Cicely and Other Stories Part 3

"She offered Miss Alida a taste out of the little pasteboard box she carried. To Miss Alida's horror, she found it was a package of roach paste, warranted to be a deadly poison to insects. Miss Alida hurried the child into the house and set to work so skilfully that by the time the doctor reached there, nothing was left for him to do. He said that Doris would have died but for Miss Alida's medical knowledge and immediate attention. If nothing had been done until he arrived, it would have been too late to save the child.

"Ada got home about the time he p.r.o.nounced Doris entirely out of danger, and was so frightened when she heard what had happened that she went from one fainting spell into another. This morning we found where Doris got the poison, and learned that the little child at the cottage died in the night. Ada is so unnerved that she is nearly frantic, thinking how near she came to losing Doris. She is so grateful to Miss Alida that she would go through fire and water to serve her in any way. Well, we all would, in fact," added the young man, with a suspicion of huskiness in his voice. "You see, Doris is the only grandchild in the family, and we are almost foolishly fond of her."

Detaching a locket from his watch-chain, he handed it to the judge.

"Here is a miniature of her," he said. The judge looked at the beautiful baby face framed in its golden curls, and then glanced up at Alida, who had returned, dressed for her drive.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HID HER FACE IN A GREAT BUNCH OF ROSES."]

"Thank G.o.d for such a sensible little daughter!" he said with fervour, as he rose and kissed her.

This was not the last time that Ben Fuller was sent to escort Alida to his sister. Mrs. Cranford's grat.i.tude grew into an intense affection for the girl. All winter she sent for her on every possible occasion, to drive with her, to dine, to go to the opera, or attend some entertainment. She was constantly planning some new way to give Alida pleasure. Finding her deeply interested in the children at the hospital, she sent a beautiful tree out to them on Christmas day, in Alida's name. When February 14th came again, a great package of valentines found its way to Alida for the children--enough for every child in every ward, and the finest that could be bought in the city.

Doctor Agnes came up to Alida's room to help her sort and address them. "You certainly have your share this year," she said, laughing.

"Do you remember what a slough of despond you were in a year ago?"

Alida smiled happily, and then hid her face in a great bunch of roses on her dressing-table. The little note that had come with the flowers was still in her hand, and she had just reread it.

"St. Valentine has brought me something else," she said, hesitatingly.

"Doctor Agnes, I'm to be Ben's valentine at the party to-night, and he--he thinks that I am really homely in the archaic sense."

THE HAND OF DOUGLAS

[Ill.u.s.tration]

THE HAND OF DOUGLAS

"Hurry, Mary Lee, it is nearly train time!" called Mrs. Marker, where she sat in a dingy little dining-room, pouring out a cup of coffee in nervous haste for her daughter's early breakfast. The brand-new hand-satchel on the lounge, packed for its first journey, was the only thing in the room undimmed by service. Even at this early hour the house felt hot and stuffy, for the August sun was fast warming the great Southern city to a heat that would be intolerable by noon.

"I wish you were going with Mary Lee, Henry," said Mrs. Marker, looking across the table at her husband as he seated himself. "You need the rest."

There was a weary stoop in the man's shoulders that told of years spent over a bookkeeper's desk, and his face was pale and worn. "Don't say that in Mary Lee's hearing," he answered. "It is the child's first real outing, and I would not have her pleasure marred by a single thought of my work or ill health."

It was the greatest disappointment of Henry Marker's life that he had not been able to give his daughter all that other fathers gave theirs.

Both he and his wife had been gently reared, and it was through no fault of his that their property had been swept away just as he was launching into his profession. A place at a bookkeeper's desk had been the first thing that he had been able to obtain.

He felt Mary Lee's lack of advantages more than she did. With the exception of a few excursions into the country, she had lived all her seventeen years in this dingy little house on a side street. Her mother had been her only teacher, and the men and women found in the books of her father's library her only companions. Mary Lee was a sociable creature; she longed for the companions.h.i.+p of girls of her own age. To be a debutante, to have the seasons filled with a round of visiting and receiving, to meet brilliant people, and to number one's friends by the score--this to her simple little heart seemed the height of happiness.

Now for the first time in her life she was to have a taste of it. Miss Travis Dent had invited her to spend a month with her at Wicklett Springs, a fas.h.i.+onable summer resort, in a house full of interesting people, whose sayings and doings were already familiar to her through the society columns of the daily papers. She was to be Travis's guest.

The rest of it, the railroad expenses, the new trunk and the new clothes which footed up to such an enormous sum in her eyes, were of her father's giving, and she promised herself a happiness in proportion to the sacrifice he had made to provide for her.

"Hurry, Mary Lee!" called her mother, again. At the second call there was a light rustle through the hall, and the bright face looking in at the door seemed to transform all its surroundings.

"I couldn't come any sooner, mother dear, for admiring myself in my new travelling-clothes. Oh, I'm such a fine peac.o.c.k in all my fine feathers!" she said, pausing to give her father a quick hug before she took her place at the table. "Do tell me that I look like a real born-to-the-purple, tailor-made girl."

Her father looked at her critically from the crown of her simple travelling-hat to the tips of her little shoes, and there was an unmistakable gleam of pride in his eyes as he completed his survey.

"Yes, you do," he said, slowly. "You would pa.s.s muster anywhere. I don't mean your clothes alone; but it is written all over you, so plainly that even a stranger must see at a glance, 'This is a real little lady!'"

A little later they were bidding each other good-bye on a parlour car in the Union Depot. Travis Dent had joined them.

"I could not send my little girl in better company," thought Mr.

Marker, as he shook hands with the serene young woman who came forward to meet them, with a sweet unconsciousness of self in her greeting.

There were depths in Travis Dent's grave, gray eyes that bespoke a strong, self-reliant character.

The train was beginning to move. Mary Lee waved a last good-bye and went back to Travis. Settling herself luxuriously in the big cus.h.i.+oned chair, she smiled across at her friend. "Isn't it lovely!" she exclaimed. "I want to begin a letter home this minute and tell them the good times have begun."

For ten summers the ancestral home of the Wickletts had been turned into a boarding-house, but apparently it ignored the change with the same high-born ease of manner that characterised its gentle old mistress. The hospitality it extended to its paying guests was the same with which it welcomed its many visitors in ante-bellum days. And Miss Philura Wicklett was the same. They were wonderfully alike, the aristocratic old mansion and Miss Philura. Indeed, one could scarcely think of her apart from her familiar background of tall, white pillars, as stately and dignified as herself. The old portraits looking down on the faces round the great polished table, saw familiar ones, for the same family types were repeated there year after year among the boarders that had been welcomed at Wicklett generations before. The long mirrors, reflecting dimly the young faces peering into them now, had flashed back the smiles of mothers and grandmothers of these girls many a time, when gay house parties thronged the old mansion.

People flocked from all over the country to drink the waters of the chalybeate springs near by, which the name of Wicklett made famous; but a new hotel had been built for the strangers. Only the first families, who claimed Miss Philura's friends.h.i.+p, knew the open sesame to her great front door. It was for this reason that there was much surprise and many exclamations of wonder, and a stir all round the luncheon table, when Miss Philura announced that she was expecting Miss Marker and Miss Dent to spend August with her. "Where are they from, Miss Philura?" asked Molly Glendenning, a tall brunette, who was the acknowledged belle of the springs that season.

"From your own city, my dear," was the placid answer. "They live somewhere on Bank Street, I believe."

"Why, I have never even heard of them," said Molly Glendenning, with a slight arching of her black eyebrows at mention of the street.

Miss Philura hesitated and coloured slightly. "I must acknowledge,"

she said, with some hesitation, "that I have departed from my usual custom, and it is only fair to you to inform you that they do not move in your set at home. Miss Dent's father was a painter by trade, but is now a wealthy contractor. She has had every advantage, is a college graduate, and has had her voice cultivated abroad. She will be quite an acquisition to us. Miss Marker is just a little schoolgirl, but well connected, I understand. Her mother was a Monroe. I knew her father when he was just beginning the study of law. He had a very brilliant career in prospect, apparently, but through some sad freak of fate lost his money and was obliged to abandon it. He is bookkeeper now for Bement & Ahlering."

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'WHY, I HAVE NEVER EVEN HEARD OF THEM'"]

A stony silence greeted Miss Philura's explanation, for a moment, and then several expostulatory voices asked in chorus, "Oh, Miss Philura!

How could you consent to their coming? A common workingman's daughter!

We don't want to know her, I'm sure!"

There was a touch of hauteur in Miss Philura's manner, that any one should question any act of hers. "As I stated before," she said, coldly, "I had the best of reasons. Surely, if I with my conservative ideas can endorse them, that ought to be enough. There are not two more ladylike girls in the South than Travis Dent and Mary Lee Marker.

I hope you will find one another agreeable during the little time they will be here."

Miss Philura, somewhat deaf, did not hear the undertone pa.s.sing round the table, as she turned her attention to the making of the salad dressing. "A sign-painter's daughter!" said Molly Glendenning, with a shrug of the shoulders. "Well, I for one do not care to know her.

People educated above their station in life are apt to be presuming.

It might make matters a trifle awkward next winter if she should attempt to push her acquaintance when we go back to town."

"It will be easy enough to ignore them," answered her cousin Cora, "and I shall do it with a vengeance. It is one thing to be nice and friendly with shopgirls and factory hands, and quite another to take up with the well-to-do middle cla.s.s. Give them an inch and they'll take an ell every time. First thing you know they'll turn round and patronise you."

The subject was still under discussion when they rose from the table and followed Molly Glendenning out into the wide hall. "They'll not stay long!" she exclaimed when they were well out of Miss Philura's hearing; "I'll promise you that. They can push in here if they want to, but they'll have to learn Marmion's lesson--'The hand of Douglas is his own!'" She swept her pretty pink palm outward with a tragic gesture, as she ran lightly up the stairs, and the girls, laughing as they flocked after her, scattered to their rooms for their afternoon siesta.

It was in the heat and drowsiness of mid-afternoon that Travis and Mary Lee reached Wicklett, and stood looking down the long shady avenue leading to the house.

"Oh, Travis!" exclaimed Mary Lee, catching her breath with a gasp of admiration. "Isn't it beautiful and still? It seems as if we might be on enchanted ground, and that the palace of the Sleeping Beauty. I never dreamed that anything could be so lovely."

She nodded toward the velvety green terraces, with their marble urns of flowers, stretching one above another until they reached the stately white pillars of the old mansion, where two stone lions guarded the white steps. On the highest terrace a peac.o.c.k stood motionless, his resplendent feathers spread to the sun. Here and there deserted hammocks swung under the trees, with books and magazines scattered invitingly underneath. Mary Lee turned aside from the path to look at the t.i.tle of one in pa.s.sing.

"'Gray Days and Gold,'" she read aloud. "How can any one leave such a treasure on the gra.s.s? Surely, Travis, they must be all golden days here. I have never imagined anything so beautiful."