PINK PETALS AND BRIGHT VISIONS.
“Yes, Mother; if you cannot persuade Beatrice to behave herself upon
the street, I really think she should not be allowed to go out. Her
goings on are very mortifying to me, and she is sure to get us into
some dreadful sort of scrape yet, worse than that small-pox scare last
week--”
“Sweet maiden, all severe! Don’t! That is a sensitive point with
your unfortunate sister! The less said upon it the more agreeable!”
interrupted Bonny, skipping across the narrow parlor of the Beckwith
home, whither they had just returned, and catching the tall Isabelle
around the waist with a persuasive little hug.
“What have you been doing now, Beatrice?” asked the gentle little
widow, looking up from a piece of wonderful embroidery, and fixing a
half-amused, half-apprehensive gaze upon the younger girl’s face.
“Nothing, dear Motherkin, but a simple act of charity. I happened to
see a funny old gentleman tumble down in the middle of the street, and
I pulled him out of harm’s way. Isn’t that a right sort of thing to do?”
“But that is only the beginning,” added Belle. “She was not contented
with a really kind and brave rescue, but she must go off with her
protégé into a store and tell him all about ourselves, and--”
“Isabelle! Not ‘all.’ I merely told him where we lived. And it was
really an act of charity to ourselves. He will make a delightful and
very salable model for Motherkin’s embroidery. Lend me your pencil,
dear. Let me show you!”
“Beatrice, have you done this foolish thing? Did you go with any
stranger into a shop?”
“Please don’t interrupt the flow of art, Motherkin!”
“If you did, you must never do so again. Leave the person you have
assisted to go his way and you go yours. And of all people to get into
such affairs you are certainly the most unfortunate child I ever knew.”
“I’ll try to be good, Mother dear. Only it will be very difficult. He
was a nice old man. This looks very like him. You must do his legs in
burnt sienna. See? And his coat--his coat was like a ‘picter.’ All
tight down the back and very high-shouldered as to sleeves, which also
were very long and narrow. Do his coat in Prussian blue. His ‘weskit’
was yellow ochre, touched up with umber; and his hat--alas! his hat had
disappeared! His face--Motherkin, he had a nice face. A good face, a--”
“Like the tramp you let into the house, while we were out, to steal
our last half-dozen silver spoons! He, I remember, ‘had a good face, a
really intellectual face’!” remarked Belle, gibingly. Her good nature
was now quite restored by the pleasure of finding some excuse for
teasing Beatrice, who liked to tease them all.
“There, Motherkin! Isn’t that ‘sweetly pretty’? Can you not work
him into a landscape of trees and cows and clouds and other country
things?” demanded Bonny, ignoring her sister, and laying the really
clever little sketch in her mother’s lap.
“How do you get on with your singing, dear?” asked that lady, smiling,
and taking time from her work to pat the soft cheek of her merry
daughter.
“Badly. There is a terrible discrepancy between my chest notes and my
head notes. When T try to stretch one up and the other down, something
appears to give way--cr-r-rick-crac-c-k-screech! Shall I illustrate,
Mother dear?”
“No, no, I beg! My nerves are in bad condition to-day. But if you’ll
sing something without nonsense, I shall be glad to hear you. It would
rest me, I think.”
Beatrice’s gay face sobered instantly, and Isabelle laid down her book.
“Are you so tired, Motherkin?”
“Oh! no, indeed! Only it is a bit monotonous stitching, stitching all
day with nobody to talk to. Never mind. Here comes Roland. I wonder why
so early.”
The inquiry was in her eyes as she raised them to meet her son’s when
he entered, full three hours before his usual time of home-coming. But
she saw instantly that he was not ill, and, that anxiety allayed, she
smiled brightly upon him. “Well, my boy! what good fortune has given
you a holiday?”
“Ill, not good fortune, Mother. I--I have been discharged. I have lost
my place.”
Then, indeed, did a significant silence fall upon the family group.
Lost his place! Could anything have been more unfortunate!
“Why, ‘Laureate,’ have you been writing more soap-poetry?”
“No, Bonny; but I had a row with the boss, and he talked to me so
rudely that I made up my mind no gentleman would stand it. So I bolted.
That’s all. I was going to leave, anyway, after the holidays.”
“Oh, you were, eh? Going into soap-poetry for a business? If it pays as
well as your first venture--”
“Be still.”
“Yes, my dear. But I’ll just make a note of your new words. You will
have quite a vocabulary if you keep on. ‘Row,’ ‘boss,’ ‘bolted,’ will
rhyme admirably with ‘cow,’ ‘toss,’ ‘moulted.’ I shall take to writing
for soap-prizes myself soon. I’ve always had a notion that my genius
would develop in a direction not at present suspected by my family.
Mother thinks I am an embryo prima-donna; Belle knows I am a fine
dressmaker; Bob is sure I was born for no other purpose than to make
boys’ kites, and Roland must acknowledge he never would have won the
soap-poem prize if I hadn’t furnished at least one missing rhyme. But--”
“Bonny, do keep still! If I were as fond of talking as you, I’d--”
“Talk! Hark! There goes the door-bell. I hope nobody has come to
call, for--” The chatterbox did not wait to express her inhospitable
reasons, but darted down the narrow passage to answer the summons,
and was back almost directly, bearing in her arms the basket of
chrysanthemums which Mr. Brook’s messenger had just brought.
“Beatrice!”
“For mercy’s sake!”
“What in the world!”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, oh, oh!” cried the delighted girl, dancing about so that nobody
could get more than a glance at her burden of lovely blossoms, until
she finally dropped in a little heap at her mother’s feet and placed
the basket on the drawing she had laid upon her mother’s knee. “Such
a handy table your lap makes, Motherkin!” she often remarked; but the
truth was that everything must be shared with this sympathizing woman
or it lost in value.
“Isn’t it lovely, lovely?”
“Lovely, indeed! But it cannot possibly be meant for you, dear. Where
did it come from? How did you get it?”
“Of course it is meant for me. It came from the store I visited in
company with my old gentleman. And I took it out of a messenger boy’s
hand. Oh! the beauties! the darlings! Now, Miss Isabelle Beckwith,
don’t you wish you had not been so impatient? Maybe his royal
highness--he must be that, at least, or he couldn’t afford such a
gift--would have sent you one wee blossom all for yourself.”
“But I do not understand. I do not know that it is right for you to
keep it, dear,” remarked Mrs. Beckwith, between the rapid exclamations
which fell from the lips of all three young people.
“Now, Motherkin! Of course it’s right! It’s the very prettiest
compliment I ever had in all my life. Don’t go for to spoil it with
your proper notions, that’s a good Mother! But--see here! Here’s a
_billet-doux_! or I’m a sinner!”
If Mr. Philipse Chidly Brook could have witnessed the delight with
which his offering was received, and could have heard the running
comments bestowed upon it, he would have been repaid a thousand times.
For when his courtly little note, with its old-fashioned writing, was
read aloud, even the careful mother had no further reproof for her
adventure-loving Beatrice, not all whose chivalrous escapades ended as
comfortably as this.
FAIR, KIND, AND MOST RESPECTED MISS,--Allow me to present you with
this slight token of my gratitude; which I hope to express more
fully when I call, this evening, to make my regards to your Mother
and her family.
I have the honor to subscribe myself
Your Obedient Servant,
PHILIPSE CHIDLY BROOK.
Of NEW WINDSOR, N. Y., _November Twenty-third, Eighteen hundred and
eighty-one_.
To MISS BEATRICE BECKWITH.
“My obedient servant! My blessed old Prince of Givers! That’s what
he should have signed. Seventy-five cents each, Motherkin mine! All
lavished on your troublesome girl!”
Mrs. Beckwith did not immediately reply. She took the note from Bonny’s
hand and gazed at it musingly, as if trying to clear some confusion of
memory. “I have heard that name before--somewhere--besides in history.
Let me think!”
“I hope you will hear it again--‘somewhere’! Here comes my
‘Humpty-Dumpty’! I was wishing he could enjoy this.”
“Hello! Bon! What the dickens is that?”
“Hello! Bob! It’s chrysanthemums, not dickens!”
“Whose is it?”
“Mine!”
“Stuff! That can’t be yours! Where did you get it?”
“It can be mine, it shall be mine, it is mine. It is a reward of merit,
the first instalment of many I hope to receive.”
“Tell a feller!” pleaded the eight-year-old boy, who was very like
Beatrice, only that his hair was a little rougher, his dark eyes even
brighter, his general appearance a trifle more dilapidated.
“I have told a ‘feller,’ and if a ‘feller’ can’t believe I am not to
blame.”
“Don’t bother! Tell the hull concern!”
Beatrice slipped her arm around the little chap as affectionately as if
his costume were not plentifully bedaubed with street mud, and kissed
his retroussé nose squarely on its tip; after which she gave him a
history of the afternoon’s incident, told as only Bonny would have told
it.
“Jimminy-cracky! He must be richer’n thunder!”
“Robert! Where do you learn such talk? Why will you use such words?”
“Dunno, Mother. They seem to grow somehow. Say, Bon! That basket is
worth a heap of money!”
“My brother, you should not look a gift horse in the mouth!”
“You’re doing it yourself, aren’t you? I saw you counting all the time
you were talking. So was I. But some of ’em seemed to get away. I bet
they is more’n forty. S’pose they cost much as five cents apiece?”
“Five cents! Seventy-five is the price of that particular shade
everywhere. Think of it! Do it,--a nice little sum for a nice little
boy for a nice little girl who pulled a nice little man out of a nice
little crowd on a nice little corner of a nice--”
“Bonny, Bonny! Don’t be silly! But, indeed, I don’t wonder! The sight
of so much beauty has raised my own spirits till I feel able to fight
the world afresh--for you, my children! But Bonny is right; don’t,
don’t ‘count the teeth’ of this lovely ‘gift horse,’ dears. Put the
basket on that white cloth I just finished embroidering, right in the
centre of the table. Then let us gather about it and study it. We will
all work the better for the lesson.”
“Motherkin! you are the dearest, wisest body in the world. Here’s
your chair--right up front. And say! let’s every one tell what she or
he sees in the flowers. I suppose that present represents something
different to each; don’t you?”
“I suppose with all your practical sense you are still a fanciful
child!” responded Mrs. Beckwith, smiling fondly upon the active
Beatrice, who was, indeed, her mother’s “right hand” of dependence in
their every-day life.
“Well, if I am, I think it is a case of heredity--like I was reading
about in last night’s paper. When you were left to make faces at
fortune, with four troublesome youngsters pulling at your skirts,
you might have dropped your mouth-corners and put on a doleful
expression--but you did not. You just rolled up your sleeves and put
on your thimble and shut your eyes to the old dame’s frowns and went
to work. I remember, Motherkin, once when ‘Humpty-Dumpty’ was in the
cradle, and I was rocking him to sleep, you sang so loud and so long
that I told you I wouldn’t rock him any more if you didn’t keep still;
and you turned on me with such a look! Your eyes were full of tears and
your lips were trembling; but yet you were smiling as brave as could
be. ‘I dare not stop, darling!’ you said; ‘if I did I should cry!’ I
tell you, Motherkin, I never forgot that, and I never will! But what do
you see in the ‘posy,’ dear Mother?”
“I see an old-fashioned garden, with an old-fashioned dame walking in
it. An old-fashioned gentleman is bending before her, and presenting
her with chrysanthemums--of just this shade. It is early winter--or
late, late fall. There is hoar-frost on the dead leaves in the path,
hoar-frost upon the hair of these two people, and a touch of winter’s
cold has nipped their thin cheeks. Yet they smile and are lovingly
courteous still. They know that the chrysanthemums will fade; that the
hoar-frost will change to ice on which they must slip downwards over
the dead-leaf path--out of sight. But they will be brave and beautiful
to the end; and their memory will be like the strange and spicy
fragrance of their chosen flowers.”
“Oh, how pretty, Mother! Call the picture ‘Artemisias.’ That is the
old-time name for ‘Mums.’ And I hope when it is done some rich, rich
person who has leisure to study the meaning of beautiful things will
buy your drapery and hang it on a wall alone, close to a cheery wood
fire; and that he will sit down before it many times and learn all that
you have put into it.”
“Belle, next! What says the basket to you, Miss Beauty?”
“I see a big, big ball-room. It is filled with handsome women and
gentlemanly men. They are all, like Bonny’s ‘rich one,’ at leisure and
at rest. They say courteous things to one another, and they feel them.
The women have never known what it means to wear patched shoes and
soiled gloves. They have travelled everywhere. They know everything
that happy mortals need to know. They have never heard that there was
poverty in the world which they could not relieve, nor suffering they
could not soothe. They have never had their tempers spoiled and their
faces lined by want of any sort. I am there in the midst of them, as
care-free, as beautiful, as soft-spoken as any of them. As happy, too.
I wear a lovely gown of just that chrysanthemum shade, but no jewels. I
have the blossoms in my hair, on my corsage, in my hands. I love them.
I am wholly, wholly content. I have nothing left to wish for.”
“Happy mortal! Come, ‘Laureate’! But cut it short. Because, you know,
my poet, you are inclined to be a little long-drawn-out sometimes.”
“Hush! impious spirit! Fright not the muse away!” retorted Roland,
in a very unpoetic tone. “I am in Japan. There are lovely fountains,
perfect gardens, beautiful maidens--and lots of time! I don’t get up
in the morning till I choose. I write soap or even stove-polish poems,
unrebuked by my irreverent sister. I have plenty of money to buy my
mother gowns covered with embroidery which she doesn’t have to do
herself, and to fill the cupboard with food which she doesn’t have to
cook. There are wonderful kites which Bonny does not make, but which
‘Humpty-Dumpty’ does fly, from the top of a funny little house as tall
as a table, into a blue sky which rests on the top of his head--”
“Enough! Now, Bob?”
“Oh! I dunno. No school, fer one thing. No grammar talk when I get
home. Plenty of fire-crackers an’ pistols an’ guns an’ turkey an’
everything I want! Say, Bonny Beckwith! Ain’t we never a going to have
any supper?”
“At once, small sir. It is a matter of economy to feed you immediately
you feel the need of being fed. The longer the delay the greater the
cavity. Now, dreamers, all move back, please. Your humble servant has
the floor, and must have the table, seeing that it is the only one the
house of Beckwith possesses.”
With a smile they all pushed back; but the gentle widow laid her hand
caressingly upon Beatrice’s shoulder with the question: “Had the
chrysanthemums no visions for your eyes, sweetheart?”
“Heaps of ’em, Motherkin! But some other time.”
“No fair, no fair, Bon! What do you want?”
“A home in the country!”
“Whew! I reckon I’ll get my Japanese tour first!” said Roland, as
he placed the basket of flowers upon the top of the sewing-machine
amid a pile of unmended stockings. “Gracious! How much depends upon
surroundings! That isn’t half as suggestive up there!”
“Hark! What’s that row in the street? Hear that awful thumping!” cried
Bob, seizing his hat and bounding down the stairs, two steps at a time.
Bonny also hurried to the window, but turned from it in instant dismay.
“For the goodness’ sake! It’s my old gentleman, and a policeman has him
by the collar!” And before anybody could interpose she had followed her
small brother.