AT YORK
The morning after her arrival at York, Martine stood at the door of the little red farm-house. The air was fresh and cool, a delightful contrast to the last day or two of heat in the city that she had just left. A slight mist from the river softened without hiding the view. Through the rolling meadows that stretched before her across the road, she saw the thread of river winding its way toward the sea. The ocean itself was not in sight, though it made itself known in a certain agreeable saltness of odor that Martine quickly recognized.
Martine gazed across the meadows with a certain pleasant expectancy, such as any young girl in a new place is likely to feel. The houses in the distance looked attractive.
"I wonder if they are summer cottages, or if people really live there. I wonder who has this large house just across the road. It is rather handsome. I hope there are girls in the family. It must be very pleasant there, the garden seems to run down to the river. Our garden needs attention," she concluded, taking a few steps toward the flower beds, where a few stray geraniums and untrimmed rose-bushes were the sole adornments. After a few rather futile efforts to improve the appearance of these beds, Martine turned toward the house.
The red cottage, as she faced it, was far from imposing.
"It's like some of the roadside cottages I have seen in England and Wales. It isn't much larger. I'm glad that it is red instead of white—well I should have had to live in it just the same, but I should have hated a white house. A coat of red paint always makes a house seem picturesque," she concluded.
At this moment Angelina, in a pink calico in which she looked more gypsy-like than ever, ran down the little slope to meet Martine.
"Isn't it lovely," she said, "to be so near the road. We can see the electric cars pass by the corner over there, and hear the train. Didn't you notice the whistle this morning? I did, and it made me think of the city right off."
"I don't often hear an engine whistle in the city."
"Yes, but a steam-engine makes you think of the city. You know that you are not cut off from everything, and that sometime you can go back."
"Why Angelina, I hope that you are not homesick?"
There had been a suspicious quiver in Angelina's voice.
"Not exactly homesick, oh, no, I feel perfectly at home with you and Mrs. Stratford, but still—well, you see, Miss Martine, we haven't as many neighbors as we had in the city. I knew something about every family in the Belhaven, but here I don't see how I'll begin to get acquainted."
"Cheer up, Angelina," said Martine, pleasantly. "Don't let a little thing like that trouble you. A person of your sociable disposition can make acquaintances anywhere. But it's more dignified to proceed slowly. You and I will be busy enough the next few days getting settled. I have an idea that mother may need us now."
"There," cried Angelina, as they stood inside the little entry. "It's small, Miss Martine, but it's real neat, isn't it?"
"Yes, it's neat," and Martine looked at the steep flight of stairs that almost tumbled down into the narrow hall, separating the two front rooms. "It's neat enough, but I am glad we have a strip of red carpet for the stairs. Uncarpeted, the paint might soon wear off, and besides they would be rather noisy. But are you sure that you have finished your kitchen-work, Angelina?"
"Well, I just haven't; I'm glad you reminded me." So Angelina hurried to the back of the house, where soon her voice was heard singing shrilly above the clatter of dishes.
"Martine," said Mrs. Stratford, as her daughter entered the sitting-room at the left of the hall, "the wall paper was very successful. What would this room have been without it?"
"These pale yellow roses certainly brighten it up, and the color is not only cheerful, but increases the size of the room. This little cupboard in the wall is fascinating, and when we get some of our china in, it will be truly æsthetic."
"If only it opened on a piazza," sighed Mrs. Stratford. "It is singular enough that so many New England houses are built without any pretence of a porch or piazza."
"Oh, that can be remedied," responded Martine cheerfully. "There's a very attractive nook between those two trees, and we can send to town for an awning, and if we lay down a rug, and move out a sofa, and some chairs and a table, why we'll have a regular little summer house."
Martine, pausing almost out of breath, noted with regret that her mother did not smile. A shadow crossed Mrs. Stratford's face.
"Mother does not like it here," thought Martine, "neither do I, but I must like it."
"Come, mother," she said aloud, taking her mother by the arm. "Wasn't it a good idea to have the walls of this dining-room painted blue? You see it gets so much sun, and this gives it the effect of coolness."
"I dislike oak furniture." Mrs. Stratford did not answer the question that Martine had put indirectly to her. Her attention was now centred on the ugly extension table and the uncomfortable chairs ranged stiffly around the wall.
"We'll have to put up with the chairs, I suppose, but I have a lovely old blue cotton curtain in one of the trunks that will hide the table and give the room any amount of style."
"You are trying to make the best of everything, my dear, and I dare say you are right. But the house is so much smaller and plainer than I remembered it, that I fear we shall hardly be comfortable."
"Oh, no; come, let me show you, already I have made ever so many plans;" and impressed by Martine's vivacious optimism, Mrs. Stratford at last began to see the pleasanter possibilities of the red cottage.
Martine was not deceiving either her mother or herself in pointing out the best side of things, and yet in her heart there was a certain disappointment in her first survey of "Red Knoll."
"We must have a name for the house," she had said the very afternoon of their arrival. "'Red Farm,' no, that isn't exactly the thing; 'Red Top,' no, the roof isn't red, and besides, that name has been used by some one else. 'Red Knoll'—there, why not, it combines the color of the house and the situation on a knoll—why not, mamma?" and as Mrs. Stratford had no adverse answer, Red Knoll it was from the beginning.
A house needs something besides a picturesque name to make it attractive even to an optimistic girl anxious to see the bright side of things.
The little farm-house that Mr. and Mrs. Stratford had so impulsively bought, was barely large enough for the three persons who were now to make it the summer home. The two square rooms on each side of the front door, if thrown together, would have been smaller than the bedroom which had been Martine's in her father's house. Over them, originally, had been two rooms of equal size. One of these was now to be Mrs. Stratford's bedroom. The other had been divided by a partition into two rooms each, resembling the so-called hall bedroom of many city houses. The one nearest her mother Martine appropriated for herself. The second she named euphemistically the guest-room; but for the present she intended to use it as a studio or writing-room, and had removed one or two other pieces of furniture to make room for a large deal table.
Beyond this room, connected by a narrow door, were two ell rooms, one of which was assigned to Angelina. Downstairs in the ell were kitchen and wash-room, both with white-washed walls.
"A small house, but our own," said Martine cheerfully, as she first walked through it. "I'll try to forget how different it is from the place we used to have at Oconomowoc. When father first sold it, he said some time he would buy a place on the New England coast, but he certainly hadn't Red Knoll in mind then."
As the first evening in their new home came on, Martine felt lonely. The shadows gathering around the little cottage seemed to shut her out from the world.
"Will things ever come right? I feel so—so miserable. I wonder what it is—mother, where are you?"
Two or three times she called, before her mother's voice came to her from a corner of the little garden.
"What are you doing out in the damp?"
"Is it damp, my child? But the sunset was too beautiful to miss. You should have been out here with me. Where were you, dear?"
"Helping Angelina."
"That was right; it will take her some time to get perfectly adjusted. You are going to be a great comfort, Martine."
Her mother's praise sounded sweet to Martine, yet she could not shake off a certain strange feeling, that she would have called homesickness had her mother not been with her.
When they reached the house, they sat for a moment by the open window.
"Mother," cried Martine, "I have an idea—I mean a special idea. Wouldn't it be better after this to have tea later, just as it begins to grow dark. Then we needn't miss the sunset."
"Wouldn't that make Angelina's dish-washing come rather late?"
"Oh, listen, listen," cried Martine, with something of her old eagerness. "It is part of my plan to leave the dish-washing until morning. There are only three of us, and so we need not follow old-fashioned housekeeping rules."
"I am not so sure of that," and Mrs. Stratford shook her head as if in doubt. "But we can try the late tea to-morrow, so that we can go up in the meadow behind the house for our sunset. It is a better place for a view than my corner of the garden."
It pleased Martine to hear her mother speak so cheerfully.
"I'll try not to mind the melancholy twilights, and all those strange chirping things and the feeling of being shut off in a corner of the world, if only this place is good for mother."
The later tea hour proved feasible, and Martine at the table with her mother after their little stroll to Sunset Hill forgot the melancholy twilight. Nor had she in their busy first week much time for discontent. The village boy whom Mrs. Stratford engaged to unpack their trunks and boxes was bewildered by their number.
"There are some, Angelina, that are not to be unpacked now, please get him to put them in the unfinished ell room."
"Yes, Miss Martine, I know just which they are, and I'll hurry back to help you hang those pictures."
When all the pictures were hung, when artistic draperies covered some of the ugliest chairs, when pretty sofa cushions softened ugly angles, when books and bric-à-brac were distributed in carelessly homelike fashion, and when a number of really valuable rugs were used to tone down the crudeness of the carpets, Angelina surveyed the result with a pride that could not have been greater if she had been the owner of the cottage.
"There," she cried. "It looks just like a city house, only more so, if anything. Don't you think so, Miss Martine, and I do hope you'll have some callers right away. Why, I almost feel as if I was back at the Belhaven when I look from this Cashmere rug to that Arts and Crafts silver bowl on the mantle-piece. No one can say that we haven't shown perfect taste, can they, Miss Martine?"
"I am glad we brought all these things," replied Martine, "mother thought I was packing too much, but if we are to be here three or four months, we must make it seem as homelike as possible."
"It certainly is homelike," continued Angelina, "especially that picture of Miss Brenda. Mrs. Weston, I mean; when I first saw her I always thought she was stylish, and that was years ago. Of course I hadn't been acquainted with many Back Bay ladies then, excepting one that taught in our Sunday School. But still, after all I've known I just think Mrs. Weston's at the very head of them. You are something like her, too, Miss Martine, in fact I should say you're almost as stylish, and to-day when I rode down to the village I saw a lot of young ladies that are just your kind, in white muslins and high-heeled shoes, and I hope they'll call on you soon. As far as I could make out from something I heard some one on the seat behind me say, they were going to a tea, and it's likely to be a gay summer. I'm glad of this for your sake, Miss Martine, for you've been too quiet lately for one of your age."
Martine was not altogether pleased with Angelina's familiarity, though for the moment it seemed hardly worth while to rebuke her.
Consequently Angelina, unreproved, continued her monologue:
"I noticed a good many people in bathing when I passed the beach, but when I went up I found they were chiefly nurse-maids, employees of the cottagers. There were a lot of pleasant-looking nurses and children playing in the sand, and one that I spoke to, a nurse, I mean, was very accommodating, and told me lots about the cottagers. They bathe at noon every day, and it's a great sight. I presume when I do go in, I'll have to go in with the employees, for I suppose I'll be classed with the nurses and children that generally bathe in the afternoon."
"You'll be classed with the children, if you babble on in this way, Angelina. But as to the bathing, you must ask mother."
"Well, I wish you had been going to that tea, Miss Martine; the young ladies looked just your style. I asked the nurse about it, and she said it was given by Miss Peggy Pratt of Philadelphia."
These last words of Angelina's made more impression than all the others. "Peggy Pratt." Martine felt on further reflection particularly aggrieved.
"Elinor must have written Peggy regarding her summer plans, for Elinor was a person of her word, and she had promised to do this. If Elinor had not promised, of course I should have written myself. But now I am glad I did not, for probably I should have been treated just the same. Yet it doesn't seem just like Peggy."
"Martine," called Mrs. Stratford from her corner a few minutes later, and Martine hurried to her mother's side.
"Sit down, dear," added Mrs. Stratford, then with a shade of anxiety in her voice. "But you look tired. I fear you have been working too hard. Perhaps you did more than your share in preparing this boudoir for me."
"Oh, no, Angelina and Timothy worked much harder than I. But it is a cosy corner. Between the awning and the trees, you will be as well shaded from the sun as you would be indoors, and an open window wouldn't begin to give you so much air."
Martine swung herself into the hammock.
"There, I feel like a bird. Mother dear, you called me for something special, what is it?"
"Only to say that Angelina is anxious to know how we will celebrate."
"Celebrate?"
"Yes, Miss Martine." Angelina had reappeared on the scene with Mrs. Stratford's glass of milk. "Celebrate," she repeated. "Why, Miss Martine, you haven't forgotten what day to-morrow is?"
Martine sat upright in the hammock. "I really and truly had, but now you mention it it's the great and glorious Fourth, and what of that?" she concluded, waving her hand dramatically.
"Oh, Miss Martine, it wouldn't be right to pass it by unnoticed. Why at the North End we used to sit up all the night before, and the streets were as full of noise as if a war was going on."
"We couldn't celebrate in exactly that way," responded Martine smiling. "I am almost sure that I won't sit up to-night, and as to fire-crackers, what's the good, unless there's a boy in the house?"
Again the sober expression returned to Martine's face, as this mention of the Fourth brought vividly to mind the many celebrations in which she and Lucian had taken a lively interest. Where was Lucian now? Would the whole family ever be together again?
She came to herself with Angelina's high-pitched voice still ringing in her ears.
"So I felt quite sure that you wouldn't object as the ten weeks is more than past, and as I've paid all that up, why, I made sure you wouldn't mind my spending just a little for fireworks. But I'd like you to look in your little book first."
"I know it's all settled, Angelina, but you can bring me that little red book from the drawer in my writing-table."
While Angelina was in the house, Martine explained to her mother what she had meant by "paying up."
"It is that money Lucian paid for the hall. He told her to give it back to me. So she has been paying a dollar and a half a week. It is Lucian's money, though he wished me to keep it, and I agreed not to let Angelina know that it was he who helped her."
"It is to Angelina's credit that she has paid so promptly."
"It really is, mamma, and I think it has been rather a good thing as it has kept her from spending all her money foolishly. Of course, the hall itself was a foolish expense, yet these last few weeks she has been able to waste only part of her money, but now—"
At this moment Angelina appeared with the little red book, and Martine, quickly turning to the pages with her account, saw to Angelina's satisfaction as well as her own, that the indebtedness for the hall had been cancelled.
"There," cried Angelina, folding up the receipt that Martine with business-like exactness gave her. "I am relieved. Now I can celebrate all I want to, for fire-crackers cost a lot."
"Please don't waste your money on fireworks."
"Really, Angelina, you must not," added Martine.
But Angelina, making no reply either to Mrs. Stratford or Martine—unless a nod and three shakes of the head and a broad smile could be called a reply, flew down the little slope toward the road.
The morning of the Fourth was so quiet that Martine might have forgotten the great and glorious holiday but for Angelina. Before the breakfast dishes were washed, the latter was outside striking torpedoes against the stone that formed the kitchen doorstep.
When Mrs. Stratford went with her books to her retreat under the trees in the garden, she found two small flags standing in the vase that was usually filled with flowers.
When once her mind was turned toward the Fourth, Martine began to recall Independence Days of the past. What fun she and Lucian used to have! Why, they often had been up before sunrise to play with their fire-crackers and torpedoes. Then at night—
"I wonder," mused Martine, "if any other children ever had half the sport we had. Set pieces, and fire balloons, as well as rockets; how indulgent father always was. No wonder I feel blue to-day, and expect too much—when it isn't likely that in this town a single person is thinking about us."
The day, as befitted the holiday, proved hot, and Martine, swinging languidly in the hammock, at length admitted to herself that she was glad that she had no troublesome social engagement to keep, and she maintained this opinion even in face of Angelina's report, after a walk to the village, that there seemed to be a great deal going on.
To oblige Angelina, dinner instead of tea was served at five, and it proved a great success.
"I would like to have served red white and blue ice-cream, but I didn't know how to make it blue, so it's red and white," apologized Angelina.
"I might have supplied the blue this morning," said Martine. "It's too late now." But no one understood her feeble attempt at a pun.
"It seems worse," said Angelina, as they gathered up the dishes, "to leave dinner things to be washed until morning, but if your mother don't mind—"
"I am sure that I don't," said Martine, "and as for mother—why, of course she won't care."
"Well, I have some very important business to attend to—if you'll excuse me."
Upon this Angelina disappeared, and in the pleasant twilight Martine went outside with her mother to the little retreat in the garden.
"I half wish," said Mrs. Stratford, "that we had had a few fireworks. Even if we are shut off from the world, we ought not to forget the Fourth. I didn't suppose there would be much celebrating down here, but see!"
Looking where her mother pointed, Martine saw a great fire balloon soaring slowly into the air. They watched it until it disappeared and as the twilight deepened, they counted many rockets and Roman candles going up in various directions.
Before Martine could decide whether it would be wise to recall the Fourth when Lucian almost put his eye out by blowing into a fire-cracker to see if it was still burning, Angelina appeared on the scene with a number of packages. These she deposited on the slope in front of the house with consequential air.
"Angelina," cried Mrs. Stratford.
"Yes'm," responded Angelina.
"Angelina," called Martine, and without waiting for a reply walked down to where the girl was undoing her packages.
"Then you really have fire-crackers here?"
"Yes, Miss Martine, and rockets, and Roman candles, and fire balloons, at least only one balloon. It didn't seem homelike not to have something doing on the Fourth, and now that I can spend my own money, there's no reason why I shouldn't celebrate."
Martine had no reply for this unanswerable argument, and in a second she, too, was busy helping.
"I might have bought some myself, if I had thought of it in time."
"That's it, if you'd thought of it in time. My, that's fine," and Angelina clapped her hands, as a rocket shot into the air falling in a shower of golden stars.
"I didn't know I could find pleasure in anything so simple," said Martine, returning to her mother's side.
"It only shows how limited our life here is," and Mrs. Stratford sank back in her chair with a sigh.
"Oh, fireworks amuse everybody," rejoined Martine, "but now I must run back to Angelina. The last, she says,—is finest of all—a fire balloon."
After two or three ineffectual efforts Martine and Angelina at last had the pleasure of sending off the balloon. But alas! Instead of pursuing its upward way, it was borne horizontally by a wandering breeze, and at last was lost to sight.
"I know," cried Angelina. "It has gone somewhere behind the buildings of that estate over the way. I must get it." And in a flash she had run toward the large house regarding whose occupants Martine had so often wondered.
"Our celebration is over, I suppose," said Martine to her mother, "but we might as well stay outside a little longer, and see! What magnificent rockets are going up from the estate across the way." A change of intonation carried out Martine's mimicry of Angelina's words.
"Yes, and there's a balloon that puts Angelina's to the blush," and mother and daughter watched the ball of fire dwindling in the upper air, until it was lost apparently among the stars.
It was some time before Angelina returned, breathless.
"Oh, did you see my balloon? Wasn't it magnificent? They said they were proud to help send it up from their estate, and they only wished they had had some of their own. You see it had got kind of twisted after you and I sent it, and went down sideways, right on the lawn in front of their house. They seemed the most elegant people, and I told them how lonely it was for you up here, and you used to things so very different. When I mentioned your names it seemed to me they'd heard of you before, and so I asked them to come to see you."
"Oh, how could you, Angelina, how could you!" cried Martine.
"There, there," said Mrs. Stratford, as she laid her hand on Martine's arm as they turned toward the house. "I have always told you you would spoil Angelina. It's useless to reprove her now, for she won't understand what you mean, but in future you can be more careful."