several months, and her popularity had never waned. A picnic was planned
to Dover's Grove, and the romantic little girls had insisted upon a May
queen, and Lucy was unanimously elected. The pupils of Madame's school
went to the picnic in the manner known as a “strawride.” Miss Parmalee
sat with them, her feet uncomfortably tucked under her. She was the
youngest of the teachers, and could not evade the duty. Madame and Miss
Acton headed the procession, sitting comfortably in a victoria driven
by the colored man Sam, who was employed about the school. Dover's Grove
was six miles from the village, and a favorite spot for picnics. The
victoria rolled on ahead; Madame carried a black parasol, for the sun
was on her side and the day very warm. Both ladies wore thin, dark
gowns, and both felt the languor of spring.
The straw-wagon, laden with children seated upon the golden trusses of
straw, looked like a wagonload of blossoms. Fair and dark heads, rosy
faces looked forth in charming clusters. They sang, they chattered. It
made no difference to them that it was not the season for a straw-ride,
that the trusses were musty. They inhaled the fragrance of blooming
boughs under which they rode, and were quite oblivious to all discomfort
and unpleasantness. Poor Miss Parmalee, with her feet going to sleep,
sneezing from time to time from the odor of the old straw, did not
obtain the full beauty of the spring day. She had protested against the
straw-ride.
“The children really ought to wait until the season for such things,”
she had told Madame, quite boldly; and Madame had replied that she was
well aware of it, but the children wanted something of the sort, and the
hay was not cut, and straw, as it happened, was more easily procured.
“It may not be so very musty,” said Madame; “and you know, my dear,
straw is clean, and I am sorry, but you do seem to be the one to ride
with the children on the straw, because”--Madame dropped her voice--“you
are really younger, you know, than either Miss Acton or I.”
Poor Miss Parmalee could almost have dispensed with her few years
of superior youth to have gotten rid of that straw-ride. She had no
parasol, and the sun beat upon her head, and the noise of the children
got horribly on her nerves. Little Lucy was her one alleviation. Little
Lucy sat in the midst of the boisterous throng, perfectly still, crowned
with her garland of leaves and flowers, her sweet, pale little face
calmly observant. She was the high light of Madame's school, the effect
which made the whole. All the others looked at little Lucy, they talked
to her, they talked at her; but she remained herself unmoved, as a high
light should be. “Dear little soul,” Miss Parmalee thought. She also
thought that it was a pity that little Lucy could not have worn a white
frock in her character as Queen of the May, but there she was mistaken.
The blue was of a peculiar shade, of a very soft material, and nothing
could have been prettier. Jim Patterson did not often look away from
little Lucy; neither did Arnold Carruth; neither did Bubby Harvey;
neither did Johnny Trumbull; neither did Lily Jennings; neither did many
others.
Amelia Wheeler, however, felt a little jealous as she watched Lily. She
thought Lily ought to have been queen; and she, while she did not dream
of competing with incomparable little Lucy, wished Lily would not always
look at Lucy with such worshipful admiration. Amelia was inconsistent.
She knew that she herself could not aspire to being an object of
worship, but the state of being a nonentity for Lily was depressing.
“Wonder if I jumped out of this old wagon and got killed if she would
mind one bit?” she thought, tragically. But Amelia did not jump. She
had tragic impulses, or rather imaginations of tragic impulses, but she
never carried them out. It was left for little Lucy, flower-crowned and
calmly sweet and gentle under honors, to be guilty of a tragedy of which
she never dreamed. For that was the day when little Lucy was lost.
When the picnic was over, when the children were climbing into the
straw-wagon and Madame and Miss Acton were genteelly disposed in the
victoria, a lamentable cry arose. Sam drew his reins tight and rolled
his inquiring eyes around; Madame and Miss Acton leaned far out on
either side of the victoria.
“Oh, what is it?” said Madame. “My dear Miss Acton, do pray get out and
see what the trouble is. I begin to feel a little faint.”
In fact, Madame got her cut-glass smelling-bottle out of her bag and
began to sniff vigorously. Sam gazed backward and paid no attention to
her. Madame always felt faint when anything unexpected occurred, and
smelled at the pretty bottle, but she never fainted.
Miss Acton got out, lifting her nice skirts clear of the dusty wheel,
and she scuttled back to the uproarious straw-wagon, showing her slender
ankles and trimly shod feet. Miss Acton was a very wiry, dainty woman,
full of nervous energy. When she reached the straw-wagon Miss Parmalee
was climbing out, assisted by the driver. Miss Parmalee was very pale
and visibly tremulous. The children were all shrieking in dissonance,
so it was quite impossible to tell what the burden of their tale of woe
was; but obviously something of a tragic nature had happened.
“What is the matter?” asked Miss Acton, teetering like a humming-bird
with excitement.
“Little Lucy--” gasped Miss Parmalee.
“What about her?”
“She isn't here.”
“Where is she?”
“We don't know. We just missed her.”
Then the cry of the children for little Lucy Rose, although sadly
wrangled, became intelligible. Madame came, holding up her silk skirt
and sniffing at her smelling-bottle, and everybody asked questions
of everybody else, and nobody knew any satisfactory answers. Johnny
Trumbull was confident that he was the last one to see little Lucy, and
so were Lily Jennings and Amelia Wheeler, and so were Jim Patterson and
Bubby Harvey and Arnold Carruth and Lee Westminster and many others; but
when pinned down to the actual moment everybody disagreed, and only one
thing was certain--little Lucy Rose was missing.
“What shall I say to her father?” moaned Madame.
“Of course, we shall find her before we say anything,” returned Miss
Parmalee, who was sure to rise to an emergency. Madame sank helpless
before one. “You had better go and sit under that tree (Sam, take a
cushion out of the carriage for Madame) and keep quiet; then Sam must
drive to the village and give the alarm, and the strawwagon had better
go, too; and the rest of us will hunt by threes, three always keeping
together. Remember, children, three of you keep together, and, whatever
you do, be sure and do not separate. We cannot have another lost.”
It seemed very sound advice. Madame, pale and frightened, sat on the
cushion under the tree and sniffed at her smelling-bottle, and the rest
scattered and searched the grove and surrounding underbrush thoroughly.
But it was sunset when the groups returned to Madame under her tree,
and the strawwagon with excited people was back, and the victoria with
Lucy's father and the rector and his wife, and Dr. Trumbull in his
buggy, and other carriages fast arriving. Poor Miss Martha Rose had been
out calling when she heard the news, and she was walking to the scene of
action. The victoria in which her cousin was seated left her in a
cloud of dust. Cyril Rose had not noticed the mincing figure with the
card-case and the parasol.
The village searched for little Lucy Rose, but it was Jim Patterson who
found her, and in the most unlikely of places. A forlorn pair with a
multiplicity of forlorn children lived in a tumble-down house about half
a mile from the grove. The man's name was Silas Thomas, and his wife's
was Sarah. Poor Sarah had lost a large part of the small wit she had
originally owned several years before, when her youngest daughter, aged
four, died. All the babies that had arrived since had not consoled her
for the death of that little lamb, by name Viola May, nor restored her
full measure of under-wit. Poor Sarah Thomas had spied adorable little
Lucy separated from her mates by chance for a few minutes, picking wild
flowers, and had seized her in forcible but loving arms and carried her
home. Had Lucy not been such a silent, docile child, it could never
have happened; but she was a mere little limp thing in the grasp of the
over-loving, deprived mother who thought she had gotten back her own
beloved Viola May.
When Jim Patterson, big-eyed and pale, looked in at the Thomas door,
there sat Sarah Thomas, a large, unkempt, wild-visaged, but gentle
creature, holding little Lucy and cuddling her, while Lucy, shrinking
away as far as she was able, kept her big, dark eyes of wonder and
fear upon the woman's face. And all around were clustered the Thomas
children, unkempt as their mother, a gentle but degenerate brood, all
of them believing what their mother said. Viola May had come home again.
Silas Thomas was not there; he was trudging slowly homeward from a job
of wood-cutting. Jim saw only the mother, little Lucy, and that poor
little flock of children gazing in wonder and awe. Jim rushed in and
faced Sarah Thomas. “Give me little Lucy!” said he, as fiercely as any
man. But he reckoned without the unreasoning love of a mother. Sarah
only held little Lucy faster, and the poor little girl rolled appealing
eyes at him over that brawny, grasping arm of affection.
Jim raced for help, and it was not long before it came. Little Lucy rode
home in the victoria, seated in Sally Patterson's lap. “Mother, you take
her,” Jim had pleaded; and Sally, in the face and eyes of Madame, had
gathered the little trembling creature into her arms. In her heart she
had not much of an opinion of any woman who had allowed such a darling
little girl out of her sight for a moment. Madame accepted a seat in
another carriage and rode home, explaining and sniffing and inwardly
resolving never again to have a straw-ride.
Jim stood on the step of the victoria all the way home. They passed poor
Miss Martha Rose, still faring toward the grove, and nobody noticed her,
for the second time. She did not turn back until the straw-wagon, which
formed the tail of the little procession, reached her. That she halted
with mad waves of her parasol, and, when told that little Lucy was
found, refused a seat on the straw because she did not wish to rumple
her best gown and turned about and fared home again.
The rectory was reached before Cyril Rose's house, and Cyril yielded
gratefully to Sally Patterson's proposition that she take the little
girl with her, give her dinner, see that she was washed and brushed
and freed from possible contamination from the Thomases, who were not a
cleanly lot, and later brought home in the rector's carriage. However,
little Lucy stayed all night at the rectory. She had a bath; her lovely,
misty hair was brushed; she was fed and petted; and finally Sally
Patterson telephoned for permission to keep her overnight. By that time
poor Martha had reached home and was busily brushing her best dress.
After dinner, little Lucy, very happy and quite restored, sat in Sally
Patterson's lap on the veranda, while Jim hovered near. His innocent
boy-love made him feel as if he had wings. But his wings only bore him
to failure, before an earlier and mightier force of love than his young
heart could yet compass for even such a darling as little Lucy. He sat
on the veranda step and gazed eagerly and rapturously at little Lucy on
his mother's lap, and the desire to have her away from other loves came
over him. He saw the fireflies dancing in swarms on the lawn, and a
favorite sport of the children of the village occurred to him.
“Say, little Lucy,” said Jim.
Little Lucy looked up with big, dark eyes under her mist of hair, as she
nestled against Sally Patterson's shoulder.
“Say, let's chase fireflies, little Lucy.”
“Do you want to chase fireflies with Jim, darling?” asked Sally.
Little Lucy nestled closer. “I would rather stay with you,” said she in
her meek flute of a voice, and she gazed up at Sally with the look which
she might have given the mother she had lost.
Sally kissed her and laughed. Then she reached down a fond hand and
patted her boy's head. “Never mind, Jim,” said Sally. “Mothers have to
come first.”
NOBLESSE
MARGARET LEE encountered in her late middle age the rather singular
strait of being entirely alone in the world. She was unmarried, and as
far as relatives were concerned, she had none except those connected
with her by ties not of blood, but by marriage.
Margaret had not married when her flesh had been comparative; later,
when it had become superlative, she had no opportunities to marry. Life
would have been hard enough for Margaret under any circumstances, but it
was especially hard, living, as she did, with her father's stepdaughter
and that daughter's husband.
Margaret's stepmother had been a child in spite of her two marriages,
and a very silly, although pretty child. The daughter, Camille, was like
her, although not so pretty, and the man whom Camille had married
was what Margaret had been taught to regard as “common.” His business
pursuits were irregular and partook of mystery. He always smoked
cigarettes and chewed gum. He wore loud shirts and a diamond scarf-pin
which had upon him the appearance of stolen goods. The gem had belonged
to Margaret's own mother, but when Camille expressed a desire to present
it to Jack Desmond, Margaret had yielded with no outward hesitation, but
afterward she wept miserably over its loss when alone in her room. The
spirit had gone out of Margaret, the little which she had possessed. She
had always been a gentle, sensitive creature, and was almost helpless
before the wishes of others.
After all, it had been a long time since Margaret had been able to
force the ring even upon her little finger, but she had derived a small
pleasure from the reflection that she owned it in its faded velvet box,
hidden under laces in her top bureau drawer. She did not like to see
it blazing forth from the tie of this very ordinary young man who had
married Camille. Margaret had a gentle, high-bred contempt for Jack
Desmond, but at the same time a vague fear of him. Jack had a measure of
unscrupulous business shrewdness, which spared nothing and nobody, and
that in spite of the fact that he had not succeeded.
Margaret owned the old Lee place, which had been magnificent, but of
late years the expenditures had been reduced and it had deteriorated.
The conservatories had been closed. There was only one horse in
the stable. Jack had bought him. He was a wornout trotter with legs
carefully bandaged. Jack drove him at reckless speed, not considering
those slender, braceleted legs. Jack had a racing-gig, and when in it,
with striped coat, cap on one side, cigarette in mouth, lines held taut,
skimming along the roads in clouds of dust, he thought himself the man
and true sportsman which he was not. Some of the old Lee silver had paid
for that waning trotter.
Camille adored Jack, and cared for no associations, no society, for
which he was not suited. Before the trotter was bought she told Margaret
that the kind of dinners which she was able to give in Fairhill were
awfully slow. “If we could afford to have some men out from the city,
some nice fellers that Jack knows, it would be worth while,” said she,
“but we have grown so hard up we can't do a thing to make it worth their
while. Those men haven't got any use for a back-number old place like
this. We can't take them round in autos, nor give them a chance at
cards, for Jack couldn't pay if he lost, and Jack is awful honorable. We
can't have the right kind of folks here for any fun. I don't propose
to ask the rector and his wife, and old Mr. Harvey, or people like the
Leaches.”
“The Leaches are a very good old family,” said Margaret, feebly.
“I don't care for good old families when they are so slow,” retorted
Camille. “The fellers we could have here, if we were rich enough, come
from fine families, but they are up-to-date. It's no use hanging on to
old silver dishes we never use and that I don't intend to spoil my
hands shining. Poor Jack don't have much fun, anyway. If he wants that
trotter--he says it's going dirt cheap--I think it's mean he can't have
it, instead of your hanging on to a lot of out-of-style old silver; so
there.”
Two generations ago there had been French blood in Camille's family. She
put on her clothes beautifully; she had a dark, rather fine-featured,
alert little face, which gave a wrong impression, for she was
essentially vulgar. Sometimes poor Margaret Lee wished that Camille had
been definitely vicious, if only she might be possessed of more of the
characteristics of breeding. Camille so irritated Margaret in those
somewhat abstruse traits called sensibilities that she felt as if she
were living with a sort of spiritual nutmeg-grater. Seldom did Camille
speak that she did not jar Margaret, although unconsciously. Camille
meant to be kind to the stout woman, whom she pitied as far as she was
capable of pitying without understanding. She realized that it must
be horrible to be no longer young, and so stout that one was fairly
monstrous, but how horrible she could not with her mentality conceive.
Jack also meant to be kind. He was not of the brutal--that is,
intentionally brutal--type, but he had a shrewd eye to the betterment of
himself, and no realization of the torture he inflicted upon those who
opposed that betterment.
For a long time matters had been worse than usual financially in the Lee
house. The sisters had been left in charge of the sadly dwindled estate,
and had depended upon the judgment, or lack of judgment, of Jack. He
approved of taking your chances and striking for larger income. The few
good old grandfather securities had been sold, and wild ones from the
very jungle of commerce had been substituted. Jack, like most of his
type, while shrewd, was as credulous as a child. He lied himself, and
expected all men to tell him the truth. Camille at his bidding mortgaged
the old place, and Margaret dared not oppose. Taxes were not paid;
interest was not paid; credit was exhausted. Then the house was put up
at public auction, and brought little more than sufficient to pay the
creditors. Jack took the balance and staked it in a few games of chance,
and of course lost. The weary trotter stumbled one day and had to be
shot. Jack became desperate. He frightened Camille. He was suddenly
morose. He bade Camille pack, and Margaret also, and they obeyed.
Camille stowed away her crumpled finery in the bulging old trunks, and
Margaret folded daintily her few remnants of past treasures. She had an
old silk gown or two, which resisted with their rich honesty the inroads
of time, and a few pieces of old lace, which Camille understood no
better than she understood their owner.
Then Margaret and the Desmonds went to the city and lived in a horrible,
tawdry little flat in a tawdry locality. Jack roared with bitter mirth
when he saw poor Margaret forced to enter her tiny room sidewise;
Camille laughed also, although she chided Jack gently. “Mean of you to
make fun of poor Margaret, Jacky dear,” she said.
For a few weeks Margaret's life in that flat was horrible; then it
became still worse. Margaret nearly filled with her weary, ridiculous
bulk her little room, and she remained there most of the time, although
it was sunny and noisy, its one window giving on a courtyard strung with
clothes-lines and teeming with boisterous life. Camille and Jack
went trolley-riding, and made shift to entertain a little, merry but
questionable people, who gave them passes to vaudeville and entertained
in their turn until the small hours. Unquestionably these people
suggested to Jack Desmond the scheme which spelled tragedy to Margaret.
She always remembered one little dark man with keen eyes who had seen
her disappearing through her door of a Sunday night when all these gay,
bedraggled birds were at liberty and the fun ran high. “Great Scott!”
the man had said, and Margaret had heard him demand of Jack that she be
recalled. She obeyed, and the man was introduced, also the other members
of the party. Margaret Lee stood in the midst of this throng and heard
their repressed titters of mirth at her appearance. Everybody there was
in good humor with the exception of Jack, who was still nursing his bad
luck, and the little dark man, whom Jack owed. The eyes of Jack and the
little dark man made Margaret cold with a terror of something, she
knew not what. Before that terror the shame and mortification of her
exhibition to that merry company was of no import.
She stood among them, silent, immense, clad in her dark purple silk gown
spread over a great hoopskirt. A real lace collar lay softly over her
enormous, billowing shoulders; real lace ruffles lay over her great,
shapeless hands. Her face, the delicacy of whose features was veiled
with flesh, flushed and paled. Not even flesh could subdue the sad
brilliancy of her dark-blue eyes, fixed inward upon her own sad state,
unregardful of the company. She made an indefinite murmur of response
to the salutations given her, and then retreated. She heard the roar of
laughter after she had squeezed through the door of her room. Then she
heard eager conversation, of which she did not catch the real import,
but which terrified her with chance expressions. She was quite sure that
she was the subject of that eager discussion. She was quite sure that it
boded her no good.
In a few days she knew the worst; and the worst was beyond her utmost
imaginings. This was before the days of moving-picture shows; it was
the day of humiliating spectacles of deformities, when inventions
of amusements for the people had not progressed. It was the day of
exhibitions of sad freaks of nature, calculated to provoke tears rather
than laughter in the healthy-minded, and poor Margaret Lee was a chosen
victim. Camille informed her in a few words of her fate. Camille was
sorry for her, although not in the least understanding why she was
sorry. She realized dimly that Margaret would be distressed, but she
was unable from her narrow point of view to comprehend fully the whole
tragedy.
“Jack has gone broke,” stated Camille. “He owes Bill Stark a pile, and
he can't pay a cent of it; and Jack's sense of honor about a poker debt
is about the biggest thing in his character. Jack has got to pay. And
Bill has a little circus, going to travel all summer, and he's offered
big money for you. Jack can pay Bill what he owes him, and we'll have
enough to live on, and have lots of fun going around. You hadn't ought
to make a fuss about it.”
Margaret, pale as death, stared at the girl, pertly slim, and common and
pretty, who stared back laughingly, although still with the glimmer of
uncomprehending pity in her black eyes.
“What does--he--want--me--for?” gasped Margaret.
“For a show, because you are so big,” replied Camille. “You will make us
all rich, Margaret. Ain't it nice?”
Then Camille screamed, the shrill raucous scream of the women of her
type, for Margaret had fallen back in a dead faint, her immense bulk
inert in her chair. Jack came running in alarm. Margaret had suddenly
gained value in his shrewd eyes. He was as pale as she.
Finally Margaret raised her head, opened her miserable eyes, and
regained her consciousness of herself and what lay before her. There was
no course open but submission. She knew that from the first. All three
faced destitution; she was the one financial asset, she and her poor
flesh. She had to face it, and with what dignity she could muster.
Margaret had great piety. She kept constantly before her mental vision
the fact in which she believed, that the world which she found so hard,
and which put her to unspeakable torture, was not all.
A week elapsed before the wretched little show of which she was to be a
member went on the road, and night after night she prayed. She besieged
her God for strength. She never prayed for respite. Her realization
of the situation and her lofty resolution prevented that. The awful,
ridiculous combat was before her; there was no evasion; she prayed only
for the strength which leads to victory.