CHAPTER VII – DODO’S ELOPEMENT
“Dodo, your mother says we got to go with her to visit the Osgoods,” Mr. Alexander informed his daughter, early the next morning at breakfast.
“Well, I won’t! so there! I’m going with Polly and her friends, to Paris. I just guess I can take up decorating if I want to, and Ma can’t stop me!” Dodo was really angry.
“I’ve been thinking, Dodo, that if we don’t go down with Ma, she can’t go there alone. Now she wants to go the worst way, but she won’t care so much whether we stay on or not – as long as she can hold on to the invitation.”
Dodo looked up quickly at her father’s tone. “What do you mean, Pa?”
“Well, you see, we plan to go down in the car. We can carry all the trunks and other traps, that way. But going down there doesn’t say we’ve got to stay, does it?”
“N-o-o,” agreed Dodo, beginning to see light.
“Well then, getting Ma down there, and you and I clearing out again, is all that I want to do. She will stay on and we will fly to Paris. How is that?”
Dodo laughed merrily at the plot, but she still had to hear further particulars. For instance, how did Pa expect to get away from the others without suspicion, and on what plea would he get back to London?
“Say now, Do – you don’t suspect me of telling to them people all I expect to do, do you? No, I’ll just wait for night, and then you and I will elope together.”
“Elope! Oh, Pa, how funny!” laughed Dodo, clapping her hands.
“Yeh, easy as pie, Do! Now listen to me. Ma gets all nicely settled the first night, and you have your little room by yourself. I go out for a smoke with my friend pipe – all by myself. I see you trying to steal away with your bundles, and a MAN! I hear a motor purr, and I see you and that man get in a car – and off you tear. I foller you to London, and keep right on your heels to Paris. There I catch you, and send word back to Ma to ease her mind.
“When she hears that you eloped with a man, and I went after, to catch you, before you married someone we don’t know about, she will be so glad that she’ll forgive me. And she won’t dare say a word to you, because that will spoil her little game for Jimmy, see?
“The Osgoods will make her stay on with them, if they really plan to land our million, because they will need some link by which to win you back, see? If they think more of their family than of our money, they’ll let Ma go and join us in Paris.
“Now, Dodo, what you think of your Pa’s little scheme?” laughed the little man, as he rubbed his hands together in glee.
“Say, Pa! It’s a shame such a wonder as you should be hidden to the world,” exclaimed Dodo, admiringly.
“As long as it hides you and me until the storm blows over, will be enough to satisfy me,” retorted Mr. Alexander.
At this moment, the Fabians and Ashbys entered the room, and Mr. Alexander winked at his daughter for secrecy on the subject they had been discussing. Soon after the others sat down at the breakfast table, Mrs. Alexander joined them, and the conversation turned to their parting.
“When do you plan to leave London, Mrs. Alexander?” asked Mr. Ashby, politely.
“Tomorrow, I hope. I want to fit Dodo up in some decent gowns before I take her to such a fine place as Osgood Hall.”
“When do you leave, Mr. Ashby?” asked Dodo.
“I expect to take Ruth and my wife down to my cousin’s, at Brighton, this afternoon. Then I have to go to different towns, you know, to collect things for my customers in the States.”
“And you, Polly?” Dodo turned to the girl she liked best of those she had met that summer.
“We are going to remain in London for a few days more, and see the Museums and galleries, then go on to Paris.”
“I wish I was going with you,” said Dodo. “Maybe we can meet in Paris, soon, and I can go on with you-all to learn more of antiques and decorating.”
“That must be as your father and mother say, Dodo,” Mr. Fabian now remarked.
“I always said Dodo could do as she liked,” quickly said Mr. Alexander.
“But my daughter will be with me down at Osgood Hall, so you won’t be likely to cross each other’s path again, in Europe,” declared Mrs. Alexander, smilingly, although her tone expressed her determination.
The Ashbys left that afternoon, and Mrs. Alexander took Dodo shopping for more clothes. Then, in the morning, the car was brought to the hotel, and the girls went with Dodo to see her off.
“I sure feel as if I want to cry,” whimpered Dodo, pretending to dab her eyes.
“We-all will miss you awfully, Dodo. You’re a good pal and we had such good times with you!” sighed Polly.
“Let’s hope we will meet soon, in spite of Ma’s sayin’ our paths wouldn’t cross each other again,” grinned Mr. Alexander.
“Ebeneezer, do get started, won’t you? Here we are sitting and holding up everyone else!” snapped Mrs. Alexander.
So the car drove off, with Dodo waving her hand as long as she could see her friends.
The Fabians and Polly and Eleanor visited the Victoria and Albert Museum that day, finding many wonderful pieces to admire. Among bronzes, ivories, tapestries and other art objects, Mr. Fabian pointed out various bits of costly and famous work.
There was a reading-desk of the 15th century; several Florentine coffers with fine carved panels; a beautiful cabinet decorated with Marquetry of the South German type, that hailed back to the 16th century. And in the Pavilion, Polly found a lovely dressing-table of satin-wood from the 18th century that reminded her of the piece she had bought down in Sussex.
The second day at the Museum – for it took several days to do it thoroughly – they visited the rooms where all kinds of furniture are exhibited, from stately William and Mary chairs down to the tiniest of foot-stools and ottomans.
They were passing an odd group of chairs when Eleanor laughingly drew their attention to two. “Just look at that fat old roistering chair conversing with the thin straight-laced prig of a side-chair, next to him.”
Her description was so true of the two chairs, that her companions laughed.
“Yes,” said Mr. Fabian, “the stiff-backed puritanical chair is telling the fat old rascal what a coarse bourgeois manner he shows in such good company.”
“Daddy, how could such a clumsy chair ever get into this famous museum?” asked Nancy.
“Because it can claim antiquity,” replied her father. “In early English times, when Squires and over-lords ruled the land, they spent most of their time in drinking and gambling. This chair is a type of them, is it not?”
“It certainly is,” agreed the girls.
“So you will find almost every period of furniture. They tell, truer than one thinks at the time, of the type of people that makes and uses them. You will find effeminate pieces in the reign of the Louis’, and hard-looking furniture in German history. Our own American furniture tells, better than all else, of the mixing of nations in the ‘melting-pot.’ Our furniture has no type, or style, individually its own.
“The so-called sales advertised in department stores are symbolic of what Americans are satisfied with: hodge-podge ready-made factory pieces, quickly glued together, and badly finished. As long as it is showy, and can demand a high price, the average American is satisfied. And that is the great error we interior decorators have to correct – we have to educate the people away from confusion and into art and beauty.”
Having seen the best examples of old furniture on exhibition in the Museum, Mr. Fabian prepared to go. As they walked quietly through the corridor to the main entrance, he said impressively: “I consider you girls have seen some of the best products to be found in the world today. The results of many ideals and hard work.
“You must know, that a good ideal thought plans a perfect chair or table; and that thought eventually expresses itself in the object it sees in mind. If the object is a thing of beauty and a joy forever, it elevates the whole world just that much. If it falls short of the artist’s ideals and hopes, he must do it over again, sooner or later, to reach the perfect model in mind. Thus he expresses God (good) in his ideals. If he refuses to try again to perfect his work, he knows he has failed utterly and he has nothing but the result of lowering his ideal – failure and deformity.”
As he ceased speaking, Mr. Fabian found the girls were intensely interested in his little lecture, and he smiled as Polly cried: “Oh, tell us some more along that line, please!”
“Well, I wish to impress upon you that in your work you must express the highest ideal or be a failure. Now God, Good, is Mind, and this Mind must be expressed in countless manifestations to be seen by us. Unexpressed it is a non-entity, and does not exist. Art and beauty are forms of ideal manifestation, and this manifestation objectifies itself in divan, lamp, rug or ornament, for you.
“To be a perfect thing, it must have God, or Mind, as its Creator, but this God uses you, His child, as the channel through which He works. If you obey that idealistic desire and work the best you know how, God sends added understanding and assistance to help you perfect the object, thus it becomes good and true. Now evil works, too, but just in the opposite directions; hence, if you give in to greed, avarice, dishonesty, envy, or the multitude of weapons evil always has on hand to tempt you with, you inevitably must produce an inharmonious result, and the repelling effects that go to cause criticism and dissatisfaction with all who thereafter look at the object.
“That is why that roistering armchair displeases a true and idealistic artist. It was not produced by a true and high-minded individual who hoped to bring forth a model of line and color, but who had only in mind, at the time, the production of a stout piece of furniture that would withstand the tests and offer a seat to the drunkards of that time; and would also resist the fierce quarrels and fights so common between gamblers who frequented the taverns of that day.”
“I wish to goodness I knew as much as you do about all these interesting things, Mr. Fabian!” declared Polly, yearningly.
“That is the sweetest praise a man can have, Polly dear; to wish to stand in my shoes in experience,” smiled Mr. Fabian. “But the very desire when truly entertained, will bring about the thing you so earnestly desire. For you know, ‘Desire is prayer.’”
Mrs. Fabian smiling at her husband, now said, “Why not add a benediction to this little sermonette, dear?” Then turning to the girls, she quoted: “‘Give up imperfect models and illusive ideals; and so let us have one God (Good), One Mind, and that one perfect, producing His own models of excellence.’”
That evening, the clerk at the hotel office handed Mr. Fabian a card.
“Why, how strange!” remarked he, glancing again, at the pasteboard in his hand.
“What is it?” asked Nancy, trying to look over his shoulder.
“The Alexanders were here. As we were out they left a card saying that they were going on to Paris, at once, and would see us at the hotel where we said we would stop.”
“How very strange!” exclaimed Mrs. Fabian, while the girls wondered what had happened to so suddenly change the minds of their friends.
“I never heard of anything like that. One day Mrs. Alexander was crazy to visit the Osgoods, and now they run away and are as crazy to reach Paris,” said Eleanor.
“I’m glad for Dodo’s sake. The poor girl didn’t want to go to Osgood Hall, at all, and I know how she felt about Jimmy,” said Polly.
“Maybe that’s what caused all the fuss. Dodo put down her foot and refused him outright, and that made his folks too angry to forgive her,” said Eleanor, romancing.
“Well, now she can go along with us, can’t she Daddy, and get all the information she wants, from visiting the places we go to.”
“With her parents’ consent, I should like to help Dodo to a higher plane for herself,” returned Mr. Fabian.
As they started again for their rooms, Polly laughed at a sudden memory. “Oh, maybe Ebeneezer’s poisonous black pipe played such havoc at the first dinner at Osgood Hall, that the guests couldn’t stand it, and he was sent away with his friend.”
Everyone laughed merrily at Polly’s picture of Mr. Alexander and his old friend pipe.
The next day after the Fabian party returned from the last sight-seeing in London, a wire was handed the man of the group. He opened it hastily, and read aloud: “Send word when you leave for Paris. Will meet you at train with car. Alexander.”
“Now that is really nice of the little man, I say,” added Mr. Fabian, as he handed the message to his wife.
“Then you’d better wire him at once, for we plan to go tomorrow,” advised Mrs. Fabian.
Everything had been attended to in London, and the girls took a farewell look at the city as they sped away to Dover where they expected to take the Channel Boat for Havre.
Much has been said about the rough crossing of this little strip of water, but the girls found it as quiet as a mill-pond, and the steamer skimmed the waves like a sea-gull. The ride in the dusty train, from Havre to Paris, was the most unpleasant part of the trip. But upon leaving the train at Paris, they saw Dodo and her father anxiously scanning the faces that passed by.
“Here we are, Dodo!” called Polly, eagerly, as she jumped forward and caught her friend’s hand.
“Dear me! I’m as glad to see you-all as I can be,” cried Dodo, shaking everyone eagerly by the hand.
“Yeh, you’re a sight for sore eyes,” remarked her father.
“We’ve only been in Paris a day and night, but Pa hasn’t any French with him, and I’ve only got a few words that I am always using mistakenly, so we’re happy to have someone who can speak and understand the lingo” laughed Dodo, happily.
They all got into the luxurious car that had carried them so many miles over England, and as they sank down upon the soft cushions, Polly said: “An automobile really is nicer than a hard old steam-tram.”
Mrs. Fabian, always polite, asked: “How is your mother, Dodo?”
“Last time we saw her she was first class, thank you.”
“She may be having high-sterics now, however,” added Mr. Alexander, chucklingly.
“What do you mean? Isn’t she well?” asked Mrs. Fabian.
“We hope she is well, Mrs. Fabian, but we left her at Osgood Hall, while we eloped to Paris,” laughed Dodo.
“Eloped! What are you talking about, child?” demanded Mrs. Fabian, while the girls sat up, eager to hear a story.
“Pa and I just had to elope, you know, to save our lives. We waited until Ma got nicely settled with the family, then we got in the car and ran away. We haven’t heard, yet, in answer to our telegram from here, so we’re frightened to pieces lest Ma packs up and comes after us,” explained Dodo.
But this fear was quieted when they all went into the hotel and the clerk handed Mr. Alexander a message. He opened it with trembling fingers, and suddenly sat down in a great chair.
“Goodness me, Pa! What is it? Is she coming for us?” cried Dodo, in an agony of suspense.
“No – that’s why I caved in, Dodo. The relief was so turrible!” sighed the little man.
Everyone felt sorry for these two, but the situation was so funny that they laughed in spite of their trying not to.
“Yes, laugh,” giggled Dodo, “that’s just what Pa and I did when we got well away on the road to London. When I think of how they must have looked when they read the note I pinned on my cushion for Ma, I have to laugh myself.”
“What was in the note, Do?” asked Eleanor, curiously.
“I said I was eloping with the man I loved best on earth – which was true, you know. And I knew I could never be happy with a title, as long as I loved this everyday man. That was true, too. So I was fleeing with him, to Paris, where I hoped to meet her some day and ask her forgiveness.”
The girls laughed heartily at Dodo’s note, and Polly said she was awfully clever to think it out that way.
“Oh, but it was Pa who planned it all. And when we got to Paris, he wired back to Ma, saying: ‘Got Dodo in time. Never laid eyes on that young man, but will keep her safe with me. Better not try to join us yet, she may not want to be reminded of the good home and young man she ran away from.’”
“And this is what Ma wired back,” said Mr. Alexander, sitting up to read the message. “Just read Dodo’s note about her elopement. Glad you are after her, Eben. Don’t let her marry any man, while there is a chance of Jimmy. Maggie.”
“So now, folks, Ma is safe at Osgood Hall, and we are here, with our car, with you. What’s to hinder us from taking you all over Europe in the old machine, eh?” eagerly asked Mr. Alexander.
“Your offer is very attractive, Mr. Alex,” returned Mr. Fabian, “but I am not in a position to accept it without consulting further with my wife and the girls.”
“Why not? Here’s a car and a fine chauffeur for you-all to use as you like, and you admit that you’re going to visit the big cities of Europe, and that means travel in some sort of way.”
“Oh yes, that part of the plan is as you say,” admitted Mr. Fabian, “but there is more to it than mere travelling. You must understand that Mrs. Alexander has a claim on that car, too, and I don’t see how we can tour away from Paris in her car without her knowledge and willing consent.”
“Oh, as for that!” retorted the little husband, “she’d be only too glad to hear Dodo was safe with you folks on a tour. Diden’ I tell you-all that she’s happy where she is, and nothin’ can tear her away from the Osgoods, at present?”
“Besides that, I want to stay with you-all,” added Dodo, plaintively. “So that I can get more knowledge of decorating, because I’ve made up my mind, once and for all time, to go into a business as you girls propose doing.”
Mr. Fabian yearned to encourage the girl in her ambition, but he was adamant when it came to using the Alexander car under the circumstances. All the persuasions of father and daughter could not move him from what he considered to be a just decision.
There the matter was left for the time being, but Mr. Fabian was not so narrow-minded that he refused to drive about Paris with the little man, on the different occasions when he and his party were invited to go.
The day after their arrival at the hotel in Paris, Polly said to Dodo: “Did your wedding-chest arrive here safely?”
“Yes, it came, and it’s gone again.”
“Gone again! Where?” said surprised Polly.
“Gone to Ruth – for her birthday gift,” giggled Dodo.
“Not really! Why how wonderful for Ruth,” exclaimed the girls in a chorus.
Dodo smiled. “Don’t you remember what I said to Ruth about a little gift, the day we drove away from that old shop?”
“I remember, but no one dreamed you meant that chest,” replied Polly.
“I made up my mind about it, the moment I found how Ma got it from under Ruth’s nose. That’s why I made Ma say the chest was my very own – so she could not come back at me and say I had no right to give it away.”
“Dodo, you are splendid in your generous way of giving. If only everyone was like you!” cried Polly, giving her a hug.
“There! That hug means more to me than a wedding-chest,” laughed Dodo, pink with pleasure.
When Mrs. Fabian heard of the gift to Ruth she caught the girl’s hand and said: “Dodo, Ruth will be so happy, I know.”
“Dear me, you-all make as much fuss over that chest as if I had to earn the money for it. I can’t forget that we have more cash than we can ever spend honestly,” declared Dodo.
When Mrs. Fabian told her husband about the gift and Dodo’s point of view about wealth, it had more influence with him than anyone could have thought for. He felt that Dodo and her father were really worth-while characters, but there was a roughness about them that needed some polishing before the purity and beauty of their souls would shine forth resplendently and make others appreciate them.
The streets of Paris were anything but good for motoring because of the broken cobbles, and deep ruts in the roads. The disagreeable odors, too, created by poor sanitation in the city, caused Polly and her chums to cover their noses many a time.
“I like the wonders of Paris, but I can’t say that I like the people and the everyday annoyances,” remarked Polly, one day.
“The shops are beautiful!” said Eleanor.
“And the signs – they are marvellous,” added Dodo.
Mr. Fabian laughed at the individual tastes, and Mrs. Fabian said: “Well, we can’t get away any too soon to please me.”
“‘Them’s our sentiments, too,’” laughed Polly.
“I’ll hate to leave the Bohemian Restaurants,” sighed Nancy. “I always did like to sit under a tall palm and watch the people parade by, so near me that I could reach out a hand and catch hold of them.”
“Now that all but Mr. Alex and I have had a say I’ll add, that I like Paris because of the marvellous collections for artists to visit, and profit by,” remarked Mr. Fabian.
“An’ I like the gay town because no one bothers you. You can smoke a pipe, or do any durn thing without someone’s kickin’,” added little Mr. Alexander.
His opinion drew a general laughter from the group.
From the first day of the arrival of Mr. Fabian and his party, little Mr. Alexander had daily exchanged messages with his wife, hoping in that way, to receive one that would convince Mr. Fabian that he must make use of the car for the tour of the Continent. But he could not read his wife’s confused statements and feel that the right one had yet arrived for him to use in this need.
The day the girls started for the Louvre, Mr. Alexander and his car had been refused because, they said, they would be busy in the Galleries all day and could not ask him to sit outside waiting for their appearance.
So they left him sitting at a writing table in the hotel, and started for the Louvre. As they approached the grounds of the famous museum, they were thrilled with the magnificence of the place.
“It is considered the finest museum in the world, and contains rarest national collections of art and antiquity that date back as far as Philippe Auguste, in 1180,” explained Mr. Fabian. “Philippe Auguste built a fortress here to protect the walls of his hunting-box where it touched the river. This old foundation can be seen by visitors on certain days, and I arranged so that we would come on one of the days.”
So the girls followed their escort down to the cellars, where the old walls were seen. But they were not deeply interested in foundations with no claim to beauty or value for the world, so they soon returned to the Halls where the antiques were on exhibition.
To reach the Rotonde D’ Apollon, Mr. Fabian led the girls past Galleries filled with paintings, sculptures, ivories and other art treasures. Then having seen these collections, they passed through a seventh century iron gateway brought from the Chateau de Maisons, and entered the magnificent room which was sixty-one metres long and was built in the time of Henri IV. In this galerie, as in others following it, there were shown such placques, vases, dishes, and other objects of art, that the beholders were silent with admiration.
Beyond the Salle des Bronzes Antiques, where very fine examples of bronzes were to be seen, the girls visited five rooms containing 17th and early 18th century furniture. Here they also found several exquisite Gobelin and Mortlake tapestries.
That evening the hotel clerk handed Mr. Fabian a legal looking envelope, which, upon being opened, proved to contain the passes necessary for visitors to enter and see the famous tapestries woven by the Gobelin Society.
“Ah! Now you girls will see something worth while,” remarked Mr. Fabian, holding the slips of paper above his head. “I have here the ‘open sesame’ to the National Manufactory of the Gobelins which still is housed in the grounds of Louis the XVIth. There we may feast our eyes on some of the examples of weaving that has made this Society so famous.”
“When will we go?” asked Polly, eagerly.
“Tomorrow, the passes say.”
Everyone expressed an eagerness to see these looms and the method of making the tapestries, so it was planned that the entire party should go, excepting Mr. Alexander who preferred a drive in his car after leaving his friends at their destination.