THE HONOR GIRL (12 page)

“H’m! Maybe,” said Gene, looking around. “It
is
fierce, isn’t it? You couldn’t put good things into a hole like this. S’pose you hustle over to Harlin’s early in the morning before he sends his men out for the day. If you tell him that it’s for a surprise, I guess he’ll fix us up. Tell him we want something real snappy with roses in it.”

Those two big boys could hardly sleep that night with their planning. They were almost as excited as if they had been girls, and Jack was up and off bright and early in the morning.

Harlin was an old friend. He remembered Elsie when she was but three, with eyes like stars and hair of gold. Surely he would help them get the room ready for her by Saturday. He was rushed, of course, and behind in his work; but what was one day or so, more or less? He would put somebody else off. Small room, was it? Well, he had the very thing, left over from the Graham mansion on the pike.

It might not sound so very grand just to tell about it, but it made up “simply great!” “Gray felt, real light, with a ceiling of rose tint and a border of cut-out roses on the gray, and you wouldn’t believe how pretty it finished off,” said the man. “I went up to see it when it was furnished, an’ it was just like a parlor. They had two kinds o’ curtains, one white with a border of pink roses, and one pink; an’ the room all looked as if the sun just shone right in. It went real pretty with the gray wall. You wouldn’t a’ b’lieved it, but it did.”

Jack wasn’t quite sure; but the roses sounded good, so he told Harlin to go ahead; and Harlin promised to send someone over that morning to begin.

Jack rushed home and moved all the furniture out of the room, bundling it unceremoniously up into the back room.

It’ll do for the servant, won’t it?” he asked, practically. “Anyhow, we have to have a decent place for her to sleep, or we couldn’t get one to stay. That Rebecca wasn’t worth her salt!”

“I should say!” answered Gene. “Now come on and hustle. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

The brothers rushed off to their uncharacteristic shopping as eager as two children.

A
long toward six o’clock the brothers returned, weary but well satisfied with their labors. They had purchased carefully and with due deliberation and many appeals to sympathetic salesmen and saleswomen, and they felt that they had purchased well. A little white bed and bureau and desk; a white willow rocker with rosy cushions; a small white desk-chair; filmy curtains with a border of roses; a lace-edged cover for the bureau; and a lace-edged, rose bordered, fat pin-cushion; a silver-backed brush and comb; a pink-bordered blanket and coverings for the bed; an eider-down quilt of pink satin crowning extravagance of all, a small but very Oriental rug, just large enough to fill the space between the bed and the bureau, and extended from near the door to near the window, where the little rocker would sit. The rug was a bargain and very silky with a lot of deep rose color and cream in its design; and the brothers, as they settled down into their seats in the trolley car, drew a long breath of satisfaction over it. They knew that Elsie would probably know the value of that rug, and they fairly beamed with delight over the thought that they had been able to buy it for her. Only in a vague way did they appreciate it themselves, and that from hearsay rather than knowledge. It was just a tiny rug. It looked to them no better—not so good, perhaps—as a larger rug for the same price that would have covered the entire floor and was festive with roses and lilies; but they had been most thoroughly instructed in rug lore by the various salesmen who had waited upon them that morning, and they had learned that this small, glowing fabric was related to a great rug that hung high upon the wall that counted its handmade knots to the square inch by the hundred and its price by the thousands of dollars; therefore they sat in awe, and reflected upon their purchase with deep satisfaction.

When they reached home, they did not stop to start their supper nor even to light up. They made one dash up the stairs to the little room that was their sister’s. Yes, Harlin had been as good as his word. There was a smell of new paste in the air, and the floor was littered with old paper torn and scraped from the walls. They stumbled in it as they reached to turn on the light.

The work was not all done, but it was well on its way. The ceiling glowed down rosily upon them, and two walls were smooth and gray with a ravishing rose vine clambering neatly over the top and blending ceiling and sidewall. They could see that it would not take long to finish. It would probably be done when they got home tomorrow night from work.

“Say! It’s all right!” commented Jack delightedly.

“It’s not so bad,” rejoiced Eugene. “Our curtains ’ll go well with that border. But this paint is fierce. It ought to be white; what was that they called the furniture? Ivory-white? It ought to be painted ivory-white. Guess we better get a pot of paint, and get at it tomorrow night. It won’t take long.”

“The floor too. We’ll have to get up that matting, and stop up the cracks with putty, and paint it, and varnish it, I guess. What color? I guess mahogany would set off that rug pretty well. What’s the matter with getting the paint tonight? Then we can go right at it when we get home tomorrow. Guess it won’t do to knock off another day. We might need the money with all these things to pay for.”

“Somebody ought to be here when the things come tomorrow.”

“I guess we can get Harlin to look after those.”

While they were making their plans, the father arrived, and came straight upstairs as eager as either of them. It was eight o’clock before they got around to sit down to their supper, and it was a very different atmosphere from that of their usual meals, for all of them were taking animatedly and suggesting things that might be done to make the house more habitable and pleasant for the new occupant.

“There’s plenty of room to build a sleeping-porch out that south window of hers,” suggested the father eagerly. “Most of the houses out here have one or two of them. That would be something she doesn’t have in the city, anyway.”

“Just the thing, Dad. Isn’t it a pity we didn’t think of these things last summer, and get them done when we had plenty of time?”

“It’s better this way,” said the father. “We shouldn’t know how she wanted everything, you know. She’ll have her own ways, and it’s best to let her plan it herself.”

The brothers looked at one another with sinkings of heart. For the first time it occurred to them that their purchases might not be all that their sister would have liked, and perhaps they ought to have waited until she came.

“Well, everything can be exchanged if she doesn’t like it,” reflected Jack cheerfully, and so a degree of satisfaction was regained.

Tuesday night the papering was done, and the boys began their painting. The air was so full of excitement that they hardly stopped to eat. The father hovered between the room upstairs, giving advice to the boys, and downstairs, where the new furniture was assembled in parlor and hall. He touched with reverent finger the fine white finish, looking wistfully into the French plate mirror that reflected the tired old image of what he used to be. He wondered vaguely whether his wife could know that their little girl was coming back to the old home to live, and whether she was glad. He felt a pang of fear lest Elsie might not like it enough to stay, lest, after all, her aunt might yet persuade her not to come. Indeed, this thought was just below the surface in the minds of them all, and they worked the more nervously that they might not think it out to their consciousness.

Jack got up at four o’clock Thursday morning to put the last coat of paint on so that it would be dry enough by night to hang the curtains. They were so impatient to see the whole finished room that they could hardly sleep. Thursday evening they ate crackers and cheese with coffee, taking as little time as possible, that they might get to work at once.

They washed their hands very carefully when they began to handle the white furniture, and set every piece in place as if it were the ark of the covenant and they were unfit to touch it. They took off their heavy shoes, and went about in stocking feet, lest they scratch the floor; and every time they put anything in place they stepped back with bated breath and surveyed the result, as bit by bit the lovely room was built.

As a lady might have put the last exquisite finishes of lace and jewelry to her costume, so they fastened up the little brass rods, and hung the cheap muslin curtains with rose-bordered ruffles; so they laid on the lace-edged bureau-cover, and set forth the fat pink-satin cushion.

With careful hands and much adjuring of one another they spread up the bed, even to the final arranging with clumsy fingers of the big pink eider-down quilt across the foot. Three or four times apiece they unfolded and replaced that eider-down before they could get it to suit them both, and there was much disputing as to how those they had seen in the shop-windows had been folded. But at last it was all done, and the lovely rug spread down in the center space; and then the three men stood just outside the door, and took in the whole finished beauty, as if it were a sanctuary, without saying a word.

The beauty of it lingered with them when they slept; they dreamed, and thought they were looking into the kingdom of heaven, where the roses grew high against celestial skies and the streets were inlaid with jewels like an Oriental rug.

Neither of the brothers came home in the bus Friday evening. Each, unknown to the other, got off from work early, and slipped away on an errand before coming home. Eugene started first and went to the city. When he came home, it was still afternoon, and no one was about. He stole up to the house shamefacedly, and up to the new room. There he stood a moment looking about, filled with that wonder that ever impresses one at a miracle of change. Then with a flush of embarrassment upon his face he opened his parcels, disclosing a long, soft, rosy robe of thin silk, and lace, and a lovely little silver-lace boudoir-cap wreathed with satin rosebuds. It had taken courage and perseverance to purchase those articles, and now he felt foolish standing there and holding them. What would Jack think of him? What would Elsie? Yet somehow his soul had not been satisfied until they were. He had wanted them there to give that touch of woman’s personality to the room, that little bit of feminine beauty that would show their sister the room was hers, even before she had stamped it with her own possessions.

He arranged them clumsily at last across the back of the desk-chair with an attempt at imitation of the way they had laid across the chair in the store-window. Then he stepped back in the shadow of the hall, and looked again.

While he stood thus, and before he was aware, Jack came stealing in with his arms full of bundles, and started back with an embarrassed laugh at seeing his brother. In fact, it would have been hard to tell which brother felt the more sheepish at being caught in what he was doing. Jack recovered first, and came springing up the last three steps at a bound, and stood looking into the room. Then he tiptoed across, and looked at the cap and gown approvingly.

“Good work, old boy!” he applauded joyously. “I didn’t know you had it in you. I don’t know what they’re for, but they seem to belong. Now just cast an eye at what I’ve got.”

He set the largest package on the floor, and went into the bathroom with the others. In a moment he returned carrying two slender crystal vases, one holding a single perfect rose, white with a flush of rose color in its heart. This he set upon the top of the little white desk. The other vase held half a dozen glorious pink buds, and this he set on the bureau, where the flowers were reflected in the mirror and sent their fragrance through the room.

“Some class, Jack! You’ve beat me to it!” declared his older brother.

“Not yet,” said Jack, and rushed out for his other package. This was two pictures, delicate pastels framed in a silver, one a bit of ocean, real and vivid, green waves flecked with white foam, the other a bit of brook and birch-tree, with the evening sky all rose and silver in the west behind the etching of the fine branches.

He hung the pictures in the two bare places on the wall that had seemed to cry out for something, and then they stood back to take in the effect.

Outside, the trolley car was stopping. Something moved Jack to step to the window and look out.

“She’s come. Elsie’s come! Let’s beat it downstairs!”

And, gathering up the papers and the hammer, they made a hasty retreat to the kitchen, from which they presently issued decorously as if they had not thought of being anywhere else.

B
reakfast at Aunt Esther’s that Friday morning had been a very sad and dreadful affair. Aunt Esther’s eyes had that wan look, a bit red around the edges that said she had been crying half the night. It was not unbecoming for Aunt Esther to cry, but it was depressing. Elsie was made to feel that she was the cause of the deep grief. She felt almost desperate; yet, as the days of that last week had dragged themselves by, she had been more and more convinced that her duty lay at Morningside, and not in this home where everything was so perfect and lovely.

The two cousins were absorbed in their mail, which had lain by their plates as they entered. All the week they had treated Elsie with a gentle, condescending patience that one accords to very young naughty children who are not only giving us pain, but are hurting some one very dear to us. They were doing their best to show Elsie she was an ungrateful girl to reward their dear mother for all she had done for her, by running away.

Uncle James had exploded a bomb in the midst of this scene by suddenly laying down his paper and saying to his wife:

“My dear, if Elsie still thinks that her place is at Morning-side, and she is intending to go there tomorrow, I think we should see about sending her things out today for her. She will want her own furniture and everything that is in her bedroom, of course.”

There was dead silence, during which Elsie gasped and tried to get voice to answer; but she could only cast one grateful glance at her uncle and then struggle with the tears that threatened to get the better of her. Her two cousins looked up with a glance of disapproval that said as plainly as words could have done that their father was simply crazy to mention such an idea; and Aunt Esther put on a severe front, and finally spoke.