CHAPTER VI

“HE RODE ALL UNARM’D, AND HE RODE ALL ALONE”

One day was very like another in the first two weeks of Janet’s new school life. The teachers soon liked the sunny girl with the ready dimples and readier wit, joined with honest industry and determination to learn. The girls--the best girls--liked Jan at once, but the little knot of companions whom Gwen had disrespectfully called “that gang” disliked her every day a little more than the previous one, and chiefly because of the liking of the better faction. Gladys--and this was what made the attitude of these girls hard to bear--Gladys arrayed herself with them, and showed positive dislike to “Miss Lochinvar,” who certainly did not deserve it at her hands.

At home, after school, during the five hours between its dismissal and dinner time, life was a trifle dreary, or would have been but for Jack, Viva, and Jerry. Gwen thoughtlessly, in spite of her liking for Jan, betook herself to her own pursuits. Sydney did not seem like part of the family at all, but rather like some one who was fortunate enough to have secured an unusually well-appointed lodging-house and restaurant. He came and went unnoted, to Jan’s amazed distress. She had heard so much said by her father and mother of the necessity of keeping close to their boys and making home pleasant to them that motherly little Jan quite yearned over the handsome lad who had no one to see that he kept straight. She longed to make friends with him; a longing intensified by her intimacy with her own elder brother, Fred, whom she missed more than any of the children she had left behind her, unless it was the baby, Poppet. But though Sydney was perfectly polite to Jan, he made no recognition of her overtures of friendship, and, it seemed to his cousin, grew more indifferent to his surroundings, and more heavy-browed at each succeeding dinner.

Mrs. Graham soon got over her annoyance at Janet’s coming, and was always pleasant, pretty, and kindly, but not less busy than at first. As the autumn advanced into winter she was more deeply engulfed in engagements than ever, and Jan shared her children’s lack of their mother’s society. Unfortunately, with her aunt’s displeasure at her coming had disappeared her uncle’s pleasure in receiving his favorite sister’s child, and Jan quite longed for another of the evenings with him, such as she had tasted on her arrival a month ago.

Every afternoon when she came home from school--except on the afternoon of the dancing-class--Jan went into the nursery and sat down with Hummie, Jack, Viva, and the baby--who would have resented the title. Jack found the steep hill of learning which--to speak metaphorically--had so winded him turned into “the primrose path of dalliance” by this pretty cousin, who was so honest that she would not do his tasks for him, yet so clear-headed that she turned them into positive joys. Then she told the jolliest stories of the doings of her brothers and sisters, whom Jack burned to know, considering them more attractive than any youngsters he had had the luck to meet with, either in or out of a book, and whose feats filled him with envious admiration. Peals of laughter floated down the hall frequently during these hours--laughter which reached Gwen in her shrine of genius, and sometimes brought her out to share the fun. Gwen was surprised to find herself half jealous of the children’s love which Jan had won in a short month, and which she had missed because she had never thought about them at all. She sometimes felt quite shut out and hurt when she saw how the faces of the three youngest brightened at the sight of Jan and heard the whoop of delight with which they welcomed her.

Quiet little Viva found that Jan knew ways of playing housekeeping which her own naturally domestic little brain could not have devised, and that she could dress dolls, and play with them, too, as no one--not only her own sisters, but her friends--could begin to hope to do. And she could tell stories, not only the funny stories of life in Crescendo and the Howes’ frolics, but the fairy-tales which Viva preferred, in a way that would make the lady who told stories in the Arabian Nights’ green with envy. Viva loved Jan with a sort of dumb adoration. She was a sensitive little creature, and Jan had come into her solitude like sunshine. As to Jerry, she adopted Jan--whom she called “Yan” with a pure Norwegian pronunciation--as her own property, and loved her with tumultuous affection. Jerry had grown so well-behaved in the dining-room--never tipping over her oatmeal spoon, still less kicking “Tsusan”--that her father and mother wondered at the reform. They did not know that if “Yan” lifted her eyebrows in shocked surprise at the dawn of naughtiness in the wilful tot, Miss Geraldine immediately resumed the behavior which should make “Yan” show her dimples in smiling at her, for “Yan’s” dimples had become Jerry’s barometer, and she could not exist if their absence indicated disapproval.

It was fortunate for Janet that she was so sincerely fond of younger children and that her little cousins did cling to her with such devotion, for without their love she would have had many lonely hours and would have found the atmosphere of the splendid home she had come to too frigid for happiness.

Helen Watterson was to give a party, and the school was stirred by the announcement. Not only did Helen live in a house so large that her party was sure to be an event, but she had announced it as a “fagot party,” and all the girls invited protested that they could never, never fulfil its requirements. These requirements were for each guest to bring a fagot of wood--and “fagot” could be interpreted very liberally to mean anything from a few toothpicks bound together to a large bundle of real sticks. These fagots were to be laid in turn on the open fire, and while his fagot was burning each guest must tell a story.

The Grahams, Gwen, Gladys, and Janet Howe, were invited, as well as most of the girls of their age at “the Hydra.” Gwen felt no uneasiness as to her powers in the story-telling line, nor did Jan, though she was rather frightened at the thought of lifting up her voice in such an august assembly, but Gladys was dismayed, and declared, without meaning it, that she would not go if she had to tell a story, but would plead some excuse at the last moment. As it happened, it was Gwen, who longed to go, that pleaded the excuse at the last moment, a painfully real excuse, for she had a bad sore throat, and could not leave her room. Jan begged to be allowed to stay at home with her, partly through kindness to the cousin whom she really loved, and partly from a strong preference for doing so, for the prospect of going to a party without Gwen and with Gladys was worse than going alone. But Gwen would not hear of Jan’s staying behind.

“It will be the nicest party, I’m sure, Jan,” she said, “and I wouldn’t have you miss it. Besides, it is really the first affair we’ve been asked to since you came, so it will be your introduction to New York society. And another ‘besides’ is that I shall want to hear all about it, every story repeated, and everything, and Gladys never would tell me one thing.”

“I don’t feel as though I could go with Gladys, Gwen,” Jan said involuntarily. “She does dislike me so, and it makes me more awkward and scared than ever.”

“Don’t pay the slightest attention to her,” said Gwen, looking wrathfully at Jan over the red-flannel swathings of her throat--Hummie always insisted on the efficacy of that color for such purposes. “After you leave the dressing-room you keep with Dorothy Schuyler and Cena North. They’ve got sense enough to appreciate you! And they’re my friends. You’ll have a good time, because there’ll be plenty of good times there to have, and when there are, you don’t miss them.”

Gwen, with mistaken zeal, made a few vigorous remarks to Gladys before they set forth, telling her what she thought of her slighting Jan, and bidding her be nice to her at the party, under threat of wrath to come. The result of this well-meant interference was that Gladys sulked, settling herself in her corner of the carriage without speaking to Jan during the drive. After they arrived she compelled Susan to arrange her hair and dress first, and she then left the dressing-room without waiting for Jan, who had to find her way, frightened and hurt, to the parlors alone.

“Isn’t Gwen coming?” asked Dorothy Schuyler, standing near their hostess, when Gladys entered.

“Gwen has a sore throat. She’s dreadfully disappointed. She cared more about coming than I did,” said Gladys.

“And Jan wouldn’t leave her, I suppose?” suggested Dorothy.

“Oh, Jan is here. She is coming right down,” said Gladys, trying to speak easily.

Dorothy gave her one of the glances which Gwen had said “made you curl up,” and went swiftly into the hall. Here she found Jan coming hesitatingly down-stairs through the group of boys lounging part way up, waiting for “the party to begin.” They all stared at Jan, glad of something prettier to look at than one another, for, though some of them were already young dandies, most of them despised the stiff costume to which even the younger lord of creation is condemned at festivities, and were wondering, each individually, if he “looked as big a fool in his stiff collar as the other fellows did.”

Jan gave a sigh of relief as she caught sight of Dorothy. It seemed to her that she could not enter that crowded room alone. Dorothy noticed with pleasure that Jan looked very charming in soft, delicate green, which gave her, with her brown eyes and hair, the effect of some sylvan creature.

It was not so very bad after all to get to her hostess and make her salutations now that kind Dorothy was at her elbow, and when the ordeal was over Jan turned to enjoying herself with her tendency to make the best of things.

There was to be dancing after supper, but first the young guests grouped themselves around the open fire for the fagot burning and story-telling. Dorothy began, and told a pretty legend of Brittany, not long, but much longer than Daisy Hammond’s, who had brought a tiny bundle of three lightest twigs, and related a tragic tale in two stanzas of “nonsense rhymes.”

When it came Jan’s turn she found to her horror that the story which she had so carefully learned and rehearsed with Gwen had slipped from her as completely as if she had never heard it. “What shall I do?” she whispered to Dorothy. “I have forgotten my story!”

“Make up another. Tell us something you have seen or done in the West,” said Dorothy. “It will probably be much more interesting, so don’t worry.”

“I have forgotten the story I meant to tell,” Jan began in a faint voice as she laid her fagot on the fire. “I think maybe I could remember it if only I could get hold of the beginning. But Dorothy Schuyler says I had better tell you something true that happened at home, so I am going to tell you about a cyclone we had once, and I’ve got to hurry, or my wood will be gone. There was a family living outside of Crescendo, about a couple of miles out, and they had come there from the frontier, and twenty-five years before the day of the cyclone they had lost one of their children--the oldest boy--out in the territory; he was stolen by Indians. They hunted everywhere and as hard as they could for him, but they never found him, so they thought he must be dead, and they moved into Kansas, and settled in Crescendo, and had ever so many other children, and were quite happy, though they never forgot that lost boy. They didn’t get on so very well--didn’t make much money, I mean, so mamma and papa tried to help them. They couldn’t very much, because we have such lots of children and not much money. But one day there came up a storm, and papa ran around making everything tight and getting all our children in, for he said it was going to be a windstorm, and that scares us out there--we’ve seen them!”

Jan had forgotten her shyness, and was becoming dramatic as the recollection of the fatal day came over her. She leaned forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes fastened on her burning fagot, with the light playing over her earnest face.

“Well, it came. The sky got all over a dreadful yellow, and it was so dark we lighted up like night. Mamma was baking and I was sweeping and dusting--I know I thought it was lucky my head was tied up, for it seemed as though it might blow off. The wind roared and rushed past us, and branches of fruit-trees and heavy things came banging up against the house--oh, it was awful! But we didn’t get the worst of it inside the town. Outside, where this family lived, it was the very middle of the cloud, and it took the roof off, and it blew down the barn, and the neighbor’s house blew over and part of it struck theirs--and--oh, dear, oh, dear! I can’t bear to think of it!” Jan hid her face in her hands a moment, shuddering, and her audience sat silently waiting for her to go on.

“The wall fell in and it buried all that family under it, for they were all huddled together--they hadn’t any cyclone cellar. It was the first time a cyclone had ever struck Crescendo. And when the storm had passed--it was all over in fifteen minutes--they went out to that house and they found them dead, all dead, except the baby, and he was crying and pulling at his mother’s dress.” Jan’s voice quivered so that she had to wait another moment, and no one noticed that her fagot was burned out.

“And when they got there,” Jan went on, “there was a young man standing among the ruins whom the people who came to help had never seen before. Would you believe it? It was that oldest son whom they had lost! He had found out who he was and had traced his parents, and had come to Kansas after them, and had reached Crescendo just in time to find them dead in the ruins of their home. And there was not one left but the little crying baby and the oldest son--they were all gone! I took off my sweeping dress, and mamma left her baking, and we went out there. We brought the baby home with us--he was just Poppet’s age--until after the funeral. Then the young man took him, and they went away together, the oldest and the youngest, and we have never seen either of them in Crescendo again.”

After a complete silence of a few minutes, more flattering than applause, the applause for Jan’s tragic story burst forth from every pair of hands. It was the success of the evening, but to Gladys it was a success worse than failure. The confession that Jan and her mother had been busied with housework at the time of the tragedy added the story to the long list of disgraceful disclosures Jan was forever making.

But the other guests at the party did not seem to consider Jan’s little tale a blot upon her credit--_they_ could afford to admire it, Gladys thought bitterly; she was not _their_ cousin! Girls and boys crowded around Jan to congratulate her, till poor Jan hardly knew where to look. She was already the heroine of the evening, but one thing more raised her into a heroine indeed, though it ended the party for her and Gladys.

The last fagot was on the fire, and Helen Watterson leaned forward with the tongs to adjust it as it burned. She wore floating tarlatan over her pink-silk skirt, and as she reached for the falling fagot the draft from the chimney sucked her dress into the fireplace, and instantly the gauzy stuff blazed up.

Her guests fell back screaming, but Jan sprang forward, gathered up the overdress in her hands, crumpling it together, and extinguishing the flames before there was the slightest danger of injury to Helen. Probably there had not been very great danger, for the flimsy stuff would very likely have been consumed before it could ignite the rest of her garments, but none the less, Jan had done a brave deed, and at the cost of painful burns on her own hands.

Mrs. Watterson took her away to be coddled and bandaged, amid a murmur of admiration from the guests she left behind her. When the poor little brown hands were thoroughly wrapped in oil and cotton a carriage was called, and Susan put Jan into it, while Gladys followed, angry at being obliged to miss the dancing, angry with herself for her bad temper, angriest of all with Jan for proving her so wrong, yet swelling with pride that her cousin had saved Helen’s life--for Gladys would not regard the event as less than life-saving. The drive back was as silent as had been the drive to the party. Jan was in too much pain, Gladys in too perturbed a state of mind for speech.

As Susan helped Jan from the carriage, a forlorn, hungry, sick-looking little tiger cat ran mewing toward her, and then scuttled away, as one who had no reason to count on the human kindness it implored.

“Oh, that poor, poor, dear little cat!” cried Jan, who loved dumb beasts tenderly. “Can’t I take it in, Gladys?”

“Oh, Miss Janet, it’s that forlorn and miserable, you don’t want it!” protested Susan.

“Yes, I do; that’s why I want it!” cried Jan. “Do you think your mother would care? I’ve missed my animals so dreadfully, Gladys!” she pleaded.

“You know mamma never cares what we do as long as we are satisfied,” said Gladys ungraciously.

Jan waited for no further permission. With her bandaged hands, and with the blandishments of a voice used to conversing with our little kindred who can not reply--not in the same tongue at least--Jan contrived to catch the frightened little waif who stood in such sore need of kindness.

Clasping him to her breast, in spite of bandages, and disregarding possible mud on the white paws, Jan returned, damaged, excited, but, on the whole, happy, from her first party.