into a boarding-house, but apparently it ignored the change with the
same high-born ease of manner that characterised its gentle old
mistress. The hospitality it extended to its paying guests was the
same with which it welcomed its many visitors in ante-bellum days. And
Miss Philura Wicklett was the same. They were wonderfully alike, the
aristocratic old mansion and Miss Philura. Indeed, one could scarcely
think of her apart from her familiar background of tall, white
pillars, as stately and dignified as herself. The old portraits
looking down on the faces round the great polished table, saw familiar
ones, for the same family types were repeated there year after year
among the boarders that had been welcomed at Wicklett generations
before. The long mirrors, reflecting dimly the young faces peering
into them now, had flashed back the smiles of mothers and grandmothers
of these girls many a time, when gay house parties thronged the old
mansion.
People flocked from all over the country to drink the waters of the
chalybeate springs near by, which the name of Wicklett made famous;
but a new hotel had been built for the strangers. Only the first
families, who claimed Miss Philura's friendship, knew the open sesame
to her great front door. It was for this reason that there was much
surprise and many exclamations of wonder, and a stir all round the
luncheon table, when Miss Philura announced that she was expecting
Miss Marker and Miss Dent to spend August with her. "Where are they
from, Miss Philura?" asked Molly Glendenning, a tall brunette, who was
the acknowledged belle of the springs that season.
"From your own city, my dear," was the placid answer. "They live
somewhere on Bank Street, I believe."
"Why, I have never even heard of them," said Molly Glendenning, with a
slight arching of her black eyebrows at mention of the street.
Miss Philura hesitated and coloured slightly. "I must acknowledge,"
she said, with some hesitation, "that I have departed from my usual
custom, and it is only fair to you to inform you that they do not move
in your set at home. Miss Dent's father was a painter by trade, but is
now a wealthy contractor. She has had every advantage, is a college
graduate, and has had her voice cultivated abroad. She will be quite
an acquisition to us. Miss Marker is just a little schoolgirl, but
well connected, I understand. Her mother was a Monroe. I knew her
father when he was just beginning the study of law. He had a very
brilliant career in prospect, apparently, but through some sad freak
of fate lost his money and was obliged to abandon it. He is bookkeeper
now for Bement & Ahlering."
[Illustration: "'WHY, I HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THEM'"]
A stony silence greeted Miss Philura's explanation, for a moment, and
then several expostulatory voices asked in chorus, "Oh, Miss Philura!
How could you consent to their coming? A common workingman's daughter!
We don't want to know her, I'm sure!"
There was a touch of hauteur in Miss Philura's manner, that any one
should question any act of hers. "As I stated before," she said,
coldly, "I had the best of reasons. Surely, if I with my conservative
ideas can endorse them, that ought to be enough. There are not two
more ladylike girls in the South than Travis Dent and Mary Lee Marker.
I hope you will find one another agreeable during the little time they
will be here."
Miss Philura, somewhat deaf, did not hear the undertone passing round
the table, as she turned her attention to the making of the salad
dressing. "A sign-painter's daughter!" said Molly Glendenning, with a
shrug of the shoulders. "Well, I for one do not care to know her.
People educated above their station in life are apt to be presuming.
It might make matters a trifle awkward next winter if she should
attempt to push her acquaintance when we go back to town."
"It will be easy enough to ignore them," answered her cousin Cora,
"and I shall do it with a vengeance. It is one thing to be nice and
friendly with shopgirls and factory hands, and quite another to take
up with the well-to-do middle class. Give them an inch and they'll
take an ell every time. First thing you know they'll turn round and
patronise you."
The subject was still under discussion when they rose from the table
and followed Molly Glendenning out into the wide hall. "They'll not
stay long!" she exclaimed when they were well out of Miss Philura's
hearing; "I'll promise you that. They can push in here if they want
to, but they'll have to learn Marmion's lesson--'The hand of Douglas
is his own!'" She swept her pretty pink palm outward with a tragic
gesture, as she ran lightly up the stairs, and the girls, laughing as
they flocked after her, scattered to their rooms for their afternoon
siesta.
It was in the heat and drowsiness of mid-afternoon that Travis and
Mary Lee reached Wicklett, and stood looking down the long shady
avenue leading to the house.
"Oh, Travis!" exclaimed Mary Lee, catching her breath with a gasp of
admiration. "Isn't it beautiful and still? It seems as if we might be
on enchanted ground, and that the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. I
never dreamed that anything could be so lovely."
She nodded toward the velvety green terraces, with their marble urns
of flowers, stretching one above another until they reached the
stately white pillars of the old mansion, where two stone lions
guarded the white steps. On the highest terrace a peacock stood
motionless, his resplendent feathers spread to the sun. Here and there
deserted hammocks swung under the trees, with books and magazines
scattered invitingly underneath. Mary Lee turned aside from the path
to look at the title of one in passing.
"'Gray Days and Gold,'" she read aloud. "How can any one leave such a
treasure on the grass? Surely, Travis, they must be all golden days
here. I have never imagined anything so beautiful."
Miss Philura met them in the hall in a white wrapper, waving a huge
palm-leaf fan. "I was up waiting for you," she said, cordially. "Every
one else in the house is asleep. That is all one can do these hot
afternoons."
"I shall soon follow everybody's example," said Travis, when they had
been shown to their rooms and the trunks brought up.
"And I shall begin a long letter home," said Mary Lee, spreading out
her writing material on an old claw-footed table, by the window
overlooking the peacock.
All the trivial incidents of the trip had been stored away for this
very purpose. They ceased to be trivial when recorded as Mary Lee's
alert eyes had seen them, and with the colour her amusing descriptions
lent. It was a letter that seemed to carry a breath of fresh air with
it into the stuffy dining-room on Bank Street, where her mother first
read it, and into the hot office where Henry Marker took it later to
reread at his leisure. Just that one enthusiastic letter, bubbling
over with a young girl's happiness, was enough to repay him for any
sacrifice he had made to give her such pleasure, and the smile the
letter awakened stayed on in his tired eyes all day.
A sound of voices broke out through the house long before Mary Lee had
finished writing. There was much opening and shutting of doors, and
calling of gay messages across the halls as the old mansion awoke to
life. Long before she was dressed for dinner, Mary Lee saw a flutter
of ribbons and white gowns under the trees as some of the girls
strolled down to the springs through the lengthening shadows. Soon she
and Travis would be strolling there, too.
Some one began playing on the piano in the drawing-room below, and a
familiar air came floating up to her, clear and sweet. It thrilled her
with a festive holiday feeling that seemed to give wings to her
spirits. "Listen, Travis," she cried, running into the adjoining room,
"to-morrow you'll be singing with them."
The music stopped, and the singer came out of the house and stood on
the white steps below between the lions, still humming. It was Molly
Glendenning, in her rose-coloured hat and dainty ruffled dress of
palest pink organdy.
"Oh, isn't she beautiful!" exclaimed Mary Lee, peeping out between the
curtains. "Look, Travis. What a picture she makes! 'Queen rose of the
rosebud garden of girls,'" she quoted softly. "Oh, I know I shall love
her," she declared, with all the intense enthusiasm of seventeen.
Four more pages were added to Mary Lee's letter that night. She
described everybody whom they had met at dinner, from her Queen Rose,
as she called Molly Glendenning, to the courtly old Confederate
general at the end of the table. She had been so absorbed in the
repartee and bright speeches round her that she had not noticed that
she and Travis were not included in the conversation. But Travis had
noticed. There were many callers that night after dinner; men who took
the girls away singly, in groups, and in pairs, to some sort of an
entertainment at the Inn near by. Travis and Mary Lee, sitting all
alone on the porch in the moonlight, could hear the music of the band
stealing across the lawn. There was a wistful little note in Mary
Lee's voice as she exclaimed, "I wish that we had been here long
enough to know everybody and go, too. Oh, Travis, it will be so nice
when we're really acquainted and are a part of it all," and again her
first enthusiasm manifested itself in her voice.
* * * * *
When the end of the week came, Mary Lee's lonely little heart still
cried out at being kept "a stranger within the gates." It puzzled her
that all her gentle advances should be politely ignored. Nobody seemed
to hear either Travis or herself if they ventured a remark. Not an
eyelid lifted in recognition if they joined a group on the porch or
under the trees by the hammocks. But Travis did not seem to notice.
She planned drives and excursions and long walks that kept them away
from the house much of the time after the first two days, and Mary Lee
was still more puzzled that Travis should be so blind. She wondered if
she were not overly sensitive herself, and decided not to cloud
Travis's evident enjoyment by a single whisper of her suspicions.
Still it was not drives and excursions for which Mary Lee had longed.
It was companionship and many friends she wanted, and it was hard to
hide her disappointment when she wrote home, and to make her letters
as buoyant and cheery as at first. One evening, after one of these
expeditions, she left Travis on the porch and went up-stairs with a
heavy heart to write the usual daily letter. She had heard the girls
planning a musicale to be given the following night, and she had a
sore, left-out feeling, because Travis had not been included. Sitting
down by the lamp, she picked up the pen and wrote three words: "Dear,
dear father!" Then she laid down her pen and leaned wearily back in
the chair. Somehow there seemed so little to tell. Her door was open
into the hall to admit the breeze, and she heard some one coming up
the stairs. There were voices passing her door, and she recognised the
first as Hester Tyler's. She was a young artist, lately arrived, who
was a favourite with every one. "It's hardly fair, Molly," she was
saying. "People who are sure of their own social position have no need
to snub anybody. Miss Dent is certainly a lady, any one can see that,
and if her voice is as good as Miss Philura says, she ought to be
included in the programme."
"That might do for you, Hester,"--and Mary Lee recognised the voice of
her Queen Rose,--"but you are too absorbed in your art to know
anything about conventionalities. We society girls have to put up some
sort of hedge. If people of that class want to push themselves in
where they are not wanted, and Miss Philura lets them come, that's
their affair. But, as I told the girls in the beginning:
"'The hand of Douglas is his own, and never shall in friendly grasp
The hand of such as--the mushroom aristocracy of Bank Street--clasp!'
"No sign-painter's daughter nor bookkeeper's daughter, whichever she
may be, on the programme with me, thank you. If there is, I'll not
sing. That's all there is about it."
"Molly Glendenning, you're a snob! The worst sort!" replied Hester,
but she laughed as she said it, and in a moment they were out of
hearing. Several minutes later they passed the door again on their way
down-stairs.
Mary Lee sat staring at the paper before her with dazed, tear-blinded
eyes, as bit by bit her innocent little air-castle crumbled into
nothingness. Then her glance fell on the words she had written, and
laying her face down on them she began to sob. "Dear old father," she
whispered, brokenly. "I asked them for bread and they gave me a stone.
And it's because you have to work. They despise you for that, you dear
old daddykins, with your high ideals and knightly notions of honour.
Oh, how can they be so snobbish and blind! I'll not stay another day
under the same roof with such heartless people!"
Wiping her eyes, she went slowly down-stairs to look for Travis, but
the porch and halls were deserted. Every one must have gone over to
the Inn, she thought, as she heard the notes of the violins stealing
out on the night air. Travis was nowhere to be found. At last Mary Lee
wandered into the empty, dimly lighted drawing-room, and throwing
herself face downward on a long velvet divan, gave way to the feelings
she could no longer control. She had never been so miserable in all
her life before. Great, choking sobs shook her convulsively.
"Why, my dear child! What is the matter?" asked a deep voice,
suddenly, and Mary Lee started up to see the kind face of the old
general bending anxiously over her. "Are you ill? What is the mutter?"
he repeated.
[Illustration: "'WHAT IS THE MATTER?' HE REPEATED"]
Mary Lee sat up, wiping her eyes with a little, wet ball of a
handkerchief. "Nothing, thank you, sir," she said, politely, feeling
all of a sudden that the wise old general would think her very silly,
if he knew the cause of her crying. She tried to keep the sobs out of
her answer, but the effort was a dismal failure, and the tears began
to flow again.
"People often break their hearts over nothing," answered the general,
courteously, but with a smile lurking under his white moustache. "It
isn't wise to do it, and maybe I could convince you of the fact, if I
knew what particular nothing is making you unhappy."
The general had often noticed the eager, attentive little face at the
table, and had been attracted by its bright intelligence. Mary Lee
blinked up with red, tear-swollen eyes into the fatherly old face with
its crown of white hair, and recognised the stamp of the true knight
in every aristocratic feature. With a sudden, instinctive feeling of
confidence she cried out: "You are not like the rest. You would
understand, and I must tell somebody."
It was a pitiful little tale that she poured out to her sympathetic
listener, revealing a sweet, unspoiled nature as she laid bare her
fond girlish hopes and longings, in a way that would have surprised
her had she realised what she was doing. It gave him an insight into
her home life, too, and when she had finished, he could appreciate
what a cruel wound had been given her sensitive heart by the words
which disparaged her father. For a minute after she stopped speaking,
the general sat quite still. Then he said:
"Will you take the advice of an old man who has lived a long time and
learned a great many lessons? Don't go home to-morrow, as it is your
first impulse to do. Be brave and unselfish enough not to say anything
to your friend that will mar her enjoyment." He broke off suddenly and
sat musing a minute. "Do you know Browning's 'Saul'?" he asked, after
a little pause. Mary Lee nodded, a gleam of pleasure lighting her eyes
for an instant.
"Then you will remember these lines:
"'Round me the sheep
Fed in silence--above, the one eagle wheeled slow as
in sleep;
And I lay in my hollow and mused on the world that
might lie
'Neath his ken, though I saw but the strip 'twixt the hill
and the sky.'
"Now these girls who have hurt you so cruelly, have done it solely
through ignorance. They have never seen anything beyond their own
little strip ''twixt the hill and the sky,' and they can only follow a
leader like a flock of pretty sheep. It is true that they ought to
have a broader horizon than the boundary of the little social circle
in which they were born, but you must make allowances for them, my
child. From their cradles they have been hedged round with
conventionalities which have made them short-sighted. It is your
privilege to rise above the petty social hollows of life. Learn to
take an eagle view, my dear. What does the eagle care for the
happenings down in the hollows?
"'With wing on the wind, and eye on the sun,
He swerves not a line, but bears onward--right on!'
That is a true American motto, learned from our national emblem.
"It is absolute foolishness for us to prate of old-world castes when
it is a part of our national creed that any one among us may rise as
high as the best of us, provided he can grow the wings wherewith to
soar. That little speech which almost broke your heart is a part of
our creed, too. 'The hand of Douglas _is_ his own.' The American
Douglas reserves the right to extend it, regardless of all arbitrary
social lines, to any palm that has proved itself worthy, no matter
how hard and toil-stained it may be. Only snobbishness refuses."
There was a long pause, while Mary Lee considered the old general's
little sermon, and he watched her, with a kindly twinkle in his eyes.
"Are you strong enough to do that, child?" he asked, presently; "to
rise to the eagle view of the situation, and stay on here regardless
of the slights that have stung you, for your friend's sake? And your
father's sake, too," he added. "It would grieve him sorely to know of
your disappointment, as he would have to know it, if you went back
before the appointed time."
Mary Lee looked up quickly. "I don't believe that you understand,
after all," she cried. "I could rise above the snubbings. It is not
that that hurts, but it is the disappointment. Oh, you don't know how
I longed to be friends with those girls! They are so bright and
attractive, and seem to have such good times together. It is the
missing of all that I had hoped to find that hurts."
The wistfulness of the fair little face touched the general's gallant
soul to the quick. "'Pon my word," he declared. "If you care as
much as that for their friendship, you shall have it. I'll conduct
a campaign into the enemy's quarters, and capture it for you, myself!"
[Illustration: "IT WAS NOT HER VOICE ALONE WHICH DREW SO MANY
ADMIRERS."]
And nobly the old general kept his promise. The night of the musicale
Travis Dent was not on the programme, but she sang more than once, and
each time, except the first, at the request of the most noted musical
people among the guests. It was the general who led her to the piano,
first saying that no programme was complete without his favourite
ballad.
But Mary Lee saw, with a thrill of gratified pride in her friend's
triumph, that it was not her voice alone which drew so many admirers
round her, and kept them drifting back many times during the evening.
It was the charm of Travis Dent's own gracious personality. Mary Lee
had her share of the lions, too, that evening, for the general saw to
that. He introduced them himself, and his deferential attentions to
the two girls had the effect he intended. It argued that they were
well worth the knowing.
"Didn't I tell you they were a flock of pretty sheep?" he asked,
several days afterward. "Hasn't a change come over the spirit of your
dream?"
"Yes, indeed," answered Mary Lee, gaily. "All thanks to you. And it
seems so funny. All the girls have been talking so much about that Mr.
Hendrick Lang, and exclaiming over his new novel. He has called on
Travis twice since the musicale, and this afternoon he took us both
out for a drive. When we came back Miss Glendenning asked us to walk
down to the spring with her as cordially as if we had been old friends
always."
"'The hand of Douglas!'" exclaimed the general, with a laugh. "Well,
it's the way of the world to give it in that fashion, and I'm glad
you've got what you wanted, at last."
"And to think," cried Mary Lee, "that Travis knew from the first they
were trying to freeze us out. But she didn't care a bit. All those
drives and excursions she planned were simply to keep me away from the
house so that I should not notice it. She was going on perfectly
serene and untroubled, herself."
"'With wing on the wind, and eye on the sun,'"
quoted the general, softly. "Ah, my little friend, Miss Travis has a
broader outlook than the petty hollows. She has risen to the eagle's
view."
ELSIE'S "PALMISTRY EVENING"
ELSIE'S "PALMISTRY EVENING"
As Helen Jaynes stood before the mirror in her room, putting the last
touches to her toilet, there was a rap at the door.
"I'm ready, Jane," she called, thinking it was the maid who had come
to tell her the carriage was ready. But instead, her fifteen-year-old
sister Sara peeped into the room. "Oh, sister Helen!" she exclaimed,
in a disappointed tone. "Are you going out? Olive and I wanted to ask
you something very particularly."
"Come in, dear," answered Helen, nodding pleasantly to the
rosy-cheeked girl who peered over Sara's shoulder. "What do you want?
I am at your service."
"What is it you want, Sara?" asked Helen again, as the girls seated
themselves by the cozy, tiled fireplace, and looked round admiringly.
Sara hesitated. "I had planned to break it to you gently," she began,
"but as you are going out there is no time to lead up to the subject
gradually. I hope you'll not be shocked, but there is a clairvoyant at
the Metropole this week. Some of the girls have been there, and they
say it is simply wonderful how she can tell fortunes. She charges only
fifty cents. Olive and I are wild to go, and we thought maybe you
might take us Saturday afternoon."
Helen buttoned her gloves as if considering. "Do you think it would
make you any happier, little sister, to know what the future holds for
you?"
"Oh, yes!" answered Sara, decidedly. "The clairvoyant told Addie
Roberts things in her past life that positively nobody but Addie knew
had happened. Then she told her that a large fortune is coming to her
soon, and she has a long journey ahead of her. She is to fall in love
with a young man whom her parents will oppose her marrying, but 'love
will find out a way,' and all will end happily."
"Does Addie believe all that the clairvoyant told her?" asked Helen.
"I don't know," answered Sara, but Olive put in eagerly, "I am sure
she does, for she talks so much about it, and says if the woman could
tell her past so accurately, she cannot help thinking that there must
be some truth in her predictions for the future."
"Sara," said Helen, gravely, "suppose that woman were to tell you that
sometime you will quarrel with your family, and be driven from home,
and finally die in a poorhouse. Wouldn't it make you miserable every
time you thought of it?"
"No, indeed, sister," answered the girl, indignantly. "I hope I am not
quite so weak-minded as to believe all that. I'd simply think that she
had made a mistake. Imagine me quarrelling with my family!"
"But clairvoyants often tell people things that seem just as
improbable. What is the use of wasting half a dollar to hear
predictions that you might not be able to believe, or if you could
believe them, would make you utterly miserable?"
"Oh, it is just for the fun of it, Helen," urged Sara. "Please take
us. All the girls are going, and we have never had our fortunes told
in our lives."
Before there was time for a reply, Jane came to the door. "The
carriage is waiting, Miss Helen," she said. For a moment Helen stood
irresolutely beside her dressing-table, stroking her muff in an
absent-minded sort of way. Then she said: "I shall have to think about
it awhile before I can promise. I shall not be out long. If you girls
have nothing planned for the afternoon, suppose you wait for me here.
Get out my old college chafing-dish and make yourselves some
chocolate, string up my banjo, and I'll give you a package of old
letters to read, telling of some of our pranks at school."
"Oh, that will be lovely, Miss Helen," cried Olive; "especially the
letters;" and Sara ran to give her sister an impulsive hug.