CHAPTER XIV

DIRK ENTERTAINS

The Sunday after Christmas found Mr. Cortlandt kept in the house by a cold. Beth sought him out in the evening and found him beside his library fire. The logs burned cheerily, snapping and crackling; the red flames and impish sparks looked most alluring on this cold night.

Beth came across the thick carpet without a sound of a footfall; in her hand she carried the miniature which Aunt Rebecca had sent her at Christmas.

“Uncle Jim,” she said, pausing.

Mr. Cortlandt started. “Why, Elizabeth-Beth!” he cried. “You must have caught me napping. You made me jump. Glad to see you, puss. Come enjoy my fire with me. Isn’t this a fire to enjoy?” He put out his left hand and drew Beth down on the arm of his big leather chair, within the circle of his arm.

[Illustration: “I’VE BEEN WAITING TO SHOW IT TO YOU.”]

“Fires look so glad, fires in fireplaces,” said Beth, perching herself close to her uncle’s shoulder. “When they are burning houses they dance even more, but they never look glad then; only cruel. I suppose it is because in fireplaces they are doing their best to make us warm and happy. Aunt Rebecca had the front of the old fireplace at home torn out. They had boarded it up for a stove. Now it is the biggest, splendidest fireplace! Sometimes we can get wood from the seashore--the sea is about nine miles from Aunt Rebecca’s--and when we do we have the loveliest fires, all colors in the flames! Uncle Jim, see what Aunt Rebecca sent me. I’ve been waiting to show it to you.”

Beth held out her hand with the closed velvet case of the miniature in its palm. Mr. Cortlandt took it, opened it, and Beth heard him draw in his breath sharply as he leaned backward and held the miniature over the back of his chair to allow the light from the reading lamp to fall on it. For a moment he did not speak, then he said:

“Do you know how your great-aunt came by this picture, Bethie?”

“I didn’t when it came, but I had a letter from Aunt Rebecca yesterday and she told me about it. My father had it painted. Aunt Rebecca has had it laid away all this time to give me when I was old enough to appreciate it, she says; I never saw it in all my life till it came on Christmas eve. You know who it is? Is it good, Uncle Jim?” Beth asked anxiously.

“It is perfect,” declared Uncle Jim, and his voice was husky. “Know it, child? I not only know the miniature, but I know a great many things when I look at it that I wish I could have known years ago. But I was too young, too heedless, too thoroughly a boy to know these things then. If you look in the glass, Beth, you must see for yourself that it is an excellent likeness of your girl-mother, for it is also a good likeness of you. You are like her, Bethie, but you are graver, your eyes are not as laughing, until something makes you laugh. My little sister Nannie overflowed with gaiety that was in herself; she was a merry, soft-hearted kitten, but there was a fund of strength beneath the gentle affectionate ways, as she proved, as she proved, poor, steadfast little Nannie!”

Mr. Cortlandt was silent for a while and Beth did not interrupt his thoughts, though she longed to ask questions.

“Beth,” Mr. Cortlandt began again after a few moments, “you said something one day not long ago that gave me a pang. Do you remember when you told me that you had once been jealous of New York’s superiority in age to Massachusetts? You also said, when I told you that your kindred had a part in its beginnings, that you had not realized then that you had Cortlandt relatives. It made me feel sorry and ashamed to know that this must be true.”

“Oh, but Uncle Jim, I know now! It doesn’t matter! I suppose I always knew my mother had relations. I meant I never thought about them,” cried Beth, her cheek instantly rubbing against her uncle’s, as if to efface all regrets he might feel.

“Your part of it is all right, Bethie; mine isn’t,” said Uncle Jim, stroking the fair hair which tickled him. “Tell me; what do you know about your mother? What has your Bristead great-aunt told you?”

“Not much. I know she died when I was just born and my father died four months before that. I know she wasn’t old a bit; only twenty-three, but that is on her stone, if you count up. When my father knew he couldn’t get well he took my mother to Aunt Rebecca. I think that’s all I know. Aunt Rebecca never liked to talk about my mother. She always said she would by and by. I didn’t know whether that was because she liked her too well to talk about her, or not well enough. It would act just the same on Aunt Rebecca. Of course I wanted dreadfully to hear about her; any girl would,” Beth ended with a suggested appeal to her uncle now to supply her lack of knowledge.

“Wouldn’t my knee be more comfortable than the chair arm?” asked Mr. Cortlandt. “That’s better, more cozy, too! Well, Beth, I am going to tell you about your mother. I was five years older than she was, so I ought to have been more sympathetic, have stood by her. But in justice to myself I think I may say that I did not in the least realize, as I do now, that she must have longed and hungered for a brother’s kindness in those bitter months of her widowhood; indeed I did not realize anything about her, feeling that she had chosen her own lot and that it would all come out right in the end. I was entirely occupied with my own young life just then. Nannie was a lovely little creature; she was trusting, gentle, loving, obedient, but when she fell in love with your father she never could be persuaded to give him up. Your father was a fine fellow, Beth; the Bristeads were good old stock, as you evidently have been taught, and he was all he ought to be. But he hadn’t a cent in the world, and no certainty of having much more, so your Grandfather Cortlandt forbade his tenderly cared-for little daughter to marry him. Father was afraid that Nannie would suffer. But Nannie would not give up your father. Instead she gave up her home and its luxury and married him. My father was furiously angry, angry with Nannie for disobeying him, still more angry with your father for letting her share the risks of his future, and he had not forgiven either of them when the end came, so swiftly that there was no time to heal the breach. As you say, your father had taken his young wife to his father’s home and to the care of his father’s sister when he found he could not live. Miss Bristead was too proud and too angry on her side that her nephew should have been forbidden to marry the girl he chose, to let my father know when Nannie’s husband died. If Nannie could have lived I know that my father would have sent for her to come back and that she, with you in her arms, would have nestled into her old place in her home. But Nannie died and father was crushed, heart-sick with the worst of sorrow, regret for a separation that death had made permanent. He was more than satisfied to leave you with the Bristeads; he died four years after Nannie’s death. I have always had in mind to look up Nannie’s child, but the years slipped away without doing it. I, too, have had my share of the pain of self-reproach that I thoughtlessly left my little sister to her fate. Thoughtlessly; not unkindly, I am glad to say, for I never shared father’s anger against Nannie. I heedlessly took for granted that she was where she had chosen to be and that it was no affair of mine. So you grew up a real little Beth Bristead, not knowing, as you said, that you had Cortlandt relatives, till this winter. At last I aroused to action and sent for you. Tell me, in your mother’s name, that my carelessness is forgiven. For we love you so much, Beth, dear child, that neither your Aunt Alida nor I, nor your cousins, for that matter, will ever again let you slip out of our grasp.”

Beth kissed her uncle by way of an answer that she could not give in words. The sad story of her girl-mother’s brief life had been told so simply that she understood it, as far as any one, old or young, ever can understand what they have not lived through themselves.

“Was it very wrong for my father and mother to disobey Grandfather Cortlandt and marry?” asked Beth at last.

“Wrong, dear? Well, I am sure that they did not think so. I am certain that they believed that they loved each other so truly that it would have been wrong to act otherwise,” Mr. Cortlandt said. “But, yes, it was wrong, though I am confident they did not see it. I have two daughters of my own--and a niece!--and I should not be willing to let them take the chance of poverty. Older people see these things differently from romantic youngsters. Nannie and her lover ought, at least, to have waited till he had proved what he could do for her. They were young enough to afford to wait. But that is just why they could not wait; young people never think they can waste a year or so. It is only when there aren’t many years left that people begin to see that there is plenty of time. That is a contradiction which I do not expect you to understand, Bethikins! Ah, well! That story has had finis written against it this many a day! I am sure that Nannie was happy for the short time allowed her, and I doubt she was ever sorry that she braved all things for your father. In any case her marriage gave you to us, little Beth, so if the story that is finished has a sad ending, the sequel to it is the happiest one possible.”

“Aunt Rebecca has tried very hard indeed to make me grow up properly,” said Beth, with the funny little gravity that was the result of this same “proper” growing up.

“I don’t suppose there could be a better foundation than her old-fashioned, strict training,” admitted Uncle Jim. “Your Aunt Alida is the best person in all the world to build beautifully on that solid foundation. Between us all, Beth, you ought to turn out an ornament to your sex and a glory to your country.”

Beth laughed, as her uncle intended her to; he thought there had been enough serious talk and he wanted to see Beth’s eyes dance and her dimple come.

“I may as well tell you, niece of mine, that your ‘Wonder-Winter,’ as I hear you call it, is to be followed by a Wonder-Summer--or I hope it will prove one! At any rate you are going with us to our summer home. It is a pretty nice place, Beth; we think it is most beautiful, house and grounds and neighboring ocean, and all our friends say so, too. We have a little theatre there where my children give plays, and we sail and bathe and are happy all the day long, and every day. You and Trump will revel in it, I’m positive. So make up your mind that the winter wonders will melt into greater summer wonders for you, Bethikins, my dear.”

“Oh, Uncle Jim! Isn’t that splendid! I’ve been dreading spring!” cried Beth. Then her face fell; she drooped in every muscle of her body. “But Aunt Rebecca!” she sighed. “Don’t you think she must be lonely, Uncle Jim?”

“Truth compels me to admit that I don’t see how she can help missing you, Bethie,” her uncle conceded. “I have written to her, putting before her the fact that she has had you ten years and a little more, while we have only had you this winter--though that is our own fault; that makes it all the worse! I asked her to tell me if she got on fairly well without you, reminding her that we could do a great deal for your happiness and to your advantage. Miss Bristead has replied briefly that she is getting on well, that she would not consider making any claim upon you that kept you from your best good, and that if you wanted to stay with us longer and could assure her conscientiously that you were safe, and not being harmed, she would consent to sparing you. So, unless you think we are doing mischief to you, Beth, ours you are to be for a long time to come.”

“Oh, doesn’t that sound just like Aunt Rebecca!” cried Beth. “She’s so afraid I’ll not be nice! But she wouldn’t stand in the way, if she died getting out of the way--I mean in the way of something best for me. She is good; Aunt Rebecca really is good! But perhaps she won’t mind much if I’m gone just this summer longer! There’s so much to take up your mind in summer--preservings and cannings and fighting flies! Aunt Rebecca won’t let one fly pull his head forward and rub it with his feet in her house the way they do. She flaps him with a folded newspaper before he can twiddle his feet once! She has a great deal more to take up her attention in summer than she has in winter. Oh, Uncle Jim, I guess the honest truth is I want to think Aunt Rebecca won’t care if I’m away, I want to stay so dreadfully, dreadfully much!”

“The greatest good of the greatest number! On that principle you ought to stay because there are so many of us to one Aunt Rebecca, and we want you to stay ‘so dreadfully, dreadfully much’!” Mr. Cortlandt affirmed this statement with a pat on Beth’s shoulder.

At this moment Beth’s girl cousins came into the library, followed by Dirk with an air of wishing there were something to do better than following them.

“Where in the world are you, Beth?” cried Alys, unnecessarily, since her eyes were on her cousin as she spoke. “We’ve looked everywhere for you. What can you and father be doing in this dim light?”

“Beth and I have been chatting in the firelight, Alys,” Mr. Cortlandt replied for Beth. “Dim light and brilliant talk often go together. Though has our conversation been brilliant, Miss Bristead?”

“It has been nice,” said Beth decidedly, slipping from her perch, recognizing that the quiet hour she had enjoyed so much was over.

“I’m going to have a Twelfth Night revel--in the afternoon. You’re asked,” Dirk announced to Beth, meeting her in the hall a day or two after New Year’s.

“Beans in cake, king and queen, all those things?” cried Beth eagerly, instantly reverting to her favorite ballads and romance at the name of Twelfth Night.

“Beans! Beans in cake! You mean raisins, don’t you?” asked Dirk staring.

“No. But it was only one bean; I remember now. Whoever got the bean in the cake was king of the revel,” explained Beth.

“Well, I’m the king of my own revel, only there isn’t a bean about it and I’m not going to say I’m running it. I’m not going to ask one single girl but you. I suppose Nat and Alys will be around, but I’m not going to ask them; maybe they’ll have something else on the go. I’ve asked the boys and you. We’re going to have it in the gym. Bob Leonard’ll come. You wear that white and gold thing you had on at the Christmas tree. We’re going to play something that’ll just come in to fit. Will you come, Beth?” Dirk ended anxiously, as if he feared his taste in revels might not appeal to Beth.

“’Course,” Beth accepted briefly. “Do I have to know ahead what the game is?”

“No.” Dirk shook his head hard. “All you’ll do, most likely, is sit around and look the part. You’re to be a captive white princess, if you want to know, and we’re going to have a tournament, an Indian tournament, about you.”

“Fighting? Does Aunt Alida know?” asked Beth nervously.

“Sure she knows, has to order the eats, doesn’t she? Don’t get scared, Beth; nothing’ll happen,” Dirk assured Beth kindly.

Natalie and Alys had no more desire to go to Dirk’s Twelfth Night party than he had to have them come. He scorned “a lot of girls”; they looked down on “a little boys’ party,” so they were quits, each faction comfortably superior to the other.

The girls went to lunch and to a matinée party with a friend of theirs. Beth found herself wondering whether the honor of being the one girl invited was not going to prove a burden. She watched Frieda making her pretty in her Christmas white and gold costume with no little dread of this Twelfth Night revel.

Dirk was waiting for her on the stairs. She found him a forbidding brave in Indian costume, feathers, paint, tomahawk and all, and his whoop hailing her sent her heart to the soles of her feet, though she knew him, of course.

“Dirk, they won’t all yell like that, right in my ears, and flourish a tomahawk, will they?” Beth protested.

“Oh, come now, Beth, be a sport!” Dirk reasoned with her. “I suppose they will, else what would be the use of dressing up like Indians? You stood the Christmas horns, you ought to be able to stand boys yelling. If I’d thought you were going to be finnified-fine-ladyish, like Alys, I wouldn’t have asked you, either.”

In her heart Beth wished he had not, but she felt in honor bound not to be any more disappointing than she could help.

“All right, Dirk; I won’t mind--much, and I’ll play my best. What do you want me to do?” she asked.

“I knew you’d be a sport,” cried Dirk, relieved. “Why, the fellows are all in there. I bring you in as a captive, see? And they all set upon us, but my tribe--we’re evenly divided--fights the hostile Indians, and so I get over to my wigwam. We’ve got it all made up; they tackle me when I go in. Then I leave you in the wigwam and we all fight; regular gym stunts. Bob Leonard’s to be umpire and see it’s all on the level. My side has to win, ’cause if it doesn’t, why, the other side gets the captive, see? We’ll have to try, all right; we’re divided as fair as we could make it.”

“What happens if the other side gets the captive--or if your side keeps her?” asked Beth with pardonable anxiety.

“Why, why--I don’t know! We keep her, or we don’t; that’s about all; win the fight, don’t you see? After that--well, after that I guess we cool off and have the eats,” Dirk explained.

Beth laughed. “Sounds like ‘the king of France went up the hill with twenty thousand men.’ I guess I needn’t mind playing that,” she said.

“Come on, then; they’re all waiting,” Dirk urged her. “I have to skulk up to the gym door and open it as quiet! Bring my captive in on the sly, see? They’ll all yell like sixty when they see us, so be ready.”

They did yell like sixty! Beth thought they yelled like ten times sixty. In spite of her preparation for the onslaught she shrank back as the horrid din smote her. Then she fulfilled her promise to play the best she could and resumed her haughty bearing, the scornful, unmoved pride of a noble white lady in the hands of savages, whose only weapon against them was her contempt for the worst that they could do.

No one could distinguish friendly Indians from the foes of her captor, for they were all in war paint and feathers, all brandishing tomahawks and yelling insanely, and they all fell on one another in a khaki-colored snarl of contest.

Gradually the snarl divided to Beth’s eyes and by degrees half fell back and allowed the other half, with Dirk at their head, dragging Beth by the wrists, to progress to the further end of the great room.

“Say, don’t come along so easy; you ought to hold back,” Dirk whispered to her.

“No, I ought not,” Beth retorted. “If I couldn’t get away and knew it, I’d come along quietly, to trick you. Hannah Dustin kept still till she got her chance, then she killed the Indians and escaped. That’s exactly the way I’m acting my part.”

Dirk was silenced. When Beth came down on him with an historical fact he wilted--and Beth had an inconvenient number of historical facts at her tongue’s end.

When Dirk, as chief, deposited his captive on a chair at the extreme end of the gymnasium, called, for convenience, his wigwam, he went on the war path again, and this time the fight was unimpeded by a captive and was waged thoroughly.

Though she knew that Mr. Leonard would not let the boys get carried away by the game, Beth’s heart beat hard with excitement. After a while Beth saw that the fight followed rules and that Dirk’s side was, on the whole, getting the best of it. Certain strokes counted as wounds, others were reckoned fatal and on receiving these the brave thus hit dropped out and was dragged aside. It was more interesting than Beth had expected to find it, though as little like a Twelfth Night revel as it well could be.

When Dirk’s side was reduced to three spirited braves, yelling defiance to foes now outnumbering them by more than twice their number, Dirk turned to his tribe, crying:

“Shall we fight till we kill them all? The palefaces will say the red man never shows mercy. Let’s capture them and torture them and make them work for us, but let them keep their scalps. Saying this the Big Chief Ride-on-the-Wind sprang to the top of the highest pine tree to overlook the field of battle.”

With which speech, modeled on his best Indian stories, Dirk made a standing jump and rapidly swung himself to the top of the highest trapeze in the gymnasium.

“And the band played ‘From the land of the sky blue water they brought a captive maid!’” cried Mr. Leonard applauding his pupil’s feat.

Beth applauded, too, enjoying this part of the game immensely, when a sharp rending sound penetrated the laughter and she saw Mr. Leonard’s face turn ghastly white as he paused with his upraised hands arrested in applause. It was but an instant, too brief to measure, the space of an indrawn breath, and one side of the lofty trapeze parted, the horizontal bar swung down on one end, swaying and twisting violently, and Dirk plunged head downward, clutching at the bar, missing it, falling headlong.

As death seemed to grip Beth’s heart in the horrible silence of that instant, Mr. Leonard leaped forward, caught Dirk with his hands and shoulders, sank beneath the boy’s weight, and received his fall, his body a cushion for the impact which he had broken as he clutched Dirk.

Another instant, and no one spoke or moved, then the boys rushed forward, shutting the group on the floor from Beth’s eyes. She arose and tried to go toward them, but could not take a step. Then a great shout rang out and the boys pulled Dirk to his feet and Mr. Leonard got up, dusting himself, trying to laugh, but making a sorry failure of it with his lips blue and drawn, his whole body visibly trembling.

“No harm done, Captive Maid!” Mr. Leonard called to poor little quivering Beth as she stood clinging to her chair, looking out over the boys’ heads with big eyes staring from a white, pinched face.

Dirk went over to her. “Scared, Bethie? Pretty close call. What do you think of Bob Leonard now? Not a bump on me. I guess--I guess mother----” Dirk stopped short. To his disgust he was crying, “in front of the fellows!”

But no one seemed to mind. Not an Indian, foe or friendly, but that was choking tearfully, so no one could criticize Dirk for being shaken when he had so narrowly escaped death.

“Dirk, oh, Dirk, I was so frightened!” sobbed Beth. She longed to put her arms around her cousin and cry herself quiet, holding him to make sure she actually had him still, but she knew that Dirk would never allow such a display of emotion before an audience.

Beth looked at Mr. Leonard. It seemed to her that he loomed tall and marvelous and that she could see glory all around him.

“You saved Dirk’s life. What do you suppose Uncle Jim and Aunt Alida will say?” she said, choking back the sob that tried to end her sentence.

“Don’t you think they’ll overlook it?” Mr. Leonard managed to laugh this time. “I merely jumped and caught Dirk. Didn’t I play first base on the college team? I’ve caught harder and smaller balls than that. You’d have jumped, too, Bethie; don’t make so much of what I did. It was a good thing I was here, that’s all. What I’d like to know is what made that trapeze give way. It’s the best apparatus on the market. Indeed I don’t mean to make light of what has happened. Dirk had a frightful fall. I am deeply thankful, deeply thankful that I could catch him. Good old chap!”

He put his arm over Dirk’s shoulder with his fine young face full of affection. Dirk looked up at him adoringly. “I tell you what, Bob Leonard,” he said, “I’d just as lief have you save my life as any one.”

Then, in the nick of time to break up a nervous strain that threatened to be too much for a boys’ frolic, what Dirk had called “the eats” appeared. There were sandwiches and hot chocolate, cakes of many sorts and ice-cream in forms, each form an Indian, except one, and that was a lovely maiden in bisque and strawberry so disposed that one could easily imagine that it represented pink and white youthful prettiness.

“Say, isn’t my mother just one! Goes and orders Indians for us and never lets on, because I told her what we were going to play to-day!” cried Dirk.

“Here, this girl’s for you, Beth, and the rest don’t matter. The chocolate Indians are the nearest the real thing in looks.” Dirk passed the cream as he talked and urged his friends to help themselves freely to the cakes, which, to do them justice, they were perfectly ready to do.

Beth could hardly eat; she chipped off the ends of her maiden’s hair and nibbled a cake, but she still saw Dirk’s body dashing through the air and her head swam. She wondered at the boys who, without exception, though some of them began to eat slowly, all rose superior to nerves and tucked away Mrs. Cortlandt’s refreshments rapidly. Even Mr. Leonard, who was a boy, too, of a larger size, proved as equal to this occasion as he had been to the danger.

After the refreshments there never seems to be much for which to linger and Dirk’s Twelfth Night party broke up shortly. When the eating was over the sense of solemnity returned and the boys were ill at ease. Dirk was evidently glad when the last one had departed and he could go to his room to resume the garments of the white race.

That evening at dinner Dirk was a hero. Natalie and Alys hung upon his every word. Natalie visibly glowed when he ate with hearty relish, apparently relieved by proof that he was thoroughly and boyishly alive.

Alys smiled at every word Dirk spoke; she spoke to him softly, with the greatest affection, as though she feared to startle him if she used her ordinary tone. She told him that if he still wanted the camera which he thought better than his own, he might have it. She added that she was sorry she had not given it to him at once.

Dirk grinned at this and openly winked at Beth, calling upon her to share his glee over Alys’s conversion to him.

But Beth’s smile in return was full of unmixed joy; she did not think it was funny that Alys discovered that her one brother was a precious possession, after all.

Mr. Cortlandt watched Dirk in a hidden way and his face was full of emotion. Aunt Alida toyed with her dinner and did not try to hide the tears that choked her. No one could forget what a different household theirs might have been that night but for Bob Leonard’s quickness of mind and hand.

After dinner Beth saw her aunt fold Dirk in her arms and hold him close while the lad dropped his head on her breast like a little child.

“My son, my one little, little son!” murmured Aunt Alida. “If I had lost you I could not have lived!”

“I know it, mummy. I was glad right away Bob Leonard caught me, for your sake,” returned Dirk. “I’d have hated like everything to have had you come home if--if he hadn’t.”

Beth heard with surprise. She had fancied that Aunt Alida loved her girls better, if there were a difference, than she loved her boy. She treated Dirk with a playful carelessness and he rarely showed feeling when he was with her, whereas the girls openly worshiped her beauty and her charm.

Evidently this son and mother understood each other without demonstrations. Beth wondered, feeling that she was learning a great deal. She went to bed a tired little girl, worn out by excitement and emotion. Her last thought on the borderland of sleep was a grateful one that all her dear people were happy that night.