Caroline, Miss Honey, and the General were taking the morning air.
Caroline walked ahead, her chin well up, her nose sniffing pleasurably
the unaccustomed asphalt, the fresh damp of the river, and the watered
bridle path. The starched ties at the back of her white pinafore fairly
took the breeze, as she swung along to the thrilling clangor of the
monster hurdy-gurdy. Miss Honey, urban and blasé, balanced herself with
dignity upon her long, boat-shaped roller-skates, and watched with
patronizing interest the mysterious jumping through complicated diagrams
chalked on the pavement by young persons with whom she was unacquainted.
The General sucked a clothespin meditatively: his eyes were fixed on
something beyond his immediate surroundings. Occasionally a ravishing
smile swept up from the dimples at his mouth to the yellow rings beneath
his cap frill; he flapped his hands, emitting soft, vague sounds. At
such times a wake of admiration bubbled behind him. Delia, who propelled
his carriage, pursed her lips consciously and affected not to hear the
enraptured comments of the women who passed them.
To the left the trees, set in a smooth green carpet, threw out tiny,
polished, early May leaves; graceful, white-coated children dotted the
long park. Beyond them the broad blue river twinkled in the sun, the
tugs and barges glided down, the yachts strained their white sails
against the purple bluffs of the Palisades. To the right towered the
long, unbroken rows of brick and stone; story on story of shining
windows, draped and muffled in silk and lace; flight after flight of
clean granite steps, polite, impersonal, hostile as the monuments in a
graveyard.
Immobile ladies glided by on the great pleasure drive, like large tinted
statues, dressed altogether as the colored pictures in fashion books,
holding white curly dogs in their curved arms; the coachmen in front of
them seemed carved in plum-colored broadcloth; only by watching the
grooms' eyelids could one ascertain that they were flesh and blood.
Young girls, two, three, and four, cantered by; their linen habits rose
and fell decorously, their hair was smooth. Mounted policemen, glorious
in buttons, breathing out authority, curvetted past, and everywhere and
always the chug-chug-chug of the gleaming, fierce-eyed motor cars filled
one's ears. They darted past, flaming scarlet, somber olive, and livid
white; a crouching, masked figure intent at the wheel, veiled, shapeless
women behind, a whir of dust to show where they had been a breath
before.
And everywhere, as far as the eye could reach, a thin stream of white
and pink and blue, a tumbling river of curls and caps and bare legs,
were the children. A babble of shrill cries, of chattering laughter, of
fretful screams, an undercurrent of remonstrance, of soothing patience,
of angry threatening, marked their slow progress up and down the walk.
To Caroline, fresh from untrammeled sporting through neighborly suburban
yards, this disciplined procession, under the escort of Delia and the
General, was fascinating to a degree. Far from resenting the authority
she would have scorned at home, she derived an intense satisfaction from
it, and pranced ostentatiously beside the perambulator, mimicking Miss
Honey's unconscious reference to a higher power in the matter of
suitable crossings and preferred playfellows with the absorbed gravity
of the artist.
"See! General, see the wobblybubble," Delia murmured affectionately.
"(Will you see that child turn his head just like a grown person? Did
you ever see anything as smart as that?) Did he like the red one best?
So does Delia. We'll come over here, and then you won't get the sun in
your precious eyes. Do you want me to push you frontwards, so you can
see me? Just wait till we get across, and I will. Look out, Miss Honey!
Take hold of your cousin's hand and run across together, now, like good
girls."
Miss Honey made an obedient snatch at Caroline's apron strings, and
darted forward with a long roll of her skates. The road was clear for a
block. Delia, with a quick glance to left and right, lowered the
perambulator to the road level and forged ahead. Caroline, nose in air,
studied the nearest policeman curiously.
"Look out, there! _Look out!_"
A man's voice like a pistol shot crashed behind them. Caroline heard
quick steps and a woman's scream, and looked up at a huge, blood-red
bulk that swooped around the corner and dashed forward. But Miss Honey's
hand was clutching her apron string, and Miss Honey's weight as she
fell, tangled in the skates, dragged her down. Caroline, toppling,
caught in one dizzy backward glance a vision of a face staring down on
her, white as chalk under a black mustache and staring goggles, and
another face, Delia's, white too, with eyes more strained and terrible
than the goggles themselves. One second that look swept her and Miss
Honey, and then, shifting, fell upon the General strapped securely into
his carriage. Even as Caroline caught her breath, he flew by her like an
arrow, his blue eyes round with surprise under a whirl of white parasol,
the wicker body of the perambulator swaying and lurching. With that
breath still in her nostrils, she was pushed violently against Miss
Honey, who was dragged over her from the other side by a large hairy
hand. A sharp blow from her boot heel struck Caroline's cheek, and she
screamed with the pain; but her cry was lost in the louder one that
echoed around her as the dust from the red monster blew in her eyes and
shut out Delia's figure, flat on the ground, one arm over her face as
the car rushed over.
"My God! She's down!" That was the man.
"Take his number!" a shrill voice pierced the growing confusion.
Caroline, crying with pain, was forced to her feet and stumbled along,
one apron string twisted fast in Miss Honey's hand.
"Here, get out o' this--don't let the children see anything! Let's get
home."
"No, wait a minute. Let's see if she's alive. Have they got the
ambulance?"
"Look out, there, Miss Dorothy, you just stop by me, or you'll be run
over, too!"
"See! She's moving her head! Maybe she's not----"
Sobbing with excitement, Caroline wrenched herself free from the tangle
of nurses and carriages, and pushed her way through the crowd. Against
the curb, puffing and grinding, stood the great red engine; on the front
seat a tall policeman sat; one woman in the back leaned over another,
limp against the high cushions, and fanned her with the stiff vizor of
her leather cap.
"It's all right, dear, it's all right," she repeated monotonously, with
set lips, "the doctor's coming. It's all right."
Caroline wriggled between two policemen, and made for a striped blue and
white skirt that lay motionless on the ground. Across the white apron
ran a broad, dirty smudge.
Caroline ran forward.
"Delia! Delia!" she gulped. "Is she--is she dead?"
A little man with eye-glasses looked up from where he knelt beside the
blue and white skirt.
"I don't believe so, my dear," he said briskly. "Is this your nurse?
See, she's opening her eyes now--speak to her gently."
As he shifted a leather-covered flask from one hand to the other,
Caroline saw a strange face with drawn, purplish lids where she had
always known two merry gray eyes, and tight thin lips she could not
believe Delia's. A nervous fear seized her, and she turned to run away;
but she remembered suddenly how kind Delia had been to her; how that
very morning--it seemed so long ago, now--Delia had helped her with her
stubby braids of hair, and chided Miss Honey for laughing at her
ignorance of the customs of the park. She gathered her courage together
and crouched down by the silent, terrifying figure.
"Hel--hello, Delia!" she began jerkily, wincing as the eyes opened and
stared stupidly at the ring of anxious faces. "How do you feel, Delia?"
"Lean down," said the little man softly, "she wants to say something."
Caroline leaned lower.
"General," Delia muttered, "where's General?"
The little man frowned.
"Do you know what she means?" he asked.
Caroline patted her bruised cheek.
"Of course I do," she said shortly. "That's the baby. Oh," as she
remembered, "where is the General?"
"Here--here's the baby," called some one. "Push over that carriage," and
a woman crowded through the ring with the General, pink and placid under
his parasol.
"Lift him out," said the little man, and as the woman fumbled at the
strap, he picked the baby out neatly and held him down by the girl on
the ground.
"Here's your baby, Delia," he said, with a kind roughness in his voice.
"Safe and sound--not a scratch! Can you sit up and take him?"
And then, while the standing crowd craned their necks, and even the
steady procession, moving in the way the police kept clear for them,
paused a moment to stare, while the little doctor held his breath and
the ambulance came clanging up the street, Delia sat up as straight as
the mounted policeman beside her and held out her arms.
[Illustration: "CAROLINE WALKED AHEAD, HER CHIN WELL UP, HER NOSE
SNIFFING PLEASURABLY THE UNACCUSTOMED ASPHALT"]
"General, oh, General!" she cried, and buried her face in his fat warm
neck.
The men coughed, the women's faces twisted, but the little doctor
watched her intently.
"Move your leg," he said sharply. "Now the other. Hurt you? Not at all?"
He turned to the young man in a white jacket, who had jumped from the
back of the ambulance.
"I thought so," he said. "Though it didn't seem possible. I saw the
thing go over her. Right over her apron--never touched her. Half an inch
more----"
"Please, is Miss--the other little girl--is she----"
This was Delia's old voice, and Caroline smiled happily at her.
"She's all right, Delia--here she is!"
Miss Honey limped across on one roller skate, pale, but conscious of her
dramatic value, and the crowd drew a long breath of relief.
"You are a very brave girl," said the doctor, helping Delia to her feet
and tucking the General, who alternately growled and cooed at his
clothespin, into the perambulator. "You have undoubtedly saved the lives
of all three of these children, and their parents will appreciate it,
you may be sure. The way you sent that baby wagon flying across the
street--well, any time you're out of a job, just come to me, that's all.
Dr. Gibbs, West Forty-ninth. Can you walk now? How far do you have to
go?"
The crowd had melted like smoke. Only the most curious and the idlest
lingered and watched the hysteria of the woman in the automobile, who
clutched her companion, weeping and laughing. The chauffeur sat stolid,
but Caroline's keen round eyes saw that he shook from the waist down
like a man in a chill.
"Yes, sir, I'm all right. It's not so very far." But Delia leaned on the
handle she pushed, and the chug-chug of the great car sent the blood out
of her cheeks. The little doctor frowned.
"Look here," he said, "I'll tell you what you'll do. You come down these
steps with me, there aren't but three of them, you see, and we'll just
step in here a moment. I don't know what house it is, but I guess it'll
be all right."
Before Delia could protest, he had pressed the button, and a man in
livery was opening the door.
"We've just escaped a nasty accident out here," said the little doctor
easily. "You were probably looking out of the window? Yes. Well, this
young woman is a sort of a patient of mine--Dr. Gibbs, West Forty-ninth
Street--and though she's very plucky and perfectly uninjured, I want her
to rest a moment in the hall here and have a drink of water, if your
mistress doesn't object. Just take this card up and explain the
circumstances and"--his hand went into his pocket a moment--"that's
about all. Sit down, my dear."
The man took in at a glance the neat uniform of the nurse, the General's
smart, if diminutive, apparel, and the unmistakable though somewhat
ruffled exterior of Miss Honey.
"Very well, sir," he said, politely, taking the card. "It will be all
right, sir, I'm sure. Thank you, sir. Sit down, please. It will be all
right. I will tell Madame Nicola."
"Well, well, so this is Madame Nicola's!" The little doctor looked
around him appreciatively, as the servant ran up the stairs.
"I wish I could stay with you, chickens, but I'm late for an appointment
as it is. I must rush along. Now, mind you, stay here half an hour,
Delia, and sit down. You're no trouble at all, and Madame Nicola knows
who I am--if she remembers. I sprayed her throat once, if I'm not
mistaken--she was on a tour, at Pittsburg. She'll take care of you." He
opened the door. "You're a good girl, you biggest one," he added,
nodding at Caroline. "You do as you're told. Good-bye."
[Illustration: "YOUNG GIRLS ... CANTERED BY; THEIR LINEN HABITS ROSE AND
FELL DECOROUSLY, THEIR HAIR WAS SMOOTH"]
The door shut, and Caroline, Miss Honey, and Delia looked at each other
in a daze. Tears filled Delia's eyes, but she controlled her voice and
only said huskily, "Come here, Miss Honey, and let me brush you off--you
look dreadful. Did it--were you--are you hurt, dear?"
"No, but you pushed me awful hard, Delia, and a nasty big man grabbed me
and tore my guimpe--see! I wish you'd told me what you were going to
do," began Miss Honey irritably.
"And you gave me a big kick--it was _me_ he grabbed--look at my cheek!"
Caroline's lips began to twitch; she felt hideously tired, suddenly.
"Children, children, don't quarrel. General, darling, _won't_ you sit
still, please? You hurt Delia's knees, and you feel so heavy. Oh, I wish
we were all home!"
The man in uniform came down the stairs. "Will you all step up, madame
says, and she has something for you up there. I'll take the baby," as
Delia's eyes measured the climb. "Lord, I won't drop her--I've got two
o' my own. 'Bout a year, isn't she?"
"He's a boy," panted Delia, as she rested her weight on the rail, "and
he's only eight months last week," with a proud smile at the General's
massive proportions.
"Well, he _is_ a buster, isn't he? Here is the nurse, madame, and the
children. The doctor has gone."
Caroline stretched her eyes wide and abandoned herself to a frank
inspection of her surroundings. For this she must be pardoned, for every
square inch of the dark, deep-colored room had been taken bodily from
Italian palaces of the most unimpeachable Renaissance variety. With
quick intuition, she immediately recognized a background for many a tale
of courts and kings hitherto unpictured to herself, and smiled with
pleasure at the Princess who advanced, most royally clad in long, pink,
lace-clouded draperies, to meet them.
"You are the brave nurse my maid told me about," said the Princess;
"she saw it all. You ought to be very proud of your quick wit. I have
some sherry for you, and you must lie down a little, and then I will
send you home."
Delia blushed and sank into a high carved chair, the General staring
curiously about him. "It wasn't anything at all," she said awkwardly;
"if I could have a drink----"
Caroline checked the Princess as she moved toward a wonderful colored
decanter with wee sparkling tumblers like curved bits of rainbow grouped
about it.
"Delia means a drink of water," she explained politely. "She only drinks
water--sometimes a little tea, but most usu'lly water."
"The sherry will do her more good, I think," the Princess returned,
noticing Caroline for the first time, apparently, her hand on the
decanter.
[Illustration: "THE STANDING CROWD CRANED THEIR NECKS, AS DELIA SAT UP
STRAIGHT AND HELD OUT HER ARMS"]
At this point Miss Honey descended from a throne of faded wine-colored
velvet, and addressed the Princess with her most impressive and
explanatory manner.
"It won't do you any good at all to pour that out," she began, with her
curious little air of delivering a set address, prepared in private some
time before, "and I'll tell you why. Delia knew a nurse once that drank
some beer, and the baby got burned, and she never would drink anything
if you gave her a million dollars. Besides, it makes her sick."
The Princess looked amused and turned to a maid who appeared at that
moment, with apron strings rivaling Caroline's.
"Get me a glass of water, please," she said, "and what may I give
you--milk, perhaps? I don't know very well what children drink."
"Thank you, we'd like some water, too," Miss Honey returned primly; "we
had some soda-water, strawberry, once to-day."
Caroline cocked her head to one side and tried to remember what the
lady's voice made her think of. Suddenly it came to her. It was not like
a person talking at all, it was like a person singing. Up and down her
voice traveled, loud and soft; it was quite pleasant to hear it.
"Do you feel better now? I am very glad. Bring in that reclining chair,
Ellis, from my room; these great seats are rather stiff," said the
Princess, and Delia, protesting, was made comfortable in a large curved
lounging basket, with the General, contentedly putting his clothespin
through its paces, in her arm.
"How old is it?" the Princess inquired after an interval of silence.
"He's eight months, madame, last week--eight months and ten days,
really."
"That's not very old, now, is it?" pursued the lady. "I suppose they
don't know very much, do they, so young?"
"Indeed he does, though," Delia protested. "You'll be surprised. Just
watch him, now. Look at Delia, darlin'; where's Delia?"
The General withdrew his lingering gaze from the clothespin, and turned
his blue eyes wonderingly up to her. The corners of his mouth trembled,
widened, his eyelids crinkled, and then he smiled delightfully, straight
into the eyes of the nurse, stretched up a wavering pink hand, and
patted her cheek. A soft, gurgling monosyllable, difficult of
classification but easy to interpret, escaped him.
The Princess smiled appreciatively, and moved with a stately, long step
toward them.
"That was very pretty," she said, but Delia did not hear her.
"My baby, my own baby!" she murmured with a shiver, and hiding her face
in the General's neck she sobbed aloud.
Miss Honey, shocked and embarrassed, twisted her feet nervously and
looked at the inlaid floor. Caroline shared these feelings, but though
she turned red, she spoke sturdily.
"I guess Delia feels bad," she suggested shyly, "when she thinks
about--about what happened, you know. She don't cry usu'lly."
[Illustration: "'I'VE GOT TWO O' MY OWN'"]
The Princess smiled again, this time directly at Caroline, who fairly
blinked in the radiance. With her long brown eyes still holding
Caroline's round ones, she patted Delia's shoulder kindly, and both
children saw her chin tremble.
The General, smothered in that sudden hug, whimpered a little and kicked
out wildly with his fat, white-stockinged legs. Seen from the rear he
had the appearance of a neat, if excited, package, unaccountably frilled
about with embroidered flannel. Delia straightened herself, dabbed
apologetically at her eyes, and coughed.
"It's bottle time," she announced in horror-stricken tones, consulting a
large nickel watch hanging from her belt, under the apron. "It's down in
the carriage. Could I have a little boiling water to heat it, if you
please?"
"Assuredly," said the Princess. "Ellis, will you get the--the bottle
from the baby's carriage and some boiling water, please. Do you mix it
here?"
"Mix--the food is all prepared, madam." Delia spoke with repressed
scorn. "I only want to heat it for him."
"Oh, in that case, Ellis, take it down and have it heated, or," as the
nurse half rose, "perhaps you would feel better about it if you attended
to it yourself?"
"Yes, I think I will go down if you don't mind--when persons aren't used
to 'em they're apt to be a little careless, and I wouldn't have it break
and him losing his three o'clock bottle, for the world. You know how it
is."
The Princess shook her head whimsically. "But surely you will leave the
baby," and she moved toward them again. "I will hold it," with a half
grimace at her own condescension. "It seems so very good and cheerful--I
thought they cried. Will it come to me?"
Delia loosened her arms, but tightened them again as the little creature
leaned forward to catch at the swinging lace on the lady's gown.
"I--I think I'll take baby with me. Thank you just the same, and he'll
go to any one--yes, indeed--but I feel sort of nervous, I think I'd
better take him. If anything should happen.... Wave your hand good-bye,
now, General!"
The General flapped his arms violently, and bestowed a toothless but
affectionate grin upon the wearer of the fascinating, swaying lace,
before he disappeared with the delighted Ellis in the van.
"And can you buy all that devotion for twenty, thirty, or is it forty
dollars a month, I wonder?" mused the Princess. "Dear me," she added,
petulantly. "It really makes one actually _want_ to hold it! It seems a
jolly little rat--they're not all like that, are they? They howl, I'm
sure."
Again Miss Honey took the floor.
"When babies are sick or you don't treat them right," she announced
didactically, "they cry, but not a well baby, Delia says. I"--with
conscious pride--"screamed night and day for two weeks!"
"Really!" observed the Princess. "That must have been--er--trying for
your family!"
"Worried to death!" Miss Honey rejoined airily, with such an adult
intonation that the Princess started.
"The General, he just laughs all the time," Caroline volunteered,
"unless you tease him," she added guiltily, "and then he squawks."
"Yes, indeed," Miss Honey bore witness, jealous of the lady's flashing
smile to Caroline, "my mother says I'm twice the trouble he is!"
The Princess laughed aloud. "You're all trouble enough, I can well
believe," she said carelessly, "though you particular three are
certainly amusing little duds--for an afternoon. But for a steady
diet--I'm afraid I'd get a bit tired of you, eh?"
She tapped their cheeks lightly with a cool, sweet-smelling finger. Miss
Honey smiled uncertainly, but Caroline edged away. There was something
about this beautiful tall lady she could not understand, something that
alternately attracted and repelled. She was grown up, certainly; her
skirts, her size, and her coiled hair proved that conclusively, and the
servants obeyed her without question. But what was it? She was not like
other grown-up people one knew. One moment she sparkled at you and the
next moment she forgot you. It was perfectly obvious that she wanted the
General only because Delia had not wanted to relinquish him, which was
not like grown people; it was like--yes, that was it: she was like a
little girl, herself, even though she was so tall and had such large red
and blue rings on her fingers.
Vaguely this rushed through Caroline's mind, and it was with an
unconscious air of patronage that she said, as one making allowances for
inexperience, "When you get married, then you'll _have_ to get tired of
them, you know."
"But you'll be glad you've got 'em, when they're once in bed," Miss
Honey added encouragingly. "My mother says I'm a real treasure to her,
after half-past seven!"
The Princess flushed; her straight dark eyebrows quivered and met for an
instant.
"But I _am_ married," she said.
There was an utter silence.
"I was married five years ago yesterday, as it happens," she went on,
"but it's not necessary to set up a day nursery, you know, under those
circumstances."
Still silence. Miss Honey studied the floor, and Caroline, after an
astonished stare at the Princess, directed her eyes from one tapestry to
another.
"I suppose you understand that, don't you?" demanded the Princess
sharply. She appeared unnecessarily irritated, and as a matter of fact
embarrassed her guests to such an extent that they were utterly unable
to relieve the stillness that oppressed them quite as much as herself.
The Princess uttered an angry exclamation and paced rapidly up and down
the room, looking more regal and more unlike other people than ever.
"For heaven's sake, say something, you little sillies!" she cried. "I
suppose you want me to lose my temper?"
Caroline gulped and Miss Honey examined her shoe-ties mutely.
Suddenly a well-known voice floated toward them.
"Was his nice bottle all ready? Wait a minute, only a minute now,
General, and Delia'll give it to you!"
The procession filed into the room, Delia and the General, Ellis
deferentially holding a tiny white coat, the man in livery bearing a
small copper saucepan in which he balanced a white bottle with some
difficulty. His face was full of anxious interest.
Delia thanked them both gravely, seated herself on the foot of the
basket-chair, arranged the General flat across her knees, and, amid the
excited silence of her audience, shook the bottle once or twice with the
air of an alchemist on the brink of an epoch-making discovery.
"Want it? Does Delia's baby want it?" she asked enticingly. The General
waved his arms and legs wildly; wreathed in smiles, he opened and shut
his mouth in quick alternation, chirping and clucking, as she held it up
before him; an ecstatic wriggling pervaded him, and he chuckled
unctuously. A moment later only his deep-drawn, nozzling breaths could
be heard in the room.
"He takes it beautiful," said Delia, in low tones, looking
confidentially at the Princess. "I didn't know but being in a strange
place might make a difference with him, but he's the best-baby!----"
She wiped his mouth when he had finished, and lifting him, still
horizontal, approached her hostess.
"You can hold him now," she said superbly, "but keep him flat for twenty
minutes, please. I'll go and take the bottle down, and get his carriage
ready. He'll be good. He'll take a little nap, most likely."
She laid him across the rose-colored lap of the Princess, who looked
curiously down on him, and offered him her finger tentatively. "I never
held one before," she explained. "I--I don't know." ... The General
smiled lazily and patted the finger, picking at the great sapphire.
"How soft its hands are," said the Princess. "They slip off, they are so
smooth! And how good--does it never cry?" This she said half to herself,
and Caroline and Miss Honey, knowing there was no need to answer her,
came and leaned against her knee unconsciously, and twinkled their
fingers at the baby.
"Hello, General! Hello!" they cried softly, and the General smiled
impartially at them and caressed the lady's finger.
The Princess stroked his cheek. "What a perfectly exquisite skin!" she
said, and bending over him, kissed him delicately.
"How good it smells--how--how different!" she murmured. "I thought
they--I thought they didn't."
Miss Honey had taken the lady's other hand, and was examining the square
ruby with a diamond on either side.
"My mother says that's the principal reason to have a baby," she
remarked, absorbed in the glittering thing. "You sprinkle 'em all over
with violet powder--just like doughnuts with sugar--and kiss 'em. Some
people think they get germs that way, but my mother says if she couldn't
kiss 'em she wouldn't have 'em!"
The Princess bent over the baby again.
"It's going to sleep here!" she said, half fearfully, with an inquiring
glance at the two. "Oughtn't one to rock it?"
Miss Honey shook her head severely. "Not General," she answered, "he
won't stand it. My mother tried again and again--could I take that blue
ring a minute? I'd be awful careful--but he wouldn't. He sits up and he
lies down, but he won't rock."
"I might sing to him," suggested the Princess, brushing a damp lock from
the General's warm forehead and slipping her ringless finger into his
curved fist carefully. "Would he like it?"
"No, he wouldn't," said Miss Honey bluntly, twisting the ring around her
finger. "He only likes two people to sing--Delia and my mother. Was that
ruby ring a 'ngagement ring?"
Caroline interfered diplomatically, "General would be very much
obliged," she explained politely, "except that my Aunt Deedee is a very
good singer indeed, and Uncle Joe says General's taste is ruined for
just common singing."
The Princess stared at her blankly.
"Oh, indeed!" she remarked. Then she smiled, again in that whimsical,
expressive way. "You don't think I could sing well enough for him--as
well as your mother?"
Miss Honey laughed carelessly. "My mother is a singer," she said, "a
real one. She used to sing in concerts--real ones. In theaters. Real
theaters, I mean," as the lady appeared to be still amused.
"If you know where the Waldorf Hotel is," Caroline interrupted, "she has
sung in that, and it was five dollars to get in. It was to send the poor
children to a Fresh Air Fund. It--it's not the same as you would
sing--or me," she added politely.
The lady arose suddenly and deposited the General, like a doll, with one
swift motion, in the basket-chair. Striding across the room she turned,
flushed and tall, and confronted the wondering children.
[Illustration: "'WHO--WHO--WHAT IS THE MEANING OF THIS?' HE WHISPERED
HOARSELY"]
"I will sing for you," she said haughtily, "and you can judge better!"
With a great sweep of her half bare arm, she brushed aside a portiére
and disappeared. A crashing chord rolled out from a piano behind the
curtains and ceased abruptly.
"What does your mother sing?" she demanded, not raising her voice, it
seemed, and yet they heard her as plainly as when they had leaned
against her knee.
"She sings, 'My Heart's Own Heart,'" Miss Honey called back defiantly.
"And it's printed on the song, 'To Madame Edith Holt'!" shrilled
Caroline.
The familiar prelude was played with a firm, elastic touch, the opening
chords struck, and a great, shining voice, masterful, like a golden
trumpet, filled the room. Caroline sat dumb; Miss Honey, instinctively
humming the prelude, got up from her foot-stool and followed the music,
unconscious that she walked. She had been privileged to hear more good
singing in her eight years than most people in twenty-four, had Miss
Honey, and she knew that this was no ordinary occasion. She did not know
she was listening to one of the greatest voices her country had ever
produced--perhaps in time to be known for the head of them all--but her
sensitive little soul swelled in her, and her childish jealousy was
drowned deep in that river of wonderful sound.
Higher and sweeter and higher yet climbed the melody; one last
triumphant leap, and it was over.
"_My heart--my heart--my heart's own heart!_"
The Princess stood before them in the echoes of her glory, her breath
quick, her eyes brilliant.
"Well?" she said, looking straight at Miss Honey, "do I sing as well as
your mother?"
Miss Honey clenched her fists and caught her breath. Her heart was
breaking, but she could not lie.
"You--you"--she motioned blindly to Caroline, and turned away.
"You sing better," Caroline began sullenly, but the lady pointed to Miss
Honey.
"No, you tell me," she insisted remorselessly.
Miss Honey faced her.
"You--you sing better than my m--mother," she gulped, "but I _love_ her
better, and she's nicer than you, and I don't love you at _all_!"
She buried her face in the red velvet throne, and sobbed aloud with
excitement and fatigue. Caroline ran to her: how could she have loved
that cruel woman? She cast an ugly look at the Princess as she went to
comfort Miss Honey, but the Princess was at the throne before her.
"Oh, I am abominable!" she cried. "I am too horrid to live! It wasn't
kind of me, _chérie_, and I love you for standing up for your mother.
There's no one to do as much for me, when _I'm_ down and out--no one!"
Sorrow swept over her flexible face like a veil, and seizing Miss Honey
in her strong, nervous arms, she wept on her shoulder.
Caroline, worn with the strain of the day, wept too, and even the
General, abandoned in the great chair, burst into a tiny warning wail.
Quick as thought the Princess was upon him, and had raised him against
her cheek.
"Hush, hush, don't cry--don't cry, little thing," she whispered, and
sank into one of the high carved chairs with him.
"No, no, I'll hold him," she protested, as Delia entered, her arms out.
"I'm going to sing to him. May I? He's sleepy."
Delia nodded indulgently. "For half an hour," she said, as one allowing
a great privilege, "and then we must go."
"What do you sing to him?" the Princess questioned humbly.
"I generally sing 'Flow Gently Sweet Afton,'" the nurse answered. "Do
you know it?"
"I think so," and the Princess began a sort of glorified humming, like a
great drowsy bee, all resonant and tremulous.
Flow gently, sweet Afton, among thy green braes,
Flow gently, I'll sing thee a song in thy praise.
Soft the great voice was, soft and widely flowing: to Caroline, who had
retreated to the further end of the music-room, so that Delia should not
see her tears, it seemed as if Delia herself, a wonderful new Delia,
were singing her, a baby again, to sleep. She felt soothed, cradled,
protected by that lapping sea of melody that drifted her off her
moorings, out of the room....
Vaguely she saw Miss Honey, relaxed on the red throne, smile in her
sleep, one arm falling over the broad seat. Was it in her dream that
some one in a blue and white apron--not Delia, for Delia was
singing--leaned back slowly in the long basket-chair and closed her
tired eyes? Who was it that held the General close in her arms, and
smiled as he patted her cheek at the familiar song, and mumbled her
fingers with happy, cooing noises?
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream,
Flow gently, sweet Afton, disturb not her dream!
The General's head was growing heavy, but he smiled confidingly into the
dark eyes above him and stretched himself out in full-fed, drowsy
content. One hand slipped through the lace under his cheek and rested on
the singer's soft breast. She started like a frightened woman, and her
voice broke.
Down in the hall the butler and the maid sat on the lower stair.
"Ain't it grand?" she whispered, and Haddock nodded dreamily.
"Mother used to sing us that in the old country," he said. "There was
Tom and 'Enry an' me--Lord, Lord!"
The General was asleep. Sometimes a tiny frown drew his eyebrows
together. Sometimes he clenched and uncurled his warm hands. Sometimes
he sucked softly at nothing with moist, reminiscent lips. But on and on,
over and over, rose and fell the quaint old song.
My Mary's asleep by thy murmuring stream!
It flooded the hushed house, it spread a net of dreams about the
listening people there and coaxed them back to childhood and a child's
protected sleep. It seemed a song that could not stop, that must return
on its simple refrain so long as there were arms to encircle and breasts
to lean upon.
Two men came softly up a smaller stair than the grand entrance flight,
and paused in amazement at sight of Caroline stretched full length
across the threshold. The older and smaller of the men had in fact
stepped on her, and confused and half awake, she listened to his
apologies.
"Sh! sh!" he whispered excitedly, "not a vordt! not a vordt! Mein Gott!
but it is marvelous! My friend, vot is this?"
He peeped behind the drawn curtains and withdrew a face of wonder.
"It is nodding but children--and they sleep!" he hissed. "Oh, but
listen, listen! And I offered her fifteen hundert dollars for two hours
only of that!"
The other man peeped behind the curtains in his turn, and seizing
Caroline by the arm tiptoed with her to a farther room.
"What--who--what is the meaning of this?" he whispered hoarsely. "That
child--where----"
Caroline rubbed her eyes. The golden voice rose and fell around her.
"General--Delia," she muttered, and stumbled against him. He lifted her
limp little body and laid it gently on a leather sofa.
"Another time," he said softly to the other man, "I--we cannot talk with
you now. Will you excuse us?"
The man looked longingly at the curtains.
"She will never do more well than that. Never!" he hissed. "Oh, my
friend, hear it grow soft! Yes, yes, I am going."
It seemed to Caroline that in a dream some one with a red face and
glasses askew shook her by the shoulder and said to her sternly, "Sh!
sh! Listen to me. To-day you hear a great artist--hey? Vill you forget
it? I must go because they do not vant me, but you vill stay and listen.
There is here no such voice. Velvet! Honey! Sh! sh!" and he went the way
of dreams.
The man who stayed looked long through the curtains.
As a swing droops slow and slower, as the ripples fade from a stone
thrown in the stream, the song of the Princess softened and crooned and
hushed. Now it was a rich breath, a resonant thread.