THE BOY IN THE FLOWERY, DRAGONY PICTURE FRAME
During the next few days of hurried preparation for the visit the Hart
boys found themselves almost entirely left out of the life in the little
barn house, the house that ordinarily served as a second home for them.
“No time for boys to-day,” Kate would call out crisply when they
appeared at windows or door. “Woman’s business is afoot. We’re too busy
even to look at you.”
And Katherine, who was usually so much more easily beguiled and quick to
see their side in any argument, for once echoed Kate and upheld her in
her determination to stick to the tasks they had set themselves.
In spite of all Kate’s protests, Katherine’s new white linen was ripped
to pieces and remade for the traveller into a jaunty street suit. With a
black tie and narrow black patent-leather belt, when it was finished it
looked as though it might have come from some fashionable shop in New
York. Kate could not help being delighted. The pink organdie, which had
done Kate duty for best all last summer, and Katherine for best for
several summers before that, was now freshened with new lace and
decorated with narrow black velvet ribbon. It was not only becoming, but
quite up-to-date, and when it was finished and Kate surveyed herself in
it in the glass, standing on a chair to see it all, they both decided
that Kate would be able to put clothes definitely out of her mind when
she was wearing it, for it was quite appropriate for all the occasions
it was destined to grace.
And finally, Katherine’s pretty bedroom was robbed of its month-old
chintz curtains which, under her magic, in the space of two days only,
became two simple but unique and pretty morning dresses for Kate. Now
all that remained to be thought of in the way of clothes was the
travelling suit.
“My navy blue silk will do perfectly,” Kate said. “If I’m a little
careful, it won’t hurt it any, and next winter it will be as good as
ever for your teas and things, Mother, unless I’ve quite grown out of
it. Anyway, travelling won’t spoil it.”
When that was agreed upon it naturally followed that Katherine’s new
spring hat must go with it; for it was a little navy blue silk hat,
light and small and quite fascinating.
“What you’ll ever do for a hat I don’t see,” Kate worried.
“Never mind about me,” Katherine told her nonchalantly. “Here on this
hill-top anything does so long as it gives a shade. And if ever I go
down to Middletown I can wear your black tam.”
In the silk dress and hat and with her last spring’s blue cape with its
orange silk lining Kate felt prepared to meet the eyes of even Elsie’s
maid with equanimity. But imagine a girl of fifteen having a lady’s
maid!
Katherine thought that was just a glorified title for nurse, probably.
But Kate protested that. A nurse for a girl of fifteen would be even
more absurd than a maid. Well, Katherine was sure Aunt Katherine herself
wouldn’t have a maid. She was a New Englander with all a true New
Englander’s scorn of self-indulgence. But she probably did need someone
to keep Elsie mended and possibly to be a sort of chaperon for her, too;
for Aunt Katherine, since her inheritance, had interested herself in
social and charitable work and was a very busy and even an important
woman.
The two had endless conversations about Aunt Katherine and the
adventures awaiting Kate. And Katherine talked more than she had ever
talked before about her own girlhood in Oakdale and the little orchard
house where she had always lived and where she had been so happy.
“If it isn’t rented you must go into it,” she told Kate. And then she
described the rooms for her and all the important events that had
happened in them. Aunt Katherine’s big newer house she hardly spoke of
at all, for Kate herself was so soon to see it and know all its corners.
All the planning and sewing and the long intimate conversations about
Katherine’s girlhood and bits of family history that Kate had never
heard before, kept her right up to the eve of departure occupied and
excited. But as bedtime approached that night she began to be shaken by
unexpected qualms. She had never before been away from her mother for
even one night and they had always _shared_ adventure. That now she was
actually to go off by herself into an adventure of her own seemed
unnatural and almost impossible.
They were sitting on the bench out beside the big front doors, breathing
in all the cool night air they could after the last hot and rather
hurried day. Their faces were only palely visible to each other in the
starlight. They had been silent for many minutes when Kate said
suddenly, and a little huskily, “Mother, may I take the picture of the
boy in the silver, flowery, dragony picture frame along to Oakdale with
me to-morrow? He’s a sort of talisman of mine.”
Katherine was used to Kate’s abruptnesses and seldom showed surprise at
anything anyway. But now she did show surprise, and the voice that
answered Kate quivered with more than surprise.
“The silvery, flowery, dragony picture frame? And the boy? What do you
know of him, Kate?”
“Why, he’s always been in the little top drawer of your desk. He’s
_always_ been there. I’ve never told you how much he meant to me. I’ve
made it a secret. But I’ve known him just about as long as I can
remember. I was an awfully little girl and had to climb on to a chair at
first to see him. But I didn’t climb to look often. I saved it
for—magic. When something dreadful happened, when I was punished or
lessons were just too hateful, or you were late coming home, then I’d
climb up and look at that boy in the frame for comfort. I think it would
be very comfortable to have it with me along with your picture, Mother.”
Katherine did not answer this for some time. She stayed as still as a
graven image in the starlight. Finally, without moving at all, and in a
voice as cool as starlight, she asked, “But why did you make it a
secret? I don’t understand a bit. I didn’t know you even knew there was
a little upper drawer. It’s almost hidden, and there is a secret about
the catch. You have to work it just so.”
“Yes, I know. And I can’t remember how or exactly when I discovered how
to work it. At first, I do remember, it was just the frame I loved. It
is a little wonder of a frame! The silver was so shining, and then the
flowers and the fruit _and_ the dragons are all so enchanting. I traced
the dragons with my finger over and over and played they were alive. I
thought it was too mysterious and lovely, all of it! It fascinated me in
a way I could never tell you.”
Katherine remained silent and Kate went on: “It was only when I was
older I began to look at the picture and feel about that so strangely. I
discovered what a wonderful face that boy has. I pretended he was the
Sandman, the one who gave me my dreams at night. I always had such
wonderful dreams, Mother! Remember?”
Katherine did not answer, and Kate felt somehow impelled to go on. She
was surprising herself in this account of past childish imaginings. She
had never thought about it in words like this before.
“He’d be just the person to have made those dreams for me. His face said
he knew them all and thousands and thousands more! Then, when I got
older I forgot about his being the Sandman, and anyway, my dreams
stopped being wonderful and were just silly. Then I called him the
‘Understander.’ When I especially wanted an understander I’d open the
secret drawer—I could do it without climbing on a chair by then—and
there he was, looking up at me out of the dragons and the fruit and the
flowers with _understanding_.
“It was all just a notion, of course. Oh, am I talking nonsense, Mother?
And was it nonsense to keep it so secret and all, always?”
Katherine answered emphatically, “No. Not nonsense a bit. Only
surprisingly—intuitive. For, Kate, he is just the sort of person who
_could_ have made up those wonderful dreams you used to have. And he
was—and is still, I suppose—just a perfect understander. That is his
quality. And it is startling to me, all you have said, for he has been a
sort of a talisman to me, too, all these years. I’ve looked at him, at
the picture, when _I_ needed understanding. And that is surprising in
itself, for once, when he was just the age he is in that picture, the
very week the picture was taken, I did him a wrong, a great wrong. We
quarrelled. Since then I have never seen or heard from him.”
Kate turned upon her mother with real exasperation at this disclosure.
“Oh, Mother! How could you! Another quarrel!”
Katherine said nothing, and Kate instantly softened. She felt that she
had wounded her mother; and that was a dreadful thing to have happened
on this their last night! It was in an apologizing tone and humbly that
she asked then, “And may I take him with me to-morrow?”
“No, I think you’d better not. Let him stay just where he is, in the
secret drawer. I may need his magic more than you while you are away.”
So her mother wasn’t really hurt at all, or cross. She had spoken
lightly, even airily. Kate sighed her relief. “I’m not asking you who
the boy is, notice?” she spoke as lightly as her mother. “It might spoil
the magic if I knew a human name for him. And I don’t believe you ever
did him a wrong, either. For one thing, I don’t believe any one could do
him a wrong. And you never did any one a wrong, anyway. I know it.
You’re too dear and kind.— Look at those fireflies out there. Watch me
catch one!”
Kate suddenly jumped up and ran away into the summer evening. Katherine
stayed still on the bench, watching her quick motions, her leaps and
runs and turns. “It’s very like a dance,” she thought. “Only there
should be music.” And she began humming softly.
* * * * * * * *
Kate slept that night with the twinges of premature homesickness dulled
by fatigue. And when morning came with the last bustle and scurry, any
doubts that still lingered back in her mind were lost in the glamour of
the adventure whose day had at last arrived.
“I’m going to take ‘The King of the Fairies’ with me to read on the
train, Mother,” she called from her bedroom where she was putting the
very last things into her bag.
Katherine came to stand in the doorway, a partly spread piece of bread
for a sandwich for Kate’s luncheon in her hand. “But you know ‘The King
of the Fairies’ by heart,” she said. “Why not take the mystery story Sam
and Lee gave you?”
“I’ve packed that. I believe you want ‘The King of the Fairies’
yourself, just as you want the picture!” Kate said, teasingly.
“Perhaps I do. It’s without exception the nicest thing that has happened
to us this year, I think. Bring it back safely, for I shall certainly
read it again before the summer’s through. Suppose we had been so
foolish as to decide we couldn’t afford it that day we stumbled on it in
the bookshop and were lost at the first paragraph!”
Kate gasped at such a supposing. “I simply can’t imagine having missed
it, never read it, can you? If that had happened, well, everything would
be different. It has made so many things different, hasn’t it—reading
it?”
“Yes, for us both, I think. That’s why I am sure it is a great book,
because it does make such a difference to you, having read it or not.
And I understand your wanting it with you to-day. Try to get Aunt
Katherine to read it, if you can. She has enough literary appreciation
to realize its beauty, and the rest of it, what it does to you—well, it
wouldn’t hurt to have it do a little of that to her, too!”
At that minute Sam and Lee whistled from the road, out at the back of
the house, and in a second they were around and in at the big front door
calling for Kate’s bag and anything that was to be carried. Katherine
hurried to finish the sandwiches and tie up the lunch, Kate gave her
hair a last boyish, brisk brushing, put on her hat, took her cape on her
arm, and they were off, hurrying down to Broad Street and the bus there
waiting the minute of starting in front of the Hotel.
“Don’t let your father work Mother too hard on that old catalogue,” Kate
besought the boys. “And do write me sometimes about everything, the
tennis court and all.”
Sam and Lee promised that they would take turns writing, much as they
disliked it, and Kate should not lack for news. “And bring Elsie back
with you to repay us,” they commanded. “The Hotel has let us borrow the
roller, and the court will be in fine shape. We’ll be all practised up,
too. You’d better do some practising yourself while you’re there. Elsie
is probably a shark, anyway.”
They reached the bus in good time and stood chattering a few minutes
before the bus driver facetiously sang out, “All aboard!” Kate was the
only passenger that morning. One quick hug and kiss passed between
mother and daughter while Sam put in the suitcase and Lee dropped “The
King of the Fairies” and the box of lunch in at the window. The busman
himself had climbed into his seat and was sitting with his back to them.
The Hotel piazza was deserted for the minute. There was no one besides
themselves on the street. Sam kissed Kate on one cheek, and Lee kissed
her on the other, quick, sound, affectionate, brotherly kisses. The
driver blew his horn twice just to make sure no traveller was belated in
the Hotel, started his engine, and the adventurer was off.
Kate stood in the little vestibule, hanging to the door and looking back
as long as she could see the three people she was leaving. Katherine was
between the boys, hatless, in a blue smocked dress; she was waving and
blowing kisses. She looked like a sister to the boys, and not even an
older sister from the distance of the speeding bus. Then the vehicle
jerked around a corner and Kate sat down, faced about the way they were
going, and contemplated her own immediate future.
In school she had often sat watching the big clock over the blackboard
in the front of the room; just before the minute hand reached the hour
it had a way of suddenly jerking itself ahead with a little click. That
was what had happened on the instant of parting from her mother—time,
somehow, or at least her place in time, had jerked suddenly and
unexpectedly ahead. Now the hour must be striking, she reflected
whimsically, and she was at the beginning of a new one. So much the
better. She expected it to be a wholly fascinating hour, and Elsie the
unknown comrade was waiting in it.