The Forerunner Part 5

"There! Sukey's gone!" Mrs. Warden suddenly remarked, watching the stout figure moving heavily away under the pepper trees. "And I meant to have asked her to make me a gla.s.s of shrub! Dora, dear, you run and get it for mother."

Dora laid down her work, not too regretfully, and started off.

"That child is the most practical of any of you," said her mother; which statement was tacitly accepted. It was not extravagant praise.

Dora poked about in the refrigerator for a bit of ice. She ho no idea of the high cost of ice in that region--it came from "the store," like all their provisions. It did not occur to her that fish and milk and melons made a poor combination in flavor; or that the clammy, sub-offensive smell was not the natural and necessary odor of refrigerators. Neither did she think that a sunny corner of the back porch near the chimney, though convenient, was an ill-selected spot for a refrigerator. She couldn't find the ice-pick, so put a big piece of ice in a towel and broke it on the edge of the sink; replaced the largest fragment, used what she wanted, and left the rest to filter slowly down through a ma.s.s of grease and tea-leaves; found the raspberry vinegar, and made a very satisfactory beverage which her mother received with grateful affection.

"Thank you, my darling," she said. "I wish you'd made a pitcherful."

"Why didn't you, Do?" her sisters demanded.

"You're too late," said Dora, hunting for her needle and then for her thimble, and then for her twist; "but there's more in the kitchen."

"I'd rather go without than go into the kitchen," said Adeline; "I do despise a kitchen." And this seemed to be the general sentiment; for no one moved.

"My mother always liked raspberry shrub," said Mrs. Warden; "and your Aunt Leicester, and your Raymond cousins."

Mrs. Warden had a wide family circle, many beloved relatives, "connections" of whom she was duly proud and "kin" in such widening ramifications that even her carefully reared daughters lost track of them.

"You young people don't seem to care about your cousins at all!" pursued their mother, somewhat severely, setting her gla.s.s on the railing, from whence it was presently knocked off and broken.

"That's the fifth!" remarked Dora, under breath.

"Why should we, Ma?" inquired Cora. "We've never seen one of them--except Madam Weatherstone!"

"We'll never forget _her!"_ said Madeline, with delicate decision, laying down the silk necktie she was knitting for Roscoe. "What _beautiful_ manners she had!"

"How rich is she, mother? Do you know?" asked Dora.

"Rich enough to do something for Roscoe, I'm sure, if she had a proper family spirit," replied Mrs. Warden. "Her mother was own cousin to my grandmother--one of the Virginia Paddingtons. Or she might do something for you girls."

"I wish she would!" Adeline murmured, softly, her large eyes turned to the horizon, her hands in her lap over the handkerchief she was marking for Roscoe.

"Don't be ungrateful, Adeline," said her mother, firmly. "You have a good home and a good brother; no girl ever had a better."

"But there is never anything going on," broke in Coraline, in a tone of complaint; "no parties, no going away for vacations, no anything."

"Now, Cora, don't be discontented! You must not add a straw to dear Roscoe's burdens," said her mother.

"Of course not, mother; I wouldn't for the world. I never saw her but that once; and she wasn't very cordial. But, as you say, she might do _something._ She might invite us to visit her."

"If she ever comes back again, I'm going to recite for her," said, Dora, firmly.

Her mother gazed fondly on her youngest. "I wish you could, dear," she agreed. "I'm sure you have talent; and Madam Weatherstone would recognize it. And Adeline's music too. And Cora's art. I am very proud of my girls."

Cora sat where the light fell well upon her work. She was illuminating a volume of poems, painting flowers on the margins, in appropriate places--for Roscoe.

"I wonder if he'll care for it?" she said, laying down her brush and holding the book at arm's length to get the effect.

"Of course he will!" answered her mother, warmly. "It is not only the beauty of it, but the affection! How are you getting on, Dora?"

Dora was laboring at a task almost beyond her fourteen years, consisting of a negligee s.h.i.+rt of outing flannel, upon the breast of which she was embroidering a large, intricate design--for Roscoe. She was an ambitious child, but apt to tire in the execution of her large projects.

"I guess it'll be done," she said, a little wearily. "What are you going to give him, mother?"

"Another bath-robe; his old one is so worn. And nothing is too good for my boy."

"He's coming," said Adeline, who was still looking down the road; and they all concealed their birthday work in haste.

A tall, straight young fellow, with an air of suddenly-faced maturity upon him, opened the gate under the pepper trees and came toward them.

He had the finely molded features we see in portraits of handsome ancestors, seeming to call for curling hair a little longish, and a rich profusion of ruffled s.h.i.+rt. But his hair was sternly short, his s.h.i.+rt severely plain, his proudly carried head spoke of effort rather than of ease in its att.i.tude.

Dora skipped to meet him, Cora descended a decorous step or two.

Madeline and Adeline, arm in arm, met him at the piazza edge, his mother lifted her face.

"Well, mother, dear!" Affectionately he stooped and kissed her, and she held his hand and stroked it lovingly. The sisters gathered about with teasing affection, Dora poking in his coat-pocket for the stick candy her father always used to bring her, and her brother still remembered.

"Aren't you home early, dear?" asked Mrs. Warden.

"Yes; I had a little headache"--he pa.s.sed his hand over his forehead--"and Joe can run the store till after supper, anyhow." They flew to get him camphor, cologne, a menthol-pencil. Dora dragged forth the wicker lounge. He was laid out carefully and fanned and fussed over till his mother drove them all away.

"Now, just rest," she said. "It's an hour to supper time yet!" And she covered him with her latest completed afghan, gathering up and carrying away the incomplete one and its tumultuous const.i.tuents.

He was glad of the quiet, the fresh, sweet air, the smell of flowers instead of the smell of mola.s.ses and cheese, soap and sulphur matches.

But the headache did not stop, nor the worry that caused it. He loved his mother, he loved his sisters, he loved their home, but he did not love the grocery business which had fallen so unexpectedly upon him at his father's death, nor the load of debt which fell with it.

That they need never have had so large a "place" to "keep up" did not occur to him. He had lived there most of his life, and it was home.

That the expenses of running the household were three times what they needed to be, he did not know. His father had not questioned their style of living, nor did he. That a family of five women might, between them, do the work of the house, he did not even consider.

Mrs. Warden's health was never good, and since her husband's death she had made daily use of many afghans on the many lounges of the house.

Madeline was "delicate," and Adeline was "frail"; Cora was "nervous,"

Dora was "only a child." So black Sukey and her husband Jonah did the work of the place, so far as it was done; and Mrs. Warden held it a miracle of management that she could "do with one servant," and the height of womanly devotion on her daughters' part that they dusted the parlor and arranged the flowers.

Roscoe shut his eyes and tried to rest, but his problem beset him ruthlessly. There was the store--their one and only source of income.

There was the house, a steady, large expense. There were five women to clothe and keep contented, beside himself. There was the unappeasable demand of the mortgage--and there was Diantha.

When Mr. Warden died, some four years previously, Roscoe was a lad of about twenty, just home from college, full of dreams of great service to the world in science, expecting to go back for his doctor's degree next year. Instead of which the older man had suddenly dropped beneath the burden he had carried with such visible happiness and pride, such unknown anxiety and straining effort; and the younger one had to step into the harness on the spot.

He was brave, capable, wholly loyal to his mother and sisters, reared in the traditions of older days as to a man's duty toward women. In his first grief for his father, and the ready pride with which he undertook to fill his place, he had not in the least estimated the weight of care he was to carry, nor the time that he must carry it. A year, a year or two, a few years, he told himself, as they pa.s.sed, and he would make more money; the girls, of course, would marry; he could "retire" in time and take up his scientific work again. Then--there was Diantha.

When he found he loved this young neighbor of theirs, and that she loved him, the first flush of happiness made all life look easier. They had been engaged six months--and it was beginning to dawn upon the young man that it might be six years--or sixteen years--before he could marry.

He could not sell the business--and if he could, he knew of no better way to take care of his family. The girls did not marry, and even when they did, he had figured this out to a dreary certainty, he would still not be free. To pay the mortgages off, and keep up the house, even without his sisters, would require all the money the store would bring in for some six years ahead. The young man set his teeth hard and turned his head sharply toward the road.

And there was Diantha.

She stood at the gate and smiled at him. He sprang to his feet, headacheless for the moment, and joined her. Mrs. Warden, from the lounge by her bedroom window, saw them move off together, and sighed.