CHAPTER XVIII

“FLORIDA PASQUA”

Eastertide brought with it weather that might have been called unseasonable warmth but that almost any sort of weather is seasonable in the spring of the Eastern states.

Suddenly New York seemed to bloom. Not only were the parks and squares gorgeous with flaunting tulips, but the shop windows were equally gay with flowers, living and artificial, and with hats and gowns that vied with them. These last were repeated in the streets, worn by springlike maidens and bright-faced women. For that matter the blossoming plants were offered for sale on the curbstones in places, or went nodding along, enjoying their drive in vendors’ carts, through the narrow streets of which Beth caught glimpses in her own drives with her uncle, northward, into Westchester County, whither the car took them often since it had grown so warm, and where she rode Trump on rarer occasions.

“Isn’t it happy!” cried Beth. “All of it, the whole of New York! You wouldn’t think a big city could get so much spring into it. It’s so bright and flowery! The country isn’t so bright now; fields look scrubby in March, but here--well, it’s just like Easter, all risen up after winter!”

“Your wonder-winter is over, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary, who had knocked at Beth’s door with a message from Mrs. Cortlandt while Frieda was finishing Beth’s toilet for a drive.

“A wonder-spring is even better!” cried Beth, nodding at Anna Mary in the glass. “The reddest geranium would look like black crêpe to me, if I weren’t going to stay right on. But the summer will be better than the winter, so I’m enjoying spring. Aunt Alida isn’t going herself, Anna Mary?”

“No, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary. “She’s sending me.”

Beth ran down-stairs. The hall was filled with plants of small sizes which Mrs. Cortlandt was sending to the families whence Beth and Anna Mary had drawn the guests for the Christmas tree; that tree seemed to have been long ago.

At one side stood a small forest of bloom. Great azaleas in all their shades of soft reds, pinks and whites; orchids, roses, lilies-of-the-valley, violets so large and sweet that they dominated the other fragrances, Easter lilies, spireas, ferns, all dressed in plaited tissue paper skirts, like unearthly ballet dancers, and tied with broad sashes of beautiful ribbons, each with a card pendant from its side.

Cut flowers covered the hall table, chairs and the seat of the long carved Italian bench. They were partly revealing their loveliness through paraffine paper, like veiled Turkish brides, or they were thrusting long stems through the end of white boxes of incredible length, to hint that on the other end of those stems was a rose of perfection.

“Dear me, Anna Mary, it seems as though I must be dead. You wouldn’t think there were such flowers, except in heaven, nor half so many! Are we to take all these to the poor?”

“What a queer thing to say, Miss Beth!” cried Anna Mary. “No, indeed, then! These on this side we take. Those over there are sent to your aunt; don’t you see they have cards on them? Mrs. Cortlandt has sent as many and more herself. They’re ordered at a big florist’s and left on Holy Saturday where they’re to go. ’Tis a nice way to wish your friends a good Easter, but thousands of dollars it costs--though it does seem wrong to be considerin’ cost along with Easter lilies and the like!”

“I should think you’d have to think what it costs just as much as you’d have to smell them; it seems to come right up at you, just as strong,” said Beth, inhaling a lily as she spoke.

She and Anna Mary got into the car and Léon, with the help of three maids, set the flower pots into the tonneau and piled the boxes of cut flowers on the seats which were unoccupied and around Léon’s feet.

They drove slowly through the streets for fear of disturbing the potted plants. Other cars which they passed were similarly laden, though none to their degree. Mrs. Cortlandt liked to make sure that her gifts were properly delivered, so did not risk their going astray in the tenements.

Once more Beth was moved to profound pity by the crowded poverty she saw. Sharp as had been the contrast at Christmas between it and the holly-trimmed Christmas gaiety from which she had come, still sharper was the contrast now between the evil-smelling, congested tenements and the spacious hall in her uncle’s house, fragrant and lovely with the crowning successes of the master florists.

“Do you think the flowers will help any?” she asked Anna Mary wistfully. “It seems as though they couldn’t know Christ had risen and what alleluia meant, in such places.”

“Sometimes they know better than in great houses, bless your dear heart, Miss Beth,” said Anna Mary. “There do be people in such places that know so well that Christ lived on earth and left hope to them when He left it, that they’re almost glad to be poor, because He was. Sure, there’s no place so mean, or so crowded that there isn’t space enough to let in God Almighty! And that’s a comfort to think of when we’re needin’ it. And any decent person craves comfortin’ thoughts when they see what misery there do be, and that at Eastertide.”

Beth came home thoughtful from her beautiful errand. She had begged to be allowed to go with Anna Mary and her aunt had willingly consented. Neither of her girls could have been induced to go. Aunt Alida thought that perhaps in little Beth there might develop the one who would best use the Cortlandt wealth, in the ways which she herself believed wealth must be used. She hoped that Beth’s unconscious goodness, her instinctive choice of the best, might, as time went on, bend Natalie and Alys into the unworldly women of the world which was Aunt Alida’s ideal of a woman of their class. She looked upon Beth as hers, as permanently and almost as really as were her own children. She was daily thankful for the little girl who fitted so perfectly into the household life and needs, in spite of her differences from it.

Sunday morning--Easter Sunday--dawned the brightest day of all that week of summer brightness.

“Get dressed early, Bethie,” Uncle Jim advised Beth at breakfast. “We must be well ahead of the service hour to get comfortably to our pew to-day. And here is your Easter card for the contribution box.” He handed Beth a crisp five dollar bill, of which he had provided four for the children.

Beth took it with a smile of thanks. “I suppose some day I should get used to it,” she said, without explaining to what she referred. “At home the children usually have a nickel, children who are properly brought up. Aunt Rebecca scorns pennies. She says it’s a queer thing that Christians call religion the greatest thing in the world and hunt out the smallest coin there is to support it.”

Frieda had been to church early that morning, so had Anna Mary. Frieda told Beth about the pretty German Easter customs which her mother had described to her, following up her description with two or three lovely German Easter legends, so that not only the hour of dressing seemed short, but Beth was attuned to Easter anthems when the limousine was driven to the door and she took her place in it with her back to the driver.

Aunt Alida in her silvery green with dark green plumes on her white hat and Killarney roses in the lace on her breast, Natalie in the dull blue that brunettes may wear, Alys in her pale golden brown, how lovely they looked, Beth thought admiringly watching them as they drove along.

“’Cute, n’est ce pas?” whispered Alys as, in turn, they watched Beth.

“Perfectly darling face, so pretty and so dear!” returned Natalie warmly.

Beth was totally unconscious of their approval as she happily watched the stream of carriages and cars slowly flowing up and down the avenue, and the crowds, gathering in density as they neared one of the great churches.

Beth’s Easter gown was white; the simplest of straight coats in a rough silk and wool, with just enough black velvet to set off its fine lines and texture. Her hat was soft and drooping white chip, with a scarf of white and gold and a single black plume. The costume brought out the childish pink and white of Beth’s skin, the blueness of her happy eyes, the pure gold of her hair, with the darkening of its future tint beginning to creep into it.

“We must walk home to-day, Alida. It is necessary to show Beth the Easter parade,” said Uncle Jim.

Aunt Alida laughed. “Are you sure that isn’t an excuse, like the grandfather who takes the small boy to the circus? I suspect you will like to see it yourself; it is long since we were on the avenue as part of its display,” she said.

“If it proves entertaining, that won’t be a misfortune. Come, Bethie, here we are, and you are the first one out, because you are so badly in the way!” said Uncle Jim, passing Beth when the car stopped before the door of the great stone church to which the Cortlandts came each Sunday morning.

The sidewalk and approach to the church were massed with people, even on the side street upon which Léon had drawn up the car. On the Fifth Avenue side the crowds extended even into the road; policemen were detailed there to prevent accidents. The side entrance was kept for pewholders; through it the Cortlandt party slowly made its way, for here, too, progress was slow.

Beth caught her breath as she entered the church. The air was heavy with the scent of flowers; the beauty of the scene transported her. The light streamed dimly from the windows of many-colored glass; its rays sought and were lost in the wilderness of flowers that turned the now-familiar building into a region of heavenly enchantment for Beth. Ferns and lance-like pandanus were massed against pillars, roses above them in swaying grace. Lilies formed a second rail within the altar railing; everywhere roses and still more roses, and lilies and lilies! Beth’s eyes dilated and swam with dewy joy.

“Don’t you suppose, Natalie,” she asked, under cover of the slow progress to the pew, “that when God spoke to Moses in the burning bush it was a rose-bush, burning with its own red roses?”

The service was wonderful to poetical Beth. From the time she arose to her feet at the distant sound of the choir singing and the white vested choristers wound in among the flowers, singing their alleluias, till the last faint echo of their final amen came from afar, as sweet and distinct, yet illusive, as the odor of one of the roses, Beth was unconscious of all the world; she knew only the world of unearthly beauty and ideals.

They came out of church to the glorious strains of the Hallelujah chorus sung by the choir of the church, supplemented by men and women and a glorious orchestra. Beth lingered so slowly along that the others far outstripped her, impeded though they all were by the throngs which had filled every available space in the church. Uncle Jim turned back to find her. He found her forgetful of all around her, slipped into a vacant pew, drinking in the volume of glorious sound pouring over her as, from side to side, the voices tossed and repeated the Hallelujahs of Handel’s grand chorus.

Uncle Jim tucked Beth’s hand into his arm and waited with her till it was sung.

“I don’t blame you, Bethie, for clinging to the last note of the Hallelujah chorus. Some day you must hear the whole oratorio from which it is taken--the oratorio of the Messiah. Now we must go, dear. It is all over,” he said.

Uncle Jim brought Beth out into the flooding light of noon on an early spring day in the broad thoroughfare of bright New York.

The little girl blinked; she was returning, not merely to the strong sunshine, out of the dim church, but into the actual world from vague visions of angels and celestial glories. Yet the world around her was beautiful and wonderful, too, for the avenue was dense with people going slowly in two distinct streams up and down, north and south, on the outer and inner sides of the sidewalk.

Uncle Jim skilfully steered his family into the descending line on the inner side, and Beth found herself part of “the Easter parade.”

Occasionally the Cortlandts passed some one whom they knew, but rarely. The crowd was made up of people from another world within the great city. There were sharp-faced, pert girls in the extreme of grotesque fashions; many foreign faces; families headed by women who looked like overgrown heads of cabbage decked out in flower petals, so blowsy were they, yet so gay in what they considered spring finery. Many of the faces bore the stamp of privation and a hard tussle to live; they showed that there must have been self-denial in necessities to get together the money to buy the luxuries of Easter garments. The girls wore the highest heeled pumps, the thinnest of stockings, the narrowest of skirts, the closest of hats, with stiffest feathers extending out at the rear, as was the fashion of that spring. It was a caricature of style; these girls who worked hard for their living were bound to prove that they knew “the latest thing from Paris” as well as their more fortunate sisters. But every one, however tawdry her finery, wore a bunch of flowers on her jacket. Sometimes they were artificial flowers, but usually they were fragrant violets and roses, or long-stemmed carnations. Even the young men from the East Side had a blossom in their buttonholes and swaggered along, to prove they were at ease in this famous avenue of wealth, with a bit of spring fragrance abloom upon them.

“Now I know why they called it flowering Easter!” said Beth, after she had walked in silence for two blocks, submitting to her uncle’s guidance and watching the strange and famous parade of all sorts of people with eyes that half recognized its significance.

“Who called what flowering Easter, Bethie?” asked Uncle Jim.

“Florida. Don’t you know? Ponce de Léon named it that because he discovered it on Easter. And his name for Easter--the Spanish called it, I mean--‘flowering Easter,’ Pasqua Florida. I guess that’s the way you pronounce it. I never knew why they called it that till to-day. I didn’t know there could be so many flowers all over everything and everybody. It seems as though New York was a greenhouse! I feel like a humming-bird; as if I’d had my beak in flowers till I could hardly breathe!” explained Beth.

“You’re a bird all right!” cried Dirk, who had stepped back to ask his father the time and so had heard Beth’s speech.

“Easter Monday is a holiday from study. Miss Deland has gone for a three days’ visit in the country, as you know,” announced Mrs. Cortlandt when she bade Beth good-night. “There is to be an egg hunt through the house to-morrow morning, and in the afternoon I may take you three girls shopping. It is time to get summer clothing under way. We go to Cortmeer about May tenth and the days between Easter and then seem to melt away each year so fast that there’s a scurry of preparations at the last, in spite of my resolutions every year to get ready early.”

“Aunt Alida, do you think I’m a little dreadful to be so glad I’m going with you to Cortmeer this summer, instead of going home?” asked Beth.

“I think you would be quite dreadful and ungrateful if you weren’t,” said Aunt Alida decidedly. “When we want you so much and it will be such a happy summer. It’s my opinion that you will never be ‘at home,’ as you call it, long again, Bethie. We’ve no intention of letting you go.”

“It’s Aunt Rebecca that makes me feel wicked,” said Beth. “She wouldn’t say she missed me, but she had me a long time and there’s no one else. Even a little girl around is better than no one.”

“It seems to me, Beth, that since your great-aunt has consented to your staying and it is settled, the only thing to do is to consider it settled and be happy in the decision,” said Mrs. Cortlandt, kissing her good-night. “Go to sleep and dream of the flowery Easter; don’t meditate on your wickedness!”

Beth laughed and ran away, ready to act upon this advice.

The family breakfasted together Easter Monday morning. Aunt Alida said that the spring made itself felt most of all in a willingness to cut short the morning nap. Colored eggs and eggs that held small trinkets, as well as candy eggs, had been hidden from one end of the great house to the other. The four young people were going on an egg hunt when breakfast was over.

Riggs brought in a heavy mail that morning, doubled by Easter greetings, arriving a little late.

Mrs. Cortlandt received the bulk of it, but Beth had two letters for her share when they were distributed. She held up a card with flowers, a cross and a chicken skilfully combined in its design. “From Janie,” she explained.

“That’s a card that is sure to sell, Beth,” said Uncle Jim gravely. “It hits everybody on one or another side. There are flowers for the sentimental; a chicken for the humorous; a cross for the religious view of Easter. Perhaps your friend Janie is not sure what tastes you have developed this winter.”

“Here’s a letter from Miss Tappan,” said Beth, wondering, and not paying attention to her uncle’s teasing. “She never writes me.”

She opened her letter, for her aunt had set the example of looking over the mail at breakfast by opening her own.

Beth read hers with the color coming and going in her face and with a variety of expressions chasing one another, though everybody else was so interested in what had come in the mail that no one noticed Beth.

Finally Natalie looked up from a note which she held, crying:

“Oh, Alys, listen to this! Genevieve Haddon is going to have charades for the Poor Babies’ Fund----Beth, what’s the matter?”

“Oh, it’s Aunt Rebecca! I knew she wouldn’t tell!” cried Beth in a distressed voice.

“Tell what? She isn’t dead?” exclaimed Natalie.

“How could she tell that?” said Alys. “Is she sick, Beth?”

“Bad news, dear?” asked Aunt Alida, putting down the letter which she was reading. Uncle Jim, too, folded a large sheet of figures which he was examining and thrust it into his pocket. All eyes turned upon Beth, waiting her explanation.

“If I read it that will be the quickest; it isn’t long,” said Beth tremulously.

“‘My dear Beth,’” Beth read. “‘I have been thinking of writing you for some time. It is not that I want to, but that I ought to. I do not wish to take other people’s business on my shoulders, but silence gives consent and if I am silent I shall give consent to a wrong. We are told in the Acts that Saul stood by and held the garments of those who stoned Stephen to death and so shared their guilt. Of course I feel that this lesson is for me, because I am a dressmaker, so have to do with garments. Besides, I opened to that chapter when I opened my Bible the other day to get guidance whether to write you or not. So I am writing.

“‘Your Aunt Rebecca is not at all well. She is not sick, but it is my opinion that she is pining, and pining is unhealthy, if carried too far. She is lonely, but she would die before saying so. You know it would be exactly like her to die without saying anything about anything which she felt strongly. As long as you prefer the houses of the rich and great to your early home she will bear it as best she can. But she is not a young woman and hot weather is coming. If I were you, Elizabeth, I should feel it my duty to come back and cheer her up. As I said, pining is unhealthy, and it may be a very hot summer, which wears at best.

“‘Do as you think best about returning, though you are too young to realize how a person can miss any one, or to decide important questions. Whatever you do, never let on to your great-aunt that I wrote; she would kill me and never forgive me.

“‘Hoping that you will see all that I could not make you see, I remain, “‘Your true friend, “‘LYDIA TAPPAN.

“‘P. S.--Your cat, Tabby, is well. She has a yellow kitten. You asked to have it saved, if there was one, so your aunt kept it, though you don’t mean to come home.’”

There was silence as Beth folded up her letter with hands that would tremble. She looked around the table, at the faces which she had learned to love so well, with trouble, but no tears in her gentle eyes.

“Oh, well,” said Uncle Jim, shaking off the impression which the letter had made, in spite of its funny phrases and confused thought. “After all your true friend, Lydia Tappan, says your great-aunt is not ill. We knew that she must miss you. You can write this person, who has to do with garments, that it is all settled that you are to stay with us.”

Beth shook her head. “I don’t see how I could, Uncle Jim,” she said.

“Oh, Bethie dear, I’m not sure that it is your duty to return, really, and not wholly selfishly!” cried Aunt Alida. “This may be a friendly exaggeration of your Aunt Rebecca’s natural loneliness. As your uncle says, Miss Tappan states plainly that she is not ill.”

“Say, you don’t mean that you think of going!” cried Dirk, too disgusted to say more.

“You are _not_ going and that settles it,” declared Alys.

“You’re ours for keeps, Bethikins, so what’s the use?” added Natalie, disposing of the question once for all.

Beth looked at them imploringly. “I’ve got to go,” she said, and instantly Aunt Alida recognized the immovable decision that lay behind the words and in Beth’s childish face.

“Well, of all----” began Natalie.

“You can’t go, Beth,” said Mr. Cortlandt at the same moment.

Beth held up the hand that wore the prince’s ring, the insignia of the Order of the Strong Hearted.

“Don’t you remember what we are to do always?” she asked. “We have to choose what we ought to do, not what we want to do. He said that was the meaning of the Order; we promised that when we joined it. I’m the first one who has had to choose anything much since the prince founded the Order. Wouldn’t it be awful if I failed? And wouldn’t you go home, if any one had taken care of you for years and years, all your life, and was pining? Even if you didn’t belong to an Order? It’s dreadful to pine. A girl at home pined so when her mother died that she went into quick consumption and died too. Of course I must go home. I’ll write Miss Tappan not to tell Aunt Rebecca I’m coming; then I’ll surprise her. Probably that’ll do her more good. When can I go, Uncle Jim? You wouldn’t have to send Anna Mary to take me back, would you?”

“Beth, Beth, do you want to go back? You seem impatient to start!” cried Natalie.

Her mother gave her a quick glance, and Beth’s eyes filled with tears.

“Oh, Natalie, don’t you know how beautiful I knew Cortmeer would be and the sea? And--don’t I love you?” Beth cried.

She did not say, loyal little soul that she was, that life in her old home was utterly different from the life of luxury and beauty surrounding her here. Beth would not have been a human child to have felt no pang in giving up her room, the perfect service, the drives in carriages and cars, all the delights which her uncle’s wealth poured upon her. Going back meant leaving fairy-land, in which Beth had dwelt blissfully all winter, for the real life of simplest realities which had been hers. And, as she said, she loved these new-found relatives with all her loving heart.

Aunt Alida came to her rescue. “Do you know, Jim,” she said to her husband, who sat regarding Beth thoughtfully, without speaking, “do you know that I think Beth is entirely right to go? I want her very much; she knows that, but I think she is right, in the highest kind of right, to choose to sacrifice herself for the one who has taken care of her all her life. And I know quite well that it is a hard sacrifice to make. But Beth would not be happy if she went to Cortmeer after this. We will help her to make the sacrifice; not make it harder by our protests. We will pack her off in the Pullman car, and Trump in the express for small ponies, and send her on her way, if not precisely rejoicing, yet happy in the knowledge that she has done a hard thing and a dear, sweet sort of right thing, and that she is going to make an old lady very, very glad by choosing her instead of us. For a time, though, Bethie! Remember you are coming back to us, and another time we shall try to arrange for no more partings!”

Aunt Alida smiled at the little girl, with a warm light in her glorious dark eyes, and Beth smiled back at her bravely, in spite of the tears on her flushed cheeks. These two understood each other. Beth wondered how she should ever bear not seeing that beautiful face, how she should ever be able to wait to hear again that gracious voice, which had come to represent to her the sweetest music in the world, the expression of truest womanhood.

“We’ll do better than you propose, Alida,” said Uncle Jim, while the Cortlandt children sat silent, aghast at this unexpected and adverse settlement of the discussion. “We will ship Trump, as you say, but we will take Beth back ourselves, in our big touring car, and leave her on Miss Bristead’s door-steps--like a foundling!”

“Oh, Uncle Jim!” cried Beth as usual.

And so, swiftly, suddenly, it was settled. Beth was going back. Her Wonder-Winter was over and no Wonder-Summer was to follow it, this year, at least.

It was hard, cruelly hard, yet, just as Aunt Alida had prophesied, already a song was singing in Beth’s heart that she had not failed of her obligations as one of the Order of the Strong of Heart. She had chosen, not what she wanted, but what was right. And poor old lonely, repressed Aunt Rebecca would be glad.