you," added Bruce. "Usually it is Basil who is regarded as the literary
member of Battalion B, but I have usurped his office. You will please
notice that it is not my fault that the rhyme of my poem halts in
one place--the only place, in fact, for the poem is not long. If the
English language were ever pronounced as it is spelled the rhyme would
be perfect, which you will at once perceive after I have recited it.
Ladies and gentlemen: My poem."
Bruce also bowed deeply, turning from side to side, then proceeded to
recite slowly and impressively:
_Miss Grey,
The key!_
and handed Miss Charlotte the key to her own front door.
"You perceive," said Bruce as soon as he could speak for his audience's
applause and laughter, "that the spelling of those two words is
identical; evidently the pronunciation of one or the other should be
changed. There was not time after the composition of the poem--which
consumed hours--to decide which it should be."
"If you had written your poem in Irish brogue it would have settled
itself," observed Rob.
"Now we heroes of Battalion B are going down to meet our long lost
father," said Bartlemy. "Come Bas and Bruce; there's not too much time."
The three tall, stalwart young fellows tramped out of the house and
down the walk bordered by the old-fashioned shrubs which had sprung up
again since the fire.
"How proud of them their father will be!" said Mrs. Grey, watching them
with as loving a look as if they had been her own boys.
Polly and the little Hasbrooks were already friends, and Polly bore the
four away to display the charms of her new home.
"It's as nice as it can be, and I'm glad you have it, Cousin Peace, but
only think what renunciations the little grey house has had to make
lately--you and Polly, Lydia--I suppose I can't include Demetrius----"
"Are those the only renunciations, and is it only the little grey house
which has renounced, Rob dear?" asked Myrtle Hasbrook significantly.
"But, as I was about to say when this lady rudely interrupted
me," continued Rob frowning at Myrtle, fearfully, "consider what
we have gained: A new house to make a supplementary home; a new
kind-of-cousin-through-our-aunt-in-law; up at the big house, little
Doris and Ted and Bobby, besides dear little Betty to pet and look
after, and----"
"Our father, dear Grey people," broke in Basil's voice, completing
Rob's sentence.
The group around the fireplace of the new house turned towards the door.
They saw the three tall Rutherford boys, and with them a man in navy
uniform, as tall as his sons, smiling at them with his handsome bronzed
face.
"I need no introduction to the Greys. I have known you all so long
through these great boys of mine that it feels like coming home, merely
to meet you. It will take all of my two years' leave of absence to tell
you how grateful I am for all that you have done for my boys. Dear Mrs.
Grey, I am your humble debtor," said Commodore Rutherford, bending over
the motherly hand which had wrought so much good to his sons, with a
something caught in other climes added to his cordial frank heartiness
of manner. "And which is Oswyth, my daughter Wythie?" he asked looking
unerringly straight at Wythie's blushing and happy face. "My little
girl, you dear, little old-fashioned, sweet faced little girl, I
verily believe that Basil's love is not blind." And he kissed Wythie
tenderly, half lifting her as he touched her cheeks.
"Come to supper in my new little house, and insure its prosperity by
its happy beginning," called Miss Charlotte's musical voice from the
dining-room.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
ITS FIRST WEDDING
All winter Wythie had hemmed damask and stitched linen, like the
old-fashioned little soul that she was. Not Oswyth Grey, the first,
in her generation could have burned with more housewifely zeal for
home-and-hand-made furnishings for the home to which she was never to
go from the little grey house than did this Oswyth, set down, a sweet
anachronism, amid the age of sewing-machines and ready-madeness. The
long winter days were too short for the dear little woman, expert
needlewoman though she was, in which to prepare for the home to which
she was to go in June when Basil was graduated.
The Caldwell place--now the Rutherford place--was going through
thorough renovations. The Greys had always known that the Rutherford
boys were provided with enough money to remove them beyond anxiety as
to the future. It was precisely like their unworldliness to accept
this fact vaguely, and it gave Wythie something approaching a shock to
discover that Basil was rich, measured by her simple standards.
"It won't matter in the least how poor are the books which he writes,
Wythie; he will be able to live while they are writing, and then
publish them himself and buy up the entire edition. So aren't you glad
that his mother left Basil such a pretty little fortune?" asked Rob,
energetically creasing the hem of the napkin for which she had offered
her help.
"I think Basil will write nothing but poetry for twelve months," added
Prue. "So he will need every penny. I don't consider the Rutherford
boys' fortune riches."
"It is enough to keep up that big Caldwell place with two women and a
man servant, and to live tastefully and other-fully; I call that rich,
Prudence. What would you have?" said Rob.
Prue arose, tall and graceful in her eighteenth year, as a young
goddess, and walked to the window where she stood looking out, her
hands clasped at the back of her head with its crown of golden hair.
The sunshine lit her up into a splendour that had nothing to fear from
its most illuminating ray, and Wythie's busy hands paused, with her
needle held at the full length of its thread, to look at her anew with
an overwhelming sense of her fitness for a brilliant setting.
"I would have," said Prue slowly, without turning around, "I would have
an income that was equal to these boys' principal. I would have great
spacious rooms, filled with the most charming, exquisitely costumed
people. I would have a retinue of well-trained servants that would keep
me from feeling one jar of the wheels of living. I would have a life
full of big interests, not a little, limited life like ours here. I
would have the world, my sisters." And Prue extended her arms with a
regal gesture that seemed at once to hunger for it and to seize it.
"Oh, Prue, Prudy!" expostulated Wythie in genuine distress. "After all
our happy years in this dear little house! After all our blessed mother
has taught us of the beauty of simplicity and unworldliness!"
Prue turned then to look at her elder with a tolerant smile. "Don't be
so shocked, my dear, little, contented Mouse," she said. "You look as
though I had announced my desire for something criminal. I don't want
the world that we renounce in baptism; I don't want it in a sordid,
vulgar, mean way. I want a big stage and on it I'd like to play a big
part, and I'd like to use the power it gave me for glorious things.
There are more ways of being good than humdrum ones."
"You are ambitious, Prudence, and Mardy says that ambitious women are
not likely to be happy ones," insisted Wythie.
"Then I must be unhappy. I can't make myself like you, Wythie,
satisfied to live, like Kiku-san, purring by the fire, nor like Rob,
throwing herself into whatever lies at hand, and spending herself for a
tiny circle," said Prue. "I'm going out into the world and it shall not
be the worse for having me. I'm going to be part of a great scene, and
I don't mean to be a blot on it."
Rob had let her napkin fall and was watching Prue as closely as Wythie
was, sharing her presentiment of misfortune for their beautiful
youngest, but seeing farther.
"Don't look so troubled, Wythiekins," she said. "Prue must dree her
wierd, like the rest of humanity. She never was the wren we were; she
wants to be an eagle and soar against the sun. I can understand her
better than you do. I have my restless moments, but I think there is an
instinct in me that is prescient; I know without having tasted, that
the fruit of ambition does not nourish. Prudy will flash out into her
bigger world, and she will learn that nothing matters, nothing counts
but love and the inner things. I'm not two years older than you, my
little tall sister, but I'm right, as you will see. It isn't only that
Mardy thinks this; I feel it, or nobody knows what mad things I might
do, for I'm fearfully impatient at times. It won't harm her, Wythie;
the only difference is that what you and I know Prue must be taught by
experience and disappointment."
"You talk like all the prophets melted into one," said Prue, impressed
in spite of herself, for Rob's flashing dark eyes saw far, as her
family well knew.
"Nothing that ends can satisfy any one with a mind, and much more with
a soul, Prue. It is simple enough to understand, if once you realize
that. Your world is too brief, dear Prudy. If you go forth to conquer
it you will turn back some day to the narrow field you had here, and
see that it was intrinsically a wider one, reaching farther, than that
which you mistake for greater," said Rob.
"You talk like an old woman, and you are as inexperienced a girl as I
am," said Prue.
"She talks like what she is; a creature of insights, and that is
not a matter of years; Rob has always known," said Wythie, warmly.
"'Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers.'"
"Mercy upon us, Wythie, you and Rob ought to go about like Dinah Morris
in 'Adam Bede,' in a cap and kerchief preaching unworldliness," cried
Prue petulantly. "I shall take the world into my hands, not into my
heart, and I'm going to make it give me its best gifts." She tossed her
head as she spoke, and Wythie and Rob felt that her beauty made hers no
idle boast.
Rob arose and, putting both arms around her, kissed Prue as her mother
might have done. "Go your ways, dear," she said. "We fear nothing for
you but that they will be harder ways than ours, and that in the end
its youngest child will look back longingly at these peaceful years in
the little grey house."
Prue broke away and quickly left the room, annoyed, moved, excited.
Rob went back to her seat and picked up her napkin, absently, examining
it closely, as if the future lay folded in its hem.
"This means the death knell to poor Bartlemy's hopes, Wythie," she
said. "This means Arthur Stanhope and his million."
"Ah, yes, I know that," sighed Wythie. "But, of course, it doesn't mean
that Prue will marry for money!"
"No, but--well, we can't be sure, but I'm afraid that she doesn't
realize the influence it has had on her mind," said Rob.
"Arthur Stanhope is very nice," suggested Wythie.
"How often have we assured each other of that?" laughed Rob. "We don't
seem at ease about it. But he is, really, very nice, only he doesn't
strike me as particularly forceful--and then he isn't, Bartlemy!"
"Oh, that's really the whole trouble," mourned Wythie. "Our dear, big
Bartlemy! And I was so sure that not a link of the triple alliance
would fail!"
Rob looked up quickly, but Wythie had not the most remote intention of
teasing, so she resumed her creasing with heightened colour, and Wythie
hemmed on, lost in thought.
The Grey girls went to the commencement, and saw their Battalion B
dismissed from their beloved Mother Yale with honours for which all
three, each in his way, had worked hard. The last train brought them
back to Fayre: Wythie tucked under Basil's father's arm, who seemed
hardly less fond of his little almost-daughter than Basil, while Basil
looked after Hester; Lester Baldwin devoted himself to Frances, and
Rob and Prue fell to Bruce and Bartlemy's share, just as they had
always done.
"Mother Grey, here are our alumni!" cried Commodore Rutherford, his
voice resounding through the stillness of Fayre at midnight as the
party came up the flagged walk.
"I think it sounds pretty bad to say: 'I am an alumnus,'" said
Bartlemy. "Much as I coveted the title it sounds zöological to me."
"Dear boys, I congratulate you with all my heart," said Mrs. Grey. "I
feel a little of Mr. Peggotty's wonder when he found Davy 'a gentleman
growed.'"
"I hope you are not struck by finding us gentlemen? We've been
tolerably growed ever since you've known us," said Bruce.
"It was a delightful day? Not a blemish in it?" asked Cousin Charlotte,
who had come up with Polly for the night to pay tribute to the alumni.
"It was the most beautiful, faultless day one could imagine," said
Hester.
Basil began to count on his fingers. "Ten days from to-day I can easily
imagine far more beautiful," he said, with a rapturous look at Wythie.
"Rhoda has made us chocolate, dear Alumni," said the Grey mother. "And
we're going to drink your health from the cup from which Washington
pledged the Grey of that day."
She did not care to discuss that ten days distant celebration, glad as
she was that Wythie was to be so safely happy.
It was such a very short time to keep the circle in the little grey
house unbroken, and those ten days sped like swallows over the old roof.
There had been stirring discussions as to the manner of Oswyth's
marrying; only one thing had been settled from the first: Wythie
insisted on a perfectly simple wedding, and on being married in her
beloved little home.
When it came to inviting and omitting, the matter grew difficult. The
Greys suddenly realized how long was their list of friends with a
claim, once they admitted the claim of any outside the most strictly
limited circle of relatives and intimate friends. Hester and Frances
must be present, yet why not with them the Fayre girls and young men
with whom Wythie had played from the day when her shoes were guiltless
of heels and more than liable to bend around the ankles?
It ended in asking so many people that it was "a question as to how
they could be nearer present than under the apple-trees," Prue said,
and her remark solved the problem. It was June, and all the doors and
windows of the little grey house could be thrown open to its warmth.
Like all early houses the grey house had many doors, letting its guests
step forth under its trees with but a brief delay upon broad flagstone
steps. Wythie was to be married in the big wainscotted room in which
her father had spent most of his dreaming days. Hester, Frances, Rob,
and Prue, with the help of Bruce and Bartlemy, with Lester, had covered
the walls between wainscotting and low ceiling with mountain laurel,
and the effect was most beautiful.
The old clergyman who had baptised and catechised Wythie was to marry
her, and Dr. Fairbairn was to give her away. Rob and Prue, in pale
green gowns, were to be Wythie's bridesmaids, the other two Rutherfords
supporting Basil. Wythie had begged that Polly might be flower maid,
not in a bridal procession, since there was to be none, but carpeting
with rose leaves the place where she and Basil were to stand while the
Fayre young people sang the Lohengrin march without accompaniment.
Wythie had stood out for sentiment, and her wedding-gown was a frail
muslin of the first Oswyth's, wrought with that other Oswyth's
needlework, made, so tradition had it, for her own bridal which was
never to be. Over it fell from the crown of Wythie's fair head to her
little feet a priceless old veil worn for three generations by many
brides of the Winslow race. Her only ornament was Basil's gift of his
mother's pearls, on the back of whose clasp he had had engraved the
poem which he and Wythie had read in the garret on the day of their
betrothal, the stanza written to the Oswyth of long ago.
Wythie, ready for her bridal, stood for the last time before the mirror
of the room which she and Rob had for so long shared through their
happy childhood, their anxious, yet happy young girlhood, and through
the perfect sympathy of their dawning womanhood and grown-up love. It
seemed to Wythie, as her hands smoothed her frail old gown, that in
some mystical way her dream had been fulfilled, and that in her that
earlier romance was perfected.
Then she turned to her dear ones. Prue stood tall and beautiful in her
mermaid-tint of robe, smiling, glad of Wythie's joy, yet moved. But
Rob's cheeks were crimson in her effort for self-control. Say what one
would, this was separation, and though the new home was so near she was
giving up her Wythie. Mrs. Grey smiled at Wythie bravely, saying as
she met her imploring eyes: "My darling, you have been all that a girl
could be to her mother; I am glad to give you to Basil to be all that a
woman can be to her husband."
But Wythie threw herself into her arms, crying: "Don't give me, Mardy;
I can't be given. I must still be a daughter of the little grey house."
"Now, Wythiekins, don't be a goose! We couldn't get rid of you if we
would," said Rob sternly. "It's lovely to have a brother. There's the
chorus, the wedding march. Trot along Wythie!" And she hurried the
little bride from the room, imploring all the powers that be to help
her to drive back the sob then choking her and all succeeding sobs.
There was not a formal entrance. Before the guests realized that they
were coming, Oswyth and Basil stood in their places on Polly's fragrant
carpet, with Rob and Prue and Bruce and Bartlemy on either hand, and
with Mrs. Grey, Commodore Rutherford and Cousin Peace as near as they
could get, and with Polly looking up into the clergyman's eyes with
such a solemn face that those who were not too deeply interested to
notice her, wondered if she were going to forbid the bans.
A few words, the promises asked and given, and Oswyth Grey was Oswyth
Grey no more. Young Basil Rutherford, carrying himself proudly, humbly
erect, turned to lead down among his friends his little wife.
Rob did not know how the next half hour passed; she helped Wythie into
her travelling gown and for one, long moment, the sisters clung to
each other. For whatever happiness the future held, this was a sort of
parting, and the little grey house had given up its eldest daughter.
Mrs. Grey followed Basil and Wythie out on the steps, tears in her eyes
and smiles on the lips which kissed and blessed Wythie clingingly. A
crack of a whip, Myrtilla Hasbrook's baby Betty upset a basket of rice,
and Wythie was gone.
Rob, seeking for a spot in which to hide till she could be sure of
herself, came upon Polly crying her eyes out in the hall closet, with
Bruce trying to comfort her.
"Oh, Rob, oh Rob!" sobbed Polly. "The only thing that I can think of to
make me bear it is that I'm so thankful it isn't you!"
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
ITS DENIAL AND ITS GIFT
Bartlemy was painting Prue. Not that there was anything novel in this;
he had been painting Prue at every opportunity since he had first known
her, but this attempt was an ambitious one, not a portrait, nor a study
of the single figure in some pretty pose as usual, but a larger canvas
and a difficult composition.
Under the splendid trees of the hill place where the little Hasbrooks
and their mother were reigning what Aunt Azraella might have considered
a reign of terror, Prue posed for Bartlemy with the four children
around her whose eager hands she was filling with daisies. The picture
was to be called: "My Lady June," and on it Bartlemy built high hopes
of early fame. It was progressing slowly; neither bribes, threats nor
prayers could keep Ted and Bobby Hasbrook still long at a time; Doris
was an ideal model, but lively little Betty was as reliable as a
butterfly, and Bartlemy had to take what he called "snap-shot strokes"
on her restless little figure.
The picture bade fair to be something well worth doing if Bartlemy
proved equal to his own conception. Prue, lovely beyond words in her
floating white draperies, swaying downward to the children as she
enriched them with the dower of June, was like the incarnation of the
summer-time, so exquisite that the young artist had to fight to keep
his hand steadily at his work, and his mind from wandering from Prue as
a model to the Prue whom he daily feared more and more beyond his reach.
Basil newly married and engrossed in his happiness, Bruce working hard
under Dr. Fairbairn's strict requirements left Commodore Rutherford
very much to the society of his youngest son, between whom and the big
sailor there sprang up a beautiful intimacy of friendship, founded
on their differences. Bartlemy was sufficiently an artist to talk
of himself quite simply, and he and his father had discussed the
probability of Prue, at some future day, making him happy as Wythie had
made Basil.
"You are only a boy, my great son, but I think you know perfectly well
what you will want when you are ready to take it, and though you are
so young I should be delighted if beautiful Prudence cared enough for
you to wait for you. It would not necessarily be long; you have as much
to start upon as Basil has," said this comrade-father, wise in reading
the set of tides and winds. "But, my son, though Prue is fond of you in
her frank sisterly manner of established custom, it is Arthur Stanhope
whom she will marry, and not my boy, who must find his consolation in
the galleries of Europe as many another disappointed artist has found
it before him."
"Not without a try at a better fate, father," said Bartlemy with a
certain compression of the lip that meant determination.
Prue, bending forward that day, under the glorious trees, amid the
waving grass, and holding out the daisies to wriggling Bob and Ted,
felt the determination and preoccupation of the painter's mind, and
dreaded a scene that would be painful to them both. So she chatted on
in a ceaseless flood of varying topics, wondering if this really could
be only Bartlemy with whom she felt so ill at ease.
"See here, boys, I'm going to chloroform you the next time," cried
Bartlemy at last. "How do you think I can paint a perpetual motion--let
alone two motions? Oh, say, Betty, now don't jump out of the picture
like that, not even if you do want to reach that tassel grass!"
"Betty, Betty, try to be quiet!" begged Prue. "Poor Bartlemy! he can't
paint, and you will have spoiled our beautiful picture!"
"It's so hot!" sighed Betty.
"Yes, and what do we care for pictures? You can get better ones'n
this'll be at the grocer's, swapping for soap wrappers," grumbled Bobby.
"'N Doris wants to finish Tobias' collar, though she's too polite to
say so," added Ted.
"Doris is a comfort, a model model," said Bartlemy. "We might as well
let the kiddies off, Prue; they've stood it as long as they can, and
the rest of the time they would be no good. I've got what I wanted most
to-day, and can work it up without models for a day or two."
The children had scattered at the first suggestion of dismissal,
all but Doris, who paused to pick up some tubes and a brush which
Bartlemy had dropped before walking sedately away to resume the collar
which she was making for old Tobias, who found his declining years
sunshine-flooded by the coming of this little maid.
Bartlemy set his boxes in order, and folded up his easel, then he
looked up at Prue, who said hastily: "I think I'll go on up to the
house and see Myrtle Hasbrook for a little while."
"No; don't, Prue. Let me tell you what I was thinking," said Bartlemy.
"I was thinking," he continued, disregarding Prue's gesture of dissent,
"that I should like to paint you as Romola."
"Romola? Among these Connecticut hills?" laughed Prue.
"No, indeed, but Romola in Florence," said Bartlemy. "Get an old
Florentine costume, and the Florentine background, and wouldn't you
make a dandy model for Romola?"
"It's not very easy to get the Florentine background--" began Prue.
"Perfectly easy," said Bartlemy eagerly, interrupting her. "Prue, I'm
going over this autumn. I have enough money to afford never to sell a
picture--as much as Bas has. Come with me to Florence; let me show you,
let us see together for the first time the pictures we all dream of,
and let me see the people in the galleries turn away from the Titians,
and the golden hair which Henner paints to look at the golden-haired
American girl, more beautiful than any of them, my pride, my model, my
inspiration, my----"