THE HAPPY VENTURE
CHAPTER I
TALES IN THE RAIN
" 'How should I your true love know,
From another one?
By his cockle hat and staff,
And his sandal shoon. . .'"
IT was the fourth time that Felicia, at the piano, had begun the old song. Kenelm uncurled his long legs, and sat up straight on the window-seat.
"Why on earth so everlasting gloomy, Phil?" he said. "Isn't the rain bad enough, without that dirge?"
"The sky's 'be-weeping' him, just the way it says," said Felicia. She made one complete revolution on the piano-stool, and brought her strong fingers down on the opening notes of another verse.
" 'He is dead and gone, ladie,
He is dead and—'"
Kenelm rose and removed his sister bodily from the stool, for all that she was fifteen and nearly as tall as he.
"The piano's just been tuned," she protested, struggling back, "and the thing has such lovely, cruddly, doleful chords, lambkin."
"'Cruddly's not a word. And for pity's sake, don't call me 'lamb'!"
"Mr. Sturgis, then. Kirk likes it—don't you, honey?"
The child who leaned beside the piano raised his dark head, and turned to her a vividly responsive face and shadowed, unseeing eyes.
"I like all the songs you sing," he said, putting out his hand to her with the slight hesitancy of the blind. "Let her do it. Ken—please!"
Kenelm swung him suddenly up and perched him on top of the piano, where he recovered himself with a small gasp, half startled and half amused. He was never quite prepared for this brother who swooped on him unexpectedly out of the darkness.
"Oh, take him off!" Felicia objected. "I don't want his boots dangling at my ear while I'm playing."
"You're not playing," Kenelm said; "and they're sandal shoon."
Felicia wrinkled her nose slightly at him, patted the warm brown of Kirk's nearest leg, and dashed into the air of "Rolling down to Rio." Kenelm joined in vigorously—it was a song he liked to sing—and Kirk chuckled appreciatively at the armadillo "dilloing in his armor." Half-way through the second "Ro-o-o-o-oll," when Kenelm was achieving startling coloratura effects at the top of his voice, Felicia stopped like a shot.
"Good gracious! Mother's lying down with a headache," she said. "I'd quite forgotten."
"Why didn't you tell a fellow?" Kenelm exclaimed, a little breathless after his flight of notes; "that's a mean shame. Cut along, Kirk, and tell her we're sorry. Here—here I am; slide down me."
Kirk descended from the piano by way of his brother's arms, got his bearings at the doorway, and was gone like a shadow up the stairs, his hand safely on the balustrade.
"I hate her to have headaches," Felicia said, swinging about a little on the piano-stool. "Poor dear! so often. She never used to."
Kenelm sat down again in the window-seat. He knew that Felicia was anxious about their mother, and he himself shared her anxiety. The queer code of fraternal secrecy made him refrain from showing any sign of this to his sister, however. He yawned a little, and said, rather brusquely:
"This rain's messing up the frost pretty well. There shouldn't be much left of it by now."
"Crocuses soon . . ." Felicia murmured. She began humming to an almost inaudible accompaniment on the piano:
"'Ring, ting, it is the merrie spring-time. . . .'"
The rain rolled dully down the clouded window-panes and spattered off the English-ivy leaves below the sill. They quivered up and down on pale stems—bright, waxed leaves, as shining as though they had been varnished.
Kirk drifted in and made his way to Felicia.
"She's better," he observed. "She said she was glad we were having fun." He frowned a little as he ran his finger reflectively down Felicia's sleeve. "But she's bothered. She has think-lines in her forehead. I felt 'em."
"You have a think-line in your own forehead," said Felicia, promptly kissing it away. "Don't you bother."
"Where's Ken?" Kirk demanded.
"In the window-seat."
Thither Kirk went, a tumble of expectancy, one hand before him and his head back. He leaped squarely upon Ken, and made known his wishes at once. They were very much what Kenelm expected.
"See me a story—a long one!"
"Oh, law!" Kenelm sighed; "you must think I'm made of 'em. Don't crawl all over me; let me ponder for two halves of a shake."
Kirk subsided against his brother's arm, and a "think-line" now became manifest on Kenelm's brow.
"See me a story"—Kirk's own queer phrase—had been the demand during most of his eight years. It seemed as though he could never have enough of this detail of a world visible to every one but himself. He must know how everything looked—even the wind, which could certainly be felt, and the rain, and the heat of the fire. From the descriptions he had amassed through his unwearied questioning, he had pieced out for himself a quaint little world of color and light,—how like or unlike the actuality; no one could possibly tell.
"Blue is a cool thing, like water, or ice clinking in your glass," he would say, "and red's hot and sizzly, like the fire."
"Very true," his informants would agree; but for all that, they could not be sure what his conception might be of the colors.
Things were so confusing! There, for instance, were tomatoes. They were certainly very cool things, if you ate them sliced (when you were allowed), yet you were told that they were as red as red could be! And nothing could have been hotter than the blue tea-pot, when he picked it up by its spout; but that, to be sure, was caused by the tea. Yet the hot wasn't any color; oh, dear!
Ken had not practised the art of seeing stories for nothing. He plunged in with little hesitation, and with a grand flourish.
"My tale is of kings, it is," he said; "ancient kings—Babylonian kings, if you must know. It was thousands and thousands of years ago they lived, and you'd never be able to imagine the wonderful cities they built. They had hanging gardens that were—"
Felicia interrupted.
"It's easy to tell were you got this story. I happen to know where your marker is in the Ancient History."
"Never you mind where I got it," Ken said, "I'm trying to describe a hanging garden, which is more than you could do. As I was about to say, the hanging gardens were built one above the other; they didn't really hang at all. They sat on big stone arches, and the topmost one was so high that it stuck up over the city walls, which were quite high enough to begin with. The tallest kinds of trees grew in the gardens; not just flowers, but big palm-trees and oleanders and citron-trees, and pomegranates hung off the branches all ready to be picked,—dark greeny, purpley pomegranates all bursting open so that their bright red seeds showed like live coals (do you think I'm getting this out of the history book, Phil?), and they were this-shaped—" he drew a pomegranate on the back of Kirk's hand—"with a sprout of leaves at the top. And there were citrons—like those you chop up in fruit-cake—and grapes and roses. The queen could sit in the bottomest garden, or walk up to the toppest one by a lot of stone steps. She had a slave-person who went around behind her with a peacock-feathery fan, all green and gold and beautiful; and he waved the fan over her to keep her cool. Meanwhile, the king would be coming in at one of the gates of the city. They were huge, enormous brass gates, and they shone like the sun, bright, and the sun winked on the king's golden chariot, too, and on the soldiers' spears.
"He was just coming home from a lion-hunt, and was very much pleased because he'd killed a lot of lions. He was really a rather horrid man,—quite ferocious, and all,—but he wore most wonderful purple and red embroidered clothes, the sort you like to hear about. He had a tiara on, and golden crescents and rosettes blazed all over him, and he wore a mystic, sacred ornament on his chest, round and covered all over with queer emblems. He rode past the temple, where the walls were painted in different colors, one for each of the planets and such, because the Babylonish people worshipped those—orange for Jupiter, and blue for Mercury, and silver for the moon. And the king got out of his chariot and climbed up to where the queen was waiting for him in the toppest gar—"
"Don't you tell me they were so domestic and all," Felicia objected. "They probably—"
"Who's seeing this story?" Ken retorted. "You let me be. I say, the queen was waiting for him, and she gave him a lotus and a ripe pomegranate, and the slaves ran and got wine, and the people with harps played them, and she said— Here's Mother!"
Kirk looked quite taken aback for a moment at this apparently irrelevant remark of the Babylonian queen, till a faint rustle at the doorway told him that it was his own mother who had come in.
She stood at the door, a slight, tired little person, dressed in one of the black gowns she had worn ever since the children's father had died.
"Don't stop, Ken," she smiled. "What did she say?"
But either invention flagged, or self-consciousness intervened, for Kenelm said:
"Blessed if I know what she did say! But at any rate, you'll agree that it was quite a garden, Kirky. I'll also bet a hat that you haven't done your lesson for to-morrow. It's not your Easter vacation, if it is ours. Miss Bolton will hop you."
"Think of doing silly reading-book things, after hearing all that," Kirk sighed.
"Suppose you had to do cuneiform writing on a dab of clay, like the Babylonish king," Ken said; "all spikey and cut in, instead of sticking out; much worse than Braille. Go to it, and let Mother sit here, laziness."
Kirk sighed again, a tremendous, pathetic sigh, designed to rouse sympathy in the breasts of his hearers. It roused none, and he wandered across the room and dragged an enormous book out upon the floor. He sprawled over it in a dim corner, his eyes apparently studying the fireplace, and his fingers following across the page the raised dots which spelled his morrow's lesson. What nice hands he had, Felicia thought, watching from her seat, and how delicately yet strongly he used them! She wondered what he could do with them in later years. "They mustn't be wasted," she thought. She glanced across at Ken. He too was looking at Kirk, with an oddly sober expression, and when she caught his eye he grew somewhat red and stared out at the rain.
"Better, Mother dear?" Felicia asked, curling down on a footstool at Mrs. Sturgis's feet.
"Rather, thank you," said her mother, and fell silent, patting the arm of the chair as though she were considering whether or not to say something more. She said nothing, however, and they sat quietly in the falling dusk, Felicia stroking her mother's white hand, and Ken humming softly to himself at the window. Kirk and his book were almost lost in the corner—just a pale hint of the page, shadowed by the hand which moved hesitantly across it. The hand paused, finally, and Kirk demanded, "What's 'u-g-h' spell?"
"It spells 'Ugh'!" Ken grunted. "What on earth are you reading? Is that what Miss Bolton gives you?"
"It's not my lesson," Kirk said; "it's much further along. But I can read it."
"You'll get a wigging. You'd better stick to 'The cat can catch the mouse,' et cetera."
"I finished that years ago," said Kirk, loftily. "This is a different book, even. Listen to this: 'Ugh! There—sat—the dog with eyes—as—big as—as—'"
"Tea-cups," said Felicia.
"'T-e-a-c-' yes, it is tea-cups," Kirk conceded; "how did you know, Phil?—'as big as tea-cups,—staring—at—him. "You're a nice—fellow," said the soldier, and he—sat him—on—the witch's ap-ron, and took as many cop-copper shillings—as his—pockets would hold.'"
"So that's it, is it?" Ken said. "Begin at the beginning, and let's hear it all."
"Ken," said his mother, "that's in the back of the book. You shouldn't encourage him to read things Miss Bolton hasn't given him."
"It'll do him just as much good to read that, as that silly stuff at the beginning. Phil and I always read things we weren't supposed to have reached."
"But for him—" Mrs. Sturgis murmured; "you and Phil were different, Ken. Oh, well,—"
For Kirk had turned back several broad pages, and began:
"There came a soldier marching along the highroad—one, two! one, two! . . ."
Little by little the March twilight settled deeper over the room. There was only a flicker on the brass andirons, a blur of pale blossoms where the potted azalea stood. The rain drummed steadily, and as steadily came the gentle modulations of Kirk's voice, as the tale of "The Tinder-Box" progressed.
It was the first time that he had ever read aloud anything so ambitious, and his hearers sat listening with some emotion—his mother filled with thankfulness that he had at last the key to a vast world which he now might open at a touch; Ken, with a sort of half-amazed pride in the achievements of a little brother who was surmounting such an obstacle. Felicia sat gazing across the dim room.
"He's reading us a story!" she thought, over and over; "Kirk's reading to us, without very many mistakes!" She reflected that the book, for her, might as well be written in Sanskrit. "I ought to know something about it," she mused; "enough to help him! It's selfish and stupid not to! I'll ask Miss Bolton."
The soldier had gone only as far as the second dog's treasure-room, when Maggie came to the door to say that supper was ready. From between the dining-room curtains came the soft glow of the candles and the inviting clink of dishes.
"'He threw—away all the copper—money he had, and filled his—knapsack with silver,'" Kirk finished in a hurry, and shut the book with a bang.
"I wouldn't have done that," he said, as Felicia took the hand he held out for some one to take; "I should think all the money he could possibly get would have been useful."
"You've said it!" Ken laughed.
"Yes," Mrs. Sturgis murmured with a sigh, "all the money one can get is useful. You read it very beautifully, darling—thank you."
She kissed his forehead, and took her place at the head of the table, where the candles lit her gentle face and her brown eyes—filled now, with a sudden brimming tenderness.