SNOWBALLS
Mr. E. C. Jefferson laid down his pen, ran his hand through his heavy
brown hair, rumpling it still more than it had been rumpled
before--which is saying considerable--and stretched his legs under the
table upon which he had been writing steadily since half-past one
o'clock. He heaved a mighty breath, stretched his arms to match his
legs, looked round at his windows, which faced the west, and so had kept
him supplied with strong light longer than windows on any other side of
the house would have done, and took out his watch.
Nearly half-past four. Time, and more than time, for his late afternoon
tramp. He set the piles of sheets before him in order, sheathed his pen
and put it in his pocket, and rose from his place, the light of
achievement in his eye, but crampiness and fatigue in all his limbs.
As he approached his windows to ascertain what kind of weather was to be
found outside, he became aware of sounds which would indicate that some
event of activity and hilarity was going on below. He realized now that
he had been hearing these sounds--quite without hearing them, after the
fashion of the absorbed workman--for the last half-hour. Looking out, he
beheld an interesting affair in full swing.
At each end of the side yard the heavy snow which a late March storm had
brought overnight had been shovelled and manipulated into the semblance
of a fort such as lads are wont to make. Between these two entrenchments
a battle was raging. But it was no lads who held the places of the
combatants. Instead, as he looked, Mr. Jefferson saw rising warily from
behind the fort nearest him, a girlish figure in a scarlet blanket suit,
its dark head half shielded by a scarlet toboggan cap very much awry. A
mittened hand flung a snowball with strength and precision straight into
the opposite fort, and the assailant immediately dodged down behind the
embankment.
From the opposing stronghold then cautiously appeared a head snugly
bound in a blue scarf, from which locks of fair hair escaped at divers
points. A second snowball, accompanied by a loose flutter of snow,
wended its way uncertainly through the air, and fell a foot short of the
fort behind which crouched the scarlet figure. The figure immediately
rose and fired an answering volley. Peals of laughter and gay shouts
rang through the air.
At this very moment a third person ran into the yard from the street,
calling: "For shame, George! I'm going to take sides with the enemy,
and we'll have you out in no time!"
Jefferson saw this third figure, in sweater and cap, dash across the
open, narrowly escaping a vigorous shower of missiles from the near
fort, and disappear behind the farther one.
The battle was now on in earnest. Let Scarlet Toboggan fire as fast and
as furiously as she might, a merciless bombardment of her protecting
walls had begun. The girl in the blue scarf--and priceless furs--had
sunk laughing upon the floor of her refuge, while her new ally, bringing
to bear the full strength and skill of his sex, battered at the
entrenchments across the yard, and began to make havoc thereon.
Georgiana was a brave foe, but though she fought with surprising
endurance she was beginning to be seriously worsted, several feet of her
snow rampart having been shot away, when a voice behind her cried out a
command, and an arm, more sinewy than hers, sent a hard shot whizzing
past her head into the opposite fort with that directness of aim and
effectiveness of delivery which only the male arm can accomplish.
"Duck down and make snowballs while I fire!" the voice ordered, and
Georgiana, breathless but still undaunted, obeyed.
"Keep behind me, and pile the balls at the right," directed Jefferson.
His voice was eager as a boy's. He also had pulled on sweater and cap,
and as he and James Stuart faced each other across the twenty yards
which separated them, they might have been a couple of school-fellows
wrestling for supremacy.
"Keep 'em coming--faster--faster!" Stuart urged Jeannette, the lust of
battle upon him. "Stop laughing and work! George is a"--he stooped to
make a ball for himself--"fiend at making 'em; you've got to learn! Keep
'em coming."
The wet snow was precisely in the right state for quick packing, and
Georgiana was indeed an expert at the business. Jefferson found her
hard, round balls splendid missiles, and he used them with all the
energy of an arm which welcomed the change from the labours of the past
hours to those of the present.
"Ha! there goes that left corner!" he exulted with his comrade-at-arms,
as the last of a series of well-directed shots reduced a part of the
enemies' defences to a gratifying slump. "And here comes a bit of ours,"
he added, as a ball of Stuart's ploughed through a weakened upper
portion of their own rampart.
"He'll be game to the last," panted Georgiana, working furiously.
"So will we! We'll fight to a finish, if we go without our suppers."
The battle raged on. The combatants took no heed of passing time, until
Jeannette, growing reckless with excitement, lifted an incautious head
and received a spent ball full upon her chin. No harm was done, as she
protested, but Stuart raised a flag of truce and Mr. Jefferson ran
across the lines to apologize.
"It didn't hurt a bit," Jeannette reaffirmed, showing a very pink chin.
"It's lucky it didn't. I wasn't properly protecting you," Stuart
declared warmly.
"Both sides come in to supper!" commanded Georgiana. "Please stay,
Jimps; it's the only amends we can make you, and you must be as hungry
as a bear."
"Thanks; I'd like to, but I'm not properly dressed, I'm afraid."
"Jean and I won't make a change, and you can take us coasting this
evening, if you will. Do you suppose Mr. Jefferson would dream of
staving off his dignity a bit longer and going, too?"
They all looked at the person mentioned and their glances were all gayly
audacious.
"Is that an invitation or a challenge?" He put it to Georgiana.
"Whichever you choose to take it."
"I'll take it as I choose, then, and accept. The spirit of sport is upon
me; I couldn't work this evening if I tried."
"Good for you! 'All work and no play,' you know," quoted Stuart, as they
went in together, a moist and merry company.
Upstairs, while Jeannette dried her hair, she reflected that she didn't
know when she had had so gay a time. She ran in to say this to
Georgiana, but found that that young woman had already put her hair in
order without drying it, as its damply curling locks above her forehead
testified, and was rushing away downstairs to the kitchen.
"Won't you take cold?" suggested Jeannette, struggling with her own wet
braids, and very naturally wishing for her maid to dry and put them in
order.
"Mercy, no; not over the kitchen stove. They'll be dry soon enough," was
the reply; and Georgiana vanished, the supper on her mind.
When Jeannette came down, half an hour later, and appeared in the
kitchen doorway, she saw that the speed of her young hostess's labours
and the warmth of the kitchen were quite likely to prevent all chance of
undried locks.
There was system about Georgiana's work, fast as was its pace. Each trip
across the floor, from pantry to dining-room and back again,
demonstrated housewifely efficiency. Both hands were always full and she
seemed never to forget what she meant to do. If she passed the stove on
her way somewhere she stopped to stir something or to glance into the
oven, and when she went to the storeroom for cream she brought away
bread and butter as well.
Jeannette commented admiringly. "Don't you ever forget and have to run
back for something?" she inquired.
"Goodness, yes! But when you've been over certain ground several million
times, it's a pity if you can't make your head save your heels as a
rule. Excuse me, dear; but if you wouldn't mind standing just a foot or
two to the left----"
Jeannette turned. "I see; I'm in the way when I'd like so much to help.
Isn't there anything I could do?"
"All done, thank you--except--would you just arrange that boxful of
scarlet geraniums Jimps brought over, for the table? That would help
very much. Take any bowl or glass from the dining-room cupboard that
looks appropriate to you."
"I'd love to." And Jeannette fell to work--if it could be called work.
Never in her life had she arranged scarlet geraniums as a table
decoration, or, for that matter, seen them so used. But as she placed
the splendid, thrifty blooms, each with its accompanying rich green
leaves, in the plain brown bowl which she felt best matched their
undistinguished beauty, she discovered for the first time that other
blossoms besides roses and orchids, chrysanthemums, and the rest of the
ordinary florists' products, may charm the eye from the centre of a
snowy cloth.
"That's gorgeous! Thank you so much! Aren't they the jolliest flowers in
the world for a winter night? Jimps's greenhouses certainly are doing
well. Don't you want a bit of a blossom in your hair? Their grower would
feel tremendously complimented."
"Red's not my colour, but it is yours. Let me tuck this little sprig in
these braids, and I'll risk the grower's being better pleased than if I
wore them."
Georgiana submitted, and promptly forgot all about the scarlet
decoration. But the others did not--found forgetting it, indeed, quite
impossible. As they gathered about the table, it caught the eye of each
in turn. Georgiana's cheeks, from the vigorous exercise in the frosty
air, were glowing brilliantly; her eyes were wonderful to look at; her
dark cloth dress had upon it no relief of colour; so the scarlet
geranium in her hair was the touch of the artist which drew the eye and
held it. She had placed upon the table, instead of the customary lamp,
one of the few treasures of the house, a fine old candelabrum, with
pendent crystals, and the burning candles threw their mellow light
directly into her face.
She looked up suddenly, after having served each one from the dish
before her, and found them all looking at her. James Stuart's fork was
suspended above his plate, but the others had not yet taken theirs. She
gazed at them in amazement.
"Why, what is the matter?" she cried. "Do I--is something queer about
me? Have I missed a point somebody has made?"
They all turned then, laughing, to their plates, and nobody would tell
her what was wrong. Stuart seemed to think it a great joke--her
mystification. When she removed the plates for the second course--there
were but two in the simple, hearty little supper--she glanced into the
small kitchen mirror. Her eye caught the scarlet geranium.
"I suppose I look ridiculously sentimental with that flower just there,"
she thought. "But I won't take it out after Jean put it there. No wonder
they laughed."
An hour afterward they were all out upon the hill nearby. Stuart
possessed a splendid pair of "bobs," and they were soon dashing down the
hill at a pace which, while it made Jeannette hold her breath with
mingled fear and joy, made Georgiana cry out, "Oh! is there anything so
glorious?" and made Mr. Jefferson, just behind her, watching over her
shoulder, respond with heartiness: "The snow fight took five years off
my age, and now here goes another five. I must be almost as young as you
are now, Miss Warne."
"Oh, no; I'm only ten myself to-night," she answered. "Coasting was one
of my earliest joys. I was so proud when I could steer Jimps Stuart's
first pair of bobs--small and primitive ones compared with these."
She found Mr. Jefferson beside her when it came to the walk back up the
hill. A new side of him was visible to-night. He was not the quiet
student and writer, the man who discussed with her father and herself
the course of the world's events or the problems of social service, but
a light-hearted boy, much like Stuart, and ready to abet all the other
man's efforts for the amusement of the party.
The fun went on for an hour; then Jeannette, unaccustomed to so much
vigorous exercise, began quite against her will to show evidences of
fatigue, and after one particularly long, swift flight the party went
back to the house. There followed another gay hour before the fire,
while Stuart roasted chestnuts, and Georgiana, sitting on the floor
against her father's knee, told stones of madcap pranks at college,
illustrating them by such changes of facial expression and such
significant gestures that her hearers spent themselves with their
laughter.
Jeannette, lying back in a shabby but comfortable old armchair, looked
and listened with the absorbed interest of one to whom such simple
pleasures as these had the flavour of absolute novelty. Her eyes
wandered from Georgiana's vivid face to her father's delicate one; to
James Stuart's comely features glowing ruddily in the firelight as he
tended his chestnuts, showing splendid white teeth as he roared at
Georgiana's clever mimicry or turned to laugh into Jeannette's eyes as
he offered her a particularly plump and succulently bursting specimen of
his labours; to Mr. Jefferson's maturer personality, his brown eyes
keenly intent, his face lighted with enjoyment, his occasional comments
on Georgiana's adventures flashing with a dry humour which matched hers
and sometimes quite outdid it. To Jeannette they were all an engrossing
study. As for herself----
"She's the loveliest thing I ever saw," thought Georgiana from time to
time as she glanced up at her cousin, whose fair hair against the dark
cushion of the old chair caught and held the charm of the fire's own
warmth in its gleaming strands. Jeannette's eyes were matchless by
lamplight; her cheeks and lips were glowing from the outdoor life of the
day and evening; her smile was a thing to imprison hearts and hold them
fast. If she spoke little no one thought of her as silent, and the charm
of her low laughter at the sallies of the others was the sheerest
flattery, it was so evidently born of genuine delight in the cleverness
she did not attempt to emulate.
"I'm a clown beside her," said Georgiana to herself. "Who cares how a
woman talks when she looks like that? Every line of her is absolute
grace and beauty, every turn of her head is fascination itself. I never
saw such eyes. That little twist in the corner of her lip when she
smiles is the most delicious thing I ever saw. Jimps looks at it forty
times in every five minutes and I can't blame him. Mr. Jefferson keeps
his chair facing that way so he can have her all the time in focus,
though he doesn't eat her up as Jimps does. I can't blame either of
them. And I shall go on being a clown, because that's what I can do and
it amuses them. If I should lie back in a chair like that and just smile
without saying anything, Father Davy would say, 'Daughter, don't you
feel quite well?' and Jimps would propose getting me a cup of tea. Oh,
well--how absurd of me to mind because another girl looks like a picture
by a wonderful painter while I look like--a lurid lithograph by nobody
at all!"
Whereupon she set her strong, white teeth into a hot, roasted chestnut,
cracked it, and, regarding the halves, said: "This reminds me of the
night Prexy lost his head"--and brought down the house with the merriest
tale of all. It was so irresistibly absurd that Jeannette, helpless with
her mirth, buried her face in her cobweb handkerchief, Stuart rocked
upon his knees and made the welkin ring, and Mr. Jefferson laughed in a
growling bass that gathered volume as the preposterousness of the
situation grew upon him with consideration of it. Even Mr. Warne, whose
expressions of amusement were usually noiseless, gave way to soft little
chuckles of appreciation, and wiped his tear-filled eyes.
Georgiana, finishing her chestnut, looked upon them all and told them
they were the most gratifying audience she had ever addressed, but that
she feared it was not good for them to give way to their emotions so
unrestrainedly, and that she should therefore not open her lips again
that night. As they found it impossible to break down this resolution,
even with entreaties backed by offerings of worldly goods, the party
broke up. Georgiana carried off her guest to put her to bed with her own
hands, while Mr. Jefferson and James Stuart smoked a bedtime pipe
together in the boarder's room; after which Stuart let himself quietly
out of a door that was never locked, to reflect, as he tramped homeward
over the snow, on what an inordinately jolly evening it had been.