Marion Ames Taggart

“ Mary, as white as Jane, moved forward as if in a dream, and Jane followed her; Win brought up the rear. A lady got out of the carriage; neither girl saw her clearly. They received an impression of an elusive perfume, soft fabrics, a vivid, tender face, and arms encircling them in turn; while a voice, most lovely in tone and quality, as soft and hauntingly sweet as the fabrics and the fragrance, said with an English accent:
“Oh, not really! I’m going back! Not such tall, tall girls my daughters! You make an old woman of me on the instant! ”

“ It might have warranted any one in thinking that Jane was right in considering the stage her vocation.
“Oh, me, oh, me!” sighed Mary, emerging from the sofa pillows into which she had helplessly fallen. “You do such mad things, Janie! And you are so wilful! You ought not to have started off alone on such an errand, to people you knew absolutely nothing about! Florimel is a headstrong child, but even she is more prudent. They must be kind people, if they are untidy, and flashy, and trashy! I’m glad they were so nice to you. Please, Jane, settle down and stop being restless-minded!” ”

“ Mr. Moulton smiled at the bewildered young man, who was not less stunned than the girls by this information. “Jane, my dear, try to control yourself. There is nothing about finding one’s mother alive to cry over, and I want you to hear what I say,” said Mr. Moulton, with better effect on Jane’s nerves than his wife’s prescription. Jane stood in awe of her guardian.
“Your mother, my dears, was married young. It was not so young that she had not tasted the delight of holding an audience by her charming voice—she sang like the linnet she was called—and by her remarkable talent for mimicry. ”

“ When the delicate plants which were worth saving were potted to be housed, the autumn seeds sown for spring growing, the pansies put to bed under leaves and straw, the roses laid down and covered, the stalks of vines straw-wound, and plants needing protection straw-thatched. No gardener was allowed to perform these tasks alone. Mary, Jane, and Florimel had insisted, from the time that the older two were small girls, and Florimel was not much more than a baby, on bidding their garden this autumnal farewell. ”

“ Mary said.
“We’re so blessed that we can’t quite know how happy we are. Isn’t that beautiful? To know we’re happier than we can know we are?” said Jane.
“I wonder if we aren’t the very luckiest girls in the world?” said Florimel. “I wonder if we could call our garden fairies, and ask them who were the happiest girls in the world, what they’d say?”
And from the steps, where she stood in the setting sun, came Anne’s voice calling, like an answer:
“Garden girls! Garden girls!” ”

“ I’d love it,” said Jane. “Do you suppose we could do it, madrina?”
Their mother regarded them thoughtfully, her head on one side, as if the car were waiting and the question admitted no delay in answering.
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I’m not fond of seeing girls do men’s work. Yet you two are rather the sort to carry it off well; do it well and not have the effect of oversmartness. We might make it a success. But that has nothing to do with the gardener and his driving; you couldn’t look after the car altogether.” ”

“ Mark faced them all again, wiping his eyes, unashamed. “I didn’t cry when I was down and out,” he said. “A fellow doesn’t feel so much like crying when he’s got his teeth set, and he’s standing things. But this—this heavenly kindness gets me.”
“It would any one,” said Mary. “But it isn’t all kindness, Mark. Mr. Moulton was anxious, troubled when he could not see any one who would be likely to finish what he had begun; you know what that means to a scientist, for you are one yourself, in your younger way. And Mrs. Moulton has been lonely. ”

“ Garden flew to her. “You dear creature!” she cried. “How glad I am to find you waiting for me, exactly where I said good-bye to you twelve years ago! And the house looks just the same! How strange, when one has been living so eagerly as I have, to come back and find a place looking as though a day had hardly gone by since one left it! But the children spoil that effect! Dear me, Anne, why have they grown to be almost young women? It’s dismaying. Where is the baby, Florimel? ”

“ Mark’s gift was fringed gentians for which he had scoured the hills beyond Vineclad, rising before the sun to gather the rare and beautiful blossoms. Mark murmured as he handed them to Mary, “They were as blue as her eyes, and very like her.”
The rain that had associated itself with Mary’s recovery in the minds of those who loved her had been followed by successive downfalls. The drought once broken, the earth received refreshment constantly. The garden was beautiful with the more gorgeous bloom of September. ”

“ Come into the house; there’s supper soon, eh, Mary?”
“Indeed there is, a good one!” cried Mary, jumping to her feet. “Of course Florimel was right, and we are glad you came! Please don’t seem to be going to refuse to stay, because you must stay, anyway! We love to have company!”
“We get dreadfully tired of just ourselves,” added Jane, though this was an exaggeration of her own occasional moods. “We’re awfully glad you came. This is Hollyhock House, we are the Garden girls—Mary, Florimel, Jane.” ”

“ Madrina isn’t so silly! She wants to sing. Can’t you see, Florimel, how fearful it is to be what she was; and then to be nothing—oh, I don’t mean that! The dear, little, charming madrina! But nothing the world knows about; just the Garden girls’ mother!” cried Jane.
“We all see, Janie,” said Mary sadly. “I’ve been thinking. Isn’t there something, some charity, for which we could raise money?”
Jane and Florimel stared at her. “Vineclad is pretty comfortable, you know; not much chance here to work for charity,” said Jane slowly. “Why, in all this wide world, did you say that, Mary? ”

“ You mustn’t burn these things, little madrina! We want them; they’re our pride now, you see! It’s like bringing in the sheaves; these are the sheaves you’ve brought into the garden, and to your Garden girls. They’re ours now, madrina, because you are ours.”
Mrs. Garden stared at Jane, amazed, then dropped her head on her shoulder with a long breath of relinquishment.
“You are uncanny, Jane, positively,” she263 said, still speaking low, not to disturb Mary. “You can’t possibly know the things you seem to know, at your age! Every word you have said, Jane, is true and wise! ”

“ She could give some of her impersonations, in those costumes the girls were so crazy about, and she could train the girls—be deep in it, in all sorts of ways. I believe it would be good for her.”
Jane and Florimel were in raptures. “For all of us!” they cried together.
“Oh, Molly darling, what a good head you’d make for a sanitarium! You’d know just what to do for every single thing that ailed people!” added Florimel.
“It can’t be hard to know what any one needs when your thoughts are almost inside her mind; you love her so much, and long so to make her happy,” said Mary. ”

“ And I know you’re—Mary! Often I want to fly off and do things and see things myself, but I know all the time I’d fly back to you fast enough! I always know that and say that, even when I’m craziest. I guess nobody could have you around, Mary Garden, and feel they had a right to you, and give you up, my darling! So what’s the use of worrying too much about our cute little toy mother? She’ll root in the garden!”
“You’re a queer mixture, my Janie,” said Mary, looking at Jane with laughter and gratitude in her eyes. “Nobody would be expected to love us as we love each other, you and I! ”

“ I’d like to work with a botanist; I know more about botany than anything else.”
“And Mr. Moulton is botany crazy, in an amateurish way!” cried Mary.
“I wonder how a person is an amateur lunatic,” murmured Jane.
“Now, who’d expect you, of all people, to ask that, Jane?” said Win suggestively. “Mr. Moulton is at work on a tremendous book, more tremendous than it will ever be book, I’m afraid. He’ll never finish it! ‘A Study of the Flora of New York,’ he calls it, and he’s making a herbarium as big as the book. Maybe he’d take you to help on it.” ”

“ I appreciate Mary, or appreciate her as well as I am able. I realize that no one can sound Mary’s depths in as short a time as I’ve known her. But you must let me rejoice in having one artist daughter, Mrs. Moulton, please! It is such a great thing to be a true artist!”
“I doubt that it makes a woman happier. I want Jane to find her happiness in simple things—for her own sake. Don’t foster an ambition for a career in her, Lynette,” Mrs. Moulton urged.
Mrs. Garden laughed. “I fancy it wouldn’t alter anything, dear Mrs. Moulton,” she said. “Jane will find her own level. ”

“ I’m going to burn every foolish one of them!”
“No, madrina, please!” said Jane, dropping down beside her mother. “You didn’t know when you went away from us; you were so young. You had no idea that motherhood was more beautiful, made sweeter music, than your singing. Don’t be sorry; it all had to be. Do you suppose it matters how people learn things, provided they are not wicked? I imagine it’s just like school: different courses, you know. I’m a lot like you, and I can sing and act, you say. ”

“ I wonder how girls like us can keep her company, not let her get lonely, yet not bore her to death? Really, it is going to be hard—we must do our best!” Mary rebuked her thought for taking a form that might be interpreted to mean that the task would be hard to the girls: hard, not merely difficult. “We shall have a great deal to do!” And Mary sprang up and began to dress rapidly, as if to be ready to do. This morning she had expected to be first in the garden, but, early as it was, Jane was already there when she came down. ”

“ It’s all right, Mary; it must be needed if that man says so. But I’ve often noticed that almost any object is all right, enough excuse, I mean, if people want to have an entertainment.”
“I’m sure we don’t want it ourselves!” sighed Mary.
“No, indeed! No fussing for me! I’d rather stay outdoors; summer’s short enough!” Jane confirmed her.
“Well, I don’t know!” said Florimel. “We’ve been outdoors all our lives, in the garden, summers. I’d like to do some perfectly gloriumphant stunt, if madrina could train me to, something that went with a zip!” ”

“ The refreshments were delicious, the young waitresses served them deftly, Anne and Abbie directing them, and to their boundless relief, the Garden girls saw that all their guests were, at last, having a thoroughly good time. Win and Mark commanded a selected force of young men, or big boys, as one liked better to regard them, and lighted the lanterns when the last radiance of the beautiful June afterglow faded away. ”

“ Though she never could have been as lovely as Mary, for she lacked Mary’s earnest eyes and the reposeful strength which supplemented her prettiness; though Jane and Florimel both far outshone her in beauty, yet Mrs. Garden must have been at their age a remarkably pretty girl, with a childish appeal, and a little manner that demanded and inspired service from all of her world. ”

“ She has suffered merely surface burns. She is in bandages, but not hurt as you are! Oh, Mary darling, and you are so much more valuable!” Mrs. Garden could not repress the cry. Mary gave her the ghost of her own smile.
“You mean you all love me best! You can’t tell about value. The Bell baby may do fine things before she is eighteen. I’m glad she is living,” Mary managed to say.
“You saved her life. I never expect to save a life in all my own life! A whole chime of Bell babies couldn’t ring the peal you do, Molly darling!” said Jane, who had come into the room. ”

“ Win heard her soft laugh as she went out of the door. The Garden girls were dismayed; they were discussing the expected guest that moment in the garden; Win had noticed from the window that they looked solemn.
“He is coming to ask her to be Lady Kelmscourt,” said Jane decidedly. “He would not come for anything else. In novels they ‘run down to the country’ before they sail for India, or Africa, or some land where they are going to get a chance to earn glory in the army, or else to kill some animals who are attending to their own jungle affairs, not meddling with any one in such distant lands. ”

“ Garden, pausing with the telephone handle in her hand as she was about to ring up the Moultons’ number. “I didn’t know! Why didn’t you tell me? I love a romance, and Win is a dear boy—always was.”
“We never thought about it. It’s not a romance, yet,” said Jane carelessly. “Win thinks she’s the only girl in sight, except us, and we don’t count that way. But Audrey’s aiming for college, and Win isn’t visible to her naked eye; no boy is! He sees her, and no one else, when she’s around.” ”

“ Garden naïvely, as she took a lettuce sandwich and welcomed her tea.
“Let me tell you a secret!” said Audrey Dallas, as she, too, accepted a sandwich, but preferred the lemonade as the alternative to tea which Anne had provided. “A New York paper, the Morning Planet, takes items which I send it, sometimes, for the Sunday issue.”
“Audrey! You do! You do!” cried Nanette Hall, with varying emphasis, but one emotion of amazement. ”