Читать книгу The Perennial Bachelor - Anne Parrish - Страница 5

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Nobody could keep away from the parlor, because Papa was there, home again. Old Chloe, in a clean yellow print sprigged with scarlet and a fresh turban, brought eggnog; Albert carried in logs for the fire; and old Toot, though he knew perfectly well he had no business to, looked in to say that he was trying to teach the little yellow cow’s two-day old calf to suck. As for the little girls, they couldn’t get near enough to Papa. But it was to Mamma that all his being was pouring out, pouring out.

They gave him his birthday presents right away—they simply couldn’t wait any longer. Mamma had embroidered him a pair of slippers—tigers! They quite frightened Lily, the tigers stared at her so, and showed such red tongues. It had been a great piece of work, calling not only for black Berlin wool, and white, and light and dark scarlet, but seven different shades of brown. And then such a question as to whether the background should be bright sky-blue or pale green. All the little girls had given their opinions.

Then she had had her own hair and theirs made into a watch-fob for him; and even that wasn’t all, for old Toot had driven them to Wilmington one day to the photographer’s, and they had had their Cartes de Visite taken. The little girls could have spent hours gazing at their pictures, and Mamma herself took a good many looks.

Maggie had made him a small, flat silk pin-cushion, shaped like a fish, with net scales, and fins and tail of pins. It had seemed beautiful to her while she was making it—a little blue fish with silver tail and fins. She could imagine the sensation it would have made swimming among the mud-colored minnows in the brook. But now she wanted to give Papa something precious, marvelous—a milk white charger, or a ruby as big as a pigeon’s egg. She wanted to do something hard to risk her life, to lose her life for him. And instead of saying, “Happy birthday with my love, Papa dear,” prettily, as Mamma had told them all to do, she almost threw her present at him, scowling dreadfully and muttering, “Here’s something—I guess it’s horrid.”

May had made him a pin-cushion, too—it was all the little sisters could think of. But hers was a lute, with a small round spot of black velvet glued on to look like the opening, and long stitches of gold thread for the lute-strings. She and Maggie had been rather troubled because they were both giving him pin-cushions, but, fortunately, it turned out that that was exactly what Papa had been longing for.

Lily’s present was an allumette stand filled with colored paper allumettes. It was of fluted wire covered with cerise and Napoleon blue chenille, and of course, Mamma had made it, really, guiding Lily’s fat little hand in the weaving of a strand or two. But Lily thought she had made it all herself, and told Papa so.

And Papa had presents for them, too—presents from New York.

“Oh, Victor love, you shouldn’t have! We didn’t expect presents!” Mamma cried, looking as pleased and excited as her little daughters.

“Oh yes, we did, Mamma!” protested May.

There were enamel lockets, black, with forget-me-nots, for the little sisters. They had on light blue chambray dresses, low necked, with scalloped ruffles, white muslin aprons, and their best long lace-edged drawers, and the lockets looked so pretty, tied on with long blue ribbons. And then there were three wax dolls, dressed as babies, and as pink as if they had just gotten out of boiling hot baths. Maggie thought that she would rather be chopped up into little tiny pieces than let Papa guess that she had hoped her present would be a bow and arrow.

“That’s all I have for you three.”

“There’s another package in the hall,” suggested May, in case Papa had forgotten it.

“Oh, fie, pet, don’t be greedy!” Mamma reproved her, shocked.

Mamma’s present was a parure of flowers; a wreath for the hair, a bouquet for the corsage, and sprays for the skirt. They were made of cornflowers and wheat, and they came from Paris!

“Is it true that shawls are out, and everyone is wearing zou-zous?” Mamma wanted to know. But Papa hadn’t noticed.

However, he had noticed lots of other things; the heavy traffic, the stages, the newsboys and apple-venders shouting in the streets. Homesick for the country, he had walked one day all the way to the Central Park, and seen the beautiful bird houses, each with its name painted on it, “City Hall,” “Battery,” and so on, built for the sparrows imported two or three years before from England. And at his hotel he had made the trip up to his room in the Vertical Railway, going straight up like a frog in a well-bucket.

“Oh, Victor! How dreadfully dangerous!” cried Mamma, pressing her hands above her heart and looking quite faint. “Thank goodness, we have you safely back!”

“I wouldn’t be afraid to ride in the Vertical Railway,” Maggie boasted, but May copied Mamma, pressing her hands to her apron bib and crying, “Oh, Papa! I’d have been frightened to death!”

Papa had brought home some new music, “Dream on, Lillie,” and “If Thou hast Crushed a Flower,” a duet called “Home of My Youth,” and two humorous songs, “The Girls are not so Green” and “What they do at the Springs.”

“I hope they’re not too comical, love,” said Mamma, remembering one called “Skedaddle” that had been.

They tried over the duet together.

“‘Home of youth! all thy pleasures

Are impressed on my heart——

Ere they fade from my mem’ry

Life itself must depart.’”

Oh, beautiful voices, rising and falling together! May had taken her new doll to the kitchen to show Chloe and Martha, and Lily had trotted after her; but Maggie leaned against Papa, weak and heavy with love, feeling through all her body his kind, careless hand on her shoulder.

“‘In the land of the stranger,

Sighs and tears are but mine——’”

Mamma sang the heart-broken words in a voice like the chirping of a contented canary, and Papa’s voice swelled out, jubilant, triumphant:

“‘Sighs and tears are but mine!’”

and he looked at her, smiling, forgetting Maggie, forgetting everything but Mamma.

“How have you been, my darling?”

“Nicely, thank you, Victor.”

“Margaret, Margaret——!”

“Sam brought over your new horse,” she said quickly, smiling and embarrassed.

“I must go out and have a look at her. I’m afraid I shouldn’t have bought her, Margaret—my business didn’t turn out quite as well as I thought it was going to.”

“Oh, but you wanted that horse so much! I’ll save some way—I’d rather fix up my old hoops and make them do another year than have you go without!”

How funny and sweet and touching she was! He loved her so that he could hardly bear it.

“Margaret—I have something to show you——”

It was in the big parcel in the hall—how had he ever gotten it home in the steam-cars? When the paper fell away, there pranced a rocking-horse, so bright, so freshly painted that it was still a little sticky, dappled grey and white, with wide scarlet nostrils.

“For the baby!”

“For Lily?” But she knew he didn’t mean for Lily. Her head drooped, her eyelids fell. She was dreadfully embarrassed.

“No—for our little boy.”

They all went out on the lawn to see Papa try the new mare. The sky was full of ragged clouds, streaming and free, and the river was covered with whitecaps. How the wind blew! It sent the water from the iron calla lilies streaming to one side in thin veils, it banged the shutters, it blew the little girl’s skirts so that you could see their drawers up to their waists. They jumped up and down, wild with excitement, and they could feel their new lockets jumping too, tap, tap.

“That’s a beautiful mare!” screamed Cousin Lizzie to Mamma, trying to make herself heard above the wind. The Blows had come as Papa was trotting down the road, and stood with Mamma on the steps watching him galloping back.

“Full of spirits—nervous as a witch!” Cousin Sam shouted. “That’s the kind Victor likes.”

Papa tore into the driveway, Trusty yelping behind him, and flung up a welcoming hand to them just as the wind caught a little white shawl from his wife’s shoulders and flung it flapping into the mare’s face. As she swerved with a great buck, he shot into the air and fell head-first on the road.

“God, his neck’s broken!” Sam Blow cried: and Lizzie began to scream, thin and high above the wind, like a rabbit in a trap. But no one paid any attention to her, for Margaret had gone crumpling down onto the steps.

In the last hour of Victor Campion’s birthday his son was born.