all the remaining force of winter had gathered itself together in the snow-storm in which miss bradbury's party had left crestville. when the storm was over the sun came out with such warmth that the streets ran in rivulets before the snow could be shoveled into carts, and people paddled about in rubbers hardly high enough, but with furs swinging well back on over-burdened shoulders.
spring was anticipating the equinoxial date by nearly two weeks, and more than the disturbance of spring unrest was in the air.
miss bradbury was eagerly pressing her claim to a home of her own, a house which could be possible only as mrs. scollard consented to share it with her, and which should take the place of miss keren's own destroyed apartment and of the patty-pans.
"by and by margery will be married," miss keren reminded her adopted family. "when that day comes there won't be room in the patty-pans for her to make the promises! and happie must grow up into her own place in the world, the place to which she was born. you can't entertain in the patty-pans. i need you and you need me, charlotte. i want you to let me legally adopt happie as my heir, and i want you to bring your[273] children into a house which shall be equally the home of us all. i don't see how you can hesitate! i could be happy as i never was in all my life before. it has been my lifelong dream to share a home and have a family—how can you hesitate, charlotte?"
but mrs. scollard hesitated. the advantages to her little brood were so great in this arrangement, the consequences of the experiment's ending badly, if thus it should end, would be so tragic, that she dared not agree to the tempting proposal until she had weighed it long and carefully.
while it pended, the unsettled feeling of spring made the patty-pans its headquarters.
"i never felt so queer and upset in all my life!" happie declared to gretta. "i feel as though i were a thin muslin gown hung out in a very high wind by only one clothes pin—i can't tell what minute, nor where i'm going to drop."
gretta laughed. "as long as you see nothing but soft grass all around, it doesn't matter much," she said.
there was no little excitement in the flat across the hall during these days of untimely warmth. the gordons had been to see mrs. jones-dexter by special invitation. mrs. gordon dreaded going on one ground, and remembered the visit painfully on another. it had seemed formidable to call on an aunt whom she had never known except by forbidding repute, but it was almo[274]st worse to find that stern person crushed, pathetically eager to make amends for the bitterness she had sown and fostered, and to do for ralph all that lay in her power. the boy stood to her less as her grandnephew than as the legacy of little serena, the "kind big boy" in whose strong arms her frail life had ended.
another visit had followed the first one, in which mrs. gordon and her elder boy were bidden to meet mrs. jones-dexter's lawyers, to receive the principal which mrs. jones-dexter had set aside for serena's maintenance. the interest of this money would enable ralph to go through college without a care as to his expenses, and next year he would enter columbia.
ralph had been ready to face the self-denials, the effort of working his way through the four years that lay ahead of him, but it was not a little thing suddenly to be freed from this necessity. it meant a great deal to the mother and to both boys, and the flat across from the patty-pans was full of grateful excitement as the march days went by in which these important happenings were perfecting.
easter fell on an early date that year, and little mrs. stewart was busy preparing for her spring exhibition. more than the languor of spring was in the delicate little woman's eye and carriage. lassitude that was rather mental than bodily weariness was betrayed by her every motion. she came oftener into the tea room in the m[275]orning and margery and she became great friends. the young girl's confident happiness drew the older woman to her, and she won margery to talk of her hopes and plans. it was not hard for margery to see that she listened to them much as one reads and re-reads a poem that brings the tears which comfort in their shedding.
mrs. stewart did not return margery's confidences on her own young romance by the story of her unhappy life, nor did she precisely withhold such confidence. by a word here and there the girls learned that the little dancing mistress with the lovely face and gracious manners, was one of those pathetic creatures, a lady cut off from her proper setting in life, deprived of the support that should have been hers and without which she was peculiarly unfitted to exist. physically and instinctively mrs. stewart was ill-adapted to combat the world. margery knew without being told in so many words, that the little dancing mistress' husband had been a german, an extraordinary musician who had given up, for his art's sake, his family, which was one among the lesser nobility of the fatherland. but she knew also that he had selfishly sacrificed to his music the frail american wife he had married after coming to the united states, and that in some manner that margery did not understand, he had neglected her, been cruel to her, and that his one child had died because the heart-broken mother could not give him what he required.
[276]
margery's heart went out to mrs. stewart more than ever when this story had been learned piecemeal. she and happie discussed it night after night when they should have been asleep. happie was enraged by it and pointed out to margery the dangers of marriage, but margery wept over it without so much indignation. she could not help pitying the man who had been guilty of thus wronging such a lovable creature as mrs. stewart. both girls wondered, but never discovered, whether he were alive or dead. margery felt sure he must be dead, or he would have returned, but happie was equally certain that he was alive, basing her opinion on the general feeling that an out-and-out wretch is likely to be long for this world.
one thing was clear: if her husband had been a german mrs. stewart's name could not be stewart. what, then, was it? it was most interesting, and rather exciting, to feel that they knew the heroine of a pathetic story, a story that included an incognita for its heroine!
in the meantime this heroine was preparing for the eastertide exhibition of her school. little serena's death cast a shade of melancholy over the remaining weeks. mistress and pupils alike, missed and mourned the exquisite little child whose pretty ways had pervaded every hour of the winter. serena was to have danced the solo dance, and now the honor was to be penny's.[277] penny was beside herself with delight. there hardly could have been a sharper contrast to ethereal serena than penny was, penny, all color and life and decision. she danced well, with animation, gaiety, abandonment, to the pleasure of the moment. serena had danced like the milkweed silk to which laura had compared her, floatingly, dreamily, as if swayed by the breeze. dear little white serena, who had floated away as softly as the milkweed floats heavenward in the soft winds of september!
the tea room seemed to be more popular than it had been during the winter, now that the warm days made people weary, ready to rest and to sip tea on the slightest pretext. the girls were so much interested in the preparations up-stairs that it was a trial to them to be kept from slipping up to the rehearsals. only laura contrived to go, no matter how busy they were in the tea room. it was laura's way to do precisely what she pleased, though the sky fell.
it was the wednesday after easter, and the exhibition was to be on friday afternoon. polly and penny were up-stairs with mrs. stewart, having come down with the older girls that morning for the last rehearsal of their dances. the tea room was unusually full for a forenoon. gretta and happie were flying about, while margery was patiently discussing novels with a succession of people who wanted to borrow—not merely a book from the shelves, but guidance from the six maidens as [278]to their choice. it was somewhat trying to be forced to meet book talk so early in the morning, to match adjective with adjective, and to respond interestedly to commonplaces. margery acquitted herself perfectly, but happie caught her eye and nearly upset her with the gleam in her own, as, passing, she heard a lady declare for modern writers in preference to mid-victorian novelists—"thackeray and dickens were so tiresome!" she said.
herr lieder came in just then, and happie surprised herself by hailing him with sincere pleasure. he wore his great coat thrown far back because of the heat, but he atoned for this by having his hat more than ever drooping over his face. a look of gloom, beyond the ordinary, he wore, and he went straight to the piano as if for that only he were there.
laura followed him, inevitably. he threw down hat and cloak tragically, and seated himself without a morning salutation to his "little clara schumann."
bending over the keys he sat in silence for a few moments, then he began to play chopin's marche funèbre, played it as it is rarely played, until the awful throbs of the first theme seemed to his hearers like the suffocating beating of their own hearts.
as he ended his head fell forward again upon his breast, and laura, turning to him with her face as pale as emotion could make it, cried: "herr lieder, herr lieder, don't play—like that!"
[279]
hans lieder glanced at her. "this is the third of april. fourteen years ago to-day my only child was born," he said.
"is he dead?" laura managed to ask.
"he is dead, through my own fault. even chopin could not express the despair this day brings to me. i have no right to be here, but this piano is so like my own, and i was so miserable that i rose up, and came," said this strange man. his hands on the keys wandered into more of chopin's despairing music, and laura did not venture to protest, though it suffocated her with a sense of misery that she could not understand.
up-stairs little mrs. stewart was in despair of another sort. again her pianist had failed her. she knew no way out of her difficulty except once more to appeal to laura for help. she disliked to do this, knowing that the little girl was needed in the tea room. polly eagerly offered her sister's aid, and volunteered to go down to fetch her, but mrs. stewart said that if she must bother her dear little neighbors she would go herself to explain matters, and so it came about that she went.
as she came lightly down the stairs the music of herr lieder's making came towards her. at first she heard it indistinctly, but as she proceeded it reached her ears plainly, and she stopped. her hand pressed her side and her lips parted.
"no one else ever played like that, played that like that!" she murmured half aloud. with hardly a pause, as the[280] nocturne ended hans lieder had passed into the rondo of beethoven's sonata pathétique. the little dancing mistress groaned.
"oh, i mustn't listen! it is the day that makes me imaginative. it is the herr lieder of whom the children have told me! but i have never been reminded of his playing before——" she shook herself together, proceeded down the few remaining stairs, and went around to the rear door that opened on the hall, entering the tea room by that way.
her face was so ghastly white that gretta, turning from the gas stove on which she was making tea, set down the teapot she held and sprang towards her.
"mrs. stewart! are you sick?" she cried.
"no, not at all; only tired," replied mrs. stewart. "gretta, are you very busy here this morning? my pianist has not come, and i wanted to beg laura to take pity on me again. but if you can't spare her say so honestly, and i'll slip back the way i came without speaking to margery or hap—— gretta, who is playing?"
she stopped herself so abruptly, turning, if possible, paler than before as herr lieder drifted into a heart breaking little russian song, that gretta was frightened.
"that is herr lieder, who plays for us sometimes, plays so wonderfully," she said. "we are busy, mrs. stewart, but i am sure we can get on very well without laura. when herr lieder plays she is no use anyway. come through [281]with me to the front, and speak to the girls."
gretta led the way through "the portière that hung between the tea and the room," as happie had once said. she heard a sound like a sob that was half a stifled cry, and turned to see mrs. stewart fallen back against the wall, her hands clutching her throat, her wide eyes staring at herr lieder with indescribable terror.
gretta's little teapot fell to the floor with a crash as she sprang to catch the swaying woman. but mrs. stewart was not swooning. she pushed gretta away with both hands as the girl came between her and the piano, at which she still gazed with fixed, dilated eyes.
the breaking china and gretta's exclamation as she turned back to mrs. stewart, drew towards them every one's attention. margery and happie hastened to gretta's assistance and the ladies grouped about at the different tables pushed back their chairs, or arose, ready to offer help.
the stir reached herr lieder at the piano. he glanced over his shoulder carelessly, not interested in tea room events. margery was between him and a clear sight of mrs. stewart, but as he turned away again margery moved to one side, and he hastily looked a second time at the little dancing teacher standing motionless with her hands still clasping her throat, her white face thrown into relief against the dark red curtai[282]n.
herr lieder leaped to his feet, overturning the piano stool. he, too, stood motionless, staring at that white face which stared at him. he began to shake in every muscle of his tall figure. then one long-fingered, thin hand reached out and clutched frightened laura's arm, though herr lieder's eyes did not waver from the eyes that held them across the room. he twice tried to speak but failed. then he whispered hoarsely: "wer ist—who is that?"
"mrs. stewart"—laura had begun, when mrs. stewart sprang forward with a cry that brought all to their feet and made them fall away to allow her passage. "gaspar!" she screamed, and fell fainting at the feet of the mysterious herr lieder. the tall man stooped and tried to raise her, but he was himself in too much need of support to accomplish it. gretta came to help him with her strong young arms, and several ladies present, who were immensely excited at finding themselves witnesses to a drama they did not understand, in turn helped gretta, and between them they got mrs. stewart into a great chair.
"where am i to take her? we cannot stay here among so many," asked herr lieder abruptly.
"her own rooms are above this," said happie. "but the children are there for a rehearsal. i don't know——"
"she has her living rooms above that. do you forget, happie?" suggested margery. "we will carry her there.[283] i will tell her pupils that mrs. stewart has been suddenly taken ill, and dismiss them. let us get her up-stairs before she becomes conscious; it will be easier for her. you are her husband, herr lieder?"
"you have guessed right, miss scollard. i am her husband who never expected to see her face again—nor deserved to, nor deserved to! i am gaspar von siegeslied." herr lieder turned away from margery with a groan, but he turned to little mrs. stewart as she lay unconscious in the chair and took her up in his arms, the expression of his face plainly declaring that if he had neither expected nor deserved to see his wife again, he had hungrily longed to see her.
margery and gretta went with herr lieder—herr von siegeslied—to do what they could for his wife, leaving happie and laura disturbed beyond all possibility of tea room duties being properly attended to for the rest of that morning.
it was more than an hour before margery and gretta came down. in the meantime polly and penny had arrived, disappointed by margery's announcement that there was to be no rehearsal that day, and full of eager questions as to mrs. stewart's sudden illness. "because, happie, it really might make it seem as if the tea room had something unhealthy in its tea," said polly solemnly. "she came down here to get laura to play, and she was perfectly well. and then she came back too ill to come back—i mean she had t[284]o send margery to dismiss us. i hoped the girls wouldn't think anything."
"i'll attend to that dark green lady," said gretta when she and margery came back. "you let margery tell you about it. it's more wonderful than finding grandmother's will in the bittenbender trunk! polly will help me. i suppose laura will have to hear what margery tells you."
"come over in the corner, hapsie and laura," said margery breathlessly. "i must make it short, because there's so much to do here. mrs. stewart—mrs. von siegeslied—is all right now; she won't be ill. just to think that this mysterious hans lieder has been coming and coming here because that piano which mrs. stewart—his wife, i mean—left here reminded him so much of his own! and it was his own! and he had no idea what had become of her, and there she was right above his head all this time! and to-day is their little boy's birthday, and she came down—never came once before when he was here!—and they met. i never can tell you just what happened when she came out of that swoon. it was the loveliest, most painful scene—gretta and i cried with them both. but herr lieder is plainly as sorry as he can be for the wrong he has done, and she is so glad to see him again that i don't believe she knows he has ever done wrong—yes, she does! she knows it just enough to rejoice more in his return! women are like angels; they are more glad of one sinner that repents than o[285]f ninety-nine who need no repentance."
"would you rather robert were just reforming from something awful?" inquired happie.
"girls like stainless heroes," retorted margery with a tiny laugh. "wait till i'm a woman, happie! no, i shall always be thankful for robert's goodness. but our dear little lady up-stairs is in ecstasy at being able to forgive her husband, that's plain. gretta and i felt dreadfully at being present when mrs. stewart opened her eyes and saw that her husband actually was there. she thought it could not be true. but we need not have minded, for neither of them remembered us. we sat and cried and held on to each other quite unnoticed. after a while the two von siegeslieds were able to talk rationally. mr. von siegeslied told his wife that he had succeeded to the family estate and title—he's a baron, it seems—because his elder brother was dead, but that he had felt no desire to go to germany. he had no heart, he said, for life anywhere. but here where he had lost knowledge of his wife, and where she must be, if she still lived, he would rather linger. he had enough to maintain him, he said; his wants were few, his tastes simple. but now that he had found her, he cried, he would go back to germany and live among his own people, resume his own name, give her the place and the comforts that should have been hers. then he remembered us, and he turned to us with his face transfigured. you [286]never could imagine our mysterious and rather fearful hans lieder looking like that! 'margery!' he said. 'it has all come about through your fortunate little tea room. there is no more a hans lieder to play for you. in his stead behold the herr baron von siegeslied. is it not suitable, little maid, that i should be resuming my own name and that it means a song of victory? soon there will be no baron von siegeslied, either, to play for you, nor any longer your mrs. stewart so bravely to fight her hard battle alone, teaching the little ones on top of your heads.' he grew more german, happie, as he grew more excited. 'we are rich people now, little maid, and people of consequence in the fatherland. will you allow us to wait on your mother at your home to beg of her a great favor? i want her to lend me my little clara schumann. she will trust her laura to my wife, the best, the saintliest, the sweetest of women! i want to take laura with me to germany, into my own home, and i want to give her the musical education that shall prepare her to use the talent god has given her."
margery paused and looked at laura who gazed at her blankly, silently for a moment as if she could not understand. then the color rushed to her face and she began to tremble. "me? me to go to germany? to study music? he wants me?" she screamed.
"hush-sh, sh!" whispered margery laying her hand on laura's arm to quiet her, with her eyes on happie's eyes questi[287]oningly. "yes, dear, he wants to take you away for a long, long time, to train you as he thinks you should be trained. it is a serious proposition, but mrs. stew—von siegeslied is so lovely that perhaps mother will be willing. isn't it amazing, happie? what do you say?"
happy looked totally unable to say half she thought or felt. "i don't believe laura will ever be good for anything else," she said sincerely. "and it is too good an offer to refuse—mrs. stewart being herself, and a woman to whom mother would trust laura."
"if i went," said laura speaking rapidly and only half articulately in her excitement, "i would do everything mrs. von siegeslied bade me, and be far better than i was here to deserve it. girls, you don't know what it means! don't let mamma say no! beg for me to be allowed to go."
