THE COTTAGE IN THE LANE.
It was called thus because it stood at the end of a broad, grassy avenue
or lane, which led from the park to the entrance of the grounds of
Collingwood, whose chimneys and gables were distinctly visible in the
winter when the trees were stripped of their foliage. At the time when
Mrs. Crawford took possession of it its color was red, but the storms
and rains of eleven summers and winters had washed nearly all the red
away; and as Mrs. Crawford had never had the money to spare for its
repainting, it would have presented a brown and dingy appearance
outwardly, but for the luxurious woodbine, which she had trained with so
much care and skill that it covered nearly three sides of the cottage,
and made a gorgeous display in the autumn, when the leaves had turned a
bright scarlet.
Thanks to the thoughtfulness of Arthur Tracy, the cottage was furnished
comfortably and even prettily when Mrs. Crawford entered it, and it was
from the same kind friend that her resources mostly had come up to the
day when, three years after her marriage, Amy Hastings came home to die,
bringing with her a little two-year-old boy, whom, she called Harold,
for his father. Just where the father was, if indeed he were living, she
did not know. He had left her in London six months before, saying he was
going over to Paris for a few days, and should be back almost before she
had time to miss him. Just before he left her he said to her, playfully:
'Cheer up, _petite_. I have not been quite as regular in my habits as I
ought to have been, but London is not the place for a man of my
tastes--too many temptations for a fellow like me. When I come back we
will go into the country, where you can have a garden, with flowers and
chickens, and grow fat and pretty again. You are not much like the girl
I married. Good-bye.'
He kissed her and the baby, and went whistling down the stairs. She
never saw him again, and only heard from him once. Then he was in Paris,
and had decided to go for a week to Pau, where he said they were having
such fine fox hunts. Weeks went by and he never wrote nor came, and Amy
would have been utterly destitute and friendless but for Arthur Tracy,
who, when her need was greatest, went to her, telling her that he had
never been far from her, but had watched over her vigilantly to see that
no harm came to her. When her husband went to Paris he knew it through a
detective, and from the same source knew when he went to Pau, where all
trace of him had been lost.
'But we are sure to find him again,' he said, encouragingly; 'and
meantime I shall see that you do not suffer. As an old friend of your
husband, you will allow me to care for you until he is found.'
And Amy, who had no alternative, accepted his care, and tried to seem
cheerful and brave while waiting for the husband who never came back.
At last when all hope of seeing him again was gone, Arthur sent her home
to the cottage in the lane, where her mother received her gladly,
thanking Heaven that she had her daughter back again. But not for long.
Poor Amy's heart was broken. She loved her husband devotedly, and his
cruel desertion of her--for she knew now it was that--hurt her more than
years of suffering with him could have done. Occasionally she heard from
Arthur, who was still busy in search of the delinquent, and who always
sent in his letter a substantial proof of his friendship and generosity.
And so the weeks and months went by; and then, one day, there came a
letter in the well-known handwriting. But it was Mrs. Crawford who
opened it and read that Harold Hastings was dead: that Amy was free, and
that Arthur Tracy, who through all had loved her just as well as when he
first asked her to be his wife, now put the question again, offering to
make her the mistress of Tracy Park and surround her with every possible
comfort.
'Say yes, darling Amy,' he wrote, 'and we may yet be very happy. I will
be a good husband to you and a father to your child, who shall share my
fortune as if he were my own. Answer at once, telling me to come, and,
before you know it I shall be there to claim you for my wife.'
With a low moan, Mrs. Crawford hid her face in her hands and sobbed
aloud, for the Amy who might have been the honored wife of Arthur Tracy
lay dead in her coffin; and that day they buried her under the November
snow, which was falling in great sheets upon the frozen ground. What
Arthur felt when he heard the news no one ever knew, for he made no sign
to any one, but at once gave orders to Colvin that a costly monument
should be placed at her grave, with only this inscription upon it:
AMY
_Aged_ 23.
Of course the low-minded people talked, and Mrs. Crawford knew they did;
but her heart was too full of sorrow to care what was said. Her
beautiful daughter was dead, and she was alone with the little boy, the
child Harold, who had inherited his mother's beauty, with all her lovely
traits of character. Had Mrs. Crawford consented, Arthur would have
supported him entirely; but she was too proud for that. She would take
care of him herself as long as possible, she wrote him, but if, when
Harold was older, he chose to educate him, she would offer no objection.
And there the matter dropped, and Mrs. Crawford struggled on as best she
could, sometimes going out to do plain sewing, sometimes taking it home,
sometimes going to people's houses to superintend when they had company,
and sometimes selling fruit and flowers from the garden attached to the
cottage. But whatever she did, she was always the same quiet, lady-like
woman, who commanded the respect of all, and who, poor as she was, was
held in high esteem by the better class in Shannondale. Grace Atherton's
carriage and that of Edith St. Claire stood oftener before her door
than that at Tracy Park; and though the ladies came mostly on business,
they found themselves lingering after the business was over to talk with
one who, in everything save money, was their equal.
Harold was his grandmother's idol. For him she toiled and worked,
feeling more than repaid for all she did by his love and devotion to
her. And Harold was a noble little fellow, full of manly instincts, and
always ready to deny himself for the sake of others. That he and his
grandmother were poor he knew, but he had never felt the effects of
their poverty, save when Tom Tracy had jeered at him for it, and called
him a pauper. There had been one square fight between the two boys, in
which Harold had been the victor, with only a torn jacket, while Tom's
eye had been black for a week, and Mrs. Tracy had gone to the cottage to
complain and insist that Harold should be punished. But when she heard
that Dick St. Claire had assisted in the fray, taking Harold's part, and
himself dealing Tom the blow which blackened his eye, she changed her
tactics, for she did not care to quarrel with Mrs. Arthur St. Claire, of
Grassy Spring.
Harold and Richard St. Claire, or Dick, as he was familiarly called,
were great friends, and if the latter knew there was a difference
between himself and the child of poverty he never manifested it, and
played far oftener with Harold than with Tom, whose domineering
disposition and rough manners were distasteful to him. That Harold would
one day be obliged to earn his living, Mrs. Crawford knew, but he was
still too young for anything of that kind; and when Grace Atherton, or
Mrs. St. Claire offered him money for the errands he sometimes did for
them, she steadily refused to let him take it. Had she known of Mrs.
Tracy's proposition that he should be present at the party as hall-boy,
she would have declined, for though she could go there herself as an
employee, she shrank from suffering Harold to do so. That Mrs. Tracy was
not a lady, she knew, and in her heart there was always a feeling of
superiority to the woman even while she served her, and she was not as
sorry, perhaps, as she ought to have been, for the attack of rheumatism
which would prevent her from going to the park to take charge of the
kitchen during the evening.
'I am sorry to disappoint her, but I am glad not to be there,' she was
thinking to herself as she sat in her bright, cheerful kitchen, waiting
for Harold, when he burst in upon her, exclaiming:
'Oh, grandma, only think! I am invited to the party, and I told her I'd
go, and I am to be there at half-past seven sharp, and to wear my
meetin' clothes.'
'Invited to the party! What do you mean? Only grown up people are to be
there,' Mrs. Crawford said.
'Yes, I know;' replied Harold, 'but I'm not to be with the _grown-ups_.
I'm to stay in the upper hall and tell 'em where to go.'
'Oh, you are to be a _waiter_,' was Mrs. Crawford's rather contemptuous
remark, which Harold did not heed in his excitement.
'Yes, I'm to be at the head of the stairs, and somebody else at the
bottom; and they are to have fiddlin and dancin'; I've never seen
anybody dance; and ice-cream and cake, with something like plaster all
over it, and oranges and grapes, and, oh, everything! Dick St. Claire
told me; he knows; his mother has had parties, and she's going to-night,
and her gown is crimson velvet, with black and white fur in it like our
cat, only they don't call it that; and--oh, I forgot--they have had a
telegraph, and I took it to Mrs. Tracy, who looked mad and almost cried
when she read it, Mr. Arthur Tracy is coming home to-night.'
Harold had talked so fast that his grandmother could hardly follow him,
but she understood what he said last, and started as if he had struck
her a blow.
'Arthur Tracy! Coming home to-night!' she exclaimed. 'Oh, I am so glad,
so glad.'
'But Mrs. Tracy did not seem to be, and I guess she wanted to stop the
party,' Harold said, repeating as nearly as he could what had passed
between him and the lady.
Harold was full of the party to which he believed he had been invited,
and when in the afternoon Dick St. Claire came to the cottage to play
with him, he felt a kind of patronizing pity for his friend who was not
to share his honor.
'Perhaps mother will let me come over and help you,' Dick said, 'I know
how they do it. You mustn't talk to the people as they come up the
stairs, nor even say good-evening, only;
'"Ladies will please walk this way, and gentlemen that!"
And Dick went through with a pantomime performance for the benefit of
Harold, who, when the drill was over, felt himself competent to receive
the Queen's guests at the head of the great staircase in Windsor Castle.
'Yes, I know,' he said, '"Ladies this way, and gentlemen that;" but when
am I to go down and see the dancing and get some ice-cream?'
On this point Dick was doubtful. He did not believe, he said, that
waiters ever went down to see the dancing, or to get ice cream, until
the party was over, and then they ate it in the kitchen, if there was
any left.
This was not a cheerful outlook for Harold, whose thoughts were more
intent upon cream and dancing than upon showing the people where to go,
and it was also the second time the word waiter had been used in
connection with what he was expected to do. But Harold was too young to
understand that he was not of the party itself. Later on it would come
to him fast enough, that he was only a part of the machinery which moved
the social engine. Now, he felt like the engine itself, and long before
six o'clock he was dressed, and waiting anxiously for his grandmother's
permission to start.'
'I'll tell you all about it,' he said to her. 'What they do, and what
they say, and what they wear, and if I can, I'll speak to Mr. Arthur
Tracy and thank him for mother's grave-stone.'
By seven o'clock he was on his way to the park, walking rapidly, and
occasionally saying aloud with a gesture of his hand to the right and
the left, and a bow almost to the ground.
'Ladies this way,' and 'gentlemen that.'
When he reached the house the gas-jets had just been turned up, and
every window was ablaze with light from the attic to the basement.
'My eye! ain't it swell!' Harold said to himself, as he stood a moment,
looking at the brilliantly lighted rooms. 'Don't I wish I was rich and
could burn all that gas, and maybe I shall be. Grandma says Mr. Arthur
Tracy was once a poor boy like me; only he had an uncle and I haven't.
I've got do earn my money, and I mean to, and sometimes, maybe, I'll
have a house us big as this, and just such a party, with a boy up stairs
to tell 'em where to go. I wonder now if I'm expected to go into the
kitchen door. Of course not, I've got on my Sunday clothes, and am
invited to the party. I shall ring,'
And he did ring--a sharp, loud ring, which made Mrs. Tracy, who had not
yet left her room, start nervously as she wondered who had come so
early.
'Old Peterkin, of course. Those whom you care for least always come
first.'
Peering over the banister Tom Tracy saw Harold when the door was opened,
and screaming to his mother at the top of his voice, 'It ain't old
Peterkin, mother; it's Hall Hastings, come to the front door,' he ran
down the stairs, and confronting the intruder just as he was crossing
the threshold, exclaimed:
'Go 'long; go back. You hain't no business ringin' the bell as if you
was a gentleman. Go to the kitchen door with the other servants!'
With a thrust of the hand he pushed Harold back and was about to shut
the door upon him when, with a quick, dextrous movement, Harold darted
past him into the hall, saying, as he did so:
'Darn you, Tom Tracy, I won't go to the back kitchen door, and I'm not a
servant, and if you call me so again I'll lick you!'
How the matter would have ended is doubtful, if Mrs. Tracy had not
called from the head of the stairs:
'Thomas! Thomas Tracy! I am ashamed of you! Come to me this minute! And
you, boy, go to the kitchen; or, no--now you are here, come up stairs,
and I'll tell you what you are to do.'
Her directions were much like those of Dick St. Claire, except that she
laid more stress upon the fact that he was not to speak to any one
familiarly, but was to be in all respects a machine. Just what she meant
by that Harold did not know; but he hung his cap on a bracket, and
taking his place where she told him to stand, watched her admiringly as
she went down the staircase, with her peach-blow satin trailing behind
her, and followed, by her husband, who looked and felt anxious and ill
at ease.
Tom had disappeared, but his younger brother, Jack, who was wholly
unlike him, came to Harold's side, and began telling him what quantities
of good things there were in the dining-room and pantry, and that his
Uncle Arthur was coming home that night, and his mother was so glad, she
cried; then, with a spring he mounted upon the banister of the long
staircase and slipped swiftly to the bottom. Ascending the stairs almost
as quickly as he had gone down, he bade Harold try it with him.
'It's such fun! and mother won't care. I've done it forty times,' he
said, as Harold demurred; and then, as the temptation became too strong
to be resisted, two boys instead of one rode down the banister and
landed in the lower hall, and two pairs of little legs ran nimbly up the
stairs just as the door opened and admitted the first arrival.