The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor Part 14

Phil and I came across a song the othah day that I want you all to heah.

Maybe it will make you change yoah minds."

Phil protested with many grimaces and much nonsense that he "could not sing the old songs now." That he would not "be butchered to make a Roman holiday." But all the time he protested, he was stepping toward the piano in a fantastic exaggerated cake-walk that set his audience to laughing. At the first low notes of the accompaniment, he dropped his foolishness and began to sing in a full, sweet voice that brought the old Colonel to the door of his den to listen. Eliot, packing trunks in the upper hall, leaned over the banister:

"I know a place where the sun is like gold, And the cherry blooms burst with snow.

And down underneath is the loveliest nook Where the four-leaf clovers grow.

"One leaf is for hope and one is for faith, And one is for love you know, And G.o.d put another one in for luck.

If you search you will find where they grow.

"And you must have hope and you must have faith.

You must love and be strong, and so If you work, if you wait, you will find the place Where the four-leaf clovers grow."

It was a sweet, haunting melody that accompanied the words, and the gay party of nine, strolling toward the orchard, hummed it all the way.

There in the shade of the big apple-trees, where the clover grew in thick patches, they began their search; all together at first, then in little groups of twos and threes, until they had hunted over the entire orchard. Stuart, who had been doing more talking than hunting, went to groping industriously around on his hands and knees, when they all came together again after an hour's search.

"Bradford," he said, emphatically, "I am beginning to think that you and Miss Joyce are right, and that Paradise has a monopoly on the four-leaf kind. I haven't caught a glimpse of one. Not even its shadow."

Lloyd held up a handful. "I found them in several places, thick as hops."

"Which goes to show," he insisted, "that the song, 'If you work, if you wait, you will find the place,' is all a delusion and a snare. You all have worked, and Eugenia and I have waited, and only you, who are 'bawn lucky,' have found any. It's pure luck."

"No," interrupted Miles Bradford, "you can't call strolling around a shady orchard with a pretty girl work, and the song does correspond with the legend. Abdallah worked hard for his first leaf, dug a well with which to bless the thirsty desert for all time. The bit of copper was at the bottom of it. The effort he made for the second almost cost him his life. He rescued a poor slave girl in order to be faithful to a trust imposed in him, and taught her the truths of Allah. The silver leaf was his reward. He found it in the heathen fetish which she gave him in her grat.i.tude. It had been her G.o.d.

"I am not sure about the golden leaf, but I think it was the reward of living a wise and honorable life. The day of his birth it was said that he alone wept, while all around him rejoiced; and he resolved to live so well that at the day of his death he should have no cause for tears, and all around him should mourn. No, I'll not have you belittling my hero, Tremont. There was no luck about it whatsoever. He won the first three leaves by unselfish service, faithfulness to every trust, and wise, honorable living, so that he well deserved that Paradise should bring him perfect happiness."

"Girls!" cried Betty, her face lighting up, "_we_ must be warm on the trail, with our Tusitala rings, our Warwick Hall motto, and our Order of Hildegarde. A Road of the Loving Heart is as hard to dig in every one's memory as a well in the desert. If we keep the tryst in all things, we're bound to find the silver leaf, and think of the wisdom it takes to weave with the honor of a Hildegarde!"

Eugenia interrupted her: "Oh, Betty, _please_ write a legend of the shamrock for girls that will fit modern times. In the old style there are always three brothers or three maidens who start out to find a thing, and only the last one or the youngest one is successful. The others all come to grief. In yours give _everybody_ a chance to be happy.

"There is no reason why _every_ maiden shouldn't find the leaves according to the Tusitala rings and Ederyn's motto and Hildegarde's yardstick. And then, don't you see, they needn't wait till the end of their lives for the diamond, for _the prince_ will bring it! Don't you see? It is his coming that _makes_ the perfect happiness!"

Phil laughed. "Stuart's face shows how he appreciates that compliment,"

he said, "and as for me and all the other sons of Adam, oh, fair layde, I make my bow!" Springing to his feet, he swept her an elaborate curtsey, holding out his coat as if it were the ball-gown of some stately dame in a minuet.

Lloyd, sitting on the gra.s.s with her hands clasped on her knees, looked around the circle of smiling faces, and then gave her shoulders a whimsical shrug.

"That's all right if the prince _comes_," she exclaimed. "But how is one to get the diamond leaf if he doesn't? Mammy Eastah told my fortune in a teacup, and she said: 'I see a risin' sun, and a row of lovahs, but I don't see you a-takin' any of 'em, honey. Yo' ways am ways of pleasantness, and all yo' paths is peace, but I'se powahful skeered you'se goin' to be an ole maid. I sholy is, if the teacup signs p'int right.'"

"It will be your own fault, then," answered Phil. "The row of lovers is there in the teacup for you. You've only to take your pick."

"But," began Rob, "maybe it is just as well that she shouldn't choose any of them. The prince's coming doesn't always bring happiness. Look at old Mr. Deckly. For thirty years he and his fair bride have led a regular cat and dog life. And there are the Twicketts and the Graysons and the Blackstones right in this one little valley, to say nothing of all the troubles one reads of in the papers."

"No!" contradicted Eugenia, emphatically. "You have no right to hold them up as examples. It is plainly to be seen that Mrs. Deckly and Mrs.

Twickett and Mrs. Grayson and Mrs. Blackstone were not Hildegardes. They failed to earn their third leaf by doing their weaving wisely. They didn't use their yardsticks. They looked only at the 'village churls,'

and wove their webs to fit their unworthy shoulders, so that the men they married were not princes, and they couldn't bring the diamond leaf."

"The name of the prince need not always be _Man_, need it?" ventured Joyce. "Couldn't it be Success? It seems to me that if I had struggled along for years, trying to make the most of my little ability, had worked just as faithfully and wisely at my art as I could, it would be perfect happiness to have the world award me the place of a great artist. It would be as much to me as the diamond leaf that marriage could bring. I should think you'd feel that way, too, Betty, about your writing. There are marriages that are failures just as there are artistic and literary careers that are failures, and there are diamond leaves to reward the work and waiting of old maids, just as there are diamond leaves to reward the Hildegardes who use their yardsticks.

Sometimes there are girls who don't marry because they sacrifice their lives to taking care of their families, or living for those who are dependent on them. Surely there must be a blessedness and a happiness for them greater than any diamond leaf a prince could bring."

"There is probably," answered Eugenia, "but it seems as if most people of that kind have to wait till they get to Paradise to find it."

"I don't think so," said Betty. "I believe all the dear old-maid aunts and daughters, _who earn the first three leaves_, find the fourth waiting somewhere in this world. It is only the selfish ones, who slight their share of the duties life imposes on every one, who are cross and unlovely and unloved. They probably would not have been happy wives if they had married."

"Well, but what about _me_!" persisted Lloyd. "I nevah expect to have a career, so Success in big lettahs will nevah bring me a medal or a chromo. I am not sacrificing my life for anybody's comfort, and I can nevah have any little nieces and nephews to whom I can be one of those deah old aunts Betty talks about, and there is that dreadful teacup!"

She did not hear Doctor Bradford's laughing answer, for Phil, turning his back on the others, looked down into her upturned face and began to hum, as if to himself, "_From the desert I come to thee!_" Only Mary understood the significance of it as Lloyd did, and she knew why Lloyd suddenly turned away and began pa.s.sing her hands over the gra.s.s around her, as if resuming her search. She wanted to hide her face, into which the color was creeping.

A train whistled somewhere far across the orchard, and Rob took out his watch. The sight of it suggested something in line with the conversation, for when he had noted the time, he touched the spring that opened the back of the case.

"Never you mind, Little Colonel," he said, in a patronizing, big-brotherly tone. "If n.o.body else will stand between you and that teacup, _I'll_ come to the rescue. Bobby won't go back on his old chum.

_I'll_ bring you a four-leaf clover. Here's one, all ready and waiting."

Lloyd looked across at the watch he held out to her. "Law, Bobby," she exclaimed, giving him the old name she had called him when they first played together, "I supposed you had lost that clovah long ago."

"Not much," he answered. "It's the finest hoodoo ever was. It helped me through high school. I swear I never could have pa.s.sed in Latin but for your good-luck charm. It's certainly to my interest to hang on to it.

"Think of it, Mary," he added, seeing that her eyes were round with interest, "that was given to me by a princess."

Mary darted a quick look at Lloyd and another one at him to see if he were teasing.

"Oh, I _see_!" she remarked, in a tone of enlightenment.

"What do you see?" he demanded, laughing.

She would not answer, but, ignoring his further attempts to make her talk, she, too, turned again to search for clovers, inwardly excited over the discovery she thought she had made. She would make a note of it in her journal, she decided, something like this: "The plot thickens.

The B. M. and Sir F. have a rival they little suspect. R. carries the charm the M. of H. gave him in years gone by, and I can see many reasons why he should be the one to bring her the diamond leaf."

Only two dozen clovers rewarded their united search, but Eugenia was satisfied. "We'll put them in the boxes haphazard," she said, "and the uncertainty of getting one will make it more exciting than if there were one for every box."

The path back to the house led past the kitchen, where several colored women were helping Aunt Cindy. Just as they pa.s.sed, one of them put her head out of the door to call to a group of children crowded around one of the windows of the great house. They were watching the decorators at work inside the drawing-room, hanging the gate of roses in the arch. The youngest one was perched on a barrel that had been dragged up for that purpose, so that his older brothers and sisters might be spared the weariness of holding him up to see. A narrow board laid across the top made an uneasy and precarious perch for him. He was seated astride, with his bare black legs dangling down inside the barrel.

"You M'haley Gibbs," called the woman, "don't you let Ca'line Allison lean agin that bo'd. It'll upset Sweety into the bar'l."

Her warning came too late, for even as she called the slight board was pushed off its foundations by the weight of the roly-poly Ca'line Allison, and the pickaninny went down into the barrel as suddenly as a candle is snuffed out by the wind.

"You M'haley, I'll natcherly lay you out," shrieked the woman, hurrying up the path to the rescue. But M'haley, made agile by fifteen years of constant practice, dodged the cuffing as it was about to descend, and scuttled around the house to wait till Sweety stopped howling.

"They are Sylvia Gibbs's children," said Lloyd, in answer to Doctor Bradford's astonished comment at seeing so many little negroes in a row.

"They can scent a pahty five miles away, and they hang around like little black buzzahds waiting for sc.r.a.ps of the feast. I suppose they feel they have a right to be heah to-day, as Sylvia is helping in the kitchen. They're the same children, Eugenia," she added, "who were heah so much when I had my first house-pahty. M'haley is the one who brought you that awful, skinny, mottled chicken in a bandbox for you to 'take home on the kyers fo' a pet,' she said."

"So she is!" exclaimed Eugenia, as they pa.s.sed around the corner of the house and caught sight of M'haley, who was peeping out to see if the storm was over, and if it would be safe to return to the sightseeing at the window. Her teeth and eyeb.a.l.l.s were a-shine with pleasure when Eugenia pa.s.sed on, after a pleasant greeting and some reference to the chicken. She felt it a great honor to be remembered by the bride, and thanked again, after all these years, for her parting gift. She gave a little giggle when Lloyd came up, and said, with a coy self-conscious air that was extremely amusing to the Northern man, who had never met this type of the race before, "I'se a maid of honah, too, Miss Lloyd."

"You are!" was the surprised answer. "How does that happen?"

"Mammy's gwine to git married agin, to Mistah Robinson, and she says n.o.body has a bettah right than me to be maid of honah to her own ma's weddin'. So that's how come she toted us all along to you-all's weddin', so that Sweety and Ca'line and the boys could learn how to act at her and Mistah Robinson's."

"When is it to be?" inquired Lloyd.