"THEY'LL bring
her," said Mrs. Trescott, dubiously. Her cousin, the painter, the
bewildered father of the angel child, had written to say that if they were
asked, he and his wife would come to the Trescotts for the Christmas holidays.
But he had not officially stated that the angel child would form part of the
expedition. "But of course they'll bring her," said Mrs. Trescott to
her husband.
The doctor assented.
"Yes, they'll have to bring her. They wouldn't dare leave New York at her
mercy."
"Well,"
sighed Mrs. Trescott, after a pause, "the neighbors will be pleased. When
they see her they'll immediately lock up their children for safety."
"Anyhow,"
said Trescott, "the devastation of the Margate twins was complete. She
can't do that particular thing again. I shall be interested to note what form
her energy will take this time."
"Oh yes! that's
it!" cried the wife. "You'll be interested. You've hit it exactly.
You'll be interested to note what form her energy will take this time. And
then, when the real crisis comes, you'll put on your hat and walk out of the
house and leave me to straighten things out. This is not a scientific question;
this is a practical matter."
"Well, as a
practical man, I advocate chaining her out in the stable," answered the
doctor.
When Jimmie Trescott
was told that his old flame was again to appear, he remained calm. In fact,
time had so mended his youthful heart that it was a regular apple of oblivion
and peace. Her image in his thought was as the track of a bird on deep snow--it
was an impression, but it did not concern the depths. However, he did what
befitted his state. He went out and bragged in the street: "My cousin is
comin' next week from New York." . . ."My cousin is comin' to-morrow
f'om New York."
"Girl or
boy?" said the populace, bluntly; but, when enlightened, they speedily
cried, "Oh, we remember her!" They were charmed, for they thought of
her as an outlaw, and they surmised that she could lead them into a very
ecstasy of sin. They thought of her as a brave bandit, because they had been
whipped for various pranks into which she had led them. When Jimmie made his
declaration, they fell into a state of pleased and shuddering expectancy.
Mrs. Trescott
pronounced her point of view: "The child is a nice child, if only Caroline
had some sense. But she hasn't. And Willis is like a wax figure. I don't see
what can be done, unless- -unless you simply go to Willis and put the whole
thing right at him." Then, for purposes of indication, she improvised a
speech: "Look here, Willis, you've got a little daughter, haven't you?
But, confound it, man, she is not the only girl child ever brought into the
sunlight. There are a lot of children. Children are an ordinary phenomenon. In
China they drown girl babies. If you wish to submit to this frightful impostor
and tyrant, that is all very well, but why in the name of humanity do you make
us submit to it?"
Doctor Trescott
laughed. "I wouldn't dare say it to him."
"Anyhow,"
said Mrs. Trescott, determinedly, "that is what you should say to
him."
"It wouldn't do
the slightest good. It would only make him very angry, and I would lay myself
perfectly open to a suggestion that I had better attend to my own affairs with
more rigor." "Well, I suppose you are right," Mrs. Trescott
again said. "Why don't you speak to Caroline?" asked the doctor,
humorously.
"Speak to
Caroline! Why, I wouldn't for the world! She'd fly through the roof. She'd snap
my head off! Speak to Caroline! You must be mad!"
One afternoon the
doctor went to await his visitors on the platform of the railway station. He
was thoughtfully smiling. For some quaint reason he was convinced that he was
to be treated to a quick manifestation of little Cora's peculiar and
interesting powers. And yet, when the train paused at the station, there
appeared to him only a pretty little girl in a fur-lined hood, and with her
nose reddening from the sudden cold, and--attended respectfully by her parents.
He smiled again, reflecting that he had comically exaggerated the dangers of
dear little Cora. It amused his philosophy to note that he had really been
perturbed.
As the big sleigh sped
homeward there was a sudden shrill outcry from the angel child: "Oh,
mamma! mamma! They've forgotten my stove!"
"Hush, dear;
hush!" said the mother. "It's all right." "Oh, but, mamma,
they've forgotten my stove!"
The doctor thrust his
chin suddenly out of his top-coat collar. "Stove?" he said.
"Stove? What stove?"
"Oh, just a toy of
the child's," explained the mother. "She's grown so fond of it, she
loves it so, that if we didn't take it everywhere with her she'd suffer
dreadfully. So we always bring it."
"Oh!" said
the doctor. He pictured a little tin trinket. But when the stove was really
unmasked, it turned out to be an affair of cast iron, as big as a portmanteau,
and, as the stage people say, practicable. There was some trouble that evening
when came the hour of children's bedtime. Little Cora burst into a wild
declaration that she could not retire for the night unless the stove was
carried up stairs and placed at her bedside. While the mother was trying to
dissuade the child, the Trescotts held their peace and gazed with awe. The
incident closed when the lamb-eyed father gathered the stove in his arms and
preceded the angel child to her chamber.
In the morning,
Trescott was standing with his back to the dining-room fire, awaiting
breakfast, when he heard a noise of descending guests. Presently the door
opened, and the party entered in regular order. First came the angel child,
then the cooing mother, and last the great painter with his arms full of the
stove. He deposited it gently in a corner, and sighed. Trescott wore a wide
grin.
"What are you
carting that thing all over the house for?" he said, brutally. "Why
don't you put it some place where she can play with it, and leave it
there?"
The mother rebuked him
with a look. "Well, if it gives her pleasure, Ned?" she expostulated,
softly. "If it makes the child happy to have the stove with her, why
shouldn't she have it?" "Just so," said the doctor, with
calmness.
Jimmie's idea was the
roaring fireplace in the cabin of the lone mountaineer. At first he was not
able to admire a girl's stove built on well-known domestic lines. He eyed it
and thought it was very pretty, but it did not move him immediately. But a
certain respect grew to an interest, and he became the angel child's
accomplice. And even if he had not had an interest grow upon him, he was certain
to have been implicated sooner or later, because of the imperious way of little
Cora, who made a serf of him in a few swift sentences. Together they carried
the stove out into the desolate garden and squatted it in the snow. Jimmie's
snug little muscles had been pitted against the sheer nervous vigor of this
little golden-haired girl, and he had not won great honors. When the mind
blazed inside the small body, the angel child was pure force. She began to
speak: "Now, Jim, get some paper. Get some wood--little sticks at first.
Now we want a match. You got a match? Well, go get a match. Get some more wood.
Hurry up, now! No. No! I'll light it my own self. You get some more wood.
There! Isn't that splendid? You get a whole lot of wood an' pile it up here by
the stove. An' now what'll we cook? We must have somethin' to cook, you know,
else it ain't like the real."
"Potatoes,"
said Jimmie, at once.
The day was clear,
cold, bright. An icy wind sped from over the waters of the lake. A grown person
would hardly have been abroad save on compulsion of a kind, and yet, when they
were called to luncheon, the two little simpletons protested with great cries.
The ladies of
Whilomville were somewhat given to the pagan habit of tea parties. When a tea
party was to befall a certain house one could read it in the manner of the
prospective hostess, who for some previous days would go about twitching this
and twisting that, and dusting here and polishing there; the ordinary habits of
the household began then to disagree with her, and her unfortunate husband and
children fled to the lengths of their tethers. Then there was a hush. Then
there was a tea party. On the fatal afternoon a small picked company of latent
enemies would meet. There would be a fanfare of affectionate greetings, during
which everybody would measure to an inch the importance of what everybody else
was wearing. Those who wore old dresses would wish then that they had not come;
and those who saw that, in the company, they were well clad, would be pleased
or exalted, or filled with the joys of cruelty. Then they had tea, which was a
habit and a delight with none of them, their usual beverage being coffee with
milk.
Usually the party
jerked horribly in the beginning, while the hostess strove and pulled and
pushed to make its progress smooth. Then suddenly it would be off like the
wind, eight, fifteen, or twenty-five tongues clattering, with a noise of a few
penny whistles. Then the hostess had nothing to do but to look glad, and see
that everybody had enough tea and cake. When the door was closed behind the
last guest, the hostess would usually drop into a chair and say: "Thank
Heaven! They're gone!" There would be no malice in this expression. It
simply would be that, womanlike, she had flung herself headlong at the
accomplishment of a pleasure which she could not even define, and at the end
she felt only weariness.
The value and beauty,
or oddity, of the teacups was another element which entered largely into the
spirit of these terrible enterprises. The quality of the tea was an element
which did not enter at all. Uniformly it was rather bad. But the cups! Some of
the more ambitious people aspired to have cups each of a different pattern,
possessing, in fact, the sole similarity that with their odd curves and dips of
form they each resembled anything but a teacup. Others of the more ambitious
aspired to a quite severe and godly "set," which, when viewed,
appalled one with its austere and rigid family resemblances, and made one
desire to ask the hostess if the teapot was not the father of all the little
cups, and at the same time protesting gallantly that such a young and charming
cream-jug surely could not be their mother.
But of course the
serious part is that these collections so differed in style and the obvious
amount paid for them that nobody could be happy. The poorer ones envied; the
richer ones feared; the poorer ones continually striving to overtake the
leaders; the leaders always with their heads turned back to hear overtaking
footsteps. And none of these things here written did they know. Instead of
seeing that they were very stupid, they thought they were very fine. And they
gave and took heart-bruises--fierce deep heart-bruises--under the clear
impression that of such kind of rubbish was the kingdom of nice people. The
characteristics of outsiders of course emerged in shreds from these tea
parties, and it is doubtful if the characteristics of insiders escaped
entirely. In fact, these tea parties were in the large way the result of a
conspiracy of certain unenlightened people to make life still more
uncomfortable.
Mrs. Trescott was in
the circle of tea-fighters largely through a sort of artificial necessity--a
necessity, in short, which she had herself created in a spirit of femininity.
When the painter and
his family came for the holidays, Mrs. Trescott had for some time been feeling
that it was her turn to give a tea party, and she was resolved upon it now that
she was reenforced by the beautiful wife of the painter, whose charms would make
all the other women feel badly. And Mrs. Trescott further resolved that the
affair should be notable in more than one way. The painter's wife suggested
that, as an innovation, they give the people good tea; but Mrs. Trescott shook
her head; she was quite sure they would not like it.
It was an impressive
gathering. A few came to see if they could not find out the faults of the
painter's wife, and these, added to those who would have attended even without
that attractive prospect, swelled the company to a number quite large for
Whilomville. There were the usual preliminary jolts, and then suddenly the tea
party was in full swing, and looked like an unprecedented success.
Mrs. Trescott exchanged
a glance with the painter's wife. They felt proud and superior. This tea party
was almost perfection.
Jimmie and the angel
child, after being oppressed by innumerable admonitions to behave correctly
during the afternoon, succeeded in reaching the garden, where the stove awaited
them. They were enjoying themselves grandly, when snow began to fall so heavily
that it gradually dampened their ardor as well as extinguished the fire in the
stove. They stood ruefully until the angel child devised the plan of carrying
the stove into the stable, and there, safe from the storm, to continue the
festivities. But they were met at the door of the stable by Peter Washington.
"What you 'bout, Jim?"
"Now--it's snowin'
so hard, we thought we'd take the stove into the stable."
"An' have er fiah
in it? No, seh! G'w'on 'way f'm heh!-- g'w'on! Don' 'low no sech foolishin'
round yer. No, seh!" "Well, we ain't goin' to hurt your old stable,
are we?" asked Jimmie ironically.
"Dat you ain't,
Jim! Not so long's I keep my two eyes right plumb squaah pinted at ol' Jim. No,
seh!" Peter began to chuckle in derision.
The two vagabonds stood
before him while he informed them of their iniquities as well as their
absurdities, and further made clear his own masterly grasp of the spirit of
their devices. Nothing affects children so much as rhetoric. It may not involve
any definite presentation of common-sense, but if it is picturesque they
surrender decently to its influence. Peter was by all means a rhetorician, and
it was not long before the two children had dismally succumbed to him. They went
away.
Depositing the stove in
the snow, they straightened to look at each other. It did not enter either head
to relinquish the idea of continuing the game. But the situation seemed
invulnerable. The angel child went on a scouting tour. Presently she returned,
flying. "I know! Let's have it in the cellar! In the cellar! Oh, it'll be
lovely!"
The outer door of the
cellar was open, and they proceeded down some steps with their treasure. There
was plenty of light; the cellar was high-walled, warm, and dry. They named it
an ideal place. Two huge cylindrical furnaces were humming away, one at either
end. Overhead the beams detonated with the different emotions which agitated
the tea party.
Jimmie worked like a
stoker, and soon there was a fine bright fire in the stove. The fuel was of
small brittle sticks which did not make a great deal of smoke.
"Now what'll we
cook?" cried little Cora. "What'll we cook, Jim? We must have
something to cook, you know."
"Potatoes?"
said Jimmie.
But the angel child made
a scornful gesture. "No. I've cooked 'bout a million potatoes, I guess.
Potatoes aren't nice any more."
Jimmie's mind was all
said and done when the question of potatoes had been passed, and he looked
weakly at his companion.
"Haven't you got
any turnips in your house?" she inquired, contemptuously. "In my
house we have turnips." "Oh, turnips!" exclaimed Jimmie,
immensely relieved to find that the honor of his family was safe.
"Turnips? Oh, bushels an' bushels an' bushels! Out in the shed."
"Well, go an' get
a whole lot," commanded the angel child. "Go an' get a whole lot.
Grea' big ones. We always have grea' big ones."
Jimmie went to the shed
and kicked gently at a company of turnips which the frost had amalgamated. He
made three journeys to and from the cellar, carrying always the very largest
types from his father's store. Four of them filled the oven of little Cora's
stove. This fact did not please her, so they placed three rows of turnips on
the hot top. Then the angel child, profoundly moved by an inspiration, suddenly
cried out,
"Oh, Jimmie, let's
play we're keepin' a hotel, an' have got to cook for 'bout a thousand people,
an' those two furnaces will be the ovens, an' I'll be the chief cook--"
"No; I want to be
chief cook some of the time," interrupted Jimmie.
"No; I'll be chief
cook my own self. You must be my 'sistant. Now, I'll prepare 'em--see? An' then
you put 'em in the ovens. Get the shovel. We'll play that's the pan. I'll fix
'em, an' then you put 'em in the oven. Hold it still now."
Jim held the
coal-shovel while little Cora, with a frown of importance, arranged turnips in
rows upon it. She patted each one daintily, and then backed away to view it,
with her head critically sideways.
"There!" she
shouted at last. "That'll do, I guess. Put 'em in the oven."
Jimmie marched with his
shovelful of turnips to one of the furnaces. The door was already open, and he
slid the shovel in upon the red coals.
"Come on,"
cried little Cora. "I've got another batch nearly ready."
"But what am I
goin' to do with these?" asked Jimmie. "There ain't only one
shovel."
"Leave 'm in
there," retorted the girl, passionately. "Leave 'm in there, an' then
play you're comin' with another pan. 'Tain't right to stand there an' hold the
pan, you goose."
So Jimmie expelled all
his turnips from his shovel out upon the furnace fire, and returned obediently
for another batch. "These are puddings," yelled the angel child,
gleefully. "Dozens an' dozens of puddings for the thousand people at our
grea' big hotel."
At the first alarm the
painter had fled to the doctor's office, where he hid his face behind a book
and pretended that he did not hear the noise of feminine revelling. When the
doctor came from a round of calls, he too retreated upon the office, and the
men consoled each other as well as they were able. Once Mrs. Trescott dashed in
to say delightedly that her tea party was not only the success of the season,
but it was probably the very nicest tea party that had ever been held in
Whilomville. After vainly beseeching them to return with her, she dashed away
again, her face bright with happiness.
The doctor and the
painter remained for a long time in silence, Trescott tapping reflectively upon
the window-pane. Finally he turned to the painter, and sniffing, said:
"What is that, Willis? Don't you smell something?"
The painter also
sniffed. "Why, yes! It's like--it's like turnips."
"Turnips? No; it
can't be."
"Well, it's very
much like it."
The puzzled doctor
opened the door into the hall, and at first it appeared that he was going to
give back two paces. A result of frizzling turnips, which was almost as
tangible as mist, had blown in upon his face and made him gasp. "Good God!
Willis, what can this be?" he cried.
"Whee!" said
the painter. "It's awful, isn't it?"
The doctor made his way
hurriedly to his wife, but before he could speak with her he had to endure the
business of greeting a score of women. Then he whispered, "Out in the hall
there's an awful--"
But at that moment it
came to them on the wings of a sudden draught. The solemn odor of burning
turnips rolled in like a sea-fog, and fell upon that dainty, perfumed tea
party. It was almost a personality; if some unbidden and extremely odious guest
had entered the room, the effect would have been much the same. The sprightly
talk stopped with a jolt, and people looked at each other. Then a few brave and
considerate persons made the usual attempt to talk away as if nothing had
happened. They all looked at their hostess, who wore an air of stupefaction.
The odor of burning
turnips grew and grew. To Trescott it seemed to make a noise. He thought he
could hear the dull roar of this outrage. Under some circumstances he might
have been able to take the situation from a point of view of comedy, but the
agony of his wife was too acute, and, for him, too visible. She was saying:
"Yes, we saw the play the last time we were in New York. I liked it very
much. That scene in the second act--the gloomy church, you know, and all
that--and the organ playing--and then when the four singing little girls came
in--" But Trescott comprehended that she did not know if she was talking
of a play or a parachute.
He had not been in the
room twenty seconds before his brow suddenly flushed with an angry inspiration.
He left the room hastily, leaving behind him an incoherent phrase of apology,
and charged upon his office, where he found the painter somnolent.
"Willis!" he
cried, sternly, come with me. It's that damn kid of yours!"
The painter was
immediately agitated. He always seemed to feel more than any one else in the
world the peculiar ability of his child to create resounding excitement, but he
seemed always to exhibit his feelings very late. He arose hastily, and hurried
after Trescott to the top of the inside cellar stairway. Trescott motioned him
to pause, and for an instant they listened.
"Hurry up,
Jim," cried the busy little Cora. "Here's another whole batch of
lovely puddings. Hurry up now, an' put 'em in the oven."
Trescott looked at the
painter; the painter groaned. Then they appeared violently in the middle of the
great kitchen of the hotel with a thousand people in it. "Jimmie, go up
stairs!" said Trescott, and then he turned to watch the painter deal with
the angel child.
With some imitation of
wrath, the painter stalked to his daughter's side and grasped her by the arm.
Oh, papa! papa!"
she screamed, "You're pinching me! You're pinching me! You're pinching me,
papa!"
At first the painter
had seemed resolved to keep his grip, but suddenly he let go her arm in a
panic. "I've hurt her," he said, turning to Trescott.
Trescott had swiftly
done much toward the obliteration of the hotel kitchen, but he looked up now
and spoke, after a short period of reflection. "You've hurt her, have you?
Well, hurt her again. Spank her!" he cried, enthusiastically. "Spank
her, confound you, man! She needs it. Here's your chance. Spank her, and spank
her good. Spank her!"
The painter naturally
wavered over this incendiary proposition, but at last, in one supreme burst of
daring, he shut his eyes and again grabbed his precious offspring.
The spanking was
lamentably the work of a perfect bungler. It couldn't have hurt at all; but the
angel child raised to heaven a loud, clear soprano howl that expressed the last
word in even mediaeval anguish. Soon the painter was aghast. "Stop it,
darling! I didn't mean--I didn't mean to--to hurt you so much, you know."
He danced nervously. Trescott sat on a box, and devilishly smiled.
But the pasture-call of
suffering motherhood came down to them, and a moment later a splendid
apparition appeared on the cellar stairs. She understood the scene at a glance.
"Willis! What have you been doing?"
Trescott sat on his
box, the painter guiltily moved from foot to foot, and the angel child advanced
to her mother with arms outstretched, making a piteous wail of amazed and
pained pride that would have moved Peter the Great. Regardless of her frock,
the panting mother knelt on the stone floor and took her child to her bosom,
and looked, then, bitterly, scornfully, at the cowering father and husband.
The painter, for his
part, at once looked reproachfully at Trescott, as if to say: "There! You
see?"
Trescott arose and
extended his hands in a quiet but magnificent gesture of despair and weariness.
He seemed about to say something classic, and, quite instinctively, they
waited. The stillness was deep, and the wait was longer than a moment.
"Well," he said, "we can't live in the cellar. Let's go up
stairs."