THE FOUR-LEAVED CLOVER
As Betty carefully blotted the last page and placed the stopper in the
ink-bottle, the clock in the hall began to strike, and she realized that
she must have been writing fully an hour. The whole household was astir
now. She would be late to breakfast unless she hurried with her
dressing.
Steps on the gravelled path below the balcony made her peep out between
the vines. Stuart and Doctor Bradford were coming back from an early
stroll about the place. The wistaria clung too closely to the trellis
for them to see her, but, as they crossed the grassy court between the
two wings, they looked up at Eugenia's balcony opposite. Betty looked
too. That bower of golden-hearted roses had drawn her glances more than
once that morning. Now in the midst of it, in a morning dress of pink,
fresh and fair as a blossom herself, stood Eugenia, reaching up for a
half-blown bud above her head. Her sleeves fell back from her graceful
white arms, and as she broke the bud from its stem a shower of
rose-petals fell on her dusky hair and upturned face.
Then Betty saw that Doctor Bradford had passed on into the house,
leaving Stuart standing there with his hat in his hand, smiling up at
the beautiful picture above him.
"Good morrow, Juliet," he called, softly. "Happy is the bride the sun
shines on. Was there ever such a glorious morning?"
"It's perfect," answered Eugenia, leaning out of her rose bower to smile
down at him.
"I wonder if the bride's happiness measures up to the morning," he
asked. "Mine does."
For answer she glanced around, her finger on her lips as if to warn him
that walls have ears, and then with a light little laugh tossed the
rosebud down to him. "Wait! I'll come and tell you," she said.
Betty, gathering up her writing material, saw him catch the rose, touch
it to his lips and fasten it in his coat. Then, conscience-smitten that
she had seen the little by-play not intended for other eyes, she bolted
back into her room through the window, so hurriedly that she struck her
head against the sash with a force which made her see stars for several
minutes.
The first excitement after breakfast was the arrival of the bride's
cake. Aunt Cindy had baked it, the bride herself had stirred the charms
into it, but it had been sent to Louisville to be iced. Lloyd called the
entire family into the butler's pantry to admire it, as it sat
imposingly on a huge silver salver.
"It looks as if it might have come out of the Snow Queen's palace," she
said, "instead of the confectionah's. Wouldn't you like to see the place
where those snow-rose garlands grow?"
"Somebody take Phil away from it! Quick!" said Stuart. "Once I had a
birthday cake iced in pink with garlands of white sugar roses all around
it, and he sneaked into the pantry before the party and picked off so
many of the roses that it looked as if a mouse had nibbled the edges.
Aunt Patricia put him to bed and he missed the party, but we couldn't
punish him that way if he should spoil the wedding cake, because we need
his services as best man. So we'd better remove him from temptation."
"Look here, son," answered Phil, taking Stuart by the shoulders and
pushing him ahead of him. "When it comes to raking up youthful sins
you'd better lie low. 'I could a tale unfold' that would make Eugenia
think that this is 'a fatal wedding morn,' If she knew all she wouldn't
have you."
"Then you sha'n't tell anything," declared Lloyd. "I'm not going to be
cheated out of my share of the wedding, no mattah what a dahk past
eithah of you had. Forget it, and come and help us hunt the foah-leaf
clovahs that Eugenia wants for the dream-cake boxes."
"What are they?" asked Miles Bradford, as he edged out of the pantry
after the others. Mary happened to be the one in front of him, and she
turned to answer, pointing to one of the shelves, where lay a pile of
tiny heart-shaped boxes, tied with white satin ribbons.
"Each guest is to have one of those," she explained. "There'll be a
piece of wedding cake in it, and a four-leaf clover if we can find
enough to go around. Most people don't have the clovers, but Eugenia
heard about them, and she wants to try all the customs that everybody
ever had. You put it under your pillow for three nights, and whatever
you dream will come true. If you dream about the same person all three
nights, that is the one you will marry."
"Horrible!" exclaimed he, laughing. "Suppose one has nightmares. Will
they come true?"
Mary nodded gravely. "Mom Beck says so, and Eliot. So did old Mrs.
Bisbee. She's the one that told Eugenia about the clovers. There was one
with her piece of cake from her sister's wedding, that she dreamed on
nearly fifty years ago. She dreamed of Mr. Bisbee three nights straight
ahead, and she said there never was a more fortunate wedding. They'll
celebrate their golden anniversary soon."
"Miss Mary," asked her listener, solemnly, "do you girls really believe
all these signs and wonders? I have heard more queer superstitions the
few hours I have been in this Valley, than in all my life before."
"Oh, no, we don't really believe in them. Only the darkies do that. But
you can't help feeling more comfortable when they 'point right' for you
than when they don't; like seeing the new moon over your right shoulder,
you know. And it's fun to try all the charms. Eugenia says so many
brides have done it that it seems a part of the performance, like the
veil and the trail and the orange-blossoms."
They passed from the dining-room into the hall, then out on to the front
porch, where they stood waiting for Joyce and Eugenia to get their
hats. While they waited, Rob Moore joined them, and they explained the
quest they were about to start upon.
"Where are you going to take us, Miss Lloyd?" asked Miles Bradford.
"According to the old legend the four-leaved clover is to be found only
in Paradise."
"Oh, do you know a legend about it?" asked Betty, eagerly. "I've always
thought there ought to be one."
"Then you must read the little book, Miss Betty, called 'Abdallah, or
the Four-leaved Shamrock.' Abdallah was a son of the desert who spent
his life in a search for the lucky shamrock. He had been taught that it
was the most beautiful flower of Paradise. One leaf was red like copper,
another white like silver, the third yellow like gold, and the fourth
was a glittering diamond. When Adam and Eve were driven out of the
garden, poor Eve reached out and clutched at a blossom to carry away
with her. In her despair she did not notice what she plucked, but, as
she passed through the portal, curiosity made her open her hand to look
at the flower she had snatched. To her joy it was the shamrock. But
while she looked, a gust of wind caught up the diamond leaf and blew it
back within the gates, just as they closed behind her. The name of that
leaf was Perfect Happiness. That is why men never find it in this world
for all their searching. It is to be found only in Paradise."
"Oh, but I don't believe that!" cried Lloyd. "Lots and lots of times I
have been perfectly happy, and I am suah that everybody must be at some
time or anothah in this world."
"Yes, but you didn't stay happy, did you?" asked Joyce, who had come
back in time to hear part of the legend. "We get glimpses of it now and
then, as poor Eve did when she opened her hand, but part of it always
flies away while we are looking at it. People can be contented all the
time, and happy in a mild way, but nobody can be perfectly, radiantly
happy all the time, day in and day out. The legend is right. It is only
in Paradise that one can find the diamond leaf."
"Joyce talks as if she were a hundred yeahs old," laughed Lloyd, looking
up at Doctor Bradford. "Maybe there is some truth in yoah old Oriental
legend, but I believe times have changed since Abdallah went a-hunting.
Phil and I came across a song the othah day that I want you all to heah.
Maybe it will make you change yoah minds."
Phil protested with many grimaces and much nonsense that he "could not
sing the old songs now." That he would not "be butchered to make a Roman
holiday." But all the time he protested, he was stepping toward the
piano in a fantastic exaggerated cake-walk that set his audience to
laughing. At the first low notes of the accompaniment, he dropped his
foolishness and began to sing in a full, sweet voice that brought the
old Colonel to the door of his den to listen. Eliot, packing trunks in
the upper hall, leaned over the banister:
"I know a place where the sun is like gold,
And the cherry blooms burst with snow.
And down underneath is the loveliest nook
Where the four-leaf clovers grow.
"One leaf is for hope and one is for faith,
And one is for love you know,
And God put another one in for luck.
If you search you will find where they grow.
"And you must have hope and you must have faith.
You must love and be strong, and so
If you work, if you wait, you will find the place
Where the four-leaf clovers grow."
It was a sweet, haunting melody that accompanied the words, and the gay
party of nine, strolling toward the orchard, hummed it all the way.
There in the shade of the big apple-trees, where the clover grew in
thick patches, they began their search; all together at first, then in
little groups of twos and threes, until they had hunted over the entire
orchard. Stuart, who had been doing more talking than hunting, went to
groping industriously around on his hands and knees, when they all came
together again after an hour's search.
"Bradford," he said, emphatically, "I am beginning to think that you and
Miss Joyce are right, and that Paradise has a monopoly on the four-leaf
kind. I haven't caught a glimpse of one. Not even its shadow."
Lloyd held up a handful. "I found them in several places, thick as
hops."
"Which goes to show," he insisted, "that the song, 'If you work, if you
wait, you will find the place,' is all a delusion and a snare. You all
have worked, and Eugenia and I have waited, and only you, who are 'bawn
lucky,' have found any. It's pure luck."
"No," interrupted Miles Bradford, "you can't call strolling around a
shady orchard with a pretty girl work, and the song does correspond with
the legend. Abdallah worked hard for his first leaf, dug a well with
which to bless the thirsty desert for all time. The bit of copper was at
the bottom of it. The effort he made for the second almost cost him his
life. He rescued a poor slave girl in order to be faithful to a trust
imposed in him, and taught her the truths of Allah. The silver leaf was
his reward. He found it in the heathen fetish which she gave him in her
gratitude. It had been her god.
"I am not sure about the golden leaf, but I think it was the reward of
living a wise and honorable life. The day of his birth it was said that
he alone wept, while all around him rejoiced; and he resolved to live so
well that at the day of his death he should have no cause for tears, and
all around him should mourn. No, I'll not have you belittling my hero,
Tremont. There was no luck about it whatsoever. He won the first three
leaves by unselfish service, faithfulness to every trust, and wise,
honorable living, so that he well deserved that Paradise should bring
him perfect happiness."
"Girls!" cried Betty, her face lighting up, "_we_ must be warm on the
trail, with our Tusitala rings, our Warwick Hall motto, and our Order of
Hildegarde. A Road of the Loving Heart is as hard to dig in every one's
memory as a well in the desert. If we keep the tryst in all things,
we're bound to find the silver leaf, and think of the wisdom it takes
to weave with the honor of a Hildegarde!"
Eugenia interrupted her: "Oh, Betty, _please_ write a legend of the
shamrock for girls that will fit modern times. In the old style there
are always three brothers or three maidens who start out to find a
thing, and only the last one or the youngest one is successful. The
others all come to grief. In yours give _everybody_ a chance to be
happy.
"There is no reason why _every_ maiden shouldn't find the leaves
according to the Tusitala rings and Ederyn's motto and Hildegarde's
yardstick. And then, don't you see, they needn't wait till the end of
their lives for the diamond, for _the prince_ will bring it! Don't you
see? It is his coming that _makes_ the perfect happiness!"
Phil laughed. "Stuart's face shows how he appreciates that compliment,"
he said, "and as for me and all the other sons of Adam, oh, fair layde,
I make my bow!" Springing to his feet, he swept her an elaborate
curtsey, holding out his coat as if it were the ball-gown of some
stately dame in a minuet.
Lloyd, sitting on the grass with her hands clasped on her knees, looked
around the circle of smiling faces, and then gave her shoulders a
whimsical shrug.
"That's all right if the prince _comes_," she exclaimed. "But how is one
to get the diamond leaf if he doesn't? Mammy Eastah told my fortune in a
teacup, and she said: 'I see a risin' sun, and a row of lovahs, but I
don't see you a-takin' any of 'em, honey. Yo' ways am ways of
pleasantness, and all yo' paths is peace, but I'se powahful skeered
you'se goin' to be an ole maid. I sholy is, if the teacup signs p'int
right.'"
"It will be your own fault, then," answered Phil. "The row of lovers is
there in the teacup for you. You've only to take your pick."
"But," began Rob, "maybe it is just as well that she shouldn't choose
any of them. The prince's coming doesn't always bring happiness. Look at
old Mr. Deckly. For thirty years he and his fair bride have led a
regular cat and dog life. And there are the Twicketts and the Graysons
and the Blackstones right in this one little valley, to say nothing of
all the troubles one reads of in the papers."
"No!" contradicted Eugenia, emphatically. "You have no right to hold
them up as examples. It is plainly to be seen that Mrs. Deckly and Mrs.
Twickett and Mrs. Grayson and Mrs. Blackstone were not Hildegardes. They
failed to earn their third leaf by doing their weaving wisely. They
didn't use their yardsticks. They looked only at the 'village churls,'
and wove their webs to fit their unworthy shoulders, so that the men
they married were not princes, and they couldn't bring the diamond
leaf."
"The name of the prince need not always be _Man_, need it?" ventured
Joyce. "Couldn't it be Success? It seems to me that if I had struggled
along for years, trying to make the most of my little ability, had
worked just as faithfully and wisely at my art as I could, it would be
perfect happiness to have the world award me the place of a great
artist. It would be as much to me as the diamond leaf that marriage
could bring. I should think you'd feel that way, too, Betty, about your
writing. There are marriages that are failures just as there are
artistic and literary careers that are failures, and there are diamond
leaves to reward the work and waiting of old maids, just as there are
diamond leaves to reward the Hildegardes who use their yardsticks.
Sometimes there are girls who don't marry because they sacrifice their
lives to taking care of their families, or living for those who are
dependent on them. Surely there must be a blessedness and a happiness
for them greater than any diamond leaf a prince could bring."
"There is probably," answered Eugenia, "but it seems as if most people
of that kind have to wait till they get to Paradise to find it."
"I don't think so," said Betty. "I believe all the dear old-maid aunts
and daughters, _who earn the first three leaves_, find the fourth
waiting somewhere in this world. It is only the selfish ones, who slight
their share of the duties life imposes on every one, who are cross and
unlovely and unloved. They probably would not have been happy wives if
they had married."
"Well, but what about _me_!" persisted Lloyd. "I nevah expect to have a
career, so Success in big lettahs will nevah bring me a medal or a
chromo. I am not sacrificing my life for anybody's comfort, and I can
nevah have any little nieces and nephews to whom I can be one of those
deah old aunts Betty talks about, and there is that dreadful teacup!"
She did not hear Doctor Bradford's laughing answer, for Phil, turning
his back on the others, looked down into her upturned face and began to
hum, as if to himself, "_From the desert I come to thee!_" Only Mary
understood the significance of it as Lloyd did, and she knew why Lloyd
suddenly turned away and began passing her hands over the grass around
her, as if resuming her search. She wanted to hide her face, into which
the color was creeping.
A train whistled somewhere far across the orchard, and Rob took out his
watch. The sight of it suggested something in line with the
conversation, for when he had noted the time, he touched the spring that
opened the back of the case.
"Never you mind, Little Colonel," he said, in a patronizing,
big-brotherly tone. "If nobody else will stand between you and that
teacup, _I'll_ come to the rescue. Bobby won't go back on his old chum.
_I'll_ bring you a four-leaf clover. Here's one, all ready and waiting."
Lloyd looked across at the watch he held out to her. "Law, Bobby," she
exclaimed, giving him the old name she had called him when they first
played together, "I supposed you had lost that clovah long ago."
"Not much," he answered. "It's the finest hoodoo ever was. It helped me
through high school. I swear I never could have passed in Latin but for
your good-luck charm. It's certainly to my interest to hang on to it.
"Think of it, Mary," he added, seeing that her eyes were round with
interest, "that was given to me by a princess."
Mary darted a quick look at Lloyd and another one at him to see if he
were teasing.
"Oh, I _see_!" she remarked, in a tone of enlightenment.
"What do you see?" he demanded, laughing.
She would not answer, but, ignoring his further attempts to make her
talk, she, too, turned again to search for clovers, inwardly excited
over the discovery she thought she had made. She would make a note of it
in her journal, she decided, something like this: "The plot thickens.
The B. M. and Sir F. have a rival they little suspect. R. carries the
charm the M. of H. gave him in years gone by, and I can see many reasons
why he should be the one to bring her the diamond leaf."
Only two dozen clovers rewarded their united search, but Eugenia was
satisfied. "We'll put them in the boxes haphazard," she said, "and the
uncertainty of getting one will make it more exciting than if there were
one for every box."
The path back to the house led past the kitchen, where several colored
women were helping Aunt Cindy. Just as they passed, one of them put her
head out of the door to call to a group of children crowded around one
of the windows of the great house. They were watching the decorators at
work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch. The
youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that
purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the
weariness of holding him up to see. A narrow board laid across the top
made an uneasy and precarious perch for him. He was seated astride, with
his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.
"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison
lean agin that bo'd. It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l."
Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was
pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line
Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a
candle is snuffed out by the wind.
"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying
up the path to the rescue. But M'haley, made agile by fifteen years of
constant practice, dodged the cuffing as it was about to descend, and
scuttled around the house to wait till Sweety stopped howling.
"They are Sylvia Gibbs's children," said Lloyd, in answer to Doctor
Bradford's astonished comment at seeing so many little negroes in a row.
"They can scent a pahty five miles away, and they hang around like
little black buzzahds waiting for scraps of the feast. I suppose they
feel they have a right to be heah to-day, as Sylvia is helping in the
kitchen. They're the same children, Eugenia," she added, "who were heah
so much when I had my first house-pahty. M'haley is the one who brought
you that awful, skinny, mottled chicken in a bandbox for you to 'take
home on the kyers fo' a pet,' she said."
"So she is!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they passed around the corner of the
house and caught sight of M'haley, who was peeping out to see if the
storm was over, and if it would be safe to return to the sightseeing at
the window. Her teeth and eyeballs were a-shine with pleasure when
Eugenia passed on, after a pleasant greeting and some reference to the
chicken. She felt it a great honor to be remembered by the bride, and
thanked again, after all these years, for her parting gift. She gave a
little giggle when Lloyd came up, and said, with a coy self-conscious
air that was extremely amusing to the Northern man, who had never met
this type of the race before, "I'se a maid of honah, too, Miss Lloyd."
"You are!" was the surprised answer. "How does that happen?"
"Mammy's gwine to git married agin, to Mistah Robinson, and she says
nobody has a bettah right than me to be maid of honah to her own ma's
weddin'. So that's how come she toted us all along to you-all's weddin',
so that Sweety and Ca'line and the boys could learn how to act at her
and Mistah Robinson's."
"When is it to be?" inquired Lloyd.
"To-morrow night. Mammy's done give her fish-fry and ice-cream festible,
and she cleahed enough to pay the weddin' expenses. You-all's suah gwine
to git an invite, Miss Lloyd."
"It is sort of a benefit," Betty explained to Miles Bradford, as they
walked on. "Instead of giving a concert or a recital, the colored people
here give a fish-fry and festival whenever they are in need of money.
They used to have them just to raise funds for the church, but now it is
quite popular for individuals to give them when there is a funeral or a
wedding to be paid for. I am so glad you are going to stay over a few
days. We can show you sights you've never dreamed of in the North."
Eugenia, first to step into the hall, gave a cry of pleasure. The
florist and his assistants had been there in their absence, and were
just leaving. They had turned the entire house into a rose-garden. Hall,
drawing-room, and library, and the dining-room beyond were filled with
such lavishness that it seemed as if June herself had taken possession,
with all her court. Stuart and Eugenia paused before the tall gate of
smilax and American beauties.
"It is the Gate into Paradise, sweetheart," he whispered, looking
through its blossom-covered bars to the altar beyond, that had been
built in the bay-window of the drawing-room, and covered with white
roses.
"Yes," answered Eugenia, smiling up at him. "The legend is right. We
must enter Paradise to find the diamond leaf. But I was right, too. It
is my prince who will bring mine to me."