Some days later a very weary gentleman in blue goggles and a restless little girl in queer attire, occupying a section of a railway sleeper, heard the welcome announcement of the guard passing through the train: “Next station will be Jersey City. Jer-sey-Ci-ty’s-the-next-sta-tion!”
Then followed the expressman with his insinuating question of, “Baggage, sir? Delivered any part of the city—baggage?” And the newsboy with his patois of, “N’ Yo’k pape’s? Pos’-Sun-’Elegram-World! Pape’s? N’ Yo’k pape’s?”
By that time all the passengers were in a bustle of excitement,—women hunting and strapping stray parcels; men standing up to stretch their cramped limbs, while smiling congratulations to one another that their three-thousand mile journey was safely accomplished.
Cries of, “Porter, my coat!” “This way, Joe! give me a brush next!” “Oh, we’re almost in! See?” echoed here and there. Now, through rows of houses, crowding faster and faster upon one another; and then over a net-work of iron rails, between numberless cars of every sort,—constantly threatening a collision that was always avoided,—pushed and panted the great “Overland,” like an exhausted living creature longing for rest.
All this was very familiar to Mr. Calthorp, but quite new and formidable to his little daughter, who nestled a bit closer to his side, and looked about her with wide, observant eyes.
“Are you not glad, Steenie, my darling? A few more trifling changes to make, another two hours of railway journeying, and then we shall be at Old Knollsboro, at Grandmother’s.”
“As glad as anything, Papa dear, only—” She checked herself suddenly, remembering her farewell promise to Kentucky Bob that she would “keep a stiff upper lip, an’ not let the ‘Boss’ see her weaken, no matter if she did get homesick!”
“Only what, dear?”
“Why—why—I don’t know. I feel so kind of queer and sick-y inside of me. I’m not ill—like eating too much candy; but—I don’t feel very nice. I mean, it’s all right, dear Papa. And I am really, truly glad. ’Cause then you’ll get rested, won’t you? And you’ll go to the eye-man and be fixed; and then—maybe—I s’pose we’ll go home again.”
But already the train had stopped, and the porter, who had neglected these two for more importunate passengers, hurried up to give them a farewell “brush” and to help them with their parcels.
Alas! poor Mr. Calthorp required assistance now as he had not done at familiar Santa Felisa. The close confinement, the almost sleepless nights of the long journey, and the growing anxiety, had affected his dim vision most unfavorably; and the constant attention of his little daughter was necessary to him as he stepped from the car and joined the throng of liberated passengers passing forward into the station.
“Lead me into the ticket office. Can you make it out? Ask any man in uniform.”
Steenie looked up startled. There was a sharp, imperious note in her father’s voice which was new to her, forced from him by the sudden conviction that he was no longer losing his sight, but that it was already lost, and that he had come eastward—too late.
Obediently the little girl touched the arm of an official, passing at that moment. “Please, sir, will you tell us where to go? My father—”
Mr. Calthorp took the explanation from her lips, and the man in the blue uniform looked compassionately upon these two who seemed so helpless, and whose manner so plainly bore the stamp of the far west, where threading narrow streets and dodging crowds are not every-day events.
“Sorry, little one, but—I’m in a hurry. Call somebody else;” and he turned away.
As he did so, he caught the quiver of a girlish, travel-soiled lip, and a look of terror in a pair of big blue eyes; and his feet refused to carry him further from the spot.
“Pshaw! Almost train-time—hm-m. All right, Sissy. Here, this way, sir;” and slipping his arm through Mr. Calthorp’s, the conductor of an out-going “express” wheeled sharply about, and guided his charges into a waiting-room, where he consigned them to: “Here, you, twenty-seven! Look out for these folks! There you are, little one. This man will—” The rest was lost in the distance as, with the skill of a veteran railroader, the kind conductor boarded an already moving car and disappeared.
A little act; but it cleared the mists from Steenie’s eyes and the anxiety from her heart, for already “Twenty-seven” was saying in tones of cheery friendliness, “All right, little missy! Whar yo’ an’ yo’ pa wanter go at?”
Mr. Calthorp’s explanations were repeated with such clearness that, in another moment, a cab had been summoned, the travellers assisted into it, and the station-man dismissed, with a smile shining on his black face and a new quarter in his palm.
“I’m not a bit afraid now, Papa darling. I was just at first, ’cause I didn’t understand the place. But don’t you be worried now, we’re all right; and won’t my grandmother be glad to see you!”
The returning invalid had his own opinion on that matter; but he did not dampen Steenie’s courage by expressing it.
She went on, heedless of his silence. “My! what folks and folks! More than ever came to our circus—even that last one! And what makes ’em almost run? They ’bout hit each other, don’t they? What big wagons! Oh, that’s a pretty horse! What big ones at that wagon full of ’normousest barrels! Why are they so many, many folks, Papa dear? Ah, we’re stopping!”
More confusion—more changes; but always somebody at hand to guide them, for Mr. Calthorp had recovered his usual calm, alert manner, and could direct, if he could not see his path. A second brief railway trip, through which Steenie slept comfortably against her father’s arm, and then—they were standing before the great door of a big white house, whence a brass lion’s-head knocker grinned maliciously upon them. Though unguided by his eyes, Mr. Calthorp’s hand rose naturally till it seized a curious bar-like tongue which hung from the beast’s mouth, and struck it sharply against the polished plate.
“Whack! Rat-a-tat!”
Which brought the sound of approaching feet; and the door opened noiselessly, to show within the aperture a very stiff old man.
“Is Madam Calthorp at home?”
“Yes. But—my-soul-I-declare! Is it you, Mr. Daniel?”
“And you, Resolved Tubbs? I know your voice!” The visitor’s hand was extended and clasped, though cautiously, by the trembling one of the old servitor. “My eyes—”
“I see, I see, sir. This way—you know—Madam is in the library. I don’t think she expected you so soon.”
“Maybe not. Though my secretary wrote.”
“This way, sir.” Mr. Tubbs had become himself again: a wooden-visaged old man who liked to express no opinion whatever, till it had been formed for him by his mistress of many years. He had not been able yet to judge whether that mistress would rejoice at this home-coming of her only son, or not; and he waited his cue before knowing his own sentiments.
“Ah! if it is as it used to be, I can find my own way, Resolved. The table by the wall—I recall its red wool cover with the black stamp exactly in the middle; the two oaken chairs here; and here—the hat-rack! At home, indeed! Even the very aroma of lavender and southernwood from those upper chambers is unchanged!”
Then the blue goggles could not hide the gladness which leaped to the son’s face as he turned the brass knob of the library door, and cried out, “Mother! are you here?”
There was a moment’s hesitation, which Daniel Calthorp’s dim eyes could not see; then the rustle of silken skirts, and the stately old lady of the mansion had risen from her chair and crossed the room, to take her boy’s hands in her own, and to imprint upon his bearded cheek a kiss of greeting. “So soon, Daniel? I had not looked for you until next week.”
“Yes; I had a message sent. You see, I was able to get through a bit earlier, and I could endure no unnecessary delay. Here, darling, this is Grandmother.”
In all her life Steenie had never looked upon the face of any woman who bore a kinship to herself, and the dreams of her romantic little heart had clustered about this unknown relative with an intensity such as only childhood knows. So she scarcely waited to have her elders’ hands unclasped before she sprang forward between her father and his mother, and precipitated herself upon that lady’s neck. “Oh, I thought you would be pretty! but you’re prettier than anything I ever saw!”
Madam Calthorp staggered a little,—perhaps from the violence of this attack upon her person, perhaps from surprise at the words; then she quietly loosened the child’s clinging arms and released herself. “You are an impulsive little girl, Steenie! Let me see, how old are you?”
“Ten; going on ’leven.”
“Say ‘eleven.’ You are very large of your age; I should think you might be older.”
Then there was an awkward silence, which the son broke by groping across the room to a sofa in the bay-window, where he sank down as if exhausted. Steenie bounded to his side, flashing a defiant glance at the tall old madam as she passed. “What is it, my Papa? Are you ill?”
“No, no; not at all! But we are both travel-soiled, and unfit for your dainty rooms, Mother. What quarters have you given us? We will go and freshen up a bit.”
Old Tubbs, still waiting outside the door, listened critically for his mistress’s reply. From it he would form his own basis of action.
“I gave you the spare chamber, Daniel; your daughter can take the little room next.” But Madam’s voice, saying this, sounded as if she were somewhat perplexed.
“Hm-m!” said Resolved to himself, “if she’d answered up quick, ‘Your old room,’ I’d a knowed she was glad, an’ meant things as they uset ter be. But—‘spare room!’ that means he’s comp’ny. She hain’t fergot how he went away, ner the dozen years between. Well, my—soul—I—declare-I’m sure I know which side my bread’s buttered! An’ comp’ny it is!”
“Shall I carry yer bag, Mr. Daniel?” asked this astute servant, as the travellers emerged from the library.
“No! oh, no! thank you. I fancy I’m better able than you, old fellow. Nothing wrong with me but my eyes. This way, sweetheart.”
Whatever the feeling of disappointment in Daniel Calthorp’s heart, there was nothing but gayety in Steenie’s, as she tripped merrily up the broad stairs behind him,—stopping now to examine the slender polished rods which held the carpet in place, and now to gaze through the window on the landing at the old-fashioned garden, where the late April snows still lingered in the clefts of the lilac branches and made a white border for the rows of box.
“Oh! isn’t it just like a storybook? And my grandmother looks like pictures of queens. She makes me think of the cleanest things I ever saw. Did you notice?”
“Be eyes for me, little one, and tell me just what you saw. Her face, is it wrinkled? Is her hair gray? Did she wear glasses?”
“Her face is white,—whiter than anybody’s I ever saw, ’cept Irish Kate’s little baby’s. And her hair is like that pretty snow out there, all round little rolls each side her eyes; and she has some soft white stuff on her head, and more around her neck and her wrists. Her dress is black silk, and—I love her!”
“I’m glad—very glad of that!” exclaimed Mr. Calthorp, earnestly. The power of Steenie’s love he believed to be irresistible.
“But isn’t Mr. Tubbs funny? He makes me think of raisin grapes that haven’t dried right. And he wears his spectacles up on the bald part of his head; and he looks lots older ’n Sutro. How old is he, Papa?”
“Maybe seventy; I don’t know exactly. Now, can you make yourself tidy alone? There are no young women servants in this old house, and you must do everything you can for yourself. But I will help you with your hair if it bothers you, as I did, or tried to do, on the train.”
However, he was saved this trouble; for at that moment came a knock upon the door of the little room assigned to Steenie, and, at her swift opening of it, an old lady entered.
At least Steenie called her “lady,” and was amazed when this prim person, in the black alpaca gown and wearing spectacles, remarked: “Madam sent me to wash and dress you. Come here!”
“But—I—I can do it for myself. I’d rather. I’m very soiled; the car was so dusty And you look so clean! Everybody is so ter’ble clean here!”
“Hoity-toity! Come. I’ve no time ter waste.”
Steenie moved forward, slowly, and greatly wondering. It had seemed all right to have gay young Suzan´ preside at her toilet, but a severe-looking and venerable creature like this was quite a different matter.
“Where is the bath-room, please?”
“The bath-room! There ain’t none. Hm-m. Did ye expect a palace?”
“A palace! I was talking ’bout water. What’ll I do then? I’ve been a’most a week in that dirty car—and I—Maybe Papa knows.” She applied at her father’s key-hole for advice, and he took the direction of affairs into his own hands.
“Just fix up a tub in your old wash-room, won’t you, Mary Jane? And let Steenie have her splash there. It will save messing your clean room, and I will explain to my mother.”
Mary Jane went away with a sniff, and her nose in the air; sternly muttering about “folks turning the house topsy-turvy, an’ thinkin’ the hull world b’longed to ’em;” and Steenie followed, meekly. She was very much in terror of the sharp-visaged old spinster, whose favor she had, however, unwittingly won by her desire for cleanliness; although Mary Jane was not the woman to admit that at once. She was shown into the bare-floored, and rather chilly wash-room, where a round blue tub was deposited upon the boards with a decided bang, and promptly partially filled with several buckets full of cold water from the “system” pump, after which Mary Jane disappeared.
Then the new-comer forgot her fear in her curiosity, and was busily poking about, inspecting her surroundings, when her ancient attendant re-entered, tossed another pail of boiling water into the previous ones of cold, and again withdrew.
An hour later, Steenie, very fresh and dainty in her white frock, and with her rebellious curls brushed into a semblance of order by her father’s untrained hand, bounded gayly through the long, cold halls, and in at the library door, just in time to overhear the old servant explaining to Madam: “She’ll be a cruel lot o’ trouble, an’ mebbe the death on us with her noise; but—she’s clean! Why, ma’am, she says she takes a hull body-wash, ever’ day on her life, an’ sometimes twicet! An’ if it’s the truth, she’s one youngun out of a million! an’ the only one ’t I ever see ’t liked water in her nateral state. She’s a phenomely. But—my floor! When I went in, half an hour arterwards, there she stood, dancin’ a reg’lar jig, roun’ an’ roun’, an’ splashin’ the suds all over her an’ the boards, an’ ever’ conceivable thing! I scairt her out, lively; an’ all she could say fer herself was: ‘It seemed so good an’ funny to use a roun’ tub, stidder a reg’lar long one.’ She’d a splotched out the last drop in another minute. She must a be’n brung up a reg’lar heathen, an’ her Mr. Dan’l’s only!”
Steenie, poised on tip-toe, listened to the close of the harangue; certain from the words that Mary Jane was frightfully angry and from the tone that she was rather pleased. But, at that moment, Madam Calthorp perceived her, and motioned silence to the speaker.
“But I’m not a heathen, Mary Jane! My father says a heathen is one who worships idols, an’ I wouldn’t be such a dunce as that. I’ve a whole lot of Indian idols at San’ Felisa, an’ they’re as ugly as ugly. The silly things make them out of the same clay they do their jars and dishes, an’ the jars are far prettier. My father says—”
“Steenie, why have you put on a white frock on such a day as this?”
“Why?” repeated the puzzled visitor. “It’s a clean one, only wrinkled in the packing.”
“But—a white dress in April! It is wholly out of place. You will get sick, and have to be taken care of. Take it off at once.”
All the gayety died out of the child’s face, rosy from recent scrubbings with soap and water, and radiant with health, and a look of strange perplexity succeeded. “I—I can’t, Grandmother. I haven’t any other.”
“No—other—frock!”
“Not that is clean. My car one is ter’ble dirty an’ dusty. My father says it isn’t fit to wear any more; and my horseback one isn’t unpacked; an’ my rest are just like this. I’m sorry if it isn’t right;” with a deprecatory little gesture that appealed strangely to Madam Calthorp’s cold heart.
“Well, well! Do you wear such clothes as these all winter in California?”
“Yes; I do. My father says ’at white is the only ’propriate color for a little girl.”
“White is not a color, Steenie. Learn to be accurate. But—go and ask Mary Jane to give you my gray cashmere shawl, then put it on directly. If you have no suitable clothes, some must be procured for you.”
“Yes’m,” answered Steenie, obediently, and ran away,—to return presently, sheathed in a great gray calyx, from which her flower-like face peered mischievously out. Then her father’s steps were heard descending the stairs, slowly, and the child darted off, once more, to clasp his arm with a vigor that denoted deep emotion. “Oh, Papa, it was too bad we came! Do you know she doesn’t want us? My pretty, very own Grandmother! She doesn’t say so, but I know it. She doesn’t!”
Daniel Calthorp drew his darling closer to his side; and though he smiled brightly enough, his own heart echoed the disappointed words. He had known from the moment when his mother’s voice had fallen on his now super-sensitive ear that his coming had brought her no pleasure, and that she had been too truthful to put into her welcome a warmth which she did not feel.
“Then we must be so patient and kind to her, sweetheart, that she can’t help being glad, after awhile. I depend upon you, my Blue Eyes, to work a miracle.”
So they entered the Madam’s presence once more, and together; and though she saw something pathetic in the grouping of that helpless pair, the disturbance and annoyance which their coming was to her calm, self-sufficient life far outweighed her pity.
