CHAPTER NINE
“WHOSE YESTERDAYS LOOK BACKWARD
WITH A SMILE”
There were two immediate results of the garden party. One seemed trivial, but indirectly brought about important effects. The other made immediate difference in the daily life of the Garden girls, and seemed to them more important than it was. The first result of the party was that Mrs. Garden insisted upon employing “a whole gardener,” as Florimel put it. The old garden was so well established, such a large proportion of its lavish bloom came from hardy perennials and trim shrubs of generous natures, that Mary and Win, who decided such questions, had never thought it necessary to employ a gardener exclusively for their work, but had claimed a sixth of a skilful, but cranky, Scot, who gave one day a week to them and to five other families.
The garden party had been damaging to the garden in its more vulnerable parts, and now Mrs. Garden, for the first time intervening in household arrangements, urged the employment of a man who should be all the Gardens’ own—and their garden’s own.
“He might be a person who could also drive a car,” she suggested. “I think I shall get a car soon.”
“Oh, madrina, let us be your chauffeuresses!” Florimel cried, jumping up and down, instantly afire. “Jane and I would love to run a car!”
“But not Mary!” Mary interposed. “I wouldn’t be a ‘chauffeuress’ for anything you could offer me.”
“Mel is right; I’d love it,” said Jane. “Do you suppose we could do it, madrina?”
Their mother regarded them thoughtfully, her head on one side, as if the car were waiting and the question admitted no delay in answering.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’m not fond of seeing girls do men’s work. Yet you two are rather the sort to carry it off well; do it well and not have the effect of oversmartness. We might make it a success. But that has nothing to do with the gardener and his driving; you couldn’t look after the car altogether.”
“Now just imagine sitting up in the front seat, with your hands on the wheel, and stooping over to change gears, in that easy way, just as if you’d shifted gears for ages!” cried Florimel, in irrepressible rapture over the picture.
“I always thought that I should like to blow one of those horns, that sound like sudden hysterics, right behind a fearfully stout man who had no idea a car was near,” said Jane, candidly acknowledging this naughty-small-boy ambition.
“How does one get servants in Vineclad?” Mrs. Garden persisted, intent upon her new idea. “I want a man about the place; we need one. Shall we advertise?”
“I suppose so,” Mary hesitated. “You left us Anne, you know, and she has looked after everything till Jane and I began to be able to help. Mrs. Moulton found Abbie long ago. We never had to get any one. I don’t believe there are many gardeners in Vineclad—or chauffeurs, especially not together! I imagine you must advertise in the city.”
“I’ll put in an advertisement, then I’ll get Win to go down and buy the car—I couldn’t decide on one myself—and see the men who answer the advertisement. It ought to work out perfectly,” said Mrs. Garden, more and more in love with her plan as it matured. She was quite childish about it, as eagerly anticipating her gardener as her car, and perfectly sure, now that she had decided upon them, that she must not delay an unnecessary hour obtaining them.
The second result of the garden party was that “the Garden girls’ cute mother” became the absorbing interest with the other girls of Vineclad. Mrs. Garden’s prettiness, her little ways, her poetical name—the girls declared that Lynette Garden was the loveliest name that they had ever heard—her interesting history and, not least, her marvellous costume worn at the party, were discussed with unflagging interest among the younger generation in Vineclad. Mrs. Garden was so wonderfully youthful that the girls felt no hesitation in approaching her, so her three daughters suddenly found themselves in demand, as never before.
Elias Garden, LL.D., had held certain peculiar theories relative to girls’ education. He held them so strongly that, in making his friend Austin Moulton their guardian, he had laid down the course which must be taken in regard to his girls’ training definitely, under such binding conditions in his will that there was no loophole for Mr. Moulton, nor for their mother, had she stayed in Vineclad, to bring them up otherwise than as Mr. Garden had ordained. Neither of the girls was to go to any sort of school until she was eighteen; then she was to be free to choose her career and the preparation for it. But, with all the preceding years spent outside of special training, it was a question whether one of the Garden girls would be prepared at eighteen to take the required examination for entrance in a school suitable to that age. Their father had insisted upon certain studies for his children, under carefully selected masters. Languages the doctor had left for more mature study; the ordinary accomplishments of young girls he had said should be acquired, or passed over, according to the individual talents of the children. But history they must learn; philosophy they must read; mathematics were to be taught them thoroughly, and, especially, English literature, and still more English literature; and a careful, but not a text-bookish grammatical study of the English tongue. Astronomy and geology they were to read with a competent teacher. The doctor had requested that they be made conversant with foreign lands, through books of travel, and especially that they be given a general knowledge of great art and music; not to draw, to play, nor to sing, but in such wise that they might enjoy other people’s performance and the noble pictures, statues, and architecture which are the inheritance of the ages. For the rest Doctor Garden had amply provided for the training of any particular talent that one of his girls might develop; these things were obligatory.
In consequence of these theories, incumbent upon their guardian to carry out, Mary, Jane, and Florimel were separated from other girls of their age by the insurmountable barriers of their different education. Nourished as they were upon the great English classics, they knew much that girls of their age had not only never heard of, but which a great many people, unfortunately, miss throughout their lives. They were thoughtful and mature beyond their years because their minds were stored with the best of the poets, yet they were wholly ignorant of the world and knew nothing of what children younger than Florimel pick up from one another. They were more than anxious to be friendly to their contemporaries, and they were liked for their wit, their friendliness, their beauty. But the other Vineclad girls pronounced the Garden girls “queer,” that convenient word, covering what is not clearly perceived, and, with amiability on both sides, the Garden girls were usually left to their own companionship—which, after all, they preferred to any other.
But now the state of things was different. The Vineclad girls began to frequent Hollyhock House, drawn by the fascination of the charming little creature who was the girls’ unexpected and unlikely mother, and who had been before the public so long, even, it was whispered, having “sung at court!” Mrs. Garden was quick to perceive that she was fast becoming an idyl and an idol to the girls. She felt so much younger than her years, she was so fond of admiration and so accustomed to it, that she basked in the adulation of her visitors and became happier and more contented for having it.
“The girls are so dear, Mary,” she said. “Really, I find them perfectly charming! It would never do to say so, but I think Vineclad is far nicer in its younger set than in its older one. I’m quite happy with the girls, but I find their mothers and aunts a little, just a little frumpy—please, dear!”
Mary laughed. “I’ll let you, small madrina; don’t be afraid to say it! I’m so glad that the girls amuse you! It must be because we’ve got our labels on wrong; we are your mother and you are our little girl!”
“Oh, you’re not pokey, Mary; not you, nor Jane, nor Florimel; not a bit! You are much the cleverest girls here, as you are the prettiest. That isn’t prejudice, because even now I can’t believe you’re my babies, but it’s a fact!” cried Mrs. Garden loyally. “You know I haven’t shown you my scrapbooks nor my photographs yet. Well, I’m going to have them all brought into the garden this afternoon, and Gladys Low, Dorothy Bristead, Audrey Dallas, and Nanette Hall are coming to see them with you. You won’t mind?”
“Why, mother-girl, of course not! We like those girls best,” cried Mary.
“So do I!” said Mrs. Garden, evidently greatly pleased by this unanimous verdict. “Wait! I’m going to call up the Moultons and ask that nice Mark Walpole to come over. Then I’ll call up Win and tell him to come home early. Girls always have a better time with some boys about, even though there aren’t enough to go around! It’s better fun that way, once in a while; then one has the fun of seeing which of the girls score.”
“I’m shocked, madrina!” cried Jane, coming in at that moment and swinging her mother’s scant hundred and eight pounds off the floor in a big hug. “Needn’t bother with Sherlock-Holmes-experimenting on Win! He thinks Audrey Dallas beyond scoring, soared right up to the top of the column and stayed there!”
“Really!” cried Mrs. Garden, pausing with the telephone handle in her hand as she was about to ring up the Moultons’ number. “I didn’t know! Why didn’t you tell me? I love a romance, and Win is a dear boy—always was.”
“We never thought about it. It’s not a romance, yet,” said Jane carelessly. “Win thinks she’s the only girl in sight, except us, and we don’t count that way. But Audrey’s aiming for college, and Win isn’t visible to her naked eye; no boy is! He sees her, and no one else, when she’s around.”
“Audrey may be intent on college, Janie, and not courting romance now, but I assure you I never saw a girl in my life so interested in intellectual aims that she could not at least see a handsome youth’s admiration, even though she would not dally to regard it,” said Mrs. Garden wisely. “Central, please give me Mr. Austin Moulton, 4-8-2 Willow Street.”
Florimel had been on the couch, submerged in a book and a box of buttercups, a combination that satisfied her, mind and body, for she dearly loved the condemned habit of eating while she read. Now she raised her head and rolled over approvingly.
“That’s what I always thought, madrina. I don’t believe a girl doesn’t feel pleased when such a perfect duck of a fellow as our Win thinks she’s the cream of the whole dairy! And I’m sure she’s as proud as she can be to think she’s strong minded enough to go right on thinking she’s only thinking of college! I’m only thirteen, but I can see that,” she announced.
“Just let me order a few thinks, madrina, when you’re through with the telephone; Mel put all the thinks we had in the house into that sentence,” said Jane.
“Mother can’t hear when they connect her if you two keep up that chatter,” suggested Mary. “As to being only thirteen, Mellie, I’ve an idea that thirteen sees most, because it’s so sharply interested in getting facts—especially of that sort!”
“Well, I’m interested in all there is going,” said Florimel truthfully, once more plunging into her book, which swallowed her up as completely and instantly as if she had not emerged from it. “Mark will come! I’ll tell Win now. Perhaps I’d better say who’ll be here, if you think he likes to see Audrey,” cried Mrs. Garden gleefully, perfectly happy in the prospect of the afternoon before her.
“Isn’t it lucky our linnet sings over trifles as cheerfully as over anything worth chirping about?” asked Jane. She and Mary were always congratulating each other on their mother’s childish lightness of heart.
The girls came trouping, all together, at a little before three in the afternoon.
“It’s fearfully early to come, Mary,” said Dorothy Bristead, as spokesman of the four, “but Mrs. Garden told us to come early; she had too much to show us to get through in a short time. Besides, we couldn’t wait. She told us something about the photographs she’s going to show us. Are they wonderful?”
“We haven’t seen them yet,” began Mary, then added quickly, seeing that Dorothy looked shocked: “Her boxes have been an endless time coming; they have been here only four days. Mother wanted us to wait until she had everything arranged in order for us to see. It isn’t that we’re not as interested as we can be.”
“Oh, yes!” breathed Gladys Low fervently. “She told us about her little girl costumes and Snow White and the Easter Bunny! And the flower dress! I don’t see how you bear it, girls, to have her right in the house, and to know she is your mother! I’d be crazy!”
“It isn’t so bad,” said Florimel, before Mary could check her. “Perhaps we’d mind it more if she seemed like our mother, but we take care of her as if she were a—soap bubble!”
“Will you call mother, please, Florimel?” Mary interposed. “Mel means that we can’t help feeling as if some one had sent us something frail from England, to be taken care of; not to be bothered by us, you know, Gladys.”
“Of course I know!” Gladys’ assent was almost reverent. “She’s lovely!”
“So glad to see you, girls!” cried Mrs. Garden, floating into the room, in a thin white gown with pink ribbons, with a lightness of motion that suggested the soap bubble which had occurred to Florimel as the most fragile and beautiful simile that she could use to describe her mother’s delicacy. “I have everything laid out in order in the library. It is too warm to enjoy the garden, and Anne has promised us a little treat after you are tired of my pictures.” Mrs. Garden laid her hand caressingly on the shoulder of the girl nearest to her. It was Audrey Dallas, who reddened with delight, raising her eyes adoringly to Mrs. Garden’s deep-blue ones, eyes that were bright yet full of appealing pathos.
Mrs. Garden led the way into the library. Tables, the couch, several chairs were stacked with photographs and scrapbooks.
“It must seem queer to you to see so many, but, when one is before the public, photographs are made constantly of her, and I’ve one of each, at least. And I’ve kept my press notices, the poems, and all such things written to me. It’s great fun; one can’t help feeling as if the whole world were one’s personal friend, though it’s all nonsense, of course.” Mrs. Garden had talked, skimming over her trophies to select her point of beginning. Soon she was in full tide of joyous reminiscence. Win and Mark came in quietly, but nobody noticed them beyond a careless glance of welcome. Illustrating her stories with a photograph of herself as a street sweeper, the White Rabbit, the Easter Bunny, a flower, a bird, a little child, in various childish employments; young shop girls, dreaming maidens, Juliet, Rosalind, endless rôles, Mrs. Garden related something funny, exciting, or sad that had befallen her in each of these characterizations. Her audience laughed till they were weak; or quivered, sharing her danger; or were saddened by her long-dried tears. The gifted little lady herself was in high spirits, reliving her triumphs, seeing again, repeated in this young audience in her American library, the effects she had produced on her mixed audiences in the English halls, theatres, and drawing-rooms. Her voice was gone, but she hummed for them some of her songs, producing by her perfect phrasing, with the words, considerable of the effect her singing had made. She recited for them, and the girls could not contain half their rapture. Her own three girls were entranced. Jane was wrought up to a frenzy of admiring pride in her. Florimel could not repress herself and actually cheered one number, carried beyond remembrance of conventions that forbid mad applause of one’s own.
Mary broke down and actually cried at the end of a pretty bit of child pathos. She was completely overwhelmed, and a little aghast, to discover talent, the like of which her inexperience had never encountered, shut up in her own mother’s slender body. She felt, as Gladys Low had felt for her, that it was almost past bearing to have such a gifted being one’s own mother, living under the same roof.
Win, first of any one, discovered Anne standing with a tray in her hands, which she had forgotten, waiting for the end of a recitation, forgetting that she thus was waiting.
“You lamb!” exclaimed Anne aloud as her beloved lady ended. And the words made every one, Anne included, laugh, and this brought the emotional part of the entertainment to a close.
“But there’s no end more that I know!” exclaimed Mrs. Garden naïvely, as she took a lettuce sandwich and welcomed her tea.
“Let me tell you a secret!” said Audrey Dallas, as she, too, accepted a sandwich, but preferred the lemonade as the alternative to tea which Anne had provided. “A New York paper, the Morning Planet, takes items which I send it, sometimes, for the Sunday issue.”
“Audrey! You do! You do!” cried Nanette Hall, with varying emphasis, but one emotion of amazement.
“Sometimes, Nan,” said Audrey, laughing. “Will you mind if I write about your having come back to America, to Vineclad, where you had lived as a bride, and how you had returned to your career, leaving your children here? And how you were now resting and delighting your friends, as you had delighted thousands of the English public? You know how they always say those things! And may I say that you were known to the world as Miss Lynette Devon, your maiden name, but in private were Mrs. Elias Garden, the widow of Elias Garden, LL.D., a scholar who had lived an exceedingly private life in Vineclad, New York? And then will you care if I add something about the happiness your talent gives your neighbours when you are kind enough to entertain them? It wouldn’t sound like this when I’d written it, you know, but this would be the material I’d use. Would you mind, dear Mrs. Garden?”
“Not in the least,” said Mrs. Garden. “It would be rather nice of you, Audrey—I can’t call you girls Miss; you’re my daughters’ friends, you see! Then I’d mail copies of that paper over to England, and people would know I still lived. The London papers could be got to copy it. Oh, girls, sometimes it tears my heart to know I’m laid on the shelf!” Tears sprang into Mrs. Garden’s eyes and glistened on her cheeks.
“Steady, Lynette,” Win interposed. “Just look at the three jam-and-honey pots you found on the shelf, waiting you here!”
“Oh, I know, Win; I do know, really!” cried the artist. “And I’m happy here, truly! But they used to applaud me so, and call: ‘Lynette! Ah, Lynette, our pet! You can do it, you bet!’ from the galleries, don’t you know; the boys! And the flowers they sent me and the sweets! And it was all as if they liked me, the me back of it all, don’t you know! One can’t help loving all that. But the girls are dear to me, simply dear to me! Indeed I’m grateful!”
Mary put her arm around her with the gesture she used when she saw that her fragile mother was overtired.
“We don’t ‘like’ you, Lynette, our pet!” she whispered. “We love you, as all England could never love you.”
“We don’t send you flowers; we just lay our glorious garden at your feet,” said Jane.
“As to sweets and poems and presents, what’s that? Look at us; you’ve got us here,” Florimel summed up conclusively.
“We think you have all Vineclad, Mrs. Garden,” said Audrey. “We girls are simply crazy over you; crazy, that’s all!”
“Quite enough,” interposed Win heartily, tired of this sort of girlish sentimentality. “You all give Mrs. Garden treacle out of a huge spoon, the way Mrs. Squeers fed it to the boys in the school. I’ll walk with you, Audrey, if you’re going home, as I see you’re making ready to do. I’ve an errand past your house.”
“Got it up after you knew Audrey was to be here, Win?” asked Florimel.
“It’s to fetch my shoes, which I left to be straightened by the shoemaker last week, Miss,” said Win severely. “Not that it would not be to my credit if I did provide myself with a reason for walking with Audrey.”
“With any of us, Win,” said Audrey, almost too unconsciously to be unconscious. “Of course the shoes will wait.”
Win feigned not to hear this suggestion; he departed with the girls, to turn off with Audrey at her corner.
Mark accepted with alacrity an invitation to stay to tea.
“I wonder if Audrey acts like that just to make Win want to go all the more? Couldn’t make me believe she’s plain stupid! Isn’t it fun to watch ’em? When I’m older, if there’s a boy in Vineclad—they’re not too plenty, not older ones—I’m going to take in everything that comes my way,” announced Florimel, cramming a round tea cake into her mouth in two bites to free her hands for carrying out teacups.
“You seem to be beginning now, Mel,” Jane commented.