THE HAPPY VENTURE
BY
EDITH BALLINGER PRICE
AUTHOR OF "BLUE MAGIC,"
"US AND THE BOTTLEMAN,"
"SILVER SHOAL LIGHT," ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
THE AUTHOR
Published in 1920, 1921, by The Century Co.
CONTENTS
I TALES IN THE RAIN
II HAVOC
III UP STAKES
IV THE FINE OLD FARMHOUSE
V THE WHEELS BEGIN TO TURN
VI THE OTHER SIDE OF THE HEDGE
VII A-MAYING
VIII WORK
IX FAME COMES COURTING
X VENTURES AND ADVENTURES
XI THE NINE GIFTS
XII "ROSES IN THE MOONLIGHT"
XIII "THE SEA IS A TYRANT"
XIV THE CELESTINE PLAYS HER PART
XV MARTIN!
XVI ANOTHER HOME-COMING
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"Now can you see it? _Now_?"
The Maestro sat down beside Kirk
The slack length of it flew suddenly aboard
"Phil--Phil!" Kirk was saying then
THE HAPPY VENTURE
CHAPTER I
[Illustration: "Now can you see it? _Now?_"]
TALES IN THE RAIN
"'How should I your true love know,
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon...'"
It was the fourth time that Felicia, at the piano, had begun the old
song. Kenelm uncurled his long legs, and sat up straight on the
window-seat.
"Why on earth so everlasting gloomy, Phil?" he said. "Isn't the rain bad
enough, without that dirge?"
"The sky's 'be-weeping' him, just the way it says," said Felicia. She
made one complete revolution on the piano-stool, and brought her strong
fingers down on the opening notes of another verse.
"'He is dead and gone, ladie,
He is dead and--'"
Kenelm sat down again in the window-seat.
He knew that Felicia was anxious about their
mother, and he himself shared her anxiety.
The queer code of fraternal secrecy made him
refrain from showing any sign of this to his
sister, however. He yawned a little, and said,
rather brusquely:
"This rain's messing up the frost pretty well. There shouldn't be much
left of it by now."
"Crocuses soon ..." Felicia murmured. She began humming to an almost
inaudible accompaniment on the piano:
"'Ring, ting, it is the merrie springtime....'"
The rain rolled dully down the clouded window-panes and spattered off
the English-ivy leaves below the sill. They quivered up and down on pale
stems--bright, waxed leaves, as shining as though they had been
varnished.
Kirk drifted in and made his way to Felicia.
"She's better," he observed. "She said she was glad we were having
fun." He frowned a little as he ran his finger reflectively down
Felicia's sleeve. "But she's bothered. She has think-lines in her
forehead. I felt 'em."
"You have a think-line in your own forehead," said Felicia, promptly
kissing it away. "Don't _you_ bother."
"Where's Ken?" Kirk demanded.
"In the window-seat."
Thither Kirk went, a tumble of expectancy, one hand before him and his
head back. He leaped squarely upon Ken, and made known his wishes at
once. They were very much what Kenelm expected.
"See me a story--a long one!"
"Oh, law!" Kenelm sighed; "you must think I'm made of 'em. Don't crawl
all over me; let me ponder for two halves of a shake."
Kirk subsided against his brother's arm, and a "think-line" now became
manifest on Kenelm's brow.
"See me a story"--Kirk's own queer phrase--had been the demand during
most of his eight years. It seemed as though he could never have enough
of this detail of a world visible to every one but himself. He must know
how everything looked--even the wind, which could certainly be _felt_,
and the rain, and the heat of the fire. From the descriptions he had
amassed through his unwearied questioning, he had pieced out for himself
a quaint little world of color and light,--how like or unlike the
actuality no one could possibly tell.
"Blue is a cool thing, like water, or ice clinking in your glass," he
would say, "and red's hot and sizzly, like the fire."
"Very true," his informants would agree; but for all that, they could
not be sure what his conception might be of the colors.
Things were so confusing! There, for instance, were tomatoes. They were
certainly very cool things, if you ate them sliced (when you were
allowed), yet you were told that they were as red as red could be! And
nothing could have been hotter than the blue tea-pot, when he picked it
up by its spout; but that, to be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the
_hot_ wasn't any color; oh, dear!
Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories for nothing. He plunged
in with little hesitation, and with a grand flourish.
"My tale is of kings, it is," he said; "ancient kings--Babylonian kings,
if you must know. It was thousands and thousands of years ago they
lived, and you'd never be able to imagine the wonderful cities they
built. They had hanging gardens that were----" Felicia interrupted.
"It's easy to tell where you got _this_ story. I happen to know where
your marker is in the Ancient History."
"Never you mind where I got it," Ken said. "I'm trying to describe a
hanging garden, which is more than you could do. As I was about to say,
the hanging gardens were built one above the other; they didn't really
hang at all. They sat on big stone arches, and the topmost one was so
high that it stuck up over the city walls, which were quite high enough
to begin with. The tallest kinds of trees grew in the gardens; not just
flowers, but big palm-trees and oleanders and citron-trees, and
pomegranates hung off the branches all ready to be picked,--dark greeny,
purpley pomegranates all bursting open so that their bright red seeds
showed like live coals (do you think I'm getting this out of the history
book, Phil?), and they were _this_-shaped--" he drew a pomegranate on
the back of Kirk's hand--"with a sprout of leaves at the top. And there
were citrons--like those you chop up in fruit-cake--and grapes and
roses. The queen could sit in the bottomest garden, or walk up to the
toppest one by a lot of stone steps. She had a slave-person who went
around behind her with a pea-cock-feathery fan, all green and gold and
beautiful; and he waved the fan over her to keep her cool. Meanwhile,
the king would be coming in at one of the gates of the city. They were
huge, enormous brass gates, and they shone like the sun, bright, and the
sun winked on the king's golden chariot, too, and on the soldiers'
spears.
"He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, and was very much pleased
because he'd killed a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid
man,--quite ferocious, and all,--but he wore most wonderful purple and
red embroidered clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He had a tiara
on, and golden crescents and rosettes blazed all over him, and he wore a
mystic, sacred ornament on his chest, round and covered all over with
queer emblems. He rode past the temple, where the walls were painted in
different colors, one for each of the planets and such, because the
Babylonish people worshipped those--orange for Jupiter, and blue for
Mercury, and silver for the moon. And the king got out of his chariot
and climbed up to where the queen was waiting for him in the toppest
gar--"
"Don't you tell me they were so domestic and all," Felicia objected.
"They probably--"
"Who's seeing this story?" Ken retorted. "You let me be. I say, the
queen was waiting for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe
pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, and the people with harps
played them, and she said--Here's Mother!"
Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment at this apparently irrelevant
remark of the Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the doorway told
him that it was his own mother who had come in.
She stood at the door, a slight, tired little person, dressed in one of
the black gowns she had worn ever since the children's father had died.
"Don't stop, Ken," she smiled. "What did she say?"
But either invention flagged, or self-consciousness intervened, for
Kenelm said:
"Blessed if I know what she _did_ say! But at any rate, you'll agree
that it was quite a garden, Kirky. I'll also bet a hat that you haven't
done your lesson for to-morrow. It's not _your_ Easter vacation, if it
is ours. Miss Bolton will hop you."
"Think of doing silly reading-book things, after hearing all that," Kirk
sighed.
"Suppose you had to do cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the
Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking
out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here,
laziness."
Kirk sighed again, a tremendous, pathetic sigh, designed to rouse
sympathy in the breasts of his hearers. It roused none, and he wandered
across the room and dragged an enormous book out upon the floor. He
sprawled over it in a dim corner, his eyes apparently studying the
fireplace, and his fingers following across the page the raised dots
which spelled his morrow's lesson. What nice hands he had, Felicia
thought, watching from her seat, and how delicately yet strongly he used
them! She wondered what he could do with them in later years. "They
mustn't be wasted," she thought. She glanced across at Ken. He too was
looking at Kirk, with an oddly sober expression, and when she caught his
eye he grew somewhat red and stared out at the rain.
"Better, Mother dear?" Felicia asked, curling down on a footstool at
Mrs. Sturgis's feet.
"Rather, thank you," said her mother, and fell silent, patting the arm
of the chair as though she were considering whether or not to say
something more. She said nothing, however, and they sat quietly in the
falling dusk, Felicia stroking her mother's white hand, and Ken humming
softly to himself at the window. Kirk and his book were almost lost in
the corner--just a pale hint of the page, shadowed by the hand which
moved hesitantly across it. The hand paused, finally, and Kirk demanded,
"What's 'u-g-h' spell?"
"It spells 'Ugh'!" Ken grunted. "What on earth are you reading? Is
_that_ what Miss Bolton gives you!"
"It's not my lesson," Kirk said; "it's much further along. But I can
read it."
"You'll get a wigging. You'd better stick to 'The cat can catch the
mouse,' _et cetera_."
"I finished that _years_ ago," said Kirk, loftily. "This is a different
book, even. Listen to this: 'Ugh! There--sat--the dog with eyes--as--big
as--as--'"
"Tea-cups," said Felicia.
"'T-e-a-c-' yes, it _is_ tea-cups," Kirk conceded; "how did you know,
Phil?--'as big as tea-cups,--staring--at--him. "You're a nice--fellow,"
said the soldier, and he--sat him--on--the witch's ap-ron, and took as
many cop--copper shillings--as his--pockets would hold.'"
"So that's it, is it?" Ken said. "Begin at the beginning, and let's hear
it all."
"Ken," said his mother, "that's in the back of the book. You shouldn't
encourage him to read things Miss Bolton hasn't given him."
"It'll do him just as much good to read that, as that silly stuff at the
beginning. Phil and I always read things we weren't supposed to have
reached."
"But for him--" Mrs. Sturgis murmured; "you and Phil were different, Ken.
Oh, well,--"
For Kirk had turned back several broad pages, and began:
"There came a soldier marching along the highroad--one, two! one,
two!..."
Little by little the March twilight settled deeper over the room. There
was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where
the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came
the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the tale of "The Tinder-Box"
progressed.
It was the first time that he had ever read aloud anything so ambitious,
and his hearers sat listening with some emotion--his mother filled with
thankfulness that he had at last the key to a vast world which he now
might open at a touch; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in the
achievements of a little brother who was surmounting such an obstacle.
Felicia sat gazing across the dim room.
"He's reading us a story!" she thought, over and over; "Kirk's reading
to us, without very many mistakes!" She reflected that the book, for
her, might as well be written in Sanskrit. "I ought to know something
about it," she mused; "enough to help him! It's selfish and stupid not
to! I'll ask Miss Bolton."
The soldier had gone only as far as the second dog's treasure-room, when
Maggie came to the door to say that supper was ready. From between the
dining-room curtains came the soft glow of the candles and the inviting
clink of dishes. "'He threw--away all the copper--money he had, and
filled his--knapsack with silver,'" Kirk finished in a hurry, and shut
the book with a bang.
"I wouldn't have done that," he said, as Felicia took the hand he held
out for some one to take; "I should think all the money he could
possibly get would have been useful."
"You've said it!" Ken laughed.
"Yes," Mrs. Sturgis murmured with a sigh, "all the money one can get
_is_ useful. You read it very beautifully, darling--thank you."
She kissed his forehead, and took her place at the head of the table,
where the candles lit her gentle face and her brown eyes--filled now,
with a sudden brimming tenderness.