CHAPTER I
THE FINGER OF PROVIDENCE
"It does seem to me, folkses," said Kit warmly, "that when anyone is trying to write, you might be a little quiet."
The three at the end of the room heeded not the admonition. Doris was so interested that she had almost succeeded in reclining like a Roman maiden on the library table, trying to see over Helen's shoulder. Jean was drawing up the plan for action. The list of names lay before her, and she tapped her pencil on her nose meditatively as she eyed it.
"Now, listen, Jean," Helen proposed. "This would really be a novelty. Let's have a Cupid for postman and not give out our valentines until after the games. And just when we've got them all seated for supper have the bell ring, and a real postman's whistle blow, and enter Cupid!"
"It's too cold for wings," Doris interposed mildly.
"Oh, Dorrie, you goose. He'd be all dressed up beautifully. Buster Phelps is going to be Cupid, only we were going to have him sit in front of a Valentine box and just hand them out. We'll put a little white suit on him with red hearts dangling all over him, and curl his hair angelically."
"You'd better have red heart favors too, Helen," Jean added; "something that opens and shuts, with something else inside for a surprise. And we'll put red crepe shades on all the electric bulbs. Could we get those, do you think, girls?"
"We can get anything if Dad and Mother are home by that time," answered Helen. The rest were silent. Kit, sitting at her mother's desk beside the wide bay window, looked up and frowned at the stuffed golden pheasant on top of the nearest bookcase. Outside snow was falling lightly. The view of the Sound was obscured. A pearly grayness seemed to be settling around the big house as if it were being cut off from the rest of the world by some magic spell.
"Hope Dad's feeling all right by now," Kit said suddenly, pushing back her thick, dark curls restlessly. "They sail from Sanibel Island the 8th. Wasn't it the 8th, Jean?"
"Oh, they'll be home in plenty of time," Jean exclaimed. "Here we all sit, having the silent mullygrumps when he's better. Mother said positively in her last letter that he had improved wonderfully the previous week."
Helen stared at the long leather couch on one side of the open fireplace. It was over four weeks since her father had lain on it. Throughout the winter there had been day after day of unremitting weakness following his breakdown, and somehow she could not help wondering whether the future held the same. She rose quickly, shaking her head with defiance at the thought.
"Let's not worry, girls. If we all are blue when he comes, he'll have a relapse."
Then Jean spoke, anxiously, tenderly, – her big dark eyes questioning Kit.
"What about Mother?"
"We're all worried about Mother, Jean. It isn't just you at all," Kit spluttered. "But you can be just boiling inside with love and helpfulness, and still not go around with a face like that!"
"Like what?" demanded Jean haughtily.
"Don't fight, children, don't fight," Doris counseled, just as if she were the eldest instead of the youngest. "Remember what Cousin Roxy says about the tongue starting more fires than the heart can put out. You two scrap much more than Helen and I do."
"Well, I think," said Helen sedately, "that we ought to remember Mother just as Jean says. She's almost sick herself worrying over Dad, and there she is, away down in Florida with just the White Hen to talk to."
Jean smiled, thinking of the plump little trained nurse, Miss Patterson, so spick and span and placid that the girls had declared they expected her to cluck at any moment. They had nicknamed her the White Hen, and it surely suited her. Even though no Chantecler had arrived yet to claim her, she was the White Hen, – good-tempered, cheerful, attending strictly to business always, but not just what one might call a lovable companion.
"She's too chirpy for anyone who has responsibilities," Jean said.
"Note Jean when she has responsibilities," Kit proclaimed. "Jean's been playing Mrs. Atlas and carrying the rest of us around on her shoulders. And look at her! Where is the merry smile of old, fair sister?"
Jean smiled rather forlornly. It was true that she had shouldered most of the responsibility since they had been left alone. Cousin Roxana had arrived only a few days previous to the departure of Mrs. Robbins, and it had been rather a formidable task suddenly to assume a mother's place and run the home.
"Oh, I'm all right," she said. "It's only that everything seems to be coming at once. The valentine party and Kit's special effusion for Lincoln's Birthday."
"Class symposium on 'Lincoln-the Man-the President-the Liberator'-" Kit ran it off proudly. "Little classics of three hundred words each. You just ought to see Billie Dunbar's, Jean. He's been boiling it down for a week from two thousand words, and every day Babbie Kane asks him how he's getting along. And you know how Billie talks! He just glowers and glooms and this morning he told her, 'It's still just sap.' He's a scream."
"Kit, don't," laughed Jean in spite of herself. "If you get ink spots on Mother's best suede desk pad, you'll find yourself a little classic."
Kit moved the ink well farther back as a slight concession, and suggested once more that the rest of the family try their level best to keep still about their old party while she finished her symposium.
"You know," Helen began with a far-off look in her eyes, "I think we're awfully selfish, and I mean all of us, not just Kit-"
"Thanking your royal highness," murmured Kit.
"Here's Dad coming back home after five weeks' absence, and we don't know really whether he's better or worse-"
"Helen, don't be a raven quothing things at us," pleaded Jean.
"But it's perfectly true. He needs rest above everything else, Miss Patterson told me so; and here we're planning for a party the minute he gets home."
"Dad says always to go right ahead and have a good time, that it makes him happier to know we are happy."
Kit frowned again. She had straight dark brows set above wide gray eyes, and her frown was somewhat portentous. At fifteen she was far more energetic than Jean at seventeen. No matter what fate might deliver to her she would always find a quick antidote for any manner of trouble. With her short curly hair, she seemed more like the boy of the family, like her father himself, cheery, optimistic, fond of all outdoor life. It was a saying in the Robbins family that Kit might neglect the weeds a bit in her special garden of life, but the general landscape effect would always be artistic and beautiful.
Privately, now that the family were facing a crisis, Kit felt far more competent to act as the head pro tem. than did Jean. The main trouble was, as Helen had said, that Kathleen needed a brake to check her official impetus.
"Anyway, the invitations are all out now and Mother knows we're going to have the party because I wrote her all about it, and she sent back word that she didn't mind a bit so long as we had Cousin Roxy to steer us safely."
"But did you ask Cousin Roxy, Jean?"
"You ask her," said Jean. "She'd fly around the morning star if you asked her to, Helenita."
Helen thawed at once. The thought of their elderly and stately Cousin Roxana sailing blithesomely around in the early dawn circling the morning star, brought about an immediate resumption of friendly relations. It was the prerogative of sisters to scrap, Kit always held. Sometimes it was quite a satisfaction to say just what you thought in the bosom of your family, get it all off your mind, and know that the family loved you just the same. Under these circumstances, Kit was wont to chant feelingly:
"Oh, what was love made for, if 'twere not the same
Through joy and through torment, through sorrow and shame.
I know not, I ask not, if guilt's in that heart,
But I know that I love thee, whatever thou art."
Therefore the mere mention of Cousin Roxana brought harmony and mirth into the strained atmosphere of the library.
It seemed as if a special dispensation of Fate had brought their elderly cousin down from her calm and well-ordered seclusion at Gilead Center, Connecticut, just when they needed her most.
Usually she contented herself with sending the family useful and proper gifts on birthdays and at Christmas, but otherwise she did not manifest herself.
She was forty-seven, plump, serene, and still good to look upon, with her fluffy flaxen hair just beginning to look a trifle silvery, and a fine network of wrinkles showing around the corners of her eyes and mouth.
"Land alive, Elizabeth Ann," she had told Mrs. Robbins happily the moment she set foot inside the wide entrance hall at Shady Cove, "didn't I know you needed me?" And she laughed wholesomely. "I didn't plan to descend on you so sudden, but it looked as if it was the finger of Providence pointing the way, with Jerry down sick and you so sort of pindling yourself. Don't you fret a mite about my being put out. I'll stay here with the children and take care of things till you get back home."
And lovely Elizabeth Ann, she who had been Betty all through her girlhood and graceful matronhood, had agreed thankfully. After a three months' siege of nursing her husband through a nervous breakdown, she was glad indeed to welcome the hearty assistance of Cousin Roxy.
"Let's put it right up to her now," Kit exclaimed. "I'd just as soon ask her if Helen's afraid."
Before the others could hold her back, she had slipped out of the library and was running up the stairs, two at a time, into the large sunny room at the south end of the house which Cousin Roxy had chosen because from its windows she could look out over Long Island Sound. But at the door Kit stopped short. Over at the window stood Cousin Roxy, energetically wiping her eyes with a generous-sized plain linen handkerchief, and the end of her nose was red from weeping.
"Come in, child, come right in," she said hastily, as Kit backed away. "I'm glad you happened up. Come here to your old second cousin and comfort her. I feel as if all the waves and billows of David had washed over me."
Kit hurried over and wrapped her arms around the tall, self-sufficient figure.
"There, there, save the bones," laughed Cousin Roxana, through her tears. "You're just like your father; oh, dear me, Kit, your dear splendid father."
"What's the matter with Dad?" demanded Kit, swift to catch the connection between her cousin's tears and words. "Did you get a letter?"
In silence Cousin Roxana handed over a telegram. It was from Miss Patterson at Palm Beach. They were to stop there after leaving Sanibel Island on the west coast. Kit read it breathlessly:
"Mr. Robbins worse. Sailing 2nd."
"You know, Kit, they'd never do that if there hadn't been a turn for the worse." There was a break in Cousin Roxana's voice as she reached for the telegram. "I just wish that I had him up home safe in the room he used to have when he was a boy. He had measles the same time I did when my mother was alive. That's your Aunt Charlotte, Kit, she that was Charlotte Peabody from Boston. But I always seemed to take after the Robbins' side 'stid of the Peabody, they said, and Jerry was just like own brother to me. I wish I had him away from doctors and trained nurses, and old Doctor Gallup tending him. I've seen him march right up to Charon's ferryboat and haul out somebody he didn't think was through living."
Kit stood with her hands clasped behind her head, looking down at the pines, their branches lightly crystalled with snow and ice. Somehow it didn't seem as if God could let her big, splendid father slip out of the world just when they all needed him so much. During all the months of illness, the girls had not grasped the seriousness of it. He only seemed weak and not himself. They knew he had had to give up his work temporarily, that he never went to the office in New York any more, that it was even an effort for him to give orders over the telephone, but they had taken these things as of little moment.
Perhaps only Jean had really gleaned the real import of her mother's anxious face, the steady daily visits of the nerve specialist, and, last of all, the consultation two days before they had left for the South.
Kit closed her eyes and wrinkled her face as if with a twinge of sharp pain. "It's going to be awful," she said softly, "just awful for Mother."
Cousin Roxana squared her ample shoulders unconsciously, and lifted her double chin in challenge to the worry that the next few days might hold.
"It's more awful for you poor children and Jerry. We women folks are given special strength to bear just such trials; we've got to be strong."
But the tears came slowly, miserably to Kit's gray eyes. She pulled the curtains back, and looked out of the window to where the blue waters of Manhasset Bay were turning purple and violet in the gathering gloom of the late afternoon. The land looked desolate, and yet it was but a light snowfall. Down close to the bay some gulls rose and swept in a big half circle towards the other side of the inlet. Buster Phelps, running along the sidewalk towards home, waved up at her a big bunch of pussy willows.
"Spring's coming, Kit," he called riotously. "Just found some and they're 'most out!"
Kit waved back mechanically. Of course she must not break down and cry. Doris might do that, but she and Jean must be strong and brace up the two younger ones so they all could help their mother. Still the tears came. What was the use of spring if-
"Kit, aren't you ever coming down?" called Jean from the foot of the stairs.
"Right now," Kit answered. "You come too, please, Cousin Roxy. We need you fearfully to tell us what to do next."
"No, you don't," said Cousin Roxana calmly. "You don't need me any more than the earth needs me to tell it this snow's going away and the flowers will soon be blossoming. Just trust in the Lord, child. 'It may not be my way, and it may not be thy way, but yet in His own way, the Lord will provide.' It's one thing to stand in the choir and sing that, and it's another to live up to it. The first thing you girls must do is learn how to meet your father with a smile."
CHAPTER II
THE MOTHERBIRD AND HER ROBINS
The next three days were ones of anxious waiting. All plans for the Valentine party had been abandoned, and after school hours the girls hung around Cousin Roxana feeling that she alone could help them bear the suspense. Jean occasionally stole away to her mother's room and looked around to be sure that everything was as she liked it best, and when she came out into the wide upper hall she usually met Kit and Doris stealing from their father's room, their eyes red from weeping.
Helen hunted the cosy corners and curled herself up like a forlorn kitten. Kit declared there wasn't a dry sofa cushion in the house.
"How about your own self?" Doris asked.
"I cry too, but not all the time. Jean and I are standing shoulder to shoulder with Cousin Roxy." Kit straightened her shoulders and stood in martial attitude. "We represent the-the ultima-what's the farthest beyond in Latin, Jean? Anyway that's what we represent, the beyondness in feminine efficiency."
"What does that mean, Kit?"
Kit patted the short bobbed curls on the head of the youngest "robin."
"Means that we've got to keep our heads no matter what happens."
Jean said little. Ever since she could remember, her mother had said to her, "You know I rely on you most, dear. You're mother's comforter."
It was a thought that always gave her fresh strength, to know how much her mother needed her. She was smaller than Kit, slender and with dark eyes, with a look in them that Doris said reminded her of the eyes of a deer.
"Jeanie, there's a Virginia fallow deer over in the Park that looks exactly like you," she would say soberly. "And so do all the squirrels when they keep still and stare at one sideways. You've got such sympathetic, interested, mellow eyes."
"Eyes can't be mellow, Dorrie," Jean laughed. "Try something else."
"Well, they are mellow just the same, – tender and nice, aren't they, Helen?"
And Helen would always agree that they were, tender like the eyes of Jeanne, the girl in the garden at Arles, listening to the voices.
But they were full of trouble now, as Jean hurried around the house, following Cousin Roxana's directions, and encouraging Tekla, the Hungarian cook, to stand at her post. Cousin Roxana really did herself proud, as she would have said, as director of preparations. Mr. Robbins' rooms were as immaculate and as clear of non-essentials as the deck of a battleship. Under her orders the girls and Bertha, the second maid, worked faithfully; while Tekla regarded her with silent, wide-eyed admiration.
"We'd never have managed without you, Cousin Roxy," Jean declared when the final half-hour arrived, and they all gathered in the long living-room, listening for the hum of the car up the drive. Helen and Doris were together, arms entwined about each other's shoulders, on the wide window-seat. Kit paced back and forth restlessly, and Jean sat on the arm of her father's favorite chair before the open fireplace, her eyes watching the curling flames.
"Land, child, I don't see what you want to burn open fires for when you run a good furnace," Cousin Roxana had demurred. "Up home, I'd be only too glad of the furnace. I have to keep the kitchen stove going steady all day, and run one more in the sitting-room."
"I know it isn't necessary," Jean answered, sitting on the rug before the fire, her hands clasped around her knees, kiddie fashion, in spite of her seventeen years, "but it warms the cockles of your heart to watch an open fire. Don't you think so, Cousin Roxy?"
Cousin Roxana sat in the low willow rocker, placidly knitting on a counterpane square of old-fashioned filet.
"We must all hope for the best," she said, beaming at the anxious faces. "Helen, for pity's sake stop that silent drizzling. If it should be the will of the Lord that your blessed father be taken, it isn't right for us to rebel and take on so, is it? I feel just as badly as any of you." She took off her eyeglasses, that were always balanced half way down her nose, and ruminated, "Land, didn't I live with him for years after his mother died. That was your own grandmother, Helen Faunce Robbins. I've got her spinning-wheel up home in the garret still. But I always did say we made too much woe of the passing over of our dear ones. Why, it isn't any time at all before we're going along right after them. I do believe there's many a person been worried to death by weeping relations. Smile, girls, even if your hearts do ache, and cheer him up. Don't meet him with tears and fears. Jean, run and tell Tekla to keep an eye on that beef tea while I'm up here. It has to keep simmering. Kit, can't you keep still for a minute, or does it rest your mortal coil to keep it on the trot?"
So she cheered and encouraged them, and when the automobile rolled up to the veranda steps with Mr. and Mrs. Robbins and the spotless little White Hen, the children did their best to appear happy. Mr. Robbins, wrapped close in furs, waved to them, his lean, handsome face eager with home love and longing.
"Hello, my robins," he called to them. "Back to the nest. Roxy, God bless you, give me a hand. I'm still rather shaky."
They were all trying to kiss him at once, and Doris held one of his thin white hands close against her cheek. It did not require the look in their mother's beautiful eyes to warn them about being careful. Slender and stately, she stood behind him, smiling at them all. Surely in all the world there was nobody quite like Mother, the girls thought, nobody who could be so tender and sweet and yet so gracious and queenlike.
"Why, he doesn't look nearly so bad as I expected," Cousin Roxana told her, kissing her in a motherly way. Somehow it seemed quite natural for all to pet and comfort the Motherbird, to try and shield her from the harsher side of life and make the sun shine for her always. Life had always run in smooth, flower-bordered canals of peace for Betty Robbins. Only the past three months had shown her the possibilities of trouble and sorrow, and even now they had only knocked at her door, not entered as unbidden guests.
"You mustn't tire him, girls," she told them warningly, as the nurse and Cousin Roxana assisted him upstairs, one step at a time, then a rest before the next. "He must have a chance to recover from the long journey."
"Land o' rest," Roxana called back happily, "I'm so relieved that you didn't have to bring him back on a stretcher I can hardly catch my breath."
"We're hopeful since he stood the journey so well," answered Mrs. Robbins. She leaned back in the big, cushioned willow chair that Doris always called "The Bungalow." Jean slipped off her cloak and Doris took her gloves. Helen knelt to put a fresh log on the fire and Kit hurried down after a tea tray. It was not fitting that the Queen Mother should receive service at the hands of hirelings. But when she returned she found a scene that might have baffled even Cousin Roxana. Helen and Doris knelt on the floor beside the big chair, the tears running down their faces, and Jean hung over the back with her arms close around her mother.
"Mother darling," she begged. "Don't, don't cry so. Why, you're home, and we're all going to look after him, and be your helpers."
Helen sped up after Cousin Roxana, and presently she came bustling downstairs, flushed and efficient.
"Why, Elizabeth Ann," she cried, smoothing back her hair just as if she had been one of the girls. "Don't give way just when your strength should be tried and true."
"Please call me Betty," protested Mrs. Robbins, smiling even through her tears. "It sounds so formal for you to call me Elizabeth Ann. It always makes me feel like squaring my shoulders, Roxy."
"So you should, child," Roxana declared cheerily. "Betty's so sort of gaysome to my way of thinking and there's stability to Elizabeth Ann. Lord knows, you're going to need a lot of stability before you find the way out of this."
"I know I am." As she spoke the Motherbird held her brood close to her, Doris and Helen kneeling beside her and Jean and Kit on each side. She leaned back her head and smiled at them. It was such a lovely face, they thought. Nobody in all the world had quite the same look or air as Mother. Back from her low broad forehead waved thick brown hair. Doris loved to perch on the broad arm of the willow chair and search diligently for any gray hairs that dared to show themselves. If any were found, they were promptly pulled out. Nine might come in the place of each, as Cousin Roxana said was highly probable according to tradition, but while they were few and far between, they were all eradicated, almost in indignation that Father Time should dare to assail, ever so gently, the splendid fortress of Mother's youth.
"Really, girls," Kit would say sometimes in her abrupt way, "I think Mother has the most interesting face I ever saw, and the most soulful eyes. They can be just as full of fun and mischief as Dorrie's, and then, again, just watch them when she feels sorry for anybody. It's worth while having a pain or something happen to you just to see her look that way."
She was looking "that way" at this moment as she smiled up at Cousin Roxana; just as though there was nothing too hard or too difficult in all the world for her to undertake.
"That's better," Cousin Roxy said comfortably. "Now you children take her up to her room and play you're maids of honor to the queen. I have to tend my broth and see how Jerry's coming along. Looks to me like rest and quiet and cheerful hearts will carry him through if anything will."
"Roxy!" There was a hidden note of tragedy in the Motherbird's voice. Nobody but the same unemotional Roxy knew how she longed to put her head right down on that ample bosom and have a good old-fashioned cry. "Roxy, the doctors say he'll never be any better."
"Fiddlesticks and pinwheels!" exclaimed Miss Robbins indignantly, with a toss of her head. "Lots they know about it. I declare, sometimes I think the more you pay a doctor the less he can do for you and the bigger-sounding names he thinks up to call what may ail you. I certainly do wonder at the way they try to make folks think they've got a special little private telephone wire right up to the Death Angel's door. I never take any stock in them at all, Betty." It came out quite easily. "Give me castor oil, some quinine and calomel, and maybe a little arnica salve for emergencies, and I'll undertake to help anybody hang on to their mortal coils a little bit longer."
"But things seem to be near a crisis now."
"Let them." Cousin Roxana stood with arms akimbo, as if she were hurling defiance at somebody, and the girls fairly hung on her words. "If the soul never had trials, what would be the use of life? Put ye on the armor of faith, Betty Robbins, and hope for the best. As for you, Jean and Kit, and you too, Helen and Dorrie, if I find any of you looking down your noses, I declare I'll stick clothes-pins on them and fasten a smile to your lips with court plaster."