Brenda's Summer at Rockley/Chapter 10
X
TWO CALLS
Just after The Fourth came one of those scorching weeks when even at the seashore people had all they could do to keep cool. Until late in the afternoon the girls stayed in the darkened house, with the windows well shaded by blinds and awnings. Only toward evening would they go down to the sea, and then how delicious the plunge in the cool water, the rapid race along the sands when they came out, and the ten or fifteen minutes while they sat on the beach!
“When are we going to call on Amy?” asked Julia one day, as the three sat there resting for a few minutes before proceeding to the bath-house.
“As soon as the weather is cooler. I don’t see anyway why she should n’t call on us sometime on her way to the beach. She comes over nearly every day. I don’t think that girls of our age ought to be too ceremonious.”
Julia and Nora laughed at Brenda’s rather plaintive tone.
“The warm weather seems to have got into your voice. But I thought that you were rather a believer in ceremony, Brenda. I ’ve often heard you scold about girls who did not return calls properly.”
“Oh, in summer it’s different! We can’t be expected to be polite when the thermometer keeps in the neighborhood of a hundred or two all the time.”
“Yes, but still you could drive toward the end of any afternoon, and Amy struck me as the kind of a girl one would n’t wish to offend.”
“The idea! a girl who lives in a little bit of a house like the one she lives in. Oh, no, she won’t be so easily offended!”
This seemed to be the old Brenda of the preceding winter, and Julia looked at her cousin in some surprise.
Presently, when no reply had been made to her last speech, Brenda continued, “But I’m perfectly ready to go to-morrow, for you see I ought to take back that ‘Faery Queen.’ I caught you looking at it this morning, and the next thing you ’ll be wanting to read it aloud to me. I could n’t stand that, and so the best way to prevent it will be to take the book back.”
“Very well,” said Julia, “to return the book will be a very good excuse for calling.”
“Why do we need an excuse?”
“Well, Amy has n’t actually invited us, only it certainly would be the proper thing to do.”
“But would n’t it be just as proper for her to call after having been out on the yacht?” asked Nora.
“Yes, but I have an idea that she is timid about coming. You see we are summer people, and she—”
“She just lives up on that back road all the year. Just fancy! It must be terribly dreary.”
“She is n’t at all a dreary sort of girl,” rejoined Julia. “She seems to have read everything worth reading. I suppose that’s because she has studied at home with her mother. Next year she’s going to the High School at Salem, she told me.”
“I’d like her very much, more than almost any one I know,” said Brenda, “if she were n’t quite so snubbing. I wish you could have seen how shocked she looked when she found that I admired the novels of ‘The Countess.’ Really I did feel small when she handed back one to me that I had dropped over there on the rocks.”
“It served you right, Brenda Barlow; those novels are trash, and I believe that you know that they are. Why I don’t profess to read very deep things, but I would n’t waste my time over ‘The Countess.’ Besides, I thought that your mother did n’t care to have you do it; has n’t she forbidden you?”
Brenda flushed a little angrily. “My mother never forbids me to do anything. She says that I must learn the difference between right and wrong myself.”
“Come now, Brenda, she does n’t expect you to choose the wrong, does she?”
Nora could venture farther with Brenda than most of her friends. But this time Brenda was almost offended with her.
“As I told Julia the other day, if my mother wishes, she can make a bonfire of all my novels; there are n’t so very many of them. They ’re all there in plain sight on my book-shelf. I should n’t think of hiding them.”
“If I were you, I would n’t read them either. They ’re so silly, so untrue to life.”
“How do you know, Nora? You ’ve never been in England, or Ireland either. The scene of some of them is in Ireland. That’s what I like about them. There’s nothing common or ordinary about them. Almost everyone lives in a castle, or ought to, because some of them are people who have been kept out of their own. But the stories always end well,—that is, almost always,—and when they happen to be sad, really they would make you cry. I ’ve cried and cried over some of them.”
“Really, Brenda, I’d try to find something better worth crying over,” said Nora, “something better than a mere trashy novel.”
“Oh, but the people in these books of ‘The Countess’ seem just like real people, and the girls are always such perfect beauties that when things go wrong, you feel terribly for them. But generally they get their fortune back again, or they marry a rich man; I hate sad endings.”
“Give me the ‘Faery Queen’ every time,” cried Nora, “though I ’ve never read it. I must talk to your friend Amy about it.”
The result of the conversation was that a day or two later the three girls set off to make the call on Amy. Brenda was inclined to go—as Nora expressed it—“in style,” that is, wearing her best India silk gown, and her most elaborate hat. But Julia and Nora finally persuaded her that it would be much better to go in simpler array, so that the call might not seem too formal. The day which they chose was the first cool day after the long, hot spell, and they were able to go in cloth walking skirts, with pretty silk waists and fresh gloves to give them a more formal aspect than was usual in their summer costumes.
Brenda had yielded to the other girls in the matter of walking.
“Really, we have been almost like prisoners during this warm season; I have hardly set foot off the piazza,” said Nora; “I’m dying for fresh air and exercise.”
“But you ’ve been driving nearly every evening.”
“Oh, yes, Brenda, but still that is not the same thing at all. A long walk will do us good. Do say yes, for I’m sure that you ’ll enjoy it, too.”
“I’d rather go on my wheel.”
“Oh, it’s too warm for that, besides we’d get so very dusty. Come, Julia’s in favor of walking, so you ’ll have to give in.”
“Oh, very well, as long as the sun is n’t very bright. I hate to walk in the sun.”
The walk toward the road where Amy lived was a pleasant one. It lay along a cross road that was little more than a lane. The trees on each side almost met overhead, and along the sides was the thick growth of flowering bushes which always surprises visitors to the Massachusetts North Shore.
“I never can get used to finding all these lovely things so near the sea-shore,” cried Julia; “why, one could almost stand with one foot in the ocean, and the other resting on a bank of wild flowers such as would be looked for only in the country. See how may different kinds I have here,” and Julia began to tell them off: “wild roses, St. John’s-wort. Why don’t you gather some, Brenda; they’d be lovely on the table this evening.”
“Perhaps I will on my way home. I don’t want to take off my gloves now. They ’re so very hard to fasten.”
Nora, however, followed Julia’s example, and they soon had two large bunches of wild flowers, including more than a dozen different kinds.
Amy saw the three friends as they approached the house. She was hulling strawberries, and this, you know, is a kind of work that stains the fingers rather hopelessly. She was seated on the side-steps with the bowl on her lap, as the girls drew near, and her first impulse was almost to throw it with its ruddy contents one side. Sensible girl though she was, she did not like to have them find her engaged in what she considered a half-menial occupation. Instead of yielding to the foolish impulse, however, she did the more sensible thing, and advanced with the bowl in her hand. She knew that they must have seen her from the road, and had she permitted them to ring the door-bell, she knew that they would have had to wait some time before she could enter the house to answer it.
“Oh, can’t we sit here with you?” cried Brenda cordially, “there’s room for one of us on the step, and those two dear little chairs,”—and she pointed to two at some distance back of the house,—“will be just the thing for the others.”
Before she had finished speaking, Nora and Julia had brought forward the chairs. They were painted a dark- green, the same shade as the doors and fence. Soon the four girls were chatting as gayly as only girls of fifteen can chat, and Amy went on with her task as composedly as if her visitors had been old friends. They talked of the jolly time they had had on The Fourth; and Brenda gave Amy the special invitation which Mrs. Barlow had sent, that she should come down soon to Rockley to spend the day.
“If my mother can spare me, and I know she will, I shall be perfectly delighted,” responded Amy. Her face beamed with pleasure. It was not often that she had an invitation of this kind, and she knew that a day with Brenda and her friends would be very delightful.
“How fine it must be,” exclaimed Nora, “to be so useful in a family that you could n’t accept an invitation until you knew whether or not you could be spared! In all my life I ’ve never reached that height,” said Nora.
There was always a ring of sincerity in Nora’s voice that even strangers recognized, and Amy saw that Nora meant just what she said.
“I hope that I did n’t sound as if I thought myself of too much importance,” she said. “But you know we do not keep any regular girl, and we have an old cousin living with us who needs much attention, and sometimes, when mamma is busy, I feel as if I ought not to leave her.”
This was rather a long speech for Amy, and she was not in the habit of explaining her affairs so fully to people. But in thinking about her acquaintance with these girls, she had decided that frankness was much the best thing.
“They must know that I am poor, or I would n’t be living in this little house, and they might as well know that I am not in the least ashamed of it.” Now all this was in the line of the training that Amy had received from her mother. Yet I am not sure but that Mrs. Redmond might have thought that she was going a little farther than was absolutely necessary.
“There,” said Brenda, when Amy had finished speaking, “there is one thing that I’m almost sure that you will have to come to our house for, that is, if you ever wish to see it again,—your ‘Faery Queen.’”
“Why, yes,” said Amy, “I had almost forgotten it.”
“Well, I meant to bring it to-day. Why I started out to call on you almost expressly to bring it! How in the world did I forget it, Julia?”
“It does seem rather strange for you to forget anything, Brenda.”
“Oh, but it does n’t matter,” interposed Amy.
“On the whole, I’m not sorry, because you ’ll be sure now to come for it.”
“I’d be sure to accept your invitation. But now I want you to come into the house for a while; these chairs must be very uncomfortable.”
Showing the three callers into the pleasant sitting-room, Amy excused herself to take the tray with the bowl of berries and the saucer of hulls out to the kitchen. She returned, plaintively holding up her hands.
“But the stain of the strawberry hangs o’er me still.”
“That sounded like poetry,” said Julia. “Are you a poet, as well as a housekeeper?” Julia was two years older than Amy, and there may have seemed to be just the least tinge of patronage, or older girlishness in her voice. Whatever it was, it caused Amy to answer a rather curt “No,” and made the other girls exchange glances. Amy herself was almost immediately ashamed of her momentary petulance. How often had her mother warned her that she must curb her quick temper, and here she was ready to flare up at—why, at nothing! As amends for this, she now made great efforts to entertain her guests. She showed them a portfolio containing her mother’s watercolor sketches of wild flowers; and when the girls expressed their admiration, she added, “Mother does n’t like to do flower and nature sketches.”
“Oh, I should think she’d be just crazy to; why these flowers are just perfect! ” Brenda’s admiration was very genuine.
“Perhaps there is something else that she does even better,” suggested Julia.
“Well, I think that her portraits are better; she can make the funniest little sketches of people. Sometime, perhaps, she ’ll let me show you some that she has done. Those are miniatures of hers on the mantelpiece.”
Again came a series of “ohs” and “ahs” of admiration from the girls.
“Don’t say it is n’t like me,” cried Amy, as Brenda and Nora bent over one of them. “I know that I am idealized in it; but when I feel low-spirited, I gaze at it, and try to imagine that I look like that.”
“Low-spirited,”—surely that was a rather old-fashioned word for a girl of fifteen; at least Julia thought so, as she stole a rather searching glance at Amy.
Cousin Joan, from her little room upstairs, heard the laughing voices, and wondered who these visitors could be. Amy was not in the habit of entertaining young girls, and the invalid spent a long half hour speculating about them. Before they left, it had been arranged that Amy was to come over to Rockley early the following week.
“No, you need n’t send for me,” she had protested when Brenda said that Thomas and the carryall should come for her. “In the morning I should enjoy the walk. Perhaps in the afternoon you will feel like driving me home.”
“Why, of course,” said Brenda. “I would n’t think of letting you come back alone.”
Just as the three started to bid Amy good-bye, Mrs. Redmond came back from Salem, where she had had to go on business. She was pleased to meet the girls about whom Amy had told her so much, and she quickly gave her consent to Amy’s acceptance of the invitation.
“Amy, Amy!” called cousin Joan, as the three friends waved their farewell as they disappeared down the road. “Amy, I wish that you’d come right upstairs; I ’ve been in an almost suffering state. It must be suppertime; but you were so much taken up with your company that of course you had n’t a thought for me.”
Fortunately the truthful Amy did not feel called upon to make a reply. If she had said anything, it would probably have been that she really had not thought of cousin Joan during the stay of her visitors.
To make up for her negligence, she now moved about the room quietly, adjusting the blinds, arranging the pillows, and doing everything that she could to make her comfortable. She also gratified the old lady’s curiosity by describing the girls who had just left, and she made her account so entertaining that cousin Joan was evidently gratified, although she sniffed a little as if slightly scornful, and said, “Brenda Barlow, Mr. Robert Barlow’s daughter! Oh, yes, it will only make you discontented to know people like that. You ’ll be wanting to do as they do, and you can’t. If I was your mother, I would n’t let you visit them. You can’t have a carriage and pair, and a yacht, and all those things.”
Amy, for a moment, was tempted to make some scoffing reply, but her second thoughts were better, and remembering that cousin Joan was shut out from most of the pleasant things of life, she hastened downstairs to prepare the invalid’s tea; and when she and her mother had finished their own evening meal downstairs, she returned to cousin Joan’s room to read to her for an hour.
Cousin Joan was an inheritance that Mrs. Redmond and Amy were hardly entitled to. She was a half-cousin of Mrs. Redmond’s father, and, to be perfectly frank, Mrs. Redmond was not bound to her by any strong ties of affection or gratitude. In her own girlhood, the mother of Amy had seen this relative only two or three times, as her home was in a distant state. But about the time of Mr. Redmond’s death, cousin Joan had been left a widow with a small income,—so small that it was hardly enough for her to live on. Returning to her native place, she had suggested to Mrs. Redmond that it might he a good plan for them to live together. “My board will be something to you, and I will have more of a home than I could in a boarding-house. Besides, I can look after Amy when you are busy, and I’m quite a good hand at needlework.”
The plan really had appealed to Mrs. Redmond, and, if everything had gone as they planned, cousin Joan, instead of being a burden, would have been a great help. But, first of all, through a bad investment, her income was reduced about half. “Of course, if you say so, Lucy, I ’ll go to the poorhouse,” she had said, with tears in her eyes; and of course Mrs. Redmond had said that she must not talk so foolishly.
“You are company for me, and you can do many little things for me. The loss of your money need n’t make the least difference, as far as I am concerned.”
But one trouble after another came to cousin Joan. First, her general health failed, and a good part of her little stipend went to pay doctors’ bills. Then her eyes became almost useless, and she could no longer sew. But it was not Mrs. Redmond who complained, nor even Amy, whose feet grew very tired sometimes, running up and down stairs at the sick woman’s behest.
“She has really no one else to live with,” Mrs. Redmond had said once or twice to people who had suggested that the care of an invalid was too great for the mother and daughter to bear without aid. “She has really no one else to live with, and it would be very hard for one who has seen better days to live in an institution.”
“Sometimes I wish that she had never seen better days, she has so much to say about them. But that would n’t be so bad if she would n’t try to interfere with me. Really, it seems sometimes as if she thought that this was her house, and we only boarders.”
“Remember, my dear, that she is an old woman,” Mrs. Redmond had replied, “and that it is very hard to be old and sick and poor.”
“I know that it ’s hard to be poor,” Amy had answered, “but—”
“But then be thankful that you are not old and sick, too, and be considerate for those who are.”
It was no wonder that the three girls, after their visit to Amy, said that they thought that Mrs. Redmond had a face that seemed “full of goodness.” This was Nora’s rather quaint wording, and the others agreed with her, while Julia added, “You might not call her beautiful, Aunt Anna, and yet it seemed to me that a very beautiful disposition showed in every line of her face.”
“And she must be very talented, too; her pictures were lovely,” added Brenda.
“Amy Redmond?” queried Mr. Elston, who happened to be dining with the Barlows that evening, “is that the name of the young girl you had with you on the Fourth?”
“Yes, is n’t it a pretty name.”
For a moment Mr. Elston’s mind seemed to be wandering. Then he replied, half absent-mindedly, “It’s an odd combination.”
Now, if time permitted, it would be pleasant to give you a full account of the day that Amy spent at Brenda’s house. To Amy, it was like a glimpse of Fairy Land, first, to be relieved for a whole day of all domestic care, and second, to have a glimpse of a household living as luxuriously as that of Mr. and Mrs. Barlow. To Amy at least the large house with its furnishings and decorations so suited to summer comfort, the three or four domestics who kept things in running order, the well-shorn lawn and the garden beds full of flowers, made a whole that seemed almost too delightful to be real. She noted the many simple, though well-chosen pictures on the wall, the low book-shelves filled with books, and when she sat on Brenda’s little balcony looking seaward, she said in her rather serious tone, “I wonder if you know how fortunate you are to have a home so beautiful as this! I have never seen anything like it. The hedge in front always hid it from view, and I did not dream that there was such a fairy palace behind it.”
Brenda laughed in her lightest-hearted way.
“Oh, you ought to see some of the houses farther down the Shore, at Beverly, or Pride’s! Our grounds are insignificant compared with Edith’s, and our house could almost be set inside hers. But of course I know that ours is very attractive. It’s a good situation.”
“I should say so,” replied Amy; “you certainly ought to be very happy.”
“That sounds as if you would like to add ‘and very good,’” said Brenda, again smiling. “But you ’ll find, if you know me well, that I’m not particularly good.”
“I should n’t wonder if you were good enough,” rejoined Amy. Although she may have seen some things to criticise in Brenda, she still had a strong liking for this new friend of hers. Brenda, on her part, had the rather strange sensation of wishing to gain the approbation of another girl. It was not the same feeling that she had sometimes had at school when she found herself trying by various little methods (in which liberality in spending money at recess, and generosity in buying birthday and Christmas presents played a large part) to attain a reputation for popularity. Even had she known that the next day would be the birthday of Amy, she would hardly have dared to make her a present. But she did feel anxious to stand well in her estimation. It was on this account, probably, that she threw an uneasy glance at her visitor, as the latter paused for a moment, in passing through her room, to look at her book-shelves.
What if she should take down one of those paper-bound volumes! A regret flashed through her mind that she had not put them away in her closet.
But although Brenda had bidden Amy make herself perfectly at home, the latter would not have ventured to take down one of the books without a special invitation. The glance that she gave them was so rapid that she did not read the titles. Brenda gave a sigh of relief as they passed from the room. She had begun to question her own wisdom in keeping “The Countess” in so conspicuous a place.
If Amy enjoyed the day at Rockley, the three girls and Mrs. Barlow were delighted with her.
“Really,” said Mrs. Barlow, “you have told me things about this neighborhood that I have never known, although I have spent so many summers here. I shall never drive through Swampscott now without thinking of Lady Humphrey. You say that the name of the long street running to Marblehead came from Lady Humphrey, and that she and her husband once owned all the country about us. I dare say that you know more about the town of Marblehead itself than Brenda does.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure of that,” interposed Brenda. “She told me quantities of interesting things the other day on the ‘Balloon.’ I begin to feel almost like Julia, I am so anxious to explore it.”
“Then you will probably approve of a plan I have had come through my mind while Amy has been talking. It seems to me that it would be delightful if she would go with you some day soon to Marblehead, and tell you what she knows about some of the old houses.”
Mrs. Barlow looked inquiringly at Amy, and the young girl responded brightly, “I should be very glad indeed to do it.”
“Oh, yes,” added Brenda. “We could have lots of fun out of it, I am sure.”
“Of course you know, Mrs. Barlow, that I simply know the things that are in books that I have read, or that my mother has read to me. I can tell Brenda where to find the same things. Perhaps she would rather read them for herself.”
“Oh, no, indeed; I’ve always noticed that people who write history manage to make their books frightfully uninteresting. I’m afraid that I shouldn’t know much, if I had to dig it out of books myself.”
“Ah, Brenda, why will you make yourself out to be so much worse than you are. Amy will think that Boston school girls receive a strange education. Some of us do like history,” and Nora looked appealingly from Brenda to Amy.
The outcome of this suggestion of Mrs. Barlow’s was the appointing of a day for the four girls to spend together at Marblehead. Brenda was delighted when she found that no older person was to accompany them.
“Marblehead is a quiet place,” said her mother, “and if I did not believe that you could be trusted, I should not think of letting you go, older person or no older person with you.”
“Why, Aunt Anna, am I not an older person?” asked Julia, “if you like, I will take charge of everything.”
“No, I thank you,” interposed Brenda, “you need n’t take charge of me. Mother’s plan of letting us take care of ourselves is the best one.”
Julia saw at once that she had made a mistake, since Brenda had not yet outgrown her rather childish fear that some one might try to have undue authority. She therefore hastened to say,—
“It is you, Brenda, who must have charge of me. You know ever so much more about this coast than I do.”
“Well, I expect you all to learn a great deal,” said Mrs. Barlow, “otherwise I should not encourage your going to Marblehead.”