At daybreak; a novel

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. Betty 5

II. Transplanted 14

Chapter I. Betty

T he afternoon shadows pf the great elm-branches swung drowsily on the gravel-path. The air was filled with a faintly murmurous rhythm, accounted for by frequent sallies, across the warm sand, of the small black-mailed insect who contributes in his grassy retirement to that sweet September hum. From some invisible height a sharp, plaintive note descended : the voice of the bird known to some country-folk as the “hot-bird.”

There were plenty of trees and lilac-bushes helping to shade the wide brick house-front with its cheerful-looking awnings ; but a still heat had gathered even under that green protection. The stone animals guarding the base of the steps felt quite warm as you put your hand on their vine-wreathed flanks : the sun had been trying their patience severely that day. So Betty thought, as she sat on the steps where the shade was deepest : a little idle figure, with a long flaxen braid following the convexity of its little spine, its elbows planted on its knees, its round chin propped at a disconsolate slant in the hollows of its hands.

She was staring at the stone lions just then, and thinking sympathetically that there was something very thirsty in the persistent loll of their granite tongues. It moved her to that extent presently that she came down off the steps and got a sprinkler from the grass-plat, and under pretence of watering the vines poured such a libation between the patient jaws that it should have relaxed their piteous gape. It did not, all the same ; but Betty felt easier as she returned to her shady spot on the flight of steps. She was quite advanced in years — over eight of them ; but the carved lions were old playmates of hers, and always seemed to have more life in them than most carved lions.

She sat down again, in the same attitude as before, giving a sigh that was almost a grown-up sigh for volume. The honeysuckle clinging around the porch was letting its last flowers drift helplessly over the steps, as though it were really no use in life to keep up one’s extra adornments in such very warm weather. Betty swept up a few of the wrinkled blossoms in her hand, and looked regretfully at the vine. She was in a susceptible mood this afternoon, it seemed ; more so than usual, though she was always a tender and imaginative little maiden. But trouble often increases one’s sensibility, even in small matters — and Betty had an immense trouble ! It was the first time she ever had one, anything like so large ; its weight, combined with the heat of the day, took the spring altogether out of her elastic little feet.

Axel was gone away! Axel was only a browneyed urchin in a Scotch cap and “monkey-jacket;” but in Betty’s estimation, as he bounced into the half-filled coach at his father’s door to ride to the railway, he was by far the most important factor of the load.

Betty could not remember a time when she and Axel had not played together. She was the younger by several years ; but there were hardly any boys in the vicinity, and anyhow Axel did not like rough boys. Not that he was a “girl-boy” in the least; but from his frock-days up he had shown a calm superiority to the common types of infancy — a sort of gentlemanly disdain for the squabbling, tumbling enjoyments of the average boy. The same exclusive taste led him to make a comrade of the ladylike wee Betty, all the more that there were no ill-mannered infants near by to make fun of him for it. He could not forbear domineering over her a little ; but that was perfectly acceptable to Betty. She would prefer being ordered around by Axel to being slaved for by any other boy in the neighborhood ; indeed, she took no interest in any other boy.

There- was a strong tie of intimacy between the children’s families. They had lived for many years on adjacent land, and bot^ of them in houses which might well be called old homesteads by this time, though additions and improvements had taken place in them year by year. Betty’s home had seen the less remodelling of the two. It had not been changed at all, within her short recollection : the same vines curled, summer after summer, around the same stone window-ledges ; the same huge lilac-bushes flowered, summer after summer, on either side of the long flight of steps ; the same broad brick house-front reddened in the sun. They seemed to be the same chip-sparrows, too, that sat in sociable, vacillating rows on the slopes of the small dormer-windows,^ year by year, tipping their brown heads to look at Betty bringing crumbs to scatter on the grass. Christina, the older sister, used to toss up twigs at them, to see them flutter off and circle through the trees in a panic ; but Christina had been away from home for two or three years now, and Betty and the chip-birds had it all their own peaceful way.

Axel never made targets of the birds ; he was too kind-hearied for that. He used sometimes to get angry at Christina for such cruel diversions. The young lady was several years older than Axel ; she did not worry herself much then about his opinion of her.

She was rather a difficult child to get on with generally — “peculiar,” her mother said. Tenderness seemed to have been left out of her composition, so far as the family were able to discover. As long as she reigned alone in the Karlsen nursery she treated her subjects with fluctuatiifg favor; but when a new claimant to the throne appeared, Christina abdicated with great readiness. They set it down to her credit that she never seemed jealous of Betty. For the rest, she was variable, she was wilful, she could never be coaxed into more than a fleeting show of fondness for anybody but through the medium of presents, in respect to which she showed an abnormal degree of calculation. The family felt, on the whole, a certain relief when Aunt Bertha Karlsen, the rich Uncle Caspar’s widow, carried off Christina, at twelve years of age, for an unlimited visit at her *house in the city.

Aunt Bertha, as they called her, had never visited her brother-in-law’s family until Betty her namesake was entering her second year. She was an American lady, pronounced to be fine-looking, and certainly singular. Her relatives had never suspected her of any great attachment to them ; indeed, her correspondence with them had been so scanty that she knew almost nothing of the family census beyond the existence of a small Bertha, which last fact was rather gratifying to her.

Having no children of her own, and perhaps getting a trifle lonesome in the midst of splendors. Aunt Bertha, moved by one of her sudden fancies, bought a gold mug and rushed off to Lyme to make the acquaintance of her niece.

Betty as an infant was good-nature in person ; so there was dismay among the retainers when her babyship, on the introduction of Aunt Bertha and the gold mug into the nursery, pulled a wry face and showed signs of open dissatisfaction. Brought into contact with her aunt’s stiff silks the namesake wept lO bitterly — even directing a kick of hostility against the influential visitor. The mug, with a funny image on the handle, availed nothing.

“ My niece appears to have a somewhat irritable disposition,” observed Aunt Bertha, wflth a piqued air.

At this point Christina, in a white frock, appeared at the nursery door, fluttering about on her tiptoes and looking at the handsome strange lady.

“ Bless me, Letitia, what little spirit is this ? Not your child ? What ! is there another one ? ” said the lady to her brother’s wife, staring at the older niece.

Christina was excessively pretty ; and Aunt Karlsen was very susceptible to beauty. She flattered herself by finding an image of her younger self in this blooming child’s face. Christina advanced with her little assured step, attracted partly by her aunt’s admiring look, partly by the large and gleaming pendants on that lady’s lace-ruffled neck ; and submitted her blonde curls to be stroked with perfect confidence.

“What a charming face and what a responsive temperament ! ” said Aunt Karlsen, delighted. “ Should you like a wax-doll, my dear, with joints ? or would you rather have a walking-doll and a trousseau from Colifichet’s ? ”

Betty got the mug ; but Christina got the doll and Aunt Karlsen’s heart, and many a subsequent gift of more appreciable value. And in the course of a few years the lady made her second visit, and found no great difficulty in getting possession of the favored niece for an indefinite period.

BETTY.

II

Betty missed her sister very little ; she thought of her occasionally with a comfortable sense of safety from teasing, which was altogether a novelty. Axel Brand, her playfellow from “ down the road,” was a much more sympathetic comrade.

And now at last, there was Axel gone : and desolation and emptiness had settled down upon the alleys and arbors of the sunny old garden. The small Ariadne, sitting forlorn in her tear-moistened pinafore, retired into the past with quite a mature fervor of sentiment. She went over the various scenes in which the brown eyes and monkey-jacket had figured.

Now it is a spring-wandering in the woodlands: they have discovered the prettiest little torrent, swishing down a hillside, lit up with broken sunlight through the birches. “ Sit down there, Betty, and keep the sun olf my face ! ” commands Axel the Great Caliph, stretching out regally on the moss. Betty obeys with meekness. She knows he will take occasion to tell her some wonderful bit out of the Arabian Nights ; and whether he does or not, what diversion could be more grateful than to sit and keep the sun off Axel’s face ?

Now it is a lovely white Christmas, snow-hushed and mysterious, fragrant indoors with mignonette and roses, and with the sweeter breath of fir and the waxy scent of candles. And in the evening they hear voices carolling softly in the starlit garden : and Axel pulls her to the window, and they look down and see a group of shadowy choristers standing out

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by the whitened hedges. Then the singers are brought in — a party from the village ; and there is so much talking and laughing, and clicking of glasses and dancing of wax-lights, that Betty’s head grows quite heavy, and without her knowledge the brilliant evening merges itself into next morning.

Again it is a birthday — her birthday ; and Axel comes whistling across lots to bring her a basket of his favorite white clethra. Actually Betty is precocious enough — remembering that basket of clethra — to wish that she had kept some of the fragrant spikes, and flattened them in a book, for souvenirs.

“Axel will come back next summer, after his school is over,” she reminds herself, trying to regard that as a bit of consolation. But she is not so old yet that ten months do not stretch out before her like a Great Desert of time, too immense for her small mind to span.

“ Betty, where are you ? ” says her mother’s voice, floating down from an upper window.

“ On the doorstep,” Betty answers, rising slowly and coming up into the sunlight.

“Why, Betty Karlsen, where did you find that little old frock ? and what induced you to put those black ribbons on your hair ? What notion has crept into your head now, you foolish child ? ”

For Betty, with a funny little feeling that sable was most appropriate to this melancholy day, had hunted up a black frock from some remote closet, and invested herself with it ; and had also fished out some knots of black ribbon from a chaotic bonnetbox, and tied the same on her flaxen braid and on the neck of her pinafore.

“ Is it any harm ? ” she says, irresolute, and looking up honestly with big, rounded, questioning eyes I put them on, you know, because he was going away. I did n’t think it would be any harm.”

Mrs. Karlsen took her head in with a silent laugh. She always humored the child’s fancies, and never showed it if they amused her.

Betty went off mutely by herself, and nestled over a book in the dim library. She had happened right upon a story which was one of Axel’s favorites, and which they both knew by heart. It was about a Prince who rode out into the world for adventures ; and who had such a hard time of it, between dragons and magicians, that he never came home again till his hair was gray. But his Princess, in order to preserve her youth till his return, shut herself up in her tower to sleep ; and would not be waked until the Prince himself climbed the tower-stair and dropped his shield at her feet. This story they called Princess Faithful.”

“ Axel has gone out into the world, too,” said Betty; and she read the old story through again, while more than one sprinkle of reminiscence fell on the black ribbons of the little pinafore.

Chapter II. Transplanted

T hree generations had been recorded since Jens Karlsen, a fair-haired and gray-eyed young man, travelled away from Jutland and sailed over seas to America. No courtiers nor long-titled gentlemen were among Betty’s ancestors ; the original Jens was a tough-sinewed farmer’s son, though an intelligent and well-informed one.

As the transplanted family of Karlsen grew and multiplied, it was steadily favored in its temporal affairs ; whether by luck, or as a result of Northern muscle and diligence, the descendants were not moved to inquire. By the time that the odd little name, bequeathed by father to son, had worked itself around to John^ it had become the property of a most American-looking gentleman, who retained no trace of his origin except his blonde beard, his patronymic, and a mild interest in the jagged little tongue of land which sheltered his forefathers.

This John Karlsen, at the age of twenty-seven, 'being in some sort a gentleman of leisure, with a good education, made extended tours in the Old World ; whence he finally brought back, as Mrs. Karlsen, a fair and refined young person of English parentage. Mrs. Karlsen had been in course of preparation for a less retired career — that of a professional vocalist, in fact. She had fine musical gifts, and might have won a famous place among artists. Put John Karlsen was extremely happy that she had not yet undertaken her public training when he made her acquaintance. He congratulated himself that her experience had been confined to musicales in somebody’s drawing-rooms under her master’s auspices. He respected the art, but was sensitive about publicity for the lady whom he was about to distinguish. He was as proud as though Jens Karlsen of that early generation had come of blood royal instead of solid Jutland farmer-stock.

So he hastened to carry off the young lady, as it were Iphigeneia from the sacrifice ; and brought her home to America, having impressed upon her that she was never to employ her talent but for his own pleasure and that of his friends. The injunction was needless ; directly on leaving England some unaccountable cold or other malady made short work of her beautiful voice, to her very bitter regret indeed. She sang no more, except that sometimes she tried the sweet remains of her voice for her own wistful pleasure, and for the entertainment of the little sovereigns Christina and' Betty,

People who knew the Karisens often wondered how it was that they were satisfied to keep on with their quiet life in Lyme, A few who knew them better understood perfectly how the sweet, romantic air of the pretty village, and especially their own i6

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retired home among the trees, suited the Somewhat poetic taste of the couple.

There was still another attraction for Mr. Karlsen at Lyme. He was a man of very warm attachment to the limited number whom he called his friends ; and one of that number had been for years resident on land adjoining the Karlsen property. Dr. Brand showed externally still less of the Scandinavian than his friend Karlsen ; notwithstanding that his relations with the Kattegat w'ere much closer than the latter gentleman’s. It was the discovery of their common origin that first drew the two together, when they met as young men, Harold Brand having just returned Math his degree from Copenhagen.

“ My father went there before me,” he explained to Karlsen ; “ it ’s only natural he should want me to finish off at his Alma Mater. One may as well go to Copenhagen as anywhere else. I learned to be very fond of it, too. When I M^ent over to Denmark I thought I was going out of the world, you know ; but it ’s a charming land, let me tell you ! I M^ould really have liked to settle there, but that the family is grafted in America, and it would be a bad thing to break one’s self off. I shall always regret Denmark. Is it possible you ’ve never been there, Karlsen ? ”

No, he had never been there, and never cared very much about going, though he felt some natural interest in the country.

Brand, American-born as he was, declared that nothing would ever destroy his awakened and innate passion for old Dania ; and so, indeed, he remained,

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ardent Dane to the last day of his life. Karlsen admired the dark-eyed young patriot, and wondered at him, unable to sympathize very deeply with his enthusiasm.

“ I could get enthusiastic about you^ Harold,” he sometimes said, smiling at his friend and approving his eloquence more readily than its theme. “ But an old Norse fellow like you has no business with those stunning black eyes. If you had my pale phiz, now, it would seem more the thing for you to be singing runes and telling legends and all that.”

“ Oh, there are plenty of dark phizzes in Denmark,” Brand said. “ I remember one section where you could all but fancy yourself in some Spanish village, just by looking at the ‘midnight eyes’ in the roads and windows.”

It was easy to like Dr. Brand. He had a fine engaging face, beautiful eyes, a broad, active figure, and the most perfect address in the world, people were apt to say.

“ If Providence had seen fit to make you a rascal,” Karlsen once remarked to him, contemplatively, “you might have been the most successful rascal that ever beguiled mankind ! ”

This compliment Brand received in all simplicity, with a laugh that certainly no rascal could have achieved.

He bought the house and land bordering on the Karlsen homestead ; and told his friend : “ If I ever marry, I ’ll come out here and run up the Danish flag, and establish my Penates under its folds.”

i8

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Karlsen was delighted with the promise. He was so far under the other^s influence as to decide on giving his first daughter a name from the land of her grandfathers ; and recalling the royal name of Christian as prominent in Dr. Brand’s historical sketches, it seemed to him that the derivative Christina would have rather a pretty and dignified effect. So, one Sunday morning the small nameless one was borne into the village church, and came out Christina Karlsen, blinking quietly on the nurse’s shoulder.

Christina’s papa reported complacently to Dr. Brand ; and was quite vexed when Brand told him in amused deprecation to read his Danish history, and see what an ineligible name he had pitched upon for the little maid.

“ Well, I can’t help it now,” said the crestfallen papa. “ I hope it won’t hurt her.”

By and by Dr. Brand married a pretty Philadelphian with brown-velvet eyes and a spirit of truly old-fashioned devotion to “her Harold.” They came, according to promise, and set up their Penates within a stone’s throw of the Karlsen limits. Dr. Brand took the first step toward household equipment by erecting a flag-pole on his roof and letting fly the “ Dannebrog ; ” which afterwards caused great perplexity to such villagers and wayfarers as beheld the flap of the mysterious scarlet ensign from the high-road.

The interior of his house bore equal witness to his patriotism. As one entered the hall a head of Bertel Thorvaldsen looked down in marble from a conspicuous niche. At right and left were stationed large casts from the master’s works, which little Betty’s soft gray eyes studied with wonder in after years, ranging through the house under Axel’s lead.

One half of the Doctor’s library was devoted to Scandinavian literature ; the shelves were topped by busts and medallions of compatriot authors; and over one alcove, where the children often loitered, the head of gentle Andersen rose in kindly abstraction. The Doctor, finding them there looking at it, would tell over anecdotes from the good man’s treasury, and sometimes repeat his pretty history of the boy Bertel ; afterwards calling them out into the hall and making them admire the great head of the genius grown a man. Thorvaldsen was one of the Doctor’s idols. Little Axel himself was always put to sleep under a copy of the beautiful “ Night,” ever flying with drowsy wings and poppy-wreathed forehead.

Now and then they brought Betty in to take dinner with them, which was a high privilege to her. She looked with silent gratification around the large dining-room, where everything seemed to be made of polished wood except the heavy-framed paintings ; at Dr. Brand’s dark-whiskered face, smiling jovially over the red and yellow decanters and little twinkling glasses ; at Axel, sitting up very gentlemanlike behind his own diminutive tankard with a carved lid. She tasted daintily of awe-inspiring dishes, and of a miraculous red jelly which Mrs. Brand called by some heathenish name, and praised as a favorite dish in the Doctor’s country. And when they left the table her eyes always wandered to the great dark buffet set out with strange-shaped glass and a singular figure of a knight on a charger, who was susceptible of being lifted off and resolving himself into a cup-lid.

“ See there ! How the race has dwindled ! ” the Doctor would say, stopping before it. “ Look at that hunting-cup — its original belonged to one of the greatest kings of Denmark, who used to fill and empty it in a breath ! Let a Dane of the present day try that feat ! ”

The “ hunting-cup ” was a huge and curious structure, all repousse-work, which he had seen among the treasures of a castle and managed to get tolerably copied for himself, at great expense. It was said to accommodate the amount of two bottlesful, which the thirsty sovereign, according to tradition, used to absorb at a gulp.

“ I don’t believe that, you know,” Axel remarked aside, without any irreverence. “ My father believes it, but I don’t. Not unless those old kings were regular giants ; and I think that ’s not very likely.”

Betty thought so, too ; but looking after the Doctor’s handsome head, which she admired much more than Thorvaldsen’s, as it receded into his library, she delicately refrained from admitting the doubt.

In the unlucky days when Dr. Brand had sent her playfellow into the city to school, those marble heads and figures were something of a solace to Betty.

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She never missed paying them her respects, on her visits to Mrs. Brand, before going up to the sitting-room above. The kind lady would be oftenest found in that smaller room next her own, where the little bas-relief of “ Night ” glimmered like a white moon on the wall. Her brown eyes always smiled up in welcome, though sometimes with lately-moistened lashes, at sight of the small inquiring face presented in her doorway. She was ever ready to give to the last particular the latest-received news of Axel : how he was staying with distant relatives in the city ; how kind they were to him, and how he had entirely gotten over being homesick (at which Betty secretly felt hurt) ; how much there was to see in town, and how “awfully jolly” it all was — which phrase his mamma marvelled at, and feared he had been brought into contact with some undesirable streeturchins. And — as an afterthought — the absent one mentioned that his standing at school was very good ; which indeed was confirmed by reports from his teachers to the pleased Doctor.

It was a joyful day when Mrs. Brand could announce his first vacation-time. Betty ran down the long gravel-walk to look, whenever a coach was heard rumbling, all that day and the next. Mrs. Brand, sewing and waiting by the little casement of Axel’s room, smiled as she caught glimpses of the yellow braid flying between the trees. The braid resolved itself into its strands on the twelfth trip, and blew into a cloud around Betty’s disappointed face.

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“ I suppose,” sighed the quaint maiden to herself, • that I must learn a lesson of patience ! ”

And she returned slowly and mounted on one of her stone lions, looking, as she sat up with the flaxen shower around her straight little figure, like a miniature Una in a revery.

“ How-do-you-do- Betty ?” a. queer small voice said presently at her side.

Betty looked up with a start. A gray parrot sat on the step, a ribbon fastened to its foot ; and at the other end of the ribbon was Axel, mounted on the twin lion and chuckling with mischief.

“ Oh, oh ! ” cried Betty, flying to the ground and seizing on him joyfully. “ Is it really you. Axel ? How could you get here without my knowing it ? Where did you get the sweet parrot.? Have you seen your mother.? How long have you been here ? ”

“ Don’t step on the parrot, child ! I came in the last train but one, and Griffin drove me over. That ’s why you did n’t see me in the coach ; but I saw you, from mother’s window. Have you been running out that way all day to watch for me ? ”

“ Yes, indeed,” said Betty, in high excitement,

“ and all day yesterday. Oh, dear me ! ” she sighed, hopping about like a wren, “ I am so glad you have come ! And the nice bird, does he belong to you ? How does he know my name .? ”

“ Oh, he ’s been trained. Somebody made me a present of him, and I thought I would bring him home to you. Mother does n’t like parrots. So I

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tied the ribbon on him, and taught him what to say ; and when I tweak the ribbon he says it.” Axel illustrated by tweaking the ribbon, and — ^^/low-do- . you-do-Betty ? ” murmured the bird again in thoughtful tones.

“ O, how good of you. Axel ! ” cried Betty, enchanted, clasping her hands. And then she fell to examining him to see what changes six months’ absence had produced. He did look a little larger, she thought, and stronger ; and he had his curly poll well-clipped, and wore a new jacket which made him look rather older. She sat on the lowest step, admiring him. The sweet garden-air blew up from the flower-beds, and fluttered her hair ; the pigeons cooed under the elm-trees ; there was something wonderful in it. She felt strangely like part of a fairy story ; the Prince had come home.

“Your mother read me all your letters, but I want to hear more. Tell me what you did out of school ? What was there to amuse you ? ”

Then Axel related many histories of his doings, which Betty devoured breathlessly, and thought that he was getting quite tremendously experienced in the world. He had attended a great many concerts, and could mention a number of performers by name, with easy familiarity ; he had witnessed all the parades and races of any account, and been to the theatre occasionally with the people who had charge of him ; and he went to his dancing-class every week. He had also much to say about a certain Flora Tompkins, whose dancing was a thing to be

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remQ,mbered. Flora Tompkins, it appeared, had black eyes and long black ringlets, and many dimples — a description most harrowing to Betty, whose hair suggested corn-silk, and whose small cheek made thepurest of undimpled curves.

“ What a nice name Flora is, is n’t it ? ” said he. “ It was the name of a goddess, too, don’t you know ? ”

“ What ’s a goddess ? ” inquired Betty, rather nettled and very curious.

“ Oh, a goddess was a — a Greek person, with wings shaped something like battledores, you know, who lived in the woods and had altars. They generally turned into trees and bushes, I believe,” explained Axel, whose study of the myths was largely pictorial.