A BIRTHDAY
_An Extract from the Journal of Miss Susan
Standish, New York, November 12._
It is nearly two weeks since I left Oldburyport, and in spite of the
Anstices' hospitality I have been homesick ever since. When we reach
middle age nothing suits us so well as village life. The small events
occupy and divert our minds without wearying them with the bewildering
whirl of the city. The interest of our neighbors in us and our
affairs, which is annoying in youth, becomes more grateful as life
goes on, and we discover how little real thoughtfulness and interest
in others the world contains. As for the narrowing influences of
village life, I don't see that people in Oldburyport are any more
provincial or prejudiced than they are in New York,--not so much so, I
really think, for they are forced by the very smallness of their
circle to find their interests in the affairs of the great world, and
the lack of social excitements gives them so much more time for
reading. To be sure, when people are unhappy there is less to divert
their minds, and when they are irritable they feel more at liberty to
vent their tempers, because they know folks cannot get away from them
so easily. I confess I was not sorry to take leave of Cousin John,
though I did feel sorry for him, as he sat there all alone with his
gouty foot up on the chair in front of the Franklin stove in the
sitting-room. He is not satisfied with Philip, and seems to hold me
responsible. He would like to have Phil come home to live and be
cashier of the bank.
Cousin John thinks the world revolves round the Oldbury bank; and I
suppose it is natural he should, seeing how long he has been
president, and what a fine reputation it has the country round.
Of course Philip does not see it in the same light, and it seems he
made some ill-advised speech,--said he would rather turn sexton and
bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that,
which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,--but that was
no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was
sick of his capitalist airs, and he for one should not be surprised if
he came some day to beg for aid from the bank he thought too
insignificant to be worthy of his attention.
Philip was furious. "Bankrupt I may be some day," he answered, "but I
promise you I will go to the poorhouse before ever I ask help of you
and your infernal bank."
This was the state of mind in which they parted, when Philip had come
home for his first visit in years. I could have shaken them both for
their obstinacy and lack of common sense; but it is always so when men
live alone. They need a woman about the house to accustom them to
being contradicted. Now if Philip married a girl like Winifred, she
would soon straighten things out. I can see now how Cousin John would
dote on her and pretend not to care very much, and scold sometimes
when he had the gout; but all the while be her slave and spend his
life trying to give her pleasure. That is what ought to happen, so of
course it won't. Instead, Philip will go and marry some uncomfortable
sort of person with a mission. Oh, dear! what if it should be--?
There, I will not allow my mind to turn in _that_ direction. I have a
sort of superstition that thinking too much about any unfortunate
thing helps to bring it about. I think it must be this city life which
makes me feel so blue and discouraged. The fact is, I do not like New
York. In the first place, because it is not Boston; and in the second
place, because it _is_ New York. There is too much of everything
here--too much money, too much show, too many lamps, and
sofa-pillows, and courses at dinner. Then everybody seems to be
everlastingly at work getting ready to live. Here is Winifred, for
instance, tearing up and down for hours after upholsterers and
paper-hangers, toiling about from shop to shop, and from Broadway to
Sixth Avenue, matching samples and trying æsthetic effects which no
one but herself cares anything for when they are accomplished. And by
the end of the day she is so tired that she falls asleep when I read
aloud to her in the evening.
"Why do you fuss so about everything?" I asked her the other day. "We
don't fuss in Boston."
"That accounts," she answered,--which was not very civil, I
thought. She has certainly grown very queer this fall. She told me
this morning that she thought the Unitarians were as bigoted as
anybody. Now she never would have said a thing like that this summer
when she was living in the open air. It's my opinion that two things
are telling upon her,--furnace heat and the influence of that Mr.
Flint--especially the last. Why, it just seems to me as if she were
trying to make herself over into the kind of woman he would be likely
to like. She has dropped her old hoidenish ways and goes about as prim
as a Puritan. She says she is always like that in the city, and that
her Nepaug ways are only a reaction; but I don't believe it. He comes
here a great deal, that is certain; and I don't think it is very
gentlemanly, after her begging him, as I heard her with my own ears,
to go away. But he is too selfish to care what any one wants but
himself. For some reason or other it suits his plans just now to try
to please Winifred.
The first night I was here Winifred was telling him about Maria
Polonati, the little Italian girl who sells flowers at the corner of
the Square, and how she had made friends with her, and learned all
about her "padre" and her "madre" and the playmates she had left
behind her in the "bella Napoli." Winifred knows how to tell a thing
so it seems to stand right out like the old Dutch women in the
pictures, and I could see that Mr. Flint was taking it all in, for all
he said so little; and so he was, for the next time he came he walked
right up to Winifred's chair and dropped a great bunch of violets into
her lap.
"The little girl at the corner sent you these," he said; and Winifred
smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world for that
cross-grained egotist to do a thing like that. He did it rather
gracefully, I admit; but a Boston man would have done it just as well,
if he had only thought of it.
Of late Mr. Flint has taken to dropping in once or twice a week of an
evening to play whist,--he and Winifred against her father and me. Now
I like to beat as well as any one; but I do like some show of
organized resistance, and this young man's playing is what I call
impertinently poor, as if he did not think it worth while to try.
Winifred seems just as well satisfied to be beaten as to beat, and the
Professor takes a guileless and childlike satisfaction in his triumph
which is quite pitiable. I take pains to let Mr. Flint see that I at
least am not taken in; but he only smiles in that exasperatingly
non-committal way of his, as if it mattered little enough to him what
I thought one way or the other. After the game is over he gets a
chance for a few minutes' talk with Winifred while I am hunting up my
knitting and her father his pipe, and it is my belief that it's just
those few minutes that he looks forward to all the evening, while he
is ignoring his partner's trump-signal and leading from his weak suit.
Winifred has caught a very annoying trick of turning to him on all
occasions, as if waiting to know what he thought before making up her
mind. Altogether I don't like the look of things at all.
Of course there was no getting out of inviting Mr. Flint to the little
birthday party which we were planning for Nora Costello. To tell the
truth, nobody but me seemed to want to get out of it. Professor
Anstice says he is the most agreeable man that comes to the house, and
when I confided to him that I was afraid Winifred would fall in love
with him, he answered: "She might do worse. She might do much worse."
That was all the consolation I got in that quarter, and with Winifred
herself it was as bad. I thought it might do good to recall some of
her early impressions, which seem to have changed so mightily of late.
"Don't you remember," I said, "how you called him a refrigerator?"
"Did I?" she said with a little laugh. "Well, he was rather frigid in
those days."
"Yes, and you said how disagreeable his manners were, and how
thoughtless he was of every one but himself."
At this Winifred colored up as if they hadn't been her own very words.
"If I said it," she answered with a little toss of her head, "or if
anybody else said it, it was a stupid slander, which grows stupider
every time it is repeated."
I was a little nettled myself at her answering me like that. "You
didn't think so," I said, "when you begged him to go away from
Nepaug."
At this Winifred jumped straight up from her chair, running her hand
through her hair in a way she has when she is excited--"Did you hear
that? Then you must have been listening," she cried out, as if she
were accusing me of chicken-stealing.
"If you think that of me, Winifred, the sooner my trunk is packed the
better," I answered, as stiff as the Captain's monument on Duxbury
Hill.
In an instant Winifred was on her knees by my side, and had thrown her
arms around my neck.
"No, no, dear Miss Standish, I do not think it, and I ought not to
have said it. It only made me feel so badly to think of any one's
having overheard my secret, which after all was not my own."
Now here was my chance to find out the very thing which had been
bothering my old head all these weeks. I had only to pretend to know
and I should hear it all, for Winifred was in one of her rare
confidential moods. But that inconvenient New England conscience of
mine not only would not let me pretend, but it pricked me a little
with Winifred's accusation of having listened. Perhaps if my ears had
not been strained just a trifle, I should not have caught as much as I
did of the conversation at Flying Point. Anyway, I felt bound to
confess now.
"I did not hear anything but just your asking him to go away, and his
answering rather reluctantly that he did not want to, but he would."
"Then," said Winifred, "you are bound to take my word for the meaning
of the snatch of talk you heard, and I tell you that he acted like a
gentleman and a very honorable gentleman; moreover, that from that
good hour I began to be ashamed of my rash estimate of him (I always
do jump in overhead in my judgments) and am only waiting for a chance
to tell him so frankly, and to ask him to forget all my rude
speeches."
After this there was no more to be said. I only pray to be kept from
arguing. The habit of making comments has brought me into more trouble
than all my other vices put together. Well, this time grace was given
me to hold my tongue. When I saw a note addressed in Winifred's hand
to "J. Edwards Flint, Esq.," I did not even observe that it would have
been as well to let her father write it, nor did I say what I
think,--that I hate to see a man chop off his first name with a
capital and write his middle name in full. It always looks like an
alias. The man who does it is either trying to attract attention or
trying to get rid of it.
Everything else about the birthday scheme ran as smooth as a ribbon
from Jordan & Marsh's. I begged leave to make the cake, and it came
out of the oven done to a turn, white as snow inside and a golden
brown on the crust. Nora Costello and her brother came at eight
o'clock just as they had promised, with unfashionable promptness. They
looked somewhat surprised to see the house so lighted up, and Nora
gave a timid little glance at Winifred's rose-colored waist (a woman
doesn't forget how clothes look just because she joins the Salvation
Army); but she herself was a picture in spite of her dress--perhaps
because of it, for the close-fitting blue gown, with its plain band at
the neck and sleeves, set off her fine features and the noble carriage
of her head. The chief decoration of her dress was a scarlet ribbon
coming diagonally from the shoulder to the belt, marked "Jesus is My
Helper." I did wish she had not felt called to make a guy of herself
with that thing; but she seemed so unconscious of it herself that I
should have forgotten it too if Mr. Flint had not been coming; but I
hate to see a scoffer like him get hold of anything ridiculous in
religion. Now we Unitarians stand midway between scepticism and
superstition. I wonder everybody can't see it as we do.
I am bound to say, however, that Mr. Flint behaved exceedingly well. A
thorough acquaintance with the world seems to give pleasanter manners
sometimes than a religious nature. Anyway, he came forward and greeted
her very handsomely. He handed her a little volume of Thomas à Kempis,
"For those leisure hours which you never have," he said. The girl
looked mightily pleased but a little bewildered, and still more so
when Philip Brady followed with a great bunch of the reddest of red
roses (trust men for always picking out red flowers--I don't believe
they know there is any other color). Tied by a satin ribbon to the
flowers was the little blue bag which I made at Nepaug, and inside it
lay the lost brooch. I never saw any such delight as shone on Nora
Costello's face when she drew out the pin. She looked from one to
another of us, then at the pin in her hand, which she turned about and
about, crying over it softly. At length she brushed away her tears and
smiled a real child's smile of pure pleasure. "Look, Angus!" she
exclaimed, holding out her treasure to her brother, "the lost is
found. Do you mind the day Mither gave it me, and how she bade me have
a care, for that I was a heedless lass and like to lose it?"
"Ay, I mind it," answered her brother, a flush of gratified pride and
affection mounting to his high cheekbones. "How can we thank these
kind folks?"
"How indeed!" echoed Nora. "Oh, how good it is to have it back!" she
exclaimed, fondling the brooch as though it had life and could feel.
"But where did you find it, and why--Ah! I see," she added, as she
turned it in her hand--"you dear, good folks--and here it was only
this morning I thought the Lord had clean forgot 't was my birthday."
I wish I could recall on paper the little foreign accent of the Scotch
girl which seemed to add so much to the charm of her simple speech.
Her big drooping eyes were wet with tears, and the little homesick
note in her voice made an irresistible appeal to the hearts of those
who heard it,--at least it did to mine, and I sneaked away behind the
lid of the grand piano, which was open, to get out my pocket
handkerchief, for I did not choose to make a spectacle of myself, and
I don't know how to cry prettily, like Nora Costello. My nose gets
red, and my eyes look as if I were addicted to the use of intoxicating
liquors.
When I emerged from behind the screen of the piano, I saw Philip Brady
standing over Nora Costello, and looking down at her in a way that
made my heart jump. She is a sweet girl, and a good girl, and a
beautiful girl; but really this wouldn't do at all. Fancy Cousin
John's son going round with a drum, keeping company with a
tambourine. Shades of Dr. Charming forbid! Now why couldn't it have
been Mr. Flint? That would have been poetic justice. Conversion of an
atheist--marriage on the platform in presence of the Army. She is too
good for him; but still I would have given my blessing--but here
everything is snarled up and getting worse all the time.
The surprises of the evening were not over yet, for the most
remarkable remains to tell. While we were all sitting at table
(Winifred did look startlingly handsome under the pink candle-shades)
the bell rang, and a messenger boy appeared.
Could he not leave the package? Professor Anstice asked, when he had
signed the ticket the boy took out of his hat, where for some
inscrutable reason New York messengers carry everything.
No, he was ordered to give it to Miss Anstice herself.
"Very well," said Winifred, "bring it in by all means. Perhaps some
one has mixed things a little, and fancies that it is _my_ birthday
that we are celebrating."
So in came the package, and with it a great bunch of violets, and a
card which said, "The little girl at the corner sends you these."
I saw Winifred's hands tremble as she untied the ends of the package.
The wrappings fell off and she saw a picture.
"What--who is it?" Winifred asked, turning from one to another of us
with bewilderment in her eyes.
"A relative of yours, I believe," Mr. Flint answered quietly. "Her
name is Ruth. She formed the habit of eloping in her youth, and had
not the heart to refuse my entreaties to run away with me when I left
Nepaug."
Then in an instant it flashed across Winifred and all of us
that this was the portrait for which she had been searching all
summer (any one might have recognized it, for the resemblance to
Winifred about the eyes and mouth is unmistakable), and she knew of
course that Mr. Flint had been the one to find it. Her way of taking
the affair was very characteristic. There was no tearful tremulous
gratitude like Nora Costello's, but a great overflow of pride and
gladness. Rising, with her just filled wine glass in her hand, and her
head thrown back a little as if in a pride which had a shade of
defiance in it, she called out, "A health!--a health! Here's to my
great-great-grandmother, the runaway bride, and to the generous man
who restored her to the bosom of her family!"
Every one looked bewildered, but all laughed and drank the toast (I
noticed that the Costellos drank theirs in water), and then began to
ask questions as fast as they could talk. The health broke up the
feast, and every one crowded about the portrait. As Winifred and Mr.
Flint stood close behind me, I overheard, this time without intention,
upon my honor, an exchange of remarks between them.
"You have shown yourself very generous, Mr. Flint," Winifred remarked.
"You will not surely be so _un_generous as not to let us make some
little return for your gift. I am not ignorant that such a portrait
has a value besides that of sentiment."
"You touch me there on a sore point, Miss Anstice," Mr. Flint
answered. "I am afraid the person to whom you are really indebted is
old Marsden, for I knew if I offered him anything like the real value
of the picture, he would hold it for the price of a Raphael. So I made
him set his own price, which the sly old dog thought a staggering one,
and which I found so absurdly low that I shall feel bound to remember
him handsomely at Christmas."
"You are jesting," Winifred answered, speaking lower; "but I am in
earnest. Can we not persuade you to let us pay for this picture? For
the pleasure you have given us we never could repay you."
"If it is a question of payment," said Mr. Flint, sinking his voice
still lower, "I am so deep in your debt that it would bankrupt me to
straighten our accounts. If it is a question of generosity, and I
should come to you some day and ask--"
"Did you say it was a Copley?"
This question from Philip broke in upon Mr. Flint's aside. He answered
with some asperity, "No, it was painted in England before Copley's
time. It is unsigned, but the artist, I should say, was first-rate."
After this response Mr. Flint turned his head in an instant; but the
charm was snapped. Winifred had slipped away, and the company was
breaking up. How the man would hate me if he knew that it was I who
set Brady on to ask that question!
Winifred is tired to-day, and took her breakfast in bed. I
wonder--Pshaw, what good does it do to wonder?