the house party in the ark—especially because it was to be composed only of the household—seemed so desirable as the time for it grew nearer that the party to see the midsummer night's dream paled before its beacon light.
yet robert gaston gave his guests a blissful evening! margery, gretta, happie and mrs. charleford sat in the first box, with ralph and robert himself for the black-coated background to their brightness. edith, laura, bob and snigs were in the second box under mrs. scollard's care. of course there was no real division of the party.
"we just happen to have a fold in the middle, like a big birthday card," said happie, laying her hand on the plush-covered railing of the next box as she leaned over to speak to edith.
margery settled into her chair, half hidden by the curtain, with a long breath of satisfaction. gretta sat serenely in the middle, lost in admiration of the handsome theatre, the well-gowned women, the rustle of anticipation, secure in her sense of being unknown and of no consequence. she did not guess that many a glass was turned upon her face, with its brilliant tints of red and white skin, dark eyes, and heavy masses of dark hai[225]r. margery and she were rare foils for each other, like a jasmine blossom and a jacqueminot rose. no one could claim for happie regular beauty, but she was alight with life, fun, eagerness to enjoy and to give pleasure. her hair, always lawless, gleamed like tarnished copper, her eyes danced, her dimples came and went, her lips curved and quivered—she was like an incarnate electric current. margery was lovely, gretta was handsome, but happie was charming, and on the whole that is the greatest gift of the three.
it did not take long for the audience around the boxes to discover and grow interested in the theatre party. it was not often that one could see so many winsome creatures together as robert was entertaining that night, with a keen sense of the fact and no little pride in his guests.
not laura alone enjoyed the music of the mendelssohn overture, but laura did enjoy it, leaning far over the edge of the box, her pale face responsive to its spell. then the curtain went up and the girls were admitted to fairyland, to the realm of visions, under the domain of sleep-like trance in which the actual world was no more a reality. shakespeare's poetry, aided by the skill of to-day, wrought the spell. electric fire-flies flitted through the forest, stung bottom's sleepy poll, flew hither and yon at puck's behest, while the owl in the hollow tree winked his electric eyes as the elf teased him. fairies lifted their arms and then flitted acro[226]ss the stage and disappeared among the trees as titania or oberon commanded them; it was hard to believe they were mortals, so perfectly managed was the illusion of their flight. happie put a hand over one of margery's and one of gretta's, giving herself up to the fun of the grotesque players of pyramus and thisbe, yielding her imagination to the forest elves, perfectly happy and unconscious of real life, as happie always could be when she read or saw or heard. not till the curtain fell on the last act in the palace of the duke, with the fairies flitting through the gathering darkness shedding wedding blessings on the reunited lovers to the softly sung music of oberon, did happie stir, sighing. the lights blazed up in the body of the theatre, on every side there was a rustle of preparation for the street. the illusion was over, and broadway, with its roar of trolley and its stream of varied types of life, waited to swallow up the mortals who for three hours had been transported to the kingdom of dreams.
robert gaston had taken mrs. scollard for a walk in the lobby between two of the acts. as she put on her hat happie fancied there was between them an air of understanding. her mother seemed stirred, while robert looked blissful. he helped margery into her coat carefully, and laughingly disentangled gretta's heavy braid of hair from happie's obtruding hook.
"i have had the best birthday i remember, and i'm a thousand times grateful to all of you who helped make it that," [227]he said, forestalling the thanks which they were all ready to pour out to him.
the tea room claimed the girls for two more days, and then came the longed-for friday when they were to go to crestville.
mrs. scollard, alone, was not to be of the party. she and jeunesse dorée, she said, would look after the patty-pans, for she could not well be spared from her duties at that time.
"well, you take good care of yourself while we go out of the patty-pans into the mire," said bob, hunting around for a mislaid blacking brush.
"that's what we did when we went up the first time, but there's no mire now, bobsy; only 'the snow, the beautiful snow!'" cried happie in high feather. their libations to jack frost, which aunt keren had suggested, had not been in vain. the ground was white, the streets were vociferous with the italian drivers of tip-carts, as the "white-wings" gangs labored to clear the snow away in the least possible time.
it was an early start that the eight o'clock train necessitated, but there was no other train until twenty minutes of two, and that would not get them to crestville until nearly half past five—too late and too dark for pleasure-seekers. besides, what was the use of wasting the valuable afternoon which might be gained by taking what crestvillians called "the mail train"? this arrived at noon, in the sunniest, brightest part of the da[228]y. nevertheless, catching it meant leaving the patty-pans at not much past seven. not that there was any doubt of getting off. the scollard family was stirring before six, and the first sound it heard was a pounding on the dumb-waiter, announcing that the gordon boys were ahead of them.
mrs. scollard bundled her youngest into an extra coat as a protection against the mountain wind that she would face driving up from the station, and kissed her children all around with fervor enough to make up for the two days in which she should not kiss them. she clung to margery and kissed her repeatedly.
"good-bye, little margery, good-bye, best of daughters. you're such a comfort to me, dear, and no one will ever love you quite as mother does," she whispered.
margery looked at her, guessing, perhaps, the reason for this tenderness.
"i'm never going to be less than your eldest daughter, mother dear. i couldn't care for anything that took me from you," she whispered back.
then the joyous crowd started out noisily, all the scollards, flanked by ralph and snigs, who joined them in the hall.
they had allowed more time than they needed to get down to the station, and sat watching the crowd of incoming suburbanites hurrying through the outer gates as if new york were a mammoth kinetoscope which they were bare[229]ly in time to see.
after a short wait a personage in brass buttons with a voice of marvelous volume and monotony aroused the occupants of the waiting-room with what sounded like a recitation from the gazeteer, a long list of stations at which this mail-bearing train stopped. the scollard party hurried through the gates, and lengthened down the car aisle, ten strong.
"let's divide up our crowd and sit on both sides of the car. if we're all on one side we'll have to telephone if the first pair should wish to communicate with the last pair," said snigs. "i sit with happie!"
"not this trip, little brother!" observed ralph, elbowing up to take that place.
"happie sits with gretta," announced happie. "and mr. gaston must be one of the right-side people, because that side has a better view of the water gap. all the rest of us have seen it before."
margery slipped into a seat on the right side of the car, robert gaston beside her. bob dropped down behind them beside gretta, and defeated happie accepted ralph's presence and crow of victory without perceptible regret. laura on the other side of the car welcomed snigs as a traveling companion, with a gracious smile, and polly and penny settled down together behind them, immediately to unsettle with excited bounces on the seat, kneeling up to look out of the window, then flouncing down for two minutes in which they tried to convey the impression that they were seasoned and[230] somewhat blasé travelers.
"we look like a bridal party, with margery in that gray suit ahead, and gaston so beautiful to behold in his new top-coat—— i'm sure it's a new one!" ralph whispered to happie. "bet you what you will the people in this car think margery's a bride, and bob and i are bridesmaids."
"and snigs and i the stern parents!" added happie. "rather a young bride, i should think. it's years before margery will be old enough to marry. what do you suppose they think polly and penny are?"
"grains of rice," said ralph promptly. "as to 'years before margery's old enough,' she's eighteen, and after that danger signals are flying."
"humph!" ejaculated happie with more sincerity than politeness.
the three hours and a half journey up to crestville is pretty for the first half of the distance, and beautiful the last half. at eleven o'clock the jolly young group from the patty-pans was looking out of the windows with twenty eager eyes to see the approach to the delaware water gap. laura and snigs were perching on the arms of the seats of those on the more favorable side, and polly and penny had crowded, one in with happie and ralph, the other with gretta and bob.
the train curved around the shining track like a snake, the locomotive plainly to be seen as it tugged along the bend t[231]hat brought it into view from the rear cars. the river, swollen by snows, ran swiftly down its rocky bed and on either hand rose the dark mountains, snow-patched and pine-clad, through which in countless ages the delaware had cut its way to the sea.
"we begin to be proud about here," bob explained to robert over the latter's shoulder. "from this point up we consider our feet upon our native heath and our name is macgregor, of the purest gregorian—if you doubt it, look at gretta."
robert laughingly turned. gretta's eyes were dilated, they were darker than ever, and looked ready to leap across the intervening mountains to behold crestville. her cheeks were crimson, her lips parted by her quick breathing; joy radiated from her very hands.
"it's a beautiful country, gretta," said robert. "how you do love it! i don't quite see how you stay away, when it makes you feel like this to get back."
"i never was away to get back to it before," said gretta. "i couldn't stay away with any one but these dear people. there isn't any one up here that really cares a bit what becomes of me, yet it seems as though all these trees knew me, and the mountains—oh, i can't tell you how the mountains look to me! not a bit the way they look to any of you, i'm sure of that. i see the mountains, too, and how splendid they are, but[232] i see them something as you see your mother—something that i saw when i first opened my eyes."
"yes, i understand," said robert gently. "strange, and beautifully strange, the kinship we all feel for our mother bit of earth!"
the ride up the steep grade from the water gap to crestville seemed long to the hungry and impatient "archaics," as bob had called the ark occupants the previous summer. it took three-quarters of an hour for the train to wind up the fifteen miles, ascending sharply, and with the track curved and inclined so that the locomotive came in sight often, as it labored to get its charge up the grade.
"there's the solitary pine, hapsie!" cried bob, pointing to a landmark that stood out alone on a summit which they passed in the drive from the station over to the ark.
"i see!" happie's voice echoed bob's pleasure, and gretta caught her breath.
"crestville! crestville!" shouted the guard. but the party for the ark was on its feet before the announcement, and penny had bolted for the door, to the dismay of careful polly, burdened with responsibility for her successor who lacked all of her own steadiness.
drawn up beside the station platform as the archaics came around, was jake shale's team. the horses were as discouraged-looking as ever, but the children had learned [233]that their gauntness and melancholy were rather habits than the proof of actual discomfort. they were harnessed to a bright blue wagon body, set on two sleds. the wagon was filled with straw, and jake sat on the seat smiling helplessly, with no change of expression on his cadaverous face to indicate the pleasure that he really did feel on seeing the scollard young folk again.
beyond jake stood don dolor, fairly shining with prosperity and grooming, harnessed to a pretty dark green sleigh with a removable second seat, which none of the newcomers had ever seen before. mahlon gruber held the reins. he was just as limp, just as near falling to pieces, apparently, as ever, but he grinned with inane joy as bob shouted to him: "hallo, mahlon!" and responded "hallo," with an approach to animation.
margery and robert, the latter because he was the guest of honor and margery because he was largely her guest, got into the back seat of the sleigh, and polly and penny were tucked in beside mahlon, with some regret for the straw-filled wagon body and the majority.
"do they let you drive alone, mahlon?" asked bob, tucking in his large and his smaller sisters, and patting don dolor—dolorous no more—on his handsome black nose.
"ye-e-ah!" said mahlon in a long drawn note of triumph, ending with a staccato snap. "yep! yes, sirree! i kin driv[234]e that there horse anywheres. he knows me good."
"he looks fine, mahlon. you take every bit as good care of him as i did," said bob, turning away to join the waiting shale party.
"i bet ye!" said the proud mahlon emphatically, and with the thin giggle that the children remembered so well.
"she couldn't come over," said jake shale, turning his long vehicle with its long squeak on the frozen snow. "she sent word yesterday i'd got to be over till to-day fer the mail train. she was afraid she hadn't the dare to come, fear of cold. i didn't see how i was goin' to make it—i'm haulin' fer a man that's lumberin' a piece he's took over the other side. he's cuttin' mine props and ties. but i told him i'd have to do it a while, to oblige her, and i come. if i hadn't a went aaron could, but i was using the team. so you was to the city, gretta. you look good."
"i am good, jake," said gretta, as keenly alive now as any other distinguished stranger, to the dialect of her native village.
"miss bradbury isn't ill, is she? she's able to be out?" asked happie, rightly construing jake's feminine pronoun to apply to her godmother.
"i guess," said jake. "but she was afraid she might wetten her feet out, so she said she guessed she hadn't ought to went. rosie wouldn't leave her go, for all; she wanted to come along bad, but she said she'd have to[235] let the meetin' you folks to me."
"and she couldn't have 'let' it to a better man, jake," said bob gravely.
the drive up to the ark could not have been more beautiful if crestville had felt precisely as the young scollards felt, and had wanted to show robert gaston the country under its most attractive aspect. a light, but wet snow which had not reached new york, had fallen here on the preceding day. it was the sort of snow that rests on the bare tree branches and clothes them in white. the entire landscape was a study in black and white, trees all white on a line of black limb, serried ranks of black woods touched with white in the distance, white fields, black rocks, all against a gray sky that had the effect of nearness and of palpable softness.
"dear me, it is a lovely country!" robert said, looking about him delightedly. "what a glorious view! no wonder gretta is glad to get back!"
"it was the dreariest, most desolate place to us when we came here last april that one could imagine. the house dilapidated, unfurnished, or furnished with rickety fragments, and mother so ill, and our future so unsmiling! aunt keren was everything to us; she literally saved mother's life, we think, but indeed it was discouraging enough the night we drove this road for the first time," said margery. "there is our ark!"
mahlon let don dolor turn in at the gate. the big sled was not far behind, speed being nearly equal up hill betw[236]een tired horses and a fresh one.
miss keren risked taking cold, standing on the upper step to beam her welcome. beside her stood rosie gruber, as tall and gaunt as ever, but now her gauntness had the effect of an original design, and when the ark had first known her rosie had given the impression of being gaunt from over-work and under-feeding.
she caught polly and penny into her arms, both at once, like a capacious threshing machine grasping at peculiarly succulent little grains.
"well, my days, children, i didn't know you'd have room enough in new york to grow like you have! i guess country air shown you how! you run in and see once what rosie's fixed for dinner! margery, you dear girl, leave me hug you!" rosie's welcome forestalled miss keren's in these cases, but miss keren was welcoming robert, whom she presented to rosie, and to whom rosie extended a hard and bony hand, with a keen glance that appraised the young man accurately.
"glad you come," she said. "it hain't so cold where you live, but you wouldn't feel it if you stayed up to git use to it. my days, there's the team, and bob, and ralph—and happie yet!"
rosie's tone expressed her sense of happie as a climax. the second scollard girl had always been to her the perfection of girlhood.
[237]
in a moment they were all hugging and shaking hands with rosie, while robert gaston looked on with amused and admiring eyes, fully appreciating the relations between this free-born american citizen and the family she looked after.
miss keren submitted to the arm happie wound around her, as they all bundled into the small entry and into the library. on the hearth rosie had built a generous fire of logs, odorous cherry logs, which filled the room with faint fragrance and emphatic warmth. aunt keren looked better, happie thought. and how pretty this room was which they had found so forlorn on its first sight! the low ceiling, the wide planks in the flooring, the comfortable chairs, the table, book-strewn, the shelves lined with books of all sizes and colors, the soft short curtains, the good pictures, the firelight throwing shadows and high lights though it was noon, for the day was gray—how pretty and individual it all was.
"now get your things off while i dish up, and then you kin all set up and eat a while," said rosie, in the familiar phrase which had amused the family so much on their first acquaintance with it.
"let us help you, gretta and i!" cried happie throwing off her hat and coat. "we always did."
dinner was served quickly, generously, and though rosie, who waited on the table, joined in the conversation and asked eager questions, it was obviously not from disrespect, but rather from a mutual respect that did away with inequalities. margery—and for that matter the two [238]keren-happuchs—watched robert to see how he took this arcadian simplicity. they felt, justly enough, that it tested his intelligence and the genuineness of his breeding.
his eyes were full of humorous kindness, he was eating with boyish relish the country viands, and he smiled at rosie's queer ways with a smile as friendly as it was amused.
"well, he'll do!" thought miss keren.
"i knew he'd look like that! he never fails one," thought margery.
and happie nodded approvingly to gretta as she signaled her admiration of robert's appetite for schmier-kase and apple butter.
"we have a long afternoon," said miss keren when dinner was over. "all of my guests know the place rather better than their hostess—except mr. gaston. what do you propose for your own entertainment?"
"we thought we would go skating, aunt keren," said bob. "we four boys—if mr. gaston permits our counting him in—and margery, happie,—all the girls, except the kiddies."
"i am going to stay in the house all the afternoon with aunt keren," announced happie.
"i am going to take polly and penny coasting; i promised it a week ago," said gretta.
"laura and margery, will you desert us?" asked bob.
[239]
"let's all go coasting!" cried ralph. "let's borrow sleds somewhere and coast. it's more fun than skating—we'll skate in the morning."
"much more fun!" cried robert gaston.
"and happie, i won't allow you to stay here with me," said aunt keren decidedly.
"if it's coasting i couldn't, dear auntie keren. i haven't coasted since i was young," cried happie.
"how can you remember it then?" inquired ralph.
[240]
