Auntie May said very little as the carriage rolled along, but when, at last, we reached home, she swept me in before the a.s.sembled family.
"There were ten little boys telling her good-night," she cried, breathlessly, in a voice divided between awe and delight. "Ten little boys! Just fancy! Our Rhoda! She was a great success. She was the prettiest one there."
My mother put out a tender hand and drew me to her.
"And did you have a good time at the party, Rhoda?" she asked, eagerly.
"A real good time, little girl?"
I looked around the listening family circle. They were all watching me.
Yes, even my father over his paper.
"I don"t know," I answered, bashfully.
"Of course she didn"t," grandmother cried, nodding her head triumphantly. "Of course she didn"t. She"s a Harcourt all over."
I looked down at my little bra.s.s ring. I felt that grandmother was wrong.
VII
AUNTIE MAY
ALWAYS when I think of Auntie May, I remember sunshine, and the wind blowing, and a lilac bush in purple bloom by the garden gate. We were standing there together, very quiet and confidential, she, tall and slim, and I a little girl who liked to cling to her hand. We had on our best white dresses, for it was Sunday, and her church service was white and violet, and mine was white and gold. We had parasols just alike, and we stood waiting until the first boom rang out from the big bell in the church tower far down the street.
"Now we will go," Auntie May said.
She opened the garden gate, and we pa.s.sed out, very demurely.
It was seldom that I went into the big world; but when I did I enjoyed it so! The parasols cast a pleasant shade, and I had a big five-cent piece in my right hand that meant church, and another clutched tightly in my left that meant Sunday school. There were other family parties to be met on the street, elderly ladies carrying Bibles, and little girls and boys walking with careful precision, and down near where the big bell boomed there was another church which commenced after ours did where Burton Raymond played the violin. I could not remember when I had not known Burton Raymond and his violin, for they were one person.
"When Burton Raymond goes to bed," I had heard my mother say, "he always puts the violin to bed, too."
"In a bed, mother?" I demanded.
"No. In a box by his bed, wrapped in his pocket handkerchief, poor fellow."
It was after this time that Auntie May embroidered an oddly shaped velvet mat quite secretly. It had forget-me-nots on it, and when it was finished she tied it up in a beautiful white paper, and slipped it in the mail box down at the corner. And, once, months afterwards, when Burton Raymond played one evening at our house, he put his violin to bed in a velvet jacket just like the one which Auntie May had made.
We were great friends. When we met down by the church steps he would call to me, cheerfully.
"Good-morning, Rhoda."
"There he is, Auntie May!" I would cry. "Don"t you see him? Look, Auntie May!"
Somehow, or other, although he never called to her, I always wanted her to see him, too.
He looked very pleasant in the bright sunshine. His hair was nicely brushed, and his shoes were blacked. There was a patch on his right elbow; but you could not see it unless you looked closely. There was something n.o.ble in the way in which he carried his dark head. Somebody, perhaps it was Norah, had told me that one of his ancestors had been a great lord, back in the days when the lords were crusaders, and I liked to think of Burton Raymond in chain armor killing people, recklessly.
Little d.i.c.k and I used to act it out sometimes in the dark end of the hall. We killed a number of things there, Saracens, and lions, and tigers, and the rocking-horse, and little Trixie, and would come in quite breathless afterwards to the sitting room where the family sat in the lamplight. Sometimes we found them talking about Burton Raymond.
"Every time that I walk down our block I seem to meet Burton Raymond,"
my father grumbled, one evening. "It"s getting to be a nuisance.
Especially since May has been visiting here," he added, after a serious moment"s pause.
"He pa.s.sed the house fifteen times to-day," my mother said, quietly.
She said it with a blush, and then, suddenly, she made an impulsive dive at my father"s hand and squeezed it.
"We were young ourselves once!" she cried.
"The lad hasn"t a cent to bless himself with," grandmother demurred.
"But he has genius!" my mother cried again. "There is a great future opening before him. And when we were married we had very little, Robert.
There was just one small twenty-five cent piece left after the wedding trip. Do you remember, Robert? And you spent it in flowers--for me! They were roses. I have some of them dried yet."
My mother"s voice had sunk lower and lower, falling almost into a whisper, as it always did when she was greatly moved. Sometimes I used to fancy that my mother was not so clever as my father. He could add up sums for you, and tell you about the presidents, and who were the greatest generals in the world; but my mother knew quite different things, the kind that stay with you forever. To her life was a poem and a dream. She was her happiest when she could help somebody, so that for any one to be poor, and very unfortunate, was an open sesame to her heart.
I heard a good deal about Burton Raymond that night, and when I went to bed I asked a sudden question, staring with wide open eyes at my mother over the white coverlet.
"Mother, how poor is Burton Raymond?"
She was taking away the light; but she came back again.
"He is so poor," she said, dramatically, "that he lives in a garret room at Widow Denton"s. It is quite a cold room, without a fire, and the bed is not soft like yours, Rhoda. He has a few books on the end of the shelf by his violin box. He plays whenever he can get a chance.
Sometimes, perhaps, he is hungry! Yes, sometimes he is hungry!"
I shivered.
"But it"s no sin to be poor, is it, mother?" I demanded, anxiously. "We can love people who are poor?"
She put down the light on the bureau before she answered me.
"Money never bought the real things of life," she said, slowly. "To be good and true is the greatest of all. It is sincerity that counts. And when we see some one very n.o.ble, and very poor, we must help them, and love them always. Yes, love them always!"
She gave me a sudden kiss, and took the lamp away.
I lay staring into the dark. I could see that garret room, and the violin on the shelf, almost I could see Burton Raymond walking around, very cold and poor, perhaps; but so lovable, yes, so lovable, that poverty seemed the very highest distinction. I made up a long story about him all by myself. He had a great fortune left him, and grew into a lord again, and married Auntie May long before I went to sleep.
But there was another side to the picture.
"It"s the cheek that himself has to be coming after our young lady,"
Norah declared. "A lad out of a b.u.t.ter and eggs shop! Is it fitting for the likes of him to lift his eyes to her?"
"Who, Norah?" I asked, breathlessly.
She was washing clothes with her sleeves rolled to the elbow. First her hands went down into the water with a rush, and then they came up again, and she rubbed something white on a board, amid a snowy froth of suds that was good to look upon. Norah was an authority on washing, and she was, also, an authority on love. Sometimes she would toss back the stray locks from her face, and sing as she scrubbed with a nave abandon that would bring grandmother to the scene in a hurry: