When Jimmie Trescott was told that his old flame was again to appear, he remained calm. In fact, time had so mended his youthful heart that it was a regular apple of oblivion and peace. Her image in his thought was as the track of a bird on deep snow—it was an impression, but it did not concern the depths. However, he did what befitted his state. He went out and bragged in the street: “My cousin is comin’ next week f’om New York.”—“My cousin is comin’ tomorrow f’om New York.”
“Girl or boy?” said the populace, bluntly; but, when enlightened, they speedily cried, “Oh, we remember her!” They were charmed, for they thought of her as an outlaw, and they surmised that she could lead them into a very ecstasy of sin. They thought of her as a brave bandit, because they had been whipped for various pranks into which she had led them. When Jimmie made his declaration, they fell into a state of pleased and shuddering expectancy.
Mrs. Trescott pronounced her point of view: “The child is a nice child, if only Caroline had some sense. But she hasn’t. And Willis is like a wax figure. I don’t see what can be done, unless—unless you simply go to Willis and put the whole thing right at him.” Then, for purposes of indication, she improvised a speech: “Look here, Willis, you’ve got a little daughter, haven’t you? But, confound it, man, she is not the only girl child ever brought into the sunlight. There are a lot of children. Children are an ordinary phenomenon. In China they drown girl babies. If you wish to submit to this frightful impostor and tyrant, that is all very well, but why in the name of humanity do you make us submit to it?”
Doctor Trescott laughed. “I wouldn’t dare say it to him.”
“Anyhow,” said Mrs. Trescott, determinedly, “that is what you should say to him.”
“It wouldn’t do the slightest good. It would only make him very angry, and I would lay myself perfectly open to a suggestion that I had better attend to my own affairs with more rigor.”
“Well, I suppose you are right,” Mrs. Trescott again said.
“Why don’t you speak to Caroline?” asked the doctor, humorously.
“Speak to Caroline! Why, I wouldn’t for the world! She’d fly through the roof. She’d snap my head off! Speak to Caroline! You must be mad!”
One afternoon the doctor went to await his visitors on the platform of the railway station. He was thoughtfully smiling. For some quaint reason he was convinced that he was to be treated to a quick manifestation of little Cora’s peculiar and interesting powers. And yet, when the train paused at the station, there appeared to him only a pretty little girl in a fur-lined hood, and with her nose reddening from the sudden cold, and—attended respectfully by her parents. He smiled again, reflecting that he had comically exaggerated the dangers of dear little Cora. It amused his philosophy to note that he had really been perturbed.
As the big sleigh sped homeward there was a sudden shrill outcry from the angel child: “Oh, mamma! mamma! They’ve forgotten my stove!”
“Hush, dear; hush!” said the mother. “It’s all right.”
“Oh, but, mamma, they’ve forgotten my stove!”
The doctor thrust his chin suddenly out of his topcoat collar. “Stove?” he said. “Stove? What stove?”
“Oh, just a toy of the child’s,” explained the mother. “She’s grown so fond of it, she loves it so, that if we didn’t take it everywhere with her she’d suffer dreadfully. So we always bring it.”
“Oh!” said the doctor. He pictured a little tin trinket. But when the stove was really unmasked, it turned out to be an affair of cast iron, as big as a portmanteau, and, as the stage people say, practicable. There was some trouble that evening when came the hour of children’s bedtime. Little Cora burst into a wild declaration that she could not retire for the night unless the stove was carried upstairs and placed at her bedside. While the mother was trying to dissuade the child, the Trescotts held their peace and gazed with awe. The incident closed when the lamb-eyed father gathered the stove in his arms and preceded the angel child to her chamber.
In the morning, Trescott was standing with his back to the dining room fire, awaiting breakfast, when he heard a noise of descending guests. Presently the door opened, and the party entered in regular order. First came the angel child, then the cooing mother, and last the great painter with his arm full of the stove. He deposited it gently in a corner and sighed. Trescott wore a wide grin.
“What are you carting that thing all over the house for?” he said, brutally.
“Why don’t you put it some place where she can play with it, and leave it there?”
The mother rebuked him with a look. “Well, if it gives her pleasure, Ned?” she expostulated, softly. “If it makes the child happy to have the stove with her, why shouldn’t she have it?”
“Just so,” said the doctor, with calmness.
Jimmie’s idea was the roaring fireplace in the cabin of the lone mountaineer. At first he was not able to admire a girl’s stove built on well-known domestic lines. He eyed it and thought it was very pretty, but it did not move him immediately. But a certain respect grew to an interest, and he became the angel child’s accomplice. And even if he had not had an interest grow upon him, he was certain to have been implicated sooner or later, because of the imperious way of little Cora, who made a serf of him in a few swift sentences. Together they carried the stove out into the desolate garden and squatted it in the snow. Jimmie’s snug little muscles had been pitted against the sheer nervous vigor of this little golden-haired girl, and he had not won great honors. When the mind blazed inside the small body, the angel child was pure force. She began to speak: “Now, Jim, get some paper. Get some wood—little sticks at first. Now we want a match. You got a match? Well, go get a match. Get some more wood. Hurry up, now! No. No! I’ll light it my own self. You get some more wood. There! Isn’t that splendid? You get a whole lot of wood an’ pile it up here by the stove. An’ now what’ll we cook? We must have somethin’ to cook, you know, else it ain’t like the real.”
“Potatoes,” said Jimmie, at once.
The day was clear, cold, bright. An icy wind sped from over the waters of the lake. A grown person would hardly have been abroad save on compulsion of a kind, and yet, when they were called to luncheon, the two little simpletons protested with great cries.
II
The ladies of Whilomville were somewhat given to the pagan habit of tea parties. When a tea party was to befall a certain house one could read it in the manner of the prospective hostess, who for some previous days would go about twitching this and twisting that, and dusting here and polishing there; the ordinary habits of the household began then to disagree with her, and her unfortunate husband and children fled to the lengths of their tethers. Then there was a hush. Then there was a tea party. On the fatal afternoon a small picked company of latent enemies would meet. There would be a fanfare of affectionate greetings, during which everybody would measure to an inch the importance of what everybody else was wearing. Those who wore old dresses would wish then that they had not come; and those who saw that, in the company, they were well clad, would be pleased or exalted, or filled with the joys of cruelty. Then they had tea, which was a habit and a delight with none of them, their usual beverage being coffee with milk.
Usually the party jerked horribly in the beginning, while the hostess strove and pulled and pushed to make its progress smooth. Then suddenly it would be off like the wind, eight, fifteen, or twenty-five tongues clattering, with a noise like a cotton mill combined with the noise of a few penny whistles. Then the hostess had nothing to do but to look glad and see that everybody had enough tea and cake. When the door was closed behind the last guest, the hostess would usually drop into a chair and say: “Thank Heaven! They’re gone!” There would be no malice in this expression. It simply would be that, womanlike, she had flung herself headlong at the accomplishment of a pleasure which she could not even define, and at the end she felt only weariness.
The value and beauty, or oddity, of the teacups was another ele
ment which entered largely into the spirit of these terrible enterprises. The quality of the tea was an element which did not enter at all. Uniformly it was rather bad. But the cups! Some of the more ambitious people aspired to have cups each of a different pattern, possessing, in fact, the sole similarity that with their odd curves and dips of form they each resembled anything but a teacup. Others of the more ambitious aspired to a quite severe and godly “set,” which, when viewed, appalled one with its austere and rigid family resemblances, and made one desire to ask the hostess if the teapot was not the father of all the little cups, and at the same time protesting gallantly that such a young and charming cream jug surely could not be their mother.
But of course the serious part is that these collections so differed in style and the obvious amount paid for them that nobody could be happy. The poorer ones envied; the richer ones feared—the poorer ones continually striving to overtake the leaders, the leaders always with their heads turned back to hear overtaking footsteps. And none of these things here written did they know. Instead of seeing that they were very stupid, they thought they were very fine. And they gave and took heart-bruises—fierce, deep heart-bruises—under the clear impression that of such kind of rubbish was the kingdom of nice people. The characteristics of outsiders of course emerged in shreds from these tea parties, and it is doubtful if the characteristics of insiders escaped entirely. In fact, these tea parties were in the large way the result of a conspiracy of certain unenlightened people to make life still more uncomfortable.
Mrs. Trescott was in the circle of tea-fighters largely through a sort of artificial necessity—a necessity, in short, which she had herself created in a spirit of femininity.
When the painter and his family came for the holidays, Mrs. Trescott had for some time been feeling that it was her turn to give a tea party, and she was resolved upon it now that she was reinforced by the beautiful wife of the painter, whose charms would make all the other women feel badly. And Mrs. Trescott further resolved that the affair should be notable in more than one way. The painter’s wife suggested that, as an innovation, they give the people good tea; but Mrs. Trescott shook her head; she was quite sure they would not like it.
It was an impressive gathering. A few came to see if they could not find out the faults of the painter’s wife, and these, added to those who would have attended even without that attractive prospect, swelled the company to a number quite large for Whilomville. There were the usual preliminary jolts, and then suddenly the tea party was in full swing and looked like an unprecedented success.
Mrs. Trescott exchanged a glance with the painter’s wife. They felt proud and superior. This tea party was almost perfection.
III
Jimmie and the angel child, after being oppressed by innumerable admonitions to behave correctly during the afternoon, succeeded in reaching the garden, where the stove awaited them. They were enjoying themselves grandly, when snow began to fall so heavily that it gradually dampened their ardor as well as extinguished the fire in the stove. They stood ruefully until the angel child devised the plan of carrying the stove into the stable, and there, safe from the storm, continuing the festivities. But they were met at the door of the stable by Peter Washington.
“What you ’bout, Jim?”
“Now—it’s snowin’ so hard, we thought we’d take the stove into the stable.”
“An’ have er fiah in it? No, seh! G’w’on ’way f’m heh!—g’w’on! Don’ ’low no sech foolishin’ round yer. No, seh!”
“Well, we ain’t goin’ to hurt your old stable, are we?” asked Jimmie, ironically.
“Dat you ain’t, Jim! Not so long’s I keep my two eyes right plumb squaah p’inted at ol’ Jim. No, seh!” Peter began to chuckle in derision.
The two vagabonds stood before him while he informed them of their iniquities as well as their absurdities, and further made clear his own masterly grasp of the spirit of their devices. Nothing affects children so much as rhetoric. It may not involve any definite presentation of common sense, but if it is picturesque they surrender decently to its influence. Peter was by all means a rhetorician, and it was not long before the two children had dismally succumbed to him. They went away.
Depositing the stove in the snow, they straightened to look at each other. It did not enter either head to relinquish the idea of continuing the game. But the situation seemed invulnerable.
The angel child went on a scouting tour. Presently she returned, flying. “I know! Let’s have it in the cellar! In the cellar! Oh, it’ll be lovely!”
The outer door of the cellar was open, and they proceeded down some steps with their treasure. There was plenty of light; the cellar was high-walled, warm, and dry. They named it an ideal place. Two huge cylindrical furnaces were humming away, one at either end. Overhead the beams detonated with the different emotions which agitated the tea party.
Jimmie worked like a stoker, and soon there was a fine bright fire in the stove. The fuel was of small brittle sticks which did not make a great deal of smoke.
“Now what’ll we cook?” cried little Cora. “What’ll we cook, Jim? We must have something to cook, you know.”
“Potatoes?” said Jimmie.
But the angel child made a scornful gesture. “No. I’ve cooked ’bout a million potatoes, I guess. Potatoes aren’t nice any more.”
Jimmie’s mind was all said and done when the question of potatoes had been passed, and he looked weakly at his companion.
“Haven’t you got any turnips in your house?” she inquired, contemptuously. “In my house we have turnips.”
“Oh, turnips!” exclaimed Jimmie, immensely relieved to find that the honor of his family was safe. “Turnips? Oh, bushels an’ bushels an’ bushels! Out in the shed.”
“Well, go an’ get a whole lot,” commanded the angel child. “Go an’ get a whole lot. Grea’ big ones. We always have grea’ big ones.”
Jimmie went to the shed and kicked gently at a company of turnips which the frost had amalgamated. He made three journeys to and from the cellar, carrying always the very largest types from his father’s store. Four of them filled the oven of little Cora’s stove. This fact did not please her, so they placed three rows of turnips on the hot top. Then the angel child, profoundly moved by an inspiration, suddenly cried out, “Oh, Jimmie, let’s play we’re keepin’ a hotel, an’ have got to cook for ’bout a thousand people, an’ those two furnaces will be the ovens, an’ I’ll be the chief cook—”
“No; I want to be chief cook some of the time,” interrupted Jimmie.
“No; I’ll be chief cook my own self. You must be my ’sistant. Now I’ll prepare ’em—see? An’ then you put ’em in the ovens. Get the shovel. We’ll play that’s the pan. I’ll fix ’em, an’ then you put ’em in the ovens. Hold it still, now.”
Jim held the coal shovel while little Cora, with a frown of importance, arranged turnips in rows upon it. She patted each one daintily, and then backed away to view it, with her head critically sideways.
“There!” she shouted at last. “That’ll do, I guess. Put ’em in the oven.”
Jimmie marched with his shovelful of turnips to one of the furnaces. The door was already open, and he slid the shovel in upon the red coals.
“Come on,” cried little Cora. “I’ve got another batch nearly ready.”
“But what am I goin’ to do with these?” asked Jimmie. “There ain’t only one shovel.”
“Leave ’m in there,” retorted the girl, passionately. “Leave ’m in there, an’ then play you’re comin’ with another pan. ’Tain’t right to stand there an’ hold the pan, you goose.”
So Jimmie expelled all his turnips from his shovel out upon the furnace fire, and returned obediently for another batch.
“These are puddings,” yelled the angel child, gleefully. “Dozens an’ dozens of puddings for the thousand people at our grea’ big hotel.”
IV
At the first alarm the painter had fled to the doctor??
?s office, where he hid his face behind a book and pretended that he did not hear the noise of feminine reveling. When the doctor came from a round of calls, he too retreated upon the office, and the men consoled each other as well as they were able. Once Mrs. Trescott dashed in to say delightedly that her tea party was not only the success of the season, but it was probably the very nicest tea party that had ever been held in Whilomville. After vainly beseeching them to return with her, she dashed away again, her face bright with happiness.
The doctor and the painter remained for a long time in silence, Trescott tapping reflectively upon the windowpane. Finally he turned to the painter and, sniffing, said: “What is that, Willis? Don’t you smell something?”
The painter also sniffed. “Why, yes! It’s like—it’s like turnips.”
“Turnips? No; it can’t be.”
“Well, it’s very much like it.”
The puzzled doctor opened the door into the hall, and at first it appeared that he was going to give back two paces. A result of frizzling turnips, which was almost as tangible as mist, had blown in upon his face and made him gasp. “Good God! Willis, what can this be?” he cried.
“Whee!” said the painter. “It’s awful, isn’t it?”
The doctor made his way hurriedly to his wife, but before he could speak with her he had to endure the business of greeting a score of women. Then he whispered, “Out in the hall there’s an awful—”
But at that moment it came to them on the wings of a sudden draught. The solemn odor of burning turnips rolled in like a sea fog and fell upon that dainty, perfumed tea party. It was almost a personality; if some unbidden and extremely odious guest had entered the room, the effect would have been much the same. The sprightly talk stopped with a jolt, and people looked at each other. Then a few brave and considerate persons made the usual attempt to talk away as if nothing had happened. They all looked at their hostess, who wore an air of stupefaction.