CHAPTER II—IN THE FIRELIGHT
TWO hours later you might have seen the old pung drawn by Mr. Allen's Jerry, with Bell and Alice Forsaith on the seat, and four laughing, rosy-cheeked girls warmly tucked in buffalo robes on the bottom. Even the sober old sun, who had been under a cloud that day, poked his head out to see the fun, and became so interested that, in spite of himself, he forgot his determination not to shine, and did his duty all the afternoon.
When the girls opened the door and saw Bell's preparations,—the cozy sitting-room, with dining-table in the bay-window, three sofas in a row, so that on snowy days they might extend their lazy lengths thereon, and finally a fir-covered barrel of Nodhead and Baldwin apples in one corner,—there arose bursts of happy laughter and ecstatic cheers loud enough to shock the neighbors, who seldom laughed and never cheered.
“I know it's an original idea to have an apple-barrel in your parlor corner,” said Bell; “but the common-sense of it will be seen by every thoughtful mind. Our forces will consume a peck a day, and life is too short to spend it in galloping up and down cellar constantly for apples.”
“Bell Winship, you are an inhospitable creature,” exclaimed Lilia Porter. “Here I am, calmly seated on a coal-hod with my hat on, while you are talking so fast that you can't get time to show us our apartments. Shelter before food, say I!”
“Apartments!” sniffed Bell, in mock dudgeon. “You are very grand in your ideas! Behold your camp, your wigwam, your tent, your quarters!” and she threw open the door of the large chamber and waved the party dramatically in that direction.
“Bell, you will yet be Presidentess of these United States,” cried Edith Lambert. “Any girl who can devise two such happy combinations as an apple-barrel in a parlor corner and three beds in a row, ought to be given a chair of state.”
“Might a poor worm inquire, Bell,” asked Patty, “why those croquet mallets and balls are laid out in file round the beds?”
“Why, those are for protection, you goose, supposing anybody should come in the piazza window at night, and we had nothing to kill him with!”
“Yes, and supposing he should take one of the mallets and pound us all to a jelly to begin with?” Patty retorted, being of a practical mind.
“That would be rather embarrassing,” answered Bell, with a reflective shudder; “I hadn't thought of it.”
“What could one poor man do against five girls banging him with croquet mallets, while the sixth was running to alarm the neighbors?” asked Alice, “and to put an end to the discussion I suggest that the cooks start supper;” whereupon she threw herself into an arm-chair, and put up a pair of small, stout boots on the fender.
The unfortunate couple referred to exchanged looks of unmitigated discouragement.
“I have my opinion of a girl who will mention supper before she has been in the house an hour,” said the head cook.
“Josie, I foresee that they are going to make galley-slaves of us if they can. However,” turning again to Alice, “it isn't to be supper, but dinner. The meals at this house are to be thus and so: Breakfast at 9 a.m., luncheon at 12 m., dinner at 5 p.m., refreshments at various times betwixt and between, and all affairs pertaining to eatables are to be completely under the control of the chefs, Mesdemoiselles Winship and Fenton. We cannot have you 'suggesting' dinner at all hours, Miss Forsaith. If time hangs heavy on your hands, occupy it in your own branches of housework.”
“If we are to be ruled over in this way, life will not be worth living,” cried Patty Weld, in comical despair. “I dare say we shall be half starved as the days go on, but do give us something good to begin on, Bluebell!”
Judging from the scene at the table an hour later, it would not have made much difference whether the repast was sumptuous or not, so formidable were the appetites, and such the merriment.
“Oh, dear,” sighed Bell, dismally, to the assistant cook, “I will throw off all disguise and say that this family is a surprise and a disappointment to me. When a person cooks twenty-seven potatoes, with the reasonable expectation of having half left to fry, and sees a solitary one left in the dish, with all its lovely companions both faded and gone, she is naturally disheartened. Any way, we have finished for to-night, so the Dish Brigade can marshal its forces. We will take our one potato into the kitchen, Jo, and see if we can make it enough for breakfast. Look in the corner bookcase; bring Mrs. Whitney's 'Just How,' Marion Harland's 'Cook Book,' 'The Young Housekeeper's Friend,' and 'The Bride's Manual.'”
At nine o'clock that evening Uncle Harry passed through the garden, and noticing a pair of open shutters, peeped in at the back window of the sitting-room, thinking he had never seen a more charming or attractive picture. Pretty Edith Lambert was curled up in an armchair near the astral lamp, her face resting on her two rosy palms, and her eyes bent over “Little Women.” Bluebell, her bright hair bobbed in a funny sort of twist, from which two or three venturesome and rebellious curls were straying out, and her high-necked blue apron still on over her dark dress, was humming soft little songs at the piano. Roguish Jo was sitting flat on the hearth, her bright cheeks flushed rosier under the warm occupation of corn popping, and her dark hair falling loosely round her face, while Patty Weld with her shy, demure face, was beside her on a hassock, knitting a “fascinator” out of white wool. These two, so thoroughly unlike, were never to be seen apart; indeed, they were so inseparable as to be dubbed the “Scissors” or “Tongs” by their friends. Alice and Lilia were quarreling briskly over a game of cribbage, Lilia's animated expression and ringing laugh contrasting forcibly with the calm face of her antagonist. Alice was never known to be excited over anything. It was she who carried off all the dignity and took the part of presiding goddess of the party. The girls all adored her for her beauty and superior age; for she had attained the enviable pinnacle of “sweet sixteen.”
“Come,” said Jo, breaking the silence, “let us have refreshments, then a good quiet talk together, then muster the Hair-Brushing Brigade, and go to bed. I think I have corn enough; I've popped and popped and popped as no one ever popped before, and till popping has ceased to be fun.”
“Pop on, pop ever; the more you give us, Jo, the more popular you'll be,” laughed Bell.
“She is a veritable 'pop-in-J,' isn't she?” cried Lilia.
“Now Lilia,” said Edith, “let us get the apples and nuts, and we'll sit in a ring on the floor, and eat. I shan't crack the almonds; the girl that hath her teeth, I say, is no girl, if with her teeth she cannot crack an almond. Lilia, you're not a bit of assistance; you've tied up the end of the nut-bag in a hard knot, upset the apple-dish, put the tablecloth on crooked, and—oh, dear—now you've stepped in the pop-corn,” as Lilia, trying desperately to cross the room without knocking something over, as usual, had hit the corn-pan in her airy flight. “You have such a genius for stepping into half-a-dozen things at once, I think you must be web-footed.”
“Well, that's possible,” retorted the unfortunate Lilia; “I've often been told I was a duck of a girl, and this proves it.”
“Do you realize, girls,” said Edith, after a while, “that we shall all be visited by ghosts and visions to-night, if we don't terminate this repast? I'll put away the dishes, Bell, if you'll move the sofas up to the fire, so that we can have our good-night chat.”
So, speedily, six warm dressing-sacques were slipped on, and then, the lamps being turned out, in the ruddy glow of the firelight, the brown, the yellow, and the dark hair was taken down, and the housekeepers, braiding it up for the night, talked and dreamed and built their castles in the air, as all young things are wont to do.
“Girls, dear old girls,” said Alice, softly, breaking an unusual silence of two minutes; “isn't this cosy and sweet and friendly beyond anything? How thankful we ought to be for the happy lives God gives us! We have been put into this beautiful world and taken care of so wisely and kindly every day; yet we don't often speak, or even think, about it.”
“It is trouble, sometimes, more than happiness, that leads us into thinking about God's care and goodness,” said Edith, “although it's very strange that it should. Before my mother's death I was just a little baby playing with letter-blocks, and all at once, after that, I began to make the letters into words and spell out things for myself.”
“What a perfect heathen I am,” burst out Jo. “I can't feel any of these things any more than if I were a Chinaman. Or, perhaps, it is as Edith says, I am still playing with blocks, although I cannot even see the letters on them. I wonder if I shall ever be wide awake enough for that!”
“Look out of the window, Jo,” said
Bell, who was leaning on the sill. “Don't you think if God can make out of all that snow and ice, in three short months, a lovely, tender, green, springing world, He can make something out of us! Isn't it a wonderful thing that He can wake up the life that's asleep under the frozen earth?”
“Well,” rejoined Jo, dismally, “there's something to begin on out there, but I don't think I have much of a soul; any way, I have never seen any signs of it. You always say things so prettily, Bell, that I like to hear you sermonize. You'd make a good minister's wife.”
“I think you have plenty of 'soul material,' Jo,” said Lilia, confusedly struggling to make a figure of speech express her meaning. “There's lots of it there, only it wants to be blown up, somehow.”
“Thanks for your encouragement,” said Jo, amid the laughter that followed Lilia's peculiar metaphor. “I think if you'll try to handle the spiritual bellows, you'll find it's harder work than you imagine. Now don't laugh, girls, because I really do feel solemn about it, only I talk in my usual frivolous way.”
“You always make yourself appear wicked, Jo,” said her loving champion, Patty, “but I happen to know a few facts on the opposite side. Who was it who gave every cent of her month's allowance to Mrs. Hart, the poor washerwoman who scorched her white skirt; and who stayed away from the church sociable to take care of that horrid room mate of hers who had a headache?”
“Patty, if you don't desist,” cried Jo, with a flaming face, and brandishing a hair-brush fiercely, “I'll throw this at your dear, charitable little head. Now, Bell, you know we all agreed to tell a story of adventure each night before going to bed, and I think you, as hostess, ought to begin. If the entertainment is delayed much longer it will find me asleep with fatigue and over-feeding in the front row of the orchestra.”
“Dear me, I can't begin!” cried Bell, “Nothing ever happened to me except going to California and having a double wedding in the family. That's the sum total of my adventures.”
“Make up something then, or tell us a true story about California. Oh, you do have such a good time, and funny things are always happening to you,” sighed Lilia. “You never seem to have any trials.”
“Trials!” rejoined Bell, sarcastically. “I should think I hadn't. Perhaps I haven't a little scamp of a brother and an awfully fussy old aunty! Perhaps I'm not such an idiot that I can't multiply eight and nine, or seven and six, without a lead-pencil; perhaps I wasn't left at school while my parents toured in the South! Don't you call those afflictions?”
“Yes, I do,” answered Lilia, joining in the general laugh; “and I'll never allude to your good fortune again. Now tell us a California story,—that's a dear,—for I'm getting sleepy as well as Jo.”
“Oh, well,” said Bell, walking about the room absent-mindedly, until her eyes rested on the cabinet, “I'll tell you the story of these;” and she took up a string of dusty pearls which were seamed and cracked as if by fire. “Now open your eyes and lend me your ears, for I shall make it as 'bookish' and romantic as possible.
“Last summer Mother and I were living in a beautiful valley a hundred miles from San Francisco. It was near the mining districts, where Father was attending to some business. Of course, a great many Mexicans and Indians, as well as Chinamen, worked in these mines, and we used to see them very often. Mother and I were sitting under the peach-trees in the garden one afternoon. It was so beautiful sewing or reading in that California garden, for the fruit was ripe and hanging in bushels on the trees, as lovely to look at as it was luscious to eat; some of the peaches were a rich yellow inside and others snow-white, except where the crimson stones had tinged their sockets with rosy little spots.”
“Don't,” cried Jo; “you'll make us discontented with our New England apples!”
“We were chatting and eating peaches,” continued Bell, “when the gate opened, and an Indian girl with an old squaw came in and approached us, The girl could speak English, and told me her name was Eskaluna. I had heard about her, and knew that she was the beauty and belle of the tribe, and was going to marry the chief's son when the next moon came; for our Indian cook was as gossipy as a Yankee, and was forever telling us tales. She was the most beautiful creature I ever saw: lovely black hair, not so coarse as is usual with them, brilliant dark eyes, good features, and the prettiest slim hands and graceful arms. She was dressed gaily and handsomely in the fashion of her tribe, and on her lovely, bare, brown neck was this long string of Mexican pearls, which we noticed at once as being very valuable. She stayed there all the afternoon under the fruit-trees, and really grew quite confidential. Mother, meanwhile, had gone into ecstacies over her beautiful pearls, and had taken them from her neck to examine them. At sunset, when she went home to her wigwam, she slipped the necklace into mother's lap, saying, with her sweet trick of speech, 'I eatie your peachie, you takie my beads.' Of course, mother could not accept them, and Eskaluna departed in quite a disappointed mood. I remember being sorry that the pretty young thing was going to marry the disagreeable, ugly chief. He was just as jealous and ferocious as he could be—wouldn't let her talk to one of the warriors of the tribe, and had shot one man already because he fancied Eskaluna admired him.”
A chorus of “Oh's” and “Ah's” interrupted Bell, and Alice's eyes grew round with interest, for she was sixteen and had been called a “cruel coquette” by a young student at Wareham.
“In a few days our Indian cook came home at night from the mines, saying that he wanted a holiday the next morning to go to a funeral. We had heard that in some tribes they burn the bodies of the dead, and wondered whether his were one of them, so we asked him the particulars, of course, and were terribly shocked when we heard that it was the funeral of poor Eskaluna, who had visited us so lately, in all her dusky beauty. Nakawa told us the whole story in his broken English, and a sad one it was. Her lover, the chief, as I have said, was always jealous of her, and on the afternoon she came to our house, he had heard from some crafty villain or other (an enemy of Eskaluna's, of course), that she was false, and, instead of intending to marry him, loved a handsome young Indian of another tribe, and was planning to run away with him.
“This fired his hot blood, and he rushed off on the village road determined to kill her. He climbed a large sycamore tree on a lonely part of the way, and there waited until the shadows fell over the mountain sides, and the sun, dropping behind their peaks, left the San Jacinto valley in fast-growing darkness. At last he saw the gleam of her scarlet dress in the distance, and soon he heard her voice as she came singing along, little thinking of her dreadful fate. He took sure aim at the heart that was beating happily and carelessly under its cape of birds' feathers; shot, and so swift and unerring was his arrow that she fell in an instant, dead, upon the path. Then, leaving her with the helpless old squaw, he escaped into a canon near by.
“The next day we went over to the Indian encampment, and reached the place just after poor Eskaluna had been burned on the funeral pile. We went close to the spot and could hardly help crying when we thought of her beauty and sweetness, and her sad and undeserved death. Up near the head of the pile where that lovely brown neck of hers had rested,—the prettiest neck in the world,—lay this charred string of pearls she had worn in our garden. Mother asked for it as a remembrance, and the old squaw gave it to her. Eskaluna's brother is on the war-path after her murderer, I believe, to this day, if he hasn't killed him yet; for he was determined to avenge her. Now, isn't that romantic, and tragic at the same time, girls? Poor Eskaluna! I don't know that her fate would have been much easier if she had married the chief; but it is hard to think of her being so heartlessly murdered when she was so innocent and true; and that's the end of my story. Who comes next?”
“Not I, at this hour,” yawned Jo, “but it was a good tale!”
“Nor I, after that thrilling experience of yours!” said Alice, admiringly.
“I can think of no story half so delightful as the dreams we shall have if we go to bed,” murmured Edith from her cozy corner. “Come, it is after ten, and the wide bed calls loudly for occupants.”
In a half-hour all six were asleep, and the bright-faced moon, looking in at the piazza window, smiled as she saw the half-dozen heads in a row, and the bed surrounded by croquet mallets and balls.