Hollyhock House/Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“WISE TO RESOLVE AND PATIENT TO PERFORM”
“Now, small madrina,” said Jane, coming into the library where her mother sat before the hearth upon which Mark was laying a fire in deference to the cool dampness of the evening; “you are to be told something, and implored something, and you must be very, very good and ready to say yes to a polite beggar.”
“I’d be surer to say yes to a rude beggar, because I’d be afraid of him,” Mrs. Garden said. “Please don’t ask me to go on a picnic, Jane; I loathe picnics.”
“Not a picnic in my possession!” declared Jane. “But that’s mind reading! How did you guess I had any sort of festivity in my mind?”
“Jane, if I dared permit myself an ancient bit of slang, I’d say I’d no idea you had festivities in your mind, that I thought Vineclad festivities were all in your eye! I’ve been here over two months and the gayest times I’ve seen were our own garden party—and that was nice—and some depressing teas. I do wish I dared hope your festivity were festive!”
“Madrina, we’re going to get up”
“Well, it’s encouraging to hear you’re the originator of the affair, Jane,” Jane’s mother interrupted her energetically. “You are my daughters; more likely to think of something I’d enjoy. Tell me!”
“We are going to get up something, we don’t know what; we’re counting on you to tell us, to raise a little money for the Day Nursery that Joel Bell said was needed over there. Don’t you think we ought to?” Jane tried to look noble. Her mother laughed and Mark applauded with the tongs.
“In all truth, my dear, I don’t think you could raise enough for the nursery, but no one could approve more heartily than I of the attempt,” Mrs. Garden said. “Haven’t you, really, thought of an entertainment? Because I have! I’ve been thinking of it a good deal lately. Shall I tell you? It’s original. Anything at this time of year ought to be held out of doors, don’t you think? Would it matter that we used our garden? I mean do we seem to emphasize the garden too much? It is so lovely, so big and suitable to almost any purpose.”
“You couldn’t have said anything we’d like to hear much better than that, madrina,” said Mary, slipping into the room behind her mother’s chair and laying her hands on the shoulders which persisted in remaining thinner than the Garden girls liked to see them. “We hoped you’d love our best friend and dearest possession.”
“Of course I love such a garden as that!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Here’s my idea of a nice, perfectly new kind of party: Invite your guests—since it’s to be for charity, sell tickets instead—to meet their friends, of all ages and conditions. Select certain people to be the actors and distribute among them just as many characters as you can; as you can costume and get well taken, that means. Each character would wear a number in a conspicuous place, and wander about the gardens, which would be hung with lanterns and made as pretty as possible in every way. Some of the actors would represent several characters; they would wander about for a certain length of time in one costume, then change and reappear in another. Some of your helpers would have more talent than the others and could enact more rôles. The—I wonder if one should say audience in such a case? The guests not acting would be provided with small pads and pencils, the pads headed with the words: ’I Met’—followed by numbers down the side of each page, as many numbers as there were characters represented. The guests would write against each number the name of the character—his guess of the character—bearing that number. Prizes would be given for the three most accurate lists in order of merit—first, second, and third prizes, and a consolation prize, if you wished. The actors would be required to enact their parts as well as they could, and to answer questions—trying, of course, to give baffling answers—put by the guessers to elicit their identity. We should alter and add to this programme as we came to experiment with it, I suppose. Don’t you think it might be made perfectly charming? All these prettily costumed creatures wandering around under the lantern-hung trees, singing, reciting, doing whatever the characters demanded done? And mightn’t it be lots of fun?”
The girls, Florimel, too, and Win, now added to the group before the fire, had listened to Mrs. Garden’s description of her idea for a summer evening’s revel without interrupting her, but with glances at one another expressing their satisfaction.
“Madrina, it’s great!” cried Jane, first, as usual, to find her voice.
“It would be beautiful, really beautiful, if we could do it as it ought to be done,” said Mary, doubt and desire in her voice.
“Well, I want to be Lady Macbeth!” cried Florimel, which desire, accompanied in its expression by a jump from her low stool and a pirouette most unsuited to tragedy, raised a shout of laughter.
“We’d call the entertainment ‘the Garden of Dreams,’” Jane announced.
“Janie, what a happy label!” Mary said. “My one fear, madrina mia, is that we couldn’t carry out your lovely programme, but if you train us, I suppose we might.”
“Of course I’ll train you! And take any number of characters myself. Shall we make out a list of characters? Get pencils and paper, Florimel, please, and we could set down the names of the actors—your part of it, girls!” Mrs. Garden was all animation, youthfulness flowed into her and flashed from her. Her children exchanged satisfied glances; already their plot was a success. The advertised object of the entertainment was not their object; the Day Nursery was incidental. What mattered was that their plaything mother, growing dearer to them and more of an anxiety each day, should be kept interested and happy.
“Now that our future voters have spoken,” said Win, “might a mere man say that he thinks this a suggestion worthy of a better cause? Also that a Day Nursery in the neighbourhood proposed for it would be a da-go nursery? Also to ask where you’d get costumes, and what you think your proceeds would amount to, if you hired so many costumes, decent enough to be seen at close range?”
“Oh, Win!” Mary’s distressed voice surprised Win, who lacked the clue to her eagerness not to have her mother’s suggestion wet-blanketed, “we can make most of the girls’ costumes, and it wouldn’t cost much to hire a few for the men.”
“Why, Winchester, I have a whole chestful of costumes among my boxes,” Mrs. Garden triumphed in her announcement.
“What may I be?” Mark asked meekly, having been listening and not talking.
“Mark Twain!” Mary almost shouted this happy discovery. “Mark Two, you know! You have thick hair; we’ll comb it out bushy, and powder it, and you can wear a white suit! That would be fine, for one thing! Too easy to guess, but some must be easy.”
“I thought little Jack Horner would fit me; I’ve pulled out a plum in Mr. Moulton—also a peach, in Mrs. Moulton, too,” Mark said sincerely.
“Perhaps Jacky was really a good boy, and was right when he said it, and that’s why he got the plum,” said Jane slyly.
Mark smiled at her. “I thought I ought to be Richard Third,” he said. “He was lame, wasn’t he? I could don a hump. He’s not an attractive gentleman.”
“Was he lame? He limped on the straight and narrow path, Mark,” commented Win. “But lame is too big a word for your tiny drop step, Mark!” protested Florimel.
“Drop step? That’s a new one, Florimel! Quick step, sick step, drop step—goes like a door step!” laughed Mark, who sensibly refused to be sensitive about his slight lameness.
“Is the meeting adjourned, with a resolution to hold the Garden of Dreams festival? Because Abbie was making us grape juice sherbet when I came in. She said she thought we’d be about uncomfortable enough from our fire to want it later on! And we are pretty warm and miserable for people who were chilly, aren’t we?” Mary arose as she spoke and went toward the door to let Abbie know that the hour for sherbet had struck. She laid her hand, with a caressing touch that suggested a benediction, on her mother’s head as she passed her.
“Happy, little Lynette-madrina?” she asked, without pausing for an answer.
Mark stirred in his chair and turned his eyes upon the fire to hide from the others the look that he was himself conscious had sprung into them as he had watched Mary’s betrayal of her sweetness; to hide also the moisture that often rose to them when this happy Garden family reminded him that, though his days were now filled with friendly affection, he had no one whom he might claim his own.
The Vineclad girls, when they heard of the Garden of Dreams, were ready to give the Gardens, mother and daughters, the adulation which grateful children pay—or should pay—to fairy godmothers, who turn the pumpkins of this work-a-day world into chariots, and make the most secret longings of youthful hearts come true. Never before had it befallen them to impersonate the heroines of romance, clad in picturesque garments, trailed blissfully through fairy scenes. It was not a simple task to apportion the characters. Not only must they be given to the persons best fitted physically to assume them, but a perfectly successful impersonation involved mental sympathy between the real and assumed individuals, else bearing and movements would be out of accord. When it came to fencing to ward off the guessers’ questions, which must be answered, betrayals would be inevitable, unless each actor understood the character he, or she, portrayed sufficiently to reply correctly yet misleadingly. The Vineclad boys were dubious about the whole thing; they had a common misgiving among them that walking about in costume would “make them feel like fools.” There were a few who took kindly to the idea, seeing it in its true light, as informal drama, but in the main the older men were impressed into service for the masculine characters, which remained in the minority. Mr. Moulton developed amazing enthusiasm for the dressing-up game, unexpected, and the more delightful in him. He volunteered to assume the rôles of blind Milton, if Mary would walk with him as Milton’s devoted daughter, Mary; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, for whom Mr. Moulton, it seemed, had a secret admiration; Merlin, out of Tennyson’s Idyls, and King Cophetua, with Florimel as the Beggar Maid.
“It’s perfectly scrumptious of you, Guardian!” said Jane. “We never dreamed we could get you into it—and four times! It must be all those plants you work over springing up in you and making you blossom out!”
“A botanist ought to enjoy transformations, an elderly man ought to be glad to be rejuvenated, and we are all secretly inclined to the drama, my dear,” Mr. Moulton answered her. “This notion of Lynette’s strikes my fancy; I leaped to the bait of one night’s youthfulness; that’s all.”
“Nothing to apologize for, Mr. Moulton,” said Mary. “You are to have four rôles, then, and Mark four—Galahad, Alexander Hamilton—we think Mark looks a little like him—Clive Newcome, Kim. And Win will be Mark Antony—I don’t see how anybody can be sure which Roman he is, when togas were so fashionable!—Robin Hood, The Last of the Mohicans, L’Aiglon—in a gorgeous satin costume!—and Oliver Goldsmith. If only you three could be in as many places at once as you can take parts we’d seem to have an army of men! That short Dallas boy, Fred, is to be Little Tommy Tucker, crying for his supper, and Phil Ives will be Barnaby Rudge, with a stuffed crow they have, a pet crow he was before he was stuffed—as Barnaby’s raven, on his shoulder. It will really be good. We have George Washington, tall Mr. Bristead, and Agamemnon, king of men, will be Mr. Hall, because he’s so huge. Goodness only knows what he’ll look like if he wears a Grecian costume! And Mr. Low wants to be Falstaff—with pillows to fill him out—and he will act the part well. There are other men characters. Tiny Nanette Hall is to be Little Miss Netticoat, in a white petticoat! That will really be dear! A straight little candle costume, a red flame wired up on her head, and a fluffy white skirt, like a candle shade! The girls are ready to take as many parts as we can dress.”
“I’m to be Brünhilde,” cried Jane, “on account of my hair. And Joan of Arc, and the White Lady of Avenel, and the Red-haired Girl in ‘The Light that Failed,’ and Lady Clara Vere de Vere, and Snow White—as many more as they like! Madrina is going to teach me the ‘Willow Song,’ and I’m to be Ophelia, but that’s a secret! I’m crazy about it.”
“Most suitable to Ophelia; it promises well for your acting the part, Jane,” suggested Mr. Moulton. “And Mary?”
“I’m to be your Beggar Maid, Cophetua’s,” cried Florimel, not hearing his question. “And Katharine Seyton, in ‘The Abbot,’ and Madge Wildfire, and Cleopatra, and Lady Babbie, in ‘The Little Minister,’ and Topsy—black face! Burnt cork! Goodness, what fun! And a Spanish dancer; Carmen, we’ll call her.”
“I’m Mary Milton, with you,” Mary then got a chance to say. “And Ruth Pinch, and Dinah Craik, in ‘Adam Bede,’ you know, and Florence Nightingale, and Madam Butterfly, and Pippa—the Pippa who passed. I like that one, an Italian peasant dress, and just go happily along singing softly: ‘God’s in his heaven and all’s right in the world.’ And madrina wants me to be Mother Hubbard, in a nice, little tucked-up gown, with Chum following me around after a bone. But I’m afraid the crowd would be more frightful to Chum than the bone would be attractive. You never could imagine the lovely things madrina will be and do! She’s going to wear about seven of her costumes. We’ve got to find names for each part. People can’t guess, it wouldn’t be fair if she were just “A Child”; it must be some particular child, and so on. But we can arrange that. Madrina is so happy over it, Mr. Moulton! She isn’t a bit lonely now.”
“Own up, my Mary! You are not doing this for a charity in the first place, but for your mother’s sake—or perhaps you think charity should begin at home?” Mr. Moulton accused Mary, a hand on her shoulder.
“Madrina must not dwell on her lost voice, dear Guardian,” said Mary, with a deprecating look. “Do you think Mrs. Moulton could be persuaded to represent Cinderella’s godmother? We could have a dear Cinderella group if she would.”
“I think nothing short of chloroforming her and setting her up, unconscious, to fill a lay figure’s rôle could get my wife into anything distantly resembling tableaux, or amateur theatricals!” laughed Mr. Moulton.
“I suppose I knew that,” sighed Mary, then smiled, dismissing her regret. “We’re terribly rushed rehearsing; madrina is training some one every minute. I’ve got to go now, Mr. Moulton. I need practice as Pippa.”
It was perfectly true that the Garden girls were “terribly rushed rehearsing.” The Garden of Dreams took on nightmare aspects at times, it required so much anxious discussing, so much actual hard work, added to which the heat of August, sultry and heavy, made hammocks alluring and naps hard to ward off. But on the whole even the unexpectedly arduous preparations were enjoyable, Mrs. Garden was in her element, and the outlook was all for success. One important happy result had already been attained from the mere rehearsing of the Garden of Dreams. Jane had developed under her mother’s training such instinctive talent for the dramatic singing required to accompany impersonations that Mary and Win were amazed, and Mrs. Garden was greatly excited. At first the excitement seemed to hold something of regret; it would have been hard to say whether Jane’s mother was glad or sorry to find her second child inheriting her talent, intensified.
“Jane, why Jane! You are extraordinarily good at this!” she cried. “You act well, really well, you know! And your voice! Your voice is going to be better than mine ever was! Jane, Jane, what can you mean by it? You can sing and I cannot! Your life lies all before you, and mine is over and done with!” She dropped into a chair as she spoke, and burst into weeping, great sobs tearing her slender form, her thin shoulders heaving.
Jane flew to her, with a distressed glance over toward Mary.
“Little girl-mother, don’t mind, please don’t mind!” Jane begged, on her knees before her mother, gathering her shaking little body into her firm young clasp. “I’ll never sing a note unless you want me to; truly I won’t! And don’t you see your life isn’t over and done with if I can do this? That’s nonsense, of course; I mean your life being over when you seem younger than we girls! What I meant was about the singing. If I could sing, if I have a voice, it came from you, and when I sang it would be you singing still, through me. It would be beautiful, I think, if it were so, because then you would go singing on and on, when you thought you’d never sing again! If I sang you could say: there’s my dear voice that I loved so and never expected to hear again! Jane’s taken it out to exercise it for me! And when you wanted to sing, you could say: Jane, use my voice for me; I want to sing ‘Good-bye, Sweet Day,’ or whatever you would sing that special minute. Couldn’t you feel that way about it? It would be so lovely! But if you’d rather, I’d take a clam vow right away and keep it, never to sing any more than a clam does, humming in my bed—do clams sing in their clam beds, do you suppose?”
Mrs. Garden’s moods were beginning to be less amazing to her girls; they changed with darting rapidity, swinging from despair to laughter at a word. Now she sat up and laughed, a little tremulously, but still she laughed, drying her eyes and hugging Jane with a funny childish little chuckle.
“Jane, you’re a farce comedy! No wonder you act well—which is not the same as behaving well, miss! ‘A clam vow’ is an entirely new sort! And I certainly do not want you to take one. I see precisely what you mean by your voice being my proxy, my little glowing-haired poet, Jane, and it can be true; it is true; we’ll make it true! What dear children you are, all three of you! Mary, sweetheart, don’t look so troubled! It was bad, downright bad and wicked of me to cry like that. I’m happy now, truly. It was just a minute of wickedness! I felt as though I couldn’t bear it to hear Jane singing at less than half my age, and to know I was silenced forever! It isn’t that I’m not glad Jane can sing, but that I’m sorry that I can’t! But Jane found the word to the enigma; she has shown me how to be glad, and I am glad! I’ll let you use my voice, Janie, just as long as you want to—or as long as you can! People can’t always sing as long as they want to, my dear! And I’ll try to remember it is mine, not yours. I’m going to train you just as well as I know how; you must not sing much for two years. Then you shall be taught by better masters than I. I’m delighted! My voice, that I loved best of all earthly things, is not gone, but is transferred. And here’s another thing, children: if I had not come home when I could no longer use my voice I should never have known that it had been smuggled into the states—for I’m certain you didn’t pay the duty on it, Jane!”
“Not a penny, madrina!” declared Jane, with a glad look at Mary. This was the first time that their mother had spoken of her return to Vineclad as “coming home.”
“I think it was brought in, past the customs officers, in a baby’s shirt, and that they never noticed it, for I’ve had it ever so long, and when I found it, it was under a little soft shirt you put on me without noticing it, either; I believe you thought it a little squeaky squawk.”
From this hour there was a change in Mrs. Garden; she seemed happier, and her eyes followed Jane with new interest, she threw herself into the preparations for the Garden of Dreams with new zest. Jane’s brilliant beauty, her delicate grace, her luminous pallor, her radiant hair seemed to enthrall her mother, now that she had found them the casket of her lost voice. For Jane’s pretty fancy took hold of her mother’s imagination; it was plain that she was beginning to feel that her voice actually did live on in Jane, and to be comforted by the thought. Mary was still her mother’s comfort, her sweet reliance, as she was every one’s, but in Jane her mother seemed to find her own reincarnation.
Thus, with new pleasure and enthusiasm, the rehearsals for the entertainment in the Gardens’ old garden went on toward its perfecting.