"it is such an important decision! i make it, but i instantly unmake it. it is hard to trust a little thirteen years old girl to go away from us all to germany!" exclaimed mrs. scollard. her voice was full of anxiety and her eyes were troubled. it was the last minute; they were expecting the von siegeslieds every instant to receive the answer to their offer to take laura to be educated in music. her mother had decided for and against it many times in the two days in which the family had discussed it. the last decision had been that laura was to go, but now, with the footfall of laura's abductor audible, in imagination, on the stairs, once more her mother found herself reverting to the impossibility of giving consent.
laura had betaken herself to her room and to tears, entirely unable to see her hopes wavering.
"it isn't as though laura were good for anything else, motherums," repeated happie. she kept coming back to this argument, which was not meant unkindly, though it had rather that ring. it struck her as a sound argument, for laura being created especially for music it must be right to fall into line with this opportunity to develop her.
"charlotte, my dear," aunt keren began patiently, for the unnumbered time. "i have known little mrs. stew—von siegesl[289]ied a great while, and you know that i would not let one of our children go away in untried hands. she will train laura up just as you would have done. as to her husband, don't you think that a man who has suffered bitterly from giving himself over to the selfishness of genius will be a good corrective to our little girl's inclination to selfishness, and to counting her art more than her heart? we all know what he is as a musical guide. and as to the obligation, mr. von siegeslied has set his heart on taking laura. it will really be a favor to him to let him have the girl to train, and, while his wife would rather steal happie, or polly or penny, still she will rejoice in having any one of the little scollards to bring young girlhood into her home. once more, charlotte, while i shrink from the responsibility of a decision, still some one must take it, and i strongly advise you to ship your third girl to germany."
bob whistled "die wacht am rhein" under his breath, absent-mindedly. his mother turned appealing eyes on him, and just then the bell rang.
"sie sind da gewesen—sein!" bob ended triumphantly, after a breath's hesitation on the possibility of another form of the verb, acting on the serviceable german conviction that the more terminal verbal forms the better. german was not bob's strong point. "there they are, motherums! well, i say let laura go. she'll never make a commonplace, domestic, old fashioned girl, like margery, happie and polly—penny, to[290]o, when she gets big enough, so let's try her in the big world. i don't believe one of your girls could turn out much awry, or for long. transport her, motherums!"
"yes, mother, it seems to be for the best," agreed margery, her eyes reflecting the anxiety in her mother's as they met.
then polly opened the door, and mr. and mrs. von siegeslied came in. mrs. stewart was changed in more than name. years had dropped from her shoulders, her face was radiant. and could this be the mysterious, shadowy herr lieder? the herr baron von siegeslied overflowed with charm. the gloom had vanished from his eyes and mouth. in repose his face still looked life-worn, but joy and peace had taken the place of his morosely forbidding look.
penny watched his greetings of the older members of her family from across the room, and came over to lean on his knee and express her sense of this change with the freedom of her age. "if you'd looked like this and been mr. von siegeslied at first we'd never been afraid of you," she said.
"so! and you were afraid of me!" mr. von siegeslied laughed. "laura was not. laura knew me in music, but happie did better—happie pitied me, didn't you, fräulein glücklich?"
happie looked guilty. "not at first," she murmured, embarrassed.
[291]
"when can laura be ready to sail? you are going to let us have her?" said mrs. von siegeslied.
"listen to the voice of destiny—i am destiny," said miss keren before mrs. scollard could speak. "mrs. scollard has had so much to do to make up her mind that when she got it made up she didn't know it—like some one who had bought a blue gown that proved to be green when it was made and worn. she has decided to lend you laura, that much is settled. laura, girl!" she expostulated, for laura had jumped up and whirled around, and then rushed from the room in a tempest of hysterical rejoicing. miss keren shook her head. "it is a good deal to undertake, to bring forward the musician and keep in check the emotional girl," she said. "well, for the rest there are some things which i have decided for mrs. scollard. i have taken a house in one of the fiftieth streets and while she has been hesitating i have taken for granted that she is coming to live in it. there is a family that i want to bring here, into the patty-pans; another little widow, charlotte, but this one has only two girl children. if you don't mind, she will take the remainder of your lease off your hands. we shall move your furniture into the new house, but not try to put anything in order till the autumn, when we return. when must laura be ready to sail, mrs. von siegeslied?"
"we should like to sail on the steamer that leaves new york a week from next tuesday," said mr. von siegeslied apologetically. "it must seem hurried to you, but having [292]decided to return i can hardly wait to get into my own home."
"and the tea room?" cried margery and happie together. their absorbing interest in laura's going away had driven all recollection of the tea room from their minds until that moment.
"my lease of that building expires in may. perhaps you can re-rent from its next tenant," said mrs. von siegeslied.
"the tea room has fulfilled its end. it is suitable that it should end with that fulfilment," said miss keren decidedly. "neither mrs. scollard nor i would care to have the girls down there without you over their heads—like a sort of guardian angel, little frau von siegeslied."
"laura going, the patty-pans given up, a new house taken, the tea room abolished—why, it's like an earthquake!" cried happie.
"i am breathless!" cried mrs. scollard at last. "why are we out in this cyclone of events?"
"but they are all favorable breezes, motherums!" cried happie with a reassuring pat. laura came back just then with such an uplifted look on her face that her own family hardly knew her. she went straight to her mother and put both her hands into the warm ones that clasped them as if they would hold the child, even now.
"i solemnly promise to obey mrs. von siegeslied precisely as i would you," began laura impressively. "i solemnly pro[293]mise to write to you every day a journal of all i do and think, and mail it to you each week. i solemnly promise to work as hard as i can to be as great a musician as herr von siegeslied thinks i can be. because i am glad, glad, glad that i am going! and i mean to do everything i can to be worthy of such a great, such a very great, wonderful opportunity!" laura was immensely serious and she spoke of her opportunity with a capital letter in her voice.
mr. von siegeslied looked at her with the first twinkle the scollards had seen in his eyes. "hear, hear!" he applauded. "that is right, my little clara schumann! do all that you can, as i hope we shall do, and nobody can do more—not even apollo, the chief of musicians! my intention, mrs. scollard, is to take a house in leipsic—my estates lie not far from the city—and make a little home. my wife will see to it that our laura does not lack the home training, while i watch over her musically. i am much mistaken if the child does not prove a pride to us all. i think she has much talent. if she adds industry to that talent, she will go far. i thank you for intrusting her to us." he had arisen to go, and his little wife arose with him and stood with her arm around margery, from whom she dreaded to part.
"laura has made her promises, please accept a pledge from me," said herr von siegeslied. "i will faithfully look after the little girl, and do for her everything in[294] my power. you will miss your home, laura, more than you realize. you will have many dark days when you will long to throw up every chance in life only to get back here into this merry, affectionate group. the artist must sacrifice much and suffer loneliness, longing, weariness of body and soul. but the recompense comes. be assured, mrs. scollard, that the little girl shall have the best of care. and with all my faults i keep a promise. the von siegeslieds brought down their name from the crusading days, and they are men of honor." the former herr lieder looked around him proudly, and his hearers felt certain that he would keep his pledge to them and be good to laura.
but his sweet wife did better. she went up to mrs. scollard and putting her arms around her, kissed her. "thank you for lending me the child," she whispered. "i will do my best. my child is dead."
and after that brief speech mrs. scollard's last doubt of laura's welfare in these hands finally vanished.
it was not half after nine when the von siegeslieds went away. bob rushed out to the kitchen and beat a tattoo on the opposite dumb waiter door. snigs responded in the preliminary stages of preparation for bed.
"get your collar on—or don't if you are opposed to doing it—but get ralph anyway, and come on over here," bob said. "we're having upheavals, and i'm not perfectly c[295]ertain whether i half like it. we've got news for you—tell your mother to come, and i'll go around and lower the drawbridge for you to get in."
bob shut the dumb waiter door with emphasis and without delaying to learn whether or not snigs was going to act on his suggestion.
"i've called the gordons," bob said, explaining his haste to reach the door, as he passed the parlor.
the gordons came, the mother also, and the scollards poured out their budget of news. laura was to sail for germany in less than two weeks. the tea room was to be given up, with the dancing school of the former mrs. stewart. but—and this was not wholly pleasant tidings—the patty-pans flat was to be abandoned, and the scollards were to make one family with miss bradbury in the house she had taken much farther down in town.
ralph, who had been standing to receive all these amazing items, forgot manners and dropped on a chair, astride of it, his chin resting on its back. gloom, nay, positive consternation was on his face.
"you're not!" he gasped. "you're not going to move from here!"
"we are going to keep a hold on the patty-pans by letting it pass into the hands of some one i know," said miss keren. she did not say that she was going to lease the flat for the mrs. leland who was coming into it, because miss keren never spoke of her good deeds. "and ra[296]lph, you and snigs are going to spend the entire summer in the ark, the guests of gretta, as proprietor, and of me as householder. we are not going to be separated, dear gordon boys!"
ralph's expression of dismay hardly lightened. "it can't be the same," he said, and his voice was husky. "look at to-night, how bob called us over to tell us the news! there's a big difference between being across a narrow passage and being four miles apart—especially in winter. we've got to stay right where we are for four years more. this is too near columbia for us to move. and when i get through college there will be snigs still struggling to acquire learning! we couldn't do better than to stay in our flat. imagine us in it and other people in here!"
he looked at happie as he spoke, and his head dropped on his arms with a groan that he intended to be mistaken for a burlesque, but which sounded perfectly sincere.
"oh, we won't drift apart, ralph!" happie cried earnestly. "i think we are the kind of friends that are not geographical friends. i dread leaving the patty-pans myself—don't hear that, auntie keren, because it doesn't mean i'm truly sorry to go. the house will be great fun. only——"
"only you are quite right to love the bright little place where your brave mother made a home for you so long," interrupted miss keren. "but now for the next stage in y[297]our progress."
"it will be far, far better for you, dear girls, as you are growing older," said mrs. gordon. "but ralph is quite right in foreseeing us disconsolate without you. and laura is really going to germany? and by and by margery will be married! but the greatest change will be laura's." she looked at laura thoughtfully, realizing that it would be another laura who would come back to the changing family group.
"she is going over to learn to be a lauralei," observed bob, objecting to the note of sentiment creeping into the conversation.
mrs. gordon laughed. "come, ralph and charley; i don't think these neighbors of ours can have any more news to tell us, and if they have i don't think we could bear up under more. good-night, nice people! we congratulate you on all these delightful happenings, but you can't expect us to reach the heights of being glad. it is hard to think of breaking up our perfect relations. when must it be?"
"if charlotte thinks she can accomplish it," began miss keren doubtfully, "it would be better to go up to crestville the very day that laura sails. we ought to be there early, for gardening reasons—and it would be better."
"oh!" exclaimed mrs. scollard catching her breath. then to every one's surprise she added: "i can be ready then quite as well as later, and i should be glad to go."
[298]
margery and happie knew that their mother dreaded to come back to the little home without laura. it would seem less like a parting if they all went to the ark when laura went away.
gretta beamed at this hearing. she longed for her mountains more and more as the warmth of spring increased.
the gordons went back to their own domain, ralph with a face so gloomy that it was hard to recognize him whose liveliness failed then for the first time.
bob closed the door behind them and came back with a thoughtful look. "aunt keren," he said, "i can't go to the ark with the rest. i am a year older, and i can't leave mr. felton as i did last year and expect to get back in the fall. you know i'd like to spend the summer up there, but how can i? i think i'll ask mrs. gordon to take me in with her boys, and you'll let me come up fridays, or saturdays if i can't do better?"
"oh, bob!" exclaimed gretta involuntarily, with such profound disappointment in her voice that they all laughed, and she colored furiously.
"i've got to be a man, gretta," said bob. "time's up in which i can be merely a thing of beauty."
"and for me, too, bobby boy!" cried his mother. "isn't it strange that i did not remember my responsibilities until just now! i can't go off rusticating this summer as i did last year when i was an invalid, miss keren. b[299]ob and i will board—no, we will stay in the patty-pans, and visit you and the children in the ark for nice englishlike 'week ends' every week!"
"charlotte, dear, listen. you have a new position. you are no longer to be foreign correspondent to your down-town firm, but housekeeper plenipotentiary to her crotchety highness, the princess keren-happuch. and a sorry time you will probably have of it!" said miss keren with emphasis. "to-morrow i am going to get you to meet me with happie at my lawyer's and we are going to execute certain documents that will give happie a legal claim on me."
"shall i take your name, auntie keren?" inquired happie.
"you are to add bradbury, but not substitute it for scollard," said miss keren.
"and not with another hyphen, please?" implored happie. "not keren-happuch bradbury-scollard! because my signature would look like those paper dolls cut in strings from folded paper—those that all hold hands, you know. i don't need a legal claim on you, auntie dear. i'll claim you illegally just as irresistibly."
"i never tried to resist you, happie, but there may come a day when the legal claim will be useful," retorted miss keren. "i will dispense with the hyphens. charlotte, as i was saying, to-morrow we will attend to my legal adoption of happie. then she will have a rea[300]l claim on me. the first thing she would do if she had an income, she told me, would be to establish you in a house in idleness. i am not going to do that. but i am going to ask you to give up your position and come to look after an old woman whose dear and only daughter you are. please don't interrupt me, charlotte. you can't realize how close to my heart is this plan of mine! and for the other side of it, charlotte, did you ever read good little books in your childhood in which the dutiful were rewarded and the naughty punished? i am not inclined to think your new life will be entirely free from annoyance, since i am moving you to fifty-eighth street, and not to paradise. but i think it will be easier than braving the world daily as you now do. all these years, more than five, my girl, ever since your widowhood, i have watched you cheerfully, unflaggingly working for your children, teaching them, putting under foot and out of sight your own sorrow and weariness of body and mind. dear charlotte, like the good little girls in the story books your reward has come. we will go out of these little patty-pan rooms into our own home, and by and by, if our children—your children, and my grandchildren, dear daughter of roland and elizabeth,—leave us, we will live on together and you shall help me get ready to follow my two best beloved. it is all settled, charlotte, and you cannot hesitate to take what good there is in it for you, remembering the good you will do m[301]e. and don't you suppose i enjoy being the channel through which you receive a little reward for your great courage and devotion?"
it was a long speech for terse miss keren, but she made it rapidly, and there were tears in her eyes and a quiver in her voice as she ended it with hands outstretched to mrs. scollard.
margery sobbed under her breath, happie walked swiftly to the window. laura forgot her theme; her hands crashed down on the piano keys and her eyes overflowed with happy tears that sprang out of the warmest spot in her self-centred little heart as she heard her mother praised.
but bob, who had listened with a face contorted by his efforts to appear unmoved, gave up the attempt at last. he crossed over to miss keren and lifted her bodily in his arms. he kissed her over and over again, and he was not ashamed that he made her cheeks wet from the contact with his own moist ones.
"aunt keren, you're dead right!" he cried. "you've got ahead of me in making a home for mother, but i don't grudge it to you! and if ever i forget what i owe you—for all our sakes—then i'm not roland spencer's grandson."
miss keren clasped the big boy close. he could not have thanked her in any words that would have warmed her heart like these. "you're his own boy, my bob!" she said. "girls, there isn't one earthly thing to cry about!" she added, shamelessly ignoring her own brimmin[302]g eyes. "gretta, you rival our crestville brook! next winter you are to be given an education, my girl, that will more than take the place of what the barkers wanted to do for you! you are part of my plans, gretta, and part of my family. go to bed, children. this has been an exciting evening."
"yes, let's turn in," agreed bob, somewhat ashamed of his recent outburst. "and it's à bas, la patty-pans! is it?"
"no! long live our patty-pans—it's overflowed, that's all!" cried happie turning from the window. "it's 'lochaber no more.' i wonder what that air is? laura, you don't know?"
laura shook her head. "but i could make a song, if you all would wait for me," she said.
"so can i—without waiting!" cried happie in one of her poetic outbursts which bob said "weren't real poetry, but were real inspiration," and she began to sing:
"our cakes have got so full of plums
the patty-pans can't bake them;
now, by the pricking of my thumbs,
it is a witch who hither comes
and bids us to forsake them!
it's patty-pans no more and it's patty-pans no more,
then bye-bye, little patty-pans, we'll love you as before,
but we're going down to live behind our very own front door—
so it's patty-pans we love you, but it's patty-pans no more!"
[303]
this gem of song was chanted to such a simple air that laura at once fell into an accompaniment, and the scollards sang it, marching with difficulty up and down the tiny room as they sang.
"my dears! the people down-stairs! and we've tried to be good neighbors!" remonstrated mrs. scollard. "it's past bedtime. please defer your farewell chorus! i'm afraid the other tenants will be glad we're going!"
"not a bit of it, motherums!" cried happie, catching up jeunesse dorée who was vainly trying to get out of the way of the celebration. "how will you like to be a backyard kitten and not a fire escaper, my golden catkins? for a backyard will be thine when it's patty-pans no more!"
