“SOMETHING BETWEEN A HINDRANCE AND A HELP”
Mary Garden woke with a start the next morning. Her room was filled
with the beautiful light that preceded the sun on a mid-June morning,
when the days are longest. She could not recall for a bewildered
instant what it was that made her feel such a sense of great
possession, such flooding joy. Then the chorussing birds in the garden
below aroused her more fully, and she knew!
“The first day!” she thought, sinking back into the pillows, and into
the birdsong and translucent air, feeling that all beauty flowed around
her and held her up, that she lay on great joy-filled hands which at
once gave to her and sustained her.
It was not yet four o’clock, so Mary gave herself up for a delicious
half-hour to turning over the wealth that had come to her; she felt
as one might whose hands were dripping with unset gems of the purest
water. It all lay before her--the setting, and learning, and enjoying
of this strange gift. In that brief time which she had spent with her
mother on her arrival Mary had seen that nothing which they knew of
ordinary mothers would help the Garden girls to acquaintance with their
own, neither in teaching them their duty toward her nor in enjoying
her. As she lay in thought, gradually Mary’s ecstasy in waking merged
into a graver sense of responsibility that reversed the relationship
of this new mother and her eldest daughter. Mary recalled her mother’s
pretty mannerisms, spontaneous yet trained; her dainty appointments,
her dependence, her appeal, as of one who had been accustomed to homage
and must have it.
“She has come home because she is cruelly wounded; we must remember
that every moment,” Mary thought, feeling her way. “She cared more for
her singing, her career, than for anything else--yes, _anything_
else!” Mary repeated this to herself sternly. “We can’t mean much to
her yet; she doesn’t know us. She will miss her old life dreadfully.
She will feel wretched when she remembers that she cannot sing now. We
must keep her from thinking of it, but it will rush over her at times,
in spite of all that we can do. I wonder how girls like us can keep her
company, not let her get lonely, yet not bore her to death? Really, it
is going to be hard--we must do our best!” Mary rebuked her thought for
taking a form that might be interpreted to mean that the task would be
hard to the girls: _hard_, not merely difficult. “We shall have a
great deal to do!” And Mary sprang up and began to dress rapidly, as
if to be ready to do. This morning she had expected to be first in the
garden, but, early as it was, Jane was already there when she came down.
“I couldn’t sleep, the birds sang so,” Jane explained.
“And our hearts sang so, Janie,” Mary added. “That is what wakened me,
though I never heard the birds sing as they did this morning, nor saw
such a sunrise. Do listen to that catbird! He’s just like a little gray
lead pipe, pouring out liquid song! Do hear how it bubbles and ripples!”
Jane tipped back her head till her long, delicate face was turned
skyward, and the mounting sun transformed her hair into a part of
himself, as if he were reflected in a golden shield.
“You know you can almost touch heaven when you’re so happy, and when
you’re unhappy it seems too far away to be real. Yet some one is always
happy, and some one else unhappy. If we could remember that, do you
suppose heaven would always seem near?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know; I suppose so, Janie. I’ve never been really unhappy,
never more than sad, or sorry when our pets die--though that’s bad
enough! We never had anything to bear that we ought to call sorrow. I’m
always happy,” said Mary.
“I know you are!” cried Jane. “I’m not. It doesn’t need sorrow to
make me sorrowful. Sometimes I get up in the morning feeling as if I
couldn’t stand it; nothing special--just stand _it_! I get as
blue! Then sometimes I could dance on the top of the river, I’m so
light-hearted! This morning it doesn’t seem as though the blue day
could come. This is different; I know what I’m glad about now. It feels
all warm and lasting.”
“I suppose--perhaps--we ought not to be unhappy over nothing,” said
Mary.
“It’s my hair,” said Jane. “Everything is my hair! Mrs. Moulton
says ups and downs are part of ‘the red-haired temperament.’ Your
temperament has brown hair, Molly darling, so you’ll have to dye me, if
you want to make me nice and steady-good.”
“I don’t want to make you anything that changes you, my Janie,” said
Mary. “And I didn’t mean to preach.”
“Preach all you want to, Sister Maria Serena; I don’t mind preaching
when people practise, too,” said Jane, pirouetting on the extreme tips
of her toes. “I came out to see if I could find the prettiest rose that
ever bloomed for mother’s plate at breakfast. I don’t like any of them
exactly. Do you think she ought to have a red, or a pink, or a white
one, Mary?”
“Pink,” said Mary instantly. “A long bud, just opening. One of us ought
to offer to help her dress; she’s used to a maid. Perhaps it would
better be you, Jane. You are cleverer with your fingers than I am.”
“I think I’d be afraid,” said Jane, nervously, actually turning a
little pale from the thought of not performing her task satisfactorily.
“But I’d love to.”
“Perhaps she wants to get up now, and is afraid of disturbing us,”
suggested Mary. “Shall we creep up to see if she is awake?”
The two girls crept up the stairs and listened at their mother’s door.
Mary’s shoulder jarred the knob and Mrs. Garden called out:
“Is some one there?”
Softly, as if she had not spoken and might be asleep, Mary opened the
door barely enough to admit, first Jane, then herself.
“Good morning, mother dear,” Mary said. “Have we kept you waiting? Did
you want to get up and go out in the garden before?”
“Before!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Angels and ministers of grace defend
us! You out and out little American aborigine! It can’t be much after
five o’clock, and you ask me if I have wanted to go into the garden
_earlier_?”
Mary looked so confused that Jane came to her rescue. “You see, mother,
we get up at this time in summer. It’s far lovelier in the garden now
even than at sunset, fresher, and the birds sing quite differently.
When we were little we used to play we were Adam and Eve, if we got up
in time; we called it our ‘new garden’ at this hour. We never thought
we could be Adam and Eve after breakfast.”
“I’ve no doubt, Jane. In any case, Adam and Eve were not in the garden
after they had eaten. But you see I’ve no desire to play at Adam and
Eve! I’ve not the least doubt that the garden is charming at dawn--but
you see, my dears, the dawn is not charming; at least not as alluring
as my comfortable bed. This is a remarkably comfortable bed, by the
way. What time do you imagine I rise, girls?” asked Mrs. Garden.
Mary shook her head. “It sounds as though you meant us to guess a
shocking hour, mother dear,” she said.
“Not nearly as shocking as five o’clock, Mary dear,” retorted her
mother. “At home I have tea and rolls in bed, and come down about noon.”
“Mercy! The day is just half gone then!” cried Jane.
“Not if one sings till nearly midnight and has supper after that, or
dances, or entertains her friends,” said Mrs. Garden. “Oh, my heart, my
heart! And now I sing no more! Girls, I can’t believe it! It is like a
horrid dream. I waken trying to sing, or else I waken, to cry and cry,
from a dream that I am singing again and the audience are clapping,
clapping me, crying: ‘Bravo, linnet!’ They called me ‘the linnet’
at home, because my name was Lynette, and they loved my singing.
Oh, me, oh, me!” She sank back with her face turned to her pillow;
her daughters saw her delicate body heave with sobs. Mary and Jane
exchanged looks of distress.
“I think I can understand how hard it is, mother,” Jane said, timidly
kneeling beside the bed and touching one slender shoulder. “But maybe
your voice will come back. Everything grows in our lovely garden! And
we mean to take such care of you! Won’t you get used to us, and think
it isn’t so very bad not to hear applause, when your three girls are
admiring you as hard as they can?” she whispered.
“And how would you like to get up this one morning and come out with
us, just to see the garden with the dew on it, and hear the birds?”
Mary pleaded, following Jane and stroking her mother’s hair with the
hand that had been endowed with beauty and a healing touch. “I think it
would make you feel as though nothing on earth mattered--for a while,
at least. And you should have coffee out there, and rolls, or tea, if
that’s what you like better. You’d love to be the birds’ audience this
time, little clever mother.”
Mrs. Garden turned and looked up at them with a quick movement and a
laugh, though tears wet her cheeks; it was like one of Jane’s swift
changes.
“What wheedlers! And what determination!” she cried. “Very well, then,
I’ll give in, and do the unheard-of: get up before six in the morning
and go outdoors! Only wait till I write my English friends what little
monsters I found over here, ready to drag me to torture! You two will
have to be my maids and help me dress. I’m the most helpless creature,
and you wouldn’t let me bring a maid over. I give you due notice: I’m
going to get one here!”
“You shall have three, mother, if you like! First try us, and see if
we can’t hook, and button, and brush you! We want to so dreadfully!”
cried Jane. “That would be three, counting Florimel, though that wasn’t
what I meant.” She dropped on her knees again, and began putting on her
mother’s stockings and shoes, while Mary busied herself with sorting
out the hairpins and small belongings on the dressing-table.
Both girls had become painfully shy and awkward, plainly trying to
conquer it and make their mother feel, what was true, that they
delighted in waiting upon her, but were too ill at ease to reveal their
pleasure. Mrs. Garden, on the contrary, grew merry and playful. She had
decided that the adventure of rising at what she called “the middle of
the night” was wholly funny, and she chattered and laughed throughout
her dressing, without a hint of her former sadness.
Florimel added herself to the other two “Abigails,” as Mrs. Garden
called her lady’s maids, and claimed for her share of the service her
mother’s pretty light-brown hair. “It’s awfully soft and fluffy,” said
Florimel admiringly. “Is it the shampoo?”
“Eggs, my dear,” said her mother. “The last maid I had would use
nothing else. You don’t imagine that’s why I get up with the
chickens--that the eggs have gone to my head, in another sense?”
“Perhaps you recited Chantecler; did you, mother?” suggested Mary. “You
did recite, as well as sing, didn’t you?”
“Oh, dear me, yes, but nothing of that sort! Child things. They say I
can speak like a little girl. And then I wore the most ravishing little
blue frock, and a captivating white pinafore. They say I actually
looked a child. I’ll do it for you some day. But what I love best to do
is imitations. I’ll do them all for you. My voice lets me recite for a
short time,” said Mrs. Garden eagerly.
“I should think, if it wasn’t strong--it sounds clear and full when you
talk--but if it got a little tired I’d think you would sound more like
a child than ever,” Jane said.
“What an understanding child you are, Janie!” her mother said, bringing
Jane’s quick colour to her cheeks. “Really, I think we four shall get
on quite nicely, don’t you? Only you don’t seem in the least like my
daughters. Over there I was treated like a girl, myself.”
“Of course,” said Florimel decidedly. “I think it’s more than likely we
shall treat you like a girl, too, when we get acquainted.”
“Now I’m ready. Dear me, don’t you wear gloves in the garden? Nor
garden hats? How frightful! Why, you’ll be like--what’s that little
song I used as an encore? ‘Three Little Chestnuts up from the Country?’
That’s it! You’ll be three little brown chestnuts by autumn. Let me
see your hands. Of course! Quite tanned, and it’s only June! You have
beautiful hands, Mary! I hadn’t noticed them. Jane’s are pretty,
slender, and graceful; Florimel’s are very well, but yours are
beautiful, Mary. I think I’ve never seen nicer hands.”
“Thank you, mother,” said Mary, hiding them in her sleeves. “I hope
they’ll be able to do things for you.”
“That’s precisely the sort they look to be, my dear,” returned her
mother. “Now, if you’re ready, children, we may as well go out and see
whether the early birds have caught the worms! Dear me, I hope they’ve
made away with the caterpillars! The worst of gardens is that while the
flowers are delightful, the insects are simply maddening.”
The girls received a new impression of the garden when their mother
came into it. To them it had always been their best-loved friend,
awaiting them, laden with gifts, if they neglected it, which rarely
happened. But Mrs. Garden did not regard it as wholly trustworthy.
She did not plunge carelessly into its welcome, as her children did.
Florimel was dispatched for a rug to guard her feet from dampness; Jane
was sent back to get a down cushion to ease and protect her shoulders;
Mary was set to testing currents of air, to determine where the least
draught blew. Altogether it suddenly was apparent to the girls that
going into the garden in the morning was not the simple thing they had
thought it. Yet this frail “English bit of motherwort,” as Mary called
her, was delighted with the garden, the birdsong, the sunshine, and the
fragrances, after she was made comfortable and safe.
Mary ran away to prepare coffee for her, Mrs. Garden having decided
“to become a real American,” she said, and break her fast with coffee,
foregoing tea. But Anne had forestalled Mary. She had ready a delicious
potful of the perfect coffee which was the pride of that household,
and a tray filled with silver cups and saucers, cream and sugar, snowy
rolls and golden butter, and another supplementary tray with a great
bubble of a cut glass bowl filled with late strawberries, and the small
translucent dishes in which to serve them.
“Oh, Anne, she must be happy here!” cried Mary, seeing these
preparations.
“Don’t worry, Mary; she will be. She’s like a child, easily disturbed,
easily pleased,” said Anne. “She hasn’t changed in the least. I knew
you’d have to have something of this sort. Run back, dear child, and
get out a small table and call Win down. Then I’ll have Abbie help me
with these trays.”
“Isn’t it lovely, Anne?” Mary exclaimed, flying on her errands.
Win needed no calling; he met Mary in the hall. “I’ll take this,
Molly,” he said, preventing her attempt to carry out an old-fashioned
work table, whose drop-leaves could be raised for extra space. “Why
are you carrying off the furniture? And why not get a van, if we’re
moving?”
“Breakfast in the garden, silly Win!” Mary panted. “Mother is out
there! She is liking it, I think.”
Win controlled his strong desire to suggest that she ought to like
it. He had a very young man’s intolerance of a dependent and petted
woman, and he resented his sister-in-law’s forsaking her little girls.
Nevertheless, he made himself an acquisition to this garden party in
the early morning, set up the table, brought chairs, helped with the
trays, while Jane and Florimel arranged a wreath of Bleeding Heart
around the table edge, and laid a rose at each place, and Mary stuck
a branch of fragrant “syringa,” the mock orange, in the back of each
chair.
Mrs. Garden grew animated and childishly happy watching these
preparations. “Isn’t it nice? Isn’t it delightful?” she repeated.
“Quite like a garden party. I think I shall love it here. I didn’t
remember it was so nice. But then I was only a girl and there were no
other girls with me. Now I have three girls and a fine gallant to keep
me company; that explains the difference. Couldn’t you possibly find a
little name for me that would be suitable, yet not so solemn as mother,
girls? Somehow I think I’ll never get used to being called mother.”
“And it’s so lovely!” Jane exclaimed before she thought, then could
have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. Instantly she felt that
this request summed up the situation: they must think of this pretty
creature as something else than mother, something that expressed their
protection for her, not implying dependence upon her.
“I’ve been thinking mother didn’t suit,” said Florimel, with her
usual candour. “Would Madrina do? Madre is mother, and ina is a
‘little’-whatever-it’s-put-to, isn’t it? That calls you our little
mother, like the sort of a toy mother you’ll be, I guess.”
“Toy mother! Oh, Florimel! But perhaps that’s what I am,” laughed Mrs.
Garden.
“Mother sounds less serious in French and Italian than it does in
German and English,” said Jane.
“Do you know languages, children?” asked Mrs. Garden.
“Not even one, though we can make ourselves understood in English,”
Mary said.
“I know a good deal of German and French, and Italian I really know
quite well. I must begin to read with you, regularly, this summer. I
don’t want to be only a hindrance to you girls; I want to be a help,
too,” Mrs. Garden said with a pretty appealing eagerness.
“No fear of that! And, anyway, aren’t people the best kind of help when
you can do for them? Let me give you these tremendous strawberries;
I’ve been picking out some bouncing ones for you,” Mary urged,
unconsciously illustrating the truth of the first part of her answer to
this “toy mother.”