CHAPTER V

ALL SORTS OF NEW STEPS

Only on the first morning of her visit did Beth oversleep. The second morning she was up bright and early, so early that, with some misgiving of doing wrong, she had dressed before Frieda came to call her.

“I couldn’t lie still, Frieda,” she said apologetically. “I did leave my hair for you to do; I knew I could never make such a bow as you tie. But I wished I was a lot of girls to dress; I didn’t know what to do, I’ve been up so long. I wanted to make my bed, but I was afraid it would be wrong to make a bed in New York. I always made my own bed at Aunt Rebecca’s.”

“It’s hard to get out of the habit of a thing,” said Frieda, uncertain what she ought to reply to this statement.

“Yes,” cried Beth eagerly. “Aunt Rebecca says we ought to be very careful about habits. She says they are just like poppies in a vegetable garden; you get the package of seeds in the first place yourself, but after that they keep on growing in spite of you. Still, I must say I like poppies in the vegetables; they look perfectly lovely in through the peas and standing up over the beets and the spinach. But Aunt Rebecca always made me watch when the dear little seed cups turned brown and told me to gather all the seeds. But they came up every year just the same. She says that’s the way with habits. Only I’m not as sure as I ought to be that I was very, very careful to catch every single seed! They are so tiny! It was hard not to spill any, but I’m not certain sure I cared if I gathered them when the wind blew and they were bound to spill. I guess we don’t always care if we don’t get over our habits, either. I have the habit of reading when I eat, and I don’t believe I ever tried my best to get over it--it is just like poppy seeds, after all!”

“We put poppy seeds on the top of our bread in Germany,” said Frieda gathering up Beth’s hair in her left hand, preparatory to tying it with the admired bow. She found Beth lovable, but perplexing. “You mustn’t make your bed, Miss Beth,” she added. “Even I wouldn’t do that; that’s the chambermaid’s work.”

“I should think it would be dreadfully hard never to do something somebody else ought to do when there are so many people to do every little thing,” said Beth. “That’s even a lovelier, stickier-up bow than the plaid ribbon last night, Frieda,” she added, beaming at the blue ribbon now crowning her. It matched the pretty gown waiting its new wearer--for that was the way Beth thought of the dresses her aunt had bought her.

“They all are like lovely New York pieces of nice girls, waiting to get acquainted with me,” she had said to Frieda the previous night when her maid was folding and hanging up the beautiful garments which had come home for Beth.

“You are ready now, Miss Beth,” said Frieda. “You will find all the family in the breakfast room, where you had supper the night you came. Mrs. Cortlandt always comes down when Mr. Cortlandt is at home. She likes to have her family breakfast together, and she won’t let her children get up late.”

“I’m to do lessons with them,” said Beth rather sadly. “Aunt Alida said that she didn’t want me to lose a whole winter’s study, so of course I’ll do what she likes me to, but I’m scared. Natalie and Alys speak French, Frieda!”

“Well, I’m sure you speak English enough to make up for it,” said Frieda, puzzling Beth by this indirect tribute to her unconscious quaintness, the result of a life spent with eccentric Aunt Rebecca, and with the books which were the little girl’s preferred comrades.

Beth went down the broad stairs and hesitatingly found her way to the door of the rose-hued breakfast room. It was a morning room, flooded by the early sunshine; it was more beautiful seen by the strong eastern light for which its colors were planned than it had been under the electricity. Beth stopped on its threshold, forgetting to salute the assembled family.

“It looks like ‘Brightest and best of the sons of the morning’!” she cried.

“Beth, what do you mean?” demanded Natalie. Beth’s uncle put down his paper to listen to her answer.

“The hymn, you know,” explained Beth, “and the room; it’s so--so, as if it would ‘shine on our darkness,’ you know, when you come into it from the hall.”

Riggs, the butler, with the greatest difficulty suppressed a smile which would have been so unbecoming to his office that it would, so to speak, have unbutlered him if he had not been able to prevent its coming. Happily he succeeded, but Aunt Alida laughed, and Uncle Jim shouted, though Beth could not see anything amusing.

“Here’s your place, beside your old uncle; come and take it, little Puritan,” he cried. “Do you know what you are, Beth?”

“Yes, but not what you mean I am,” said Beth, unexpectedly, with a twinkle exactly like her uncle’s in her own blue eyes.

“You are a Survival and an Anomaly,” said Uncle Jim gravely.

“Oh, dear!” said Beth, pretending to sigh, appreciating these formidable words as fun, even though she could not understand them.

“You are a Survival of our grandmother’s day, and consequently an Anomaly in modern Gotham,” explained Uncle Jim, without letting light upon the subject. “Don’t you like grape fruit, little S. and A.?”

“It is a little bitter,” said Beth trying to keep from shuddering as she spoke.

“It is like adversity, has a certain bitterness, yet sweet are its uses. Riggs, take Miss Elizabeth’s fruit and pass her Master Dirk’s jam. Dirk doesn’t like grape fruit either, Beth,” said this gay uncle, whose boyishly breezy manner was a delightful surprise in a full-grown man.

“Is that all of Dirk’s name, Uncle Jim? It--isn’t it a New York way of saying Dick?” asked Beth.

“No, indeed!” cried Uncle Jim. “That is a Dutch name. Don’t you know, my dear, that we are of Holland Dutch descent, and are immensely proud of it?”

“We are? Oh, you mean--yes, I see! My mother was. The Bristeads are Massachusetts people, Aunt Rebecca says. She says a Bristead marched out with the Lexington men, on the 19th of April, 1775. Aunt Rebecca says he played the fife all the way to the fight and then fought like fifty,” said Beth proudly.

“You mean like fifety,” said Alys. “Don’t give us history at breakfast, Beth.”

“I advise you to take history wherever you can get it; you need it,” said Natalie.

Beth finished her breakfast in silence. She dimly felt a little snubbed by Alys; besides the rose room was so jewel-like in its beauty that she was glad to enjoy it while her uncle and aunt discussed plans in which she did not know that she had an interest, but which concerned her closely.

“Now for the day’s work!” said Natalie when she arose from the table. “You haven’t seen the schoolroom, have you, Beth?”

“I haven’t seen lots of the house,” said Beth.

“That’s so; we’ll show it to you! Not this afternoon, because Alys and I are going to start you as a dancer to-day. To-morrow is dancing class day, and I’m going to have you know a little about it before you see all the girls. But the next day--that will be Sunday?--after church, then, we’ll take you all over this house. Now come up with us and show us what a learned person you are, Elizabeth Bristead. They say all Massachusetts children speak Greek just as naturally as they wear spectacles. But you don’t wear spectacles, do you?” Natalie stooped to look close into Beth’s eyes as if to make sure that this surprising fact were really true.

Beth laughed. Natalie’s mixture of big girl kindliness with perfect friendliness was winning Beth’s affection fast; it was not a hard thing to do, for Beth was as inclined to love as a heliotrope is inclined to the warmth of the sun.

She slipped her hand confidingly into her oldest cousin’s and they preceded Alys up-stairs. Dirk lingered to prove how easily he could overtake the girls two steps at a time. Beth knew that he had succeeded, because Alys screamed and sat down on her feet to protect her ankles from his energetic pinching. Dirk stood in awe of his father, but once safe from his eye Dirk lost few opportunities of making Alys’s life a burden. He was planning like pleasures in Beth’s case, whose gentle, shy and sweet manner promised her an easy victim.

“What a schoolroom!” cried Beth stopping short. “Why, I never saw such a schoolroom. There’s nothing in our school at home like it! Is it all for you alone?”

“No, it’s for you too, this winter,” laughed Natalie.

It was a large room, square and sunny. Its burlaped walls were covered with copies of famous pictures and casts from glorious sculptures. Tables, and four desks, chairs, globes, instruments which Beth did not understand, all these the little girl saw in her first amazed look around the room. A bookcase full of books of all sizes, that looked as if they might also be of all sorts, filled one end of this magic schoolroom’s great width.

“No wonder you speak French,” murmured Beth.

“Don’t you?” asked Alys.

“Not a single word,” said Beth slowly and impressively. “Do you use all these things?” she added.

“We draw from the casts, and we use the instruments in our chemistry and astronomy, and that is our own school library,” said Alys, “and our piano. You see we have special teachers for various branches, and lessons in certain things on certain days.”

“And we learn riding and swimming and gymnastics out of school, and that’s the best of it,” said Dirk. “To-day we’ve got to have history and literature, and writing compositions--that’s all one woman----”

“He means the teacher,” interrupted Alys. “But Miss Deland is a lady, not a woman.”

“And it’s the worst of the lot,” Dirk concluded.

The “lady who was not a woman” arriving at that moment cut off further explanations. Beth saw a girl with a clear, strong face and the busy air of kindly preoccupation that meant that Miss Deland was a student who loved her work.

“This is the little cousin whom you expected?” she said at once. “How do you do, my dear?”

“Very well, thank you,” said Beth faintly, overcome by the depths of ignorance which Miss Deland was about to discover in her.

Miss Deland lost no time. “Ready, Natalie, Alys, Dirk,” she said. “And----”

“Beth Bristead,” Natalie said. “Beth may sit here, mayn’t she, Miss Deland?”

She moved a chair near the window as she spoke, and pushed one of the small tables in front of it.

Then the work began. To Beth’s relief there was no hint of any tongue but her own. She listened for a while, and, listening, plucked up heart. Natalie was reciting in English history. Beth could not have repeated Natalie’s lesson, but it sounded half familiar to her. She did not know it, but she was a fortunate child in having been given the freedom of a library of English classics in Aunt Rebecca’s house, which lacked so much of other, less important things.

Alys’s recitation was in United States history, and this Beth knew thoroughly; she cheered up more and more as she saw that, though she was going to be crushed by her lucky cousins’ accomplishments, there would be studies in which she would not disgrace them. After the three Cortlandts had recited Miss Deland set them to writing a synopsis of what they had repeated. While this was doing she examined Beth. When the examination was over Beth found herself before the bookcase at the end of the room talking excitedly to Miss Deland about the many favorite volumes she was finding on its shelves, with the sudden conviction that private lessons with a governess was the most delightful thing in the world, instead of the ordeal that she had dreaded. The morning ended with a story which Miss Deland set each of her four pupils to write, the subject being one that she herself suggested. Beth was surprised to see Natalie and Alys struggling with their task; Dirk wrote faster than either of his sisters. Beth, who had written stories ever since she could remember, and who cherished the hope of one day being a great author, finished her story first of all. It was the one Miss Deland selected to read aloud, “because”--Miss Deland actually said this!--“it was by far the best of the four.”

Beth went to lunch a happy Beth; it was hard to feel that her cousins could speak French, draw, play, dance, ride, knew astronomy, chemistry and nobody could say what else, and that she, Beth, could do nothing in particular. She was properly glad to excel them in something.

“We are going to be excused from our exercise this afternoon, Beth, to teach you to dance,” said Natalie. “We always go out after lunch, but we aren’t going to-day. You see next week is Thanksgiving, and we are going to give a dance. It is to introduce you to our friends. Of course, dear, my friends are too old for you, and Alys’s are, too. Dirk is nearest your age, but his friends are all boys. So we’re going to ask our own set, just as usual, but we are going to invite their younger brothers and sisters for you.”

“Please don’t, Natalie,” said Beth. “I shouldn’t know what to do with them.”

“You don’t have to do anything with them,” said Alys. “We’re going to give a dance. It’s going to be a fancy dress dance, all in Puritan, or colonial costume, because it is Thanksgiving. It will be lots of fun.”

“I’m going to dress up as a turkey gobbler and scare you girls to death,” said Dirk.

“You’d better go as a goose,” said Natalie.

“No, let him go as a gobbler, then he can have his neck wrung,” said Alys sharply.

“I’ll be an Indian and scalp you!” shouted Dirk turning red with rage.

“I guess it would be more like you to be Miles Standish that took care of the poor Pilgrims, because you are the only boy of this family,” said Beth hastily, with her sweetest smile. Quarrels made her quite sick and she threw herself into the breach to prevent this one. Dirk stared at her. It was true that he tormented his sisters and was rather a trial, but they had never tried coaxing him into better ways. They considered him a nuisance and let him feel it; it was a new experience to Dirk to find a girl implying that a noble part would become him.

“Yes, I guess I would! A lot I’d take care of ’em,” he muttered, but his wrathy look subsided, and he glanced at Beth with an expression that made her resolve to be friends with Dirk, awful as she had been thinking him.

“Well,” Natalie resumed after this cloud had blown over, “you have only till next Thursday to learn to dance, Beth. So come up-stairs and begin this minute. You’ve simply got to two-step and waltz by then or you won’t have any fun. You come up-stairs and Alys and I will take turns playing and teaching you, and to-morrow you are going to dancing class with us.”

Beth meekly obeyed. For the next two hours her cousins relentlessly put her through vigorous dancing lessons in the schoolroom. At first she could not move her feet, but having an ear for rhythm she did better after a while, and by the time her teachers gave up for the day Beth could dance a two-step, after a fashion. Dirk came in and rewarded Beth for her kindness after lunch by offering to be her partner. Natalie and Alys were so surprised that they could hardly believe their ears; Dirk had never been known to do such a thing before in his ten years of life.

The next day was Saturday and in the morning the four children were to go to dancing class.

“Why, Frieda, isn’t it a school?” cried Beth coming in from her bath to see a froth of dainty things laid out on her bed, ready for her to put on.

“It is, and it isn’t; you’ll see,” said Frieda. “Mrs. Cortlandt picked out what you should wear.”

So Beth, still wondering, submitted to being dressed; everything that Frieda put on was so beautiful that she soon began to be glad of any excuse for wearing it. All in white Beth found that she was to be clad, white stockings, white slippers, foamy white skirts, one above another, and finally a white gown over them all, fine and simple, with only hem and tucks to ornament it, but showing through its delicacy the deep lace of her skirts. The only color about Beth was in her cheeks, her dilated blue eyes, her flying golden hair, for this Frieda had crowned with an immense white bow, the climax and queen of all preceding bows.

“Well, I look exactly, just exactly like the loveliest dressed girl in Miss Tappan’s fashion books,” said Beth, surveying herself in a sort of delirium. “I wish, I do wish that Janie Little could see me! But what on earth do girls wear here at parties, Frieda?”

“Dancing class, where you meet all the young ladies you know, Miss Beth, has to be dressed for much the same,” said Frieda. “This is only what a quite young young lady like you must wear; just fine white things.”

“Then do let me hurry to see Natalie and Alys,” cried Beth.

Frieda wrapped Beth in a long, loose cloak and she found Natalie and Alys’s splendors similarly eclipsed when she came out and met them in the hall. At the dancing school she forgot to notice what they wore, but she saw that Alys had never before been so pretty, and Natalie was as handsome as a tanager.

The room was full of girls, all so exquisite in tints of hair, eyes, cheeks and clothes that Beth forgot her own white daintiness.

“It is only more fairy-land,” she thought. “Aunt Alida was right; she had to make me a fairy, too, or they’d have driven me back to mortals.”

Natalie and Alys introduced Beth to girl after girl, brought boys to her and introduced them also, and, worst of all, took Beth to ladies who were sitting about the room and introduced her to them as their cousin who was spending the winter with them.

Beth grew so confused that she hardly knew how to carry herself.

“I know you hate it, Bethie, but they are mama’s friends and she would like it; besides, if there are any children’s parties this winter--and there will be--you must be asked,” whispered Natalie. “Now you go into the practice class for beginners, and when the time comes to dance Alys and I will dance with you, to start you. Then you must accept every invitation you get to dance; it’s polite and practice, too.”

Bewildered Beth found herself in a line with much smaller children taking steps forward, back, to the right, to the left, following the tireless motions of a small man who set the children example in front of the line, gesticulating to mark time, and moving so lightly that Beth wondered if he had the usual sort of feet.

The music to which the class danced was rendered by a beautiful piano, violin and flute trio. After she grew accustomed to being where she was, Beth began to hear it better, and, hearing it, she lost consciousness of herself, and danced. The girls’ teaching had been good; followed now by the winging effect of the entrancing music it took Beth out of the awkwardness of beginning. When the line stopped practice and the teacher gave the signal to dance Natalie and Alys flew to Beth.

“We’re proud of you, Beth!” cried Natalie. “You’re going to make a dancer! You quiet little mouse, who’d have thought you’d have done so well!”

“I don’t know. Hurry up, Natalie, let me dance!” cried Beth with sparkling eyes.

She danced and danced, not always well, because there were ever so many dances that she did not know, but with an enjoyment that made her partners forgive her mistakes. She never actually danced badly, because her ear for rhythm carried her through.

Célie, who had come with the children, wrapped Beth up at last to go home. She was flushed and trembling with delight; her white slippers tapped the floor and she pranced to the music echoing in her brain.

“Oh, I was always sorry for Cinderella when the clock struck twelve, but I never knew how awful it was for her! I don’t want to go home; I want to dance and dance and dance!” she cried.

“You shall, but not all at once, Beth!” laughed Natalie. She found herself growing as fond of this enthusiastic little cousin as if she were Beth’s elder sister.

Beth lay back in the corner of the carriage, then sat upright, and ended by tumbling over into Natalie’s lap as they drove home. The November air was sharp, with the hint of snow in it, but it was June and rosetime to Beth in that carriage.

“I’m so happy, Natalie!” she cried. “It’s so lovely in New York, you can’t think unless you haven’t always been here! And it’s so nice to drive in this dear carriage and look so pretty, and have all those lovely other fairy girls dancing all around you! Isn’t it a queer thing that fairy stories aren’t half as nice, not near half as nice as what is true?”