CHAPTER FOURTEEN
“OUR ACTS OUR ANGELS ARE, OR GOOD OR ILL”
Vineclad bought tickets to the Garden of Dreams without stint. It had never suspected its own need of a Day Nursery, not even in its poorer neighbourhood, but it more than suspected its need of being entertained, and it aroused to seize its opportunity.
“It will take more than Joel Bell to restore the garden after the entertainment,” said Florimel ruefully.
“Oh, no!” cried Mary. “We wouldn’t have it if we thought so! Vineclad will keep to the paths and the grass, and the grass will spring up in the first rain, if it does get trodden down slightly. Little madrina, go away and rest; you look tired and you mustn’t be tired to-night, not the stage manager, costumer, dramatic and singer teacher, and leading lady!”
“Why, I am all these things; isn’t it so, Mary?” cried Mrs. Garden, in childish glee.
“And little toy-mother besides! Come along, little porcelain lady, and get rested,” said Jane, putting her arm around her mother’s willowy waist and drawing her along.
“Jane found the word, Florimel; Jane always does!” cried Mary. “Our mother is just that, a little porcelain lady! I’ve been trying to think ever since she came what it was that she made me want to say, and it’s Austin Dobson’s line: ‘You’re just a porcelain trifle, belle Marquise.’”
“Don’t know it,” said Florimel, too preoccupied to be interested in poetical labels and their suitability. “Can’t you come and see, once more, if all my costumes are right, Mary?”
“I have a few last stitches to take on my Florence Nightingale dress; a red cross to sew on, and the cap isn’t right. I’ll do it in your room and look yours over at the same time, though we have made sure of yours over and over, Mellie,” said patient Mary.
To do Florimel justice she usually aroused to see Mary’s readiness to serve when her hands were more than full. She did so now. Throwing her arms around her in a hug that was more expressive than considerate, she cried:
“You dear old Mary-Job, you! Why don’t you say: ‘Get out with you, you selfish little black gypsy! I’ve got enough to do to attend to myself. Besides, you’ve been attended to! And, besideser, nobody will look at a snip like you when Jane and I are around!’ But no! You tell me you’ll ‘look me over again’ while you sew your own things—at the eleventh hour! But you won’t; I’ll ask Anne. Only she wouldn’t know! I’ll get Jane—if I can. I’m always vowing I won’t torment you, Molly darling, but you’re so unselfish you spoil me!”
“What nonsense, Mel! As if I didn’t just love to fuss over you! Come along,” Mary insisted, and, in spite of her protests, Florimel was only too glad to go with her. The Garden of Dreams was to begin at half-past eight; now, in August, the dusk was deep enough at that hour to allow effectual lighting of the myriad lanterns which everywhere were to illumine the old garden.
The spectators—that was not the word for them, either! Those who had purchased tickets allowing them to take part in the game of the evening came, for the most part, early.
Mrs. Moulton proved to be far more useful in her own proper—exceedingly proper—person than she would have been could she have been persuaded to appear in costume in the Cinderella group. The players had but the cloudiest notion of what was expected of them. Mrs. Moulton, acting as hostess, or a reception committee of one, supplemented the boys who gave out pads and pencils. She explained that the players were expected to set down the names of the characters whom, later on, they would meet wandering in the garden, each name opposite the number on the pad corresponding to the number which would be conspicuously worn by the actor; that they had the privilege of asking questions from the actors, intended to draw forth clues to their impersonations, questions which the actors were obliged, by the rules of the game, to answer, but only if they were capable of being answered indirectly. For instance, if one met a girl with a crook one would not be permitted to say point blank: “Are you little Bo-peep?” compelling the bereft sheperdess to answer: “Yes.”
As the darkness dropped down over the garden, warm, fragrant, heavy with August dew, it absorbed and gave back the delicious blended odours from the garden: cedar and juniper and box, white lilies, alyssum, mignonette, monthly roses and hardy tea roses, heliotrope, sweet peas, pungent marigolds, phlox, nasturtiums, and many more living jars of fragrance, uncovered to the sky as perpetual incense, and blended with the tonic scents from the herb garden, sage, savory, marjoram, thyme, and all the rest.
While the lantern-lighting was in progress the old garden filled with arrivals; no one was late, every one was curious to see what awaited them. There was a small but excellent little stringed orchestra, imported to Vineclad upon Mrs. Garden’s insistence; she would not listen to suggestions of less competent musicians to supply the music. The pulsating harp strings, the poignant sweetness of the violins and viols, the accents of the mandolins emphasizing the flowing melody with their metallic tinkle, filled the garden with music as suited to the fragrance-laden dusk, the lantern lights twinkling everywhere, as the birdsongs in the morning would be suited to the young light of dawn.
As the guests strolled through the beauty, admiring it, yet speculating on what was to follow, there began to wander through the paths other figures, each in costume, fantastic, pretty, or ugly, but always suggestive, and each of these figures wore on his breast or upon hers a number, or, sometimes, this number was worn upon the arm, when the design of the costume did not permit it upon the breast.
The first of these impersonations were not particularly hard to guess. Jane, as Joan of Arc, with shield and sword and a rapt look on her intent face, for instance, was obviously the Maid of Orleans, and so beautiful that it was clear why her soldiers would follow where she led.
“Little Miss Netticoat” also was easy to guess, though one of the prettiest figures of the evening. But there were many baffling impersonations; some hard to guess because they were so definite, plainly representing a particular and unmistakable character which eluded memory; others equally hard to guess because they were so indefinite. A continental uniform, for instance, might cover the representative of Washington, or of any of his generals, and a lady in a formal court dress of a hundred and twenty-five years ago might be almost any one in France, England, or the newly evolved Western republic.
The game grew exciting on both sides, actors’ and guessers’. Questions flew through the air, as hard to dodge as shrapnel. The hard-pressed actors were confronted with posers, relentlessly assailing them, backed up by a pencil, ready poised over a pad, to set down the name which a careless, too hasty answer might betray.
“It isn’t fair!” cried Florimel, driven into a corner in her Carmen costume by rapid-fire questioning of six people at once, drawn up before her. “What a lot of you to think up questions and only one of me to answer them! It’s worse than setting limed twigs for crabs!”
But Florimel was hard to entrap; her nimble wit was at its best, excited as she was by the marvellously good time she was having. Brilliant Florimel’s dark hair and eyes, and white and crimson cheeks, made her such a glowing picture in her pretty costumes that she could not help knowing what a success she made and having a good time in proportion to it.
Audrey Dallas proved helpless under fire of cross-examination, but Win’s legal training, or quick wit, or both, stood him in good stead in answering correctly, but not relevantly. He therefore made Audrey’s defencelessness a pretext for hovering near her, slyly to hint misleading answers to her. Even though Audrey was supposed to be looking toward college with an eye of single purpose, the Garden girls were sure she was not sorry that her inability to parry questions kept Win at her side. Win was quite well worth looking at in his various rôles, and laughter followed at his heels wherever he and Audrey went.
Sweet Mary was lovely as Milton’s daughter, guiding the poet’s steps. Mr. Moulton made a good foil to her fresh loveliness in his black scholar’s gown, though Mary told him that he “looked more like William Dean Howells than John Milton.”
Later in the evening Mary, as Ruth Pinch, charmed and puzzled every one by bustling through the paths, in evidence of being busy, dressed in an old-fashioned flowered muslin, with short sleeves and round neck, and carrying in her hand a yellow mixing bowl in which she stirred hard with a kitchen spoon, to represent Ruth Pinch’s famous “beefsteak pudding.”
Yet of them all, players of the game and
actors in it, none was happier, prettier, more
charming, none as successful in acting as Mrs.
Garden. Costume succeeded costume, as rôle
succeeded rôle for her assuming, a wide range of
characters, each as perfectly sustained as the
other. As Ariel she flitted along the paths so
lightly that she conveyed the sense of flight.
As the White Rabbit, whom Alice knew, she
hopped along with sidewise, timid glances, for
all the world like a magnified bunny. As Blue-eyed
Mary, of the old song, she wistfully vended
flowers, slow of step and drooping with fatigue _p0261.jpg)
“THOSE WHO KNEW HER BEST WERE AMAZED AND A LITTLE STARTLED” and hunger. As the Marchioness she flaunted
herself pertly in rags and with a smutty face,
carrying her cribbage board, ready for a game
with Dick Swiveller. And as Little Miss Muffet
she was incredibly childlike and lovely in a
Kate Greenaway costume, carrying her bowl and
spoon on her way to look for a tuffet to sit on to
eat “her curds and whey,” and murmuring a
little song under her breath, like a rhythmic chant
of a happy child.
“She’s perfectly wonderful!” Vineclad agreed. Even though there were Vineclad matrons who felt Mrs. Garden’s talent was unsuited to the mother of three big girls, however young a mother she might be, still they all agreed that she “was wonderful.”
The most beautiful picture of the evening, the impersonation longest remembered in Vineclad, was Jane as Ophelia, however. Jane threw herself into her part with such self-forgetfulness, such enthusiasm, talent so extraordinary in so young a girl, that those who knew her best were amazed and a little startled. All in white, with her masses of red-gold hair falling around her, crowned by a wreath of old-time garden flowers, intertwisted with long sprays of wild flowers, which straggled downward and mingled with her marvellous hair; her pale face uplifted, her eyes set with an unseeing look in their dilation; her hands holding up her apron filled with flowers, which she lifted and dropped, and lifted again, sometimes kissing them, sometimes throwing them from her; singing the Willow Song from Othello, and singing it with a voice as pure and true as it was high and sweet, singing it with an abandonment of grief that proved Jane’s talent, for she had not yet reached the sixteenth of her happy years, and understood heartbreak only through her intuitions, Jane glided on through the garden paths toward the fountain. No one stopped her to ask a question; she could be none other than Ophelia, mad. Conversation died out, the murmur of voices everywhere was silent, as the guests fell into groups to watch this enthralling young loveliness pass, and to listen to the pathos of her despairing song.
“She’s more than I ever would have dared to dream of being!” cried Mrs. Garden in an ecstasy. “She can soar higher than I could ever have climbed; she is an artist! Think of her now, but fifteen! Oh, I’m so glad, glad, that one of my girls is Jane!”
“And you can be just as glad that only one is Jane,” retorted Mrs. Moulton dryly. “She’s a dear girl, very fine and dear; I don’t mean that she’s not, but I do mean that the old-fashioned talents, like Mary’s, make everybody happier than Jane’s cleverness can—not excepting, indeed, first of all!—their possessor.”
“Jane is devoted, generous, unselfish, as well as clever,” said Mrs. Garden. “Of course I know you think so. I appreciate Mary, or appreciate her as well as I am able. I realize that no one can sound Mary’s depths in as short a time as I’ve known her. But you must let me rejoice in having one artist daughter, Mrs. Moulton, please! It is such a great thing to be a true artist!”
“I doubt that it makes a woman happier. I want Jane to find her happiness in simple things—for her own sake. Don’t foster an ambition for a career in her, Lynette,” Mrs. Moulton urged.
Mrs. Garden laughed. “I fancy it wouldn’t alter anything, dear Mrs. Moulton,” she said. “Jane will find her own level. Do look at her, kneeling by the fountain! Would you not be sure it was a deep, dark pool, and that she was going to her mad death? Ophelia ends there; they must all guess it. But what a child!”
“They” did “all guess it.” There was the silence that is the truest applause for an instant, then the garden rang with shouts of: “Ophelia! Ophelia!” to the accompaniment of clapping hands.
Mary had urged that Joel Bell be bidden to bring his children to see the festival which he had, indirectly, suggested. The three little Bells were small, in varying degrees of smallness, down to the baby, who, Joel had said: “Was ’most two.” They ranged from her up past another girl of four, to the boy, who was six. Tucked away in a safe vantage corner for seeing, unseen, the three small Bells had bewilderedly watched many things and people which they could by no means understand, had enjoyed the music, but had finally settled down to adoration of the lanterns swaying in the breeze, as the crown and glory, the wonder and beauty, beyond all the other beautiful wonders which enveloped their awe-struck minds. The baby was too young for her awe to strike lastingly deep. Several times she escaped her sister’s and brother’s competent vigilance and sallied forth from their post, only to be caught and brought back, her protests muffled, not soothed, by firm little hands clapped over her wide-open mouth.
Just at the end of the entertainment, when those appointed to the task were getting ready to collect lists from the guessers, count up correct entries after the numbers, and award the prizes for the three best lists, Nina Bell, the baby, still wide awake when the two older little Bells were getting muffled by sleepiness, saw her chance and escaped once more, this time successfully. She toddled along, her covetous eyes on the swinging lanterns quite beyond the reach of her hands, but not of her ambition.
“Everything comes to him who waits” is more or less true. Small Nina had been waiting all the evening to see one of those luminous bright things close by. As she went wistfully along the path now, a cord from which a line of the lanterns was suspended dropped from the farther branch to which it had been attached and fell at her feet.
Here they were, not one but eight glowing, queer flowers thrown by kind fairies to her fingers! With a crow of joy Nina stooped clumsily—for stooping still involved for her a drop on to her hands rather than a bending of her body—and began to examine her prize. They were as satisfactory, seen at close range, as they had been at a distance. Suddenly, however, as she poked and prodded them and lifted one, they altered. They were no longer flowers, with a single heart of flame in each; they were blazing from one to the other, and Nina held the cord. Instantly her own short white frock blazed with them. She gave a frightened scream. Then some one caught her, held her close, threw her down, beat out the flames with bare hands and rolled the little body in the grass, lying close over it. And this was Mary Garden.
By a coincidence Mary’s final rôle had been Florence Nightingale; she wore on her arm the Red Cross of the hospital as she flew to the child’s rescue, no one else at the instant near enough to render aid. With sure presence of mind and recklessness of her own danger, Mary beat out the flames enveloping the little creature, and saved her! But her own dress was a thin white cotton material, she wore a thin white apron, and her deep cuffs and collar were thinner than the regulation cuffs and collar of the nurse. In saving the child Mary’s costume caught fire. Though she threw herself upon the ground it was not smothered. Win ran to her, his face distorted with agony, in his hand a coat from some one’s continental uniform. Mark rushed after him, not keeping up, for the halting foot impeded him and he hated it as he had never before hated his impediment. He had snatched up a rug which Mrs. Moulton had been standing on all the evening; with it he made his best speed toward Mary. All the other men ran toward her when the alarm spread, but Win and Mark reached her first, and they wrapped her in the coat and the rug, tearing from her the flaming garments beneath them which threatened her.
The cries of little Nina had turned attention in that direction; to this alone Mary owed her chance to live. Only her outer clothing, her dress and apron, caught at first; help reached her before her inner garments had led the fire to her tender flesh. Yet, fight as they best could, with many hands hastening to help Win and Mark, the blazing materials could not be extinguished till Mary was badly burned. She lay in merciful unconsciousness upon the grass, the dark rug and blue and yellow coat enveloping her, her sweet face unmarred, as her head in a hollow of the grass let it turn up, white and drawn, to the star-strewn sky.
“What an end to our evening!” groaned Mr. Moulton, raising Mrs. Garden, who had fallen, half fainting, beside Mary upon the grass.
“Now I shall go mad; not act it!” Jane said fiercely, and Win turned to put his arm around her. Jane violently threw him from her. “Don’t any one dare to try to comfort me. Mary! Mary!” she screamed.
The love between these two sisters was especially close and strong. Mary heard Jane’s cry and her eyelids fluttered.
“It’s all right, Janie,” she murmured. “Hurts—a—little. Don’t—worry.”
“Take her up, boys, as carefully as you can, and carry her into the house. There’s no time to lose getting a doctor. Any one sent for one?” said Mr. Moulton.
“Mr. Dallas went, in his car, tearing!” said Anne Kennington, who had come from the house, and now knelt, kissing Mary’s shoes, where she thought her touch could not hurt her. “My lamb, my lamb! My Mary sweet!” she sobbed.
They raised Mary, and the lifting brought her back to full consciousness and to agony. But though it wrung their hearts to give her pain, no one could save her from suffering. If only they could save her life!
The little procession passed Florimel in a faint at the corner of the path. Mrs. Moulton lingered to attend to her. Mrs. Garden, hardly able to walk, was helped homeward by Mr. Moulton. Jane walked, erect and ghastly, with great dilated eyes, a white, set face, and her masses of hair gleaming under Ophelia’s mad wreath. Win and Mark, with two other young men to help them in case their arms weakened, carried Mary slowly, as carefully as they could, but she moaned at every step.
Thus in pain, and with tragedy threatening, ended the beautiful evening of the Garden of Dreams.