The evening train came in through the little bend in the edge of the
woods, and across the bridge over the pretty rapids, and slid to its
stopping-place under the high arches of the other bridge that
connected the main street of Z---- with its continuation through
"And."
There were lights twinkling in the shops, where they were making
change, and weighing out tea and sugar, and measuring calico,
although outside it was not yet quite dark.
The train was half an hour late; there had been a stoppage at some
draw or crossing near the city.
Mr. Prendible was there, to see if his lodgers were come, and to get
his evening paper; the platform was full of people. Old Z----
acquaintances, many of them, whom Desire and her mother were
pleased, and Helena excited to see.
"There's Kenneth Kincaid!" she exclaimed, quite loudly, pulling
Desire's sleeve.
"Hush!" said Desire, twitching away. "How can you, Helena?"
"He's coming,--he heard me!" cried Helena, utterly impenitent.
"I should think he might!" And Desire walked off a little, to look
among the trunks that were being tumbled from the baggage car.
She had seen him all the time; he had been speaking to Ruth
Holabird, and helping her up the steps with her parcels. Mr.
Holabird was there with the little Westover carryall that they kept
now; and Kenneth put her in, and then turned round in time to hear
Helena's exclamation and to come down again.
"Can I help you? I'm very glad you are come," he said, cordially.
Well; he might have said it to anybody. Again, well; it was enough
to say to anybody. Why should Desire feel cross?
He took Helena's bag; she had a budget beside; Mr. Prendible
relieved Mrs. Ledwith; Desire held on valiantly to her own things.
Kenneth walked over the bridge with them, and down the street to Mr.
Prendible's door; there he bade them good-by and left them.
It was nice to be in Z----; it was very sweet here under the
blossoming elms and locusts; it was nice to see Kenneth Kincaid
again, and to think that Dorris was coming by and by, and that the
lanes were green and full of ferns and vines, and that there was to
be a whole long summer; but there were so many people down there on
the platform,--there was such a muss always; Ruth Holabird was a
dear little thing, but there were always so many Ruths about! and
there was only one cross, stiff, odd, uncomfortable Desire!
But the very next night Kenneth came down and stayed an hour; there
was a new moon glistening through the delicate elm-tips, and they
sat out on the piazza and breathed in such an air as they had not
had in their nostrils for months and months.
The faint, tender light from the golden west in which the new moon
lay, showed the roof and tower of the little church, Kenneth's first
beautiful work; and Kenneth told them how pleasant it was up at Miss
Arabel's, and of the tame squirrels that he fed at his window, and
of the shady pasture-path that led away over the brook from the
very door, and up among pines and into little still nooks where dry
mossy turf and warm gray rocks were sheltered in by scraggy cedars
and lisping birches, so that they were like field-parlors opening in
and out from each other with all sorts of little winding and
climbing passages, between clumps of bayberry bushes and tall ferns;
and that the girls from Z---- and Westover made morning picnics
there, since Lucilla Waters had grown intimate with Delia Waite and
found it out; and that Delia Waite and even Miss Arabel carried
their dressmaking down there sometimes in a big white basket, and
stayed all day under the trees. They had never used to do this; they
had stayed in the old back sitting room with all the litter round,
and never thought of it till those girls had come and showed them
how.
"I think there is the best and sweetest neighborliness and most
beautiful living here in Z----, that I ever knew in any place," said
Kenneth Kincaid; "except that little piece of the same thing in
Aspen Street."
Kenneth had found out how Rosamond Holabird recognized Aspen Street
as a piece of her world.
Desire hated, as he spoke, her spitefulness last night; what she had
said to herself of "so many Ruths;" why could not she not be pleased
to come into this beautiful living and make a little part of it?
She was pleased; she would be; she found it very easy when Kenneth
said to her in that frank intimate way,--"I wish you and your mother
would come over and see what Dorris will want, and help me a little
about that room of hers. I told Miss Waite not to bother; just to
let the old things stand,--I knew Dorris would like them,--and
anything else I would get for her myself. I mean Dolly shall take a
long vacation this year; from June right through to September; and
its 'no end of jolly,' as those English fellows say, that you have
come too!"
Kenneth Kincaid was fresher and pleasanter and younger himself, than
Desire had ever seen him before; he seemed to have forgotten that
hard way of looking at the world; he had found something so
undeniably good in it. I am afraid Desire had rather liked him for
his carping, which was what he least of all deserved to be liked
for. It showed how high and pure his demands were; but his praise
and admissions were better; it is always better to discern good than
to fret at the evil.
"I shall see you every day," he said, when he shook hands at
parting; "and Helena, if you want a squirrel to keep in your pocket
next winter, I'll begin training one for you at once."
He had taken them right to himself, as if they belonged to him; he
spoke as if he were very glad that he should see them every day.
Desire whistled over her unpacking; she could not sing, but she
could whistle like a blackbird. When her father came up on Saturday
night, he said that her eyes were brighter and her cheeks were
rounder, for the country air; she would take to growing pretty
instead of strong-minded, if she didn't look out.
Kenneth came round on Monday, after tea, to ask them to go over to
Miss Waite's and make acquaintance.
"For you see," he said, "you will have to be very intimate there,
and it is time to begin. It will take one call to be introduced, and
another, at least, to get up-stairs and see that beautiful breezy
old room that can't be lived in in winter, but is to be a delicious
sort of camping-out for Dolly, all summer. It is all windows and
squirrel-holes and doors that won't shut. Everything comes in but
the rain; but the roof is tight on that corner. Even the woodbine
has got tossed in through a broken upper pane, and I wouldn't have
it mended on any account. There are swallows' nests in the chimneys,
and wrens under the gable, and humming-birds in the honeysuckle.
When Dolly gets there, it will be perfect. It just wants her to take
it all right into her heart and make one piece of it. _They_ don't
know,--the birds and the squirrels,--it takes the human. There has
to be an Adam in every garden of Eden."
Kenneth really chattered, from pure content and delight.
It did not take two visits to get up-stairs. Miss Arabel met them
heartily. She had been a shy, timid old lady, from long neglect and
humble living; but lately she had "come out in society," Delia said.
Society had come after her, and convinced her that she could make
good times for it.
She brought out currant wine and gave them, the first thing; and
when Kenneth told her that they were his and Dorris's friends, and
were coming next week to see about getting ready for her, she took
them right round through all four of the ground rooms, to the queer
corner staircase, and up into the "long west chamber," to show them
what a rackety old place it was, and to see whether they supposed it
could be made fit.
"Why it's like the Romance of the Forest!" said Helena, delighted.
"I wish _we_ had come here. Don't you have ghosts, or robbers, or
something, up and down those stairs, Miss Waite?" For she had spied
a door that led directly out of the room, from beside the chimney,
up into the rambling old garret, smelling of pine boards and
penny-royal.
"No; nothing but squirrels and bees, and sometimes a bat," answered
Miss Arabel.
"Well, it doesn't want fixing. If you fix it, you will spoil it. I
shall come here and sleep with Dorris,--see if I don't."
The floor was bare, painted a dark, marbled gray. In the middle was
a great braided rug, of blue and scarlet and black. The walls were
pale gray, with a queer, stencilled scroll-and-dash border of
vermilion and black paint.
There was an old, high bedstead, with carved frame and posts, bare
of drapery; an antiquated chest of drawers; and a half-circular
table with tall, plain, narrow legs, between two of the windows.
There was a corner cupboard, and a cupboard over the chimney. The
doors of these, and the high wainscot around the room, were stained
in old-fashioned "imitation mahogany," very streaky and red. The
wainscot was so heavily finished that the edge running around the
room might answer for a shelf.
"Just curtains, and toilet covers, and a little low rocking chair,"
said Mrs. Ledwith. "That is all you want."
"But the windows are so high," suggested Desire. "A low chair would
bury her up, away from all the pleasantness. I'll tell you what I
would have, Mr. Kincaid. A kind of dais, right across that corner,
to take in two windows; with a carpet on it, and a chair, and a
little table."
"Just the thing!" said Kenneth. "That is what I wanted you for, Miss
Desire," he said in a pleased, gentle way, lowering his tone to her
especial hearing, as he stood beside her in the window.
And Desire was very happy to have thought of it.
Helena was spurred by emulation to suggest something.
"I'd have a--hammock--somewhere," she said.
"Good," said Kenneth. "That shall be out under the great butternut."
The great butternut walled in one of the windows with a wilderness
of green, and the squirrels ran chattering up and down the brown
branches, and peeping in all day. In the autumn, when the nuts were
ripe, they would be scrambling over the roof, and in under the
eaves, to hide their stores in the garret, Miss Arabel told them.
"Why doesn't everbody have an old house, and let the squirrels in?"
cried Helena, in a rapture.
In ten days more,--the first week of June,--Dorris came.
Well,--"That let in all the rest," Helena said, and Desire, may be,
thought. "We shan't have it to ourselves any more."
The girls could all come down and call on Dorris Kincaid, and they
did.
But Desire and Helena had the first of it; nobody else went right up
into her room; nobody else helped her unpack and settle. And she was
so delighted with all that they had done for her.
The dais was large enough for two or three to sit upon at once, and
it was covered with green carpet of a small, mossy pattern, and the
window was open into the butternut on one side, and into the
honeysuckle on the other, and it was really a bower.
"I shall live ten hours in one," said Dorris.
"And you'll let me come and sleep with you some night, and hear the
bats," said Helena.
The Ledwiths made a good link; they had known the Kincaids so well;
if it had been only Dorris, alone, with her brother there, the
Westover girls might have been shy of coming often. Since Kenneth
had been at Miss Waite's, they had already grown a little less free
of the beautiful woods that they had just found out and begun fairly
to enjoy last autumn.
But the Ledwiths made a strong party; and they lived close by;
there were plans continually.
Since Leslie Goldthwaite and Barbara Holabird were married and gone,
and the Roger Marchbankses were burned out, and had been living in
the city and travelling, the Hobarts and the Haddens and Ruth and
Rosamond and Pen Pennington had kept less to their immediate
Westover neighborhood than ever; and had come down to Lucilla's, and
to Maddy Freeman's, and the Inglesides, as often as they had induced
them to go up to the Hill.
Maud Marchbanks and the Hendees were civil and neighborly enough at
home, but they did not care to "ramify." So it came to pass that
they were left a good deal to themselves. Olivia and Adelaide, when
they came up to Westover, to their uncle's, wondered "that papa
cared to build again; there really wasn't anything to come for; West
Hill was entirely changed."
So it was; and a very good thing.
I came across the other day, reading over Mr. Kingsley's "Two Years
Ago," a true word as to social needs in England, that reminded me of
this that the Holabirds and the Penningtons and the Inglesides have
been doing, half unconsciously, led on from "next" to next, in
Z----.
Mr. Kingsley, after describing a Miss Heale, and others of her
class,--the middle class, with no high social opportunities, and
with time upon their hands, wasted often in false dreams of life and
unsatisfied expectations, "bewildering heart and brain with novels,"
for want of a nobler companionship, says this: "Till in country
villages, the ladies who interest themselves about the poor will
recollect that the farmers' and tradesmens' daughters are just as
much in want of their influence as the charity children and will
yield a far richer return for their labor, so long will England be
full of Miss Heales."
If a kindly influence and fellowship are the duty of the
aristocratic girls of England toward their "next," below, how far
more false are American girls to the spirit of their country, and
the blessed opportunities of republican sympathies and equalities,
when they try to draw invisible lines between themselves and those
whose outer station differs by but so little, and whose hearts and
minds, under the like culture with their own, crave, just as they
do, the best that human intercourse can give. Social science has
something to do, before--or at least simultaneously with--reaching
down to the depths where all the wrongs and blunders and
mismanagements of life have precipitated their foul residuum. A
master of one of our public schools, speaking of the undue culture
of the brain and imagination, in proportion to the opportunities
offered socially for living out ideas thus crudely gathered, said
that his brightest girls were the ones who in after years, impatient
of the little life gave them to satisfy the capacities and demands
aroused and developed during the brief period of school life, and
fed afterwards by their own ill-judged and ill-regulated reading,
were found fallen into lives of vice. Have our women, old or young,
who make and circumscribe the opportunities of social intercourse
and enjoyment, nothing to search out here, and help, as well, or as
soon as, to get their names put on committee lists, and manage these
public schools themselves, which educate and stimulate up to the
point of possible fierce temptation, and then have nothing more that
they can do?
It was a good thing for Desire Ledwith to grow intimate, as she did,
with Rosamond Holabird. There were identical points of character
between the two. They were both so real.
"You don't want to _play_ anything," Barbara Holabird had said to
Rosamond once, in some little discussion of social appearances and
pretensions. "And that's the beauty of you!"
It was the beauty of Desire Ledwith also; only, with Rosamond, her
ambitions had clothed themselves with a grace and delicateness that
would have their own perfect and thorough as far as it went; and
with Desire, the same demands of true living had chafed into an
impatience with shams and a blunt disregard of and resistance to all
conventionalisms.
"You are a good deal alike, you two," Kenneth Kincaid said to them
one day, in a talk they all three happened to have together.
And he had told Rosamond afterward that there was "something grand
in Desire Ledwith; only grand things almost always have to grow with
struggles."
Rosamond had told this again to Desire.
It was not much wonder that she began to be happier; to have a
hidden comfort of feeling that perhaps the "waiting with all her
might" was nearly over, and the "by and by" was blossoming for her,
though the green leaves of her own shy sternness with herself folded
close down about the sweetening place, and she never parted them
aside to see where the fragrance came from.
* * * * *
They were going to have a grand, large, beautiful supper party in
the woods.
Mrs. Holabird and Mrs. Hobart were the matrons, and gave out the
invitations.
"I don't think I could possibly spend a Tuesday afternoon with a
little 't,'" said Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks laughing, and tossing down
poor, dear, good Mrs. Hobart's note upon her table. "It is _rather_
more than is to be expected!"
"Doctor and Mrs. Hautayne are here, and Dakie Thayne is home from
West Point. It will be rather a nice party."
"The Holabirds seem to have got everything into their own hands,"
said Mrs. Marchbanks, haughtily. "It is always a pity when people
take the lead who are not exactly qualified. Mrs. Holabird _will_
not discriminate!'
"I think the Holabirds are splendid," spoke up Lily, "and I don't
think there's any fun in sticking up by ourselves! I can't bear to
be judicious!"
Poor little Lily Marchbanks had been told a tiresome many times that
she must be "judicious" in her intimacies.
"You can be _pleasant_ to everybody," said mother and elder sister,
with a salvo of Christian benignity.
But it is so hard for little children to be pleasant with fence and
limitation.
"Where must I stop?" Lily had asked in her simplicity. "When they
give me a piece of their luncheon, or when they walk home from
school, or when they say they will come in a little while?"
But there came a message back from Boston by the eleven o'clock
train on the morning of the Tuesday with a little "t," from Mr.
Marchbanks himself, to say that his brother and Mr. Geoffrey would
come up with him to dinner, and to desire that carriages might be
ready afterward for the drive over to Waite's grove.
Mrs. Marchbanks marveled, but gave her orders. Arthur came out
early, and brought with him his friend Archie Mucklegrand, and these
two were bound also for the merry-making.
Now Archie Mucklegrand was the identical youth of the lavender
pantaloons and the waxed moustache, whom Desire, as "Miss Ledwith,"
had received in state a year and a half ago.
So it was an imposing cavalcade, after all, from West Hill, that
honored the very indiscriminate pleasure party, and came riding and
driving in at about six o'clock. There were the barouche and the
coupé; for the ladies and elder gentlemen, and the two young men
accompanied them on horseback.
Archie Mucklegrand had been at West Hill often before. He and
Arthur had just graduated at Harvard, and the Holabirds had had
cards to their grand spread on Class Day. Archie Mucklegrand had
found out what a pretty girl--and a good deal more than merely
pretty--Rosamond Holabird was; and although he might any day go
over to his big, wild Highland estate, and take upon himself the
glory of "Sir Archibald" there among the hills and moors,--and
though any one of a good many pretty girls in Spreadsplendid Park
and Republic Avenue might be induced, perhaps, if he tried, to go
with him,--all this did not hinder him from perceiving that up
here in Z---- was just the most bewitching companionship he had
ever fallen in with, or might ever be able to choose for himself
for any going or abiding; that Rosamond Holabird was just the
brightest, and sweetest, and most to his mind of any girl that he
had ever seen, and most like "the woman" that a man might dream
of. I do not know that he quite said it all to himself in
precisely that way; I am pretty sure that he did not, as yet; but
whatever is off-hand and young-mannish and modern enough to
express to one's self without "sposhiness" an admiration and a
preference like that, he undoubtedly did say. At any rate after
his Christmas at Z---- with Arthur, and some charade parties they
had then at Westover, and after Class Day, when everybody had been
furious to get an introduction, and all the Spreadsplendid girls
and their mothers had been wondering who that Miss Holabird was
and where she came from, and Madam Mucklegrand herself--not having
the slightest recollection of her as the Miss Holabird of that
early-morning business call, whose name she had just glanced at
and dropped into an Indian china scrap-jar before she went
down-stairs--had asked him the same questions, and pronounced that
she was "an exceedingly graceful little person, certainly,"--after
all this, Archie had made up his--mind, shall I say? at least his
inclination, and his moustache--to pursue the acquaintance, and be
as irresistible as he could.
But Rosamond had learned--things do so play into our lives in a
benign order--just before that Christmas time and those charades, in
one of which Archie Mucklegrand had sung to her, so expressively,
the "Birks of Aberfeldy,"--that Spreadsplendid Park was not, at
least his corner of it,--a "piece of her world;" and she did not
believe that Aberfeldy would be, either, though Archie's voice was
beautiful, and--
"Bonnie lassie, will ye go?"
sounded very enticing--in a charade.
So she was quite calm when the Marchbanks party came upon the
ground, and Archie Mucklegrand, with white trousers and a lavender
tie, and the trim, waxed moustache, looking very handsome in spite
of his dapperness, found her out in the first two minutes, and
attached himself to her forthwith in a most undetachable and
determined manner, which was his way of being irresistible.
They were in the midst of their tea and coffee when the West Hill
party came. Miss Arabel was busy at the coffee-table between the two
oaks, pouring out with all her might, and creaming the fragrant cups
with a rich lavishness that seemed to speak of milky mothers without
number or limit of supply; and Rosamond, as the most natural and
hospitable thing to do, conducted the young gentleman as soon as she
could to that lady, and commended him to her good offices.
These were not to be resisted; and as soon as he was occupied,
Rosamond turned to attend to others coming up; and the groups
shifting, she found herself presently a little way off, and
meanwhile Mrs. Marchbanks and her son had reached the table and
joined Archie.
"I say, Arthur! O, Mrs. Marchbanks! You never got such coffee as
this, I do believe! The open air has done something to it, or else
the cream comes from some supernal cows! Miss Holabird!"
Rosamond turned round.
"I don't see,--Mrs. Marchbanks ought to have some of this coffee,
but where is your good woman gone?" For Miss Arabel had stepped
round behind the oak-tree for a moment, to see about some
replenishing.
In her prim, plain dress, utterly innocent of style or _bias_, and
her zealous ministry, good Miss Arabel might easily be taken for
some comfortable, superior old servant; but partly from a sudden
sense of fun,--Mrs. Marchbanks standing there in all her elegant
dignity,--and partly from a jealous chivalry of friendship, Rosamond
would not let it pass so.
"Good woman? Hush! she is one of our hostesses, the owner of the
ground, and a dear friend of mine. Here she is. Miss Waite, let me
introduce Mr. Archibald Mucklegrand. Mrs. Marchbanks will like some
coffee, please."
Which Mrs. Marchbanks took with a certain look of amazement, that
showed itself subtilely in a slight straightening of the lips and an
expansion of the nostrils. She did not _sniff_; she was a great deal
too much a lady; she was Mrs. Marchbanks, but if she had been Mrs.
Higgin, and had felt just so, she would have sniffed.
Somebody came up close to Rosamond on the other side.
"That was good," said Kenneth Kincaid. "Thank you for that, Miss
Rosamond."
"Will you have some more?" asked Rosamond, cunningly, pretending to
misunderstand, and reaching her hand to take his empty cup.
"One mustn't ask for all one would like," said Kenneth,
relinquishing the cup, and looking straight in her eyes.
Rosamond's eyes fell; she had no rejoinder ready; it was very well
that she had the cup to take care of, and could turn away, for she
felt a very foolish color coming up in her face.
She made herself very busy among the guests. Archie Mucklegrand
stayed by, and spoke to her every time he found a chance. At last,
when people had nearly done eating and drinking, he asked her if she
would not show him the path down to the river.
"It must be beautiful down there under the slope," he said.
She called Dorris and Desire, then, and Oswald Megilp, who was with
them. He was spending a little time here at the Prendibles, with his
boat on the river, as he had used to do. When he could take an
absolute vacation, he was going away with a pedestrian party, among
the mountains. There was not much in poor Oswald Megilp, but Desire
and Rosamond were kind to him now that his mother was away.
As they all walked down the bank among the close evergreens, they
met Mr. Geoffrey and Mr. Marchbanks, with Kenneth Kincaid, coming
up. Kenneth came last, and the two parties passed each other single
file, in the narrow pathway.
Kenneth paused as he came close to Rosamond, holding back a bough
for her.
"I have something very nice to tell you," he whispered, "by and by.
But it is a secret, as yet. Please don't stay down there very long."
Nobody heard the whisper but Rosamond; if they could have done so,
he would not have whispered. Archie Mucklegrand was walking rather
sulkily along before; he had not cared for a party to be made up
when he asked Rosamond to go down to the river with him. Desire and
Dorris had found some strange blossom among the underbrush, and were
stopping for it; and Oswald Megilp was behind them. For a few
seconds, Kenneth had Rosamond quite to himself.
The slight delay had increased the separation between her and Archie
Mucklegrand, for he had kept steadily on in his little huff.
"I do not think we shall be long," said Rosamond, glancing after
him, and looking up, with her eyes bright. She was half merry with
mischief, and half glad with a quieter, deeper pleasure, at
Kenneth's words.
He would tell her something in confidence; something that he was
glad of; he wanted her to know it while it was yet a secret; she had
not the least guess what it could be; but it was very "nice"
already. Rosamond always did rather like to be told things first; to
have her friends confide in and consult with her, and rely upon her
sympathy; she did not stop to separate the old feeling which she was
quite aware of in herself, from something new that made it
especially beautiful that Kenneth Kincaid should so confide and
rely.
Rosamond was likely to have more told her to-night than she quite
dreamed of.
"Desire!"
They heard Mrs. Ledwith's voice far back among the trees.
Desire answered.
"I want you, dear!"
"Something about shawls and baskets, I suppose," said Desire,
turning round, perhaps a little the more readily that Kenneth was
beside her now, going back also.
Dorris and Oswald Megilp, finding there was a move to return, and
being behind Desire in the pathway, turned also, as people will who
have no especial motive for going one way rather than another; and
so it happened that after all Rosamond and Archie Mucklegrand walked
on down the bank to the river together, by themselves.
Archie's good humor returned quickly.
"I am glad they are gone; it was such a fuss having so many," he
said.
"We shall have to go back directly; they are beginning to break up,"
said Rosamond.
And then, coming out to the opening by the water, she began to talk
rather fast about the prettiness of the view, and to point out the
bridge, and the mills, and the shadow of East Hill upon the water,
and the curve of the opposite shore, and the dip of the shrubs and
their arched reflections. She seemed quite determined to have all
the talk to herself.
Archie Mucklegrand played with his stick, and twisted the end of
his moustache. Men never ought to allow themselves to learn that
trick. It always comes back upon them when it makes them look most
foolish.
Archie said nothing, because there was so much he wanted to say, and
he did not know how to begin.
He knew his mother and sister would not like it,--as long as they
could help it, certainly,--therefore he had suddenly made up his
mind that there should be no such interval. He could do as he
pleased; was he not Sir Archibald? And there was his Boston
grandfather's property, too, of which a large share had been left
outright to him; and he had been twenty-one these six months. There
was nothing to hinder; and he meant to tell Rosamond Holabird that
he liked her better than any other girl in the world. Somebody else
would be telling her so, if he didn't; he could see how they all
came round her; perhaps it might be that tall, quiet, cheeky looking
fellow,--that Kincaid. He would be before him, at any rate.
So he stood and twisted his moustache, and said nothing,--nothing, I
mean, except mere little words of assent and echo to Rosamond's
chatter about the pretty view.