LETTERS AND CHANGES.
It was some time later when, by Madam Dalrymple’s request, Jessica
added that postscript:
“DEAREST MOTHER:
“Something worse than the house burning has happened. The ‘man of
business,’ has run away and taken all our Cousin Margaret’s money
with him. At least there’s nothing left of it, nothing at all. She
hasn’t any of that needed ‘cash in hand’ except the ground the burned
house stood on. That seems funny, but the ground can be sold and
bring money for itself. Till then Cousin Margaret has had to borrow
a little of Mr. Hale. The worst of it is, she says--I heard her
talking to Mr. Hale and another lawyer she’d sent for to come here
right away quick--the worst is that she is in some way responsible
for some other people losing their money. She had allowed her ‘man of
business’ to ‘speculate’ somehow--Oh! I don’t understand, nor does
even she. Except that not only has all she thought she had gone,
nobody knows where, but some she didn’t know she owed, and that she
must pay back if she’s ever to know another happy moment.
“She and the lawyers talked till she got dizzy, and I had been all
the time. Then when I heard her dear old voice go sort of trembly I
dared to put my arm around her and to remind her: ‘Don’t you worry,
Cousin Margaret, my mother and I are Waldrons, too, and we’ve a
copper mine in California that they say is full of money. When we get
enough dug out we will pay all those folks and give you back all that
“man” ran away with. I think that losing that money isn’t half as bad
as losing that old home; and don’t you care a mite!’
“That was right, wasn’t it? And the two lawyers looked at one another
quick and Cousin Margaret gave me a little squeeze, and said:
“‘That’s the Waldron speaking in you, dear. But this is my affair,
not yours nor Gabriella’s. I shall make everything good. Nobody can
suffer through me.’
“Then Mr. Hale cried out real sharp, like he used to when the ‘boys’
plagued him and said: ‘That dastardly coward! I hope they’ll catch
him and shut him up for life!’ But the Madam just looked at him,
quiet and stern, and answered: ‘Don’t say that. It doesn’t belong to
us to take vengeance. The poor wretch is suffering more than I am, if
he hasn’t already taken his own life. Let him go. What is left to me
is to get the highest possible price for the Washington Square land
and to use it as impartially, judiciously, as I can. Will you two
take care of that business for me, reserving for yourselves a just
payment for your services?’
“And they said they would but would take no pay. But Cousin Margaret
smiled and said the future would arrange all that. So they went away,
and she told me to tell you we could not go to Newport now. She has
a little bit of a place on the Hudson river, somewhere, that she
bought once when she was traveling through the town just because it
was so pretty and would make a nice home for Tipkins and Barnes, if
they should outlive her and get married. Now, of course, Barnes never
will live there, but Tipkins will. He says he will never leave our
Cousin Margaret while he has strength to serve her, and that he has
money in the bank enough to keep us all a good long time. He wants
his Madam to take it and use it as if it were her own, which it was
once. But she thanks him just as sweet and says: ‘Not till need be,
Tipkins.’ I think that was lovely of him, don’t you? Ephy is full
of schemes for making money for us all. But of course, nobody need
to worry ’cause of that copper mine we have; and I’m rather glad we
aren’t going to that Newport, though I would have liked to see the
sea.
“Cousin Margaret has counter--counter-demanded, I guess it is--all
the orders about the new, fine clothes. She is to have just a few of
the very plainest for herself, and thinks I won’t need many either.
Till the fall when I go to Madam Mearson’s school. Even there I
shan’t want them, and I am so glad. I think it takes so much trouble
to keep changing as I would have had to do if we had gone to that
Newport, where rich people live. ‘Schoolgirls should dress simply’
she says.
“Cousin Margaret says there is a tiny garden beside the little house
where we will live, in the country, and Ephy says he will be able to
take care of that. If she _will_, that Granny Briggs may go with us,
too. Cousin Margaret says she must befriend her, some way.
“Now this is the real good-by. Ephraim is going to put the letter in
the mail-box and I do wish it could get to you right away. It is so
long--a week to go and a week to come; two whole weeks between us,
mother dear.
“Your loving
“JESSICA.”
A week later saw Madam Dalrymple and her household installed in the
small cottage up the river. Tipkins was still in charge of the house
affairs, but old “Forty-niner” had encased himself in a suit of the
overalls which Granny Briggs “finished off” and announced himself as
“head gardener,” with “Little Captain” first assistant.
Sophy Nestor was still in hospital. She was rapidly recovering from her
burns and as swiftly learning to love the refuge she had found. Her
heroism had won her many friends; also her willingness, now, to have
the surgeons “experiment” with her deformity. Concerning this, there
was diversity of opinion, with the majority inclining to the belief
that cure was possible.
“Well, Doctors, if both the child and her grandmother approve, do you
go ahead and try. Let no possible expense be spared. The girl whose
life she saved can well repay for any outlay,” Madam Dalrymple had
assured the hospital staff on the occasion of that memorable visit she
had made to little Sophy.
To the crippled child, this was almost more wonderful than the hope of
being made straight. To have this beautiful “White Hair” come to that
ward and have all the children in it know that the visit was to her,
Sophy! All just because she had once done--Why, what any of them might
have done if they had had the chance!
“Roses? Roses--for me--Sophy? Oh! Ma’am, I ain’t worth it! I ain’t half
worth it! Roses--roses cost a lot. I know. And ’twas only a laylock
that was give to me, free for nothing, that I was going--Just laylocks;
but roses! Them kind grows in the hot-houses, I know. I hope--I hope
nobody didn’t go without their dinner to buy ’em!” protested the
flower-girl, half-crying, half-weeping from sheer delight.
“Ah! no, little maid. Nobody would need do that. Why do you say so?”
asked the wonderful Madam in her softest voice, that sounded so like a
caress.
“Why, Jessica said you was poor, too, now. Don’t seem so. Don’t ’pear
as if it could be,” returned the child, critically regarding the plain
street costume of her visitor, and which to the tenant of Avenue A
looked as fine as it was new.
“Well, little girl, poverty is comparative. You don’t understand that
yet, but you will some day. As for you I trust you will never again be
as poor as in those old days before Buster made you acquainted with
my young cousin. By the way, the broncho is going to be a very happy
horse. He is going to live in the country, away from all elevated
trains and jangling street-cars, though he’ll not wholly escape from
automobiles. Even the country isn’t free from those detestable things.”
“Ain’t it, ma’am? What’s it like, that country?”
Jessica listened, amazed to hear Sophy talking so glibly to her
stately Cousin Margaret and to hear that lady replying with so much
graciousness to this once most objectionable girl from Avenue A:
“What is the country like? Like Central Park, only infinitely lovelier.
I’ve a bit of good news for you, too, my child. That good grandmother
of yours is going with us to our new home. Ephraim Marsh says she
‘hails from Cawnco’d,’ same as himself and that she is wearing her
heart out here in the great city. He says, besides, which is more to
the point, that she is a fine cook. So she has promised to go and live
with me and do the family’s cooking. As soon, then, as you are able to
come, you shall visit us and her. Visit, at first, only; because if you
are to be made just like you’d wish to be, it will take many months,
maybe even years. You will really live at the hospital, while Granny
lives with us. But it’s only an hour or two between; short journeys by
rail or boat, a bit of a ride behind Buster--and you will be in the
country itself.”
“Oh! O-h!” gasped poor Sophy, too greatly overcome for further words.
“Now, Jessica, bid your little friend good-by. You may write to her and
maybe she can write to you--if----”
“Oh! ma’am, I can, I can! Granny made me go to night school and I can
write real plain. If I had any paper, or money to put on a stamp on the
envelope. You can get them to a drug store and they cost two cents. The
stamps do. Maybe, if you didn’t mind, some these hospital folks’d buy
one these roses. Then I could. If you didn’t mind so very much.”
“Can you? Well, I fancy a stamp may be procured even right here
in this hospital and without disposing of your flowers. I will see
that it is provided, with all else that is necessary. Ah! you poor,
beauty-starved child, to whom roses suggest but sordid money! Well, it
will not be long till you gather roses from bushes out of doors, and
may they there suggest to you only God’s goodness and love!”
This was a rare outburst from the reticent Madam; who was widely
known for her liberal, “organized” charities; but who had hitherto
contented herself with such, missing the greater delight of bestowing
herself--her personal interest and sympathy, which alone make charity
worth anything to its recipient.
Then Cousin Margaret bore Jessica away. Granny came for a brief, rather
unsatisfactory visit, since the new surroundings in which she found her
grandchild always rather abashed her. Ephraim flew in and out, like
an excited old child, with his arms full of bundles--of more or less
useless contents, like a toy bear and a pineapple cheese--and at last
Sophy was alone in that hospital she had so dreaded.
For a time she felt deserted; but it was only on the second day that
a letter came from Jessica, containing a stamped, addressed envelope,
that made the safe delivery of Sophy’s answer a sure thing. Jessie’s
effusion was not quite so well written as these she had sent home to
California, and this explained itself:
“MY DEAREST LITTLE HEROINE:
“We got here all right and Tipkins met us to the station. He’d
come up ahead of us on the boat with Buster and Buster was the
trouble. The broncho was all right on that boat and being led up to
the cottage--it’s just lovely! No bigger than lots in California,
so I like it better. Buster had never been harnessed, never in all
his darling life. But I don’t know how we should get along without
him, ’cause he’s the only horse we have. Now. Think of that! Just
one little bit of a broncho to do all the teaming and plowing and
everything for a whole cottage full of folks. Only he won’t team and
he won’t plow and he won’t--most everything. You know the span and
the carriages and the coachman and footman were all sold after the
fire. I mean the horses were. They went to pay our board at that big
hotel where it costs a lot of money to stay even a single day. So
that horse--Buster I mean, this time--he wouldn’t draw the little
bit of wagon Tipkins had hired to take your grandmother and Cousin
Margaret up the hill in to the cottage, and they thought they’d have
to walk. Tipkins was mad and struck Buster and that made me angry,
too. Ephraim lost his own temper and said he’d get ahead of that
beast or bust. Fancy! ‘Forty-niner’ calling my broncho a ‘beast’!
“After all it was I that got ahead, not Ephy. I just got on Buster’s
back and chirruped to him and off he went, just as if we were
starting to race some other horse across the mesa. Never knew he had
that wagon with folks in it behind him, till I told him to stop; and
then we had got home and it was too late for him to fuss.
“Now, Ephraim says, I’ll have to ride him while he plows that garden,
for he’s going to have the best, old-fashionedest Yankee kind of a
garden that he’s seen since he left Concord. He’s going to raise
the same old marrowfat sort of green pease that Sophia Badger used
to eat when she was a girl, and I do wish you could see that dear
old lady! You’re going to, soon, anyway. But she is the happiest!
Why, she just picks up handfuls of green grass, even, and buries her
nose in it and says it ‘carries her back to a time when she tramped
barefoot after the cows in the pasture.’ I shouldn’t think that would
make anybody extra happy, but it seems to, her. And this morning she
came across a little plant of what she called ‘Southernwood,’ or ‘Old
Man’--a queer, smelly kind of bush that you never sold, I guess, from
your tray--and she burst right out crying! Said her own mother used
to always carry a sprig of it to meeting when Granny was a mite of a
child. She could see her mother’s face, just smelling it, she said.
Fancy! Being the mother of a grandmother! Doesn’t that seem almost
too old to be believed?
“My Cousin Margaret is almost as happy as your Granny. She says life
is so simple up here, and it does her so much good to see anybody so
glad as Mrs. Briggs. I guess we’re all pretty glad and I am so busy
that I didn’t write before, because you see Ephy went right at that
garden this very morning and I’ve been riding Buster to make him drag
that plow without kicking it out of the furrow every other step.
“Do you know, Sophy Nestor? I--it seems almost a wicked thing to
say--but, haven’t lots of happy things happened just because that old
house burned up? And my Cousin Margaret is more beautiful than ever.
She doesn’t worry a bit. Your grandmother and Ephraim amuse her all
the time and Tipkins is even more devoted than he used to be.
“There seems to be money enough for the little we need, now we don’t
have to buy so many clothes, and--Ephraim is calling me. He wants
to go to a seed store at the Landing and he can’t make Buster draw
the wagon to fetch him and the tools back again unless I ride on his
back. What a good thing it was all around that Ephy came to this
side the continent and brought Buster with him! What a good, happy,
splendid thing life is, anyway! Write right away.
“Your loving, ever grateful
“JESSIE.”
The reply to this long letter was brief and to the point.
“DEER JESSICA TRENT:
“I’ll come Soons i Can. I Cant Now. i’m strapped on a Bord gettin’
my crook straTened. I’m Goin’ to Bee a traned Nurse and live to a
hospittle. I’m goin’ to be strapped for--ever And Ever, ’seems if.
i’m the gladdest ever ’t the house burnt up an’ Buster nocked me down
an’ everything, sophy nesTor. Yours Till deth. Cross my hart. good
By.”
This letter did not reach Jessica, of course, until the day following
the trip to the Landing she had mentioned in her own. A trip that
amused the people whom she passed along the way because of her novel
method of making the broncho “go.” A trip that was to have a most
astonishing ending and one to fill the “Little Captain’s” soul with
unspeakable delight.
[Illustration: “She rose once, bobbed a returning courtesy to Jessica’s
profound one.” (See page 73)]