“’TIS JUST LIKE A SUMMER BIRD CAGE IN A GARDEN”
“Are you girls always as good as this?” asked Mrs. Garden on the third
day after her arrival. Her tone expressed something akin to despair.
“Don’t you ever frolic, do anything young, perhaps something you ought
not to do? You’re like my grandmothers.”
Mary and Jane laughed, glancing at each other.
“We’re being good purposely, you know,” said Jane. “It isn’t an
accident.”
“Very likely Florimel is in mischief this minute,” Mary added
consolingly. “She’s always likely to be, and it’s a good while since
she has travelled off a walk.”
“How did you happen to name Mel that, madrina?” asked Jane. “Nobody
else has that name.”
“I thought it pretty. The Gardens named you two; it was my turn to name
a baby. _Flori_ has something to do with flowers, and _mel_
is Latin for honey, isn’t it? I thought it combined prettily with
Garden. It’s in Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen,’” Mrs. Garden replied.
“Spenser’s ‘Fairy Queen!’” Jane’s repetition expressed surprise.
“Oh, I never read it,” her mother cried hastily. “It’s far too long and
old-time English to read, but I found out Florimel was in that poem. I
always liked to feel that nice books were around me, and to hear them
alluded to, but nobody but a teacher of English literature, I should
fancy, would read Spenser.”
Mary tipped her head back and laughed with great enjoyment. “You’re
such a funny little personage, Mrs. Garden! You often say what other
people think, but don’t dare to say,” she cried.
“Oh, well, that’s one advantage in having a career all your own; one
doesn’t have to bother about what other people do. I was a singer and
entertainer; I never had to read books to talk about them, you see.
Lots of people read what they think they ought to read; I always read
exactly what I wanted to read, and let the rest go,” explained Mrs.
Garden frankly. “Don’t you know any young people? No girls come here,
no boys, except that nice young secretary of Mr. Moulton’s, whom you
say Florimel found along the wayside--like a flower! Are your friends
keeping away from me? Because I wish they wouldn’t! Of course I’ve been
having just the rest I needed since I came, but it might be--don’t
you think?--the least bit dull to go on forever this way. I remember
I found Vineclad overwhelmingly dull when I lived here. Aren’t there
any pleasant people who will call on me, older than you are, but not
so elderly, so _sedately_ elderly as Mr. and Mrs. Moulton?” Mrs.
Garden gave her daughters a glance like a naughty child venturing on
mild disrespect to her elders. More than ever the relation between
this mother and her children seemed to be reversed, as Mary received
the glance and its suggestion with precisely that anxious air of
helplessness so many mothers wear when their children threaten to prove
difficult.
“Why, yes, mother dear, there are a good many young people in Vineclad
who come to see us,” she replied. “They are letting us have you all
to ourselves at first, you know. We don’t know them as we should have
known them if Mr. Moulton had not been obliged to carry out father’s
ideas of education. Girls who are taught at home are a little
separated from the young people in school. But we see a good deal of
the Vineclad girls and boys. And you will have lots of callers, of
course, after people think you are ready for them. I don’t know whether
or not Vineclad is dull. I suppose it is, when you think about it and
have lived somewhere else. But there are lovely people here. Didn’t you
know some you liked twelve years ago? They’d be here now, I’m sure.”
“So am I sure of it! I fancy Vineclad people are rooted!” laughed her
mother.
“They used to call on me; perfectly nice creatures, but--Mary, they
used to want to teach me stitches and recipes because I was so young!
And that was precisely why stitches and recipes did not interest me!”
“I think I like them.” Mary looked apologetic.
“Because you are a little old lady! And I wasn’t--and am not!” cried
Mrs. Garden.
“I don’t like them, either!” cried Jane. “But Mary loves fun, madrina.
You see she hasn’t been thinking of anything but getting you well.”
“Surely I see,” returned Mrs. Garden, with the smile that always made
new applause burst forth when she acknowledged applause from her
audiences. “If you three little grandmothers of mine hadn’t so far
succeeded in getting me well, I suppose I should be quite content to
sun myself in the garden, like a lizard. But---- Yet it’s really very
charming here in this garden and house! When my boxes get here I shall
have no end of things to show you. You’ve no notion of the scrapbooks
I’m bringing, with my programmes and press notices in them, and I’m
afraid there’ll be so many photographs of me you’ll be impatient of
them. But one’s press agent demands constant sittings.”
“It must seem dreadfully dull, madrina,” said Mary, rising with a line
between her clouded eyes. “Only wait! I should think you could wake
Vineclad when you feel stronger. Perhaps it won’t be so hard on you by
and by. Poor little singing linnet! Much as I love to have you for my
own, I think I’m able to wish it had not happened. I can faintly guess
how hard it is to drop out of all that glory and come home to three
little crude daughters, whom you don’t know and who can’t entertain
you. Let me shake up that pillow!”
“You ought rather to shake me, sweet Mary!” cried her mother sincerely,
not deaf, in spite of her regret for what she had lost, to the pathos
in this dear girl’s voice, nor blind to the patient, self-forgetful
depth of her pitying love. “I’ll get on. It’s a great thing to find
you--each what you are.”
“Well, I know I’d feel like an uprooted plant from the king’s garden,
dying on a country stone wall, if I were in your place!” cried Jane,
with an explosion that amazed her mother.
“You are the most like me of the three, Janie,” she said. “But I was
never the little stick of dynamite that you are. I was merely a girl
that loved her own way of being happy and found it. I never cared
with the force you do; I liked and disliked quietly, and quietly
slipped through what I disliked and chose what I liked. I still like
pleasantness; it isn’t particularly pleasant to feel too strongly, I
fancy; I really never tried it. So I mean to enjoy rusting out here in
Vineclad with you--somehow! I haven’t found the way yet. Don’t look so
anxious, Mary sweetheart. How did they happen to call you Mary? You
are Martha, now, ‘troubled about many things.’ No, you’re not! You are
precisely what we mean when we say Mary!” Mrs. Garden lightly swayed
herself backward and tipped up her face to invite Mary to kiss her,
which she did, with heart as well as lips, feeling that this exotic
must blossom and brighten in their garden at any cost.
Later, in the pantry, Jane came upon Mary shaking the lettuce for lunch
out of its cold-water submersion. She looked up, as Jane came in, with
such a sober face that Jane shook her, lightly, much as she was shaking
the lettuce.
“You look like a frost-bitten Garden,” Jane declared, “and there’s no
sense!”
“Suppose we can’t keep her, Janie? If she’s unhappy we shall not want
to keep her,” Mary sighed, dropping a spoonful of mayonnaise on to the
lettuce as if she said: “Ashes to ashes.”
“I don’t think she’s so heartless, Mary,” said Jane, intending to
banish Mary’s anxiety by a shock, and certainly succeeding in shocking
her.
“Heartless! Oh, Jane!” Mary cried.
“What else would it be, if she didn’t care enough about her own
children to stay with them, when they were doing their best, too?”
maintained Jane.
“If we had been her own children all along it would be different,” Mary
suggested. “I’m afraid such young girls as we can’t make her happy.
There’s so much we have to replace.”
“I think we’re pretty nice,” said Jane honestly. “Lots of people
like girls young; the younger the better. Some people prefer babies,
even. Of course we are not companionable, like the people she’s been
with, nor entertaining that way, but I’d suppose we were interesting
in another way. Besides, we’re _hers_! There isn’t any sense in
trying to feel as if we were just little sugar gingerbread figures! We
think Florimel is so pretty we can’t do a thing, sometimes, but watch
her. And you like me, and laugh at my nonsense. And I _know_
you’re--Mary! Often I want to fly off and do things and see things
myself, but I know all the time I’d fly back to you fast enough! I
always know that and say that, even when I’m craziest. I guess nobody
could have you around, Mary Garden, and feel they had a right to you,
and give you up, my darling! So what’s the use of worrying too much
about our cute little toy mother? She’ll root in the garden!”
“You’re a queer mixture, my Janie,” said Mary, looking at Jane with
laughter and gratitude in her eyes. “Nobody would be expected to love
us as we love each other, you and I! Not that I mean that is part of
the queer mixture. But you’re as full of impossible schemes, and as
flighty as the wind, yet you’re really so sensible! More so than I am
and I seem----”
“The church steeple and I the weathercock!” cried Jane. “So you are,
so I am. But you’re afraid of hurting somebody’s feelings, if you go
to bed and think the truth in the dark, where nobody can see you, and
when everybody thinks you’re asleep! I’m not! I think it’s right to
see straight--then you’re pretty sure to stand by people, because you
haven’t anything to change your mind about. That cute little mother
ought to be crazy over such a girl as you are, Mary, and such a pretty,
clever thing as Mel----”
“And such a flame-warm, and flame-clever, and flame-beautiful daughter
as----”
“Get the fire extinguisher, Molly!” Jane interrupted. “You see, after
all, you do know that our cunning linnet ought to enjoy her young
birds in this garden! Though I’m sorrier than you can be for her to
have lost her voice. Somehow, I believe I know better than you do what
that is to her. Molly, did you ever think of it? You’re the reliable,
house-motherly little soul, and I’m the flighty Garden, yet I’m older
than you are, though I’m not sixteen, and you’re trotting right up to
your eighteenth bend in the road?”
Mary looked at her a moment, turning this statement over in her mind.
“You really are, in lots of ways. It’s that trick you have of knowing
what you don’t know at all,” said Mary, after that moment.
“Hurrah for Mistress Mary and her definitions! That’s called intuition,
Molly!” cried Jane.
To the amazement of both girls their mother came hurrying into the
dining-room. Her step was quick, her face flushed, her whole expression
and air alert as they had not yet seen it.
“Oh, girls,” she cried breathlessly, “where can Anne be? Do you think
you can do anything? There’s a boy in the garden in a frightful way! He
dashed in at the side gate and quite crumpled up before me! He’s wet
and besmeared with mud; I fancy he’s been rescued from drowning, or
some one has tried to drown him, and he barely made the garden, running
away! I can’t leave him there! Come, for pity’s sake! Oh, where are
Anne and Abbie? Why don’t we keep a man about all day?” She wrung her
hands frantically as she spoke.
Mary had dashed into the cold closet, back of the pantry, and brought
out a glass of brandy. She snatched up the bottle of household ammonia
that stood on the shelf beside the pantry sink, not to take time to go
after proper restorative ammonia. Jane had flown to the kitchen and had
wrenched Abbie from her steak at its critical moment, then had shrieked
Anne’s name until she had heard and had almost fallen downstairs,
recognizing the cry as announcing danger.
Mrs. Garden led the way, as light of foot and fleet as her children.
Mary and Jane followed and Anne behind them, not able to move as
quickly as the rest. A little in arrear of the other four lumbered
Abbie, whose joints were refractory, carrying a pail of water and a
glass, also a large palm leaf fan.
A short distance from the chair in which the girls had left their
mother lay a boy of childish build. A gray felt sombrero hat covered
his head; he was as wet and muddy as Mrs. Garden had described him,
but he was able to move for, as the rescue party came up, he rolled
over on his face, having been turned as if to get more air, and Jane’s
keen eyes saw him pull his hat tighter down over his head by the hand
farthest from them, slipped up to catch its broad brim. The lad wore
grayish knickerbockers and a loose flannel shirt that had been white,
but the mud with which he was generously decorated concealed its
original colour and barely revealed that his stockings were black and
his shoes old tan ones.
“Wait a minute,” said Jane, thinking that there was something familiar
in the boy’s drooping shoulders and build. She put out her hands to
check Mary, who, overflowing with sympathy, was hastening to lift the
lad and pour between his cold lips a little of the brandy which she
carried. “Wait a minute, Anne; let mother turn him over.”
Mary stopped, but looked at Jane, astonished. Anne gave her a sharp
glance.
“All right, Jane; I think maybe it would be better,” Anne said.
“Oh, I don’t want to touch him! I never could bear to do anything of
this sort!” shuddered Mrs. Garden.
She went up to the boy, nevertheless, and shrinkingly took him by the
two dryest spots that she could select on his shoulders and turned him.
He resisted her and made the turning unexpectedly hard, considering
that he had fallen as he lay when he had entered, as if his last drop
of strength had been drained. Pulling him over, Mrs. Garden fell back
with a cry.
“Florimel! Florimel, you little wretch! Whatever is wrong with you? Why
are you in such clothes?” she gasped.
Florimel lay on her back, the hot sunshine of noon streaming down on
her mischievous face. Her black hair, shaken loose by her movement,
tumbled about her from the sombrero covering it. Her eyes danced, her
red cheeks dimpled, and her teeth gleamed as she lay, laughing till
she could not speak, ripples and chuckles shaking her, the picture of
supreme enjoyment.
“You handsome imp!” cried her mother, as if she could not help it.
“You frightened me almost out of my life. I never dreamed it was you.
Whatever did you do it for?”
“That’s why: to scare you,” said Florimel, lying still, in no hurry to
get up, nor having much breath with which to do so. “I was watching you
this morning and I thought you looked dull; I thought, maybe, you’d
like to have something happen. Whenever we get to feeling that way it’s
up to Jane or me to start something. I knew Jane wouldn’t dare, not for
you, yet, so I did. Got these things down at Allie Ives’, her brother
Phil’s, you know.” Florimel turned her brilliant eyes on her sisters,
expecting them to recognize Phil Ives. “Allie and I muddied them
up--Mrs. Ives didn’t care, Phil’s outgrown them--and we turned the hose
on me; I never take cold, Anne knows it! Then I ran home, by the back
way, and tumbled in here! I thought it would scare you! It did, didn’t
it?” Florimel pleadingly asked her mother, desiring to hear again of
her complete success.
“Certainly it did, dreadfully.” Mrs. Garden’s tone was satisfactory to
Florimel.
“Didn’t any one see you coming home, Florimel? What would they think!”
“That’s all right, little motherkins,” cried Florimel, jumping up and
displaying her costume, with its muddy wetness, to such a ridiculous
effect that there was no scolding her, for it was funny. “I didn’t meet
any one but the Episcopalian minister, and he loves nonsense, and the
grocer’s boy, and he grinned; he loved it! And an old funny woman down
the street who is too nearsighted to see I wasn’t some boy--unless Chum
gave me away, but I guess she doesn’t know Chum! Anyhow, people all
know we’re the Garden girls, and Vineclad always looks up to Gardens,
so it doesn’t matter. Besides, they expect me to cut up; I always
do--and Mary never! It’s all right, mothery. Do you like me better as
a boy? I do. Why didn’t you let the baby be a boy, little mother? When
you had two girls, and she’d have loved so to have been one?”
“Did you actually do this because you wanted to entertain me?” asked
Mrs. Garden, looking as helpless as she felt, laughing, yet puzzled by
this prank.
“You and me,” said Florimel honestly. “I’d got tired of being so steady
ever since you came. I’m always getting into scrapes; I thought it was
time you got acquainted with the real me--not that this is a scrape!
But honest and true, I did think you looked as if it was time something
shook you up, little lady-mother.”
“I felt that,” Mrs. Garden acknowledged. “But, really, Florimel, I
hope you won’t feel obliged to go to extremes to enliven me! Oughtn’t
she get off those wet clothes, Mary; oughtn’t she, Anne? Do you really
think it won’t make her ill?”
“She’s proof against illness, or she’d have been buried ten years ago,”
said Anne. “She’s as healthy as a ragamuffin--which she looks like! Of
course you must go and dress, Florimel! Did you leave your frock at
Allie’s? Lunch is almost ready, too.”
“Oh, Jerusalem Halifax Goshen! My steak, my steak! You abominable,
desolating Florimel, if it’s burnt!” screamed Abbie, dropping her pail,
with the glass now floating on its surface, and ambling toward the
house, her big palm leaf fan making her look like a large insect with
one disabled wing.
“If Florimel sees that you need entertaining, I think we’d better give
a tea for you, and invite Vineclad to make your acquaintance, madrina,”
said Mary, offering her mother her arm for support from the garden to
the house after the shock of Florimel’s invasion.
Mrs. Garden slipped her hand into Mary’s arm and shook it delightedly.
“If only you would!” she cried. “I’ve been wishing you would, but I
didn’t like to suggest it. Why not a garden party? I have the loveliest
gown for it you ever saw in all your life, and a hat that shades my
face just enough! They told me it made me look less than twenty-five!
I wore it at home in England. But only once, girls; think of it! Do
give me a party! I never wore that delicious costume except to the
fête champêtre which dear Lady Hermione gave when Balindale came of
age. You know Lord Balindale is not yet twenty-two, and this was his
twenty-first birthday, last September. The gown isn’t in the least out
of style. How lovely you are, Mary, to have thought of this!”
Mary stopped short in their slow progress houseward. She looked at
her mother, and then at Jane aghast. “Oh, little mother,” she cried,
“what are we to do! Here you’ve been playing with countesses and having
coming-of-age parties, precisely like an English story, and we’ve
nothing in the least splendid to give you here! The greatest personages
in all Vineclad and its neighbourhood are Mrs. Dean, the widow of the
founder of the college; the various ministers’ wives, and the doctors’
and lawyers’ families, and the bank families; and a retired author, who
is really very nice, but doesn’t care to go out a great deal; and Mr.
and Mrs. Moulton! And is Lord Balindale an earl?”
“Certainly he is, but one doesn’t expect earls in a republic. Americans
are quite as nice in manners and as clever as titled people--provided
they are nice Americans--though, as a rule, their voices are not as
good! Of course one doesn’t expect much in a small country place! But
pray give the party, Mary! At least I can wear my gown, and it will be
something to think about!” begged Mrs. Garden.
“Of course, if you want it,” Mary hesitated, but Jane cried:
“That’s the idea; it will be an excuse for dressing up, and being nice
yourself! I always imagined parties were things to dress up for more
than they were to enjoy. All I ever went to were, anyway! We’ll have a
lovely garden party, little madrina, if only because you’ll be lovely
at it!”