CHAPTER VI

“THE ISLAND DAY”

“If you don’t feel like going to church you may say so, Beth,” said Mr. Cortlandt at the breakfast table.

“Oh, I do!” cried Beth. “I love to go to church. I like so very much to sing hymns. Sometimes I wish we could have hymns instead of a sermon, but Aunt Rebecca says that’s all wrong. Of course you don’t mind some sermons, but I do get crawly-creeps all over sometimes, when they last dreadfully long and are all about places and people with hard names. That kind always end up: ‘You will see from this, my brethren,’ but I don’t see a thing from it, usually.”

Uncle Jim laughed his merry laugh and Beth laughed, too.

“Everything is so different here, I suppose church won’t be the same, either,” she said.

“Well, we’ll try it, if you’re so disposed, Miss Bristead,” said Uncle Jim.

“Come up-stairs, Beth; we must get ready,” said Natalie, glancing at the clock as it chimed a happy little air, and then struck ten soft notes.

“Must I change my dress?” asked Beth glancing downward at the soft blue cloth that was far prettier than her Sunday gown at home.

“Dear me, yes!” said Alys. “Why, that’s a morning house dress. You must wear your suit, Beth; not the long coat which you’d have to wear over this.”

“I wish we could have a Pilgrim party to church; I’d like to wear my Indian blanket there,” muttered Dirk wrathfully, with a presentiment of the discomfort of his coming starched collar.

Frieda made Beth proper in her blue suit, with its underlying hint of gray. Aunt Alida, artistically studying Beth’s eyes, had chosen blue in Beth’s new outfit wherever she could, but there were so many shades and kinds of the color that Beth wondered. Here was the blue of the sky in April, with a drooping hat of a lighter shade of the same blue, with long loops of ribbon velvet of a much darker shade, and a soft bunch of ostrich tips, like the ribbon, in the front. Beth saw that it was most becoming to her. She turned away from a long survey of the effect with a laugh and a blush.

“It is nice to be pretty, Frieda,” she said frankly. “I never was before, and I sha’n’t be when I go home, but while it lasts it is about the nicest thing in the world to be pretty.”

“You ought not to talk that way to Frieda, so confidingly, Beth,” Alys rebuked her as they went to the elevator.

“Oh, Frieda knows; she saw the things Miss Tappan made for me, and she knows,” said Beth lightly. She was too content to mind what Alys thought, suddenly feeling perfectly sure of herself. “I think it’s silly to try to cover up anyway, Alys. People always see through you,” she added.

Natalie laughed. “You’re a funny little thing, Beth,” she said. “Sometimes you seem about seven years old, and then you say something as old as sixteen--like that.”

“It’s because I’ve always been a good deal by myself. I think when you don’t know many girls you keep little, yet then older people make you old, only differently,” explained Beth, with correct understanding of her own case but not the clearest way of stating it.

She looked at Natalie, glowing in her brown cloth, with the tawny touch of red in her hat, and her soft brown furs, at Alys in sage green with her white hat and its green plumes, then she looked again at her own blue figure in the elevator mirrors. Aunt Alida was better than a fairy godmother; she certainly knew how to dress her girls.

In the hall below they found Dirk awaiting them, the image of Sunday correctness, brushed and shining in his dark clothes with his bright scarf, and an innocent look of peace on his round face that entirely misrepresented his state of mind.

The carriage was waiting and they heard Mr. Cortlandt hurrying his wife for the horses’ sake; the wind was sharp. Pretty Aunt Alida came down the stairs all in soft gray, gown, coat, hat and furs. She swayed in a flower-like way as she walked; Beth thought there never was such a lovely creature. She thought it so earnestly that her eyes declared her thought, and her Aunt Alida stooped to kiss her.

“We all look beautiful,” Beth said as her uncle came down also, in the dignity of long coat, gray gloves and gray tie. He threatened Beth with his silk hat.

“Get out with you, you base flatterer!” he cried, driving her before him down the steps.

The three girls sat opposite to Mrs. Cortlandt and her husband, Dirk between his father and mother.

“We shall have to get a three-seated family coach if these young women grow any larger,” said Mr. Cortlandt as the footman shut the door, and the horses began to move at an unwillingly decorous pace down the avenue.

It was a bright and beautiful avenue, alive with churchgoers, driving and afoot, and with gay turnouts on their way to the park, on pleasure bent.

“You have not seen the park yet, Beth, nor the museums, nor Riverside Drive--you haven’t begun to have a good time yet,” cried Natalie, remembering how much there would be to show Beth.

“I should think I had begun to have a good time!” said Beth. “I began the moment I started for here with Anna Mary.”

It was not far to the church, not much over half a mile; Beth wondered why they had not walked to it. It was a great stone building; into its threefold entrance on the avenue a stream of beautifully dressed people was flowing. Beth fell back with Natalie to enter in the wake of her aunt and uncle and Alys and Dirk.

A shadowed beauty awed the child as she passed in. Soft light from the rose window over the door and from the long stained glass windows all along the body of the church seemed to Beth to be part of the soft harmonies with which the great organ bore them down the long avenue of the dim aisle.

Dirk contrived to be first in the pew, at the head of which Mr. Cortlandt halted to admit his family. Beth came next, then Alys, Natalie, with Mrs. Cortlandt next to her husband at the end. Instead of the pulpit at which Beth was accustomed to look up, with its table below it and its high backed chairs flanking it, here was a beautiful altar, flower burdened, backed by a window through which the light fell as if heaven were but dimly veiled. There were noble carved stalls in row upon row within the inclosure of a rail before the altar, their dark wood contrasting perfectly with the gold and bronze-touched wall of strong, rich coloring.

Was this indeed a church? the little visitor wondered. It was no more like the Centre Church to which she had trudged beside Aunt Rebecca all her short life than Uncle Jim’s palace of a house was like Aunt Rebecca’s brown clapboarded house. Beth did not dare think of fairies as at work on a church; it must be that their work was supplemented by angels here, but it was all one in its dream-like beauty with the fairy-land in which she was dwelling this wonder-winter.

They were in good time for Beth to see all this before the service, but hardly had she taken it in than she heard the sound of singing, faint, yet clear and sweet, like a thread of sound dropped down from heaven to earth. It scarcely surprised Beth that she should hear the angels singing, since the miraculous was now her daily experience, but she held her breath to lose nothing of their strains, and the tears sprang to her eyes for the joy of it.

Then the congregation arose with a surge of silken garments, doors at the head of the side aisle swung open, the music swelled into a full burst of melody with articulate words, and a stream of white-robed little boys, larger boys, big boys and men, filed into the church, singing, singing as Beth had never heard any one sing before. She could not remember to be disappointed that these were the voices of men, and not of angels, so heavenly beautiful was their singing. On they came, the wee boys holding a hymn-book that looked too heavy for their chubby hands, raising their soft eyebrows into acute angles in the earnestness of their efforts, with pure, clear child voices singing marvelously. Then there came a boy walking alone, a boy about as old as Beth. His voice soared up and up, high above all the others, singing deliciously, so sweet, so touchingly sweet, that not only Beth’s but many older eyes were wet with the emotion its sweetness called forth. Then the lovely boy altos streamed by; then the tenors and the basses of the men, holding up the children’s voices as the stone columns of the church held up its vaulted roof. Behind their choristers came the clergymen, robed also, and solemn, and the service began. Beth could not follow it, but she listened to the musical reading, the chanting, the bursts of responsive chanting from the choristers, who had ranged themselves in the dark carved stalls on each side of the altar.

No chance here for a little girl to sing her beloved hymns, but Beth could not regret it, for here was music that left no room for regret, nor wishing.

The sermon was short, too, and one that Beth understood and liked. She thought that the service was not going to be long enough, but Dirk evidently was not agreeing with her. Beth felt him fidgeting at her side, and at last she received a pinch that made her jump and barely keep from crying out. She turned red with pain and anger, and threw Dirk a look of such hurt reproach that he reddened in his turn, looking as ashamed as he properly should have been.

“Just for fun,” he whispered by way of apology, but Beth shook her head hard. Dirk understood that she meant that a pinch that hurt as that one did was not her idea of fun anywhere, least of all in church.

When the service was over once more the congregation arose with the rustle of silks and waves of perfume, and the choristers went away as they had come, white garments swaying as they sang and sang, the sound dying away in the distance into silence with a far-off “Amen,” as it had grown out of that silence and had swelled into beauty in their coming.

With a sigh that it was all over, Beth turned to follow her cousins out of the pew. Alys was immediately before her, and as she started to step into the aisle, she tripped and almost fell. She turned furiously upon Dirk, who was that moment pressing past Beth in his haste to get out. Alys’s face was crimson, her eyes blazed with anger, she raised her hand, but, remembering where she was, dropped it again and continued her way out of the church in a towering rage.

“We are going to walk home, lassies,” announced Mr. Cortlandt over his shoulder to his daughters and his niece. Beth was glad of this. The sun had brightened while they were in church, and the avenue was filled with two streams of story-book people, beautifully dressed, gay, prosperous-looking, handsome. It was a joy to Beth to be one of the children who were part of the crowd, moving visions, surpassing the loveliest in Miss Tappan’s books in the far-off, humdrum days.

When they had reached home and Beth came running down-stairs after she had laid off coat and hat, she found her aunt looking troubled and her uncle talking sternly to Dirk in the library.

“You shall certainly be punished, sir,” he said. “If it is amusing to you to trip up your sister you must be taught not to amuse yourself. Fancy Alys almost falling in church because a great boy of ten tripped her!”

Dirk looked sullen; his face was dark red; he frowned fearfully. Beth knew in an instant that Alys had thought that Dirk had been responsible for her accident in leaving the pew, and had complained to her father that her brother might be punished. In the little time that she had been in this household Beth had discovered that her uncle took a hopeless view of Dirk, and was ready to believe him guilty whenever he was accused, on the general ground of past experience.

“Oh, Uncle Jim!” she cried, “Dirk isn’t to blame for Alys’s tripping! I know exactly what he was doing, and he didn’t have a thing to do with that, truly.”

“Then what did I trip on?” demanded Alys, who had been enjoying Dirk’s discomfiture.

“I don’t know, Alys, but Dirk didn’t do one single thing to you. He was--he was right behind me, and I know,” cried Beth. She did not say that Dirk was pinching her again, but this was the case.

“Why didn’t you say so, Dirk?” demanded his father.

“What’s the use?” sulked Dirk.

“I shouldn’t think you’d take his part, Beth; he hasn’t been very nice to you since you came,” said Alys.

“Well, I suppose he doesn’t like me; everybody can’t like everybody--every other body, I mean,” said Beth. “I don’t think that has anything to do with what’s fair. And I do know Dirk didn’t trip you.”

“That’s the right spirit, Lady Beth!” cried Mr. Cortlandt heartily, as Mrs. Cortlandt said:

“Oh, I’m glad, little son, you weren’t unkind to your sister!”

“I beg your pardon, Dirk, for pitching into you without hearing your side first,” said Mr. Cortlandt, speaking as one man speaks to another. “Shake hands, Dirk.”

“Oh, that’s all right; I don’t mind. I did something else,” muttered Dirk giving his father a limp little hand.

After dinner he came upon Beth alone in the library.

“Say, you’re all right,” he began in some embarrassment. “I ain’t going to forget what you did.”

“Well, you didn’t trip up Alys,” said Beth.

“No, but I pinched you like fury in church, and I was pinching you when she slipped up. I guess most girls would have let me take what was coming to me, and be glad I got it. I won’t bother you any more; I wish you were my sister and Alys was my cousin. I ain’t going to forget it, Beth Bristead, and if you want anything any time, say so,” said Dirk.

“I want something now,” said Beth with a little laugh. “I want you to show you’re nice, instead of trying to make everybody think you’re horrid.”

“Oh, come off!” said Dirk much embarrassed, but inwardly pleased. “I guess I ain’t going to pretend.”

“All right, then it’s a bargain,” Beth triumphed. “And I’m glad it all happened, because that’s exactly what you do every minute--pretend you’re a rude, disagreeable boy, and I know better! I’m awfully glad you’ll stop pretending, Dirk!”

“Oh, say!” exclaimed Dirk. But he grinned, for there was no denying that Beth had the best of him.

Natalie and Alys came into the room. “Now we’re going to show you the house, Beth,” Natalie announced. “You’ve seen this library and the dining-room, and that’s all you have seen, down-stairs. On this side of the hall is the drawing-room.” Natalie threw open the door as she spoke, and Beth cried out delightedly.

The floor, inlaid in beautiful woods, was partly covered with rugs of the finest colors and textures--before the fireplace lay a great tiger skin. The walls were hung with silken tapestries of green and silver, the furniture “did not match,” Beth noticed in surprise; there was gold, dull enough to accord with the silver; there was white, and there were rare woods, and there were cushions and upholstering of the same green as the walls and of darker shades of the same tone. Beth did not know why it was such a beautiful room. She did know that she had never seen one so splendid.

“This is the conservatory,” said Alys, leading the way. And there off the drawing-room, Beth found herself “knee deep in June,” in a conservatory filled with bloom and with the green of the tropics, its damp, rose-scented air seeming, most of all that Beth had seen in this wonder house, the work of fairies on this chill November day.

“This is father’s billiard room,” said Dirk who had followed the girls.

“Beth won’t care for that,” said Alys. “This is the music room. We’ve come around a square; that door across there leads back into the library.”

The music room was vaulted, finished in dark woods, paneled from floor to ceiling. One end of it was occupied by a great organ, built into the wall; a piano, harp and several small instruments rested against the walls at intervals.

“Can you play them all?” gasped Beth, wide-eyed with awe.

Natalie laughed. “No, indeed, but mama gives musicales in the winter, and she has people come who can play them. This is the picture gallery.”

“All these?” murmured Beth vaguely.

This was a long room, its walls covered with green; a railing ran around it three or four feet from the wall. Pictures and still more pictures hung from floor to ceiling against these walls, and rare marbles and bronzes stood on pedestals in spaces built for them against heavy draperies that threw into relief their perfect loveliness, their glorious strength. Beth did not know that her uncle’s collection of paintings and sculpture was famous in the city, but she dimly understood that here was a world of beauty whose existence she had never guessed.

“Oh, me,” she sighed gratefully, “what a lot of things there are to know, and what a happy world it is!”

“Mama will tell you about the pictures some day,” said Natalie. “Father will, if he finds you can learn to love them. He doesn’t like to waste time on people who never could care for them. Now come up-stairs and see the ballroom. That is built out over all these rooms, the music room, the billiard room and this gallery.

“Turn on the lights, Alys; it is getting dusky, and anyway this room is best by electricity,” said Natalie as they paused in the great arched doorway of a room so big, so splendid that this time Beth could not so much as breathe as she looked down its great length. It was a room all white and gold as to walls; its high paneled ceiling was painted with a design of flowers and long, eddying links of Greek maidens in floating draperies and happy children and birds flying; the painted poem of beautiful motion. Against the doors and windows hung curtains of deep-hued golden silk and velvet; the polished floor reflected the countless lights that flashed from the cut-glass chandeliers. At one end of the room was a screened balcony for musicians and around it at intervals were deep recessed niches, resting places for dancers, while luxurious and curious seats stood about, to offer hospitality to onlookers. There were galleries for like purpose on three sides of the room.

“Do you use it?” asked Beth in a whisper.

“We haven’t had anything here for two winters,” said Natalie. “Mama says we may dance here Thanksgiving night, when we have the costume party. When I come out--just think, it will be in three years, Beth!--we are going to have a ball that is going to be a dream. You can be planning your gown till it comes off, Beth.”

“I shall be at home then,” said Beth wistfully.

“Well, I rather think you will be here!” declared Natalie. “Now we’ve found you we aren’t going to lose you, little cousin, and you will be at my coming-out party, even if you aren’t old enough to be out yourself.”

“We’d better leave the gymnasium till another time,” said Alys. “Beth has seen all there is now, except the rooms in the basement, and the gymnasium.”

“Do you suppose there is another house in New York as splendid as this one?” asked Beth overcome by the wonders displayed to her.

“Oh, yes; finer,” said Natalie. “But there are a good many not so fine.”

“I don’t see, Natalie, how you can ever be good enough,” said Beth solemnly.

Alys laughed, but Natalie said: “Sometimes I feel that, too, Beth. I hope I can use it all as I ought. Mama tries to have us remember we’ve got to do a great deal more than just enjoy our wealth. It is hard not to forget, and take it all just as Jack Horner took the plum.”

“Off in a corner and thinking how good he was!” cried Beth quickly. “You won’t be that kind, Natalie!”

“Do you like my house, Beth?” asked Mr. Cortlandt when Beth came alone into the library after her tour to find him, sitting with a book laid face upon his knee, looking into the fire.

“It is like Jerusalem the Golden,” said Beth seriously. “‘I know not, oh, I know not what joys await me there.’ There’s no palace in all the stories I ever read half so wonderful, Uncle Jim! I can’t think I’m really seeing.”

“You look like your mother, Beth,” said her uncle unexpectedly, as he watched the earnest little face.

“No one ever told me about her, Uncle Jim,” said Beth coming over to perch on his knee as a matter of course. “Will you tell me about her, please? It would be nice for Sunday night.”

“There are two lines of Jean Ingelow’s that I always think of when I think of her,” said Uncle Jim.

“‘A sweeter, woman ne’er drew breath Than my son’s wife, Elizabeth.’

Only she was my sister and not an Elizabeth. Do you like Sunday night, little Beth?” asked her uncle stroking her soft cheek.

“Oh, yes,” said Beth. “I think Sunday is like an island day, with all the other days rolling around it, like waves, while it is all still and peaceful. This has been a dear Sunday, Uncle Jim. Will you tell me more about my mother, more than those lovely lines, please?”

“Yes. Put your head on my shoulder and I will tell you about her,” said Beth’s uncle. “I loved her dearly, dearly, and so did every one else.”

They talked for a long time in the gathering darkness, lighted only by the flames of the wood-fire, leaping and falling in the sombre beauty of the library. Here Mrs. Cortlandt found them when she came down-stairs later, both of them pensively happy in the memory of Beth’s sweet mother, whom she had never known.