Six Girls and the Tea Room

by Marion Ames Taggart

The announcement was too much for Polly. That good little girl, who rarely was cross and never in a passion, flew into one now under the stress of feeling far too strong for her.

"It's not her funeral hymn! Stop that horrid playing Laura Scollard!" she screamed, throwing down Phyllis Lovelocks, her beloved doll, with such violence that the petted creature must have been amazed. "Serena isn't going to have a funeral! She shan't die. I love her, I love her! She's the dearest of all the dancing school children. Stop, Laura! Laura, stop! It's just like a—just like a—just like a cannibal, to do what you're doing, that awful music and those horrid, horrid words!"

Polly's voice had risen to an hysterical shriek, and Margery flew in to calm her.

"Really, Laura, I agree with Polly," she said, gathering the excited child in her arms. "Please don't regard everything as an opportunity for your talents. It may be artistic, but it seems somewhat inhuman."

It was after ten that night when Ralph came home. His mother and Snigs were waiting for him in the Scollard flat. A message had told them that there was no hope of Serena's living till midnight, and that he would return before many hours.

He came at last, a very tired, solemn-looking Ralph, to whom Margery, Happie and Gretta brought hot chocolate and sandwiches, and to whom Mrs. Scollard gave the most comfortable chair.

"I'm not hungry, thanks, Happie," said Ralph. "Yes, I'm glad of the chocolate, Gretta; it's cold out. My little new-found cousin is dead. Poor baby! She looked so frail and sweet. She was a dear little creature. She seemed touchingly glad to see me. She was restless, and I carried her up and down the room, and through the other rooms on that floor until just before—the end. Her grandmother had told her that I was coming, and that I was her cousin. She was very loving. She seemed to be delighted that I was hers, that she had a claim on me. She kissed me and patted my cheek when she could no longer see. Well—we'd better not talk about Serena. I am awfully sorry for Mrs. Jones-Dexter. The child was the one soft spot, the one devotion of her wilful life. Every one else she intended to compel to live for her, but she lived for Serena, and lived IN her. She is an old, broken-down woman to-night. She talked to me in a way that was pretty hard for a boy like me to hear from a woman of her age, but I knew she was crushed under this blow, and that it made her feel better to talk, so I sat still. She wants us to forgive her, mother. And she wants something else. Serena asked her to take care of 'Ralphy' once to-night while I was walking with her, and she said, 'I will do anything for Ralph that he will let me do.' While she was talking to me she told me that she felt as if little Serena had given me to her, in a sense. And she reminded me that she was your own aunt, mother. She begs me to allow her to settle an income on me during her life. It would have been more if it had been given to Serena, she said, but this will be Serena's gift to me. She said—with just a glimpse of her old manner—that she knew we needed money, she had seen our Harlem flat this morning! I hesitated, because I didn't want to take it, mother, and I thought that you wouldn't want it either, and when she saw that I was trying to say no gently, she almost went on her knees to me. It really was awful. She begged me not to be hard on her, to punish her for all her cruel, wilful life—that was what she called it. She said the Jones-Dexter pride had cost her all that made life worth living, and how God had stricken her in her old age. She said I had no right to refuse her a slender comfort, I in whose arms little Serena had died. Little Serena, all that she had! It would go hard with me one day, as it was going hard with her now, if I, with my life all before me, was cruel to an old woman. Mercy on us, you don't know what it was to hear her, and I couldn't speak to tell her that she had misunderstood. As though I wanted to keep up a row that was never mine, nor mother's either, for that matter! Finally she broke down from sheer exhaustion, and then I made her understand that I was not quite the proud, headstrong fellow she thought, and that I would take the gift if mother would allow me to, and that I hoped I might be some comfort to her because my little cousin had loved me. And at last I got away. Talk about pride! If any one could have seen that poor, broken, stiff-necked old lady to-night, desolate, all alone through her own fault, her son dead whom she had quarreled with and driven away, and now this flower-like little idol of her last years dead up-stairs, I think if he were tempted to pride the sight of the Jones-Dexter pride in the dust would humble him! I don't want to go through another such scene. When Serena lay in my arms, gasping, dying, so gentle, so affectionate, I cried like a baby—I don't mind owning it. But it was a sweet sort of grief; the dear little creature seemed so safe and peaceful when we laid her on the pillows at last. But desolate old age, and a proud old woman crushed, that's another sort of pathos."

The circle around him had listened to Ralph without once interrupting him. No one there had ever seen him so stirred and carried beyond his American-boyish self-consciousness and false shame under emotion.

"Dear Ralph, this child's death seems like a providence to soften her hard grandmother. By and by she will be more at peace, if not happier, that Serena left her," said Mrs. Gordon. "Ralph, does this gift help you to college, dear?"

"It would more than solve our problem, mother. If we take the allowance our troubles are over," said Ralph.