Gerald’s and Olly’s visit
was quite an event in the quiet Lane household.
Olly flagrantly broke every existing custom in it with
the sublime autocracy of childhood, and regained his
health at the cost of the peace of mind of every individual
with whom he came in contact, from nervous Miss Lydia
down to the protesting servants; while Gerald was one
of those intense personalities whose influence seems
to recreate the entire atmosphere about them at once,
go where they will. Poor Miss Lydia was afraid
of her quick speech and brusque ways and decided opinions,
and spent more hours than usual upstairs alone in
her own little room, and wore her best cap whenever
she appeared below, as a sort of mute appeal to the
young lady’s indulgence. But Gerald, in
her robust health, had no sympathy whatever with invalids
as a class, and for “chronic nerves” she
had an absolute contempt, unmitigated by even the best
cap’s gay ribbons. “It’s altogether
a matter of will,” she asserted. “People
needn’t be ill if they are only resolved not
to be so.”
“Humph!” said Mrs. Lane,
who had chanced to overhear; and there was a trifle
more tenderness than usual in her manner when she went
up later to put the mid-day cup of beef-tea into her
sister’s thin hands, and stood looking compassionately
down at her. “Nothing is easier than to
insist that a thing is so and so, just because there’s
no way to prove that it isn’t so.”
“How you do always talk in proverbs,
Sister Sophy!” said Miss Lydia, admiringly.
“I only wish Solomon could have heard you.
I do believe he would have put some of them in.”
“He would have been far too
busy taking down Mrs. Upjohn’s fine speeches
to mind me,” grunted Mrs. Lane. “And
I never did think much of Solomon, anyway. He
was too much of a Mormon with his hundred wives and
that. Want any thing else, Lyddy?”
“No, thank you. The house
is very nice and still this morning. There’s
a picnic up at the Dexter’s farm, isn’t
there? I suppose they’ve all gone to it.”
“Of course. Who ever heard
of a picnic unless Phebe went along to do all the
fussing and mussing that everybody else shirks?
Don’t tell me there’s any fun in
a picnic, going off in the woods like that,
to do for yourself what you’d sell the clothes
off your back to have somebody else do for you at
home, and eating all kinds of heathenish messes with
your fingers because you’ve forgotten the forks.
But what people like let them have. They’ll
get experience out of it if nothing better. And
of course Phebe had to go.”
True enough, Phebe was as essential
to any picnic as the feast, though much less obtrusively
so, and Gerald watched her friend’s quiet helpfulness
with lazy interest. She herself was stretched
at ease on the clean, fresh grass under some glorious
old trees. The place chosen was a lovely spot
at the head of the lake; the drive there had been long
and hot, and now she lay enjoying to the full the
refreshment of the shadow and the breeze, and the
perfection both of the view and of her immediate surroundings.
Bell Masters sat near her, having discovered that she
was generally surest of Mr. De Forest’s company
when in Gerald’s neighborhood. Nor had
she been mistaken this time. He had openly abandoned
the greedy band of berry-pickers, and the artistic
knot of sketchers, and the noisy body of pleasure-seekers,
who were paddling frivolously around the shores of
the lake and screaming with causeless laughter, as
soon as he found that Gerald did not intend attaching
herself to any of them but had struck out the new and
independent line of doing absolutely nothing at all.
Halloway had been helping industriously with the fire,
but he came toward the group under the trees when his
services seemed no longer required.
“You look most invitingly comfortable,”
he said, fanning himself with his hat. “We
must try to coax Miss Phebe here for a rest.”
“Pray don’t,” said
De Forest, lifting a lazy hand with an air of finding
even that motion too great an effort. “At
least not till the coffee is well under way.
I tasted a cup of her make yesterday. Don’t
call her off. We are all benefiting in a manner
by her absence.”
“I can make good coffee too,
when I choose,” said Bell, biting at the rim
of her straw hat.
De Forest contemplated her with new
interest. “Ah, can you. ’Tis
a gift of the gods given to few. And when do
you choose, may I ask? Apparently not to-day.”
“’Tisn’t my picnic.”
“Oh! Is it Miss Lane’s?”
“One would say it was, from the way she slaves
for it,” remarked Gerald.
“Why don’t you help too?”
asked De Forest, breaking off blades of grass and
flinging them out singly upon the air.
“For Miss Masters’ excellent reason:
it is not my picnic.”
“You contribute your valuable aid solely to
your own undertakings then?”
“Why am I called upon to contribute it to any
other?”
“’Tis a problem for philosophers.
But for argument’s sake, let us say for the
good of humanity at large, and of the Dexters in particular.”
“I am not bound to the Dexters
by any obligation that I can see to help them carry
out their entertainment. If they are not equal
to it, they should not give it.”
“Nothing Quixotic about you,
is there?” said De Forest, looking at her quizzically.
“Nothing whatever,” replied
Gerald, easily. “Why should there be?
Let every one look out for himself.”
“And if some can’t?”
“That is no business of mine.
It’s simply my business to make sure that I
can look after myself.”
“What an outrageously frank
exposure of a universally concealed sentiment!
Mr. Halloway is scandalized. He is thinking how
he can fit a scorching text to it to wither you with
next Sunday.”
“No; here is a sermon ready
made on the spot,” said Denham, as Phebe came
slowly toward them. “Miss Lane in herself
is a sufficient illustration of the opposite doctrine.”
“Prove it,” answered Gerald,
shrugging her shoulders. “Prove that Phebe,
who toils for everybody, is any happier than I, who
only follow my inclination.”
“You certainly look vastly the
more comfortable at present,” said De Forest,
looking from Gerald’s cool cheeks and unruffled
muslin flounces to Phebe’s flushed face and
tumbled cambric. “You are a practical embodiment
of the beauty and expediency of selfishness.”
“What are you talking about?”
asked Phebe, coming up and leaning wearily against
a tree.
“About you and Miss Vernor,”
explained Bell. “Which of you is happier?
I should say Miss Vernor decidedly.”
A loving look came into Phebe’s
eyes, as she glanced down at Gerald.
“Miss Vernor, of course”,
she said, with a very tender inflection of voice.
“Being what she is, how can she help being the
happier?”
“Virtue advocating vice,”
said De Forest. “Mr. Halloway, your sermon
is a dead failure, as a sermon.”
“By no means,” answered
Denham, smiling. “I don’t expect to
convert you in a single lesson. Will you not
sit down with us, Miss Phebe? You look tired.”
“Not just yet, thank you.”
“And why not?” asked Gerald.
“I want to see a little after
Miss Delano first. She’s off there all
alone hunting for ferns.”
“Well,” persisted Gerald,
“what of it? Are you fonder of her society
than ours, that you must run after her?”
“I am not fonder of any one’s
society than of yours, Gerald.”
“But are you fond of that tiresome
creature at all? Confess it; doesn’t she
bore you to death with her interminable grasshopper
chatter?”
Phebe glanced at Halloway, and laughed
a little as she moved away. “Oh, I am learning
by degrees not to be bored by people, not
even by Miss Delano.”
“Now, will any one explain why
she should wish to teach herself not to know
a bore from a Christian?” exclaimed Gerald, impatiently.
“It is quite beyond me.”
“But do you really never talk
to anybody unless you want to, Miss Vernor?”
asked Bell, disagreeably conscious that Gerald had
not voluntarily addressed her once that morning.
“Never,” replied Gerald, staring out at
the lake.
“Don’t you ever do any thing you don’t
want to, because you ought to?”
“I don’t always see the
ought. For instance, why should I put myself out
to entertain Miss Delano as Phebe does?”
“I don’t know,”
muttered Bell. “I wouldn’t, I am sure.
She is mortally dull.”
“One might imagine reasons for
the self-sacrifice, I suppose,” said De Forest,
making a languid snatch at a butterfly fluttering near.
“The possibility, we will say, that it might
please the gentle old babbler to come under the condescension
of your notice. How would that do for a motive?”
“Why should I want to please
her?” insisted Gerald, removing a hideous beetle
from her dress with all possible care lest she should
hurt it. “I don’t want to. I
don’t care for her, nor she for me. Why
should I put myself out for her? What claim has
she on me that I should displease myself to please
her?”
“Let us see,” said Denham,
ruminatingly. “Miss Delano’s pleasure
against Miss Vernor’s displeasure, or vice
versa, Miss Vernor’s pleasure against Miss Delano’s
displeasure. Yes; the balance of pleasure remains
quite the same whichever lady has it. Apart from
principle, the logic is unanswerable.”
“It is admirable,” commented
De Forest. “I always did like logic so much
better than moral philosophy. Hello, what’s
the matter now?”
There was a wail of distress somewhere in the distance.
Gerald turned her shapely head and
listened a moment. “It’s only Olly,”
she said, composedly. “I recognize the cry.
He isn’t hurt. Oh, you needn’t go,
Mr. Halloway; Olly never comes to any harm. He’s
only quarrelling with some one.”
De Forest raised himself on his elbow
to listen, while Halloway walked off in the direction
of the outburst. “There are possibilities
lurking in picnics, you know,” he remarked,
resuming his recumbent position, “mad bulls,
and rabbit traps, and fine chances for a drown now
and then. But I suppose we needn’t trouble
ourselves, Mr. Halloway’ll see to it. Besides,
Olly bears the charmed life of the wicked. Miss
Masters, I hope you remember to give daily thanks
that you haven’t any small brothers.”
“I do devoutly give thanks that
I haven’t any sisters,” said Bell, with
an unaffectionate glance toward Gerald. “I
should hate them.”
And so the desultory talk rambled
on, the little group growing larger by degrees as
the approaching luncheon hour brought back the stragglers,
and with them Olly, trotting contentedly along, clinging
to Halloway’s hand, meek as any lamb.
“What were you doing when you
cried out so a little while ago?” asked Gerald,
going up to the child.
Olly looked at her with instant defiance
in his eyes. “I hurt my foot.”
“You know perfectly well you
can’t deceive me, Olly. Tell me the truth.
What mischief were you at?”
“I tell you I hurt my foot,
and it hurt like mischief, and that’s all the
mischief there was. I wish it had been your
foot, and I wouldn’t have cried a bit.”
Halloway was turning aside, but Gerald
appealed to him. “Is he telling the truth?”
“Yes,” answered Denham,
dryly. “He was racing with the Anthony boys
and fell, but, as you see, he’s right enough
now.”
“Ya-ah!” said Olly, and
leered into her face with brotherly disrespect.
“I’ll tell you a lie next time if you’d
rather. Ya-ah!”
Gerald looked as if she were going
to shake him on the spot, and to prevent any such
catastrophe Denham suddenly seized the little fellow
and put him through a number of acrobatic feats in
breathless succession, till he was fairly hustled
into good temper and everybody around was laughing,
even Gerald. Jake Dexter was instantly incited
to display some marvellous limber-jointed powers of
his own, and had just demonstrated to the assembled
company, to his and their entire satisfaction, that
the impossible is after all sometimes possible, when
luncheon was announced by the ringing of a cow-bell,
and a gay onslaught upon the usual picnic table, rich
in luxuries and poor in necessities, superseded for
the nonce all less material forms of amusement.
Later in the afternoon Halloway wandered
off from the rest for one of the solitary strolls
that he preferred to companionship as being less lonely, a
feeling often experienced when fate and not choice
appoints one’s comrades, and returning
leisurely along the banks of the lake, he came upon
a little group of picnickers, and stopped unperceived
beyond them, to enjoy for a while that comfortable
sense of being in the world yet out of it, which is
the birthright of all spectatorship. Gerald and
Phebe were skipping stones, thoroughly absorbed in
energetic enjoyment of the simple game; their two
contrasting figures, Gerald dark and tall and slim,
and Phebe so round and fair and supple, making a pretty-enough
picture for any artist. Olly, little Maggie Dexter,
and an assortment of sturdy urchins known throughout
Joppa only as the Anthony boys, were dancing and chattering
aimlessly around, and near by was drawn up a clumsy
old boat where Phebe had made a comfortable niche for
Miss Delano, who every day at about this hour was
afflicted with a remarkable disorder which had grown
upon her wholly of late years, and whose symptoms,
so far as she was willing to admit them, consisted
of a painful heaviness of the eyelids, a weakness
in the nape of the neck, and an irresistible tendency
to retire for a brief season within herself. A
little farther off still, having taken fortune at
the flood and secured De Forest at last, Bell Masters
was embarked on another kind of craft, a thorough-going,
fully-freighted flirtation, all sails set; and through
the trees were glimpses of lazily moving figures beyond,
generally in twos and twos, following some occult
rule of common division peculiar to picnics. By
degrees the children wandered off up the bank, and
presently there came a shout, followed by an evident
squabble. Phebe looked around uneasily.
Gerald kept on with her sport.
“One, two, three, four, five,
six, seven times, Phebe. Now do better than that.”
At this juncture little Maggie ran
up, her pretty brown eyes wide and her red lips quivering.
“Oh! Miss Vernor, Olly shan’t do it,
shall he? Do say he shan’t!”
“Do what?” asked Gerald,
pausing in the act of searching for another pebble.
“Put it in the water to swim
like a duck. It isn’t a duck, it’s
a little, little young bird he’s found in a
nest, and it can’t swim, it can’t hardly
fly. Oh, don’t let him!”
“Let him!” echoed Gerald
sharply. She sprang toward the children with a
bound, almost lifting Olly off his feet as she drew
him back from the water’s edge. “You
cruel boy!” she cried. “Give it to
me directly.”
“I won’t!” answered
Olly, trying to shake himself free from her grasp.
“It’s mine, I found it.”
But the small hands held him in a
grip as strong as a man’s, and in another moment
Gerald had taken the poor little half-feathered creature
from him, and bidden Maggie restore it carefully to
its nest.
“It’s mine! It’s
mine! I’ll have it back!” shouted
Olly, angrily, after the little girl.
Gerald took hold of him by the shoulders
and turned him round toward her. There was a
great deal of hatred for the sin, and not overmuch
love for the sinner, in her face, as she looked down
at him. “If you dare touch that bird again,
Olly, I’ll find a punishment for you that you
will not soon forget, do you hear?”
A hidden thought of revenge for the
spoiled sport came into Olly’s mind. He
twisted himself away from his sister with a little
grunt, and stood peevishly playing a moment with a
couple of marbles; then suddenly darting aside, seized
the boat in which Miss Delano was established, still
struggling, but more feebly, with the mysterious trouble
that held her in thrall; and with a strength with
which one would hardly have credited his slight form,
he pushed it off into the water. There was, of
course, not a particle of real danger for Miss Delano,
even though this chanced to be the only boat at that
point, and she was no oarswoman; but the poor little
old lady, thus suddenly roused from the strange hallucinations
(as she called them) which were the most marked feature
of her complaint, and finding herself afloat upon
the unstable deep, instantly supposed that her last
hour was come. She sprang up, too terrified to
scream, with a look of deadly horror in her face, and
then sank again all in a heap in the bottom of the
boat. Olly gave a fiendish laugh, but before
any one else could move to the rescue, Gerald, with
one fierce, unutterable look at her brother, and no
thought but how soonest to end Miss Delano’s
speechless agony, quick as a flash, caught hold of
an overhanging bough and swung herself on to a rock
quite far out in the water, and thence, with a light,
bold spring, landed safely in the middle of the boat
as it drifted past.
“All right, Miss Delano,”
she said, briskly, seating herself and laying hold
of the oars with accustomed hands; “I’m
a born sailor, and we’ll have a little row first
before we go back.”
Had an angel visibly descended from
heaven to assume the helm, Miss Delano could not have
been more grateful and overcome. “Oh, my
dear, my dear!” she said, and, in the intensity
of her relief, began to cry a little softly.
Gerald pretended not to notice her emotion (she was
very awkward as a comforter, and as shy before tears
as a man), and rowed around for a while in utter silence;
and then feeling that conversation might aid in quieting
her companion’s unnecessarily excited nerves
she began abruptly charging her with questions as
one loads a gun with cartridges, dropping down one
after another with cruel directness into the harmless
vacancy of Miss Delano’s brain. How many
inhabitants had Joppa in precise figures? what was
the height of those farther hills to the left? upon
what system was the village-school governed? what was
the mineral nature of the soil? what was the fastest
time ever made by that bay mare of Mr. Upjohn’s
with the white hind foot? etc. etc., etc.,
on all which points poor Miss Delano could only assure
her timidly: “I don’t know, dear;
it would be well if I did,” and relapsed into
an alarmed and most uncharacteristic silence.
Phebe stood watching the boat as Gerald
rowed off, then, as if recollecting some neglected
duty, turned suddenly, and found herself face to face
with Mr. Halloway.
“No farther,” he said, playfully barring
her passage.
“Oh, but I must! I want
to find Olly and talk him into a better frame of mind
before Gerald comes back.”
“Leave Olly to me, please.
I am a perfect child-tamer, and guarantee to exorcise
his seven evil spirits in less than no time. Meanwhile,
sit you down and rest.”
“Oh, I don’t need rest.
If you’ll undertake Olly I’ll help put
back the lunch things. Picnics are quite like
the Biblical feasts: five loaves and two fishes
somehow always make twelve basketfuls to take up.”
“And you are always a true disciple
at the feast, Miss Phebe, intent only upon ministering
to others.”
Phebe laughed her own peculiarly light-hearted,
gay laugh. “That is a much prettier way
of putting it than Gerald’s. She says I
make myself maid-of-all-work.”
“Miss Gerald, of course, doesn’t
approve of such service.”
“But you do. So I needn’t mind her
blame.”
“But I shall blame too, Miss
Phebe, when you overdo yourself. I don’t
see why others’ recreation need be all work
for you. Let each take his share of both the
pleasure and the toil.”
“But you see this is
my share, Mr. Halloway, because I can’t help
in any better way. I don’t know enough
to entertain people’s guests just by talking
to them, as Gerald does. You forget how dull I
am.”
“So I do,” said Denham,
gravely. “I forget it all the time.
Indeed, the forgetfulness has quite become chronic.
Now I’ll find Olly, and we’ll all go at
the dishes together and make a game of it.”
Certainly Denham Halloway must have
possessed some secret charm in his management of children,
for by the time Gerald turned her boat to the shore,
he stood at the bank to meet them, with Olly by his
side, as amiable a little fellow as any Sunday-school-book
hero ever born.
“I am glad your sail turned
out such a success, Miss Delano,” said Halloway,
cheerily, as he lifted the little old lady carefully
out on to the pebbles. “You have been envied
of us all. But here is a little boy come to tell
you all the same how sorry he is that he gave you such
a fright. Olly, my lad, I think Miss Delano looks
as if she had forgiven you through and through.”
“Oh, indeed, indeed yes,”
answered Miss Delano, hurriedly. “It was
only my silly way of being scared, particularly when
I’m roused up so sudden out of one of those
turns of mine. And it’s all right, my dear,
all right.”
“But I’m sorry, real and
honest,” declared Olly, stoutly, looking squarely
in Miss Delano’s kindly face. “And
I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You meant it for a revenge
on me, I suppose,” said Gerald, in a low, harsh
voice. She took hold of his arm as she spoke.
“Give me those marbles of yours.”
Olly looked at her, hesitated, and
then reluctantly produced three very handsome agates
from some outlying storehouse of his jacket.
“I bought you six,” said Gerald.
“Where are the rest?”
“I lost one,” answered Olly, sullenly.
“It fell down a hole.”
“Then give me the other two.”
Olly obeyed still more reluctantly,
fixing great, anxious eyes upon his treasures as he
laid them, each one more slowly than the last, in his
sister’s hand.
“There,” said Gerald.
“Perhaps this will teach you to behave better
another time. I shall not buy you any more this
summer.” She flung out her hand suddenly,
and the five pretty stones fell with a splash far out
in the lake and disappeared forever, five little cruel
sets of circles instantly beginning to widen and widen
over their graves in a perfect mockery of roundness.
Olly gave one sharp cry, and then stood stock-still,
a bitterly hard look coming over his face; those marbles
had been very, very dear to his heart. Halloway
put his arm tenderly around the little fellow, and
drew him close in a very sympathetic way.
“Olly,” he said, gently,
“you know you deserved some punishment, but now
that your sister has punished you, I am sure she will
forgive you too, as Miss Delano has done, if you only
ask her.”
Olly buried his face in his friend’s
coat, and burst into a fit of heart-broken tears.
“I don’t want her to forgive me,”
he sobbed. “I only want my agates, my
pretty, pretty agates!”
“Surely you will forgive him?”
pleaded Halloway, looking up at Gerald over Olly’s
head, and holding out one of the boy’s hands
in his own. “He was really penitent when
you came up. Let me ask for him.”
Gerald moved a step away, ignoring
the hand. “Certainly, if you wish it,”
she said, coldly.
Halloway bent and kissed Olly’s
flushed face. “Do you hear, my boy?
It is all right now, and there is Maggie calling you
to swing her. Don’t forget you promised
to make me a visit at the rectory to-morrow.”
Olly threw his arms around Denham’s
knees and gave him a convulsive hug. “I
like you though you are a minister,” he
said, through his tears. “I just wish you
were my sister!” And then he went slowly off
to Maggie, and Denham and Gerald stood silently where
he had left them. Gerald was the first to speak.
“You think I am hard on Olly. I see it
in your face.”
“I do think,” replied
Denham, slowly, with a faint smile curving his well-cut
lips, “that perhaps it might be happier for Olly
if you would try to consider him less in the light
of a boy, and more as as only a little
animal. You are so tender-hearted and pitiful
toward animals.”
Gerald flushed angrily. “I
like plain speaking best. You think I am hard
on him. Why don’t you say so?”
“I will if you prefer it. I do think so.”
“Thanks. Is there any thing
else you would like to say to me in your capacity
as clergyman before we join the others?”
“Yes, if I may really venture
so far. Your hat is quite crooked.”
Gerald straightened it without a smile.
“Thanks again. Anything else?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
He turned to escort her back, but Gerald stood still,
frowning out at the lake.
“You don’t know Olly,” she said,
curtly.
“Maybe not, but I know childish
nature pretty well, perhaps because I love it.”
“Ah! I don’t love
it. It isn’t lovable to me. It is all
nonsense to call it the age of innocence. It
is vice in embryo instead of in full leaf, that is
all.”
“But that is an inestimable
gain of itself. A little of a bad thing is surely
much better than a great deal of it. For my part
I confess to a great partiality for children.
There is something pathetic to me in the little faults
and tempers that irritate us now chiefly because they
clash against our own weaknesses, and yet on the right
guidance of which lies the whole making or marring
of the child’s life.”
“Doesn’t guidance include punishment?”
“Yes, it includes it. But it does not consist
of it.”
Gerald still stood half turned from
him, frowning out over the placid blue water.
“Ah,” she said, “it chiefly consists
of good example and that sort of thing, I suppose.”
“I think it consists chiefly of love,”
said Halloway, simply.
Gerald made no answer at first, then
turned and looked at him almost defiantly. Her
changeable eyes seemed black as she raised them to
his. “Would you have thrown Olly’s
marbles into the lake?”
“No,” replied Halloway, looking steadily
back at her.
“Then you would have been very
foolish,” said Gerald, haughtily. “It
was the only way to touch him. I was quite right
to do it.”
“You should be the best judge of your actions,
Miss Vernor.”
Gerald bowed without answer, and moved
past him like an offended duchess. Halloway stood
looking after her with an amused sparkle in his eyes.
“Miss Geraldine Vernor,” he said to himself,
“with all your beauty and your reputed accomplishments
and intellect, you would yet do well to take a few
lessons of my little friend Phebe Lane.”