"Look at your child," she cried. "She lays traps for me! Pepper traps!"
"Rhoda!" my mother exclaimed.
My grandmother seemed stricken dumb.
I hung my head in shame. I had forgotten how sorry they would be.
She told them all about it. She knew just why I had done it, and how I had done it. She declared that she would never give me another lesson.
No, never! Her voice grew very loud in her denunciation, and the mild words of shocked apology which my mother put in from time to time were swept away in the torrent of her wrath. I saw my grandmother"s lip curl, and my mother look astonished. They were judging her by their own standards of quiet reticence and womanly dignity. She was almost justifying me.
Yet before she went she lodged an arrow in my mother"s heart.
"As for the child"s talent," she cried, and snapped her fingers. "It would be as easy to teach her the tight-rope!"
I heard somebody laugh in the next room. It sounded just like granddad.
My mother and my grandmother went to the door with Madame Tomaso, and saw her out quite as if she were company, and then they came back into the parlor and gazed at me. They did not seem to know just what to say.
It was evident that I had done something dreadful. I began to be frightened. We had a big black cellar, with dark, cavernous recesses where cobwebs swayed about, and dwarfs peeped out at you. I wished that it was night, and I was safe in my bed.
Then somebody shuffled in behind me, and patted my head softly. I looked up into two merry blue eyes.
"Don"t you fret, Rhoda," a sympathizing voice said. "Granddad will stand by you."
Even now when he is only a memory I can still feel the thrill of grat.i.tude with which I clung to his protecting hand.
VI
A SOCIAL EVENT
"BUT she hasn"t any dress!" my mother cried, in consternation. "Only that white Sunday one which is much too short!"
"Let down a tuck," my grandmother said, decisively. "That would lengthen it."
"Oh, do let down a tuck, mother!" I echoed, eagerly.
I had a little pink envelope hugged up close against my ap.r.o.n. On the outside it had "Miss Rhoda Harcourt" written in very large letters, and on the inside it invited me to a party! I was not quite sure what people did at a party; but I knew it must be something delightful, judging from the commotion the pink envelope made in the family. There was a whirlwind of talk about white dresses, and new slippers, and blue bows, and in the midst of the discussion Auntie May caught up her dress and danced.
"Come here, Rhoda," she called. "This is what they do at a party. Come.
I will teach you how."
I braced my back, stiffly, and let her haul me around. This was a serious matter, and must be undertaken with a sober mind.
"She hasn"t any spring in her," Auntie May exclaimed, ruefully. "Who would think that she is related to me!"
"She does not come of a dancing family," my grandmother replied, with a cold smile. "The Harcourts look after their souls, and let their feet alone."
Auntie May made a wry face. She was my mother"s sister.
"Don"t shut up like a knife, Rhoda," she said, disconsolately. "Let yourself go. There, I believe the Lawrence side of the family is waking up at last!"
She looked so pretty as she danced in the firelight that I tried to be like her. I copied her courtesies, and followed her steps, and when, at length, she fell breathlessly into a chair, I leaned against her knee with my hand on her pink cheek.
"Auntie May, are you going, too?" I asked, confidentially.
Somehow I thought it would be rather nice to have Auntie May there, just for company.
"Child!" she cried, with a grand air, "it"s a children"s party. I am sixteen!"
I felt the rebuke. I was only seven myself, and there were whole centuries between us. It was strange, though, how sometimes Auntie May would play with my dolls, and sometimes she would tuck up her hair and keep me at arm"s length. I never knew which she was going to be--little girl or grown woman.
Auntie May did not live with us, but in another house with a lady who called herself my frivolous grandmother, and curled her hair every day of her life. Grandmother Harcourt wore sober black silk dresses, but this other grandmother liked blue and pink, and even sometimes a gallant touch of red that made her look almost young again. Whenever she looked her youngest, she was greatly pleased, and curled her hair triumphantly.
At family meetings the two grandmothers often made those curls the subject for discussion, and oftener still it was my dress and manners which never seemed to suit either of them. One wanted me very quiet and subdued, and dressed in gingham, and the other wanted me very gay and lively, and dressed in silk. As grandmother Harcourt lived in our house, she had the advantage, and, save for occasional bursts of splendor, I went in great meekness of spirit and dress.
I had thought at first that there was going to be trouble about the party. My frivolous grandmother objected seriously to the idea of that tuck. She seemed to think that I should look very shabby among the other little girls. She spoke of her position, and of the great pleasure that it would give her to buy me a dress.
"Nellie," she urged, almost with tears in her eyes, "let me buy Rhoda a suitable dress. You surely don"t want that unfortunate child to go to the Otway"s with a tuck let down!"
Grandmother Harcourt did not say anything. I fancy that she must have had it all arranged beforehand, for, after a rather appealing look at her, my mother declined the offer in a faint, reluctant voice.
I did not care what I wore. I was going to a party. That was enough for me. All the night before I could not sleep, and when, at last, the hour drew near, and I stood before my mother while she gave a final touch to my floating hair, I felt that it was all a dream. It was a dream going down the stairs while the twins, in their nightgowns, peeped after me, and it was a dream getting into the carriage which Auntie May had brought to take me. The very streets were a dream, with little white-clad girls pa.s.sing in our direction and little boys, with stiff white collars and solemn faces, walking along behind them. And most of all that big house on the hill was a dream, with the lights shining in all its windows, and the rows of Chinese lanterns in the piazza, and a nearby violin letting off cheerful notes of preparation.
"Mrs. Otway is giving this party for the two little grandchildren who are visiting her," Auntie May said, peering out of the carriage window.
"They come from the city. They are cousins. You saw them in church on Sunday."
So that was who they were! I felt that I had learned something. Only the Sunday before there had come into the pew before me, first a little boy, and then a little girl, followed by a party of ladies. The little boy sat up in the far end of the pew, just as I did, and he had a high silk hat laid on the cushion beside him, and an elegant cane with a silver head to which he seemed much attached. I never noticed little boys as a rule. I divided them into two cla.s.ses: boys who walked clumsily, in heavy boots, and glanced sidewise at me, and _bad_ boys who made awful faces from behind trees. Never to one of them had I said a single word.
That boy, however, was something quite different. I knew that as soon as I looked at him. He had a light graceful figure, and brave, beautiful eyes. When he gazed over his shoulder and smiled at me, I felt strangely pleased. It was as though some one whom I had known a long time ago had come again.
"Oh, so _he_ is Theodore Otway!" I cried, unguardedly, remembering the name on my pink invitation.
Auntie May laughed a whole minute, just about nothing at all.
"You get down here, Rhoda," she said. "Now, remember to shake out your hair the way that I showed you. And don"t you get frightened as you always do. Your dress isn"t very fine; but there is one thing that is nice about it. It has real lace basted in the neck. Mother put it in.
Just fancy, grandmother Harcourt never noticed! Always give your right hand first in the ladies" chain. You are the only little girl who has come in a carriage. Oh, dear me, I wish that it wasn"t a children"s party! I"d just love to go in! The lovely, lovely music! What shall you do, Rhoda, if you get very frightened?"
"I"ll shut my eyes, and think that I"m in church," I answered, soberly.
"Good heavens!" I heard her cry as the carriage drove away, "there"s the other side of the family coming out after all!"
I went up the steps rather breathlessly. There was a big lump rising in my throat, as if I had run miles and miles. I wondered if they would let me in, or if I would have to say what my name was. I was not real sure in my mind that I knew what my name was. Once, years ago, I had been called Rhoda, but Rhoda always went to bed at seven o"clock. This was a new little girl, a fairy child, who walked under globes of fire straight into fairy-land.
Up, up, I went, past a man with shining b.u.t.tons who held the door open very graciously for me, past shrubs and flowers banked along the staircase, into a room where there was a great hum of voices. Ever so many little girls, dozens of them, were taking off their hats, and shaking out their skirts, and doing what grandmother called "prinking"
before a great gla.s.s. I prinked a little myself, following out Auntie May"s directions. I thought that I looked rather nice. A woman in a white cap seemed to think so, too. She took a great deal of pains with me, and when the other little girls, who knew one another, went down the stairs in a group, she led me by the hand to the staircase, and showed me where to go.
It was very hard to walk down the stairs alone. I had such a queer feeling, and I could not see a thing for a mist before my eyes. I went quite slowly, step by step. I could hear the people in the parlor talking.