Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and others Part 18

The sons, Sidney and Laurence, grew up together, pa.s.sionate, devoted, and widely loved. Sidney married and went away for a few years; but presently he came back to his mother and brother, bringing with him the motherless little Sidney who was Jean's sunny big husband now. This younger Sidney well remembered the day--and had once told his wife of it--when his father and his uncle fell to sudden quarrelling in their boat, during a morning's fishing on the placid river. He remembered, a small watcher on the bank, that the boat upset, and that, when his uncle reached the sh.o.r.e, it was to work unavailingly for hours over his father's silent form, which never moved again. The boy was sent away for a while, but came back to find his uncle a silent, morose shadow, pacing the lonely garden in una.s.sailable solitude, or riding his horse for hours in the great woods. Sometimes the little fellow would sit with his grandmother in the library window, where she watched and waited. Always, as he went about the garden and yards, he would look for her there, and wave his cap to her. He missed her, in his unexpressed little-boy fashion, when she sat there no longer, although she had always been silent and reserved with him. Then came his years of school and travel, and in one of them he learned that the Hall was quite empty now. Sidney meant to go back, just to turn over the old books, and open the old doors, and walk the garden paths again; but, somehow, he had never come until to-day. And now that he had come, he, and Jean, and Peter, too, wanted to stay.

Jean sighed.

"You knew Madam Carolan, didn't you, Mary?"

"No--no, I didn't," said Mrs. Moore, coloring uneasily. "I've seen her, though, as a small girl, at the window. I used to visit Billy's--my husband's--people when we were both small, you know, and we often came to these woods."

"I've been thinking of the house and its cheerful history," said Jean, with a little shudder. "Sweet heritage for Peterkin!"

"Heritage--nonsense!" said the other woman, hardily. "Every one tells me that your husband is the gentlest and finest of them all--and his father was before him. I don't believe such things come down, anyway."

"Well," smiled Sidney's wife, a little proudly, "I've never seen the Carolan temper in the nine years we've been married!"

"Exactly. Besides, it's not a temper--just strong will."

"Sidney has WILL enough," mused Jean.

"Oh, all men have," said the doctor's wife contentedly. "Billy, now! He won't STAND a locked door. One night--I never shall forget!--the children locked themselves in the nursery, and Will simply burst the door in. n.o.body makes a fuss or worries over THAT!"

If the ill.u.s.tration was beside the point, neither woman perceived it.

"There, you see!" said Jean, glad to be quite sure of conviction. "It never really worries me," she added, after a moment, "for Peter adores his father, and is only too eager to obey him. If Peter--and it's impossible!--ever DID really work himself up to disobedience, why, I suppose he'd get a thrashing,"--she made a wry face,--"and they'd love each other all the more for it."

"Of course they would," agreed the other cheerfully.

"There must have been some way in which Madam Carolan could have managed them," pursued Jean, thoughtfully. "The women of that generation were a poor-spirited lot, I imagine. One isn't quite a child!" There was another little pause in the hot murmuring silence of the garden, and then, with a sudden change of manner, she rose to her feet. "Mary! come and meet Sidney and the kiddy!" she commanded.

"Well, I rather hoped you were going to present them," said Mrs. Moore, rising too, and gathering up sunshade and gloves.

They threaded the silent garden paths again, pa.s.sed the house, and crossed a neglected stable yard, where a great red motor-car had crushed a path for itself across dry gra.s.s and weeds. In the stable itself they found Sidney Carolan, the little Peter, and a couple of servants--the chauffeur with oily hands, and the wrinkled old Italian maid, very gay in scarlet gown and headdress.

Jean's husband had all the Carolan beauty and charm, and was his most gracious and radiant self to-day. His sunny cordiality gave Mary no chance to remember that she had a little feared the writer and critic.

But, after the first moment, her eye was irresistibly drawn to the child.

Tawny-haired, erect, and astonishing in the perfection of his childish beauty, Peter Carolan advanced her a bronzed, firm little hand, and gave her with it a smile that seemed all brilliant color--white teeth, ocean-blue eyes, and poppied cheeks. His square little figure was very boyish in the thin silk shirt and baggy knickerbockers, and a wide hat, slipping from his yellow mane, added a last debonair touch to his picturesque little person. He was flushed, but gracious and at ease.

"You're one of the reasons we came!" he said in a rich little voice--when his mother's "You've heard me speak of Mrs. Moore, Peter?"

had introduced them. "You have boys, too, haven't you?"

"I have three," said Mrs. Moore, in the rational, unhurried tone that only very clever people use to children. "Billy is nine, George seven, Jack is three; and then there's a girl--my Mary."

"I come next to Billy," calculated little Peter, his eyes very eager.

"You and he will like each other, I hope," said Billy's mother.

"I hope we will--I hope so!" he a.s.sented vivaciously. "I've been thinking so!"

Mrs. Carolan presently suggested that he go off with Betta to pack the luncheon things in the car, and the three watched his st.u.r.dy, erect little figure out of sight. Mrs. Moore heard his gay voice break into ready Italian as they went.

A horde of workmen took possession of Carolan Hall a few days later, and for happy weeks Jean and Mary followed and directed them. The Moore children and Peter Carolan explored every fascinating inch of house and garden. Linen and china were unpacked, old furniture polished, and old paintings restored.

Mrs. Moore, with her two oldest sons frolicking about her like excited puppies, came up to Carolan Hall one exquisite morning a month later.

Brush fires were burning in the thinning woods, and the blue, fragrant smoke drifted in thin veils across the sunlight.

A visit to the circus was afoot, and Peter Carolan, seated on the porch steps in the full glory of starched blue linen and tan sandals, leaped up to join his friends in a war-dance of wild antic.i.p.ation.

Jean came out, also starched and radiant, kissed her guests, piled some wraps into the waiting motor, and engineered the group into the shaded dining-room, where the excited children were somehow to be coaxed into eating their luncheon. Sidney came in late, to smile at them all from the top of the table.

It was rapidly dawning on the adult consciousness that, above every other sound, the voices of the children were really reaching inexcusable heights, when a burst of laughter and a brief struggle between Peter and Billy Moore resulted in an overturned mug, the usual rapidly spreading pool of milk, and the usual reckless mopping. Peter's silver mug fell to the floor, and rolled to the sideboard, where it lay against the carved mahogany base, winking in the sun.

"Peter!" said Jean, severely. "No, don't ring, Sidney! He did that by his own carelessness, and mother can't ask poor, busy Julia to pick up things for boys who are noisy and rude at the table. Go pick up your mug, dear!"

"Yes. Quite right!" approved Sidney, under his breath.

Peter, who had been laughing violently a moment before seemed rather inclined to regard the incident as a tribute to his own brilliancy. He caught his heels in a rung of his chair, raised himself to a standing position, and turned a bright little face to his mother.

"But--but--but what if I don't WANT to pick it up, mother?" he said gayly.

The little Moore boys, still bubbling, giggled outright, and Peter's cheeks grew pink. He was innocently elated with this new role of clown.

"What do you mean?" said Sidney's big voice, very quietly. There was a pause. Peter slowly turned his eyes toward his father.

"Oh, please, Sidney!" said Jean, a shade impatiently. "He thinks he has some reason." She turned to Peter. "What do you mean, dear?" she asked pleasantly.

Peter looked about the group. He was confused and excited at finding himself so suddenly the centre of attention.

"Well--well--why are you all looking at me?" he asked in his confident little treble, with his baffling smile.

"Dearie, did you hear mother tell you to get quietly down and pick up your mug?" demanded Jean, authoritatively.

"Well--well, you know, I don't want to, mother, because Billy and I were both reaching for that mug," drawled Peter, "and maybe it was Billy who--"

"Now, look here, son!" said his father, controlling his impatience with difficulty, "we've had enough of this! You do it because your mother told you to, and you do it right NOW!"

"And don't let anything spoil this happy day," pleaded Jean's tender voice.

"Can't I let it stay there, mother?" suggested Peter, brilliantly, "and have my milk in a gla.s.s? I don't want my mug! It can just lie there--"

His mother unsmilingly interrupted this pleasantly offered solution.

"Peter! Father and mother are waiting."

"Gee--I'll pick it up!" said Billy Moore, good-naturedly, slipping to the floor.

Sidney reached for the little boy, and brought him to anchor in the curve of his big arm, without once glancing at him.

"Thank you, Billy," he said, "but Peter will pick it up himself. Now, Peter! We don't care who knocked it down, or whose fault it was. Your mother told you to pick up your mug, and we are waiting to have you do it. Don't talk about it any more. n.o.body thinks it is at all smart or funny for boys to disobey their mothers!"