THE PICNIC.
Gerald's and Olly's visit was quite an event in the quiet Lane household.
Olly flagrantly broke every existing custom in it with the sublime
autocracy of childhood, and regained his health at the cost of the peace
of mind of every individual with whom he came in contact, from nervous
Miss Lydia down to the protesting servants; while Gerald was one of those
intense personalities whose influence seems to recreate the entire
atmosphere about them at once, go where they will. Poor Miss Lydia was
afraid of her quick speech and brusque ways and decided opinions, and
spent more hours than usual upstairs alone in her own little room, and
wore her best cap whenever she appeared below, as a sort of mute appeal
to the young lady's indulgence. But Gerald, in her robust health, had no
sympathy whatever with invalids as a class, and for "chronic nerves" she
had an absolute contempt, unmitigated by even the best cap's gay ribbons.
"It's altogether a matter of will," she asserted. "People needn't be ill
if they are only resolved not to be so."
"Humph!" said Mrs. Lane, who had chanced to overhear; and there was a
trifle more tenderness than usual in her manner when she went up later to
put the mid-day cup of beef-tea into her sister's thin hands, and stood
looking compassionately down at her. "Nothing is easier than to insist
that a thing is so and so, just because there's no way to prove that it
isn't so."
"How you do always talk in proverbs, Sister Sophy!" said Miss Lydia,
admiringly. "I only wish Solomon could have heard you. I do believe he
would have put some of them in."
"He would have been far too busy taking down Mrs. Upjohn's fine speeches
to mind _me_," grunted Mrs. Lane. "And I never did think much of Solomon,
anyway. He was too much of a Mormon with his hundred wives and that. Want
any thing else, Lyddy?"
"No, thank you. The house is very nice and still this morning. There's
a picnic up at the Dexter's farm, isn't there? I suppose they've all
gone to it."
"Of course. Who ever heard of a picnic unless Phebe went along to do all
the fussing and mussing that everybody else shirks? Don't tell _me_
there's any fun in a picnic,--going off in the woods like that, to do for
yourself what you'd sell the clothes off your back to have somebody else
do for you at home, and eating all kinds of heathenish messes with your
fingers because you've forgotten the forks. But what people like let them
have. They'll get experience out of it if nothing better. And of course
Phebe had to go."
True enough, Phebe was as essential to any picnic as the feast, though
much less obtrusively so, and Gerald watched her friend's quiet
helpfulness with lazy interest. She herself was stretched at ease on the
clean, fresh grass under some glorious old trees. The place chosen was a
lovely spot at the head of the lake; the drive there had been long and
hot, and now she lay enjoying to the full the refreshment of the shadow
and the breeze, and the perfection both of the view and of her immediate
surroundings. Bell Masters sat near her, having discovered that she was
generally surest of Mr. De Forest's company when in Gerald's
neighborhood. Nor had she been mistaken this time. He had openly
abandoned the greedy band of berry-pickers, and the artistic knot of
sketchers, and the noisy body of pleasure-seekers, who were paddling
frivolously around the shores of the lake and screaming with causeless
laughter, as soon as he found that Gerald did not intend attaching
herself to any of them but had struck out the new and independent line of
doing absolutely nothing at all. Halloway had been helping industriously
with the fire, but he came toward the group under the trees when his
services seemed no longer required.
"You look most invitingly comfortable," he said, fanning himself with his
hat. "We must try to coax Miss Phebe here for a rest."
"Pray don't," said De Forest, lifting a lazy hand with an air of finding
even that motion too great an effort. "At least not till the coffee is
well under way. I tasted a cup of her make yesterday. Don't call her off.
We are all benefiting in a manner by her absence."
"I can make good coffee too, when I choose," said Bell, biting at the
rim of her straw hat.
De Forest contemplated her with new interest. "Ah, can you. 'Tis a gift
of the gods given to few. And when do you choose, may I ask? Apparently
not to-day."
"'Tisn't my picnic."
"Oh! Is it Miss Lane's?"
"One would say it was, from the way she slaves for it," remarked Gerald.
"Why don't you help too?" asked De Forest, breaking off blades of grass
and flinging them out singly upon the air.
"For Miss Masters' excellent reason: it is not my picnic."
"You contribute your valuable aid solely to your own undertakings then?"
"Why am I called upon to contribute it to any other?"
"'Tis a problem for philosophers. But for argument's sake, let us say for
the good of humanity at large, and of the Dexters in particular."
"I am not bound to the Dexters by any obligation that I can see to help
them carry out their entertainment. If they are not equal to it, they
should not give it."
"Nothing Quixotic about you, is there?" said De Forest, looking at her
quizzically.
"Nothing whatever," replied Gerald, easily. "Why should there be? Let
every one look out for himself."
"And if some can't?"
"That is no business of mine. It's simply my business to make sure that I
can look after myself."
"What an outrageously frank exposure of a universally concealed
sentiment! Mr. Halloway is scandalized. He is thinking how he can fit a
scorching text to it to wither you with next Sunday."
"No; here is a sermon ready made on the spot," said Denham, as Phebe came
slowly toward them. "Miss Lane in herself is a sufficient illustration of
the opposite doctrine."
"Prove it," answered Gerald, shrugging her shoulders. "Prove that Phebe,
who toils for everybody, is any happier than I, who only follow my
inclination."
"You certainly look vastly the more comfortable at present," said De
Forest, looking from Gerald's cool cheeks and unruffled muslin flounces
to Phebe's flushed face and tumbled cambric. "You are a practical
embodiment of the beauty and expediency of selfishness."
"What are you talking about?" asked Phebe, coming up and leaning wearily
against a tree.
"About you and Miss Vernor," explained Bell. "Which of you is happier?
_I_ should say Miss Vernor decidedly."
A loving look came into Phebe's eyes, as she glanced down at Gerald.
"Miss Vernor, _of course_", she said, with a very tender inflection of
voice. "Being what she is, how can she help being the happier?"
"Virtue advocating vice," said De Forest. "Mr. Halloway, your sermon is a
dead failure,--as a sermon."
"By no means," answered Denham, smiling. "I don't expect to convert
you in a single lesson. Will you not sit down with us, Miss Phebe? You
look tired."
"Not just yet, thank you."
"And why not?" asked Gerald.
"I want to see a little after Miss Delano first. She's off there all
alone hunting for ferns."
"Well," persisted Gerald, "what of it? Are you fonder of her society than
ours, that you must run after her?"
"I am not fonder of any one's society than of yours, Gerald."
"But are you fond of that tiresome creature at all? Confess it; doesn't
she bore you to death with her interminable grasshopper chatter?"
Phebe glanced at Halloway, and laughed a little as she moved away.
"Oh, I am learning by degrees not to be bored by people,--not even by
Miss Delano."
"Now, will any one explain why she should wish to teach herself _not_ to
know a bore from a Christian?" exclaimed Gerald, impatiently. "It is
quite beyond me."
"But do you really never talk to anybody unless you want to, Miss
Vernor?" asked Bell, disagreeably conscious that Gerald had not
voluntarily addressed her once that morning.
"Never," replied Gerald, staring out at the lake.
"Don't you ever do any thing you don't want to, because you ought to?"
"I don't always see the ought. For instance, why should I put myself out
to entertain Miss Delano as Phebe does?"
"I don't know," muttered Bell. "I wouldn't, I am sure. She is
mortally dull."
"One might imagine reasons for the self-sacrifice, I suppose," said De
Forest, making a languid snatch at a butterfly fluttering near. "The
possibility, we will say, that it might please the gentle old babbler
to come under the condescension of your notice. How would that do for
a motive?"
"Why should I want to please her?" insisted Gerald, removing a hideous
beetle from her dress with all possible care lest she should hurt it. "I
don't want to. I don't care for her, nor she for me. Why should I put
myself out for her? What claim has she on me that I should displease
myself to please her?"
"Let us see," said Denham, ruminatingly. "Miss Delano's pleasure against
Miss Vernor's displeasure, or _vice versa, Miss Vernor's pleasure against
Miss Delano's displeasure. Yes; the balance of pleasure remains quite
the same whichever lady has it. Apart from principle, the logic is
unanswerable."
"It is admirable," commented De Forest. "I always did like logic so much
better than moral philosophy. Hello, what's the matter now?"
There was a wail of distress somewhere in the distance.
Gerald turned her shapely head and listened a moment. "It's only Olly,"
she said, composedly. "I recognize the cry. He isn't hurt. Oh, you
needn't go, Mr. Halloway; Olly never comes to any harm. He's only
quarrelling with some one."
De Forest raised himself on his elbow to listen, while Halloway walked
off in the direction of the outburst. "There are possibilities lurking in
picnics, you know," he remarked, resuming his recumbent position, "mad
bulls, and rabbit traps, and fine chances for a drown now and then. But I
suppose we needn't trouble ourselves, Mr. Halloway'll see to it. Besides,
Olly bears the charmed life of the wicked. Miss Masters, I hope you
remember to give daily thanks that you haven't any small brothers."
"I do devoutly give thanks that I haven't any sisters," said Bell, with
an unaffectionate glance toward Gerald. "I should hate them."
And so the desultory talk rambled on, the little group growing larger by
degrees as the approaching luncheon hour brought back the stragglers, and
with them Olly, trotting contentedly along, clinging to Halloway's hand,
meek as any lamb.
"What were you doing when you cried out so a little while ago?" asked
Gerald, going up to the child.
Olly looked at her with instant defiance in his eyes. "I hurt my foot."
"You know perfectly well you can't deceive me, Olly. Tell me the truth.
What mischief were you at?"
"I tell you I hurt my foot, and it hurt like mischief, and that's all the
mischief there was. I wish it had been _your_ foot, and I wouldn't have
cried a bit."
Halloway was turning aside, but Gerald appealed to him. "Is he telling
the truth?"
"Yes," answered Denham, dryly. "He was racing with the Anthony boys and
fell, but, as you see, he's right enough now."
"Ya-ah!" said Olly, and leered into her face with brotherly disrespect.
"I'll tell you a lie next time if you'd rather. Ya-ah!"
Gerald looked as if she were going to shake him on the spot, and to
prevent any such catastrophe Denham suddenly seized the little fellow and
put him through a number of acrobatic feats in breathless succession,
till he was fairly hustled into good temper and everybody around was
laughing, even Gerald. Jake Dexter was instantly incited to display some
marvellous limber-jointed powers of his own, and had just demonstrated to
the assembled company, to his and their entire satisfaction, that the
impossible is after all sometimes possible, when luncheon was announced
by the ringing of a cow-bell, and a gay onslaught upon the usual picnic
table, rich in luxuries and poor in necessities, superseded for the nonce
all less material forms of amusement.
Later in the afternoon Halloway wandered off from the rest for one of the
solitary strolls that he preferred to companionship as being less
lonely,--a feeling often experienced when fate and not choice appoints
one's comrades,--and returning leisurely along the banks of the lake,
he came upon a little group of picnickers, and stopped unperceived beyond
them, to enjoy for a while that comfortable sense of being in the world
yet out of it, which is the birthright of all spectatorship. Gerald and
Phebe were skipping stones, thoroughly absorbed in energetic enjoyment of
the simple game; their two contrasting figures, Gerald dark and tall and
slim, and Phebe so round and fair and supple, making a pretty-enough
picture for any artist. Olly, little Maggie Dexter, and an assortment of
sturdy urchins known throughout Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were
dancing and chattering aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a
clumsy old boat where Phebe had made a comfortable niche for Miss Delano,
who every day at about this hour was afflicted with a remarkable disorder
which had grown upon her wholly of late years, and whose symptoms, so far
as she was willing to admit them, consisted of a painful heaviness of the
eyelids, a weakness in the nape of the neck, and an irresistible tendency
to retire for a brief season within herself. A little farther off still,
having taken fortune at the flood and secured De Forest at last, Bell
Masters was embarked on another kind of craft, a thorough-going,
fully-freighted flirtation, all sails set; and through the trees were
glimpses of lazily moving figures beyond, generally in twos and twos,
following some occult rule of common division peculiar to picnics. By
degrees the children wandered off up the bank, and presently there came a
shout, followed by an evident squabble. Phebe looked around uneasily.
Gerald kept on with her sport.
"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven times, Phebe. Now do better
than that."
At this juncture little Maggie ran up, her pretty brown eyes wide and her
red lips quivering. "Oh! Miss Vernor, Olly shan't do it, shall he? Do say
he shan't!"
"Do what?" asked Gerald, pausing in the act of searching for
another pebble.
"Put it in the water to swim like a duck. It isn't a duck, it's a little,
little young bird he's found in a nest, and it can't swim, it can't
hardly fly. Oh, don't let him!"
"Let him!" echoed Gerald sharply. She sprang toward the children with a
bound, almost lifting Olly off his feet as she drew him back from the
water's edge. "You cruel boy!" she cried. "Give it to me directly."
"I won't!" answered Olly, trying to shake himself free from her grasp.
"It's mine, I found it."
But the small hands held him in a grip as strong as a man's, and in
another moment Gerald had taken the poor little half-feathered creature
from him, and bidden Maggie restore it carefully to its nest.
"It's mine! It's mine! I'll have it back!" shouted Olly, angrily, after
the little girl.
Gerald took hold of him by the shoulders and turned him round toward her.
There was a great deal of hatred for the sin, and not overmuch love for
the sinner, in her face, as she looked down at him. "If you dare touch
that bird again, Olly, I'll find a punishment for you that you will not
soon forget, do you hear?"
A hidden thought of revenge for the spoiled sport came into Olly's mind.
He twisted himself away from his sister with a little grunt, and stood
peevishly playing a moment with a couple of marbles; then suddenly
darting aside, seized the boat in which Miss Delano was established,
still struggling, but more feebly, with the mysterious trouble that held
her in thrall; and with a strength with which one would hardly have
credited his slight form, he pushed it off into the water. There was, of
course, not a particle of real danger for Miss Delano, even though this
chanced to be the only boat at that point, and she was no oarswoman; but
the poor little old lady, thus suddenly roused from the strange
hallucinations (as she called them) which were the most marked feature of
her complaint, and finding herself afloat upon the unstable deep,
instantly supposed that her last hour was come. She sprang up, too
terrified to scream, with a look of deadly horror in her face, and then
sank again all in a heap in the bottom of the boat. Olly gave a fiendish
laugh, but before any one else could move to the rescue, Gerald, with one
fierce, unutterable look at her brother, and no thought but how soonest
to end Miss Delano's speechless agony, quick as a flash, caught hold of
an overhanging bough and swung herself on to a rock quite far out in the
water, and thence, with a light, bold spring, landed safely in the middle
of the boat as it drifted past.
"All right, Miss Delano," she said, briskly, seating herself and laying
hold of the oars with accustomed hands; "I'm a born sailor, and we'll
have a little row first before we go back."
Had an angel visibly descended from heaven to assume the helm, Miss
Delano could not have been more grateful and overcome. "Oh, my dear, my
dear!" she said, and, in the intensity of her relief, began to cry a
little softly. Gerald pretended not to notice her emotion (she was very
awkward as a comforter, and as shy before tears as a man), and rowed
around for a while in utter silence; and then feeling that conversation
might aid in quieting her companion's unnecessarily excited nerves she
began abruptly charging her with questions as one loads a gun with
cartridges, dropping down one after another with cruel directness into
the harmless vacancy of Miss Delano's brain. How many inhabitants had
Joppa in precise figures? what was the height of those farther hills to
the left? upon what system was the village-school governed? what was the
mineral nature of the soil? what was the fastest time ever made by that
bay mare of Mr. Upjohn's with the white hind foot? etc. etc., etc., on
all which points poor Miss Delano could only assure her timidly: "I don't
know, dear; it would be well if I did," and relapsed into an alarmed and
most uncharacteristic silence.
Phebe stood watching the boat as Gerald rowed off, then, as if
recollecting some neglected duty, turned suddenly, and found herself face
to face with Mr. Halloway.
"No farther," he said, playfully barring her passage.
"Oh, but I must! I want to find Olly and talk him into a better frame of
mind before Gerald comes back."
"Leave Olly to me, please. I am a perfect child-tamer, and guarantee to
exorcise his seven evil spirits in less than no time. Meanwhile, sit you
down and rest."
"Oh, I don't need rest. If you'll undertake Olly I'll help put back the
lunch things. Picnics are quite like the Biblical feasts: five loaves and
two fishes somehow always make twelve basketfuls to take up."
"And you are always a true disciple at the feast, Miss Phebe, intent only
upon ministering to others."
Phebe laughed her own peculiarly light-hearted, gay laugh. "That is a
much prettier way of putting it than Gerald's. She says I make myself
maid-of-all-work."
"Miss Gerald, of course, doesn't approve of such service."
"But you do. So I needn't mind her blame."
"But I shall blame too, Miss Phebe, when you overdo yourself. I don't see
why others' recreation need be all work for you. Let each take his share
of both the pleasure and the toil."
"But you see this _is_ my share, Mr. Halloway, because I can't help in
any better way. I don't know enough to entertain people's guests just by
talking to them, as Gerald does. You forget how dull I am."
"So I do," said Denham, gravely. "I forget it all the time. Indeed, the
forgetfulness has quite become chronic. Now I'll find Olly, and we'll all
go at the dishes together and make a game of it."
Certainly Denham Halloway must have possessed some secret charm in his
management of children, for by the time Gerald turned her boat to the
shore, he stood at the bank to meet them, with Olly by his side, as
amiable a little fellow as any Sunday-school-book hero ever born.
"I am glad your sail turned out such a success, Miss Delano," said
Halloway, cheerily, as he lifted the little old lady carefully out on to
the pebbles. "You have been envied of us all. But here is a little boy
come to tell you all the same how sorry he is that he gave you such a
fright. Olly, my lad, I think Miss Delano looks as if she had forgiven
you through and through."
"Oh, indeed, indeed yes," answered Miss Delano, hurriedly. "It was
only my silly way of being scared, particularly when I'm roused up so
sudden out of one of those turns of mine. And it's all right, my dear,
all right."
"But I'm sorry, real and honest," declared Olly, stoutly, looking
squarely in Miss Delano's kindly face. "And I didn't mean to scare you."
"You meant it for a revenge on me, I suppose," said Gerald, in a low,
harsh voice. She took hold of his arm as she spoke. "Give me those
marbles of yours."
Olly looked at her, hesitated, and then reluctantly produced three very
handsome agates from some outlying storehouse of his jacket.
"I bought you six," said Gerald. "Where are the rest?"
"I lost one," answered Olly, sullenly. "It fell down a hole."
"Then give me the other two."
Olly obeyed still more reluctantly, fixing great, anxious eyes upon his
treasures as he laid them, each one more slowly than the last, in his
sister's hand.
"There," said Gerald. "Perhaps this will teach you to behave better
another time. I shall not buy you any more this summer." She flung out
her hand suddenly, and the five pretty stones fell with a splash far out
in the lake and disappeared forever, five little cruel sets of circles
instantly beginning to widen and widen over their graves in a perfect
mockery of roundness. Olly gave one sharp cry, and then stood
stock-still, a bitterly hard look coming over his face; those marbles had
been very, very dear to his heart. Halloway put his arm tenderly around
the little fellow, and drew him close in a very sympathetic way.
"Olly," he said, gently, "you know you deserved some punishment, but now
that your sister has punished you, I am sure she will forgive you too, as
Miss Delano has done, if you only ask her."
Olly buried his face in his friend's coat, and burst into a fit of
heart-broken tears. "I don't want her to forgive me," he sobbed. "I only
want my agates,--my pretty, pretty agates!"
"Surely you will forgive him?" pleaded Halloway, looking up at Gerald
over Olly's head, and holding out one of the boy's hands in his own. "He
was really penitent when you came up. Let me ask for him."
Gerald moved a step away, ignoring the hand. "Certainly, if you wish it,"
she said, coldly.
Halloway bent and kissed Olly's flushed face. "Do you hear, my boy? It is
all right now, and there is Maggie calling you to swing her. Don't forget
you promised to make me a visit at the rectory to-morrow."
Olly threw his arms around Denham's knees and gave him a convulsive hug.
"I like you though you _are_ a minister," he said, through his tears. "I
just wish you were my sister!" And then he went slowly off to Maggie, and
Denham and Gerald stood silently where he had left them. Gerald was the
first to speak.
"You think I am hard on Olly. I see it in your face."
"I do think," replied Denham, slowly, with a faint smile curving his
well-cut lips, "that perhaps it might be happier for Olly if you would
try to consider him less in the light of a boy, and more as--as only a
little animal. You are so tender-hearted and pitiful toward animals."
Gerald flushed angrily. "I like plain speaking best. You think I am hard
on him. Why don't you say so?"
"I will if you prefer it. I do think so."
"Thanks. Is there any thing else you would like to say to me in your
capacity as clergyman before we join the others?"
"Yes, if I may really venture so far. Your hat is quite crooked."
Gerald straightened it without a smile. "Thanks again. Anything else?"
"Absolutely nothing." He turned to escort her back, but Gerald stood
still, frowning out at the lake.
"You don't know Olly," she said, curtly.
"Maybe not, but I know childish nature pretty well, perhaps because
I love it."
"Ah! I don't love it. It isn't lovable to me. It is all nonsense to call
it the age of innocence. It is vice in embryo instead of in full leaf,
that is all."
"But that is an inestimable gain of itself. A little of a bad thing is
surely much better than a great deal of it. For my part I confess to a
great partiality for children. There is something pathetic to me in the
little faults and tempers that irritate us now chiefly because they clash
against our own weaknesses, and yet on the right guidance of which lies
the whole making or marring of the child's life."
"Doesn't guidance include punishment?"
"Yes, it includes it. But it does not consist of it."
Gerald still stood half turned from him, frowning out over the placid
blue water. "Ah," she said, "it chiefly consists of good example and that
sort of thing, I suppose."
"I think it consists chiefly of love," said Halloway, simply.
Gerald made no answer at first, then turned and looked at him almost
defiantly. Her changeable eyes seemed black as she raised them to his.
"Would you have thrown Olly's marbles into the lake?"
"No," replied Halloway, looking steadily back at her.
"Then you would have been very foolish," said Gerald, haughtily. "It was
the only way to touch him. I was quite right to do it."
"You should be the best judge of your actions, Miss Vernor."
Gerald bowed without answer, and moved past him like an offended duchess.
Halloway stood looking after her with an amused sparkle in his eyes.
"Miss Geraldine Vernor," he said to himself, "with all your beauty and
your reputed accomplishments and intellect, you would yet do well to take
a few lessons of my little friend Phebe Lane."