“AND ADD TO THESE RETIRED LEISURE, THAT IN TRIM GARDENS TAKES HIS
PLEASURE.”
Mary and Win were walking slowly over to Mr. and Mrs. Moulton’s,
discussing the coming party with immense seriousness, at least on
Mary’s part. Win could not be induced to regard it as of as much
importance as she did.
“Mary,” he said, “it’s precisely here: you give a party; you do your
best to make it a pleasant party, to both sides, hosts and invited; you
either succeed, or you don’t--most likely you neither quite succeed
nor quite fail. And when the next full moon comes around it won’t make
tuppence worth of difference how it came out. That’s the way I look at
it, and it’s the right way to look at it, not because it’s my way, but
because it _is_! This won’t be different from all other Vineclad
parties.”
“Mercy, yes, it will!” cried Mary. “Mother hasn’t been at the others.”
“Not since you remember parties, nor I, for that matter, but she
has been here,” said Win. “She knows what to expect, and if Vineclad
doesn’t remember her, all the better for Vineclad. It ought to be
an interesting party to the town, because it has her to wonder over
beforehand, and to see at the time. Your guests are sure to enjoy it.
Whether Lynette does, what she’ll think of it, I don’t know.”
“But I can guess,” sighed Mary. Then they both laughed.
“Mary’s come to be braced up, Mrs. Moulton,” announced Win, when they
had been greeted by both Mr. and Mrs. Moulton, and after Mark Walpole,
with a shining, joyous face, had brought for Mary the low chair she
liked, and placed it beside her guardian.
“It’s pleasanter within to-night, my dear,” Mrs. Moulton said. “I think
there’s a heavy dew. What is wrong, child, that you need bracing?”
“Nothing wrong, Mrs. Moulton, and I need encouraging, not really
bracing; that’s Win’s exaggeration. I--we’ve got to give a party.”
“Dear me, why?” asked Mr. Moulton. “Are you coming out, Mary?”
“No, sir; never, I imagine,” said Mary. “I’m out, or I never shall be
out; I don’t know which it is. We children were born knowing everybody
in old Vineclad, so there’s no society for us to be introduced to;
we’ve been asked to places with you ever since we could walk. But
mother is getting restless; she needs amusing. We have to give a party,
a tea--no, a garden party; to get her introduced to her neighbours.”
“I see! Why should that afflict you, Mistress Mary?” asked Mr. Moulton.
“Everything is so turned about!” cried Mary. “We’ve got to invite
people to meet our mother. Who ever heard of girls doing that? And--do
you suppose we can make it a nice party? And isn’t it ridiculous for
us to ask people? Yet mother doesn’t want to, because no one has yet
called on her--except you, and you are our own! Wouldn’t it be better
if you sent out the invitations, Mrs. Moulton?”
“I invite people to your house to meet your mother, my dear? Hardly!
Send your invitations and don’t worry. I see you are afraid that
Vineclad society may bore your mother. There is a consolation in
Vineclad, as there is almost always a good side to a drawback! If
Vineclad is dull it is because it is so small and old-fashioned, and,
for that very reason, it will not misunderstand you, nor be critical
of the peculiarities of your party. I think you may safely count upon a
pleasant afternoon, my dear,” Mrs. Moulton reassured her.
“Mother has a beautiful gown for a garden party, which she wants to
wear. She has worn it but once, to Lord Balindale’s coming-of-age
celebration, in England. He’s an earl, Mrs. Moulton! And for the second
time she is to wear it here. Doesn’t it sound rather awful?” Mary asked.
“I haven’t heard a description of it, Mary,” said Mrs. Moulton dryly.
“I doubt that your mother would have an awful gown. Of course you
can’t mean that you are overpowered by its having been worn on a
superior occasion? No good American admits superior occasions--at
least not titled superiors. And, if it came to that, my child, the
original Garden bore a title and renounced it, when he came here, for
conscientious reasons. Doesn’t that offset the incense of past glories
which that gown may waft?”
“Yes, it does. I knew that about the first Garden, but I haven’t
thought of it for a long time,” laughed Mary. “To tell the truth, it
isn’t the earl’s party in itself that worries me: it’s only that I do
so want mother to be happy here!”
“Surely, dear,” said Mr. Moulton gently. “Your mother is easily won by
kindness. After she has fluttered a while, restlessly, she will settle
down in our blest Garden spot. She is more of a child than any one of
her children, I think.”
“So do I!” cried Mary. “I would never think of going to her with
bothers, as I do to you. We all feel that we must protect her, even
that witch of a Florimel feels it. Then you think our party will be all
right, and I may go on and make out the list of invitations? Will you
help me with that, Mrs. Moulton? I think we ought not to ask a few,
as I thought at first. I think it would be right to ask everybody we
know, not just our own set; then mother will really be introduced to
Vineclad.”
“Please hand me my fountain pen and a pad, Mark,” Mrs. Moulton answered
Mary indirectly. “We’ll make out our list this instant.”
For an hour they worked on this task, Mr. Moulton and Win throwing in
suggestions which Mark saw were absurd, although he did not know any of
the people discussed, because the elder and the younger man twinkled
at each other in making them, Mary laughed at them, and Mrs. Moulton
passed them over with dignified contempt.
“That is seventy-five names, Mrs. Moulton,” Mary announced, adding up
the three pages of the pad. “Some of these people won’t come, but most
of them will. Isn’t that a large party? Jane and I counted up a third
of those in the first place.”
“Either you must make it small, keep it within the circle which the
Garden family has always moved among, or else you must include every
one set down here,” said Mrs. Moulton. “Since you are to do this, Mary,
I advise making it what the Old Campaigner, in the Newcomes, called ‘an
omnium gatherum.’”
“With a caterer?” asked Mary.
“No. With cakes ordered from Mrs. Mills and ice cream and thin homemade
sandwiches and your own coffee, tea, and chocolate. Abbie and Anne can
manage it. I’ll lend you Violet; she is unsurpassed in cooking; her
coffee is indescribable. But you know that. And you know she is like
all of her race, ready to do anything for any one she likes, though
quite unreconcilable to those whom she does not fancy. And you know
she calls you: ‘Dem Gyarden blossums!’ Vineclad would be inclined to
resent a caterer. What are you three to wear?” Mrs. Moulton ended with
a look of suspicion at Mary.
Mary proved that the suspicion was just by the dismay that overspread
her face. Then she laughed.
“Never thought of it; not once!” she cried. “But we have something that
will do. A white dress is best, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know as to that, but you have not ‘something that will do!’”
said Mrs. Moulton firmly. “You are to send for something perfectly new,
and perfectly suitable. You must live up to the gown that appeared at
the earl’s majority celebration. White for you, demure Mary, but I
think pale sea green for Jane, and rose colour for Florimel. I shall
write to New York in the morning to have gowns sent up on approval; I
have an account at Oldfellow’s. I intend to see that you are properly
apparelled for this introductory festivity.”
“Althea, I am not sure that I shall approve your teaching Mary to be
vain,” interposed Mr. Moulton.
“Austin,” his wife retorted, “if nature is not strong enough to make a
girl of seventeen vain, I shall be quite harmless. I suppose I should
dislike vanity in our girl, but I sometimes feel that I should like to
make her know that she was worth considering.”
“Oh, dear Mrs. Moulton!” Mary protested, rosy red from her throat to
her soft brown hair. “No fear of my forgetting Mary Garden.”
“I see her alluded to in the papers rather often,” said Mr. Moulton. “I
saw to-day that she was singing in London.”
“Poor real Mary Garden!” sighed Mary, pityingly, as she arose to go.
“She has to be used so much to tease me!”
“The party’s all arranged, is it?” asked Win, also rising.
“No, indeed; it’s only arranged to be arranged!” cried Mary, looking
around the grave room with the affection she always gave it.
It was a high-ceiled room, with arched door-ways, white wainscoting,
an ample unadorned fireplace; soft green, patternless paper on the
walls making an effective background for excellent pictures, and its
furniture was plain and solid, square in outlines, upholstered in dark
brocade.
“This room always looks to me as if it had never let anything that was
not good come into it, at least not to stay in it,” she said.
“That is true,” Mrs. Moulton confirmed her, adding with a look of
profound admiration at her husband: “Mr. Moulton’s father built this
house and they say Austin is his father over again.”
“I’ll walk with them, if you are not going to close the house for a
while, Mrs. Moulton,” said Mark, offering Mary the little scarf which
had slipped from her arm to the floor. There was a look in his eyes,
as his hand lightly brushed Mary’s shoulder, laying the scarf over it,
that sent the colour flushing to Mrs. Moulton’s brow, it so surprised
her.
“I’m sure I don’t know what I should say to that!” she exclaimed. Then,
as Mark looked at her in blank amazement, she recalled herself. “Of
course, walk over with them, Mark; we are not going to bed for an hour
or so,” she added.
“They’re awfully good to me, Mary and Win,” said Mark, as they went
along the street made silent by Vineclad’s early bedtime habits. “Mr.
Moulton is trusting me more and more with important bits of his work,
and they both are treating me as if they considered me something
besides a snip of a boy whom they were paying. I’m having a fine time
with them and the botanical work I wanted to do but never expected to
be able to touch.”
“Gets better every day, doesn’t it?” cried Mary, raising her face to
his, glowing with pure joy over this fortunate state of things.
“Every day lovelier than the last!” declared Mark, looking into Mary’s
unclouded, unsuspicious eyes. And Win silently received the impression
which, a little earlier, had startled Mrs. Moulton, but of which Mary
was as unconscious as a crystal is of the rainbow colours playing
through it.
In the succeeding days after this call the hours sped rapidly, filled
with the absorbing topic of the garden party and its business. The
invitations were sent out and all but six of them were accepted. The
gowns sent up from New York by the famous house of Oldfellow proved
to be deliriously attractive. Mary did not hesitate a moment, but
seized upon a soft white gown, so simple in its lines, so exquisite in
material, design, and workmanship, with its only trimming real lace
upon its clinging round neck and sleeves, that it seemed to have been
designed expressly for this girl, whose sweetness was of a type that
forbade ornate decoration. Jane could not decide between a pale green
gown and a pale golden one, either of which made of her brilliant,
delicate beauty a jewel perfectly set. The golden gown won the day
at last and in it Jane’s red-gold tints of hair and eyes became the
attributes of a sun-maiden. Florimel was offered no choice of colour,
only of design in various rose pinks. Above each one she glowed like a
living rose. The frock they all voted for her to wear was the palest of
them all, a shell-like rose colour, floating over its own shade.
Mrs. Garden was in ecstasy; she gained in strength on each of these
happy days. “I don’t care what the party is like, I’m having such fun
now!” she truthfully declared.
Mrs. Mills, whose cakes were the correct supplement to one’s own
kitchen limitations in Vineclad, sparing the housekeeper the
mortification of having recourse to a professional caterer, made the
best examples of her skill for the Garden garden party. Ice cream might
be ordered from the nearest large town; Vineclad did not disapprove
of buying ice cream, so for this party it was ordered from abroad.
But this did not release the Garden kitchen from weighty obligations
and achievements. It was supplemented by Violet, Mrs. Moulton’s most
competent and blackest of cooks, to whom the preparation of the coffee
was securely entrusted. Twelve young girls, from the nearby industrial
school orphanage, were engaged to serve the guests. They were to be
dressed alike, in white waists and skirts, and Mrs. Garden pronounced
their effect “refreshing among the garden foliage and blossoms.”
Jane dressed her mother’s hair, relieved to know that her picturesque
hat would more than conceal any deficiency in her maid’s skill. The
gown which had but once before appeared in public, and then in an
august and distant place, was revealed for the first time to the girls;
Mrs. Garden had refused them a glimpse of it before the day. It was of
white lace, skirt, waist, and coat, lined with white silk, yet touched,
with a French artist’s skill, with exactly the correct effective amount
of a wonderful red, like the heart of a rare rose. Roses of the same
shade lay, as if they had fallen, on one side of the lace on the hat,
and the same marvellous colour lined the lace parasol, that added the
last touch of perfection to the costume.
“Didn’t that young earl, Lord Balindale, die on his twenty-first
birthday? I’d expect that dress and all to be the end of him,” said
Florimel, regarding her mother literally with open mouth and eyes.
“Nice, isn’t it?” said Mrs. Garden, much gratified by the effect of her
magnificence. “No, he survived, Florimel. There were other gowns there
that day which might easily have been as fatal as this one. Do you
suppose all Vineclad will perish off the earth? We’ve asked most of it
here.”
“Well, there’s one thing sure, it never in all its Vineclad life saw
anything like you, Mrs. Lynette Garden, who-can’t-possibly-be-our-mother!”
declared Jane.
“Some of our guests will adore you, and some of them will detest you;
your gown is too magnificent for a small place like Vineclad to stop
halfway,” said Mary, displaying her understanding of small places. “Of
course our own friends will be in raptures over you,” she added, seeing
her mother’s face cloud.
A carpet rug had been spread at one end of the lawn side of the garden;
on this Mrs. Garden, her daughters, and Mrs. Moulton were to stand to
receive the guests. The invitations had run “from five to nine.” This
allowed the heat of the day to be over when the first guests came, and
it gave three hours of sunset light to show the beauty of the scene at
its best, and one hour in which the Japanese lanterns, hung from tree
to tree throughout the great garden, might burn to transform it into
fairyland for the close of the garden festival. It was funny to see
the arrival of the guests. Vineclad held certain families, like the
Moultons and the Gardens themselves, which for generations had been
accustomed to the best society, at home and abroad; but the majority of
its citizens were the average small-town type, upright, good people,
refined in taste and principles, ambitious to grasp opportunity as it
was offered to them, but wholly inexperienced in the ways and standards
of a larger, better-equipped world.
When these women, in their “best dresses,” eloquent of the home use of
paper patterns, secure, most of them, in being silk, decorated with a
fichu of machine-made lace, came up to greet the Garden girls and be
presented to the princess who looked scarcely older than they, and yet
was introduced to them as “my mother,” their faces were a study. The
struggle between diffidence, pride, and amazement was so easily read
that Mrs. Garden grew younger every instant, finding herself once more
taking part in a play, and the rôle assigned to her far from easy.
But Florimel, with her overflowing fun, Mary, with her sweetness and
tact, beloved as she was by the entire community, high and low, threw
themselves into the task of entertaining, and were seconded by some of
their girl friends and some older ones, and most of all by Win, who
knew precisely how to set everybody at ease and to make them forget
themselves in a laugh. Jane never could be at her best in a crowd, so
she stayed at her post beside her mother, leaving the entertaining to
the others.
The people whom Mrs. Garden had known when she had lived her brief
married life in Vineclad came later than the others and instantly Mrs.
Garden renewed her slight acquaintance with them, chatting and laughing
so prettily that they were enchanted with her. Jane, close at her
elbow, made mental notes of how to be a social success.
The refreshments were delicious, the young waitresses served them
deftly, Anne and Abbie directing them, and to their boundless relief,
the Garden girls saw that all their guests were, at last, having a
thoroughly good time. Win and Mark commanded a selected force of young
men, or big boys, as one liked better to regard them, and lighted
the lanterns when the last radiance of the beautiful June afterglow
faded away. Ray by ray the myriad little lights began to gleam over
the garden, made more vast, and transformed into mystery, by the deep
shadows waving between these stationary fireflies, swinging with their
particoloured shapes in all directions. The guests knew that they were
expected to go, but still lingered, entranced by the beauty of the
scene which the sunset had made lovely beyond words, but which the
lanterns now, beneath the stars, revealed in a new and more fascinating
beauty.
“If only I could sing! Can’t you start them singing, Jane?” whispered
Mrs. Garden.
Always ready to sing, Jane raised her voice, and from all over the
great garden the chorus joined her, till at last, realizing that they
were exceeding the time limit of their invitations by almost an hour,
the guests sang the good-night song: “Good-night, Ladies,” and melted
away.
With one of her characteristic changes of mood the tears ran down Mrs.
Garden’s cheeks in the shadow of the tree against which she leaned, and
fell on her glorious gown. She could no longer sing; she was so tired;
she had had a happy time; the garden was full of sweet odours, brought
out by the night; it was all wonderful, mysterious, lovely--and she
could no longer sing! Mary, quick to see every movement of her new,
absorbing charge, noted the droop of her body and went to her, slipping
both arms around her mother’s slender waist.
“Had a nice time, little madrina? Tired?” she asked.
“I’ve enjoyed it a great deal better than I thought I should, I’ve had
a nice time, really, Mary. And I’m launched in Vineclad society!” said
Mrs. Garden, with a nervous laugh that to Mary’s true ear held in it
the suggestion of a sob.
“You’re tired, dearest,” said this mother-daughter. “Say good-night to
Mr. and Mrs. Moulton--they’re still here--and come to bed.”