THE HONOR GIRL

by Grace Livingston Hill

  She went about dusting and putting things in order again. At half past five she put some potatoes into the oven to roast, set the table with the three big chrysanthemums in the middle in a tall glass pitcher, and got everything ready for supper. There were celery in a glass dish, a quivering mould of jelly, a plate of crisp crackers, and a dish of tiny little sweet pickles. The oyster stew was beginning to send a savory steam through the house when the bus arrived with the brothers.

  Elsie ought to have seen their faces brighten when they caught sight of the flowers. What had happened? Not Elsie there again so soon! That would be too good to be true.

  But, when they flung wide the kitchen door, and Jack gave a cheery whistle, there sure enough she was, running out of the kitchen to meet them, with her sleeves rolled high and a big apron enveloping her. The gaunt cat followed, amorously winding herself between Elsie’s feet and actually purring hoarsely, an out-of-practice but quite genuine purr.

  They just danced around her, those two big brothers, and whirled her off her feet with their joy. They shouted and whistled and sang and laughed until the neighbors across the way must have wondered what had come to the house of Hathaway.

  The trolley stopped while they were in the midst of their rejoicing, and the father arrived, amazed at the noise. He came in as if not quite sure yet whether his senses were betraying him or not, and the daughter read a real welcome in his smile as he looked around with a kind of wistful contentment.

  Elsie had telephoned her aunt that she was staying out to dinner that night, and would be home by nine o’clock if possible; so she had not a great while to remain, and must do her talking rapidly. After the oysters were brought in and everybody served, she began.

  “Father, I’ve been thinking of what you said about wanting me to come home. I think I’ll come if I can manage it. You know I’m going to school in the city, and I’d have to be away all day—”

  But the whoops of joy from her brothers interrupted her conversation for several minutes; and both big fellows left their seats, and came around to embrace her in their eagerness. When the uproar had somewhat subsided, she began again.

  “I should have to have a good servant, father; do you think we could manage it? You know I shouldn’t have much time to work. But I could teach her what to do, and I could be here evenings. I think we could have good times together.”

  The father lifted his whitening head and looked at her with yearning tenderness.

  “You can have all the servants you want, child, if you’ll just come back and put some soul into this old house,” he said feelingly; and then he rested his forehead in his hands and groaned.

  Elsie, deeply touched, came around to him and put her arms about his bowed head, kissing him tenderly, a strange new yearning coming into her heart. Why had she never realized before that she had left true and loving hearts for her own selfish ease? And yet they had been willing for her good to have her away all these years!

  The father lifted his face after a time, and his cheeks were wet with tears.

  “I’d like to have you come back, daughter, if you think it won’t be sacrificing too much,” he said in a shaken voice. “We maybe don’t know how to make things look so fancy as they do at your aunt’s house—we’re only three lonely men, but we’ll do the best we can to make you happy. I’m making enough to keep you well and get a servant too.”

  He patted her hand awkwardly. This beautiful grown-up daughter embarrassed him.

  “It’s been no home here since your mother left, but maybe you can bring home into it once more,” he said tenderly.

  Elsie and her brothers did the dishes before she left; but they had to do some rushing, for Elsie did not wish to distress her aunt any more than necessary by being late. Both boys elected to escort her back to the city, and she bade her father good-bye, promising to be out early Saturday morning to stay.

  When the boys left their sister at their aunt’s door, they walked on down the street in silence for several blocks. They were so absorbed in thought that somehow by common consent they had not thought to take the car.

  “That’s a big thing for her to do; do you know it kid?” said Gene at last. “Did you get a look into that parlor window? That’s some room compared to ours! See that fireplace with the fire shining on those brass and irons and the big lamp with the colored globe, and that big grand piano. She’s leaving a lot to come out to our dump.”

  “Yes. And some dump!” breathed the younger brother contemptuously. “Say, why couldn’t we have a fireplace? There’s a room enough on the side of the room where the mantelpiece is. I always did like to see an open fire.”

  “Tell Dad. Maybe he’ll do something.”

  “I will!” declared Jack. “Gee! How’d we ever get to living in such a mess, anyway? I use to wish I would never see the dump again when I went away to school in the morning, and I use to wish I could die when I went home at night. Of course one doesn’t mind when there’s some place to go, but most times you want a spot to relax in between.”

  “Same here,” declared Gene. Then they walked several more blocks in silence.

  Suddenly they found themselves in the business section and passing a large department store. Eugene came to a halt before a great window display.

  The scene represented a room in a mansion, the walls hung with soft, neutral tints, the windows draped in white and rose, the cushions on the white willow chairs repeating the same tints. On the floor was a costly Oriental rug in which rose and gray and green predominated in lovely silky blending. Before the little white dressing-table with its threefold mirror was seated a waxen lady in negligee robe of rose chiffon, with boudoir cap of rose and silver lace, toying with the silver-backed brushes and other articles of the toilet that lay upon the delicate lace-edged linen cover. Over at the other end of the room with a white chest of drawers and a delicate bed with insets of wicker. The bed was covered with a costly spread of handsome openwork lace over pink satin, and at the foot was folded a puffy satin quilt of rose color.

  “Some class!” ejaculated Jack, looking carefully at the details. “Say, Gene, we oughtta fix up her room. She fixed ours. What d’ ya say? Let’s do it.”

  “Take some cash to make up that outfit.”

  “Well, how much ya got? Guess I’ve got a hundred lying around, and Todd owes me fifty he borrowed last month. He promised to fork over soon.”

  “Guess I can match you once again,” said Gene. “I’ve been saving up to buy a car when a good bargain comes along, but that can wait.”

  “We may want a car too, now,” said Jack thoughtfully. “Wish I hadn’t blown so much going up in airplanes and playing poker, but a fellow had to do something to pass the time away.”

  “Well, I guess we might manage to get some kind of an outfit together by Saturday if we make a good stab at it. What do you say to taking tomorrow off and seeing what we can do?”

  The two went on reluctantly from that window to others, gradually discovering what seemed to be the style in bedroom furnishings, noting the differences of qualities and shapes and colors, lingering long at a window filled with Oriental rugs.

  At last they took the car for Morningside, still discussing which bedroom set had been the prettier, the one on Market Street or the gray one at Filleree’s.

  It was late when they reached home and their father was asleep in his chair. They roused him, and poured into his ears their plans, taking him into the front room to show him where a fireplace might be built. They were so excited about it that they stayed up ’til midnight planning just where the chimney could go. They even took a candle, and all three went out-of-doors to see whether it would interfere with the windows upstairs if it were placed where they had planned.

  When they went upstairs, Jack flung back his sister’s door and turned on the light, going in with a critical look around. It was strange how Elsie’s advent had been the only tolerable tidy spot in the house, the shrine for a sort of ideal of womanhood, had now becom
e a musty, dusty, gloomy spot, far too poor for the girl who was coming to occupy it.

  ‘“Gee! Isn’t it fierce?” exclaimed Jack. “No wonder she never came back before! I s’pose she’s used to fine things like those we saw in the windows tonight. Say, Gene, this wallpaper’s rotten. It would give any girl the jimjams to wake up in a room like this. Couldn’t we get it papered before Saturday if we hired Harlin and made him hustle?”

  “H’m! Maybe,” said Gene, looking around. “It is fierce, isn’t it? You couldn’t put good things into a hole like this. S’pose you hustle over to Harlin’s early in the morning before he sends his men out for the day. If you tell him that it’s for a surprise, I guess he’ll fix us up. Tell him we want something real snappy with roses in it.”

  Those two big boys could hardly sleep that night with their planning. They were almost as excited as if they had been girls, and Jack was up and off bright and early in the morning.

  Harlin was an old friend. He remembered Elsie when she was but three, with eyes like stars and hair of gold. Surely he would help them get the room ready for her by Saturday. He was rushed, of course, and behind in his work; but what was one day or so, more or less? He would put somebody else off. Small room, was it? Well, he had the very thing, left over from the Graham mansion on the pike.

  It might not sound so very grand just to tell about it, but it made up “simply great!” “Gray felt, real light, with a ceiling of rose tint and a border of cut-out roses on the gray, and you wouldn’t believe how pretty it finished off,” said the man. “I went up to see it when it was furnished, an’ it was just like a parlor. They had two kinds o’ curtains, one white with a border of pink roses, and one pink; an’ the room all looked as if the sun just shone right in. It went real pretty with the gray wall. You wouldn’t a’ b’lieved it, but it did.”

  Jack wasn’t quite sure; but the roses sounded good, so he told Harlin to go ahead; and Harlin promised to send someone over that morning to begin.

  Jack rushed home and moved all the furniture out of the room, bundling it unceremoniously up into the back room.

  It’ll do for the servant, won’t it?” he asked, practically. “Anyhow, we have to have a decent place for her to sleep, or we couldn’t get one to stay. That Rebecca wasn’t worth her salt!”

  “I should say!” answered Gene. “Now come on and hustle. We’ve got a lot to do today.”

  The brothers rushed off to their uncharacteristic shopping as eager as two children.

  Chapter 11

  Along toward six o’clock the brothers returned, weary but well satisfied with their labors. They had purchased carefully and with due deliberation and many appeals to sympathetic salesmen and saleswomen, and they felt that they had purchased well. A little white bed and bureau and desk; a white willow rocker with rosy cushions; a small white desk-chair; filmy curtains with a border of roses; a lace-edged cover for the bureau; and a lace-edged, rose bordered, fat pin-cushion; a silver-backed brush and comb; a pink-bordered blanket and coverings for the bed; an eider-down quilt of pink satin crowning extravagance of all, a small but very Oriental rug, just large enough to fill the space between the bed and the bureau, and extended from near the door to near the window, where the little rocker would sit. The rug was a bargain and very silky with a lot of deep rose color and cream in its design; and the brothers, as they settled down into their seats in the trolley car, drew a long breath of satisfaction over it. They knew that Elsie would probably know the value of that rug, and they fairly beamed with delight over the thought that they had been able to buy it for her. Only in a vague way did they appreciate it themselves, and that from hearsay rather than knowledge. It was just a tiny rug. It looked to them no better—not so good, perhaps—as a larger rug for the same price that would have covered the entire floor and was festive with roses and lilies; but they had been most thoroughly instructed in rug lore by the various salesmen who had waited upon them that morning, and they had learned that this small, glowing fabric was related to a great rug that hung high upon the wall that counted its handmade knots to the square inch by the hundred and its price by the thousands of dollars; therefore they sat in awe, and reflected upon their purchase with deep satisfaction.

  When they reached home, they did not stop to start their supper nor even to light up. They made one dash up the stairs to the little room that was their sister’s. Yes, Harlin had been as good as his word. There was a smell of new paste in the air, and the floor was littered with old paper torn and scraped from the walls. They stumbled in it as they reached to turn on the light.

  The work was not all done, but it was well on its way. The ceiling glowed down rosily upon them, and two walls were smooth and gray with a ravishing rose vine clambering neatly over the top and blending ceiling and sidewall. They could see that it would not take long to finish. It would probably be done when they got home tomorrow night from work.

  “Say! It’s all right!” commented Jack delightedly.

  “It’s not so bad,” rejoiced Eugene. “Our curtains ’ll go well with that border. But this paint is fierce. It ought to be white; what was that they called the furniture? Ivory-white? It ought to be painted ivory-white. Guess we better get a pot of paint, and get at it tomorrow night. It won’t take long.”

  “The floor too. We’ll have to get up that matting, and stop up the cracks with putty, and paint it, and varnish it, I guess. What color? I guess mahogany would set off that rug pretty well. What’s the matter with getting the paint tonight? Then we can go right at it when we get home tomorrow. Guess it won’t do to knock off another day. We might need the money with all these things to pay for.”

  “Somebody ought to be here when the things come tomorrow.”

  “I guess we can get Harlin to look after those.”

  While they were making their plans, the father arrived, and came straight upstairs as eager as either of them. It was eight o’clock before they got around to sit down to their supper, and it was a very different atmosphere from that of their usual meals, for all of them were taking animatedly and suggesting things that might be done to make the house more habitable and pleasant for the new occupant.

  “There’s plenty of room to build a sleeping-porch out that south window of hers,” suggested the father eagerly. “Most of the houses out here have one or two of them. That would be something she doesn’t have in the city, anyway.”

  “Just the thing, Dad. Isn’t it a pity we didn’t think of these things last summer, and get them done when we had plenty of time?”

  “It’s better this way,” said the father. “We shouldn’t know how she wanted everything, you know. She’ll have her own ways, and it’s best to let her plan it herself.”

  The brothers looked at one another with sinkings of heart. For the first time it occurred to them that their purchases might not be all that their sister would have liked, and perhaps they ought to have waited until she came.

  “Well, everything can be exchanged if she doesn’t like it,” reflected Jack cheerfully, and so a degree of satisfaction was regained.

  Tuesday night the papering was done, and the boys began their painting. The air was so full of excitement that they hardly stopped to eat. The father hovered between the room upstairs, giving advice to the boys, and downstairs, where the new furniture was assembled in parlor and hall. He touched with reverent finger the fine white finish, looking wistfully into the French plate mirror that reflected the tired old image of what he used to be. He wondered vaguely whether his wife could know that their little girl was coming back to the old home to live, and whether she was glad. He felt a pang of fear lest Elsie might not like it enough to stay, lest, after all, her aunt might yet persuade her not to come. Indeed, this thought was just below the surface in the minds of them all, and they worked the more nervously that they might not think it out to their consciousness.

  Jack got up at four o’clock Thursday morning to put the last coat of paint on so that it would be dry enough by night t
o hang the curtains. They were so impatient to see the whole finished room that they could hardly sleep. Thursday evening they ate crackers and cheese with coffee, taking as little time as possible, that they might get to work at once.

  They washed their hands very carefully when they began to handle the white furniture, and set every piece in place as if it were the ark of the covenant and they were unfit to touch it. They took off their heavy shoes, and went about in stocking feet, lest they scratch the floor; and every time they put anything in place they stepped back with bated breath and surveyed the result, as bit by bit the lovely room was built.

  As a lady might have put the last exquisite finishes of lace and jewelry to her costume, so they fastened up the little brass rods, and hung the cheap muslin curtains with rose-bordered ruffles; so they laid on the lace-edged bureau-cover, and set forth the fat pink-satin cushion.

  With careful hands and much adjuring of one another they spread up the bed, even to the final arranging with clumsy fingers of the big pink eider-down quilt across the foot. Three or four times apiece they unfolded and replaced that eider-down before they could get it to suit them both, and there was much disputing as to how those they had seen in the shop-windows had been folded. But at last it was all done, and the lovely rug spread down in the center space; and then the three men stood just outside the door, and took in the whole finished beauty, as if it were a sanctuary, without saying a word.

  The beauty of it lingered with them when they slept; they dreamed, and thought they were looking into the kingdom of heaven, where the roses grew high against celestial skies and the streets were inlaid with jewels like an Oriental rug.

  Neither of the brothers came home in the bus Friday evening. Each, unknown to the other, got off from work early, and slipped away on an errand before coming home. Eugene started first and went to the city. When he came home, it was still afternoon, and no one was about. He stole up to the house shamefacedly, and up to the new room. There he stood a moment looking about, filled with that wonder that ever impresses one at a miracle of change. Then with a flush of embarrassment upon his face he opened his parcels, disclosing a long, soft, rosy robe of thin silk, and lace, and a lovely little silver-lace boudoir-cap wreathed with satin rosebuds. It had taken courage and perseverance to purchase those articles, and now he felt foolish standing there and holding them. What would Jack think of him? What would Elsie? Yet somehow his soul had not been satisfied until they were. He had wanted them there to give that touch of woman’s personality to the room, that little bit of feminine beauty that would show their sister the room was hers, even before she had stamped it with her own possessions.