.
Miss Bates gave them a queer look, flashed a disdainful glance at
Barbara, and left the house.
“It’s no use to scold you, Charles,” said Barbara, as she extricated
the child from his hiding-place. “But I am glad that mother is coming
to take the burden of your dreadful speeches. Now see if you _can_ stay
good until supper-time.”
She left the room to arrange the details of the feast, and as she
passed through the hall, she came upon the letter marked “Personal”
which she had left forgotten on the table.
“I declare!” said she, sitting down on the stairs again. “I believe
I am going crazy with joy to-day. I have forgotten one thing after
another.”
She opened the letter eagerly, and as she did so, stray words caught
her eye,—“undoubted talent,”—“unquestionable success,” etc. She turned
to the first page and read:—
DEAR LITTLE GIRL,—For you are a little girl to me, and
always will be, in spite of your twenty-one years,—I
have something to tell you which cannot wait until I
reach home. It is also somewhat of a confession, and
I am sure that you will absolve me when you have read
this.
I wonder if you have realized how very entertaining
your letters have been, and what a godsend they were
to me in this tedious place. They were so clever that
I could not help reading them to a few of the friends
whom I have made here. One of them is Hugh S. Black,
whom I have often mentioned, you remember, and who
has been slowly recovering from an attack of nervous
prostration. He grew very much interested in your
letters,—so much so, that I had not the heart to refuse
to read them. I told him of your desire to write, and
of the piles of rejected psychological studies which
have been mounting up on your desk. In fact, you told
him, yourself, although you were not aware of it. We
have often talked you over, and he thinks that you have
undoubted talent, and can gain unquestionable success
in writing for publication, if you will be willing to
attempt the kind of things that lie within your own
experience. Mr. Black said the other day, “Your girl
has wit, humor, an excellent power of description, the
faculty of seeing things as they are, and of describing
them from an original point of view. Why won’t she
write stories or sketches dealing with every-day life,
instead of such nonsense as ‘The Effect of Imagination
on the Habits of the Child’?”
This morning, Mr. Black asked me if I would not
request you to read over your letters and change them
into proper form for a story, which he will be glad
to publish serially in his magazine, if the finished
product meets with his approval. This is a splendid
opportunity for you, little daughter, and I advise you
to grasp it.
Are you disappointed to find that your talents do
not lie along the psychological paths of lofty,
intellectual labor? Does this story of your experiences
of one summer seem too trivial for your effort? I think
not, my dear, if the change in the tone of your letters
can be depended upon for inference. We shall talk this
over when I am once more at home, and can relieve my
brave, strong girl of the burdens which she has borne
for four long months.
There was more in the letter, but Barbara did not read it. She danced
about the hall with such abandon that her father opened his office
door, and regarded her with amazement.
“Has my housekeeper taken leave of her senses?” he asked affectionately.
“On the contrary,” returned Barbara, saucily, “she has just regained
them. Father dear, I realize that we must not all aspire to high
tragedy or classic sublimity. High comedy seems to be more in my line.”
Her father looked at her with his eyes softening more and more. “Come
in here,” he said, and closed the door behind them.
“Barbara, my dear,” he began, looking at her over his spectacles, “I
have a kind of confession to make to you.”
“Another one!” thought Barbara.
“When you came home last June, things were a little hard for you, and
seemed still harder, didn’t they?”
“Well, rather!” said Barbara, slangily.
“Your point of view was young and uncompromising, and—yes—rather
toploftical.”
“I know it.”
Her father smiled. “You surveyed the world from a collegiate summit,
and found it woefully lacking. Well, so it is lacking, but all the
advice from all the lofty heights in the world will never make it
better. We must come down into the plain, and struggle with the common
herd, and help to raise it by our individual effort; glad to be a
living, toiling part of great humanity, like every one else; never the
isolated, censorious onlooker who does not share the common lot. This
is one of the hardest lessons for youth to learn, and I have watched
you learn it, during all these long, hard months.”
“If I only have really learned it!” put in Barbara.
“I have stood aside,” her father continued. “Sometimes I did not help
you, even when I might, and you thought me undiscerning or abstracted.
Barbara, my dear, you have done it all yourself, and I am very, very
proud of my firstborn.”
Barbara crimsoned with pleasure. “I’ve made awfully silly mistakes,”
she said, “and you have been _so_ dear and patient.”
She kissed her father gratefully. As she went upstairs, her mind
was filled with wonder that she should ever have misunderstood him
so completely, and have complacently ascribed to herself intellect
and culture and knowledge superior to his. She found herself feeling
actually grateful for the events of her life since June.
“What if I had never known his darlingness!” she said.
It was not many hours before Auburn knew of the expected arrival of
Mrs. Grafton. Miss Bates had constituted herself an information
bureau, and had flitted hither and thither with an alacrity not at all
hindered by her rage against the younger Graftons.
About four o’clock in the afternoon, as Barbara was giving capable
directions in the kitchen, a knock sounded on the door.
“I just ran in this way,” said Susan, “because I wanted to congratulate
you, and to see if you don’t want this chocolate cake for supper.
Barbara, what are you laughing at?”
“This is the third cake I have received to-day for mother,” giggled
Barbara, “and four chickens are waiting to be consumed. But put it
down, Sue dear, and Jack will make a hole in it very soon.”
“Well, anyway,” Susan declared, “it’s because every one loves your
mother so much! And it is also because every one recognizes your pluck.”
“Everybody in this whole town is lovely!” answered Barbara.
Susan smiled. But there was no triumph in her face, only joy that her
friend had come into her own.
“It is half-past five!” announced Barbara from the window-seat of the
living-room. “Father has gone to the train almost an hour ahead of
time. Everything in the house is in perfect order; supper is nearly
ready; David isn’t tired; and we are all ‘neatly and tastefully
attired’ for the occasion. Won’t mother be impressed!”
“Not by Gassy,” answered Jack. “Gassy has a hole in her stocking above
her shoe, and I don’t know how many below. Her waist has two buttons
missing in the back; still, her hair is somewhat improved, and that’s
one comfort.”
“I look as well as you,” retorted Gassy, carrying the work-basket over
to her sister. “You have some soot on your face, and I won’t tell you
where, and nobody else shall, either.”
“Am I clean?” asked David, plaintively.
“Clean!” exclaimed Jack. “Why, David, you’re as clean as a piece of
blank paper, and just as thin. Turn your face to mother when she comes
in, for she won’t be able to see you if she catches a glimpse of you
sideways.”
“How tiresome you are, Jack!” observed Gassy, condescendingly. “I—”
She was interrupted by a series of bumps and scrapings in the cellar
below, followed by a strange wailing moan.
“Hark from the tombs a doleful sound!” cried Jack, rising. “I’ll bet a
quarter it’s the Kid.”
It was the Kid. Clad in a clean white sailor suit, and finding time
pressing heavily on his hands, he had bethought himself of a gift with
which to meet his mother,—none other than one of the new kittens which
had been born two weeks before and were now passing their infancy on
an old rug at the bottom of a barrel in the cellar. Having made an
expedition to the barrel, the Kid had endeavored to gain one of the
feline offspring by reaching over into the dark depths, with a logical
result of falling headlong into the barrel. The muffled shrieks which
the family heard, and the sounds of scraping, were such as would
naturally proceed from the attempts of a small boy to rescue himself
from an uncomfortable posture. When Jack arrived upon the scene, the
Kid had just succeeded in freeing himself by tipping over the barrel
and crawling out. Being blinded and confused by the length of time in
which he had been standing on his head, he had made a wild dive for the
door, and found himself prone on the piles of coal on the cellar floor.
“Well, here’s a mess!” cried Jack, with disgust, picking him up and
dragging him along to the upper regions. “Look at this, Barbara; and
there are only ten minutes to change his clothes.”
Barbara hurried the little boy upstairs without a word of reproach. She
washed him quickly, and was struggling with a stiff new linen suit,
when the sound of a carriage came to her ears.
“I love you, Barbara, for changing me,” the Kid said humbly.
She kissed him affectionately. “Now your tie,—there!”
The carriage had stopped. She heard Jack’s excited voice downstairs.
The Kid made a desperate wriggle from her and fled down the steps,
shouting for his mother. Barbara felt a sudden pang as he left her,—a
pang of loneliness and desertion. She stood still a moment, and then,
almost before she had time to move, a quick step sounded on the stairs,
a new, fresh mother came swiftly into the room, and two strong, firm
arms held her close.
“Barbara, my brave, splendid daughter!” said the most motherly voice in
the world.
Barbara’s reign was over.
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A