Vagabondia Part 1

Vagabondia.

by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

AUTHOR'S NOTE.

This my first novel was written several years ago, and published (without any revision by me) first in a ladies' magazine under the name of "Dorothea," and afterwards in book form as "Dolly." For reasons not necessary to state here, all control over the book had pa.s.sed from my hands. It has been for some time out of print; but, having at last obtained control of the copyright, I have made such corrections as seemed advisable, given it the name I originally intended for it, and now issue it through my regular publishers.

FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT.

Was.h.i.+ngton, November, 1883.

VAGABONDIA.

CHAPTER I. ~ IN WHICH WE HOLD COUNSEL.

It was a nondescript sort of a room, taking it altogether. A big, sunny room, whose once handsome papering and corniceing had grown dingy, and whose rich carpeting had lost its color and pile in places, and yet a.s.serted its superiority to its surroundings with an air of lost grandeur in every shabby medallion. There were pictures in abundance on the walls, and more than one of them were gems in their way, despite the evidence all bore to being the work of amateurs. The tables were carved elaborately, and the faded, brocaded chairs were of the order _pouf_, and as inviting as they were disreputable in appearance; there was ma.n.u.script music among the general litter, a guitar hung from the wall by a tarnished blue and silver ribbon, and a violin lay on the piano; and yet, notwithstanding the air of free-and-easy disorder, one could hardly help recognizing a sort of vagabond comfort and luxury in the Bohemian surroundings. It was so very evident that the owners must enjoy life in an easy, light-hearted, though perhaps light-headed fas.h.i.+on; and it was also so very evident that their light hearts and light heads rose above their knowledge of their light purses.

They were congregated together now, holding a grand family council around the centre-table, and Dolly was the princ.i.p.al feature, as usual; and, embarra.s.sing as the subject of said council was, not one of them looked as if it was other than a most excellent joke that Dolly, having been invited into the camps of the Philistines, should find she had nothing to put on to grace the occasion. And as to Dolly,--well, that young person stood in the midst of them in her shabby, Frenchy little hat, slapping one pink palm with a shabby, shapely kid glove, her eyes alight, her comical dismay and amus.e.m.e.nt displaying itself even in the arch of her brows.

"And so the Philistine leader pounced upon me herself," she was saying.

"You know the 'Ark,' Phil? Well, they were all in the Ark,--the Rev.

Bilberry in front, and the boys and girls filling up the corners; so you may imagine the effect produced when they stopped, and Lady Augusta bent over the side to solemnly proclaim her intention of inviting me to partake of coffee and conversation on Friday night, with an air of severely wondering whether I would dare to say 'No!'"

"Why did n't you say it?" said Aimee. "You know it will be an awful bore, Dolly. Those Bilberry clan gatherings always are. You have said so yourself often enough."

"Of course I have," returned Dolly. "And of course it will be, but it would be dreadfully indiscreet to let the Bilberry element know I thought so. The Bilberry doors once closed against us, where is our respectability, and Phil's chance of success among the Philistines? It is bad enough, of course, but there is reason to be thankful that I am the only victim. The rest of you would be sure to blunder into the B.

B. B.'s [meaning the Bilberry black books], and that _would_ be an agreeable state of affairs. 'Toinette, look at Tod, he is sitting in the coal-box eating Phil's fusees."

In 'Toinette we find Mrs. Phil, a handsome creature, young enough to have been in the school-room, but with the face and figure of a Greek G.o.ddess, and a pair of eyes lovely enough to haunt one's dreams as a memory for a lifetime, and as to the rest, an inconsistent young madcap, whose beauty and spirit seemed only a necessary part of the household arrangements, and whose son and heir, in the person of the enterprising Tod (an abbreviate of Theodore), was the source of unlimited domestic enjoyment and the object of much indiscreet adoration. It was just like Philip Crewe, this marrying on probabilities; and it was equally like the rest of them to accept the state of affairs as an excellent joke, and regard the result as an exquisite piece of pleasantry. 'Toinette herself was only another careless, unworldly addition to the family circle, and enjoyed her position as thoroughly as the rest did; and as to Tod, what a delicate satire upon responsibilities Tod was, and how tranquilly he comported himself under a _regime_ which admitted of free access into dangerous places, and a lack of personal restraint which allowed him all the joys the infantile mind can revel in!

At Dolly's exclamation Toinette rushed at him in his stronghold, and extricated him from the coal-box with demonstrations of dismay.

"Look at his white dress!" she wailed pathetically. "I only put it on a few minutes ago; and he has eaten two dozen fusees, if this was n't an empty box when he found it. I hope they won't disagree with him, Phil."

"They won't," said Phil, composedly. "Nothing does. Dust him, and proceed to business. I want to hear the rest of Dolly's story."

"I _think_," said Mollie, "that he ate Shem and Ham this morning, for I could only find j.a.pheth after he had been playing with his Noah's Ark.

Go on, Dolly."

"Wait until I have taken off my things," said Dolly, "and then we 'll talk it over. We must talk it over, you know, if I am to go."

She took off her hat, and then laid her shawl aside,--a little scarlet shawl, draped about her figure and tossed over one shoulder smartly, and by no means ungracefully,--and so stood revealed; and it must be admitted she was well worth looking at. Not a beauty, but a fresh, wholesome little body, with a real complexion, an abundance of hair, and large-irised, wide-awake eyes, changeable as to color, because capricious in expression; the sort of girl, in fact, who would be likely to persuade people ultimately that, considering circ.u.mstances, absolute beauty could be easily dispensed with, and, upon the whole, would rather detract from the general charm of novelty, which, in her case, reigned supreme.

"It is n't the mere fact of being a beauty that makes women popular,"

she would say; "it's the being able to persuade people that you are one,--or better than one. Don't some historians tell us that Cleopatra had red hair and questionable eyes, and yet she managed to blind the world so completely, that no one is sure whether it is true or not, and to this day the generality of people are inclined to believe that it was her supernatural beauty that dragged Marc Antony to the dust at her feet."

Aimee's face was more nearly perfect than Dolly's; Mollie's was more imposing, child as she was; 'Toi-nette threw her far into the shade in the matter of statuesque splendor; but still it was Dolly who did all the difficult things, and had divers tragic adventures with questionable adorers, whose name was legion, and who were a continual source of rejoicing and entertainment to the family.

Having tossed hat and shawl on to the table, among the ma.n.u.script music, paint-brushes, and palettes, this young person slipped into the most comfortable chair near the fire, and, having waited for the rest to seat themselves, proceeded to open the council. Mollie, who was sixteen, large, fair, beautiful, and not as tidy as she might have been, dropped into a not ungraceful position at her feet. Aimee, who was a little maiden with a tender, _spirituelle_ face, and all the forethought of the family, sat near, with some grave perplexity in her expression.

'Toinette and Tod, _posed_ in the low nursery-chair,--the girl's firm, white arm flung around the child,--swung lightly to and fro, fit models for an artist.

"You would make a first-cla.s.s picture,--the lot of you," commented Phil, amicably.

"Never mind the picture," said Mollie, drawing her disreputable slippers up under her wrapper. "We want to hear how Dolly thinks of going to the Bilberrys'. Oh, Dolly, how heavenly it would be if you had a turquoise-blue sat--"

"Heavenly!" interrupted Dolly. "I should think so. Particularly celestial for Lady Augusta, who looks mahogany-colored in it, and peculiarly celestial for a poor relation from Vagabondia. It would be as much as my reputation was worth. She would never forgive me. You must learn discretion, Mollie."

"There is some consolation in knowing you can't get it," said 'Toinette.

"You won't be obliged to deny yourself or be indiscreet. But what _are_ you going to wear, Dolly?"

"That is for the council to decide," Dolly returned. "First, we must settle on what we want, and then we must settle on the way to get it."

"Other people go the other way about it," said Aimee.

"If we were only rich!" said Mollie.

"But it is a most glaringly patent fact that we are not," said Dolly.

"There is one thing certain, however,--it must be white."

"A simple white muslin," suggested 'Toinette, struggling in the grasp of the immortal Tod,--"a simple white muslin, with an equally simple wild flower in your hair, _a la_ Amanda Fitzallan. How the Dowager Bilberry _would_ like that."

"And a wide blue sash," suggested Mollie. "And the sleeves tied up with bows. _And_ tucks, Dolly. Girls, just think of Dolly making great eyes at an eligible Philistine, in white muslin and a sash and tucks!"

She was a hardened little sinner, this Dolly, her only redeeming point being that she was honest enough about her iniquities,--so honest that they were really not such terrible iniquities after all, and were regarded as rather good fun by the _habitues_ of Vaga-bondia proper.

She laughed just as heartily as the rest of them at Mollie's speech.

She could no more resist the temptation of making great eyes at eligible Philistines than she could help making them at the entertaining but highly ineligible Bohemians, who continually frequented Phil's studio.

The fear of man was not before her eyes; and the life she had led had invested her with a whimsical yet shrewd knowledge of human nature, and a business-like habit of looking matters in the face, which made her something of a novelty; and when is not novelty irresistible? And as to the masculine Philistines,--well, the audacity of Dolly's successes in the very midst of the enemy's camp had been the cause of much stately demoralization of Philistine battalions.

At her quietest she created small sensations and attracted attention; but in her wicked moods, when she was in a state of mind to prompt her to revenge the numerous small slights and overt acts of lofty patronage she met with, the dowagers stood in some secret awe of her propensities, and not without reason. Woe betide the daring matron who measured swords with her at such times. Great would be her confusion and dire her fall before the skirmish was over, and nothing was more certain than that she would retire from the field a wiser if not a better woman. After being triumphantly routed with great slaughter on two or three occasions, the enemy had discovered this, and decided mentally that it was more discreet to let "little Miss Crewe" alone, considering that, though it was humiliating to be routed, even by one of their own forces, it was infinitely more so to be routed by an innocent-looking young person, whose position was questionable, and who actually owed her vague shadow of respectability to her distant but august relative, the Lady Augusta Decima Crewe Bilberry, wife of the Rev. Marmaduke Sholto Bilberry, and mother of the plenteous crop of young Bilberrys, to whom little Miss Crewe was music teacher and morning governess.

So it was that Mollie's joke about the tucks and white muslin gained additional point from the family recollection of past experiences.

"But," said Dolly, when the laugh had subsided, "it won't do to talk nonsense all day. Here 's where we stand, you know. Coffee and conversation on Friday night on one side, and nothing but my draggled old green tarlatan on the other, and it's Tuesday now."

"And the family impecuniosity being a fact well established in the family mind," began Phil, with composure.

"But that 's nonsense," interrupted Aimee. "And, as Dolly says, nonsense won't do now. But," with a quaint sigh, "we always _do_ talk nonsense."

But here a slight diversion was created. Mrs. Phil jumped up, with an exclamation of delight, and, dropping Tod on to Mollie's lap, disappeared through the open door.

"I will be back in a minute," she called back to them, as she ran up-stairs. "I have just thought of something."

"Girls," said Mollie, "it's her white merino."

And so it was. In a few minutes she reappeared with it,--a heap of soft white folds in her arms, and a yard or so of the train dragging after her upon the carpet,--the one presentable relic of a once inconsistently elaborate bridal trousseau, at present in a rather tumbled and rolled-up condition, but still white and soft and thick, and open to unlimited improvement.