PATTY-PANS NO MORE
"IT is such an important decision! I make it, but I instantly unmake
it. It is hard to trust a little thirteen years old girl to go away
from us all to Germany!" exclaimed Mrs. Scollard. Her voice was full
of anxiety and her eyes were troubled. It was the last minute; they
were expecting the von Siegeslieds every instant to receive the answer
to their offer to take Laura to be educated in music. Her mother
had decided for and against it many times in the two days in which
the family had discussed it. The last decision had been that Laura
was to go, but now, with the footfall of Laura's abductor audible,
in imagination, on the stairs, once more her mother found herself
reverting to the impossibility of giving consent.
Laura had betaken herself to her room and to tears, entirely unable to
see her hopes wavering.
"It isn't as though Laura were good for anything else, motherums,"
repeated Happie. She kept coming back to this argument, which was not
meant unkindly, though it had rather that ring. It struck her as a
sound argument, for Laura being created especially for music it must be
right to fall into line with this opportunity to develop her.
"Charlotte, my dear," Aunt Keren began patiently, for the unnumbered
time. "I have known little Mrs. Stew--von Siegeslied a great while,
and you know that I would not let one of our children go away in
untried hands. She will train Laura up just as you would have done. As
to her husband, don't you think that a man who has suffered bitterly
from giving himself over to the selfishness of genius will be a good
corrective to our little girl's inclination to selfishness, and to
counting her art more than her heart? We all know what he is as a
musical guide. And as to the obligation, Mr. von Siegeslied has set his
heart on taking Laura. It will really be a favor to him to let him have
the girl to train, and, while his wife would rather steal Happie, or
Polly or Penny, still she will rejoice in having any one of the little
Scollards to bring young girlhood into her home. Once more, Charlotte,
while I shrink from the responsibility of a decision, still some one
must take it, and I strongly advise you to ship your third girl to
Germany."
Bob whistled "Die Wacht am Rhein" under his breath, absent-mindedly.
His mother turned appealing eyes on him, and just then the bell rang.
"Sie sind da gewesen--sein!" Bob ended triumphantly, after a breath's
hesitation on the possibility of another form of the verb, acting
on the serviceable German conviction that the more terminal verbal
forms the better. German was not Bob's strong point. "There they are,
motherums! Well, I say let Laura go. She'll never make a commonplace,
domestic, old fashioned girl, like Margery, Happie and Polly--Penny,
too, when she gets big enough, so let's try her in the big world. I
don't believe one of your girls could turn out much awry, or for long.
Transport her, motherums!"
"Yes, mother, it seems to be for the best," agreed Margery, her eyes
reflecting the anxiety in her mother's as they met.
Then Polly opened the door, and Mr. and Mrs. von Siegeslied came in.
Mrs. Stewart was changed in more than name. Years had dropped from her
shoulders, her face was radiant. And could this be the mysterious,
shadowy Herr Lieder? The Herr Baron von Siegeslied overflowed with
charm. The gloom had vanished from his eyes and mouth. In repose his
face still looked life-worn, but joy and peace had taken the place of
his morosely forbidding look.
Penny watched his greetings of the older members of her family from
across the room, and came over to lean on his knee and express her
sense of this change with the freedom of her age. "If you'd looked like
this and been Mr. von Siegeslied at first we'd never been afraid of
you," she said.
"So! And you were afraid of me!" Mr. von Siegeslied laughed. "Laura was
not. Laura knew me in music, but Happie did better--Happie pitied me,
didn't you, Fräulein Glücklich?"
Happie looked guilty. "Not at first," she murmured, embarrassed.
"When can Laura be ready to sail? You are going to let us have her?"
said Mrs. von Siegeslied.
"Listen to the voice of destiny--I am Destiny," said Miss Keren
before Mrs. Scollard could speak. "Mrs. Scollard has had so much to
do to make up her mind that when she got it made up she didn't know
it--like some one who had bought a blue gown that proved to be green
when it was made and worn. She has decided to lend you Laura, that
much is settled. Laura, girl!" she expostulated, for Laura had jumped
up and whirled around, and then rushed from the room in a tempest of
hysterical rejoicing. Miss Keren shook her head. "It is a good deal
to undertake, to bring forward the musician and keep in check the
emotional girl," she said. "Well, for the rest there are some things
which I have decided for Mrs. Scollard. I have taken a house in one of
the Fiftieth streets and while she has been hesitating I have taken for
granted that she is coming to live in it. There is a family that I want
to bring here, into the Patty-Pans; another little widow, Charlotte,
but this one has only two girl children. If you don't mind, she will
take the remainder of your lease off your hands. We shall move your
furniture into the new house, but not try to put anything in order till
the autumn, when we return. When must Laura be ready to sail, Mrs. von
Siegeslied?"
"We should like to sail on the steamer that leaves New York a week from
next Tuesday," said Mr. von Siegeslied apologetically. "It must seem
hurried to you, but having decided to return I can hardly wait to get
into my own home."
"And the tea room?" cried Margery and Happie together. Their absorbing
interest in Laura's going away had driven all recollection of the tea
room from their minds until that moment.
"My lease of that building expires in May. Perhaps you can re-rent from
its next tenant," said Mrs. von Siegeslied.
"The tea room has fulfilled its end. It is suitable that it should
end with that fulfilment," said Miss Keren decidedly. "Neither Mrs.
Scollard nor I would care to have the girls down there without you over
their heads--like a sort of guardian angel, little Frau von Siegeslied."
"Laura going, the Patty-Pans given up, a new house taken, the tea room
abolished--why, it's like an earthquake!" cried Happie.
"I am breathless!" cried Mrs. Scollard at last. "Why are we out in this
cyclone of events?"
"But they are all favorable breezes, motherums!" cried Happie with a
reassuring pat. Laura came back just then with such an uplifted look on
her face that her own family hardly knew her. She went straight to her
mother and put both her hands into the warm ones that clasped them as
if they would hold the child, even now.
"I solemnly promise to obey Mrs. von Siegeslied precisely as I would
you," began Laura impressively. "I solemnly promise to write to you
every day a journal of all I do and think, and mail it to you each
week. I solemnly promise to work as hard as I can to be as great a
musician as Herr von Siegeslied thinks I can be. Because I am glad,
glad, GLAD that I am going! And I mean to do everything I can to be
worthy of such a great, such a very great, wonderful Opportunity!"
Laura was immensely serious and she spoke of her opportunity with a
capital letter in her voice.
Mr. von Siegeslied looked at her with the first twinkle the Scollards
had seen in his eyes. "Hear, hear!" he applauded. "That is right, my
little Clara Schumann! Do all that you can, as I hope we shall do,
and nobody can do more--not even Apollo, the chief of musicians! My
intention, Mrs. Scollard, is to take a house in Leipsic--my estates lie
not far from the city--and make a little home. My wife will see to it
that our Laura does not lack the home training, while I watch over her
musically. I am much mistaken if the child does not prove a pride to us
all. I think she has much talent. If she adds industry to that talent,
she will go far. I thank you for intrusting her to us." He had arisen
to go, and his little wife arose with him and stood with her arm around
Margery, from whom she dreaded to part.
"Laura has made her promises, please accept a pledge from me," said
Herr von Siegeslied. "I will faithfully look after the little girl,
and do for her everything in my power. You will miss your home, Laura,
more than you realize. You will have many dark days when you will
long to throw up every chance in life only to get back here into this
merry, affectionate group. The artist must sacrifice much and suffer
loneliness, longing, weariness of body and soul. But the recompense
comes. Be assured, Mrs. Scollard, that the little girl shall have
the best of care. And with all my faults I keep a promise. The von
Siegeslieds brought down their name from the crusading days, and they
are men of honor." The former Herr Lieder looked around him proudly,
and his hearers felt certain that he would keep his pledge to them and
be good to Laura.
But his sweet wife did better. She went up to Mrs. Scollard and putting
her arms around her, kissed her. "Thank you for lending me the child,"
she whispered. "I will do my best. My child is dead."
And after that brief speech Mrs. Scollard's last doubt of Laura's
welfare in these hands finally vanished.
It was not half after nine when the von Siegeslieds went away. Bob
rushed out to the kitchen and beat a tattoo on the opposite dumb waiter
door. Snigs responded in the preliminary stages of preparation for bed.
"Get your collar on--or don't if you are opposed to doing it--but
get Ralph anyway, and come on over here," Bob said. "We're having
upheavals, and I'm not perfectly certain whether I half like it. We've
got news for you--tell your mother to come, and I'll go around and
lower the drawbridge for you to get in."
Bob shut the dumb waiter door with emphasis and without delaying to
learn whether or not Snigs was going to act on his suggestion.
"I've called the Gordons," Bob said, explaining his haste to reach the
door, as he passed the parlor.
The Gordons came, the mother also, and the Scollards poured out their
budget of news. Laura was to sail for Germany in less than two weeks.
The tea room was to be given up, with the dancing school of the former
Mrs. Stewart. But--and this was not wholly pleasant tidings--the
Patty-Pans flat was to be abandoned, and the Scollards were to make one
family with Miss Bradbury in the house she had taken much farther down
in town.
Ralph, who had been standing to receive all these amazing items, forgot
manners and dropped on a chair, astride of it, his chin resting on its
back. Gloom, nay, positive consternation was on his face.
"You're not!" he gasped. "You're not going to move from here!"
"We are going to keep a hold on the Patty-Pans by letting it pass into
the hands of some one I know," said Miss Keren. She did not say that
she was going to lease the flat for the Mrs. Leland who was coming
into it, because Miss Keren never spoke of her good deeds. "And Ralph,
you and Snigs are going to spend the entire summer in the Ark, the
guests of Gretta, as proprietor, and of me as householder. We are not
going to be separated, dear Gordon boys!"
Ralph's expression of dismay hardly lightened. "It can't be the same,"
he said, and his voice was husky. "Look at to-night, how Bob called us
over to tell us the news! There's a big difference between being across
a narrow passage and being four miles apart--especially in winter.
We've got to stay right where we are for four years more. This is too
near Columbia for us to move. And when I get through college there will
be Snigs still struggling to acquire learning! We couldn't do better
than to stay in our flat. Imagine us in it and other people in here!"
He looked at Happie as he spoke, and his head dropped on his arms with
a groan that he intended to be mistaken for a burlesque, but which
sounded perfectly sincere.
"Oh, we won't drift apart, Ralph!" Happie cried earnestly. "I think
we are the kind of friends that are not geographical friends. I dread
leaving the Patty-Pans myself--don't hear that, Auntie Keren, because
it doesn't mean I'm truly sorry to go. The house will be great fun.
Only----"
"Only you are quite right to love the bright little place where your
brave mother made a home for you so long," interrupted Miss Keren.
"But now for the next stage in your progress."
"It will be far, far better for you, dear girls, as you are growing
older," said Mrs. Gordon. "But Ralph is quite right in foreseeing us
disconsolate without you. And Laura is really going to Germany? And
by and by Margery will be married! But the greatest change will be
Laura's." She looked at Laura thoughtfully, realizing that it would be
another Laura who would come back to the changing family group.
"She is going over to learn to be a Lauralei," observed Bob, objecting
to the note of sentiment creeping into the conversation.
Mrs. Gordon laughed. "Come, Ralph and Charley; I don't think these
neighbors of ours can have any more news to tell us, and if they have
I don't think we could bear up under more. Good-night, nice people!
We congratulate you on all these delightful happenings, but you can't
expect us to reach the heights of being glad. It is hard to think of
breaking up our perfect relations. When must it be?"
"If Charlotte thinks she can accomplish it," began Miss Keren
doubtfully, "it would be better to go up to Crestville the very
day that Laura sails. We ought to be there early, for gardening
reasons--and it would be better."
"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Scollard catching her breath. Then to every one's
surprise she added: "I can be ready then quite as well as later, and I
should be glad to go."
Margery and Happie knew that their mother dreaded to come back to the
little home without Laura. It would seem less like a parting if they
all went to the Ark when Laura went away.
Gretta beamed at this hearing. She longed for her mountains more and
more as the warmth of spring increased.
The Gordons went back to their own domain, Ralph with a face so gloomy
that it was hard to recognize him whose liveliness failed then for the
first time.
Bob closed the door behind them and came back with a thoughtful look.
"Aunt Keren," he said, "I can't go to the Ark with the rest. I am a
year older, and I can't leave Mr. Felton as I did last year and expect
to get back in the fall. You know I'd like to spend the summer up
there, but how can I? I think I'll ask Mrs. Gordon to take me in with
her boys, and you'll let me come up Fridays, or Saturdays if I can't do
better?"
"Oh, Bob!" exclaimed Gretta involuntarily, with such profound
disappointment in her voice that they all laughed, and she colored
furiously.
"I've got to be a man, Gretta," said Bob. "Time's up in which I can be
merely a thing of beauty."
"And for me, too, Bobby boy!" cried his mother. "Isn't it strange that
I did not remember my responsibilities until just now! I can't go off
rusticating this summer as I did last year when I was an invalid, Miss
Keren. Bob and I will board--no, we will stay in the Patty-Pans, and
visit you and the children in the Ark for nice Englishlike 'week ends'
every week!"
"Charlotte, dear, listen. You have a new position. You are no longer
to be foreign correspondent to your down-town firm, but Housekeeper
Plenipotentiary to Her Crotchety Highness, the Princess Keren-happuch.
And a sorry time you will probably have of it!" said Miss Keren with
emphasis. "To-morrow I am going to get you to meet me with Happie at my
lawyer's and we are going to execute certain documents that will give
Happie a legal claim on me."
"Shall I take your name, Auntie Keren?" inquired Happie.
"You are to add Bradbury, but not substitute it for Scollard," said
Miss Keren.
"And not with another hyphen, please?" implored Happie. "Not
Keren-happuch Bradbury-Scollard! Because my signature would look like
those paper dolls cut in strings from folded paper--those that all hold
hands, you know. I don't need a legal claim on you, auntie dear. I'll
claim you illegally just as irresistibly."
"I never tried to resist you, Happie, but there may come a day when the
legal claim will be useful," retorted Miss Keren. "I will dispense with
the hyphens. Charlotte, as I was saying, to-morrow we will attend to
my legal adoption of Happie. Then she will have a real claim on me. The
first thing she would do if she had an income, she told me, would be to
establish you in a house in idleness. I am not going to do that. But I
am going to ask you to give up your position and come to look after an
old woman whose dear and only daughter you are. Please don't interrupt
me, Charlotte. You can't realize how close to my heart is this plan of
mine! And for the other side of it, Charlotte, did you ever read good
little books in your childhood in which the dutiful were rewarded and
the naughty punished? I am not inclined to think your new life will be
entirely free from annoyance, since I am moving you to Fifty-Eighth
Street, and not to paradise. But I think it will be easier than braving
the world daily as you now do. All these years, more than five, my
girl, ever since your widowhood, I have watched you cheerfully,
unflaggingly working for your children, teaching them, putting under
foot and out of sight your own sorrow and weariness of body and mind.
Dear Charlotte, like the good little girls in the story books your
reward has come. We will go out of these little Patty-Pan rooms into
our own home, and by and by, if our children--your children, and my
grandchildren, dear daughter of Roland and Elizabeth,--leave us, we
will live on together and you shall help me get ready to follow my two
best beloved. It is all settled, Charlotte, and you cannot hesitate to
take what good there is in it for you, remembering the good you will
do me. And don't you suppose I enjoy being the channel through which
you receive a little reward for your great courage and devotion?"
It was a long speech for terse Miss Keren, but she made it rapidly, and
there were tears in her eyes and a quiver in her voice as she ended it
with hands outstretched to Mrs. Scollard.
Margery sobbed under her breath, Happie walked swiftly to the window.
Laura forgot her theme; her hands crashed down on the piano keys and
her eyes overflowed with happy tears that sprang out of the warmest
spot in her self-centred little heart as she heard her mother praised.
But Bob, who had listened with a face contorted by his efforts to
appear unmoved, gave up the attempt at last. He crossed over to Miss
Keren and lifted her bodily in his arms. He kissed her over and over
again, and he was not ashamed that he made her cheeks wet from the
contact with his own moist ones.
"Aunt Keren, you're dead right!" he cried. "You've got ahead of me in
making a home for mother, but I don't grudge it to you! And if ever I
forget what I owe you--for all our sakes--then I'm not Roland Spencer's
grandson."
Miss Keren clasped the big boy close. He could not have thanked her
in any words that would have warmed her heart like these. "You're his
own boy, my Bob!" she said. "Girls, there isn't one earthly thing to
cry about!" she added, shamelessly ignoring her own brimming eyes.
"Gretta, you rival our Crestville brook! Next winter you are to be
given an education, my girl, that will more than take the place of what
the Barkers wanted to do for you! You are part of my plans, Gretta,
and part of my family. Go to bed, children. This has been an exciting
evening."
"Yes, let's turn in," agreed Bob, somewhat ashamed of his recent
outburst. "And it's _à bas, la Patty-Pans!_ is it?"
"No! Long live our Patty-Pans--it's overflowed, that's all!" cried
Happie turning from the window. "It's 'Lochaber no more.' I wonder what
that air is? Laura, you don't know?"
Laura shook her head. "But I could make a song, if you all would wait
for me," she said.
"So can I--without waiting!" cried Happie in one of her poetic
outbursts which Bob said "weren't real poetry, but were real
inspiration," and she began to sing:
"Our cakes have got so full of plums
The Patty-Pans can't bake them;
Now, by the pricking of my thumbs,
It is a witch who hither comes
And bids us to forsake them!
It's Patty-Pans no more and it's Patty-Pans no more,
Then bye-bye, little Patty-Pans, we'll love you as before,
But we're going down to live behind our very own front door--
So it's Patty-Pans we love you, but it's Patty-Pans no more!"
This gem of song was chanted to such a simple air that Laura at once
fell into an accompaniment, and the Scollards sang it, marching with
difficulty up and down the tiny room as they sang.
"My dears! The people down-stairs! And we've tried to be good
neighbors!" remonstrated Mrs. Scollard. "It's past bedtime. Please
defer your farewell chorus! I'm afraid the other tenants will be glad
we're going!"
"Not a bit of it, motherums!" cried Happie, catching up Jeunesse Dorée
who was vainly trying to get out of the way of the celebration. "How
will you like to be a backyard kitten and not a fire escaper, my golden
catkins? For a backyard will be thine when it's Patty-Pans no more!"