mark walpole came up the walk at a rapid gait, swinging one arm and breathing through his puckered lips as though he were whistling, though the tune of it was in his mind only; no sound came forth. mary met him at the door with her pretty air of self-forgetfulness and absorption in others, the manner that was all mary’s, as if she were an anxiously motherly old lady and, at the same time, a childishly innocent young girl.
“you were gone a long time; was it a nice visit?” she asked.
“great!” cried mark, in a tone that left no doubt of his sincerity. “such a collection as mr. moulton has made! i never saw plants pressed and preserved like his. he says he has discovered a trifling secret, but a big one, that makes his specimens less brittle. and his book is all right, too! he is writing from a new angle.58 i don’t see how he will ever finish it. maybe some younger man will carry it on. that’s what he said. he said he’d be relieved to know there was some one to keep on with it if he dropped out, some one who understood his ideas thoroughly. it would mean a lot to fit one’s self to carry on this really great book, but maybe if i did my best——” mark left his sentence unfinished.
mary caught at its meaning eagerly. “then mr. moulton does want you to help him?” she cried. “you did get on well with him?”
mark grinned, with a boyishly sheepish look of satisfaction. “as to that, he was awfully nice and kind, in a gruff way that i liked—after i caught on to his methods. and i got so wound up over his specimens and the book plans that—well, i guess he saw i wasn’t faking it, for he thawed right out. he’s going to take me on as a—i don’t know what you would call it—amanuensis, or secretary, but, thank goodness, it’s more than that, because i’m to help with the work, if i know enough; not merely copy and put notes in order.”
mary laughed delightedly, clasping her hands before her in an ecstatic little way that she had, as if she were congratulating herself on being glad.
59 “you look like another boy!” she cried. “isn’t it fine? i’m almost as glad as you are! mr. moulton is a dear, the dearest of dears, but he has to be found out—like gold and jewels! and his wife is another dear. i know you will be happy, and the greatest comfort to mr. moulton; he’s been longing for a helper. isn’t it fine!”
“you girls and your unc—and win did it. florimel made me come home with her, and you’ve all been great to me! i’m awfully grateful, though i can’t say so as i want to, miss gard—well, then, mary!” mark corrected himself, as mary shook her head at his relapse into forbidden formality. “but ‘miss guard’ suits you to a t! i’m not sure i shan’t call you miss guard; you certainly mother this house, if you are younger than i am.”
“she smothers the house,” jane corrected him, entering that moment. but she swung mary off her feet in a rapid hug to illustrate her actual meaning.
“what’s happened?” cried florimel, dashing in from the garden. chum bounded after her; she had lost every remnant of doubt as to the sort of home she had found; indeed her manner conveyed that she had owned the house first60 and had kindly allowed the gardens to use it. florimel’s skirt was torn and she and chum left loam tracks wherever they stepped, which seemed to be everywhere. but chum’s expression was so foolishly blissful, and florimel’s brilliant beauty was so irresistible, that mary stifled her impulse to protest and beamed on the youngest garden and the dog, inwardly resolving to repair damages before busy abbie could see them.
“what’d he say?” panted florimel, jumping up and down in front of mark, whose success or failure she considered her own particular affair.
“he said we’d have a trying time, florimel,” replied mark, laughing at her. “he’d try me and i’d try him, and if the trial proved me competent, he’d take me into his tent and be content; but if trying me proved too trying he’d not try to try me any longer!”
“for pity’s sake!” cried florimel, shaking mark’s arm. “my head feels like a snarl of wool! what do you mean, anyhow? what did mr. moulton say, mary?”
“mark is going to help him, mel,” said mary. “i’m sure it is going to be the best thing that ever happened; i’m as happy as i can be about61 it. did you know you had torn your skirt, dear? and it’s a new one.”
“i rolled over on it, mary, too tight—i mean the skirt was pulled down under me tight when i fell over. i was sitting on my heels, weeding. and chum thought it was a joke and ran over to bite and yank me, so i kicked out, quite hard, i suppose, because i heard that tearing, crashing sound that you read about in stories of ships striking icebergs, and when i looked——” florimel ended her account of the disaster with a dramatic gesture downward.
“make her mend it herself, mary, and then wear it; she tears everything, and you mend and mend for her, and never scold her!” said jane, frowning because mary smiled when she should have frowned at careless florimel.
“certainly i shall mend it!” said florimel, who had never been known to repair anything she had torn. “when i went with you to call on your friend, miss aldine, jane, i decided to begin to mend the very first time anything happened to me! then if mary were sick i could mend for you, when you went on the stage, if that sloppy lot were the way you’d have to be. it was what mrs. moulton calls an object lesson to me.”
jane coloured with annoyance over this allusion, but could not help laughing at the look florimel gave her out of her dancing black eyes, her rosy face pulled down to severity as she spoke.
“it’s a precious good thing i let you go with me, miss, if it was an object lesson and makes you spare poor mary some of your mending,” she retorted. “there’s the telephone; i’ll answer it.”
at the end of the hall jane took down the receiver and they heard her say: “yes. no, it’s jane. oh, mr. moulton, i didn’t know your voice. how funny it sounds. have you a cold? that’s good, but your voice sounds husky and queer, as if it didn’t work right. yes, sir; we’re all here. you’ll be over in about an hour? all right, mr. moulton; good-bye. they’re coming over, mr. and mrs. moulton,” jane said, rejoining her sisters. “he says he has something most important and unexpected to tell us. he sounded so queer! if it had been one of us i’d have said he was excited.”
“no, you wouldn’t,” observed mark. “you’d say she was excited.”
“oh, dear me,” sighed jane. “nothing worse than fussy people! maybe i wouldn’t; maybe63 win would have been home, or you here, and i’d still have said he. coming with me to get ready to see the moultons, marygold? they’ll be here so late we shall have to get dressed for supper before they come.”
“yes. florimel, if mrs. moulton saw you wearing that torn skirt i don’t know what might happen to her,” said mary, joining jane at the foot of the stairs.
“she’ll see me wearing a whole skirt. wait till i put chum out,” said florimel.
mary and jane did not take florimel’s “wait” literally. they knew that putting chum out could hardly be called putting—it involved long coaxing and wiles, and feigned enthusiasm and excitement over a cat in the garden, which had no existence there or elsewhere. so the two older girls went on up to their rooms, leaving florimel to the persuasion of chum.
“what do you say it is?” asked jane a little later, standing in mary’s chamber door, her radiant hair falling over her white skirt and flying around her face in a glory to which mary never became thoroughly accustomed. jane was drying her face as she spoke; she never could be kept in the proper spot long enough to finish any part of her toilet. mary was bent over,64 combing up the heavy masses of her own soft brown hair. she looked up from under it at jane’s reflection in the mirror.
“what do i suppose what is?” mary asked.
“what mr. moulton has to tell us, of course,” said jane. “i’ve been thinking. he’s our guardian, you know, so i think it’s one of two things: either we are a great deal poorer than we are supposed to be, or a great deal richer. his voice certainly sounded excited; the more i think of it the surer i am that mr. moulton’s voice was queer. when guardians in books have anything to tell their wards it is something about money, so i suppose we’re beggared, or else——”
“we’re not!” mary ended jane’s sentence for her with a laugh. “just like the effect of the white knight’s poem, which either brought tears to your eyes or it didn’t! janie, you’re the greatest goose—for a duck! you’re precisely like the heathen imagining vain things! mr. moulton probably wants to talk about naming a plant for one of us; he’s been talking about that ever since he began experimenting with those hybrids of his, which are going to produce a new flower.”
“you’ll see!” said jane, throwing out her hair and running her fingers through it till it crackled and followed them, standing out around her.
“jane,” protested mary, “go away! you make me think of the burning bush and ‘the pillar of fire by night,’ till i feel quite wicked and irreverent.”
instead of going away jane came over and kissed mary in the hollow of the back of her neck: “if i could make you feel wicked, you old lump of goodness, you, i’d follow you around every minute. ’tisn’t fair that mel and i have all the garden badness—all the weediness,” she declared.
just as mary and jane ran downstairs, both fresh and lovely in pale lawns, win came in at the front door.
“what’s up?” he asked at once. “mr. moulton telephoned the office for me to be home early, that he was coming here to tell us all something, and would like me to be here, if i could be. what’s up?”
“we don’t know,” began mary, slightly disturbed, feeling that this must portend more than the naming of a new hybrid. jane took the words out of her mouth. “we don’t know,” she said, “but i’m sure that we have had a lot66 of money come somehow, or else we’re so poor, everything swept away, that we’ve got to be cash girls, at four dollars a week.”
“too much,” said win, shaking his head. “red-haired girls at three-fifty; that’s the rule.”
“they’re coming, anyway, mr. and mrs. moulton are coming,” florimel called over the banisters as she hurriedly buttoned her waist in the back and pulled it down into place after she had done this. “we’ll soon know what it is. mother was english, wasn’t she? maybe we’re earls, i mean dukes, duchesses—oh, noble!”
“we are noble, mel,” said win gravely; “very noble. if we weren’t noble, my dear, we should long ago have dealt with you as you deserve.”
mark was nowhere to be seen, though he was staying this second night in hollyhock house, having arranged to begin his service to mr. moulton on the next day.
“he’s a nice boy to take himself off, but mr. moulton can’t have anything to say that any one might not hear,” said win, going out to meet the visitors. yet when win came back, stepping aside to allow the girls’ guardian to precede him into the house, there was an instant perception of something out of the ordinary on the67 part of the three garden girls. it was so strong that it was as if they had not thought of it before; mr. moulton’s face was quite red, his manner distinctly nervous, and his wife looked greatly disturbed. mary found it difficult to greet them, while jane, who was like an electrical wire in receiving impressions, turned pale and put out her hand to her old friends without speaking.
“my dears,” mr. moulton began, having cleared his throat portentously, “i have an extraordinary announcement to make to you; nothing bad, so don’t be frightened, but it will certainly amaze you. i don’t know how to begin. do you know your mother’s name?”
“there!” exclaimed florimel involuntarily. “jane said it was money, but i knew it was the nobility!”
“lynette devon, wasn’t it, mr. moulton?” said mary, with a reproving glance at florimel.
“lynette devon was her maiden name,” assented mr. moulton, glancing at his wife, who sat nervously on the edge of her chair, as if prepared to render any sort of aid to any one instantly. “you never heard of the manner nor time of her death, did you?” mr. moulton went on. “no!” he added as the three girls shook68 their heads and mary clasped her hands quickly and gasped: “oh, mr. moulton!”
“no, you never did. the impression that she was dead has been intentionally given you, because it was the kindest thing to do to keep you from worrying and longing to get in touch with her. but, my dears, your mother is not dead.”
the three girls sat in utter silence for a few moments after this announcement. mary, white to the lips, clasped and unclasped her hands, looking imploringly at mr. moulton with her lovely brown eyes as prayerful as a dog’s. florimel seemed dazed, and jane, alarmingly white and thin looking—jane had a trick of looking thin under emotion—suddenly dropped over on the arm of her chair and shook with dry sobs. win sat silent, looking rather stern.
“we do not understand,” mary managed to whisper at last.
“win remembers her; he was eleven years old when she went away.” mr. moulton halted again over the beginning of his story.
“he never talked about her to us,” said mary reproachfully.
“i know,” assented mr. moulton, watching his wife as she vainly tried to calm jane, and finally went quietly to find anne kennington and ask for aromatic ammonia. “win had a boy’s resentment against his sister-in-law for leaving you, and for leaving him, also. he was fond of her and bitterly resented her ‘deserting you,’ as he called it. i used to try to reconcile win and teach him to judge mrs. garden gently, but he was too young to learn charity. he helped me to keep from you younger children the fact that she was alive—which he has not suspected, i know—by believing that she had died, and asking no questions.” mr. moulton smiled at the bewildered young man, who was not less stunned than the girls by this information. “jane, my dear, try to control yourself. there is nothing about finding one’s mother alive to cry over, and i want you to hear what i say,” said mr. moulton, with better effect on jane’s nerves than his wife’s prescription. jane stood in awe of her guardian.
“your mother, my dears, was married young. it was not so young that she had not tasted the delight of holding an audience by her charming voice—she sang like the linnet she was called—and by her remarkable talent for mimicry. she was the best mimic i ever heard; she could burlesque anybody, and imitate almost any sound. she was a great pet with audiences over in england, when she married an american, considerably her elder—your father and my friend. he took her away from her audiences and her country and set her down in the old garden house amid the old garden garden. here you, her three babies, were born in four years. i knew lynette as well as a sober codger like me could know such a radiant creature, but i never knew whether or not she longed for her professional life. then, your father dead, florimel a baby of a year, she suddenly announced that she could bear it no longer, but must return to her singing and entertaining. i was your guardian, children; anne was devotion to you incarnate; your mother knew that she was leaving her babies to absolute safety, better care than most mothered babies get. of course no one else can understand how the old life could call her with half the force your baby voices would have to hold her. mrs. moulton has never understood it.” mr. moulton glanced at his wife, who looked grimly at him in return. “i don’t understand it myself, but lynette devon loved her old life and she was unable to resist its lure. she went back, and all these past twelve years, while you have thought her dead, she has been entrancing the english public, quite as great a success as before her marriage.”
mary looked at her guardian, her eyes so full of appeal that he paused.
“what is it, mary, dear?” he asked.
“nobody has been blaming our mother all this time, have they? she is——” mary could not frame her question.
“she is an artist, mary, and everything she does is worth doing, if that is what you would like to ask,” mr. moulton assured her. “she sings good music and does clever entertaining; every one praises her. she is a child and an artist; she could not be domestic, and, as long as her babies were comfortable and safe, she saw no reason why she should deny her nature and stay here. we cannot understand that——”
“yes, i can!” jane interrupted him to cry. “i couldn’t leave an animal to suffer, but i can see why she had to go back. isn’t it wonderful, mary?”
“ah, but, jane, here’s the hard part of it!” said mr. moulton. “you see her days of giving and getting joy in her own way were not long. lynette is only thirty-seven now, and, though that may sound decrepit to you, it is young. and your mother’s voice is gone, her career ended. she caught a severe cold, was seriously ill for some months this last winter, and when she recovered it was but a partial recovery—her beautiful voice was completely gone. so now she is laid on the shelf. she wrote to me——”
“she wants to come home!” cried mary, starting to her feet, and jane and florimel were on theirs as quickly.
“sit down, children; she is not outside,” smiled mr. moulton. “she wrote me that ‘if her little girls were not angry with her for having cast them off for her career, if they would receive her, now that her career was ended and she had nothing but them to turn to, she would like to come here.’ she added that she realized that it had a contemptible look to turn to her children only when nothing else was left, but she wanted them now, and hoped that they would forgive her. she also said, quite simply and, i think, sincerely, that she ‘had to go.’”
“when will she get here?” cried mary, still clasping and unclasping her hands, still white to the lips.
“will any one have to go to get her?” demanded jane. “i’ll go.”
“oh, say, couldn’t she take an airship and hurry?” burst out florimel, her face crimson with impatient excitement.
“if she needs an escort over, i could start saturday, if they’d give me two weeks out of the office now, instead of a summer vacation,” added win.
“she will come with her maid, if you invite her,” said mr. moulton. “she is not poor; mrs. garden is really rather a wealthy woman, i imagine. it is not because she needs support that she wants to come.”
“of course not; she needs us, her daughters!” cried mary.
“and we need her, if only to pet,” jane supplemented her.
“i am bound to tell you one thing, my dears,” said mr. moulton. “you are free to do precisely as you wish in the matter. there were some of us who would not accept the responsibility for you—myself and some of the gardens—unless we were to have it completely. when your mother went back to england, leaving you here, florimel still a baby, you know, she signed an agreement to relinquish all claim upon you and upon this estate. she has no legal claim upon you. i am bound to tell you that.”
“as though one remembered law about one’s mother!” cried jane, losing all hold on words.
“’specially when she’s lost her voice and needs us,” said florimel.
“she could not alter things with pen and ink, mr. moulton,” said sweet mary. and mr. moulton drew her to him and kissed her.
“such true little girls!” he said. “what’s a voice and the public to lose if the loss gains you three?”
