ALL SORTS OF NEW STEPS
Only on the first morning of her visit did Beth oversleep. The second
morning she was up bright and early, so early that, with some misgiving
of doing wrong, she had dressed before Frieda came to call her.
“I couldn’t lie still, Frieda,” she said apologetically. “I did leave
my hair for you to do; I knew I could never make such a bow as you
tie. But I wished I was a lot of girls to dress; I didn’t know what to
do, I’ve been up so long. I wanted to make my bed, but I was afraid it
would be wrong to make a bed in New York. I always made my own bed at
Aunt Rebecca’s.”
“It’s hard to get out of the habit of a thing,” said Frieda, uncertain
what she ought to reply to this statement.
“Yes,” cried Beth eagerly. “Aunt Rebecca says we ought to be very
careful about habits. She says they are just like poppies in a
vegetable garden; you get the package of seeds in the first place
yourself, but after that they keep on growing in spite of you. Still, I
must say I like poppies in the vegetables; they look perfectly lovely
in through the peas and standing up over the beets and the spinach. But
Aunt Rebecca always made me watch when the dear little seed cups turned
brown and told me to gather all the seeds. But they came up every year
just the same. She says that’s the way with habits. Only I’m not as
sure as I ought to be that I was very, very careful to catch every
single seed! They are so tiny! It was hard not to spill any, but I’m
not certain sure I cared if I gathered them when the wind blew and they
were bound to spill. I guess we don’t always care if we don’t get over
our habits, either. I have the habit of reading when I eat, and I don’t
believe I ever tried my best to get over it--it is just like poppy
seeds, after all!”
“We put poppy seeds on the top of our bread in Germany,” said Frieda
gathering up Beth’s hair in her left hand, preparatory to tying it with
the admired bow. She found Beth lovable, but perplexing. “You mustn’t
make your bed, Miss Beth,” she added. “Even I wouldn’t do that; that’s
the chambermaid’s work.”
“I should think it would be dreadfully hard never to do something
somebody else ought to do when there are so many people to do every
little thing,” said Beth. “That’s even a lovelier, stickier-up bow than
the plaid ribbon last night, Frieda,” she added, beaming at the blue
ribbon now crowning her. It matched the pretty gown waiting its new
wearer--for that was the way Beth thought of the dresses her aunt had
bought her.
“They all are like lovely New York pieces of nice girls, waiting to
get acquainted with me,” she had said to Frieda the previous night when
her maid was folding and hanging up the beautiful garments which had
come home for Beth.
“You are ready now, Miss Beth,” said Frieda. “You will find all the
family in the breakfast room, where you had supper the night you came.
Mrs. Cortlandt always comes down when Mr. Cortlandt is at home. She
likes to have her family breakfast together, and she won’t let her
children get up late.”
“I’m to do lessons with them,” said Beth rather sadly. “Aunt Alida said
that she didn’t want me to lose a whole winter’s study, so of course
I’ll do what she likes me to, but I’m scared. Natalie and Alys speak
French, Frieda!”
“Well, I’m sure you speak English enough to make up for it,” said
Frieda, puzzling Beth by this indirect tribute to her unconscious
quaintness, the result of a life spent with eccentric Aunt Rebecca, and
with the books which were the little girl’s preferred comrades.
Beth went down the broad stairs and hesitatingly found her way to the
door of the rose-hued breakfast room. It was a morning room, flooded by
the early sunshine; it was more beautiful seen by the strong eastern
light for which its colors were planned than it had been under the
electricity. Beth stopped on its threshold, forgetting to salute the
assembled family.
“It looks like ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’!” she
cried.
“Beth, what do you mean?” demanded Natalie. Beth’s uncle put down his
paper to listen to her answer.
“The hymn, you know,” explained Beth, “and the room; it’s so--so, as
if it would ‘shine on our darkness,’ you know, when you come into it
from the hall.”
Riggs, the butler, with the greatest difficulty suppressed a smile
which would have been so unbecoming to his office that it would, so
to speak, have unbutlered him if he had not been able to prevent its
coming. Happily he succeeded, but Aunt Alida laughed, and Uncle Jim
shouted, though Beth could not see anything amusing.
“Here’s your place, beside your old uncle; come and take it, little
Puritan,” he cried. “Do you know what you are, Beth?”
“Yes, but not what you mean I am,” said Beth, unexpectedly, with a
twinkle exactly like her uncle’s in her own blue eyes.
“You are a Survival and an Anomaly,” said Uncle Jim gravely.
“Oh, dear!” said Beth, pretending to sigh, appreciating these
formidable words as fun, even though she could not understand them.
“You are a Survival of our grandmother’s day, and consequently an
Anomaly in modern Gotham,” explained Uncle Jim, without letting light
upon the subject. “Don’t you like grape fruit, little S. and A.?”
“It is a little bitter,” said Beth trying to keep from shuddering as
she spoke.
“It is like adversity, has a certain bitterness, yet sweet are its
uses. Riggs, take Miss Elizabeth’s fruit and pass her Master Dirk’s
jam. Dirk doesn’t like grape fruit either, Beth,” said this gay uncle,
whose boyishly breezy manner was a delightful surprise in a full-grown
man.
“Is that all of Dirk’s name, Uncle Jim? It--isn’t it a New York way of
saying Dick?” asked Beth.
“No, indeed!” cried Uncle Jim. “That is a Dutch name. Don’t you know,
my dear, that we are of Holland Dutch descent, and are immensely proud
of it?”
“We are? Oh, you mean--yes, I see! My mother was. The Bristeads are
Massachusetts people, Aunt Rebecca says. She says a Bristead marched
out with the Lexington men, on the 19th of April, 1775. Aunt Rebecca
says he played the fife all the way to the fight and then fought like
fifty,” said Beth proudly.
“You mean like fifety,” said Alys. “Don’t give us history at breakfast,
Beth.”
“I advise you to take history wherever you can get it; you need it,”
said Natalie.
Beth finished her breakfast in silence. She dimly felt a little snubbed
by Alys; besides the rose room was so jewel-like in its beauty that she
was glad to enjoy it while her uncle and aunt discussed plans in which
she did not know that she had an interest, but which concerned her
closely.
“Now for the day’s work!” said Natalie when she arose from the table.
“You haven’t seen the schoolroom, have you, Beth?”
“I haven’t seen lots of the house,” said Beth.
“That’s so; we’ll show it to you! Not this afternoon, because Alys
and I are going to start you as a dancer to-day. To-morrow is dancing
class day, and I’m going to have you know a little about it before
you see all the girls. But the next day--that will be Sunday?--after
church, then, we’ll take you all over this house. Now come up with us
and show us what a learned person you are, Elizabeth Bristead. They say
all Massachusetts children speak Greek just as naturally as they wear
spectacles. But you don’t wear spectacles, do you?” Natalie stooped to
look close into Beth’s eyes as if to make sure that this surprising
fact were really true.
Beth laughed. Natalie’s mixture of big girl kindliness with perfect
friendliness was winning Beth’s affection fast; it was not a hard thing
to do, for Beth was as inclined to love as a heliotrope is inclined to
the warmth of the sun.
She slipped her hand confidingly into her oldest cousin’s and they
preceded Alys up-stairs. Dirk lingered to prove how easily he could
overtake the girls two steps at a time. Beth knew that he had
succeeded, because Alys screamed and sat down on her feet to protect
her ankles from his energetic pinching. Dirk stood in awe of his
father, but once safe from his eye Dirk lost few opportunities of
making Alys’s life a burden. He was planning like pleasures in Beth’s
case, whose gentle, shy and sweet manner promised her an easy victim.
“What a schoolroom!” cried Beth stopping short. “Why, I never saw such
a schoolroom. There’s nothing in our school at home like it! Is it all
for you alone?”
“No, it’s for you too, this winter,” laughed Natalie.
It was a large room, square and sunny. Its burlaped walls were covered
with copies of famous pictures and casts from glorious sculptures.
Tables, and four desks, chairs, globes, instruments which Beth did not
understand, all these the little girl saw in her first amazed look
around the room. A bookcase full of books of all sizes, that looked
as if they might also be of all sorts, filled one end of this magic
schoolroom’s great width.
“No wonder you speak French,” murmured Beth.
“Don’t you?” asked Alys.
“Not a single word,” said Beth slowly and impressively. “Do you use all
these things?” she added.
“We draw from the casts, and we use the instruments in our chemistry
and astronomy, and that is our own school library,” said Alys, “and
our piano. You see we have special teachers for various branches, and
lessons in certain things on certain days.”
“And we learn riding and swimming and gymnastics out of school, and
that’s the best of it,” said Dirk. “To-day we’ve got to have history
and literature, and writing compositions--that’s all one woman----”
“He means the teacher,” interrupted Alys. “But Miss Deland is a lady,
not a woman.”
“And it’s the worst of the lot,” Dirk concluded.
The “lady who was not a woman” arriving at that moment cut off further
explanations. Beth saw a girl with a clear, strong face and the busy
air of kindly preoccupation that meant that Miss Deland was a student
who loved her work.
“This is the little cousin whom you expected?” she said at once. “How
do you do, my dear?”
“Very well, thank you,” said Beth faintly, overcome by the depths of
ignorance which Miss Deland was about to discover in her.
Miss Deland lost no time. “Ready, Natalie, Alys, Dirk,” she said.
“And----”
“Beth Bristead,” Natalie said. “Beth may sit here, mayn’t she, Miss
Deland?”
She moved a chair near the window as she spoke, and pushed one of the
small tables in front of it.
Then the work began. To Beth’s relief there was no hint of any tongue
but her own. She listened for a while, and, listening, plucked up
heart. Natalie was reciting in English history. Beth could not have
repeated Natalie’s lesson, but it sounded half familiar to her. She did
not know it, but she was a fortunate child in having been given the
freedom of a library of English classics in Aunt Rebecca’s house, which
lacked so much of other, less important things.
Alys’s recitation was in United States history, and this Beth knew
thoroughly; she cheered up more and more as she saw that, though
she was going to be crushed by her lucky cousins’ accomplishments,
there would be studies in which she would not disgrace them. After
the three Cortlandts had recited Miss Deland set them to writing a
synopsis of what they had repeated. While this was doing she examined
Beth. When the examination was over Beth found herself before the
bookcase at the end of the room talking excitedly to Miss Deland about
the many favorite volumes she was finding on its shelves, with the
sudden conviction that private lessons with a governess was the most
delightful thing in the world, instead of the ordeal that she had
dreaded. The morning ended with a story which Miss Deland set each
of her four pupils to write, the subject being one that she herself
suggested. Beth was surprised to see Natalie and Alys struggling with
their task; Dirk wrote faster than either of his sisters. Beth, who
had written stories ever since she could remember, and who cherished
the hope of one day being a great author, finished her story first of
all. It was the one Miss Deland selected to read aloud, “because”--Miss
Deland actually said this!--“it was by far the best of the four.”
Beth went to lunch a happy Beth; it was hard to feel that her cousins
could speak French, draw, play, dance, ride, knew astronomy, chemistry
and nobody could say what else, and that she, Beth, could do nothing in
particular. She was properly glad to excel them in something.
“We are going to be excused from our exercise this afternoon, Beth,
to teach you to dance,” said Natalie. “We always go out after lunch,
but we aren’t going to-day. You see next week is Thanksgiving, and we
are going to give a dance. It is to introduce you to our friends. Of
course, dear, my friends are too old for you, and Alys’s are, too.
Dirk is nearest your age, but his friends are all boys. So we’re going
to ask our own set, just as usual, but we are going to invite their
younger brothers and sisters for you.”
“Please don’t, Natalie,” said Beth. “I shouldn’t know what to do with
them.”
“You don’t have to do anything with them,” said Alys. “We’re going to
give a dance. It’s going to be a fancy dress dance, all in Puritan, or
colonial costume, because it is Thanksgiving. It will be lots of fun.”
“I’m going to dress up as a turkey gobbler and scare you girls to
death,” said Dirk.
“You’d better go as a goose,” said Natalie.
“No, let him go as a gobbler, then he can have his neck wrung,” said
Alys sharply.
“I’ll be an Indian and scalp you!” shouted Dirk turning red with rage.
“I guess it would be more like you to be Miles Standish that took care
of the poor Pilgrims, because you are the only boy of this family,”
said Beth hastily, with her sweetest smile. Quarrels made her quite
sick and she threw herself into the breach to prevent this one. Dirk
stared at her. It was true that he tormented his sisters and was rather
a trial, but they had never tried coaxing him into better ways. They
considered him a nuisance and let him feel it; it was a new experience
to Dirk to find a girl implying that a noble part would become him.
“Yes, I guess I would! A lot I’d take care of ’em,” he muttered, but
his wrathy look subsided, and he glanced at Beth with an expression
that made her resolve to be friends with Dirk, awful as she had been
thinking him.
“Well,” Natalie resumed after this cloud had blown over, “you have only
till next Thursday to learn to dance, Beth. So come up-stairs and begin
this minute. You’ve simply got to two-step and waltz by then or you
won’t have any fun. You come up-stairs and Alys and I will take turns
playing and teaching you, and to-morrow you are going to dancing class
with us.”
Beth meekly obeyed. For the next two hours her cousins relentlessly put
her through vigorous dancing lessons in the schoolroom. At first she
could not move her feet, but having an ear for rhythm she did better
after a while, and by the time her teachers gave up for the day Beth
could dance a two-step, after a fashion. Dirk came in and rewarded Beth
for her kindness after lunch by offering to be her partner. Natalie and
Alys were so surprised that they could hardly believe their ears; Dirk
had never been known to do such a thing before in his ten years of life.
The next day was Saturday and in the morning the four children were to
go to dancing class.
“Why, Frieda, isn’t it a school?” cried Beth coming in from her bath to
see a froth of dainty things laid out on her bed, ready for her to put
on.
“It is, and it isn’t; you’ll see,” said Frieda. “Mrs. Cortlandt picked
out what you should wear.”
So Beth, still wondering, submitted to being dressed; everything that
Frieda put on was so beautiful that she soon began to be glad of any
excuse for wearing it. All in white Beth found that she was to be clad,
white stockings, white slippers, foamy white skirts, one above another,
and finally a white gown over them all, fine and simple, with only hem
and tucks to ornament it, but showing through its delicacy the deep
lace of her skirts. The only color about Beth was in her cheeks, her
dilated blue eyes, her flying golden hair, for this Frieda had crowned
with an immense white bow, the climax and queen of all preceding bows.
“Well, I look exactly, just exactly like the loveliest dressed girl in
Miss Tappan’s fashion books,” said Beth, surveying herself in a sort of
delirium. “I wish, I do wish that Janie Little could see me! But what
on earth do girls wear here at parties, Frieda?”
“Dancing class, where you meet all the young ladies you know, Miss
Beth, has to be dressed for much the same,” said Frieda. “This is only
what a quite young young lady like you must wear; just fine white
things.”
“Then do let me hurry to see Natalie and Alys,” cried Beth.
Frieda wrapped Beth in a long, loose cloak and she found Natalie and
Alys’s splendors similarly eclipsed when she came out and met them in
the hall. At the dancing school she forgot to notice what they wore,
but she saw that Alys had never before been so pretty, and Natalie was
as handsome as a tanager.
The room was full of girls, all so exquisite in tints of hair, eyes,
cheeks and clothes that Beth forgot her own white daintiness.
“It is only more fairy-land,” she thought. “Aunt Alida was right; she
had to make me a fairy, too, or they’d have driven me back to mortals.”
Natalie and Alys introduced Beth to girl after girl, brought boys to
her and introduced them also, and, worst of all, took Beth to ladies
who were sitting about the room and introduced her to them as their
cousin who was spending the winter with them.
Beth grew so confused that she hardly knew how to carry herself.
“I know you hate it, Bethie, but they are mama’s friends and she would
like it; besides, if there are any children’s parties this winter--and
there will be--you must be asked,” whispered Natalie. “Now you go into
the practice class for beginners, and when the time comes to dance Alys
and I will dance with you, to start you. Then you must accept every
invitation you get to dance; it’s polite and practice, too.”
Bewildered Beth found herself in a line with much smaller children
taking steps forward, back, to the right, to the left, following the
tireless motions of a small man who set the children example in front
of the line, gesticulating to mark time, and moving so lightly that
Beth wondered if he had the usual sort of feet.
The music to which the class danced was rendered by a beautiful
piano, violin and flute trio. After she grew accustomed to being where
she was, Beth began to hear it better, and, hearing it, she lost
consciousness of herself, and danced. The girls’ teaching had been
good; followed now by the winging effect of the entrancing music it
took Beth out of the awkwardness of beginning. When the line stopped
practice and the teacher gave the signal to dance Natalie and Alys flew
to Beth.
“We’re proud of you, Beth!” cried Natalie. “You’re going to make a
dancer! You quiet little mouse, who’d have thought you’d have done so
well!”
“I don’t know. Hurry up, Natalie, let me dance!” cried Beth with
sparkling eyes.
She danced and danced, not always well, because there were ever so
many dances that she did not know, but with an enjoyment that made her
partners forgive her mistakes. She never actually danced badly, because
her ear for rhythm carried her through.
Célie, who had come with the children, wrapped Beth up at last to go
home. She was flushed and trembling with delight; her white slippers
tapped the floor and she pranced to the music echoing in her brain.
“Oh, I was always sorry for Cinderella when the clock struck twelve,
but I never knew how awful it was for her! I don’t want to go home; I
want to dance and dance and dance!” she cried.
“You shall, but not all at once, Beth!” laughed Natalie. She found
herself growing as fond of this enthusiastic little cousin as if she
were Beth’s elder sister.
Beth lay back in the corner of the carriage, then sat upright, and
ended by tumbling over into Natalie’s lap as they drove home. The
November air was sharp, with the hint of snow in it, but it was June
and rosetime to Beth in that carriage.
“I’m so happy, Natalie!” she cried. “It’s so lovely in New York, you
can’t think unless you haven’t always been here! And it’s so nice to
drive in this dear carriage and look so pretty, and have all those
lovely other fairy girls dancing all around you! Isn’t it a queer thing
that fairy stories aren’t half as nice, not near half as nice as what
is true?”