Cicely and Other Stories Part 2

A slight expression of annoyance crossed Mrs. Gooding's handsome face.

She and May were alone at lunch, and when the servant had left the room she said impatiently to May: "I particularly wanted Alida to go out with us this afternoon to call on Mrs. Lancaster's guest. She takes so little interest in people outside the family, and it really mortifies me to see how silent and stiff she is in company. She always has some excuse to stay at home. She can never overcome her reticence unless she goes out more. Oh, May, I wish she were more like you!"

As Alida lay up-stairs, battling with her tears and a throbbing headache, a note was brought to her. It was from Ben Fuller, asking her to be his valentine at Mrs. Lancaster's party. By this time she had worked herself up to such a state of morbid sensitiveness that she could not even write a gracious refusal. It was so curt and cool that Ben gave a low whistle of surprise when he received it.

"I shall never ask _her_ to go anywhere again!" was his mental comment, as he tossed the note into the fire.

All the rest of the week Alida stayed in her room as much as possible.

Phil Bently's speech so rankled in her mind that she could take no pleasure in anything, not even in the making of May's costume, in which all the family were interested. It was an odd affair--a white silk gown dotted with red hearts and bordered with dozens of old-fas.h.i.+oned lace-paper valentines, with their bright array of cupids and doves and flowers; and to May it was most becoming.

"Where did you ever get all the things to put on it?" asked her father as she slowly revolved before him the night of the party.

"Oh, I saved them as an Indian brave does his scalp-locks," she answered. "They were sent to me ages ago, before I left the nursery. I had them all packed away, and had forgotten them until I began planning this costume. I wonder if Charley Jarvis will recognise that row, or Phil Bently remember when he sent this. They were barely out of the kindergarten then."

The judge looked at the trophies with an amused smile. "I remember sending valentines to your mother once upon a time. It is too bad the custom is dying out. Young people seem to be discarding their patron saint."

"Oh, no, indeed, father," answered May. "We have got beyond hearts and darts and lace-paper affairs; but cast your judicial eye over that table at all I have received to-day: books and music and boxes of candy and no end of flowers."

"Where is your share, Alida?" asked the judge, kindly, peering over his eye-gla.s.ses at his youngest daughter. "What did St. Valentine bring you?"

"Nothing," answered Alida, rising suddenly to leave the room, lest he should notice the tears she could not force back. "He's like everybody else," she added, bitterly, as she reached the door. "He doesn't care for homely people."

The judge looked annoyed. "I wish she were not so self-conscious and sensitive!" he exclaimed.

"She hasn't seemed well for some time," said her mother, apologetically. "It might be a wise thing to have the doctor see her soon. The next time Agnes drops in I shall speak to her."

"If the child is ailing, have her come at once," said the judge, decidedly, and a few minutes later he was at the telephone, sending a message for Doctor Agnes Mayne to call that evening, if possible.

Instead of going to her own room, Alida opened the door of the old nursery, turned on the gas, and began searching through closets and drawers. At last she found the object of her search, a little portfolio in which she had laid away some of her childish treasures, as her older sister had done. Kneeling on the floor beside it, she took out the valentines it contained and counted them. There were only six--all that she had ever received; and now she noticed that each little lace envelope was addressed in her father's familiar handwriting. She had failed to see that in those earlier years.

"So, really, St. Valentine has never brought me anything," she thought, bitterly, "and he never will! I wonder how it feels to be loved and admired by everybody, as May is!"

Going into her own room, she sat down before her little mahogany dressing-table, and tilting back the oval mirror, studied the reflection in it. As she looked, the tears began to roll down her cheeks, and finally she crossed her arms on the table and laid her head on them with a choking sob. There was a knock at the door presently, but she paid no attention. It was repeated, and then some one came in softly, pausing as she saw the girl's dejected att.i.tude.

Alida looked up, "Oh, Doctor Agnes!" she exclaimed; then, despite a strong effort to control her nervous tears, down went her head on the table, and she sobbed harder than before.

Doctor Agnes Mayne was the warm friend of all the family, and on the most familiar footing with them. As she was a woman of strong personal magnetism, and knew just how to win Alida's confidence, it was not long before her judicious questions had drawn out the reason of the girl's grief. After Alida had finished her recital of the conversation at the dentist's, there was a long silence.

"Well, Alida," said Doctor Agnes at last, "what you need is a dose of definitions, and I am going to give them to you at once. I wish you would go to your dictionary and look for the word 'homely.' That seems to be such a bugbear to you."

Much surprised, Alida crossed the room and opened the ponderous volume on her writing-table. While she ran her finger slowly down the page, the doctor continued: "It has several definitions, but the original meaning was home_like_, and it is only in that archaic sense that I want you to take it. Now, what is given as the definition of homelike?"

"Comfortable; cheerful; cozy; friendly," read Alida.

"Now look for comfortable," directed the doctor. "Not any modern meaning. I want the good old ones that have become obsolete."

"Strong; vigorous; serviceable; helpful," read Alida again.

"Now just one word more," said the doctor. "Find cozy, the meaning that the English give it."

Alida searched the columns a moment and then read: "Chatty; talkative; sociable."

"There!" exclaimed the doctor, taking the girl's feverish wrist in her firm, cool hand. "That is my prescription for you. Take those definitions faithfully to heart for a year, and you will become so homely, in the good old sense of the word, that by another St.

Valentine's day you will find yourself admired by everybody."

Alida shrugged her shoulders so incredulously that the doctor took out her watch and showed her a picture inside the case. "There is my proof," she said. It was the picture of a sweet, kindly old face, plain in features, but with a beauty of expression that made Alida's eyes soften as she looked at it.

"My mother," said Doctor Agnes, gently. "She might be called a homely woman in both senses of the word. Every one feels the cheer of her presence as of a warm, comfortable fire-side. n.o.body can come into contact with her without being helped by her sunny, friendly interest.

People feel at home--at their easiest and best--with her, and she is the 'cozy corner' they naturally turn to, old and young alike."

"Then she must have been born with such a nature," interrupted Alida.

"No, she was as reserved and timid as you are--always worrying about her appearance and thinking that people were criticising her, until she went to visit an eccentric old aunt, who spent her time in finding employment for friendless young girls.

"Aunt Winifred soon found that mother was in as great need of employment as the poorest little seamstress on her list. So she interested her in her charities, drawing her by degrees into the active work of them until her unhappy little niece had learned the beautiful gospel of self-forgetfulness. Afterward, when mother was married and had the happiness of her five daughters at heart, she induced each one of us to take up something of absorbing interest, in order that there might be no empty, idle days when discontent could creep in. That is how I came to study medicine, and that is how I learned to love the word 'homely' in its first and best sense. She taught me the definitions which I have just given you."

Half an hour later Judge Gooding was surprised to see Alida and Agnes Mayne coming gaily into the room with their arms around each other.

There was more animation in Alida's face than it had shown for days.

"Papa, I am going to study medicine," she announced. "Doctor Agnes has told me so many interesting things about her profession, and the cases she has in the children's hospital, that I can hardly wait to begin.

She has promised to take me round with her and lend me all her books.

I think I shall begin to-morrow morning."

The judge smiled indulgently. "I have no fears of your going into the practice of medicine seriously," he said. "I should not like a daughter of mine to do that; but if you think you would enjoy the study as a pastime and Doctor Mayne recommends it, I shall not object if your mother is willing."

The family thought that "Alida's fad," as they called it, would not last long; but under Agnes Mayne's wise supervision it became an unfailing source of pleasure to the girl. Winter slipped into spring, and the crocuses gave way to the summer roses, and still her interest grew daily. She even begged not to be taken to the seash.o.r.e, where the family always spent their summers.

"Mrs. Mayne has asked me to stay with her," she said, "and she has such a dear little house, and I am sure that the children at the hospital would miss me now if I were to go away. There is so much that I can do to make the poor little things happier."

Alida had her own way finally. She studied on through the summer, learning much about anatomy and physiology from the doctor's big books in the office, but unconsciously learning the higher wisdom of a spiritual hygiene from her sweet-souled old hostess, the doctor's mother. It cleared her mental vision. It made her quick to understand other people, warm in her sympathies, and forgetful of self in her intercourse with them.

"She do be such a comfortable sort of body, that young doctor," said a poor washerwoman, suffering from a scalded arm, as Doctor Mayne made her rounds alone one morning. "She is that chatty and sociable that I forget the pain while she is about, and it would do your heart good to see how she do cozy up the place before she leaves it."

Doctor Mayne repeated this to Alida. "You are getting on bravely with your definitions," she said, with an approving pat on her shoulder.

"What do you think of 'Alida's fad' now?" she asked Mrs. Gooding, several months later. It was a dull December day, and she had called for a hasty visit.

"My dear Agnes," said Mrs. Gooding, "we are simply delighted! It has waked her up and made a different creature of her. She is almost as easy and sociable with May's friends now as May is herself. Yesterday afternoon half a dozen of them came in with May to get warm after a long sleigh-ride. Alida prepared a delicious little chafing-dish lunch for them, and made herself so agreeable and entertaining that I was really surprised.

"I thought that she looked almost pretty, too. Her complexion is so clear now, since she has put to such good use what she has learned about hygiene. She looked so bright and animated, laughing and talking there in the firelight, that it did not seem possible she had ever been a cold, reticent girl, who always repelled people."

One morning, not long after this conversation, the family were surprised by Ben Fuller's driving up in his sleigh soon after breakfast, and asking for Alida. They were all in the library, and he announced his errand without taking a seat. "My sister Ada--Mrs.

Cranford, you know--is very anxious for you to come over for a little while. She was so prostrated yesterday by the shock of what happened in her absence that she couldn't talk coherently to you then; but she feels that she must see you for a few moments, if possible, and she is unable to come out this morning. May I take you over in my sleigh?"

Alida, showing no trace of surprise at the message, rose at once to go up-stairs for her hat, but Mrs. Gooding plied him with astonished questions.

"Is it possible that she has not told you?" he exclaimed. "My sister is spending the winter here with her little daughter Doris. We all idolise the child, and she is never left alone a moment. But yesterday we were all out of town at a wedding, and Doris had to be left with only the nurse. n.o.body will ever know how it happened, but she slipped away and got into the little cottage around the corner. There was a child there that she had taken a fancy to from seeing it at the window whenever she pa.s.sed.

"n.o.body can find out how long she was there, or what the two children did. She says that they played party and had 'good fings' to eat that they 'finded' by themselves. Miss Alida met her coming home about four o'clock, and turned to walk with her and see her safely into the house, for she suspected that Doris had run away. Doris was eating some of the pink candy that she had brought home from the cottage, although we did not know where it came from until this morning.