AN ANGEL IN DISGUISE
"IT'S rather worse to be ill with nothing the matter than to be
sensibly ill of a disease," said poor Mrs. Scollard speaking feebly,
but with an attempt at her own cheerfulness.
She had been ill for three weeks, and had not improved perceptibly
over her condition in the beginning. "Only a nervous collapse," the
doctor repeated. It had been so long coming on that the recovery must
be proportionately long. And how could she get better with the thought
that when her strength had given out, the family income had ceased
sitting like a vulture at her bedside? Small as was the rent of the
"Patty-Pans," still it must be paid. A month was as long as she could
be idle, yet that month was nearly past, and she was no better.
Margery, Bob and Happie for the first time realized what a vitally real
thing money is, and vainly strove to find a way to take their mother's
place as the bread-winners. They understood only too clearly that there
was no chance for that dear mother to get well while she lay in the
second Patty-Pan room with anxiety tearing at her heart-strings.
Ralph and Snigs and their fine mother were comforts in those black
days, but it was on Miss Bradbury that the Scollards found themselves
relying with hourly increasing appreciation of her strength. That
remarkable woman had not suggested returning to her home, but nightly
occupied the parlor couch in the Patty-Pans, and daily took charge of
its sorrowful tenants. Delicacies such as Margery would not have dared
to buy found their way to Mrs. Scollard, and Margery discovered when
she went to market that there were no out-standing accounts such as she
had been dreading with the neighboring tradesmen; Miss Keren-happuch
paid as she went out of her own purse, which the Scollard girls had
always believed to be not over-abounding.
"Over-doing in work is not likely to lead to under-doing a breakdown,"
Miss Bradbury replied to Mrs. Scollard's remark. "Nature is an
excellent accountant, and knows how to collect her dues. I think I
should be satisfied with what ails you, if I were you, Charlotte."
She altered the position of Mrs. Scollard's pillows and smoothed
them with a touch singularly gentle in such an energetic person, and
beckoned Margery to follow her into the dining-room. Laura sat here
in an attitude of despair, her feet stuck straight out before her
indifferently to the size of the room, her arms hanging over the back
of her chair. Bob and Happie were trying to occupy themselves with the
lessons which their mother would have required had she been well,
and serene little Polly sat rocking her doll, she the more sleepy
of the two, though the doll's eyes did droop with the motion of the
rocking-chair.
Miss Bradbury took the chair which Polly had occupied when the little
girl yielded it up on her entrance, and gathered Polly into her lap,
who in turn still held Phyllis Lovelocks tight.
"Now, my dears," began Miss Keren-happuch in her businesslike way that
covered so much tenderness, "you all look dreadfully worried. You must
not; your mother will get well after she gets to the country."
"Why, Aunt Keren!" exclaimed Happie reproachfully. "When you know she
can't even afford to stay in the city!"
"Which is the reason that she is going to my farm, that, and the fact
that she must have fresh air and quiet," said Miss Keren-happuch.
"Your farm!" exclaimed all the children together.
"Yes; in Pennsylvania," said Miss Bradbury calmly. "I have never seen
it, and I doubt strongly that I shall be particularly pleased with the
sight. But a farm it is, of some seventy acres, up in the mountains,
and there is where we are going in two weeks."
"We don't understand," cried Bob, after he had exchanged excited and
bewildered glances with the others.
"There is nothing more to understand," declared Miss Bradbury. "Polly,
your doll's arm will break off if you don't turn it around. Your
mother must rest, there is no money to provide that rest, I must go to
the country somewhere, so instead of boarding this summer, I am going
to open that house of mine, which I have never seen, and you children
are going to keep house for your mother and me indefinitely. It's not
in the least difficult nor mysterious."
"You trump!" cried Bob with an enthusiasm that prevented any suspicion
of disrespect.
"I heard a boy say lately that he would not live in the country for
anything," observed Miss Bradbury with her twinkle.
"But to save his mother, and when he didn't know how he could live
anywhere!" cried Bob.
"You dear, dear, blessed Aunt Keren!" cried Happie, throwing herself
upon her adopted relative with an abandon which, under ordinary
circumstances that lady would have disapproved.
"There, there! I suppose it is a relief," she said patting Happie's
back. "But I warn you that it will not be at all attractive, probably.
I took it for a debt, and my debtor said afterwards, so I am told, that
it was cheaper to give it to me than to keep it. I suspect that he
pretended not to be able to pay me in money in order to get rid of this
farm. So you may be prepared for going into the wilderness. However, it
will be a wilderness of pure air and great altitude, and we can exist
somehow. It will undoubtedly build up poor Charlotte."
"I am going to like it," Happie declared. "I learned to like tomatoes,
and I thought that in all this world I could never taste them a second
time. And I love olives now, but when I first tried one, I really had
to rush away from the table. So I am going to love that farm no matter
what it is. How could we help loving a place that cured motherkins?"
"Aunt Keren, you are an angel in disguise," announced Laura solemnly.
"I must admit the disguise," retorted Miss Bradbury. "Now, children, I
want you to get ready to go out of town in two weeks from now. Can you
do it?"
"Yes, but we have a lease of the Patty-Pans; we shall have to sub-let
it," said Margery, with the tiny anxious line appearing in her forehead.
"Furnished," supplemented Miss Bradbury. "I shall send up all the
furniture necessary. There is some furniture there; I don't know how
much, nor how good."
"Nobody has told you what we think of your giving up your comfortable
summer in the White Mountains and down in Maine, without a care, and
going up to this farm in order to cure dear mother, and to help us,"
said Margery, with a quiver in her voice.
"Nonsense!" cried Miss Keren-happuch briskly. "Every landed proprietor
should look after his estate. It is high time that I saw mine. I shall
enjoy the novelty of the situation. For the rest, Margaret, I have a
very real affection for your mother, and a profound respect for the way
that she has fought her good fight for you orphaned children. There
is more than you know in my feeling for Charlotte; your grandmother
and I were not ordinary friends. I should not do less than my best for
her daughter, even if I were not as fond of her as I am. So there is
nothing more to be said on that head."
"We will call the farm 'the Ark,'" said Happie. "It will be our refuge
in this flood of affliction."
"It's not a particularly original name, Hapsie," remarked Bob. "I think
lots of houses have been called the Ark, but it fits this case to a T.
I don't suppose there's any doubt that we should not have had a place
in which to lay our heads if it had not been for Aunt Keren and her
farm."
A knocking at the dumb waiter door warned the Scollards that Ralph
and Snigs wanted to be admitted; they had adopted this substitute for
the bell not to disturb Mrs. Scollard. Polly slipped down from Miss
Bradbury's lap and ran to open the door to them.
"Boys, what do you think?" cried Happie the moment they entered. "We
are going away!"
The Gordons had known all the troubles, the anxieties that threatened
to engulf their neighbors, and had shared their despondency over a
prospect that held no hope. They stopped short, looking hardly less
excited than the family group.
"What do you mean?" Ralph cried.
"Going away with blessed Aunt Keren to a farm she owns in
Pennsylvania," Happie said. "It will save mother's life--and you
know what else it will do, Ralph. We are going to try to sub-let the
Patty-Pans furnished, so it won't be good-bye forever to you."
"And my mother wants to find another flat!" cried Snigs, getting very
red in the effort to speak fast enough. "There are some college boys
from the South want to stay in New York all summer. She wants to rent
another flat and take them with her. She was saying to-night she might
move if she could not get one in this house. Mayn't we have yours?"
"Now, did you ever in all your life?" demanded Happie of the world at
large. And the world at large, in the person of Margery, Bob and Laura,
replied that it never did! Even Miss Bradbury seemed elated over this
remarkable coincidence of need and supply on both sides.
"Come on over and tell mother about it!" said Snigs, seizing Bob's arm,
and gesticulating wildly to Margery and Happie, while plunging towards
the door as if he feared the escape of the Patty-Pans or of his mother,
unless they were at once permanently secured to each other.
"Go, if you like," Miss Bradbury supplemented. "I think I will unfold
my plan to your mother this moment. The rule is not to talk to a
nervous invalid at night, but I suspect that she is more sleepless now
from worry than she will be from excitement over a prospect which,
though not brilliant, at least holds a solution of her troubles."
The oldest Scollards having departed with and to their neighbors, Miss
Keren-happuch went into their mother's room, and seated herself on the
edge of the bed with an air of such resolution that the sick woman
humorously wondered whether she had come to amputate or to execute.
"You are to be deported, Charlotte," she announced decidedly.
"Deported? Why and whence?" asked Mrs. Scollard.
"For precisely the same reason that the authorities always
deport--because you are not fit to stay," replied Miss Bradbury. "We
are going to spend the summer on my Pennsylvania farm, your family and
myself."
"I didn't know you had a farm," gasped Mrs. Scollard, catching at the
first thing that occurred to her to say, overwhelmed with the magnitude
of the announcement.
"Neither did I, fully, until to-day," said Miss Bradbury. "I have never
seen it, but I believe it will shelter us. As soon as you are able to
move we are going, and our return is most indefinite. You are going to
sub-let the Patty-Pans, furnished, and the girls are to keep house for
us while we enjoy ourselves without a care upon our minds."
"Dear, dear Miss Keren!" sobbed Mrs. Scollard with the ready tears of
nervous prostration. "How good you are! But do you think I could let
you take my place, and support all my family for several months?"
"Nonsense, Charlotte! I shall save money. My summers cost me not less
than three hundred dollars always, junketing around from hotel to
hotel, from the seashore to the mountains. We won't spend three hundred
dollars up there, not all of us put together, if I know anything about
an isolated farm. And I really ought to look after my property. What
do I get out of the sort of summers I usually spend? Weariness and
vexation of spirit! Dress three times a day, not a solitary spot that
isn't humming with summer voices! When I want to sit down and hear
the waves, or to read, I have to hear a lot of empty-headed women
telling one another about their servants' misdeeds, or how the tailor
spoiled a coat, or--worst of all--how seriously they doubt the wisdom
of speaking to some of the other women, one of whom is too quiet to
be a desirable acquaintance, and the other too gay to know! And all
the long golden summer days they sit on the piazza and make hideous,
useless things out of pretty materials! It is nothing to regret that I
may spend one summer on my own probably worthless estate, in dignified
seclusion. Whether or not, we are going. I did not come to consult you,
but to announce it. So go to sleep. For half a year you are to have a
vacation where, at the worst, you will be two thousand feet above tide
water, and must get strong, knowing the children are safe, and you are
secure, breathing good air, even if there is little else to live on.
Go to sleep, Charlotte, and stop worrying, because I want you to get
strong enough to go at once. Since I have remembered my farm, I am all
youthful impatience to see it."
Good Miss Keren-happuch arose with a jerk, intending to stalk out of
the room, but Mrs. Scollard sprang up and caught her around the neck.
"You dear, you dear! I can't thank you!" she sobbed.
"I don't remember suggesting that you should," said Miss Keren gruffly.
But the kiss with which she laid her old friend's daughter back upon
the pillow was very tender.
* * * * *
Mrs. Gordon was delighted with the opportunity to take the Patty-Pans
and its furniture; it fitted her plans to obtain it quite as well as it
worked for the Scollards to have her assume it. Before any one had time
to realize what had happened, energetic Miss Bradbury had set Margery
and Happie at their preparations for departure, and going away had
become a definite fact.
It seemed a little formidable to the three eldest children, now that
the plan had taken on definiteness. Mrs. Scollard was about again,
proving that if one can find the way to minister to a mind diseased,
strength attends on such ministration, but she was still so weak and
pale that Margery could hardly look at her without tears. She tried
hard to be brave, but she dreaded leaving behind her the only life that
she had known, to go away into an untried life among new surroundings.
More than any of the other children, Happie had a cat-like love of
place, and to her it was very hard to go away from New York with
uncertainty in her mind as to how or when she could return to it.
"I suppose I shall go around wailing and gnashing my teeth, Bob," she
confided to her brother. But Bob knew her, and her ability to make the
best of something that was not merely a bad bargain, but no bargain at
all.
"Not you, Hapsie!" he said. "You will find a dozen good reasons for
preferring that farm to any other spot on earth, no matter if it turns
out as bad as Martin Chuzzlewit's Eden."
"That's not a bad testimony to the fitness of your nickname, Happie,"
smiled Margery.
Laura openly gave way to grief, which she carefully fostered in
herself, for Laura loved the rôle of martyr as well as Happie loved to
be sunny.
It troubled Mrs. Scollard sorely to see Laura's sorrow until she
took to singing Schubert's "Adieu," as a suitable expression of her
woe, then her mother smiled at the sentimental little girl, justly
concluding that sentimental grief was not dangerously deep.
Jeunesse Dorée was to accompany his family as a matter of course,
though the old colored woman who came to clean for them held up her
hands in horror at the suggestion.
"You sholy won't have luck if you takes him," she groaned. "'Twan't
never reckoned right where I come fum to move a cat, and I just begs
an' prays you let him run. It's bad nuff ter see you goin', let 'lone
wif a cat."
"We think it would be very bad luck to be deprived of Dorée," smiled
Mrs. Scollard. "And surely, Amanda, some sort of punishment ought to
fall on those who would turn a petted creature into the street to
starvation and ill-treatment! I think I'd rather risk the effect of
taking him."
"Bob has bought a beautiful strong basket for him," said Happie
applauding her mother's sentiments with a bright smile as she went
through the Patty-Pans parlor.
She found Laura with Polly in the chamber which they shared, Polly
watching her elder with a face expressive of puzzled awe, tempered by
amusement. Penny was lost in the labor of packing the animals into a
large Noah's ark, and losing her patience with the bulk of elephants
and flies--which really did not differ materially--and with unruly legs
and horns which got continually entangled.
"Bob says," the mite was remarking, "we's all going to live in a nark,
an' for me to get you nanimals all back 'gain 'fore ve flood. If you
don't swallow you' horns, you foolsish mooly cow, you, I'll make you
sail on ve roof, and vhen you'll see!"
"Leave the ducks and geese out to swim, Penny mine, and you'll have
more room," suggested Happie. "Let Happie coax the cow to draw in her
horns. There, you see what good it does to pat her and to speak to her
gently? She's in. What are you doing, Laura?"
Laura looked up, raised her eyebrows, and sighed with her grown-up air,
but she did not answer.
"She says she's going to put all her pretty things in a box and mark it
for me when I'm twelve, going on thirteen," said Polly answering for
her. "She says she's sure she'll never live to use 'em. Now, isn't that
silly? Because farms are healthy, I thought!"
Happie laughed. "Oh, Laura," she cried, "how can you be such a goose? I
wouldn't count on getting those treasures if I were you, Polly. I think
Laura may live to use them."
Laura regarded Happie with serene superiority. "Grief often kills," she
said with the brevity of a tragic poet. "I'm sure I shall pine away. Do
you know what nostalgia means?"
Again Happie laughed out merrily. "No; do you?" she said.
"It means homesickness," replied Laura with crushing dignity. "I found
the word in a book of poetry and I looked it up, because I knew it must
mean something lovely and sad. I made a song without words about it;
it goes this way." And Laura hummed a line of music that was more minor
than any known key seemed able to represent.
"Isn't that perfectly be-au-ti-ful?" she demanded. "Doesn't that sound
just like nostalgia? That may be my last composition; it will be if
this move kills me, as I 'most know it will. Wouldn't you feel sure
that meant some one dying of homesickness if you heard it, and no one
told you?"
"What a queer thing you are, Laura!" exclaimed Happie, half
impressed, though she could never keep a respectfully straight face
over Laura's performances. "I can't tell whether it sounds like
nos--what-you-call-it or not, because I never heard the word before, so
I haven't had time to know it set to music, but I don't think I should
know that tune meant homesickness. It sounds to me like the wail of the
washerwoman who got too much blueing in the clothes--it's the bluest
thing I ever heard."
"You haven't one bit of--of anything in you, Happie," said Laura
turning away pettishly.
Bob came in, his arms full of half-discarded boyish treasures. "Say,
what do you think, Hap; will there be room for this stuff?" he
demanded. "I could give it up, but I'd just as lief keep it. You see it
won't be our house."
"Still there must be room for everything, since it's a farm, and we
have a freight car to ourselves. I'd keep it," said Happie with the
understanding she could not give Laura.
"I guess I asked you instead of Margery because I wanted that advice,
and I knew you'd give it--she thinks I clutter," said Bob. "Are you
going to take all your own Lares and Penates?"
"What it is to have a classical education!" exclaimed Happie in mock
admiration. "No; we are only going to take our Laura and Penelope."
And she swooped down to snatch a refreshing kiss from the pink and
white baby, and to rescue a particularly spotted dog from having his
exceedingly curled-up tail shut in the cover of the Noah's ark.
* * * * *
At last all the preparations were completed, the Patty-Pans flat was
shining and fleckless, everything in apple-pie order to be relinquished
to Mrs. Gordon's care. Ralph and Snigs were inconsolable over the
approaching parting until Miss Bradbury hinted her intention of asking
them to follow the exiles sometime during the summer, when they plucked
up heart and began to plan for meeting on the farm.
It was a cold, raw day in April, a day left over from March getting
used up in April, a most dreary and uncomfortable day on which to set
forth upon a journey with an invalid to migrate from the city to the
country, and to a house the comfort of which there was good reason to
doubt.
The Gordon boys went to the station and pressed upon their friends, in
parting, bulky packages of almost any possibilities. They shook hands
with emotion, and the Scollard party sank into its seats silently with
a suspicious redness about other lashes than Laura's, though everybody
made heroic efforts to appear cheerful, and not ungrateful for Miss
Bradbury's kindness. The only way to succeed in this effort was to keep
constantly in view the good that was to be done the dear mother.
The warmth of the train was welcome. Poor Mrs. Scollard sank into the
corner of her chair hardly able to endure the neuralgia which had added
itself to her weakness, glad of the friendly steam pipes.
The train pulled slowly out of the station, and steamed, with
increasing speed across the plains of Jersey towards the distant hills.
No one spoke for some time. Then Happie aroused herself. "I wonder if
the farm has good cherry-trees," she said.
Bob laughed. "Already, Happie?" he said. "I thought it would take
longer than this for even your barometer to indicate clearing."
Happie smiled a feeble smile. "I'm afraid I don't much care whether it
has or not," she said. "I just happened to think of it."
"Don't apologize," returned Bob. "It's a comfort to have you beginning
to sit up and take notice."
Jeunesse Dorée purred when one of the children peeped into his basket,
according to his cheerful habit of responding with a song to any notice.
After a time the landscape arose from the dull level of its beginnings
and began to put on beauty. The hills were showing their heads in the
distance, with blue vaporous lights playing over them in the pale
sunshine of the chill afternoon.
On they steamed, the grade perceptibly higher, until all the young
folk were looking out of the windows, enjoying the barren beauty of
the mountains in the early spring. Mrs. Scollard felt the benediction
of space and quiet, her throbbing nerves grew more still as her eyes
sought the horizon with the delight this beauty-loving woman always
found in nature.
Miss Bradbury sat preternaturally stiff and straight looking at the
scene, which was as new to her as to any of the others, with the
approval of a proprietor.
"It's pretty here!" cried Polly, as the train rounded a curve. As she
spoke the travelers felt its motion retard. It stopped, and the guard
called out: "Crestville!" They had arrived.