Margarita Spalding Gerry

“ Trowel in hand, he knelt down beside the plant. He began mechanically to test the earth around the roots. The fortune that would surely be his began to fill his consciousness,—all that it meant of release from work, when work would be too heavy—it all surged over him, a warm, comfortable flood.
"Dad-Dave!" said an impatient little voice. "Isn't this the rosie you wanted? Haven't I found it for you?"
"Yes, dear boy," said Dave, gently. "You have found it—for me."
" 'Wine and spice and all things nice,' " chanted Jeremy, capering beside the rose bush. ”

“ Perhaps my desperation put something authoritative into my voice when I said, "Wait a minute, Mrs. Harris." She halted. "Won't you sit down?" But that apparently was presuming too much.
"No, I'll not sit down," she rapped out, as if I had suggested the final indignantly. "I'll not sit."
Then, absurdly enough, I fired, too. All at once a wave of red rage came over me. How dared she, just because I was a clerk in her husband's office, earning my living unprotected—just because I was in a position where a thing like that could occur—insult me! ”

“ Nothing else is real. Toys of tenderness—toys of mirth—toys that sail a man back to childhood—toys that sweep a man into manhood—and beyond." He held the color-bearer passionately close. "A hero!" he said. "Thank God for the man who knows our hearts. The world is his toy-shop and men and women are his toys. He can use everybody—it makes no difference how ugly a toy may be. He loves them even when they are naughty—just like a little girl when she spanks her dolly." Joseph smiled at his own thoughts with tenderness.... ”

“ All the time the child's eyes were on the flowers. Their brightness drew him; he was himself singularly colorless; even his hair was silvery rather than golden. He made a little groping motion with his hand. Tennant understood. He knew the feeling.
"Want some posies, child?" he asked, softly.
"That's why I came. I saw them," said Jeremy, raising his eyes to the man's face.
"Well, here, Jeremy." The florist, followed by the child, went down the greenhouse, picking carnations and heliotropes and rosebuds. As each blossom was cut, the little fingers closed upon it tightly. ”

“ Her pose, the lines of her delicate gray gown, the russet lights in her hair brought out by the shaded light at her side, held Mendoza's errant fancy.
"Some of these United States customs have value," he reflected, as she raised smoke-gray eyes to his in response to his request for a cup of tea.
"Do you really want tea?" she queried, as skeptically as a hospitable maiden could.
"It is my favorite; more, with the pure water it is my only beverage."
"But consider the danger!" she pleaded.
"Danger is sometimes stimulative, also tea—sometimes." ”

“ So much beauty, so much grace, it should be held to make exquisite the home of some man who could understand. Never would I—never would the men of my country—suffer so lovely a flower to give out its perfume to the unthanking, base many——"
"You will have to be here a long time," said Miss Talbot, laughing, "before you become a bit American."
"For the women with harsh voices"—Mendoza's pet detestation—"I say, yes, with rejoicing, but not for one like you. You should be cherished, surrounded with the beautiful, an adorer's fortune laid at your feet." ”

“ The little shop was a modest place. On one side was a counter where, safe under glass, were home-made candies and cakes, with a rosy-cheeked apple or two. But, lining the walls, tumbling over shelves, crowded into old-fashioned presses, were the toys. There were dolls, of course, patrician wax dolls with delicate eyebrows of real hair, hearty, wooden-jointed dolls that were a real comfort to little mothers. There were wheels of fortune where one could see [12] a steeple-chase if he spun hard enough to make the horses vault the hurdles. ”

“ This was like the stories I used to imagine when I was a child: how it would be to be the only person in the world, and be able to go into all the candy-shops and toy-shops and get everything you wanted without having to ask permission of anybody at all. ”

“ To his own great surprise Dave felt impelled to interfere.
"Let the child be happy while he can," he said. His voice amazed him; it sounded so indignant. "What does he know of it all? It doesn't seem to me that it's anything that will do him good to have forced on him. He can't know anything more about death than those poppies over there—even if they do drop their petals in a day. They just know they miss the sunshine—and so does Jeremy." ”

“ The days when the beauty from the backwoods electrified society by appearing in garb outlandish and not in style are past. It is by other things that one judges—the way the clothes are worn, the way muscles flow or jerk under supple surfaces, the quality of voice, and that indescribable something that testifies whether or not it is an evolved personality, sufficiently free from awkward egotism to make its instant sortie in search of its like. ”

“ Mendoza, bareheaded in the chilling rain, watched them climb the steps slowly and vanish into the glow of the open door. Then he stepped into his brougham. For a long time he sat staring blankly in front of him. Still staring, he groped mechanically in his pockets for his cigarette-papers and tobacco-pouch, produced them and rolled a cigarette with infinite pains. Only when the first few puffs had filled the carriage with the fragrance he loved did his face relax. ”

“ I never clapped my hands for joy in my life, and I never saw anybody else do it. When I'm awfully pleased about anything, what I'm really liable to do is to kiss Harry. So whenever I say I clapped my hands, from force of habit, you can understand what I really mean. I can't take the time to be sure about every little detail.
We had great fun looking at the bonds, perhaps for the last time, and I couldn't sleep for thinking of all the ways I wanted to spend that money. Spending money had always seemed the most fascinating thing in the world to me. ”

“ The smug, sleek, carefully corseted, idle women that make an obstructive delta wherever the tide of prosperity is lush with spoils—what have they not to answer for? Turning their backs on all that really calls them, vapid with pleasure or gripping their hands raw climbing the senseless heights that lead to nowhere, stripping the men who feed them of the only armor that always shelters—that armor that the love of home masks—and then sending them out where at the first step stands an enemy, and the next, a Circe! ”

“ Had Joseph Schotz not been lost in the one story that never failed to thrill him—of his shattered dreams and his hero—he would have noticed that the face of the tall man who sat before him had lapsed into hopelessness. ”

“ I felt I couldn't live if I didn't have a tiny vase with the most marvelous blue glaze I ever saw and the most perfect lines. They had such an intelligent salesman, and a certain millionaire had just paid five thousand for a vase not half so perfect, and I could have this one for two thousand! But if I got that, Harry and I couldn't both have fur coats—at least his wouldn't have a real sable collar, and I knew that every time I looked at the vase and saw Harry's coat with just a Persian-lamb collar I'd hate the vase. ”

“ Mendoza started, scrutinizing her keenly. Then he shrugged his shoulders. How difficult it was to understand American women—even this one.
"I wish I could tell you, but I can only tell you what you should see. It is the color of it all, the Southern warmth that forces the art spirit everywhere. If you could see, too, the vivid blues and whites and violet shadows of Tangier as I have seen them, and the rich, subdued half-tones of old Spain, hear the music, see the flowers everywhere, feel the glorious thrill of careless life that is in the air! ”

“ There it was—a white rose no longer. Jeremy saw a tall stalk, dead and dry and bearing a cluster of yellowed petals. In place of the perfume it gave out a dusty smell.
"You did it. I took you in. You brought the sickness with you; the doctor said so. That's why I forgot her, and she's dead!"
Jeremy stood quiet—so quiet that that of itself forced itself on Dave's despair. Tennant checked himself. The child was watching him with the same look of dumb terror in his eyes as had been there when he fled from the Silence that had been his mother.
The old man tried to control himself. ”

“ A man finds himself in that bare desert in the middle of life—there is the sudden assurance of one's essential loneliness—the good one has gained seems a little shop-worn. And you have the daily association with some one whose job it is to please you, and whose smiles you don't know by rote, the reason for them or what they lead to. ”

“ I did feel that it wasn't safe to leave the apartment so much. Somebody might find out about the safe-deposit and steal the bonds long before either of us would open it, and it did seem as if we ought to stay home more and watch it. Then, too, Marie did make the most outrageous eyes at Harry, and I never could quite forget that Pelham business. When a girl doesn't marry until late in life she does get sort of restless and reckless. ”

“ I thought, my wife, that the end of life had come for me when I knew that I should have to sit here in the shop the rest of the days of my life and make toys for children. Now I know that it was but the beginning. He taught me. There could be nothing greater. The toys will live in the homes of the children. They will find them, too, the toys he bought for his boy—after he has gone. But not every one will know the work that they have done. Nor will all the toys the President left be so easily discovered.... ”

“ What are they thinking of, those well-fed, complacent women, that they hug to themselves the assurance that theirs is the one job that can be neglected and still go on eternally yielding them comfort and plenty and domination! ”

“ Eliot with his gentle nut-cracker smile.
"In plants, madam, precocity is a disease."
"Plants don't have to earn their living," snapped the capable lady.
Tennant passed his hand over his forehead; he never could understand his neighbors. He smiled guiltily as he thought of some of his methods with Jeremy. What, he wondered, would Mrs. Eliot think if she could see, from her closed evening shutters, a small faun capering about on the cool wet grass, the spray from a garden hose playing deliciously upon its glistening white skin? ”

“ Bradley, whose tenderly nursed visiting-list occupied most of his waking hours, endeavored to assume a sympathetic air of masculine superiority.
"It is a duty one owes to society," he explained. "Our hostesses need to know who are to be considered in society each season. They know then where to turn for dancing men—otherwise they forget."
"Oh, they forget, do they, my friend?" Mendoza regarded the little man for a moment with a suppressed smile. "Well, well, it is a tribute to the greatness of this country that it does not yet know all its desired ones." ”

“ The jack-in-the-box was cut short in the midst of a horrible grimace.
"Was the boy pleased with his toys?" asked Joseph Schotz from his end of the room. His voice was wistful; he had never needed to use his skill for the delight of children of his own.
"Yes, my friend."
[28]
"Yes, there is indeed a change in the Man since his first visit," thought Joseph. The smile with which the guest looked up from his toys warmed the sick man's heart, about which a chill had been gathering.
"But he wants more. He always does." There was the purest delight in the father's face as he spoke. ”

“ And my heart did sink, for though a car was the first thing I had thought of—and still I wasn't sure—it is a very different thing when a woman wants a car and when a man does, I tell you. A woman wants one just for use, and is perfectly willing to use a car two years. But with a man! Well, it is just the beginning of the end. That car gets to represent the reputation of the family, and it has to be a new one every year, with limousine top and all the attachments; and now that they have got a twelve-cylinder, of course Harry would have to have that. ”

“ For a man sixty-odd who can hardly take care of himself, and who never had anything more to do with a child before than to give him the flowers his mother sent him for—"
He left the sentence unfinished and sat for a time in troubled silence. The peace of the night had begun to rest him when he started up.
"If I haven't forgotten the greenhouse!" he groaned. "The boy drove everything else out of my head!"
"A child can do more unexpected things than a hybrid plant," said Dave, with rueful emphasis.
It was a week since Jeremy had come to the greenhouse. ”

“ Bradley turned hurriedly to the lady. "I am glad to see you again, Miss Talbot. No, thank you, no tea; we are due at Mrs. Page's. May I present my friend, Señor Mendoza?—of the Spanish legation, you know. Now shall we go?"
"My friend, I beg that you will go without me. Is a man to have no rest? I am fatigued beyond endurance. Will you not present my compliments to Mrs. Page? And tell her I was—detained?" with the faintest flicker of a glance toward Miss Talbot. ”

“ The suttee at the death of a naval officer in the United States is more complete than that of the most exalted Brahman of India; it's not the widow only who is sacrificed, it is the man's whole family that go into eclipse. My mother had gone before, so I made suttee. Out of a whole city full of friends I can count hardly a dozen that I see more than once a year. My own special set has scattered to the four winds. It isn't that Navy people are afraid of the undesirably poor; they are too utterly sure of their own position for that. ”

“ He smiled whimsically. "I am trying to give him all the toys I—didn't have. And"—his voice died away, and he forced the words with difficulty—"he must have all that I meant to give the boy who—went away."
"You mustn't spoil him," said Schotz, after a moment, with the perfunctory morality of the childless man.
[29]
The smile broke out again. "Bless you, you can't spoil children with love. Why, my boy plays with his soldiers, but he doesn't know that war is anything but a game. I wish his father could win battles with toy soldiers and tin swords." His eyes were drawn back to the counter. ”

“ He appropriated a chair, happily left unclaimed, and settled himself by the tea-table with a serene assurance of enjoyment.
"Are you generous, that you laugh at me?" he demanded.
"You can't expect generosity from women, you know. Weakness is always cruel," she said, rearranging the tea-cups.
"Ah, but not in that way should women be weak," said Mendoza caressingly, "and not in that way should they be cruel."
She laughed again. "I shall certainly have to mind my phrases. There is Mr. Gordon-Bradley looking for somebody." ”

“ But for the others, the climbers, cringing to those above them and, in turn, being victimized by other climbers who think the first have achieved—what are they but a colony of ants building up, with painful effort, the atoms of their ant-hill, only to have it scattered by the foot of a passer-by on a worthier errand? The changes of one season ought to prove it to you. You come back, after the absence of one summer, to find a new colony of ants building and the old horde with whom you thought you had achieved a sure position gone—for the most part. ”

“ It does seem as if the earth ought to know how to nourish a growing thing better than has been done for that child."
The dinner was a feast to Jeremy. Dave had filled a big bowl in the middle of the table with roses. There was so little sale for them at this time of the year with the frugal Deering folks that he could indulge himself with a clear conscience. The tints of the flowers were reflected dully in the satiny lustre of the mahogany table that had been willed to him by his grandfather. Tennant put before his guest the simplest things of his simple larder. ”