Buch lesen: «A Daughter of the Rich»

I
MOLASSES TEA

"Good-night, Martie," called a sweet voice down the stairway.

"Good-night, Rose dear; I thought you were asleep."

"Good-night, Martie," duetted the twins, in the shrillest of treble and falsetto.

"Good-night, you rogues; go to sleep; you 'll wake baby."

"Dood-night, mummy," chirped a little voice from the adjoining room.

There was a shout of laughter from the twins.

"Shut up," growled March from the attic over the kitchen. "Good-night, mother." His growl ended in a squeak, for March was at that interesting period of his life indicated by a change of voice. At the sound, a prolonged snicker from somewhere was answered by a corresponding giggle from another-where.

"Now, children," said Mrs. Blossom, speaking up the stairway, "do be quiet, or baby will be wide awake."

"Tum tiss me, mummy," piped the little voice a second time, with no sound of sleep in it.

"Yes, darling, I 'll come;" as she turned to go into the bedroom adjoining the kitchen, there was the sound of a jump overhead, a patter of bare feet, a squabble on the stairs, and Budd and Cherry, the irrepressible ten-year-old twins, tumbled into the room.

"I 'll haul those kids back to bed for you, mother," shouted March, and flung himself out of bed to join the fray, while Rose was not behindhand in making her appearance.

Mrs. Blossom came in with little May in her arms, and that was the signal for a wholesale kissing-party in which May was hostess.

"Children, children, you 'll smother me!" laughed their mother. "Here, sit down on the rug and warm your toes,–coming over those bare stairs this cold night!" And down they sat, Rose and March, Budd and Cherry and little May, in thick white and red flannel night-dresses and gray flannel pajamas.

Budd coughed consumptively, and Cherry followed suit. March shivered and shook like a small earthquake, and Rose looked up laughingly at her mother.

"We know what that means, don't we, Martie," she said. "Shall I help?"

"No, no, dear,–in your bare feet!"

Mrs. Blossom took a lamp from the shelf over the fireplace, and, leaving the five with their fifty toes turned and wriggling before the cheering warmth of the blazing hickory logs, disappeared in the pantry.

"Oh, bully," said Budd, rubbing his flannel pajamas just over his stomach; "I wish 't was a cold night every day, then we could have molasses tea all the time, don't you, Cherry?"

"Mm," said Cherry, too full of the anticipated treat for articulate speech.

"There 's nothing like it to warm up your insides," said March; "mother 's a brick to let us get up for it. She would n't, you know, if father were at home."

"My tummy's told," piped May, frantically patting her chest in imitation of Budd, and all the children shouted to see the wee four-year-old maiden trying to manufacture a shiver in the glow of the cheerful fire.

Mrs. Blossom had never told her recipe for her "hot molasses tea;" but it had been famed in the family for more than a generation. She had it from her mother. The treat was always reserved for a bitterly cold night, and the good things in it of which one had a taste–molasses, white sugar, lemon-peel, butter, peppermint, boiled raisins, and mysterious unknowns–were compounded with hot water into a palate-tickling beverage.

When Mrs. Blossom reappeared, with a kettle sending forth a small cloud of fragrant steam in one hand and a tray filled with tin cups in the other, the delighted "Ohs" and "Ahs" repaid her for all her extra work at the close of a busy, weary day.

Budd rolled over on the rug in his ecstasy, and Cherry was about to roll on top of him, when March interfered, and order was restored.

As they sat there on the big, braided square of woollen rag-carpet, sipping and ohing and ahing with supreme satisfaction, Mrs. Blossom broached the subject of valentines.

"It's the first of February, children, and time to begin to make valentines. You 're not going to forget the Doctor this year, are you?"

"No, indeed, Martie," said Rose. "He deserves the prettiest we can make. I 've been thinking about it, and I 'm going to make him a shaving-case, heart-shaped, with birch-bark covers, and if March will decorate it for me, I think it will be lovely; will you, March?"

"Course I will; the Doctor 's a brick. I 'll tell you what, Martie, I can pen and ink some of those spruces and birches that the Doctor was so fond of last summer; how 'll that do?"

"Just the thing," said his mother; "I know it will please him. What are you thinking, Cherry?" for the "other half" of Budd was gazing dreamily into the fire, forgetting her tea in her revery.

"Fudge!" said Cherry, shortly. March and Rose laughed.

"Keep still making fun of Cherry," said Budd, ruffling at the sound; and to emphasize his admonishing words, he dug his sharp elbow so suddenly into March's ribs that some hot molasses tea flew from the cup which his brother had just put to his mouth and spattered on his bare feet.

March deliberately set down his tin cup on the hearth near the fire beside his brother's, and turned upon Budd.

Budd tried to dodge, but had no room. In a trice, March had his arms around him, and was hugging him in a bear-like embrace. "Say you 're sorry!" he demanded.

"Au-ow!"

"Say you 're sorry!" he roared at him, hugging harder.

"Au-ow-ee-ow!"

"Quick, or I 'll squeeze you some more!"

Budd was squirming and twisting like an eel.

"O-ee-wau-au-Au!"

"There," said March, releasing him and setting him down with a thump on the rug; "I 'll teach you to poke me in the ribs that way and scald my feet.–You 're game, though, old fellow," he added patronizingly, as he heard a suspicious sniff from Cherry. "You and Cherry make a whole team any day."

Cherry's sniff changed to a smile, for March did not condescend to praise either of them very often.

"Well," she said meditatively, "I suppose it did sound funny to say that, but I was thinking that if Budd would make me a little heart-shaped box of birch-bark, I 'd make some maple-sugar fudge,–you know, Martie, the kind with butternuts in it,–and that could be my valentine for the Doctor."

"Why, that's a bright idea, Cherry," said Mrs. Blossom; and, "Bully for you, Cherry," said Budd; "we'll begin to-morrow and crack the butternuts."

"What will May do?" asked Mrs. Blossom, lifting the little girl, who was already showing signs of being overcome with molasses tea and sleep. May nestled in her mother's arms, leaned her head, running over with golden curls, on her mother's breast, and murmured drowsily,–

"'Ittle tooties–tut with mummy's heart-tutter–tutter–tooties–tut–" The blue-veined eyelids closed over the lovely eyes; and Mrs. Blossom, holding up her finger to hush the children's mirth at May's inspired utterance, carried her back into the bedroom.

One after another the children crept noiselessly upstairs, with a whispered, "Good-night, Martie," and in ten minutes Mary Blossom knew they were all in the land of dreams.

II
MRS. BLOSSOM'S VALENTINE

It was a bitter night. Mrs. Blossom refilled the kitchen stove, and threw on more hickory in the fireplace in anticipation of her husband's late return from the village. She drew her little work-table nearer to the blaze, and sat down to her sewing. Then she sighed, and, as she bent over the large willow basket filled with stockings to be darned and clothes to be mended, a tear rolled down her cheek and plashed on the edge.

There was so much she wanted to do for her children–and so little with which to do it! There was March, an artist to his finger-tips, who longed to be an architect; and Rose, lovely in her young girlhood and giving promise of a lovelier womanhood, who was willing to work her way through one of the lesser colleges, if only she could be prepared for entrance. Mary Blossom saw no prospect of being able to do anything for either of them.

And the father! He must be spared first, if he were to be their future bread-winner. Mary Blossom could never forget that day, a year ago this very month, when her husband was brought home on a stretcher, hurt, as they thought, unto death, by a tree falling the wrong way in the woods where he was directing the choppers.

What a year it had been! All they had saved had gone to pay for the extra help hired to carry on the farm and finish the log-cutting. A surgeon had come from the nearest city to give his verdict in the case and help if he could.

The farm was mortgaged to enable them to pay the heavy bills incident to months of sickness and medical attendance; still the father lay helpless, and Mary Blossom's faith and courage were put to their severest test, when both doctor and surgeon pronounced the case hopeless. He might live for years, they said, but useless, so far as his limbs were concerned.

This was in June; and then it was that Mary Blossom, leaving Rose in charge of her father and the children, left her home, and walked bareheaded rapidly up the slope behind the house, across the upland pastures and over into the woodlands, from which they had hoped to derive a sufficient income to provide not only for their necessities, but for their children's education and the comforts of life.

Deep into the heart of them she made her way; and there, in the green silence, broken only by the note of a thrush and the stirring of June leafage above and about her, she knelt and poured out her sorrow-filled heart before God, and cast upon Him the intolerable burden that had rested so long upon her soul.

The shadows were lengthening when at last she turned homewards. Cherry and Budd met her in the pasture, for Rose had grown anxious and sent them to find her.

"Why, where have you been, Martie?" exclaimed the twins. "We were so frightened about you, because you didn't come home."

"You need n't have been; I 've been talking with a Friend." And more than that she never said. The children's curiosity was roused, but when they told Rose and asked her what mother meant, Rose's eyes filled with tears, and she kept silence; for she alone knew with Whom her mother had talked that June afternoon.

"Run ahead, Budd, and tell Malachi to harness up Bess. I want him to take a letter down to the village so that it may go on the night mail." Budd flew rather than ran; for there was a look in his mother's face that he had never seen before, and it awed him.

That night a letter went to Doctor Heath, a famous nerve specialist of New York City. It was a letter from Mary Blossom, his old-time friend and schoolmate in the academy at Barton's River. In it she asked him if he would give her his advice in this case, saying she could not accept the decision of the physician and surgeon unless it should be confirmed by him.

"I cannot pay you now," she wrote, "but it was borne in upon me this afternoon to write to you, although you may have forgotten me in these many years, and I have no claim of present friendship, even, upon your time and service; but I must heed the inner command to appeal to you, whatever you may think of me,–if I disobeyed that, I should be disobeying God's voice in my life,"–and signed herself, "Yours in childhood's remembrance."

The next day a telegram was brought up from the village; and the day after the Doctor himself followed it.

It was an anxious week; but the wonderful skill conquered. The pressure on a certain nerve was removed, and for the last six months Benjamin Blossom had been slowly but surely coming back to his old-time health and strength. But again this winter the extra help had been necessary, and it had taxed all Mary Blossom's ingenuity to make both ends meet; for there was the interest on the mortgage to be paid every six months, and the ready money had to go for that.

In the midst of her thoughts, her recollections and plans, she caught the sound of sleigh-bells. The tall clock was just striking ten. Smoothing every line of care and banishing all look of sadness from her face, she met her husband with a cheery smile and a, "I 'm so glad you 've got home, Ben; it's just twenty below, and the molasses tea is ready for you and Chi."

"Chi!" called Mr. Blossom towards the barn.

"Whoa!" shouted a voice that sounded frosty in spite of itself. "Whoa, Bess!"

"Come into the kitchen before you turn in; there's some hot molasses tea waiting for us."

"Be there in a minute," he shouted back, and Bess pranced into the barn.

"Oh, Mary, this is good," said Mr. Blossom, as he slipped out of his buffalo-robe coat and into his warm house-jacket, dropped his boots outside in the shed, and put on his carpet-slippers that had been waiting for him on the hearth.

"It is home, Ben," said his wife, bringing out clean tin cups from the pantry, and putting them to warm beside the kettle on the hearth.

"Yes, with you in it, Mary," he said with the smile that had won him his true-love eighteen years before.

"Come in, Chi," he called towards the shed, whence came sounds as if some one were dancing a double-shuffle in snow-boots.

"'Fraid I 'll thaw 'n' make a puddle on the hearth, Mis' Blossom. I 'm as stiff as an icicle: guess I 'll take my tea perpendic'lar; I ain't fit to sit down."

"Sit down, sit down, Chi," said Mrs. Blossom. "You 'll enjoy the tea more; and give yourself a thorough heating before you go to bed. I 've put the soapstone in it," she added.

"Well, you beat all, Mis' Blossom; just as if you did n't find enough to do for yourself, you go to work 'n' make work." He broke off suddenly, "George Washin'ton!" he exclaimed, "most forgot to give you this letter that come on to-night's mail."

He handed Mrs. Blossom the letter, which, with some difficulty, owing to his stiffened fingers, he extracted from the depths of the tail-pocket of his old overcoat. Then he helped himself to a brimming cup of the tea, and apparently swallowed its contents without once taking breath.

"Why, it's from Doctor Heath!" exclaimed Mrs. Blossom, recognizing the handwriting. "Is it a valentine, I wonder?" she said, feigning to laugh, for her heart sank within her, fearing it might be the bill,–and yet, and yet, the Doctor had said–she got no further with these thoughts, so intent was she on the contents of the letter.

Chi, with an eye to prolonging his stay till he should know the why and wherefore of a letter from the great Doctor at this season of the year, took another cup of the tea.

"Ben, oh, Ben!" cried Mrs. Blossom, in a faint, glad voice; and therewith, to her husband's amazement, she handed him the letter, put both arms around his neck, and, dropping her head on his shoulder, sobbed as if her heart would break.

Chi softly put down his half-emptied cup and tiptoed with creaking boots from the room.

"Can't stand that, nohow," he muttered to himself in the shed; and, forgetting to light his lantern, he felt his way up the backstairs to his lodging in the room overhead, blinded by some suspicious drops of water in his eyes, which he cursed for frost melting from his bushy eyebrows.

"Oh, Ben, think of it!" she cried, when her husband had soothed and calmed her. "Twenty-five dollars a week; that makes a little more than twelve hundred a year. Why, we can pay off all the mortgage and be free from that nightmare."

For answer her husband drew her closer to him, and late into the night they sat before the dying fire, talking and planning for the future.

"Children," she said at breakfast next morning, and her voice sounded so bright and cheery that the room seemed full of sunshine, although the sky was a hard, cold gray, "I 've had one valentine already; it came last night from the Doctor."

Chi listened with all his ears.

"Mother!" burst from the children, "where is it?" "Show it to us." "Why did n't you tell us before breakfast?"

"I can't show it to you yet; it's a live one."

"A live one!" chorussed the children.

"You 're fooling us, mother," said March.

"Do I look as if I were?" replied his mother.

And March was obliged to confess that she had never looked more in earnest.

Rose left her seat and stole to her father's side. "What does it mean, pater?" she whispered.

"Ask your mother," was all the satisfaction she received, and walked, crestfallen, back to her chair; for when had her father refused her anything?

"When will you tell us, anyway?" said Budd, a little gruffly. He hated a secret.

"I can't tell you that either," said his mother, "and I don't know that I shall tell you until the very last, if you ask in that voice."

Budd screwed his mouth into a smile, and, unbeknown to the rest of the family, reached under the cloth for his mother's hand. He sat next to her, and that had been his way of saying "Forgive me," ever since he was a tiny boy.

He had a squeeze in return and felt happier.

"I say, let's guess," said Cherry. "If I don't do something, I shall burst."

"You express my feelings perfectly, Cherry," said March, gravely, and the guessing began.

"A St. Bernard puppy?" said Budd, who coveted one.

"A Shetland pony," said Cherry.

"The Doctor's coming up here, himself." That was Rose's guess.

"'T ain't likely," growled Budd.

"A tunning 'ittle baby," chirped May.

March failed to think of any live thing the Doctor was likely to send unless it might be a Wyandotte blood-rooster, such as he and the Doctor had talked about last summer.

"You 're all cold, cold as ice," laughed their mother, using the words of the game she had so often played with them when they were younger.

"Oh, mother!" they protested. They were almost indignant.

Chi rose and left the table. "Beats me," he muttered, as he took down his axe from a beam in the woodshed. "What in thunder can it be? I ain't goin' to ask questions, but I 'll ferret it out,–by George Washin'ton;" and that was Chi's most solemn oath.

III
A CURIOUS CASE

"What is it, dear?"

"Bothered–bothered."

"A case?"

"Yes, and I must get it off my mind this evening."

The Doctor set down his after-dinner coffee untasted on the library table, and rose with a half sigh from his easy chair before the blazing wood-fire. His heavy eyebrows were drawn together into a straight line over the bridge of his nose, and that, his wife knew full well, was an ominous sign.

"Must you go to-night? It's such a fearful storm; just hear it!"

"Yes, I must; just to get it off my mind. I sha'n't be gone long, and I 'll tell you all about it when I get home." The Doctor stooped and kissed the detaining hand that his wife had laid lovingly on his arm; then, turning to the telephone, he bespoke a cab.

As the vehicle made its way up Fifth Avenue in the teeth of a February, northeast gale that drove the sleet rattling against the windows, Doctor Heath settled back farther into his corner, growling to himself, "I wish some people would let me manage their affairs for them; it would show their common sense to let me show them some of mine."

A few blocks north of the park entrance, the cab turned east into a side street, and stopped at Number 4.

"Mr. Clyde in, Wilkins?" asked the Doctor of the colored butler, who opened the door.

"Yes, sah; jes' up from dinner, sah, to see Miss Hazel."

"Tell him I want to see him in the library."

"Yes, sah." He took the Doctor's cloak and hat, hesitating a moment before leaving, then turning, said: "'Scuse me, sah, but Miss Hazel ain't more discomposed?"

"No, no, Wilkins; Miss Hazel is doing fairly well."

"Thank you, sah;" and Wilkins ducked his head and sprang upstairs.

"Why, Dick," said Mr. Clyde, as he entered the library hurriedly, "what's wrong?"

"The world in general, Johnny, and your world in particular, old fellow."

"Is Hazel worse?" The father's anxiety could be heard in the tone with which he put the question.

"I 'm not satisfied, John, and I 'm bothered."

When Doctor Heath called his friend "John," Mr. Clyde knew that the very soul of him was heavily burdened. The two had been chums at Yale: the one a rich man's son; the other a country doctor's one boy, to whom had been bequeathed only a name honored in every county of his native state, a good constitution, and an ambition to follow his father's profession. The boy had become one of the leading physicians of the great city in which he made his home; his friend one of the most sought-after men in the whirling gayeties of the great metropolis. As he stood on the hearth with his back to the mantel waiting for the physician's next word, he was typical of the best culture of the city, and the Doctor looked up into the fine face with a deep affection visible in his eyes.

"Going out, as usual, John?"

"Only to the Pearsells' reception. Don't keep me waiting, old fellow; speak up."

"How the deuce am I to make things plain to you, John? Here, draw up your chair a little nearer mine, as you used in college when you knew I had a four A.M. lecture awaiting you, after one of your larks."

The two men helped themselves to cigars; and the Doctor, resting his head on the back of the chair, slowly let forth the smoke in curling rings, and watched them dissolve and disperse.

"Come, Dick, go ahead; I can stand it if you can."

"Well, then, I 've done all I can for Hazel, and shall have to give up the case unless you do all you can for her."

Now the Doctor had not intended to make his statement in such a blunt fashion, and he could not blame Mr. Clyde for the touch of resentment that was so quick to show in his answer.

"I did n't suppose you went back on your patients in this way, Richard; much less on a friend. I have done everything I can for Hazel. If there is anything I've omitted, just tell me, and I 'll try to make it good."

The Doctor nodded penitently. "I know, John, I 've said it badly; and I don't know but that I shall make it worse by saying you 've done too much."

"Too much! That is not possible. Did n't you order last year's trip to Florida and the summer yachting cruise?"

Doctor Heath groaned. "I'm getting in deeper and deeper, John; you can't understand, because you are you; born and bred as you are– Look here, John, did it ever occur to you that Hazel is a little hot-house plant that needs hardening?"

"No, Richard."

"Well, she is; she needs hardening to make her any kind of a woman physically and, and–" The Doctor stopped short. There were some things of which he rarely spoke.

"My Hazel needs hardening!" exclaimed the amazed father. "Why, Richard, have n't you impressed upon me again and again that she needs the greatest care?"

The Doctor groaned again and smote his friend solidly on the knee.

"Oh, you poor rich–you poor rich! 'Eyes have ye, and ye see not; ears have ye, and hear not.' John, the girl must go away from you, who over-indulge her, from this home-nest of luxury, from this private-school business and dancing-class dissipation, from her young-grown-up lunch-parties and matinée-parties, from her violin lessons and her indoor gymnastics–curse them!"

This was a great deal for the usually self-contained physician, and Mr. Clyde stared at him, but half comprehending.

"Go away? Do you mean, Richard, that she must leave me?"

"Yes, I mean just that."

"Well,"–it was a long-drawn, thinking "well,"–"I will ask my sister to take her this summer. She returns from Egypt soon and has just written me she intends to open her place, 'The Wyndes,' in June."

Again the Doctor groaned: "And kill her with golf and picnics and coaching among all those fashionable butterflies! Now, hear to me, John," he laid his hand on his friend's shoulder, "send her away into the country, that is country,–something, by the way, which you know precious little about. Let me find her a place up among those life-giving Green Hills, and do you do without her for one year. Let me prescribe for her there; and I 'll guarantee she returns to you hale and hearty. Trust her to me, John; you 'll thank me in the end. I can do no more for her here."

"Do you mean, Richard, to put her away into real country conditions?"

"Yes, just that; into a farmer's family, if possible,–and I know I can make it possible,–and let her be as one of them, work, play, go barefoot, eat, sleep, be merry–in fact, be what the Lord intended her to be; and you 'll find out that is something very different from what she is, if only you 'll hear to me."

The Doctor was pacing the room in his earnestness. He was not accustomed to beg thus to be allowed to prescribe for his patients. His one word was law, and he was not required to explain his motives.

Mr. Clyde's eyes followed him; then he broke the prolonged silence.

"Richard, you have asked me the one thing to which her mother would never have consented. How, then, can I?"

"Think it over, John, and let me know."

The two men clasped hands.

"Let me take you along in my cab to the reception; it's inhuman to take out your horses on such a night."

"Thank you, no; I think I 'll give it up; I 'm not in the mood for it. Good-night, old fellow."

"Good-night, Johnny."

The next morning, at breakfast, the Doctor took up a note that lay beside his plate, and after reading it beamed joyously while he stirred his coffee vigorously without drinking it. When, finally, he looked up, his wife elevated her eyebrows over the top of the coffee urn, and the Doctor laughed.

"To be sure, wifie, read the note." And this is what she read:–

DEAR RICHARD,–I 've had a hard night, trying to look at things from your point of view and see my own duty towards Hazel. Things have grown rather misty, looking both backwards and forwards, and I have concluded I can't do better than to take you at your word,–trust her to you, and accept the guarantee of her return to me with her physical condition such as it should be.

This decision will, as you well know, raise a storm of protest among the relations. The whole swarm will be about my ears in less than no time. Stand by me. The whole responsibility rests upon you,–and tell Hazel; I 'm too much of a coward. This is a confession, but you will understand. Let me know the details of your plans so soon as possible. I have never been able to give you such a proof of friendship. Have you ever asked another man for such? I mistrust you, old fellow.

Yours,

JOHN.