CHAPTER XV

CHRYSALIS AND THE COUNTESS

Beth had a slight cold so could not go out. Her birthday was Valentine’s Day and her cousins hinted at some delightfully mysterious way in which it was to be celebrated and for which she must be perfectly well, so Beth was nursing her cold in the house, St. Valentine’s feast--and hers--being but a week distant.

Liebchen and Annunciata had been sent for to spend the afternoon. Both these children regarded Beth as a sort of distinct order of being, compounded of equal parts of a good fairy, a dear little girl, an almost-big girl--for they were both younger than Beth--a grand lady to admire, a warm-hearted friend to love, and they proceeded to love her in the combined ways and to the degree all these sides demanded.

When there was a chance amid her whirl of pleasures, Beth was allowed to ask her worshipers to visit her. They had come to-day and Beth was romping with them as she never could romp with Natalie and Alys. When they went home there would be gifts for them, pretty ribbons, some candy, a toy or two and perhaps a simple, pretty little frock. The consciousness of this possibility, based on past experiences, added no little to Liebchen’s and Annunciata’s enjoyment of the frolic while they were with Beth.

Dirk had joined Beth and her guests and Beth had suggested and directed a new play. Liebchen and Annunciata did not understand it, but it necessitated dressing up so it did not matter why they had to do this always agreeable thing. Dirk did not enter far into Beth’s enthusiasm for the game, but, as he said, he “made a stagger at playing it,” and Beth’s imagination did not need much fuel to feed its flames.

“I shall be Mary, Queen of Scots,” she elucidated. “You will be the faithful Douglas, Dirk, who adores her and tries to make her life in prison less miserable. Liebchen and Annunciata must be the four Maries--I mean two of the queen’s Maries. They were her ladies in waiting, you know.”

“Switched if I do!” declared Dirk. “Where do you get all this stuff, Beth? History?”

“Well, not plain history,” admitted Beth. “I just love the Border Ballads and all those things. And ‘The Abbot,’ you know, one of the Waverley novels, is all about Queen Mary; I’ve read it and read it! I play I’m Mary Queen of Scots half the time at home. Janie can’t stand the Waverley novels; I looked over some I don’t care about, either. But ‘The Abbot’ and ‘Kenilworth’ and ‘Ivanhoe’ and ‘The Talisman’--goodness, Dirk, I should think you’d love them! I like ‘Guy Mannering,’ too. Janie plays I’m Mary Stuart at Lochleven Castle pretty nicely, though. I’ve just _made_ her listen to the best parts of ‘The Abbot,’ so she could. She has to be Catharine Seyton, of course. When she puts her arm through the bolt place to fasten the door--oh! Well, we must play now. I’ll tell you what to say and do. You don’t have to dress up much----”

“I’m not going to dress up at all.” Dirk decided that at once.

“I suppose your suit would answer,” said Beth doubtfully; she recognized Dirk’s determination and that she should lose his support unless she compromised. “Knickerbockers and a jacket are something like trunks and a doublet. All right; you stay as you are. But Liebchen and Annunciata must have long trained skirts and head-dresses and some jewels; not many, because the queen could not give them much when she was in misfortune. You wait here, Dirk, and I’ll take them to my room to fix up. Aunt Alida gave me perfectly magnificent robes of state to dress up in, old silk dresses of hers. We’ll be back soon.”

Beth hurried her two attendants away before her and presently they all returned, splendid to behold in their finery.

Liebchen wore a blue moiré silk skirt that not merely trailed behind her, but was so long in front that it had to be looped up through a girdle around her hips, and this gave her quite the effect of a lady of the period which she represented. Annunciata wore a yellow gown, equally too long for her, equally puffy around her hips. Both had head-dresses with feathers and jewels, both were decked with chains and each carried a fan--merely as a touch of vague elegance. Beth, as the hapless queen, wore a royal robe of purple velvet and a cap of lavender with a long white veil flowing down her shoulders. Her head-dress came down in a point in the middle of her forehead so that there, at least, she looked like the portraits of Mary Stuart and a clever person might guess whom she represented.

“Gracious! You do look like I don’t know what!” exclaimed Dirk candidly. “I don’t blame whoever it was that did it for putting you into prison, if there wasn’t any asylum those days! Now what do you do--what’s the game, after you get togged out?”

Beth looked a little troubled; Dirk had laid his finger on the weak spot in these imaginative plays of hers. Nothing actual ever came of the dressing up; it all depended on how much the players could get out of feeling their parts.

“Why, I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I think the captive queen had better walk about her prison, under the guard of George Douglas--that’s you. We can go through the house--nobody’s around--and pretend it’s Lochleven Castle. My ladies in waiting will walk behind me and sometimes I shall invite one or the other to take her place at my side. We’ll come back up-stairs afterward and they will sing, I guess. The queen’s ladies sang a good deal while she embroidered, or wrote Latin prayers, or French poetry.”

“Well, if that isn’t a lively game!” cried Dirk with a shout of laughter. “The queen must have had some head if she could write prayers and poetry in two languages with people singing around her. If a bunch of girls sang I think I see what my Latin and French exercises would look like! Well, come on, if you’re going to promenade! Come on; queen’s move! Bob Leonard’s been teaching me chess.”

Beth preceded down the hall, her step stately, her carriage aimed to convey dignity, resignation and suffering. She felt that she actually was the imprisoned queen and her eyes glowed with inward light as she dwelt upon her misfortunes, a royal prisoner in this lonely northern island castle, with hope fading day by day. She managed to overlook the awkwardness of her ladies in their looped up gowns, even the schoolboy suit of “George Douglas,” which distressed her till she forcibly banished it from her mind.

The funny little cavalcade proceeded down to the lower hall and lifted the curtain of the library door. Here the queen felt that she should find the setting most like the dark castle of her imagination. “George Douglas” held the leather curtain back for her and her attendants to pass through.

To the children’s horror there sat at the further end of the room, facing the door beside a tea wagon and a small table with an alcohol kettle boiling upon it, Aunt Alida and a lady whom Beth and Dirk thought they had never seen before. This lady laughed at the apparition in the doorway and Aunt Alida smiled reassuringly to Beth.

“No harm done, Beth dear. Come in, please. Evidently you did not know I was at home. Come and show us your costumes. To whom have I the honor of speaking? I see it is not Beth Bristead,” said Aunt Alida, holding out an inviting hand.

Beth came forward shyly, but smiling as she saw sympathy and understanding in the stranger’s beautiful blue eyes. She was not precisely pretty; beside Aunt Alida’s brilliant beauty she looked almost plain. But her eyes were lovely, her bearing graceful and refined. Beth decided on the spot that she was “nice,” and that she need not mind being seen by this unknown lady in her costume.

“We were playing that I was Mary, Queen of Scots, Aunt Alida,” said Beth. “Liebchen and Annunciata are ladies in waiting. Dirk is George Douglas, only he wouldn’t dress up. Out of ‘The Abbot,’ you know.”

“Oh, really!” exclaimed Aunt Alida’s guest with an accent so unmistakably English that Beth recognized it. “How delightful to find children enjoying Sir Walter Scott! My little girl and boys won’t read an older classic than Kipling and Barrie. Will you present me to her majesty, Mrs. Cortlandt, please?”

“In real life this is my husband’s niece, Elizabeth Bristead, my only son, Dirk, and two protégées of Beth’s. But now--Lady Harrowdene, I present you to her majesty, the Queen of Scotland. Queen Mary, graciously receive Lady Caroline Patricia, Countess of Harrowdene.” Aunt Alida arose to make the presentation and her guest also arose, making the profound courtesy required in a court presentation, her eyes laughing into Beth’s with a look half maternal, half a playmate’s.

Beth caught her breath, her eyes widened in terror; she glanced at Aunt Alida to discover whether this introduction was part of a play, too. She remembered that Frieda had said that titled ladies came from across the sea in winter and were entertained by her aunt and uncle, and Aunt Alida did not seem to her to be making believe that her guest was a noble lady. But it seemed quite impossible to Beth that a countess should be present in the flesh, outside the pages of romance.

Lady Harrowdene bent her head respectfully and said: “Your majesty, I rejoice to see that you are bearing so well the weary months and years of your captivity. Though I am English, I am heart and soul your slave, in spite of the circumstances which force me to live in the land reigned over by Elizabeth.”

“Why don’t you say something?” Dirk whispered with a vigorous nudge. He had great pride in Beth’s flow of antique-sounding phrases which she usually employed in making believe.

“Are you really a--a countess?” Beth asked, staring wide-eyed at Lady Harrowdene when she was thus goaded to speak.

Lady Harrowdene laughed delightedly. “You funny little thing!” she cried. “Is that what is the trouble? Shall we stop playing Queen Mary and her attendants and talk in our proper persons? Thank you; making believe is a bit hard to keep up long. I think my title is all right. Why do you question it? My husband is Lord William Bellair, Earl of Harrowdene. Doesn’t that make me a countess, quite securely?”

“Yes, ma’am. Yes, my lady. I don’t know even how to say yes to a countess! I didn’t really believe there were countesses and earls, not _feel_ I believed them, till this minute!” cried Beth in a burst of a sort of despair of meeting this occasion properly.

Lady Harrowdene laughed so heartily that the tears sprang to her eyes.

“Why do you care so much about them, my dear? Aren’t you a true little American republican, believing--what is it that your Declaration of Independence says? That all men are created equal? Why, then, do you care about a title?” cried this merry countess when she recovered her breath.

“It’s not that,” Beth tried bravely to explain. “It’s not the way the Declaration meant, I care. It’s--it’s so strange, because you read about earls and countesses in books and they always seem so--interesting. Almost like fairies, only nicer, I think. And it doesn’t seem as though they could be just going around now. Are your children earls and countesses?”

“My oldest boy will be Harrowdene some day. My girl--she’s not as old as you are--is the Honorable Constantia Bellair, because her father is an earl. We call her Con, Connie, usually, quite as you are called Beth. It really doesn’t matter about these things as much as you fancy, my dear. I see, though, that it is the romance of it that appeals to you, not the worldly side of noble birth. But I assure you we are not particularly romantic, though I fancy you’d find plenty to enthrall your dreaming little soul in the fine old Elizabethan house at Harrowdene. One day you must see it, when your aunt comes over to return my visit of to-day and brings your lovely cousins, as she has promised to do. They used to call me Honorable Pat, Beth, before I was married, because my father was also an earl. Now they call me Lady Pat, and my husband makes stupid jokes on my name, all about his Pat-ent wife; what a frightful wound he got when my father gave him a Pat--and all that sort of thing, don’t you know? But this is when we are quite in private and it doesn’t matter! I only mention it to show you that an earl is quite merely a mere man! By the way, my dear, an ancestor of mine, on my mother’s side, was one of the noblemen selected to witness the execution of poor Mary Stuart. Pray don’t set that down against me; I’m sure I should have tried to rescue her had I been in his place!”

Lady Harrowdene had talked on, evidently to set Beth at her ease, and to accustom her to the shock of meeting English historical romances clothed in flesh, which she saw was much the way in which Beth regarded her.

The little girl had listened, enthralled. Lady Harrowdene’s beautiful voice, her inflections, so different from those she had always heard, made of the tongue they both spoke something so unlike its old self, so attractively unlike it, that Beth could have listened forever, even had not what Lady Harrowdene said been so interesting.

“Don’t be too disappointed, dear, that I am just an every-day twentieth century woman and not a splendid creature of Queen Elizabeth’s court!” Lady Patricia leaned toward Beth with the motherly look in her eyes, and Beth went over to her at once.

“The daughter of a thousand earls, belted earls!” she murmured.

Aunt Alida and Lady Patricia dissolved in merriment at this, and Lady Patricia hugged Beth vehemently.

“You dear, funny little creature!” she cried. “I give you my word that I never had a thousand earls for a father in my life! And I’m quite sure my father never wore a belt, except when he was playing tennis. If it gives you satisfaction to think of me as a countess, pray keep it well in mind. But if it is going to raise a barrier against our intimacy, then please consider me only as the mother of five little English people, Herbert, Richard, Constantia, Gilbert, and my rosy, jolly baby James William. I had to keep up the family names and poor Jamie took both his grandfather’s and his father’s! You would love Jamie, Beth. He is nearly two years old. While I am away from him he tugs at my heart-strings like a particularly strong Atlantic cable. Dirk, dear, Beth and I are doing all the talking! You were but a little lad when I was last over; I remember you, but you will not remember me.”

“Yes, I do now, Lady Harrowdene,” said Dirk. “You had the greatest little terrier I ever saw.”

“I had, truly,” said Lady Harrowdene, greatly pleased. “He’s still the greatest little dog in England. The children will not allow him to leave them; he’s waiting my return with the rest of my family. You are all going to see him when you go over. He will do tricks for you, fall over dead, stand erect and salute at ‘God save the king,’ join in the chorus with barks when he’s bidden--he has really quite a repertory of accomplishments! I shall be glad to introduce you to Briton when you come to visit me, and that must not be later than the summer after next. Now then, Alida, are you ever going to tell them? If you don’t I shall.”

“Do you think it’s fair to blame me for delay, Pat, dear? There has been no lull in the conversation!” returned Aunt Alida.

Beth noticed with surprise this intimate use of first names; she wondered when Aunt Alida had come to know so well this lady, separated from her by the width of the Atlantic.

“Beth, you are to be given a birthday party! It must also be a Valentine party, as you are a Valentine child. I had planned to celebrate you, but Lady Harrowdene has a Valentine-birthday idea that puts mine quite in the shade! It will---- Oh, Lady Pat, I believe I will not tell her about it, after all! It is a week distant. We’ll let Beth get gray and ugly puzzling over it; we won’t tell her another syllable than that she is to have a party!” Aunt Alida stopped herself short and laughed at Beth with her flashing dark eyes.

Beth did not grow gray, nor did she seem to those that loved her in the least likelihood of becoming ugly as the week before her birthday crawled past. But she gave a great deal of thought to the celebration of the day. So did Natalie and Alys; Dirk professed indifference to all parties, but secretly he speculated, too, on what new form this celebration could take. Mrs. Cortlandt would not give either of her own children the least hint about it, for fear Beth should hear it; they all rightly thought that Mrs. Cortlandt was having a fine time keeping the mystery shrouded.

St. Valentine’s day came at last. Early in the afternoon Frieda attired Beth in the strangest costume! Beth did not know whether to like it or not; she certainly had the gravest doubt of its suitability. Yet Aunt Alida always knew, not merely what was pretty, but what was appropriate. This gown was blue, light blue in its upper part, dark blue below, and it had velvet stripes of yellow bordering its tunic and rings of yellow velvet on the skirt. The material was the gauziest silk imaginable; everything about the frock was exquisite, but the effect altogether was, as Beth doubtfully told herself, “queer.” However, she could not voice her doubt and in a moment Frieda had slipped over the whole costume a straight, sheathing sort of a dull yellow silken garment, like a scant raincoat. It had a yellow silk hood which Frieda drew forward over Beth’s hair, carefully arranging it so that the whalebones in it lay so that they would keep the hood from disarranging her hair.

“For pity’s sake, Frieda, what is it? It makes me look like a big chrysalis!” cried Beth, surveying her sleek gray figure in the glass with disfavor.

Frieda clapped her hands. “Isn’t that fine, Miss Beth!” she cried. “Just what it’s meant to look like! And to think you knew it at once!”

“Well, my goodness! I don’t want to be a chrysalis!” cried Beth. Then she remembered and felt ashamed. “But Aunt Alida knows,” she added loyally. “Anyhow, I should think she’d made you look nice often enough, Beth Bristead, for you to wear what she wanted you to! Maybe Aunt Alida wants me to be a chrysalis to eat salad! Am I ready, Frieda?”

“Yes, Miss Beth, you are. I’m to go with you to help you and your cousins,” said Frieda, making sure that her black gown and white linen cap and apron were as they should be.

“Going with us? Are we going somewhere, Frieda?” cried Beth.

But Frieda put her finger on her lip and shook her head to say that she must not tell Beth anything, even at this late hour, and, taking her coat, Frieda led the way to the elevator and put Beth in.

Down-stairs Beth found three other figures swathed like herself in scant dull yellow silk--Natalie, Alys and Dirk. She stared, then began to take a more hopeful view of the queer costume. If there were so many copies of it they must have some fine purpose.

“All ready?” asked Aunt Alida, hastening out from the reception room where she had waited for her flock. Beth saw that she was clad in beauty unconcealed, so the cocoon-like sheath was not for her.

“Léon is at the door, children!” cried Aunt Alida, as always, refreshingly excited and happy in the prospect of pleasure for the children.

She led the way to the car, put the three girls in the back seat, took Dirk with her in the middle seats, Frieda took her place beside Léon and they were off.

They drove circuitously, from street to street, from Fifth Avenue to Madison Avenue, in the blocks which lay between, and everywhere they were joined by other cars, each containing one or more of the mysterious silk-clad figures, wearing exactly the same long, dull silk enveloping coats which Beth and her cousins wore. These cars fell in line with the Cortlandt car till they had a lengthy procession of various cars, all carrying human chrysalides. Everybody they passed stared, but that did not matter. Most people smiled at the procession, recognizing it as a children’s party of some sort.

The line of motors stopped in turn under the porte-cochère of one of the most splendid hotels in the city and each discharged its burden of guests and maids. The party was met by a preternaturally tall person in quiet livery who said:

“Lady Harrowdene’s party? Thank you, madam. This way if you please,” and conducted Mrs. Cortlandt and all her dull silken followers to elevators which took them up to the second floor, where they were led by the tall man who looked, Natalie whispered, “like the Washington monument,” to a room opening out of a ballroom in which the children heard violins tuning.

“Her ladyship is here, Mrs. Cortlandt,” said the tall man throwing open the door. Then he bowed low and withdrew.

Lady Harrowdene came rapidly forward to meet them. “So glad you are come at last!” she said. “Oh, no, you are not late, Alida, but I was a bit early and waiting was tedious. How beautifully you have carried out the idea! Aren’t they charming, the chrysalis-girls? Please present me to my--and your--guests.”

One by one Mrs. Cortlandt introduced the young people, girls and boys, to Lady Harrowdene. Beth thus knew for the first time who were invited to her birthday party; she found that they were the Tanagers and Bluebirds and the other young people whom she had met, her cousins’ friends. This did not lessen her shyness. Beth had never made the least progress in acquaintanceship outside her family that winter, and now the fear of what might be required of her at a party given in her honor oppressed her.

Aunt Alida must have known this for she announced:

“This is Beth’s party, but she is as much in the dark in regard to it as any of you. Lady Harrowdene has surprises for you all, so you are to consider her as your hostess and Beth as a sort of Appendix Hostess. We are all under Lady Harrowdene’s orders.”

“Very well, then,” began Lady Harrowdene, accepting her responsibility; “you must know that you are each to consider yourself a chrysalis, if you please! You did not know why you were bidden wear that yellow silk covering, but this is the reason: you are each a chrysalis. Now, we are to repair to the dancing room, each chrysalis when it--‘it’ is surely the correct word for a chrysalis!--when it is ready.”

She led the way, a dazzling apparition in white and green. Beth saw with unspeakable joy that she wore on her hair something that must have been a coronet! What rapture it gave her to know that her hostess, Beth Bristead’s hostess at her birthday party, rightfully wore a countess’s coronet!

“‘Kind hearts are more than coronets And simple faith than Norman blood,’”

she said to her own great dismay, and not because that was what she was thinking, but because Lady Harrowdene’s coronet put the words on her tongue. She was horrified when a girl at her elbow heard her quotation and laughed.

The ballroom was beautiful with flowers, the orchestra was playing irresistible dance music as the chrysalides slid, in their quiet dull color, into the brilliant light. The daylight was excluded by heavy screens and the electric candles turned the February afternoon into night.

In a moment every chrysalis was dancing and they danced for an hour. Then the music died away into the faintest echo and the chrysalides stopped dancing, wondering what was to happen.

A curtain concealing a stage at the end of the long room was withdrawn by invisible hands and upon this stage flitted fairy figures, so beautiful, so fairylike, as they half danced, half flew on the invisible wires across the stage, that Beth caught her breath in delight, so keen that it overwhelmed her.

The fairies--in reality they were professional dancers hired by Lady Harrowdene--began a dance that seemed to call upon nature to awaken; it was a Dance of Spring. With exquisite threadings of wind-blown mazes they flitted, calling, hand to lips. Then they poised, listening, one hand on hip, one at the ear, as the dancers leaned forward to hear if their summons were heeded. Then they bent their graceful bodies low to earth, lightly touching the ground. Then they sprang up with fawn-like leaps, triumphing, the flowers which they had wakened and culled waving in their hands above their heads. And finally they came to the front of the stage, lips parted as if calling, waving their arms, extending their hands, fluttering, waiting expectant, never still, yet waiting.

Natalie had been coached by Lady Harrowdene what to do. She stood at the head of a long double row of chrysalides. At a signal from her each chrysalis fell off and the boys and girls appeared in gorgeous colors. At last Beth understood her gown of blues with the yellow velvet stripes! She was a butterfly, they were each a butterfly, broken out of a chrysalis, Natalie in gold, Alys in green, Dirk in browns and golds, all the young guests in color combinations incredibly beautiful.

Natalie began to swing in time with the slow dancing on the stage; the entire line of newly-emerged butterflies swung with her and followed her as she broke into a dance. She led them around the room, dancing as only Natalie could dance, improvising her steps and motions. The professional dancers came down and danced with the children till, finally, the line broke up into pairs and, all over the room, the butterflies were waltzing, a sight so beautiful that, as Mrs. Cortlandt said, it was the greatest pity that all the world could not be there to see.

Then, as if Lady Harrowdene were in command of genii, the servants of the hotel slipped into the room and began to serve refreshments. Aunt Alida had attended to the selection of these, as more versed in what these American birthday guests would prefer than Lady Harrowdene was.

All the edibles were valentines! Heart-shaped sandwiches, as well as cakes; salads served in lacy paper, like old-fashioned valentines; pâtés also lace-trimmed and heart-decorated; fancy ices in valentine forms; sweets in pairs of love birds; chocolate in heart cups, its whipped cream carrying out the old-fashioned valentine effect of lace paper.

Somehow Beth found herself at the head of the central one of the small tables which Lady Harrowdene’s genii had swiftly and noiselessly set in place and covered with good things. To her table they bore a huge valentine cake, decorated with all sorts of icing designs in the valentine style, ringed around with eleven candles burning steadily. Beth had to rise and cut the cake. She was so embarrassed that she could only make the first incision, from which custom forbade her being excused. Aunt Alida rescued her after that and cut the birthday cake into slices herself.

“You are to sit still, Beth, please,” Lady Harrowdene said, signaling to the servants when the supper was over.

Just as swiftly and silently as they had brought them, the men bore the tables away, all but the centre one on which Beth’s birthday cake stood and at which Beth herself was left, a solitary island entirely surrounded by guests and shyness.

The orchestra, which had been playing beautiful soft music during the supper, played a waltz. The butterflies once more spread their wings, figuratively speaking, and danced. As they whirled around and past Beth each butterfly dropped into the lap of this one little motionless butterfly a package, tied with gay ribbons, decked with birthday cards and flowers, till the small table was heaped and the small recipient was nearly overcome.

“‘Please don’t open till Christmas,’ not till you get home at any rate!” cried Alys. “Come and dance, Bethie, for it will soon be over and this music is heavenly.”

It was; Beth thought so. Aunt Rebecca would have been surprised if she could have seen her little grandniece dancing, for Beth had acquired the accomplishment only this winter and was fond of it with all her musical heart.

“The clock strikes twelve, Cinderella!” warned Lady Harrowdene. “Dear guests, my party is over. I’m sorry and I hope you are.”

“It was the nicest party we ever had, Lady Harrowdene,” declared one of the Tanager girls. “If you have parties like this in England I’m going to live there as soon as I come of age.”

Beth came home excited, tired, but in a dream of bliss. The party had seemed like a dream, but the proof of its reality was the snow of white packages completely covering the floor of the tonneau of the car.

“Well, sir,” exclaimed Dirk, speaking out of a long silence on the way home, “she’s a countess that counts!”

And Natalie, Alys and Beth enthusiastically agreed.