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