“I just love fried mush and bean soup.”
“You’re a ducky! And besides, I’m going to save on the dessert.”
“Aren’t we going to have ice cream?” Louise’s voice showed anxiety.
“Yes, but we’ll make it ourselves. I found the freezer out in the back shed under all those carpets yesterday. And we’ll have pale-green peppermint sherbet. It’s beautiful and costs hardly anything. You just make lemonade and put in a few drops of peppermint and a drop or two of confectioners’ green coloring; and it is the prettiest thing you ever laid eyes on. Looks like a dream and tastes—wonderful!”
“Oh!” said Louise, her eyes shining.
“We’ll have angel cake for the birthday cake, I think,” went on the sister, “with white icing and little pink candles. Eggs are not expensive now, and anyway I found a recipe that says measure the whites, and such big eggs as we get take only nine to a cup. How will that be, angel cake and green sherbet for dessert?”
Louise sat down and folded her hands, her big, expressive eyes growing wide and serious.
“It’s going to be a success!” she said solemnly with a grownup air. “I was afraid she wouldn’t be—well—impressed, but she will. It’s regular! You wanted her to be impressed, too, didn’t you, Nellie?”
Cornelia couldn’t help laughing at the solemn question, but she sobered instantly.
“Yes, dear, I guess I did. I wanted her to have respect for Carey’s family and to know that however foolish he may be, there is something, as you say, ‘regular’ behind him. Because there is, you know, Louise. Father and Mother are ‘regular.’”
“They are!” said the little girl.
“It sounds rather strange to try to impress people with fuss and show and food fixed up in fancy styles, but if I can judge anything about that girl, she hasn’t reached the stage yet where she can appreciate anything but fuss and fancy and fashion. So we’ve got to use the things that will appeal to her if we want to reach her at all. If it were just Grace Kendall coming, or even the young man Brand, I would have things very plain and simple. It would be in better taste and more to my liking. But I have a notion, kitten, that if we had everything very simple, that young lady with the fancy name would rather despise us and set out to ride right over us. They talk a great deal nowadays about people’s reaction to things, and if I know anything at all about the girl, I feel pretty sure that her reaction to simple, quiet things would be far from what we want. So for this once we’ll blossom out and have things as stylish and fancy and formal as possible. I’ve heard it said that there is nothing so good to take the pride out of an ignorant person as an impressive array of forks and spoons, so we’ll try it on Miss Clytie and see if we can bring her near enough to our class to get acquainted with her real self. Now get a pencil and write down the menu and see how it reads.”
“But what are you going to have in the middle, Nellie, after the soup? Any meat?”
“Why, surely, round steak, simmered all day with an onion and browned down with thick gravy the way you love it so well; only we’ll cut it into small servings like cutlets before we cook it, and nobody will ever dream what it is. Then we’ll have new potatoes creamed, with parsley sprinkled over them, and spinach minced, with a hard-boiled egg on top; and for salad we’ll make some gelatin molds in the custard cups with shredded cabbage and parsley in it, that on a lettuce leaf will look very pretty; and I’ll make the mayonnaise out of the yolks of the eggs from the angel cake. There’ll be enough left over to make a gold cake or some custard for the next day besides. Now write the menu. Raspberry fruit cocktail, cream of spinach soup, round-steak cutlets with brown gravy, creamed new potatoes with parsley, spinach, aspic-jelly salad, angel cake, mint sherbet, and coffee. Doesn’t that sound good?”
“I should say,” answered the little girl with a happy sigh.
“We’ll have everything all ready beforehand, so that the serving will be easy,” went on the elder sister. “The butter and water and fruit will be on the table. We can fill the soup cups and keep them in the warming oven, and you and Harry can get up quietly, remove the fruit glasses, and bring on the soup cups. You see I’ve been thinking it all out. I’ve planned to buy two more wire shelves to fit into the oven. You know there are grooves to move them higher or lower, and I find that if we use the lowest groove for the first, there will be room to set the eight plates in there; and we’ll just have everything all served on the plate ready: the little cutlet with gravy, the creamed potatoes, and the spinach. Then, if we light only one burner and turn it low, and perhaps leave the door open a little—I’ll have to experiment—I think they will keep hot without getting dry or crusty on the top, just for that little while. The only thing is, you’ll have to be tremendously careful not to drop one getting them out. They’ll be hot, you know, and you’ll have to use a cloth to take them out. Just think if you dropped one, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.”
Louise giggled and squeezed her sister’s hand.
“Oh Nellie, isn’t it going to be just packs of fun? I won’t drop one, indeed I won’t, but if I should, I just know I’d laugh out loud; it would be so funny, all that grand dinner party in there acting stylish, and those potatoes and spinach and meat sitting there on the floor! But don’t you worry, if I did drop ‘em, I’d pick ‘em up again and take that plate for myself. Our kitchen floor’s clean, anyway. When do we bring in the salad?”
“Oh, we’ll just have that on the kitchen table by the door, ready. And then, while the people are finishing, you and Harry can slip out and get the sherbet dished out. Do you think you two can manage it?”
“Oh, sure! Harry does it at school every time we have an entertainment. The teacher always gets him to do it ’cause he gets it out so nice, and not messy, she says. Shall we cut the cake beforehand, or what?”
“Oh, no, the cake will be on the table with the candles lit when we come into the dining room. And when the time comes, Carey will have to blow out the candles and cut his own cake.”
And so they planned the pretty festival and almost forgot the unloved cause of it all: poor, silly little Clytie Amabel Dodd.
Cornelia’s hardest task was writing the letter of invitation to the guest she dreaded most of all. After tearing up several attempts and struggling with the sentences for half an hour, it was finally finished, and read:
My dear Miss Dodd,
We are having a little surprise for my brother Carey on his birthday next Thursday, the twenty-fifth, and would be very glad if you will come to dinner at six o’clock to meet a few friends. Kindly say nothing to Carey about it, and please let us know if we may expect you.
Looking forward to meeting you, I am,
Very sincerely,
Carey’s sister,
Cornelia Copley
After a solemn meeting it was decided to mail this note, and then the three conspirators waited anxiously for two whole days for a reply. When Harry and Louise arrived from school the third day and found no answer yet, anxiety was strong.
“Yes, Harry, you oughta have taken that note yourself, the way Nellie said,” declared Louise.
“Not me!” asserted Harry loftily. “Not if that chicken never comes! We don’t want her anyway. I guess we can have a party without her!”
But a few minutes later a clattering knock arose on the front door, and a small boy with an all-day sucker in his cheek appeared.
“My sister, she says sure she’ll come to your s’prise party,” he announced indifferently. “She didn’t have no time to write, so I come.”
He waited expectantly for a possible reward for his labors. Cornelia smiled, thanked him, said she was glad, and he departed disappointedly. He was always on the lookout for rewards.
“That’s Dick Dodd,” Louise explained. “He’s an awful bad little kid. He put gum in the teacher’s hat and hid a bee in her desk. And once she found three caterpillars in her lunch basket, and everybody knew who put them there. He never washes his hands nor has
a handkerchief.”
The little girl’s voice was full of scorn. She was returning to her former dislike of their expected guest with all that pertained to her.
“Well, there’s that,” said Cornelia smiling. “She’s coming, and we know what to expect. Now I think I’ll call up the Barlock house and find out when they expect that Brand fellow to be at home. I think I can do that more informally over the phone.”
It just happened that Brand Barlock was passing through the house where he was supposed to reside—probably for a change of garments or something to eat or to get his wallet replenished—and he answered the phone himself. Cornelia was amused at the haughty condescension of his tone. One would think she had presumed to invite royalty to her humble abode by the loftiness in which he answered: “Why, yes—I might come, if nothing else turns up. Yes, I’m sure I can make it. Very nice, I’m sure. Anything you’d like to have me bring?”
“Oh, no, indeed!” said Cornelia emphatically, her cheeks very red indeed. “It’s just a simple home affair, and we thought Carey would enjoy having his friends. You won’t mention it to him, of course.”
“Aw’right! I’ll keep quiet. So long!” and the young lord hung up.
Cornelia emerged from the drugstore telephone booth much upset in spirit and wishing she hadn’t invited the young upstart. By the time she reached the outer door she wished she had never tried to have a party for Carey. But, when she got back to Louise and her shining interest, her common sense had returned, and she set herself to bear the unpleasantness and make those two strange, mismatched guests of hers enjoy themselves in spite of everything, or else make them feel so uncomfortable that they would take themselves forever out of Carey’s life.
Steadily forward went the preparations for the party, and at last the birthday morning arrived.
Chapter 15
Arthur Maxwell over his morning grapefruit, buttered toast, and coffee, which he usually had served in his room, began in a leisurely way to open his mail.
There was a thick, enticing letter from his mother, which he laid aside till the last. He and his mother were great pals, and her letters were like a bit of herself, almost as good as talking with her face-to-face. He always enjoyed every word of them.
There were the usual number of business communications, which he tore open and read hurriedly as he came to them, frowning over one, putting another in his pocket to be answered in his office, and then at the very bottom, under a long envelope, which carried a plea for money for his alma mater to help build a new observatory, he came suddenly upon a square, foreign-looking envelope addressed in a dashing, illegible hand and emitting a subtle fragrance of rare flowers, a fragrance that had hovered exquisitely about his senses from the moment the mail had been laid by his plate, reminding him dimly of something sweet and forbidden and half forgotten.
He looked at the letter, half startled, a trifle displeased, and yet greatly stirred. It represented a matter that he was striving to put out of his life, that he thought he had succeeded in overcoming, even almost forgetting. A grim speculative look came into his face. He hesitated before he reached out his hand to pick up the letter and questioned whether he should even open it. Then with a look that showed that he had taken himself well in hand, he picked it up, ran his knife crisply under the flap of the envelope, and read:
Dear Arthur,
I am passing through Philadelphia tomorrow on my way to Washington and am stopping over for a few hours especially to see you about a matter of grave importance. I feel that you will not be angry at my breaking this absurd silence that you have imposed between us when I tell you that I am in great trouble and need your advice. I remember your promise always to be my friend, and I know you will not refuse to see me now for at least a few minutes.
I am coming down on the two o’clock train from New York and shall go directly to the hotel and await your coming anxiously. I know you will not fail me.
Yours eternally,
Evadne
The subtle fragrance, the dashing script, the old familiar turn of sentence reached into his consciousness and gripped him for a second in spite of his being on his guard. Something thrilling and tragic seemed to emanate from the very paper in his hand, from the royal purple of the lining of the expensive envelope. For an instant he felt the old lure, the charm, the tragedy of his life that he was seeking to outlive, which he had supposed was already outlived.
In his senior year in college Arthur Maxwell had become acquainted with Evadne Chantry at a house party where both had been guests. They had been thrown together during the two days of their stay, whether by the hostess’s planning or at the lady’s request is not known, but Arthur, at first not much attracted by her type, found himself growing more and more interested.
Evadne was a slender, dark, sophisticated little thing with dreamy eyes and a naive appeal. His chivalry was challenged, and when it further appeared that she was just from England and was of the old family of Chantrys whom his mother knew and visited, he got down from his distance and capitulated. They became close friends, in spite of the fact that Evadne’s ways were not the ways in which he had been brought up, and in which his young manhood had chosen to walk. But he had found himself excusing her. She had not been taught as he had. She had lived abroad where standards were different. She had been in boarding schools and convents and then traveled. He felt she could be brought to change her ways.
It appeared that she was going to be for some time in the city where his college was located, and the friendship ripened rapidly, taking Arthur Maxwell into a social group as utterly foreign to his own as one could imagine, in fact one that he did not really enjoy; yet he went for Evadne’s sake.
When he came to the point of telling his mother of the friendship, about which it had been strangely hard to write, he found that it was no easy matter. In the light of her clear eyes there were matters that could not be so easily set aside as his own conscience had been soothed to do. He suddenly realized what a shock it would be to his conservative mother to see Evadne smoking, to watch her in her sinuous attitudes, to know that her son was deeply interested in a young woman who had plucked eyebrows and used lipstick freely. When he came to think of it, some of her clothing might be exceedingly startling to his mother. Yet he believed in his mother so thoroughly that he felt she could be made to understand how much this girl had suffered from lack of a mother and how much she was in need of just such a friend as his mother could be.
When the time arrived that Mrs. Maxwell had to learn these things, her son was even more startled than herself to find out how much she really was shocked at this choice of a girl. The stricken look that came into her eyes the first time they met told him without further words from her lips. In that moment he might be said to have grown up as he suddenly looked upon the girl, whom he thought he loved beyond all women, through the eyes of his mother.
His mother had been wonderful even though she carried the stricken look through the entire meeting. She had perhaps not exactly taken Evadne into her arms quite as he had hoped, but she had been gently sweet and polite. His mother would always be that. She had been quiet, so quiet, and watchful, as if she were gravely considering some threatened catastrophe and meeting it bravely.
Afterward, she had met his eyes with a brave, sad smile, without a hint of rebuke, not a suggestion that he should have told her sooner, only an acceptance of the fact that the girl was here in their lives and must be dealt with fairly. She listened to his story of Evadne’s life, considered his suggestion that she might help the girl, and heard how they had met and his reasons for feeling that she was the one and only girl. As he told it all he was conscious of something searching in her sweet, grave eyes that turned a knife in his heart, yet he was full of hope that she would eventually understand and come under Evadne’s spell with himself.
Only once she questioned about the girl. How did he know she belonged to the Chantrys she knew? What relationship did she bear to them? Was she Paul Cha
ntry’s sister? Cousin? She did not remember that there had been a daughter.
Evadne had not taken kindly to his mother. She wept when Arthur talked with her alone after their meeting and said she was sure his mother did not love her. But the days passed on, and Mrs. Maxwell kept her own counsel and invited the girl to her home, doing all the little gracious social things that might be expected of her, yet with a heavy heart, till one day when it seemed that an announcement of the engagement should be the next thing in order, there came a letter from England in answer to one Mrs. Maxwell had written, disclaiming any relationship between Evadne and the distinguished old family who were her friends.
This was a matter that Arthur could not ignore when his mother brought it to his notice, and Evadne was asked for an explanation.
Evadne met his questions with haughty contempt and then with angry tears and retired into an offended silence that seemed as impenetrable as a winter fog, from which she presently emerged like a martyr with vague explanations of a distant cousinship that seemed full and sufficient to his gallant, young spirit, till he tried to repeat them to his perceptive mother, and then they did not seem so convincing.
The matter was finally smoothed over, however; and it seemed as if the mother was about to be called upon to set the seal of her approval upon a speedy marriage between the two, when there came a revelation through the medium of an old friend who had met Evadne abroad and asked her quite casually, in the presence of the Maxwells, where her husband was. Explanations followed, of course, and it appeared that Evadne was married already and had left her husband in South Africa without even the formality of a divorce.