Hollyhock House/Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
“SOMETHING BETWEEN A HINDRANCE
AND A HELP”
Mary Garden woke with a start the next morning. Her room was filled with the beautiful light that preceded the sun on a mid-June morning, when the days are longest. She could not recall for a bewildered instant what it was that made her feel such a sense of great possession, such flooding joy. Then the chorussing birds in the garden below aroused her more fully, and she knew!
“The first day!” she thought, sinking back into the pillows, and into the birdsong and translucent air, feeling that all beauty flowed around her and held her up, that she lay on great joy-filled hands which at once gave to her and sustained her.
It was not yet four o’clock, so Mary gave herself up for a delicious half-hour to turning over the wealth that had come to her; she felt as one might whose hands were dripping with unset gems of the purest water. It all lay before her—the setting, and learning, and enjoying of this strange gift. In that brief time which she had spent with her mother on her arrival Mary had seen that nothing which they knew of ordinary mothers would help the Garden girls to acquaintance with their own, neither in teaching them their duty toward her nor in enjoying her. As she lay in thought, gradually Mary’s ecstasy in waking merged into a graver sense of responsibility that reversed the relationship of this new mother and her eldest daughter. Mary recalled her mother’s pretty mannerisms, spontaneous yet trained; her dainty appointments, her dependence, her appeal, as of one who had been accustomed to homage and must have it.
“She has come home because she is cruelly wounded; we must remember that every moment,” Mary thought, feeling her way. “She cared more for her singing, her career, than for anything else—yes, anything else!” Mary repeated this to herself sternly. “We can’t mean much to her yet; she doesn’t know us. She will miss her old life dreadfully. She will feel wretched when she remembers that she cannot sing now. We must keep her from thinking of it, but it will rush over her at times, in spite of all that we can do. I wonder how girls like us can keep her company, not let her get lonely, yet not bore her to death? Really, it is going to be hard—we must do our best!” Mary rebuked her thought for taking a form that might be interpreted to mean that the task would be hard to the girls: hard, not merely difficult. “We shall have a great deal to do!” And Mary sprang up and began to dress rapidly, as if to be ready to do. This morning she had expected to be first in the garden, but, early as it was, Jane was already there when she came down.
“I couldn’t sleep, the birds sang so,” Jane explained.
“And our hearts sang so, Janie,” Mary added. “That is what wakened me, though I never heard the birds sing as they did this morning, nor saw such a sunrise. Do listen to that catbird! He’s just like a little gray lead pipe, pouring out liquid song! Do hear how it bubbles and ripples!”
Jane tipped back her head till her long, delicate face was turned skyward, and the mounting sun transformed her hair into a part of himself, as if he were reflected in a golden shield.
“You know you can almost touch heaven when you’re so happy, and when you’re unhappy it seems too far away to be real. Yet some one is always happy, and some one else unhappy. If we could remember that, do you suppose heaven would always seem near?” Jane asked.
“I don’t know; I suppose so, Janie. I’ve never been really unhappy, never more than sad, or sorry when our pets die—though that’s bad enough! We never had anything to bear that we ought to call sorrow. I’m always happy,” said Mary.
“I know you are!” cried Jane. “I’m not. It doesn’t need sorrow to make me sorrowful. Sometimes I get up in the morning feeling as if I couldn’t stand it; nothing special—just stand it! I get as blue! Then sometimes I could dance on the top of the river, I’m so light-hearted! This morning it doesn’t seem as though the blue day could come. This is different; I know what I’m glad about now. It feels all warm and lasting.”
“I suppose—perhaps—we ought not to be unhappy over nothing,” said Mary.
“It’s my hair,” said Jane. “Everything is my hair! Mrs. Moulton says ups and downs are part of ‘the red-haired temperament.’ Your temperament has brown hair, Molly darling, so you’ll have to dye me, if you want to make me nice and steady-good.”
“I don’t want to make you anything that changes you, my Janie,” said Mary. “And I didn’t mean to preach.”
“Preach all you want to, Sister Maria Serena; I don’t mind preaching when people practise, too,” said Jane, pirouetting on the extreme tips of her toes. “I came out to see if I could find the prettiest rose that ever bloomed for mother’s plate at breakfast. I don’t like any of them exactly. Do you think she ought to have a red, or a pink, or a white one, Mary?”
“Pink,” said Mary instantly. “A long bud, just opening. One of us ought to offer to help her dress; she’s used to a maid. Perhaps it would better be you, Jane. You are cleverer with your fingers than I am.”
“I think I’d be afraid,” said Jane, nervously, actually turning a little pale from the thought of not performing her task satisfactorily. “But I’d love to.”
“Perhaps she wants to get up now, and is afraid of disturbing us,” suggested Mary. “Shall we creep up to see if she is awake?”
The two girls crept up the stairs and listened at their mother’s door. Mary’s shoulder jarred the knob and Mrs. Garden called out:
“Is some one there?”
Softly, as if she had not spoken and might be asleep, Mary opened the door barely enough to admit, first Jane, then herself.
“Good morning, mother dear,” Mary said. “Have we kept you waiting? Did you want to get up and go out in the garden before?”
“Before!” cried Mrs. Garden. “Angels and ministers of grace defend us! You out and out little American aborigine! It can’t be much after five o’clock, and you ask me if I have wanted to go into the garden earlier?”
Mary looked so confused that Jane came to her rescue. “You see, mother, we get up at this time in summer. It’s far lovelier in the garden now even than at sunset, fresher, and the birds sing quite differently. When we were little we used to play we were Adam and Eve, if we got up in time; we called it our ‘new garden’ at this hour. We never thought we could be Adam and Eve after breakfast.”
“I’ve no doubt, Jane. In any case, Adam and Eve were not in the garden after they had eaten. But you see I’ve no desire to play at Adam and Eve! I’ve not the least doubt that the garden is charming at dawn—but you see, my dears, the dawn is not charming; at least not as alluring as my comfortable bed. This is a remarkably comfortable bed, by the way. What time do you imagine I rise, girls?” asked Mrs. Garden.
Mary shook her head. “It sounds as though you meant us to guess a shocking hour, mother dear,” she said.
“Not nearly as shocking as five o’clock, Mary dear,” retorted her mother. “At home I have tea and rolls in bed, and come down about noon.”
“Mercy! The day is just half gone then!” cried Jane.
“Not if one sings till nearly midnight and has supper after that, or dances, or entertains her friends,” said Mrs. Garden. “Oh, my heart, my heart! And now I sing no more! Girls, I can’t believe it! It is like a horrid dream. I waken trying to sing, or else I waken, to cry and cry, from a dream that I am singing again and the audience are clapping, clapping me, crying: ‘Bravo, linnet!’ They called me ‘the linnet’ at home, because my name was Lynette, and they loved my singing. Oh, me, oh, me!” She sank back with her face turned to her pillow; her daughters saw her delicate body heave with sobs. Mary and Jane exchanged looks of distress.
“I think I can understand how hard it is, mother,” Jane said, timidly kneeling beside the bed and touching one slender shoulder. “But maybe your voice will come back. Everything grows in our lovely garden! And we mean to take such care of you! Won’t you get used to us, and think it isn’t so very bad not to hear applause, when your three girls are admiring you as hard as they can?” she whispered.
“And how would you like to get up this one morning and come out with us, just to see the garden with the dew on it, and hear the birds?” Mary pleaded, following Jane and stroking her mother’s hair with the hand that had been endowed with beauty and a healing touch. “I think it would make you feel as though nothing on earth mattered—for a while, at least. And you should have coffee out there, and rolls, or tea, if that’s what you like better. You’d love to be the birds’ audience this time, little clever mother.”
Mrs. Garden turned and looked up at them with a quick movement and a laugh, though tears wet her cheeks; it was like one of Jane’s swift changes.
“What wheedlers! And what determination!” she cried. “Very well, then, I’ll give in, and do the unheard-of: get up before six in the morning and go outdoors! Only wait till I write my English friends what little monsters I found over here, ready to drag me to torture! You two will have to be my maids and help me dress. I’m the most helpless creature, and you wouldn’t let me bring a maid over. I give you due notice: I’m going to get one here!”
“You shall have three, mother, if you like! First try us, and see if we can’t hook, and button, and brush you! We want to so dreadfully!” cried Jane. “That would be three, counting Florimel, though that wasn’t what I meant.” She dropped on her knees again, and began putting on her mother’s stockings and shoes, while Mary busied herself with sorting out the hairpins and small belongings on the dressing-table.
Both girls had become painfully shy and awkward, plainly trying to conquer it and make their mother feel, what was true, that they delighted in waiting upon her, but were too ill at ease to reveal their pleasure. Mrs. Garden, on the contrary, grew merry and playful. She had decided that the adventure of rising at what she called “the middle of the night” was wholly funny, and she chattered and laughed throughout her dressing, without a hint of her former sadness.
Florimel added herself to the other two “Abigails,” as Mrs. Garden called her lady’s maids, and claimed for her share of the service her mother’s pretty light-brown hair. “It’s awfully soft and fluffy,” said Florimel admiringly. “Is it the shampoo?”
“Eggs, my dear,” said her mother. “The last maid I had would use nothing else. You don’t imagine that’s why I get up with the chickens—that the eggs have gone to my head, in another sense?”
“Perhaps you recited Chantecler; did you, mother?” suggested Mary. “You did recite, as well as sing, didn’t you?”
“Oh, dear me, yes, but nothing of that sort! Child things. They say I can speak like a little girl. And then I wore the most ravishing little blue frock, and a captivating white pinafore. They say I actually looked a child. I’ll do it for you some day. But what I love best to do is imitations. I’ll do them all for you. My voice lets me recite for a short time,” said Mrs. Garden eagerly.
“I should think, if it wasn’t strong—it sounds clear and full when you talk—but if it got a little tired I’d think you would sound more like a child than ever,” Jane said.
“What an understanding child you are, Janie!” her mother said, bringing Jane’s quick colour to her cheeks. “Really, I think we four shall get on quite nicely, don’t you? Only you don’t seem in the least like my daughters. Over there I was treated like a girl, myself.”
“Of course,” said Florimel decidedly. “I think it’s more than likely we shall treat you like a girl, too, when we get acquainted.”
“Now I’m ready. Dear me, don’t you wear gloves in the garden? Nor garden hats? How frightful! Why, you’ll be like—what’s that little song I used as an encore? ‘Three Little Chestnuts up from the Country?’ That’s it! You’ll be three little brown chestnuts by autumn. Let me see your hands. Of course! Quite tanned, and it’s only June! You have beautiful hands, Mary! I hadn’t noticed them. Jane’s are pretty, slender, and graceful; Florimel’s are very well, but yours are beautiful, Mary. I think I’ve never seen nicer hands.”
“Thank you, mother,” said Mary, hiding them in her sleeves. “I hope they’ll be able to do things for you.”
“That’s precisely the sort they look to be, my dear,” returned her mother. “Now, if you’re ready, children, we may as well go out and see whether the early birds have caught the worms! Dear me, I hope they’ve made away with the caterpillars! The worst of gardens is that while the flowers are delightful, the insects are simply maddening.”
The girls received a new impression of the garden when their mother came into it. To them it had always been their best-loved friend, awaiting them, laden with gifts, if they neglected it, which rarely happened. But Mrs. Garden did not regard it as wholly trustworthy. She did not plunge carelessly into its welcome, as her children did. Florimel was dispatched for a rug to guard her feet from dampness; Jane was sent back to get a down cushion to ease and protect her shoulders; Mary was set to testing currents of air, to determine where the least draught blew. Altogether it suddenly was apparent to the girls that going into the garden in the morning was not the simple thing they had thought it. Yet this frail “English bit of motherwort,” as Mary called her, was delighted with the garden, the birdsong, the sunshine, and the fragrances, after she was made comfortable and safe.
Mary ran away to prepare coffee for her, Mrs. Garden having decided “to become a real American,” she said, and break her fast with coffee, foregoing tea. But Anne had forestalled Mary. She had ready a delicious potful of the perfect coffee which was the pride of that household, and a tray filled with silver cups and saucers, cream and sugar, snowy rolls and golden butter, and another supplementary tray with a great bubble of a cut glass bowl filled with late strawberries, and the small translucent dishes in which to serve them.
“Oh, Anne, she must be happy here!” cried Mary, seeing these preparations.
“Don’t worry, Mary; she will be. She’s like a child, easily disturbed, easily pleased,” said Anne. “She hasn’t changed in the least. I knew you’d have to have something of this sort. Run back, dear child, and get out a small table and call Win down. Then I’ll have Abbie help me with these trays.”
“Isn’t it lovely, Anne?” Mary exclaimed, flying on her errands.
Win needed no calling; he met Mary in the hall. “I’ll take this, Molly,” he said, preventing her attempt to carry out an old-fashioned work table, whose drop-leaves could be raised for extra space. “Why are you carrying off the furniture? And why not get a van, if we’re moving?”
“Breakfast in the garden, silly Win!” Mary panted. “Mother is out there! She is liking it, I think.”
Win controlled his strong desire to suggest that she ought to like it. He had a very young man’s intolerance of a dependent and petted woman, and he resented his sister-in-law’s forsaking her little girls. Nevertheless, he made himself an acquisition to this garden party in the early morning, set up the table, brought chairs, helped with the trays, while Jane and Florimel arranged a wreath of Bleeding Heart around the table edge, and laid a rose at each place, and Mary stuck a branch of fragrant “syringa,” the mock orange, in the back of each chair.
Mrs. Garden grew animated and childishly happy watching these preparations. “Isn’t it nice? Isn’t it delightful?” she repeated. “Quite like a garden party. I think I shall love it here. I didn’t remember it was so nice. But then I was only a girl and there were no other girls with me. Now I have three girls and a fine gallant to keep me company; that explains the difference. Couldn’t you possibly find a little name for me that would be suitable, yet not so solemn as mother, girls? Somehow I think I’ll never get used to being called mother.”
“And it’s so lovely!” Jane exclaimed before she thought, then could have bitten her tongue out for having spoken. Instantly she felt that this request summed up the situation: they must think of this pretty creature as something else than mother, something that expressed their protection for her, not implying dependence upon her.
“I’ve been thinking mother didn’t suit,” said Florimel, with her usual candour. “Would Madrina do? Madre is mother, and ina is a ‘little’-whatever-it’s-put-to, isn’t it? That calls you our little mother, like the sort of a toy mother you’ll be, I guess.”
“Toy mother! Oh, Florimel! But perhaps that’s what I am,” laughed Mrs. Garden.
“Mother sounds less serious in French and Italian than it does in German and English,” said Jane.
“Do you know languages, children?” asked Mrs. Garden.
“Not even one, though we can make ourselves understood in English,” Mary said.
“I know a good deal of German and French, and Italian I really know quite well. I must begin to read with you, regularly, this summer. I don’t want to be only a hindrance to you girls; I want to be a help, too,” Mrs. Garden said with a pretty appealing eagerness.
“No fear of that! And, anyway, aren’t people the best kind of help when you can do for them? Let me give you these tremendous strawberries; I’ve been picking out some bouncing ones for you,” Mary urged, unconsciously illustrating the truth of the first part of her answer to this “toy mother.”