The Wyndham Girls
by Marion Ames Taggart · English · Gutenberg #47739 · 421,787 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Wyndham Girls
Author: Marion Ames Taggart
Illustrator: C. M. Relyea
Release date: December 22, 2014 [eBook #47739]
Most recently updated: October 24, 2024
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/47739
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WYNDHAM GIRLS ***
THE WYNDHAM GIRLS
[Illustration: "TOM HAD CAMPED OUT, AND HE INSISTED ON COOKING THE
STEAK."]
THE
WYNDHAM GIRLS
BY
MARION AMES TAGGART
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
BY C. M. RELYEA
NEW YORK
THE CENTURY CO.
1902
Copyright, 1901, 1902, by
THE CENTURY CO.
_Published October, 1902_
THE DEVINNE PRESS
TO
CAROLYN WELLS
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I "POOR HUMPTY DUMPTY!" 3
II FRIENDS, COUNSELORS, AND PLANS 22
III WAYS AND MEANS 40
IV MAKING THE BEST OF IT 59
V PHYLLIS AND BARBARA ENTER THE LISTS 75
VI MARK TAPLEY'S KIND OF DAYS 91
VII TAKING ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES 107
VIII THE TURN OF THE LANE 122
IX HOME-KEEPING HEARTS 140
X DISCOVERIES 157
XI LOYAL PHYLLIS 172
XII THE SQUARE BECOMES A TRIANGLE 190
XIII THE STRAY UNIT 207
XIV THE LITTLE BLIND GOD OPENS HIS EYES 224
XV WREATHING HOLLY AND TWINING BAY 242
XVI SPOKES FROM THE HUB 258
XVII THE LADY OF THE SCALES 271
XVIII UNDER THE HARVEST MOON 289
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
"TOM HAD CAMPED OUT, AND HE INSISTED ON
COOKING THE STEAK" _Frontispiece_
THE WYNDHAM GIRLS 7
"A YOUNG MAN DASHED DOWN THE STEPS INTO THE RUINS" 51
AUNT HENRIETTA 81
THE EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF PEACE 125
"'LOOK OUT, TRUCHI-KI; YOU'LL FALL!' PHYLLIS SAID" 145
"'I KNEW THAT IF I WAS AWFULLY ILL MISS BAB WOULD BE
NICE TO YOU,' MURMURED MARGERY" 237
A BEARER OF GOOD TIDINGS 279
THE WYNDHAM GIRLS
CHAPTER I
"POOR HUMPTY DUMPTY!"
"No pink for me, please; I want that beautiful shimmering green, made
up over shining white silk. It will make my glossy brown eyes and hair
look like a ripe chestnut among its green leaves."
"Oh, Bab, such a glistening sentence! 'Shimmering green,' 'shining
white,' 'glossy hair'--you didn't mean glossy eyes, I hope! Besides,
chestnuts don't show among green leaves; they stay in their burs till
they drop off the tree."
"Now, Phyllis, what is the use of spoiling a poetical
metaphor--figure--what do you call it? Which do you like best? Have you
made up your mind, Jessamy?"
"I want all white; probably this mousseline de soie."
"I'm rather inclined to the pearl, yet the violet is lovely."
"You both 'know your effects,' as that conceited little novelist said
last night," cried Barbara. "Jessamy's a dream in white, and Phyl
looks too sweet for mortal uses in anything demure."
The soft May wind from the distant river blew the lace curtains gently
to and fro, and lifted the squares of delicate fabrics scattered over
the couch on which the three young girls were sitting. Jessamy, the
elder of the two Wyndham sisters, was at eighteen very beautiful, with
dainty elegance of motion, refinement of speech, almost stately grace,
unusual to her age and generation.
Barbara, a year younger, was her opposite. Life, energy, fun were
declared in every quick turn of her head and hands; small in figure,
with sparkling dark eyes, and a saucy tilt of nose and chin, she
could hardly have contrasted more sharply with her tall, gray-eyed,
delicately tinted sister, and with what Bab herself called "Jessamy's
Undine ways."
The third girl, Phyllis, was twin in age to Jessamy, but unlike either
of the others in appearance and temperament. She was in reality their
cousin, the one child of their father's only brother, but, as she had
been brought up with them since her fourth year, Jessamy and Barbara
knew no lesser kinship to her than to each other.
At first glance Phyllis was not pretty; to those who had known her for
even a brief time she was beautiful. Sweetness, unselfishness, content
shone out from her dark-blue eyes, with the large pupils and long, dark
lashes. Her lips rested together with the suggestion of a smile in
their corners, and the clear pallor of her complexion was shaded by
her masses of dark-brown hair, which warmed into red tints under the
sunlight.
Across the room from her daughters and niece, enjoying the girls'
happiness as she always did, sat Mrs. Wyndham, rocking slowly.
She was a fragile woman, still clad in the mourning she had worn for
her husband for seven years,--a sweet and gentle creature, who, one
felt at once, had been properly placed by Providence in luxury, and
fortunately shielded from hardship; for the Wyndhams were wealthy. The
morning-room in the great house on Murray Hill showed evidence of being
the spot where the family gathered informally for rest and recreation;
it made no attempt at special beauty, still it was full of countless
little objects which declared the long custom of all its inmates of
purchasing whatever struck their fancy, regardless of its cost or
subsequent usefulness.
The three young girls, differing in many ways, were alike in
bearing the stamp of having spent their short lives among luxurious
surroundings, shielded from the cradle against the sharp buffets of
common experience.
Even the samples fluttering under their fingers and the touch of the
spring wind bore the name of a French artist on Fifth Avenue whose
skill only the highly favored could command, and the consultation
under way was for the selection for each young girl of gowns fit for a
princess's wearing, yet intended for the use of maidens not yet "out,"
in the hops at the hotel at Bar Harbor in the coming summer.
"Madrina, do you care which we choose?" asked Bab, jumping up in a
shower of samples which flew in all directions at her sudden movement,
and running over to hug her pale mother. Jessamy said Bab was "subject
to irruptions of affection."
"Not in the least; the samples are all bewilderingly pretty. I only ask
to have a voice in selecting the style of the gown. Madame Alouette and
I sometimes differ as to what is suitable," replied Mrs. Wyndham, when
she had caught her breath.
"Do you remember the elaborate lace she used on Jessamy's dimity last
year, auntie?" laughed Phyllis, on her knees collecting the samples Bab
had scattered.
Jessamy rose slowly, gently putting together the bits of
soap-bubble-tinted gauzes on her knee; her fingers stroked them
reluctantly, as if unwilling to part from them. "I am afraid I am
dreadfully vain," she said, "though I hope I am only artistic. I am
not sure whether I love exquisite things for their own sake or because
I want them for myself, but these lovely fabrics go to my very heart.
I hate cheapness to an extent that I am ashamed of, and I certainly
always have an instinct for the most expensive articles in the shops,
though I never think of the price."
"I am sure it is because you're artistic, Amy," said Phyllis, coming
up flushed from under an arm-chair. "You do like fine things for
yourself, but it's just as you want only good pictures in your room.
You crave beauty, and you're born royal in taste. If we were all
beggared, Bab and I could get on; for while I love beauty too, it's not
with your love for it. Besides, I could be happy in a tenement if we
were together, and Bab would revel in a sunbonnet and driving the cows
home. But you're a princess, and you can't be anything else: _noblesse
oblige_, you know, means, in your case, 'obliged to be noble.'"
[Illustration: THE WYNDHAM GIRLS.]
"You're a bad Phyl, whose object in life is to ruin people by making
them perfectly self-satisfied," said Jessamy. "I only hope some of the
excuses you find for me are true. I'm as luxurious in nature as a cat.
I know that. Come to the window; I want to see this old rose in the
sunlight."
Bab stopped swinging her feet, and slipped from the arm of her mother's
chair, where she had been perching, to follow them. "Don't you abuse
cats, nor my sister Jessamy, miss," she said, putting her arm around
slender Jessamy and peering over her shoulder at the sample of old-rose
silk, while she rubbed Jessamy's arm with her chin like an affectionate
dog. "They're two as nice things as I know. Madrina, I see Mr. Hurd
coming across the street; he's headed this way."
"Oh, dear!" sighed Mrs. Wyndham, almost fretfully; "I suppose he is
coming to talk business again. He has been tormenting me all winter
to withdraw my money from the corporation; you know, he thinks it
isn't secure. I am sure I cannot see why--do you, Jessamy and Phyllis?
You are as good business women as I am. Don't leave me when he comes
to-day; I should like to have you hear his arguments. Young as you
are, you can understand quite as well as I do. He says I ought to sell
my stock, or enough to secure us against misfortune, but I cannot get
as high interest elsewhere, and it is safe."
"He--you said Mr. Hurd thinks it isn't safe, didn't you, mama?" asked
Jessamy, turning from the window.
"But that is ridiculous! Your poor father's partner is at the helm,
and your father always said he was both clever and unimpeachable; he
trusted him like himself," said Mrs. Wyndham. "It is all because they
won't show the books lately--as though I wanted to see the books, or
minded if Mr. Hurd did not, as long as Mr. Abbott is managing! I cannot
see why Mr. Hurd is so nervous; he has talked hours to me since last
fall, and yet I don't see. I will not put our stock on the market--in
the market--what is the right word?--and shake public confidence, flood
the market--inflate it--oh, I cannot remember terms! And Mr. Abbott
wrote me, and came especially to see me in March to say that would
be the effect of my offering my bonds or stock now. I understand him
much better than Mr. Hurd; he is more patient, and won't leave his
point until I have mastered it. He said industrial stock was different
from--from--the other kind. He said one must not bear the market on
one's own stock, but must bull it. That means, in their queer terms,
not depress it, but force things upward, which is, of course, what one
would want to do with one's own values. You stay in the room to-day,
children, and see if you understand. Mr. Hurd insists I am risking
beggaring you, and that distresses me unspeakably."
"Don't mind Mr. Hurd, Madrina; he's an anxious attorney, that's all,"
said Barbara, with an air of lucidity.
"But one has to heed one's attorney, daughter," said her mother, half
smiling. "Only I can't turn my back on my dear husband's business,
which he brought to such splendid success, and sell out Wyndham Iron
Company stock as if we weren't Wyndhams, but outsiders."
"Mr. Hurd, ma'am," said Violet, the black maid, extending a card in
one hand, while the other twisted her apron-string nervously; she had
caught alarm from a glance at the visitor's face.
"Bring him here, Violet. Mr. Hurd will pardon feminine confusion," Mrs.
Wyndham added, rising and pointing to the samples on the couch with her
extended hand, for the lawyer had followed the maid without delay. "We
are pluming, or more properly donning, our feathers for flight, Mr.
Hurd."
"Yes, yes," said the little man, shaking hands, without looking at Mrs.
Wyndham. "Good morning, Miss Jessamy; good morning, Phyllis; how do you
do, little Barbara? May I interrupt your--Gracious powers! dear madam,
I mean I _must_ interrupt your plans, Mrs. Wyndham."
Jessamy and Phyllis clutched each other with sudden pallor; the little
lawyer's voice shook with emotion. Bab flushed and ran to her mother,
putting her arms around her frail figure as though to place herself as
a bulwark between her and ill.
"You will not interrupt anything more important than the selection
of dancing-gowns for the children," said Mrs. Wyndham, with her soft
dignity, though she turned a little paler. "Is there any special reason
for your visit--kind visit always--Mr. Hurd? And may the girls hear
what you have to say, since their interests are at stake?"
"Special reason, madam? Special, indeed! God help me, I don't know how
to say what I have to say, but I prefer the young ladies to hear it.
You remember, I have urged their presence at our previous conferences,
but you considered them too young to be troubled--Poor chicks!" he
added suddenly.
"Evidently you feel that you have something unpleasant to tell me, Mr.
Hurd; but I feel sure you exaggerate; you know, you are always more
timid and pessimistic than I," said Mrs. Wyndham, dropping into the
nearest chair and trying to smile.
"Good heavens, Mrs. Wyndham! It isn't a matter for self-gratulation. If
I could have made you listen to me six--even two--months ago, I should
not be here to-day, the bearer of such dreadful news," burst out the
lawyer, impatiently.
"Wouldn't it be better, Mr. Hurd, to tell us quickly? You frighten us
with hints," said Jessamy, in her silvery, even voice; but the poor
child's lips were white.
Mr. Hurd glanced at Jessamy. "Yes," he said; "but it is not easy. I
heard the definite news last night in Wall Street; rumors had been
afloat for days. I wanted to give you one more night of untroubled
sleep. It will be in the papers this evening."
"What will, Mr. Hurd?" burst out Barbara, impatiently.
"The failure of the Wyndham Iron Company."
There was dead silence in the room, broken only by the low-toned little
French clock striking ten times.
"The company--failed?" whispered Mrs. Wyndham, trying to find her voice.
"What does that mean, Mr. Hurd?" asked Phyllis.
"It means that your mother's bonds and stocks are valueless; and as she
holds everything in her own right and has kept all that your father
left in the business, it means that your inheritance has been wiped
out of existence," said the lawyer, not discriminating between the
daughters and the niece in his excitement.
"How can it be--total ruin?" asked poor Mrs. Wyndham. "Henry gone but
seven years, and such a splendid success as he left the company! How
can it have failed? I don't believe it!" she cried, starting to her
feet with sudden strength.
"Dear Mrs. Wyndham, it is too certain," said her husband's old friend
and attorney, gently. "When they refused to open up the books for
inspection, and you would not authorize me to take steps to compel them
to do so, I knew this would come."
"Mr. Abbott--" began Mrs. Wyndham.
"Mr. Abbott is an outrageous villain," interrupted Mr. Hurd,
passionately. "I have lain awake all night cursing him, or I could
not mention him before you without swearing. He has got control of
the corporation by holding the majority of stock, and he has run the
thing on a speculative basis instead of a solid business one. At the
same time, justice to his business capacity compels me to add that he
has kept himself clear of possible failure, using the stockholders'
funds and not his own for his operations, so that though you and others
are ruined, he is safe. I shall never be able to make you understand
the case more fully; but that is the sum of it, and he's a consummate
rogue."
"But Henry trusted him--" essayed Mrs. Wyndham once more.
"Henry Wyndham was an honest man, and a good friend. He is not the
first who has been deceived in his estimate of a man. That is all to be
said on that score," said the little lawyer, grimly.
"I never knew any one who was ruined, outside of books," said Jessamy,
trying to smile. "What does it mean? Going to live in an East-side
tenement, and working in a sweat-shop?"
"Nonsense, Jessamy!" said her mother, sharply, drying her tears, which
had been softly falling, while Bab burst into wailing at the picture.
"Nonsense! I shall sell some stock, and I am sure that we shall get on
very well--perhaps economizing somewhat."
"Dear madam, you no more grasp the situation than you saw it coming,"
said Mr. Hurd, struggling between annoyance and pity. "Your preferred
stock might bring five cents, and the common stock three, but I doubt
it; their value is wiped out. Practically, you have no stock. Still, I
hope the situation will not be as grave as Miss Jessamy pictures. You
will have an income greater than enough to give you comfort, though
by comparison you will be poor. You cannot stay in this house, for it
alone, and its contents, must furnish your income. But it will rent or
sell at a figure to insure you six to eight thousand a year; and if
you sell your pictures and some of the furniture you will have a very
respectable principal to live upon. Bad as it is, your case might be
far worse."
"Do you mean that this house will be the sole--actually the
sole--source of income left me?" gasped Mrs. Wyndham, with more
agitation than she had yet shown.
Mr. Hurd nodded. The poor lady uttered a sharp cry and fell back,
sobbing wildly. "Then I have nothing--nothing!" she screamed. "My
darlings are beggared!"
Phyllis rang for wine, and Mr. Hurd leaped to his feet with
apprehension of the truth.
"What do you mean, Mrs. Wyndham?" he demanded.
Mrs. Wyndham rested her head on Phyllis's arm and drank the wine she
held to her lips.
"Last March," she began feebly, "Mr. Abbott came to me and
explained--or seemed to explain--matters to me. At that time he told
me he had bought iron for the works as a speculation, expecting it to
appreciate in value. Instead it fell, and the business was temporarily
embarrassed in consequence. He asked me to let him negotiate a loan
with this house as security."
Mr. Hurd, who had been pacing the floor furiously, stopped short, with
a fervent imprecation. Halting before the feeble creature who had been
so duped, he thrust his hands deep into his pockets and gazed down on
her. "And you did it?" he growled.
Mrs. Wyndham bowed her head lower. "It was a mere formality, he said.
The business needed but to be tided over its present embarrassment,
which the ready money thus raised would do, and then the loan would be
paid and the house stand as free as before. So I gave it as security."
"Just heaven! Why didn't Henry leave everything in trust for you in the
hands of a decent man!" cried Mr. Hurd, furiously. "To trick a woman,
and such a guileless woman as you, like that! The miserable, currish
scamp! Why didn't you mention this to me, madam?"
"Because Mr. Abbott begged me not to; he said none but ourselves,
partners in the concern, stockholders of the corporation, should know
of it, or it might make the stock panicky--I am sure he said panicky,"
murmured the wretched woman.
"Then I am afraid Miss Jessamy's picture is not so overdrawn," groaned
the lawyer. "You will have no principal except what the personal
property, the furniture and the pictures will bring."
"And I have ruined my children--my dear, blessed, pretty girls, for
whom I would gladly die, and whose father was so happy to feel that he
had secured them from the hard side of life! He knew in his youth what
privation meant--my dear, good Henry. Oh, I can't bear it! I won't have
it so! It isn't true!" And Mrs. Wyndham went off into hysterical cries,
which ended all possibility of further discussion.
Jessamy ran to call Violet to help her mother to her room; Bab lay
on the floor, a collapsed heap of misery, sobbing in terror of her
mother's agony and the affliction, dimly understood, which had fallen
on them in the midst of the dainty fabrics and happy plans. But
Phyllis, trembling and white, yet calm, laid her cold hands on her aunt
and gently forced her into quiet. She lifted her eyes, no longer blue,
but jet black, with their dilated pupils blazing with righteous wrath,
to Mr. Hurd's face. "Is there no law to make that villain give up what
he stole?" she demanded fiercely.
The lawyer looked at her with the good fighter's quick recognition
of the same quality in another. "I'll try mighty hard to find it,
Phyllis," he said. "The trouble is that a consummate rogue knows how to
cover his tracks. He has undoubtedly put everything out of his hands.
But we'll make him show when it was done; and if he has taken such
steps this winter past, we can force him to disgorge. There is one
comfort: I'll make New York a confoundedly unpleasant place for him to
try to do business in."
Kind Violet, with her black face gray from sympathy and fright, came
back with Jessamy, and put her strong arms around her mistress's
fragile body, lifting her like a baby. "Come right along, you po'
little lamb lady," she said. "Miss Jes'my telephone for doctoh, an' I'm
goin' make you quiet an' comf'able in bed. Don' you cry 'notheh teah;
Vi'let ain't goin' let nothin' come neah you."
Utterly exhausted in mind and body, Mrs. Wyndham found comfort in the
soft voice and loving arms. She drooped her head on the pink gingham
shoulder of the tall girl, and let herself be carried away to her
chamber as if she had been a child.
Jessamy turned to Mr. Hurd. "You will not mind if we received the
news rather badly," she said. "We shall all do our parts when we have
learned them. It--it--came rather suddenly, you see." Evidently Jessamy
was going to be the princess her cousin called her, and meet misfortune
proudly.
"You dear child," said the lawyer, his eyes softening and dimming as he
looked in the pretty face, blanched white, and noted the lines holding
the soft lips grimly set to keep them from quivering. "You are little
heroines--you and Phyllis. Don't try to be too brave; it is better to
cry, and then wipe away the tears to see what is to be done after the
shipwreck."
"There is only one thing I want to ask you now, Mr. Hurd; then,
perhaps, we would better not talk any more to-day: What are we likely
to have to live on if we sell our things?" asked Jessamy.
"You know it is guesswork; no one can more than approximate the result
of sales," answered Mr. Hurd. "Your father knew good pictures, and
there are many of considerable value here, but summer is no time to
offer them. I should say you were likely to have returns of about
thirty thousand dollars, which, if I invest it at six per cent., will
give you nearly two thousand a year. Now, good-by, my dears, for this
morning. Try not to grieve; no one knows what is best for him in this
curious world, and the day may come when you will be grateful for this
change of fortune. People are usually better and stronger for trying
their mettle as well as their muscle. God bless you."
Jessamy did not attempt to answer. Mr. Hurd laid his hand gently on
each head, and went away.
Left to themselves, Jessamy and Phyllis looked at each other and around
the pretty room, with the couch still strewn with the samples for their
dancing-gowns; the books, pictures, ornaments they had bought scattered
everywhere. With a sudden rush of memory, they saw themselves little
children, playing about their kind father--for he had been father to
them both--in that very room, and with equal clearness saw the years
before them in which this beautiful home had no being, but, instead,
privations more awful to their imaginations because they had no clue to
their actual meaning.
The necessity for self-restraint being removed, with a common impulse
Jessamy and Phyllis turned, and, throwing their arms around each other,
burst into passionate weeping--the despairing weeping of youth which
has not yet learned that nothing on earth is final.
Bab stirred uneasily and sat up on the floor, wiping her own eyes and
trying to smile. "Don't cry like that, girls; please don't," she said.
"It doesn't matter so much about me, because I always go off one way
or the other, but I can't stand it if you are wretched." She gathered
herself up, and went slowly over to the others. "We're young and
beautiful," she said, "and we have some few brains; we'll make another
fortune for ourselves. I think, perhaps, I'll marry an oil man with
millions. Smile--for mercy's sake smile--Jess and Phyl!"
But Jessamy and Phyllis, who had controlled themselves while Bab
sobbed, could not raise their heads.
Bab was mercurial--always, as she herself put it, "going off" to
extremes. She had cried her first terror away, and now the necessity of
her nature to look on the bright side and find something funny in all
situations began to assert itself.
"I think likely two thousand a year will be a lot when we get used to
it, though it costs that to clothe us all now, I suppose. I expect to
learn to manage so well that we can adopt twins on the money we have
left over. I shall go to get points from Ruth Wells; I always thought
she was splendid, and longed to know her; she understands how to make
every quarter a half-dollar. Now, girls, we're going to be like the
people in the story-books, and learn who are our true friends--don't
you know how misfortune always tests them? Look up--smile! 'Rise,
Sally, rise; dry your weeping eyes!'"
"Don't, Bab," murmured Jessamy, faintly. "You haven't an idea of what
has really happened." But she raised her head, and attempted to check
her tears as she spoke.
Bab saw it with secret triumph; she was actually talking herself into
something like cheerfulness. "Don't I! I have quite as much experience
as you, miss, anyway. Still, I'm willing to confess I'd rather not be
poor," she added, with the air of making a generous concession. "But I
feel sure we'll be happy yet, because I, for one, have got to be. But
it is rather hard to get thrown off your high wall when you've sat on
it all your life. Poor Humpty Dumpty! I never properly felt for him
before."
And Bab was rewarded for her nonsense by a tearful smile from Jessamy
and Phyllis.
CHAPTER II
FRIENDS, COUNSELORS, AND PLANS
The evening turned cool and damp, with the unreliability of May. Mrs.
Wyndham was too ill to rise; the doctor had given her sedatives, and
she slept in utter exhaustion. Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara dined
lightly alone; no one had any desire for food, although the cook sent
up the dishes dearest to each young palate, hoping to tempt her young
ladies to forget sorrow enough to eat. But this very kindness on the
part of Sally below stairs, combined with Violet's positively tragic
efforts to be cheerful while she served them, brought sobs into the
three throats, and defeated the end of their good will.
After dinner the three girls carried their burdens to Jessamy's room,
where an acceptable wood fire was burning. The great house was amply
large enough to afford a room for each of the young Wyndhams to occupy
unshared. Phyllis's and Bab's were on the third floor, connected by
dressing-rooms; Jessamy's was next her mother's, over the dining-room,
on the second. Each room expressed, as rooms always do, the character
of its occupant. Phyllis's was cheery, yet beautiful, with simple
elegance and plenty of space. Her pictures were good, but not all the
very highest art; "literary pictures," those which told a story, were
not lacking, and many of the photographs, abounding everywhere, were
portraits of literary people. The room was lined with low bookcases,
and books crowded the tables and the desk.
Barbara's room was an anomaly. Bright Eastern colors gave the general
effect of a field of poppies on entering. Pictures of animals, casts
of Barye's splendid beasts abounded, with Luca della Robbia's happy
cherubs, and a copy of Dürer's portrait of Stephan Paumgärtner, and
Rembrandt's "Lesson in Anatomy" to prove how many-sided little Bab was
thus far in her development. A small upright piano, with a guitar and
mandolin lying on its top, between busts of Paderewski and Beethoven,
testified truly that she was the most musical girl of the three.
Jessamy's room was all soft greens and moss browns as to color.
Her pictures were chosen for beauty alone, and that of the highest
sort. Copies of Botticelli's "Triumph of Spring," his lovely Madonna
in the National Gallery, some of Holbein's glorious portraits, two
Corots, Carpaccio's "Dream of St. Ursula," Donatello casts, as well as
antiques, demonstrated at a glance that the eye of an artist had chosen
them to rest upon. But, revealing the corresponding side of Jessamy's
nature, were softest down cushions heaped on a divan, dainty toilet
accessories in ivory and gold, carved chairs of slumbrous depths,
flowers in delicate green Venetian glasses, and, above all, volumes
of poems, with Thomas à Kempis and the "Celestial City" on the stand
nearest the bed; for Jessamy loved perfect beauty, and turned naturally
to its highest ideals and expression.
Into this half-studio, half-chamber, and wholly beautiful room the
three girls crept after dinner, drawing their chairs close to the fire
and speaking softly, not to disturb Mrs. Wyndham in the next room.
"The only thing for us to do is to find out what we can live on, and
then make our plans. If we haven't quite enough money, we must earn it
in some way," said Jessamy, with her most mature and responsible air.
"I think the very first thing of all is to find out what that income
will be, and Mr. Hurd says we can't know positively until after the
sale," said practical Phyllis. "And the next and most awful thing is to
find out what we can do. I doubt if we know anything thoroughly enough
to earn money by it."
"Do? Why, we'll do anything!" cried Bab. "Jessamy draws and paints
beautifully, you are all kinds of a genius, and I--oh, there are lots
of things I could do if I tried. Some girls make ever so much money;
I'm sure we sha'n't have any trouble when we are once started."
"We have some talents between us, but I am afraid they're trained
only well enough for the admiration of ourselves and our friends;
when it comes to getting something more solid than flattery for our
cleverness--well, I'm afraid! I can't help seeing that Jessamy's work,
though it is talented, is amateurish. Bab plays, and burns things with
her pokers, to our delight; but she can't play like a person who has
been grinding at music in earnest six or eight hours a day. And as to
me, when I write a story you think it is great, but I see it lacks
something. It may be correct English and a good idea, but it is not
worth money because of the thing that isn't in it; and I suspect that
quality is the mark of training and experience," said Phyllis, sadly.
"I don't see why you try to discourage us, Phyl," said Bab, in an
aggrieved tone. "I think we ought to bolster each other up."
"And I think we ought to face facts, and that as soon as we can," said
Phyllis, firmly. "We've lived so far in a dream. I've been thinking
hard all the afternoon, and I've realized how cruel such cases as ours
are. There was auntie, left with great wealth and no more business
knowledge than a baby. And here are we, three girls with brains enough
to be useful and enough money to have had a practical training in some
direction, no more ready to meet emergencies than so many kittens. We
couldn't compete with tenement-house girls, with all our advantages and
their drawbacks."
"Phyllis is right," said Jessamy, with conviction. "Still, we must
compete if we must."
"She is not right; I'm sure we can make lots of money with no special
training," said Bab, indignantly. "Good gracious! There's 'our
inheritance'! We never once thought of it!"
Six years before, an aunt of Mr. Wyndham, dying on her New Hampshire
farm, had left each of her grand-nieces five thousand dollars. They
had rather laughed at it, and never alluded to it save as "their
inheritance"; yet now, recalled suddenly by Bab, it shone across their
path like a ray of sunshine. Taken from the bank where it lay and
reinvested at higher interest, it would materially help them in an hour
when a thousand dollars had assumed new proportions.
"Mercy, yes! I quite forgot it," cried Jessamy, her face brightening.
"At six per cent., what would that be a year?"
This was too great a mental problem for these would-be business women,
whose arithmetic was that of most pupils of fashionable schools for
girls. Bab sprang up for pencil and paper. "Nine hundred dollars!" she
announced triumphantly. "That is quite an addition to our fortune,
isn't it?"
"I suppose there isn't much good in making plans," said Jessamy.
"We've got to trust Mr. Hurd to guide us. If we are no use, as Phyllis
believes--and probably is right in believing--we had better live quite
poorly for a while, and fit ourselves to do something well. I don't
want to rush into any kind of half-good employment, if by self-denial,
perhaps even hardship, at first, we might amount to something in the
end."
"Hail Minerva!" cried Phyllis. "You'll be as thoroughbred a working
girl, if you must, as you were fine lady; and that's what I love you
for, Jasmine blossom."
"My poor, unfortunate children, are you sitting here in the dark?"
said a voice. "Violet told me I should find you up-stairs. I saw that
dreadful item in 'The Evening Post,' Is it true?"
"How do you do, Aunt Henrietta?" said Jessamy, rising, while Bab barely
stifled a groan. "About the failure? Yes, I am afraid it is quite true."
Mrs. Hewlett was Mr. Wyndham's aunt; he had been her favorite nephew
because he was her namesake. Her nieces did not love their great-aunt;
she had a strong tendency to speak her opinions, if they were
unpleasant to the hearer; sincerity and a profound conviction that she
was infallible in judgment being Mrs. Henrietta Hewlett's most marked
characteristics. Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara recognized in her coming
an added hardship at the end of their hard day.
"I always knew it would end this way," said Aunt Henrietta, dropping
into an easy-chair and letting her cloak slip to the floor while
she untied her bonnet strings. "Your mother has no business ability
whatever. Poor Henry!"
"Mama did not make the iron company fail, aunt; and papa can't need
pity now as much as she does," said Bab, losing her temper instantly,
as she always did on encountering "the drum-major," as she irreverently
called her great-aunt.
"How are you left?" demanded Aunt Henrietta, ignoring Bab, to Jessamy's
profound gratitude.
"We shall have only what the contents of this house will bring, besides
the five thousand apiece left us by Aunt Amelia," said Jessamy.
Aunt Henrietta held up both hands in genuine horror. "My poor sister
had no notion that her little legacy would be your all,--for of course
you can't get anything for second-hand furniture. So you are actually
beggared! Well, it is even worse than I expected."
"Not quite beggars, aunt," said Phyllis. "We expect to have two
thousand a year. And if you foresaw Mr. Abbott's dishonesty, you are
the only one who mistrusted him. Uncle Henry believed in him as firmly
as in himself. Of course, if you read the papers, you know no one is to
blame for anything, unless for trusting Mr. Abbott."
"Two thousand for such a family as you!" ejaculated Aunt Henrietta,
characteristically passing over the less disagreeable points in
Phyllis's remarks. "It is practically beggary. You have been brought
up in the most extravagant way--never taught the value of money. Your
mother has spoiled you from the cradle. I suppose you will run through
what little ready money you have, and then expect to be helped by your
friends."
"Really, Aunt Henrietta, I cannot see why you assume us entirely to
lack common sense, principles, and pride," said Jessamy, struggling
hard to keep her voice steady. "We have already determined to make our
income suffice us, investing our little capital."
"H'm! Two thousand suffice! You're exactly like your mother--absolutely
unpractical. If poor Henry--" began Mrs. Hewlett.
"Now, Aunt Henrietta, just drop mama, if you please," said Barbara,
hotly. "She is the dearest mother in the world, and papa loved her with
all his heart. I don't see what good there can be in trying to blame
some one for this trouble; but if any one were to blame, it was dear
papa himself, and not mama, for he left her all his wealth and all
his trust in Mr. Abbott, and never taught her the least thing about
business. Mama never said nor did an unkind thing in all her gentle
life, and I won't have her abused. And, in spite of what you say now,
you were always very proud of her lovely face and manners, and glad
enough to point out your niece, Mrs. Henry Wyndham. And you've boasted
about all of us while we were rich, and now you talk as if this trouble
was the punishment of our sins, especially mama's. And I won't have you
mention her--dear, crushed mama--lying in there heartbroken for our
sakes!"
Bab's cheeks had been getting redder and her voice higher through this
speech, until at this point she burst into tempestuous tears.
"Hoity-toity, miss! Don't be impertinent," said the old lady. "You'll
be dependent on your friends' charity in six months, and you will be
wise not to offend them."
"I won't! I'll beg from door to door or be a cashgirl at Macy's
first," sobbed Bab. "Besides, I'm not impertinent; I'm only firm."
The idea of Bab firm on the verge of hysterics made Phyllis and
Jessamy smile faintly. "Don't say any more, Bab; you know it's no
use," whispered Phyllis, stroking the hot cheek, while Jessamy said:
"You must not mind Bab, aunt. We are all somewhat overwrought, but I
agree with her that, if you please, we will leave our mother out of the
discussion."
"I don't mind that flighty child; she never had a particle of
stability, and has not been taught self-control or respect," said Aunt
Henrietta, with what in a less dignified person would have been a
sniff. "What kind of work are you going to take up? For of course it is
ridiculous to talk of living on two thousand a year, and you must earn
your living."
"We have not decided anything yet, aunt; we've had only a few hours to
get used to being poor," replied Phyllis.
"Well, I've been considering your case, and I don't believe there is
anything you can do decently; your education has been the thistle-down
veneer girls get, nowadays," said their aunt, disregarding the fact
that she would have been still less prepared to meet misfortune than
her nieces at their age.
"Veneer!" echoed Jessamy. "I hope not, though I don't know what
thistle-down veneer is. I wouldn't mind being honest white pine, but I
should despise the best veneer."
"As far as I can see, you would do well to go out as a nurse girl.
There are many who would be glad to get a young woman of refinement,
and you would be treated nicely in a good place," said Aunt Henrietta.
Bab gasped. Phyllis cried: "A nurse girl! Jessamy!" But Jessamy turned
white to her lips. "Will you allow me to sit on your steps and sun
my young charge, if I take care to keep my aprons clean?" she asked
slowly, her voice low and ominously steady.
"Don't be a fool, Jessamy, and have high-flown notions. Any work is
honorable, and you are not trained to skilled labor," said her aunt.
"All labor is certainly honorable, aunt," said Phyllis, seeing
that Jessamy dared not speak again. "But there are degrees in its
attractiveness. It would be short-sighted wisdom to put a talented
creature like our princess to doing what the humblest emigrant can
perform, wasting all her opportunities. I am afraid I cannot understand
how you could consent to pushing any of us down, instead of helping us
up."
"We shall not need help," said Jessamy, her head up like a young racer.
"I hope to manage quite well alone. Will you excuse us from more of
this sort of talk, aunt? We have had a hard day, and are tired."
Mrs. Hewlett rose; her eldest niece always overawed her, in spite of
her determination not to mind what she to herself called "Jessamy's
affected airs."
"I felt sure I should not find you chastened by misfortune," she
said. "You should take your downfall in a more Christian spirit.
I trust you will heed me in one point, at least. Sell your best
clothes and ornaments. It will be most unbecoming if, in your altered
circumstances, you dress in articles bought for Henry Wyndham's
daughters. People will make the most unkind comments if you do."
Barbara had recovered by this time. "Aren't we still Henry Wyndham's
daughters, aunt?" she asked guilelessly. "I didn't realize parentage as
well as inheritance was vested in the business. What a calamity that
it failed! As to unkind remarks, no mere acquaintances will make them;
all but our relatives will understand that we could afford fine things
when we had them, and that failure naturally did not destroy them. I
give you fair warning, I mean to look my best, whatever the rest do,
else I may be defeated in my plan to get back to luxury by a brilliant
marriage."
"Bab, how could you?" said Jessamy, reproachfully, as their aunt
disappeared. "She will take that for solemn truth and despise you.
There's no use in making her worse than she is."
"I couldn't, Lady Jessamy; nature is perfect in her works. And I'll
tell you one thing for your edification: If I did mean it, and did
succeed in marrying for money, so far from despising me, she would be
proud of me, and talk to every one about 'my charming niece, Barbara,'"
said Bab, venomously.
"Oh, don't, Bab!" cried Phyllis, distressed. "We've been poor only one
day, and here are you growing bitter! That's the worst of this sort of
misfortune, I feel sure in advance. It shows people in such a horrid
light that the victims get cynical and nasty. Do let us keep sweet
and wholesome through it all, for if we're that, and have each other,
nothing else matters seriously."
"You dear little saint Phyllis!" cried Bab. "My bitterness so far is
shallow, so don't worry. You're better than bicarbonate of soda to
sweeten what Sally calls 'a sour risin'.'"
An hour later Violet brought up a note that came opportunely to
counteract the disagreeable effect of Mrs. Hewlett's visit. It was from
an old friend of their mother, and ran thus:
"MY DEAREST LITTLE GIRLS: I am not going to bother poor Emily
to-night, but I cannot sleep unless I write you. I read that
horrible item in 'The Sun' about the Wyndham Iron Company, and I am
wretched. Maybe it will be less bad than it now seems--I pray it
may! But I want you to realize that my house, my love, are entirely
yours. You are all coming to spend the summer with me at Mount
Desert--there is plenty of room in my house--so that is settled.
And in the fall we shall see. If there is to be a sale, I shall
attend to it myself, with Mr. Hurd's help, for I am a good business
woman. And don't make too heroic resolves just now. If you must
earn your living, some of us will see that it is done in ways in
which your sweetness, cleverness, and delicacy will not be wasted.
But I should try very hard not to be pushed out into a world unfit
for women to fight in. And don't forget how much is left, how much
you are blessed in yourselves--I know you do remember it--and be
sure you are going to be perfectly happy again. Dear little girls,
I'm crying as I write, but that is because I love you so much,
and am so sorry. We won't let you do anything too bitter, and I
know how splendidly you are meeting trouble, because I know your
dear, good mother, and how truly well you have been taught. Tell
my old friend I am coming to her in the morning--to refuse me if
she likes, but I hope to comfort her. Good night, my poor little
chickens, out in your first storm. There is sunshine ahead, but I
wish that I could gather you all under my wings.
"Your old, loving friend,
"MARY VAN ALYN."
The girls cried on one another's shoulders after they had read this
warm message, full of loving comprehension of their needs and natures;
but they were tears which did them good and sent them to bed refreshed
and comforted.
In the morning Bab started off early to see Ruth Wells, as she had
planned. Ruth was a brisk little creature of the same age as Bab, who
had been the Wyndhams' schoolmate for a short time, but who had met
with misfortune too, and had left school and dropped almost entirely
out of their lives; only Bab had kept up a desultory friendship
with her.
Ruth lived with her mother in a little flat--apartment is too dignified
a word--not far from Morningside Heights. She was skilful with her
needle, as at any work of her hands, and earned, by embroidering for
two wholesale houses, enough to supplement sufficiently an income
hardly large enough to pay their low rent.
Bab had always wondered to find her so blithe and happy; to-day she
came determined to solve, if possible, the secret of her content.
As she pressed the electric button under the speaking-tube over which
the name "Wells" shone on a narrow strip of brass, the latch of the
front door clicked, and, pushing it open, Barbara mounted the three
flights of stairs and rang the bell by the door at their head.
Ruth herself answered the summons, and uttered an exclamation of
pleasure on seeing Bab. "Oh, Babbie, dear, it does affect you, doesn't
it?" she cried at once. "I saw an account of the Wyndham Iron Works
failure in this morning's 'Times.'"
"It affects us so much, Ruth, that I came up here the first thing to
get your advice; you have had experience in coming down in the world.
And I want to say just here," Barbara added, with heightened color,
"that I wish I had been here oftener, and that Phyl and Jessamy had
been with me. We never realized how lonely you must have been at
first." And Bab looked around the little parlor with new interest.
"Oh, I was so much younger than we are now when our troubles came that
it was easier to bear," said Ruth, brightly. "Besides, I never had
nearly as much as you to lose. And as to coming to see me, you have
always been a good friend, Bab. We lived too far apart in every sense
to meet often. When one is poor one cannot be intimate with those who
are living luxuriously; it is so stupid for those who have fallen
from past glories to expect old friendships kept up, and call old
acquaintances snobs when they are not. It is impossible for extremes to
meet often or agreeably, for one doesn't care to know the very wealthy;
they are not half as interesting as those whose faculties have been
sharpened--they don't know facts, and it is not their fault that they
don't. Even you, Babbie, have not understood words in the sense I did
when we have talked lately, and I saw it. Then a busy person hasn't
time for people who don't know what _must_ means. It is far nicer to
have friends who are busy too, and don't waste precious time. But
goodness! You see, I talk just as fast as ever; and maybe you are not
going to be poor, after all! Is the loss as heavy as the papers had
it?" While Ruth had talked she had gotten off Bab's outer garments,
and now seated herself at her embroidery frame, while Bab drew a chair
in front of it and shook her head. "Quite as bad; worse, in fact," she
said, and proceeded to tell Ruth the whole story.
"Now, what I want to know, Ruth, is whether four persons can possibly
live on two thousand a year--supposing we have that--until we can learn
to be useful?" she said in conclusion.
"Of course they can," said Ruth, with cheerful decision; she did not
seem to think the case very bad. Taking a pencil and paper from the
window-sill at her side, she began to reckon.
"Do you think you could take a little flat and do your own work?" she
asked.
"Mercy, no!" cried Bab, in horror. "Why, we'd starve! We can't do
anything; we must board."
"That's a pity, for cheap boarding is unwholesome, vulgar, and
generally horrid," said Ruth. "However, if you must, you must; but
I'm sure you'll be taught better. Mama and I began that way, but we
were soon cured. You can get two rooms, and pay--let's see--two in a
room--say seven dollars each--twenty-eight dollars a week. Twenty-eight
times fifty-two--fourteen hundred and fifty-six dollars a year. That
leaves you five hundred for washing, clothes, possible doctor's bill,
and so on."
"Can we board for seven dollars apiece?" asked Bab, rather awed by
Ruth's businesslike methods.
"You can; it will be pretty horrid, but, honestly, I wouldn't spend
more till you increase your income. Your mother isn't well, and you
will need extra dainties for her, no matter where you board nor what
you pay. Mama and I ran too close to our margin once, and then she got
ill. It taught me a lesson I did not forget," said Ruth.
"You have been very kind and interested, Ruth; and you have helped me
a lot in more than advice," said Bab, rising to go. "I shouldn't mind
being poor if I could be like you."
"Well, I believe I have a talent for poverty; it has its good side,"
laughed Ruth. "And I'll tell you one thing, Babbie. Real troubles keep
one from imagining affliction, and that is no small gain. I am happy
because I am busy, and my mind is too full of my responsibilities and
cares to let me worry over shadows; I haven't time to consider how I
feel, even; and sometimes, when I suspect I might be a tiny bit ill
if I thought about it, I go to work and drive it away. You don't know
what a good thing it is for girls to have lots that must be done. Come
see our flat," added brave Ruth, leading the way into a bedroom off
the parlor. "This is mama's room; next it is mine. Then, here is the
bath-room--you see, it is quite large--for a flat! And isn't this a
nice little dining-room? Sunny too! And here is the kitchen. Mama, this
is Barbara Wyndham."
Mrs. Wells was bending over a double boiler set on the gas-range; she
was plainly dressed in black, shielded by a large apron. She lifted
a sweet, well-bred face to smile at Bab, and held out a delicate,
daintily formed hand to greet her, with no apology for her employment.
"The maid's room is our store-room, for we do our own work, with a
woman coming in to wash and iron and sweep. Now, isn't this a nice
flat? And we pay only twenty-eight dollars a month for it!" cried Ruth,
triumphantly.
Bab looked at the rooms, as they were shown to her, with newly
perceptive eyes. Everything was of the plainest, yet so refined and
dainty it could but be pretty. She began to suspect there were many
things in life to learn which would not be unpleasant knowledge. She
wondered, coming from the spacious rooms of her home, how Ruth and her
mother managed to move about without seriously damaging their anatomy;
the chambers, with the furniture in them, looked hardly larger than a
good-sized napkin.
But Ruth was so proud of it all, so unconscious of any defects in her
home, that Bab could only envy her, though the tiny box of a place
did look rather meager in her eyes, and Ruth worked hard all day to
maintain it.
"Thank you again, Ruth," she said, as her friend hugged her at the head
of the stairs, letting the pity which she had not dared express show in
the warmth of the embrace and the tears in her eyes as she kissed her.
"I'm coming often, please, for advice and courage. You have already
shown me that I need not fear. I suspect our first additional revenue
will come from the sale of my book, 'How to be Happy Though Ruined,'
illustrated by Ruth Wells."
CHAPTER III
WAYS AND MEANS
Events moved swiftly for the Wyndhams, impelled by the force of
necessity. The trust company that had made the loan to Mr. Abbott which
had been secured by Mrs. Wyndham's house, learning of the failure of
the corporation and that it was unable to meet its indebtedness, fell
back on its security, and seized the house so unfortunately pledged to
it.
Although Mrs. Wyndham was prepared for this inevitable result of her
fatal confidence in Mr. Abbott, it came upon her like a bewildering
blow that her house was hers no longer. This, and the fact that the
expense of running such an immense establishment would make ruinous
inroads on her slender principal in a few weeks, determined her upon
hastening her movements and quitting as soon as possible the home
she loved, taking up an existence which seemed to her, as she tried
to picture it, a horrible nightmare in which she must die if she did
not waken.
It was no more difficult for her true friends to mislead
Mrs. Wyndham kindly in business matters than it had been for her
false friend to defraud her. Mr. Hurd and Mrs. Van Alyn combined to
take advantage of her ignorance of affairs, to her profit. It was
a bad time of year for a sale, as Mr. Hurd had said; but it was of
paramount importance that the painful severing of old ties should be
made quickly, not only because it was necessary to begin to receive an
income immediately, but in order to avoid the torture of keeping the
Wyndhams' troubles an open wound.
To all those whom she hoped the news might interest, Mrs. Van Alyn
sent notices that the pictures were to be sold. Collectors and dealers
came not only from the city, but from Boston and Philadelphia, for
Mr. Wyndham had been well known for the value of his art treasures.
Offers were made for the pictures as they hung on the walls, as well
as for the marbles and bronzes; on the whole, the prices were fair,
considering that it was a forced sale, with no time margin to allow
the owners opportunity to do better. At least this method saved the
commission on an auction sale, which had to be added to net profits in
estimating them.
The horses brought an excellent price; they were young, perfectly
matched, and spirited, yet gentle. Parting from them was perhaps the
hardest pang Barbara had to endure. Castor and Pollux were really her
friends--as, indeed, any animal she came in contact with was sure to
be. But she derived a grain of comfort from the promise, which she
went personally to obtain from their new owner, that even if they began
to break down he would never allow them to be sold into hardship--a
promise which, it is to be hoped, was kept for the sake of the girl who
had tried to protect the creatures she loved.
Mrs. Van Alyn persuaded Mrs. Wyndham to come to her for the final two
weeks of her nominal ownership of the house. It would be less painful,
she thought, if the poor lady could pass its threshold for the last
time, shutting the door on everything as she had loved it, rather than
remain during the dismantling, to see profane hands ruthlessly dragging
from their places the mementos of her happy marriage and the childhood
of her daughters.
Accordingly, one warm, sunny morning, Mrs. Van Alyn's rotund horses
drew up at the door, and Mrs. Wyndham, looking very frail and newly
widowed under her long veil, came slowly down the stairs, leaning on
Jessamy's arm. She had made a painful pilgrimage to each room, pausing
at certain spots, laying her hand lingeringly on the furniture, and
kneeling long before the great brown-leather chair which had been her
husband's, her face hidden on its glossy seat, which was wet with her
tears when she raised her head.
At each door she stopped, rested her cheek a moment against the
casement, and kissed the dark wood as lovingly as a Jew would kiss the
_mazuzah_ on the casement; for this had been her home, a sacred temple,
and the law of love was written on its door-posts. It was a long
and weary task to get the poor creature to the end of her stations
of sorrow, and the three girls, as well as she, were white and faint
when they reached the hall. But finally Mrs. Wyndham came forth on the
door-step, and for the last time the heavy mahogany door swung close,
shutting out its mistress forever.
Jessamy drove with her mother to the kind friend who waited her with
loving welcome, but Phyllis and Bab sobbed long and tempestuously on
the stairs after Mrs. Wyndham had gone, and black Violet and blacker
Sally, with Irish Ellen, the laundress, on the basement stairs, sobbed
with them.
That afternoon the work of stripping the house was begun. The pictures
were boxed for their various owners, vans were coming and going, taking
the furniture to auction-rooms, and all was melancholy confusion.
Mrs. Van Alyn and Phyllis took charge of the painful work. Mrs. Van
Alyn quietly set aside some of the dearer mementos of past happiness
not too valuable to be kept out of the sale, to be sent to a store-room
she had taken for the purpose. Nothing splendid was retained; only the
pictures in the girls' rooms, their own special pet chairs, desks,
tables, Bab's piano, and Mr. Wyndham's library chair. Mrs. Van Alyn
foresaw and tried to provide for the day when, in one way or another,
some of the Wyndhams would again have a home in which this flotsam and
jetsam from their early shipwreck would be welcome. Not even Phyllis
knew that their kind friend was doing this, though she unconsciously
furnished the information which guided Mrs. Van Alyn in making her
selections.
It took but a week to undo the work of twenty years. Mr. Wyndham had
bought this house on his marriage, and his family had known no other
home; yet by the Saturday following the Monday on which Mrs. Wyndham
had gone away from it, it was barren of everything except a bonnet and
shawl hanging on a hook behind the kitchen door, the property of the
woman who had come in to sweep out the empty rooms.
Jessamy, Phyllis, and Barbara roamed through the house as their mother
had done, like her, bidding it farewell in every corner, listening,
half frightened, to the echo of their footsteps on the bare floors.
Their power to feel had been spent in the preceding days of their
painful tasks; utterly weary in body and mind, they closed the door of
their dismantled home behind them, and passed down the steps into their
new existence.
It had been agreed at first among the Wyndhams that they would not
accept Mrs. Van Alyn's invitation to Mount Desert for the summer; but
Mrs. Wyndham was so ill with utter prostration of nerves and strength,
and the girls themselves so unfit to encounter any further trials, that
the question decided itself otherwise. They gladly availed themselves
of another kindness from the devoted friend who was an antidote against
heavy doses of the poisonous bitterness of finding there were many the
warmth of whose affection was much tempered by change of fortune.
The summer at Mount Desert sent the Wyndhams back to New York fortified
in mind and body to meet their fate. Phyllis especially was much
cheered by the fact that she had made a friend in Maine in the person
of an old lady from Boston, who had been quite charmed by her, of whom
she always spoke as "the dear little girl," and to whom she promised a
position as reader and companion to herself at any time that fortune
failed Phyllis in New York or that her family could spare her.
The sale of the Wyndhams' effects--silver, glass, jewelry, as well as
pictures, marbles, furniture, and horses--had brought but a trifle
over twenty thousand dollars. Fortunately Mrs. Wyndham disapproved of
bills, so there was but little outstanding indebtedness to discharge
before investing the remnant of their fortune. But even at six per
cent. it could not yield more than half of the sum they had calculated
on having, and the once lightly valued legacy to the girls from their
unknown great-aunt Amelia was required to bring their little capital up
to the point of returning them two thousand a year.
The first step to be made by these novices in the ungentle art of
living was to find a boarding-place. This undertaking was assumed by
Jessamy and Phyllis, aided by Ruth Wells, who knew better than they did
what to seek and what to avoid.
The limitations of their purse defined the boundaries of their search;
only places where low prices obtained were open to the Wyndhams--a fact
in itself difficult to master at first; and the poor little pilgrims
up Poverty Hill shrank from the mere exterior of some of the houses,
the advertisements of which they had cut out and pasted on a sheet of
paper, making a "vertebrate" like Mrs. March's in Howells's story.
At last they summoned courage to ring the bell of an old-fashioned,
high-stoop house in a quiet down-town street.
"What a queer smell, Ruth!" murmured Phyllis, sniffing the air
critically and speaking low, because the sight and sound of some one
moving about, opening and shutting drawers in the back parlor, were
distinctly visible and audible through the plain places in the pattern
of the ground-glass panels of the folding doors.
"Boarding-house!" said Ruth, laconically. "It's the regular odor;
ghosts of Christmases--past Christmas dinners, I mean--Fourth of July,
and no particular days besides."
At this moment the doors slid back, revealing a folding-bed, let down
and unmade, and a gaunt figure in a worn black silk skirt and lavender
waist stood confessed.
"We are looking for board for four ladies--a widow with two daughters
and a niece," said Ruth, making herself spokeswoman. "You take
boarders, I believe? We saw your advertisement in yesterday's 'Herald.'"
"We receive a few guests," replied the gaunt person, correctively. "We
prefer gentlemen."
"Yes; we knew that on general principles," said Ruth, easily; "but
these are ladies. What rooms have you?"
"A hall bedroom on the second and two square rooms on the third,"
returned the gaunt one. "Will you look at them?"
"If you please," said Jessamy, and they were conducted up the dingy
stairs to the third floor. The floors were covered alike with red
Brussels carpet; the wall-papers--gray with gilt figures in one,
brown with red roses in the other--were alike tarnished and stained.
A marble-topped bureau of black walnut, a bedstead, and three chairs,
with one rocker, all of the same expressionless wood, furnished each
room.
"We could never put up with this, Ruth; don't delay here," whispered
Jessamy, but Ruth shook her head. "What do you ask for these rooms?"
she inquired.
"Twenty dollars a week for each, two in a room," replied the gaunt
person.
"Thank you; they would not answer," said Jessamy. "Why, I should die
here, or go mad of odors and ugliness," she added for Phyllis's private
ear.
"We might consider thirty-five a week, as it is one family," suggested
the gaunt person at the door.
"No, thanks," said Phyllis. "Only fancy! Seven dollars more than we
mean to pay, and for what? Are all boarding-houses like this, Ruth?"
"Not in detail; similar in genus. I tell you, you would be far better
off in your own little flat, cooking your own little meals on your
own little gas-range, in your own little spider. However, don't
lose heart at the first one; there are degrees of badness," laughed
Ruth.
The second attempt was made further up town, in a street among the
Thirties. The parlor into which the girls were ushered was more
cheerful here than in the first case, but was furnished in a style that
jarred on the nerves through the eyes, just as grating slate-pencils
jar them through the ears.
A portly person, with a much jetted front, sailed into the room,
smiling affably.
"We take a few guests," she said in reply to the inquiry for board,
precisely as the gaunt person down town had replied, adding, like her,
that she "preferred gentlemen." "I have the back parlor on this floor
and a hall bedroom on the third vacant just now, though we rarely have
a vacancy," she said graciously. "You might manage with a folding-bed
in the large room and the hall bedroom."
"And your prices?" asked Phyllis. "Still, it doesn't matter; we must
have two square rooms near each other."
"I should charge eighteen dollars for two in the back parlor, and I
would let the hall bedroom to two for fourteen--my table board is six
dollars apiece without a room," said she of the jets.
"No; we shall pay only fourteen for each of the rooms we are looking
for," said Jessamy, whose courage was rising.
"Oh, I couldn't consider it," said the landlady, sternly. "Still, there
are two lovely rooms on the top floor you might have for that. The
furnace does not go up there, so they would be heated by a stove. You
wouldn't mind looking after your own fires?"
"I should mind my mother going up so many flights; still, we will look
at the rooms," said Jessamy. The long climb to the top of the house
brought them to two rooms together, though not connected; sunny, rather
cheerful, and, though plainly furnished, not so ugly as the first ones.
"We are not willing to go up so high, but we will let you know if we
consider them further," said Jessamy.
"I should require references as to respectability," said the landlady,
firmly.
"I am glad to hear it; so should I," said Jessamy, and departed,
cutting short a list of distinguished people who had once boarded there.
Three days of weary search brought forth no better results. The main
difference in the places the discouraged girls visited was that in one
house the stairs went up on the right side of the hall, in another on
the left; that in one the furniture of the rooms was black walnut, in
another oak--when it was maple or mahogany it was beyond the Wyndhams'
limit of price.
These days taught the three girls--for Barbara had joined the
others--more of life than their entire years so far had shown them, and
the fruit of this tree of knowledge was bitter indeed.
They were unable to find anything within their means better than the
upper rooms in the West Thirty ---- Street house, and decided to
risk the four flights--five including the basement--and the dubious
prospect of the care of their own fires.
Having decided, they proceeded to make the best of what each felt in
her heart to be a very bad bargain, with the courage each possessed in
different forms.
There were two days intervening between that on which the new
boarding-place was engaged and the day on which it was to be
"infested," as Bab called taking possession. That young person assumed
the task of beautifying their unattractive quarters, nor would she
permit any of the others to see her improvements, but hammered her
thumbs and strained her unaccustomed arms putting up curtains, shelves,
casts, and photographs unassisted, in order to "usher her family into a
bower of bliss" when it moved in.
On the afternoon before this event, Barbara came along Thirty ----
Street from Sixth Avenue. Her arms were full of flower-pots--two filled
them--and a boy came behind with a basket containing six more. Bab had
not been able to resist the temptation to invest in plants to fill
her mother's sunny window and make the room a little more cheerful.
She hurried down the street, and paused at the foot of the steps long
enough to let her listless attendant squire catch up with her. She had
no hand to give her skirts, but she sprang up the steps, regardless of
the danger of tripping. At the same instant the front door opened and a
cocker spaniel rushed out, barking wildly and throwing himself downward
with that apparent utter disregard of whether head or tail went
first, and of anything which might be in his path, characteristic of a
young and blissful little dog.
[Illustration: "A YOUNG MAN DASHED DOWN THE STEPS INTO THE RUINS."]
He flung himself down, and Barbara stepped aside; her balance was
uncertain, and her skirts unmanageable by reason of her laden arms.
She tripped, fell, and flower-pots, dog, and girl rolled crashing and
scattering dirt in all directions into the boy and basket two steps
lower, ending in a tangle on the sidewalk.
From the doorway a horrified voice cried: "Good heavens! Nixie!" and a
young man dashed down the steps into the ruins.
"Are you hurt?" he cried anxiously, as he fished Barbara out of the
wreck. Nixie had already slunk out from under, and was wagging his
tail deprecatingly, with glances of mingled shame and amazement at his
master.
"I think I am," said Barbara, raising her head and trying to speak
cheerfully.
The young man replaced her hat--it had fallen over her eyes--and
revealed a woebegone little face. Earth plastered the saucy chin, one
cheek was cut, and blood trickled from the bridge of the poor little
tilted nose, making a paste wherever the loam from the flower-pots had
spattered, and this was nearly everywhere. Barbara's hair was coming
down, her hat was shapeless, and her eyes tearful from the smarting
wounds.
"By Jove, you're a wreck! It's a shame!" cried the young man. "I'll
whip Nixie."
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" said Barbara, with spirit. "How did
he know I was coming up--coming up like a flower--at that moment? You
might as well whip me. Nobody is to blame, and I'll be all right when
I've washed and sewed and plastered, and done a few other things."
"Well, you're plucky," said the youth, admiringly. "I'm a doctor in
embryo--full fledged next June. I'll take you in and fix you up. Do
you--you don't live here?"
"We shall to-morrow; I'm a new boarder," said Barbara. "Oh, I hope my
plants aren't broken! Can they be re-potted? We've become poor, and I
ought not to have bought them. Why on earth doesn't that boy get up? Is
he killed?" she demanded, realizing that her companion in misery was
still lying, with his head in the basket, under a debris of flower-pots.
"It's why _in_ earth, rather," laughed the medical student. "Here, you
boy, are you alive? You're buried all right! Get up."
The listless boy gathered himself slowly together. "Well, I'll be
darned!" he said.
"You'll have to be," cried the doctor, sitting down to laugh, and
pointing to the rent across the shoulders of the inert one's jacket.
"What ailed that dog? Did he have a fit?" drawled the boy, scowling at
Nixie, who slunk behind Barbara self-consciously.
"He wasn't a dog; he was a cat-apult," gasped the doctor.
"Oh, please help me into the house," cried Barbara, half laughing, half
crying. Several people had paused to gaze, grinning sympathetically at
the scene.
"I beg your pardon! What an idiot to keep you standing here!" cried
the medical student, jumping up. "Here, hustle these plants into your
basket," he added to the boy. "They're not broken; we can fix them up
all right. Where's my key?--there you are! Walk in. Get into the house,
Nixie, you crazy pup; you've lost your walk. Leave those plants in the
hall, boy, and rush back to your employer and tell him you want as many
pots as you had at first, and a bag of dirt, and hurry back with it.
Now, Mrs. Black--Mrs. Black, where are you?"
"Here," said the landlady, emerging from the rear. "Why, Miss Wyndham,
what has happened?"
"Introduce us, please; we met on the steps," said Barbara's new
acquaintance.
"Miss Wyndham--Doctor Leighton," said the bewildered Mrs. Black,
automatically.
"Happy to have the honor, Miss Wyndham. There was a mix-up on the
steps, Mrs. Black; there's some of it there yet. Let me have some warm
water and a sponge, please. Miss Wyndham, take off your hat and have
your face washed," said the unabashed boy.
"Not by you," said Barbara.
"Precisely. I'm almost a doctor, and I'm going to see that no dirt is
left in your wounds to scar you. Don't be foolish, Miss Wyndham; it's
not exactly a ceremonious occasion."
Barbara submitted with no further demur, and soon her face was adorned
with strips of court-plaster laid on in a plaid pattern.
"Shall I be scarred?" she asked, surveying the crisscross lines on the
bridge of her nose.
"Not a bit," said Doctor Leighton, cheerfully. "Mrs. Black might give
you a cup of tea to brace you up."
"Yes," said Mrs. Black, without enthusiasm.
"No, thanks; I hate tea, and I'll be all right. There's the boy back
with the new pots," said Barbara.
"Let me help you get the plants in, and I'll settle with the boy,
because it's all Nixie's fault," said the young doctor. "Not a word!
Get to work, Miss Wyndham."
He placed papers on the floor in the rear hall, apparently oblivious
to Mrs. Black's icy disapproval, which inexperienced Barbara found
oppressive.
"My father and your father were friends," said the young fellow,
packing the earth around a begonia. "I knew you were coming here to
board, and I know about the hard blow you've had. It's a shame, and
it's all the fault of that scoundrel Abbott."
"Oh, how nice that your father knew papa! That is almost like being
friends ourselves," said Barbara, simply. "Yes, it's dreadful for mama
to be poor, and for Jessamy. Phyl and I are not going to mind it so
much."
"Is Phil your brother?"
"No; Phyllis it is; she's my cousin, only she's just as much my sister
as Jessamy, for she has always lived with us. I'm a year younger than
she and Jessamy. Jessamy's perfectly beautiful and princessfied, and
Phyllis is the most unselfish blessing in the world. I'm only Barbara."
"And I'm only Tom; I'm not a doctor yet. It's awfully jolly you're
coming here. Mrs. Black gone? Yes. There isn't any one in the house I
care to know; the young people are not my sort. I hope you'll forgive
Nixie and me enough to speak to us once in a while," said Tom, getting
up and dusting his knees.
"Oh, we shall want to talk to you; Nixie is such a nice dog," laughed
Barbara.
"Only Nixie? Well, love my dog, love--oh, it's the other way about!
Never mind, though; we can improve old saws. Where are your rooms?"
"First floor from the Milky Way," laughed Bab. "We hate to have mama
climb so far, but we couldn't afford better rooms."
Tom Leighton looked down on the swollen, patched little face with
brotherly kindness; respect and pity were in his voice as he said
gently: "You will make any room bright and homelike. I see why you took
your tumble down the steps so well. You are brave in falling, Miss
Barbara."
Barbara stooped suddenly to pat Nixie, hiding her wounded face in his
glossy curls.
"I'm not always brave," she said huskily. "I am ashamed to think so
much about my beautiful room and home. I feel so little and lost in
this boarding-house."
"Poor little woman!" said Tom Leighton. "Try to feel you have one
friend in it. I have two sisters, and it was lonely for me when I left
home. Good-by; we shall meet to-morrow." They shook hands, feeling like
old friends; and Nixie sat up to shake hands too, though the dignity of
his farewell was much damaged by a surreptitious lick of his quick red
tongue on Bab's chin.
Tom departed, whistling, to give Nixie the walk the accident had
postponed; he found himself seeing, all down the street, a tilted
little nose adorned with court-plaster, and brown eyes, wistful like
Nixie's. "She's plucky and simple and frank; just the girl to be a
fellow's good chum," he thought. "What luck they're coming to the
Blackboard!"--Tom's name for his residence.
Bab finished her tasks, and went home with glowing accounts of the
little dog who had undone her and the jolly boy who had patched her up.
"There are two nice things in our new home," she said; "and I believe
we'll be happy, in spite of fate."
CHAPTER IV
MAKING THE BEST OF IT
"I don't know where to put another thing," said Mrs. Wyndham, pushing
aside a hat-box to sit beside it on the rocker, and casting a
despairing glance from the shallow closet, already full, to the floor,
covered with the heterogeneous contents of two trunks, in the midst of
which Barbara was sitting.
It had been decided that Bab, as the liveliest member of the family,
should share her mother's room; and a compact was drawn up solemnly
pledging Barbara to keep a sharp lookout for symptoms of "blues" in
her mother, and, if necessary, take as vigorous measures against them
as the immortal Jerry Cruncher used to prevent his wife "flopping."
The Wyndhams had taken possession of their new quarters but two hours
earlier, and forceful measures against slight despondency were not
considered yet in order.
A scream from the next room prevented Bab replying to her mother, and
Nixie bounded through the open door, triumphantly worrying a slipper.
He recognized Barbara, and dropped his prize to bestow several rapid
kisses on the nose he had been the means of damaging before Bab, from
her disadvantage-point on the floor, could stop him.
Tom Leighton appeared immediately behind his dog, calling Nixie with
no result, for Bab had her arms around the wriggling black bit of
enthusiasm, hugging him hard and begging his master to let him stay.
"Mama, this is the doctor who repaired me so nicely. Doctor
Leighton--my mother," said Barbara.
"Please don't think me intrusive, Mrs. Wyndham," said Tom, stepping
forward to take the delicate hand extended to him. "I am the son of
John Leighton, a friend of your husband, and I wanted to ask if I could
be of use in getting you in order. I'm a jack-of-all-trades, and have
been boarding long enough to have learned dodges."
"I remember your father," said Mrs. Wyndham, cordially. "It is very
pleasant to find a friend among strangers. I don't see what you can
do, unless you can build a closet. This tiny cubby Bab and I must
share is already overflowing, yet just look!" And Mrs. Wyndham made a
comprehensive gesture toward the littered floor.
"I suppose we've too many clothes, but we don't dare give away one
thing, because we may never be able to get any more, and we're going
to buy patent patterns and make over this stock until we're old and
gray. I expect that to be soon, however, if I have to sew," said Bab,
scrambling to her feet and tossing up Nixie's purloined slipper for him
to catch.
"A dog broke and entered--entered any way--and stole Jessamy's
slipper--oh, I beg pardon!" said Phyllis, stopping short in the doorway
at the unexpected apparition of Tom.
"My niece, Miss Phyllis Wyndham--and my elder daughter Jessamy, Doctor
Leighton," added Mrs. Wyndham, as Jessamy followed Phyllis.
"I came to ask if you had any idea of what Jessamy and I could do
with our things, auntie," said Phyllis. "We haven't begun to make an
impression on the room, yet the closet and drawers are full."
"Bab and I are in the same plight; how do people get on in such narrow
space?" sighed Mrs. Wyndham.
"You'll have to have a wigwam," said Tom.
"A wigwam! That would have no closet at all; besides, where could we
build it in New York?" laughed Phyllis.
"In that corner; I'll make it," said Tom. "It's a corner shelf, with
hooks in the under side and a curtain around it. It's the only kind of
closet I have, for my room is a hall bedroom. You can keep things dust
won't hurt in there. Then you want a divan--a woven-wire cot-bed, with
the legs cut off, fastened by hinges to a box made to fit it. We could
upholster it between us. It would be larger than the ready-made divans,
and hold more; you'll be surprised to see what it holds. Then, if one
of you were ill, it would be useful as a couch."
"There spoke the doctor," said Jessamy. "A couch is always useful. I
suppose we shall have to have a trunk in each room besides," she added
ruefully.
"If you could bring yourself to part with that table, you could set the
trunk--the flat-topped one--in the window, and I could case it in with
white pine; we'd cover it all over with felt, and it wouldn't be a very
bad-looking book-stand," said Tom.
"Well, you are a genius!" cried Bab, in open admiration.
Phyllis sang softly under her breath, to the tune of "St. Patrick's Day
in the Morning":
"All hail to the doctor who seems to be able
To mend up a nose, or to make up a table!
We gladly would cheer him, but that it seems risky,
For cheers in a boarding-house may be too frisky."
"Well, I never!" laughed Tom. "Say, was that--of course it had to
be--improvised?"
"Oh, Phyl is a genius," said Jessamy, proudly. "One of these days her
name will be in all the magazines, and at last in the encyclopedia."
"And maybe in oblivion," added Phyl. "What time do you--do we dine,
Doctor Leighton?"
"At six; I suppose you want to get ready. It is your first appearance
in a boarding-house dining-room; you must make a strong impression."
"Yes, and only look at my court-plaster! Nixie, your first impression
was too strong," groaned Bab.
"You mustn't let Nixie bother you; he'll try to be friendly," warned
Tom.
"Let him, and his master, too," said Mrs. Wyndham, heartily. "You will
both cheer us, and I appreciate your kindness very fully."
"Not a bit kindness, ma'am," said Tom, promptly. "I tell you, you don't
know how forlorn a boy is alone in a boarding-house. It does me good to
get a home breath again."
"We'll help each other if we can," said Mrs. Wyndham, gently. "You
can't be more than a year or so older than my girls, and a nice boy
will be a welcome addition to storm-tossed lassies' lives."
"Not to mention Nixie; _dogs_ are so dear," said Bab, with a slight,
naughty emphasis on "dogs."
Tom and Nixie departed, followed by praise from all the Wyndhams.
Fifteen minutes later a gong sounded through the house, and Mrs.
Wyndham and the girls made their long descent into the basement.
Two tables ran the full length of the dining-room, at the first of
which the newcomers took their places. A severe old lady, presented
to them as Mrs. Hardy, sat at its head, beside Mrs. Wyndham. She
demanded--and so received--more attention than any one else in the
house; her favorite theme was her past splendors and the dignity of her
acquaintances. Opposite Mrs. Wyndham sat a big, kindly-looking man,
who said he was "just in" from a Western trip, thus revealing himself
a traveling salesman. He was pathetically fond of his two overgrown,
ill-mannered children, and deprecating toward his peevish wife, who,
with the elegance brought from her early apprenticeship to a milliner,
assumed superiority to her less pretentious husband, thus keeping him
in wholesome abeyance and general readiness to endow her with ornaments.
Three over-dressed, painfully vivacious girls in a row completed the
line opposite the Wyndhams, with a big man at the other end of the
table, who combated with a sort of fury every proposition made by any
one else. Beside him sat a widow who was a bookkeeper in a department
store, and who looked utterly worn out and anemic. Two school-teachers,
middle-aged and drab of complexion, with the aggressive air of women
who had from girlhood fought the world to maintain a foothold in it,
filled in the line between the wilted widow and Jessamy.
The girls were too young to realize all that these melancholy types
stood for, but their poor mother felt, with utter heartsickness, that
this was the fate of those whom poverty made homeless and forced to
struggle for existence.
The second table was filled with men of varying degrees of youth,
solitary and unattached, some of whom lived under the roof, but the
majority came in from outside for meals only, thus belonging to the
class designated as "table boarders."
This table almost to a man stared at Mrs. Wyndham and her three
charges, especially at Jessamy. Tom Leighton sat there, and Phyllis,
who was quickest of the three to seize a situation, saw him flush with
annoyance, and guessed that they, and particularly Jessamy's beauty,
were the subject of impertinent comment.
Bab was half amused and wholly excited by the new experience; there
was something she liked in rubbing elbows with such a singular world.
But the sense of humor of all the others failed them, and they ate but
lightly, pecking from the individual vegetable-dishes, which resembled
birds' bath-tubs, with not much more appetite than the birds themselves
would have had.
Jessamy heard a loud whisper asking for "a knockdown to the beauty" as
she smiled and bowed to Tom Leighton in leaving the room, and Phyllis
was stopped by the three resplendent maidens, who introduced themselves
as May Daly, Fanny Harmon, and Daisy Heimberger. "You just come?" they
asked--it seemed to Phyllis they all talked at once. "Say, ain't your
sister handsome? My, I think she's simply great! Too bad the other one
got cut so; must be her who fell up the steps yest'day when the young
doc was goin' out. Mis' Black was tellin' us last night. Funny way to
meet! Do you know any of the other young gentlemen? They're awful nice,
but I s'pose we won't have any chance now you've come!" This with a
giggle that showed doubt of her own prediction. "They take us girls to
the theater real often Sat'day nights--not doc, though; do you know
him?"
"Mrs. Wyndham's husband and his father were friends," said Phyllis,
prudently. It was the first time in her short life it had occurred to
her to explain her actions.
"Well, come see us; we've got a room with two beds on the third floor."
And Phyllis noticed, as they nodded good night, that each wore two
buttons bearing photographs of the other two members of their trio.
"Very likely they are nice in their way--poor things!" she thought;
"and share comforts and sorrows--but, oh, dear!" And she followed her
family sadly up the stairs.
Their own rooms looked very peaceful and refined to the Wyndhams when
they got back to them, and Phyllis and Barbara felt comforted when the
door was closed behind them; but Jessamy sank into a chair in blank
despondency, and her mother could not smile at Bab's wildest sallies.
"First aid to the injured!" cried a cheery voice, and Ruth Wells burst
into the gloom--"like an arc-light," Barbara said, jumping up to hug
her rapturously.
"No, don't; I've tacks and a hammer here," said Ruth, struggling free.
"I knew you had no closets, or none worth calling one, so I came to
show you how to make a charity."
"A what?" asked Jessamy.
"A charity; it covers a multitude of things, you see," laughed Ruth.
"You take a board--we can get one down-stairs, probably--saw it off to
the right length, and put it in a corner. Then you drive hooks--"
"In the under side--we know," interrupted Phyllis. "Only Doctor
Leighton says it is a wigwam."
"Mama, let me call that boy; we'll have a bee--a be-autiful time, too,"
cried Bab, springing up. "I wonder if I could get him." And she looked
wistfully out of the door.
By a strange chance, Tom's door happened to be open. "Do you want me?"
he called, seeing the eager little face he had patched up so carefully.
"Yes. Ruth Wells has come, and we're going to make a wigwam, only
she calls it a charity, because, she says, it covers a multitude of
things," said Bab. "Nixie too; come, Nix."
"I don't know who Ruth Wells is, but we shall be glad to come,"
responded Tom, with alacrity.
In five minutes the little room was ringing with fun. The "charitable
wigwam"--Phyllis's compromise on the name--could not be made for
lack of boards, but the young people managed to cover up the dismal
impressions of their first experience of the bleak side of life, and
that was making a real charity, as Jessamy pointed out in bidding Ruth
good night.
The wigwam was made in the end, the divan too, and the Wyndhams began
to learn to adjust themselves to the new conditions. Tom had become
almost one of themselves, and Nixie a necessity and no longer a luxury,
as Bab noted. Tom was such a bright, honest, boyish young creature that
no greater piece of good fortune could well have befallen the girls in
their new trouble than his friendship--a fact their mother recognized
gratefully. As to Tom himself, the motherly kindness of Mrs. Wyndham
and the sweet, frank companionship of the girls were a boon to the
young fellow, who had loved his own mother and sisters well.
Bab and he were the best comrades, but he admired beautiful Jessamy,
and was not less proud of her than the girls were; and Phyllis he
regarded from the first with affectionate reverence, as the embodiment
of perfect maidenhood.
Winter was coming on, and for the first time in their lives the
Wyndhams tried to make old answer for new in the matter of garments.
"Not a penny must be spent this season," declared Jessamy, sternly. "A
year hence we may earn new clothes."
All the summer garments had been laid away in the new divan. "Never
throw away a winter thing in the spring, nor a summer thing in the
fall," advised Ruth, that little woman wise in ways and means. "You
can't tell how anything looks out of its season, nor what you may want.
Set up a scrap-box, and tuck everything into it; it's ten to one you'll
be grateful for the very thing you thought least hopeful. Many a time
I've all but hugged an old faded ribbon because its one bright part was
just the right shade and length to line a collar."
The scrap-box was therefore established, and easily filled from a stock
not yet depleted. Jessamy's artistic talents developed in the direction
of hats. Ruth taught her to take the long wrists of light suede
gloves which were past wearing, and stretch them over a frame for the
foundation of especially pretty hats.
Jessamy made three hats, one for each of them, with crowns of old glove
wrists and velvet puffs around the brims; and in the new scrap-box she
found quills and ribbons and flowers to trim them, so that all three
were different, yet each "a James Dandy," according to Tom Leighton's
authoritative verdict.
Dressmaking was a more serious matter, but the three Wyndhams essayed
it with the courage of ignorance. Ruth brought down mysterious brown
tissue-paper patterns--"perforated to confuse the innocent," Bab
said--and announced that she had come for a dress parade. Her friends
were still too unversed in being poor to realize that when she came to
them Ruth was sacrificing her own good for theirs, since her time meant
money, and little Ruth's pockets jingled only when she spent long days
at her needle.
"Get out all your last year's glories," commanded Ruth, perched on the
footboard of Jessamy's and Phyllis's bed. "That's a pretty dark-blue
cloth suit; whose is that?"
"Phyllis's; it was nice, but she tried it on the other day, and it's
too full in the skirt," said Jessamy.
"I don't believe I'd dare touch anything so tailor-made; if we rip
it we shall never be able to give it the same finish. I'll tell you,
Phyllis; we can take out the gathers and lay a box-pleat in the back;
that will make it look flatter and more in the present style," cried
Ruth, with sudden illumination. "Now isn't it true that there's good
blown to some one on all winds? If you didn't have stoves in your
rooms, you wouldn't have any place to heat irons; and don't I know the
impossibility of getting a flatiron from the lower regions when one is
boarding?"
"Infernal regions do you mean, when you say 'lower'?" inquired Tom,
from the doorway.
"Go away! This is a feminine occasion; no boys allowed," cried Ruth.
"Mysteries of Isis?" suggested Tom. "I only want a buttonhole sewed up;
wouldn't the goddess allow that?"
"Yes," said Phyllis, holding out her hand for the collar Tom was waving
appealingly. "It is rather in the line of the service about to begin in
this temple. We are going into dressmaking."
"You'll succeed; you can do anything," said Tom, watching Phyllis's
fingers as she twitched the thread in a scientific manner to draw
the gaping buttonhole together. "Those laundry people apparently dry
collars by hanging them upon crowbars thrust through the buttonholes.
Couldn't I help with your dressmaking? I know there are bones in
waists, and maybe I could set them."
The four girls groaned. "Such a pale, feeble little jokelet!" sighed
Bab. "Take it to the hospital to be measured for crutches."
"Here's your collar. Run away and play with the other little boys;
we're busy. By and by, if you're good, we may let you take out
bastings," said Phyllis.
"Jupiter! That sounds familiar," sighed Tom. "My mother used to say
just that when I was seven. Much obliged for the collar. When you want
me for the bastings sing out, and I'll pardon your impertinence in
consideration of service rendered." And Tom disappeared.
"Phyl will do very well with the blue, then," said Ruth, resuming
practicalities. "What are your prospects, Other Two?"
"I had this gray, and I loved it," said Jessamy, smoothing a
chinchilla-trimmed jacket fondly. "I think it isn't hurt at all, and I
shouldn't dare touch it."
"There's a spot on the back where you leaned up against something
greasy, but French chalk will make it all right," said Ruth, issuing
her mandates from her perch like a mounted general at the head of an
army.
"Mine was brown, with mink," said Barbara, sadly; "but I spilled
something, sometime--I don't know what or when--on the front of the
skirt, and I don't see what you can do with it; I haven't a smidge of
the goods."
"A what?" murmured Ruth, absent-mindedly, wrinkling her brow over the
problem. "Tailor-made or not, we shall have to rip that skirt and put
in a breadth of something else; and it will never look right--No, I
have it!" she cried, interrupting herself and sliding to her feet with
a triumphant little shout.
"Eureka, Miss Archimedes! What is it?" asked Phyllis.
"Braid!" cried Ruth. "We'll get narrowest silk soutache--Jessamy shall
draw a design--and you shall braid the entire front breadth of your
skirt, Bab, resolving with each stitch to be neater in the future."
"I never saw such cleverness!" cried Jessamy, admiringly, while Bab
made a wry face over the prospect.
"And now for house wear," said Ruth. "Here are some pretty light silks;
the skirts are good, but the waists are worn out."
"I thought, perhaps, we could make fancy waists of the skirts to wear
with our cloth gowns," said Phyllis, doubtfully, turning over a heap of
light colors.
"Could? Why, of course we can. Let's rip them now," said Ruth, whipping
out her own little scissors with alacrity. The four pairs of hands
made quick work of the ripping, and Ruth cut out three waists by the
tissue-paper patterns she had brought, pinned and basted them together,
and left her friends to carry out her instructions.
Phyllis proved most adept at the new art; Jessamy succeeded fairly, but
Bab had a dreadful time with her waist. Seams puckered and drew askew
because of her reckless way of sewing them up in various widths, yet
she felt aggrieved when the waist proved one-sided on trying on. And as
to sleeves, Bab's would not go in with anything approaching civility
and decorum. The poor child ripped, basted, tried on, ripped again,
refusing all help in her proud determination to be independent, till
her cheeks were purple, and she threw the waist down in despair and
cried forlornly.
Tom surprised her in this tempest, and laughed at her until she longed
to flay him. Then, sincerely repentant for having aggravated her woes,
he humbly begged her pardon, and took her out for a walk with Nixie to
cool her cheeks and calm her ruffled nerves. When she returned, Phyllis
had taken it upon herself to disregard her wishes, and had basted
in the refractory sleeves for her, which, like everything else, had
yielded to Phyllis's charm and gone meekly into place. From this point
Bab's path was smooth before her, and the last of the three waists,
the first attempt of the girls at practical work, was brought to a
triumphant finish.
There was real pleasure in using their wits in these things, the girls
found; there was truly a bright side to poverty. But the ugly side
remained--the jealousy of the three girls who were their opposites
at table, as well as literally, and who disliked the Wyndhams for
their difference in accent, manners, birth, for their unlikeness to
themselves, for which neither side was to blame nor to praise.
And Mrs. Wyndham was ailing, fretting her heart out over the present
situation and her poor girls' future. And--hardest of all to bear--the
landlady made them feel that she considered the rate of their board
insufficient to remunerate her for the immense, though to them
imperceptible, generosity with which she served them.
But the most serious aspect of the anxieties closing in around the
Wyndhams was that, in spite of all their prudence, money slipped away,
laundry bills took on alarming proportions, and they had never dreamed
how fast five-cent car fares could swell into as many dollars. Although
they had taken care to make their expenditures come well within their
income, they saw that there was not going to be enough to meet an
emergency should it arise, and Jessamy and Phyllis talked till midnight
many a night discussing how they could put their young shoulders to the
wheel and join the great army of wage-earners.
CHAPTER V
PHYLLIS AND BARBARA ENTER THE LISTS
Aunt Henrietta always stayed until November in her cottage near
Marblehead. She said that she never enjoyed the ocean until she was
alone with it, and Jessamy suggested afterward that it was a trifle
hard on the ocean--a severe remark for Jessamy, whose genuinely high
standards of good breeding forbade unkind comment on others--even on
Aunt Henrietta, though she was trying.
Immediately on her return to town, Mrs. Hewlett came to look up "her
fallen kindred," as Barbara said. That young lady went down to the
parlor to conduct her great-aunt to her mother. "It would make a lovely
title for a Sunday-school book, wouldn't it?" she said, turning from
the glass, where she had been inspecting the last faint trace of the
mishap to her nose. "'Little Barbara's Upward Leading,' or 'Toward the
Skies,' or 'Helped Upward,' or 'Mounting Heavenward,' or even simply
'Uplifted.'"
"Barbara, I am ashamed of you!" said her mother, as severely as she
could, while trying not to laugh.
"Now, Bab, do be nice," pleaded Jessamy.
"Nice! I'd like to know what could be nicer than to plan moral little
titles like those?" said Bab, in an injured tone. "But don't worry;
I'll be a sweet morsel when I get down there."
"You look thinner," said Aunt Henrietta, when Barbara had delicately
touched the unresponsive cheek offered her to kiss.
"I _am_ thinner, aunt; we're none of us waxing fleshy. Black Sally's
marketing and cooking seemed rather more comforting than our present
fare," said Bab.
"H'm! Where under heavens are your rooms?" asked Mrs. Hewlett.
"Just there, Aunt Henrietta. Right under heavens--on the top floor,"
laughed Barbara.
"Do you mean to say you have taken your delicate mother up all those
flights?" demanded her great-aunt. "You ought to be ashamed of
yourselves."
"What could we do, aunt?" asked Barbara, meekly, though her cheeks grew
very red. "We were not able to make any boarding-house keeper give us
better rooms at our price for mama's sake."
"Do? You ought to be earning money--three great healthy girls--and
Phyllis only a niece-in-law of your mother's into the bargain! I came
to talk to you about this," said Mrs. Hewlett.
"Please wait till we get up-stairs; I fancy there are always ears
about here," said Bab, and led the way to their own quarters.
"'Excelsior!' is our motto, aunt," she said, pausing at the head of the
second flight, and finding malicious pleasure in her relative's labored
breathing.
"Well, Emily, the consequences of your imprudence are severe. I am
sorry to find you thus; you don't look well," was Aunt Henrietta's
greeting to Mrs. Wyndham. "Now, I want to get down to business without
delay," she added, removing her splendid furs. "I suppose you are using
your principal?"
"On the contrary, our living, such as it is, comes well within the
limits of our income," replied Mrs. Wyndham.
"Really!" exclaimed Mrs. Hewlett, disappointed of the chance to find
fault on that score, but swiftly rallying to another point of attack.
"Then it is because you are living so wretchedly in order to keep these
girls fine ladies. You always spoiled them, Emily; but your weakness
really should have some limit. It is outrageous for you to be compelled
to climb all these stairs, that a slender income may support four
people. These girls should be a source of income, not a drain upon you;
you can't be poor and be fine ladies at the same time."
"We hope that we can be, aunt," said Jessamy; "but you are quite
mistaken if you think we wish to spare ourselves at mother's expense."
Only Mrs. Wyndham's hand holding Bab's wrist tight kept that small
torpedo from exploding. "This question has been discussed among us,
aunt, especially lately," said Mrs. Wyndham, quietly, though her voice
trembled. "Jessamy has clearly determined her course; she has talent,
and we all think can do good book illustrations. She is going to fit
herself for her work, and we hope will be successful. From the first
Jessamy has declared that she should prepare herself to do something
well, and devote herself to one vocation."
"Jessamy has sense," said Aunt Henrietta, surveying the girl with
something like approbation. "She is so pretty that she will undoubtedly
marry before she follows any business long. I only hope that she will
remember your necessities, and marry well."
"If by 'well' you mean a good man, whom she loves, I hope so too,
Aunt Henrietta," said Mrs. Wyndham, with heightened color. "Bitter as
our recent trouble has been, it would be unbearable if I thought it
would lead one of my girls to sell herself, forgetful of self-respect,
goodness, and true womanliness. Thank heaven, I believe there is no
danger of what I should feel was a great crime."
"Sentimentality! You never were practical, Emily," said Aunt Henrietta,
impatiently, but too intent on her object to quarrel. "Now, how about
Phyllis and Barbara!"
"I agree with Aunt Henrietta that I, at least, ought to be earning
money," said Phyllis.
"Not you any more than me, Phyl," cried Barbara, with more warmth than
correctness.
"Well, I cut out an advertisement from the morning paper for one of
you to answer," said Aunt Henrietta, producing a clipping. "I want to
help you get started. Barbara, you might try this; it would probably be
easy employment, and you are too flighty for most things."
"Thanks, aunt," said Bab, with double intent, and read aloud: "'Wanted:
A young lady correspondence clerk in gentleman's office. Good salary to
right person. Address X. Y. Z. Trumpet, Downtown Office.'"
"That sounds rather nice," commented Barbara, spearing the slip to the
pin-cushion with a hat-pin. "I will answer it, Aunt Henrietta."
"If you write now, I'll post it when I go out," suggested Mrs. Hewlett.
"Afraid to trust me? I always do what I say I will, but I would as lief
write now as any time," said Bab, and seated herself at the table.
"How is this?" she asked later, and read: "'The inclosed advertisement
from "The Trumpet" noted. The undersigned applicant for the situation
would say that she is seventeen years old. This note is a specimen of
her handwriting; and for character, ability, personal qualities, etc.,
she can furnish best city references. An interview requested. Address,'
etc. Will that do? I'm not so sure about the reference for ability, but
I hope some one would guarantee my honesty."
"Mercy, Bab! where did you learn such business-like forms?" cried
Jessamy.
"Oh, but fancy my little Bab--my baby--going down to business every
day! There is no doubt that it is a misfortune for women to be forced
to compete with men; I never could let little Babbie do it," cried poor
Mrs. Wyndham.
"I promise not to compete, Madrina; the men shall go on as if
nothing--as if I, at any rate--had never happened. It can't do any harm
to send in my application," said Bab.
"There is just where your foolish pride comes in, Emily," said Aunt
Henrietta, sternly. "Your daughters are no better than other people's
daughters; and every one knows that if a girl behaves herself no harm
can befall her under any circumstances."
"It is not pride," said Mrs. Wyndham, stung to self-defense. "Nor do
I fear harm, exactly. Unwomenly women are a misfortune to themselves
and all the community, and it is impossible to knock about the world
without losing something of that dear and delicate loveliness which, at
best, is fast going out of fashion. If it can be avoided, I think no
girl should be placed in the thick of the fight, striding through the
world in fierce competition with men."
"If it can be avoided--precisely; but it cannot be avoided," said Aunt
Henrietta, calmly; "for none of your relatives can afford to help you,
Emily."
"Help? When did I ever dream of wanting or being willing to accept
help, aunt?" cried Mrs. Wyndham, hysterically. "But if I prefer to
practise stern self-denial to keep my girls sheltered until such time
as they can help me in more feminine ways than you propose--or
would let them follow if they were your own, I feel sure--is that
wrong?"
[Illustration: AUNT HENRIETTA.]
"Not wrong," said Aunt Henrietta, with exasperating soothing in her
voice, and entire conviction of being right, "but utterly foolish
and impractical. Now, I have a proposition for Phyllis. A friend--an
acquaintance of mine--desires a nursery governess. She has three
charming children, and will pay a girl twenty-five dollars a month to
teach them the simple things children between six and three years of
age learn, take them out--in short, be, as I said, nursery governess;
you know what those duties are as well as I do. There is no exposure to
the world in that position, so you ought to like it, Emily."
"Could I go and come every day, aunt?" asked Phyllis, while Mrs.
Wyndham twisted her handkerchief nervously. This was bringing poverty
home to her; she clung strongly, poor lady, to the hope of sheltering
her little brood, and no amount of privation at home seemed to her like
thrusting the burden on them, as did their going out into the world to
earn their living.
"She would want you to," said Aunt Henrietta, rising, well pleased
at finding her grand-nieces so amenable to reason--"amenable to
reason" meaning, to her mind, as to most others, readiness to accept
her opinion. "I wrote this introductory line on the back of my
visiting-card. You will find Mrs. Haines at that number on East Forty
---- Street, just beyond Fifth Avenue. You will do well to apply at
once, for there will be many after the situation."
"You won't mind if Phyllis mentions that she is your niece, in case she
does decide to apply?" inquired Jessamy, with meaning hidden under a
gentle manner.
But the satire was quite lost on Aunt Henrietta. "Not at all; you are
only my grand-nieces, and my social position is beyond being affected
by trifles," she said, in self-gratulatory tones. Then she went away,
leaving a perturbed roomful behind her.
"Now, let me tell you, my dearest auntie-mother, that I think I'll
try the nursery governess," said Phyllis. "Twenty-five dollars a
month will nearly pay my board, and I'd be happier to feel I were
helping. It won't be the end of my career, I hope, but it will answer
for a beginning. I honestly think our beloved metallic great-aunt is
right--that we ought to be bettering matters, rather than settle down
satisfied to such a life as this. Jessamy and I have reached that
conclusion lately."
Mrs. Wyndham was crying softly. "To think that if I had heeded Mr. Hurd
we should still have enough," she moaned.
"If--if! Mama, what is the use of 'ifs' now?" cried Barbara. "You
did what you thought right, and we can't bear to have you reproach
yourself. My letter has gone, and we will try to enter the lists to
fight for you like true knights--pity we're girls, for it spoils my
fine simile."
"I think not, Babbie baby; a knightly spirit is quite as often in a
girl's breast as in a boy's," said her mother, kissing her.
"The worst of it is that I feel so mean and selfish to let you all
help, while I stay at home," said Jessamy. "But I honestly believe
I can do more and help better by waiting and following my natural
bent. You won't think me shirking? When even little Bab is answering
advertisements, I feel horribly indolent and self-seeking."
"'Even little Bab'--who is anything but even--is only a year younger
than you, miss," said Bab; while Phyllis put her arms around Jessamy
and kissed her as she said: "No one could ever suspect you of not
playing fair, my crystal cousin."
Phyllis went forth in her dark-blue gown the next day to "secure the
young ideas which in the end she would probably want to shoot," Bab
said.
Mrs. Haines was at home, and came down immediately. Phyllis presented
her card of introduction, and stated her errand.
"It seems absurd to inquire into the qualifications of a Miss Wyndham
to teach children as young as mine are--but do you understand
kindergarten methods?" Mrs. Haines asked affably.
"I am sorry, but I do not," said Phyllis.
"No; you would hardly have studied them, not having foreseen the
necessity of teaching. The books can give you suggestions, and you can
easily pick up those charming song-games. You sing?"
"A little; enough for that," said Phyllis.
"And speak French?"
"As well as English," said Phyllis, glad to answer one inquiry
affirmatively.
"Oh, then I should be glad if you would speak it with the children,"
exclaimed Mrs. Haines. "Fancy having a daughter of Mr. Henry Wyndham
for one's nursery governess! What a land of reverses America is!
Frankly, I made up my mind to take you the moment you came."
The vulgarity of this remark struck Phyllis dumb for a moment. Never
in her life had she felt that the money standard existed. In her home
she had been surrounded by luxury, but never before had she imagined
that any one could estimate a person by what he had, or desire to know
those who had wealth, merely for that reason. In a flash, the vision of
a world of shams, snobbishness, insincerity, spread before her, calling
forth the fierce revolt, the sickening repulsion, proper and natural to
her youth and better teaching.
"I am not Mr. Henry Wyndham's daughter," she said; "I am his brother's
daughter, but I have lived with my uncle since I was almost a baby,
and neither of my cousins feels any difference between me and her own
sister."
"Oh, but there _is_ a difference; your uncle and aunt must have felt
it, if the children did not, or if they were too kind to let you see
it. They were very nice to look after you. Are you the only one who
is going to work, now that the money is gone? Why did not one of
the others come?" asked Mrs. Haines, with evident disappointment,
wrinkling her pretty, if rather common, face fretfully.
"Miss Wyndham and Miss Barbara Wyndham have other plans," said Phyllis,
haughtily. Then, realizing that she was actually the applicant for
a position, and that this tone would never do, she added, with the
intention of influencing the shallow creature before her, though she
despised herself for appealing to such motives: "I doubt very much if
the world knows which is niece and which are daughters. We have always
been to every one merely 'the Wyndham girls,' with no distinction to
outsiders any more than among ourselves."
"How lovely! Of course it makes no real difference; you must come to
me, just the same," said Mrs. Haines, brightening. "Would you like to
see the children and the nursery? All mothers _think_ their babies
sweetest, but I _know_ that mine are." And she led the way up-stairs.
Poor Phyllis! Her heart melted somewhat toward her future employer at
this remark, but when she reached the nursery even her innocence could
hardly help discovering that this too was a pose. No mother-light
leaped into Mrs. Haines's eyes at the sight of the three little
creatures playing there, nor did the children spring to meet her, as
the three little Wyndhams had always sprung at the sight of their
mother--mother to them all equally, in spite of Mrs. Haines's doubt.
Phyllis loved children, and her quick perception of the lack in the
lives of these filled her with pity. She stooped down to them, and ran
her fingers through the curls of the second child, a girl of four, and
drew the baby, another girl of three, toward her. The eldest, a pale
boy of six, gazed at her steadily. "Who are you?" then he said.
"This is Miss Wyndham, and she is coming to teach you and play with you
every day," said his mother.
"Oh, wouldn't it be better for them to call me Miss Phyllis? It sounds
less distant, and I want them to love me. You will love me, won't you?"
said Phyllis.
"Don't touch my hair; you'll spoil it!" said the elder girl; but the
baby laughed and cuddled closer, and the boy said gravely: "I think I
shall, because you've got such a lamp behind your eyes."
"Decidedly, one of my charges is going to prove interesting," thought
Phyllis; but she only said: "Won't you tell me your name, and your
sisters'?"
"Mine is Lionel Ferdinand Haines. What would you do if the boys up in
the park called you 'Nellie' Because you wore curls? My mother won't
cut them off."
"Then I should laugh at the boys for trying to tease me when I didn't
care what they said; and I should try to like curls because my mother
liked them," said Phyllis. "And the girls' names?"
"The big one is Muriel Dorothy Haines, and the littlest one is Gladys
Gertrude Haines," said Master Lionel, and was about to propound another
question when his mother interrupted him to say that she must take
Phyllis away, because she had an engagement.
"Shall I consider the matter settled, Miss Wyndham, and that you are
coming?" she asked.
"Yes, please," said Phyllis.
"And at twenty-five dollars a month? Mrs. Hewlett mentioned the wages,
I suppose?"
"Yes--please," said Phyllis again, forcing the last word, as she kissed
the baby.
Lionel extended his hand to be shaken, but Muriel said "Good-by"
crossly, refusing to be touched.
"I am engaged, girls," said Phyllis, coming into the room with very red
cheeks on her return, and maintaining silence as to the discouraging
aspects of her new employment.
Phyllis began her labors on the following Monday. Barbara, who had
heard nothing further from her application for the correspondence
clerkship, now turned to Mr. Hurd for help, and the little lawyer
obtained for her the position of cashier with a friend of his own,
where the young girl would at least be secure from many of the
drawbacks to a business career which her mother dreaded for her.
But, to Bab's unspeakable mortification, she found that she was
incompetent to fill the position. She made change slowly, often
wrongly, and at night her columns would not add up right, no matter
how often she went over them nor how carefully she counted her
fingers. At the end of a week she came home crestfallen, having been
kindly dismissed, to be comforted and petted by her mother and the
girls. Accomplishments she had, but practical knowledge, especially
arithmetic, she lacked. Phyllis had been right, in the first place,
when she said they were not able to compete with their inferiors in
doing the serious work of the world.
After this experience, Mr. Hurd placed Barbara in an office to address
envelops. This she did well, for her fingers and brain were quick; but
she was far from an expert, and her salary was but three dollars and a
half a week. Fortunately, the office was within walking distance for
her, so that car fare did not have to be deducted from this magnificent
result of six days' labor.
Jessamy was working hard at her drawing. Phyllis said little of her
daily experiences, from which her family concluded that they were not
wholly pleasant.
A single ray of hope shone out of the gloom for Phyllis. A little story
she had written was accepted by one of the large syndicates and paid
for--fifteen dollars. The money was not much, though it was more than
half of what she was paid monthly by Mrs. Haines; but the glory and the
hope it shed on the future were invaluable.
On the whole, Phyllis and Barbara found their entrance into the lists
not easy, and the blows of the tourney hard, but they kept on with a
courage fine to see.
They all felt that in some way their skies would brighten when Mrs.
Van Alyn returned; she was their "Lady from Philadelphia," and would
be sure to find a way through their difficulties. But Mrs. Van Alyn
had gone to England till February, and in the meantime the Wyndhams
struggled on to the best of their ability.
CHAPTER VI
MARK TAPLEY'S KIND OF DAYS
Phyllis was finding her occupation trying. The children had not been
accustomed to obedience, and Muriel proved intractable; Phyllis could
neither win her affection nor subdue her by sternness. Lionel minded
her because he loved her; in a week's time the boy had become her
doglike adorer, and Phyllis loved him with pitying tenderness. The baby
was like a little garden patch with the sun shining upon it through the
tree branches, in alternate sunshine and shadow, and her obedience was
patchy, too; no child more properly deserved the insignia of "a little
curl right in the middle of her forehead." But she was only the baby;
no one could take very seriously the misdemeanors of a mite of three,
and Gladys was a dear mite when she was not the other sort.
It was hard to assume the charge of three children for six hours a
day; hard to bring them, and herself as well, into the discipline of
stated hours and tasks; not easy to take them out to walk, and feel
perfectly independent and indifferent to the possibility of meeting old
acquaintances when thus employed.
But the hardest thing about her new life to Phyllis was the insight it
gave her into a manner of living which shocked and tortured her, for
Phyllis was a conscientious girl, and the first actual contact with the
worldly side of the world is bitter to such as she. Mrs. Haines did
not love her children. Sometimes, when they were beautifully dressed,
she flattered them and devoured them with kisses; but more frequently
she repulsed them, scolded them petulantly and unjustly, and answered
their questions with a fretful "Don't bother me! I don't know; ask
Miss Wyndham." Sometimes she would say in their hearing that she
detested children; that they all ought to be fastened up in the barrel
Holmes suggested and fed through the bunghole; and that she would give
anything if she were free to have a good time like other young women.
And Phyllis could see Lionel's lips quiver and then set hard at these
speeches, and she knew the little lad understood that though he had a
mother, he had not her love, but was a burden to her.
It made her sick at heart; less experienced than her tiny charges, she
had never for a moment dreamed that a woman who had children could
do less than love them beyond all the world, holding no pleasure, no
admiration, worth a thought while her babies' little arms clung to her.
But Mrs. Haines boasted the flattery she received. Evidently husband,
as well as children, was nothing to her beside her idea of pleasure;
and honest Phyllis went home daily, heavy in mind and foot, weary with
loathing more than with work.
Tom saw that she was looking blue and ill, and he made it his
business to come home her way and meet her, and try to cheer her into
forgetfulness of the annoyances of which he was ignorant; for Phyllis
could not reconcile it with her standard of honor to talk to any one of
what she saw in the home to which she had been admitted. Yet she longed
to ask some one if all the world, but her own narrow one, was like this
new one; Jessamy and Bab knew no better than she, and her aunt was too
ill to be troubled.
Mrs. Haines soon discovered the handsome young fellow who came to meet
her governess, and rallied Phyllis on what she called "her conquest."
"I hear you have an admirer, my dear," she said.
Phyllis flushed scarlet with indignation. "Tom is a dear boy, like
a brother to all of us," she said. "There isn't the least silly
thing about him; we are only girls, and we don't want nor think of
flirtations."
Mrs. Haines laughed with contemptuous good nature. "Would it be silly
in him to admire you?" she asked. "As to the rest of it, girls you may
be, but children you are not; I was no older than you when I married,
and am only seven years older than you are now."
"My aunt has taught us that love and marriage are so sacred and solemn
that we must never think nor speak of them lightly, and, above all
things, never spoil our lives and hearts by flirting," said Phyllis,
trying to speak without excitement.
"Very good teaching; very poor practice, my dear," laughed Mrs. Haines.
"Do you want to be three little gray nuns? But I hoped this 'Tom' of
yours might prove something more serious than a flirtation--that is, if
he has any money; your business is to marry well, under your present
circumstances; don't go in for romance."
"I never think of marrying, Mrs. Haines; I am much too young and
girlish. But I would rather die than marry just for money," said
Phyllis.
"See here, Miss Wyndham; I was a poor girl too," said Mrs. Haines. "I
had just about enough money for gloves and hats, but not for gowns and
shoes. My husband is fourteen years older than I; do you think I cared
for him? Not a bit, but I married him at nineteen, and now I have a
fine house, carriage, everything I want, and more beaux to say I'm
pretty than most girls of my age. Don't you think I was sensible?"
In spite of herself, Phyllis shuddered; she thought of Mr. Haines's
solitary breakfasts, frequent dinners at the club, the unloved
children, and realized how blessed she had been in her bringing up.
"There are better things than money, Mrs. Haines," she said, almost
pitying the little creature before her, hardly, as she said, older than
herself, yet so frankly pagan and sordid. "I would rather work till I
died working than--"
She stopped, frightened at her own boldness. Mrs. Haines looked at
her, understanding what she did not say. "There will always be these
two kinds of people," she said, and Phyllis wondered, not quite
comprehending.
Phyllis met Tom with a sensation of relief, as well as pleasure; he
looked so manly, so reliable. "It's no use, Tom," she said. "I've been
trying not to tell you, but I must. Is it I or the world that's out of
joint?"
"On general principles, I can assure you that it's not you, Phyllis;
you're all right. But, if I might, I should like to have something more
explicit," said Tom, looking very kindly down on the flushed, earnest
face.
Phyllis began at the beginning, and poured forth to Tom all the matters
that had distressed her in the Haines household, ending with the
conversation of the afternoon, suppressing his part in the theme.
"Well, what do you want me to tell you, Phyllis?" asked Tom. "Surely
you don't have to question whether you or a heartless, flirting,
worldly woman is right? Or whether any woman worth the name will sell
herself for an establishment and clothes?"
"No, not that; right is right, and wrong is wrong--" began Phyllis.
"Always," broke in Tom.
"Yes, I know; but what makes me downright sick is the fear that dear
auntie has kept us shut away from a world that is full of this sort
of thing--that all the world is like this," cried Phyllis. "Are
we different from the rest of the world? These last months have
frightened me."
"Not much wonder," said Tom, heartily. "Poor little soul! Now, look
here, Phyllis; you're not different from all the world, but you're
different from lots of it. The best never gets run out, but it runs
low often. You've been given the highest standards in all things, and
they can never be common. It is much easier to be bad than good for
people who start crooked; you started straight, you and Jessamy and
Bab. All you've got to do is to be yourself and not worry. Keep your
own ideas, and steer by them, and let the rest go. Do you suppose I
don't see heaps and piles of things I hate? More than you ever will,
because a fellow runs up against the world as no girl does. I'd like
to be able to tell you I see none but sweet, modest, true girls; but,
honest, I see fewer of them than the other kind. Girls make me sick,
though I feel mean to say it; they wouldn't if I didn't think they are
so much better than we are when they are nice. You see, Phyllis, girls
don't understand that the whole world is in their hands; we're all what
women, young and old, make us. Now, you and I had good mothers and
sisters. When I went away my oldest sister--she's past thirty--talked
to me. 'Shut your eyes to the bold girls, Tom,' she said, 'and make
no woman friend you would not introduce to your sisters. Keep your
ideals, and be sure there will always be sweet, wholesome girls to
save the world.' So I have been shutting my eyes to the strong-minded
sisterhood, and the giddy ones too; and just when I needed you,
because I was getting too lonely, the Wyndhams turned up, thank heaven!
So you'll find it, Phyl; it's a queer, crooked old world, but there are
straight folk in it. Keep your ideals, miss, as my sister told me, and
'gang your ways,' And don't take it so hard that there is wrong and
injustice in the world. That's being morbid. You'll get used to it;
it's only your first plunge that costs; the world's like the ocean in
that. And there's heaps of good lying around, mixed up with bad too,
sometimes, and that's what no young person sees at first. You know I
am ever so much older than you because I've had my eyes opened longer.
Don't you get to thinking it's a bad world; it's a good one. The Lord
saw that, and said so, when it was first made. Thus endeth my first
lesson. I never talked so much in my life at a stretch. Come into this
drug-store for hot coffee; you look fagged."
"You're such a comfort, Tom," said Phyllis. "I feel much better. There
was no use in talking to Jessamy or Bab, because we all know no more
nor less than one another, but I wanted straightening out. And auntie
looks so ill of late, don't you think so?"
Tom looked very serious. "I think she is ill, Phyllis," he said. "There
is nothing the matter with her, except one of the worst things: she
is exhausted, worn out with fret and trouble. She doesn't get enough
nourishment; she needs nursing."
"Oh, I see it, Tom," cried Phyllis, as they left the soda-fountain.
"What can I do?"
"Take care of yourself, for one thing; you don't look right, either,"
said Tom.
"I feel dragging--that's the only word I know for it," said Phyllis.
"And Lionel is pale and languid. I wonder if the child and I are both
getting ready to be ill."
"Poor little beggar, I hope he isn't," said Tom; "but that would be
nothing to your coming down. I'm going to fix you up some quinine and
calisaya; I am not pleased with you of late, Miss Phyllis."
Four days later Phyllis trailed her weary way homeward. The end of
her first month of servitude had come; the twenty-five dollars she
had thus earned lay in her pocket-book in four new bills. Her head
ached, her knees felt strangely unreliable, her spine seemed to be some
one else's, so burning and painful it felt in its present place, and
her eyes played her tricks by showing her objects in false positions
and sizes and occasionally flaring up and darkening completely for a
dreadful few seconds.
Jessamy met her at the door with an anxious face. "Mama has given out
wholly, Phyl," she said. "She is in bed and frightens me, she looks so
weak, and her heart beats unevenly and feebly."
"That's bad," said Phyllis, so indifferently that Jessamy stared in
amazement, then saw with utter sinking of her heart that Phyllis looked
desperately ill herself; if Phyllis, the rock they all leaned on, gave
out now, what should she do?
"What is the matter, Phyl?" she cried, putting her arm around her
cousin.
"I have no idea. My head aches unbearably, and it seems to be a
headache that reaches to the soles of my feet," answered Phyllis,
miserably. "What does Tom say about auntie?"
"He thinks it is just complete giving out, as though that weren't bad
enough! And he made me send for Doctor Jerome; he says he wouldn't dare
take the responsibility of our resting on his opinion, so the doctor is
to come soon, I hope." said Jessamy.
"Yes, that's right. I have twenty-five dollars in my purse; that will
pay for several visits, won't it?" asked Phyllis, uncertainly; she
dropped her hat on the floor beside her and pushed the hair back from
her temples as she spoke, resting both elbows on her knees. "I shall
have only the little girls, I am afraid, for a time; Lionel is ill."
"What ails him?" demanded Jessamy, her breath shortening; suppose it
were something dreadful, and Phyllis had caught the infection!
"The doctor thought it might be typhoid; it was too soon to tell, he
said," replied Phyllis.
"Typhoid! Is that contagious?" demanded Jessamy.
"I don't know. Don't be afraid, Jessamy; I am too full of pain for
anything else to get in; I couldn't catch it," said Phyllis, with no
intention to be humorous.
Jessamy waited to hear no more. Running across to Tom's room, she
knocked impatiently. "Oh, Tom, dear Tom, do come into my room," she
cried. "Phyllis has come home so ill I am more frightened about her
than about mama now."
They found Phyllis exactly as Jessamy had left her. Tom felt her
pulse; her hands were burning, the pulses galloping. "She must lie
down and wait till the doctor comes," said Tom, looking grave. "I'll
give her something sedative that can't do any harm, but I'd rather
not do anything more. Doctor Jerome ought to prescribe. Help her into
bed, Jessamy, and don't look so hopeless, dear girl; all's not lost
save honor, even though that's a good deal to have left. Phyllis is
very likely going to have grip--the real thing, not a cold under that
name--and though that is bad to go through, it does not need such a
tragic face to meet it."
But Jessamy would not smile. "The Haines boy has a fever; the doctor
thinks it may be typhoid; is that contagious?"
For the life of him, Tom could not repress a slight start; then
he bethought himself, and answered cheerfully: "Not a bit--only
infectious. Get Phyllis quiet in bed, and try not to borrow trouble."
But as he crossed the hall he shook his head like an old practitioner.
"Not contagious--only infectious, is true; but Phyl has been in the
same atmosphere as the boy, and may have contracted it under the same
conditions," he said, rubbing Nixie's head absent-mindedly, as the
little dog poked it into his hand. "I don't like it, Nixie, old man;
I confess I don't like it."
Doctor Jerome came to find two patients instead of one. His verdict
as to Mrs. Wyndham corroborated Tom's; she needed nursing, constant
nourishing, utter rest, and cheer. And, to make sure of the latter
prescription, there was Phyllis! On her case the doctor said it was
much too early to pronounce; typhoid was misleading in its first
symptoms, sometimes; but--yes, it might be typhoid. He would do all he
could to break it up, but Phyllis was decidedly ill. Jessamy must have
a nurse, even though Barbara gave up her employment to help her; they
were both too inexperienced, not strong enough to undertake cases in
which everything depended on the nursing.
Phyllis did not resist the doctor's verdict that she should give
herself up to being ill, though Jessamy fully expected to have hard
work persuading her. She lay quite passive, her dark lashes sweeping
her crimsoned cheeks, and only lifted her eyes to say, "Tell Mrs.
Haines," and then sank into unnatural slumber again.
Barbara came home into the trouble very tired and discouraged over
her own uselessness; she who had felt so confident that she could do
anything had thus far been able to earn but three dollars and a half
for many hours' labor; in the old days she had spent that in a week at
Huyler's.
Jessamy and she had a consultation, at which Tom assisted, as to
their possibilities. By their prudence in living within their income
the Wyndhams had nearly four hundred dollars a year more than their
actual living expenses cost them. But this income came in quarterly; a
trained nurse would cost them twenty-five dollars a week, besides her
board, yet Tom and Doctor Jerome said it was of the utmost importance
to have the best of nurses. "I have an inspiration!" cried Tom.
"There's a fine woman I know of, disengaged now; she has nursed in our
family, and she's all right. If Doctor Jerome approves, I'll see if I
can get her, and I am nearly certain she would come for me for fifteen
dollars a week."
"Then I must see Mrs. Black as to her terms; and how about the
arrangement of the rooms?" asked Jessamy.
"The two patients must be separate; that goes without saying," said
Tom. "You and Bab will use my room, and the nurse will take her share
of rest where it suits her."
"And where will you sleep, you dear, generous boy?" cried Jessamy.
"I have a friend I can bunk with till you are through with the room,"
said Tom. "It won't trouble me a bit, so don't call me names, princess."
Jessamy interviewed their landlady, and had a tempestuous time. Mrs.
Black refused at first to allow her house to be turned into a hospital;
then she demanded an exorbitant sum for the nurse's board, although
the room was not to be included. At last, when Jessamy, calling up the
spirit which usually lay dormant under her quiet manner, threatened
removing both her charges to a hospital and leaving the house at once,
Mrs. Black compromised, with a mental reservation to get even in the
end, as the girls suspected from her subsequent behavior.
It would have been wiser to have taken Mrs. Wyndham and Phyllis to a
good hospital, where a private room would have been no heavier drain
on their purse than the present arrangement, and the accommodations
better; but Jessamy was so shocked at the proposition that Doctor
Jerome waived the point, and the nursing began at home. Tom's good
woman came; she was the kindest soul in the world, and no less
competent than kind. Barbara gave up her envelops to help Jessamy. With
two patients she was needed, and even then there were hardly hands
enough to render the service required. Tom ran in and out at all hours
of the day and night; Jessamy felt that if she lived ninety-nine years
she never could repay him for his help and cheer, though she devoted
her life to trying to do so.
Mrs. Wyndham lay in that wearying state of feebleness peculiar to
exhausted nerves; there was no actual danger, unless it were the danger
of continued prostration. But Phyllis grew more ill; twice a day the
old doctor came to watch her progress. The typhoid symptoms did not
develop positively, but she burned with a low fever, and no one could
foretell the end.
Out of the five hundred dollars coming to the Wyndhams quarterly from
their total income, there was an excess over necessary expenditures
amounting to something like ninety dollars. This was all the capital
Jessamy had in hand to meet the present emergency; and underlying
all her other anxieties was the dreadful fear that she should be
obliged to borrow of Aunt Henrietta to tide herself through the double
illness which had come upon them. For her mother required all sorts
of expensive food preparations, and Jessamy realized that her little
fund would not take them further on the hard road than three weeks'
distance, when out of it she had to pay a nurse, and that nurse's board.
Christmas was coming--the Christmas they had dreaded, at best, to meet
in a boarding-house, the first since they had become homeless; but now
what a Christmas it was! Barbara, sitting, as she did every moment that
the nurse would intrust Phyllis to her, close by her cousin's bed,
thought, with quietly falling tears, of what Phyllis had always said,
that nothing mattered while they had one another. What if they were not
always to have one another? What if Phyllis herself--dear, unselfish,
sweet Phyllis--was to be the one to go away, leaving forever a void
which no one could fill?
For Phyllis had become delirious, and raved ceaselessly of the horrible
faces grinning and mowing around her bed; of the recent troubles,
begging pitifully to be taken home and laid in her own big, pretty room
where her head would not ache so. And she did not know Barbara nor
Jessamy, but confounded them with Mrs. Haines, and implored them by
turns to love the children, for Lionel was ill, and his head was aching
inside of hers, which made him and "poor Phyllis" both worse, and they
might die, and then his mother would never forgive herself. She always
spoke of herself as "poor Phyllis," apparently with some dim idea that
she was unlike herself--another personality--and invariably ended every
burst of delirium with the same appeal for mercy, and to be taken home
again. Barbara had never seen delirium; these ravings nearly broke
her heart, and took every particle of hope out of her. In vain Doctor
Jerome and Tom, whom she trusted even more, told her it was nothing
unusual. Bab, the light-hearted, refused to fulfil her title, but sat
stonily, looking forward to Phyllis's death.
Jessamy, more equable, kept up a little courage; but she too was
utterly inexperienced, and it was very hard for her to hope for
Phyllis's recovery.
And so Christmas eve dawned grimly enough upon the two poor girls, and
on them alone, for Mrs. Wyndham was too weak to give more than a sick
woman's passing thought to the day, and to Phyllis there was neither
day nor night.
Doctor Jerome came that morning, and looked more anxious than ever.
"Your mother is doing fairly," he said; "but this little girl does not
mend. Nurse, if you will get your scissors, I think this heavy hair
must come off."
"Oh, don't--please don't cut off Phyllis's beautiful hair," cried Bab,
while Jessamy clasped her hands, mutely making the same appeal.
"Nonsense, Bab; it will relieve her more than you can imagine," said
Tom, sharply, who had followed the doctor into the room. "It would all
fall, anyway, after such an illness. It is better for the hair; but if
it weren't, it would still require doing. Pray, be sensible."
The nurse brought the scissors, and with a few strokes the long, warm,
dark masses of hair lay on the quilt. "That's better," said the doctor,
as Phyllis moved her head as though at once conscious of relief.
He left a few additional directions for the nurse, and went away.
Phyllis's hair lay on a paper on the table; the sunlight, resting on
it, brought out its rich reddish tint. Tom lifted a tress tenderly.
"Poor, sweet Phyllis," he said. Jessamy turned away to the window,
without a word. What a Christmas eve, indeed!
CHAPTER VII
TAKING ARMS AGAINST A SEA OF TROUBLES
Christmas morning dawned clear and cold, with a few errant snowflakes
drifting on the wind as if to show New York that the great Northwest
had not forgotten her, but had only delayed its Christmas box of winter
weather for a little while.
It is hard wholly to escape the universal joy in the Christmas air;
and, in spite of anxiety, Jessamy and Barbara felt more hopeful than
they had the night before. Then little crumbs of comfort floated their
way in the morning, as the snowflakes were floating without. Beautiful
flowers came to Mrs. Wyndham from Mr. Hurd and other friends, and the
expressman had left some packages for the girls late the preceding
night, which the chambermaid with the chronically dust-branded forehead
brought up the first thing in the morning.
Relations had been strained between the three Wyndham girls and the
less fortunate trio who sat opposite them at table; Jessamy, Phyllis,
and Bab, finding their overtures of peace misunderstood and rejected,
had given up making them. But this morning the Christmas spirit seemed
reflected in the softer looks under the towering pompadours across
from them, and, hearing May Daly say that she was "dreadful sorry they
hadn't any flowers for the dance that evenin'," Jessamy ventured to
suggest that her mother had received lovely roses, which she would be
glad to share with her neighbors if they would accept them.
"You're real kind," said Daisy Heimberger, flushing with pleasure. "If
you've got so many you'll have enough for your ma and we, they'd be
about 's nice a Christmas card as you could give us."
"We'll accept them with pleasure, and be much obliged," added May Daly,
who, the Wyndhams had learned, was more ambitious than either of her
friends.
"We was sayin' this mornin' that it must be a sorrowful kind of
Christmas to you, and we'd like to show we thought of you if we knew
how, or you wouldn't be mad," added Fanny Harmon.
"That was lovely," said Jessamy, heartily, flushing in her turn, and
wondering that she felt so glad of a kind word from one of these girls.
"We have had a good many more merry Christmases, but we won't mind if
only my mother and cousin get well--" She stopped abruptly.
"Don't you fret," said Daisy Heimberger, coming around to pat dignified
Jessamy kindly on the shoulder. "I wish you was goin' to the dance
to-night like us; but your turn'll come, sure, an' most likely your ma
and sister'll be all right in a day or two."
"Thank you," said Jessamy, gratefully, while Bab added: "We're very
glad you are going to have a nice time, if we can't; but we shall be
happier if we can add to your pleasure with the flowers. We'll send
them down, and if you wrap them in wet newspapers and lay them outside
on your window-sill in the shade they won't open, but will be just
right to wear to-night. We have lots, so don't be afraid to take what
we send."
"All right; we'll do something for you if ever we can," said May Daly.
"So long, and I hope you'll have something nice happen to you to-day."
This little incident made both Jessamy and Bab feel that the sun shone
brighter; it is such a pleasant thing to feel one can add even a trifle
to some one's happiness, and every one's good wishes and liking are
worth having.
Then the postman came and brought Christmas greetings for the girls
from several of their old friends, and a letter from Mrs. Van Alyn,
with an ivy-leaf from Stratford-on-Avon for Phyllis, a photograph of
Botticelli's beautiful little picture of the "Nativity" in the National
Gallery for Jessamy, and for Bab an oak-leaf from the sleepy old
English town whence the first ancestor of the Wyndhams had sailed away
to America two hundred years before. But, best and most wonderful of
all, he brought a note from Aunt Henrietta, which Jessamy read aloud
to Bab after they got up-stairs.
"'My dear nieces,'" it ran, "'I am concerned to hear that your mother
and Phyllis are ill, though it would be more becoming if you had
acquainted me with the fact directly, rather than leave me to learn
it circuitously through Mrs. Haines. I trust Phyllis is not going to
have typhoid, like the Haines child. Also that your mother will try to
overcome her natural weakness. It is a pity she has none of the Wyndham
endurance.'"
"Yet dear papa died, not Madrina," interrupted Bab.
"'I should have been to see you,'" continued Jessamy, "'but that I
myself have been suffering. I have had a severe attack of bronchitis,
and the doctor thought I should not escape appendicitis--'"
"Mercy! They're not much alike, except in having that horrible long-i
sound!" exclaimed Bab, who grew what Tom called "Babbish" the moment
pressure on her spirits was relaxed.
"Do be still, Babbie," cried Jessamy, and read on: "'Escape
appendicitis, but the symptoms were caused, as you may conjecture, by
acute indigestion. When I am able to be out, I shall go to see you. In
the meantime, I send you each a small Christmas remembrance, which may
be useful to you in your present circumstances. Your affectionate aunt,
Henrietta Hewlett.'"
The small Christmas remembrance was a check for twenty-five dollars for
each member of the family. Jessamy snatched them up greedily. No one
knew how she had dreaded applying to Aunt Henrietta for a loan, and now
Aunt Henrietta herself had precluded the necessity. A hundred dollars!
It would carry them more than two weeks beyond the New Year, when their
interest came in; and perhaps before this windfall was used up they
might be able to dispense with the nurse. It is difficult to be hopeful
about anything with money anxieties to corrode one's heart, and for the
first time Jessamy and Bab looked down on their two dear patients with
courage, and pressed each other's waists with their encircling arms,
feeling very grateful for the relief Christmas had brought them, and
something very like love for Aunt Henrietta, who, in spite of ways all
her own, had done a really beautiful thing.
Mrs. Black rose to the requirements of the festival, and gave "her
guests" an unwonted feast. Mrs. Wyndham took little bits of the
delicate meat around the turkey wishbone with more relish than she had
shown for anything since her breaking down.
After dinner Ruth Wells came down, her basket on her arm, like a
happy combination of Little Red Riding Hood and Little Mabel, whose
"willing mind" could not have been as ready to serve others as kindly
Ruth's. Out of her basket she produced a veil-case for Jessamy, a
handkerchief-case for Bab, a glove-case for Phyllis, all embroidered
in tiny Dresden flowers and wreaths on white linen, not in her spare
moments--for Ruth had no spare moments--but in the moments she had
pilfered from her work for her friends. And for the sick ones were
clear jellies and a mold of blanc-mange, with bits of holly stuck
blithely in the top.
"Oh, Ruth, how could you make all these, and how did you get them down
here?" cried Jessamy.
"That comes of having one's flat, and not boarding," laughed Ruth. "At
least, as far as the making goes. As to getting them down, a little
more or less, once you have a basket, doesn't matter. Your mother looks
ever so much brighter."
"Yes; she ate with a little appetite to-day. But Phyllis doesn't seem
to change. And, oh, Ruth! They have cut off her hair!" said Bab.
"Well," said Ruth, stoutly, "what of it? You speak as though it were
her head. I suppose it won't be like the raveled-yarn hair on the
knit doll I had when I was a little tot; I cut that once when he was
going to a party, and was dreadfully grieved that it never grew again.
Phyllis's will, I suspect."
"Come and see her," said Jessamy. Ruth followed. She really was a
wonderfully comforting girl. Not a shadow of regret could Jessamy
and Bab, watching her closely, detect as she looked on poor shorn
Phyllis, lying quietly just then, the delirium past. Instead, Ruth said
cheerily: "It will probably grow out in little soft curls all over her
head, and how pretty she will look!"
And, as if to reward Ruth for her goodness, Phyllis opened her eyes,
smiled faintly, and said: "I'm lazy, Ruth."
It was the first sign of recognition she had given since she became
unconscious, and Jessamy and Bab clutched each other with speechless
joy. To be sure, Phyllis said no more, but dropped away again into
that mysterious space wherein the sick seem to exist, and Tom was gone
home to keep the holidays with his family, so they could not fly, as
they longed to do, to ask some one just how good a symptom this might
be. But the nurse told them that though it might mean little, it was
encouraging; and Jessamy and Bab resolved to take it at its highest
valuation--to get all the joy they could out of a Christmas which was
not too bright at best.
Bab went out with Ruth for a breath of air, and they walked up town,
passing one or two elevated-road stations which Ruth might have used,
but that she preferred keeping Bab company. They came to a little
church; its doors were ajar, and Bab proposed entering. "I think I feel
like church," she said, and Ruth understood that tired Babbie craved
support and help. So she did not suggest that she was due at home, but
went in willingly. A strong odor of spruce and pine filled the air,
together with a kind of close sweetness, the lingering reminder of
incense used in the morning service.
"It must be a Catholic church," whispered Ruth. "What do you suppose
that is on the side where everybody is kneeling?" The girls followed
two women who had preceded them up the aisle, and came to a curious
scene at the altar-rails. On the right side a small grotto of firs had
been made, with rocks represented by unmistakable painted canvas. At
the back of the grotto were little figures, dressed in bright colors,
mounted on camels, coming in procession down the rocks toward the
foreground. And in that foreground were far larger figures, some
shepherds with lambs on their shoulders, an ox and an ass, a man
leaning on a staff, a young woman dressed in blue, with a white veil
floating backward, all adoring a tiny infant, lying, with little hands
clasped, on straw in the middle of the group.
"It must represent Bethlehem, and the birth of Christ," whispered
Barbara.
"Isn't it queer? And do see those funny little Wise Men on the camels,
and the big tinsel star," returned Ruth.
"Don't, Ruth," said Bab. She saw that the representation was childish,
far from artistic, and yet that it had another kind of beauty. For old
women and men were kneeling around it at prayer, with rapt faces or
wet cheeks, evidently carried back to the first Christmas; and little
children came and went hand in hand, kneeling a brief time before this
quaint reminder of Bethlehem, then going decorously away. Sometimes, as
the girls watched, funny round tots, in faded hoods or with tattered
caps in hand, would rise from kneeling on the altar-step, so high to
them that their shabby shoes stuck straight out in the air, and make
a bobbing curtsy of farewell with the best of intentions, but with
their backs frequently turned toward the Bethlehem where their serious
faces should have been. It was droll, but it was touching. Barbara was
endowed by nature with the simplicity and love which enabled her to
see beyond the ugly colors, the tinsel, the inartistic figures, and
grasp the love and faith they were meant to awaken. It was a simple
representation, for simple people, and Barbara saw for what it stood.
She knelt in a pew, watching the strange scene, and feeling as though
some magic had transported her far from New York to a distant European
village; but as she watched and wondered, wordlessly her heart prayed
too among these imploring visitors to the manger. "Mama, Phyllis; mama,
Phyllis," she thought, but the thought was a prayer, every pulse and
heart-beat crying out for those she loved.
At last they left the dark church, lighted only by the reflector behind
the star and a light above the altar. "Did you ever see anything like
it?" said Ruth, who had been less touched by the scene than Barbara.
"No; it is so foreign and queer, but I think I see what it means," said
Bab, slowly. "Only fancy there being such quaint things among us! If we
went to Europe, and saw what we have seen on Christmas, we should write
long letters home, and probably you would think it pretty in Italy,
Ruth."
"Well, I don't see how it could be pretty, but I suppose it has a kind
of beauty, too. I am glad we went in. I'll take the train here, Bab,
for I'm late already. Keep up heart; everything is coming right for
you, and Phyllis is better, or she wouldn't have known me."
"Thank you, Ruthy; you're so heartening. I wish mama could take you for
a tonic. I'm sure I don't know any other equal to you," said Bab. And
she went her way alone, quickening her steps, for it was growing dusk,
and feeling comforted by the quiet quarter of an hour in the little dim
church, where she had poured her heart out silently and it had come
back to her refreshed.
The last seven days of the year slipped by with alternations of hope
and fear for Phyllis filling Jessamy and Barbara's moments,--for
Phyllis, because the question of whether she was to throw off the fever
or settle down to long typhoid was determining, and Mrs. Wyndham's
condition involved no present danger. On the whole, hope predominated;
the times in which Phyllis had lucid moments grew more frequent and
longer. Doctor Jerome looked more cheerful each day.
But finally, as if she knew that the time of good resolutions and
amendment had come, on the closing night of the year Phyllis threw off
the last trace of her fever and lay weak and white, but smiling and
conscious, to greet the New Year's dawn.
Tom and Nixie came back just in time to hear the good news and rejoice
with the grateful girls, bringing cheer with them; altogether, Jessamy
felt that night, when she lay down to sleep, that her troubles were
nearly over, and she saw light ahead.
She had yet to learn that the long days of convalescence held trials
greater than those she had borne, though the haunting fear that had
hung over her during Phyllis's danger was relieved.
In the first place, the January days fulfilled the old prophecy of
increased cold, with longer hours of light; and the little stoves, to
which she and Bab offered up holocausts of knuckles and finger-tips,
tried them almost past endurance.
"It really isn't the stove which bothers us," said Bab, falling back on
her heels as she knelt before it, and raising a discouraged and smutty
face to Jessamy. "The stove is like the rest of us--it would work
better if it could get something to consume."
That was true; it took constant battling to keep coal on hand to
replenish the fire. Mrs. Black was not interested in fuel, or, more
correctly, she was interested in it to keep the supply low, and the
result was that the swift-drawing cylinder stoves were precariously
near being fireless half the time.
The matter of getting food for their convalescents kept Jessamy and
Barbara's nerves quivering. Even when they sacrificed their own
dinners, and toiled upstairs again with clumsy trays, hoping to get a
warm chop, bowl of soup, or slice of beef to their mother or Phyllis,
who was pathetically hungry and begged for plenty to eat, they failed
in their object, though they went hungry themselves to attain it.
They bought chops and gave them to Mrs. Black to be cooked, bribing the
cook to do them nicely; but the meat that had looked so succulent and
juicy when it was cut, reappeared dry and blackened, with congealing
fat around the edges of the plate, or else was so rare that Phyllis's
hungry eyes filled with tears at the sight of it.
They bought beef and glass jars, and tried extracting the juice in
cold water and salt, as Mrs. Wells taught them to do; and they got a
broiling-fork and cooked chops over the coals in their stoves till the
irascible old man below them and Mrs. Hardy, who disapproved of the
Wyndhams' friendship for Tom, complained to the landlady of the odor
of broiling. Jessamy began to have a little line between her eyes,
and her sweet voice grew almost sharp from nervous strain, while Bab,
though she really struggled hard to "be good," as she said, found her
naturally quick temper roused beyond her ability to curb it in the
effort to obtain justice, if not kindness, for her dear patients, whose
recovery depended on proper care.
For a month the two poor little heroines struggled on in a daily round
of petty annoyances that were not petty when one considered what they
involved.
"We're getting awful, Jessamy," said Bab, tearfully, one night. "We're
getting sharp-tempered, nervous, hard, and where shall we end?"
"Come in here, girls," called Phyllis's voice, still tremulous, from
the next room. "Bring Tom."
Tom and Nixie had resumed their old quarters since the nurse had gone,
and they both came as readily as they always did when Jessamy and
Barbara called them.
"I heard what you said, Babbie," said Phyllis, motioning Tom to the
seat of honor, and making Nixie welcome by her side in the big chair.
"I heard you say you were getting horrid, and I've been seeing what a
hard time you were having, and I want to tell you what we're going to
do."
"It sounds rather solemn, Phyl," said Jessamy, "summoning us to a
conclave like this. If we're going to do anything bad, don't tell us
to-night."
Phyllis laughed. "Hand me that book, Bab, please," she said, and Bab
wonderingly gave her a volume she had been reading that afternoon.
Phyllis produced from it a sheet of paper covered with figures. "What
we're going to do," she said, "or what I am going to do, is go to
housekeeping."
There was a shout of laughter from her auditors, after a moment of
surprised silence.
"You look like housekeeping just now," said Bab.
"I look less like boarding," said Phyllis, stoutly. "Ruth Wells is
perfectly right; we should be far better off in a little home of our
own--'be it ever so humble.' It takes strong--no, I mean tough people
to get on without home comforts. You and Jessamy are getting utterly
worn out, as nervous and fretted as you can be, and if you put half the
strength it takes to live this way into healthy housework you would
have everything you need and not be tired, still less cross."
"Phyllis is right!" exclaimed Tom. "It's a miserable way to live."
"Of course I'm right," said Phyllis; "only this isn't living. Now,
I've been figuring," and she held up her sheet of paper. "It costs
us fourteen hundred and fifty-six dollars a year to board as we are
boarding now. Our washing is about three dollars a week--that is a
hundred and fifty-six dollars a year--and that makes sixteen hundred
and twelve dollars. Then, I don't know what you are spending besides
for all these nourishing things auntie and I are having."
"I do," said Jessamy, with a half-humorous, half-genuine sigh.
"I am sure you do, and that it is awful," said Phyllis. "Well, now,
listen; we are going to take a flat, wherever we can find it, and the
best for the money, at forty dollars a month. We are going to have a
woman come in two days in the week, to wash, iron, and sweep, at a
dollar and a quarter a day, and that is a hundred and thirty dollars a
year. And we are going to cook on gas, and spend about six dollars a
month for our gas--Ruth said so--and that is seventy-two dollars more.
And we're going to live plainly, but have nice, wholesome things to
eat, and all we want, for six hundred a year--Ruth told me that too,
and she knows--and that makes a total of thirteen hundred dollars,
allowing a little margin. That's three hundred dollars less than we
spend now; and who wouldn't rather live in her own dear little home,
with all scratchy, maddening things and people shut out?"
Phyllis stopped, breathless, and the others had listened in so much
the same condition that it was a moment before any one spoke. Then Bab
leaped to her feet and ran over to hug Phyllis in rapture. "You dear,
quiet, splendid old Phyllistine!" she cried. "It's just blissfully
lovely. To think of you being the one to do it, when you're still so
weak and forlorn!"
"Ask me to tea, have me up to help, and let me catch the crumbs from
your table," said Tom. "Phyllis, you're a trump, and you've saved the
day!"
"Crumbs from the table!" cried Jessamy, catching her breath. "That's
just it. It is a dream, Phyl; but how in the wide world can we do it?
There won't be any crumbs from the table, nor anything to eat; we don't
know anything, any of us; I'm not sure mama understands cooking."
"Auntie can direct a cook; I've heard her do it," said Phyllis. "And
as to anything to eat, we'll learn a few necessary things, and do them
every day if we have to. But I'm not afraid, with a good cook-book and
Ruth to ask. It's better than this at the worst, and we shall save
money, too. As to that, if we failed we could have one servant and
still spend no more than we do now. You and Bab go out to look for
flats to-morrow. You'll see I am right."
Phyllis's last remark settled the question; if they could afford to
keep a servant in case they were forced to it, there could be no risk
in the attempt. Indeed, Barbara would not admit that there was risk in
any case.
Tom was unselfishly enthusiastic over the scheme, though he said he
dared not think of his loneliness if they left the "Blackboard." But
Bab hospitably gave him the freedom of the new apartment, and before
they separated for the night the place was rented, furnished, and they
had moved in. And, best of all, Tom had promised Phyllis a kitten.
CHAPTER VIII
THE TURN OF THE LANE
Jessamy and Barbara were ready for their expedition in search of
peace by nine o'clock the next morning. Phyllis had solemnly promised
to prepare for herself and her aunt alternate cups of beef-tea and
malted milk for every two hours of their absence, a task to which she
protested she was quite equal, especially as she would be sustained by
the remembrance of the errand on which they were bound. If they were
detained over lunch-hour, the willing but overworked maid was engaged
to serve them, a provision for possibilities suggested by Phyllis,
who realized that Harlem was a long distance away and flat-seeking
consuming of time.
"Phyllis is rather like the centurion in the gospel: she tells one to
go, and she goeth, and another to do this, and she doeth it. That isn't
irreverent, because the centurion was only a Roman soldier, not even
a prophet," said Bab, as she and Jessamy toiled up the elevated-road
steps at Thirty-third Street. "I wonder what it is about Phyl that we
all yield to?"
"She is very decided, with all her quiet manner, for one thing," said
Jessamy; "and we have learned that she is generally right, and pulls us
out of difficulties for another. Wait till I get up, Bab; I think I've
two tickets."
"What does it matter? Keep them; we shall need them when we've moved up
town," said Bab, airily, as she dashed ahead and deposited ten cents at
the ticket-seller's window.
They had a list of apartments to rent, cut from the paper, and they
decided, after consulting it, to make One Hundred and Fourth Street
what Bab called "their distributing-point," whence they would scatter
themselves impartially over the neighborhood.
It is not wholly an attractive section of the city; Jessamy and
Bab felt their ardor somewhat dampened after they had rung several
janitors' bells, in uniformly small vestibules decorated with
stencil-work on the ceilings and walls, and with little brass
speaking-tubes, and electric bells, and, in many cases, with several
small children munching cookies and staring, round-eyed, at the
strangers. The apartments they were shown were not what they had
dreamed of the previous night. They were tiny, with chambers "just
about large enough to iron a pocket handkerchief on the floor," said
Jessamy, forlornly.
But Barbara said, "Where there's scope there's hope, and New York is
large," and kept on cheerfully. At last they discovered a house further
up, but still below the bend of the elevated road, around which, the
girls felt sure, they would never be able to persuade their mother to
travel. It looked very neatly kept; the janitor's wife, a ruddy German,
showed them the rooms, up two flights, with no elevator, it was true,
but the stairs were not steep ones. There were seven rooms in the
little place, not large, but not as small as the others they had seen;
the outlook was on a quiet street, the chambers were not all dark and
aired from a well, and the upper entrance to Central Park was but two
blocks away. The rent of the apartment, they were told, was forty-five
dollars a month; but, since it was February, the janitor thought it
could be had for forty. Jessamy and Barbara were unversed in the ways
of landlords, and did not know that this was a method frequently
resorted to in trying to enhance the attractiveness of unrented
property; it had its desired effect in their case, and they quite
trembled lest some one else should secure their bargain before they had
time to report it to their mother.
"We will go to see the landlord," said Jessamy, making a note of his
address, and hoping she did not seem too eager.
They got home, tired but triumphant, to be greeted by two faces so much
brighter than the ones they had left that they were amazed, until Mrs.
Wyndham and Phyllis told them in a breath that Mrs. Van Alyn had come
home, and had been to see them.
[Illustration: THE EXPEDITION IN SEARCH OF PEACE.]
"And, oh, girls!" cried Phyllis, giving them each a rapturous squeeze.
"I got her in this room all alone and told her our plan, and where
you had gone, and she thought it the wisest move we could make.
And--and--oh, Jess--oh, Bab, I'm half crazy! She's had some of our
dearest things stored away for us, and we never knew it! Uncle's big
chair, Bab's piano, our desks, tables--oh, I don't know what they
are--and photographs and casts out of our own dear, lovely old rooms;
and now they will be all ready for this little home!"
Bab turned white, then took a header into the pillows to smother the
cry of joy which she could not keep back, but which her mother must not
hear, while Jessamy, who had silently mourned her lost treasures as
neither of the others had, dropped into the rocking-chair, crying for
joy.
Mrs. Van Alyn had advised the girls to settle the matter without
consulting their mother. She was so weak, so dead to all interest
around her, that her friend thought it would be better to take her into
the little apartment when it was ready to receive her, without giving
her a chance to worry over the difficulties in their path--difficulties
which, in her condition, would impress her more than the advantages of
the plan.
Jessamy took Mrs. Van Alyn to see their discovery, and she approved;
that made it somewhat better if matters went wrong later, for Jessamy
did not like to assume all responsibility for such a radical change of
which her mother was to be ignorant.
So the flat was taken, and then arose the question of "Only
necessities, dear girls, at first, if you are guided by my advice,"
said Mrs. Van Alyn; "but buy good things, and select wisely. The
articles I have saved for you out of your old home are rather of the
nature of luxuries, so you will have almost as much as your little nest
will hold of pretty things, which is fortunate."
The new apartment was repapered from front to back, and the girls had
the pleasure of selecting the colors. A soft gray-green in the parlor,
a rich red, olive, and brown tapestry in the dining-room, light, cheery
papers in the darker bedrooms were their choice, and entirely changed
the effect given by the ugly papers which had preceded them. The floors
were stained in the parlor and dining-room, and for the floors of the
little chambers Jessamy bought tasteful denims, which were not only
pretty, but would save labor in sweeping. The three-feet-wide hall
running through the apartment was stained also, and black goatskin rugs
bought to lay at intervals; they were real of their kind, and Jessamy
abhorred imitations. The parlor had a pretty Wilton rug to cover
it, and the dining-room likewise. Curtains were not among the first
necessities, though the girls thought longingly of their softening
effect against the woodwork, which was not of the best quality.
However, there must be many things left for time to supply; the outlay
for dining-room and chamber furniture was all their first quarter's
income could spare.
Ruth was called into consultation for the kitchen; she and Barbara
had a delightful morning in a hardware shop, buying bright tins and
fascinating japanned boxes, and all the other homely articles--homely
in the English sense, for they looked beautiful to the homesick
girls--which go to furnish the most important room in the house.
Jessamy, Phyllis, and Bab were wild with delight during these last
days; they hardly knew how to get through them, so impatient were
they for the day to come when they should take possession of their
kingdom. Tom was not less excited than they. Not a day passed without
his bringing home some wonderful contribution to the coöperative
housekeeping, in which he claimed his full share of coöperation. And
at last, on the day before the Wyndhams were to move up town, Mrs. Van
Alyn carried Tom off with her to the apartment, forbidding the girls
entrance to their own precincts, and with his help set in place the
priceless treasures of old association which her kindness had kept for
them from a past more splendid, but which the present promised to equal
in happiness.
And so the great day came. Mrs. Wyndham had been told only two days
before of the home awaiting her, and received the news with rather more
apprehension than pleasure.
Aunt Henrietta had been to see them, and had scolded the girls roundly
for their madness, prophesying utter failure and expense far beyond
their calculations, and telling them that it was quite evident they
meant to kill their poor mother, putting a burden upon her she was so
unequal to bearing, for of course it was ridiculous to consider them,
inexperienced, spoiled children, as either housekeepers or cooks.
But though there was a little time after this interview that Jessamy
especially, having been the one who was inclined to doubt, felt her
ardor somewhat dampened, it passed quickly, for Tom came, bringing in
a patent washboard which did everything but iron the clothes laid in
a tub in which it stood; and in the nonsense talked over it, and the
lecture Tom gave on its merits, Aunt Henrietta was forgotten.
Phyllis had given up her position with Mrs. Haines. They hoped to
save as much as she had earned there under the new arrangements, and
her services were needed at home to do this. "Besides, you couldn't
possibly be a nursery governess, Phyllis Wyndham," said Bab. "Won't it
be blissful if we can earn money by saving it, and by making a home for
ourselves into the bargain?"
Mrs. Van Alyn sent her carriage once more for her old friend's service.
Mrs. Black "assembled," Tom said, to see them off; this time it was
Phyllis who accompanied her aunt, and the two invalids were furnished
with refreshments for the drive, and the coachman was ordered to take
them up through the park at an easy pace. And so, in the carriage which
had borne her away from her first home, poor Mrs. Wyndham, full of the
recollection, too ill and too sad to share the girls' enthusiasm, rode
away to her new one.
The trunks and all Tom's mad contributions to the apartment had gone
away early, and as soon as the door had closed on their mother and
Phyllis, Jessamy and Barbara tore up the long flights to get their hats
and jackets and hasten after them.
Bab seized Jessamy around the waist and waltzed her all over both
empty rooms, singing at the top of her voice. The chambermaid
pushed her reddish bang out of her eyes to see better, and grinned
sympathetically; she liked the Wyndhams, who had been considerate of
her, and she would have been glad to escape bondage herself.
"Oh, Nellie, here is our parting gift to you," said Jessamy. "We're
much obliged to you for what you have done for us since we came here."
"Sure, 'twa'n't anything to thank me for, miss, thanks to you; an'
it's sorry I am to see you goin'," said Nellie, wiping her forehead
with her apron, for she knew from long experience that it was dusty
without looking to see.
"Don't say it, Nellie, don't say it," cried Bab, wriggling into her
jacket, both arms at a time. "I'm so glad I think I shall die before
I get home--home, Nellie, home! Only think of that--_home_, and we
have been boarding here since September! Come on, Jess! Don't stop for
gloves; put them on in the train! Got everything? Oh, hurry! We must
be there to look after Madrina and Phyl, and I'm wild to see what Mrs.
Van Alyn and that boy did up there yesterday. Don't stop for gloves;
I'm going crazy."
"You're crazy now," said Jessamy, but she tucked her gloves into her
coat pocket, and her voice shook, and her cheeks were crimson. "Come,
then. Good-by, Nellie; I hope you will be well and happy. Good-by, old
room; we might have left you sorrowful instead of rejoicing, and I
thank you for that."
Barbara was already half way down-stairs; Jessamy ran after her, and
they reached the front door breathless, to find Mrs. Black and Mrs.
Hardy waiting to say farewell.
"I wish you luck," said Mrs. Black, with an air that seemed to imply it
was a hopeless desire for any one mad enough to leave her sheltering
roof. "You'll find housekeeping very different from having no cares
and being free to enjoy yourself. I hope you may be happy, and your ma
won't break down under the strain; she can't stand much."
"Good-by, Miss Wyndham and Miss Barbara," said Mrs. Hardy. "I thought,
maybe, the young medical student might board with you. I hope you won't
forget to send us cards to your wedding, my dear. I think you make a
mistake to leave here, but I hope you know best."
"Did you ever dream of such a horrible old woman?" said Bab, walking
indignantly down the street to Sixth Avenue. But these last shafts from
the quiver which had pricked them so often in the past months could not
annoy Jessamy and Barbara long, because they were the last; were they
not going home, home, and is not home a word to conjure evils away?
The ride seemed endless to the two girls, feverish with impatience;
the train dragged around the curve at Fifty-third Street, and loitered
as it had never done before at each station. But at last--at last the
tedious journey ended, and once they had turned east out of crowded
Columbus Avenue, Jessamy and Bab fairly ran down the street where their
apartment waited them.
They let themselves into the house with their own latch-key; the
janitor's wife was cleaning brasses, and said good morning pleasantly,
but with no notion of what a great event was happening before her
Swabian eyes. How could she have, poor soul, since people move in and
out of apartments every day, and few of them are young exiles, hungry
for a home, come to take possession of their Land of Promise?
Jessamy's heart beat so she could hardly get up the stairs, but Bab
honorably waited for her, and would not put the key in the lock--not
the general, common lock of the outer door, solemn as that ceremony had
been, but the sacred, blessed lock of their own private-hall door.
She threw the door open, clutched Jessamy's hand, who returned the
pressure with interest, and together they entered their home.
How beautiful, peaceful, homelike everything looked! There stood Bab's
piano, Jessamy's desk, and the pictures they had loved welcomed them
from the walls like living things.
They ran from room to room, calling to each other, sobbing and
laughing and kissing the inanimate things like crazy girls. Phyllis's
desk stood in her room, and the little rocking-chair Bab loved best
held out its arms to her beside her bed. In the dining-room they found
silver they had thought never to see again, and dishes which, empty or
full, they knew would be equal to food to their mother.
They made their excited way back to the parlor finally, and Jessamy
dropped exhausted in the window, which was mysteriously draped with
white lace, though they had made up their minds to self-denial in the
matter of curtains. Her eyes rested on her father's chair, and her
lips trembled with joy and gratitude. "Oh, God bless that dear, dear
Mrs. Van Alyn!" she said, though she usually found such expression
impossible.
Barbara opened the piano, and laid her hands on the keys. She struck
two or three chords of "Home, Sweet Home," and then laid her head down
on the pretty case to cry the happiest tears she had ever shed.
It was fortunate that Jessamy and Barbara had more than half an hour to
await the arrival of the invalids, for neither Phyllis nor their mother
was strong enough to encounter them while their excitement was at its
height. When they arrived the girls had calmed down enough to open the
door quietly and say, with only a little tremor in each voice: "Welcome
home, mama and Phyllis!"
Phyllis looked white after her drive, but the color rushed from her
throat to her short hair at the sight that met her eyes. She did not
attempt to go further than the parlor sofa, where Bab led her, and
let her cousin take off her wraps without an effort to help herself.
She lay still in a trance of delight, looking from one dear picture
to another, letting the soothing green tone of the room sink into her
brain and rest her as if a quiet hand had been laid upon her nerves.
Mrs. Wyndham got no further than her husband's chair. She sank into
it, laid her tired head against its cool leather, and burst into quiet
tears. But even the girls, inexperienced as they were, recognized
that they were tears which would restore her, that they stood for the
breaking up of the apathy which had been the worst phase of their
mother's illness, over which Doctor Jerome had looked gravest. And they
felt certain that they had done well in taking matters into their own
hands, and giving the frail little mother a home once more.
Bab, getting to herself again, saw that the taking possession must be
keyed lower, and that they must get into the commonplace as quickly as
possible if they wanted their mother and Phyllis to feel no ill effect
of the drive.
"We shall now proceed, Miss Wyndham and I, to prove to you that we can
build a fire and cook," she said. "We are going into our kitchen, and
shall turn on our gas, which is the way we always build a fire, and
light it with a safety match, and we shall take our new saucepan and
heat for both of you ladies a fresh glass of milk. You will perceive,
without my mentioning it, that everything we propose to do is new and
up-to-date. You shall be served within fifteen minutes, Mrs. Wyndham,
ma'am, with crisp, fresh crackers, hot milk, and a thimbleful of
brandy, then you and your niece will be mildly but firmly compelled to
lie down on your beds until luncheon." A program which was carried out
to the letter.
Oh, the joy of preparing that luncheon, when for the first time Jessamy
deposited the carefully measured tea--measured by the old rule of
a teaspoonful to each cup and one for the pot--into the fat little
Japanese teapot, and the unutterable bliss of peeping in afterward,
with an air of experience, to see if it had "drawn" sufficiently! And
the happiness of broiling the chops on the broiler of the gas-range,
new and lovely to behold, if it was black! And the greater happiness of
making cocoa for the invalids in the alluring agate saucepan, brought
forth from the under part of the kitchen closet, to be useful for the
first time in its gray, satin-finish life!
Bab was delirious, cut a slice of bread, and flew off to turn the
chops; cut two more slices, and ran away to hug her mother. She set
the cold water running, and Jessamy just stopped her afterward from
filling the water-pitcher from the hot-water faucet. She set the table
in a whirl, darting here and there with rapturous squeals at the
discovery of some treasure she had not yet seen; on the whole, did
all a mad child could do to prove that Aunt Henrietta was right, and
that she was "flighty" and unreliable.
Jessamy took her happiness in another way. She went about with an
uplifted look on her lovely face, touched everything with a kind of
reverence, brooding over the teacups and lifting the butter-jar as if
they were little babies. She forgot nothing, left nothing undone, and
when she went in to say, with an assumption of what she intended for
a commonplace manner, though her voice would quiver: "Lunch is ready,
mama; come, Phyllis," she called them to a meal perfect, so far as it
went, thanks to her and in spite of Bab's temporary insanity.
Tom and Ruth came to that first dinner. Tom had camped out, and
insisted on cooking the steak. Ruth showed the girls how to boil
potatoes so that they would neither crumble to bits nor emerge
water-soaked from the hot water. Ruth also taught them to prepare the
canned peas so that the flavor of the tin would be taken from them;
and more than this they did not attempt, beyond cutting oranges into
flower shapes for dessert, and making black coffee, which the girls had
supposed a simple accomplishment until Ruth explained to them the many
ways in which they could spoil it.
Nixie had a brilliant red bow, which he despised, on his collar for the
occasion, and was fed in turn by every one till he could eat no more
and retired to the front of the radiator to meditate on the advantages
of housekeeping.
Mrs. Wyndham made an effort, and took her place at the head of her
table to please the girls, and really showed such an improved appetite
that Jessamy and Barbara forgot theirs in the joy of watching her. And
Phyllis did her duty by the tender steak as only fever and half a year
of "Blackboard" steaks could make her. Jessamy and Bab made a dinner
chiefly of rapture; it was all so wonderful, so blissful, that they did
not crave ordinary food, but beamed on their family in satisfaction
that was as nourishing--for once--as steak.
Tom donned one of the new plaid gingham aprons provided for the young
housekeepers and helped with the dishes. It was only a game, new and
fascinating, this first time to wash even the greasy broiler; but Ruth
had shown them the charm of ammonia and a patent preparation of potash,
and even dainty Jessamy faced the prospect of future pans fearlessly.
"Now, I've one more contribution to this mansion," said Tom. "I wanted
to show it to you when I came, but I feared for my dinner. Your mother
has it in the parlor. It's for you, Phyllis."
"Is it--" began Phyllis, but Tom interrupted her. "Don't guess; come
and see, all of you."
Phyllis fairly jumped from the rocking-chair, where she had been
installed in range of the kitchen door to watch the dish-washing, and
ran, as if she had never been ill, into the parlor. There sat her aunt,
and in her lap, curled up like a powder-puff, the tiniest, whitest
kitten ever seen. Phyllis had it in her hands and cuddled in her neck
in a moment. "Oh, Tom, it's lovely! Oh, if you only knew how I've
been wanting a kitten! How did you get such a white one?" she cried
rapturously.
"I've had it engaged for you for ten days; we've been waiting for it
to learn to eat; it's only a month old," said Tom, looking very happy
at Phyllis's pleasure. "His mother is a white lady of most honorable
reputation and perfect manners; they say all her kittens are models in
every way. Hope he'll do you credit."
"He shall be called Truce," cried Phyllis; "because he's all white and
we're at peace."
"Truce is not peace; however, it's a jolly name," said Tom. "I called
him Antiseptic Cotton, but I don't mind if you change the name. He
looks precisely like the little packages of cotton we use in the
hospital."
"Horrid!" said Bab, decidedly. "Truce is pretty. I think you might let
some one else see just the tip of his tail, Phyl. We like kittens, too."
"He adds the very last touch to the hominess of everything," said
Phyllis, generously handing the kitten over to Bab. "Bless you, Tom,
for getting him!"
CHAPTER IX
HOME-KEEPING HEARTS
The Wyndhams had been "out of Egypt," as Phyllis called it, a month.
Tom painted a highly decorative sign bearing the word "Canaan," in gold
letters on a red ground, to be placed over the front door, because
the Wyndhams were not only out of Egypt, but entered into the Land of
Promise. Although it was not quite possible to hang the inscription in
the front hall, Phyllis would not discard it, but placed it between the
dining-room windows. The flat was the land of promise to them all, and
each realized it in her own way.
Mrs. Wyndham was almost entirely well; her improvement had been rapid
from the first, and she was far happier than she had been since the
fatal day when Mr. Hurd had come to tell her of her loss, almost a year
ago.
Phyllis was completely recovered; she was so happy there was no
possibility of being less than well. Her hair was growing out in soft
rings of curls, as Ruth had prophesied it would, and she had never
been half as pretty in her life as now, with present joy and hope for
the future shining in her beautiful eyes. For Phyllis was dreaming and
working; when household duties were done she spent certain hours of
each day over her desk, and it was hard for her not to share Jessamy
and Barbara's sincere conviction that her little stories were one day
to see the light.
In the meantime, Phyllis had gravitated naturally into the position of
chief cook in the scheme of domestic economy; she loved a kitchen, she
took kindly to all that belonged to it, and her delight was to feed
those she loved. "Phyllis is a real lady, there's no doubt of that,"
said Bab. "It is her nature to give bread to her dependents, and the
term describes her in its dictionary meaning." With little white Truce
on her shoulder, his favorite throne, Phyllis went about her tasks,
singing from morning till night, happier than she had ever before been
in all her short life.
Jessamy had found her proper place as the beautifier; she set every
room in order daily, gave the touch only she could give to the table,
planned, and went to market, and was no less happy than Phyllis.
Barbara--what was her share? It would be hard to say, but she permeated
the little home with her sunny lightheartedness, and never shirked any
duty that came her way. "I'm general utility man and clown," she said
herself, and, with proper modification of the latter word, perhaps that
described her position.
She was growing older, Jessamy thought, watching her; there was a new
note of womanliness in her jesting sometimes. But little Barbara was
eighteen; her birthday was the first festival celebrated in the new
home.
The plan was working triumphantly; the girls were so afraid of the
failure prophesied for them that they did not dare spend what they
could honestly afford, and the first month's bills were under the
estimate; yet they were flourishing, and needed for comfort and health
no more than they had.
There were bad days, when everything went cross-ways from the beginning
to the end of the day, as there will be in all households, even
the best regulated. But when such days came the girls treated them
politely, and pretended not to notice that they were crooked, as
Phyllis suggested doing, and so they came less often than to people who
dwelt on their deficiencies.
Jessamy and Bab were making beds one morning as usual, and Phyllis was
out in the kitchen clearing away the breakfast things. Truce was on her
shoulder; he was growing fast, but did not seem to think that was any
reason why he should alter his custom. He was the most loving of small
catkins, with golden eyes, and a preternaturally long, slender tail; he
wore a scarlet ribbon to set off his pink-lined ears and pink nose, and
the snowy coat his devoted mistress kept spotless by the simple method
of sponging with soap and water. Truce never objected to anything
Phyllis chose to do to him; indeed, he had "reversed hydrophobia," Bab
said, for water had such an irresistible fascination for him that
anything containing it was in danger from his meddlesome little white
paws, from the biggest water-pitcher to the most dainty vase.
Phyllis was singing, as usual. The two girls in the room near by heard
her chanting, to a tune of her own:
"Stay, stay at home, my heart, and rest;
Home-keeping hearts are happiest,
For those that wander they know not where
Are full of trouble and full of care;
To stay at home is best."
Then she apparently tired of Longfellow, for there were a few moments
of silence and chatter to the kitten alternately. Suddenly she began
singing to a swinging, not particularly tuneful tune, like those the
little children use for the games they play in the street. This time it
was a funny little song of her own:
"Homy and happy, cheery and bright,
New tins to left of me, new tins to right,
A little white kitten to pet and to cuddle,
And purr back my peace when I get in a muddle;
A getting-well mother, three girls, and a cat--
My joys are so many they're crowding the flat!
Look out, Truchi-ki; you'll fall!" And Jessamy and Bab heard a saucepan
cover drop, and guessed that Phyllis had put up her hand to steady
Truce on her shoulder.
"Copyrighted, Phyl?" called Bab; but Phyllis, on her knees looking at
her cake in the oven, did not hear her, and Jessamy put her hand over
her sister's lips.
"Let her alone, Bab. Listen! She may improvise more," she said. "Now
she's beginning to sweep, and that usually inspires her."
Phyllis's broom flew, and Jessamy and Bab waited developments.
Evidently Truce had dismounted, and was ready for the frolic sweeping
always meant to him, for they heard Phyllis laugh, and cry: "Look
out, Truchi-ki! How do you expect me to sweep if you hold my broom?
I'll spank you, kitten; you've never had one tiny, least spanking in
all your life." Phyllis always talked nonsense to Truce, whose name
had developed through an Italian pronunciation of Truce, Truchi,
into the Japanese-sounding Truchi-ki, which Phyllis said meant,
"Trucie, ki-tten," but which Jessamy more correctly defined as meaning
nonsensical affection. Luckily for them, however, all the Wyndhams
loved nonsense.
To prove it, Phyllis began to sing once more, a long jumble of nonsense
in one rhyme:
"Trouble found me where I sat,
But I didn't care for that,
Only learned my lesson pat.
Then I took a heavy bat,
And I hit old Trouble--spat!
And I gave him tit for tat.
Last, I drowned him in a vat.
Now I've learned to make a hat,
Wash a dish and sweep a mat,
And I think I'm getting fat
In this blessed little flat,
With my snowy Trucie-cat--
I'm so very, very happy that I don't know where I'm at!"
[Illustration: "'LOOK OUT, TRUCHI-KI; YOU'LL FALL!' PHYLLIS SAID."]
This was too much for the audience; two peals of laughter rang out from
the bedroom, echoed by Mrs. Wyndham from the hall.
"Going crazy, Phyl?" gasped Bab.
"I don't know, I'm sure, and I don't see that it matters," returned
Phyllis. "I'm brushing up our own kitchen, and everything I've sung is
true; I'd like to know what consequence a little more or less sanity is
under these circumstances? Oh, dear peoplekins, do you think we shall
ever get used to this niceness? You needn't laugh at my inspirations;
they are real hymns of praise, in spirit, even if they sound crazy."
"I am the one to sing hymns of praise, dear little Phyllis," said
Mrs. Wyndham, fondly. "No one was ever so blessed with three happy,
contented, true-hearted props in misfortune as I have been."
"I'll tell you a secret, mama," said Jessamy, emerging from under
Phyllis's desk, where she had been picking up scraps of torn paper. "I
suspect it isn't misfortune. I have a deep-seated suspicion that it is
just good luck that has come to us, and that if we had stayed rich we
should have missed getting into the heart of things and the real fun of
living."
"Now be honest, Jessamy," said Bab. "I have entire confidence in
Phyllis and myself sincerely enjoying makeshifts, but I have a horrid
doubt that you may be making the best of it. Don't you wish you could
go about, and have all the pretty things you love, and do no housework,
but merely be lovely all day and every day?"
Jessamy paused, her color heightened; she was too honest to answer
equivocally. "Sometimes," she said slowly, "I remember that though
we are rather simple girls, and like to stay girlish just as long as
we can, still we are a little past nineteen, Phyl and I, and Babbie
is eighteen, and I'd like to have just a little more girlish fun,
because we can't be young long. The pretty things I don't miss much,
because I have them, if I may be allowed a bull. So far we have had
as nice things to wear as we used to have, because our old stock is
not used up. And as to our flat, it is simple, but it has the right
look, and beauty is not a matter of cost. I am very happy, and I am
truly contented; your 'horrid doubt,' Bab, need not come again. I
think this year has done more for us than we know, and I am honestly
satisfied. But I do hope that we may be able to help ourselves; if only
my illustrating turns out well, I ask nothing more--nothing better of
fate."
"Why did you change that _more_ into _better_, Jessamy?" asked Phyllis.
"Oh, because!" said Jessamy, smiling. "I'm not like you and Bab; I
can't help looking ahead and wondering."
Barbara looked at her pretty face in Phyllis's glass, and the color
mounted to her dark hair. She turned hastily to see if the others were
watching her; Jessamy saw, and noted again that Babbie, like the white
kitten, was growing up fast.
"Oh!" cried Bab, laughing a little self-consciously. "As to wondering,
I wonder, wonder, all the time. It is rather like 'Twinkle, Twinkle,
Little Star,' isn't it? When you're a three-feet snip you wonder what
the little star is, and when you're a five-feet snippier you wonder
less what is up above the world so high than what is down on your own
level, headed toward you. I suppose even the most contented girls have
to dream and get restless, don't they, Madrina--don't they, Trucie-pet?"
And she swung Truce to her shoulder, where he kissed her ear as she
danced around, singing, "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," in waltz time.
Her mother watched her, and sighed. She too saw that Bab was changing,
and, mother-like, hated to have her baby less a child.
Tom--and Nixie, as a matter of course--were due at the apartment that
afternoon. The big divan which had been constructed at his suggestion
in the boarding days, was promoted to the rank of dining-room couch,
and in this honorable position required a new cover. Tom claimed
the right, as his part of coöperation, to help in all tasks needing
masculine strength of hands; and both for his sake and their own the
Wyndhams gladly admitted him to a share in The Experiment, as they
called their housekeeping, which they thought of in capitals.
Tom was a little late, but he and Nixie appeared at last. The little
dog and Truce were perfectly good friends, though Nixie had the lowest
opinion of cats in general, and it is likely Truce held dogs in slight
esteem, but his life in an apartment, secluded from the vulgar world,
did not expose him to their acquaintance.
The dining-room was a medley of all the contents of the divan, ready
emptied for operations, and Tom lost no time in getting to work in the
three hours of light remaining.
"Pull the stuff out straight, and let me mark where it is to be cut,"
said Tom to his three assistants. Mrs. Wyndham sat in the arm-chair to
watch the performance and offer advice. The new cover was a beautiful
dark red, with the colors of the tapestry paper on the wall suggested
and emphasized in the pattern.
"Make a notch here, Bab," ordered Tom, "and cut it off straight across.
Then, Jessamy, you and Phyllis can take the piece that comes off and be
sewing the pillow-covers, if you like."
"Yes, my lord," said Phyllis, rescuing her cushion full of needles from
Truce, who was beside himself with delight at so much going on.
Tom stretched the tapestry over the top of the couch, and held it with
a few tacks while he made sure the figure ran straight. Then he sat
down on the floor and began tacking the covering on across the front.
"I've something to decide," he said, as well as he could with his mouth
full of tacks. "I want advice."
"If we can give it, my dear, you shall have it," said Mrs. Wyndham.
"You know I am to graduate this summer--" Tom began.
"I advise you to do that, if that is what you have to decide," said
Bab, saucily.
"Barbara, my dear, pray let Tom speak," said her mother.
"Yes, Miss Impudence, I intend to," said Tom. "But it is the question
of the next step I must decide. I think I never told you--please
give me the scissors, Jessamy--but I have an uncle, my father's only
brother, who had a son my age, and who was left a widower with the
boy when we were both about eight years old. My cousin died; it was a
dreadful blow to his father, whose whole life was wrapped up in his
child. My uncle has a considerable fortune, and he said, when poor
Ralph died, I was to be his heir. He has sent me to college, and now
he says that if I want to be a specialist, he'll send me to Germany
to study in some of those famous schools and under their first-class
scientists as long as I please. And I don't know what to tell him."
"Is it a question of being a specialist or a general practitioner?"
asked Mrs. Wyndham. "You ought not to consult us; we aren't competent
to advise. Besides, isn't it chiefly a matter of vocation?"
"Yes, ma'am, it is a question of taking up general or special practice;
and, no, ma'am, it is not a matter of vocation; it is a matter of
expediency. I could never be anything but a physician; I never for
a moment wanted to do anything but practise medicine, but I don't
care which branch of it I practise," said Tom. "Specialists, if they
succeed, are likely to make more money."
"But you say you are to inherit your uncle's fortune." "Surely you
wouldn't look at your profession merely from the money point of view?"
said Jessamy and Barbara, speaking together and with the unworldliness
of all good young girls.
"But if you went to Germany you would be gone ever so long," said
Phyllis, slowly. "How can you expect us to offer you unselfish advice,
when we should miss you so?"
Tom flushed with pleasure. "Then you would miss me?" he said. "That is
the point that makes me hesitate; it seems to me I could hardly make
the sacrifice."
"I don't think we ought to say one word to keep Tom from the course
that is best for him, Phyllis," said Mrs. Wyndham. "You ought to ask
some of your medical professors at college, and do what they suggest."
"I think he ought to consider what gives him most opportunity to do
good," said Jessamy, "if he is not obliged to depend wholly on his
profession for a living."
"And a general practice surely does that," said Barbara.
"Oh, I don't know; a doctor never lacks chances to help suffering in
mind and body," said Tom. "It is a hard problem. Do you want this
puffed or drawn tight over this edge?"
"The easier way, whichever that may be," said Mrs. Wyndham, smiling.
"Either is pretty."
For a while Tom tacked industriously, calling upon the girls
occasionally for a stitch taken in strong shoe thread. At last the
divan was covered, and the four pairs of young hands packed it again
with the numerous bundles and bags of precious remnants taken from it.
Mrs. Wyndham went to her room, and Phyllis stood absent-mindedly gazing
down on their neighbors' back yards, while Truce, from her shoulder,
watched a cat on the fence with mild curiosity. Jessamy and Barbara
put the pillows in place, and gave the last touches to their loops and
ruffles.
Tom walked over to Phyllis, and stood beside her. "What do you say
about me going to Germany, Phyllis? I would rather have your opinion
than any one's, and you have not spoken." His tone was lower than
usual, but rather as if the subject were serious than to exclude the
other two.
Phyllis looked up at him, frankly smiling. "Mine?" she said. "Why, Tom,
if I thought you would heed it I wouldn't dare give it, for I don't
know anything about what is best, as you know quite well."
"But on general principles?" insisted Tom.
"On general principles, and if you really don't care which you do, then
I think 'home-keeping hearts are happiest.' That little song has been
haunting me all day," said Phyllis. "I hate to think of you so far
away, alone, and for so long."
"You would rather I did not go? You would rather have me here, in New
York, and near you?" asked Tom, eagerly.
Phyllis laughed, and pushed her hair, getting to an inconvenient
length, back from her eyes to see him better. "Why, Tom!" she said.
"What a foolish question! Don't you know I would? Aren't you one of
ourselves, and shouldn't we all be crippled if you left us? Unless it
is much better for you, I should feel dreadfully to think of losing you
f
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