Part 15

I 'm not taking her away from you for good. Oh, no! That would be her loss as well as mine; but I am testing her a little. I have said I had no words with which adequately to express my gratitude. I am your debtor for my child's physical well-being--for much else which I do not find it easy to define. Will you allow me to make some compensation for your year of devotion? I do not care what form it take, providing you will permit me to try to discharge something of the debt--the whole can never be repaid. Will you not let me send that splendid son of yours through college? and give him two years of Europe afterwards? That future profession of his has always been of great interest to me. If the boy is too proud, as I suspect is the case, to accept the necessary amount other than as a loan, make it plain to him that I will even yield a point there--a pretty bad state of affairs for me as a debtor to find myself in. If he won't do this for me--won't Rose help me out by permitting me to aid her in cultivating that voice of hers? I know your magnanimity, and depend upon you to help me in this.

Hazel does not know I am writing to you, or she would send loving messages.

My kindest regards to Mr. Blossom, with hearty congratulations for March, and all sorts of neighborly remembrances for all others of the Lost Nation.

Sincerely your friend, JOHN CURTIS CLYDE.

_To Mrs. Benjamin Blossom._

"Oh, mother!"

A wave of crimson surged into March's pale face, and the sensitive nostrils quivered; then two big drops plashed down upon the letter which he handed to his mother.

"Oh, mother! if only I could--but I can't!"

He rolled over on the soft pasture turf, face downwards, his head resting on his arms.

"Why, March dear," said his mother, tenderly, "why can't you? I think it 's beautiful, so does father."

A sob shook the long, thin frame. His mother laid her hand on the back of the yellow head. "What is it, my dear boy? Can't you tell me?"

The head shook energetically beneath her hand, and muffled words issued from the grass.

"But, March, we thought it would please you to have such an opportunity. You have read what Mr. Clyde says--you can look upon it as a loan. I hope you won't have any false pride in this matter--"

"'Tis n't false, mother," came forth from the grass, "and I would like to accept his offer, if only it were n't just his."

"Why not his, March? Surely, Hazel has been like one of us--a real little sister--" Another vigorous wagging of the yellow head arrested his mother in the midst of her sentence.

"Hazel is n't my sister."

"Why, of course, you can't feel as near to her as to Rose, but then, you must see how dear she has become to us all--and Mr. Clyde has put it in such a way, that the most sensitive person could accept it without injury to any feeling of true pride. Take time and think it over, March. It has come upon you rather suddenly, and I have been thinking about it for two weeks."

"It's no use to think it over." Deep tragedy now made itself audible, as March rolled over and sat up, displaying eyes bright with excitement, flushed cheeks, and a generally determined air of having it out with himself.

"Well, I can't understand you, March."

"I wish you could."

His mother smiled in spite of the gravity of the situation. "Can't you tell me? or give me some clue to this mysterious determination of yours?"

March cast a despairing glance at his mother. "Mother, will you promise never to tell?"

"Not even your father, March?"

"No, father, nor any one--ever, mother."

"Very well; I promise, March, for I trust you."

"Oh, mother, have n't you seen?--don't you know, that I--that I love Hazel! And how can I take the money from her father, when I 'm going to try to make her love me and marry me sometime, when I get through studying, and--and--Oh, don't you see?"

And Mrs. Blossom did see--at last.

She spoke very gently, after a minute's silence, in which March's ears burned red to their tips, and his fingers were busy digging up a tiny strawberry-plant by the roots. "My son, I see, and I honor you for feeling as you do; but, March, have you thought of the difference between you and Hazel?"

"What difference, mother?"

Now Mary Blossom was not a worldly woman, neither was she a woman of the world--and she found it difficult to answer.

"You know how Hazel is placed in life, although you do not know with what luxury she is surrounded in her home. She has beauty, a large circle of friends, immense wealth. There will be many who will seek her hand in four years' time, for she has a wonderful charm of her own, for all who come close to her.--Is it worth while to attempt, even, to win this little daughter of the rich? You, a poor boy, with his way to make?"

"But, mother,"--there was strong protest in the voice--"she did n't have any beauty till she came up here to us--and if she _was_ a rich girl, she was n't a healthy one till she lived up here, and I don't see the good of money and a lot of things, if you 're sick, and homely, too." March waxed eloquent in his desire to convince his mother of the justice of his cause. "And if she hadn't come up here she would n't have got well, and then she would n't have grown so beautiful--and she _is_ beautiful, mother." (Mrs. Blossom nodded assent.) "And I don't see why I have n't just as much right to try to make her love me as any other fellow. You 've told us children, dozens of times, it's just character that counts, and not money, and if I try as hard as I can to keep straight and be a good man like father, I don't see why things would n't be all right in the end."

Mrs. Blossom was silenced,--"hoist with her own petard." "How can I destroy this lovely, young ideal? I dare not," was her thought. But aloud, she said:--"You 're right, March. Nothing but character counts. Make yourself worthy of this little love of yours. We 'll keep this in our own hearts, and when you are tempted to wrong-doing--and there are fearful temptations for every young man to meet, March,--temptations of which you can form no conception here in the shelter of your home--just remember this little talk of ours, and keep yourself unspotted by the world just by the thought of this dear girl whom you hope some day to win. There is nothing, March, that will keep a young man in the right way like his love for just 'the one girl in the world'--if only she be worthy of his love. And I think Hazel will be--even of you."

March flung his arms about her neck and kissed her heartily:

"Dear, little Mother Blossom, I 'll try, and even if I fail, just the thought of such a glorious-filorious mother that does n't laugh at a fellow--I was afraid you would, though,--will keep me straight enough. Why, Mother Blossom! I 'd be ashamed to look you in the eyes, if I did a down-right mean thing."

His mother laughed through her tears. "I wonder if many mothers get such a compliment? Come, dear, the dew is beginning to fall--it's been such a heavenly day, I had forgotten it is early spring. Do you feel chilly?"

"Not I," laughed March, and proceeded to relieve his feelings after his favorite method--by turning a double-back somersault down the pasture slope.

As Mrs. Blossom leaned over to kiss tired, sleepy Budd that night, she thought complacently to herself:--

"Well, thank fortune, here 's one who is heart-free," and laughed softly to herself. Chi had not told her of Budd's proposal.

"Wilkins, tell Miss Hazel to come down into the library when she is dressed for dinner."

"Yes, Marse Clyde." Wilkins sprang upstairs two steps at a time, and, knocking at Hazel's door, delivered his message.

"Tell papa I 'm going to dress early, for I 've some things to attend to about the table, Wilkins."

"Fo' sho', Miss Hazel," said Wilkins, with a broad smile of delighted surprise.

"And tell Mrs. Scott I 'll choose the service, if she will take out the linen, and I have ordered the flowers. Papa said I might."

Wilkins skipped downstairs, delivered his message to the amazed housekeeper, and then flew into the kitchen to impart his news to the cook, his confidante and co-worker for years in the Clyde household.

Minna-Lu was preparing a confection, and giving her whole soul to the making, when Wilkins made his appearance. She looked up grimly, the ebony of her countenance shining beneath the immaculate white of her turban:--

"Wa' fo' yo' hyar?"

Wilkins slapped both knees with the palms of his hands, and bent nearly double with noiseless laughter; then, straightening himself, approached Minna-Lu with boldness, despite the repelling wave of the cream-whip that she held suspended over the bowl, and confided to her the change of regime, to her edification and delight.

She put down the bowl and whip, stemmed her fists on her broad hips, and gurgled long and low. "'F little missus done take rale hol' er de reins, dere ain't no kin' er show fo' sech po' trash." She indicated with an upward movement of her thumb the upper regions where the housekeeper was supposed to be.

"When I wan's a missus, I wan's quality folks, an' little missus do take de cake. Nebber see sech er chile. Dem great, shinin' eyes, lookin' at yo' out o' all de do's, an' dat laff soun'in' jes' like de ol' mocker dat nebber knowed nuffin' 'bout bedtime--yo' recollecks?" Wilkins nodded emphatically, but was unprepared for Minna-Lu's next move:--

"Git out o' hyar, yo' good-fo'-nuffin' niggah. Huccome yo' stan'in' roun' wif yo' legs stiffer 'n de whites er dese yer eggs, an' yo' jaw goin' like de egg-beatah, an' de comp'ny comin' at rale sharp eight." Minna-Lu took up her bowl, and Wilkins beat a hasty retreat.

It was a warm first of May, and just about the hour when March and his mother were leaving the Wishing-Tree, that Hazel appeared in the dining-room. Wilkins gazed at her in a species of adoration. Her orders appeared to him revolutionary, but he obeyed them implicitly and unhesitatingly.

"Take off the candelabra, Wilkins, it is too warm to-night to have them on; besides, people don't have a nice time talking when they have to peek around them to get a glimpse of the people they 're talking to." Wilkins whisked off the candelabra as if they had been made of thistledown.

"Dat's so, fo' sho', Miss Hazel. I see de folks doan' talk when dey ain' comf'ble; but I nebber tink ob de can'les."

"When it's dark you can light all the sconces. I want you to use the pale green, Bohemian dinner set to-night; and I want just as little silver as possible."

Wilkins looked blank, and Hazel laughed. "Oh, we 'll make it up with some cut glass, I 'll manage it. I want the table to look cool and simple, just to-night."

Cool and simple. Wilkins failed to comprehend it, but such was his faith in "little Missy," that he carried out her orders to the letter, and the result was, according to Mrs. Fenlick, "a dream of beauty."

When she had made her preparations to her entire satisfaction, as well as Wilkins's, and the latter had called Minna-Lu from her culinary tug-of-war to witness "little Missy's" triumph, Hazel ran into the library.

Her father looked at her in amazement. Could this radiant, young girl be the same Hazel of a year ago? They had gone directly to North Carolina when Hazel had left Mount Hunger, and had been at home but two days. This little dinner was given to Mr. Clyde's intimate friends as an informal celebration and recognition of his daughter's return to the New York house.

Now, as she ran into the room and linked her arm in his, her father looked down upon her with such evident pride and love, that Hazel laughed joyfully, kid her cheek against his coat-sleeve and patted his hand.

"Do I look nice, Papa Clyde?"

"Nice! that's no word for it, Birdie." And thereupon he took her in his arms and gave her such a hug and a kiss, that the pretty dress must have suffered if it had not been made of the softest of white China-silk.

"Oh, my flowers! you 'll crush them!" she cried, shielding with both hands a bunch of flowers at her belt.

"Where did you get all this--this style, daughter mine? It's--why, you 're nothing but a little girl, but it's 'chic.'"

Hazel enjoyed her father's admiration to the full. She drew herself up, straight and tall, graceful and slender--her head was already above his shoulder--exclaiming:--

"Little girl! Well, your little girl designed this gown herself. I would n't have any fuss or frills about it; it's just plain and full and soft and clingy, and this sash of soft silk--is n't it a pretty, pale green?--feel--" She caught up a handful of the delicate fabric and crushed it in her hand, then smoothed it again, and it showed no wrinkles. "I 've put it on to match the dinner. I 've had it all my own way--Wilkins did just as I said--and it's all cool and green and springy. You 'll see."

"Where did you get these flowers?" Mr. Clyde touched the bunch of arbutus, that showed so delicately pink and white against the white of her dress and the green of her sash.

A wave of beautiful color shot up to the roots of the little crinkles of chestnut hair on her temples; she touched the blossoms caressingly. "I wrote March about this dinner-party, and how it was the first at which I had been hostess, and he wrote back and wanted to know what I was going to wear, and I told him--and this morning these lovely things came by mail all done up in cotton wool in a tin cracker-box, the kind Chi uses to put his worm-bait in, when he goes fishing. Are n't they lovely? And was n't March lovely to think of them, papa?"

"They are n't half as lovely as you are," said Mr. Clyde, earnestly, replying to half of her question only. "You are my unspoiled Hazel-blossom--" Then a sudden, intrusive thought caught and arrested his words. "Hazel Blossom," he repeated to himself, looking at her unconscious face as he uttered the last word, "Good heavens! Could such a thing be?"

"De Cun'le an' Mrs. Fenlick," announced Wilkins.

And when they were all seated at the table--the Colonel and Mrs. Fenlick, Doctor and Mrs. Heath, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jo, the Masons and the Pearsells--with no candelabra to interfere with the merry speech and glances, with the light from the candles in the sconces shining softly on the exquisite napery, on the low bed of white tulips in the centre and the grace of the pale, green porcelain, with the tall Bohemian Romer-glasses before the plates--what wonder that Mrs. Fenlick pronounced it a "dream of beauty"?

When their guests had gone, Mr. Clyde turned to Hazel:--"I shall be glad to open the Newport cottage again, Birdie, with such a little hostess to help me entertain."

"The Newport house, papa!" Hazel exclaimed, a distinct note of disappointment sounding in her voice.

"Why not, dear? I thought of getting down there by the tenth; in fact, gave my orders to Mrs. Scott to begin packing to-morrow."

Hazel was evidently struggling with herself. She fingered the arbutus nervously; took them out of her belt; inhaled their fragrance. Then she looked up with a smile, although the corners of her mouth drooped and trembled a little:--

"Why, of course, why not, papa? It's so much pleasanter there in May, than when everybody is down for the summer."

Her father sat down in an easy-chair, put an arm around his daughter, and drew her down to a seat on the arm of the chair.

"Now, Hazel, I want you to tell me all about it. Don't you want to go?"

"Yes, if you 're there, papa, but--" she turned suddenly and her arm stole around his neck--"don't leave me there alone, papa, please don't."

"Leave you--I? Why what do you mean, dear?"

"Oh, it is so lonesome when you are away, papa, when you go off yachting with the Colonel--and the house is so big, and there 's nobody to talk to and say good-night to--and--and, oh, dear!" The tears began to come, but she struggled bravely for a few minutes.

"Why, little girl, you have never told me you were lonesome without me: indeed, you have never shown any sign of it, or of wanting me around much. I never thought--why, Hazel." Down went the curly head on his shoulder, and the sobs grew loud and frequent.

"There, there, Birdie," he said soothingly, stroking her head, "you 're all tired out; this party has been too much for you--"

An energetic, protesting head-shake was followed by broken sentences--"It was n't that--I 'm not tired--you don't know, papa--I didn't know--know I was lonesome, and that I was--I think I was homesick--dreadfully--but Barbara Frietchie, you know--I had to be brave--and, I have tried not to show it to make you feel unhappy--and I love you so! but, oh, dear! I miss them so dreadfully, and I hoped--I was a member of the N.B.--B.O.--O., Oh--dear me,--Society, and the by-law says--I mean March read it--Oh, papa!"

"Well, well, there, there, dear," said the somewhat mystified father, bending all his efforts to soothe this evidently perturbed spirit, "why did n't you tell me before?"

"Because I was Barbara Frietchie."

"Now, Hazel, sit up and look me in the face and tell me what you mean. I supposed I was holding Hazel Clyde in my arms and not old Barbara Frietchie. Please explain."

"I thought I wrote you, papa," Hazel could not help smiling through her tears, for it did strike her as rather funny about papa's holding the patriotic, old lady in his arms.

"Well, you did n't tell me that." So Hazel explained.

Mr. Clyde nodded approval. "Very good, I approve of the N.B.B.O.O. Society, and of the present Barbara Frietchie's heroism--but no more of it is called for. You see, I fully intended you should pay your friends--my friends--a visit this summer, but I thought it would be much better later in the season when Mrs. Blossom would be rested from the fatigue of March's illness--"

"Oh, papa!" A squeeze effectually impeded further utterance. "I don't care how soon we go to Newport, or anywhere--of course, if _you_ are with me--as long as I can go to Mount Hunger sometime this summer. And, besides," she added eagerly, "we planned next winter's visit from Rose, didn't we?"

"I should rather think we did. We shall be very proud of our beautiful friend, Rose, and delighted to have our friends meet her, shan't we?" Another squeeze precluded, for the moment, articulate speech.

"Yes," Hazel cried, enthusiastically, "we 'll take her to concerts and operas--just think, papa, with that lovely voice she has never heard a concert!--and we 'll take her to the theatre and--"

"And," her father went on, growing enthusiastic himself at the prospect, for he was the soul of hospitality, "and we 'll give her a dainty dinner or two, and possibly a little dance--few and early, you know--"

"Oh--ee!" cried Hazel, forgetting her woe, "and Mrs. Heath will give a lunch-party for her, and, perhaps, Aunt Carrie a tea, and Mrs. Fenlick a reception--"

"Heavens!" interrupted her father, "you 'll kill her with kindness--that fresh, wild rose can't stand all that--"

"Oh, yes, she can, papa; she can stand that just as well as I stood going up there where everything was so different."

"True," said Mr. Clyde, thoughtfully, "it was different."

"Oh, it was, papa! I never had to go to bed alone. Mrs. Blossom always came to say good-night and to kiss me, and to--to--"

"To what?" asked her father.

"You won't mind if I tell you?" Hazel asked, half-shyly.

"Mind! I should say not; I should mind if you did n't tell me."

"--to say 'Our Father' with me, papa; you know no one ever said it with me before, and it's--it's such a comfy time to feel sorry and talk over what you 've done wrong; and it's _that_ I miss so."

"I don't blame you, Birdie," said her father, quietly. "But now see how late it is!"--he pointed to the clock--"Eleven! This will never do for a _debutante_. Good-night, darling. Sweet dreams of Rose and the N.B.B.O.O. Society."

"Good-night, Papa Clyde; Doctor Heath says you are the most splendid fellow in the world--but I know you are the dearest father in the world; good-night, I 've had a lovely party."

She ran upstairs, but, in a moment, her father heard her tripping down again. Her head parted the portieres. "I just came back to tell you, that this kind of a talk we 've had is just as good as the Mount Hunger bedtime-talks. I shan't be homesick any more." And away she ran.

Now John Curtis Clyde was a pew-owner--as had been his father and grandfather before him--in one of the Fifth Avenue churches, and duly made his appearance in that pew every Sunday morning. He entered, too, into the service with hearty voice, and made his responses without, the while, giving undue thought to the world. But when he had said "Our Father" with his little daughter by his side, he had supposed his duty performed to the extent of his needs--of another's, his child's, he gave no thought.

To-night, however, as he sat in the easy-chair where Hazel had left him, it began to dawn upon him slowly that his little daughter, during her fourteen years, might have had other needs, for which he had not provided, nor, perhaps, with all his riches was capable of providing.

The clock chimed twelve,--one,--two--; John Clyde, with a sigh, rose and went up to bed--a wiser and a better man.

XXII

ROSE

What a summer that was! Mr. Clyde sent Hazel up to the Blossoms for July and again for September, when he, the Colonel and Mrs. Fenlick, the Pearsells and the Masons, Aunt Carrie and Uncle Jo took possession of the entire inn at Barton's River, and for a month coached and rode throughout the "North Country," all in the cool September weather. Jack Sherrill joined them for the last three weeks, and, this time, Maude Seaton was not of the party.

"I just headed her off every time she made a dead set at any one of us for an invitation," said Mrs. Fenlick one day in confidence to her intimate, Mrs. Pearsell, as they sat on the vine-covered veranda of the inn, "but she proved a regular octopus. She got the Colonel in her toils one morning at the Casino, and I pretended to be faint--yes, I did--just to get his attention for a sufficient time to make a fuss, and get him alone in the carriage; then, of course, I settled it. Oh, dear! men are so guileless in spots!"--Mrs. Fenlick gave a weary sigh--"What I have n't been through with that girl! Anyway, she's been out two winters, now, and she has n't caught Jack Sherrill yet. I don't think there is much chance after the first season for a girl to make a really fine match, do you?" Then they fell to discussing the pros, and cons, of the question with evergreen interest.

Jack Sherrill, for one, had no thought of Miss Seaton. He had sent the valentine-flowers, and the sentiment from Barry Cornwall's love-song, with a strange kind of "kill or cure" feeling.

He had communed with himself, at twilight of one February day, as he lay at full length on the cushioned window-seat of his room from which he looked down upon the darkening, snow-covered campus and the anatomy of the elms showing black against it. His pipe had gone out, but he derived some satisfaction in pulling away at it mechanically, while he thought out the situation for himself.

"What's the use of a man's hanging fire when he _knows_?" he thought. "Now, I love her--love her." (Jack's hand stole into the breast of his jacket and crushed a bit of paper there; he smiled.) "Of course she does n't know, and won't know for a while, but it shan't be through any neglect of mine that she does n't; and when she knows--there 's the rub!--will she care for me, Jack Sherrill? I 've never done anything in my life to make a girl like that care for me.