But the Ledwiths made a strong party; and they lived close by; there were plans continually.
Since Leslie Goldthwaite and Barbara Holabird were married and gone, and the Roger Marchbankses were burned out, and had been living in the city and travelling, the Hobarts and the Haddens and Ruth and Rosamond and Pen Pennington had kept less to their immediate Westover neighborhood than ever; and had come down to Lucilla"s, and to Maddy Freeman"s, and the Inglesides, as often as they had induced them to go up to the Hill.
Maud Marchbanks and the Hendees were civil and neighborly enough at home, but they did not care to "ramify." So it came to pa.s.s that they were left a good deal to themselves. Olivia and Adelaide, when they came up to Westover, to their uncle"s, wondered "that papa cared to build again; there really wasn"t anything to come for; West Hill was entirely changed."
So it was; and a very good thing.
I came across the other day, reading over Mr. Kingsley"s "Two Years Ago," a true word as to social needs in England, that reminded me of this that the Holabirds and the Penningtons and the Inglesides have been doing, half unconsciously, led on from "next" to next, in Z----.
Mr. Kingsley, after describing a Miss Heale, and others of her cla.s.s,--the middle cla.s.s, with no high social opportunities, and with time upon their hands, wasted often in false dreams of life and unsatisfied expectations, "bewildering heart and brain with novels,"
for want of a n.o.bler companionship, says this: "Till in country villages, the ladies who interest themselves about the poor will recollect that the farmers" and tradesmens" daughters are just as much in want of their influence as the charity children and will yield a far richer return for their labor, so long will England be full of Miss Heales."
If a kindly influence and fellowship are the duty of the aristocratic girls of England toward their "next," below, how far more false are American girls to the spirit of their country, and the blessed opportunities of republican sympathies and equalities, when they try to draw invisible lines between themselves and those whose outer station differs by but so little, and whose hearts and minds, under the like culture with their own, crave, just as they do, the best that human intercourse can give. Social science has something to do, before--or at least simultaneously with--reaching down to the depths where all the wrongs and blunders and mismanagements of life have precipitated their foul residuum. A master of one of our public schools, speaking of the undue culture of the brain and imagination, in proportion to the opportunities offered socially for living out ideas thus crudely gathered, said that his brightest girls were the ones who in after years, impatient of the little life gave them to satisfy the capacities and demands aroused and developed during the brief period of school life, and fed afterwards by their own ill-judged and ill-regulated reading, were found fallen into lives of vice. Have our women, old or young, who make and circ.u.mscribe the opportunities of social intercourse and enjoyment, nothing to search out here, and help, as well, or as soon as, to get their names put on committee lists, and manage these public schools themselves, which educate and stimulate up to the point of possible fierce temptation, and then have nothing more that they can do?
It was a good thing for Desire Ledwith to grow intimate, as she did, with Rosamond Holabird. There were identical points of character between the two. They were both so real.
"You don"t want to _play_ anything," Barbara Holabird had said to Rosamond once, in some little discussion of social appearances and pretensions. "And that"s the beauty of you!"
It was the beauty of Desire Ledwith also; only, with Rosamond, her ambitions had clothed themselves with a grace and delicateness that would have their own perfect and thorough as far as it went; and with Desire, the same demands of true living had chafed into an impatience with shams and a blunt disregard of and resistance to all conventionalisms.
"You are a good deal alike, you two," Kenneth Kincaid said to them one day, in a talk they all three happened to have together.
And he had told Rosamond afterward that there was "something grand in Desire Ledwith; only grand things almost always have to grow with struggles."
Rosamond had told this again to Desire.
It was not much wonder that she began to be happier; to have a hidden comfort of feeling that perhaps the "waiting with all her might" was nearly over, and the "by and by" was blossoming for her, though the green leaves of her own shy sternness with herself folded close down about the sweetening place, and she never parted them aside to see where the fragrance came from.
They were going to have a grand, large, beautiful supper party in the woods.
Mrs. Holabird and Mrs. Hobart were the matrons, and gave out the invitations.
"I don"t think I could possibly spend a Tuesday afternoon with a little "t,"" said Mrs. Lewis Marchbanks laughing, and tossing down poor, dear, good Mrs. Hobart"s note upon her table. "It is _rather_ more than is to be expected!"
"Doctor and Mrs. Hautayne are here, and Dakie Thayne is home from West Point. It will be rather a nice party."
"The Holabirds seem to have got everything into their own hands,"
said Mrs. Marchbanks, haughtily. "It is always a pity when people take the lead who are not exactly qualified. Mrs. Holabird _will_ not discriminate!"
"I think the Holabirds are splendid," spoke up Lily, "and I don"t think there"s any fun in sticking up by ourselves! I can"t bear to be judicious!"
Poor little Lily Marchbanks had been told a tiresome many times that she must be "judicious" in her intimacies.
"You can be _pleasant_ to everybody," said mother and elder sister, with a salvo of Christian benignity.
But it is so hard for little children to be pleasant with fence and limitation.
"Where must I stop?" Lily had asked in her simplicity. "When they give me a piece of their luncheon, or when they walk home from school, or when they say they will come in a little while?"
But there came a message back from Boston by the eleven o"clock train on the morning of the Tuesday with a little "t," from Mr.
Marchbanks himself, to say that his brother and Mr. Geoffrey would come up with him to dinner, and to desire that carriages might be ready afterward for the drive over to Waite"s grove.
Mrs. Marchbanks marveled, but gave her orders. Arthur came out early, and brought with him his friend Archie Mucklegrand, and these two were bound also for the merry-making.
Now Archie Mucklegrand was the identical youth of the lavender pantaloons and the waxed moustache, whom Desire, as "Miss Ledwith,"
had received in state a year and a half ago.
So it was an imposing cavalcade, after all, from West Hill, that honored the very indiscriminate pleasure party, and came riding and driving in at about six o"clock. There were the barouche and the coupe; for the ladies and elder gentlemen, and the two young men accompanied them on horseback.
Archie Mucklegrand had been at West Hill often before. He and Arthur had just graduated at Harvard, and the Holabirds had had cards to their grand spread on Cla.s.s Day. Archie Mucklegrand had found out what a pretty girl--and a good deal more than merely pretty--Rosamond Holabird was; and although he might any day go over to his big, wild Highland estate, and take upon himself the glory of "Sir Archibald" there among the hills and moors,--and though any one of a good many pretty girls in Spreadsplendid Park and Republic Avenue might be induced, perhaps, if he tried, to go with him,--all this did not hinder him from perceiving that up here in Z---- was just the most bewitching companionship he had ever fallen in with, or might ever be able to choose for himself for any going or abiding; that Rosamond Holabird was just the brightest, and sweetest, and most to his mind of any girl that he had ever seen, and most like "the woman" that a man might dream of. I do not know that he quite said it all to himself in precisely that way; I am pretty sure that he did not, as yet; but whatever is off-hand and young-mannish and modern enough to express to one"s self without "sposhiness" an admiration and a preference like that, he undoubtedly did say. At any rate after his Christmas at Z---- with Arthur, and some charade parties they had then at Westover, and after Cla.s.s Day, when everybody had been furious to get an introduction, and all the Spreadsplendid girls and their mothers had been wondering who that Miss Holabird was and where she came from, and Madam Mucklegrand herself--not having the slightest recollection of her as the Miss Holabird of that early-morning business call, whose name she had just glanced at and dropped into an Indian china sc.r.a.p-jar before she went down-stairs--had asked him the same questions, and p.r.o.nounced that she was "an exceedingly graceful little person, certainly,"--after all this, Archie had made up his--mind, shall I say? at least his inclination, and his moustache--to pursue the acquaintance, and be as irresistible as he could.
But Rosamond had learned--things do so play into our lives in a benign order--just before that Christmas time and those charades, in one of which Archie Mucklegrand had sung to her, so expressively, the "Birks of Aberfeldy,"--that Spreadsplendid Park was not, at least his corner of it,--a "piece of her world;" and she did not believe that Aberfeldy would be, either, though Archie"s voice was beautiful, and--
"Bonnie la.s.sie, will ye go?"
sounded very enticing--in a charade.
So she was quite calm when the Marchbanks party came upon the ground, and Archie Mucklegrand, with white trousers and a lavender tie, and the trim, waxed moustache, looking very handsome in spite of his dapperness, found her out in the first two minutes, and attached himself to her forthwith in a most undetachable and determined manner, which was his way of being irresistible.
They were in the midst of their tea and coffee when the West Hill party came. Miss Arabel was busy at the coffee-table between the two oaks, pouring out with all her might, and creaming the fragrant cups with a rich lavishness that seemed to speak of milky mothers without number or limit of supply; and Rosamond, as the most natural and hospitable thing to do, conducted the young gentleman as soon as she could to that lady, and commended him to her good offices.
These were not to be resisted; and as soon as he was occupied, Rosamond turned to attend to others coming up; and the groups shifting, she found herself presently a little way off, and meanwhile Mrs. Marchbanks and her son had reached the table and joined Archie.
"I say, Arthur! O, Mrs. Marchbanks! You never got such coffee as this, I do believe! The open air has done something to it, or else the cream comes from some supernal cows! Miss Holabird!"
Rosamond turned round.
"I don"t see,--Mrs. Marchbanks ought to have some of this coffee, but where is your good woman gone?" For Miss Arabel had stepped round behind the oak-tree for a moment, to see about some replenishing.
In her prim, plain dress, utterly innocent of style or _bias_, and her zealous ministry, good Miss Arabel might easily be taken for some comfortable, superior old servant; but partly from a sudden sense of fun,--Mrs. Marchbanks standing there in all her elegant dignity,--and partly from a jealous chivalry of friendship, Rosamond would not let it pa.s.s so.
"Good woman? Hush! she is one of our hostesses, the owner of the ground, and a dear friend of mine. Here she is. Miss Waite, let me introduce Mr. Archibald Mucklegrand. Mrs. Marchbanks will like some coffee, please."
Which Mrs. Marchbanks took with a certain look of amazement, that showed itself subtilely in a slight straightening of the lips and an expansion of the nostrils. She did not _sniff_; she was a great deal too much a lady; she was Mrs. Marchbanks, but if she had been Mrs.
Higgin, and had felt just so, she would have sniffed.
Somebody came up close to Rosamond on the other side.
"That was good," said Kenneth Kincaid. "Thank you for that, Miss Rosamond."
"Will you have some more?" asked Rosamond, cunningly, pretending to misunderstand, and reaching her hand to take his empty cup.
"One mustn"t ask for all one would like," said Kenneth, relinquishing the cup, and looking straight in her eyes.
Rosamond"s eyes fell; she had no rejoinder ready; it was very well that she had the cup to take care of, and could turn away, for she felt a very foolish color coming up in her face.