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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16329-8.txt b/16329-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eace9a5 --- /dev/null +++ b/16329-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,15731 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Other Girls + +Author: Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +Release Date: July 19, 2005 [EBook #16329] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OTHER GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +THE OTHER GIRLS + +By + +MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY + + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY +The Riverside Press, Cambridge +1893 + + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by +JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, +in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. + + + * * * * * + + By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. + + WRITINGS. New Edition, from new plates. The set, 17 + vols. 16mo, $21.25. + FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 16mo, $1.25. + HITHERTO: A Story of Yesterdays. 16mo, $1.25. + PATIENCE STRONG'S OUTINGS. 16mo, $1.25. + THE GAYWORTHYS. 16mo, $1.25. + A SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE'S LIFE. 16mo, $1.25. + WE GIRLS: A Home Story. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + REAL FOLKS. 16mo, $1.25. + THE OTHER GIRLS. 16mo, $1.25. + SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50. + ODD, OR EVEN? 16mo, $1.25. + BONNYBOROUGH. 16mo, $1.25. + BOYS AT CHEQUASSET. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN FOLKS. Enlarged + Edition. Illustrated by HOPPIN. 16mo, $1.25. + HOMESPUN YARNS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25. + ASCUTNEY STREET. A Neighborhood Story. 16mo, $1.25. + A GOLDEN GOSSIP. Neighborhood Story Number Two. 16mo, $1.25. + DAFFODILS. Poems. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + PANSIES. Poems. New Edition. 16mo, $1.25. + HOLY-TIDES. Seven Songs for the Church's Seasons. + 16mo, illuminated paper, 75 cents. + BIRD-TALK. New Poems. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, $1.00. + JUST HOW: A Key to the Cook-Books. 16mo, $1.00. + + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. + BOSTON AND NEW YORK. + + * * * * * + + +PREFACE. + + +"Wait until you are helped, my dear! Don't touch the pie until it is +cut!" + +The old Mother, Life, keeps saying that to us all. + +As individuals, it is well for us to remember it; that we may not +have things until we are helped; at any rate, until the full and +proper time comes, for courageously and with right assurance helping +ourselves. + +Yet it is good for _people_, as people, to get a morsel--a +flavor--in advance. It is well that they should be impatient for the +King's supper, to which we shall all sit down, if we will, one day. + +So I have not waited for everything to happen and become a usage, +that I have told you of in this little story. I confess that there +are good things in it which have not yet, literally, come to pass. I +have picked something out of the pie beforehand. + +I meant, therefore, to have laid all dates aside; especially as I +found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these +"Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately, +known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or +experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem +to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs +could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be +remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential +Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all +have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have +not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the +prophecies be justified as speedily as the prochronisms will. + +The Great Fire, you see, came in and dated it. I could not help +that; neither could I leave the great fact out. + +Not any more could I possibly tell what sort of April days we should +have, when I found myself fixed to the very coming April and Easter, +for the closing chapters of my tale. If persistent snow-storms fling +a falsehood in my face, it will be what I have not heretofore +believed possible,--a _white_ one; and we can all think of balmy +Aprils that have been, and that are yet to be. + +With these appeals for trifling allowance,--leaving the larger need +to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no +slight fiction can adequately handle,--I give you leave to turn the +page. + + A. D. T. W. +BOSTON, _March_, 1873. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + CHAPTER + I. SPILLED OUT + II. UP-STAIRS + III. TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN + IV. NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT + V. SPILLED OUT AGAIN + VI. A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR + VII. BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW + VIII. TO HELP: SOMEWHERE + IX. INHERITANCE + X. FILLMER AND BYLLES + XI. CHRISTOFERO + XII. LETTERS AND LINKS + XIII. RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE + XIV. MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL + XV. BONNY BOWLS + XVI. RECOMPENSE + XVII. ERRANDS OF HOPE + XVIII. BRICKFIELD FARMS + XIX. BLOSSOMING FERNS + XX. "WANTED" + XXI. VOICES AND VISIONS + XXII. BOX FIFTY-TWO + XXIII. EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY + XXIV. TEMPTATION + XXV. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING + XXVI. TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS' + XXVII. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM + XXVIII. "LIVING IN" + XXIX. WINTERGREEN + XXX. NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY + XXXI. CHOSEN: AND CALLED + XXXII. EASTER LILIES + XXXIII. KITCHEN CRAMBO + XXXIV. WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP + XXXV. HILL-HOPE + + + + + +THE OTHER GIRLS + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +SPILLED OUT. + + +Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little +basket-phæton. + +There was a story about this little basket-phæton, a story, and a +bit of domestic diplomacy. + +The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right +here in this first page, let it do. It would tell--taking the little +carriage for a text and key--ever so much about aims and ways and +principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the +busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great +universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things, +as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and +atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet. + +But the diplomacy had been this:-- + +"There is one thing, Argie, I should really like Sylvie to have. It +is getting to be almost a necessity, living out of town as we do." + +Mr. Argenter's other names were "Increase Muchmore;" but his wife +passed over all that, and called him in the grace of conjugal +intimacy, "Argie." + +Increase Muchmore Argenter. + +A curious combination; but you need not say it could not have +happened. I have read half a dozen as funny combinations in a single +advertising page of a newspaper, or in a single transit of the city +in a horse-car. + +It did not happen altogether without a purpose, either. Mr. +Argenter's father had been fond of money; had made and saved a +considerable sum himself; and always meant that his son should make +and save a good deal more. So he signified this in his cradle and +gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the +elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been +named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain +Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or +because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like +original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the +later christening, if you can call it such; and now, therefore, +resulted Increase Muchmore Argenter. The father hung, as it were, a +charm around his son's neck, as Catholics do, giving saints' names +to their children. But young Increase found it, in his earlier +years, rather of the nature of a millstone. It was a good while, for +instance, before Miss Maria Thorndike could make up her mind to take +upon herself such a title. She did not much mind it now. "I.M. +Argenter" was such a good signature at the bottom of a check; and +the surname was quite musical and elegant. "Mrs. Argenter" was all +she had put upon her cards. There was no other Mrs. Argenter to be +confounded with. The name stood by itself in the Directory. All the +rest of the Argenters were away down in Maine in Poggowantimoc. + +"Living out of town as we do." Mrs. Argenter always put that in. It +was the nut that fastened all her screws of argument. + +"Away out here as we are, we _must_ keep an expert cook, you know; +we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an +emergency, as we did in town." "We _must_ have a seamstress in the +house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile +circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,--"Sylvie _ought_ to have a +little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends; +no running in and out and making little daily plans, as girls do in +a neighborhood. All the girls of her class have their own +pony-chaises now; it is a part of the plan of living." + +"It isn't any part of _my_ plan," said Mr. Argenter, who had his +little spasms of returning to old-fashioned ideas he was brought up +in, but had long ago practically deserted; and these spasms mostly +took him, it must be said, in response to new propositions of Mrs. +Argenter's. His own plans evolved gradually; he came to them by +imperceptible steps of mental process, or outward constraint; Mrs. +Argenter's "jumped" at him, took him at unawares, and by sudden +impinging upon solid shield of permanent judgment struck out sparks +of opposition. She could not very well help that. He never had time +to share her little experiences, and interests, and perplexities, +and so sympathize with her as she went along, and up to the agreeing +and consenting point. + +"I won't set her up with any such absurdities," said Mr. Argenter. +"It's confounded ruinous shoddy nonsense. Makes little fools of them +all. Sylvie's got airs enough now. It won't do for her to think she +can have everything the Highfords do." + +"It isn't that," said Mrs. Argenter, sweetly. Her position, and the +soft "g" in her name, giving her a sense of something elegant and +gentle-bred to be always sustained and acted up to, had really +helped and strengthened Mrs. Argenter in very much of her +established amiability. We don't know, always, where our ties and +braces really are. We are graciously allowed many a little temporary +stay whose hold cannot be quite directly raced to the everlasting +foundations. + +"It isn't _that_; I don't care for the Highfords, particularly. +Though I do like to have Sylvie enjoy things as she sees them +enjoyed all around her, in her own circle. But it's the convenience; +and then, it's a real means of showing kindness. She can so often +ask other girls, you know, to drive with her; girls who haven't +pony-chaises." + +"_Showing_ kindness, yes; you've just hit it there. But it isn't +always _fun to the frogs_, Mrs. A.!" + +Now if Mrs. Argenter disliked one thing more than another, that her +husband ever did, it was his calling her "Mrs. A.;" and I am very +much afraid, I was going to say, that he knew it; but of course he +did when she had mildly told him so, over and over,--I am afraid he +_recollected_ it, at this very moment, and others similar. + +"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Argenter," she said, with some +quiet coldness. + +"I mean, I know how she takes _other_ girls to ride; she _sets them +down at the small gray house,--the house without any piazza or bay +window, Michael_!" and Mr. Argenter laughed. That was the order he +had heard Sylvie give one day when he had come up with his own +carriage at the post-office in the village, whither he had walked +over for exercise and the evening papers. Sylvie had Aggie Townsend +with her, and she put her head out at the window on one side just as +her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very +elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid. +Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed +off, but he had kept up the joke. + +"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie +will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady, +there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having +things." + +"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr. +Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a +kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top +buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases." + +And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended--or had better end--the +conversation. + +For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise, +after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer +weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend +days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent +continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began +again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of +it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages. +Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just +when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr. +Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now +being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little +low phæton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's +mother was always lending it to her. + +So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over +to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by +Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves +of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken, +politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some +small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever +the former had the basket-phæton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken +demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little +comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about +so easily with a pony-carriage. + +But there was something else to be accomplished this time that +Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with +some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the +Ingraham brown bread. + +Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his +tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red +Squirrel, to make out the team; for which, if he should come to any +grief, Rodgers, the coachman, would have to bear responsibility for +being persuaded to let Duke out in such manner. + +Just as Sylvie Argenter drew up her pony at the baker's door, Rod +Sherrett came spinning round the corner in grand style. But Duke was +not used to tandem harness, and Red Squirrel, put ahead, took flying +side-leaps now and then on his own account; and Duke, between his +comrade's escapades and his driver's checks and admonitions, was to +that degree perplexed in his mind and excited off his well-bred +balance, that he was by this time becoming scarcely more reliable in +the shafts. Rod found he had his hands full. He found this out, +however, only just in time to realize it, as they were suddenly +relieved and emptied of their charge; for, before his call and the +touch of his long whip could bring back Red Squirrel into line at +this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the +"trap" down upon the little phæton. There was a lock and a crash; a +wheel was off the phæton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie +Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the +threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road, +a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering +away through the scared Corner Village, with the wreck at their +heels. + +Sylvie's arm was bruised, and her dress torn; that was all. She felt +a little jarred and dizzy at first, when Mr. Ingraham lifted her up, +and Rodney Sherrett, picking himself out of the dust with a shake +and a stamp, found his own bones unbroken, and hurried over to ask +anxiously--for he was a kind-hearted fellow--how much harm he had +done, and to express his vehement regret at the "horrid spill." + +Rod Sherrett and Sylvie Argenter had danced together at the Roxeter +Assemblies, and the little Dorbury "Germans;" they had boated, and +picknicked, and skated in company, but to be tumbled together into a +baker's shop, torn and frightened, and dusty,--each feeling, also, +in a great scrape,--this was an odd and startling partnership. +Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to +dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never +intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his +hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and +looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply, +they both laughed. Then Rodney shrugged his shoulders, and walked +over and picked up his hat. + +"It might have been worse," he said, coming back, as Mr. Ingraham +and the man who had held Sylvie's pony took the latter out of the +shafts and led him to a post to fasten him, and then proceeded +together, as well as they could, to lift the disabled phæton and +roll it over to the blacksmith's shop to be set right. + +"You'll be all straight directly," he said, "and I'm only thankful +you're not much hurt. But I _am_ in a mess. Whew! What the old +gentleman will say if Duke don't come out of it comfortable, is +something I'd rather not look ahead to. I must go on and see. I'll +be back again, and if there's anything--anything _more_," he added +with a droll twinkle, "that I can do for you, I shall be happy, and +will try to do it a little better." + +The feminine Ingrahams were all around Sylvie by this time: Mrs. +Ingraham, and Ray, and Dot. They bemoaned and exclaimed, and were +"thankful she'd come off as she had;" and "she'd better step right +in and come up-stairs." The village boys were crowding round,--all +those who had not been in time to run after the "smash,"--and Sylvie +gladly withdrew to the offered shelter. Rod Sherrett gave his hair a +toss or two with his hands, struck the dust off his wide-awake, put +it on, and walked off down the hill, through the staring and +admiring crowd. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +UP-STAIRS. + + +The two Ingraham girls had been sitting in their own room over the +shop when the accident occurred, and it was there they now took +Sylvie Argenter, to have her dress tacked together again, and to +wash her face and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham +came bustling after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were +all very delighted and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's +daughter quite to themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait +upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good +deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although +baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, +born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and +universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of +society out of the Roxeter town library. + +There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and +re-arranging were all done. The axle of the phæton had been split, +and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for +Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned, +dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window, +and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much. + +She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere +before. She didn't know--as we don't about the moon--whether there +might _be_ atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here +she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a +bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually _did_ live, much +after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a +worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the +windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint +rocker in the other,--with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of +dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,--white quilted +covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted +foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end +of the bed. + +She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner +but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,--only she never +really supposed about it,--some sort of places, behind and above it, +under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they +weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never +exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses +that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off +down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both +hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup +of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,--the latter _not_ out +of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor +cupboard,--she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and +plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn, +bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips +without distaste or harm. + +"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham. + +The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a +silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie +thought she must mean _before_ her start, about which she was +growing anxious. + +"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed. +"I wonder if the phæton will be ready soon?" + +"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll +be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite +concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess +you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them +fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames." + +Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread +edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned +together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea. + +The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the +front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around +with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the +street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green, +swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or +forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less +impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a +wheel, or get a horse shod. + +"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out +involuntarily. + +Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes. + +"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got +turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never +seemed the same again." + +If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been +reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the +house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a +good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk +vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as +delicately as she did. + +Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's +was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming, +pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most +elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed, +quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell +off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth, +neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot +was different: she was dark too, not _so_ dark; her eyes were full, +brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and +comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was +large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of, +like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her +mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to +perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate +about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness, and +every-day-ness too. + +Sylvie sat silent after this, and looked at her, wondering, more +than she had wondered about the furniture. Thinking, "how many girls +there were in the world! All sorts--everywhere! What did they all +do, and find to care for?" These were not the "other" girls of whom +her mother had blandly said that she could show kindnesses by taking +them to drive. Those were such as Aggie Townsend, the navy captain's +widow's daughter,--nice, but poor; girls whom everybody noticed, of +course, but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That +made such a difference! These were _otherer_ yet! And for all that +they were girls,--girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and +companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story, +is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls! +Heaven only knows what there is _not_ represented, and suggested, +and foreshadowed there! + +Sylvie Argenter, with all her nonsense, had a way of putting +herself, imaginatively, into other people's places. She used to tell +her mother, when she was a little child and said her hymns,--which +Mrs. Argenter, not having any very fresh, instant spiritual life, I +am afraid, out of which to feed her child, chose for her in dim +remembrance of what had been thought good for herself when she was +little,--that she "didn't know exactly as she _did_ 'thank the +goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled.'" She "should +like pretty well to have been a little--Lapland girl with a sledge; +or--a Chinese; or--a kitchen girl; a little while, I mean!" + +She had a way of intimacy with the servants which Mrs. Argenter +found it hard to check. She liked to get into Jane's room when she +was "doing herself up" of an afternoon, and look over her cheap +little treasures in her band-box and chest-drawer. She made especial +love to a carnelian heart, and a twisted gold ring with two clasped +hands on it. + +"I think it's real nice to have only _two_ or _three_ things, and to +'clean yourself up,' and to have a 'Sunday out!'" she said. + +Mrs. Argenter was anxiously alarmed at the child's low tastes. Yet +these were very practicably compatible with the alternations of +importance in being driven about in her father's barouche, taking +Aggie Townsend up on the road, and "setting her down at the small +gray house." + +Sylvie thought, this afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her +striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and +cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady +window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick +wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many +new-drawn loaves,--looking around within, at the snug tidiness of +the simple room, and even out at the street close by, with its stir +and curious interest, yet seen from just as real a shelter as she +had in her own chamber at home,--that it might really be nice to be +a baker's daughter and live in the village,--"when it wasn't your +own fault, and you couldn't help it." + +Ray nodded to some one out of her window. + +Sylvie saw a bright color come up in her cheeks, and a sparkle into +her eyes as she did so, while a little smile, that she seemed to +think was all to herself, crept about her mouth and lingered at the +dimpled corners. There was an expression as if she hid herself quite +away in some consciousness of her own, from any recollection of the +strange girl sitting by. + +The strange girl glanced from _her_ window, and saw a young +carpenter with his box of tools go past under the elm, with some +sort of light subsiding also in like manner from his face. He was in +his shirt sleeves,--but the sleeves were white,--and his straw hat +was pushed back from his forehead, about which brown curls lay damp +with heat. Sylvie did not believe he had even touched his hat, when +he had looked up through the friendly elm boughs and bowed to the +village girl in her shady corner. His hands were full, of course. +Such people's hands were almost always full. That was the reason +they did not learn such things. But how cute it had been of Ray +Ingraham _not_ to sit in the front window! He was certain to come +by, too, she supposed. To be sure; that was the street. Ray Ingraham +would not have cared to live up a long avenue, to wait for people to +come on purpose, in carriages. + +She got as far as this in her thinkings, at the same moment that she +came to the bottom of her cup of tea. And then she caught a glimpse +of Rylocks, rolling the phæton across from the smithy. + +"What a funny time I have had! And how kind you have all been!" she +said, getting up. "I am ever so much obliged, Miss Ingraham. I +wonder"--and then, suddenly, she thought it might not be quite civil +to wonder. + +Ray Ingraham laughed. + +"So do I!" she said quickly, with a bright look. She knew well +enough what Sylvie stopped at. + +Each of these two girls wondered if there would ever be any more +"getting in behind" for them, as regarded each other, in their two +different lives. + +As Sylvie Argenter came out at the shop-door, Rodney Sherrett +appeared at the same point, safely mounted on the runaway Duke. The +team had been stopped below at the river; he had found a stable and +a saddle, had left Red Squirrel and the broken vehicle to be sent +for, and was going home, much relieved and assured by being able to +present himself upon his father's favorite roadster, whole in bones +and with ungrazed skin. + +The street boys stood round again, as he dismounted to make fresh +certainty of Sylvie's welfare, handed her into her phæton, and then, +springing to the saddle, rode away beside her, down the East Dorbury +road. + +Mrs. Argenter was sitting with her worsted work in the high, +many-columned terrace piazza which gave grandeur to the great +show-house that Mr. Argenter had built some five years since, when +Sylvie, with Rod Sherrett beside her, came driving up the long +avenue, or, as Mrs. Argenter liked to call it, out of the English +novels, the _approach_. She laid back her canvas and wools into the +graceful Fayal basket-stand, and came down the first flight of stone +steps to meet them. + +"How late you are, Sylvie! I had begun to be quite worried," she +said, when Sylvie dropped the reins around the dasher and stood up +in the low carriage, nodding at her mother. She felt quite brave and +confident about the accident, now that Rodney Sherrett had come all +the way with her to the very door, to account for it and to help her +out with the story. + +Rodney lifted his hat to the lady. + +"We've had a great spill, Mrs. Argenter. All my fault, and Red +Squirrel's. Miss Argenter has brought home more than I have from the +_mêlée_. I started with a tandem, and here I am with only Gray Duke +and a borrowed saddle. It was out at Ingraham's Corner,--a quick +turn, you know,--and Miss Argenter had just stopped when Squirrel +sprang round upon her. My trap is pretty much into kindlings, but +there are no bones broken. You must let me send Rodgers round on his +way to town to-morrow, to take the phæton to the builder's. It wants +a new axle. I'm awful sorry; but after all"--with a bright +smile,--"I can't think it altogether an ill wind,--for _me_, at any +rate. I couldn't help enjoying the ride home." + +"I don't believe you could help enjoying the whole of it, except +the very minute of the tip-out itself, before you knew," said +Sylvie, laughing. + +"Well, it _was_ a lark; but the worst is coming. I've got to go home +all alone. I wish you'd come and tell the tale for _me_, Miss +Sylvie. I shouldn't be half so afraid!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN. + + +The seven o'clock morning train was starting from Dorbury Upper +Village. + +Early business men, mechanics, clerks, shop-girls, sewing-girls, +office-boys,--these made up the list of passengers. Except, perhaps, +some travellers now and then, bound for a first express from Boston, +or an excursion party to take a harbor steamer for a day's trip to +Nantasket or Nahant. + +Did you ever contrast one of these trains--when perhaps you were +such traveller or excursionist--with the after, leisurely, +comfortable one at ten or eleven; when gentlemen who only need to be +in the city through banking hours, and ladies bent on calls or +elegant shopping, come chatting and rustling to their seats, and +hold a little drawing-room exchange in the twenty-five minutes' +trip? + +If you have,--and if you have a little sympathetic imagination that +fills out hints,--you have had a glimpse of some of these "other +girls" and the thing that daily living is to them, with which my +story means to concern itself. + +Have you noticed the hats, with the rose or the feather behind or at +top, scrupulously according to the same dictate of style that rules +alike for seven and ten o'clock, but which has often to be worn +through wet and dry till the rose has been washed by too many a +shower, and the feather blown by too many a dusty wind, to stand for +anything but a sign that she knows what should be where, if she +only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two +shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each +other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but +which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed +straightness, while silks were hitched and crisp Hernanis puffed? + +Yet the alpacas, and all their innumerable cousinhood, have also +their first mornings of fresh gloss, when the newness of the counter +is still upon them; there is a youth for all things; a first time, a +charm that seems as if it might last, though we know it neither will +nor was meant to; if it would, or were, the counters might be taken +down. And people who wear gowns that are creased and faded, have +each, one at a time, their days of glory, when they begin again. The +farther apart they come, perhaps the more of the spring-time there +is in them. + +Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a +span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills +edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due +contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the +stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in +her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old +curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left, +and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with +brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace +behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as +she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody +really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical +black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the +dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp +woolen smells and blue nips and shivers. + +Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all +belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she +seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine, +with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly +fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these +things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!) +put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and +flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came +airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen" +train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent, +flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes +upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful, +sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty +that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly +through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out +whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and +bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect? + +The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as +she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to +girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not +purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys, +crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their +shuffle and noise for a second, and one said, "My! ain't she +stunning?" A young fellow, rather spruce in his own way also, with +precise necktie, deep paper cuffs and dollar-store studs and initial +sleeve-buttons, touched his hat with an air of taking credit to +himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a sober old gray +suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen collar, +turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with something +like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at a +wood-pile. + +Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to +flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she +seated herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind +him. + +"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left." + +"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone +that reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the +galleries." "Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do +for a month or so, and like it pretty well; then I shall have a +tiff, I suppose, and fling it up again; I can't stand being ordered +round longer than that." + +"Or longer than the _new_ lasts," said the other slyly, touching the +drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It _is_ awful pretty, Marry!" + +"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned +Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you. +When things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how +they're going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging +round amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and +who's going to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six +dollars a week and cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that +some of 'em have to take off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes! +No wonder Lufton's always changing. Well--there's one good of it! +You can always get a temporary there. Save up a month and then put +into port and refit. That's the way I do." + +"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if +you hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl +on, who never wore suits. + +Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders. + +"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't +pretend to calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though, +there is other things to be done,--and it isn't sewing-machines +either, if you can once get started. And when I can see my way +clear, I mean to start. See if I don't!" + +The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray +clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went +out. What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same +youth who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As +the train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at +her window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,--very modestly +and sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform, +until the track should be clear and he could cross. + +What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him, +nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly, +when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her +salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that +seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few minutes +before. + +Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into +which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young +Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost +beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole +car-full with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in +rapport, through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had +allowed her consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could +only see a face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face +that showed itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said, +"What was that you thought of me just now? _Don't_ think it!" + +They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up +together; had they been growing away from each other in some things +since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion +chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken +and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come +suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her, +hidden, not altered, which _might_ come back one of these days. Was +it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of +us, always? + +Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham? + +Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank +Sunderline thought was prettiest and nicest for a woman to be. He +was always reminded by her ways of what it would be so pretty and +nice for Marion Kent to be. But Marion _would_ sparkle; and it is so +hard to be still and sparkle too. He liked the brightness and the +airiness; a little of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full, +or room-full, or street full,--he did not like to see a woman +sparkle all round. + +Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen +years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years +afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston +with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that +she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and +stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard +literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not +bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear +old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin +again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides, +"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is +not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the +mother's girl,--the girl of the village, as was said; practical, +comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all +these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to +receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that +neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot. + +It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most +of her young acquaintance felt the _step up_ that they must take to +stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline +felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see +in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his +trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other +people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent +of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to +perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a +lady. + +That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down +in his self-estimate at its full value. + +Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline +was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it +is not a matter of course that he should be? + +I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word, +and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that +you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life +so,--your own, or anybody's else. + +I can tell you that men--those who are good for very much--come +often more slowly to their life-conclusions than you think; that +woman-_nature_ is a good deal to a man, and is meant to be, in +gradual bearing and influence, in the shaping of his perception, the +working of comparison, the coming to an understanding of his own +want, and the forming of his ideal,--yes, even in the mere general +pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse--before the _individual_ +woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central +need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds +and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to +have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the +Lord, in his handling of every man, is about. + +That night they all came out together in the last train. Ray +Ingraham had gone in after dinner to make some purchases for her +mother, and had been to see some Chapel friends. Marion, as she came +in through the gate at the station, saw her far before, walking up +the long platform to the cars. She watched her enter the second in +the line, and hastened on, making up her mind instantly, like a +field general, to her own best manoeuvre. It was not exactly what +every girl would have done; and therein showed her generalship. She +would get into the same carriage, and take a seat with her. She knew +very well that Frank Sunderline would jump on at Pomantic, his day's +work just done. If he came and spoke to Ray he should speak also to +her. She did not risk trying _which_ he would come and speak to. It +should be, that joining them, and finding it pleasant, he should +not quite know which, after all, had most made it so. Different as +they were, she and Ray Ingraham toned and flavored each other, and +Marion knew it. They were like rose-color and gray; or like spice +and salt: you did not stop to think which ruled the taste, or which +your eye separately rested on. Something charming, delicious, +resulted of their being together; they set each other off, and +helped each other out. Then it was something that Frank Sunderline +should see that Ray would let her be her friend; that she was not +altogether too loud and pronounced for her. Ray did not turn aside +and look at wood-piles, and get rid of her. + +Furthermore, the way home from the Dorbury depot, for Frank and +Marion both, lay _past_ the bakery, on down the under-hill road. + +Marion did not _think out_ a syllable of all this; she grasped the +situation, and she acted in an instant. I told you she acted like a +general in the field: perhaps neither she nor the general would be +as skillful, always, with the maps and compasses, and time to plan +beforehand. I do not think Marion _was_ ever very wise in her +fore-thoughts. + +Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many +passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to +themselves. Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the +other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting +them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had +been busily going on between them all the way. Ray was really +interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face +was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when +she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was +beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest, +if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also +by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within +observing and listening distance. Marion could not help talking over +her shoulders, more or less, always. + +"Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and +come in for the finishing off," said Rachel, just as Frank +Sunderline changed his place and joined them. "_We_ could not handle +those, for instance," she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the +carpenter's tools, and lowering her already gentle voice. + +"Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women +ride home on the loads,--is that it?" said Marion, laughing, and +snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the +train was at that moment skimming by. "Well, may be! All is, I shall +look out for my ride. After things _are_ broken in, I don't see why +we shouldn't get the good of it." + +"Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn't it?" said +Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily +into the conversation. + +"No fair!" cried Marion. "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do +you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a +woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same +goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's +what I'm complaining of." + +"That's the complaint of the day, I know," said Sunderline. "And no +doubt there's a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting, +and will get it. But things don't come to be as they are quite +without a reason, either. There's a principle in it, you've got to +look back to that." + +"Well?" said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself +with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor. She +was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk. + +"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values +that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in +the world." + +"O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm +glad to know." + +"He _could_ be doing some things that a woman could not do at +all--was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may +apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to +their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid +for--somewhere." + +"That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like +to be paid for what I _might_ be good for!" + +Frank Sunderline laughed. + +"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in +the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one +will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other; +but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the +purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for; +which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women +wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the +world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule, +to take men for it." + +"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for +instance?" asked Ray. + +"Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should +really like to know _where_ you are?" + +"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, +smiling. + +"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is +getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for +intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental +power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who +writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good +statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is +paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the +root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the +seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the +nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make +way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come +afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be +counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these +women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital +draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily +_oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I +think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege." + +"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, +they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion. + +"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a +world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because +there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that +they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances +are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the +question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the +fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back, +here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the +primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the +woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is +that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock +round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think +Providence has been very much interfered with." + +"There are widows," said Rachel, gently. + +"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to +care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent +in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the +wrong." + +"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said +Marion, squarely. + +"I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; +and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender. + +He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and +they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on +without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her +odd fashion,-- + +"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and +comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and +fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge." + +"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think +very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she +added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed +to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread." + +A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, +from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends +of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm. + +As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put +the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The +doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and +weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps, +without speaking. + +"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her +as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and +knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!" + +But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward +the side door, through the yard, under the elm. + +A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an +emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid, +dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's +shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe +my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a +brick loaf." + +Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The +conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had +interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn +aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something +that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It +is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but +it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be +allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed. +Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven +off, and forced into different combinations. + +Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain +half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would +have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just +at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from +where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to +disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And +yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her +sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the +sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward. +They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so? + +"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently. + +Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully, +twice. + +"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I +should have asked her what I did, just that minute?" + +"What? O, yes!" + +It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked +on silently again. But Marion could not give it up. + +"I don't doubt she _would_ be a baker; carry on the whole +concern,--if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts, +now." + +"Does she?" + +"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's +what I say isn't fair." + +"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world. +There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,--even +going on with it, as you say,--when it is set for her by special +circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat +her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is +getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the +times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't +generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that +they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in +the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,--and she ought to if she +can _right_,"-- + +"And what if she _has_ to, if she can, wrong?" + +"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She +takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether +it's work, or--somebody to work for her." + +They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate. + +"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody +to help me judge." + +Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for +a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant +and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless, +indeed, he be quite ready to seek and assume the permanent +privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It +may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much. + +"Your mother"--began Sunderline. + +"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living +as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never +goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude +as I think best." + +Sunderline was silent. + +"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do +something that I like, something that I think I _could_ do. I can't +stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the +places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace +curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other +folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much +longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for +reading and reciting. The Leverings,--you remember Virginia +Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with +her,--Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very +well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me, +and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me +some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to +go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?" + +Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she +asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he +might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal +what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had +known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good, +honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and +half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a +womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers, +what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could +once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It +had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with +real ingenuous solicitude, his answer. + +He gave it gravely and conscientiously. + +"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly +believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade." + +"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a +night, even when they have to hire a hall." + +"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to +last?" + +"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was +a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so +far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at +the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be +somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth." + +"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For +none of these days last long, especially with women." + +"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs. +Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!" + +"It won't do to quote them, I'm afraid. I suppose you'd hardly +expect to come up into that row?" said Sunderline, smiling. + +"They began, some time," returned Marion. + +"Yes; but for one thing, it wasn't a time when everybody else was +beginning. Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?" + +"I wish you would." + +They had walked slowly for the last three or four minutes, till they +had come to the beginning of the paling in which, a little further +on, was the white gate. They paused here; Frank Sunderline rested +his box of tools on the low wall that ran up and joined the fence, +and Marion turned and stood with her face toward him in the western +light, and her little pink-lined linen sunshade up between her and +the low sun,--between her and the roadway also, down which might +come any curious passers-by. + +"It seems to me," said Frank Sunderline, "that women are getting on +to the platforms nowadays, not so much for any real errand they have +there, as just for the sake of saying, I'm here! I think it is very +much the 'to be seen of men' motive,--the poorest part of women's +characters,--that plays itself out in this way, as it always has +done in dancing and dressing and acting, and what not. It isn't that +a woman might not be on a platform, if she were called there, as +well as anywhere else. There never was a woman came out before the +world in any grand, true way, that she wasn't all the more honored +and attended to because she _was_ a woman. There are some things too +good to be made common; things that ought to be saved up for a +special time, so that they may _be_ special. If it falls to a woman +to be a Queen, and to open and dismiss her Parliament, nobody in all +the kingdom but thinks the words come nobler and sweeter for a +woman's saying them. But that's because she is _put_ there, not +because she climbs up some other way. If a woman honestly has +something that she must say--some great word from the Lord, or for +her country, or for suffering people,--then let her say it; and +every real woman's husband, and every real mother's son, will hear +her with his very heart. Or if even she has some sure wonderful +gift,--if she can sing, or read, or recite; if she can stir people +up to good and beautiful things as _one in a thousand_, that's her +errand; let her do it, and let the thousand come to hear. But she +ought to be certain sure, or else she's leaving her real errand +behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in +without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming +to. A _sham trade_, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the +shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it. +I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We +shan't get them back again, this generation. The _homes_ are going. +Young men of these days have got to lose their wives--that they +ought to have--and their homes that they looked forward to, such as +their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes +and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the +abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end +to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of +your class--_our_ class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of +their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they +undertake to do. As I said,--how long will it last? How long will +the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you? +Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what +have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?" + +Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken +faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that +he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion +Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that +Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was +dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his +notion of real womanhood. + +But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said, +"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he +lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went +abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then? +Why didn't he give her the choice? + +But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a +girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting +ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he +had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What +should the wife have been doing in the mean time--before she was +sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for +herself? + +She said so. + +"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline." + +She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well +that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They +had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have +known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian +name, and not take up anything else if they can help it. The time +when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use +nothing but pronouns in addressing each other. A girl, however, says +"Mr." a little more easily than a man says "Miss." The girl has +always been "Miss" to the world in general; the boy grows up to his +manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to +him. There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately +marks an attitude--not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and +bewitching consciousness--in a girl friend grown into a woman, and +recognizing the man. + +"I don't see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline," said Marion. "Why shouldn't +a girl do the best she can? Will she be any the worse for it +afterwards? Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the +husbands?" + +"Real work wouldn't spoil; only the sham and the show. Don't do it, +Marion. I wouldn't want my sister to, if I had one--there!" + +He had not meant so directly to answer her question. He came to this +end involuntarily. + +Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of +the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself. +Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it. She felt angrily +ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a +girl seeking notoriety, for mere show's sake; desiring to do a sham +work; to make a pretension without a claim. How did he know what her +claim might be? She had a mind to find out, and let him see. Sister! +what did he say that for? He needn't have talked about sisters, or +wives either, after that fashion. Spoilt! Well, what should she save +herself for? It was pretty clear it wouldn't be much to him. + +The color died down, and she grew quiet, or thought she did. She +meant to be very quiet; very indifferent and calm. She lifted up her +eyes, and there was a sort of still flash in them. Now that her +cheek was cool, they burned,--burned their own color, blue-gray that +deepened almost into black. + +"I've a good will, however," she said slowly, "to find out what I +_can_ do. Perhaps neither you nor I know that, yet. Then I can make +up my mind. I rather believe in taking what comes. A bird in the +hand is worth two in the bush. Very likely nobody will ever care +particularly whether I'm spoilt or not. And if I'm spoilt for one +thing, I may be made for another. There have got to be all sorts of +people in the world, you know." + +She was very handsome, with her white chin up, haughtily; her nose +making its straight, high line, as she turned her face half away; +her eyes so dark with will, and the curve of hurt pride in her lips +that yet might turn easily to a quiver. She spoke low and smooth; +her words dropped cool and clear, without a tone of temper in them; +if there was passionate force, it was from a fire far down. + +If she could do so upon a stage; if she could look like that saying +other people's words--words out of a book: if she could feel into +the passions of a world, and interpret them; then, indeed! But +Marion Kent had never entered into heights and depths of thought and +of experience; she knew only Marion Kent's little passions as they +came to her, and spoke themselves in homely, unchoice words. Mrs. +Kemble or Charlotte Cushman might have made a study from that face +that would have served for a Queen Katharine; but Queen Katharine's +grand utterances would never have thrilled Marion Kent to wear the +look as she wore it now, piqued by the plain-speaking--and the _not_ +speaking--of the young village carpenter. + +"I hope you don't feel hurt with me; I've only been honest, and I +meant to be kind," said Frank Sunderline. + +"No, indeed; I dare say you did," returned Marion. "After all, +everybody has got to judge for themselves. I was silly to think +anybody could help me." + +"Perhaps you could help yourself better," said the young man, loth +to leave her in this mood, "if you thought how you would judge for +somebody you cared for. If your own little sister"-- + +Now the quiver came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and +jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise +themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name +of her little dead sister,--dead six years ago, when she was nine +and Marion twelve. + +The tears sprang to the darkened eyes, and quenched down their +burning; the color swept into her face, like the color after a +blow; the lips gave way; and with words that came like a cry she +exclaimed passionately,-- + +"Don't speak of little Sue! I can't bear it! I never could! I don't +know what I say now. Good-night, good-by." + +And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and +hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT. + + +Rodney Sherrett got up from the breakfast table, where he had eaten +half an hour later than the rest of the family, threw aside the +newspaper that had served to accompany his meal as it had previously +done his father's, and walked out through the conservatory upon the +slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among +which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a pair of garden +scissors and a basket in her hands, was moving about, cutting +carnations and tea-roses and bouvardia and geranium leaves and bits +of vines, for her baskets and shells and vases. + +"I say, Amy, why haven't you been over to the Argenters' this long +while? Why don't you get Sylvie here?" + +"Why, I did go, Rod! Just when you asked me to. And she has been +here; she called three weeks ago." + +"O, poh! After the spill! Of course you did. Just called; and she +called. Why need that be the end of it? Why don't you make much of +her? I can tell you she's a girl you _might_ make much of. She +behaved like a lady, that day; and a _woman_,--that's more. She was +neither scared nor mad; didn't scream, nor pout; nor even stand +round to keep up the excitement. She was just cool and quiet, and +took herself off properly. I don't know another girl that would have +done so. She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned; +she might have made it ten times the muss it was. I'd rather run +down a whole flock of sheep than graze the varnish off a woman's +wheel, as a general principle. There's real backbone to Sylvie +Argenter, besides her prettiness. My father would like her, I know. +Why don't you bring her here; get intimate with her? I can't do +it,--too fierce, you know." + +Amy Sherrett laughed. + +"What a nice little cat's-paw a sister makes! Doesn't she, Rod?" + +"I wonder if cats don't like chestnuts too, sometimes," said Rod; +and then he whistled. + +"What a worry you are, Rod!" said Amy, with a little frown that some +pretty girls have a way of making; half real and half got up for the +occasion; a very becoming little pucker of a frown that seems to put +a lovely sort of perplexed trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to +show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be +permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it +would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest. "In term +time I'm always wishing it well over, for fear of what dreadful +thing you may do next; and when it is vacation, it gets to be so +much worse, here and there and everywhere, that I'm longing for you +to be safe back in Cambridge." + +"Coming home Saturday nights? Well, you do get about the best of me +so. And we fellows get just the right little sprinkle of family +influence, too. It loses its affect when you have it all the time. +That's what I tell Truesdaile, when he goes on about home, and what +a thing it is to have a sister,--he doesn't exactly say _my_ sister; +I suppose he believes in the tenth commandment. By the way, he's +knocking round at the seashore some where using up the time. I've +half a mind to hunt him up and get him back here for the last week +or so. I think he'd like it." + +"Nonsense, Rod! You can't. When Aunt Euphrasia's away." + +"She would come back, if you asked her; wouldn't she? I think it +would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop +anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever +goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a +mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow +round and pick out the stumps and corners." + +Amy shook her head. + +"I don't believe I'll ask her, Rod. She's perfectly happy up there +in New Ipswich, painting wild flowers and pressing ferns, and +swinging those five children in her hammock, and carrying them all +to drive in her pony-wagon, and getting up hampers of fish and +baskets of fruit, and beef sirloins by express, and feeding them all +up, and paying poor dear cousin Nan ten dollars a week for letting +her do it. I guess it's my opportunity to get along here without +her, and let her stay." + +"Incorruptible! Well--you're a good girl, Amy. I must come down to +plain soft-sawder. Put some of those things together prettily, as +you know how, and drive over and take them to Sylvie Argenter this +afternoon, will you?" + +"Fish and fruit and sirloins!" + +"Amy, you're an aggravator!" + +"No. I'm only grammatical. I'm sure those were the antecedents." + +"If you don't, I will." + +"If you will, I will too, Rod! Drive me over, that's a good boy, and +I'll go." + +Amy seized with delicate craft her opportunity for getting her +brother off from one of his solitary, roaming expeditions with Red +Squirrel that ended too often in not being solitary, but in bringing +him into company with people who knew about horses, or had them to +show, and were planning for races, and who were likely to lead +Rodney, in spite of his innate gentlemanhood, into more of mere +jockeyism than either she or her father liked. + +"But the flowers, I fancy, Rod, would be coals to Newcastle. They +have a greenhouse." + +"And have never had a decent man to manage it. It came to nothing +this year. She told me so. You see it just is a literal _new_ +castle. Mr. Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and +they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to +blame for being new," he continued, seeing the least possible little +_lifted_ look about Amy's delicate lips and eyebrows. "I hate _that_ +kind of shoddiness." + +"'Don't fire--I'll come down,'" said Amy, laughing. "And I don't +think I ever get _very_ far up, beyond what's safe and reasonable +for a"-- + +"Nice, well-bred little coon," said Rodney, patting her on the +shoulder, in an exuberance of gracious approval and beamingly serene +content. "I'll take you in my gig with Red Squirrel," he added, by +way of reward of merit. + +Now Amy in her secret heart was mortally afraid of Red Squirrel, but +she would have been upset ten times over--by Rodney--sooner than say +so. + +When Sylvie Argenter, that afternoon, from her window with its cool, +deep awning, saw Rodney Sherrett and his sister coming up the drive, +there flashed across her, by a curious association, the thought of +the young carpenter who had gone up the village street and bowed to +Ray Ingraham, the baker's daughter. + +After all, the gentleman's "place," apart and retired, and the long +"approach," were not so very much worse, when the "people in the +carriages,"--the right people,--really came: and "on purpose" was +not such a bad qualification of the coming, either. + +And when Mrs. Argenter, hearing the bell, and the movement of an +arrival, and not being herself summoned in consequence, rung +in her own room for the maid, and received for answer to her +inquiry,--"Miss Sherrett and young Mr. Sherrett, ma'am, to see Miss +Sylvie,"--she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much +and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred +to her at once,--one of them adding itself to the other as +manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that +tip-out" from the basket-phæton, and the new white frill-trimmed +polonaise that Miss Sylvie would put on, so needlessly, this +afternoon, in spite of her remonstrance that the laundress had just +left without warning, and there was no knowing when they should ever +find another. + +"There is certainly a fate in these matters," she said to herself, +complacently. "_One_ thing always follows another." + +Mrs. Argenter was apt to make to herself a "House that Jack built" +out of her providences. She had always a little string of them to +rehearse in every history; from the malt that lay in the house, and +the rat that ate the malt, up to the priest all shaven and shorn, +that married the man that kissed the maid--and so on, all the way +back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the +overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney +Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no +doubt he asked her, and then their both coming together; and there +was your pretty white polonaise, you know, the day they did come; +and there was"--Mrs. Argenter has not counted up to that yet. +Perhaps it may be a long while before she will so readily count it +in. + +It had turned out a hot day; one of those days in the nineties, when +if you once hear from the thermometer, or in any way have the fact +forcibly brought home to you, you relinquish all idea of exertion +yourself, and look upon the world outside as one great pause, out of +which no movement can possibly come, unless there first come the +beneficence of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay +have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to +here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to +actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without +realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with +surprise at set of sun when the deeds are done, of the excelsior +performances of the mercury. With what secret amazement and dismay +is one's valor recognized, however, when it has led one to render +one's self at four in the afternoon on such a day, near one's friend +who _has_ been vividly conscious of the torrid atmosphere! Did you +ever make or receive such an afternoon call? + +Mrs. Argenter, comfortable in her thin wrapper, reading her thin +romance, did not trouble herself to be astonished. "They were young +people; young people could do anything," she dimly thought; and +putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that +Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presently to +ring her bell again, and tell the maid on no account to admit any +one to see herself, and to be sure that there were plenty of +raspberries brought in for tea. + +Meanwhile, away in the cities, the thermometer had climbed and +climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went +lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave +the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were +closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left +their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom +in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels +and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as +if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat. +Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with +filth, and doors stood open upon horrible passages and staircases, +little children, barefooted, with one miserable garment on, sat on +grimy stone steps, or played wretchedly about the sidewalks, +impeding the passers of a better class who hastened with bated +breath, amidst the fever-breeding nuisances, along to railway +stations whence they would escape to country and sea-side homes. + +On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and +cordage,--sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks +could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from +falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the +faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men +surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, +regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered +off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their +fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through +wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and +out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy, +strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about +upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making +_their_ hay while this terrible sun was shining. + +What did Mrs. Argenter care? + +The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool +piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,--yellow +Alderney milk,--would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of +"Argie" in New York,--gone thither on some perplexing, hurried +errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of +which she had only half heard,--and remembered that the heat must be +"awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound +steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would +surely speak to him about getting off for a while to Rye, or Mount +Desert. + +She came by and by to the end of her volume, and found that the +serial she was following ran on into the next. + +"Provoking," she said, tossing it down to the end of the sofa, "and +neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and Argie +thinks it such a bother to be asked to go to Loring's." + +Just then Sylvie's step came lightly up the stairs. She looked into +the large cool dressing-room where her mother lay. + +"I'm only up for my 'Confession Album'," she said. "But O Mater +Amata! if you'd just come down and help me through! I know they'd +stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them; +but if I said a word I should be sure to drive them away. _You_ can +do it; and they would if you came. Please do!" + +"You silly child! Won't you ever be able to do anything yourself? +When you were a little girl, you wouldn't carry a message, because +you could get into a house, but didn't know how to get out! And now +you are grown up, you can get people into the house to see you, but +you don't know how to ask them to stay to tea! What _shall_ I ever +do with you?" + +"I don't know. I'm awfully afraid of--_nice_ girls!" + +"Sylvie, I'm ashamed of you! As if you had any other kind of +acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them! I wouldn't suggest +it, even to myself, if I were you." + +"And I don't," said Sylvie boldly--"when I'm _by_ myself. But +there's a kind of a little misgiving somehow, when they come, or +when I go, as if--well, as if there _might_ be something to it that +I didn't know of, or behind it that I hadn't got; or else, that +there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too +much of. A kind of a--Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is +so _fearfully_ refined,--all the way through! It doesn't seem as if +she ever had any common things to say or do. Don't you think it +_takes_ common things to get people really near to each other? It +doesn't seem to me I could ever be intimate--or very easy--with Amy +Sherrett." + +"You seemed to get on well enough with her brother, the other day." + +"Boys aren't half so bad. There isn't any such wax-work about boys. +Besides,"--and Sylvie laughed a low, gay little laugh,--we got spilt +out together, you know." + +"Well, don't stand talking. You mustn't keep them waiting. It isn't +time to speak about tea, yet. Look over the album, and get at some +music. _Keep_ them without saying anything about it. When people +think every minute they are just going, is just when they are having +the very pleasantest time." + +"I know it. But you'll come, won't you, and make it all right? Put +on something loose and cool; that lovely black lace jacket with the +violet lining, and your gray silk skirt. It won't take you a minute. +Your hair's perfectly sweet now." And Sylvie hurried away. + +Mrs. Argenter came down, twenty minutes afterwards, into the great +summer drawing-room, where the finest Indian matting, and dark, rich +Persian rugs, and inner window blinds folded behind lace curtains +that fell like the foam of waterfalls from ceiling to floor, made a +pleasantness out of the very heat against which such furnishings +might be provided. + +In her silken skirt of silver gray, and the llama sack, violet +lined, to need no tight corsage beneath, her fair wrists and arms +showing white and cool in the wide drapery sleeves, she looked a +very lovely lady. Sylvie was proud of her handsome, elegant mother. +She grew a great deal braver always when Mrs. Argenter came in. She +borrowed a second consciousness from her in which she took courage, +assured that all was right. Chairs and rugs gave her no such +confidence, though she knew that the Sherretts themselves had no +more faultless surroundings. Anybody could have rugs and chairs. It +was the presence among them that was wanted; and poor Sylvie seemed +to herself to melt quite away, as it were, before such a girl as Amy +Sherrett, and not to be able to be a presence at all. + +It was all right now, as Sylvie had said. They could not leave +immediately upon Mrs. Argenter joining them and her joining them was +of itself a welcome and an invitation. So Sylvie called upon her +mother to admire the lovely basket, wherein on damp, tender, bright +green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most +delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly, +and at last fell like a veil over rim and handle, and dropped below +the edge of the tiny round table with Siena marble top, on which +Sylvie had placed it between the curtains of the recess that led +through to their conservatory, which had been "a failure this year." + +"I would not tell you of it, Amata. I wanted you just to see it," +she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then lamented +their own ill-success in greenhouse and garden culture. + +"I am not strong enough to look after it much myself, and Mr. +Argenter never has time," she said; "and our first man was a +tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off quantities of the +best young plants, we found, just before they came to show for +anything." + +"Our man has been with us for eight years," said Rodney Sherrett. "I +dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked; and he +wouldn't send anybody that wasn't right. Shall I ask him?" + +Mrs. Argenter would be delighted if he would; and then Mr. Sherrett +must come into the conservatory, where a few ragged palm ferns, +their great leaves browning and crumbling at the edges,--some +daphnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of +leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring +orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage that the +place afforded, and served, much like the painter's inscription at +the bottom of his canvas merely to signify by the scant glimpse +through the drawing-room draperies,--"This is a conservatory." + +Mrs. Argenter asked Rodney something about the best arrangement for +the open beds, and wanted to know what would be surest to do well +for the rockery, and whether it was in a good part of the +house,--sufficiently shaded? Meanwhile, Amy and Sylvie were turning +over music, and when they all gathered together again the call had +extended to a two hours' visit. + +"It is really unpardonable," Amy Sherrett was saying, and picking up +the pretty little hat which she had thrown down upon a chair,--"it +had been so warm to wear anything a minute that one need not." And +then Mrs. Argenter said so easily and of course, that they +"certainly would not think of going now, when it would soon be +really pleasant for a twilight drive; tea would be ready early, for +she and Sylvie were alone, and all they had cared for to-day had +been a cold lunch at one. They would have it on the north veranda;" +and she touched a bell to give the order. + +Perhaps Amy Sherrett would hardly have consented, but that Rodney +gave her a look, comical in its appeal, over Sylvie's shoulder, as +she stood showing him a great scarlet Euphorbia in a portfolio of +water-colors, and said with a beseeching significance,-- + +"Consider Red Squirrel, Amy. He really did have a pretty hard pull; +and what with the heat and the flies, I dare say he would take it +with more equanimity after sundown,--since Mrs. Argenter is so very +kind." + +And so they stayed; and Mrs. Argenter laid another little brick in +her "House that Jack built." + + * * * * * + +At this same time,--how should she know it?--something very +different was going on in one of the rooms of a great hotel in New +York. Somebody else who had meant before now to have left for home, +had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the +road by dark instead of by daylight. By dark,--though there should +be broad, beating sunshine over the world again when the journey +should be made. + +While Mrs. Argenter's maid was bringing out the tray with delicate +black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated +with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries, +and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming +crystal flagon,--and ranging them all on the rustic veranda +table,--something very different,--very grim,--at which the +occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open +doors,--was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in +the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very +grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants' Union Telegraph +Company's Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch, +addressed to "Mrs. I.M. Argenter, Dorbury, Mass.," and signed +"Philip Burkmayer, M.D." + +Nobody knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially, +when the office in State Street would be closed. Closed, with that +name outside the door that stood for nobody now. + +The news must go bare and unbroken to her. + +Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just +handing the slip to the attendant. + +"Stop; give me that again, a minute," he said; and tearing it in +two, he wrote another, and then another. + +"Send this on at once, and the second in an hour," he said; as if +they might have been prescriptions to be administered. "They may +both be delivered together after all," he continued to himself, as +he turned away. "But it is all I can do. When a weight is let drop, +it has got to fall. You can't ease it up much with a string measured +out for all the way down!" + +The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury +Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came +in after her half-hour supper time. She set the wires and responded, +and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins. + +"Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick," and so on. The +girl's face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along. She +answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly +upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door. + +"Sim! Here--quick!" she called to a youth opposite, in a +stable-yard. + +"This has got to go down to the Argenter Place. And mind how you +give it. It's bad news." + +"How can _I_ mind?" said Sim, gruffly. "I spose I must give it to +who comes." + +"You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or +the minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her, +_I_ know. Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can, +besides lightning!" + +"Donno's I can go travellin' round after 'em, if that's what you +mean," said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket, +and turning off. + +Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts +good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring +in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty +covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not quite +like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry +just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in. + +"A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter," said Sim, seizing his opportunity, +and speaking to whom it might concern. "Eighty cents to pay, and I +'blieve it's bad news." + +"O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!" cried Sylvie, turning white in the +dim light. "What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, +until I see? Won't you come in again? Mother will be frightened to +death, and I'm all alone." + +"Jump out, Amy; I'll take Squirrel round," was Rodney's answer. "Go +right up; I'll come." + +And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two +girls silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the +eighty cents which nobody thought of at that moment or ever again, +and sent him off. + +Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the +long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before +coming out into the evening air again. + +"I think I shall open it myself," whispered Sylvie, tremulously; "it +would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has +such a horror of a telegram." She looked at it on both sides, drew a +little shivering breath, and paused again. + +"Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be--only grandma, +perhaps? Do you suppose it could _possibly_ be--my _father_?" + +And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little +Sylvie's voice. + +"Wait a minute," said Amy, kindly. "Here's Rod." + + "OFFICE OF WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO., + NEW YORK, _July_ 24_th_, 187-. + + "To MRS. I. M. ARGENTER, Dorbury, Mass. + + "Mr. Argenter has had a sunstroke. Insensible. Very serious. + Will telegraph again. + + "PHILIP BURKMAYER, M.D." + +Sylvie's eyes, so roundly innocent, so star-like in their usual +bright uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first +to Rodney, then to Amy; and "O--O!" broke in short, subdued gasps +from her lips. + +Then they heard Mrs. Argenter's step up-stairs. + +"What is the matter, Sylvie? What are you doing? Who is with you +down there?" she said, over the baluster, from the hall above. + +"O, mother!" cried Sylvie, "they aren't gone! Something has _come_! +Go up and tell her, Amy, please!" And forgetting all about Amy as +"Miss Sherrett," and all her fear of "nice girls," she dropped down +on the lower step of the staircase after Amy had passed her upon her +errand, put her face between her hands and caught her breath with +frightened sobs. + +Rodney, leaning against the newel post, looked down at her, and +said, after the manner of men,--"Don't cry. It mayn't be very bad, +after all. You'll hear again in an hour or two. Can't I do +something? I'll go to the telegraph office. I'll get somebody for +your mother. Whom shall I go for?" + +"O, you are very kind. I don't know. Wait a minute. They didn't say +any place! We ought to go right to New York, and we don't know +where! O, dear!" She had lifted her head a little, just to say these +broken sentences, and then it went down again. + +Rodney did not answer instantly. It occurred to him all at once +what this "not saying any place" might mean. + +Just as he began,--"You couldn't go until to-morrow,"--came Mrs. +Argenter's sharp cry from her room above. Amy had walked right on +into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not +daring to ask what she came and did this strange thing for, till Amy +made her sit down in her own easy chair, and taking her hands, said +gently,-- + +"It is a telegram from New York. Mr. Argenter--is very ill." Then +Mrs. Argenter cried out, "That's not all! I know how people bring +news! Tell me the whole." And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing the +quick, excited words, and leaving Rodney Sherrett standing there, +rushed up into the dressing-room. + +This was the way the same sort of news came to Sylvie Argenter as +had come to the baker's daughter. Did it really make any +difference--the different surrounding of the two? The great +house--the lights--the servants--the friends; and the open bake-shop +door, the village street, the blunt, common-spoken neighbor-woman, +and the boy with the brick loaf? + +These two were to be fatherless: their mothers were both to be +widows: that was all. + +Did it happen strangely with the two--in this same story? Who know, +always, when they are in the same story? These things are happening +every day, and one great story holds us all. If one could see wide +enough, one could tell the whole. + +These things happen: and then the question comes,--alike in high and +low places,--alike with money and without it,--what the women and +the girls are to do? + +Rodney Sherrett took his sister home; drove three miles round and +brought Mrs. Argenter's sister to her from River Point, and then +turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph office. But he +met Sim Atwill on the way, received the telegram from him, and +hurried back. + +It was the dispatch of the hour later, and this was it:-- + + "Mr. Argenter died at five o'clock. His remains will be sent + home to-morrow, carefully attended. + + "PHILIP BURKMAYER." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +SPILLED OUT AGAIN. + + +There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at +meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the +Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the "late residence," +largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there +was making of crape and bombazine and silk into "mourning;" there +were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the +sad suddenness, "how it would be;" "how much he had left;" "was +there a will?" + +And there was a will; made three years before. One hundred thousand +dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter's beloved wife; also the +use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia +on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else +to be Mrs. Argenter's for her life-time, reverting afterward to +Sylvia or her heirs. + +There was just time for this to be ascertained and told of; just +time for Sylvie to be named as an heiress, and then all at once +something else came to light and was told of. + +There was a mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr. +Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of +good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and +no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in +deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already +run. + +Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from +the street. + +"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things +in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything +forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone +under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry +and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of +a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And +then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment +that have got into life." + +"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet +voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never +interpreted yet!" + +"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake +to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl, +nowadays,--the mass of them. How can they help it?" + +"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in +what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia. +"Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for +mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And +so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's +heads." + +"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in +Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for +them. They'll find it a hard time." + +"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She +could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the +Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor +souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness +they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out +of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and--be +broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to +powder. + +"How will it be with them?" she asked. + +"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out +the will?" + +Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his +father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened +with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now. + +Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear +more. The young people were both too really interested, from their +intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common +"Is it possible?" to this. + +"The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'" +said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to +be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as +such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than +nothing." + +"What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again. +"Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world." + +"Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of +kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken +heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things +together." + +"I suppose that is just what _people_ were made for." + +"It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can +help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The +hardest kind of cases." + +"It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she +followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner +was over. "And no mistake!" + +Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, +and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in +a way they were not often used to. + +"Will they have to go away?" asked Amy. + +"Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of +everything." + +"How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!" + +"She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before. +Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't +want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"--as Mr. +Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining +chair,--"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?" + +"Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to +intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is +quite my place." + +"I don't believe there will be much intruding--of _your_ sort. And +the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?" + +"Jobling and Cardwell, I believe. Men down town. Perhaps she might +like to see a neighbor. Yes, I think I will go. You can drive me +round, Rodney, some evening soon. Whom has she, of her own people, I +wonder?" + +"Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know. The brother-in-law isn't +much, I imagine." + +"Stephen A. Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He +couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding +_him_ up." + +"I think they'll be very glad to see you, sir." + +Rodney drove his father over the next night. Mr. Sherrett went in +alone. Rodney sat in the chaise outside. + +Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and +then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and +with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent +with a strange heaviness. + +"I could not persuade mother to come down," she said. "She does not +feel able to see anybody. But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr. +Sherrett." + +"I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of +use. A lady needs some one to talk things over with. I know your +mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to +business. I should not come for a mere call at such a time. I should +be glad to be of some service." + +"Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with +me, Mr. Sherrett?" + +There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the +Sylvie of a few weeks ago. It was no longer a question of little +nothings,--of how she should get people in and how she could get +them out,--of what she should do and say to seem "nice all through," +like Amy Sherrett. Mr. Sherrett had not come for a "mere call," as +he said; and there was no mere "receiving." The llama lace and the +gray silk and the small _savoir faire_ could not help her now. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain +black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly +cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the +last week or two she had rarely left. All at once, Sylvie found that +she must think and speak both for her mother and herself. + +Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was +thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis. Her +House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not +accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had +been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched +idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could +not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she +let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her +life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over +which she should pass into perfect shelter of content. + +"Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble," said +Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett. "I don't think she really +understands. She has lived so long with things as they are, that she +cannot imagine them different. I think it is easier with me, +because, you know, I haven't been used to _anything_ such a _very_ +long while." + +Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and +Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as +much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears. + +"You see we shall have to do something right off,--go somewhere; and +mother can't change the least thing. She can't spare Sabina, who has +heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody +else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her +anything she wanted. And the very things, I suppose, don't belong to +us. How shall we break through and begin again?" Sylvie looked up +earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question. This was what she +really wanted to know. + +"You will remove, I suppose?" said Mr. Sherrett "If you could hear +of a house,--if you could propose something definite,--if you and +Sabina could begin to pack up,--how would that be?" + +He met her inquiry with primary, practical suggestions, just what +she needed, wasting no words. He saw it was the best service he +could do this little girl who had suddenly become the real head of +the household. + +"I have thought, and thought," said Sylvie; "and after all, mother +must decide. Perhaps she wouldn't want to keep house. I don't know +whether we could. She spoke once about boarding. But boarding costs +a great deal, doesn't it?" + +"To live as you would need to,--yes." + +"I should hate to have to manage small, and change round, in +boarding. I know some people who live so. It would give me a very +mean feeling. It would be like trying to get a bite of everybody's +bread and butter. I'd rather have my own little loaf." + +"You are a brave, true little woman," said Mr. Sherrett, warmly. +"All you want is to be set in the right direction, and see your way. +You'll be sure to go on." + +"I _think_ I should. If mother can only be contented. I think I +should rather like it. I could _understand_ living better. There +would only be a little at a time. A great deal, and a great many +things, make it a puzzle." + +"Have you any knowledge about the property?" + +"Mr. Cardwell has been here two or three times. He says there are +twelve thousand dollars secured to mother by a note and mortgage on +this place. It was money of hers that was put into it. We shall have +the income of that; and there might be things, perhaps, that we +should have the right to sell, or keep to furnish with. Seven and a +half per cent, on twelve thousand dollars would be nine hundred +dollars a year. If we had to pay sixteen dollars a week to board, it +would take eight hundred and thirty-two; almost the whole of it. But +perhaps we could find a place for less; and our clothes would last a +good while, I suppose." + +Sylvie went through her little calculation, just as she had made it +over and over before, all by herself; she did not stop to think that +she was doing the small sum now for the enlightenment of the great +Mr. Sherrett, who calculated in millions for himself and others, +every day. + +"You would hardly be comfortable in a house which you could rent for +less than--say, four hundred dollars, and that would leave very +little for your living. Perhaps I should advise you to board." + +"But we could _do_ things, maybe, if we lived by ourselves, amongst +other people in small houses. We can't be _two_ things, Mr. +Sherrett, rich and poor; and it seems to me that is what we should +be trying for, if we got into a boarding-house. We should have to be +idle and ashamed. I want to take right hold. I'd like to earn +something and make it do." + +Sylvie's eyes really shone. The spirit that had worked in her as a +little child, to make her think it would be nice to be a "kitchen +girl, and have a few things in boxes, and Sundays out," threw a +charm of independence and enterprise and cosy thrift over her +changed position, and the chance it gave her. Mr. Sherrett wondered +at the child, and admired her very much. + +"Could you teach something? Could you keep a little school?" + +"I've thought about it. But a person must know ever to much, +nowadays, to keep even the least little school. They want +Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven't learnt. And +it's just so about music. You must be scientific; and all I really +know is a few little songs. But I can _dance_ well, Mr. Sherrett. I +could teach that." + +There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market +of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the +suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black +dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed +by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession. + +"You will be sure to do something, I see," said Mr. Sherrett. "Yes, +I think you had better have a quiet little home. It will be a centre +to work from, and something to work for. You can easily furnish it +from this house. Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be +allowed such things as you might make a schedule of. Would you like +me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?" + +"O, if you would! Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell's +name, and the thought of business. She cannot bear it now. But your +advice would be so different!" + +Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland +Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and +suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and +mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be. + +"I'm afraid you'll think I don't realize things, I've planned and +imagined so much," Sylvie began again, "but I couldn't help +thinking. It is all I have had to do. There's a little house in +Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and +nobody lives there now. At least, it was all shut up the last time +I drove by. The house with the corner piazza and the green side +yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the +shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little +houses beyond. Do you know?" + +Mr. Sherrett did know. They were three houses built by members of +the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead +property. Two of them had passed into other hands; one--this +one--remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of +late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and +with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park. + +"You see we must go where things will be convenient. We can't ride +round after them any more. And we could get a girl up there, as +other people do, for general housework. I'm afraid mother wouldn't +quite like being in the village, but of course there can't be +anything that she _would quite_ like, now. And we aren't really +separate people any longer; at least, we don't belong to the +separate kind of people, and I couldn't bear to be _lonesomely_ +separate. It's good to belong to _some_ kind of people; isn't it?" + +"I think it is very good to belong to _your_ kind, where-ever they +are, Miss Sylvie. Tell your mother I say she may be glad of her +daughter. I'll find out about the house for you, at any rate. And +I'll see Mr. Cardwell; and I'll call again. Good-night, my dear. God +bless you!" + +And the grand Mr. Howland Sherrett pressed Sylvie Argenter's hand in +both of his, as a father might have pressed it, and went out with +the feeling of a warm rush from his heart toward his eyes. + +"That's a girl like a--whatever there is that means the noblest +sort of woman, and I'm not sure it _is_ a queen!" he said to Rodney, +as he seated himself in the chaise, and took the reins from his +son's hands. + +Mr. Sherrett was apt to say to Rodney, "You may drive me to this or +that place," but he was very apt, also, to do the driving himself, +after all; especially if he was somewhat preoccupied, and forgot, as +he did now. + +The way Mr. Howland Sherrett inquired about the red-roofed house, +was this: + +He went down to Mr. John Horner's store, in Opal Street, and asked +him what was the rent of it. + +"Six hundred and fifty dollars." + +"Rather high, isn't it, for the situation?" + +"Not for the situation of the _land_, I guess," said Mr. Horner. "I'm +paying annexation taxes." + +"What will you sell the property for as it stands?" + +"Eighty-five hundred dollars." + +"I'll give you eight thousand, Mr. Horner, in cash, upon condition +that you will not mention its having changed hands. I have some +friends whom I wish should live there," he added, lest some deep +speculating move should be surmised. + +Mr. Horner thought for the space of thirty seconds, after the rapid, +Opal Street fashion, and said,-- + +"You may have it. When will you take the deed?" + +"To-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock. Will that be convenient?" + +"All right. Yes, sir." + +And the next morning at eleven o'clock, the two gentlemen exchanged +papers; Mr. Horner received a check on the First National Bank for +eight thousand dollars, and Mr. Sherrett the title-deed to house and +land on North Centre Street, Dorbury, known as part of the John +Horner estate, and bordering so and so, and so on. + +The same afternoon, Mr. Sherrett called at Mrs. Argenter's, and +told her of the quiet, pleasant, retired, yet central house and +garden in Upper Dorbury, which he found she could have on a lease of +two or three years, for a rent of three hundred and fifty dollars. +It was in the hands of a lawyer in the village, who would make out +the lease and receive the payments. He had inquired it out, and +would conclude the arrangements for her, if she desired. + +"I don't know that I desire anything, Mr. Sherrett. I suppose I must +do what I can, since it seems I am not to be left in my own home +which I put my own money into. If it appears suitable to you, I have +no doubt it is right. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure. +Sylvie knows the house, and has an idea she likes it. She is +childish, and likes changing. She will have enough of it, I am +afraid." + +She did not even care to go over and inspect the house. Sylvie was +glad of that, for she knew it could be made to seem more homelike, +if she and Sabina could get the parlor and her mother's rooms ready +before Mrs. Argenter saw it. During the removal, it was settled that +they should go and stay with Mrs. Lowndes, at River Point. This +practically resulted in Mrs. Argenter's remaining with her sister, +while Sylvie and Sabina spent their time, night as well as day, +often, between Argenter Place and the new house. + +Rodney Sherrett rode through the village one day, when they were +busy there with their arrangements. + +Sylvie stood on a high flight of steps in the bay-window, putting up +some white muslin curtains, with little frills on the edges. They +had been in a sleeping-room at Argenter Place. All the furniture of +the house had been appraised, and an allowance made of two thousand +dollars, to which amount Mrs. Argenter might reserve such articles +as she wished, at the valuation. So much, and two thousand dollars +in cash, were given her in exchange for her homestead and her right +of dower in the unincumbered portion of the estate, upon which was +one other smaller mortgage. No other real property appeared in the +list of assets. Mr. Argenter had, unfortunately, invested almost +wholly in bonds, stocks, and those last ruinous mining ventures. The +land out in Colorado was useless, and besides, being wild land, did +not come under the law of dower. + +Mrs. Argenter thought it was all very strange, especially that a sum +of money,--eighteen hundred dollars, which was in her husband's +desk, the proceeds of some little mortgage that he had just +sold,--was not hers to keep. She came very near stealing it from the +estate, quietly appropriating it, without meaning to be dishonest; +regarding it as simply money in the house, which her husband "would +have given her, if she had wanted it, the very day before he died." + +Possibly he might; but the day after he died, it was no longer his +nor hers. + +To go back to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled +about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank +entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts +that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the +"shady turn." + +The front door was open, and boxes stood in the passage; he walked +in as far as the parlor door; then he tapped with his riding-whip +against the frame of it. Sylvie started on her perch, and began to +come down. + +"Don't stop. I couldn't help coming in, seeing you as I went by," +said Rodney. + +Sylvie sat down on one of the middle steps. She would rather keep +still than exhibit herself in any further movement. Rodney ought to +have known better than go in then; if indeed he did _not_ know +better than Sylvie herself did, how very pretty and graceful she +looked, all out of regular and ordinary gear. + +She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black +dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around +and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid +of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped +it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down +over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with +exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to +dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again. She was excited with her +work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney's coming in. + +"How pretty you are going to look here," said Rodney, glancing +about. + +The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor--for though Mrs. +Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as +Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her +with a reiterated, helpless, "As you please," at every question that +came up--was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray, +with a border in an arabesque pattern. This had been upon a guest +chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and +Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if +they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She +only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing +room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs. + +The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain +library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and +little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and +other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression +lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and +grown at home. There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon +brackets each side the bay window. Pictures were already +hung,--portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,--a few +nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray, +which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room. + +"I am only afraid it is too fine," said she, replying to Rodney. "I +really want to be like our neighbors,--to _be_ a neighbor. We belong +here now. People should not drop out of the world, between the +ranks, when changes happen; they can't change out of humanity. Do +you know, Mr. Sherrett,--if it wasn't for the thought of my poor +father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,--I know I +should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?" + +"You'll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village +parlor. All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference." + +"I don't mean to. I've been thinking,--_ever_ so much, and I've +found out a good many things. It's this not falling _on_ to anything +that keeps people in the misery of falling. I mean to come to land, +right here. I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden. There's a +kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant. +I wonder if I _have_ got anything in here that has no business?" + +"Not a scrap. I've no doubt the blacksmith's wife's parlor is +finer. But you can't put the _character_ out." + +"I mean to have plants, now; in this bay window. I guess I can, now +that we have no conservatory. Village people always have plants in +their windows, and mother won't want to see the street staring in." + +"Have you brought some?" + +"How could I? Those great oranges and daphnes? No: I shall have +little window plants and raise them." + +"But meanwhile, won't the street be staring in?" + +"Well, we can keep the blinds shut, for the warm weather." + +"Amy will come and see you, when you are settled; Amy and Aunt +Euphrasia; you'll let them, won't you? You don't mean to be such a +violent village girl as to cut all your old friends?" + +"Old friends?" Sylvie repeated, thoughtfully "Well, it does seem +almost old. But I didn't think I knew any of you _very_ well, only a +little while ago." + +"Until the overturns," said Rodney. "It takes a shaking up, I +suppose, sometimes, to set things right. That's what the Shaker +people believe has got to be generally. Do you know, the +Scotch--Aunt Euphrasia is Scotch--have a way of using the word +'upset' to mean 'set up.' I think that is what you make it mean, +Miss Sylvie. I understand the philosophy of it now. I got my first +illustration when I tipped you out there at the baker's door." + +"You tipped me out into one of the nicest places I ever was in. I've +no doubt it was a piece of the preparation. I mean to have Ray +Ingraham for my intimate friend." + +Rodney Sherrett did not say anything immediately to this. He sat on +the low cricket upon which he had placed himself near the door, +turning his soft felt hat over and over between his hands. He was +not quite ready to perceive as yet, that the baker's daughter was +just the person for Sylvie Argenter's intimate friend; and he had a +dim suspicion, likewise, that there was something in the girl +constitution that prevented the being able to have more than one +intimate friend. + +He repeated presently his assurance that Amy and Aunt Euphrasia +would come over to see them, and took himself off, saying that he +knew he must have been horribly in the way all the time. + +The next morning, a light covered wagon, driven by Mr. Sherrett's +man, Rodgers, came up the Turn. There was nobody at the red-roofed +house so early, and he set down in the front porch what he took +carefully, one at a time, from the vehicle,--some two dozen lovely +greenhouse plants, newly potted from the choicest and most +flourishing growth of the season. + +When Sylvie and Sabina came round from the ten o'clock street car, +they stumbled suddenly upon this beauty that incumbered the +entrance. To a branch of glossy green, luxuriant ivy was tied a +card,-- + + "RODNEY SHERRETT, + With friendly compliments." + +Sylvie really sung at her work to-day, placing and replacing till +she had grouped the whole in her wire frames in the bay window so as +to show every leaf and spray in light and line aright. + +"Why, it is prettier than it ever was at the old place; isn't it +Sabina? It's full and perfect; and that was always a great +barrenness of glass. The street can't stare in now. I think mother +will be able to forget that there is even a street at all." + +"It's real nobby," said Sabina. + +The room was all soft green and gray: green rep chairs and sofa, +green topped library table; green piano cover; green inside blinds; +a green velvet grape leaf border around the gray papered walls. + +Sabina, though a very elegant housemaid, patronized and approved +cheerfully. She was satisfied with the new home. There had not been +a word of leaving since it was decided upon. She had her reasons. +Sabina was "promised to be married" next spring. Dignity in her +profession was not so much of an object meantime, nor even wages; +she had laid up money and secured her standing, living always in the +first families; she could afford to take it in a quiet way; "it +wouldn't be so bothering nor so dressy;" Sabina had a saving turn +with her best things, that spared both trouble and money. Besides, +her kitchen windows and the back door suited her; they looked across +a bit of unoccupied land to the back street where the cabinet-shop +buildings were. Sabina was going to marry into the veneering +profession. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR. + + +Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's +chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were +sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie +there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to +feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and +submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right. + +The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold +out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which +Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters +were not willing to think of yet. + +Rachel quietly said,--as soon as her father was so far restored and +comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,-- + +"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay. +I spoke to them Saturday night." + +Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after +the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into +the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her +father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as +he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them +all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the +business. + +"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?" + +"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest, +and the stupidest--if a quick heart and a willing will can be +stupid--of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly +hitched on. + +Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She +must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new +ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done +for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves, +family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to +be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them +ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake +rhyme. + +Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,--if +they could stop to make them and knew how,--home bread and cake +could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity. +She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do +better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced +to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been +necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was +machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for +baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled +with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the +breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times +heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. + +Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that +touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she +felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I _will_ +work; I _will_ speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if +you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are +widening in the very nature and development of things; they are +showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business, +here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is +no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do +nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the +clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose +shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that. + +Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a +sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and +from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and +Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East +Mills, and River Point. + +"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when +she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put +brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar +cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her +sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like. +She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in +to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse. + +"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I +to have any neighbors?" + +The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn; +Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also +in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She +liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is; +that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original +land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression. + +Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the +Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in +the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination. + +Ray took it more quietly and coolly. + +"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said. +"We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we +will try and come, some day." + +"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to _call_, +though I said so. I want you to come right in and _see_ me. I never +could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again." + +The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid +gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that +Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last +shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in +their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it; +a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and +exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the +delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray. + +The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening +at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a +book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been +there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone +in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped, +physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what +one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds +upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been +taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet +sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to +restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to +breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport +with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world. + +"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were +gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything. + +"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice +girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my +accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she +added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I +should like them to come." + +"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered, +listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion. + +"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright +gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender +finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know +such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a +little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them. +All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people." + +"You certainly forget the Sherretts." + +"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just +edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a +little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the +purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you +should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it, +and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could." + +"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by +the roots, and there is the end of it." + +It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and +she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her +mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife, +or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs. +Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come +together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so +much more of the same things than their mothers did. + +Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no +difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for +her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore +away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always +lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out +under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread +carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders; +the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of +quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always +glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little +purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in +her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury +library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not +so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds, +where all sorts of blooms,--bright petunias and verbenas, delicate +sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy +deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and +rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised +on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged +things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,--made a glory +and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the +grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery, +against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines. + +"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in +her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one +evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother. +"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same +things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees +put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a +view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a +peep at the hills. But you are right down _amongst_ such niceness! +There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling +along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down +the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the +shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had +all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good +time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate +properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread +smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so +much better. Somebody came here to _do_ something; and the rest +was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be +exquisite!" + +"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet, +cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia +Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone. + +"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living. +The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory." + +"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard, +beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed +quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and +she liked them. + +"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden +flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in +glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings +behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every +evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He +himself begins and ends?" + +"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham, +perceiving. + +"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of +their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun +makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of +us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find +it all, by and by, ready,--whatever we think we have missed; the +building not made with hands." + +"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us," +said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods +to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or +epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion. + +"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same +thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being +clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment. +You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole +chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the +same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new +thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move +and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some +fresh phase of what is one and everlasting." + +Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so--given the right +circumstances to draw her forth--than she could help breathing. Her +whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of. +Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams +and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown +in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day +experience and incident. + +But she never went on--and "went over," exhorting. She did not +believe in _discourses_, she said, even from the pulpit--very much. +She believed in a _sermon_, and letting it go. And a sermon is just +a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to +any soul. + +So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to +break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it +herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little +business that she had come to ask Dot. + +"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?" + +It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she +took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all +one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of +living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so +pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being +played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music +afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to +send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures +following. + +Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric +neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She +folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright +took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her +three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,-- + +"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a +real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your +house." + +"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said +good-by, and passed out through the shop. + +"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her +disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged +to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go +out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There +is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he +would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great +desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him." + +"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for +her being so happy." + +"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new +pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn, +unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old +and tired, which _I_ think there is never any need of doing." + +"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause +in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a +little suggestion from it. + +"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these +days." + +"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be +done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright +held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I +mean,"--she gathered herself up bravely to say,--"I should like +dearly to do _anything_ for Amy; but I have thought it would be a +good plan--if I could--to do something like that for the sake of +earning; as Dot Ingraham does." + +"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss +Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt. + +"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always +things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the +grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,--which we _have_ to +have,--turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages--and mother's +wine--and cream--and fresh eggs,--I get so worried when the bills +come in!" + +Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling +her money and housekeeping troubles. + +"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just +as much as I can do,--of those kinds of work,--and a poor girl would +waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much, +myself. If Sabina were to go,--and she will next spring,--I am +afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two." + +For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that +she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is +wonderful how much work one person, who _does_ none of it and who +must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs. +Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the +morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she +never _could_ remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,--she +needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And +she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it; +one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of +her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the +cabinet-maker. + +"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss +Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You +can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay." + +Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so +graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold +of them, by their honest handles,--as they were meant to be taken +hold of. + +"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village +girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat +projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They +had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty +minutes. + +"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite +_been it_, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now. +That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us +in,--all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you +weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs. +Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a +sort of a way,--well, it _was_ just like a dog sniffing round for +something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old, +black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her. +'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she _sposed_.' Everybody +isn't like the Ingrahams." + +"No garment of _this_ life fits exactly. There was only one +seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The +body is more. And at last,--somehow, sometime,--we shall be all +clothed perfectly--with his righteousness." + +This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking +for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a +meaning. + +"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any +outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me +plainer, Miss Euphrasia." + +"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not _clothes_ so much as +_life_; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears +and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history, +circumstance. 'Raiment,'--'garment,'--the words always stand for +this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his +_garment_,'--He gave up his own life that He might have been +living,--to come and wash our feet!" + +"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into +Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently. + +"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us +with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we +lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will +give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it +will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. +And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we +shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but +rightness?" + +"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of +our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?" + +"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old +letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously +true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it _is things_ +they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They +talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an +abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly +that his 'justifying' is _setting everything right_ for them, and +round them, and in them: his _rightness_ is sufficient for them; +they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute +they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for +them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul +ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings +forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes +for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of +regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord +heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He _knows_ +that we have _need_," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly. +"Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as +people run for their lives from fire or flood." + +Sylvie had listened with a shining face. + +"You get it all from that one word,--'raiment.' Your words--the +words you find out, Miss Kirkbright--are living things." + +"Yes, words _are_ living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God +does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit, +and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they +were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words, +inspired. We talk about their _being_ inspired, as if it were a +passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe +ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given +over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never +need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that +He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the +more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand +their speech." + +"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'--that words in the Bible +stand for,--Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?" + +"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled. + +"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly. + +"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't +believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in +it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming +into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to +worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We +should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to +Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one +place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the +one part to the other part under heaven. _Lightening_--not +lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the +sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day +after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night +after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward +dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,--received it, wonderfully; +but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having +heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about +the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass +away, but the Word shall never pass away." + +"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?" + +The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the +red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell. + +"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could +tell it to my mother!" + +"Can't you?" + +"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,--with me," Sylvie answered, with +a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am +taking to her. I can take,--but I can't give, and I always feel so +that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come +and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?" + +"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say. +Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about +such sort of giving--in words--as a duty. Even with people whom I +work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so +much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near +and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that +are equal--or similarly related--to the same thing, are related to +one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time. +Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to +my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort." + +"I think you go to everything for it--and to everybody with it," +said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the +car-step. + +Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie +through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle +cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all +her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let +them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless +pressure. + +For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily. +The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made +pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into +established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The +difficulties--the grapples--came thick and forceful about her. At +the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her. + +She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the +countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in +upholding her. It was a link with the old things--the very best of +the old things,--that stood as a continual assurance that they +themselves were not altered--lowered in any way--by their alterings. +This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs. +Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts +indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out +altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright +thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings +with them in a friendly--even intimate--fashion. If Sylvie chose to +sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia +did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the +maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when +she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over +knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might +well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her +window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs. +Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the +relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts +and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart +somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to +Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could +find little other. + +Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs. +Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and +thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had +these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after +all, pretty hard to endure. + +The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly +neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and +the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as +she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not +draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt +bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward +Dot and Ray. + +Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never +went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her +sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young +carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and +discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what +shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a +village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course, +Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a +voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared +mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's +proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew +beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between +the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally +and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took +in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though +the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all +these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social +"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic +benediction, all the way down. + +I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie +nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in +their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts. +This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy +was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at +Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss +Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work +all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress, +went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no +more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no +more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All +that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly. +Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year +Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These +plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving +home. + +Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss +Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions +were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into +next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would +come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow +patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite." + +[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude +to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and +Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain +that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in +expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities +whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much +pitch-forked up into heaps behind.] + +Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been +growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of +her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine +and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the +slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie +for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she +developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the +yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a +soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to +be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and +harder. + +Sabina Bowen went away. + +She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the +cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,--neat +and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread +work about the eaves and porch,--which was to be vacated at that +time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances, +the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the +remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina +eagerly one evening with the news. + +Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright +double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round +table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other; +of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her +bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and +hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread, +and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning +when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the +towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person; +it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to +dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for +dinner. + +And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of +despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if +one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one +very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as +it may be. + +She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then +flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs, +because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't +pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next +one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and +in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of +ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a +fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish, +jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the +heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like +considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the +use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the +ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her +about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her +using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon +the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance +that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their +apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a +week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard +enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool +she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers." + +That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place +before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was +no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the +village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices. +By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent +servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of +them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the +oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would +cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs. +Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she +made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by +the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All +this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled +underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any +plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean." + +At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not +pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their +little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a +poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars. +They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at +last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half, +respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and +they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs. +Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do +but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and +effectually done it. + +But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would +they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the +principal every six months? + +In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must +give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first +place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A +cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for +rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season +in that village,--nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be +just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to +provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and +everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to +make, and girls going off every Monday morning? + +She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be +able to answer a word. But the lease,--for another year? What should +they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands? + +If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how! + +The little poem of village living,--of home simpleness and frugal +prettiness,--of _that_, the two first lines alone had rhymed! + +They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they +came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was +harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer +and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the +year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away. + +Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother; +and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see +her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie. + +God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds +in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under; +even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When +Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away +her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing +was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she +would,--have what she wanted. + +Then she went to see Mr. Frost. + +"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an +answer of himself. + +The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any +moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy. +It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily. + +Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out. +She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when +he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines +without moving from his seat. + +"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after +all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and +by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned +back to his other papers,--his notes of yesterday's debate in the +House. + + * * * * * + +Early in June, there came lovely days. + +Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the +end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the +remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a +year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and +dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and +the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of +service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs +asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying +themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no +moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire." + +She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own +rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one +afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost +shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but +village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and +names were suddenly announced. + +"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!" + +Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have +said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang +to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry. + +"What _shall_ I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth _is_ +my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss +Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what +hair!" + +She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust +in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged +black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all +right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that +cloudiness beneath which they shone. + +Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and +told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered +then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed +to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful +spring. + +"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must +have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to +Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in +the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the +city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she +wants." + +Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed; +at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year +ago. + +"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?" + +"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot +Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston; +then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill +them." + +Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some +minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his +handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had +anticipated. + +By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to +ask her for Class Day. + +"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt +Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list, +you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter. +I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it +probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it +were?" + +"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to +the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness +in letting her know. "I _wish_ I could! But we shall be gone." + +"Not before Class Day?" + +"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry." + +Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for +nothing. + +Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps +Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told +Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge +of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that +lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful +wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be +crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets +discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great +and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that +men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with +their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which +the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of +his grand, pure heights." + +All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed +thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given +and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt +Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not +be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to +speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had +said--had done--nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither +knew it of the other; that was the worst. + +When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia +turned round to Sylvie with a question. + +"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?" + +"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up +all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't +mind using it. And it is _mother's_ money; and Dr. Sainswell says +she _cannot_ have a long life." + +Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear +and calm,--only tender. + +"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her +face. + +"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't +money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to +me--after mother's feebleness--is the changing; the not staying of +anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss +Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged." + +"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly. +"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the +Lord working. That is the comfort,--the certainty." + +The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in +Sylvie's eyes, at that word. + +"How _do_ you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall +never forget that now." + +Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away +toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not +help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully, +in most ways, from "putting things in his head." + +"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer. + +Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be +as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people +are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads." + +"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a +very great good-for-nothing?" + +"No, indeed. Why?" + +"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure +whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I +haven't had anything to do with _horses_ this winter; I sent Red +Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a +fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the +bad? What is there so abominable about them?" + +"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand +and splendid,--in _type_,--you know. Horses are powers; men are made +to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct +of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he +stops there,--playing with the signs. He might as well ride a +stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do, +all his life." + +Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no +answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,-- + +"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up +things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words, +just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I _might_ do +something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy, +and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real +driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my +father?" + +"I don't _know_ that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but +it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You +ought to be quite sure what you stay for." + +"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night." + +"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it +all out honestly with him." + +Which advice--the first clause of it--Rodney proceeded instantly to +follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam +and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one +of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and +passive thing. + +When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery +stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him. + +The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with +you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten." + +Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of +uncomfortableness,--of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter. +He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope, +Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes. + +"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will +be up presently to take away these things." + +The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond +which were sleeping and bath-rooms. + +Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while +Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the +latter carefully in two, and lit one half. + +"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal +beginning after they should be closeted and seated,--"I've been +thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm +rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,--before I +take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more +in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I +ought to have got ahead a little by that time." + +Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He +wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it. + +"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?" + +"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'--as Nurse Pond used +to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough +to do for a gentleman,--a _man_, I hope. But I _should_ like to take +hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want +to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want +something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't +take care of myself--and more." + +"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door." + +After that, of course, we cannot listen. + +They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr. +Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two +little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which +his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at +this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and +wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched +sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of +his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What +he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned +to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that +heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man, +can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they +came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,-- + +"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,--for +both your sakes." + +"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were +young." + +"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If +anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,--you may talk, if you like, +to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her." + +And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of +our story. + +We may leave it here for a while. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW. + + + "Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs, + Sitting so long atop of my eggs! + Never a minute for rest to snatch; + I wonder when they are going to hatch! + + "Cluck! cluck! listen! tseep! + Down in the nest there's a stir and a peep. + Everything comes to its luck some day; + I've got chickens! What will folks say?" + +Bel Bree made that rhyme. It came into her head suddenly one +morning, sitting in her little bedroom window that looked right +over the grass yard into the open barn-door, where the hens +stalked in and out; and one, with three chickens, was at that +minute airing herself and her family that had just come out of +their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the +great big world was only there, just as they had of course +expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. _She_ was just +old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind +expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage. +She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had +done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"--as her step-mother was +wont to say of her own perspicacities,--and put it into jingle, as +she had a trick of doing with things. + +Bel Bree lived in New Hampshire; fifteen miles from a railway; in +the curious region where the old times and the new touch each +other and mix up; where the women use towels, and table-cloths, and +bed-spreads, of their mothers' own hand-weaving, and hem their new +ones with sewing-machines brought by travelling agents to their +doors; where the men mow and rake their fields with modern +inventions, but only get their newspapers once a week; where the +"help" are neighbors' girls, who wear overskirts and high hats, and +sit at the table with the family; where there are rag carpets and +"painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys, +and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork +quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long +winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles +about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons +and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools +and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work +their way into professions, and girls who take the world by +instinct, and understand a great deal perfectly well that is beyond +their practical reach; where the old Puritan stiffness keeps them +straight, but gets leavened in some marvelous way with the broader +and more generous thought of the time, and wears a geniality that it +is half unconscious of; the region where, if you are lucky enough to +get into it to know it, you find yourself, as Miss Euphrasia said, +encouraged and put in heart again about the world. Things are so +genuine; when they make a step forward, they are really there. + +But Bel Bree was not very happy in her home, though she sat at the +window and made rhymes in half merry fashion; though she loved the +hills, and the lights, and the shadows, the sweet-blossoming springs +and the jeweled autumns, the sunsets, and the great rains, that set +all the wild little waterfalls prancing and calling to each other +among the ravines. + +Bel had two lives; one that she lived in these things, and one +within the literal and prosaic limit of the farmhouse, where her +father, as farmers must, had married a smart second wife to "look +after matters." + +Not that Mrs. Bree ever looked _after_ anything: nothing ever got +ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she +neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to +herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected +something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was +reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into +that wherein she should not have been blamed,--the precinct of her +step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. She was taunted +and censured for incapacity in that to which she was not admitted; +"her mother made ten cheeses a week, and flung them in her face," +she said. On the other hand, Mrs. Bree said "Bel hadn't got a mite +of _snap_ to her." One might say that, perhaps, of an electric +battery, if the wrong poles were opposed. Mrs. Bree had not found +out where the "snap" lay in Bel's character. She never would find +out. + +Bel longed, as human creatures who are discontent always do, to get +away. The world was big; there must be better things somewhere. + +There was a pathos of weariness, and an inspiration of hope, in her +little rhyme about the hen. + +Bel was named for her Aunt Belinda. Miss Belinda Bree came up for a +week, sometimes, in the summer, to the farm. All the rest of the +year she worked hard in the city. She put a good face upon it in +her talk among her old neighbors. She spoke of the grand streets, +the parades, Duke's balls,--for which she made dresses,--and +jubilees, of which she heard afar off,--as if she were part and +parcel of all Boston enterprise and magnificence. It was a great +thing, truly, to live in the Hub. Honestly, she had not got over it +since she came there, a raw country girl, and began her +apprenticeship to its wonders and to her own trade. She could not +turn a water faucet, nor light her gas, nor count the strokes of the +electric fire alarm, without feeling the grandeur of having +Cochituate turned on to wash her hands,--of making her one little +spark of the grand illumination under which the Three Hills shone +every night,--of dwelling within ear-shot and protection of the +quietly imposing system of wires and bells that worked by lightning +against a fierce element of daily danger. She was proud of +policemen; she was thrilled at the sound of steam-engines thundering +along the pavements; she felt as if she had a hand in it. When they +fired guns upon the Common, she could only listen and look out of +windows; the little boys ran and shouted for her in the streets; +that is what the little boys are for. Somebody must do the running +and the shouting to relieve the instincts of older and busier +people, who must pretend as if they didn't care. + +All this kept Miss Belinda Bree from utterly wearing out at her dull +work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressing +in families. It really keeps a great many people from wearing out. + +Miss Bree's work _was_ dull. The days of her early "mantua making" +were over. Twenty years had made things very different in Boston. +The "nice families" had been more quiet then; the quietest of them +now cannot manage things as they did in those days; for the same +reason that you cannot buy old-fashioned "wearing" goods; they are +not in the market. "Sell and wear out; wear out and sell;" that is +the principle of to-day. You must do as the world does; there is no +other path cut through. If you travel, you must keep on night and +day, or wait twenty-four hours and start in the night again. + +Nobody--or scarcely anybody--has a dress-maker now, in the old, cosy +way, of the old, cosy sort, staying a week, looking over the +wardrobes of the whole family, advising, cutting, altering, +remaking, getting into ever so much household interest and history +in the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the +same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the +leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that +in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain +for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room +with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of +scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our +dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial. + +But now, all poor Miss Bree's "best places" had slipped away from +her, and her life had changed. People go to great outfitting stores, +buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing +to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything +fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and +accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the +bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern +proportions. + +Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the +warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button +holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or +three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills, +and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and +hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even +this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, +sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about. +Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room +before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the +house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody +a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that +old callariper?" + +Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady's fault; she +resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her +dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had +always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid +that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old +hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her +hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she +"left off going out to work for families." + +The warehouses did not pay her very well; neither there was she able +to compete with the smart young seamstresses; she only got a dollar +and a quarter a day, and had to lodge and feed herself; yet she kept +on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story +window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard +the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by and well-dressed +people moving to and fro, felt the thrill of the daily bustle, and +was, after all, a part of this great, beautiful Boston! Strange +though it seem, Miss Belinda Bree was content. + +Content enough to tell charming stories of it, up in the country, +to her niece Bel, when she was questioned by her. + +Of her room all to herself, so warm in winter, with a red carpet +(given her by the very Mrs. "Callariper" who could not help a +misgiving, after all, that Miss Bree's vocation had been ended with +that wretched word), and a coal stove, and a big, splendid brindled +gray cat--Bartholomew--lying before it; of her snug little +housekeeping, with kindlings in the closet drawer, and milk-jug out +on the stone window-sill; of the music-mistress who had the room +below, and who came up sometimes and sat an hour with her, and took +her cat when she came away, leaving in return, in her own absences, +her great English ivy with Miss Bree. Of the landlady who lived in +the basement, and asked them all down, now and then, to play a game +of cassino or double cribbage, and eat a Welsh rabbit: of things +outside that younger people did,--the girls at the warerooms and +their friends. Of Peck's cheap concerts, and the Public Library +books to read on holidays and Sundays; of ten-cent trips down the +harbor, to see the surf on Nantasket Beach; of the brilliant streets +and shops; of the Public Garden, the flowers and the pond, the boats +and the bridge; of the great bronze Washington reared up on his +horse against the evening sky; of the deep, quiet old avenues of the +Common; of the balloons and the fireworks on the "Fourth of Julies." + +I do not think she did it to entice her; I do not think it occurred +to her that she was putting anything into Bel's head; but when Bel +all at once declared that she meant to go to Boston herself and seek +her fortune,--do machine-work or something,--Aunt Blin felt a sudden +thankful delight, and got a glimpse of a possible cheerfulness +coming to herself that she had never dreamed of. If it was pleasant +to tell over these scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel, +what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge +them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup +of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a +winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her +glasses on her little homely old nose? The little old nose radiated +the concentrated delight of the whole diminutive, withered face; the +intense gleam of the small, pale blue eyes that bent themselves +together to a short focus above it, and the eagerness of the thin, +shrunken lips that pursed themselves upward with an expression that +was keener than a smile. Bel laughed, and said she was "all puckered +up into one little admiration point!" + +After that, it was of no use to be wise and to make objections. + +"I'll take you right in with me, and look after you, if you do!" +said Miss Bree. "And two together, we can housekeep real +comfortable!" + +It was as if a new wave of youth, from the far-retreated tide, had +swept back upon the beach sands of her life, to spend its sparkle +and its music upon the sad, dry level. Every little pebble of +circumstance took new color under its touch. Something belonging to +her was still young, strong, hopeful. Bel would be a brightness in +the whole old place. The middle-aged music-mistress would like +her,--perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the +clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,--old Mr. Sparrow, +the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest +under the eaves,--the milliner in the second-floor-back,--why, she +would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be +singing in the house! The middle-aged music-mistress did not +sing,--only played. And this would be her doing,--her bringing; it +would be the third-floor-front's glory! The pert girls at the +wareroom would not snub the old maid any more, and shove her into +the meanest corner. She had got a piece of girlhood of her own +again. Let them just see Bel Bree--that was all! + +Yet she did set before Bel, conscientiously, the difference between +the free country home and the close, bricked up city. + +"There isn't any out-doors there, you know--round the houses; _home_ +out-doors; you have to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go +out. The streets are splendid, and there's lots to look at; but +they're only made to _get through_, you know, after all." + +They were sitting, while she spoke, on a flat stone out under the +old elm-trees between the "fore-yard" and the barn. Up above was +great blue depth into which you could look through the delicate +stems and flickering leaves of young far tips of branches. One +little white cloud was shining down upon them as it floated in the +sun. Away off swelled billowy tops of hills, one behind another, +making you feel how big the world was. That was what Bel had been +saying. + +"You feel so as long as you stay here," replied Miss Blin, "as if +there was room and chance for everything 'over the hills and far +away.' But in the city it all crowds up together; it gets just as +close as it can, and everybody is after the same chances. 'Tain't +_all_ Fourth-of-July; you mustn't think it. Milk's ten cents a +quart, and _jest_ as blue! Don't you 'spose you're better off up +here, after all? Do you think Mrs. Bree could get along without you, +now?" + +Bel replied most irrelevantly. She sat watching the fowls +scratching around the barn-door. + +"How different a rooster scratches from a hen!" said she. "He just +gives one kick,--out smart,--and picks up what he's after; _she_ +makes ever so many little scrabbles, and half the time concludes it +ain't there!--What was it you were saying? About mother? O, _she_ +don't want me! The trouble is, Aunt Blin, we two _don't_ want each +other, and never did." She picked up a straw and bent it back and +forth, absently, into little bits, until it broke. Her lips curled +tremulously, and her bright eyes were sad. + +Miss Blin knew it perfectly well without being told; but she +wouldn't have pretended that she did, for all the world. + +"O, tut!" said she. "You get along well enough. You like one another +full as well as could be expected, only you ain't constituted +similar, that's all. She's great for turning off, and going +ahead, and she ain't got much patience. Such folks never has. You +can't be smart and easy going too. 'Tain't possible. She's +right-up-an'-a-comin', and she expects everybody else to be. But you +_like_ her, Bel; you know you do. You ain't goin' away for that. I +won't have it that you are." + +"I like her--yes;" said Bel, slowly. "I know she's smart. I _mean_ +to like her. I do it on purpose. But I don't _love_ her, with a +_can't help it_, you see. I feel as if I ought to; I want to have my +heart go out to her; but it keeps coming back again. I could be +happy with you, Aunt Blin, in your up-stairs room, with the blue +milk out in the window-sill. There'd be room, enough for _us_, but +this whole farm isn't comfortable for Ma and me!" + +After that, Miss Blin only said that she would speak to Kellup; +meaning her brother, Caleb Bree. + +Caleb Bree was just the sort of man that by divine compensation +generally marries, or gets married by a woman that is +"right-up-and-a-comin'." He "had no objections," to this plan of +Bel's, I mean; perhaps his favorite phrase would have expressed his +strongest feeling in the crisis just referred to, also; it was a +normal state of mind with him; he had gone through the world, thus +far, on the principle of _not_ "having objections." He had none now, +"if Ma'am hadn't, and Blin saw best." He let his child go out from +his house down into the great, unknown, struggling, hustling, +devouring city, without much thought or inquiry. It settled _that_ +point in his family. "Bel had gone down to Boston to be a +dress-maker, 'long of her Aunt Blindy," was what he had to say to +his neighbors. It sounded natural and satisfactory. House-holds +break up after the children are grown, of course; they all settle to +something; that is all it comes to--the child-life out of which if +they had died and gone away, there would have been wailing and +heart-breaking; the loving and tending and watching through cunning +ways and helpless prettiness and small knowledge-getting: they turn +into men and women, and they go out into the towns, or they get +married, even--and nobody thinks, then, that the little children are +dead! But they are: they are dead, out of the household, and they +never come back to it any more. + +Caleb Bree let Bel go, never once thinking that after this she never +_could_ come back the same. + +Mrs. Bree had her own two children,--and there might be more--that +would claim all that could be done for them. She would miss Bel's +telling them stories, and washing their faces, and carrying them off +into the barn or the orchard, and leaving the house quiet of a +Sunday or a busy baking-day. It had been "all Bel was good for;" +and it had been more than Mrs. Bree had appreciated at the time. Bel +cried when she kissed them and bade them good-by; but she was gone; +she and her round leather trunk and her little bird in its cage that +she could not leave behind, though Aunt Blin did say that "she +wouldn't altogether answer for it with Bartholomew." + +Bel herself,--the other little bird,--who had never tried her +wings, or been shut up in strange places with fierce, prowling +creatures,--she could answer for her, she thought! + +It is worth telling,--the advent of Bel and her bird in the +up-stairs room in Leicester Place, and what came of it with +Bartholomew. Miss Blin believed very much in her cat with the +apostolic name, though she had never tried his principles with a +caged bird. She had tutored him to refrain from meat and milk unless +they were set down for him in his especial corner upon the hearth. +He took his airings on the window-ledge where the sun slanted in of +a morning, beside the very brown paper parcel in which was wrapped +the mutton chop for dinner; he never touched the cheese upon the +table, though he knew the word "cheese" as well as if he could spell +it, and would stand up tall on his hind paws to receive his morsel +when he was told, even in a whisper, and without a movement, that he +might come and have some. He preferred his milk condensed in this +way; he got very little of it in the fluid form, and did not think +very highly of it when he did. He knew what was good, Aunt Blin +said. + +He understood conversation; especially moral lectures and +admonitions; Miss Bree had talked to him precisely as if he had a +soul, for five years. He knew when she was coming back at one +o'clock to dinner, or at nine in the evening, by the ringing of the +bells. After she had told him so, he would be sitting at the door, +watching for its opening, from the instant of their first sound +until she came up-stairs. + +When Aunt Blin thought over all this and told it to Bel, on their +way down in the cars, she almost persuaded her niece and quite +convinced herself, that Bartholomew could be dealt with on +principles of honor and confidence. They would not attempt to keep +the cage out of his reach; that would be almost to keep it out of +their own. She would talk to Bartholomew. She would show him the +bird, and make him understand that they set great store by it, that +it must not be meddled with on any account. "Why, he never _offers_ +to touch my tame pigeon that hops in on the table to eat the +crumbs!" + +"But a pigeon is pretty big, Aunt Blin," Bel answered, "and may be +Bartholomew suspects that it is old and tough. I _am_ afraid about +my tiny, tender little bird." + +Bel was charmed with Aunt Blin's room, when she opened the blinds +and drew up the colored shades, and let the street-light in until +she could find her matches and light the gas. It was just after dark +when they reached Leicester Place. The little lamp-lighter ran down +out of the court with his ladder as they turned in. There were two +bright lanterns whose flames flared in the wind; one just opposite +their windows, and one below at the livery stable. There was a big +livery stable at the bottom of the court, built right across the +end; and there was litter about the doors, and horse odor in the +air. But that is not the very worst kind of city smell that might +be, and putting up with that, the people who lived in Leicester +Court had great counterbalancing advantages. There was only one side +to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the +opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there +were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at +the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of +an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and +down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole +place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all +lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand; +certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and +gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one +little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told +about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really handsome +pattern of raised leaves; the round table in the middle with a red +cloth, and the square one in the corner with a brown linen one; the +little Parlor Beauty stove, with a boiler atop and an oven in the +side,--an oval braided mat before it, and a mantel shelf above with +some vases and books upon it,--all the books, some dozen in number, +that Aunt Blin had ever owned in the whole course of her life. One +of the blue vases had a piece broken out of its edge, but that was +turned round behind. The closets, one on each side of the +fire-place, answered for pantry, china closet, store-room, wardrobe, +and all. The _refrigerator_ was out on the stone window-sill on the +east side. The room had corner windows, the house standing at the +head of a little paved alley that ran down to Hero Street. + +"There!" says Aunt Blin turning up the gas cheerily, and dropping +her shawl upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then +I'll run for some muffins, and you can make a fire. You know where +all the things are, you know!" + +That was the way she made Bel welcome; treating her at once as part +and parcel of everything. + +Down stairs ran Aunt Blin; she came up more slowly, bringing the +great Bartholomew in her arms, and treading on her petticoats all +the way. + +Straight up to the square table she walked, where Bel had set down +her bird-cage, with the newspaper pinned over it. Aunt Blin pulled +the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the +other arm. His big head stuck out before, and his big tail behind; +both eager, restless, wondering, in port and aspect. + +"Now, Bartholomew," said Aunt Blin, in her calmest, most confident, +most deliberate tones, "see here! We've brought--home--a little +_bird_, Bartholomew!" + +Bartholomew's big head was electric with feline expression; his ears +stood up, his eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on +end; he devoured poor little Cheeps already with his gaze; his tail +grew huger, and vibrated in great sweeps. + +"O see, Aunt Blin!" cried Bel. "He's just ready to spring. He don't +care a bit for what you say!" + +Aunt Blin gave a fresh grip with her elbow against Bartholomew's +sides, and went on with unabated faith,--unhurried calmness. + +"We set _everything_ by that little bird, Bartholomew! We wouldn't +have it touched for all the world! Don't--you--never--go--_near_ it! +Do you hear?" + +Bartholomew heard. Miss Bree could not see his tail, fairly lashing +now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing like green fire. +She stroked his head, and went on preaching. + +"The little bird _sings_, Bartholomew! You can hear it, mornings, +while you eat your breakfast. And you shall have CHEESE for +breakfast as long as you're good, and _don't_--_touch_--the _bird_!" + +"O, Aunt Blin! He will! He means to! Don't show it to him any more! +Let me hang it way up high, where he _can't_!" + +"Don't you be afraid. He understands now, that we're precious of it. +Don't you, Bartholomew? I want him to get used to it." + +And Aunt Blin actually set the cat down, and turned round to take up +her shawl again. + +Bartholomew was quiet enough for a minute; he must have his +cat-pleasure of crouching and creeping; he must wait till nobody +looked. He knew very well what he was about. But the tail trembled +still; the green eyes were still wild and eager. + +"The kindlings are in the left-hand closet, you know," said Aunt +Blin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into +her shawl. "You'll want to get the fire going as quick as you can." + +Poor Bel turned away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very +minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight +from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements +hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,--though he walked off +now like a deacon after a benediction,--she trembled in her poor +little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love +Aunt Blin's great gray pet as she supposed she ought. + +Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just +emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed +the door to behind her with her foot, when--crash! bang!--what _had_ +happened? + +A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and +scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and +turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has +infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such +a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of +incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about +the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The +overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy +Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to +the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful +bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the +other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of +terror. + +"You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, +snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped +discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be +reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic +indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however +much one may want to do it. + +"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as +if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her +denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns +most passionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own. + +"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous, +abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!" + +Miss Bree fairly gasped. + +When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I +_thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your +heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No +_co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!" + +It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their +grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation. + +If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a +great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment, +under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and +disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do +exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care +about that? + +"I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this +same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but +persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say +"_dogged_," except for a noble holding fast? It is a cat which is +selfishly, stolidly obstinate. + +"I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin, +with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little +bird!" + +Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the +creature cheese, but she could not give him "_con_fidence." + +Bel and the bird illustrated something finer, higher, sweeter to her +now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand +for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that. + +But Bel was so astonished at the sudden change,--it was so funny in +its meek manifestation,--that she forgot her wrath, and laughed +outright. + +"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Your beautiful Bartholomew, who +understood, and let alone!" + +Aunt Blin shook her head. + +"I don't know. I _thought_ so. But--I've no--_con_-fidence in him! +You'd better hang the cage up high. And I'll go out for the +muffins." + +Bel heard her saying it over again, as she went down the stairs. + +"No, I've no--_con_-fidence in him!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +TO HELP: SOMEWHERE. + + +There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree +by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village. + +All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to +make payment,--and all having demands against the same to present +accounts,--to Abigail S. Ingraham. + +The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon +the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer +color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and +white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a +plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to +wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen +window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they +were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room, +looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices, +but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary +documents. + +Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's +breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name +stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has +always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy +out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready +to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in +the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for +relinquishing this and the goodwill. + +Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was +different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she +had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and +incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for +the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She +understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps, +have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been +brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what +they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave +them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and +thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she +saw how that made all the difference. + +"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate." + +That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot +especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were +bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing, +could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve +the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what +might happen?" + +She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she +said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that. +It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she +didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and +assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a +seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything," +was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this +point of her considerations. And if he were anything,--anything of a +man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,--what would they +do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to +her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will +be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real +womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found +out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you +must choose as a man does,--for your whole life, at the beginning of +it." + +Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this +turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed +her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took +up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot +of _working for others_. + +"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be +safe and faithful; that will leave room." + +She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat +talking with her over some building accounts one evening. + +He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways; +beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his +own employer who held a small demand against the estate. + +"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as +if I _must_ have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to +keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot--how can +I tell what either of us"--she changed her word with brave honesty, +"might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were +forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for +journeymen,--girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be +brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want +business and they would be free, while they _were_ girls, for +happier things that might happen." + +"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best +right of all." + +"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she +can't be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her. I +suppose _that_ is what has kept women out of the real business +world,--the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm +willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me." + +There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's +deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray +Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly +perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made +the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power +ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most +tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman +accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He +hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie +ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In +dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in +the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a +servant. He lays _help_ upon him; He lays help for man upon the +woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help +meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "_help_" is to do the work +of the world. + +Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said +that she would "help, somewhere." + +What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say, +with a flash in his eyes,-- + +"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?" + +"I'm _very_ glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?" + +"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,--flashy, I +mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to +build all sorts, you know. When I build _my_ house--well, never +mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out. +He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the +care of it straight through,--stock, work, and all; and I'm to have +half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full, +you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this +year a whole street going up--with Mansard roofs, of course. +Everything is going into this house that _can_ go into a house; and +to see that it gets in right will be--practice, anyhow." + +Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray +what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was +so glad to be told. + +He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when +she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a +few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the +little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the +Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer. + +Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it +glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it +contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream +and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress," +she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a +reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together, +and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go +to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places; +folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities; +they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do. + +Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before +her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else +left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green +dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room. +The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to +get her own pay. + +What was the use of telling a girl like that--all flushed with +beauty and vanity, and gay expectation--about his having a house to +build? What would it seem to her,--his busy life all spring and +summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, +chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles +and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in +laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into +his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself +lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be +applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a +dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there +was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain; +only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of +people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate +amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare? + +It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done +before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her +glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of +them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely, +lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very +face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all +enticing, outward complement and suggestion. + +He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a +mistake. + +Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with +herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself +manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses. + +Was she glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this +poor side of her--making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, so much? + +"Marion has something better in her than that," she made herself +say, when she replied. "Perhaps it will come out again, some day." + +"I think she has. Perhaps it will. You have always been good and +generous to her, Ray." + +What did he say that for? Why did he make it impossible for her to +let it go so? + +"Don't!" she exclaimed. "I am not generous to her this minute! I +couldn't help, when you said it, being satisfied--that you should +see. I don't know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do +want people to see the truth." + +She covered it up with that last sentence. The first left by +itself, might have shown him more. It was certainly so; that there +was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear +perception and her very honesty. When she could see a thing, it +seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she +ought to show them, that they might fairly understand. A half +understanding made her restless, even though the other half were +less kind and comfortable. + +"You show the truth of yourself, too," said Frank. "And that is +grand, at any rate." + +"You need not praise me," said Ray, almost coldly. "It is impossible +to be _quite_ true, I think. The nearer you try to come to it, the +more you can't"--and then she stopped. + +"How many changes there have been among us!" she began again, +suddenly, at quite a different point, "All through the village there +have been things happening, in this last year. Nobody is at all as +they were a year ago. And another year"-- + +"Will tell another year's story," said Frank Sunderline. "Don't you +like to think of that sometimes? That the story isn't done, ever? +That there is always more to tell, on and on? And that means more to +_do_. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right still, you +see,--why, the Lord might as well shut up the book!" + +He was full of life, this young man, and full of the delight of +living. There was something in his calling that made him rejoice in +a confident strength. He was born to handle tools; hammer and chisel +were as parts of him. He builded; he believed in building; in +something coming of every stroke. Real work disposes and qualifies a +man to believe in a real destiny,--a real God. A carpenter can see +that nails are never driven for nothing. It is the sham work, +perhaps, of our day, that shakes faith in purpose and unity; a +scrambling, shifty living of men's own, that makes to their sight a +chance huddle and phantasm of creation. + +Mrs. Ingraham came down into the room where they were, at this +moment, and Dot presently followed. They began to talk of their +plans. They were going, now, to live with the grandmother in Boston, +in Pilgrim Street. + +It was a comfortable, plain old house, in a little strip of +neighborhood long since left of fashion, and not yet demanded of +business; so Mrs. Rhynde could afford to occupy it. She had used, +for many years, to let out a part of her rooms,--these that the +Ingrahams would take,--in a tenement, as people used to say, making +no ambitious distinctions; now, it might be spoken of as "a flat," +or "apartments." Everything is "apartments" that is more than a +foothold. + +The rooms were large, but low. At the back, they were sunny and +airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence +Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain. +There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces, +even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of +tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard. The step into +the front passage was a step down from the street. + +Ray and Dot told these things; beguiled into reminiscences of +pleasant childish visiting days; Ray, of long domestication in still +later years. It would be a going home, after all. + +Leicester Place was only a stone's throw from Pilgrim Street. From +old Mr. Sparrow's attic window, you could look across to the +Pilgrim Street roofs, and see women hanging out clothes there upon +the flat tops of one or two of the houses. But what of that, in a +great city? Will the Ingrahams ever come across Aunt Blin and bright +little Bel Bree? + +In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a +leaf between them. A great many of us may be as near as that to each +other in the telling of the world's story, who never get the leaf +turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a +connecting word. + +The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer. It was July +when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +INHERITANCE. + + +Do you remember somebody else who lives in Boston? Have you heard of +the old house in Greenley Street, and Uncle Titus Oldways, and +Desire Ledwith, who came home with him after her mother and sisters +went off to Europe, and something had touched her young life that +had left for a while an ache after it? Do you know Rachel Froke, and +the little gray parlor, and the ferns, and the ivies, and the +canary,--and the old, dusty library, with its tall, crowded shelves, +and the square table in the midst, where Uncle Oldways sat? All is +there still, except Uncle Oldways. The very year that had been so +busy elsewhere, with its rushing minutes that clashed out events and +changes as moving atoms clash out heat--that had brought to pass all +that it has taken more than a hundred pages for me to tell,--that +had drawn toward one centre and focus, whither, as into a great +whirling maelstrom of life, so many human affairs and interests are +continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the +persons of one little history,--this same year had lifted Uncle +Titus up. Out of his old age, out of his old house,--out from among +his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the +youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing; +into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and +Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the +Divine. Not _away_; I do not believe that. Lifted up, in the life of +the spirit, if only taken within. + +Outside,--just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life +had grown into his and into his home,--Desire remained, in this home +that he had given her. + +People talked about her, eagerly, curiously. They said she was a +great heiress. Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her +overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation, +condolence and delight. They wanted her to come abroad at once, now, +and join them. What was there, any longer, to prevent? + +Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood. +There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again. +She had come into Uncle Titus's living with him; he had let her do +that, and he had made it so that she could stay. She was not going +to leave him now. She would as soon have robbed him of his money and +run away, while the handling of his money had been his own. It was +but mere handling that made the difference. _Himself_ was not +dependent on his breath. And it was himself that she was joined +with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off +with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion. + +No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever," +they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she +lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed, +long-sufferingly. + +Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and +out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen +Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery +and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary +work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings; +in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they +had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the +dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city +"on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much +power had been laid on their young heads and hands. + +Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that +were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two +sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen +these two girls,--children almost,--whom he declared his "next of +kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he +left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the +income of each portion to be severally theirs,--Desire's without +restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each +should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two +should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other; +if neither should survive it,--then followed a division among +persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge, +and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved +to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly, +her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given +her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown +her to be truly, and of the will of God--not man, her own "next of +kin." + +"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances +Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be +executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right +judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!" + +Some people even laughed at such a document as this, made as if the +Almighty really had to do with things, and were surer than trustees +and cunning law-conditions. + +"Two girls!" they said, "who will marry--the Lord knows whom--and +do, the Lord knows what, with it all!" + +That was exactly what Titus Oldways believed. He believed the Lord +_did_ know. He had shown him part; enough to go by to the end of +_his_ beat; the rest was his. "Everything escheats to the King, at +last." + +And so Desire Ledwith and Hazel Ripwinkley sat in the old house +together, and made their pure, young, generous plans; so they went +in and out, and did their work, blessedly; and Uncle Titus's +arm-chair stood there, where it always had, at the library table; +and the Book of the Gospels, with its silver cross, lay in its +silken cover where it always lay; and nothing had gone but the bent +old form from which the strength had risen and the real presence +loosened itself; and Uncle Titus's grand, beautiful life passed over +to them continually; for hands on earth, he had their hands; for +feet, their feet. There was no break, as Desire had said; it was the +wonderful "fellowship of the mystery" which God meant, in the +manifold wisdom that they know in heavenly places, when He ordained +the passing over. We call it death; we _make_ it death; a +separation. We leave off there. We gather up the tools that loved +ones drop, and use them to carve out, selfishly, our own pleasures; +we let their _life_ go, as if it were no matter to keep it up upon +the earth. We turn our backs, and go our ways, and leave saints' +hands outstretched invisibly in vain. + +It was ever so bright and cheerful in this house into which +death--that was such a birth--had come. These children were +brimming over with happy thankfulness that Uncle Titus had loved and +trusted them so. They never solemnized their looks or lengthened +their accent when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer +to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to +approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been +hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to +their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work. +They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured +gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he was gladder than +either; they sat in Desire's large, bright chamber at their work, or +they went down to find out things in books in the library; and here, +though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled +reverently the volumes he had loved,--they used tenderly the +appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken +consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young +heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at +opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before +his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment +come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of +flowers beside the desk, at the left hand. + +One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was +busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the +stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she +spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and +sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving. + +I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that +had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home; +what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic +ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these +changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in +a country family of England, said it was like the real old places +there. + +"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,--(she did her _thinking_ deeply and +slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it +was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with +the needle,--"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread +as quick as you can,")--"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after +all." + +"Desire!" + +"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me." + +"Desire Ledwith!" + +"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't +expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all +to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?" + +"O!" + +"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I +mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last +spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on +paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings; +you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books, +and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends' +letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind, +silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I think we'll +go." + +"O, Desire, how nice!" + +"That's it! One new word, or two, every time, and repeat. 'Now say +the five?' as Fay's Geography used to tell us." + +"O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!" + +"Good girl. Now, don't you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss +Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?" + +"How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately! I mean, +all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly," said Hazel, +flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names. +"I wonder why it is fixed so, Des', that the _best_ people--those +you want to get nearest to--are so busy _being_ the best that you +don't get much chance?" + +"Perhaps the chance is laid up," said Desire, thoughtfully. "I think +a good many things are. But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan. You +know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and +joined Miss Kirkbright's class? Not _beautiful_, I don't mean +exactly,--though one of them was that, too; but real"-- + +"Splendid!" filled out Hazel. "Real ready-made sort of girls. As if +they'd had chapel all their lives, somehow. Not like first-Sunday +girls at all." + +"One of them _was_ a chapel girl. Miss Kirkbright told me. She grew +up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in +the country. Now I must have those two in, you see. I don't know but +Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors, +if I pick out the ready-made. But this sort of thing--you must have +some reliance, you know; then there's something for the rest to come +to, and grow to. I think I shall begin about it before vacation, +while they're all together and alive to things. It takes so long to +warm up to the same point after the break. We might have one +meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing. O, how good +it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!" + +If I had not so many things to tell before my story can be at all +complete, I should like nothing better than to linger here in Desire +Ledwith's room, where there was so really "a beautiful east window, +and the morning had come in." I should like to just stay in the +sunshine of it, and show what the stir of it was, and what it had +come to with these two; what a brightness, day by day, they lived +in. I should be glad to tell their piece of the story minutely; but +I should not be able to get at it to tell. We may touch such lives, +and feel the lovely pleasantness; but to enter in, and have the +whole--that may only be done in one way; by going and doing +likewise. + +This talk of theirs gives one link; it shows you how easily and +naturally they came to have to do with the Ingrahams; how they +belonged in one sphere and drew to one centre; how simply things +happen, after all, when they have any business to happen. + +Somebody speaks of the ascent of a lofty church spire, as giving +such a wonderful glimpse of the unity of a great city; showing its +converging movements, its net-work of connection,--its human +currents swayed and turned by intelligible drifts of purpose; all +which, when one is down among them, seem but whirls of a confusing +and distracting medley; a heaping and a rushing together of many +things and much conflicting action; where the wonder is that it +stays together at all, or that one part plays and fits in with any +other to harmony of service. If we could climb high enough, and see +deep enough, to read a spiritual panorama in like manner, we should +look into the mystery of the intent that builds the worlds and works +with "birth and death and infinite motion" to evolve the wonders of +all human and angelic history. We should only marvel, then, at what +we, with our little bit of wayward free will, hinder; not at what +God gently and mightily forecasts and brings to pass. + +To find another link, we must go away and look in elsewhere. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +FILLMER AND BYLLES. + + +It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to +their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter +coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage, +bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and +untouchable,--with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a +sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,--saw in the windows early +peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in +mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet +mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their +globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched, +unsatisfied, feverish lips. + +Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it. + +Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps +of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piqués, muslins, piles of +frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were +tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the +forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there, +reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening, +or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits; +delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful +morning wrappers,--perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at +watering-places and in elegant summer homes. + +Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the +sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles +were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before +each others' eyes. + +For it was fearfully hot again this year. + +Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down +yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house. +She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a +little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night +before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe +that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was +answered,--"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that +in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had +their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are +ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for +the _managing_, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt +together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were +very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the +pinch,--what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home +in a paper and made much of." + +Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to +work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick, +knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the +forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others +had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what +they put on upon another. + +It had taken Bel a fortnight to feel her ground, and to get exactly +the "lay of the land." Then she went to work, unhesitatingly, to set +some small things right. + +This morning she had hurried herself and her aunt, come early, and +put Miss Bree down, resolutely, against all her disclaimers, in a +corner of the very best window in the room. To do this, she moved +Matilda Meane's sewing-machine a little. + +When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the +world was moved. She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but +she elbowed about, she pushed her machine this way and that; she +behaved like a hen hustled off her nest and not quite making up her +mind whether she would go back to it or not. Miss Bree's nose grew +apprehensive; it drew itself up with a little, visible, trembling +gasp,--her small eyes glanced timidly from under the drawn, puckered +lids, it was evidently all she could do to hold her ground. But Bel +had put her there, and loyalty to Bel kept her passive. It is so +much harder for some poor meek things ever to take anything, than it +is forever to go without. Only for love and gratefulness can they +ever be made to assume their common human rights. + +Presently it had to come out. + +Bel was singing away, as she gathered her work together in an +opposite quarter of the room, keeping a glance out at her right +eye-corner, expectantly. + +"Who moved this machine?" asked Matilda Meane, stopping short in her +endeavors to make it take up the middle of the window without +absolutely rolling it over Aunt Blin's toes. + +"I did, a little," answered Bel, promptly. "There was plenty of room +for two; and if there hadn't been, Aunt Blin must have a good light, +and have it over her left shoulder, at that. She's the oldest person +in the room, Miss Meane!" + +"She was spoken to yesterday about her buttonholes," she added, in +a lower tone, to Eliza Mokey, as she settled herself in her own seat +next that young lady. "And it was all because she could hardly see." + +"Buttonholes or not," answered Eliza, who preferred to be called +"Elise," "I'm glad somebody has taken Mat Meane down at last. She +needed it. I wish you could take her in hand everywhere. If _you_ +boarded at our house"-- + +"I shouldn't," interrupted Bel, decisively. "Not under any +circumstances, from what you tell of it." + +"That's all very well to say now; you're in clover, comparatively. +'Chaters' and real tea,--_and_ a three-ply carpet!" + +Miss Mokey had gone home with Bel and Aunt Blin, one evening lately, +when there had been work to finish and they had made a "bee" of it. + +"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin." + +"Why couldn't I help myself as well as she? She had a nice place all +alone, before I came." + +"She must have half starved herself to keep it, then. Stands to +reason. Dollar and a quarter a day, and five dollars a week for your +room. Where's your muffins, and your Oolong? Or else, where's your +shoes?--Where's that Hamburg edging?" + +"We don't have any Hamburg edging," said Bel, laughing. + +"Nonsense. You know what I mean. O, here it is, under all that +piqué! For mercy's sake, won't Miss Tonker blow?--Now I get my nine +dollars a week, and out of it I pay six for my share of that +miserable sky-parlor, and my ends of the crusts and the +cheese-parings. No place to myself for a minute. Why, I feel mixed +up sometimes to that degree that I'd almost like to die, and begin +again, to find out who I am!" + +"Well, I wouldn't live so. And Aunt Blin wouldn't. I'm afraid she +_didn't_ have other things quite so--corresponding--when she was by +herself; but she had the home comfort. And, truly, now, I shouldn't +wonder if there was real nourishment in just looking round,--at a +red carpet and things,--when you've got 'em all just to your own +mind. You can piece out with--peace!" + +For two or three minutes, there was nothing heard after that in Bel +and Elise's corner, but the regular busy click of the machines, as +the tucks ran evenly through. Miss Tonker was hovering in the +neighborhood. But presently, as she moved off, and Elise had a spool +to change, Bel began again. + +"Why don't you get up something different? Why couldn't a dozen, or +twenty, take a flat, or a whole house, and have a housekeeper, and +live nice? I believe I could contrive." + +Bel was a born contriver. She was a born reformer, as all poets are; +only she did not know yet that she was either. That had been the +real trouble up in New Hampshire. She had her ideals, and she could +not carry them out; so she sat and dreamed of what she would do if +she could. If she might in any way have moulded her home to her own +more delicate instincts, it may be that her step-mother need not +have had to complain that "there was no spunk or snap to her about +anything." It was not in her to "whew round" among tubs and +whey,--to go slap-dash into soapmaking, or the coarse Monday's +washing, when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs +were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left +crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,--mantel +ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side +during a dusting, and left so,--carpets rough and untidy at the +corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear, +necessary _work_ anywhere. She would have made home _home_; then she +would have worked for it. + +Aunt Blin was like her. She would rather sit behind her blinds in +her neat, quiet room of a Sunday, too tired to go to church, but +with a kind of sacred rest about her, and a possible hushed thought +of a presence in a place that God had let her make that He might +abide with her in it,--than to live as these girls did,--even to +have been young like them; to have put on fine, gay things, bought +with the small surplus of her weekly earnings after the wretched +board was paid, and parade the streets, or sit in a pew, with a +Sunday-consciousness of gloves and new bonnet upon her. + +"O, faugh!" said Elise Mokey, impatiently, to Bel's "I could +contrive." "I should like to see you, with girls like Matilda Meane. +You've got to _get_ your dozen or twenty, first, and make them +agree." + +Miss Mokey had very likely never heard of Mrs. Glass, or of the +"catching your hare," which is the impracticable hitch at the start +of most delicious things that might otherwise be done. + +"I think this world is a kind of single-threaded machine, after all. +There's always something either too tight or too loose the minute +you double," she said, changing her tension-screw as she spoke. "No; +we've just got to make it up with cracker-frolics, the best way we +can; and that takes one more of somebody's nine dollars, every time. +There's some fun in it, after all, especially to see Matilda Meane +come to the table. I do believe that girl would sell her soul if she +could have a Parker House dinner every day. When it's a little +worse, or a little better than usual, when the milk gives out, or we +have a yesterday's lobster for tea,--I wish you could just see her. +She's so mad, or she's so eager. She _will_ have claw-meat; it _is_ +claw-meat with her, sure enough; and if anybody else gets it first, +or the dish goes round the other way and is all picked over,--she +_looks_! Why, she looks as if she desired the prayers of the +congregation, and nobody would pray!" + +"What _are_ you two laughing at?" broke in Kate Sencerbox, leaning +over from her table beyond. "Bel Bree, where are your crimps?" + +In the ardor of her work, or talk, or both, Bel's hair, as usual, +had got pushed recklessly aside. + +"O, I only have a little smile in my hair early in the morning," +replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all +gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's +like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the +morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it _giveth_ up, +and is down flat." + +"I guess you'll find it so," said Elise Mokey, splenetically. + +"Was _that_ what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you +choose rather aggravating subjects." + +"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know +how," Bel Bree said. + +"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise. + +"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet +little Mary Pinfall. + +"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a +plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's +perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time +you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it +isn't there." + +"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by +aggravating." + +Miss Proddle was tiresome; she always said things that had been said +before, or that needed no saying. Miss Proddle was another of those +old girls who, like Miss Bree among the young ones, have outlived +and lost their Christian names, with their vivacity. Never mind; it +is the Christian name, and the Lord knows them by it, as He did +Martha and Mary. + +"_Reductio ad absurdum_," put in Grace Toppings, who had been at a +High School, and studied geometry. + +"Grace Toppings!" called out Kate Sencerbox, shortly, "you've +stitched that flounce together with a twist in it!" + +Miss Tonker heard, and came round again. + +"Gyurls!" she said, with elegantly severe authority, "I _will_ not +have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is +an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom! +No _room_ for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures, +you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and +put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please, +unless you want to be put to plain yard-stitching." + +"Eight inches and a half is _some_ room for a flounce, I guess, if +it ain't nine inches," muttered the mathematical Grace, as she began +the slow ripping of the lock-stitched tucking, that would take half +an hour out of the value of her day. + +"That's a comfort, ain't it?" whispered mischievous, sharp, +good-natured Kate. "Look here; I'll help, if you won't talk any more +Latin, or Hottentot." + +It was of no use to tell those girls not to talk over their work. +The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a +steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, +who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in +listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and +wheels,--and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and +Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with +their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on +the tops of their bent heads,--kept time with silent thoughts to the +beat of their treadles and the clip of their needles against the +thimble-ends. + +Elise Mokey stretched up her back slowly, and drew her shoulders +painfully out of their steady cramp. + +"There! I went round without stopping! I put a sign on it, and I've +got my wish! I'd rather sweep a room, though, than do it again." + +"You _might_ sweep a room, instead," said Emma Hollen, in her low, +faint tone, moved to speak by some echo in that inward rhythm of her +thinking. "I partly wish _I_ had, before now." + +"O, you goose! Be a kitchen-wolloper!" + +"May be I sha'n't be anything, very long. I should like to feel as +if I _could_ stir round." + +"I wouldn't care if anybody could see what it came to, or what there +was left of it at the year's end," said Elise Mokey. + +"I'd sweep a room fast enough if it was my own," said Kate +Sencerbox. "But you won't catch me sweeping up other folks' dust!" + +"I wonder what other folks' dust really is, when you've sifted it, +and how you'd pick out your own," said Bel. + +"I'd have my own _place_, at any rate," responded Kate, "and the +dust that got into it would go for mine, I suppose." + +Bel Bree tucked away. Tucked away thoughts also, as she worked. Not +one of those girls who had been talking had anything like a home. +What was there for them at the year's end, after the wearing round +and round of daily toil, but the diminishing dream of a happier +living that might never come true? The fading away out of their +health and prettiness into "old things like Miss Proddle and Aunt +Blin,"--to take their turn then, in being snubbed and shoved aside? +Bel liked her own life here, so far; it was pleasanter than that +which she had left; but she began to see how hundreds of other girls +were going on in it without reward or hope; unfitting themselves, +many of them utterly, by the very mode of their careless, rootless +existence,--all of them, more or less, by the narrow specialty of +their monotonous drudgery,--for the bright, capable, adaptive +many-sidedness of a happy woman's living in the love and use and +beauty of home. + +Some of her thoughts prompted the fashion in which she recurred to +the subject during the hour's dinner-time. + +They were grouped together--the same half dozen--in a little +ante-room, with a very dusty window looking down into an alley-way, +or across it rather, since unless they really leaned out from their +fifth story, the line of vision could not strike the base of the +opposite buildings, a room used for the manifold purposes of +clothes-hanging, hand-washing, brush and broom stowing, and +luncheon eating. + +"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you +have for your choice, if you could get it?" + +"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace +Toppings. + +"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda +Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake. + +"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said +Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the +third volume of her old novel in the other. + +The girls shouted. + +"That means you'd like a real good husband,--a Tom, or a Dick, or a +Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this +country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of +us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his +own, and have a house up in Chester Park!" + +"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me, +instead of working my head and feet off making them for other +people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey. + +"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply. + +"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker +round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till +I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with +fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of +train and Yak-flounces!" + +"That isn't _my_ sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's +played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of +temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't _that_ would +ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the +gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the +hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get _out_ +of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with +my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and +_choose_ what I would do?--when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of +July, nor Washington's Birthday, nor any day in particular? I think, +on the whole, I'd choose _not_ to get up. A chance to be lazy; +that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!" + +"O, dear!" cried Bel, despairingly. "Why don't some of you wish for +nice, cute little things?" + +"Tell us what," said Kate. "I think we _have_ wished for all sorts, +amongst us." + +"O, a real little _home_--to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor +fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a +pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of +little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig +little kitchen; pies to make for Sundays and Thanksgivings; just +enough work to do in the mornings, and time in the afternoons to sit +and sew, and--somebody to read to you out loud in the evenings! I +think I'd do anything--that wasn't wicked--to come to live just like +that!" + +"There isn't anybody that does live so nowadays," said Kate. +"There's nothing between horrid little stivey places, and a regular +scrub and squall and slop all the week round, and silk and snow and +ordering other folks about. You've got to be top or bottom; and if +it's all the same to you, I mean to be top if I can; even if"-- + +Kate was a great deal better than her pretences, after all. She did +not finish the bad sentence. + +"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great, +beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. All +the rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through Hero +Street, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courts +and places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand back +from each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move up +a little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there, +behind!" + +"Say it, why don't you? I'll tell you who'd listen. Washington, +sitting on his big bronze horse, pawing in the air at Commonwealth +Avenue!" + +"Well--Washington _would_ listen, if he wasn't bronze. And its grand +for _everybody_ to look at him there. I shouldn't really want the +houses to move up, I suppose. It's good to have grandness somewhere, +or else nobody would have any place to stretch in. But there must be +some sort of moving up that could be, to make things evener, if we +only knew!" + +Poor little Bel Bree, just dropped down out of New Hampshire! What a +problem the great city was already to her! + +Miss Tonker put her sub-aristocratic face in at the door. It is a +curious kind of reflected majesty that these important functionaries +get, who take at first hand the magnificent orders, and sustain +temporary relations of silk-and-velvet intimacy with Spreadsplendid +Park. + +The hour was up. Mary Pinfall slid her romance into the pocket of +her waterproof; Matilda Meane swallowed her last mouthful of the +four cream-cakes which she had valorously demolished without +assistance, and hastily washed her hands at the faucet; Kate and +Elise and Grace brushed by her with a sniff of generous contempt. + +In two minutes, the wheels and feeds were buzzing and clicking +again. What did they say, and emphasize, and repeat, in the ears +that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always. +They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or +memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and +consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the +rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it +can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started with in +mind or heart? + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +CRISTOFERO. + + +A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York, +two days from her port. + +A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white +crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm, +which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them +breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of +foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in +their manes. + +The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a +morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet, +as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and +eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste +in the heart. + +Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of +their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail. + +One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel, +Boston,--coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight +weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright, +younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright, +tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone +out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a +ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the +business for himself; for the two last, he had represented also the +interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had +inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to +our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia. + +"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools; +multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them +to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till +thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?" + +"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be +about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry," +returned Mr. Vireo. + +"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come +home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of +scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That +'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is +between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its +special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,--or was,--Vireo; but I knew +my way lay through it. I have been pausing--thinking--striving to +know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either. +There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self, +largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief +respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do +with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a +man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty +years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange +feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such +a business exile, and choose where one will make the first +link,--decide the first condition, which may draw after all the +rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the +remembrance of the little story my mother told me--about my name. I +think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then +of the destiny partly laid out for him already." + +"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the +whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced +spiritually. + +"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who +would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned +that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him, +till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus, +then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast +and pray. But he would not fast, since from his food came his +strength to serve with; nor pray, because it seemed to him idle; but +he went forth to help those who were in danger of being swept away, +as they struggled to cross the deep, wide River. He bore them +through upon his shoulders,--the weak, the little, the weary. At +last, he bore a little child who entreated him, and the child grew +heavy, and heavier, till, when they reached the other side, Offero +said,--'I feel as if I had borne the world upon my shoulders!' And +he was answered,--'Thou may'st say that; for thou hast borne Him who +made the world.' And then he knew that it was the Lord; and he was +called no more 'Offero,' but 'Cristofero.' My mother told me that +when I was a little child; and the story has grown in me. The Christ +has yet to be borne on men's shoulders." + +Hilary Vireo stood and listened with gleaming eyes. Of course, he +knew the old saint-legend; of course, Christopher Kirkbright +supposed it; but these were men who understood without the saying, +that the verities are forever old and forever new. A mother's wise +and tender tale,--a child's life growing into a man's, and +sanctifying itself with a purpose,--these were the informing that +filled afresh every sentence of the story, and made its repetition a +most fair and sweet origination. + +"And so,"-- + +"And so, I must earn my name," said Christopher Kirkbright, simply. + +"Lift them up, and take them across," said Hilary Vireo, as if +thinking it over to himself. The old story had quickened him. A +grand perception came to him for his friend, who had begged him to +think for and advise him. "Lift them up and take them across!" he +repeated, looking into Mr. Kirkbright's face, and speaking the words +to him with warm energy. "They are waiting--so many of them! They +are sinking down--so many! They want to be lifted through. They +want--and they want terribly--a place of safety on the other side. +Go down into the river of temptation, and hardship, and sin, and +help them up out of it, Christopher. Take them up out of their cruel +conditions; make a place for some of them to begin over again in; +for some of them to rest in, once in a while, and take courage. Why +shouldn't there be cities of refuge, now, Kirkbright? Men are +mapping out towns for their own gain, all over the land, wherever a +water power or a railroad gives the chance for one to grow; why not +build a Hope for the hopeless? Nowhere on earth could that be done +as it could in our own land!" + +"A City of Refuge'" Kirkbright repeated the words gravely, +earnestly; like those of some message of an angel of the Lord, that +sounded with self-attested authority in his ears. + +After a pause, in which his thought followed out the word of +suggestion into a swift dream of possible fulfillment, he said to +his companion,-- + +"I believe there was nothing in that old Jewish economy, Vireo, that +was not given as a 'pattern of things' that should be. That whole +Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the kingdom coming. Only it +was but the first Adam. It was given right into the very conditions +that illustrated its need. It would have meant nothing, given into a +society of angels. Yet because men were not angels, but very mortal +and sinful men, we of to-day must fling contempt upon the Myth of +the Salvation of God! It will stand, for all that,--that history of +God's intimacy with men. It was _lived_, not told as a vision, that +it _might_ stand! It was lived, to show how near, in spite of sin, +God came, and stayed. The second coming shall be without sin unto +salvation." + +"I'm not sure, Kirkbright, but you ought to be a minister." + +"Not to stand in a pulpit. God helping me, I mean to be a minister. +Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a +sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it, +live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and +save,--would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might +be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think. +He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the +course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you +preachers' best." + +"I _know_ it is," Hilary Vireo replied. + +"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. "I want to +look up that old pattern. It will tell me something." + +Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had +had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright's +state-room door. Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible. + +He got hold of one word in that old ordination,--"unawares." + +"'He that doeth it _unawares_," he repeated, holding the Bible with +his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth +chapter of Numbers. "How that reminds of, and connects with, the +Atoning Prayer,--'Forgive them, for they know not what they do!' +'Sins, negligences, ignorances;' how they shade and change into each +other! If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much +evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you +suppose?" + +"Not more than there was before the mistakes began," replied Vireo. +"Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its +horrible expansion to a point again,--the point of a possibility; +the serpent suggestion of evil choice. When God has done his work of +forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the +woman shall set his heel upon its head." + +"I wish I could see what lies behind this," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"'He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,' and after +that, 'the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.' +That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the +atonement by death. I cannot rest in that. I wish I could see its +whole meaning,--for meaning it must have, and a meaning of _life_." + +"A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the +other," sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the +book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves, +as he did so. + +"The glory is in the promise: 'he shall return into the land of his +possession.' His life shall be given back to him,--all that it was +meant to be. It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his +banishment is over. Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy +providing, an anointed commission of grace." + +"But hear this," he continued, turning to the Epistle to the +Hebrews, "and put the suggestions alongside. All but God's final and +eternal _best_ is transitional. 'They truly were many priests, +because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But +this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable +priesthood. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost, +that come to God by Him.' Did it ever occur to you to think about +that saving to the uttermost? Not a scrap of blessed possibility +forfeited, lost? All gathered up, restored, put into our hands +again, from the redeeming hands of Christ? Backward and forward, +through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and +found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until +not one silver piece is missing. That is the return into the land of +our possession. _That_ is God's salvation, and his gospel! That is +what shall come to pass. Not yet; not while we are only under the +lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our +waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the +Lord!" + +The speaker's face flushed and glowed; Hilary Vireo, always glad and +strong in look and bearing, was grandly joyful when the power of the +gospel he had to preach came upon him; the gospel of a full, +perfect, and unstinted hope. + +"Is that what you tell your simple people?" asked Christopher +Kirkbright, fixing deeply eager eyes upon him. + +"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It +is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to +men's souls? 'Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!' Build +your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of +the fulfillment." + +Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before +lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from +the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher +Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the +door. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +LETTERS AND LINKS. + + +That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty +corner room at Mrs. Georgeson's,--just returned to her city life +from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,--had letters +brought to her door. + +The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and +Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the +corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This +she opened first, for the English postmarks, associated with that +handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:-- + + "MY DEAR SISTER,--Within a very few days after this + will reach you, I hope myself to land in America, and to see + if, after all these years, you and I can do something about a + home together. We learn one good of long separations, by what + we get of them in this world. We can't help beginning again, + if not actually where we left off, at least with the thought + we left off at, 'live and fresh in our hearts. The thought, I + mean, as regards each other; we have both got some thoughts + uppermost by this time, doubtless, that we had not lived to + then. At any rate, I have, who had ten years ago only the + notions and dreams of twenty-one. I come straight to you with + them, just as I went from you, dear elder sister, with your + love and blessing upon me, into the great, working world. + + "Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and + Doubleday's, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found + Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see + Amy. That's the sort of thing I can't believe when I do see + it,--Mary's baby married and housekeeping! I'm glad you are my + elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you. + Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer + together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled + women as you _can_ be at forty-three." + +With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended. + +Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you +think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her +for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true +beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure, +gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is +lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own +words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of +falseness? + +If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes +as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would +have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had +gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not +stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering +of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or +smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only +made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her; +fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither +neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty +three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight, +beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her +face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it. + +She saw a picture like this:-- + +Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves +imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as +lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never +learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest +harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of +consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented +play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to +soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; +there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that +it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and +smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest. + +Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I +guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of +perfect teeth. + +"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up +and looked prettier yet. + +"Why, I _will_ not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really +indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had +half forgotten:-- + + "BRICKFIELD FARMS, (near Tillington), Maine. + + "DEAR MISS EUPHRASIA,--I have not written to you + since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to + trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day + made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps + tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We + left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly + know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come. + Isn't it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out + of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad + been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there + across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through + the Glen. + + "Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia, + she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very + weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be + the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate, + we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such + good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice + it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the + present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved + about so much; and in all the places where we have been + before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it + was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and + then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was + too bracing. At Crawford's it was lovely, but the bill was + fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in + Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the + beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother + for all summer. + + "I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has + grown worse since. I can't help being afraid mother has been + dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there; + a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a + good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal + devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to + mother's room, and gave her all the little chat of the + place,--I'm afraid I don't amuse mother myself as much as I + ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when + you've seen more than enough of them yourself,--and she used + to take her out to drive nearly every day. + + "Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six + years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and + railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron + touched was sure to double.' She _meant_ money; but I thought + of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has + managed to double _them_. He went to New York two or three + times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting + railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of + road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the + head of a company that had bought up all the land along the + route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the + railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it! + She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as + well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left + a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of + anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that + such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so + providential that she had met her here just now; and she was + always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.' + + "Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I + begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some + friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said; + 'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know + half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in + it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage + sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, + for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear + Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few + hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other + four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into + Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land + _doesn't_ sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says + it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come + from. + + "I am saving all I can here, for the winter _must_ cost. You + would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs. + Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and + so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't + feel as if that were quite right,--or comfortable, at least; + but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the + other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be + here all through October. + + "We are having lovely weather now; not a sign of frost. + Although this place is so far north, it is sheltered by great + hills, and seems to lie under the lee, both ways, of high + mountain ranges, so that the cold does not really set in very + early. It is a curious place. I wish I had left room to tell + you more about it. There is a great level basin, around which + slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side + except the south, until you get among the real mountain + regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords', and the + Applebees', and the Patchons', and the Stilphins'. Aren't they + quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have + such names among farmers. The name of the place,--or rather + neighborhood, for I don't know where the _place_ actually + is--there are three places, and they are all four or five + miles off--Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of + the neighborhood,--Brickfield Farms, comes from there having + been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up. + The man who owned it got in debt, and failed, I believe; and + nobody has taken hold of it again, because it is so far from + lines of transportation; but there are some cottages about the + foot of Cone Hill, where the laborers used to live; and a big + queer, old red brick house, that looks as if it were walking + up stairs,--built on flat, natural steps of the rock, and so + climbing up, room behind room, with steps inside to + correspond. I have liked so much to go through it, and imagine + stories about it, though all the story there is, is that of + Mr. Flavius Josephus Browne, the man of the brick enterprise, + who built it in this odd way, and probably imagined a story + for himself that he never lived out in it, because his money + and his business came to an end. How strange it is that work + doesn't always make money, and that it takes so much + combination to make anything worth while! I wonder that even + men know just what to do. And as for women,--why, when they + take to elbowing men out, what will it all come to? + + "I have written on, until I have written off some of my heavy + feelings that I began with. If I could only _talk_ to you, + dear Miss Euphrasia, I think they would all go. But I will not + trouble you any longer now; I am quite ashamed of the great + packet this will make when it is folded up. But you told me to + let you know all about myself, and I can't help minding such + an injunction as that! + + "Yours gratefully and affectionately always, + "SYLVIE ARGENTER." + +Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause. +Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the +letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said +about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia +stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes. + +"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that +blessed Mrs. Jeffords,--to let her think she is earning her board +with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!" + +That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that +Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed +impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and +kiss that wasn't there. + +"If I were an angel, I suppose I _could_ wait," she went on saying +to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some +times. And so,--how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of +one's own little experience!--of that wonderful, blessed Day, when +all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the +Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human +that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to +be, but may not be yet!" + +I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia's +life, or touch her with its circumstance, that she did not +straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a +Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself. +Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then, +of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from +spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached +themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with +her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of +her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes +were the larger part of it. + +But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie's +letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if +she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her +mind about saying it:-- + +"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in +Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,--and +will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house, +or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach, +some hours in a day,--hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she +would not know." + +This was essential. "Mother must not know." + +The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia's mind +another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the +letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back +to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple +suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie's behalf. + +But--"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard +those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had +heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,--somewhere down +East,--where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had +come into or passed through his hands for a debt? + +"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into +my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be +unraveled?" + +For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a +jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely +keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to +her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord +knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any +real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance--no +inconsequence--with Him. + +"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she +said, as she tucked her brother's letter into a low, broad basket +beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd +minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and +put the other in her pocket. + +"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire. +That, also, is a piece of this same morning." + +Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and +repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit +by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the +Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the +story, were the things He daily puts together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE. + + +Desire was out. She had gone down to Neighbor Street, to see +Luclarion Grapp. + +Luclarion had a Home there now; a place where girls and women came +and went, and always found a rest and a welcome, to stay a night, or +a week, or as long as they needed, provided only, that they entered +into the work and spirit of the house while they did stay. + +Luclarion still sold her good, cheap white loaves and brown, her +muffins and her crumpets; and she had what she called her "big +baking room," where a dozen women could work at the troughs and the +kneaders and the ovens; and in this bakery they learned an honest +trade that would stand them in stead for self-support, whether to +furnish a commodity for sale, or in homes where daily bread must be +put together as well as prayed for. + +"You can do something now that all the world wants done; that's as +good as a gold mine, and ever so much better," said Luclarion Grapp. + +Then she had a laundry. From letting her lodgers wash and iron for +themselves, to put their scanty wardrobes into the best condition +and repair, she went on to showing them nice work and taking it in +for them to do; until now there were some dozen families who sent +her weakly washing, three to five dollars' worth each; and for ten +months in the year a hundred and eighty dollars were her average +receipts. + +Down at "The Neighbors,"--as from the name of the street and the +spirit and growth of the thing it had come to be called,--they had +"Evenings;" when friends of the place came in and made it pleasant; +brought books and pictures, flowers and fruit, and made a little +treat of it for mind and heart and body. It was some plan for one of +these that had taken Desire and Hazel to Miss Grapp's to-day. + +Miss Euphrasia's first feeling was disappointment. It seemed as if +her morning were going a wee wrong after all. But her second +thought--that it was surely all in the day's work, and had happened +so by no mistake--took her in, with a cheery and really expectant +face, to Rachel Froke's gray parlor, to "sit her down a five +minutes, and rest." She confidently looked for her business then to +be declared to her, since the business she thought she had come upon +was set aside. + +"I have had a great mind to come to thee," were the first words +Rachel said, as her visitor seated herself in the low chair, twin to +her own, which she kept for friends. Rachel Froke liked her own; but +she never felt any special comfort comfortably her own, until she +could hold it thus duplicated. + +"I have wanted for a little while past to talk to some one, and +Hapsie Craydocke would not do. Everything she knows shines so +quickly out of those small kind eyes of hers. Hapsie would have +looked at me in an unspeakable way, and told it all out too soon. I +have a secret, Euphrasia, and it troubleth me; yet not very much for +myself; and I know it need not trouble me for anything. I have a +reason that may make me leave this place,--for a time at least; and +I am sorry for Desire, for she will miss me. Frendely can do all +that I do, and she hath the same wish for everything at heart; but +then who would help Frendely? She could not get on alone for thee +knows the house is large, and Desire is always very busy, with work +that should not be hindered. Can thee think of any way? I cannot +bear that any uncertain, trustless person should come in here. There +hath never been a common servant in this house. Doesn't thee think +the Lord hath some one ready since He makes my place empty? And how +shall we go rightly to find out?" + +"Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter. Is it any trouble,--any +grief or pain?" + +Rachel had quite forgot. The real trouble of it was this perplexity +that she had told. The rest of it--that she knew was all right. She +would not call it trouble--that which she simply had to wait and +bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to "go +rightly about,"--it was that she felt as the disquiet. + +She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast. + +"The doctor calls it trouble--trouble here. But it may be helped; +and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with +great skill. My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her +house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do. Thee +sees: I suppose I ought to go." + +"And Desire knows nothing?" + +"How could I tell the child, until I saw my way? Now, can thee +think?" + +Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if +nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care +for and provide. She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy +to come first. She had grown quite used to this fact that she had +faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to +Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it. + +It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact, +looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither +complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at +the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception, +and had made her pale and grave. + +"Must it be a servant to do mere servant's work; or could some nice +young person, under Frendely's direction, relieve her of the actual +care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they +are?" + +"That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure," said +Rachel. + +"Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you, +though I had no knowledge of it in coming," said Miss Kirkbright. + +"That looks like the Lord's leading," said Rachel Froke. "There is +always some sign to believe by." + +Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie's letter, as the best way of telling +the story, and put it into Rachel Froke's hand. She did not feel it +any breach of confidence to do so. Breach of confidence is letting +strange air in upon a tender matter. The self-same atmosphere, the +self-same temperature,--these do not harm or change anything. It is +only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let +it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same +response of understanding. There are friends one can trust with +one's self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word, +the thought, shall pass. Gossip--betrayal--sends from hand to hand, +from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the +misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface. From heart to +heart it may be given without disloyalty. That is the way God +Himself works round for us. + +"It is very clear to me," said Rachel Froke, folding up the sheets +of the letter, and putting them back into their envelope. "Shall +Desire read this?" + +"I think so. It would not be a real thing, unless she understood." + +So Desire had the letter to read that day when she came home; and +then Rachel Froke told her how it was that she must go away for a +while; and Desire went round to Miss Euphrasia's room in the +twilight, and gave her back her letter, and talked it all over with +her; and they two next day explained the most of it to Hazel. It was +not needful that she should know the very whole about Rachel or the +Argenters; only enough was said to make plain the real companionship +that was coming, and the mutual help that it might be; enough of the +story to make Hazel cry out joyfully,--"Why, Desire! Miss +Kirkbright! She's another! She belongs!" And then, without such +drawback of sadness as the other two had had to feel, she caught +them each by a hand, and danced them up and down a little dance +before the fire upon the hearth-rug--singing,-- + + "Four of us know the Muffin-man, + Five of us know the Muffin-man, + All of us know the Muffin-man, + That lives in Drury Lane." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL. + + +It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend +Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister. + +It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel +of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness +that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for +twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned. + +"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to +a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of +it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of +people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said +that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't +any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for +_this_ life. He hoped there _was_ something afterwards for them that +could get to it, but he didn't know." + +"Aren't you _glad_ of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a +pleasant day, even,--or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? +Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, +now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, +_that's_ what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He +_never_ means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're +all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. +What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings +truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. +Don't mind the strain; believe in the _note_, every time his finger +touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, +that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for." + +The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in +his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by +day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began +from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though +they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began +to be according to the life. + +"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of +what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then +forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a +hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; +or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his +well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally +more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the +middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find +out. If ever we _do_ get it,--complete"-- + +"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo. + +Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through +the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October +morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its +pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little +child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of +heaven. + +They would all have a first sight of him to-day,--his first Sunday +among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might +easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs, +all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the +church above,--they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face, +voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike +Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there +amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left, +face to face, and hand to hand,--the Gospel appointed for that day. + +"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall, +good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the +sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups. + +"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look +for. We shall find _all_ our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo, +hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began. + +Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on +one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the +western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he +found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window +ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the +scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals, +that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and +forth upon the crisp autumn air. + +"My brother--Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them. + +Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes +turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the +sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She +had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had +grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always +wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,--that +while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply +deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed +simultaneously from within and behind; it was the _transmitted_ +light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord +and the people. + +She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very +young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with +mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself, +with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet +in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself +to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance +truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut +nose,--the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest +and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,--the coolness, +the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her +complexion,--these were all details of character that had asserted +itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and +narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened +their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer +curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of +the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them. + +It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself +toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name +and Desire's. + +For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside +them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that +word,--"introduced." + +"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave +me a glimpse of that girl,--her _self_. I don't think I was ever so +really introduced before." + +He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one +of the chapel protégées; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where +not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were +helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody. + +Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply; +bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet +around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any +shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the +plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked +in where the velvet band was folded together around it. + +Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her +church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those +who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of +their home-place weekly, at her side. + +Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss +Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which +she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first +Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home +with him across the Atlantic. + +There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was +praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close +beside; and all the people felt at least that _he_ felt it, and that +therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we +all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father. +That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he +knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the +Will." + +He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the +whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled +up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he +crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into +Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way +through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went +with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of +Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and +comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the +believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life. + +"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our +Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before +us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence +of _the Lord_. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the +bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is +the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning, +_God_ created the heavens and the earth; but _the Lord_ spoke unto +Adam; _the Lord_ appeared unto Abraham; _the Lord_ was the God of +Israel. + +"God is _our_ Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to +meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us +continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the +human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our +sins,--to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward +kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and +toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the +long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful +and very far off." + +The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the +corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave +them,--their way lying down the hill. + +"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the +minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it." + +"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole," +said Desire. + +"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from +beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I +shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting +life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New." + +"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. + +"Leading--_by the hand_; giving--_morsel by morsel_," said Mr. +Kirkbright, emphasizing the near and dear detail. + +"That makes me think," said Miss Euphrasia, suddenly. "Desire," she +went on, without explaining why, "we are going up to Brickfield +Farms next week, Christopher and I. Why shouldn't you go too,--and +bring her home, you know?" + +As true as she lived, Miss Euphrasia hadn't a thought--whatever +_you_ may think--of this and that, or anything, when she said it. + +Except the simple fact, that it was beautiful October weather, and +that _she_ should like it, and that Sylvie and Desire would get +acquainted. + +"It will do you good. You'd better," said Mr. Vireo, kindly. + +Christopher Kirkbright said nothing, of course. There was nothing +for him to say. He did not think very much. He only had a passing +feeling that it would be pleasant to see this grave-faced girl +again, and to understand her, perhaps, a little. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +BONNY BOWLS. + + +The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The +architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass +window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved +oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should +pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich +inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work +and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on +of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs, +remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer. + +Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the +delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful +skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and +fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had +grown to. + +Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed _him_-self; for he had put +himself--his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and +fitness--into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was +more his than the man's who paid the bills,--"out of his waistcoat +pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the +builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were +the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own, +though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and +never go within the walls again. + +It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was +glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of +accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in +which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons +rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six +days' toil. + +Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up +accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim +Street to tea. + +He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story +of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his +friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any +little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday +rest of his,--though a busier day had not gone over his head since +the week began,--must be shared and crowned by them. + +There is no subtler test of an unspoken--perhaps an +unexamined--relation of a man with his women friends, than this +instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the +companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his +heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more +than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of +the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and +sets an established seal upon them all. + +Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in +his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how +pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an +afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was +still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from +her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and +servants going in and fastening the doors upon them. + +He would make a treat of it,--a holiday,--if she would go; he would +come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go +with him in the cars and be stared at. + +He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her +any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the +young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end. + +He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something +of the same perception that would come to her,--if she cared for +this asking of his,--came to him with the sudden suggestion that it +was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had +grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such +beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a +woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and +does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has +done any real living at all. + +Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow; +and he thought she would go. + +He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his +thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice +of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her +so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and +pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had +such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her +look so different from other girls, and yet so nice? + +"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when +tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and +setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl +yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things." + +Ray colored. + +"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford +two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons." + +It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to +custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain +black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their +pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with +broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every +day,--cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon +serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they +contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if +anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank +Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a +"snarl." + +"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be +dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll +hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into. +It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women +can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they +ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try +to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than +common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their +day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means _tied_ +up. They can't _see_ to their girls; they grow helplesser all the +time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and +upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a +down-stairs to every house, and no _home_ anywhere. That's how it +is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows +and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it. +Why, the help has to get into _their_ humpty-dumpties by three or +four o'clock, and see _their_ company. If there's sickness or +anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of +folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were _afraid_ of +sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was +gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left +to depend on but hotels and hospitals. _Home_ is too big a worry. +And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it. +It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler +biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago." + +Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,--as the Scotch grow +more Scotch,--with warming up to the subject. + +Sunderline laughed. + +"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy +here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at +home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately +that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!" + +He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at +her sewing. + +"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my +house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you +ride out with me to Pomantic?" + +Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and +her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without +another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt +Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single +quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers' +ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or +three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She +felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs. +Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was +afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, +perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him +ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have +him blamed; for what business had she, after all,-- + +"Well, Ray?" + +She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; +she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that +"Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour +afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it +seem like "anything." + +"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank +you, Frank." + +Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street +afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of +course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And +she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another +word or look. She never stopped sewing, either. + +Well,--he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the +wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work. + +But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot +were by. + +That next day was made for them. + +Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over +so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the +difference? + +I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question +of rain and shine,--with need, and asking, and giving. + +Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme, +because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in +God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm, +or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not +the _prayer_ provided for? It was answered a million of years +beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and +nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for +help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the +undoing or the counteracting of the evil,--the healing of the +wrong,--just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting +soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its +foresight. + +So, under the dear Law,--which is Love, and cares for the +sparrow,--came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament, +its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and +they two went forth in it. + +They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last +them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon +drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later, +to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything. + +Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long +breath, as they drove off. + +"Well, I suppose _that's_ settled," she said, with the +mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to +be otherwise, inflecting her voice. + +"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot. + +In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use +of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy +mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of +experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon. +But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and +she left no lee-way for uninitiation. + +"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round +sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,--or don't want,--or don't +intend--? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese; +and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's _my_ mind +about it!" + +It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over +the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions. +But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long +turnpike stretches--they are turnpike stretches still, though the +Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of +little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the +flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban +residences--have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and +their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea. + +Ray enjoyed every bit of it,--even the rows of new tenements with +their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs +that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the +boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover +him up. + +The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her +companion. + + "Little lad, little lad, where were you born? + Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn, + Where they sup buttermilk from a ram's horn; + And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim, + Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in." + +"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture +over it--do you remember?" + +Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can't quote or remind amiss +from her. + +"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the +lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or +somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the +thorn, pretty much,--of poverty and pinches. But they sup their +buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind. +Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common +things by imagination?" + +"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places. +All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick +and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries +about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side +by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice +neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible +pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down +at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as +you go by in the steamboat." + +"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all. +The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I +mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went +through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny +bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out +of?" + +"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in +the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray. + +"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty +to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to +the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of +it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a +regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the +cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every +household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays." + +"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all +outside." + +Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and +reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land +and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and +different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless +imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers. +More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as +they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and +garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny +windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!" + +But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations, +before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many +times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was +in the thought of each. + +For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave +itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself, +never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or +water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed +up" in the approach. + +Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the +great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant, +light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung. + +Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with +English grass seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to +weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were +gathered at the back of the house and about the stables. + +The plate-glass windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with +their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace +buildings. It was a group,--a pile; under these roofs a family of +five--Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to +conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime--were to live like a +little royal household. And the father had made all his money in +fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of +it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one +looks it all through and thinks it all over. + +Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the +porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest +grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower. + +Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower +rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the +stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture; +along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and +dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,--places +for the many servants that there must be,--pressrooms, closets, +trunk-rooms,--space for stowing all the ample providings for use and +change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a +study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish. + +It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can't +imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray, +coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to +sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods. + +They stopped half way,--on the wide second landing where they had +seen, as they went up, that the great window space was open; the +boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the +costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the +wall at one side. + +"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house," +Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a +thousand dollars." + +"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or +a chapel." + +"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open +frame," he had added, cautioning her. + +Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his +back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some +imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved +cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the +gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color. + +"It won't do. The meeting of the pattern isn't perfect. Those +grape-bunches come too near together, and there's a leaf-tip taken +off at the corner. What a bungle! Come and look, Ray." + +Ray turned her face toward him as he spoke, and saw what thrilled +her through with sudden horror. Saw him, utterly forgetful of where +he stood, against the dangerous vacancy, his heel upon the very +edge, beyond which would be death! + +A single movement an inch further, and he would be off his balance. +Behind him was a fall of thirty feet, down to those piles of brick +and timber. And he would make the movement unless he were instantly +snatched away. His head was thrown back,--his shoulders leaned +backward, in the attitude of one who is endeavoring to judge of an +effect a little distance off. + +Her face turned white, and her limbs quivered under her. + +One gasping breath--and then--she turned, made two steps upward, and +flung herself suddenly, as by mischance, prostrate along the broad, +slowly-sloping stairs. + +Half a dozen thoughts, in flashing succession, shaped themselves +with and into the action. She wondered, afterward, recollecting them +in a distinct order, how there had been time, and how she had +thought so fast. + +"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come +this way." + +In the two steps up--"He might not follow; he would not understand. +He _must_: I must _make_ him come!" And then she flung herself down, +as if she had fallen. + +Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really +faint and helpless. + +It was all over. He was beside her. + +"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said, +quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the +stair. She could not stand. + +A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the +solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house. + +"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near +you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from +the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up +again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes." + +"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr. +Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs. + +"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I +could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself, +instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint +away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would." + +"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and +glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it, +without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more +would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a +christening as that!" + +The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just +rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail. + +"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water." + +"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say," +said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact +to think of this, but not to go without saying it. + +"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her +hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her +feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world +would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister, +Sunderline?" + +"No, sir--only a friend." + +"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!" + +Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look. + +"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business." + +"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it +were, there would be no pardon to beg." + +"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say +that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end +of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put +the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece +of Friday luck as that!" + +There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back +together into the city. + +"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to +the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked +about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me, +after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe +it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in +the world to me?" + +Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted +him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words +are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an +impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse. + +Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak. + +Frank waited--three minutes perhaps. Then he said, + +"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it." + +"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered, +softly. + + * * * * * + +"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in +Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute. + +"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all +beautiful with smile and color. + +Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told +her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the +hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to. +Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that. + + * * * * * + +"There's one thing, Frank,"--said Ray. She was standing with him, +three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her +on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea +and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one +comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before; +and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the +beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing, +Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm +going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp +to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so." + +"Who--is--Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in +his astonishment. + +Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too +long a story for the door-step. When you come again"-- + +"That'll be to-morrow." + +"I'll tell you all about it." + +"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before--a +'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?" + +"Dear me! how long _have_ you waited?" returned Ray, demurely. + +She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it +is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he +may take years in which to come to the point of asking--years in +which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an +uncertainty in it; but the point of _having_ must be moved up then, +to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose. + +A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed +time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one +another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to +let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had +to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the +asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free +enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming +the fulfillment. + +Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was +sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in +skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half +unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own +image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there +for. + +"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your +head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the +glass to-morrow morning." + +Ray roused up from her abstraction. + +"I was thinking," she said. + +"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just +outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my +childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm +thinking.' Good-by." + +There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word. + +"Dot! You silly little thing!" + +And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy, +all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball. + +"I was thinking about Marion Kent." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +RECOMPENSE. + + +That night, Marion Kent was fifty miles off, in the great, mixed-up, +manufacturing town of Loweburg. + +She had three platform dresses now,--the earnings of some half-dozen +"evenings." The sea-green silk would not do forever, in place after +place; they would call her the mermaid. She must have a quiet, +elegant black one, and one the color of her hair, like that she had +seen the pretty actress, Alice Craike, so bewitching in. She could +deepen it with chestnut trimmings, all toning up together to one +rich, bright harmony. Her hair was "_blond cendré_,"--not the +red-golden of Alice Craike's; but the same subtle rule of art was +available; "_café-au-lait_" was her shade; and the darker velvet +just deepened and emphasized the effect. + +She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden +leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair. She certainly knew +how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a +picture of. + +The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone +down with a report that Miss Kent was "stunning;" and two or three +housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering +about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to +her carriage. It was just as good, so far as these things went, as +if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody. + +And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than "these +things," yet. She reached, for herself, to just what she had been +able to appreciate in others. She had taken in the housemaid and +small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little +day of living it. She had not found out, yet, how short a time that +would last. "Verily," it was said for us all long ago, "ye shall +have each your reward," such as ye look and labor for. + +One great boy was waiting for her, _ex officio_, and without +disguise,--the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to +read to-night. + +He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her +carriage, and accompany her to the hall. + +The little boys observed him with exasperation. The housemaids +dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the +staircase; her _café-au-lait_ silk rolling and glittering behind +her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the +Phoenix Hotel stairs. + +The President of the People's Lyceum Club heard the rustle of +elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended +arm. + +That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the +space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the +sidewalk to the hack. What would you have? There could not have been +more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by. She +was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading. What more could Fanny +Kemble do? + +Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were +gathered. She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some +passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building, +whence she would enter, in full glory, upon the platform. + +She came in gracefully; a little breezy she could not help being; +it was the one movement of the universe to her at that moment, her +ten steps across the platform,--her little half bow, half droop, +before the applauding audience,--the taking up of the bouquet laid +upon her table,--her smile, with a scarcely visible inclination +again,--and the sitting down among those waves of amber that rose up +shining in the gas-light, about her, as she subsided among her +silken draperies. + +She was imitative; she had learned the little outsides of her art +well; but you see the art was not high. + +It was the same with her reading. She had had drill enough to make +her elocution passable; her voice was clear and sweet; she had a +natural knack, as we have seen, for speaking to the galleries. When +there was a sensational, dramatic point to make, she could make it +after her external fashion, strongly. The deep magnetism--the +electric thrill of soul-reality--these she had nothing to do with. + +Yet she read some things that thrilled of themselves; the very words +of which, uttered almost anyhow, were fit to bring men to their feet +and women to tears, with sublimity and pathos. Somebody had helped +her choose effectively, and things very cunningly adaptive to +herself. + +The last selection for the first part of her reading to-night was +Mrs. Browning's "Court Lady." + +"Wear your fawn-colored silk when you read this," Virginia Levering +had counseled. + +Her self-consciousness made the first lines telling. + + "Her hair was tawny with gold,--her eyes with purple were dark; + Her cheeks pale opal burned with a red and restless spark." + +Her head, bright with its golden-dusty waves and braids, leaned +forward under the light as she uttered the words; her great, +gray-blue eyes, deepening with excitement to black, lifted +themselves and looked the crowd in the face; the color mounted like +a crimson spark; she glowed all over. Yes, over; not up, nor +through; but some things catch from the outside. A flush and rustle +ran over the faces, and the benches; she felt that every eye was +upon her, lit up with an admiring eagerness, that answered to her +eagerness to be admired. + +O, this was living! There was a pulse and a rush in this! Marion +Kent _was_ living, with all her nature that had yet waked up, at +that bewildering and superficial moment. + +But she has got to live deeper. The Lord, who gave her life, will +not let her off so. It will come. It is coming. + +We know not the day nor the hour; though we go on as if we knew all +things and were sure. + +At this very instant, there is close upon you, Marion Kent, one of +those lightning shafts that run continually quivering to and fro +about the earth, with their net-work of fire, in this storm of life +under which we of to-day are born. All the air is tremulous with +quick, converging nerves; concentrating events, bringing each soul, +as it were, into a possible focus continually, under the forces that +are forging to bear down upon it. There are no delays,--no respites +of ignorance. Right into the midst of our most careless or most +selfish doing, comes the summons that arrests us in the Name of the +King. + + "She rose to her feet with a spring. + _That_ was a Piedmontese! And this is the Court of the King!" + +She was upon her feet, as if the impulse of the words had lifted +her; she had learned by rote and practice when and how to do it; she +had been poised for the action through the reading of all those last +stanzas. + +She did it well. One hand rested by the finger-tips upon the open +volume before her; her glistening robes fell back as she gained her +full height,--she swayed forward toward the assembly that leaned +itself toward her; the left hand threw itself back with a noble +gesture of generous declaring; the fingers curving from the open +palm as it might have been toward the pallet of the dead soldier at +her side. She was utterly motionless for an instant; then, as the +applause broke down the silence, she turned, and grandly passed out +along the stage, and disappeared. + +Within the door of the anteroom stood a messenger from the hotel. He +had a telegraph envelope in his hand; he put it into hers. + +She tore it open,--not thinking, scarcely noticing; the excitement +of the instant just past moved her nerves,--no apprehension of what +this might be. + +Then the lightning reached her: struck her through and through. + +"Your ma's dying: come back: no money." + +Those last words were a mistake; the whole dispatch, in its absurd +homeliness and its pitiless directness, was the work of old Mrs. +Knoxwell, the blacksmith's wife, used to hammers and nails, and +believing in good, forceful, honest ways of doing things; feeling +also a righteous and neighborly indignation against this child, +negligent of her worn and lonely mother; "skitin' about the country, +makin' believe big and famous. She would let her know the truth, +right out plain; it would be good for her." + +What she had meant to write at the end was "Pneumonia;" but spelling +it "Numoney," it had got transmitted as we have seen. + +It struck Marion through and through; but she did not feel it at +first. It met the tide of her triumph and elation full in her +throbbing veins; and the two keen currents turned to a mere +stillness for a moment. + +Then she dropped down where she was, all into the golden mass and +shine of her bright raiment, with her hands before her eyes, the +paper crumpled in the clinch of one of them. + +The President of the People's Lyceum Club made a little speech, and +dismissed the audience. "Miss Kent had received by telegraph most +painful intelligence from her family; was utterly unable to appear +again." + +The audience behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how +to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection +of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove +rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night +train down from Vermont. + +That was on Friday night. + +On Sunday morning Frank Sunderline came in on the service train, and +went up to Pilgrim Street. + +"Mrs. Kent is dead," he told Kay. "Marion is in awful trouble. Can't +you come out to her?" + +Ray was just leaving the house to go to church. Instead, she went +with Frank to the horse-railroad station, catching the eleven +o'clock car. She had been expecting him in the afternoon, to take +her to drink tea with his mother, who was not able to come in to see +her. + +In an hour, she went in at Mrs. Kent's white gate,--Frank leaving +her there. They both felt, without saying, that it would not be kind +to appear together. Marion had that news, though, as she had had the +other; from her Job's comforter, Mrs. Knoxwell, who was persistently +"sitting with her." + +"There's Frank Sunderline and Ray Ingraham at the gate. She's +coming in. They're engaged. It's just out." + +"What _do_ I care?" cried Marion, fiercely, turning upon her, and +astounding Mrs. Knoxwell by the sudden burst of angry words; for she +had not spoken for more than an hour, in which the blacksmith's wife +had administered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging +condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would go home!" + +Every monosyllable was uttered with a desperate, wrathful +deliberateness and flinging away of all pretense and politeness. + +"Well--'f I _never_!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her +voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach. + +"Jest as you please, Marion--'f I ain't no more use!" And the +aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it, +"done _everything_," left the scene of her labors and her +animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by +her inability to "realize what she _did_ feel." + +Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into +her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's +shoulder, and cried her very heart out. + +"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody +else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my +birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the +world--to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's +gone--and mother. + +"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do +for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray--I did, +truly! But she's dead--and I let her die!" + +With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting +aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her +self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or +cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail +against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise. + +"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been +better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a +strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild, +swollen eyes into hers,--"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was +only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and +selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin +burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a +silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in +the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor +little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and +left me to tend her. She wanted some water--Oh!" + +Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as +she sat. + +Ray sat perfectly still. She longed to beg her not to think about +it, not to say any more; but she knew she would feel better if she +did. + +"I told her I'd go presently; and she waited--the patient little +thing! And I was making my blue bow, and fixing it on, and fussing +with the running, and I forgot! And she couldn't bear to bother me, +and didn't say a word, but waited till she dropped to sleep without +it; and her lips were so red and dry. It was a whole hour that I +let her lie so. She never knew anything after that. + +"She waked up all in a rave of light-headedness! + +"I thought I should never get over it, Ray. And I never did, way +down in my heart; but I got back into the same wretched nonsense, +and now--here's _mother_! + +"It's no use to tell me. I've done it. I've lost my right. It'll +_never_ be given back to me." + +"Marion--I wish you could have Mr. Vireo to talk to you; or +Luclarion Grapp. Won't you come home with me, and let them come to +see you? They _know_ about these things, dear." + +"Would you take me home?" asked Marion, slowly, looking her in the +face. + +"Yes, indeed. Will you come?" + +"O, do take me and hide me away, and let me cry!" + +She dropped herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's +hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could +not stay in that house alone, one day. + +Ray stayed with her, until after the funeral. + +Marion would not go to the church. She had let them decide +everything just as they pleased, thinking only that she could not +think about any of it. Mrs. Kent had been a faithful, humble +church-member for forty years, and the minister and her +fellow-members wanted her to be brought there. There was no room in +the little half-house, where she had lived, for neighbors and +friends to gather, and for the services properly to take place. + +So it was decided. + +But when the time came, and it was too late to change, Marion +said,--"She belonged to them, and they have done by her. They can +all go, but I can't. To sit up in the front pew as a mourner, and be +looked at, and prayed for, as if I had been a real child, and had +only _lost_ my mother! You know I can't, Ray. I will stay here, and +bear my punishment. May be if I bear it _all_ now--do you believe it +might make any difference?" + +Ray stayed with her through the whole. + +While all was still in the church, not ten rods off, a carriage came +for them to the little white gate. With the silken blinds down, and +the windows open behind them, it was driven to the cemetery, and in +beneath the sheltering trees, to a stopping place just upon a little +side turn, near the newly opened grave. No one, of those who +alighted from the vehicles of the short procession, knew exactly +when or how it had come. + +The words of the prayer beside the grave,--most tenderly framed by +the good old minister, for the ear he knew they would reach--came in +soft and clear upon the pleasant air. + +"And we know, Lord, as we lay these friends away, one after another, +that we give them into Thy hands,--into Thy heart; that we give into +Thy heart, also, all our love and our sorrow, and our penitence for +whatever more we might have been or done toward them; that through +Thee, our thought of them can reach them forever. We pray Thee to +forgive us, as we know we do forgive each other; to keep alive and +true in us the love by which we hold each other; and finally to +bring us face to face in Thy glory, which is Thy loving presence +among us all. We ask Thee to do this, by the pity and grace that are +in Thy Christ, our Saviour." + +After that, they were driven straight in, over the long Avenue, to +the city, and to the quiet house in Pilgrim Street. + +Ray herself, only, led Marion to the little room up-stairs which +had been made ready for her; Ray brought her up some tea, and made +her drink it; she saw her in bed for the night, and sat by her till +she fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +ERRANDS OF HOPE. + + +"It is a very small world, after all." + +Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and +moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find +it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or +try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,--how +this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have +done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other +after years and years, and find that they have not been very far +apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat +themselves, when we had thought that they were done with. + +"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting +for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of +events,--yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all +instinct is,--toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see +at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines +must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the +coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either +blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too +shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we +read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the +writer,--the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only +catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger, +whose scripture is upon the stars. + +Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and +Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her. + +"Christ died." + +The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal +words. + +"Yes,--Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about +such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been +strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its +sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and +had to cry up after the only Hope. + +"But He could not forgive my letting _them_ die. I have been reading +the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these +little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"-- + +She could not finish the quotation. + +"Yes,--'_offend_;' turn aside out of the right--away from Him; +mislead. Hurt their _souls_, Marion." + +Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the +comfort,--snatched it with a starving madness out of his. + +"Do you think it means _that?_" she said. + +"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may +sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up +lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we +must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and +He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so +terribly condemns." + +"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ +die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts +worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain; +the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come +to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in +his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are +glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it +brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' +He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a +divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the +single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer, +that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to +you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let +not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. +Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'" + +"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them; +do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here! +Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?" + +"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.' +That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do +their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link +yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it. +The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know +that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You +can be in heaven." + +He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her +eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do. + +She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were +busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl; +stitches dropped and twisted. + +Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got +round so as to strike across her where she sat. + +The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting +them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's +touch. One of the girls would be up soon. + +Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and +embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds; +lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but +shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She +left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in +upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between +them and that heavenly enfolding. + +She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and +picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows. + +Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled. + +Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a +printed page since that night in Loweburg. + +The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book +opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went +searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it +forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her +hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out +of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her +voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her +elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not +touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had +only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all. + +"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very +pretty reading." + +Dot came in, and she went away. + +She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one; +she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but +her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake." + +And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He +that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's +reward." + +These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she +went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old +self-accusations. + +After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used +sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull +down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she +went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I +am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors. + +"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there. + +And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea, +or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by +themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own +character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and +repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives +it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born." + +"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray +Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The +kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,--people +who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of." + +"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any +chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the +pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me +any good." + +"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to +Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp. + +"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to +take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman +to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual +destinies revealed to her. + +"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the +consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And +these old worn-out consequences--why, He can turn them into +blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change; +until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of +everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a +while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty +sick time. It took--ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I +thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that +might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now +never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this +world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful +evil--in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the +easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know--and if you +hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put +into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See +here!" + +And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the +fortieth chapter of Isaiah. + +"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye +comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is +accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received +of the Lord's hand double for all her sins." + +"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,--it took +wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,--and God's +forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them +all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't +safe to let them see both sides then. But He _trusts_ us now; He +gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any +keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He +leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!" + +"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!" + +"Do you think He takes all this care of you,--lets them die for you +even,--and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad +and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had +tried,--and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little, +forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the +Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If +we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much +more against our mistakes,--our forgettings! and _they_ are the +propitiation, too; their angels--the Christ of them--do always +behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the +Lord's interceding." + +"If I could once more be let to do something for them--their very +selves!" + +"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy +this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any +more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their +errands again." + +Marion stood up on her feet. + +"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it, +because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not +have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't +mean it; would He?" + +She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of +Israel believed in the God of Abraham. + +"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the +comfort, just as much as He does the blaming." + +Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with +something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had +all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for +her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or +even asked anything as to what she should do next. + +But now it came of itself. + +"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think, +Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook +to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little +children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here, +if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of +poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't +any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat +them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any +little girls that might be sick." + +Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a +little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having +her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so +easily? + +Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, passing through the +furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the +fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old, +unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse. + +"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs. +Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of +the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great, +new building, and there'll be people wanted." + +"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how. +I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I +mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!" + +"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go +anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody +that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother, +with little children round her"-- + +"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little +Sue!" + +So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine; +so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their +own way, and brought her to a place of abiding. + +Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's +ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of +the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast +enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is +reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness. + +We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching +into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that +comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness. + +She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten +years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She +had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague. + +She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book +for children that had been Sue's. + +After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look +back after something in the Scripture words. + +It had come home to her,--that betrayal and desertion of the boy by +his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish +unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she +knew she had repented. + +She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the +Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph. + +"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye +sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.... +To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that +sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of +Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me." + +A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her; +it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender +color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed +them. It was such an answer! + +"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a +drink of water." + +It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read +secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only +for her. She believed in spirit-communication,--for she knew it +came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any +outward spells. + +She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She +came and raised the little head tenderly,--the child was hurt in the +back, and could not be lifted up,--and held the goblet to the gentle +lips; lips patient, like Sue's! + +"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!" + +The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the +child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her. + +"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And +"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent. + +The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty +triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,--she +could not trace out how. Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at +once, for her. With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration, +the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and +spoke it:-- + + "These are the lambs of the sacrifice: _this_ is the court + of the King!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +BRICKFIELD FARMS. + + +It was a rainy, desolate day. + +It had rained the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and half +cleared up last night; then this morning it had sullenly and +tiresomely begun again. + +All the forenoon it grew worse; in the afternoon, heavy, pelting, +streaming showers came down, filling the Kiln Hollow with mist, and +hiding the tops of the hills about it with low, rolling, +ever-gathering and resolving clouds. + +It seemed as if all the autumn joy were over; as if the pleasant +days were done with till another year. After this, the cold would +set in. + +Mrs. Jeffords had a bright fire built in Mrs. Argenter's room, +another in the family sitting-room. It looked cosy; but it reminded +the sojourners that they had not simply to draw themselves into +winter-quarters, and be comfortable; their winter-quarters were yet +to seek. + +Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out +meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, +if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them +to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled among and over +them. + +"This is what you liked so much at the Shakers' in Lebanon," she +said. "See if it isn't as nice as theirs, I think it is fresher. +Here is a tiny little pickle-fork, to eat with." + +Mrs. Argenter took the offered dainty. + +"You are a dear child," she said. "Come and eat some too." + +"O, I ate as I went along. Now, I'll read to you." And she took up +"Blindpits," which her mother had laid down. + +"If it only wouldn't storm so," said Mrs. Argenter. "Mrs. Jeffords +says there will be a freshet. The roads will be all torn up. We +shall never be able to get home." + +"O yes, we shall," said Sylvie, cheerily; putting down the wonder +that arose obtrusively in her own mind as to where the home would be +that they should go to. + +"Did Mrs. Jeffords tell you about last year's freshet? And the +apples?" + +"She said they had an awful flood. The brooks turned into rivers, +and the rivers swallowed up everything." + +"O, she didn't get to the funny part, then?" said Sylvie. "She +didn't tell you about the apples?" + +"No. I think she keeps the funny parts for you, Sylvie." + +"May be she does. She isn't sure that you feel up to them, always. +But I guess she means them to come round, when she tells them to me. +You see they had just been gathering their apples, in that great +lower orchard,--five acres of trees, and such a splendid crop! There +they were, all piled up,--can't you imagine? A perfect picture! Red +heaps, and yellow heaps; and greenings, and purple pearmains, and +streaked seek-no-furthers. Like great piles of autumn leaves! Well, +the flood came, and rose up over the flats, into the lower end of +the orchard. They went down over night, and moved all the piles +further up, The next day, they had to move them again. And the next +morning after that, when they woke up, the whole orchard was under +water, and every apple gone. Mr. Jeffords said he got down just in +time to see the last one swim round the corner. And when the flood +had fallen,--there, half a mile below, spread out over the meadow, +was three hundred barrels of apple sauce!" + +Mrs. Argenter laughed a feeble little _expected_ laugh; her heart +was not free to be amused with an apple-story. No wonder Mrs. +Jeffords kept the funny parts for Sylvie. Mrs. Argenter quenched her +before she could possibly get to them. But was Sylvie's heart free +for amusement? What was the difference? The years between them? Mrs. +Jeffords was a far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her +cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls +together, over their work and their stories. That was it,--the work! +Sylvie was doing _all she could_. The cheerfulness of doing followed +irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept +out the fear and the repining. + +"There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving +busy," Mrs. Jeffords said. + +Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and +worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh. + +Perhaps the hardest thing that Sylvie did through the day, was the +setting to work to "chipper" her mother up. It was lifting up a +weight that continually dropped back again. + +"Do they think this rain will ever be over?" asked Mrs. Argenter, +turning her face toward the dripping panes again. + +"Why, yes, mother; rains always _have_ been over sometime. They +never knew one that wasn't, and they go by experience." + +There was nothing more to be said upon the rain topic, after that +simple piece of logic. + +"If there doesn't come Badgett up the hill in all the pour!" + +Badgett drove the daily stage from Tillington up through Pemunk and +Sandon. He came round by Brickfields when there was anybody to +bring. + +Badgett drove up over the turf door-yard, close to the porch. He +jumped off, unbuttoned the dripping canvas door, and flung it up. + +Mrs. Jeffords was in the entry on the instant; surprised, puzzled, +but all ready to be hospitable, to she didn't know whom. Relations +from Indiana, as likely as not. That is the way people arrive in the +country; and a whole houseful to stay over night does not startle +the hostess as an unexpected guest to dinner may a city one. + +But the persons who alighted from the clumsy stage-wagon were Mr. +Christopher Kirkbright, Miss Euphrasia, and Desire Ledwith. + +"Didn't you get our letter?" said Miss Euphrasia, as Sylvie, from +her mother's door-way, saw who she was, and sprang forward. + +"Why, no, we didn't get no letter," said Mrs. Jeffords. "Father +hasn't been to the office for two days, it's stormed so continual. +But you're just as welcome, exactly. Step right in here." And she +flung open the door of her best parlor, where the new boughten +carpet was, for the damp feet and the dripping waterproof. + +"No, indeed; not there; we couldn't have the conscience." + +"'Tain't very comfortable either, after all," said Mrs. Jeffords, +changing her own mind in a bustle. "It's been kinder shut up. Come +right out to the sittin'-room-fire finally." + +Mr. Kirkbright and Miss Ledwith followed her; Miss Euphrasia went +right into Mrs. Argenter's room, after she had taken off her +waterproof in the hall. + +As she came in at the door, a great flash of sunshine streamed from +under the western clouds, in at the parlor window, followed her +across the hall and enveloped her in light as she entered. + +"Why, the storm's over!" cried Sylvie, joyfully. "You come in on a +sunbeam, like the Angel Gabriel. But you always do. How came you to +come?" + +"I came to answer your letter. You know I don't like to write very +well. And I've brought my brother, and a dear friend of mine whom I +want you to know. It did not rain in Boston when we started, but it +came on again before noon, and all the afternoon it has been a +splendid down-pour. Something really worth while to be out in, you +know; not a little exasperating drizzle. That's the kind of rain one +can't bear, and catches cold in. How the showers swept round the +hills, and the cascades thundered and flashed as we came by! What a +lovely region you have discovered!" + +"It's so beautiful that you're here! We'll go down to the cascades +to-morrow. Won't you just come and introduce me to the others, and +then come back to mother?" + +The others were in the family-room, which was also dining-room. In +the kitchen beyond, Mrs. Jeffords' stove was roaring up for an early +tea, and she was whipping griddle-cakes together. + +"My brother, Mr. Kirkbright--Miss Argenter. Miss Desire +Ledwith--Sylvie." + +The two girls shook hands, and looked in each others faces. + +"How clear, and strong, and trusty!" Sylvie thought. + +"You dear little spirit!" thought Desire, seeing the delicate face, +and the brave sweetness through it. + +This was the second real introduction Miss Euphrasia had made within +ten days. It was a great deal, of that sort, to happen in such space +of time. + +"If it hadn't been for the storm, we might have hurried down and +missed you. Mother was beginning to dread the coming on of the +cold," said Sylvie. "But the rain came and settled it, for just now. +That rested me. A real good 'can't help' is such a comfort." + +"The Father's No. Shutting us in with its grand, gentle forbiddance. +Many a rain-storm is that. I always feel so safe when I am shut up +by really impossible weather." + +After the tea, they were still in time for the whole sunset, +wonderful after the storm. + +Desire had gone from the table to the half-glazed door which opened +from the room into a broad porch, looking out directly across the +hollow, along a valley-line of side-hills, to the distant blue +peaks. + +"O, come!" she cried back to the others, as she hastened out upon +the platform. "It is marvelous!" + +Heavy lines of clouds lay banked together in the west, black with +the remnant and recoil of tempest; between these, through rifts and +breaks, poured down the sunlight across bright spaces into the +bosoms of the hills lighting them up with revelations. The sloping +outlines shone golden green with lingering summer color, and +discovered each separate wave and swell of upland. The searching +shafts fell upon every tree and bush and spire, moving slowly over +them and illuminating point after point, making each suddenly seem +distinct and near. What had been a mere margin of distant woods, +stood eliminated and relieved in bough and stem and leafage, with a +singular pre-Raphaelitic individuality. It was the standing-out of +all things in the last radiance; called up, one by one under the +flash of judgment--beautiful, clear, terrible. + +Then the clouds themselves, as the sun dropped down, drank in the +splendor. They turned to rose and crimson; they floated, and spread, +and broke, and drifted up the valley, against the hills on right and +left. Rags and shreds of them, trailing gorgeous with color, clung +where the ridges caught them, and streamed like fragments of +heavenly banners. The sky repeated the October woods,--the woods the +sky,--in vivid numberless hues. + +The sunset rolled up and around the watchers as they gazed. They +were _in_ it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either +hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like +burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up +the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the +pervading glory. + +It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to +window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling, +"Now! now! O, was there ever anything like that?" + +At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining +waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky +gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and +diviner beauty. + +A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like +rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, +foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats +floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there +it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with +saffron-touched blue. + +So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the +day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and +peace of their rushing and melting together. + +After all that, they came back by a step and a word--these mortal +observers,--to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and +especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about +bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. +Jeffords' hospitality. + +"Where should she put them? Why, she was _always_ ready. To be sure, +the _front_ upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer +company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room +enough!" + +"There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over +the sittin'-room, and there's _my_ room! I ain't never put out!" + +"But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be." + +"Don't _care_!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the +kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all +right. Don't you worry." + +"You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie. + +"I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You +must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help +it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side +up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you. +You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves." + +Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a +long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when +the evening was over. + +"So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference +the other way. I think I always _am_ among people. At least it never +seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be +exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in +the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,--that +is, as fast as the morning gets round." + +With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously +making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier +touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb +damsel. + +Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far +as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, +knowing that "these same tribulations"--and joys also--are +accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; +knowing, too,--ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,--that +we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are +alive unto each other in the Lord. + +The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of +wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them. +Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and +plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild +harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that +are born to make a part of it. + +Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a +mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and +again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the +heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the +water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so +near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it +was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands +between the Jeffords' place and the Basin. + +"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading +the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which +nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and +waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks +of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn +color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered. + +They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew, +cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens +that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their +skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy +of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the +beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at +last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and +overlook and underlook the shining tumult,--the shifting, yet +enduring apparition of delight. + +It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it +seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous +living creature. You _felt_ it reach the first rock-landing; you +were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second +spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept +coming--coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet +never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the +magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of +evanescence, caught _in transitu_, and held for the eye and mind to +dwell on. + +They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,--that +ought to be a pause,--for them to turn and go away. + +"But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And +the Second Cataract is grander than this." + +"You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright. + +"Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don't they? +Our first is somebody's else last, I suppose, always." + +"What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss +Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge. + +"A little spirit waked up by touch of misfortune," said Miss +Euphrasia. "She would have gone through life blindfolded by purple +and fine linen, if things had been left as they were with her." + +Desire and Sylvie walked on together. + +"Leave them alone," said Miss Kirkbright to her brother. And she +stopped, and began to gather handfuls of the late ferns. + +Now she had the chance given her, Desire said it straight out, as +she said everything. + +"I came up here after you, Miss Argenter. Did you know it?" + +"No. After me? How?" asked Sylvie. + +"To see if you and your mother would come and make your home with us +this winter,--pretty much as you do with Mrs. Jeffords. I can say +_us_, because Hazel Ripwinkley, my cousin, is with me nearly all +the time; but for the rest of it, I am all the family there really +is, now that Rachel Froke has gone away; unless you came to call my +dear old Frendely 'family,' as I do; seeing that next to Rachel, she +is root and spring of it. You could help me; you could help her; and +I think you would like my work. I should be glad of you; and your +mother could have Rachel Froke's gray parlor. It is a one-sided +proposition, because, you see, I know all about you already, from +Miss Euphrasia. You will have to take me at hazard, and find out by +trying." + +"Do you think the old proverb isn't as true of good words as of +mischief,--that a dog who will fetch a bone will carry a bone?" said +Sylvie, laughing with the same impulse by which clear drops stood +suddenly in her eyes, and a quick rosiness came into her face. "Do +you suppose Miss Euphrasia hasn't told me of you?" + +"I never thought I was one of the people to be told about," said +Desire, simply. "Do you think you could come? Miss Euphrasia +believed it would be what you wanted. There is plenty of room, and +plenty of work. I want you to know that I mean to keep you honestly +busy, because then you will understand that things come out honestly +even." + +"Even! Dear Miss Ledwith!" + +"Then you'll try it?" + +"I don't know how to thank Miss Euphrasia or you." + +"There are no thanks in the bargain," said Desire, smiling. "I want +you; if you want me, it is a Q.E.D. If we _do_ dispute about +anything, we'll leave it out to Miss Euphrasia. She knows how to +make everything right. She shall be our broker. It is a good thing +to have one, in some kinds of trade." + +They had come around the curve in the road now, that brought them +alongside the shady gorge at the foot of Cone Hill. Here was the +little group of brick-makers' houses; empty, weather-beaten, their +door-yards overgrown with brakes and mulleins. Beyond, up the ledge, +to which a rough drive-way, long disused, led off, was the quaint, +rambling edifice that with its feet of stone and brick went "walking +up" the mountain. + +"You must go in and see it," Sylvie said. "But first,--this is the +way to the cascade." + +Another bar-place let them in again to another narrow, wild, +bush-grown path around the edge of the cliff, the lower spur of the +great hill; and down over shelving rocks, a long, gradual descent, +to the foot of the fall. + +The water foamed and rippled to their feet, as they walked along its +varying edge-line on the smooth, sloping stone that stretched back +against the perpendicular rampart of the cliff. The fall itself was +hidden in the turn around which, above, they had followed the +tangled pathway. + +At the farthest projection of the platform they were now treading, +they came upon it; beneath it, rather, they looked back and up at +its showery silver sheet, falling in sweet, continual thunder into +the dark, hollow, rock-encircled pool, thence to tumble away +headlong, from point to point, lower and lower yet, by a thousand +little breaks and plunges, till it came out into a broad meadow +stretch miles and miles away. + +"What a hurry it is in, to get down where it is wanted," said +Desire. + +She had seated herself beside the curling edge of the swift stream, +where it seemed to trace and keep by its own will its boundary upon +the nearly level rock, and was gazing up where the white radiance +poured itself as if direct from out the blue above. + +Mr. Kirkbright stood behind her. + +"Most things come to us at last so quietly," he said. "It is good to +feel and see what a rush it starts with,--out of that heart of +heaven." + +Desire had not said that; but it was just what she had been feeling. +Eager to get to us; coming in a hurry. Was that God's impulse toward +us? + +"Making haste to help and satisfy the world," Mr. Kirkbright said +again. + +"A river of clear water of life, coming down out of the throne," +said Miss Euphrasia. "What a sign it is!" + +Mr. Kirkbright walked along the margin of the ledge, farther and +farther down. He tried with his stick some stones that lay across +the current at a narrow point where beneath the opposite cliff it +bent and turned away, losing itself from their sight as they stood +here. Then he sprang across; crept, stooping, along the narrow +foothold under the projecting rock, until he could follow with his +eye the course of the rapid water, falling continually to its lower +level as it sped on and on, all its volume gathered in one deep, +rocky, unchangeable bed. + +"What a waiting power!" he exclaimed, springing safely back, and +coming up toward them. "What a stream for mills! And it turns +nothing but the farmers' grists, till it gets to Tillington." + +Desire was a very little disappointed at this utilitarianism. She +had been so glad and satisfied with the reading of its type; the +type of its far-back impulse. + +"If there had been mills here, we should not have seen that," she +said; forgetting to explain what. + +But Christopher Kirkbright knew. + +"What was it that we did see?" he asked, coming beside her. + +"The gracious hurry," she answered, with a half-vexed surprise in +her eyes. + +"And what is the next thing to seeing that? Isn't it to partake? To +be in a gracious hurry also, if we can?" + +A smile came up now in Desire's face, and effaced gently the +vexation and the surprise. + +"Do you know what a legible face you have?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, +seating himself near her on a step of rock. + +Desire was a little disturbed again by this movement. The others had +begun to walk on, up the ledge, toward the old brick house; +gathering as they went, ferns that had escaped the frost, others +that had delicately whitened in it, and gorgeous maple-leaves, swept +from topmost, inaccessible branches,--where the most glorious color +always hangs,--by last night's rain and wind. + +It was so foolish of her to have sat there until he came and did +this. Now she could not get right up and go away. This feeling, +coming simultaneously with his question about her legible face, was +doubly uncomfortable. But she had to answer. She did it briefly. + +"Yes. It is a great bother. I don't like coarse print." + +"Nor I. But my eyes are good; and the fine print is clear. I should +like very much to tell you of something that I have to do, Miss +Ledwith. I should like your thoughts upon it. For, you see, I have +hardly yet got acquainted with my ground. From what my sister tells +me, I think your work leads naturally up to mine. I should like to +find out whether it is quite ready for the join." + +"I haven't much work," said Desire. "Luclarion Grapp has; and Miss +Kirkbright, and Mr. Vireo. I only help,--with some money that +belongs to it." + +"And I have more money that belongs to it," said Mr. Kirkbright. + +It was a curious way for a rich man and a rich woman to talk to each +other, about their money. But I do not believe it ought to be +curious. + +"Don't you often come across people who cannot be helped much just +where they are? Don't you feel, sometimes, that there ought to be a +place to send them to, away, out of their old tracks, where they +could begin again; or even hide a while, in shame and repentance, +before they _dare_ to begin again?" + +"I _know_ Luclarion does," said Desire, earnestly. + +She would have it, still, that there was no work in her own name for +him to ask about. + +"I must see this Luclarion of yours," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"Meanwhile, since I have got you to talk to, pray tell me all you +can, whoever found it out. Isn't there a need for a City of Refuge? +And suppose a place like this, away from the towns, where God's +beautiful water is coming down in a hurry, with a cry of power in +every leap,--where there is a great lake-basin full of material for +work, just stored away against men's need for their earning and +their building,--suppose this place taken and used for the giving of +a new chance of life to those who have failed and gone wrong, or +have perhaps hardly ever had any right chances. Do you think we +could manage it so as to _keep_ it a place of refuge and new +beginning, and not let it spoil itself?" + +"With the right people at each end, why not?" said Desire. "But O, +Mr. Kirkbright! how can I tell you! It is such a great idea; and I +don't know anything." + +These words, that she happened to say, brought back to her--by one +of those little lightning threads that hold things together, and +flash and thrill our recollections through us--the rainy morning +when she went round in the storm to her Aunt Ripwinkley's, because +she could not sit in the bay-window at home, and wonder whether "it +was all finished," or whether anybody had got to contrive anything +more, "before they could sit behind plate-glass and let it rain." +She remembered it all by those same words that she had spoken then +to Rachel Froke,--"Behold, we know not anything,--Tennyson and I!" + +Nonsense stays by us, often, in stickier fashion than sense does; +that is the good of nonsense, perhaps; it sticks, and draws the +sense along after it. + +"I think one thing is certain," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Human +creatures are made for 'moving on.' I believe the Swedenborgians are +right in this,--that the places above, or below, are filled from the +human race, or races; and that the Lord Himself couldn't do much +with beings made as He has made us, without places to _move us +into_. New beginnings,--evenings and mornings; the very planet +cannot go on its way without making them for itself. Life bound down +to poor conditions,--and all conditions are poor in the sense of +being limited while the life is resistlessly expanding,--festers; +fevers; breaks out in violence and disease. I believe we want new +places more than anything. I came up here on purpose to see if I +could not begin one." + +"How happened you to come just here?" questioned Desire. "What could +you know of this, beforehand?" + +"My sister had Miss Argenter's letter; and at once she remembered +the name of the place and its story. That is the way things come +together, you know. My brother-in-law, Mr. Sherrett, owns, or did +own, this whole property. A 'dead stick,' he thought it. Well, +Aaron's rod was another dead stick. But he laid it up before the +Lord, and it blossomed." + +Desire sat silent, looking at the white water in its gracious hurry. +Pouring itself away, unused,--unheeded; yet waiting there, pouring +always. The tireless impulse of the divine help; vehement; eager, +with a human eagerness; yet so patient, till men's hands should +reach out and lay hold of it! + +She dreamed out a whole dream of life that might grow up beside this +help; of work that might be done there. She forgot that she was +lingering, and keeping Mr. Kirkbright lingering, behind the others. + +"You would have to live here yourself, I should think," she said at +length, speaking out of her vision of the things that might be, and +so--would have to be. She had got drawn in to the contemplation of +the scheme, and had begun to weigh and arrange, involuntarily, its +details, forgetting that she "knew not anything." + +Mr. Kirkbright smiled. + +"Yes, I see where you are," he said, "I had arrived at precisely the +same point myself. But the 'right people at the other end?' Who +should they be? Who shall send me my villagers,--my workers? Who +shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at +the source?" + +"Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp," Desire repeated, +promptly. + +"And yourself?" + +"Yes; I and Hazel, all we can. We help them. And now there will be +Miss Argenter. As Hazel said,--'We all of us know the Muffin-man.' +How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with +us! Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?" + +"I'm afraid I don't know the Muffin-_man_ literally, except what I +can guess of him by your application," said Mr. Kirkbright, +laughing. "I've no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good." + +"You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out. Hazel +and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of +proprietorship; 'and quite proper, I'm sure'--Why, where are Miss +Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?" + +Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the +present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her "quite proper" +quotation. + +"If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside +the Muffin-man," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help +her up a steep, slippery place. + +Desire foolishly blushed. She knew it, and knew that her hat did not +defend her in the least. She could not take it back now; she had +invited him. But what would he think of her blushing about it? + +"You can learn what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said, +shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of +having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do +with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, +at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting +the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough +bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned +round and faced him; this time with a determinedly cool cheek. + +"I don't know why I said that. I did not suppose you thought you +could learn anything of me," she said. "I was confused to think I +had asked you in that offhand way to my house. I have not been very +long used to being the head of a house." + +She smiled one of those bits of smiles of hers; a mere relaxation of +the lips that showed the white tips of her front teeth and just +indicated the peculiar, pretty curve with which the others were set +behind them; feeling reassured and reinstated in her own +self-respect by her explanation. Then, without letting him answer, +she turned swiftly round again, and sprang up the rugged stairway of +the shelving rock. + +But she had not uninvited him, after all. + +They found Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie waiting for them at the red +house. It was a quaint structure, with a kind of old, foreign look +about it. It made you think either of an ancient family mansion in +some provincial French town, or of a convent for nuns. + +It was of dark red brick,--the quality of which Mr. Kirkbright +remarked with satisfaction,--with high walls at the gable ends +carried above the slope of the roof. These were met and overclasped +at the corners by wide, massive eaves. A high, narrow door with a +fan-light occupied the middle of the end before which the party +stood. Windows above, with little balconies, were hung with old red +woolen damask, fading out in stripes; perishing, doubtless, with +moth and decay; in one was suspended a rusty bird-cage which had +once been gilt. + +What an honest neighborhood this was, in which these things had +remained for years, and not even the panes of the windows had been +broken by little boys! But then the villages full of little boys +were miles away, and the single families at the nearer farms were +well ordered Puritan folk, fathered and mothered in careful, old +fashioned sort. There was some indefinite awe, also, of the lonely +place, and of the rich, far-off owner who might come any day to look +after his rights, and make a reckoning with them. + +Up, from platform to platform of the terraced rock, as Sylvie had +said, climbed the successive sections of the dwelling. The front was +two and a half stories high; the last outlying projection was a +single square apartment with its own low roof; towards the back, +within, you went up flight after flight of short stairs from room to +room, from passage to passage. Once or twice, the few broad steps +between two apartments ran the whole width of the same. + +"What a place for plays!" + +"Or for a little children's school, ranged in rows, one above +another." + +"The man who built it must have dreamt it first!" + +These were the exclamations that they made to each other as they +passed through, exploring. + +There was a great number of bedrooms, divided off here and there; +the upper front was one row of them with a gallery running across +the house, in whose windows toward the south hung the old red woolen +draperies and the bird-cage. + +Below, at the back, the last room opened by a door upon a high, flat +table of the rock, around whose overhanging edge a light railing had +been run. Standing here, they looked up and down the beautiful +gorge, into the heart of the hill and the depth of its secret shaded +places on the one hand, and on the other into the rush and whirl of +the rapidly descending and broken torrent to where it flung itself +off the sudden brink, and changed into white mist and an everlasting +song. + +"This last room ought to be a chapel," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Out +here could be open-air service in the beautiful weather, to the +sound of that continual organ." + +"You have thought of it, too," exclaimed Desire. + +"Of what?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, turning toward her. + +"Of what you might make this place." + +"What would you make of it?" + +They were a little apart, by themselves, again. It kept happening +so. Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each +other. + +"I would make it a moral sanatorium. I would take people in here, +and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin +the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work +and business, waiting just outside. I would have rooms for them +here, that they should feel the _own-ness_ of; flowers to tend; +ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful +woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at +the very first! I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living +to win them back by,--to teach them pure things; yes,--and I would +have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in! That bird-cage in +the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe," she ended, +bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection. + +"I knew you could tell me how," said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly. + +"How Hazel would rejoice in this place! It is a place to set any one +dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the +man was in a dream when he planned it." + +"I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived," said Christopher +Kirkbright. "At any rate, let us have the _vision_ out, while we are +about it! What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough +working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them +to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for +the women and children, especially. Paper for hangings, say; then, +some time or other, the printing works, and the designing? Might it +not all grow? And then wouldn't we have a ladder all the way up, for +them to climb by,--out of the clay and common toil to art and +beauty?" + +"You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright." + +"I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it +pay," he answered. "Pay itself, and keep itself going. I do not need +to look for my fortune from it. The fortune is to be put into it. +But I have no right to lose,--to throw away,--the fortune. It must +come by degrees, like all things. You know some people say that God +dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and +then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the +Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two. If I cannot do +the whole, there may be others,--and if there are, we shall find +them,--who would help to build the city." + +"I know who," said Desire, instantly. "Dakie Thayne, and Ruth! It is +just what they want." + +"Will 'Dakie Thayne' build a railroad,--seven miles,--across to +Tillington,--for our transportation? We'll say he will. I have no +question it is Dakie Thayne, or somebody, who is waiting, and that +the right people are all linked together, ready to draw each other +in," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving rein to the very lightness of +gladness in the joy of the thought he was pursuing. "We don't know +how we stand leashed and looped, all over the world, until the Lord +begins to take us in hand, and bring us together toward his grand +intents. We shall want another Hilary Vireo to preach that gospel +here; and I don't doubt he is somewhere, though it would hardly seem +possible." + +"Why don't we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable +unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she +left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher +Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush before +him. + +"I don't know why we shouldn't. In fact, we could not help it. It +would be _all_ gospel, wouldn't it? I know, at least, what I should +mean the whole thing to preach." + +Saying this, he fell silent all at once. + +"There is a great deal of wrong gospel preached in the world. If we +could only stop that, and begin again,--I think!" said Desire. +"Between the old, hopeless terrors and the modern smoothing away and +letting go, the real living help seems to have failed men. They +don't know where it is, or whether they need it, even." + +"Yes, that is it," said Christopher Kirkbright, letting his silence +be broken through with the whole tide of his earnest, life-long, +pondered thought. "Men have put aside the old idea of the avenging +and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of +Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ +_is_ that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say; +there _is_ no pit of burning torment. But they know there is +something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak, +but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God +to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back +and declare pitilessly,--'There is _Law_. Law punishes; and Law is +inexorable. God Himself does not suspend or contradict his Law. You +have sinned; you must take the consequences.' Are you better off in +the clutch of that Law, than you were in the old hell? Isn't there +the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a +Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,--the forgiving side, +the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law? +You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help +you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the +hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law +will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will bear on +downward, through the eternities! This is what threatens the sinner; +and you have sinned. Beyond and above and through the necessities +that He seems to have made, God reveals himself supreme in love, in +the Face of Jesus Christ. He comes in the very midst of the clouds, +with power and great glory! 'I have _provided_ a way,' He says, +'from the foundations,--for you to repent and for Me to take you +back. It was a part of my _plan_ to forgive. You have seen but half +the revolution of my wheel of Law. Fling yourself upon it; believe; +you shall be broken; but you shall _not_ be ground into powder. You +shall find yourselves lifted up into the eternal peace and safety; +you shall feel yourself folded in the arms of my tender compassion. +The bones that I have broken shall rejoice. Your life shall be set +right for you, notwithstanding the Law: yea, _by_ the law. _I have +provided_. Only believe.' + +"This is the word,--the Christ,--on God's part This is repentance +and saving faith, on our part. It is the Gospel. And it came by the +mouth, and the interpreting and confirming acts, of Jesus. The +_power_ of the acts was little matter; the _expression_ of the acts +was everything. He proclaimed forgiveness,--He healed disease; He +reversed evil and turned it back. He changed death into +life,--taking away the sting--the implantation--of it, which is sin. +For evermore the might of the Redemption stands above the might of +the Law that was transgressed." + +"You have dedicated your chapel, Mr. Kirkbright." + +Desire Ledwith said it, with that emotion which makes the voice +sound restrained and deep; and as she said it, she turned to go back +into the house. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +BLOSSOMING FERNS. + + +The minister's covered carryall was borrowed from two miles off, to +take Mrs. Argenter down to Tillington. + +All she knew about the winter plan was that Miss Ledwith was a +friend of Miss Kirkbright's, had a large, old-fashioned house, and +scarcely any household, and would be glad to have herself and Sylvie +take rooms with her for several months. She had a vague idea that +Miss Ledwith might be somewhat restricted in her means, and that to +receive lodgers in a friendly way would be an "object" to her. She +talked, indeed, with a gentle complaisance to Miss Kirkbright, about +its not being exactly what they had intended,--they had thought of +rooms at Hotel Pelham or Boylston, so central and so near the +Libraries; but after all, what she needed most was quiet and no +stairs; and she had a horror of elevators, and a dread of fire; so +that this was really better, perhaps; and Miss Ledwith was a very +sweet person. + +Miss Euphrasia smiled; "sweet," especially in the silvery tone in +which Mrs. Argenter uttered it, was the last monosyllabic epithet +she would have selected as applying to grave, earnest, downright +Desire. + +At East Keaton, the train stopped for five minutes. + +Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother's +foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just +returned with it. She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter's +feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her +chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which +the party was, and came up behind her. + +She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose. + +"I beg your pardon," she said, instinctively, and turned as she +spoke. + +"What for?" asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and +grasping hers before she was well aware. + +There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise +crimsoned her cheek. These two had not seen each other all summer. + +Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other. + +"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly +her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was +made to!" + +"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for +your country summer? Aunt Effie! _You're_ not surprised to see me? +Did you think I would let you go down without?" + +No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday +afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to +come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this +moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in +the most inaccessible corner of the car. + +"You're not going down to the city?" + +But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her. + +"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say. +One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all +others,--repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in +four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header, +straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the +confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a +pincushion." + +"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a +little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did, +because she was so pleased she could not help it. + +They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing +each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the +same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared +claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been +filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the +opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and +tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a +House of Refuge. + +"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped +with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,--except _my_ +home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia." + +There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, +with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months +among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff. + +Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you +anything before as concerning him. + +He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning +at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and +harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and +kerseys; _driving_, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something +and making it go. + +"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but +there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage; +that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and +the dust. Why, _this_ is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't +make me deaf,--and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said, +with an indescribably pathetic demureness. + +"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily. + +"Well,--yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I +should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a +great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the +first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it +for two years, before I--ask him for anything else. I think I shall +have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about +my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They +always do." + +What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him; +he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy. + +But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in +all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash +should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound! + +Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though +they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had +to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with +his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away +beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt +Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner, +reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little +with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange, +all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter +grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped +Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and +improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs. +Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on. + +And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted +and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and +amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for +making of herself. + +Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with +great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that +people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a +boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet. + +"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an +urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves +wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms +dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive +here, for him to be let in." + +Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never +do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback. + +"Boy! Here! toss up your load!" + +The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came +the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the +platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels +drooping all about him. + +Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made +her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and +exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers +toward them with a smile. + +"Such a quantity--for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into +her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were, +Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we +Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them +all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully +round and round into a heap. + +No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf; +she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well +what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for. + +In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns +again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and +significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into +her lap. + +She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down +beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to +catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his +very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a +strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the +life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her. + +It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, +neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, +were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October +afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, +some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that +evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take +the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our +lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed +off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it +just like this." + +Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him +on his cheek, saying nothing. + +But to herself she said, after he had gone,-- + +"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out +together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is +anybody sure of the rest of it?" + +Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +"WANTED." + + +The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took +possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not +been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful +in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, +into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's +sake. + +She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and +if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. +Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be +unbricked? + +"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is +so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the +draught is excellent." + +"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the +carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter. + +"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We +couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for +them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning." + +Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming +back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was +sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found +the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before +the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel +that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three +little pitch-pine sticks. + +There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright +blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black +layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness, +and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the +happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy +something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a +certain passive sense of participancy. + +In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking +trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting +out toilet cases upon table and stand. + +For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a +pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a +sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was +to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with +the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet +flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken +duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able +to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being +intruded upon. + +Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week +which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had +told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made +no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a +quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she +were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as +she with much compunction practised upon her mother. + +"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more +than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have +to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as +simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so. + +"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said. + +Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or +other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it +back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know +that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see +very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can +possibly gratify her mother in." + +There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen, +in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any +little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not +miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie +was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to +play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for +her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess +in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,--work for +Neighbor Street it was, mostly,--into the gray parlor, and "sewed +for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy +might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the +content of seeing it. + +On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful "Read-and-Talk," +when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the +"other girls"; when on the big table treasures of picture, map, +stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far +countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced +back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in +place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly +up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure +of years. And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the +standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could +"work in the ground fast," like Hamlet, or any other spirit. Their +hours stood for months; their two months had given them already +winters and summers of enchantment. + +Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these +travelling parties. Ada had all her mother's resources of books, +engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a +carriage-full. Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with +its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum +and St. Peter's in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and +temples. Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a +dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the +obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with +a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or +fac-simile,--even a mummied finger and a scaraboeus ring. + +They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their +subject took them out of it. They could have a glimpse of Memphis, +or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an +allusion or synchronism. + +Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the +perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and +laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism +that "tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little +different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you +all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the +whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every +separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton." + +The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street. +I suppose you knew it would as well as I. + +Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her +Aunt Blin's "finishings," at the thread-store where Dot tended. +(Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home, +since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade +and Matchett's.) Then they came across each other in their waitings +at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood. At +last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel +Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire's especial little +club at her own house. + +After the travel-talk was over,--and they began with it early, so +that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,--very often +some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of +confidence or advice with Desire. These girls brought their plans to +her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions; +not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling +her. They knew she cared for them. It was the beginning of all +religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness. +Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the +experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without +it the Divine has never been revealed. + +One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her +sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and +asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her. "We'll take the +car, presently," she said to Ray. "We shall be at home almost as +soon as you will." + +"It is about the shop work," she said to Desire, who stepped back +into the library with her. + +"I do not think I can do it much longer. I am pretty strong for some +things, but this terrible _standing_! I could _walk_ all day; but +cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the +boxes and things,--I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as +if my bones had all been racked. I haven't told them at home, for +fear they would worry about me; they think now I've lost flesh, and +I suppose I have; and I don't have much appetite; it seems dragged +out of me. And then,--I can't say it before the others, for they're +in shops, some of 'em, and places may be different; but it's such a +window and counter parade, besides; and they do look out for it. +People stare in at the store as they go by; Margaret Shoey has the +glove counter at that end, and she knows Mr. Matchett keeps her +there on purpose to attract; she sets herself up and takes airs upon +it; and Sarah Cilley does everything she sees her do, and comes in +for the second-hand attention. Mr. Matchett asked me the other day +if I couldn't wear a panier, and do up my hair a little more +stylish! I can't stay there; it isn't fit for girls!" + +Dot's cheeks flamed, and there were tears in her eyes. Desire +Ledwith stood with a thoughtful, troubled expression in her own. + +"There ought to be other ways," she said. "There ought to be more +_sheltered_ work for girls!" + +"There is," said little Bel Bree from the doorway "in houses. If I +hadn't Aunt Blin, I'd go right into a family as seamstress or +anything. I don't believe in out-doors and shops. I've only lived in +the city a little while, but I've seen it. And just think of the +streets and streets of nice houses, where people live, and girls +have to live with 'em, to do real woman's home work! And it's all +given up to foreign servants, and _our_ girls go adrift, and live +anyhow. 'Tain't right!" + +"There is a good deal that isn't right about it," said Desire, +gravely; knowing better than Bel the difficulties in the way of new +domestic ideas. "And a part of it is that the houses aren't built, +or the ways of living planned, for 'our girls,' exactly. Our girls +aren't happy in underground kitchens and sky bedrooms." + +"I don't know. They might as well be underground as in some of those +close, crowded shops. And their bedrooms can't be much to compare, +certain. I'm afraid they like the crowds best. If they wanted to, +and would work in, and try, they might contrive. Things fix +themselves accordingly, after a while. Somebody's got to begin. I +can't help thinking about it." + +Desire smiled. + +"Your thinking may be a first sign of good times, little Bel," she +said. "Think on. That is the way everything begins; with a +restlessness in some one or two heads about it. Perhaps that is just +what you have come down from New Hampshire for." + +"I don't know," said Bel again. She began a good many of her +reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler +into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad +up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and +the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have such +good places!" + +"You came yourself, you see?" + +"Yes. I wasn't contented. And things were particular with me. And I +had Aunt Blin. I don't want to go back, either. But I can see how it +is." + +"Things are particular with each one, in some sort or another. That +is what settles it, I suppose, and ought to. The only thing is to be +sure that it is a _right_ particular that does it; that we don't let +in any wrong particular, anywhere. For you, Dorothy, I don't believe +shop-life is the thing. You have found it out. Why not change at +once? There is the machine at home, and Ray is going to be busy in +Neighbor Street. Won't her work naturally come to you?" + +"There isn't much of it, and it is so uncertain. The shops take up +all the bulk of work nowadays; everything is wholesale; and I don't +want to go into the rooms, if I can help it. I don't like days' +work, either. The fact is, I want a quiet place, and the same +things. I like my own machine. I would go with it into a family, if +I could have my own room, and be nice, and not have to eat with +careless, common servants in a dirty kitchen. Mother would spare +me,--to a real good situation; and I would come home Sundays." + +"I see. What you want is somewhere, of course. Wouldn't you +advertise?" + +"Would _you_?" + +"Yes, I think I would. Say exactly what you want, wages and all. And +put it into some family Sunday paper,--the 'Christian Register,' for +instance. Those things get read over and over; and the same paper +lies about a week. In the dailies, one thing crowds out another; a +new list every night and morning. See here, I'll write one now. +Perhaps it wouldn't be too late for this week. Would you go out of +town?" + +"_Wouldn't_ I? I think sometimes that's just what ails me; wanting +to see soft roads and green grass and door-yards and sun between the +houses! But I couldn't go far, of course." + +Desire's pencil was flying over the paper. + +"'Wanted; a permanent situation in a pleasant family, as seamstress, +by a young girl used to all kinds of sewing, who will bring her own +machine. Would like a room to herself, and to have her meals +orderly and comfortable, whether with the family or otherwise. +Wages'--What?" + +"By the day, I could get a dollar and a quarter, at least; but for a +real good home-place, I'd go for four dollars a week." + +"'Wages, $4.00 per week. A little way out of town preferred.' There! +There are such places, and why shouldn't one come to you? Take that +down to the 'Register' office to-morrow morning, and have it put in +twice, unless stopped." + +"Thank you. It's all easy enough, Miss Ledwith. Why didn't I work it +out myself?" + +"It isn't quite worked out, yet. But things always look clearer, +somehow, through two pairs of eyes. Good-night. Let me know what you +hear about it." + +"She'll surprise some family with such a seamstress as they read +about," said Bel Bree, on the door-step. "I should like to astonish +people, sometime, with a heavenly kind of general housework." + +"That was a good idea of yours about the Sunday paper," said Sylvie, +as she and Hazel and Desire went back into the library to put away +the books. "But what when the common sort pick up the dodge, and +the weeklies get full of 'Wanteds'? Nothing holds out fresh, very +long." + +"There _ought_ to be," said Desire, "some filtered process for these +things; some way of sifting and certifying. A bureau of mutual +understanding between the 'real folks,'--employers and employed. I +believe it might be. There ought to be for this, and for many +things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward +degree. And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it +about. A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of +shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of +more careful managing. A mutual need,--or the seeing of it. The need +is now; these girls--half of them--want homes, more than anything; +and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls." + +"Why don't you edit a paper, Desire? The 'Fellowship Register,' or +the 'Domestic Intelligencer,' or something! And keep lists of all +the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?" + +"That isn't a bad notion, Hazie. Your notions never are. May be that +is what is waiting for you. Just cover up that 'raised Switzerland,' +will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the +Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas. +Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?" + +The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where +Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus's neck for +the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after +the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their +cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. Nobody knew +all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every +dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone. + +Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and +little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray +parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of +star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual +subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to +pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city +house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, +more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,--she +knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know +that? + +It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, +boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, "You need +not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were +anything in the way, I would tell you." + +But at last she had to say,--not, "I think I understand +Sylvie,"--but, "I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember. +I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life. +The right girls can." + +And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it +with a loving grasp between his hands again,-- + +"Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world +where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, +then they don't make 'em, and never did!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +VOICES AND VISIONS. + + +Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames +Fillmer & Bylles, one Saturday morning. + +Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker +were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic, +so cumulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of +constant professional contact with the élite. Carriages had rolled +up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very +voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private +audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away +again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain +workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those +who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her +apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a +sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated +became--not the air of shop or business or down-town street--but the +air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land. + +And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly +contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent +of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up +there came floating and spreading and shining in, on one portly and +magnificent person. + +But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries! +Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little +faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so, +and she was appointed to see it done. + +She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning. +Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had +been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were +dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss +Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable, +might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles +had given her word for it. + +The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence, +warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the +confidence,--the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily +distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore +it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little +woman sat basting,--these things are indescribable. But they are in +human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself. + +Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and +changed, and overwhelmed all things. + +A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out +upon the landing. + +"I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll +make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat," said Elise +Mokey. + +One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand, +in this fashion, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers +advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by +courtesy. + +Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her +slow fashion hind side before. + +"We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?" +she asked, blandly, of Miss Bree. + +Aunt Blin smiled. "They've been squabbling over it these five +minutes," she replied. + +Aunt Blin was sure of some particular finishing, that none could do +like her precise old self. + +Kate Sencerbox jumped up impatiently, reaching over for some fringe. + +"I shall have to give it up," she whispered emphatically into Bel +Bree's ear. "It's no use your asking me to go to Chapel any more. I +ain't sanctified a grain. I did begin to think there was a kind of +work of grace begun in me,--but I _can't_ stand Miss Proddle! What +_are_ people made to strike ten for, always, when it's eleven?" + +"I think _we_ are all striking _twelve_" said Bel Bree. "One's too +fast, and another's too slow, but the sun goes round exactly the +same." + +Miss Tonker came back, and the talk hushed. + +"Clock struck one, and down they run, hickory, dickory, dock," said +Miss Proddle, deliberately, so that her voice brought up the +subsiding rear of sound and was heard alone. + +"What _under_ the sun?" exclaimed Miss Tonker, with a gaze of +mingled amazement, mystification, and contempt, at the poor old +maiden making such unwonted noise. + +"Yes'm," said Kate Sencerbox. "It is 'under the sun,' that we're +talking about; the way things turn round, and clocks strike; some +too fast, and some too slow; and--whether there's anything new under +the sun. I think there is; Miss Proddle made a bright speech, that's +all." + +Miss Tonker, utterly bewildered, took refuge in solemn and +supercilious disregard; as if she saw the joke, and considered it +quite beneath remark. + +"You will please resume your work, and remember the rules," she +said, and sailed down upon the cutters' table. + +There was a certain silk evening dress, of singular and +indescribably lovely tint,--a tea-rose pink; just the color of the +blush and creaminess that mingle themselves into such delicious +anonymousness in the exquisite flower. It was all puffed and fluted +till it looked as if it had really blossomed with uncounted curving +petals, that showed in their tender convolutions each possible +deepening and brightening of its wonderful hue. + +It _looked_ fragrant. It conveyed a subtle sense of flavor. It fed +and provoked every perceptive sense. + +It was not a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its +trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to +be made, and these others were only basted, as also the corsage. + +After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin +aside. She uncovered the large white box in which it lay, +unfinished. + +"You have a nice room, Miss Bree. Can you take this home and finish +it,--by Wednesday? In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here +daytimes, as usual. It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of +the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. _That_ I +shall finish myself." + +Aunt Blin's voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered. She +thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some +possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the +favoring grace. + +"Certainly, ma'am. I'll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a +white cloth on the table. Thank you, ma'am. Yes; I have a nice room, +and nothing gets meddled with. It'll be quite safe there. I'm sure +I'm no less than happy to be allowed. You're very kind, ma'am." + +Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring. +She did not snub her, however; that was something. + +Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box. + +On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel. She could not help +it. + +To have this beautiful dress in the house,--perhaps to have to stand +up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with +the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the +room,--why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if +the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by, +up-stairs? If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in +that blush-colored silk! She should like to look like that, just +once, to somebody! + +Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living--all her busy +work and contentedness--all her bright notions of what might be +possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,--she +had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she +saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things +that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen! + +A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her +aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time +it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door +stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they +had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron +to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of +each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did, +perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing +between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles +far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt +Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she +was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other. +After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had +opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, +courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass. + +Aunt Blin,--dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed +cats and birds,--_her_ cat and bird, at least,--might be thrown +trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it +sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the +bird was "very, _very_ precious,"--thought Mr. Hewland was "such a +nice young man." + +And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman; +above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His +danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was +a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could +escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most +genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among +which his social position placed him. He had been singularly +attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a +wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he +had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now +and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet +laugh; or her raised, gleeful tone, as she said some funny, quick, +shrewd thing in her original fashion to her aunt. + +Through the month of August, while work was slack, and the Hewland +family was away travelling, and other lodgers' rooms were vacated, +the Brees had been more at home, and Morris Hewland had been more in +his rooms above, than had been usual at most times. The music +mistress had taken a vacation, and gone into the country; only old +Mr. Sparrow, lame with one weak ankle, hopped up and down; and the +spare, odd-faced landlady glided about the passages with her prim +profile always in the same pose, reminding one of a badly-made +rag-doll, of which the nose, chin, and chest are in one invincible +flat line, interrupted feebly by an unsuccessful hint of drawing in +at the throat. + +Mr. Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when +everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work. + +The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home +sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him, +and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities." + +He had secured in these out-of-the way-lodgings in Leicester Place, +one of the best north lights that could be had in the city; he would +not take a room among a lot of others in a Studio Building. So he +worked up his studies, painted his pictures, let nobody come near +him except as he chose to bring them, and when he wanted anything of +the world, went out into the world and got it. + +Now, something had come right in here close to him, which brought +him a certain sense of such a world as he could not go out into at +will, to get what he wanted. A world of simplicities, of blessed +contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing +spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at +Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended +by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the +roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower +reveals the spring. + +On her part, Bel Bree got a glimpse, she knew not how, of a world +above and beyond her own; a world of beauty, of power, of reach and +elevation, in which people like Morris Hewland dwelt. His step, his +voice, his words now and then to the friend or two whom he had the +habit of bringing in with him,--the mere knowledge that he "made +pictures," such pictures as she looked at in the windows and in +art-dealers' rooms, where any shop-girl, as freely as the most +elegant connoisseur, can go in and delight her eyes, and inform her +perceptions,--these, without the face even, which had turned its +magnetism straight upon hers only once or twice, and whose +revelation was that of a life related to things wide and full and +manifold,--gave her the stimulating sense of a something to which +she had not come, but to which she felt a strange belonging. + +Beside,--alongside--in each mind, was the undeveloped mystery; the +spell under which a man receives such intuitions through a woman's +presence,--a woman through a man's. Yet these two individuals were +not, therefore, going to be necessary to each other, in the plan of +God. Other things might show that they were not meant, in rightness, +for each other; they represented mutually, something that each life +missed; but the something was in no special companionship; it was a +great deal wider and higher than that. They might have to learn that +it was so, nevertheless, by some briefly painful process of +experience. If in this process they should fall into mistake and +wrong,--ah, there would come the experience beyond the experience, +the depth they were not meant to sound, yet which, if they let their +game of life run that way, they could not get back from but through +the uttermost. They must play it out; the move could not be taken +back,--yet awhile. The possible better combinations are in God's +knowledge; how He may ever reset the pieces and give his good +chances again, remains the hidden hope, resting upon the Christ that +is in the heart of Him. + +One morning Morris Hewland had come up the stairs with a handful of +tuberoses; he was living at home, then, through the pleasant +September, at his father's country place, whence the household would +soon remove to the city for the winter. + +Miss Bree's door was open. She was just replacing her door-mat, +which she had been shaking out of the entry window. She had an old +green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody +could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word +with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if +he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses. +There was something pitiful in the contrast, perhaps, of the pure, +fresh, exquisite blossoms, and the breath of sweet air he and they +brought with them in their swift transit from the places where it +blessed all things to the places where so much languished in the +need of it, not knowing, even, the privation. The old, trodden, +half-cleansed door-mat in her hands,--the just-created beauty in +his. He stopped, and divided his handful. + +"Here, Miss Bree,--you would like a piece of the country, I imagine, +this morning! I couldn't have come in without it." + +The voice rang blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat, +basting machine work; the eyes went after the voice. + +The light from the east window was full upon the shining hair, the +young, unworn outlines, the fresh, pure color of the skin. Few city +beauties could bear such morning light as that. Nothing but the +morning in the face can meet it. + +Morris Hewland lifted his hat, and bowed toward the young girl, +silently. Then he passed on, up to his room. Bel heard his step, +back and forth, overhead. + +The tuberoses were put into a clear, plain tumbler. Bel would not +have them in the broken vase; she would not have them in a _blue_ +vase, at all. She laid a white napkin over the red of the +tablecloth, and set them on it. The perfume rose from them and +spread all through the room. + +"I am so glad we have work at home to-day," said Bel. + +There had been nothing but little things like these; out into Bel's +head, as she and Aunt Blin carried home the tea-blush silk, and laid +it by with care in its white box upon the sofa-end, came that little +wish, with a spring and a heart-beat,--"If she might have it on for +a minute, and if in that minute he might happen to come by!" + +She did not think she was planning for it; but when on the Tuesday +evening the step went down the stairs at eight o'clock, while they +sat busily working, each at a sleeve, by the drop-light over the +white-covered table, a little involuntary calculation ran through +her thoughts. + +"He always comes back by eleven. We shall have two hours' work--or +more,--on this, if we don't hurry; and it's miserable to hurry!" + +They stitched on, comfortably enough; yet the sleeves were finished +sooner than she expected. Before nine o'clock, Aunt Blin was sewing +them in. Then Bel wanted a drink of water; then they could not both +get at the waist together; there was no need. + +"I'll do it," said Bel, out of her conscience, with a jump of fright +as she said it, lest Aunt Blin should take her at her word, and +begin gauging and plaiting the skirt. + +"No, you rest. I shall want you by and by, for a figure." + +"May I have it _all_ on?" says Bel eagerly. "Do, Auntie! I should +just like to be in such a dress once--a minute!" + +"I don't see any reason why not. _You_ couldn't do any hurt to it, +if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin. + +"I'll do up my hair on the top of my head," said Bel. + +And forthwith, at the far end of the room, away from the delicate +robe and its scattered material, she got out her combs and brushes, +and let down her gleaming brown hair. + +It took different shades, from umber to almost golden, this "funny +hair" of hers, as she called it. She thought it was because she had +faded it, playing out in the sun when she was a child; but it was +more like having got the shine into it. It did not curl, or wave; +but it grew in lovely arches, with roots even set, around her +temple and in the curves of her neck; and now, as she combed it up +in a long, beautiful mass, over her grasping hand, raising it with +each sweep higher toward the crown of her pretty head, all this +vigorous, beautiful growth showed itself, and marked with its +shadowy outline the dainty shapings. One twist at the top for the +comb to go in, and then she parted it in two, and coiled it like a +golden-bronze cable; and laid it round and round till the foremost +turn rested like a wreath midway about her head. She pulled three +fresh geranium leaves and a pink-white umbel of blossom from the +plant in the window, and tucked the cluster among the soft front +locks against the coil above the temple. + +Then she took off the loose wrapping-sack she had thrown over her +shoulders, washed her fingers at the basin, and came back to her +seat under the lamp. + +Aunt Blin looked up at her and smiled. It was like having it all +herself,--this youth and beauty,--to have it belonging to her, and +showing its charming ways and phases, in little Bel. Why shouldn't +the child, with her fair, sweet freshness, and the deep-green, +velvety leaves making her look already like a rose against which +they leaned themselves, have on this delicate rose dress? If things +stayed, or came, where they belonged, to whom should it more +fittingly fall to wear it than to her? + +Bel watched the clock and Aunt Blin's fingers. + +It was ten when the plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt +basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and +in a hurry the next. + +"It would be done too soon; but he might come in early; and, O dear, +they hadn't thought,--there was that puffing to put round the +corsage, bertha-wise, with the blonde edging. 'It was all ready; +give it to her.'" + +"Now!" + +The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she +stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from +her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet. + +Was that anybody coming? + +Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had +been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold, +standing like this. + +"O, it is _so_ warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And +with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making +justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it, +Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full +toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just +a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody +will come," she said. + +When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify +little Bel. I do not try to. + +"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?" + +"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and +stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You +shouldn't have sprung so, child." + +The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink +tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked +in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought +of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment--in the +heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length +float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there +about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that +becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her +waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a +sensation of? + +The door _did_ shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a +few light springs. + +Suddenly Bel was ashamed! + +She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful +trap for herself! + +"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered. + +But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and +arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with +her professional eye. + +The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift +bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright +light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with +the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the possible flush of +fair array, and marvelous blossom of consummate, adorned loveliness. + +Somehow, it broke down the safeguard he had had. + +In what was Bel Bree different, really, from women who wore such +robes as that, with whom he had danced and chatted in drawing-rooms? +Only in being a thousand times fresher and prettier. + +After that, he began to make reasons for speaking to them. He +brought Aunt Blin a lot of illustrated papers; he lent them a +stereoscope, with Alpine and Italian views; he brought down a +picture of his own, one day, to show them; before October was out, +he had spent an evening in Aunt Blin's room, reading aloud to them +"Mirèio." + +Among the strange metaphysical doublings which human nature +discovers in itself, there is such a fact, not seldom experienced, +as the dreaming of a dream. + +It is one thing to dream utterly, so that one believes one is +awake; it is another to sleep in one's dream, and in a vision give +way to vision. It is done in sleep, it is done also in life. + +This was what Bel Bree--and it is with her side of the experience +that I have business--was in danger now of doing. + +It is done in life, as to many forms of living--as to religion, as +to art. People are religious, not infrequently because they are in +love with the idea of being so, not because they are simply and +directly devoted to God. They are æsthetic, because "The Beautiful" +is so beautiful, to see and to talk of, and they choose to affect +artistic having and doing; but they have not come even into that +sheepfold by the door, by the honest, inevitable pathway that their +nature took because it must,--by the entrance that it found through +a force of celestial urging and guidance that was behind them all +the while, though they but half knew it or understood. + +Women fall in love that way, so often! It is a lovely thing to be +loved; there is new living, which seems to them rare and grand, into +which it offers to lift them up. They fall into a dream about a +dream; they do not lay them down to sleep and give the Lord their +souls to keep, till He shall touch their trustful rest with a divine +fire, and waken them into his apocalypse. + +It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he +brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living, +that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew +that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited; +not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its +satisfying. If women will look, they can see this. + +She knew--she had found out--that she was a fair picture in the +artist's eyes; that the perception keen to discover and test and +analyze all harmonies of form and tint,--holding a hallowed, +mysterious kinship in this power to the Power that had made and +spoken by them,--turned its search upon her, and found her lovely in +the study. It was as if a daisy bearing the pure message and meaning +of the heavenly, could thrill with the consciousness of its +transmission; could feel the exaltation of fulfilling to a human +soul, grand in its far up mystery and waiting upon God,--one of his +dear ideas. + +There was something holy in the spirit with which she thus realized +her possession of maidenly beauty; her gift of mental charm and +fitness even; it was the countersign by which she entered into this +realm of which Morris Hewland had the freedom; it belonged to her +also,--she to it; she had received her first recognition. It was a +look back into Paradise for this Eve's daughter, born to labor, but +with a reminiscence in her nature out of which she had built all her +sweetest notions of being, doing, abiding; from which came +the-home-picture, so simple in its outlines, but so rich and gentle +in all its significance, that she had drawn to herself as "her +wish"; the thing she would give most, and do most, to have come +true. + +But all this was not necessarily love, even in its beginning,--though +she might come for a while to fancy it so,--for this one +man. It was a thing between her own life and the Maker of it; an +unfolding of herself toward that which waited for her in Him, and +which she should surely come to, whatever she might grasp at +mistakenly and miss upon the way. + +Morris Hewland--young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's +fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty, +of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive +cleverness--was treading dangerous ground. + +He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes +he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and +drifted on. + +Aunt Blin, with her simplicity,--her incapacity of believing, though +there might be wrong and mischief in the world, that anybody she +knew could ever do it, sat there between them, the most bewildered, +the most inwardly and utterly befooled of the three. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +BOX FIFTY-TWO. + + +In the midst of it all, she went and caught a horrible cold. + +Aunt Blin, I mean. + +It was all by wearing her india-rubbers a week too long, a week +after she had found the heels were split; and in that week there +came a heavy rain-storm. + +She had to stay at home now. Bel went to the rooms and brought back +button-holes for her to make. She could not do much; she was +feverish and languid, and her eyes suffered. But she liked to see +something in the basket; she was always going to be "well enough +to-morrow." When the work had to be returned, Bel hurried, and did +the button-holes of an evening. + +Mr. Hewland brought grapes and oranges and flowers to Miss Bree. Bel +fetched home little presents of her own to her aunt, making a pet of +her: ice-cream in a paper cone, horehound candy, once, a tumbler of +black currant jelly. But that last was very dear. If Aunt Blin had +eaten much of other things, they could not have afforded it, for +there were only half earnings now. + +To-morrow kept coming, but Miss Bree kept on not getting any better. +"She didn't see the reason," she said; "she never had a cold hang on +so. She believed she'd better go out and shake it off. If she could +have rode down-town she would, but somehow she didn't seem to have +the strength to walk." + +The reason she "couldn't have rode," was because all the horses +were sick. It was the singular epidemic of 1872. There were no cars, +no teams; the queer sight was presented in a great city, of the +driveways as clear as the sidewalks; of nobody needed to guard the +crossings or unsnarl the "blocks;" of stillness like Sunday, day +after day; of men harnessed into wagons,--eight human beings +drawing, slowly and heavily, what any poor old prickle-ribs of a +horse, that had life left in him at all, would have trotted +cheerfully off with. A lady's trunk was a cartload; and a lady's +trunk passing through the streets was a curiosity; you could +scarcely get one carried for love or money. + +Aunt Blin was a good deal excited; she always was by everything that +befell "her Boston." She would sit by the window in her blanket +shawl, and peer down the Place to see the mail-carts and express +wagons creep slowly by, along Tremont Street, to and from the +railways. She was proud for the men who turned to and did quadruped +work with a will in the emergency, and so took hold of its +sublimity; she was proud of the poor horses, standing in suffering +but royal seclusion in their stables, with hostlers sitting up +nights for them, and the world and all its business "seeing how it +could get along without them;" she was proud of all this crowd of +business that had, by hook or by crook (literally, now), to be done. + +She wanted the evening paper the minute it came. She and the music +mistress took the "Transcript" between them, and had the first +reading weeks about. This was her week; she held herself lucky. + +The epizootic was like the war: we should have to subside into +common items that would not seem like news at all when that was +over. + +We all know, now, what the news was after the epizootic. + +Meanwhile Aunt Blin believed, "on her conscience," she had got the +epidemic herself. + +Bel had worked hard at the rooms this week, and late at home in the +evenings. Some of the girls lived out at the Highlands, and some in +South Boston; there were days when they could not get in from these +districts; for such as were on the spot there was double press and +hurry. And it was right in the midst of fall and winter work. Bel +earned twelve dollars in six days, and got her pay. + +On Saturday night she brought home four Chater's crumpets, and a +pint of oysters. She stewed the oysters in a porringer out of which +everything came nicer than out of any other utensil. While they were +stewing, she made a bit of butter up into a "pat," and stamped it +with the star in the middle of the pressed glass saltcellar; she set +the table near the fire, and laid it out in a specially dainty way; +then she toasted the muffins, and it was past seven o'clock before +all was done. + +Aunt Blin sat by, and watched and smelled. She was in no hurry; two +senses at a time were enough to have filled. She had finished the +paper,--it was getting to be an old and much rehashed story, +now,--and had sent it down to Miss Smalley. It would be hers first, +now, for a week. Very well, the excitement was over. That was all +she knew about it. + +In the privacy and security of her own room, and with muffins and +oysters for tea, Aunt Blin took out her upper teeth, that she might +eat comfortably. Poor Aunt Blin! she showed her age and her thinness +so. She had fallen away a good deal since she had been sick. But +she was getting better. On Monday morning, she thought she would +certainly be able to go out. All she had to do now was to be careful +of her cough; and Bel had just bought her a new pair of rubbers. + +Bartholomew had done his watching and smelling, likewise; he had +made all he could be expected to of that limited enjoyment. Now he +walked round the table with an air of consciousness that supper was +served. He sat by his mistress's chair, lifted one paw with +well-bred expressiveness, stretching out the digits of it as a +dainty lady extends her lesser fingers when she lifts her cup, or +breaks a bit of bread. It was a delicate suggestion of exquisite +appreciation, and of most excellent manners. Once he began a whine, +but recollected himself and suppressed it, as the dainty lady might +a yawn. + +Aunt Blin gave him two oysters, and three spoonfuls of broth in his +own saucer, before she helped herself. After all, she ate in her +turn very little more. It was hardly worth while to have made a +business of being comfortable. + +"I don't think they have such good oysters as they used to," she +remarked, stepping over her s'es in a very carpeted and +stocking-footed way. + +"Perhaps I didn't put enough seasoning"--Bel began, but was +interrupted in the middle of her reply. + +The big bell two squares off clanged a heavy stroke caught up on the +echo by others that sounded smaller farther and farther away, making +their irregular, yet familiar phrase and cadence on the air. + +It was the fire alarm. + +"H--zh! Hark!" Aunt Blin changed the muffled but eager monosyllable +to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her +napkin, for her "ornaments," as Bel called them. + +But she counted the strokes before she put them in, nodding her +head, and holding up her finger to Bel and Bartholomew for silence. +Everything stopped where it was with Miss Bree when the fire alarm +sounded. + +One--two--three--four--five. + +"In the city," said Aunt Blin, with a certain weird unconscious +satisfaction; and whipped the porcelains into their places before +the second tolling should begin. They were like Pleasant Riderhood's +back hair: she was all twisted up, now, and ready. + +One--two. + +"That ain't fur off. Down Bedford Street way. Give me the fire-book, +and my glasses." + +She turned the folds of the card with one hand, and adjusted her +spectacles with the other. + +"Bedford and Lincoln. Why, that's close by where Miss Proddle +boards!" + +"That's the _box_, Auntie. You always forget the fire isn't in the +box." + +"Well, it will be if they don't get along with their steamers. I +ain't heard one go by yet." + +"They haven't any horses, you know." + +"Hark! there's one now! O, _do_ hush! There's the bell again!" + +Bel was picking up the tea-things for washing. She set down the +little pile which she had gathered, went to the window, and drew up +the blind. + +"My gracious! And there's the fire!" + +It shone up, red, into the sky, from over the tall roofs. + +Ten strokes from the deep, deliberate bells. + +"There comes Miss Smalley, todillating up to see," said Bel, +excitedly. + +"And the people are just _rushing_ along Tremont Street!" + +"_Can_ you see? asked Miss Smalley, bustling in like the last +little belated hen at feeding-time, with a look on all sides at once +to discover where the corn might be. + +"_Isn't_ it big, O?" And she stood up, tiptoe, by the window, as if +that would make any comparative difference between her height and +that of Hotel Devereux, across the square; or as if she could reach +up farther with her eyes after the great flashes that streamed into +the heavens. + +Again the smiting clang,--repeated, solemn, exact. No flurry in +those measured sounds, although their continuance tolled out a +city's doom. + +Twice twelve. + +"There goes Mr. Sparrow," said the music mistress, as the +watchmaker's light, unequal hop came over the stairs. "I suppose he +can see from his window pretty near where it is." + +A slight, dull color came up into the angles of the little lady's +face, as she alluded to the upper lodger's room, for there was a +tacit impression in the house--and she knew it--that if Miss Smalley +and Mr. Sparrow had been thrown together earlier in life, it would +have been very suitable; and that even now it might not be +altogether too late. + +Another step went springing down. Bel knew that, but she said +nothing. + +"Don't you think we might go out to the end of the street and see?" +suggested Miss Smalley. + +Bel had on hat and waterproof in a moment. + +"Don't you stir, Auntie, to catch cold, now! We'll be back +directly." + +Miss Smalley was already in her room below, snatching up hood and +shawl. + +Down the Place they went, and on, out into the broad street. +Everybody was running one way,--northward. They followed, hurrying +toward the great light, glowing and flashing before them. + +From every westward avenue came more men, speeding in ever +thickening lines verging to one centre. Like streams into a river +channel, they poured around the corners into Essex Street, at last, +filling it from wall to wall,--a human torrent. + +"This is as far as we can go," Miss Smalley said, stopping in one of +the doorways of Boylston Market. A man in a blouse stood there, +ordering the driver of a cart. + +"Where is the fire, sir?" asked Miss Smalley, with a ladylike air of +not being used to speak to men in the street, but of this being an +emergency. + +"Corner of Kingston and Summer; great granite warehouse, five +stories high," said the man in the blouse, civilly, and proceeding +to finish his order, which was his own business at the moment, +though Boston was burning. + +The two women turned round and went back. The heavy bells were +striking three times twelve. + +A boy rushed past them at the corner by the great florist's shop. He +was going the other way from the fire, and was impatient to do his +errand and get back. He had a basket of roses to carry; ordered for +some one to whom it would come,--the last commission of that sort +done that night perhaps,--as out of the very smoke and terror of the +hour; a singular lovely message of peace, of the blessed thoughts +that live between human hearts though a world were in ashes. All +through the wild night, those exquisite buds would be silently +unfolding their gracious petals. How strange the bloomed-out roses +would look to-morrow! + +All the house in Leicester Place was astir, and recklessly mixed +up, when Miss Smalley and Bel Bree came back. The landlady and her +servant were up in Mr. Sparrow's room, calling to Miss Bree below. +The whole place was full of red fierce light. + +Aunt Blin, faithful to Bel's parting order, stood in the spirit of +an unrelieved sentinel, though the whole army had broken camp, +keeping herself steadfastly safe, in her own doorway. To be sure, +there was a draught there, but it was not her fault. + +"I _must_ go up and see it," she said eagerly, when Bel appeared. +Bel drew her into the room, put her first into a gray hospital +dressing-gown, then into a waterproof, and after all covered her up +with a striped blue and white bed comforter. She knew she would keep +dodging in and out, and she might as well go where she would stay +quiet. + +And so these three women went up-stairs, where they had never been +before. The door of Mr. Hewland's room was open. A pair of slippers +lay in the middle of the floor; a newspaper had fluttered into a +light heap, like a broken roof, beside them; a dressing-gown was +thrown over the back of a chair. + +Bel came last, and shut that door softly as she passed, not letting +her eyes intrude beyond the first involuntary glimpse. She was +maidenly shy of the place she had never seen,--where she had heard +the footsteps go in and out, over her head. + +The five women crowded about and into Mr. Sparrow's little dormer +window. Miss Smalley lingered to notice the little black teapot on +the grate-bar, where a low fire was sinking lower,--the faded cloth +on the table, and the empty cup upon it,--the pipe laid down +hastily, with ashes falling out of it. She thought how lonesome Mr. +Sparrow was living,--doing for himself. + +All the square open space down through which the blue heavens looked +between those great towering buildings, was filled with brightness +as with a flood. The air was lurid crimson. Every stone and chip and +fragment, lay revealed in the strange, transfiguring light. Away +across the stable-roofs, they could read far-off signs painted in +black letters upon brick walls. Church spires stood up, bathed in a +wild glory, pointing as out of some day of doom, into the +everlasting rest. The stars showed like points of clear, green, +unearthly radiance, against that contrast of fierce red. + +It surged up and up, as if it would over-boil the very stars +themselves. It swayed to right,--to left; growing in an awful bulk +and intensity, without changing much its place, to their eyes, where +they stood. On the tops of the high Apartment Hotel, and all the +flat-roofed houses in Hero and Pilgrim streets, were men and women +gazing. Their faces, which could not have been discerned in the +daylight, shone distinct in this preternatural illumination. Their +voices sounded now and then, against the yet distant hum and crackle +of the conflagration, upon the otherwise still air. The rush had, +for a while, gone by. The streets in this quarter were empty. + +Grand and terrible as the sight was to them in Leicester Place, they +could know or imagine little of what the fire was really doing. + +"It backs against the wind," they heard one man say upon the +stable-roof. + +They could not resist opening the window, just a little, now and +then, to listen; though Bel would instantly pull Aunt Blin away, and +then they would put it down. Poor Aunt Blin's nose grew very cold, +though she did not know it. Her nose was little and sensitive. It is +not the big noses that feel the cold the most. Aunt Blin took cold +through her face and her feet; and these the dressing-gown, and the +waterproof, and the comforter, did not protect. + +"It must have spread among those crowded houses in Kingston and +South streets," Aunt Blin said; and as she spoke, her poor old +"ornaments" chattered. + +"Aunt Blin, you _shall_ come down, and take something hot, and go to +bed!" exclaimed Bel, peremptorily. "We can't stay here all night. +Mr. Sparrow will be back,--and everybody. I think the fire is going +down. It's pretty still now. We've seen it all. Come!" + +They had never a thought, any of them, of more than a block or so, +burning. Of course the firemen would put it out. They always did. + +"See! See!" cried the landlady. "O my sakes and sorrows!" + +A huge, volcanic column of glittering sparks--of great flaming +fragments--shot up and soared broad and terrible into the deep sky. +A long, magnificent, shimmering, scintillant train--fire spangled +with fire--swept southward like the tail of a comet, that had at +last swooped down and wrapped the earth. + +"The roofs have fallen in," said innocent old Miss Smalley. + +"That will be the last. Now they will stop it," said Bel. "Come, +Auntie!" + +And after midnight, for an hour or more, the house, with the five +women in it, hushed. Aunt Blin took some hot Jamaica ginger, and Bel +filled a jug with boiling water, wrapped it in flannel, and tucked +it into the bed at her feet. Then she gave her a spoonful of her +cough-mixture, took off her own clothes, and lay down. + +Still the great fire roared, and put out the stars. Still the room +was red with the light of it. Aunt Blin fell asleep. + +Bel lay and listened, and wondered. She would not move to get up and +look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the +boom of a great explosion. She started up. + +Miss Smalley's voice sounded at the door. + +"It's awful!" she whispered, through the keyhole, in a ghostly way. +"I thought you ought to know. The cinders are flying everywhere. I +heard an engine come up from the railroad. People are running along +the streets, and teams are going, and everything,--_the other way_! +They're blowing up houses! There, don't you hear that?" + +It was another sullen, heavy roar. + +Bel sprang out of bed; hurried into her garments; opened the door to +Miss Smalley. They went and stood together in the entry-window. + +"All Kingman's carriages are out; sick horses and all; they've +trundled wheelbarrow loads of things down to the stable. There's a +heap of furniture dumped down in the middle of the place. Women are +going up Tremont Street with bundles and little children. Where _do_ +you s'pose it's got to?" + +"See there!" said Bel, pointing across the square to the great, +dark, public building. High up, in one of the windows, a gas-light +glimmered. Two men were visible in the otherwise deserted place. +They were putting up a step-ladder. + +"Do you suppose they are there nights,--other nights?" Bel asked +Miss Smalley. + +"No. They're after books and things. They're going to pack up." + +"The fire _can't_ be coming here!" + +Bel opened the window carefully, as she spoke. A man was standing in +the livery-stable door. A hack came rapidly down, and the driver +called out something as he jumped off. + +"Where?" they heard the hostler ask. + +"Most up to Temple Place." + +"Do they mean the fire? They can't!" + +They did; but they were, as we know, somewhat mistaken. Yet that +great, surf-like flame, rushing up and on, was rioting at the very +head of Summer Street, and plunging down Washington. Trinity Church +was already a blazing wreck. + +"Has it come up Summer Street, or how?" asked Bel, helplessly, of +helpless Miss Smalley. "Do you suppose Fillmer & Bylles is burnt?" + +"I _must_ ask somebody!" + +These women, with no man belonging to them to come and give them +news,--restrained by force of habit from what would have been at +another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter +exceptionality of this time,--while down among the hissing engines +and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate +dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and +friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the +spectacle,--while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington +Street, whose windows flashed like jewels in the far-shining flames, +where the wonderful bronze Washington sat majestic and still against +that sky of stormy fire as he sits in every change and beautiful +surprise of whatever sky of cloud or color may stretch about +him,--on Commonwealth Avenue, where splendid mansions stood with +doors wide open, and drays unloading merchandise saved from the +falling warehouses into their freely offered shelter,--ladies were +walking to and fro, as if in their own halls and parlors, watching, +and questioning whomsoever came, and saying to each other hushed and +solemn or excited words,--when the whole city was but one great home +upon which had fallen a mighty agony and wonder that drove its +hearts to each other as the hearts of a household,--these two, Bel +Bree and little Miss Smalley, knew scarcely anything that was +definite, and had been waiting and wondering all night, thinking it +would be improper to talk into the street! + +A young lad came up the court at last; he lived next door; he was an +errand-boy in some great store on Franklin Street. His mother spoke +to him from her window. + +"Bennie! how is it?" + +"Mother! All Boston is gone up! Summer Street, High Street, Federal +Street, Pearl Street, Franklin Street, Milk Street, Devonshire +Street,--everything, clear through to the New Post Office. I've been +on the Common all night, guarding goods. There's another fellow +there now, and I've come home to get warm. I'm almost frozen." + +His mother was at the door as he finished speaking, and took him in; +and they heard no more. + +The boy's words were heavy with heavy meaning. He said them without +any boy-excitement; they carried their own excitement in the heart +of them. In those eight hours he had lived like a man; in an +experience that until of late few men have known. + +They did not know how long they stood there after that, with +scarcely a word to each other,--only now and then some utterance of +sudden recollection of this and that which must have vanished away +within that stricken territory,--taking in, slowly, the reality, the +tremendousness of what had happened,--was happening. + +It was five o'clock when Mr. Hewland came in, and up the stairs, and +found them there. Aunt Blin had not awaked. There was a trace of +morphine in her cough-drops, and Bel knew now, since she had slept +so long, that she would doubtless sleep late into the morning. That +was well. It would be time enough to tell her by and by. There would +be all day,--all winter,--to tell it in. + +Mr. Hewland told them, hastily, the main history of the fire. + +"Is Trinity Church?"--asked poor Miss Smalley tremblingly. + +She had not said anything about it to Bel Bree; she could not think +of that great stone tower as having let the fire in,--as not having +stood, cool and strong, against any flame. And Trinity Church was +_her_ tower. She had sat in one seat in its free gallery for +fourteen years. If that were gone, she would hardly know where to +go, to get near to heaven. Only nine days ago,--All Saints' +Day,--she had sat there listening to beautiful words that laid hold +upon the faith of all believers, back through the church, back +before Christ to the prophets and patriarchs, and told how God was +_her_ God because He had been theirs. The old faith,--and the Old +Church! "Was Trinity?"--She could not say,--"burned." + +But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,--"Gone." + +That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung, +that fearful night! + +Mr. Hewland was wet and cold. He went up to his room and changed +his clothing. When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in, +he came down again. + +"Would you not like to go down and see?" he said to Bel. + +"Can I?" + +"Yes. There is no danger. The streets are comparatively clear. I +will go with you." + +Bel asked Miss Smalley. + +"Will you come? Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think." + +Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay. Of the two, it +was easier to go. To do--to see--something. + +Mr. Sparrow came in. He met them at the door, and turned directly +back with them. + +He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity. He and the +music-mistress--they were both of English birth, hence of the same +national faith--had been used to go from the same dwelling, +separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite +galleries. But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old +words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation. +These links between them, of country and religion, which they had +never spoken of, were the real links. + +As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first +time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they +felt another,--the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of +flame swept Paradise. + +Plain old souls!--Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and +"todillating"--as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait--along +together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before +the sight of God. + +Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked +together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the +unusualness. The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked +strange, when everything was so. + +They went along by the Common fence. In the street, a continuous +line of wagons passed them, moving southward. Gentlemen sat on +cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of +property to places of bestowal. Inside the inclosure, in the malls, +along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were +heaps of merchandise. Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked +goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in +piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and +fro among them all. People were wrapped against the keen November +cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on. A group of men +pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great +soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped +borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and +dragged upon the muddy ground. + +Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of +coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous +serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in +pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere. + +They went down Winter Street, stepping over the hose-coils, and +across the leaking streams; they came to the crossing of Washington, +where yesterday throngs of women passed, shopping from stately store +to store. + +Beyond, were smoke and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry, +chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and +protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden +in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the beautiful +"Transcript" building. + +They stood, fearful and watchful, under the broken granite walls +opposite Trinity Church. + +Windows and doors were gone from the grand old edifice; inside, the +fire was shining; devouring at its dreadful ease, the sacred +architecture and furnishings that it had swept down to the ground. + +"See! There he is!" whispered Miss Smalley to Mr. Sparrow, as she +gazed with unconscious tears falling fast down her pale old cheeks. + +It was the Rector of Trinity, who thought to have stood this morning +in the holy place to speak to his people. Down the middle of the +street he came, and went up to the cumbered threshold and the open +arch, within which a terrible angel was speaking in his stead. + +"Do you think he remembers now, what he said about the God of +Daniel, as he looks into the blazing fiery furnace?" + +"I dare say he doesn't ever remember what he _said_; but he +remembers always what _is_," answered the watch-maker. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY. + + +The strange, sad Sunday wore along. + +The teams rolled on, incessantly, through the streets; the blaze and +smoke went up from the sixty acres of destruction; friends gathered +together and talked of the one thing, that talk as they might, would +not be put into any words. Men whose wealth had turned to ashes in a +night went to and fro in the same coats they had worn yesterday, and +hardly knew yet whether they themselves were the same or not. It +seemed, so strangely, as if the clock might be set back somehow, and +yesterday be again; it was so little way off! + +Women who had received, perhaps, their last wages for the winter on +Saturday night, sat in their rooms and wondered what would be on +Monday. + +Aunt Blin was excited; strong with excitement. She went down-stairs +to see Miss Smalley, who was too tired to sit up. + +Out of the fire, Bel Bree and Paulina Smalley had each brought +something that remained by them secretly all this day. + +When they had stopped there under those smoked and shattered walls, +and Morris Hewland had drawn Bel's hand within his arm to keep her +from any movement into danger, he had gently laid his own fingers, +in care and caution, upon hers. A feeling had come to them both with +the act, and for a moment, as if the world, with all its great +built-up barriers of stone, had broken down around them, and lay at +their feet in fragments, among which they two stood free together. + +The music-mistress and the watchmaker, looking in upon their place +of prayer, seeing it empty and eaten out by the yet lingering +tongues of fire, had exchanged those words about the things that +_are_. For a minute, through the emptiness, they reached into the +eternal deep; for a minute their simple souls felt themselves, over +the threshold of earthly ruin, in the spaces where there is no need +of a temple any more; they forgot their worn and far-spent +lives,--each other's old and year-marked faces; they were as two +spirits, met without hindrance or incongruity, looking into each +other's spiritual eyes. + +Poor old Miss Smalley, when she came home and took off her hood +before her little glass, and saw how pale she was with her night's +watching and excitement, and how the thin gray hairs had straggled +over her forehead, came back with a pang into the flesh, and was +afraid she had been ridiculous; but lying tired upon her bed, in the +long after hours of the day, she forgot once more what manner of +outside woman she was, and remembered only, with a pervading peace, +how the watchmaker had spoken. + +Night came. The pillar of smoke that had gone up all day, turned +again into a pillar of fire, and stood in the eastern heavens. + +The time of safety, when there had been no flaming terror, was +already so far off, that people, fearing this night to surrender +themselves to sleep, wondered that in any nights they had ever +dared,--wondered that there had ever been anything but fear and +burning, in this great, crowded city. + +The guards paced the streets; the roll of wagons quieted. The +stricken town was like a fever patient seized yesterday with a +sudden, devouring rage of agony,--to-day, calmed, put under care, a +rule established, watchers set. + +Miss Smalley went from window to window as the darkness--and the +apparition of flame--came on. Rested by the day's surrender to +exhaustion, she was alert and apprehensive and excited now. + +"It will be sure to burst out again," she said; "it always does." + +"Don't say so to Aunt Blin," whispered Bel. "Look at her cheeks, and +her eyes. She is sick-abed this minute, and she _will_ keep up!" + +At nine o'clock, the very last thing, she spoke with the +music-mistress again, at the door. Miss Smalley kept coming up into +the passage to look out at that end window. + +"I don't mean to get up if it does burn," Bel said, resolutely. "It +won't come here. We ought to sleep. That's our business. There'll be +enough to do, maybe, afterwards." + +But for all that, in the dead of the night, she was roused again. + +A sound of bells; a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great +explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks +overhanging the stars as it did before, and paling them out. + +It seemed as if it had always been so; as if there had never been a +still, dark heaven under which to lie down tranquilly and sleep. + +"The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can't help it," +sounded Miss Smalley's voice, meek and deprecating, through the +keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving. + +Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage. + +Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place +itself. + +The great rush and blaze were all this way, now. They were right +under the storm of it. + +Aunt Blin woke up. + +"What is it?" she asked, excitedly. "Is it begun again? Is it +coming?" And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry +floor with her bare feet. + +A floating cinder fell and struck the sash. + +"We must be dressed! We must pack up! Make haste, Bel! Where's +Bartholomew?" + +Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss +Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong. + +They got her into bed again, and brought her to. But with +circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever. In half an +hour she was in a burning heat, wandering and crying out +deliriously. + +"O what shall we do? We must have a doctor. She'll die!" cried Bel. + +"If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?" said the spinster, +timidly. + +Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the +same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor +old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and +she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown +tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and +fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and +fifty. + +"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you +wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?" + +Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved +at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked. + +Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as +he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now. + +As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the +door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the +flame outside, in darkness. + +In house and street it was the same. Miss Smalley called out that it +was so. "The stable light is gone," she said. "Yes,--and the lights +down Tremont Street." + +Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders, +seemed sweeping against the window panes. + +Only that terrible light over all the town. + +"O, what does it mean?" said Bel. + +"It is Chicago over again," the young man answered her, with a grave +dismay in his voice. + +"See there,--and there!" said Miss Smalley, at the window. "People +are up, lighting candles." + +"But Aunt Blin is sick!" said Bel. "We must take care of her. What +shall we do?" + +"I'll go and send a doctor; and I'll bring you news. Have you a +candle? Stop; I'll fetch you something." + +He sprang up-stairs, and returned with a box of small wax tapers. +They were only a couple of inches long, and the size of her little +finger. + +"I'll get you something better if I can; and don't be frightened." + +The great glare, though it shed its light luridly upon all outside, +was not enough to find things by within. Bel took courage at this, +thinking the heart of it must still be far off. She gave one look +into the depth of the street, shadowed by its buildings, and having +a strange look of eerie gloom, even so little way beneath that upper +glow. Then she drew down the painted shades, and shut the sky +phantom out. + +"Mr. Hewland will come and tell us," she said. "We must work." + +She heated water and got a bath for Aunt Blin's feet. She put a +cool, wet bandage on her head. She mixed some mustard and spread a +cloth and laid it to her chest. Miss Bree breathed easier; but the +bandage upon her head dried as though the flame had touched it. + +"I'll tell you what," said good, inopportune Miss Smalley; "she's +going to be dreadful sick, I'm afraid. It'll be head and lungs both. +That's what my sister had." + +"_Don't_ tell me what!" cried Bel, irritatedly. + +But the doctor told her what, when he came. + +Not in words; doctors don't do that. But she read it in his grave +carefulness; she detected it in the orders which he gave. People +brought up in the country,--where neighbors take care of each other, +and where every symptom is talked over, and the history of every +fatal disorder turns into a tradition,--learn about sickness and the +meanings of it; on its ghastly and ominous side, at any rate. + +Mr. Hewland came back and brought two candles, which he had with +difficulty procured from a hotel. He brought word, also, that the +fire was under control; that they need feel no more alarm. + +And so this second night of peril and disaster passed painfully and +slowly by. + +But on the Monday, the day in which Boston was like a city given +over into the hands of a host,--when its streets were like +slow-moving human glaciers, down the midst of which in a narrow +channel the heavier flow of burdened teams passed scarcely faster +forward than the hindered side streams,--Aunt Blin lay in the grasp +and scorch of a fire that feeds on life; wasting under that which +uplifts and frenzies, only to prostrate and destroy. + +I shall not dwell upon it. It had to be told; the fire also had to +be told; for it happened, and could not be ignored. It happened, +intermingling with all these very things of which I write; +precipitating, changing, determining much. + +Before the end of that first week, in which the stun and shock were +reacting in prompt, cheerful, benevolent organizing and +providing,--in which, through wonderful, dreamlike ruins, like the +ruins of the far-off past, people were wandering, amazed, seeing a +sudden torch laid right upon the heart and centre of a living +metropolis and turning it to a shadow and a decay,--in which human +interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously +approached each other before,--in which the little household of +independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an +almost family relation all at once, after years of mere +juxtaposition,--before the end of that week, Aunt Blin died. + +It was as though the fiery thrust that had transpierced the heart of +"her Boston," had smitten the centre of her own vitality in the +self-same hour. + +All her clothes hung in the closet; the very bend of her arm was in +the sleeve of the well worn alpaca dress, the work-basket, with a +cloth jacket-front upon it, in which was a half-made button-hole, +left just at the stitch where all her labor ended, was on the round +table; Cheeps was singing in the window; Bartholomew was winking on +the hearth-rug; and little Bel, among these belongings that she knew +not what to do with any more, was all alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +TEMPTATION. + + +The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry. + +Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came +there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight +from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money, +with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life +the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of +class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the +moment, both ways. + +"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent +movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the +hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help +themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and +cry "hands off!" to the rich women. + +What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation, +between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements? + +In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought +neither yet. + +Bel Bree was one. + +The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with +her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps +and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was +shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one +broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day +she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her +brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by +disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly, +conscious. + +"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree." + +"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;" +concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good +folks,--Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to +keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though." + +Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any +rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire. + +There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been +together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again. +But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would +be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them +now; girls without tie or belonging,--holding on where they could. +Elise Mokey had said to her,--"See if you could help yourself if you +hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that +great, dark "If." + +Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have +been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not +quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came. +And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort--all the meaning of +it--was gone. + +They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till +Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her +be miserable, just a little while. + +Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the +music-mistress was out, giving her lessons. + +Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the +doorway, and talked with him. + +He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew +her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he +hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word +of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt +such a tenderness for. + +"I can't bear to give things up,--because they _were_ pleasant," Bel +said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there +isn't anybody to make home _with_ any more. I know what I _had_ +thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might +do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to +look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet." + +"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers. + +"Yes,--friends. But the friends are all outside, after all." + +Hewland stood silent. + +How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as +this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved +and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong +together. Make home with _me_!" + +Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not +say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl +of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no +girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the +first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself. +And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer +have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And +all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold +one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as +poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor. +Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now, +right off,--everything. + +Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of +money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to +himself; and what had the world to do with it? + +"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you +go with me?" + +The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let +have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through +them before he knew. + +"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?" + +"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating. + +"Where your mother lives?" + +Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of +defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge. + +"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or +her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of +you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a +home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust +me,--always. So help me God!" + +He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any +more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of +his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should +not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew +he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he +could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments, +with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace +and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door, +and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up +for them in his father's house. + +His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and +indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would +never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as +this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a +girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by God at all, as her +daughters were, and her son's wife should be. + +"Do you care enough for me?" + +Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions +before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not +to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could +answer him. + +He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in +her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in +him. He must make her speak,--say that she cared. + +"_Don't_ you care? Bel--you do! You are my little wife; and the +world has not anything to do with it!" + +She broke away from him; she shrunk back. + +"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world +is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think +me bad." + +There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving, +handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,--strong enough,--to +denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was +tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance +tempted the Christ,--"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me." + +Yet she shrunk, bewildered. + +"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland." + +She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to +the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it +after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking, +for him to go. + +He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon +her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed +it to. She had _left_, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she +did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe +the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to +marry her secretly, and hide her away. + +"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt +Blin!--She _can't_ have gone so very far away, quite yet!" + +She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out. + +She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the +old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her +face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had +bent to its tasks in it. + +"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any +good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?" + +She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came +away, and sat down. + +She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this +doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she +did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her. + +"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they +might help us?" + +She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for +them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go +_in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in +which we also, though blindly, dwell. + +On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses. + +Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, +came suddenly into her mind. + +"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because +they read, always, the living Word in heaven." + +Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them? + +She moved slowly to the table. + +It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it +low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter +portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter. + +When she had read that, she knew what she was to do. + +She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night. + +In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the +day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all +gone. + +She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did +she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk, +and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of +that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she +was going to do now. + +She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one +to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing, +whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never +even asked herself that question. + +She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the +stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half +hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door +unlatched and closed again. + +Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open +door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She +could not see him till he passed; and he might pass without turning. +Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung +inward from the far corner. No matter. + +He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door. +But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the +second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed +around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had +stood last night. + +She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly, +with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There +was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to +say. He saw it, and went back. + +He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale. + +"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice. + +He followed her in. + +"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer +them. I want to ask you one question, now." + +She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red +cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had +read it. + +She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the +finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a +little child to read; and his eye followed it. + +"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall +cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh. + +"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore +God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." + +"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before +them all?" she said. + +He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that +it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he +had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to +her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did +not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had +joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The +angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of +the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look +turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin. + +"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of +living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set +them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or +misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and +wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it. + +As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should +not have been his wife before anybody. + +Her young face grew paler, and turned stern. + +His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him, +marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and +stood so before the child. + +She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the +book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of +her presence. + +"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a +grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the +voice of an angel. + +When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted. + +An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a +little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went +down into the street. + +Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to +Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING. + + +Desire Ledwith had a great many secrets to keep. Everybody came and +told her one. + +All these girls whom she knew, had histories; troubles, +perplexities, wrongs, temptations,--greater or less. Gradually, they +all confessed to her. The wrong side of the world's patchwork looked +ugly to her, sometimes. + +Now, here came Bel Bree; with her story, and her little leather bag; +her homelessness, her friendlessness. No, not that; for Desire +Ledwith herself contradicted it; even Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley +were a great deal better than nothing. Not friendlessness, then, +exactly; but _belonglessness_. + +Desire sent down to Leicester Place for Bel's box; for Cheeps also. +Bel wrote a note to Miss Smalley, asking her to take in Bartholomew. +What came of that, I may as well tell here as anywhere; it will not +take long. It is not really an integral part of our story, but I +think you will like to know. + +Miss Smalley herself answered the note. It was easy enough to evade +any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal +more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she +wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides, +Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied with her own concerns. + +"There was the room," she said; "and there was the furniture. Now, +would Bel Bree let the things to her, just as they stood, if +she,--well, if Mr. Sparrow,--for she didn't mind telling Bel that +she and Mr. Sparrow had made up their minds to look after each +other's comfort as well as they could the rest of their lives, +seeing how liable we all were to need comfort and company, at fires +and things;--if Mr. Sparrow hired the room of Mrs. Pimminy? And as +to Bartholomew, Mr. Sparrow wouldn't mind him, and she didn't think +Bartholomew would object to Mr. Sparrow. Cats rather took to him, he +thought. They would make the creature welcome, and make much of him; +and not expect it to be considered at all." + +Bel concluded the arrangement. She thought it would be a comfort to +know that Aunt Blin's little place was not all broken up, but that +somebody was happy there; that Bartholomew had his old corner of the +rug, and his airings on the sunny window-sill; and Miss +Smalley--Mrs. Sparrow that was to be--would pay her fifteen dollars +a year for the things, and make them last. + +"That carpet?" she had said; "why, it hadn't begun to pocket yet; +and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the +hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it +would turn, when it came to that, and last on--as long as ever. +There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a +single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his +slippers, the minute ever he got in." + +Desire's library was full on Wednesday evenings, now. The girls came +for instruction, for social companionship, for comfort. On the table +in the dining-room were almost always little parcels waiting, ready +done up for one and another; little things Desire and Hazel "thought +of" beforehand, as what they "might like and find convenient; and +what they"--Desire and Hazel--"happened to have." Sometimes it was a +paper of nice prunes for a delicate appetite that was kept too much +to dry, economical food. Perhaps it was a jar of "Liebig's Extract" +for Emma Hollen, that she might make beef-tea for herself; or a +remnant of flannel that "would just do for a couple of undervests." +It was sure to be something just right; something with a real +thought in it. + +And out here in the dining-room, as they took their little +parcels,--or lingering in the hall aside from the others, or +stopping in a corner of the library,--they would have their "words" +with Desire and Hazel and Sylvie; always some confidence, or some +question, or some telling of how this or that had gone on or turned +out. + +In these days after the Great Fire, no wonder that the dozen or +fifteen became twenty, or even thirty; the very pigeons and sparrows +tell each other where the people are who love and feed them; no +wonder that all the chairs had to be brought in, and that the room +was full; that the room in heart and brain, for sympathy and plan +and counsel, was crowded also, or would have been, if heart and +brain were not made to grow as fast as they take in tendernesses and +thoughts. If, too, one need did not fit right in and help another; +and if being "right in the midst of the work" did not continually +give light and suggestion and opportunity. + +Bel Bree came among them now, with her heart full. + +"I know it better than ever," she said to Miss Desire. "I _know_ +that what ever so many of these girls want, most of all, is _home_. +A place to work in where they can rest between whiles, if it is only +for snatches; not to be out, and on their feet, and just _driving_, +with the minutes at their heels, all day long. Girls want to work +under cover; they can favor themselves then, and not slight the work +either. And especially, they want to _belong_ somewhere. They can't +fling themselves about, separate, anywhere, without a great many +getting spoiled, or lost. They want some signs of care over them; +and I believe there are places where they could have it. If they can +put twenty tucks into a white petticoat for a cent a piece, and work +half a day at it, and find their own fire and bread and tea, why +can't they do it for half a cent a tuck, even, in people's houses, +where they can have fire and lodging and meals, and a name, at any +rate, of being seen to?" + +"Say so to them, Bel. Tell them yourself, what you mean to do, and +find out who will do it with you. If this movement could come from +the girls themselves,--if two or three would join together and +begin,--I believe the leaven would work. I believe it is the next +thing, and that somebody is to lead the way. Why not you?" + +That night, the Read-and-Talk left off the reading. Miss Ledwith +told them that there was so much to say,--so much she wanted a word +from them about,--that they would give up the books for one evening. +They would think about home, instead of far-off places; about +themselves,--each other,--and things that were laid out for them to +do, instead of people who had taken their turn at the world's work +hundreds of years ago. They would try and talk it out,--this hard +question of work, and place, and living; and see, if they could, +what way was provided,--as in the nature of things there must be +some way,--for everybody to be busy, and everybody to be better +satisfied. She thought Bel Bree had got a notion of one way, that +was open, or might be, to a good many, a way that it remained, +perhaps, for themselves to open rightly. + +"Now, Bel, just tell us all how you feel about it. There isn't any +of us whom you wouldn't say it to alone; and every one of us is only +listening separately. When you have finished, somebody else may have +a word to answer." + +"I don't know as I _could_ finish," said Bel Bree, "except by going +and living it out. And that is just what I think we have got to do. +I've said it before; the girls know I have; but I'm surer than ever +of it now. Why, where does all the work come from, but out of the +homes? I know some kinds may always have to be done in the lump; but +there's ever so much that might be done where it is wanted, and +everybody be better off. We want homes; and we want real people to +work for; those two things. I _know_ we do. A lot of _stuff_, and +miles of stitches, ain't _work_; it don't make real human beings, I +think. It makes business, I suppose, and money; I don't know what it +all comes round to, though, for anybody; more spending, perhaps, and +more having, but not half so much being. At any rate, it don't come +round in that to us; and we've got to look out for ourselves. If we +get right, who knows but other folks may get righter in consequence? +What I think is, that wherever there's a family,--a father and a +mother and little children,--there's work to do, and a home to do it +in; and we girls who haven't homes and little children, and perhaps +sha'n't ever have,--ain't much likely to have as things are +now,--could be happier and safer, and more used to what we ought to +be used to in case we should,"--(Bel's sentences were getting to be +very rambling and involved, but her thoughts urged her on, and +everybody's in the room followed her),--"if we went right in where +the things were wanted, and did them. The sewing,--and the +cooking,--and the sweeping, too; everything; I mean, whatever we +could; any of it. You call it 'living out,' and say you won't do it, +but what you do _now_ is the living out! We could _afford_ to go and +say to people who are worrying about poor help and awful +wages,--'We'll come and do well by you for half the money. We know +what homes are worth.' And wouldn't some of them think the +millennium was come? _I_ am going to try it." + +Bel stopped. She did not think of such a thing as having made a +speech; she had only said a little--just as it came--of what she was +full of. + +"You'll get packed in with a lot of dirty servants. You won't have +the home. You'll only have the work of it." + +"No, Kate Sencerbox. I sha'n't do that; because I'm going to +persuade you to go with me. And we'll make the home, if they give us +ever so little a corner of it. And as soon as they find out what we +are, they'll treat us accordingly." + +Kate Sencerbox shrugged her shoulders. + +"The world isn't going to be made all over in a day,--nor Boston +either; not if it _is_ all burnt up to begin with." + +"That is true, Kate," said Desire Ledwith. "You will have +difficulties. But you have difficulties now. And wouldn't it be +worth while to change these that are growing worse, for such as +might grow better? Wouldn't it be grand to begin to make even a +little piece of the world over?" + +"We could start with new people," said Bel. "Young people. They are +the very ones that have the hardest time with the old sort of +servants. We could go out of town, where the old sort won't stay. +You see it's _homes_ we're after; real ones; and to help make them; +and it's homes they hate!" + +"Where did you find it all out, Bel?" + +"I don't know. Talk; and newspapers. And it's in the air." + +Bel was her old, quick, bright, earnest self, taking hold of this +thing that she so truly meant. She turned round to it eagerly, +escaping from the thoughts which she resolutely flung out of her +mind. There was perhaps a slight impetus of this hurry of escape in +her eagerness. But Bel was strong; strong in her purity; in her real +poet-nature, that reached for and demanded the real soul of living; +in her incapacity to care for the shadow or pretense,--far more the +_sullied_ sham,--of anything. Contempt of the evil had come swiftly +to cure the sting of the evil. Satan would fain have had her, to +sift her like wheat; but she had been prayed for; and now that she +was saved, she was inspired to strengthen her sisters. + +"I don't think I could do anything but sewing," said Emma Hollen, +plaintively. "I'm not strong enough. And ladies won't see to their +own sewing, now, in their houses. It's so much easier to go right +into Feede & Treddle's, and buy ready-made, that we've done the +stitching for at forty cents a day, hard work, and find ourselves!" + +"I don't say that every girl in Boston can walk right into a nice +good home, and be given something to do there. But I say there's no +danger of too many trying it yet awhile; and by the time they do, +maybe we'll have changed things a little for them. I'm willing to be +the thin edge of the wedge," said Bel Bree. + +"Right things have the power. God sees to that," said Desire. "The +right cannot stop working. The life is in it." + +"The thing I think of," said Elise Mokey, decidedly, "is suller +kitchens. I ain't ready to be put underground,--not yet awhile. Not +even by way of going to heaven, every night; or as near as four +flights can carry me." + +"In the country they don't have cellar kitchens. And anyway, there's +always a window, and a fire; and with things clean and cheerful, and +some green thing growing for Cheeps to sing to, I'll do," said Bel. +"You've got to begin with what there is, as the Pilgrim Fathers +did." + +Ray Ingraham could have told them, if she had been there this +Wednesday evening, how Dot had begun. Miss Ledwith said nothing +about it, because she felt that it was an exceptional case. She +would not put a falsely flattering precedent before these girls, to +win them to an experiment which with them might prove a hard and +disappointing one. Desire Ledwith was absolutely fair-minded in +everything she did. The feeling on their part that she was so, was +what gave them their trust in her. To bring a subject to her +consideration and judgment, was to bring it into clear sunlight. + +Dot had gone up to Z----, to live with the Kincaids, at the Horse +Shoe. + +Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will +run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good. +Circumstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we +think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach +forth and draw together; to bring into one circle of communication +people and plans of one spirit and purpose. Then, before we know how +it is, we find them linking and fitting here and there, helping +wonderfully to make a beautiful organism of result that we could not +have planned or foreseen beforehand, any more than we could have +planned our own bodies. It is the growing up into one body in +Christ. + +Hazel Ripwinkley said it all came of "knowing the Muffin Man:" and +so it did. The Bread-Giver; the Provider. It is queer they should +have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you +can't help making parables, do what you will. + +Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen. + +He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart +way; but another,--the practical way of day's doing and +ordering,--he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating +everything. + +While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing +her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight +below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven. + +But when Mrs. Waters--who was one of those born nurses whom +everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of +sickness--had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her +niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had +another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the +nights long, and the baby _would_ not settle his relations with the +solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time, +kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the +midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,--the nice little +systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated +fell into hopeless uncertainties. + +Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to +leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired. +It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be +punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow +into matter-of-course service. + +And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not +been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but +which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a +houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable +procrastinations. + +[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby, +averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time +should be no longer.] + +Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her +baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her +paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white, +hemmed dishcloths. + +"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together." + +When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot +Ingraham's advertisement. + +Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and +found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in +Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the +public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for +Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called +resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put +into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself +a little human being, and not a tadpole." + +Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She +became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done. +Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants, +which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed +tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter +time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom. + +They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got +done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a +week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her +mother. + +All went blessedly at the Horse Shoe; but there is not a Horse Shoe +everywhere. It is always a piece of luck to find one. + +Desire Ledwith knew that; so she held her peace about it for a +while, among these girls to whom Bel Bree was preaching her crusade. +All they knew was that Dot Ingraham and her machine were gone away +into a family eighteen miles from Boston. + +"If _you_ find anything for me to do, Miss Ledwith, I'll do it," +said Kate Sencerbox. "But I won't go into one of those offices, nor +off into the country for the winter. I want to keep something to +hold on to,--not run out to sea without a rope." + +Desire did not propose advertising, as she had done to Dot; she +would let Kate wait a week. A week in the new condition of things +might teach her a good deal. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'. + + +There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household. + +The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six +weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid +fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"--as his mother +said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the +"Looking Glass,"--upon a stick. + +Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,--the very happiest +and most reckless kind,--in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman, +who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was +twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological +principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon +constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family +idiosyncrasies. + +Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names. + +Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch. + +"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with +grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the +first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then--how _am_ I +accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear +old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?" + +But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was +disapproval. + +"It was bad enough," they said,--these orderers of household +administration,--"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and +no laundress!" + +"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes +slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time +from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the +child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes +and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too +thin!" + +"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend, +calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid +nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week, +an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not +even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a +laundress!" + +"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But +the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin' +round?" + +"Ad_ver_tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after +yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the +other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with +ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an' +send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer +_consider_. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an +ad_ver_tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and +prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'. +I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a +change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little +sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies. +Yer'll see 'em come in,--betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the +cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives +which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate; +an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells +'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit +yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer +toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter. +Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!" + +Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and +small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to +be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, +as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and +forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was +a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to +be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual +preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond +hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the +family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and +particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty +of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their +breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, +left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling +down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the +washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, +picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an +umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him +summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a +syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped +head. + +It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish +recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the +kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of +it. + +"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in +the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick, +carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful +condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead +with arnica water. + +"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the +consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated +'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied." + +"You _what_?" + +"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!" + +"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too +big. And little sparrows don't fly--down-stairs. They hop round, and +pick up crumbs." + +"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in +the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness. + +"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either. +The trouble is, you haven't _quite_ turned into a little bird, yet. +You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to +fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow." + +"I _ta'h_ wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!" + +"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave, +funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's +got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined +to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible--I mean +impossible--place in the house." + +"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity. + +"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see +here! Little birds that live in houses _never_ fly. And they never +pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own +little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they +can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows, +and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds; +mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless +she takes you." + +"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside +her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?" + +Asenath looked up at her husband. + +"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It +has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,--God's +sparrows." + +"In cages?" + +"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There! +That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little +birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back." + +She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all, +that was just waking. + +Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite +contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and +lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the +nursery carpet. + +"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't +have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help +themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone." + +Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she +was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being +always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the +same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of +speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not +keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of +apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she +sharpened their little wits continually against her own without +straining them. + +And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of +graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever. +Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery +talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up +dinner-tables and drawing-rooms. + +"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables +and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there +is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort +by it in the end,--Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special +taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one +thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in +our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as +well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she +would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for +the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe +more in growing up than in coming out." + +If there was a reflex action in the mental influence, how much more +in the tender and spiritual! How many a word came back into her own +heart like a dove, that she first thought of in giving it to her +child! + +She sat now in her chamber bathing and dressing baby Karen; and all +the perplexities of the day,--the days or weeks, perhaps,--that had +stretched out before her, melted into a sweetness, remembering that +she herself was but one of God's sparrows, fed out of his hand; and +that all her limitations, as well as her unsuspected safeties, were +the fine wires with which He surrounded and held her in. + +"He knows my cage," she thought. "He has put me here Himself, and He +will not forget me." + +Frank dined down town; Asenath had her lunch of bread and butter, +and beef tea; and an egg beaten in a tumbler, with sugar and cream, +for her dessert. The children, with their biscuit and milk and baked +apple, were easily cared for. They played "sparrow" all day; Asenath +put their little bowls and spoons on the low nursery table, and left +them to "help themselves." + +Honest, rough Mrs. M'Cormick fetched and carried for her, and +"cleaned up" down-stairs. Then Asenath wrote a few lines to Desire +Ledwith, told her strait, and asked if she could take a little +trouble for her, and send her some one. + +Mrs. M'Cormick went round to Greenley Street, and delivered the +note. + +"There!" said Desire, when she had read it, to Bel Bree who was in +the room. "The Providence mail is in, early; and this is for you." + +When Bel had seen what it was, she realized suddenly that Providence +had taken her at her word. She was in for it now; here was this +thing for her to do. Her breath shortened with the thought of it, as +with a sudden plunge into water. Who could tell how it would turn +out? She had been so brave in counseling and urging others; what if +she should make a mistake of it, herself? + +"She hasn't anybody; she would take Kate, maybe Kate must just go. +It won't be half a chance to try it, if I can't try it my way." + +"It is a clear stage," said Desire Ledwith. "If you can act out your +little programme anywhere, you can act it at the Schermans'." + +"Is it a cellar kitchen?" + +Bel laughed as soon as she had asked the question. She caught +herself turning catechetical at once, after the servant-girl +fashion. + +"I was thinking about Kate. But I don't wonder they inquire about +things. It's a question of home." + +"Of course it is. There ought to be questions,--on both parts. Every +fair person knows _that_ is fair. Neither side ought to assume the +pure bestowal of a favor. But the one who has the home already may +be supposed to consider at least as carefully whom she will take in, +as she who comes to offer service as an equivalent. I believe it is +a cellar kitchen; at least, a basement. The house is on the lower +side; there must be good windows." + +"I'll go right round for Kate, and we'll just call and see. I don't +know in the least how to begin about it when I get there. I could do +the _thing_, if I can make out the first understanding. I hope Kate +won't be very Kate-y!" + +She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her. + +"You needn't be afraid. I'm bound to astonish somebody. Impertinence +wouldn't do that. I shall strike out a new line. I'm the cook,--or +the chambermaid,--which is it? that they haven't had any of before. +I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table. You +might discriminate, Bel! I know I've got a kind of a pert, +snappy-sounding name,--just like the outside of me; but if you stop +to look at it, it isn't _Saucebox_, but _Sensebox_! They're related, +sometimes, and they ain't bad together; but yet, apart, they're +different." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM. + + +Mrs. Frank Scherman's front door-bell rang. Of course she had to go +down and open it herself. When she did so, she let in two girls +whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met +hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or +errand. + +She did not know them; they might be anybody's daughters, yet they +hardly looked like _technical_ "young ladies." + +They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she +had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,-- + +"We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman. Miss Ledwith +told us." + +How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman? There was +something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that +amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so +far. + +"Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,--or for either of +you?" she asked, as she led the way up-stairs. + +"I must bring you up where the children are," she said. "I cannot +leave them." + +They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the +parlor. The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs. +Scherman's own. There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a +red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor. Baby +Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed. + +"You see, this is the family,--except Mr. Scherman. I want two good, +experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in +the nursery. I say two for general work, because I want some things +equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion. Do +you want places for yourselves?" + +She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility. +These girls did not look much like it. There was no half-suspicious, +half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet. It was time for +it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all +precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves. Why +didn't they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their +muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and +lips that moved as little as possible,--"What wages, mum?" or +"What's the conveniences--or the privileges--mum?" + +Bel Bree had got her arm round little Sinsie, who had crept up to +her side inquisitively; and Kate was making a funny face over her +shoulder at Marmaduke, alternately with the pleased attentive glance +she gave to his pretty young mother and her speaking. + +"Yes'm," Bel answered. "We want places. We are sewing-girls. We have +lost our work by the fire, and we were getting tired of it before. +We have made up our minds to try families. We want a real place to +live, you see. And we want to go together, so as to make our own +place. We mightn't like things just as they happened, where there +was others." + +Mrs. Scherman's own face lighted up afresh. This was something that +did not happen every day. She grew cordial with a pleased surprise. +"Do you think you could? Do you know about housework, about +cooking?" + +"It's very good of you to put it in that way," said Kate Sencerbox. +"We just do know _about_ it, and perhaps that's all, at present. But +we're Yankees, and we _mean_ to know." + +"And you would like to experiment with me?" + +"Well, it wouldn't be altogether experiment, from the very +beginning," said Bel. "I'm sure I can make good bread, and tea, and +toast, and broil chickens or steaks; I can stew up sauces, I can do +oysters. I can make a _splendid_ huckleberry pudding! We had one +every Sunday all last August." + +"Where?" asked Asenath, gravely. + +"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire," +said Bel, simply. + +Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle +quieted in her eyes. + +"I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently. +"This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen: +and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is +very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I +have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you +thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would +have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And +the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little +children!" + +Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting +beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was +frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that +there might be doubts as to her service suiting them. + +"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox. + +"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman +has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully, +and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had +any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before +Thursday morning." + +"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate. + +"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to +be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't +hold our breaths till Thursday." + +"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere," +said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not +meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't +straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, +doesn't she?" + +"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I +can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, +I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now." + +Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering. + +Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still +minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little +bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite +end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside +down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up? + +She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings. + +Kate spoke out at last. + +"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said. + +"What do you mean?" + +"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl." + +Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to +the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already +experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that +official altogether. + +"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It +came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as +usual, with the grasping of demand. + +"Four dollars to the cook. Which _is_ the cook?" + +"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the +glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be +me. Kate can make molasses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for +much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I +feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan." + +With that covert suggestion and encouragement, she stopped, leaving +the lead to Kate again. + +Kate Sencerbox was as earnest as a judge. + +"How much to the others?" said she. + +"Three dollars each." + +"That's ten dollars a week. Now, if you only had Bel and me, and +paid us three or three and a half a piece, couldn't you put +out--say, five dollars' worth of fine washing? Wouldn't the nurse's +board and wages come to that? And I'd engage to help with the baby +as much as you say you get helped now." + +"But you would want some time to yourself?" + +"Babies can't be awake all the time. I guess I should get it. I've +never had anything but evenings, so far. The thing is, Mrs. +Scherman, if I can try this anywhere, I can try it here. I don't +suppose people have got things fixed just as they would have been if +there'd always been a home all over the house. If we go to live with +anybody, we mean to make it living _in_, not living _out_. And we +shall find out ways as we go along,--all round. If you're willing, +we are. It's Bel's idea, not mine; though she's let me take it to +myself, and do the talking. I suppose because she thought I should +be the hardest of the two to be suited. And so I am. I didn't +believe in it at first. But I begin to see into it; and I've got +interested. I'd like to work it out on this line, now. Then I shall +know." + +There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be. +Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a +half a week each. + +"It's a kind of a kitchen gospel," said Bel Bree, as they walked up +Summit Street. "And it's got to come from the _girls_. What can the +poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full +of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and +clearing out? They can't say their souls are their own. They can't +plan their work, or say how many they'll have to do it. The more +they have, the more they'll have to have. It ain't Mr. and Mrs. +Scherman, and those two little children,--or two and a half,--that +makes all the to-do. Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and +the Mondays heavier. Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than +up, with a nurse for every baby! Think of the tracking and +travelling, the wear and tear. Every one makes work for one, and +dirt for two. It's taking in a regiment down below, and laying the +trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs! And the +ladies don't see through it. They just keep getting another parlor +girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things +don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about +fractions,--where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you +can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look +at it." + +"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?" + +"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves +while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the +truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever +the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all +right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight. +It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we +had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it +according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free, +and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal +property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I +sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing +it." + +An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather +bags. + +Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let +them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie +hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together. + +Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a +surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed, +the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted. +Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and +her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their +suppers. + +The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a +bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compass in her head. + +"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them. +And it's real nice their opening out on a level." + +Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front basement for +a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A +short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran +up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen +and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and +the additional space to where the first window opened in the western +wall. + +In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over +them, and formed a sideboard. Opposite, beside the fire-place, were +sink and boiler; between the windows, a white-topped table. There +were four dark painted wooden chairs. A clock over the table, and a +rolling-towel beside the sink; green Holland window-shades; these +were the only adornments and drapery. There was a closet at each end +of the room. + +"Will you go up to your room now, or wait till after tea?" asked +Mrs. Scherman. + +"We might take up our things, now," said Bel, looking round at the +four chairs. "They would be in the way here, perhaps." + +Kate took up her bag from the table. + +"We can find the room," she said, "if you will direct us." + +"Up three flights; two from the dining-room; the back chamber. You +can stop at my room as you come down, and we will think about tea. +Mr. Scherman will soon be home; and I should like to surprise him +with something very comfortable." + +The girls found their way up-stairs. + +The room, when they reached it, looked pleasant, though bare. The +sun had gone below the horizon, beyond the river which they could +not see; but the western light still shone in across the roofs. +There were window-seats in the two windows, uncushioned. A square of +clean, but faded carpet was laid down before the bed and reached to +the table,--simple maple-stained pine, uncovered,--that stood +beneath a looking-glass in a maple frame, between the windows. There +were three maple-stained chairs in the room. A door into a good, +deep closet stood open; there was a low grate in the chimney, unused +of course, with no fire-irons about it, and some scraps of refuse +thrown into it and left there; this was the only actual untidiness +about the room, where there was not the first touch of cosiness or +comfort. The only depth of color was in a heavy woven dark-blue and +white counterpane upon the bed. + +"Now, Kate Sencerbox, shut up!" said Bel Bree, turning round upon +her, after the first comprehensive glance, as Kate came in last, and +closed the door. + +Kate put her muff down on the bed, folded her hands meekly, and +looked at Bel with a mischievous air that said plainly enough "Ain't +I?" and which she would not falsify by speech. + +"Yes, I know you are; but--_stay_ shut up! All this isn't as it is a +going to be,--though it's _not_ bad even now!" + +Kate resolutely stayed shut up. + +"You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I +dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the +old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of +breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's +faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay +raveled long. And I've got things. Just wait till my trunk comes. My +ottoman, I mean. That's what it turns into. Have you got a stuffed +cover to your trunk, Katie?" + +Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence. + +"Of course you can, when you're asked a question. You've had time +now for second thoughts. I wasn't going to let you fly right out +with discouragements." + +"It is you that flies out with taking for granteds," said Kate +Sencerbox, in a subdued monotone of quietness. "I was only going to +remark that we had got neither cellar windows, nor attic skylights +after all. I'm favorably surprised with the accommodations. I've +paid four dollars a week for a great deal worse. And I wouldn't cast +reflections by arguing objections that haven't been made, if I were +the leader of this enterprise, Miss Bree." + +"Kate! That's what I call real double lock-stitch pluck! That goes +back of everything. You needn't shut up any more. Now let's come +down and see about supper." + +They had pinned on linen aprons, with three-cornered bibs; such as +they wore at their machines. When they came down into Mrs. +Scherman's room, that young matron said within herself,--"I wonder +if it's real or if we're in a charade! At any rate, we'll have a +real tea in the play. They do sometimes." + +"What is the nicest, and quickest, and easiest thing to get, I +wonder?" she asked of her waiting ministers. "Don't say toast. We're +so tired of toast!" + +"Do you like muffins and stewed oysters?" asked Bel Bree, drawing +upon her best experience. + +"Very much," Mrs. Scherman answered. + +And Kate, looking sharply on, delighted herself with the guarded +astonishment that widened the lady's beautiful eyes. + +"Only we have neither muffins nor oysters in the house; and the +grocery and the fish-market are down round the corner, in Selchar +Street." + +"I could go for them right off. What time do you have tea?" + +Really, Asenath Scherman had never acted in a charade where her cues +were so unexpected. + +"I wonder if I'm getting mixed up again," she thought. "Which _is_ +the cook?" + +Of course a cook never would have offered to go out and order +muffins and oysters. Mrs. Scherman could not have _asked_ it of the +parlor-maid. + +Kate Sencerbox relieved her. + +"I'll go, Bel," she interposed. "I guess it's my place. That is, if +you like, Mrs. Scherman." + +"I like it exceedingly," said Asenath, congratulating herself upon +the happy inspiration of her answer, which was not surprise nor +thanks, but cordial and pleased enough for either. "The shops are +next each other, just beyond Filbert Street. Have the things charged +to Mrs. Francis Scherman. A quart of oysters,--and how many muffins? +A dozen I think; then if there are two or three left, they'll be +nice for breakfast. They will send them up. Say that we want them +directly." + +"I can bring the muffins. I suppose they'll want the oyster-can +back." + +It may be a little doubtful whether Kate's spirit of supererogatory +doing would have gone so far, if it had not been for the +deliciousness of piling up the wonder. She retreated, upon the word, +magnanimously, remitting further reply; and Bel directly after +descended to her kitchen, to make the needful investigations among +saucepans and toasters. + +"Don't be frightened at anything you may find," Mrs. Scherman said +to her as she went. "I won't answer for the insides of cupboards and +pans. But we will make it all right as fast as possible. You shall +have help if you need it; and at the worst, we can throw away and +get new, you know. Suppose, Bel," she added, with enchanting +confidence and accustomedness, "we were to have a cup of coffee with +the oysters? There is some real Mocha in the japanned canister in +the china closet, and there are eggs in the pantry, to clear with; +you know how? Mr. Scherman is so fond of coffee." + +Bel knew how; and Bel assented. As the door closed after her, below +stairs, Mrs. Scherman caught up Sinsie into her lap, and gave her a +great congratulatory hug. + +"Do you suppose it will last, little womanie? If it isn't all gone +in the morning, what comfort we'll have in keeping house and taking +care of baby!" + +The daughter is so soon the "little womanie" to the mother's loving +anticipation! + +Marmaduke was lustily struggling with and shouting to a tin horse +six inches long, and tipping up a cart filled with small pebbles on +the carpet. He was outside already; the housekeeping was nothing to +him, except as it had to do with the getting in of coals. + +When Mr. Scherman opened the front door, the delicious aroma of +oysters and coffee saluted his chilled and hungry senses. He +wondered if there were unexpected company, and what Asenath could +have done about it. He passed the parlor door cautiously, but there +was no sound of voices. Up-stairs, all was still; the children were +in crib and cradle, and Asenath was shaking and folding little +garments,--shapes out of which the busy spirits had slidden. + +He came up behind her, where she stood before the fire. + +"All well, little mother?" he questioned. "Or tired to death? There +are festive odors in the house. Has anybody repented and come back +again?" + +"Not a bit of it!" Sin exclaimed triumphantly, turning round and +facing him, all rosy with the loving romp she had been having just a +little while before with her babies. "Frank! I've got a pair of +Abraham's angels down-stairs! Or Mrs. Abraham's,--if she ever had +any. I don't remember that they used to send them to women much, now +I think of it, after Eve demeaned herself to entertain the old +serpent. Ah! the _babies_ came instead; that was it! Well; there is +a couple in the kitchen now, at any rate; and they're toasting and +stewing in the most E--_lys_ian manner! That's what you smell." + +"Angels? Babies? What terrible ambiguity! What, or who, is stewing, +if you please, dear?" + +"Muffins. No! oysters. There! you sha'n't know anything about it +till you go down to tea. But the millennium's come, and it's begun +in our house." + +"I knew that, six years ago," said Frank Scherman. "There are +exactly nine hundred and ninety-four left of it. I can wait till +tea-time with the patience of the saints." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +"LIVING IN." + + +Desire Ledwith went over to Leicester Place with Bel Bree, when she +returned there for the first needful sorting and packing and +removing. Bel could not go alone, to risk any meeting; to put +herself, voluntarily and unprotected in the way again. Miss Ledwith +took a carriage and called for her. In that manner they could bring +away nearly all. What remained could be sent for. + +Miss Smalley possessed some movables of her own, though the +furnishings in her room had been mostly Mrs. Pimminy's. There were +some things of her aunt's that Bel would like, and which she had +asked leave to bring to Mrs. Scherman's. + +The light, round table, with its old fashioned slender legs and claw +feet, its red cloth, and the books and little ornaments, Bel wanted +in her sleeping-room. "Because they were Aunt Blin's," she said, +"and nothing else would seem so pleasant. She should like to take +them with her wherever she went." + +The two trunks--hers and Katy's--(Bel had Aunt Blin's great +flat-topped one now, with its cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and +Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth +that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,--in +the recesses. A red and white patchwork quilt, done in stars, Bel's +own work before she ever came to Boston, lay folded across the foot +of the bed, in patriotic contrast with the blue,--reversing the +colors in stars and stripes. Bel had found in the attic a discarded +stairway drugget, scarlet and black, of which, the centre was worn +to threads, but the bright border still remained; and this she had +asked for and sewed around the square of neutral tinted carpet, upon +whose middle the round table stood, covering its dullness with red +again, the color of the cloth. There was plenty of bordering left, +of which she pieced a foot-mat for the floor before the +dressing-glass, and in the open grate now lay a little unlighted +pile of kindlings and coals, as carefully placed behind well +blackened bars and a facing of paper, as that in the parlor below. + +"It looks nice," Bel said to Mrs. Scherman, "and we don't expect to +light it, unless one of us is sick, or something." + +"Light it whenever you wish for it," Mrs. Scherman had replied. "I +am perfectly willing to trust your reasonableness for that." + +So on Sunday afternoons, or of a bitter cold morning, they had their +own little blaze to sit or dress by; and it made the difference of a +continual feeling of cheeriness and comfort to them, always possible +when not immediately actual; and of a bushel or two of coal, +perhaps, in the winter's supply of fuel. + +"Where were the babies of a Sunday afternoon,--and how about the +offered tending?" + +This was one more place for them also; a treat and a change to +Sinsie and Marmaduke, or a perfectly safe and sweet and comfortable +resource in tending Baby Karen, who would lie content on the soft +quilts by the half hour, feeling in the blind, ignorant way that +little babies certainly do, the novelty and rest. + +The household, you see, was melting into one; the spirit of home +was above and below. It was home as much as wages, that these girls +had come for; and they expected to help make it. Not that they +parted with their own individual lives and interests, either; every +one must have things that are separate; it is the way human souls +and lives are made. It would have been so with daughters, or +sisters. But in a true living, it is the individual interests that +at once aggregate and specialize, it is a putting into the common +stock that which must be distinct and real that it may be put in at +all. It was not money and goods alone, that the early Christians had +in common. + +Instead of a part of their house being foreign and +distasteful,--tolerated through necessity only, that the rest might +be ministered to,--there was a region in it, now, of new, extended +family pleasure. "It was as good as building out a conservatory, or +a billiard-room," Asenath said. "It was just so much more to enjoy." + +There was a little old rocking-chair, railed round till it was +almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit +into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned +patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short, +giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot +an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged, +impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in +the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it as a sewing chair, was +to tip conveniently, as she might wish to bend and reach, to pick up +scissors or spool, or draw to herself any of those surroundings of +part, pattern, or material, which are sure, at the moment one wants +them to be on the opposite side of the table. + +Bel brought this away from Leicester Place, and had it in the +kitchen. Mrs. Scherman, then seeing that there remained for Kate +only the choice of the four wooden chairs, and pleased with the cosy +expression they were causing to pervade their precincts, suggested +their making space for a short, broad lounge that she would spare to +them from an upper room which was hardly ever used. It was an old +one that she had had sent from home among some other things that +were reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year +after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and +resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a +comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to +learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of +its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but +had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded +over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick +fringe fell below, a garnishing along the front. + +"Let it be," said Asenath. "I don't think you'll set the soup-kettle +or the roasting-pan down on it; and you can always shake it out +fresh and make it comfortable. It was only getting full of dust +up-stairs. There's a square pillow in the trunk-room that you can +have too, and cover with something. A five minutes' level rest is +nice, between times, I know. I wonder I never thought of it before." + +How would Bel or Kate have ever got a "five minutes' level rest," +over their machine-driving at Fillmer & Bylles? Bel had said well, +that girls and women need to work under cover; in a _home_, where +they can "rest by snatches." A mere roof is not a cover; there may +be driving afield in a great warehouse, as well as out upon a +plantation. + +The last touch and achievement was more of the dun-gray carpet, +like that in their bedroom, and more of the scarlet and black +stair-border, made into a rug, which was spread down when work was +over, and rolled up under the table when dinner was to dish, or a +wash was going on. They had been with Mrs. Scherman a month before +they ventured upon that asking. + +When it was finished, Sin brought her husband down after tea one +night, to look at it. + +"It is the most fascinating room in the house," she said. + +There was a side gas-light over the white-topped table, burning +brightly. Upon the table were work-baskets, and a volume from the +Public Library. The lounge was just turned out from the wall a +little, towards it, and opposite stood the round rocking-chair. +Cheeps, in his cage at the farther window, was asleep in a yellow +ball, his head under his wing. Bel was hanging the last dish-towel +upon a little folding-horse in the chimney corner, and they could +hear Kate singing up-stairs to a gentle clatter of the dishes that +she was putting away from the dining-room use. + +"It looks as a kitchen ought to," said Mr. Scherman. "As my +grandmother's used to look; as if all the house-comfort came from +it." + +"It isn't a place to forbid children out of, is it?" asked Asenath. + +"I should think the only condition would be their own best +behavior," returned her husband. + +"They're almost always good down here," said Bel. "Children like to +be where things are doing. They always feel put away, out of the +good times, I think, in a nursery." + +"My housekeeping is all turning round on a new pivot," said Sin to +Frank, after they were seated again up-stairs. "Don't take up the +'Skelligs' yet; I want to tell you. If I thought the pivot would +really _stay_, there are two or three more things I should do. And +one of them is,--I'd have the nursery--a day-nursery--down-stairs; +that is, if I could coax you into it." + +"It seems the new pivot is two very large 'ifs,'" said Frank, +laughing. "And not much space to turn in, either. Would you take the +cellar, or build out? And if so, where?" + +"I'd take the dining-room, Frank; and eat in the back parlor." + +"I wish you would. I don't like dining-rooms. I was brought up to a +back parlor." + +"You do? You don't? You were? Why, Frank, I thought you'd hate it," +cried Asenath, pouring forth her exclamations all in a heap, and +coming round to lean upon his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you before! +Just think of those south dining-room windows that they'll have the +good of all the forenoon, and that all we do with is to shade them +down at dinner-time! And the horse-chestnut tree, and the +grape-vines, making it green and pleasant, by and by! And the saving +of going over the stairs, and the times one of the girls might help +me when I _couldn't_ ring her away up to my room; and the tending of +table, with baby only to be looked after in here. Why, I should sit +here, myself, mornings, always; and everything would be all together +and the up-stairs work,--it would be better than two nurse-girls to +have it so!" + +"Then why not have it so right off? The more you turn on your pivot, +the smoother it gets, you know. And the more nicely you balance and +concentrate, the longer your machine will last." + +Asenath lay awake late, and woke early, that night and the next +morning, "planning." + +When Frank saw a certain wide, intent, shining, "don't-speak-to-me" +look in her eyes, he always knew that she was "planning." And he had +found that out of her plans almost always resulted some charming +novelty, at least, that gave one the feeling of beginning life over +again; if it were only the putting of his bureau on the other side +of the room, so that he started the wrong way for a few days, +whenever he wanted to get a clean collar; or the setting the +bedstead with side instead of head to the wall; issuing in +delightful bewilderments of mind, when wakened suddenly and asked to +find a match or turn up the dressing-room gas in the night, to meet +some emergency of the baby's. + +This time the development was a very busy Friday forenoon; in which +the silver rubbing was omitted, and the dinner preparations put +off,--the man who came for "chores" detained for heavy lifting,--the +large dining-table turned up on edge and rolled into the back +parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa, +which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,--nine +square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up +by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy's, and tacked carefully down by seam +and stripe, under Asenath's personal direction; cradle, +rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from +the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,--the children +themselves following back and forth untiringly with their +one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the +rods of the balusters,--some little shabby treasure always hugged +in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to +their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also; +until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber, +reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and +bleak with the little life gone out of it. + +But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below, +where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were +chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the +western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new +moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep. + +With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could +be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and +on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of +this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it, +and said to herself when all was done,-- + +"How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all! +It _isn't_ nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the +whole day's muss!" + +The final thing was done the next morning. The carpenter came and +put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would +now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back +stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to +the parlor dining-room. China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in +that angle, also. + +A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls. The +sparrows were caged again. + +"What would you have done if they hadn't been?" asked Hazel +Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening +to be just as they were. She had come over one morning with Miss +Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangements. + +"What should we have done if anything hadn't been?" asked Asenath, +in return. "Everything always has been, somehow, in my life. I don't +believe we have anything to do with the 'ifs' way back, do you, Miss +Hapsie? We couldn't stop short of the 'if' out of which we came into +the world,--or the world came out of darkness! I think that's the +very beauty of living." + +"The very everlasting livingness," said Miss Hapsie. "We don't want +to see the strings by which the earths and moons are hung up; nor, +any more, the threads that hold our little daily possibilities." + +Asenath had other visitors, sometimes, with whom it was not so easy +to strike the key-note of things. + +Glossy Megilp and her mother had come home from Europe. They and the +Ledwiths were in apartments in one of the great "Babulous" hotels, +as Sin called them, with a mingling of idea and etymology. + +"Good places enough," she said, "for the prologue and the epilogue +of life; but not for the blessed meanwhile; for the acting of all +the dear heart and home parts." + +The two families had managed very well by taking two small "suites" +and making a common parlor; thus bestowing themselves in one room +less than they could possibly have done apart. They were very +comfortable and content, made economical breakfasts and teas +together, dined at the café, and had long forenoons in which to run +about and look in upon their friends. + +Glossy had always "cultivated" Asenath Scherman for though that +young dame lived at present a very retired and domestic life, Miss +Megilp was quite aware that she _might_ come out, and in precisely +the right place, at any minute she chose; and meanwhile it was +exceedingly suitable to know her well in this same intimate +privilege of domesticity. + +Glossy Megilp was very polite; but she did not believe in the new +order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed +it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath _just now_; +but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In +short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims. +Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away +back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue +against and clear away prospective ones. + +"Bad things have lasted long enough," she said; "I don't see why the +good ones should not, when once they have begun." + +"They won't begin; one swallow never makes a summer. This has +happened to you, but it is absolutely exceptional; it will never be +pandemic," said Mrs. Megilp, who was fond of picking up little +knowing terms of speech, and delivering herself of them at her +earliest subsequent convenience. + +"'Never' is the only really imposing word in the language," said +Asenath, innocently. "I don't believe either you or I quite +understand it. But I fancy everything begins with exceptions, and +happens in spots,--from the settling of a continent to the doing up +of back-hair in new fashions. I shouldn't wonder if it were an +excellent way to take life, to make it as exceptional as you can, in +all unexceptionable directions. To help to thicken up the good +spots till the world gets confluent with them. I suppose that is +what is meant by making one's mark in it, don't you?" + +Mrs. Megilp headed about, as if in the turn the talk had taken she +suddenly found no thoroughfare; and asked Asenath if she had been to +hear Rubinstein. + +Of course it was not in talk only, that--up-stairs or +down-stairs--the exceptional household found its difficulties. It +was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating +"living happy ever after." + +There were days now and then when the baby fretted, or lost her nap, +and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time; when the door-bell +rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice. Stormy +Mondays happened when clothes would not dry, entailing Tuesdays and +Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service +elsewhere. + +If Asenath Scherman's real life had been anywhere but in her home +and with her children,--if it had consisted in being dressed in +train-skirt and panier, lace sleeves and bracelets, with hair in a +result of hour-long elaboration, at twelve o'clock; or of being out +making calls in high street toilet from that time until two; or if +her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening +parties; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing +friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to +reduce and evade, that the real purpose and desire might sweep on +unimpeded,--she would soon have given up her experiment in despair. + +Or if, on the other part, there had been a household below, +struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to +meet, that it might get to its own separate interests and +"privileges,"--if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in +idea and perception, only watchful that no "hand's turn" should be +required of it beyond those set down in the bond,--resenting every +occurrence, however unavoidable, which changed or modified the day's +ordering,--there would speedily have come the old story of worry, +discontent, unreliance, disruption. + +But Asenath's heart was with her little ones; she went back into her +own childhood with and for them, bringing out of it and living over +again all its bright, blessed little ways. + +"She would be grown up again," she said, "by and by, when they +were." + +She was keeping herself winsomely gay and fresh against the +time,--laying up treasure in the kingdom of all sweet harmonies +and divine intents, that need not be banished beyond the +grave,--although of that she never thought. It would come by +and by, for her reward. + +She played with Sinsie in her baby-house; she did over again, with +her, in little, the things she was doing on not so very much larger +scale, for actual every day. She invented plays for Marmaduke which +kept the little man in him busy and satisfied. She collected, +eagerly, all treasures of small song and story and picture, to help +build the world of imagination into which all child-life must open +out. + +As for Baby Karen, she was, for the most part, only manifest as one +of those little embodiments that are but given and grown out of such +loyal and happy motherhood. She was a real baby,--not a little +interloping animal. She was never nursed or tended in a hurry. +Babies blossom, as plants do, under the tender touch. + +Kate Sencerbox, or Bel Bree, was glad to come into this nest-warm +pleasantness, when the mother must leave it for a while. It was not +an irksomeness flung by, like a tangled skein, for somebody else to +tug at and unravel; it was a joy in running order. + +When the hard Monday came, or the baby had her little tribulations, +or it took a good tithe of the time to run and tell callers that +Mrs. Scherman was "very much engaged"--(why can't it be the fashion +to put those messages out upon the door-knob, or to tie it up +with--a silk duster, or a knot of tape?)--Kate or Bel would look one +at another and say, as they began with saying,--"Now, shut up!" It +was an understood thing that they were not to "fly out with +discouragements." + +And nobody knows how many things would straighten themselves if that +could only be made the law of the land. + +On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Scherman always managed it that they +should both go to Desire Ledwith's, for the Read-and-Talk. + +You may say Jerusalem is not taken yet, after all; there are plenty +of "hard places," where girls like Kate Sencerbox and Bel Bree would +not stay a week; there are hundreds of women, heads of houses, who +would not be bothered with so much superfluous intelligence,--with +refinements so nearly on a level with their own. + +Granted: but it is the first steps that cost. Do you not think--do +you not _know_--that a real good, planted in the world,--in social +living,--_must_ spread, from point to point where the circumstance +is ready, where it is the "next thing?" If you do not believe this, +you do not practically believe in the kingdom ever coming at all. + +There is a rotation of crops in living and in communities, as well +as in the order of vegetation of secret seeds that lie in the +earth's bosom. + +We shall not always be rank with noisome weeds and thistles; here +and there, the better thought is swelling toward the germination; +the cotyledons of a fairer hope are rising through the mould. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +WINTERGREEN. + + +To tell of what has been happening with Sylvie Argenter's thread of +our story, we must go back some weeks and pages to the time just +after the great fire. + +As it was with the spread of the conflagration itself, so it proved +also with the results,--of loss, and deprivation, and change. Many +seemed at first to stand safely away out on the margin, mere +lookers-on, to whom presently, with more or less direct advance, the +great red wave of ruin reached, touching, scorching, consuming. + +It was a week afterward that Sylvie Argenter learned that the +Manufacturers' Insurance Company, in which her mother had, at her +persuasion, invested the little actual, tangible remnant of her +property, had found itself swallowed up in its enormous debt; must +reorganize, begin again, with fresh capital and new stockholders. + +They had nothing to reinvest. The money in the Continental Bank +would just about last through the winter, paying the seven dollars a +week for Mrs. Argenter, and spending as nearly nothing for other +things as possible. Unless something came from Mr. Farron Saftleigh +before the spring, that would be the end. + +Thus far they had heard nothing from these zealous friends since +they had parted from them at Sharon, except one sentimental letter +from Mrs. Farron Saftleigh to Mrs. Argenter, written from Newport in +September. + +Early in December, another just such missive came this time from +Denver City. Not a word of business; a pure woman's letter, as Mrs. +Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy; +nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond +and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted, +referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand +elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and +beyond all fact and literalness, into the tender vague, the rare +empyrean. + +Mrs. Argenter read it over and over, and wished plaintively that she +could go out to Denver, and be near her friend. She should like a +new place; and such appreciation and affection were not be met with +everywhere, or often in a lifetime. + +Sylvie read the letter once, and had great necessity of +self-restraint not to toss it contemptuously and indignantly into +the fire. + +She made up her mind to one thing, at least; that if, at the end of +the six months, nothing were heard from Mr. Saftleigh himself, she +would write to him upon her own responsibility, and demand some +intelligence as to her mother's investments in the Latterend and +Donnowhair road, the reason why a dividend was not forthcoming, and +a statement in regard to actual or probable sales of land, which he +had given them reason to expect would before that time have been +made. + +One afternoon she had gone down with Desire and Hazel among the +shops; Desire and the Ripwinkleys were very busy about Christmas; +they had ever so many "notches to fill in" in their rather mixed up +and mutable memoranda. Sylvie only accompanied them as far as Winter +Street corner, where she had to buy some peach-colored double-zephyr +for her mother; then she bade them good-by, saying that two were bad +enough dragging each other about with their two shopping lists, but +that a third would extinguish fatally both time and space and taking +her little parcel in her hand, and wondering how many more such she +could ever buy, she returned home over the long hill alone. So it +happened that on reaching Greenley Street, she had quite to herself +a surprise and pleasure which she found there. + +She went straight to the gray room first of all. + +Mrs. Argenter was asleep on the low sofa near the fire, her crochet +stripe-work fallen by her side upon the carpet, her book laid face +down with open leaves upon the cushion. + +Sylvie passed softly into her own chamber, took off her outside +things, and returned with careful steps through her mother's room to +the hall, and into the library, to find a book which she wanted. + +On the table, at the side which had come of late to be considered +hers, lay an express parcel directed to herself. She knew the +writing,--the capital "S" made with a quick, upward, slanting line, +and finished with a swell and curl upon itself like a portly figure +"5" with the top-pennant left off; the round sweep after final +letters,--the "t's" crossed backward from their roots, and the +stroke stopped short like a little rocket just in poise of bursting. +She knew it all by heart, though she had never received but one +scrap of it before,--the card that had been tied to the ivy-plant, +with Rodney Sherrett's name and compliments. + +She had heard nothing now of Rodney for two months. She was glad to +be alone to wonder at this, to open it with fingers that trembled, +to see what he could possibly have put into it for her. + +Within the brown wrapper was a square white box. Up in the corner +of its cover was a line of writing in the same hand; the letters +very small, and a delicate dash drawn under them. How neatly special +it looked! + +"A message from the woods for 'Sylvia.'" + +She lifted it off, as if she were lifting it from over a thought +that it concealed, a something within all, that waited for her to +see, to know. + +Inside,--well, the thought was lovely! + +It was a mid-winter wreath; a wreath of things that wait in the +heart of the woodland for the spring; over which the snows slowly +gather, keeping them like a secret which must not yet be told, but +which peeps green and fresh and full of life at every melting, in +soft sunny weather, such as comes by spells beforehand; that must +have been gathered by somebody who knew the hidden places and had +marked them long ago. + +It was made of clusters, here and there, of the glossy daphne-like +wintergreen, and most delicate, tiny, feathery plumes of +princess-pine; of stout, brave, constant little shield-ferns and +spires of slender, fine-notched spleenwort, such as thrust +themselves up from rough rock-crevices and tell what life is, that +though the great stones are rolled against the doors of its +sepulchre, yet finds its way from the heart of things, somehow, to +the light. Mitchella vines, with thread-like, wandering stems, and +here and there a gleaming scarlet berry among small, round, +close-lying waxy leaves; breaths of silvery moss, like a frosty +vapor; these flung a grace of lightness over the closer garlanding, +and the whole lay upon a bed of exquisitely curled and laminated +soft gray lichen. + +A message. Yes, it was a simple thing, an unostentatious +remembrance; no breaking, surely, of his father's conditions. Rodney +loyally kept away and manfully stuck to his business, but every +spire and frond and leaf of green in this winter wreath shed off the +secret, magnetic meaning with which it was charged. Heart-light +flowed from them, and touching the responsive sensitivity, made +photographs that pictured the whole story. It was a fuller telling +of what the star-leaved ferns had told before. + +Rodney was not to "offer himself" to Sylvie Argenter till the two +years were over; he was to let her have her life and its chances; he +was to prove himself, and show that he could earn and keep a little +money; he was to lay by two thousand dollars. This was what he had +undertaken to do. His father thought he had a right to demand these +two years, even extending beyond the term of legal freedom, to +offset the half-dozen of boyish, heedless extravagance, before he +should put money into his son's hands to begin responsible work +with, or consent approvingly to his making of what might be only a +youthful attraction, a tie to bind him solemnly and unalterably for +life. + +But the very stones cry out. The meaning that is repressed from +speech intensifies in all that is permitted. You may keep two +persons from being nominally "engaged," but you cannot keep two +hearts, by any mere silence, from finding each other out; and the +inward betrothal in which they trust and wait,--that is the most +beautiful time of all. The blessedness of acknowledgment, when it +comes, is the blessedness of owning and looking back together upon +what has already been. + +Sylvie made a space for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in +her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green +cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a +while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling +touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its +written sentence her last remaining broidered and laced +handkerchief. The wreath would dry, she knew; it must lose its first +glossy freshness with which it had come from under the snows; but it +should dry there where Rodney put it, and not a leaf should fall out +of it and be lost. + +She was happier in these subtle signs that revealed inward relation +than she would have been just now in an outspokenness that demanded +present, definite answer and acceptance of outward tie. It might +come to be: who could tell? But if she had been asked now to let it +be, there would have been her troubles to give, with her affection. +How could she burden anybody doubly? How could she fling all her +needs and anxieties into the life of one she cared for? + +There was a great deal for Sylvie to do between now and any +marriage. Her worry soon came back upon her with a dim fear, as the +days passed on, touching the very secret hope and consciousness that +she was happy in. What might come to be her plain duty, now, very +shortly? Something, perhaps, that would change it all; that would +make it seem strange and unsuitable for Rodney Sherrett ever to +interpret that fair message into words. Something that would put +social distance between them. + +Her mother, above all, must be cared for; and her mother's money was +so nearly gone! + +Desire Ledwith was kind, but she must not live on anybody's +kindness. As soon as she possibly could, she must find something to +do. There must be no delay, no lingering, after the little need +there was of her here now, should cease. Every day of willing +waiting would be a day of dishonorable dependence. + +It was now three months since Mrs. Froke had gone away; and letters +from her brought the good tidings of successful surgical treatment +and a rapid gaining of strength. She might soon be able to come +back. Sylvie knew that Desire could either continue to contrive work +for her a while longer, or spare her to other and more full +employment, could such be found. She watched the "Transcript" list +of "Wants," and wished there might be a "Want" made expressly for +her. + +How many anxious eyes scan those columns through with a like +longing, every night! + +If she could get copying to do,--if she could obtain a situation +in the State House, that paradise of well paid female scribes! +If she could even learn to set up type, and be employed in a +printing-office? If there were any chance in a library? Even work of +this sort would take her away from her mother in the daytime; she +would have to provide some attendance for her. She must furnish her +room nicely, wherever it was; that she could do from the remnants of +their household possessions stored at Dorbury; and her mother must +have a delicate little dinner every day. For breakfast and tea--she +could see to those before and after work; and her own dinners could +be anything,--anywhere. She must get a cheap rooms where some tidy +lodging woman would do what was needful; and that would take,--oh, +dear! she _couldn't_ say less than six or seven dollars a week, and +where were food and clothes to come from? At any rate, she must +begin before their present resources were utterly exhausted, or what +would become of her mother's cream, and fruit, and beef-tea? + +Mingled with all her troubled and often-reviewed calculations, would +intrude now and then the thought,--shouldn't she have to be willing +to wear out and grow ugly, with hard work and insufficient +nourishing? And she would have so liked to keep fresh and pretty for +the time that might have come! + +In the days when these things were keeping her anxious, the winter +wreath was also slowly turning dry. + +She found herself hemmed in and headed at every turn by the pitiless +hedge and ditch of circumstance, at which girls and women in our +time have to chafe and wait; and from which there seems to be no way +out. Yet there are ways out from this, as from all things. One +way--the way of thorough womanly home-helpfulness--was not clear to +her; there are many to whom it is not clear. Yet if those to whom it +is, or might be, would take it,--if those who might give it, in many +forms, _would give_,--who knows what relief and loosening would come +to others in the hard jostle and press? + +There is another way out of all puzzle and perplexity and hardness; +it is the Lord's special way for each one, that we cannot foresee, +and that we never know until it comes. Then we discern that there +has never been impossibility; that all things are open before his +eyes; and that there is no temptation,--no trying of us,--to which +He will not provide some end or escape. + +In the first week of January, Sylvie acted upon her resolve of +writing to Mr. Farron Saftleigh. She asked brief and direct +questions; told him that she was obliged to request an answer +without the least delay; and begged that he would render them a +clear statement of all their affairs. She reminded him that he had +_told_ them that he would be responsible for their receiving a +dividend of at least four per cent, at the end of the six months. + +Mr. Farron Saftleigh "told" people a great many things in his +genial, exhilarating business talks, which he was a great deal too +wise ever to put down on paper. + +Sylvie waited ten days; a fortnight; three weeks; no answer came. +Mr. Farron Saftleigh had simply destroyed the letter, of no +consequence at all as coming from a person not primarily concerned +or authorized, and set off from Denver City the same day for a +business visit to San Francisco. + +Sylvie saw the plain fact; that they were penniless. And this could +not be told to her mother. + +She went to Desire Ledwith, and asked her what she could do. + +"I would go into a household anywhere, as Dot Ingraham and Bel Bree +have done, to earn board and wages, and spend my money for my +mother; but I can't leave her. And there's no sewing work to get, +even if I could do it at night and in honest spare time. I know, as +it is, that my service isn't worth what you give me in return, and +of course I cannot stay here any longer now." + +"Of course you can stay where God puts you, dear," answered Desire +Ledwith. "Let your side of it alone for a minute, and think of mine. +If you were in my place,--trying to live as one of the _large +household_, remember, and looking for your opportunities,--what +would you say,--what would you plainly hear said to you,--about +this?" + +Sylvie was silent. + +"Tell me truly, Sylvie. Put it into words. What would it be? What +would you hear?" + +"Just what you do, I suppose," said Sylvie, slowly "But I _don't_ +hear it on my side. My part doesn't seem to chord." + +"Your part just pauses. There are no notes written just here, in +your score. Your part is to wait. Think, and see if it isn't. The +Dakie Thaynes are going out West again. Mr. Thayne knows about +lands, and such things. He would do something, and let you know. A +real business man would make this Saftleigh fellow afraid." + +The Thaynes--Mrs. Dakie Thayne is our dear little old friend Ruth +Holabird, you know--had been visiting in Boston; staying partly +here, and partly at Mrs. Frank Scherman's. At Asenath's they were +real "comfort-friends;" Asenath had the faculty of gathering only +such about her. She felt no necessity, with them, for grand, late +dinners, or any show; there was no trouble or complication in her +household because of them. Ruth insisted upon the care of her own +room; it was like the "coöperative times" at Westover. Mrs. Scherman +said it was wonderful, when your links were with the right people, +how simple you could make your art of living, you could actually be +"quite Holabird-y," even in Boston! But this digresses. + +"I shall speak to Mr. Thayne about it," said Desire. "And now, dear, +if you could just mark these towels this morning?" + +Sylvie sat marking the towels, and Desire passed to and fro, +gathering things which were to go to Neighbor Street in the +afternoon. + +"Do you see," she said, stopping behind Sylvie a while after, and +putting her fingers upon her hair with a caressing little +touch,--"the sun has got round from the east to the south. It shines +into this window now. And you have been keeping quiet, just doing +your own little work of the moment. The world is all alive, and +changing. Things are working--away up in the heavens--for us all. +When people don't know which way to turn, it is very often good not +to turn at all; if they are _driven_, they do know. Wait till you +are driven, or see; you will be shown, one way or the other. It is +almost always when things are all blocked up and impossible, that a +happening comes. It has to. A dead block can't last, any more than a +vacuum. If you are sure you are looking and ready, that is all you +need. God is turning the world round all the time." + +Desire did not say one word about the ninety-eight dollars which lay +in one of the locked drawers of her writing desk, in precisely the +shape in which every two or three weeks she had let Sylvie put the +money into her hands. There would be a right time for that. She +would force nothing. Sylvie would come near enough, yet, for that +perfect understanding in which those bits of stamped paper would +cease to be terrible between their hands, _either_ way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY. + + +Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what +would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia, +and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in +Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course +he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast +as she heard it. + +"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she +said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning. +"People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets +poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent +human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I _can't_ act as if they +weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to +keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!" + +"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just +such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her +Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go. + +Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at +her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and +telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help, +or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother. + +Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss +Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an +irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this +Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into +some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the +title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these +fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at +present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in +the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond +Latterend. + +"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote +back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I +am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her +mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a +hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I +shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger +putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up +here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly +see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my +imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your +discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?" + +The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as +this fine manoeuvrer,--pulling wires whose ends laid hold of +character, not circumstance,--believed and meant. It had only added +to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper +than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another +might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a +right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would +take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss +Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of +provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She +would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence +and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a +little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented +to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there +might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to +hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until +an absolute necessity should be upon them. + +She bade Rodney be patient yet a few weeks more, and to leave it to +her to write to his father. She did write: but she also put Rodney's +letter in. + +"Things which _are_ might as well, and more truly, be taken into +account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett. +"There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I +have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will +modify everything. This is just what the Lord has given Rodney to +do. It is not your plan, or authority, but this in his heart, which +has set him to work, and made him save his money. Why not let them +begin to live the life while it is yet alive? It wears by waiting; +it cannot help it. You must not expect a miracle of your boy; you +must take the motive while it is fresh, and let it work in God's +way. The power is there; but you must let the wheels be put in gear. +Simply, I advise you to permit the engagement, and the marriage. If +you do not, I think you will rob them of a part of their real +history which they have a right to. Marriage is a making of life +together; not a taking of it after it is made." + +It was February when this letter was sent out. + +One day in the middle of the month, Desire Ledwith, Hazel +Ripwinkley, and Sylvie had business with Luclarion in Neighbor +Street. There was work to carry; a little basket of things for the +fine laundry; some bakery orders to give. There was always Luclarion +herself to see. Just now, besides and especially, they were all +interested in Ray Ingraham's rooms that were preparing in the next +house to the Neighbors; a house which Mr. Geoffrey and others had +bought, enlarged, and built up; fitting it in comfortable suites for +housekeeping, at rents of from twenty-five to thirty dollars a +month, each. They were as complete and substantial in all their +appointments as apartments as the Commonwealth or the Berkeley; +there was only no magnificence, and there was no "locality" to pay +for. The locality was to be ministered to and redeemed, by the very +presence of this growth of pure and pleasant and honorable living in +its midst. For the most part, those who took up an abiding here had +enough of the generous human sense in them to account it a +satisfaction so to contribute themselves; for the rest, there was a +sprinkling of decent people, who were glad to get good homes cheap +in the heart of a dear city; and the public, Christian intent of the +movement sheltered and countenanced them with its chivalrous +respectability. + +Frank Sunderline and Ray were to live here for a year; they were to +be married the first of March. Frank had said that Ray would have to +manage him and the Bakery too, and Ray was prepared to fulfill both +obligations. + +She was going to carry out here, with Luclarion Grapp, her idea of +public supply for the chief staple of food. They were going to try a +manufacture of breadstuffs and cakestuffs, on real home principles, +by real domestic receipts. They were going to have sale shops in +different quarters,--at the South and West ends. Already their +laundry sustained itself by doing excellent work at moderate prices; +why should they not, in still another way meet and play into the +movement of the time for simplifying it, and making household +routine more independent? + +"Why shouldn't there be," Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, "a +place to buy _cup_ cake, and _composition_ cake, and _sponge_ cake, +tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia? Why shouldn't +there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother's, +and nice wholesome little puddings? Everybody knew that since the +war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials +and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to +buy and call cake in the city. Why shouldn't somebody begin again, +honest? And here, where they didn't count upon outrageous profits, +why couldn't it be as well as not? When there was a good thing to be +had in one place, other places would have to keep up. It would make +a difference everywhere, sooner or later." + +"And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set +up anywhere!" said Hazel Ripwinkley. "Everybody eats! Just a new +thing, if it's only new trash, sells for a while; and these new, +old-fashioned, grandmother's cupboard things,--why, people would +just _swarm_ after them! Cooks never knew how, and ladies +didn't have time. Don't forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger +pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth! Everything +was so good at Homesworth--the place was named out of comforts! +Why don't you call it the Homesworth Bakery? That would be +double-an-tender,--eh, Lukey!" + +Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her +sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a +wedding-present. For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her +heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but +had never alluded to. + +"You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you +to know that I'm contented, and there isn't a grudge in my heart. +You and Frank have both been too much to me for that. I can see how +it was, though. It was a hand's turn once. But I went my way and you +kept quietly on. It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he +wanted for a wife. It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and +when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It +fell right off from me. You can't suffer _all through_ with more +than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew +I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more +than another? It was what I had let go _out of the world_, Ray, that +made the whole world a prison and a punishment. I couldn't have +taken a happiness, if it had come to me. All I wanted was work and +forgiveness." + +"Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the +spirit that is in you! And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever +that is full of it! I _don't_ think it is any one thing,--not even +any one marrying." + +So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other +house--Luclarion's. + +That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so +rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork +stitchery,--to the young girls this afternoon. + +She showed the quilt with loving pride and praise, but the story of +it she kept in her heart, among her prayers. Frank Sunderline never +knew more than the fair fabric and color, and the name of the giver, +told him. Frank Sunderline scarcely knew so much as these two women +did, of the unanalyzed secrets of his own life. + +Luclarion waited till all this was over, and Desire Ledwith had +come back from Ray Ingraham's rooms to hers, leaving Hazel and +Sylvie among the fascinations of new crockery and bridal tin pans, +before she said anything about a very sad and important thing she +had to tell her and consult about. She took her into her own little +sitting-room to hear the story, and then up-stairs, to see the woman +of whom the story had to be told. + +"It was Mr. Tipps, the milkman, came to me yesterday with it all," +said Luclarion. "He's a good soul, Tipps; as clever as ever was. He +was just in on his early rounds, at four o'clock in the morning,--an +awful blustering, cold night, night before last was,--and he was +coming by Graves Alley, when he heard a queer kind of crazy howling +down there out of sight. He wouldn't have minded it, I suppose, for +there's always drunken noise enough about in those places, but it +was a woman's voice, and a baby's crying was mixed up with it. So he +just flung his reins down over his horse's back, and jumped off his +wagon, and ran down. It was this girl,--Mary Moxall her name is, and +Mocks-all it ought to be, sure enough, to finish up after that pure, +blessed name so many of these miserables have got christened with; +and she was holding the child by the heels, head down, swinging it +back and for'ard, as you'd let a gold ring swing on a hair in a +tumbler, to try your fortune by, waiting till it would hit and ring. + +"It was all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was +muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all +crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew +and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a +tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back +with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists +and gave it a grip,--just twist enough to make the other hand come +after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was +all she could do; she was just a mad thing. She lost her balance, of +course, and went down; he put his foot on her chest, just enough to +show her he could master her; and then she went from howling to +crying. 'Finish me, and I wouldn't care!' she said; and then lay +still, all in a heap, moaning. 'I won't hurt ye,' says Tipps. 'I +never hurt a woman yet, soul nor body. What was ye goin' to do with +this 'ere little baby?' 'I was goin' to send it out of the hell it's +born into,' she said, with an awful hate in the sound of her voice. +'Goin' to _kill_ it! You wouldn't ha' done that?' 'Yes, I would. I'd +'a done it, if I was hanged for it the next minute. Isn't it my +business that ever it was here?' + +"'Now look here!' says Tipps. 'You're calmed down a little. If +you'll stay calm, and come with me, I'll take you to a safe place. +If you don't, I'll call a policeman, and you'll go to the lock-up. +Which'll ye have?' 'You've got me,' she said, in a kind of a sulk. +'I s'pose you'll do what you like with me. That's the way of it. +Anybody can be as bad and as miserable as they please, but they +won't be let out of it. It's hell, I tell you,--this very world. And +folks don't know they've got there.' + +"Tipps says there's hopes of her from just that word bad. She +wouldn't have put that in, otherways. Well, he brought her here, and +the baby. And they're both up-stairs. She's as weak as water, now +the drink is out of her. But it wasn't all drink. The desperation is +in her eyes, though it's give way, and helpless. And what to do with +'em next, I _don't_ know." + +"I do," said Desire, with her eyes full. "She must be comforted up. +And then, Mr. Vireo must know, the first thing. Afterwards, he will +see." + +Luclarion took Desire up-stairs. + +The girl was lying, in a clean night-dress, in a clean, white bed. +Her hair, dark and beautiful, was combed and braided away from her +face, and lay back, in two long, heavy plaits, across the pillow. +Her features were sharp, but delicate, and were meant to have been +pretty. But her eyes! Out of them a suffering demon seemed to look, +with a still, hopeless rage. + +Desire came up to the bedside. + +"What do you want?" the girl said, slowly, with a deep, hard, +resentful scorn in her voice. "Have you come to see what it is all +like? Do you want to feel how clean you are beside me? That's a part +of it; the way they torment." + +It was like the cry of the devil out of the man against the Son of +God. + +"No," said Desire, just as slowly, in her turn. "I can only feel the +cleanness in you that is making you suffer against the sin. The +badness doesn't belong to you. Let it go, and begin again." + +It was the word of the Lord,--"Hold thy peace, and come out of him." +Desire Ledwith spoke as she was that minute moved of the Spirit. The +touch of power went down through all the misery and badness, to the +woman's soul, that knew itself to be just clean enough for agony. +She turned her eyes, with the fiery gloom in them, away, pressing +her forehead down against the pillow. + +"God sees it better than I do," said Desire, gently. + +An arm flung itself out from under the bedclothes, thrusting them +off. The head rolled itself over, with the face away. + +"God! Pf!" + +So far from Him; and yet so close, in the awful hold of his +unrelaxing love! + +Desire kept silence; she could not force upon her the thought, the +Name: the Name for whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the +holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender. + +"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face +still turned away. + +"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this +moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is +alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You +feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul. +If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at +all." + +Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but +half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She +shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself; +from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience; +but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use +her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and +contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of +incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no +separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked +or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's +thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was +touching and stirring her own. + +"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can, +Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help +in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you +will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side, +I am afraid. The _under_ side; the side turned down toward"-- + +"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an +utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness. + +But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the +reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let +go of to perish. + +Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went +down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock. + +When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left +them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went +home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some +of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to +Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely +left her, lately, so long as this. + +How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt +sure they must hear,--when they had to leave Greenley Street and go +into that cheap little lodging-room, and she had to stay away from +her mother all day long? + +She remembered the time when she had thought it would be nice to +have a "few things;" nice to earn her own living; to be one of the +"Other Girls." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +CHOSEN: AND CALLED. + + +Desire Ledwith found nobody at home at Mr. Vireo's. The maid-servant +said that she could not tell when they would return. Mrs. Vireo was +at her mother's, and she believed they would not come back to tea. + +Desire knew that it was one of the minister's chapel nights. She +went away, up Savin Street, disappointed; wishing that she could +have sent instant help to Mary Moxall, who, she thought, could not +withstand the evangel of Hilary Vireo's presence. It is so sure that +nothing so instantly brings the heavenly power to bear upon a soul +as contact with a humanity in which it already abides and rules. She +wanted this girl to touch the hem of a garment of earthly living, +with which it had clothed itself to do a work in the world. For the +Christ still finds and puts such garments on to walk the earth; the +seamless robes of undivided consecration to Himself. + +As Desire crossed to Borden Street, and went on up the hill, there +came suddenly to her mind recollection of the Sunday noon, years +since, when she had walked over that same sidewalk with Kenneth +Kincaid; when he had urged her to take up Mission work, and she had +answered him with her girlish bluffness, that "she thought he did +not approve of brokering business; it was all there, why should they +not take it for themselves? Why should she set up to go between?" +She thought how she had learned, since, the beautiful links of +endless ministry; the prismatic law of mediation,--that there is no +tint or shade of spiritual being, no angle at which any soul catches +the Divine beam, that does not join and melt into the next above and +the next below; that the farther apart in the spectrum of humanity +the red of passion and the violet of peace, the more place and need +for every subdivided ray, to help translate the whole story of the +pure, whole whiteness. + +She remembered what she had said another time about "seeing blue, +and living red." She was thinking out by the type the mystery of +difference,--the broken refractions that God lets his Spirit fall +into,--when, looking up as she was about to pass some person, she +met the face of Christopher Kirkbright. + +He had not been at home of late; he had been busy up at Brickfield +Farms. + +For nearly four months past, Cone Hill and the Clay Pits had been +his by purchase and legal transfer. He had lost no time in making +his offer to his brother-in-law. Ten words by the Atlantic cable had +done it, and the instructions had come back by the first mail +steamer. Repairing and building had been at once begun; an odd, +rambling wing, thrown out eastward, slanting off at a wholly +unarchitectural angle from the main house, and climbing the terraced +rock where it found best space and foothold, already made the quaint +structure look more like a great two-story Chinese puzzle than ever, +and covered in space for an ample, airy, sunny work-saloon above a +range of smaller rooms calculated for individual and home occupancy. + +But the details of the plan at Brickfields would make a long story +within a story; we may have further glimpses of it, on beyond; we +must not leave our friends now standing in the street. + +Mr. Kirkbright held out his hand to Desire, as he stopped to speak +with her. + +"I am going down to Vireo's," he said. "I have come to a place in my +work where I want him." + +"So have I," said Desire. "But he is not at home. I was going next +to Miss Euphrasia." + +"And you and I are sent to stop each other. My sister is away, at +Milton, for two days." + +Desire turned round. "Then I must go home again," she said. + +Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her. + +"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired. + +"Yes," returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him. "If +you could go down to Luclarion Grapp's,--the Neighbors, you +know,--and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just +been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world; +a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who +says that the world is hell, and people don't know they've got into +it. Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up +at Brickfields." + +"You have been to her? What have you told her yourself, already?" + +"I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the +misery of the badness. That her pain at it was God's pain for her. +That if He had done with her, she would be dead." + +"Would she believe you? Did she seem to begin to believe?" + +"I do not think she believes anything. She can't until the things to +believe in come to her. Mr. Vireo--or you--would make her see. I +told her I would send somebody who had more for her than I." + +"You have told her the first message,--that the kingdom is at hand. +The Christ-errand must be done next. The full errand of _help_. That +was what was sent to the world, after the voice had cried in the +wilderness. It isn't Mr. Vireo or I,--but the helping hand; the +righting of condition; the giving of the new chance. We must not +leave all that to death and the angels. Miss Desire, this woman must +go to our mountain-refuge; to our sanatorium of souls. I have a good +deal to tell you about that." + +They had walked on again, as they talked; they had come to the foot +of Borden Street. They must now turn two different ways. + +They were standing a moment at the corner, as Mr. Kirkbright spoke. +When he said "our refuge,--our sanatorium,"--Desire blushed again as +she had blushed at Brickfields. + +She was provoked at herself; why need personal pronouns come in at +all? Why, if they did, need they remind her of herself and him, +instead of merely the thoughts that they had had together, the +intent of which was high above them both? Why need she be pleased +and shy in her selfhood,--ashamed lest he should detect the thought +of pleasure in her at his sharing with her his grand purpose, +recognizing in her the echo of his inspiration? What made it so +different that Christopher Kirkbright should discover and +acknowledge such a sympathy between them, from her meeting it, as +she had long done, in Miss Euphrasia? + +She would not let it be different; she would not be such a fool. + +It was twilight, and her little lace veil was down. She took +courage behind it, and in her resolve,--for she knew that to be very +determined would make her pale, not red; and the next time she would +be on her guard, and very determined. + +She gave him the hand he held out his own for, and bade him good +evening, with her head lifted just imperceptibly higher than was its +wont, and her face turned full toward him. Her eyes met his with an +honest calmness; she had summoned herself back. + +He saw strength and earnestness; a flush of feeling; the face of a +woman made to look nobleness and enthusiasm into the soul of a man. + + * * * * * + +She sat in the library that evening at nine o'clock. + +She had drawn up her large chair to the open fire; her feet were +resting on the low fender; her eyes were watching shapes in the +coals. + +Mrs. Lewes's "Middlemarch" lay on her lap; she had just begun to +read it. Her hands, crossed upon each other, had fallen upon the +page; she had found something of herself in those first chapters. +Something that reminded of her old longings and hindrances; of the +shallowness and half-living that had been about her, and the chafe +of her discontent in it. + +She did not wonder that Dorothea was going to marry Mr. Casaubon. +Into some dream-trap just such as that she might have fallen, had a +Mr. Casaubon come in her way. + +Instead, had come pain and mistake; a keen self-searching; a +learning to bear with all her might, to work, and to wait. + +She had not been waiting for any making good in God Providence of +that special happiness which had passed her by. If she had, she +would not have been doing the sort of work she had taken into her +hands. When we wait for one particular hope, and will not be +satisfied with any other, the whole force of ourselves bends toward +it; we dictate to life, and wrest its tendencies at every turn. + +The thing comes. Ask,--with the real might of whatever asking there +is in you,--and it shall be given you. But when you have got it, it +may not be the thing you thought it would be. Whosoever will have +his life shall lose it. + +No; Desire Ledwith had rather turned away from all special hope, +thinking it was over for her. But she came to believe that all the +good in God's long years was not over; that she had not been +hindered from one thing, save to be kept for some other that He saw +better. She was willing to wait for his better,--his best. When she +paused to look at her life objectively, she rejoiced in it as the +one thread--a thread of changing colors--in God's manifold work, +that He was letting her follow alone with Him, and showing her the +secret beauty of. Up and down, in and out, backward and forward, she +wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it +fell into combinations that she had never planned,--made surprises +for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of +mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; +but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest +sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as +the beauty of children's plays is the parable they cannot help +having in them. Patient and careful doing, after a law and +rule,--and the gradual apparition of result, foreseen by the deviser +of the law and rule; it is life measured out upon a canvas. Who +knows how,--in this spiritual Kindergarten of a world,--the +rudiments of all small human devices were set in human faculty and +aptness for its own object-teaching toward a perfect heavenly +enlightenment? + +Desire was thinking to-night, how impossible it is, as the pattern +of life grows, to help seeing a little of the shapes it may be +taking; to refrain from a looking forward that becomes eager with a +hint of possible unfolding. + +Once, a while ago, she had thought that she discerned a green beauty +springing out from the dull, half-filled background; tender leaves +forming about a bare and awkward shoot; but suddenly there were no +more stitches in that direction that she could set; the leaves +stopped short in half-developed curves that never were completed. +The pattern set before her--given but one bit at a time, as life +patterns are, like part etchings of a picture in which you know not +how the spaces are to be filled up and related--changed; the place, +and the tint of the thread, changed also; she had to work on in a +new part, and in a different way. She could not discover then, that +these abortive leaves were the slender claspings of a calyx, in +whose midst might sometime fit the rose-bloom of a wonderful joy. +Was she discovering it now? For browns and grays,--generous and +strong, tender and restful,--was a flush of blossom hues that she +had not looked for, coming to be woven in? Was the empty calyx +showing the first shadowy petal-shapes of a most perfect flower? + +It might be the flower of a gracious friendship only a joining of +hands in work for the kingdom-building; she did not let herself go +farther than this. But it was a friendship across which there lay +no bar and somehow, while she put from herself the thought that it +might ever be so promised to her as to be hers of all the world and +to the world's exclusion,--while she resented in herself that +foolish girl's blush, and resolved that it should never come +again,--she sat here to-night thinking how grand and perfect a thing +for a woman a grand man's friendship is; how it is different from +any, the most pure and sweet, of woman-tenderness; how the crossing +of her path with such a path as Christopher Kirkbright's, if it were +only once a day, or once a week, or once a month, would be a thing +to reckon joy and courage from; to live on from, as she lived on +from her prayers. + +An hour had come in her life which gathered about her realities of +heaven, whether the earthly correspondence should concur, or no. A +noble influence which had met and moved her, seemed to come and +abide about her,--a thought-presence. + +And a thought-presence was precisely what it was. A thousand +circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links +and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an +impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact +subsists--and in rare moments we know it--when that which belongs to +us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the +footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned +toward us. Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the +will--the blessed purpose--is accomplished at once on earth and in +heaven. + +When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine +o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, +Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular +recall,--that was less a change than a transfer of the same +perception,--from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to +suppose it,--no ordinary reason why,--but she was suddenly persuaded +that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside +her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone. + +She did not even wonder for what he could have come. She did not +move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her +open book. She did not break the external conditions in which unseen +forces had been acting. If she had moved,--pushed back her +chair,--put by her book,--it would have begun to seem strange, she +would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have +embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an +unusual hour. But to have the verity come in and fill the +dream,--this was not strange. And yet Christopher Kirkbright had +scarcely been in that house ten times before. + +She heard him ask if Miss Ledwith were still below; if he might see +her. She heard Frendely close the outer door, and precede him toward +the door of the library. He entered, and she lifted her eyes. + +"Don't move," he said quickly. "I have been seeing you sitting like +that, all the evening. It is a reverie come true. Only I have walked +out of my end of it, and into yours. May I stay a little while?" + +Her face answered him in a very natural way. There was a wonder in +her eyes, and in the smile that crept over her lips; there were +wonder and waiting in the silence which she kept, answering in her +face only, at the first, that peculiar greeting. Perhaps any woman, +who had had no dream, would have found other response as difficult. + +"I am going back to Brickfields to-morrow. I am more eager than +ever to get the home finished there, for those who are waiting for +its shelter. I have had a busy day,--a busy evening; it has not been +a _still_ reverie in which I have seen you. In this last half hour, +I have been with Vireo. He has found a woman for me who can be a +directress of work; can manage the sewing-room. A good woman, too, +who will _mother_--not 'matron'--the girls. I have bought five +machines. They will make their own garments first; then they will +work for pay, some hours each day, or a day or two every week,--in +turn. That money will be their own. The rest of the time will be due +to the commonwealth. There will be a farm-kitchen, where they will +cook--and learn to cook well--for the farm hands; they will wash and +iron; they will take care of fruit and poultry. As they learn the +various employments, they will take their place as teachers to +new-comers; we shall keep them busy, and shall make a life around +them, that will be worth their laboring for; as God makes all the +beauty of the world for us to live in, in compensation for the +little that He leaves it needful for us to do. There is where I +think our privilege comes in, after the similitude of his; to +supplement broadly that which shall not hinder honest and +conditional exertion. I have been longing to tell you about it; I +have had a vision of you in the midst of my work and talk; I have +had a feeling of you this evening, waiting just so and there; I had +to come. I went to see your Mary Moxall, Miss Desire." + +"In the midst of all you had to do!" + +"Was it not a part? 'All in the day's work' is a good proverb." + +"What did you say to her?" + +"I asked her if she would come up into the country with my sister, +to a home among great, still, beautiful hills, and take care of her +baby, and some flowers." + +"It was like asking her to come home--to God!" + +"Yes,--I think it was asking her God's way. How can we, standing +among all the helps and harmonies of our lives, ask them to come +straight up to Him,--His invisible unapproachable Self,--out of the +terrible darkness and chaos of theirs? There are no steps." + +"Tell me more about the steps you have been making--in the hills. +You said 'flowers.'" + +"Yes; there will be a conservatory. I must have them all the year +through; the short summer gardening would not be ministry enough. +Beyond the Chapel Rock runs back a large new wing, with sewing and +living rooms; they only wait good weather for finishing. A dozen +women can live and work there. As they grow fit and willing, and +numerous enough to colonize off, there are little houses to be built +that they can move into, set up homes, earn their machines, and at +last, in cases where it proves safe and wise, their homes +themselves. I shall provide a depot for their needlework in the +city; and as the village grows it will create a little demand of its +own. Mr. Thayne is going to build the cottages, and he and I have +contracted for the seven miles of railroad to Tillington, as a +private enterprise. The brickmaking is to begin at once; we shall do +something for the building of the new, fire-proof Boston. Your +thought is growing into a fact, Miss Desire; and I think I have not +forgotten any particular of it. Now, I have come back to you for +more,--a great deal more, if I can get it. First, a name. We can't +_call_ it a City of Refuge, beautiful as such a city is--to _be_. +Neither will I call it a Home, or an Asylum. The first thing Mary +Moxall said to me was,--'I won't go to no Refuges nor Sile'ums. I +don't want to be raked up, mud an' all, into a heap that everybody +knows the name of. If the world was big enough for me to begin +again,--in a clean place; but there ain't no clean places!' And then +I asked her to come home with me and my sister." + +"You mean, of course, a neighborhood name, for the settlement, as it +grows?" + +"Exactly. 'Brickfield Farms' belongs to the outlying husbandry and +homesteads. And 'Clay Pits!' It is _out_ of the pit and the miry +clay that we want to bring them. The suggestion of that is too much +like Mary Moxall's 'heap that everybody knows the name of.'" + +"Why not call it 'Hill-hope'? 'The hills, whence cometh our +strength;' 'the mountain of the height of Israel where the Lord will +plant it, and the dry tree shall flourish'?" + +"Thank you," said Mr. Kirkbright, heartily. "That is the right word. +It is named." + +Desire said nothing. She looked quietly into the fire with a flush +of deep pleasure on her face. Mr. Kirkbright remained silent also +for a few minutes. + +He looked at her as she sat there, in this room that was her own; +that was filled with home-feeling and association for her; where a +solemnly tender commission and opportunity had been given her, and +had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging +itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right +to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it +to be given him. Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a +question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman. Why +had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken? If there +were not possibly, in this woman's keeping, the ordained and perfect +answer? + +While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that +he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips. + +"I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend! What are +we to do about it?" + +Desire's eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited +not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake. The color was +bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous. Then the +eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,--with words. + +So far as he had spoken, she had answered. + +"I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home +around which other homes may grow. There ought to be a heart in it, +and I cannot do it alone. Could you--_will_ you--come? Will you be +to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and +strength help me to help your sisters?" + +He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was +between them. He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held +out his hands. + +Desire stood up and laid hers in them. + +"It must be right. You have come for me. I cannot possibly do +otherwise than this." + +The deep, gracious, divine fact had asserted itself. A house here, +or a house there could not change or bind it. They belonged +together. There was a new love in the world, and the world would +have to arrange itself around it. Around it and the Will that it was +to be wedded to do. + +They stood together, hands in hands. Christopher Kirkbright leaned +over and laid his lips against her forehead. + +He whispered her name, set in other syllables that were only for +him to say to her. I shall not say them over on this page to you. + +But there is a line in the blessed Scripture that we all know, and +God had fulfilled it to his heart. + +Strangely--more strangely than any story can contrive--are the +happenings of life put side by side. + +As they sat there a little longer in the quiet library, forgetting +the late evening hour, because it was morning all at once to them; +forgetting Sylvie Argenter and her mother as they were at just this +moment in the next room; only remembering them among those whom this +new relation and joining of purpose must make surer and safer, not +less carefully provided for in the changes that would occur,--the +door of the gray parlor opened; a quick step fell along the passage, +and Sylvie unlatched the library door, and stood in the entrance +wide-eyed and pale. + +"Desire! Come!" + +"Sylvie! _What_, dear?" cried Desire, quickly, as she sprang to meet +her, her voice chording responsive to Sylvie's own, catching in it +the indescribable tone that tells so much more than words. She did +not need the further revelation of her face to know that something +deep and strange had happened. + +Sylvie said not a syllable more, but turned and hurried back along +the hall. + +Desire and Mr. Kirkbright followed her. + +Mrs. Argenter was sitting in the deep corner of her broad, low sofa, +against the two large pillows. + +"A minute ago," said Sylvie, in the same changed voice, that spoke +out of a different world from the world of five minutes before, "she +was _here_! She gave me her plate to put away on the sideboard, and +_now_,--when I turned round,"-- + +She was _There_. + +The plate, with its bits of orange-rind, and an untasted section of +the fruit, stood upon the sideboard. The book she had been reading +fifteen minutes since lay, with her eye-glasses inside it, at the +page where she had stopped, upon the couch; her left hand had +fallen, palm upward, upon the cushioned seat; her life had gone +instantly and without a sign, out from her mortal body. + +Mrs. Argenter had died of that disease which lets the spirit free +like the uncaging of a bird. + +Hypertrophy of the heart. The gradual thickening and hardening of +those mysterious little gates of life and the walls in which they +are set; the slower moving of them on their palpitating hinges, till +a moment comes when they open or close for the last time, and in +that pause ajar the soul flits out, like some curious, unwary thing, +over a threshold it may pass no more again, forever. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +EASTER LILIES. + + +Bright, soft days began to come; days in which windows stood open, +and pots of plants were set out on the window-sills; days +alternating as in the long, New England spring they always do, with +bleak intervals of sharp winds and cold sea-storms; yet giving sweet +anticipation tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she +cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the +charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and +breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year +comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of +pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you +needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!" + +People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations, +on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be +making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from +the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you +meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens +are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in +through sense and spirit. + +Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never +would be afraid again in all her life; she _knew_ how things were +measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent +while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort +had been kept back." + +She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke +should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit. +She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress, +now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to +accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries. + +Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra +yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because +she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage +was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which +she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self. + +"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for +quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had." + +There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of +good plenishing that would last for years. + +Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other +girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief" +since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck +and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their +hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately. + +She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining +Desire's own. The white box lay upon a round, damask-covered-stand +in the corner, under her mother's picture painted in the graceful +days of the gray silks and llama laces; and around this, drooping +and trailing till they touched the little table and veiled the box +that held the beautiful secret,--seeming to say, "We know it too, +for we are a part,"--wreathed the shining sprays of blossomy fern. + +In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being +happy. The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of +the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for +a new summer's grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the +air different, already, from the airs of winter. + +Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence. + +All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer +from over the water. Of all the letters that went safely into mail +bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of +all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those +bags were opened,--somehow--it can never be told how,--that +particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or +missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss +Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a +letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he +had just arrived after a visit to Berlin. + +"I have had no family news," he wrote, "of later date than January +20th. Trust all is well. Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th." + +The date of that was March 20th. + +The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire +Ledwith's marriage. + +Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous. Desire would have her +in time, but not for any fatigues. + +The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before +she left it. The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and +brown canary was singing in his cage. There was nothing to remind of +the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its +last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so +noiselessly and solemnly in. + +Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and +co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley. + +"It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for +anybody," she said. "There must be a real life in it, as long as we +can order it so." + +The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with +Hazel. Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard +Street, was to "spill over" from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill +house. "She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care +and comfort. Them shouldn't be any hurt, and there would be lots of +help." + +There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; "just as neat +as a row of pins;" but who had had less and less to be neat with for +seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as +compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could +earn twelve hundred dollars a year. The youngest had to stay at home +and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together. +They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course +they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that. +That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do +without. + +Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a +bee-hive. + +"And whenever I marry," Hazel said, "I hope he won't be building a +town of his own to take me to; for I shall _have_ to bring him here. +I'm the last of the line." + +"That will all be taken care of as the rest has been. There isn't +half as much left for us to manage as we think," said Desire, +putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus's will which they +had been reading over together. "He knew the executorship into +which he gave it." + +Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish +telling you how it all was? + +There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the +Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,--in those few +pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more +engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving +sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb. + +We can turn back afterwards for that. I think you would like to hear +about the wedding. + +Does it never occur to you that this "going back and living up" in a +story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the +divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and +miss of, now? It does to me. I know that _That_ can manage at least +as well as mine can. + + * * * * * + +Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the +library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt +all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now +another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the +first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent. + +Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters--Mrs. Megilp and Glossy--were there, of +course. + +Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about +the homestead and old associations, and "Daisy's great love and +reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she +certainly owed everything;" about the journey to New York, and the +few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend +and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("_Sir_ Marmaduke he +would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English +title that belonged to him"),--who was too infirm to come on to the +wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as +possible to their estate in the country,--Hill-hope,--where Mr. +Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of +a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,"--all this to +account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which +of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy +Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old +drawing-room which was hardly ever used. + +But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches +had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity +was present at Desire Ledwith's wedding. + +Mr. Vireo officiated; there was something in his method and manner +which Mrs. Megilp decidedly objected to. + +It was "everyday," she thought. "It didn't give you a feeling of +sanctity. It was just as if he was used to the Almighty, and didn't +mind! It seemed as if he were just mentioning things, in a quiet +way, to somebody who was right at his elbow. For her part, she liked +a little lifting up." + +Hazel Ripwinkley heard her, and told Sylvie and Diana that "that +came of having all your ideas of home in the seventh story; of +course you wanted an elevator to go up in." + +Desire Ledwith looked what she was, to-day; a grand, pure woman; a +fit woman to stand up beside a man like Christopher Kirkbright, in +fair white garments, and say the words that made her his wife. +There was a beautiful, sweet majesty in her giving of herself. + +She did not disdain rich robes to-day,--she would give herself at +her very best, with all generous and gracious outward sign. + +She wore a dress of heavy silk, long-trained; the cream-white folds, +unspoiled by any frippery of lace, took, as they dropped around her, +the shade and convolutions of a lily. Upon her bosom, and fastening +her veil, were deep green leaves that gave the contrast against +which a lily rests itself. Around her throat were links of frosted +silver, from which hung a pure plain silver cross; these were the +gift of Hazel. The veil, of point, and rarely beautiful, fell back +from her head,--lovely in its shape, and the simple wreathing of the +dark, soft hair,--like a drift of water spray; not covering or +misting her all over,--only lending a touch of delicate suggestion +to the pure, cool, graceful, flower-like unity of her whole air and +apparel. + +"Desire is beautiful!" said Hazel Ripwinkley to her mother. "She +never _stopped_ to be _pretty_!" + +White calla-lilies, with their tall stems and great shadowy leaves, +were in the Pompeiian vases on the mantel; in the India jars in the +corners below; in a large Oriental china bowl that was set upon the +closed desk on the library table, wheeled back for the first time +that anybody there had seen it so, against the wall. + +Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's +chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess +at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married. + +"Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do +God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you +both in this his world? Will you, Desire Ledwith, take Christopher +Kirkbright to be your wedded husband; will you, Christopher +Kirkbright, take Desire Ledwith to be your wedded wife; and do you +thereto mutually make your vows in the sight of God and before this +company?" + +And they answered together, "We do." + +It was a promise for more than each other; it was a +life-consecration. It was a gathering up and renewal of all that had +been holy in the resolves of either while they had lived apart; a +joining of two souls in the Lord. + +Hilary Vireo would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words, +a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would +take, and keep to, each other. + +Mrs. Megilp thought it was "so jumbled!" "If it was _her_ daughter, +she should not think she was half married." + +Mrs. Megilp put it more shrewdly than she had intended. + +Desire and Christopher Kirkbright were very sure they had _not_ been +"half married." It was not the world's half marriage that they had +stood up there together for. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +KITCHEN CRAMBO. + + +Elise Mokey and Mary Pinfall came in one evening to see Bel Bree and +Kate. + +There had been company to tea up-stairs, and the dishes were more +than usual, and the hour was a little later. + +Kate was putting up the last of the cooking utensils, and scalding +down the big tin dish-pan and the sink. Bel was up-stairs. + +A table with a fresh brown linen cloth upon it, two white plates and +cups, and two white _napkins_, stood out on the kitchen floor under +the gas-light. The dumb-waiter came rumbling down, with toast dish, +tea and coffee pots, oyster dish and muffin plate. Several slices of +cream toast were left, and there was a generous remnant of nicely +browned scalloped oysters. The half muffins, buttered hot, looked +tender and tempting still. + +Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nice +little stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred the +food from the china to these, laying it neatly together, and +replaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The tea +and coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot in +readiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed the +porcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and set +them safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in the +gas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, just +as much as they would have done in actual using. + +"But what a lot of trouble!" said Elise Mokey. + +"Half a dozen dishes?" returned Kate. "Just three minutes' work; and +a warm, fresh supper to make it worth while. Besides rubbing the +silver once in four weeks, instead of every Friday. A Yankee kitchen +is a labor-saving institution, Mrs. Scherman says." + +Down came the waiter again, and down the stairs came Bel. Kate +brought two more cups and plates and napkins. + +"Now, girls, come and take some tea," she said, drawing up the +chairs. + +Mrs. Scherman was not strict about "kitchen company." She gave the +girls freely to understand that a friend or two happening in now and +then to see them, were as welcome to their down-stairs table as her +own happeners in were to hers. "I know it is just the cosiness and +the worth-while of home and living," she said. "And I'll trust the +'now and then' of it to you." + +The hint of reasonable limit, and the word of trust, were better +than lock and law. + +"How nice this is!" said Mary Pinfall, as Bel put a hot muffin, +mellow with sweet butter, upon her plate. + +"If Matilda Meane only knew which side--and where--bread _was_ +buttered! She's living on 'relief,' yet; and she buys cream-cakes +for dinner, and peanuts for tea! But, Bel, what were you up-stairs +for? I thought you was queen o' the kitchen!" + +"Kate gives me her chance, sometimes. We change about, to make +things even. The best of it is in the up-stairs work, and waiting at +table is the first-best chance of all. You see, you 'take it in at +the pores,' as the man says in the play." + +"Tea and oysters?" said Elise, with an exclamatory interrogation. + +"You know better. See here, Elise. You don't half believe in this +experiment, though you appreciate the muffins. But it isn't just +loaves and fishes. There's a _living_ in the world, and a way to +earn it, besides clothes, and bread and butter. If you want it, you +can choose your work nearest to where the living is. And wherever +else it may or mayn't be, it _is_ in houses, and round tea-tables +like this." + +"Other people's living,--for you to look at and wait on," said +Elise. "I like to be independent." + +"They can't keep it back from us, if they wanted to," said Bel. "And +you _can't_ be independent; there's no such thing in the world. It's +all give and take." + +"How about 'other folks' dust,' Kate? Do you remember?" + +"There's only one place, I guess, after all," said Kate, "where you +can be shut up with nothing but your own dust!" + +"Sharper than ever, Kate Sencerbox! I guess you _do_ get rubbed up!" + +"Mr. Stalworth is there to-night," said Bel. "He tells as good +stories as he writes. And they've been talking about Tyndall's +Essays, and the spectroscope. Mrs. Scherman asked questions that I +don't believe she'd any particular need of answers to, herself; and +she stopped me once when I was going out of the room for something. +I knew by her look that she wanted me to hear." + +"If they want you to hear, why don't they ask you to sit down and +hear comfortably?" said Elise Mokey, who had got her social +science--with a _little_ warp in it--from Boffin's Bower. + +"Because it's my place to stand, at that time," said Bel, stoutly; +"and I shouldn't be comfortable out of my place. I haven't earned a +place like Mrs. Scherman's yet, or married a man that has earned it +for me. There are proper things for everybody. It isn't always +proper for Mrs. Scherman to sit down herself; or for Mr. Scherman to +keep his hat on. It's the knowing what's proper that sets people +really up; it _never_ puts them down!" + +"There's one thing," said Kate Sencerbox. "You might be parlor +people all your days, and not get into everybody's parlor, either. +There's an up-side and a down-side, all the way through, from top to +bottom. The very best chance, for some people, if they only knew it, +into some houses, would be up through the kitchen." + +"Never mind," said Bel, putting sugar into Mary Pinfall's second cup +of coffee. "I've got the notion of those lines, Kate,--I was going +to tell you,--into my head at last, I do believe. Red-hot iron makes +a rainbow through a prism, like any light; but iron-_steam_ stops a +stripe of the color; and every burning thing does the same +way,--stops its own color when it shines through its own vapor; +there! Let's hold on to that, and we'll go all over it another time. +There's a piece about it in last month's Scribner." + +"What _are_ you talking about?" said Elise Mokey. + +"The way they've been finding out what the sun is made of. By the +black lines across the rainbow colors. It's a telegraph; they've +just learned to read it." + +"But what do _you_ care?" + +"I guess it's put there as much, for me as anybody," said Bel. "I +don't think we should ever pick up such things, though, among the +basting threads at Fillmer & Bylles'. They're lying round here, +loose; in books and talk, and everything. They're going to have +Crambo this evening, Kate. After these dishes are washed, I mean to +try my hand at it. They were laughing about one Mrs. Scherman made +last time; they couldn't quite remember it. I've got it. I picked it +up among the sweepings. I shall take it in to her by and by." + +Bel went to her work-basket as she spoke, and lifting up some calico +pieces that lay upon it, drew from underneath two or three folded +bits of paper. + +"This is it," she said, selecting one, and coming back and reading. + +(Do you see, let me ask in a hurried parenthesis,--how the tone of +this household might easily have been a different one, and pervaded +differently its auxiliary department? How, in that case, it might +have been nothing better than a surreptitious scrap of silk or +velvet, that would have lain in Bel Bree's work-basket, with a story +about it of how, and for what gayety, it had been made; a scrap out +of a life that these girls could only gossip and wonder about,--not +participate, and with self-same human privilege and faculty delight +in; and yet the only scrap that--"out of the sweepings"--they could +have picked up? _There_ is where, if you know it, dear parlor +people, the up-side, by just living, can so graciously and +generously be always helping the down.) + +Bel read:-- + +"'What of that second great fire that was prophesied to come before +Christmas?'--'Peaches.'" + +"You've got to get that word into the answer, you see and it hasn't +the very least thing to do with it! Now see:-- + + 'A prophet, after the event, + No startling wisdom teaches; + A second fire would scarce be sent + To gratify the morbid bent + That for fresh horror reaches. + But, friend, do tell me why you went + And mixed it up with _peaches_!' + +It's great fun! And sometimes it's lovely, real poetry. Kate, +you've got to give me some words and questions, I'm going to take to +Crambo." + +"You'll have to mix it up with dish-washing," said Elise. +"Dish-washing and dust,--you can't get rid of them!" + +"We do, though!" said Kate, alertly, jumping up and beginning to +fetch the plates and cups from the dumb-waiter. "Here, Bel!" And she +tossed three or four long, soft, clean towels over to her from the +shelf beside the china. + +"And about that dusting," she went on, after the noise of the hot +water rushing from the faucet was over, and she began dropping the +things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan +full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little +mop,--"about the dusting, I didn't finish. It's a work of art to +dust Mrs. Scherman's parlor. Don't you think there's a pleasure in +handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things? +Don't they get to be a part of our having, too? Don't I take as much +comfort in her fernery as she does? I know every little green and +woolly loop that comes up in it. It's the only sense there is in +things. There's a picture there, of cows coming home, down a green +lane, and the sun striking through, and lighting up the gravel, and +a patch of green grass, and the red hair on the cows' necks. You +think you just catch it _coming_, suddenly, through the trees, when +you first look up at it. And you go right into a little piece of the +country, and stand there. Mr. Scherman doesn't own that lane, or +those cows, though he bought the picture. All he owns is what he +gets by the signs; and I get that, every day, for the dusting! There +are things to be earned and shared where people _live_, that you +can't earn in the sewing-shops." + +"That's what Bel said. Well, I'm glad you like it. Sha'n't I wipe up +some of those cups?" + +"They're all done now," said Bel, piling them together. + +In fifteen minutes after their own tea was ended, the kitchen was in +order again; the dumb-waiter, with its freight, sent up to the china +closet; the brown linen cloth and the napkins folded away in the +drawer, and the white-topped table ready for evening use. Bel Bree +had not been brought up in a New England farm-house, and seen her +capable stepmother "whew round," to be hard put to it, now, over +half a dozen cups and tumblers more or less. + +"We must go," said Elise Mokey. "I've got the buttons to sew on to +those last night-gowns of Miss Ledwith's. I want to carry them back +to-morrow." + +"You're lucky to sew for her," said Bel. "But you see we all have to +do for somebody, and I'd as lief it would be teacups, for my part, +as buttons." + +Bel Bree's old tricks of rhyming were running in her head. This game +of Crambo--a favorite one with the Schermans and their bright little +intimate circle--stirred up her wits with a challenge. And under +the wits,--under the quick mechanic action of the serving +brain,--thoughts had been daily crowding and growing, for which +these mere mental facilities were waiting, the ready instruments. + +I have said that Bel Bree was a born reformer and a born poet; and +that the two things go together. To see freshly and clearly,--to +discern new meaning in old living,--living as old as the world is; +to find by instinct new and better ways of doing, the finding of +which is often only returning to the heart and simplicity of the +old living before it _was_ old with social circumventions and needed +to be fresh interpreted; these are the very heavenly gift and office +of illumination and leadership. Just as she had been made, and just +where she had been put,--a girl with the questions of woman-life +before her in these days of restless asking and uncertain +reply,--with her lot cast here, in this very crowding, fermenting, +aspiring, great New England metropolis, in the hour of its most +changeful and involved experience,--she brought the divine talisman +of her nature to bear upon the nearest, most practical point of the +wide tangle with which it came in contact. And around her in this +right place that she had found and taken, gathered and wrought +already, by effluence and influence, forces and results that gather +and work about any nucleus of life, however deep hidden it may be in +a surrounding deadness. All things,--creation itself,--as Asenath +had said, must begin in spots; and she and Bel Bree had begun a fair +new spot, in which was a vitality that tends to organic +completeness, to full establishment, and triumphant growth. + +Upon Bel herself reflected quickly and surely the beneficent action +of this life. She was taking in truly, at every pore. How long would +it have been before, out of the hard coarse limits in which her one +line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have +come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to +breathe and abide in? To help make also; to stand at its practical +mainspring, and keep it possible that it should move on. + +The talk, the ideas of the day, were in her ears; the books, the +periodicals of the day were at hand, and free for her to avail +herself of. The very fun at Mrs, Scherman's tea-table was the sort +of fun that can only sparkle out of culture. There was a grace that +her aptness caught, and that was making a lady of her. + +"I'll give in," said Elise Mokey, "that you're getting _style_; +though I can't tell how it is either. It ain't in your calico +dresses, nor the doing up of your hair." + +Perhaps it was a good deal in the very simplifying of these from the +exaggerated imitations of the shop and street, as well as in the +tone of all the rest with which these inevitably fell into harmony. + +But I want to tell you about Bel's kitchen Crambo. I want to show +you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows +itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the +quietest background of homely use. + +She brought out pencil and paper, and made Kate write question slips +and detached words. + +"I feel just tingling to try," she said. "There's a kind of dancing +in my head, of things that have been there ever so long. I believe I +shall make a poem to-night. It's catching, when you're predisposed; +and it's partly the spring weather, and the sap coming up. 'Put a +name to it,' Katie! Almost anything will set me off." + +Kate wrote, on half a dozen scraps; then tossed them up, and pushed +them over for Bel to draw. + +"How do you like the city in the spring?" was the question; and the +word, suggested by Kate's work at the moment, was,--"Hem." + +Bel put her elbows on the table, and her hands up against her ears. +Her eyes shone, as they rested intent upon the two penciled bits. +The link between them suggested itself quickly and faintly; she was +grasping at an elusive something with all the fine little quivering +brain-tentacles that lay hold of spiritual apprehension. + +Just at that moment the parlor bell rang. + +"I'll go," she said. "You keep to your sewing. It's for the nursery, +I guess, and I'll do my poem up there." + +She caught up pencil and paper, and the other fragment also,--Mrs. +Scherman's own rhyme about the "peaches." + +Mrs. Scherman met her at the parlor door. + +"I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said; "but the baby is stirring. +Could you, or Kate, go up and try to hush her off again? If I go, +she'll keep me." + +"I will," said Bel. "Here is that 'Crambo' you were talking of at +tea, Mrs. Scherman. I kept it. Kate picked it up with the scraps." + +"O, thank you! Why, Bel, how your face shines!" + +Bel hurried off, for Baby Karen "stirred" more emphatically at this +moment. Asenath went back into the parlor. + +"Here is that rhyme of mine, Frank, that you were asking for. Bel +found it in the dust-pan. I believe she's writing rhymes herself. +She tries out every idea she picks up among us. She had a pencil in +her hand, and her face was brimful of something. Mr. Stalworth, if +_I_ find anything in the dust-pan, I shall turn it over to you. +'First and Last' is bound to act up to its title, and transpose +itself freely, according to Scripture." + +"'First and Last' will receive, under either head, whatever you will +indorse, Mrs. Scherman,--and the last not least,"--returned the +benign and brilliant editor. + +Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that +small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences +precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if _she_ woke up +in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if +pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much +patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper +edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and +by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs +fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do; +little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant, +as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again. +She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least. + +Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a +baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to make +out her own necessity by constant "tending." + +Bel did not go down-stairs again. She could do better here than with +Kate sitting opposite, aware of all her scratches and poetical +predicaments. + +An hour went by. Bel was hardly equal yet to five-minute Crambo; and +besides, she was doing her best; trying to put something clearly +into syllables that said itself, unsyllabled, to her. + +She did not hear Mrs. Scherman when she came up the stairs. She had +just read over to herself the five completed stanzas of her poem. + +It had really come. It was as if a violet had been born to actual +bloom from the thought, the intangible vision of one. She wondered +at the phrasing, marveling how those particular words had come and +ranged themselves at her call. She did not know how she had done it, +or whether she herself had done it at all. She began almost to think +she must have read it before somewhere. Had she just picked it up +out of her memory? Was it a borrowing, a mimicry, a patchwork? + +But it was very pretty, very sweet! It told her own feelings over to +her, with more that she had not known she had felt or perceived. +She read it again from beginning to end in a whisper. Her mouth was +bright with a smile and her eyes with tears when she had ended. + +Asenath Scherman with her light step came in and stood beside her. + +"Won't you tell _me_?" the sweet, gracious voice demanded. + +Bel Bree looked up. + +"I thought I'd try, in fun," she said, "and it came in real +earnest." + +Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and +the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A +lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through +it. + +She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips. + +Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away, +up-stairs. + +"Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with +it?"--Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day. + +Bel blushed. She had been a little frightened in the morning to +think of what had happened over night. She could not quite recollect +all the words of her verses, and she wondered if they were really as +pretty as she had fancied in the moment of making them. + +All she could answer was that Mrs. Scherman was "very kind." + +"Then you'll trust me?" + +And Bel, wondering very much, but too shy to question, said she +would. + +A few days after that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had +rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up a note. + +"We were just in time with our little spring song," she said. +"_Blue_birds have to sing early; at least a month beforehand. See +here! Is this all right?" and she put into Bel's hand a little +roughish slip of paper, upon which was printed:-- + + "THE CITY IN SPRING. + + "It is not much that makes me glad: + I hold more than I ever had. + The empty hand may farther reach, + And small, sweet signs all beauty teach. + + "I like the city in the spring, + It has a hint of everything. + Down in the yard I like to see + The budding of that single tree. + + "The little sparrows on the shed; + The scrap of soft sky overhead; + The cat upon the sunny wall; + There's so much _meant_ among them all. + + "The dandelion in the cleft + A broken pavement may have left, + Is like the star that, still and sweet, + Shines where the house-tops almost meet. + + "I like a little; all the rest + Is somewhere; and our Lord knows best + How the whole robe hath grace for them + Who only touch the garment's hem." + +At the bottom, in small capitals, was the signature,--BEL +BREE. + +"I don't understand," said Bel, bewildered. "What is it? Who did +it?" + +"It is a proof," said Mrs. Scherman. "A proof-sheet. And here is +another kind of proof that came with it. Your spring song is going +into the May number of 'First and Last.'" + +Mrs. Scherman reached out a slip of paper, printed and filled in. + +It was a publisher's check for fifteen dollars. + +"You see I'm very unselfish, Bel," she said. "I'm going to work the +very way to lose you." + +Bel's eyes flashed up wide at her. + +The way to lose her! Why, nobody had ever got such a hold upon her +before! The printed verses and the money were wonderful surprises, +but they were not the surprise that had gone straight into her +heart, and dropped a grapple there. Mrs. Scherman had believed in +her; and she had _kissed_ her. Bel Bree would never forget that, +though she should live to sing songs of all the years. + +"When you can earn money like this, of course I cannot expect to +keep you in my kitchen," said Mrs. Scherman, answering her look. + +"I might never do it again in all my life," sensible Bel replied. +"And I hope you'll keep me somewhere. It wouldn't be any reason, I +think, because one little green leaf has budded out, for a plant to +say that it would not be kept growing in the ground any longer. I +couldn't go and set up a poem-factory, without a home and a living +for the poems to grow up out of. I'm pleased I can write!" she +exclaimed, brimming up suddenly with the pleasure she had but half +stopped to realize. "I _thought_ I could. But I know very well that +the best and brightest things I've ever thought have come into my +head over the ironing-board or the bread-making. Even at home. And +_here_,--why, Mrs. Scherman, it's _living_ in a poem here! And if +you can be in the very foundation part of such living, you're in the +realest place of all, I think. I don't believe poetry can be skimmed +off the top, till it has risen up from the bottom!" + +"But you _ought_ to come into my parlor, among my friends! People +would be glad to get you into their parlors, by and by, when you +have made the name you can make. I've no business to keep you down. +And you don't know yourself. You won't stay." + +"Just please wait and see," said Bel. "I haven't a great deal of +experience in going about in parlors; but I don't think I should +much like it,--_that_ way. I'd rather keep on being the woman that +made the name, than to run round airing it. I guess it would keep +better." + +"I see I can't advise you. I shouldn't dare to meddle with +inspirations. But I'm proud, and glad, Bel; and you're my friend! +The rest will all work out right, somehow." + +"Thank you, dear Mrs. Scherman," said Bel, her voice full of +feeling. "And--if you please--will you have the grouse broiled +to-day, or roasted with bread-sauce?" + +At that, the two young women laughed out, in each other's faces. + +Bel stopped first. + +"It isn't half so funny as it sounds," she said. "It's part of the +poetry; the rhyme's inside; it is to everything. We're human people: +that's the way we get it." + +And Bel went away, and stuffed the grouse, and grated her +bread-crumbs, and sang over her work,--not out loud with her lips, +but over and over to a merry measure in her mind,-- + + "Everything comes to its luck some day: + I've got chickens! What will folks say?" + +"I'm solving more than I set out to do," Sin Scherman said to her +husband. "Westover was nothing to it. I know one thing, though, that +I'll do next." + +"_One_ thing is reasonable," said Frank. "What is it?" + +"Take her to York with us, this summer. Row out on the river with +her. Sit on the rocks, and read and sew, and play with the children. +Show her the ocean. She never saw it in all her life." + +"How wonderful is 'one thing' in the mind of a woman! It is a +germ-cell, that holds all things." + +"Thank you, my dear. If I weren't helping you to soup, I'd get up +and make you a courtesy. But what a grand privilege it is for a man +to live with a woman, after he has found that out! And how cosmical +a woman feels herself when her capacity is recognized!" + +Mrs. Scherman has told her plan to Bel. Kate also has a plan for the +two summer months in which the household must be broken up. + +"I mean to see the mountains myself," she said, boldly. "I don't see +why I shouldn't go to the country. There are homes there that want +help, as well as here. I can get my living where the living goes. +That's just where it fays in, different from other work. Bel knows +places where I could get two dollars a week just for a little +helping round; or I could even afford to pay board, and buy a little +time for resting. I shall have clothes to make, and fix over. It +always took all I could earn, before, to keep me from hand to mouth. +I never saw six months' wages all together, in my life. I feel real +rich." + +"I will pay you half wages for the two months," said Mrs. Scherman, +"if you will come back to me in September. And next year, if we all +keep together, it will be your turn, if you like, to go with me." + +Kate feels the spring in her heart, knowing that she is to have a +piece of the summer. The horse-chestnut tree in the yard is not a +mockery to her. She has a property in every promise that its great +brown buds are making. + +"The pleasant weather used to be like the spring-suits," she said. +"Something making up for other people. Nothing to me, except more +work, with a little difference. Now, somewhere, the hills are +getting green for me! I'm one of the meek, that inherit the earth!" + +"You are earning a _whole_ living," Bel said, reverting to her +favorite and comprehensive conclusion. + +"And yet,--_somebody_ has got to run machines," said Kate. + +"But _all_ the bodies haven't. That is the mistake we have been +making. That keeps the pay low, and makes it horrid. There's a +_little_ more room now, where you and I were. Anyhow, we Yankee +girls have a right to our turn at the home-wheels. If we had been as +cute as we thought we were, we should have found it out before." + +Bel Bree has written half a dozen little poems at odd times, since +the rhyme that began her fortune. Mr. Stalworth says they are +stamped with her own name, every one; breezy, and freshly delicious. +For that very reason, of course, people will not believe, when they +see the name in print, that it is a real name. It is so much easier +to believe in little tricks of invention, than in things that simply +come to pass by a wonderful, beautiful determination, because they +belong so. They think the poem is a trick of invention, too. They +think that of almost everything that they see in print. Their +incredulity is marvelously credulous! There is no end to that which +mortals may contrive; but the limit is such a measurable one to that +which can really be! We slip our human leash so easily, and get +outside of all creation, and the "Divinity that shapes our ends," to +shape and to create, ourselves! + +For my part, the more stories I write out, the more I learn how, +even in fiction, things happen and take relation according to some +hidden reality; that we have only to stand by, and see the shiftings +and combinings, and with what care and honesty we may, to put them +down. + +If there is anything in this story that you cannot credit,--if you +cannot believe in such a relation, and such a friendship, and such a +mutual service, as Asenath Scherman's and Bel Bree's,--if you cannot +believe that Bel Bree may at this moment be ironing Mrs. Scherman's +damask table-cloths, and as the ivy leaf or morning-glory pattern +comes out under the polish, some beautiful thought in her takes line +and shade under the very rub of labor, and shows itself as it would +have done no other way, and that by and by it will shine on a +printed page, made substantive in words,--then, perhaps, you have +only not lived quite long--or deep--enough. There is a more real and +perfect architecture than any that has ever got worked out in stone, +or even sketched on paper. + +Neither Boston, nor the world, is "finished" yet. There may be many +a burning and rebuilding, first. Meanwhile, we will tell what we can +see. + +And that word sends me back to Bel herself, of whom this present +seeing and telling can read and recite no further. + +Are you dissatisfied to leave her here? Is it a pity, you think, +that the little glimmer of romance in Leicester Place meant nothing, +after all? There are blind turns in the labyrinth of life. Would you +have our Bel lost in a blind turn? + +The _right and the wrong_ settled it, as they settle all things. +The right and the wrong are the reins with which we are guided into +the very best, sooner or later; yes,--sooner _and_ later. If we will +go God's way, we shall have manifold more in this present world, and +in the world to come life everlasting. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP. + + +Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright went away to New York on the afternoon of +their marriage. + +Miss Euphrasia went up to Brickfields. Sylvie Argenter was to follow +her on Thursday. It had been settled that she should remain with +Desire, who, with her husband, would reach home on Saturday. + +It was a sweet, pleasant spring day, when Sylvie Argenter, with some +last boxes and packages, took the northward train for Tillington. + +She was going to a life of use and service. She was going into a +home; a home that not only made a fitting place for her in it, and +was perfect in itself, but that, with noble plan and enlargement, +found way to reach its safety and benediction, and the contagion of +its spirit, over souls that would turn toward it, come under its +rule, and receive from it, as their only shelter and salvation; over +a neighborhood that was to be a planting of Hope,--a heavenly +feudality. + +Sylvie's own dreams of a possible future for herself were only +purple lights upon a far horizon. + +It seemed a very great way off, any bringing to speech and result +the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret +strength and joy and hope of her girl's heart. + +She had a thought of Rodney Sherrett that she was sure she had a +right to. That was all she wanted, yet. Of course, Rodney was not +ready to marry; he was too young; he was not much older than she +was, and that was very young for a man. She did not even think about +it; she recognized the whole position without thinking. + +She remembered vividly the little way-station in Middlesex, where he +had bought the ferns, that day in last October; she thought of him +as the train ran slowly alongside the platform at East Keaton. She +wondered if he would not sometimes come up for a Sunday; to spend it +with his uncle and his Aunt Euphrasia. It was a secret gladness to +her that she was to be where he partly, and very affectionately, +belonged. She was sure she should see him, now and then. Her life +looked pleasant to her, its current setting alongside one current, +certainly, of his. + +She sat thinking how he had come up behind her that day in the +drawing-room car, and of all the happy nonsense they had begun to +talk, in such a hurry, together. She was lost in the imagination of +that old surprise, living it over again, remembering how it had +seemed when she suddenly knew that it was he who touched her +shoulder. Her thought of him was a backward thought, with a sense in +it of his presence just behind her again, perhaps, if she should +turn her head,--which she would not do, for all the world, to break +the spell,--when suddenly,--face to face,--through the car-window, +she awoke to his eyes and smile. + +"How did you know?" she asked, as he came in and took the seat +beside her. Then she blushed to think what she had taken for +granted. + +"I didn't," he answered; "except as a Yankee always knows things, +and a cat comes down upon her feet. I am taking a week's holiday, +and I began it two days sooner, that I might run up to see Aunt +Effie before I go down to Boston to meet my father. The steamer +will be due by Saturday. It is my first holiday since I went to +Arlesbury. I'm turning into a regular old Gradgrind, Miss Sylvie." + +Sylvie smiled at him, as if a regular old Gradgrind were just the +most beautiful and praiseworthy creature a bright, hearty young +fellow could turn into. + +"You'd better not encourage me," he said, shaking his head. "It +would be a dreadful thing if I should get sordid, you know. I'm not +apt to stop half way in anything; and I'm awfully in earnest now +about saving up money." + +He had to stop there. He was coming close to motives, and these he +could say nothing about. + +But a sudden stop, in speech as in music, is sometimes more +significant than any stricken note. + +Sylvie did not speak at once, either. She was thinking what +different reasons there might be, for spending or saving; how there +might be hardest self-denial in most uncalculating extravagance. + +When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,--"I +suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue +nor blame in just saving or not saving." + +"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he +thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm +very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out +of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever +planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a +foothold." + +"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely +place." + +"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise. + +"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter." + +"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice +and plucky about those little things, isn't there?" + +It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked +perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just +then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He +was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to +come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be +kept back, was here. + +He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he +speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he +wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it +through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what +he was keeping his probation for? + +So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them +only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing. + +After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so, +giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break +in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we +not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time? +Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in +them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of +whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us. +"This is my Body, broken for you." + +If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world +might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness. + +Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went +out to the end of the platform to find the boxes. Two vehicles had +been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon +for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself. + +Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled +upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to +the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her +and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive. + +Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air. How could +he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon +the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie. + +"Shall you be afraid of me?" he asked, as he tossed in his valise +for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie's shawl against the +back, to cushion her more comfortably. "Do you suppose we can manage +to get over there without running down a bake-shop?" + +"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt +your exploits to circumstances." + +Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown +country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as +perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then +flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to +a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the +water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the +bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the +descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she +did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She +was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving. + +The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and +beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering +and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths +and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of +song gushed forth. + +The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly +furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring +wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors +and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the +pasture bushes. + +The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind, +perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we +believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes. + +"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as +they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly +believe in these hills." + +Her own words reminded her. + +"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the +other world is only a little way out." + +"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you +know that." + +His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and +pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk. + +And he had dropped the prefix from her name. + +He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was +another little falling out that he could not help. The things he +could not help were the most comfortable. + +"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said +Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came +so tenderly! I had dreaded sickness and pain for her." + +"It has been all hard for you. I hope it will be easier now. I hope +it will always be easier." + +"I am going to live with Mrs. Kirkbright," said Sylvie. + +"Tell me about my new aunt," said Rodney. + +Sylvie was glad to go on about Desire, about the wedding, about +Hill-hope, and the plans for living there. + +"I think it will be almost like heaven," she said. "It will be home +and happiness; all that people look forward to for themselves. And +yet, right alongside, there will be the work and the help. It will +open right out into it, as heaven does into earth. Mr. Kirkbright is +a grand man." + +"Yes. He's one of the ten-talent people. But I suppose we can all do +something. It is good to have some little one-horse teams for the +light jobs." + +"I never could _be_ Desire," said Sylvie. "But I am glad, to work +with her. I am glad to live one of the little lives." + +There would always be a boy and girl simpleness between these two, +and in their taking of the world together. And that is good for the +world, as well. It cannot be all made of mountains. If all were high +and grand, it would be as if nothing were. Heaven itself is not +built like that. + +"There goes some of Uncle Christopher's stuff, I suppose," said +Rodney, a while afterward, as they came to the top of a long ascent. +He pointed to a great loaded wain that stood with its three powerful +horses on the crest of a forward hill. It was piled high up with +tiling and drain-pipe, packed with straw. The long cylinders showed +their round mouths behind, like the mouths of cannon. + +"A nice cargo for these hills, I should think." + +"They have brakes on the wheels, of course," said Sylvie. "And the +horses are strong. That must be for the new houses. They will soon +make all those things here. Mr. Kirkbright has large contracts for +brick, already. He has been sending down specimens. They say the +clay is of remarkably fine quality." + +"We shall have to get by that thing, presently," said Rodney. "I +hope the horse will take it well." + +"Are you trying to frighten me?" asked Sylvie, smiling. "I'm used to +these roads. I have spent half a summer here, you know." + +But Rodney knew that it was the "being used" that would be the +question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had +ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a +steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered +the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side +spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not +more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was dropping +behind the hills. + +"I shall take you out, and lead him by," he said. "I've no wish to +give you another spill. We won't go on through life in that way." + +It was quite as well that they had only another mile to go. Rodney +was keeping his promise, but the thread of it was wearing very thin. + +They rode slowly up the opposite slope, then waited, in their turn, +on the top, to give the team time to reach the next level. + +They heard it creak and grind as it wore heavily down, taking up +the whole track with careful zigzag tackings; they could see, as it +turned, how the pole stood sharp up between the shoulders of the +straining wheel horses, as their haunches pressed out either way, +and their backs hollowed, and their noses came together, and the +driver touched them dexterously right and left upon their flanks to +bring them in again. + +"Uncle Kit has a good teamster there," said Rodney. + +Just against the foot of the next rise, they overtook him. The gray +nag that Rodney drove pricked his ears and stretched his head up, +and began to take short, cringing steps, as they drew near the +formidable, moving mass. + +Rodney jumped out, and keeping eye and hand upon him, helped down +Sylvie also. Then he threw the long reins over his arm, and took the +horse by the bridle. + +The animal made a half parenthesis of himself, curving skittishly, +and watching jealously, as he went by the frightsome pile. + +"You see it was as well not to risk it," Rodney said, as Sylvie came +up with him beyond. "He would have had us down there among the +blackberry vines. He's all right now. Will you get in?" + +"Let us walk on to the top," said Sylvie. "It is so pleasant to feel +one's feet upon the ground." + +They kept on, accordingly; the slow team rumbling behind them. At +the top, was a wide, beautiful level; oak-trees and maples grew +along the roadside, and fields stretched out along a table land to +right and left. Before them, lying in the golden mist of twilight, +was a sea of distant hill-tops,--purple and shadow-black and gray. +The sky bent down its tender, mellow sphere, and touched them +softly. + +Sylvie stood still, with folded hands, and Rodney stopped the +horse. A rod or two back, just at the edge of the level, the loaded +wagon had stopped also. + +"Hills,--and the sunset,--and stillness," said Sylvie. "They always +seem like heaven." + +Rodney stood with his right hand, from which fell the looped reins, +reached up and resting on the saddle. + +"I never saw a sight like that before," he said. + +While they looked, the evening star trembled out through the clear +saffron, above the floating mist that hung among the hills. + +"O, they never can help it!" exclaimed Sylvie, suddenly. + +"Help it? Who?" asked Rodney, wondering. + +"Beginning again. Growing good. Those people who are coming up to +Hill-hope. There's a man coming, with his wife; a young man, who got +into bad ways, and took to drinking. Mr. Vireo has been watching and +advising him so long! He married them, five years ago, and they have +two little children. The wife is delicate; she has worried through +everything. She has taken in working-men's washing, to earn the +rent; and he had a good trade, too; he was a plasterer. He has +really tried; but it was no use in the city; it was all around him. +And he lost character and chances; the bosses wouldn't have him, he +said. When he was trying most, sometimes, they wouldn't believe in +him; and then there would come idle days, and he would meet old +companions, and get led off, and then there would be weeks of +misery. Now he is coming away from it all. There is a little cottage +ready, with a garden; the little wife is so happy! He _can't_ get it +here; and he will have work at his trade, and will learn +brickmaking. Do you know, I think a place like this, where such +work is doing, is almost better than heaven, where it is all done, +Rodney!" + +She spoke his name, as he had hers a little while ago, without +thinking. He turned his face toward her with a look which kindled +into sudden light at that last word, but which had warmed all +through before with the generous pathos of what she told him, and +the earnest, simple way of it. + +"I've found out that even in our own affairs, _making_ is better +than ready-made," he said. "This last year has been the best year of +my life. If my father had given me fifty thousand dollars, and told +me I might--have all my own way with it,--I shouldn't have thanked +him as much to-day, as I do. But I wish that steamer were in, and he +were here! He has got something which belongs to me, and I want him +to give it back." + +After enunciating this little riddle, Rodney changed hands with his +reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching his other to +Sylvie. + +"You had better jump in," he said; and there was a tone and an +inflection at the pause, as if another word, that would have been +tenderly spoken, hung refrained upon it. "We must get well ahead of +that old catapult." + +They drove on rapidly along the level; then they came to the long, +gradual slope that brought them down into Brickfields. + +To the right, just before reaching the Basin, a turn struck off that +skirted round, partly ascending again until it fell into the Cone +Hill road and so led direct to Hill-hope. + +They could see the buildings, grouped picturesquely against rocks +and pines and down against the root of the green hill. They had all +been painted of a light gray or slate color, with red roofs. + +They passed on, down into the shadows, where trees were thick and +dark. A damp, rich smell of the woods was about them,--a different +atmosphere from the breath of the hill-top. They heard the tinkle of +little unseen streams, and the far-off, foaming plunge of the +cascades. + +Suddenly, there came a sound behind them like the rush of an +avalanche; a noise that seemed to fill up all the space of the air, +and to gather itself down toward them on every side alike. + +"O, Rodney, turn!" cried Sylvie. + +But there was a horrible second in which he could not know how to +turn. + +He did not stop to look, even. He sprang, with one leap, he knew not +how,--over step or dasher,--to the horse's head. He seized him by +the bridle, and pulled him off the road, into a thicket of +bush-branches, in a hollow rough with stones. + +The wheels caught fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to +rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant of the +half-overturned vehicle. + +There was only a single instant. Down, with the awful roar of an +earthquake, came crashing swift and headlong, passing within a +hand's breadth of their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team; +its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads, +haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant +more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that +made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more +suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly +up into the air, and showed dimly in the dusky light. + +The gray horse quieted, cowed by the very terror and the hush. +Sylvie slipped down from the tilting buggy, and found her feet upon +a stone. + +Rodney reached out one hand, and she came to his side. He put his +arm around her, and drew her close. + +"My darling little Sylvie!" he said. + +She turned her face, and leaned it down upon his shoulder. + +"O, Rodney, the poor man is killed!" + +But as they stood so, a figure came toward them, over the high +water-bar below which they had stopped. + +"For God's sake, is anybody hurt?" asked a strange, hoarse voice +with a tremble in it. + +"Nobody!" + +"O, are you the driver? I thought you must be killed! How +thankful!"--And Sylvie sobbed on Rodney's shoulder. + +"Can I help you?" asked the man. + +"No, look after your horses." And the man went on, down into the +dust, where the wreck was. + +"We'll go, and send help to you," shouted Rodney. + +Then he backed the gray horse carefully out upon the road again. + +"Will you dare get in?" he asked of Sylvie. + +"I do not think we had better. How can we tell how it is down there? +We may not be able to pass." + +"It is below the turn, I think. But come,--we'll walk." + +He took the bridle again, and gave his other hand to Sylvie. Holding +each other so, they went along. + +When they came to the turn, they could see, just beyond the mass of +ruin; the great wagon, three wheels in the air,--one rolled away +into the ditch; the broken freight, flung all across the road, and +lying piled about the wagon. One horse was dead,--buried underneath. +Another lay motionless, making horrid moans. The teamster was +freeing the third--the leader, which stood safe--from chains and +harness. + +Leading him, the man came up with Rodney and Sylvie, as they turned +into the side road. + +"I knew you were just ahead, when it happened. I thought you were +gone for certain." + +"There was a Mercy over us all!" said Sylvie, with sweet, tremulous +intenseness. + +The rough man lifted his hand to his bare head. Rodney clasped +tighter the little fingers that lay within his own. + +"What did happen?" he asked. + +"The brake-rod broke; the pole-strap gave way; it was all in a heap +in a minute. I saw it was no use; I had to jump. And then I thought +of you. I'm glad you saw me, sir. You know I was sober." + +"I know you were sober, and managing most skillfully. I had been +saying that." + +"Thank you, sir. It's an awful job." + +"Hark!" said Sylvie. "There's the man with the trunks." + +"I forgot all about him," said Rodney. + +"That's a fact," said the teamster. "Turn down here, to let him by. +Hallo!" + +"Hallo! Come to grief?" + +"We just have, then. Go ahead, will you, and bring back--_something +to shoot with_," he added, in a lower tone, and coming +close,--remembering Sylvie. "I had a crow-bar, but it's lost in the +jumble. I'll stay here, now." + +The wagon drove by, rapidly. The man led his horse down by the wall, +to wait there. Sylvie and Rodney, hand in hand, walked on. + +Sylvie shivered with the horrible excitement; her teeth chattered; a +nervous trembling was taking hold of her. + +Rodney put his arm round her again. "Don't tremble, dear," he said. + +"O, Rodney! What were we kept alive for?" + +"For each other," whispered Rodney. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +HILL-HOPE. + + +They were sitting together, the next day, on the rock below the +cascade, in the warm sunshine. + +Aunt Euphrasia knew all about it; Aunt Euphrasia had let them go +down there together. She was as content as Rodney in the thing that +could not now be helped. + +"I've broken my promise," said Rodney to Sylvie. "I agreed with my +father that I wouldn't be engaged for two years." + +"Why, we aren't engaged,--yet,--are we?" asked Sylvie, with +bewitching surprise. + +"I don't know," said Rodney, his old, merry, mischievous twinkle +coming in the corners of his eyes, as he flashed them up at her. "I +think we've got the refusal of each other!" + +"Well. We'll keep it so. We'll wait. You shall not break any promise +for me," said Sylvie, still sweetly obtuse. + +"I'm satisfied with that way of looking at it," said Rodney, +laughing out. "Unless--you mean to be as cunning about everything +else, Sylvie. In that case, I don't know; I'm afraid you'd be +dangerous." + +"I wonder if I'm always going to be dangerous to you," said Sylvie, +gravely, taking up the word. "I always get you into an accident." + +"When we take matters quietly, the way they were meant to go, we +shall leave off being hustled, I suppose," said Rodney, just as +gravely. "There has certainly been intent in the way we have +been--thrown together!" + +"I don't believe you ought to say such things, Rodney,--yet! You are +talking just as if"-- + +"We weren't waiting. O, yes! I'm glad you invented that little +temporary arrangement. But it's a difficult one to carry out. I +shall be gladder when my father comes. I'm tired of being +Casabianca. I don't see how we can talk at all. Mayn't I tell you +about a little house there is at Arlesbury, with a square porch and +a three-windowed room over it, where anybody could sit and +sew--among plants and things--and see all up and down the road, to +and from the mills? A little brown house, with turf up to the +door-stone, and only a hundred dollars a year? Mayn't I tell you how +much I've saved up, and how I like being a real working man with a +salary, just as you liked being one of the Other Girls?" + +"Yes; you may tell me that; that last," said Sylvie, softly. "You +may tell me anything you like about yourself." + +"Then I must tell you that I never should have been good for +anything if it hadn't been for you." + +"O, dear!" said Sylvie. "I don't see how we _can_ talk. It keeps +coming back again. I've had all those plants kept safe that you sent +me, Rodney," she began, briskly, upon a fresh tack. + +"Those very ivies? Ah, the little three-windowed room!" + +"Rodney! I didn't think you were so unprincipled!" said Sylvie, +getting up. "I wouldn't have come down here, if I had known there +was a promise! I shall certainly help you keep it. I shall go away." + +She turned round, and met a gentleman coming down along the slope of +the smooth, broad rock. + +"Mr. Sherrett!--Rodney!" + +Rodney sprang to his feet. + +"My boy! How are you?" + +"Father! When--how--did you come?" + +"I came to Tillington by the late train last night, and have just +driven over. I went to Arlesbury yesterday." + +"But the steamer! She wasn't due till Sunday. You sailed the +_ninth_?" + +"No. I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London. +I came by the Palmyra. But you don't let me speak to Sylvie." + +He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken +her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney's. + +"Father, I've broken my promise; but I don't think anybody could +have helped it. You couldn't have helped it yourself." + +"I've seen Aunt Euphrasia. I've been here almost an hour. I have +thanked God that nothing is broken _but_ the promise, Rodney; and I +think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been +so faithfully kept. I'm satisfied with _one_ year. I believe all the +rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little +lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word." + +And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking +softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead. + +Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look +upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear, +earnest expression. + +"I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,--I hope you feel sure,"--she said, +"that I wouldn't have been engaged to Rodney while there was a +promise?" + +"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett, +smiling. + +"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then +they all three laughed together. + + * * * * * + +I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in +these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the +twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in. + +That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr. +Dakie Thayne. + +He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him +close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had +obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his +knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result +had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the +railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of +five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek +payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter. + +Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to +investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I +am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part +of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a +horse-shoe! + +If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know +what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it +had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little +section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be +made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said +to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks. + +"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I +came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good +with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take. +I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into +the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and +wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single +bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people +who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are +obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who +are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a +mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people. +I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr. +John Westlock!" + +So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out +and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good +luck in the way for people to stumble upon,--and to act the part +generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing +than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge +at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed +themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe, +to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables +were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie +Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is +undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think +Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand +dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie +Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he +brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as +money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not. + +Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and +Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning. + +There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out +upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its +greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter. + +Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the +day; the Prayer, that God "who had given his only Son to die for our +sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so +to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might +always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the Assurance of "the +victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of +God," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that +"the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"--in our +redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came +back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be +unto you," _showing them his hands and his side_. + +He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God +for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where +their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel +it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it +to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that +the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his +peace upon us; because _He suffers_ till we are at peace. That so +his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering, +and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in +one, that if we receive the one,--if we bear the pain with which He +touches us,--we shall also receive the other. + +"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of +your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done +nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in +the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his +resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of +sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God, +through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" + +Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on +her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her. +Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men +and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their +Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast, +wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and +blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the +scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew. + +They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to +remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender +color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy. +There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen +with the heavenliest things that are seen. + +Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling +of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer +pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first. + +After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper +gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and +whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook +upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes +already established, and the buildings that were making ready for +more. + +Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to +accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over +there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the +spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that +left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad. + +"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two +hundred acres," he said. + +"And for the home,--you must make that large and beautiful, Desire! +We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to +bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us, +close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us; +there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other +and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let +_him_ call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name +for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to +make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent +delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so +for _your_ sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,--content, in ways +that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in." + +"_Is_ not your Desire satisfied?" + +"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very +Desire of my heart has come to me!" + +Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and +finished their talk together,--this April number of it, I +mean,--about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and +the grass plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the +mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with +her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the +ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at +Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the +Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the +porch room! + +"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall +ever want to spend for anything!" + +"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to +grow proud and snobbish." + +"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the +riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. 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D. T. Whitney +</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[*/ + <!-- + body { margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + p { text-indent: 1.5em; + margin-top: .75em; + font-size: 100%; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { text-align: center; } + h1, h3 { margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em; } + + hr { width: 20%; } + hr.long { width: 75%; } + hr.full { width: 100%; } + .center {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; } + .sc {font-variant: small-caps;} + .bquote {margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 5%; } + .noindent {text-indent: 0; } + .ar {margin-right: 8%; text-align: right; margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: .5em; } + .pub {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; margin-top: 4em; + margin-bottom: 2em; font-size: 90%; } + .pub2 {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; font-size: 90%; } + .toc {text-align: center; text-indent: 0; margin-top: 0; + margin-bottom: .25em; font-size: 90%; } + .bks {text-indent: -2em; margin-right: 20%; margin-left: 20%; + margin-top: 0; margin-bottom: 0; font-size: 90%; } + + .poem { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 10%; margin-bottom: 1em; text-align: left; } + .poem .stanza { margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; } + .poem p { margin: 0; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em; } + .poem p.ih {margin-left: -.5em; } + .poem p.i2 { margin-left: 1em; } + .poem p.i4 { margin-left: 2em; } + .poem p.i6 { margin-left: 3em; } + .poem p.i8 { margin-left: 4em; } + .poem p.i20 { margin-left: 10em; } + +/*]]>*/ + // --> +</style> +</head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Other Girls + +Author: Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney + +Release Date: July 19, 2005 [EBook #16329] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OTHER GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<div style="height: 8em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> +<hr class="long" /> +<h1> + THE OTHER GIRLS +</h1> +<h4> +BY +</h4> +<h2><span class="sc">Mrs.</span> A. D. T. WHITNEY +</h2> +<p class="pub"> + BOSTON AND NEW YORK<br /> + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY<br /> + The Riverside Press, Cambridge<br /> + 1893 +</p> + +<hr class="long" /> + +<p class="center"> + Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by<br /> + +<span class="sc">James R. Osgood and Company</span>,<br /> +in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. +</p> +<hr class="long" /> + + <h4> By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.</h4> + + +<p class="bks"> +WRITINGS. New Edition, from new plates. The set, 17 vols. 16mo, $21.25. +</p> +<p class="bks"> +FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 16mo, $1.25. +</p> +<p class="bks">HITHERTO: A Story of Yesterdays. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">PATIENCE STRONG'S OUTINGS. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">THE GAYWORTHYS. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">A SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE'S LIFE. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">WE GIRLS: A Home Story. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">REAL FOLKS. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">THE OTHER GIRLS. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50.</p> +<p class="bks">ODD, OR EVEN? 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">BONNYBOROUGH. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">BOYS AT CHEQUASSET. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN FOLKS. Enlarged Edition. Illustrated by <span class="sc">Hoppin</span>. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">HOMESPUN YARNS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">ASCUTNEY STREET. A Neighborhood Story. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">A GOLDEN GOSSIP. Neighborhood Story Number Two. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">DAFFODILS. Poems. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">PANSIES. Poems. New Edition. 16mo, $1.25.</p> +<p class="bks">HOLY-TIDES. Seven Songs for the Church's Seasons. 16mo, illuminated paper, 75 cents.</p> +<p class="bks">BIRD-TALK. New Poems. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, $1.00.</p> +<p class="bks">JUST HOW: A Key to the Cook-Books. 16mo, $1.00.</p> + + <p class="pub2">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO.<br /> + <span class="sc">Boston and New York</span>.</p> + + + +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="2H_PREF"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h3> + PREFACE. +</h3> +<p> +"Wait until you are helped, my dear! Don't touch the pie until it is +cut!" +</p> +<p> +The old Mother, Life, keeps saying that to us all. +</p> +<p> +As individuals, it is well for us to remember it; that we may not +have things until we are helped; at any rate, until the full and +proper time comes, for courageously and with right assurance helping +ourselves. +</p> +<p> +Yet it is good for <i>people</i>, as people, to get a morsel—a +flavor—in advance. It is well that they should be impatient for the +King's supper, to which we shall all sit down, if we will, one day. +</p> +<p> +So I have not waited for everything to happen and become a usage, +that I have told you of in this little story. I confess that there +are good things in it which have not yet, literally, come to pass. I +have picked something out of the pie beforehand. +</p> +<p> +I meant, therefore, to have laid all dates aside; especially as I +found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these +"Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately, +known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or +experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem +to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs +could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be +remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential +Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all +have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have +not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the +prophecies be justified as speedily as the prochronisms will. +</p> +<p> +The Great Fire, you see, came in and dated it. I could not help +that; neither could I leave the great fact out. +</p> +<p> +Not any more could I possibly tell what sort of April days we should +have, when I found myself fixed to the very coming April and Easter, +for the closing chapters of my tale. If persistent snow-storms fling +a falsehood in my face, it will be what I have not heretofore +believed possible,—a <i>white</i> one; and we can all think of balmy +Aprils that have been, and that are yet to be. +</p> +<p> +With these appeals for trifling allowance,—leaving the larger need +to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no +slight fiction can adequately handle,—I give you leave to turn the +page. +</p> + <p class="ar"> A. D. T. W.</p> +<p class="noindent">BOSTON, <i>March</i>, 1873.</p> + + + +<hr class="long" /> + + +<h3>CONTENTS.</h3> + +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0001"> +I. <span class="sc">Spilled Out</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0002"> +II. <span class="sc">Up-stairs</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0003"> +III. <span class="sc">Two Trips in the Train</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0004"> +IV. <span class="sc">Ninety-nine Fahrenheit</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0005"> +V. <span class="sc">Spilled out again</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0006"> +VI. <span class="sc">A Long Chapter of a Whole Year</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0007"> +VII. <span class="sc">Bel and Bartholomew</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0008"> +VIII. <span class="sc">To help: somewhere</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0009"> +IX. <span class="sc">Inheritance</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0010"> +X. <span class="sc">Fillmer and Bylles</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0011"> +XI. <span class="sc">Christofero</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0012"> +XII. <span class="sc">Letters and Links</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0013"> +XIII. <span class="sc">Rachel Froke's Trouble</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0014"> +XIV. <span class="sc">Mavis Place Chapel</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0015"> +XV. <span class="sc">Bonny Bowls</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0016"> +XVI. <span class="sc">Recompense</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0017"> +XVII. <span class="sc">Errands of Hope</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0018"> +XVIII. <span class="sc">Brickfield Farms</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0019"> +XIX. <span class="sc">Blossoming Ferns</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0020"> +XX. "<span class="sc">Wanted</span>" +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0021"> +XXI. <span class="sc">Voices and Visions</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0022"> +XXII. <span class="sc">Box Fifty-two</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0023"> +XXIII. <span class="sc">Evening and Morning: The Second Day</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0024"> +XXIV. <span class="sc">Temptation</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0025"> +XXV. <span class="sc">Bel Bree's Crusade: The Preaching</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0026"> +XXVI. <span class="sc">Trouble at the Schermans'</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0027"> +XXVII. <span class="sc">Bel Bree's Crusade: The Taking of Jerusalem</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0028"> +XXVIII. "<span class="sc">Living In</span>" +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0029"> +XXIX. <span class="sc">Wintergreen</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0030"> +XXX. <span class="sc">Neighbor Street and Graves Alley</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0031"> +XXXI. <span class="sc">Chosen: and called</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0032"> +XXXII. <span class="sc">Easter Lilies</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0033"> +XXXIII. <span class="sc">Kitchen Crambo</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0034"> +XXXIV. <span class="sc">What Nobody could help</span> +</a></p> +<p class="toc"><a href="#2HCH0035"> +XXXV. <span class="sc">Hill-Hope</span> +</a></p> + + + + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<hr class="long" /> +<h3> + THE OTHER GIRLS +</h3> +<hr class="long" /> +<a name="2HCH0001"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER I. +</h2> +<h3> + SPILLED OUT. +</h3> +<p> +Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little +basket-phæton. +</p> +<p> +There was a story about this little basket-phæton, a story, and a +bit of domestic diplomacy. +</p> +<p> +The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right +here in this first page, let it do. It would tell—taking the little +carriage for a text and key—ever so much about aims and ways and +principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the +busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great +universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things, +as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and +atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet. +</p> +<p> +But the diplomacy had been this:— +</p> +<p> +"There is one thing, Argie, I should really like Sylvie to have. It +is getting to be almost a necessity, living out of town as we do." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Argenter's other names were "Increase Muchmore;" but his wife +passed over all that, and called him in the grace of conjugal +intimacy, "Argie." +</p> +<p> +Increase Muchmore Argenter. +</p> +<p> +A curious combination; but you need not say it could not have +happened. I have read half a dozen as funny combinations in a single +advertising page of a newspaper, or in a single transit of the city +in a horse-car. +</p> +<p> +It did not happen altogether without a purpose, either. Mr. +Argenter's father had been fond of money; had made and saved a +considerable sum himself; and always meant that his son should make +and save a good deal more. So he signified this in his cradle and +gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the +elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been +named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain +Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or +because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like +original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the +later christening, if you can call it such; and now, therefore, +resulted Increase Muchmore Argenter. The father hung, as it were, a +charm around his son's neck, as Catholics do, giving saints' names +to their children. But young Increase found it, in his earlier +years, rather of the nature of a millstone. It was a good while, for +instance, before Miss Maria Thorndike could make up her mind to take +upon herself such a title. She did not much mind it now. "I.M. +Argenter" was such a good signature at the bottom of a check; and +the surname was quite musical and elegant. "Mrs. Argenter" was all +she had put upon her cards. There was no other Mrs. Argenter to be +confounded with. The name stood by itself in the Directory. All the +rest of the Argenters were away down in Maine in Poggowantimoc. +</p> +<p> +"Living out of town as we do." Mrs. Argenter always put that in. It +was the nut that fastened all her screws of argument. +</p> +<p> +"Away out here as we are, we <i>must</i> keep an expert cook, you know; +we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an +emergency, as we did in town." "We <i>must</i> have a seamstress in the +house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile +circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,—"Sylvie <i>ought</i> to have a +little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends; +no running in and out and making little daily plans, as girls do in +a neighborhood. All the girls of her class have their own +pony-chaises now; it is a part of the plan of living." +</p> +<p> +"It isn't any part of <i>my</i> plan," said Mr. Argenter, who had his +little spasms of returning to old-fashioned ideas he was brought up +in, but had long ago practically deserted; and these spasms mostly +took him, it must be said, in response to new propositions of Mrs. +Argenter's. His own plans evolved gradually; he came to them by +imperceptible steps of mental process, or outward constraint; Mrs. +Argenter's "jumped" at him, took him at unawares, and by sudden +impinging upon solid shield of permanent judgment struck out sparks +of opposition. She could not very well help that. He never had time +to share her little experiences, and interests, and perplexities, +and so sympathize with her as she went along, and up to the agreeing +and consenting point. +</p> +<p> +"I won't set her up with any such absurdities," said Mr. Argenter. +"It's confounded ruinous shoddy nonsense. Makes little fools of them +all. Sylvie's got airs enough now. It won't do for her to think she +can have everything the Highfords do." +</p> +<p> +"It isn't that," said Mrs. Argenter, sweetly. Her position, and the +soft "g" in her name, giving her a sense of something elegant and +gentle-bred to be always sustained and acted up to, had really +helped and strengthened Mrs. Argenter in very much of her +established amiability. We don't know, always, where our ties and +braces really are. We are graciously allowed many a little temporary +stay whose hold cannot be quite directly raced to the everlasting +foundations. +</p> +<p> +"It isn't <i>that</i>; I don't care for the Highfords, particularly. +Though I do like to have Sylvie enjoy things as she sees them +enjoyed all around her, in her own circle. But it's the convenience; +and then, it's a real means of showing kindness. She can so often +ask other girls, you know, to drive with her; girls who haven't +pony-chaises." +</p> +<p> +"<i>Showing</i> kindness, yes; you've just hit it there. But it isn't +always <i>fun to the frogs</i>, Mrs. A.!" +</p> +<p> +Now if Mrs. Argenter disliked one thing more than another, that her +husband ever did, it was his calling her "Mrs. A.;" and I am very +much afraid, I was going to say, that he knew it; but of course he +did when she had mildly told him so, over and over,—I am afraid he +<i>recollected</i> it, at this very moment, and others similar. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Argenter," she said, with some +quiet coldness. +</p> +<p> +"I mean, I know how she takes <i>other</i> girls to ride; she <i>sets them +down at the small gray house,—the house without any piazza or bay +window, Michael</i>!" and Mr. Argenter laughed. That was the order he +had heard Sylvie give one day when he had come up with his own +carriage at the post-office in the village, whither he had walked +over for exercise and the evening papers. Sylvie had Aggie Townsend +with her, and she put her head out at the window on one side just as +her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very +elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid. +Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed +off, but he had kept up the joke. +</p> +<p> +"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie +will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady, +there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having +things." +</p> +<p> +"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr. +Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a +kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top +buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases." +</p> +<p> +And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended—or had better end—the +conversation. +</p> +<p> +For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise, +after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer +weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend +days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent +continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began +again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of +it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages. +Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just +when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr. +Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now +being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little +low phæton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's +mother was always lending it to her. +</p> +<p> +So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over +to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by +Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves +of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken, +politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some +small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever +the former had the basket-phæton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken +demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little +comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about +so easily with a pony-carriage. +</p> +<p> +But there was something else to be accomplished this time that +Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with +some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the +Ingraham brown bread. +</p> +<p> +Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his +tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red +Squirrel, to make out the team; for which, if he should come to any +grief, Rodgers, the coachman, would have to bear responsibility for +being persuaded to let Duke out in such manner. +</p> +<p> +Just as Sylvie Argenter drew up her pony at the baker's door, Rod +Sherrett came spinning round the corner in grand style. But Duke was +not used to tandem harness, and Red Squirrel, put ahead, took flying +side-leaps now and then on his own account; and Duke, between his +comrade's escapades and his driver's checks and admonitions, was to +that degree perplexed in his mind and excited off his well-bred +balance, that he was by this time becoming scarcely more reliable in +the shafts. Rod found he had his hands full. He found this out, +however, only just in time to realize it, as they were suddenly +relieved and emptied of their charge; for, before his call and the +touch of his long whip could bring back Red Squirrel into line at +this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the +"trap" down upon the little phæton. There was a lock and a crash; a +wheel was off the phæton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie +Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the +threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road, +a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering +away through the scared Corner Village, with the wreck at their +heels. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie's arm was bruised, and her dress torn; that was all. She felt +a little jarred and dizzy at first, when Mr. Ingraham lifted her up, +and Rodney Sherrett, picking himself out of the dust with a shake +and a stamp, found his own bones unbroken, and hurried over to ask +anxiously—for he was a kind-hearted fellow—how much harm he had +done, and to express his vehement regret at the "horrid spill." +</p> +<p> +Rod Sherrett and Sylvie Argenter had danced together at the Roxeter +Assemblies, and the little Dorbury "Germans;" they had boated, and +picknicked, and skated in company, but to be tumbled together into a +baker's shop, torn and frightened, and dusty,—each feeling, also, +in a great scrape,—this was an odd and startling partnership. +Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to +dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never +intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his +hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and +looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply, +they both laughed. Then Rodney shrugged his shoulders, and walked +over and picked up his hat. +</p> +<p> +"It might have been worse," he said, coming back, as Mr. Ingraham +and the man who had held Sylvie's pony took the latter out of the +shafts and led him to a post to fasten him, and then proceeded +together, as well as they could, to lift the disabled phæton and +roll it over to the blacksmith's shop to be set right. +</p> +<p> +"You'll be all straight directly," he said, "and I'm only thankful +you're not much hurt. But I <i>am</i> in a mess. Whew! What the old +gentleman will say if Duke don't come out of it comfortable, is +something I'd rather not look ahead to. I must go on and see. I'll +be back again, and if there's anything—anything <i>more</i>," he added +with a droll twinkle, "that I can do for you, I shall be happy, and +will try to do it a little better." +</p> +<p> +The feminine Ingrahams were all around Sylvie by this time: Mrs. +Ingraham, and Ray, and Dot. They bemoaned and exclaimed, and were +"thankful she'd come off as she had;" and "she'd better step right +in and come up-stairs." The village boys were crowding round,—all +those who had not been in time to run after the "smash,"—and Sylvie +gladly withdrew to the offered shelter. Rod Sherrett gave his hair a +toss or two with his hands, struck the dust off his wide-awake, put +it on, and walked off down the hill, through the staring and +admiring crowd. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0002"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER II. +</h2> +<h3> + UP-STAIRS. +</h3> +<p> +The two Ingraham girls had been sitting in their own room over the +shop when the accident occurred, and it was there they now took +Sylvie Argenter, to have her dress tacked together again, and to +wash her face and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham +came bustling after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were +all very delighted and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's +daughter quite to themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait +upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good +deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although +baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, +born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and +universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of +society out of the Roxeter town library. +</p> +<p> +There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and +re-arranging were all done. The axle of the phæton had been split, +and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for +Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned, +dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window, +and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much. +</p> +<p> +She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere +before. She didn't know—as we don't about the moon—whether there +might <i>be</i> atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here +she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a +bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually <i>did</i> live, much +after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a +worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the +windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint +rocker in the other,—with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of +dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,—white quilted +covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted +foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end +of the bed. +</p> +<p> +She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner +but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,—only she never +really supposed about it,—some sort of places, behind and above it, +under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they +weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never +exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses +that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off +down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both +hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup +of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,—the latter <i>not</i> out +of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor +cupboard,—she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and +plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn, +bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips +without distaste or harm. +</p> +<p> +"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham. +</p> +<p> +The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a +silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie +thought she must mean <i>before</i> her start, about which she was +growing anxious. +</p> +<p> +"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed. +"I wonder if the phæton will be ready soon?" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll +be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite +concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess +you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them +fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames." +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread +edging,—of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned +together in a white ball upon her lap,—while Sylvie sipped her tea. +</p> +<p> +The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the +front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around +with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the +street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green, +swaying limbs,—the same here in the village as out in free field or +forest,—the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less +impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a +wheel, or get a horse shod. +</p> +<p> +"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out +involuntarily. +</p> +<p> +Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose it is,—almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got +turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never +seemed the same again." +</p> +<p> +If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been +reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the +house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a +good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk +vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as +delicately as she did. +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,—for that was her name, and her sister's +was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming, +pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most +elegant intention,—was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed, +quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell +off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth, +neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot +was different: she was dark too, not <i>so</i> dark; her eyes were full, +brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and +comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was +large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of, +like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her +mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to +perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate +about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness, and +every-day-ness too. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie sat silent after this, and looked at her, wondering, more +than she had wondered about the furniture. Thinking, "how many girls +there were in the world! All sorts—everywhere! What did they all +do, and find to care for?" These were not the "other" girls of whom +her mother had blandly said that she could show kindnesses by taking +them to drive. Those were such as Aggie Townsend, the navy captain's +widow's daughter,—nice, but poor; girls whom everybody noticed, of +course, but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That +made such a difference! These were <i>otherer</i> yet! And for all that +they were girls,—girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and +companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story, +is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls! +Heaven only knows what there is <i>not</i> represented, and suggested, +and foreshadowed there! +</p> +<p> +Sylvie Argenter, with all her nonsense, had a way of putting +herself, imaginatively, into other people's places. She used to tell +her mother, when she was a little child and said her hymns,—which +Mrs. Argenter, not having any very fresh, instant spiritual life, I +am afraid, out of which to feed her child, chose for her in dim +remembrance of what had been thought good for herself when she was +little,—that she "didn't know exactly as she <i>did</i> 'thank the +goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled.'" She "should +like pretty well to have been a little—Lapland girl with a sledge; +or—a Chinese; or—a kitchen girl; a little while, I mean!" +</p> +<p> +She had a way of intimacy with the servants which Mrs. Argenter +found it hard to check. She liked to get into Jane's room when she +was "doing herself up" of an afternoon, and look over her cheap +little treasures in her band-box and chest-drawer. She made especial +love to a carnelian heart, and a twisted gold ring with two clasped +hands on it. +</p> +<p> +"I think it's real nice to have only <i>two</i> or <i>three</i> things, and to +'clean yourself up,' and to have a 'Sunday out!'" she said. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was anxiously alarmed at the child's low tastes. Yet +these were very practicably compatible with the alternations of +importance in being driven about in her father's barouche, taking +Aggie Townsend up on the road, and "setting her down at the small +gray house." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie thought, this afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her +striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and +cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady +window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick +wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many +new-drawn loaves,—looking around within, at the snug tidiness of +the simple room, and even out at the street close by, with its stir +and curious interest, yet seen from just as real a shelter as she +had in her own chamber at home,—that it might really be nice to be +a baker's daughter and live in the village,—"when it wasn't your +own fault, and you couldn't help it." +</p> +<p> +Ray nodded to some one out of her window. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie saw a bright color come up in her cheeks, and a sparkle into +her eyes as she did so, while a little smile, that she seemed to +think was all to herself, crept about her mouth and lingered at the +dimpled corners. There was an expression as if she hid herself quite +away in some consciousness of her own, from any recollection of the +strange girl sitting by. +</p> +<p> +The strange girl glanced from <i>her</i> window, and saw a young +carpenter with his box of tools go past under the elm, with some +sort of light subsiding also in like manner from his face. He was in +his shirt sleeves,—but the sleeves were white,—and his straw hat +was pushed back from his forehead, about which brown curls lay damp +with heat. Sylvie did not believe he had even touched his hat, when +he had looked up through the friendly elm boughs and bowed to the +village girl in her shady corner. His hands were full, of course. +Such people's hands were almost always full. That was the reason +they did not learn such things. But how cute it had been of Ray +Ingraham <i>not</i> to sit in the front window! He was certain to come +by, too, she supposed. To be sure; that was the street. Ray Ingraham +would not have cared to live up a long avenue, to wait for people to +come on purpose, in carriages. +</p> +<p> +She got as far as this in her thinkings, at the same moment that she +came to the bottom of her cup of tea. And then she caught a glimpse +of Rylocks, rolling the phæton across from the smithy. +</p> +<p> +"What a funny time I have had! And how kind you have all been!" she +said, getting up. "I am ever so much obliged, Miss Ingraham. I +wonder"—and then, suddenly, she thought it might not be quite civil +to wonder. +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham laughed. +</p> +<p> +"So do I!" she said quickly, with a bright look. She knew well +enough what Sylvie stopped at. +</p> +<p> +Each of these two girls wondered if there would ever be any more +"getting in behind" for them, as regarded each other, in their two +different lives. +</p> +<p> +As Sylvie Argenter came out at the shop-door, Rodney Sherrett +appeared at the same point, safely mounted on the runaway Duke. The +team had been stopped below at the river; he had found a stable and +a saddle, had left Red Squirrel and the broken vehicle to be sent +for, and was going home, much relieved and assured by being able to +present himself upon his father's favorite roadster, whole in bones +and with ungrazed skin. +</p> +<p> +The street boys stood round again, as he dismounted to make fresh +certainty of Sylvie's welfare, handed her into her phæton, and then, +springing to the saddle, rode away beside her, down the East Dorbury +road. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was sitting with her worsted work in the high, +many-columned terrace piazza which gave grandeur to the great +show-house that Mr. Argenter had built some five years since, when +Sylvie, with Rod Sherrett beside her, came driving up the long +avenue, or, as Mrs. Argenter liked to call it, out of the English +novels, the <i>approach</i>. She laid back her canvas and wools into the +graceful Fayal basket-stand, and came down the first flight of stone +steps to meet them. +</p> +<p> +"How late you are, Sylvie! I had begun to be quite worried," she +said, when Sylvie dropped the reins around the dasher and stood up +in the low carriage, nodding at her mother. She felt quite brave and +confident about the accident, now that Rodney Sherrett had come all +the way with her to the very door, to account for it and to help her +out with the story. +</p> +<p> +Rodney lifted his hat to the lady. +</p> +<p> +"We've had a great spill, Mrs. Argenter. All my fault, and Red +Squirrel's. Miss Argenter has brought home more than I have from the +<i>mêlée</i>. I started with a tandem, and here I am with only Gray Duke +and a borrowed saddle. It was out at Ingraham's Corner,—a quick +turn, you know,—and Miss Argenter had just stopped when Squirrel +sprang round upon her. My trap is pretty much into kindlings, but +there are no bones broken. You must let me send Rodgers round on his +way to town to-morrow, to take the phæton to the builder's. It wants +a new axle. I'm awful sorry; but after all"—with a bright +smile,—"I can't think it altogether an ill wind,—for <i>me</i>, at any +rate. I couldn't help enjoying the ride home." +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe you could help enjoying the whole of it, except +the very minute of the tip-out itself, before you knew," said +Sylvie, laughing. +</p> +<p> +"Well, it <i>was</i> a lark; but the worst is coming. I've got to go home +all alone. I wish you'd come and tell the tale for <i>me</i>, Miss +Sylvie. I shouldn't be half so afraid!" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0003"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER III. +</h2> +<h3> + TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN. +</h3> +<p> +The seven o'clock morning train was starting from Dorbury Upper +Village. +</p> +<p> +Early business men, mechanics, clerks, shop-girls, sewing-girls, +office-boys,—these made up the list of passengers. Except, perhaps, +some travellers now and then, bound for a first express from Boston, +or an excursion party to take a harbor steamer for a day's trip to +Nantasket or Nahant. +</p> +<p> +Did you ever contrast one of these trains—when perhaps you were +such traveller or excursionist—with the after, leisurely, +comfortable one at ten or eleven; when gentlemen who only need to be +in the city through banking hours, and ladies bent on calls or +elegant shopping, come chatting and rustling to their seats, and +hold a little drawing-room exchange in the twenty-five minutes' +trip? +</p> +<p> +If you have,—and if you have a little sympathetic imagination that +fills out hints,—you have had a glimpse of some of these "other +girls" and the thing that daily living is to them, with which my +story means to concern itself. +</p> +<p> +Have you noticed the hats, with the rose or the feather behind or at +top, scrupulously according to the same dictate of style that rules +alike for seven and ten o'clock, but which has often to be worn +through wet and dry till the rose has been washed by too many a +shower, and the feather blown by too many a dusty wind, to stand for +anything but a sign that she knows what should be where, if she +only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two +shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each +other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but +which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed +straightness, while silks were hitched and crisp Hernanis puffed? +</p> +<p> +Yet the alpacas, and all their innumerable cousinhood, have also +their first mornings of fresh gloss, when the newness of the counter +is still upon them; there is a youth for all things; a first time, a +charm that seems as if it might last, though we know it neither will +nor was meant to; if it would, or were, the counters might be taken +down. And people who wear gowns that are creased and faded, have +each, one at a time, their days of glory, when they begin again. The +farther apart they come, perhaps the more of the spring-time there +is in them. +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a +span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills +edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due +contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the +stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in +her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old +curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left, +and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with +brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace +behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as +she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody +really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical +black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the +dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp +woolen smells and blue nips and shivers. +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all +belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she +seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine, +with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly +fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these +things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!) +put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and +flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came +airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen" +train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent, +flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes +upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful, +sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty +that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly +through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out +whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and +bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect? +</p> +<p> +The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as +she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to +girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not +purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys, +crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their +shuffle and noise for a second, and one said, "My! ain't she +stunning?" A young fellow, rather spruce in his own way also, with +precise necktie, deep paper cuffs and dollar-store studs and initial +sleeve-buttons, touched his hat with an air of taking credit to +himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a sober old gray +suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen collar, +turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with something +like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at a +wood-pile. +</p> +<p> +Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to +flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she +seated herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind +him. +</p> +<p> +"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left." +</p> +<p> +"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone +that reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the +galleries." "Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do +for a month or so, and like it pretty well; then I shall have a +tiff, I suppose, and fling it up again; I can't stand being ordered +round longer than that." +</p> +<p> +"Or longer than the <i>new</i> lasts," said the other slyly, touching the +drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It <i>is</i> awful pretty, Marry!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned +Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you. +When things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how +they're going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging +round amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and +who's going to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six +dollars a week and cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that +some of 'em have to take off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes! +No wonder Lufton's always changing. Well—there's one good of it! +You can always get a temporary there. Save up a month and then put +into port and refit. That's the way I do." +</p> +<p> +"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if +you hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl +on, who never wore suits. +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't +pretend to calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though, +there is other things to be done,—and it isn't sewing-machines +either, if you can once get started. And when I can see my way +clear, I mean to start. See if I don't!" +</p> +<p> +The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray +clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went +out. What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same +youth who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As +the train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at +her window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,—very modestly +and sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform, +until the track should be clear and he could cross. +</p> +<p> +What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him, +nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly, +when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her +salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that +seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few minutes +before. +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into +which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young +Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost +beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole +car-full with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in +rapport, through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had +allowed her consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could +only see a face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face +that showed itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said, +"What was that you thought of me just now? <i>Don't</i> think it!" +</p> +<p> +They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up +together; had they been growing away from each other in some things +since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion +chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken +and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come +suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her, +hidden, not altered, which <i>might</i> come back one of these days. Was +it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of +us, always? +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham? +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank +Sunderline thought was prettiest and nicest for a woman to be. He +was always reminded by her ways of what it would be so pretty and +nice for Marion Kent to be. But Marion <i>would</i> sparkle; and it is so +hard to be still and sparkle too. He liked the brightness and the +airiness; a little of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full, +or room-full, or street full,—he did not like to see a woman +sparkle all round. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen +years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years +afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston +with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that +she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and +stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard +literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not +bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear +old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin +again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides, +"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is +not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the +mother's girl,—the girl of the village, as was said; practical, +comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all +these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to +receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that +neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot. +</p> +<p> +It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most +of her young acquaintance felt the <i>step up</i> that they must take to +stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline +felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see +in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his +trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other +people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent +of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to +perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a +lady. +</p> +<p> +That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down +in his self-estimate at its full value. +</p> +<p> +Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline +was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it +is not a matter of course that he should be? +</p> +<p> +I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word, +and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that +you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life +so,—your own, or anybody's else. +</p> +<p> +I can tell you that men—those who are good for very much—come +often more slowly to their life-conclusions than you think; that +woman-<i>nature</i> is a good deal to a man, and is meant to be, in +gradual bearing and influence, in the shaping of his perception, the +working of comparison, the coming to an understanding of his own +want, and the forming of his ideal,—yes, even in the mere general +pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse—before the <i>individual</i> +woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central +need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds +and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to +have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the +Lord, in his handling of every man, is about. +</p> +<p> +That night they all came out together in the last train. Ray +Ingraham had gone in after dinner to make some purchases for her +mother, and had been to see some Chapel friends. Marion, as she came +in through the gate at the station, saw her far before, walking up +the long platform to the cars. She watched her enter the second in +the line, and hastened on, making up her mind instantly, like a +field general, to her own best manœuvre. It was not exactly what +every girl would have done; and therein showed her generalship. She +would get into the same carriage, and take a seat with her. She knew +very well that Frank Sunderline would jump on at Pomantic, his day's +work just done. If he came and spoke to Ray he should speak also to +her. She did not risk trying <i>which</i> he would come and speak to. It +should be, that joining them, and finding it pleasant, he should +not quite know which, after all, had most made it so. Different as +they were, she and Ray Ingraham toned and flavored each other, and +Marion knew it. They were like rose-color and gray; or like spice +and salt: you did not stop to think which ruled the taste, or which +your eye separately rested on. Something charming, delicious, +resulted of their being together; they set each other off, and +helped each other out. Then it was something that Frank Sunderline +should see that Ray would let her be her friend; that she was not +altogether too loud and pronounced for her. Ray did not turn aside +and look at wood-piles, and get rid of her. +</p> +<p> +Furthermore, the way home from the Dorbury depot, for Frank and +Marion both, lay <i>past</i> the bakery, on down the under-hill road. +</p> +<p> +Marion did not <i>think out</i> a syllable of all this; she grasped the +situation, and she acted in an instant. I told you she acted like a +general in the field: perhaps neither she nor the general would be +as skillful, always, with the maps and compasses, and time to plan +beforehand. I do not think Marion <i>was</i> ever very wise in her +fore-thoughts. +</p> +<p> +Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many +passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to +themselves. Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the +other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting +them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had +been busily going on between them all the way. Ray was really +interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face +was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when +she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was +beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest, +if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also +by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within +observing and listening distance. Marion could not help talking over +her shoulders, more or less, always. +</p> +<p> +"Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and +come in for the finishing off," said Rachel, just as Frank +Sunderline changed his place and joined them. "<i>We</i> could not handle +those, for instance," she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the +carpenter's tools, and lowering her already gentle voice. +</p> +<p> +"Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women +ride home on the loads,—is that it?" said Marion, laughing, and +snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the +train was at that moment skimming by. "Well, may be! All is, I shall +look out for my ride. After things <i>are</i> broken in, I don't see why +we shouldn't get the good of it." +</p> +<p> +"Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn't it?" said +Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily +into the conversation. +</p> +<p> +"No fair!" cried Marion. "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do +you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a +woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same +goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's +what I'm complaining of." +</p> +<p> +"That's the complaint of the day, I know," said Sunderline. "And no +doubt there's a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting, +and will get it. But things don't come to be as they are quite +without a reason, either. There's a principle in it, you've got to +look back to that." +</p> +<p> +"Well?" said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself +with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor. She +was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk. +</p> +<p> +"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values +that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in +the world." +</p> +<p> +"O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm +glad to know." +</p> +<p> +"He <i>could</i> be doing some things that a woman could not do at +all—was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may +apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to +their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid +for—somewhere." +</p> +<p> +"That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like +to be paid for what I <i>might</i> be good for!" +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline laughed. +</p> +<p> +"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in +the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one +will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other; +but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the +purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for; +which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women +wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the +world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule, +to take men for it." +</p> +<p> +"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for +instance?" asked Ray. +</p> +<p> +"Why, you're coming round to <i>my</i> side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should +really like to know <i>where</i> you are?" +</p> +<p> +"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, +smiling. +</p> +<p> +"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is +getting righted. Women <i>are</i> being paid more, in proportion, for +intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental +power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who +writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good +statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where <i>time</i> is +paid for,—where it is personal service,—the old principle at the +root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the +seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the +nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, <i>make +way</i> for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come +afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be +counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these +women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital +draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily +<i>oppression</i> by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I +think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege." +</p> +<p> +"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, +they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a +world ready made to knock round <i>in</i>, don't they? And it is because +there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that +they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances +are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the +question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the +fact that first conditions may come back any day,—do come back, +here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the +primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the +woman is what Scripture calls her,—the helpmeet. And my notion is +that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock +round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think +Providence has been very much interfered with." +</p> +<p> +"There are widows," said Rachel, gently. +</p> +<p> +"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to +care for. I said—if things were right. I wish the energy was spent +in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the +wrong." +</p> +<p> +"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said +Marion, squarely. +</p> +<p> +"I guess not—for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; +and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender. +</p> +<p> +He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and +they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on +without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her +odd fashion,— +</p> +<p> +"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and +comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and +fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge." +</p> +<p> +"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think +very likely I could be—a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she +added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed +to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread." +</p> +<p> +A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, +from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends +of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm. +</p> +<p> +As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put +the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The +doctor's chaise,—the horse fastened by the well-known strap and +weight,—was standing before the house. She quickened her steps, +without speaking. +</p> +<p> +"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her +as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and +knowing eagerness,—"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit—or sunthin'!" +</p> +<p> +But Ray made no sign—to anybody. She had already hurried in toward +the side door, through the yard, under the elm. +</p> +<p> +A neighborly looking woman—such a woman as always "steps in" on an +emergency—met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid, +dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's +shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe +my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a +brick loaf." +</p> +<p> +Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The +conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had +interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn +aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something +that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It +is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but +it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be +allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed. +Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven +off, and forced into different combinations. +</p> +<p> +Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions—certain +half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would +have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just +at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from +where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to +disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And +yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her +sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the +sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward. +They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so? +</p> +<p> +"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently. +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully, +twice. +</p> +<p> +"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I +should have asked her what I did, just that minute?" +</p> +<p> +"What? O, yes!" +</p> +<p> +It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked +on silently again. But Marion could not give it up. +</p> +<p> +"I don't doubt she <i>would</i> be a baker; carry on the whole +concern,—if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts, +now." +</p> +<p> +"Does she?" +</p> +<p> +"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's +what I say isn't fair." +</p> +<p> +"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world. +There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,—even +going on with it, as you say,—when it is set for her by special +circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat +her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is +getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the +times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't +generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that +they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in +the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,—and she ought to if she +can <i>right</i>,"— +</p> +<p> +"And what if she <i>has</i> to, if she can, wrong?" +</p> +<p> +"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She +takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether +it's work, or—somebody to work for her." +</p> +<p> +They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate. +</p> +<p> +"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody +to help me judge." +</p> +<p> +Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for +a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant +and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless, +indeed, he be quite ready to seek and assume the permanent +privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It +may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much. +</p> +<p> +"Your mother"—began Sunderline. +</p> +<p> +"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living +as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never +goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude +as I think best." +</p> +<p> +Sunderline was silent. +</p> +<p> +"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do +something that I like, something that I think I <i>could</i> do. I can't +stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the +places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace +curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other +folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much +longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for +reading and reciting. The Leverings,—you remember Virginia +Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with +her,—Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very +well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me, +and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me +some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to +go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?" +</p> +<p> +Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she +asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he +might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal +what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had +known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good, +honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and +half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a +womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers, +what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could +once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It +had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with +real ingenuous solicitude, his answer. +</p> +<p> +He gave it gravely and conscientiously. +</p> +<p> +"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly +believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade." +</p> +<p> +"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a +night, even when they have to hire a hall." +</p> +<p> +"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to +last?" +</p> +<p> +"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was +a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so +far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at +the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be +somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth." +</p> +<p> +"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For +none of these days last long, especially with women." +</p> +<p> +"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs. +Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!" +</p> +<p> +"It won't do to quote them, I'm afraid. I suppose you'd hardly +expect to come up into that row?" said Sunderline, smiling. +</p> +<p> +"They began, some time," returned Marion. +</p> +<p> +"Yes; but for one thing, it wasn't a time when everybody else was +beginning. Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?" +</p> +<p> +"I wish you would." +</p> +<p> +They had walked slowly for the last three or four minutes, till they +had come to the beginning of the paling in which, a little further +on, was the white gate. They paused here; Frank Sunderline rested +his box of tools on the low wall that ran up and joined the fence, +and Marion turned and stood with her face toward him in the western +light, and her little pink-lined linen sunshade up between her and +the low sun,—between her and the roadway also, down which might +come any curious passers-by. +</p> +<p> +"It seems to me," said Frank Sunderline, "that women are getting on +to the platforms nowadays, not so much for any real errand they have +there, as just for the sake of saying, I'm here! I think it is very +much the 'to be seen of men' motive,—the poorest part of women's +characters,—that plays itself out in this way, as it always has +done in dancing and dressing and acting, and what not. It isn't that +a woman might not be on a platform, if she were called there, as +well as anywhere else. There never was a woman came out before the +world in any grand, true way, that she wasn't all the more honored +and attended to because she <i>was</i> a woman. There are some things too +good to be made common; things that ought to be saved up for a +special time, so that they may <i>be</i> special. If it falls to a woman +to be a Queen, and to open and dismiss her Parliament, nobody in all +the kingdom but thinks the words come nobler and sweeter for a +woman's saying them. But that's because she is <i>put</i> there, not +because she climbs up some other way. If a woman honestly has +something that she must say—some great word from the Lord, or for +her country, or for suffering people,—then let her say it; and +every real woman's husband, and every real mother's son, will hear +her with his very heart. Or if even she has some sure wonderful +gift,—if she can sing, or read, or recite; if she can stir people +up to good and beautiful things as <i>one in a thousand</i>, that's her +errand; let her do it, and let the thousand come to hear. But she +ought to be certain sure, or else she's leaving her real errand +behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in +without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming +to. A <i>sham trade</i>, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the +shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it. +I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We +shan't get them back again, this generation. The <i>homes</i> are going. +Young men of these days have got to lose their wives—that they +ought to have—and their homes that they looked forward to, such as +their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes +and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the +abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end +to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of +your class—<i>our</i> class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of +their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they +undertake to do. As I said,—how long will it last? How long will +the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you? +Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what +have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?" +</p> +<p> +Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken +faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that +he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion +Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that +Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was +dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his +notion of real womanhood. +</p> +<p> +But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said, +"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he +lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went +abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then? +Why didn't he give her the choice? +</p> +<p> +But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a +girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting +ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he +had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What +should the wife have been doing in the mean time—before she was +sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for +herself? +</p> +<p> +She said so. +</p> +<p> +"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline." +</p> +<p> +She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well +that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They +had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have +known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian +name, and not take up anything else if they can help it. The time +when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use +nothing but pronouns in addressing each other. A girl, however, says +"Mr." a little more easily than a man says "Miss." The girl has +always been "Miss" to the world in general; the boy grows up to his +manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to +him. There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately +marks an attitude—not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and +bewitching consciousness—in a girl friend grown into a woman, and +recognizing the man. +</p> +<p> +"I don't see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline," said Marion. "Why shouldn't +a girl do the best she can? Will she be any the worse for it +afterwards? Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the +husbands?" +</p> +<p> +"Real work wouldn't spoil; only the sham and the show. Don't do it, +Marion. I wouldn't want my sister to, if I had one—there!" +</p> +<p> +He had not meant so directly to answer her question. He came to this +end involuntarily. +</p> +<p> +Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of +the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself. +Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it. She felt angrily +ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a +girl seeking notoriety, for mere show's sake; desiring to do a sham +work; to make a pretension without a claim. How did he know what her +claim might be? She had a mind to find out, and let him see. Sister! +what did he say that for? He needn't have talked about sisters, or +wives either, after that fashion. Spoilt! Well, what should she save +herself for? It was pretty clear it wouldn't be much to him. +</p> +<p> +The color died down, and she grew quiet, or thought she did. She +meant to be very quiet; very indifferent and calm. She lifted up her +eyes, and there was a sort of still flash in them. Now that her +cheek was cool, they burned,—burned their own color, blue-gray that +deepened almost into black. +</p> +<p> +"I've a good will, however," she said slowly, "to find out what I +<i>can</i> do. Perhaps neither you nor I know that, yet. Then I can make +up my mind. I rather believe in taking what comes. A bird in the +hand is worth two in the bush. Very likely nobody will ever care +particularly whether I'm spoilt or not. And if I'm spoilt for one +thing, I may be made for another. There have got to be all sorts of +people in the world, you know." +</p> +<p> +She was very handsome, with her white chin up, haughtily; her nose +making its straight, high line, as she turned her face half away; +her eyes so dark with will, and the curve of hurt pride in her lips +that yet might turn easily to a quiver. She spoke low and smooth; +her words dropped cool and clear, without a tone of temper in them; +if there was passionate force, it was from a fire far down. +</p> +<p> +If she could do so upon a stage; if she could look like that saying +other people's words—words out of a book: if she could feel into +the passions of a world, and interpret them; then, indeed! But +Marion Kent had never entered into heights and depths of thought and +of experience; she knew only Marion Kent's little passions as they +came to her, and spoke themselves in homely, unchoice words. Mrs. +Kemble or Charlotte Cushman might have made a study from that face +that would have served for a Queen Katharine; but Queen Katharine's +grand utterances would never have thrilled Marion Kent to wear the +look as she wore it now, piqued by the plain-speaking—and the <i>not</i> +speaking—of the young village carpenter. +</p> +<p> +"I hope you don't feel hurt with me; I've only been honest, and I +meant to be kind," said Frank Sunderline. +</p> +<p> +"No, indeed; I dare say you did," returned Marion. "After all, +everybody has got to judge for themselves. I was silly to think +anybody could help me." +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps you could help yourself better," said the young man, loth +to leave her in this mood, "if you thought how you would judge for +somebody you cared for. If your own little sister"— +</p> +<p> +Now the quiver came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and +jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise +themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name +of her little dead sister,—dead six years ago, when she was nine +and Marion twelve. +</p> +<p> +The tears sprang to the darkened eyes, and quenched down their +burning; the color swept into her face, like the color after a +blow; the lips gave way; and with words that came like a cry she +exclaimed passionately,— +</p> +<p> +"Don't speak of little Sue! I can't bear it! I never could! I don't +know what I say now. Good-night, good-by." +</p> +<p> +And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and +hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0004"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IV. +</h2> +<h3> + NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT. +</h3> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett got up from the breakfast table, where he had eaten +half an hour later than the rest of the family, threw aside the +newspaper that had served to accompany his meal as it had previously +done his father's, and walked out through the conservatory upon the +slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among +which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a pair of garden +scissors and a basket in her hands, was moving about, cutting +carnations and tea-roses and bouvardia and geranium leaves and bits +of vines, for her baskets and shells and vases. +</p> +<p> +"I say, Amy, why haven't you been over to the Argenters' this long +while? Why don't you get Sylvie here?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, I did go, Rod! Just when you asked me to. And she has been +here; she called three weeks ago." +</p> +<p> +"O, poh! After the spill! Of course you did. Just called; and she +called. Why need that be the end of it? Why don't you make much of +her? I can tell you she's a girl you <i>might</i> make much of. She +behaved like a lady, that day; and a <i>woman</i>,—that's more. She was +neither scared nor mad; didn't scream, nor pout; nor even stand +round to keep up the excitement. She was just cool and quiet, and +took herself off properly. I don't know another girl that would have +done so. She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned; +she might have made it ten times the muss it was. I'd rather run +down a whole flock of sheep than graze the varnish off a woman's +wheel, as a general principle. There's real backbone to Sylvie +Argenter, besides her prettiness. My father would like her, I know. +Why don't you bring her here; get intimate with her? I can't do +it,—too fierce, you know." +</p> +<p> +Amy Sherrett laughed. +</p> +<p> +"What a nice little cat's-paw a sister makes! Doesn't she, Rod?" +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if cats don't like chestnuts too, sometimes," said Rod; +and then he whistled. +</p> +<p> +"What a worry you are, Rod!" said Amy, with a little frown that some +pretty girls have a way of making; half real and half got up for the +occasion; a very becoming little pucker of a frown that seems to put +a lovely sort of perplexed trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to +show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be +permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it +would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest. "In term +time I'm always wishing it well over, for fear of what dreadful +thing you may do next; and when it is vacation, it gets to be so +much worse, here and there and everywhere, that I'm longing for you +to be safe back in Cambridge." +</p> +<p> +"Coming home Saturday nights? Well, you do get about the best of me +so. And we fellows get just the right little sprinkle of family +influence, too. It loses its affect when you have it all the time. +That's what I tell Truesdaile, when he goes on about home, and what +a thing it is to have a sister,—he doesn't exactly say <i>my</i> sister; +I suppose he believes in the tenth commandment. By the way, he's +knocking round at the seashore some where using up the time. I've +half a mind to hunt him up and get him back here for the last week +or so. I think he'd like it." +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense, Rod! You can't. When Aunt Euphrasia's away." +</p> +<p> +"She would come back, if you asked her; wouldn't she? I think it +would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop +anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever +goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a +mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow +round and pick out the stumps and corners." +</p> +<p> +Amy shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe I'll ask her, Rod. She's perfectly happy up there +in New Ipswich, painting wild flowers and pressing ferns, and +swinging those five children in her hammock, and carrying them all +to drive in her pony-wagon, and getting up hampers of fish and +baskets of fruit, and beef sirloins by express, and feeding them all +up, and paying poor dear cousin Nan ten dollars a week for letting +her do it. I guess it's my opportunity to get along here without +her, and let her stay." +</p> +<p> +"Incorruptible! Well—you're a good girl, Amy. I must come down to +plain soft-sawder. Put some of those things together prettily, as +you know how, and drive over and take them to Sylvie Argenter this +afternoon, will you?" +</p> +<p> +"Fish and fruit and sirloins!" +</p> +<p> +"Amy, you're an aggravator!" +</p> +<p> +"No. I'm only grammatical. I'm sure those were the antecedents." +</p> +<p> +"If you don't, I will." +</p> +<p> +"If you will, I will too, Rod! Drive me over, that's a good boy, and +I'll go." +</p> +<p> +Amy seized with delicate craft her opportunity for getting her +brother off from one of his solitary, roaming expeditions with Red +Squirrel that ended too often in not being solitary, but in bringing +him into company with people who knew about horses, or had them to +show, and were planning for races, and who were likely to lead +Rodney, in spite of his innate gentlemanhood, into more of mere +jockeyism than either she or her father liked. +</p> +<p> +"But the flowers, I fancy, Rod, would be coals to Newcastle. They +have a greenhouse." +</p> +<p> +"And have never had a decent man to manage it. It came to nothing +this year. She told me so. You see it just is a literal <i>new</i> +castle. Mr. Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and +they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to +blame for being new," he continued, seeing the least possible little +<i>lifted</i> look about Amy's delicate lips and eyebrows. "I hate <i>that</i> +kind of shoddiness." +</p> +<p> +"'Don't fire—I'll come down,'" said Amy, laughing. "And I don't +think I ever get <i>very</i> far up, beyond what's safe and reasonable +for a"— +</p> +<p> +"Nice, well-bred little coon," said Rodney, patting her on the +shoulder, in an exuberance of gracious approval and beamingly serene +content. "I'll take you in my gig with Red Squirrel," he added, by +way of reward of merit. +</p> +<p> +Now Amy in her secret heart was mortally afraid of Red Squirrel, but +she would have been upset ten times over—by Rodney—sooner than say +so. +</p> +<p> +When Sylvie Argenter, that afternoon, from her window with its cool, +deep awning, saw Rodney Sherrett and his sister coming up the drive, +there flashed across her, by a curious association, the thought of +the young carpenter who had gone up the village street and bowed to +Ray Ingraham, the baker's daughter. +</p> +<p> +After all, the gentleman's "place," apart and retired, and the long +"approach," were not so very much worse, when the "people in the +carriages,"—the right people,—really came: and "on purpose" was +not such a bad qualification of the coming, either. +</p> +<p> +And when Mrs. Argenter, hearing the bell, and the movement of an +arrival, and not being herself summoned in consequence, rung +in her own room for the maid, and received for answer to her +inquiry,—"Miss Sherrett and young Mr. Sherrett, ma'am, to see Miss +Sylvie,"—she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much +and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred +to her at once,—one of them adding itself to the other as +manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that +tip-out" from the basket-phæton, and the new white frill-trimmed +polonaise that Miss Sylvie would put on, so needlessly, this +afternoon, in spite of her remonstrance that the laundress had just +left without warning, and there was no knowing when they should ever +find another. +</p> +<p> +"There is certainly a fate in these matters," she said to herself, +complacently. "<i>One</i> thing always follows another." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was apt to make to herself a "House that Jack built" +out of her providences. She had always a little string of them to +rehearse in every history; from the malt that lay in the house, and +the rat that ate the malt, up to the priest all shaven and shorn, +that married the man that kissed the maid—and so on, all the way +back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the +overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney +Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no +doubt he asked her, and then their both coming together; and there +was your pretty white polonaise, you know, the day they did come; +and there was"—Mrs. Argenter has not counted up to that yet. +Perhaps it may be a long while before she will so readily count it +in. +</p> +<p> +It had turned out a hot day; one of those days in the nineties, when +if you once hear from the thermometer, or in any way have the fact +forcibly brought home to you, you relinquish all idea of exertion +yourself, and look upon the world outside as one great pause, out of +which no movement can possibly come, unless there first come the +beneficence of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay +have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to +here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to +actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without +realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with +surprise at set of sun when the deeds are done, of the excelsior +performances of the mercury. With what secret amazement and dismay +is one's valor recognized, however, when it has led one to render +one's self at four in the afternoon on such a day, near one's friend +who <i>has</i> been vividly conscious of the torrid atmosphere! Did you +ever make or receive such an afternoon call? +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter, comfortable in her thin wrapper, reading her thin +romance, did not trouble herself to be astonished. "They were young +people; young people could do anything," she dimly thought; and +putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that +Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presently to +ring her bell again, and tell the maid on no account to admit any +one to see herself, and to be sure that there were plenty of +raspberries brought in for tea. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile, away in the cities, the thermometer had climbed and +climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went +lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave +the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were +closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left +their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom +in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels +and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as +if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat. +Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with +filth, and doors stood open upon horrible passages and staircases, +little children, barefooted, with one miserable garment on, sat on +grimy stone steps, or played wretchedly about the sidewalks, +impeding the passers of a better class who hastened with bated +breath, amidst the fever-breeding nuisances, along to railway +stations whence they would escape to country and sea-side homes. +</p> +<p> +On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and +cordage,—sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks +could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from +falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the +faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men +surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, +regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered +off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their +fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through +wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and +out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy, +strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about +upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making +<i>their</i> hay while this terrible sun was shining. +</p> +<p> +What did Mrs. Argenter care? +</p> +<p> +The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool +piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,—yellow +Alderney milk,—would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of +"Argie" in New York,—gone thither on some perplexing, hurried +errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of +which she had only half heard,—and remembered that the heat must be +"awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound +steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would +surely speak to him about getting off for a while to Rye, or Mount +Desert. +</p> +<p> +She came by and by to the end of her volume, and found that the +serial she was following ran on into the next. +</p> +<p> +"Provoking," she said, tossing it down to the end of the sofa, "and +neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and Argie +thinks it such a bother to be asked to go to Loring's." +</p> +<p> +Just then Sylvie's step came lightly up the stairs. She looked into +the large cool dressing-room where her mother lay. +</p> +<p> +"I'm only up for my 'Confession Album'," she said. "But O Mater +Amata! if you'd just come down and help me through! I know they'd +stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them; +but if I said a word I should be sure to drive them away. <i>You</i> can +do it; and they would if you came. Please do!" +</p> +<p> +"You silly child! Won't you ever be able to do anything yourself? +When you were a little girl, you wouldn't carry a message, because +you could get into a house, but didn't know how to get out! And now +you are grown up, you can get people into the house to see you, but +you don't know how to ask them to stay to tea! What <i>shall</i> I ever +do with you?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. I'm awfully afraid of—<i>nice</i> girls!" +</p> +<p> +"Sylvie, I'm ashamed of you! As if you had any other kind of +acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them! I wouldn't suggest +it, even to myself, if I were you." +</p> +<p> +"And I don't," said Sylvie boldly—"when I'm <i>by</i> myself. But +there's a kind of a little misgiving somehow, when they come, or +when I go, as if—well, as if there <i>might</i> be something to it that +I didn't know of, or behind it that I hadn't got; or else, that +there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too +much of. A kind of a—Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is +so <i>fearfully</i> refined,—all the way through! It doesn't seem as if +she ever had any common things to say or do. Don't you think it +<i>takes</i> common things to get people really near to each other? It +doesn't seem to me I could ever be intimate—or very easy—with Amy +Sherrett." +</p> +<p> +"You seemed to get on well enough with her brother, the other day." +</p> +<p> +"Boys aren't half so bad. There isn't any such wax-work about boys. +Besides,"—and Sylvie laughed a low, gay little laugh,—we got spilt +out together, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Well, don't stand talking. You mustn't keep them waiting. It isn't +time to speak about tea, yet. Look over the album, and get at some +music. <i>Keep</i> them without saying anything about it. When people +think every minute they are just going, is just when they are having +the very pleasantest time." +</p> +<p> +"I know it. But you'll come, won't you, and make it all right? Put +on something loose and cool; that lovely black lace jacket with the +violet lining, and your gray silk skirt. It won't take you a minute. +Your hair's perfectly sweet now." And Sylvie hurried away. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter came down, twenty minutes afterwards, into the great +summer drawing-room, where the finest Indian matting, and dark, rich +Persian rugs, and inner window blinds folded behind lace curtains +that fell like the foam of waterfalls from ceiling to floor, made a +pleasantness out of the very heat against which such furnishings +might be provided. +</p> +<p> +In her silken skirt of silver gray, and the llama sack, violet +lined, to need no tight corsage beneath, her fair wrists and arms +showing white and cool in the wide drapery sleeves, she looked a +very lovely lady. Sylvie was proud of her handsome, elegant mother. +She grew a great deal braver always when Mrs. Argenter came in. She +borrowed a second consciousness from her in which she took courage, +assured that all was right. Chairs and rugs gave her no such +confidence, though she knew that the Sherretts themselves had no +more faultless surroundings. Anybody could have rugs and chairs. It +was the presence among them that was wanted; and poor Sylvie seemed +to herself to melt quite away, as it were, before such a girl as Amy +Sherrett, and not to be able to be a presence at all. +</p> +<p> +It was all right now, as Sylvie had said. They could not leave +immediately upon Mrs. Argenter joining them and her joining them was +of itself a welcome and an invitation. So Sylvie called upon her +mother to admire the lovely basket, wherein on damp, tender, bright +green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most +delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly, +and at last fell like a veil over rim and handle, and dropped below +the edge of the tiny round table with Siena marble top, on which +Sylvie had placed it between the curtains of the recess that led +through to their conservatory, which had been "a failure this year." +</p> +<p> +"I would not tell you of it, Amata. I wanted you just to see it," +she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then lamented +their own ill-success in greenhouse and garden culture. +</p> +<p> +"I am not strong enough to look after it much myself, and Mr. +Argenter never has time," she said; "and our first man was a +tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off quantities of the +best young plants, we found, just before they came to show for +anything." +</p> +<p> +"Our man has been with us for eight years," said Rodney Sherrett. "I +dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked; and he +wouldn't send anybody that wasn't right. Shall I ask him?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter would be delighted if he would; and then Mr. Sherrett +must come into the conservatory, where a few ragged palm ferns, +their great leaves browning and crumbling at the edges,—some +daphnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of +leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring +orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage that the +place afforded, and served, much like the painter's inscription at +the bottom of his canvas merely to signify by the scant glimpse +through the drawing-room draperies,—"This is a conservatory." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter asked Rodney something about the best arrangement for +the open beds, and wanted to know what would be surest to do well +for the rockery, and whether it was in a good part of the +house,—sufficiently shaded? Meanwhile, Amy and Sylvie were turning +over music, and when they all gathered together again the call had +extended to a two hours' visit. +</p> +<p> +"It is really unpardonable," Amy Sherrett was saying, and picking up +the pretty little hat which she had thrown down upon a chair,—"it +had been so warm to wear anything a minute that one need not." And +then Mrs. Argenter said so easily and of course, that they +"certainly would not think of going now, when it would soon be +really pleasant for a twilight drive; tea would be ready early, for +she and Sylvie were alone, and all they had cared for to-day had +been a cold lunch at one. They would have it on the north veranda;" +and she touched a bell to give the order. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps Amy Sherrett would hardly have consented, but that Rodney +gave her a look, comical in its appeal, over Sylvie's shoulder, as +she stood showing him a great scarlet Euphorbia in a portfolio of +water-colors, and said with a beseeching significance,— +</p> +<p> +"Consider Red Squirrel, Amy. He really did have a pretty hard pull; +and what with the heat and the flies, I dare say he would take it +with more equanimity after sundown,—since Mrs. Argenter is so very +kind." +</p> +<p> +And so they stayed; and Mrs. Argenter laid another little brick in +her "House that Jack built." +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +At this same time,—how should she know it?—something very +different was going on in one of the rooms of a great hotel in New +York. Somebody else who had meant before now to have left for home, +had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the +road by dark instead of by daylight. By dark,—though there should +be broad, beating sunshine over the world again when the journey +should be made. +</p> +<p> +While Mrs. Argenter's maid was bringing out the tray with delicate +black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated +with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries, +and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming +crystal flagon,—and ranging them all on the rustic veranda +table,—something very different,—very grim,—at which the +occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open +doors,—was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in +the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very +grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants' Union Telegraph +Company's Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch, +addressed to "Mrs. I.M. Argenter, Dorbury, Mass.," and signed +"Philip Burkmayer, M.D." +</p> +<p> +Nobody knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially, +when the office in State Street would be closed. Closed, with that +name outside the door that stood for nobody now. +</p> +<p> +The news must go bare and unbroken to her. +</p> +<p> +Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just +handing the slip to the attendant. +</p> +<p> +"Stop; give me that again, a minute," he said; and tearing it in +two, he wrote another, and then another. +</p> +<p> +"Send this on at once, and the second in an hour," he said; as if +they might have been prescriptions to be administered. "They may +both be delivered together after all," he continued to himself, as +he turned away. "But it is all I can do. When a weight is let drop, +it has got to fall. You can't ease it up much with a string measured +out for all the way down!" +</p> +<p> +The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury +Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came +in after her half-hour supper time. She set the wires and responded, +and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins. +</p> +<p> +"Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick," and so on. The +girl's face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along. She +answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly +upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door. +</p> +<p> +"Sim! Here—quick!" she called to a youth opposite, in a +stable-yard. +</p> +<p> +"This has got to go down to the Argenter Place. And mind how you +give it. It's bad news." +</p> +<p> +"How can <i>I</i> mind?" said Sim, gruffly. "I spose I must give it to +who comes." +</p> +<p> +"You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or +the minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her, +<i>I</i> know. Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can, +besides lightning!" +</p> +<p> +"Donno's I can go travellin' round after 'em, if that's what you +mean," said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket, +and turning off. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts +good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring +in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty +covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not quite +like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry +just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in. +</p> +<p> +"A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter," said Sim, seizing his opportunity, +and speaking to whom it might concern. "Eighty cents to pay, and I +'blieve it's bad news." +</p> +<p> +"O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!" cried Sylvie, turning white in the +dim light. "What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, +until I see? Won't you come in again? Mother will be frightened to +death, and I'm all alone." +</p> +<p> +"Jump out, Amy; I'll take Squirrel round," was Rodney's answer. "Go +right up; I'll come." +</p> +<p> +And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two +girls silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the +eighty cents which nobody thought of at that moment or ever again, +and sent him off. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the +long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before +coming out into the evening air again. +</p> +<p> +"I think I shall open it myself," whispered Sylvie, tremulously; "it +would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has +such a horror of a telegram." She looked at it on both sides, drew a +little shivering breath, and paused again. +</p> +<p> +"Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be—only grandma, +perhaps? Do you suppose it could <i>possibly</i> be—my <i>father</i>?" +</p> +<p> +And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little +Sylvie's voice. +</p> +<p> +"Wait a minute," said Amy, kindly. "Here's Rod." +</p> +<div class="bquote"> + <p class="ar"> "<span class="sc">Office of Western Union Telegraph Co.</span>,<br /> + <span class="sc">New York</span>, <i>July</i> 24<i>th</i>, 187-.</p> + + <p class="noindent"> "<span class="sc">To Mrs. I. M. Argenter</span>, Dorbury, Mass.</p> + + <p>"Mr. Argenter has had a sunstroke. Insensible. Very serious. + Will telegraph again.</p> + + <p class="ar"> "<span class="sc">Philip Burkmayer</span>, M.D."</p> +</div> +<p> +Sylvie's eyes, so roundly innocent, so star-like in their usual +bright uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first +to Rodney, then to Amy; and "O—O!" broke in short, subdued gasps +from her lips. +</p> +<p> +Then they heard Mrs. Argenter's step up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +"What is the matter, Sylvie? What are you doing? Who is with you +down there?" she said, over the baluster, from the hall above. +</p> +<p> +"O, mother!" cried Sylvie, "they aren't gone! Something has <i>come</i>! +Go up and tell her, Amy, please!" And forgetting all about Amy as +"Miss Sherrett," and all her fear of "nice girls," she dropped down +on the lower step of the staircase after Amy had passed her upon her +errand, put her face between her hands and caught her breath with +frightened sobs. +</p> +<p> +Rodney, leaning against the newel post, looked down at her, and +said, after the manner of men,—"Don't cry. It mayn't be very bad, +after all. You'll hear again in an hour or two. Can't I do +something? I'll go to the telegraph office. I'll get somebody for +your mother. Whom shall I go for?" +</p> +<p> +"O, you are very kind. I don't know. Wait a minute. They didn't say +any place! We ought to go right to New York, and we don't know +where! O, dear!" She had lifted her head a little, just to say these +broken sentences, and then it went down again. +</p> +<p> +Rodney did not answer instantly. It occurred to him all at once +what this "not saying any place" might mean. +</p> +<p> +Just as he began,—"You couldn't go until to-morrow,"—came Mrs. +Argenter's sharp cry from her room above. Amy had walked right on +into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not +daring to ask what she came and did this strange thing for, till Amy +made her sit down in her own easy chair, and taking her hands, said +gently,— +</p> +<p> +"It is a telegram from New York. Mr. Argenter—is very ill." Then +Mrs. Argenter cried out, "That's not all! I know how people bring +news! Tell me the whole." And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing the +quick, excited words, and leaving Rodney Sherrett standing there, +rushed up into the dressing-room. +</p> +<p> +This was the way the same sort of news came to Sylvie Argenter as +had come to the baker's daughter. Did it really make any +difference—the different surrounding of the two? The great +house—the lights—the servants—the friends; and the open bake-shop +door, the village street, the blunt, common-spoken neighbor-woman, +and the boy with the brick loaf? +</p> +<p> +These two were to be fatherless: their mothers were both to be +widows: that was all. +</p> +<p> +Did it happen strangely with the two—in this same story? Who know, +always, when they are in the same story? These things are happening +every day, and one great story holds us all. If one could see wide +enough, one could tell the whole. +</p> +<p> +These things happen: and then the question comes,—alike in high and +low places,—alike with money and without it,—what the women and +the girls are to do? +</p> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett took his sister home; drove three miles round and +brought Mrs. Argenter's sister to her from River Point, and then +turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph office. But he +met Sim Atwill on the way, received the telegram from him, and +hurried back. +</p> +<p> +It was the dispatch of the hour later, and this was it:— +</p> +<div class="bquote"> + <p>"Mr. Argenter died at five o'clock. His remains will be sent + home to-morrow, carefully attended.</p> + + <p class="ar"> "<span class="sc">Philip Burkmayer</span>." +</p> +</div> +<a name="2HCH0005"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER V. +</h2> +<h3> + SPILLED OUT AGAIN. +</h3> +<p> +There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at +meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the +Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the "late residence," +largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there +was making of crape and bombazine and silk into "mourning;" there +were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the +sad suddenness, "how it would be;" "how much he had left;" "was +there a will?" +</p> +<p> +And there was a will; made three years before. One hundred thousand +dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter's beloved wife; also the +use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia +on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else +to be Mrs. Argenter's for her life-time, reverting afterward to +Sylvia or her heirs. +</p> +<p> +There was just time for this to be ascertained and told of; just +time for Sylvie to be named as an heiress, and then all at once +something else came to light and was told of. +</p> +<p> +There was a mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr. +Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of +good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and +no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in +deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already +run. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from +the street. +</p> +<p> +"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things +in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything +forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone +under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry +and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of +a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And +then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment +that have got into life." +</p> +<p> +"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet +voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never +interpreted yet!" +</p> +<p> +"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake +to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl, +nowadays,—the mass of them. How can they help it?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in +what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia. +"Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for +mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And +so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's +heads." +</p> +<p> +"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in +Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for +them. They'll find it a hard time." +</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She +could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the +Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor +souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness +they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out +of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and—be +broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to +powder. +</p> +<p> +"How will it be with them?" she asked. +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out +the will?" +</p> +<p> +Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his +father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened +with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now. +</p> +<p> +Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear +more. The young people were both too really interested, from their +intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common +"Is it possible?" to this. +</p> +<p> +"The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'" +said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to +be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as +such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than +nothing." +</p> +<p> +"What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again. +"Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of +kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken +heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things +together." +</p> +<p> +"I suppose that is just what <i>people</i> were made for." +</p> +<p> +"It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can +help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The +hardest kind of cases." +</p> +<p> +"It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she +followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner +was over. "And no mistake!" +</p> +<p> +Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, +and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in +a way they were not often used to. +</p> +<p> +"Will they have to go away?" asked Amy. +</p> +<p> +"Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of +everything." +</p> +<p> +"How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!" +</p> +<p> +"She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before. +Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't +want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"—as Mr. +Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining +chair,—"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?" +</p> +<p> +"Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to +intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is +quite my place." +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe there will be much intruding—of <i>your</i> sort. And +the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?" +</p> +<p> +"Jobling and Cardwell, I believe. Men down town. Perhaps she might +like to see a neighbor. Yes, I think I will go. You can drive me +round, Rodney, some evening soon. Whom has she, of her own people, I +wonder?" +</p> +<p> +"Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know. The brother-in-law isn't +much, I imagine." +</p> +<p> +"Stephen A. Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He +couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding +<i>him</i> up." +</p> +<p> +"I think they'll be very glad to see you, sir." +</p> +<p> +Rodney drove his father over the next night. Mr. Sherrett went in +alone. Rodney sat in the chaise outside. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and +then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and +with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent +with a strange heaviness. +</p> +<p> +"I could not persuade mother to come down," she said. "She does not +feel able to see anybody. But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr. +Sherrett." +</p> +<p> +"I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of +use. A lady needs some one to talk things over with. I know your +mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to +business. I should not come for a mere call at such a time. I should +be glad to be of some service." +</p> +<p> +"Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with +me, Mr. Sherrett?" +</p> +<p> +There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the +Sylvie of a few weeks ago. It was no longer a question of little +nothings,—of how she should get people in and how she could get +them out,—of what she should do and say to seem "nice all through," +like Amy Sherrett. Mr. Sherrett had not come for a "mere call," as +he said; and there was no mere "receiving." The llama lace and the +gray silk and the small <i>savoir faire</i> could not help her now. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain +black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly +cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the +last week or two she had rarely left. All at once, Sylvie found that +she must think and speak both for her mother and herself. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was +thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis. Her +House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not +accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had +been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched +idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could +not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she +let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her +life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over +which she should pass into perfect shelter of content. +</p> +<p> +"Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble," said +Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett. "I don't think she really +understands. She has lived so long with things as they are, that she +cannot imagine them different. I think it is easier with me, +because, you know, I haven't been used to <i>anything</i> such a <i>very</i> +long while." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and +Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as +much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears. +</p> +<p> +"You see we shall have to do something right off,—go somewhere; and +mother can't change the least thing. She can't spare Sabina, who has +heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody +else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her +anything she wanted. And the very things, I suppose, don't belong to +us. How shall we break through and begin again?" Sylvie looked up +earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question. This was what she +really wanted to know. +</p> +<p> +"You will remove, I suppose?" said Mr. Sherrett "If you could hear +of a house,—if you could propose something definite,—if you and +Sabina could begin to pack up,—how would that be?" +</p> +<p> +He met her inquiry with primary, practical suggestions, just what +she needed, wasting no words. He saw it was the best service he +could do this little girl who had suddenly become the real head of +the household. +</p> +<p> +"I have thought, and thought," said Sylvie; "and after all, mother +must decide. Perhaps she wouldn't want to keep house. I don't know +whether we could. She spoke once about boarding. But boarding costs +a great deal, doesn't it?" +</p> +<p> +"To live as you would need to,—yes." +</p> +<p> +"I should hate to have to manage small, and change round, in +boarding. I know some people who live so. It would give me a very +mean feeling. It would be like trying to get a bite of everybody's +bread and butter. I'd rather have my own little loaf." +</p> +<p> +"You are a brave, true little woman," said Mr. Sherrett, warmly. +"All you want is to be set in the right direction, and see your way. +You'll be sure to go on." +</p> +<p> +"I <i>think</i> I should. If mother can only be contented. I think I +should rather like it. I could <i>understand</i> living better. There +would only be a little at a time. A great deal, and a great many +things, make it a puzzle." +</p> +<p> +"Have you any knowledge about the property?" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Cardwell has been here two or three times. He says there are +twelve thousand dollars secured to mother by a note and mortgage on +this place. It was money of hers that was put into it. We shall have +the income of that; and there might be things, perhaps, that we +should have the right to sell, or keep to furnish with. Seven and a +half per cent, on twelve thousand dollars would be nine hundred +dollars a year. If we had to pay sixteen dollars a week to board, it +would take eight hundred and thirty-two; almost the whole of it. But +perhaps we could find a place for less; and our clothes would last a +good while, I suppose." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie went through her little calculation, just as she had made it +over and over before, all by herself; she did not stop to think that +she was doing the small sum now for the enlightenment of the great +Mr. Sherrett, who calculated in millions for himself and others, +every day. +</p> +<p> +"You would hardly be comfortable in a house which you could rent for +less than—say, four hundred dollars, and that would leave very +little for your living. Perhaps I should advise you to board." +</p> +<p> +"But we could <i>do</i> things, maybe, if we lived by ourselves, amongst +other people in small houses. We can't be <i>two</i> things, Mr. +Sherrett, rich and poor; and it seems to me that is what we should +be trying for, if we got into a boarding-house. We should have to be +idle and ashamed. I want to take right hold. I'd like to earn +something and make it do." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie's eyes really shone. The spirit that had worked in her as a +little child, to make her think it would be nice to be a "kitchen +girl, and have a few things in boxes, and Sundays out," threw a +charm of independence and enterprise and cosy thrift over her +changed position, and the chance it gave her. Mr. Sherrett wondered +at the child, and admired her very much. +</p> +<p> +"Could you teach something? Could you keep a little school?" +</p> +<p> +"I've thought about it. But a person must know ever to much, +nowadays, to keep even the least little school. They want +Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven't learnt. And +it's just so about music. You must be scientific; and all I really +know is a few little songs. But I can <i>dance</i> well, Mr. Sherrett. I +could teach that." +</p> +<p> +There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market +of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the +suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black +dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed +by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession. +</p> +<p> +"You will be sure to do something, I see," said Mr. Sherrett. "Yes, +I think you had better have a quiet little home. It will be a centre +to work from, and something to work for. You can easily furnish it +from this house. Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be +allowed such things as you might make a schedule of. Would you like +me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?" +</p> +<p> +"O, if you would! Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell's +name, and the thought of business. She cannot bear it now. But your +advice would be so different!" +</p> +<p> +Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland +Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and +suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and +mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be. +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid you'll think I don't realize things, I've planned and +imagined so much," Sylvie began again, "but I couldn't help +thinking. It is all I have had to do. There's a little house in +Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and +nobody lives there now. At least, it was all shut up the last time +I drove by. The house with the corner piazza and the green side +yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the +shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little +houses beyond. Do you know?" +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett did know. They were three houses built by members of +the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead +property. Two of them had passed into other hands; one—this +one—remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of +late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and +with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park. +</p> +<p> +"You see we must go where things will be convenient. We can't ride +round after them any more. And we could get a girl up there, as +other people do, for general housework. I'm afraid mother wouldn't +quite like being in the village, but of course there can't be +anything that she <i>would quite</i> like, now. And we aren't really +separate people any longer; at least, we don't belong to the +separate kind of people, and I couldn't bear to be <i>lonesomely</i> +separate. It's good to belong to <i>some</i> kind of people; isn't it?" +</p> +<p> +"I think it is very good to belong to <i>your</i> kind, where-ever they +are, Miss Sylvie. Tell your mother I say she may be glad of her +daughter. I'll find out about the house for you, at any rate. And +I'll see Mr. Cardwell; and I'll call again. Good-night, my dear. God +bless you!" +</p> +<p> +And the grand Mr. Howland Sherrett pressed Sylvie Argenter's hand in +both of his, as a father might have pressed it, and went out with +the feeling of a warm rush from his heart toward his eyes. +</p> +<p> +"That's a girl like a—whatever there is that means the noblest +sort of woman, and I'm not sure it <i>is</i> a queen!" he said to Rodney, +as he seated himself in the chaise, and took the reins from his +son's hands. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett was apt to say to Rodney, "You may drive me to this or +that place," but he was very apt, also, to do the driving himself, +after all; especially if he was somewhat preoccupied, and forgot, as +he did now. +</p> +<p> +The way Mr. Howland Sherrett inquired about the red-roofed house, +was this: +</p> +<p> +He went down to Mr. John Horner's store, in Opal Street, and asked +him what was the rent of it. +</p> +<p> +"Six hundred and fifty dollars." +</p> +<p> +"Rather high, isn't it, for the situation?" +</p> +<p> +"Not for the situation of the <i>land</i>, I guess," said Mr. Horner. "I'm +paying annexation taxes." +</p> +<p> +"What will you sell the property for as it stands?" +</p> +<p> +"Eighty-five hundred dollars." +</p> +<p> +"I'll give you eight thousand, Mr. Horner, in cash, upon condition +that you will not mention its having changed hands. I have some +friends whom I wish should live there," he added, lest some deep +speculating move should be surmised. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Horner thought for the space of thirty seconds, after the rapid, +Opal Street fashion, and said,— +</p> +<p> +"You may have it. When will you take the deed?" +</p> +<p> +"To-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock. Will that be convenient?" +</p> +<p> +"All right. Yes, sir." +</p> +<p> +And the next morning at eleven o'clock, the two gentlemen exchanged +papers; Mr. Horner received a check on the First National Bank for +eight thousand dollars, and Mr. Sherrett the title-deed to house and +land on North Centre Street, Dorbury, known as part of the John +Horner estate, and bordering so and so, and so on. +</p> +<p> +The same afternoon, Mr. Sherrett called at Mrs. Argenter's, and +told her of the quiet, pleasant, retired, yet central house and +garden in Upper Dorbury, which he found she could have on a lease of +two or three years, for a rent of three hundred and fifty dollars. +It was in the hands of a lawyer in the village, who would make out +the lease and receive the payments. He had inquired it out, and +would conclude the arrangements for her, if she desired. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know that I desire anything, Mr. Sherrett. I suppose I must +do what I can, since it seems I am not to be left in my own home +which I put my own money into. If it appears suitable to you, I have +no doubt it is right. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure. +Sylvie knows the house, and has an idea she likes it. She is +childish, and likes changing. She will have enough of it, I am +afraid." +</p> +<p> +She did not even care to go over and inspect the house. Sylvie was +glad of that, for she knew it could be made to seem more homelike, +if she and Sabina could get the parlor and her mother's rooms ready +before Mrs. Argenter saw it. During the removal, it was settled that +they should go and stay with Mrs. Lowndes, at River Point. This +practically resulted in Mrs. Argenter's remaining with her sister, +while Sylvie and Sabina spent their time, night as well as day, +often, between Argenter Place and the new house. +</p> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett rode through the village one day, when they were +busy there with their arrangements. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie stood on a high flight of steps in the bay-window, putting up +some white muslin curtains, with little frills on the edges. They +had been in a sleeping-room at Argenter Place. All the furniture of +the house had been appraised, and an allowance made of two thousand +dollars, to which amount Mrs. Argenter might reserve such articles +as she wished, at the valuation. So much, and two thousand dollars +in cash, were given her in exchange for her homestead and her right +of dower in the unincumbered portion of the estate, upon which was +one other smaller mortgage. No other real property appeared in the +list of assets. Mr. Argenter had, unfortunately, invested almost +wholly in bonds, stocks, and those last ruinous mining ventures. The +land out in Colorado was useless, and besides, being wild land, did +not come under the law of dower. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter thought it was all very strange, especially that a sum +of money,—eighteen hundred dollars, which was in her husband's +desk, the proceeds of some little mortgage that he had just +sold,—was not hers to keep. She came very near stealing it from the +estate, quietly appropriating it, without meaning to be dishonest; +regarding it as simply money in the house, which her husband "would +have given her, if she had wanted it, the very day before he died." +</p> +<p> +Possibly he might; but the day after he died, it was no longer his +nor hers. +</p> +<p> +To go back to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled +about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank +entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts +that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the +"shady turn." +</p> +<p> +The front door was open, and boxes stood in the passage; he walked +in as far as the parlor door; then he tapped with his riding-whip +against the frame of it. Sylvie started on her perch, and began to +come down. +</p> +<p> +"Don't stop. I couldn't help coming in, seeing you as I went by," +said Rodney. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie sat down on one of the middle steps. She would rather keep +still than exhibit herself in any further movement. Rodney ought to +have known better than go in then; if indeed he did <i>not</i> know +better than Sylvie herself did, how very pretty and graceful she +looked, all out of regular and ordinary gear. +</p> +<p> +She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black +dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around +and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid +of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped +it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down +over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with +exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to +dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again. She was excited with her +work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney's coming in. +</p> +<p> +"How pretty you are going to look here," said Rodney, glancing +about. +</p> +<p> +The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor—for though Mrs. +Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as +Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her +with a reiterated, helpless, "As you please," at every question that +came up—was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray, +with a border in an arabesque pattern. This had been upon a guest +chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and +Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if +they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She +only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing +room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain +library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and +little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and +other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression +lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and +grown at home. There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon +brackets each side the bay window. Pictures were already +hung,—portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,—a few +nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray, +which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room. +</p> +<p> +"I am only afraid it is too fine," said she, replying to Rodney. "I +really want to be like our neighbors,—to <i>be</i> a neighbor. We belong +here now. People should not drop out of the world, between the +ranks, when changes happen; they can't change out of humanity. Do +you know, Mr. Sherrett,—if it wasn't for the thought of my poor +father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,—I know I +should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?" +</p> +<p> +"You'll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village +parlor. All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference." +</p> +<p> +"I don't mean to. I've been thinking,—<i>ever</i> so much, and I've +found out a good many things. It's this not falling <i>on</i> to anything +that keeps people in the misery of falling. I mean to come to land, +right here. I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden. There's a +kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant. +I wonder if I <i>have</i> got anything in here that has no business?" +</p> +<p> +"Not a scrap. I've no doubt the blacksmith's wife's parlor is +finer. But you can't put the <i>character</i> out." +</p> +<p> +"I mean to have plants, now; in this bay window. I guess I can, now +that we have no conservatory. Village people always have plants in +their windows, and mother won't want to see the street staring in." +</p> +<p> +"Have you brought some?" +</p> +<p> +"How could I? Those great oranges and daphnes? No: I shall have +little window plants and raise them." +</p> +<p> +"But meanwhile, won't the street be staring in?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, we can keep the blinds shut, for the warm weather." +</p> +<p> +"Amy will come and see you, when you are settled; Amy and Aunt +Euphrasia; you'll let them, won't you? You don't mean to be such a +violent village girl as to cut all your old friends?" +</p> +<p> +"Old friends?" Sylvie repeated, thoughtfully "Well, it does seem +almost old. But I didn't think I knew any of you <i>very</i> well, only a +little while ago." +</p> +<p> +"Until the overturns," said Rodney. "It takes a shaking up, I +suppose, sometimes, to set things right. That's what the Shaker +people believe has got to be generally. Do you know, the +Scotch—Aunt Euphrasia is Scotch—have a way of using the word +'upset' to mean 'set up.' I think that is what you make it mean, +Miss Sylvie. I understand the philosophy of it now. I got my first +illustration when I tipped you out there at the baker's door." +</p> +<p> +"You tipped me out into one of the nicest places I ever was in. I've +no doubt it was a piece of the preparation. I mean to have Ray +Ingraham for my intimate friend." +</p> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett did not say anything immediately to this. He sat on +the low cricket upon which he had placed himself near the door, +turning his soft felt hat over and over between his hands. He was +not quite ready to perceive as yet, that the baker's daughter was +just the person for Sylvie Argenter's intimate friend; and he had a +dim suspicion, likewise, that there was something in the girl +constitution that prevented the being able to have more than one +intimate friend. +</p> +<p> +He repeated presently his assurance that Amy and Aunt Euphrasia +would come over to see them, and took himself off, saying that he +knew he must have been horribly in the way all the time. +</p> +<p> +The next morning, a light covered wagon, driven by Mr. Sherrett's +man, Rodgers, came up the Turn. There was nobody at the red-roofed +house so early, and he set down in the front porch what he took +carefully, one at a time, from the vehicle,—some two dozen lovely +greenhouse plants, newly potted from the choicest and most +flourishing growth of the season. +</p> +<p> +When Sylvie and Sabina came round from the ten o'clock street car, +they stumbled suddenly upon this beauty that incumbered the +entrance. To a branch of glossy green, luxuriant ivy was tied a +card,— +</p> +<p class="center"> + "<span class="sc">Rodney Sherrett</span>,<br /> + With friendly compliments." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie really sung at her work to-day, placing and replacing till +she had grouped the whole in her wire frames in the bay window so as +to show every leaf and spray in light and line aright. +</p> +<p> +"Why, it is prettier than it ever was at the old place; isn't it +Sabina? It's full and perfect; and that was always a great +barrenness of glass. The street can't stare in now. I think mother +will be able to forget that there is even a street at all." +</p> +<p> +"It's real nobby," said Sabina. +</p> +<p> +The room was all soft green and gray: green rep chairs and sofa, +green topped library table; green piano cover; green inside blinds; +a green velvet grape leaf border around the gray papered walls. +</p> +<p> +Sabina, though a very elegant housemaid, patronized and approved +cheerfully. She was satisfied with the new home. There had not been +a word of leaving since it was decided upon. She had her reasons. +Sabina was "promised to be married" next spring. Dignity in her +profession was not so much of an object meantime, nor even wages; +she had laid up money and secured her standing, living always in the +first families; she could afford to take it in a quiet way; "it +wouldn't be so bothering nor so dressy;" Sabina had a saving turn +with her best things, that spared both trouble and money. Besides, +her kitchen windows and the back door suited her; they looked across +a bit of unoccupied land to the back street where the cabinet-shop +buildings were. Sabina was going to marry into the veneering +profession. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0006"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VI. +</h2> +<h3> + A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR. +</h3> +<p> +Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's +chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were +sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie +there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to +feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and +submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right. +</p> +<p> +The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold +out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which +Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters +were not willing to think of yet. +</p> +<p> +Rachel quietly said,—as soon as her father was so far restored and +comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,— +</p> +<p> +"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay. +I spoke to them Saturday night." +</p> +<p> +Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after +the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into +the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her +father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as +he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them +all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the +business. +</p> +<p> +"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?" +</p> +<p> +"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest, +and the stupidest—if a quick heart and a willing will can be +stupid—of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly +hitched on. +</p> +<p> +Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She +must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new +ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done +for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves, +family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to +be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them +ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake +rhyme. +</p> +<p> +Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,—if +they could stop to make them and knew how,—home bread and cake +could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity. +She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do +better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced +to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been +necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was +machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for +baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled +with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the +breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times +heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. +</p> +<p> +Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that +touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she +felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I <i>will</i> +work; I <i>will</i> speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if +you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are +widening in the very nature and development of things; they are +showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business, +here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is +no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do +nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the +clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose +shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that. +</p> +<p> +Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a +sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and +from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and +Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East +Mills, and River Point. +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when +she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put +brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar +cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her +sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like. +She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in +to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse. +</p> +<p> +"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I +to have any neighbors?" +</p> +<p> +The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn; +Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also +in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She +liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is; +that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original +land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression. +</p> +<p> +Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the +Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in +the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination. +</p> +<p> +Ray took it more quietly and coolly. +</p> +<p> +"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said. +"We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we +will try and come, some day." +</p> +<p> +"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to <i>call</i>, +though I said so. I want you to come right in and <i>see</i> me. I never +could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again." +</p> +<p> +The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid +gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that +Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last +shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in +their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it; +a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and +exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the +delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray. +</p> +<p> +The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening +at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a +book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been +there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone +in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped, +physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what +one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds +upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been +taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet +sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to +restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to +breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport +with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world. +</p> +<p> +"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were +gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything. +</p> +<p> +"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice +girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my +accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she +added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I +should like them to come." +</p> +<p> +"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered, +listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion. +</p> +<p> +"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright +gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender +finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know +such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a +little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them. +All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people." +</p> +<p> +"You certainly forget the Sherretts." +</p> +<p> +"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just +edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a +little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the +purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you +should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it, +and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could." +</p> +<p> +"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by +the roots, and there is the end of it." +</p> +<p> +It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and +she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her +mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife, +or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs. +Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come +together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so +much more of the same things than their mothers did. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no +difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for +her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore +away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always +lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out +under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread +carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders; +the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of +quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always +glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little +purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in +her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury +library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not +so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds, +where all sorts of blooms,—bright petunias and verbenas, delicate +sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy +deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and +rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised +on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged +things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,—made a glory +and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the +grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery, +against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines. +</p> +<p> +"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in +her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one +evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother. +"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same +things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees +put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a +view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a +peep at the hills. But you are right down <i>amongst</i> such niceness! +There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling +along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down +the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the +shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had +all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good +time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate +properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread +smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so +much better. Somebody came here to <i>do</i> something; and the rest +was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be +exquisite!" +</p> +<p> +"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet, +cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia +Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone. +</p> +<p> +"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living. +The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory." +</p> +<p> +"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard, +beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed +quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and +she liked them. +</p> +<p> +"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden +flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in +glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings +behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every +evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He +himself begins and ends?" +</p> +<p> +"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham, +perceiving. +</p> +<p> +"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of +their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun +makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of +us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find +it all, by and by, ready,—whatever we think we have missed; the +building not made with hands." +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us," +said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods +to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or +epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion. +</p> +<p> +"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same +thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being +clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment. +You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole +chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the +same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new +thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move +and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some +fresh phase of what is one and everlasting." +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so—given the right +circumstances to draw her forth—than she could help breathing. Her +whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of. +Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams +and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown +in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day +experience and incident. +</p> +<p> +But she never went on—and "went over," exhorting. She did not +believe in <i>discourses</i>, she said, even from the pulpit—very much. +She believed in a <i>sermon</i>, and letting it go. And a sermon is just +a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to +any soul. +</p> +<p> +So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to +break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it +herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little +business that she had come to ask Dot. +</p> +<p> +"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?" +</p> +<p> +It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she +took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all +one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of +living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so +pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being +played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music +afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to +send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures +following. +</p> +<p> +Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric +neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She +folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright +took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her +three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,— +</p> +<p> +"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a +real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your +house." +</p> +<p> +"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said +good-by, and passed out through the shop. +</p> +<p> +"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her +disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged +to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go +out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There +is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he +would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great +desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him." +</p> +<p> +"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for +her being so happy." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new +pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn, +unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old +and tired, which <i>I</i> think there is never any need of doing." +</p> +<p> +"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause +in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a +little suggestion from it. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these +days." +</p> +<p> +"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be +done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright +held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I +mean,"—she gathered herself up bravely to say,—"I should like +dearly to do <i>anything</i> for Amy; but I have thought it would be a +good plan—if I could—to do something like that for the sake of +earning; as Dot Ingraham does." +</p> +<p> +"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss +Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt. +</p> +<p> +"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always +things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the +grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,—which we <i>have</i> to +have,—turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages—and mother's +wine—and cream—and fresh eggs,—I get so worried when the bills +come in!" +</p> +<p> +Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling +her money and housekeeping troubles. +</p> +<p> +"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just +as much as I can do,—of those kinds of work,—and a poor girl would +waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much, +myself. If Sabina were to go,—and she will next spring,—I am +afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two." +</p> +<p> +For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that +she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is +wonderful how much work one person, who <i>does</i> none of it and who +must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs. +Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the +morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she +never <i>could</i> remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,—she +needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And +she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it; +one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of +her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the +cabinet-maker. +</p> +<p> +"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss +Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You +can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay." +</p> +<p> +Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so +graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold +of them, by their honest handles,—as they were meant to be taken +hold of. +</p> +<p> +"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village +girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat +projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They +had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty +minutes. +</p> +<p> +"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite +<i>been it</i>, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now. +That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us +in,—all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you +weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs. +Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a +sort of a way,—well, it <i>was</i> just like a dog sniffing round for +something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old, +black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her. +'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she <i>sposed</i>.' Everybody +isn't like the Ingrahams." +</p> +<p> +"No garment of <i>this</i> life fits exactly. There was only one +seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The +body is more. And at last,—somehow, sometime,—we shall be all +clothed perfectly—with his righteousness." +</p> +<p> +This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking +for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a +meaning. +</p> +<p> +"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any +outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me +plainer, Miss Euphrasia." +</p> +<p> +"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not <i>clothes</i> so much as +<i>life</i>; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears +and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history, +circumstance. 'Raiment,'—'garment,'—the words always stand for +this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his +<i>garment</i>,'—He gave up his own life that He might have been +living,—to come and wash our feet!" +</p> +<p> +"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into +Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently. +</p> +<p> +"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us +with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we +lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will +give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it +will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. +And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we +shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but +rightness?" +</p> +<p> +"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of +our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?" +</p> +<p> +"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old +letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously +true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it <i>is things</i> +they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They +talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an +abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly +that his 'justifying' is <i>setting everything right</i> for them, and +round them, and in them: his <i>rightness</i> is sufficient for them; +they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute +they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for +them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul +ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings +forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes +for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of +regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord +heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He <i>knows</i> +that we have <i>need</i>," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly. +"Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as +people run for their lives from fire or flood." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had listened with a shining face. +</p> +<p> +"You get it all from that one word,—'raiment.' Your words—the +words you find out, Miss Kirkbright—are living things." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, words <i>are</i> living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God +does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit, +and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they +were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words, +inspired. We talk about their <i>being</i> inspired, as if it were a +passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe +ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given +over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never +need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that +He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the +more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand +their speech." +</p> +<p> +"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'—that words in the Bible +stand for,—Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?" +</p> +<p> +"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled. +</p> +<p> +"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly. +</p> +<p> +"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't +believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in +it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming +into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to +worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We +should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to +Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one +place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the +one part to the other part under heaven. <i>Lightening</i>—not +lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the +sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day +after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night +after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward +dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,—received it, wonderfully; +but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having +heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about +the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass +away, but the Word shall never pass away." +</p> +<p> +"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?" +</p> +<p> +The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the +red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell. +</p> +<p> +"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could +tell it to my mother!" +</p> +<p> +"Can't you?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,—with me," Sylvie answered, with +a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am +taking to her. I can take,—but I can't give, and I always feel so +that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come +and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?" +</p> +<p> +"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say. +Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about +such sort of giving—in words—as a duty. Even with people whom I +work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so +much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near +and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that +are equal—or similarly related—to the same thing, are related to +one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time. +Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to +my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort." +</p> +<p> +"I think you go to everything for it—and to everybody with it," +said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the +car-step. +</p> +<p> +Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie +through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle +cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all +her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let +them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless +pressure. +</p> +<p> +For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily. +The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made +pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into +established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The +difficulties—the grapples—came thick and forceful about her. At +the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her. +</p> +<p> +She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the +countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in +upholding her. It was a link with the old things—the very best of +the old things,—that stood as a continual assurance that they +themselves were not altered—lowered in any way—by their alterings. +This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs. +Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts +indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out +altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright +thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings +with them in a friendly—even intimate—fashion. If Sylvie chose to +sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia +did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the +maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when +she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over +knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might +well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her +window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs. +Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the +relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts +and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart +somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to +Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could +find little other. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs. +Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and +thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,—that she had +these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after +all, pretty hard to endure. +</p> +<p> +The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly +neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and +the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as +she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not +draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt +bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward +Dot and Ray. +</p> +<p> +Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never +went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her +sister,—Aunt Lora, the tailoress,—and her son, the young +carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and +discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village—what +shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a +village beau? A village <i>desirable</i> he was, at any rate. Of course, +Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a +voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared +mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's +proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew +beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between +the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally +and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took +in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though +the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all +these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social +"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic +benediction, all the way down. +</p> +<p> +I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie +nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in +their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts. +This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy +was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at +Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss +Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work +all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress, +went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no +more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no +more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All +that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly. +Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year +Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These +plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving +home. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss +Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions +were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into +next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would +come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow +patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite." +</p> +<p> +[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude +to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and +Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain +that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in +expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities +whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much +pitch-forked up into heaps behind.] +</p> +<p> +Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been +growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of +her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine +and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the +slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie +for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she +developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the +yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a +soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to +be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and +harder. +</p> +<p> +Sabina Bowen went away. +</p> +<p> +She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the +cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,—neat +and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread +work about the eaves and porch,—which was to be vacated at that +time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances, +the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the +remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina +eagerly one evening with the news. +</p> +<p> +Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright +double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round +table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other; +of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her +bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and +hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread, +and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning +when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the +towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person; +it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to +dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for +dinner. +</p> +<p> +And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of +despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if +one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one +very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as +it may be. +</p> +<p> +She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then +flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs, +because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't +pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next +one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and +in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of +ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a +fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish, +jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the +heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like +considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the +use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the +ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her +about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her +using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon +the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance +that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their +apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a +week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard +enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool +she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers." +</p> +<p> +That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place +before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was +no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the +village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices. +By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent +servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of +them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the +oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would +cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs. +Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she +made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by +the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All +this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled +underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any +plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean." +</p> +<p> +At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not +pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their +little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a +poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars. +They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at +last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half, +respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and +they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs. +Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do +but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and +effectually done it. +</p> +<p> +But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would +they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the +principal every six months? +</p> +<p> +In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must +give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first +place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A +cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for +rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season +in that village,—nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be +just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to +provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and +everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to +make, and girls going off every Monday morning? +</p> +<p> +She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be +able to answer a word. But the lease,—for another year? What should +they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands? +</p> +<p> +If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how! +</p> +<p> +The little poem of village living,—of home simpleness and frugal +prettiness,—of <i>that</i>, the two first lines alone had rhymed! +</p> +<p> +They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they +came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was +harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer +and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the +year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother; +and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see +her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds +in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under; +even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When +Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away +her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing +was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she +would,—have what she wanted. +</p> +<p> +Then she went to see Mr. Frost. +</p> +<p> +"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an +answer of himself. +</p> +<p> +The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any +moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy. +It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out. +She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when +he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines +without moving from his seat. +</p> +<p> +"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after +all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and +by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned +back to his other papers,—his notes of yesterday's debate in the +House. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +Early in June, there came lovely days. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the +end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the +remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a +year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and +dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and +the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of +service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs +asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying +themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no +moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire." +</p> +<p> +She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own +rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one +afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost +shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but +village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and +names were suddenly announced. +</p> +<p> +"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!" +</p> +<p> +Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have +said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang +to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry. +</p> +<p> +"What <i>shall</i> I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth <i>is</i> +my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss +Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what +hair!" +</p> +<p> +She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust +in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged +black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all +right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that +cloudiness beneath which they shone. +</p> +<p> +Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and +told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered +then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed +to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful +spring. +</p> +<p> +"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must +have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to +Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in +the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the +city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she +wants." +</p> +<p> +Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed; +at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year +ago. +</p> +<p> +"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?" +</p> +<p> +"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot +Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston; +then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill +them." +</p> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some +minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his +handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had +anticipated. +</p> +<p> +By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to +ask her for Class Day. +</p> +<p> +"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt +Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list, +you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter. +I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it +probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it +were?" +</p> +<p> +"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to +the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness +in letting her know. "I <i>wish</i> I could! But we shall be gone." +</p> +<p> +"Not before Class Day?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry." +</p> +<p> +Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for +nothing. +</p> +<p> +Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps +Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told +Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge +of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that +lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful +wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be +crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets +discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great +and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that +men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with +their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which +the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of +his grand, pure heights." +</p> +<p> +All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed +thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given +and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt +Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not +be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to +speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had +said—had done—nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither +knew it of the other; that was the worst. +</p> +<p> +When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia +turned round to Sylvie with a question. +</p> +<p> +"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up +all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't +mind using it. And it is <i>mother's</i> money; and Dr. Sainswell says +she <i>cannot</i> have a long life." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear +and calm,—only tender. +</p> +<p> +"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her +face. +</p> +<p> +"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't +money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to +me—after mother's feebleness—is the changing; the not staying of +anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss +Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged." +</p> +<p> +"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly. +"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the +Lord working. That is the comfort,—the certainty." +</p> +<p> +The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in +Sylvie's eyes, at that word. +</p> +<p> +"How <i>do</i> you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall +never forget that now." +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away +toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not +help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully, +in most ways, from "putting things in his head." +</p> +<p> +"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be +as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people +are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads." +</p> +<p> +"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a +very great good-for-nothing?" +</p> +<p> +"No, indeed. Why?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure +whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I +haven't had anything to do with <i>horses</i> this winter; I sent Red +Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a +fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the +bad? What is there so abominable about them?" +</p> +<p> +"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand +and splendid,—in <i>type</i>,—you know. Horses are powers; men are made +to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct +of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he +stops there,—playing with the signs. He might as well ride a +stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do, +all his life." +</p> +<p> +Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no +answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,— +</p> +<p> +"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up +things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words, +just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I <i>might</i> do +something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy, +and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real +driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my +father?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't <i>know</i> that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but +it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You +ought to be quite sure what you stay for." +</p> +<p> +"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night." +</p> +<p> +"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it +all out honestly with him." +</p> +<p> +Which advice—the first clause of it—Rodney proceeded instantly to +follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam +and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one +of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and +passive thing. +</p> +<p> +When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery +stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him. +</p> +<p> +The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with +you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of +uncomfortableness,—of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter. +He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope, +Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will +be up presently to take away these things." +</p> +<p> +The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond +which were sleeping and bath-rooms. +</p> +<p> +Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while +Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the +latter carefully in two, and lit one half. +</p> +<p> +"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal +beginning after they should be closeted and seated,—"I've been +thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm +rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,—before I +take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more +in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I +ought to have got ahead a little by that time." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He +wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it. +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?" +</p> +<p> +"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'—as Nurse Pond used +to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough +to do for a gentleman,—a <i>man</i>, I hope. But I <i>should</i> like to take +hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want +to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want +something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't +take care of myself—and more." +</p> +<p> +"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door." +</p> +<p> +After that, of course, we cannot listen. +</p> +<p> +They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr. +Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two +little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which +his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at +this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and +wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched +sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of +his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What +he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned +to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that +heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man, +can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they +came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,— +</p> +<p> +"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,—for +both your sakes." +</p> +<p> +"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were +young." +</p> +<p> +"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If +anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,—you may talk, if you like, +to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her." +</p> +<p> +And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of +our story. +</p> +<p> +We may leave it here for a while. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0007"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VII. +</h2> +<h3> + BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW. +</h3> + + +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<p class="ih">"Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs,</p> +<p>Sitting so long atop of my eggs!</p> +<p>Never a minute for rest to snatch;</p> +<p>I wonder when they are going to hatch!</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> +<p class="ih">"Cluck! cluck! listen! tseep!</p> +<p>Down in the nest there's a stir and a peep.</p> +<p>Everything comes to its luck some day;</p> +<p>I've got chickens! What will folks say?"</p> +</div></div> + + +<p> +Bel Bree made that rhyme. It came into her head suddenly one +morning, sitting in her little bedroom window that looked right +over the grass yard into the open barn-door, where the hens +stalked in and out; and one, with three chickens, was at that +minute airing herself and her family that had just come out of +their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the +great big world was only there, just as they had of course +expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. <i>She</i> was just +old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind +expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage. +She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had +done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"—as her step-mother was +wont to say of her own perspicacities,—and put it into jingle, as +she had a trick of doing with things. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree lived in New Hampshire; fifteen miles from a railway; in +the curious region where the old times and the new touch each +other and mix up; where the women use towels, and table-cloths, and +bed-spreads, of their mothers' own hand-weaving, and hem their new +ones with sewing-machines brought by travelling agents to their +doors; where the men mow and rake their fields with modern +inventions, but only get their newspapers once a week; where the +"help" are neighbors' girls, who wear overskirts and high hats, and +sit at the table with the family; where there are rag carpets and +"painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys, +and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork +quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long +winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles +about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons +and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools +and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work +their way into professions, and girls who take the world by +instinct, and understand a great deal perfectly well that is beyond +their practical reach; where the old Puritan stiffness keeps them +straight, but gets leavened in some marvelous way with the broader +and more generous thought of the time, and wears a geniality that it +is half unconscious of; the region where, if you are lucky enough to +get into it to know it, you find yourself, as Miss Euphrasia said, +encouraged and put in heart again about the world. Things are so +genuine; when they make a step forward, they are really there. +</p> +<p> +But Bel Bree was not very happy in her home, though she sat at the +window and made rhymes in half merry fashion; though she loved the +hills, and the lights, and the shadows, the sweet-blossoming springs +and the jeweled autumns, the sunsets, and the great rains, that set +all the wild little waterfalls prancing and calling to each other +among the ravines. +</p> +<p> +Bel had two lives; one that she lived in these things, and one +within the literal and prosaic limit of the farmhouse, where her +father, as farmers must, had married a smart second wife to "look +after matters." +</p> +<p> +Not that Mrs. Bree ever looked <i>after</i> anything: nothing ever got +ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she +neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to +herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected +something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was +reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into +that wherein she should not have been blamed,—the precinct of her +step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. She was taunted +and censured for incapacity in that to which she was not admitted; +"her mother made ten cheeses a week, and flung them in her face," +she said. On the other hand, Mrs. Bree said "Bel hadn't got a mite +of <i>snap</i> to her." One might say that, perhaps, of an electric +battery, if the wrong poles were opposed. Mrs. Bree had not found +out where the "snap" lay in Bel's character. She never would find +out. +</p> +<p> +Bel longed, as human creatures who are discontent always do, to get +away. The world was big; there must be better things somewhere. +</p> +<p> +There was a pathos of weariness, and an inspiration of hope, in her +little rhyme about the hen. +</p> +<p> +Bel was named for her Aunt Belinda. Miss Belinda Bree came up for a +week, sometimes, in the summer, to the farm. All the rest of the +year she worked hard in the city. She put a good face upon it in +her talk among her old neighbors. She spoke of the grand streets, +the parades, Duke's balls,—for which she made dresses,—and +jubilees, of which she heard afar off,—as if she were part and +parcel of all Boston enterprise and magnificence. It was a great +thing, truly, to live in the Hub. Honestly, she had not got over it +since she came there, a raw country girl, and began her +apprenticeship to its wonders and to her own trade. She could not +turn a water faucet, nor light her gas, nor count the strokes of the +electric fire alarm, without feeling the grandeur of having +Cochituate turned on to wash her hands,—of making her one little +spark of the grand illumination under which the Three Hills shone +every night,—of dwelling within ear-shot and protection of the +quietly imposing system of wires and bells that worked by lightning +against a fierce element of daily danger. She was proud of +policemen; she was thrilled at the sound of steam-engines thundering +along the pavements; she felt as if she had a hand in it. When they +fired guns upon the Common, she could only listen and look out of +windows; the little boys ran and shouted for her in the streets; +that is what the little boys are for. Somebody must do the running +and the shouting to relieve the instincts of older and busier +people, who must pretend as if they didn't care. +</p> +<p> +All this kept Miss Belinda Bree from utterly wearing out at her dull +work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressing +in families. It really keeps a great many people from wearing out. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree's work <i>was</i> dull. The days of her early "mantua making" +were over. Twenty years had made things very different in Boston. +The "nice families" had been more quiet then; the quietest of them +now cannot manage things as they did in those days; for the same +reason that you cannot buy old-fashioned "wearing" goods; they are +not in the market. "Sell and wear out; wear out and sell;" that is +the principle of to-day. You must do as the world does; there is no +other path cut through. If you travel, you must keep on night and +day, or wait twenty-four hours and start in the night again. +</p> +<p> +Nobody—or scarcely anybody—has a dress-maker now, in the old, cosy +way, of the old, cosy sort, staying a week, looking over the +wardrobes of the whole family, advising, cutting, altering, +remaking, getting into ever so much household interest and history +in the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the +same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the +leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that +in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain +for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room +with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of +scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our +dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial. +</p> +<p> +But now, all poor Miss Bree's "best places" had slipped away from +her, and her life had changed. People go to great outfitting stores, +buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing +to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything +fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and +accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the +bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern +proportions. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the +warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button +holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or +three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills, +and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and +hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even +this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, +sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about. +Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room +before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the +house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody +a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that +old callariper?" +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady's fault; she +resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her +dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had +always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid +that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old +hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her +hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she +"left off going out to work for families." +</p> +<p> +The warehouses did not pay her very well; neither there was she able +to compete with the smart young seamstresses; she only got a dollar +and a quarter a day, and had to lodge and feed herself; yet she kept +on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story +window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard +the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by and well-dressed +people moving to and fro, felt the thrill of the daily bustle, and +was, after all, a part of this great, beautiful Boston! Strange +though it seem, Miss Belinda Bree was content. +</p> +<p> +Content enough to tell charming stories of it, up in the country, +to her niece Bel, when she was questioned by her. +</p> +<p> +Of her room all to herself, so warm in winter, with a red carpet +(given her by the very Mrs. "Callariper" who could not help a +misgiving, after all, that Miss Bree's vocation had been ended with +that wretched word), and a coal stove, and a big, splendid brindled +gray cat—Bartholomew—lying before it; of her snug little +housekeeping, with kindlings in the closet drawer, and milk-jug out +on the stone window-sill; of the music-mistress who had the room +below, and who came up sometimes and sat an hour with her, and took +her cat when she came away, leaving in return, in her own absences, +her great English ivy with Miss Bree. Of the landlady who lived in +the basement, and asked them all down, now and then, to play a game +of cassino or double cribbage, and eat a Welsh rabbit: of things +outside that younger people did,—the girls at the warerooms and +their friends. Of Peck's cheap concerts, and the Public Library +books to read on holidays and Sundays; of ten-cent trips down the +harbor, to see the surf on Nantasket Beach; of the brilliant streets +and shops; of the Public Garden, the flowers and the pond, the boats +and the bridge; of the great bronze Washington reared up on his +horse against the evening sky; of the deep, quiet old avenues of the +Common; of the balloons and the fireworks on the "Fourth of Julies." +</p> +<p> +I do not think she did it to entice her; I do not think it occurred +to her that she was putting anything into Bel's head; but when Bel +all at once declared that she meant to go to Boston herself and seek +her fortune,—do machine-work or something,—Aunt Blin felt a sudden +thankful delight, and got a glimpse of a possible cheerfulness +coming to herself that she had never dreamed of. If it was pleasant +to tell over these scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel, +what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge +them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup +of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a +winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her +glasses on her little homely old nose? The little old nose radiated +the concentrated delight of the whole diminutive, withered face; the +intense gleam of the small, pale blue eyes that bent themselves +together to a short focus above it, and the eagerness of the thin, +shrunken lips that pursed themselves upward with an expression that +was keener than a smile. Bel laughed, and said she was "all puckered +up into one little admiration point!" +</p> +<p> +After that, it was of no use to be wise and to make objections. +</p> +<p> +"I'll take you right in with me, and look after you, if you do!" +said Miss Bree. "And two together, we can housekeep real +comfortable!" +</p> +<p> +It was as if a new wave of youth, from the far-retreated tide, had +swept back upon the beach sands of her life, to spend its sparkle +and its music upon the sad, dry level. Every little pebble of +circumstance took new color under its touch. Something belonging to +her was still young, strong, hopeful. Bel would be a brightness in +the whole old place. The middle-aged music-mistress would like +her,—perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the +clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,—old Mr. Sparrow, +the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest +under the eaves,—the milliner in the second-floor-back,—why, she +would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be +singing in the house! The middle-aged music-mistress did not +sing,—only played. And this would be her doing,—her bringing; it +would be the third-floor-front's glory! The pert girls at the +wareroom would not snub the old maid any more, and shove her into +the meanest corner. She had got a piece of girlhood of her own +again. Let them just see Bel Bree—that was all! +</p> +<p> +Yet she did set before Bel, conscientiously, the difference between +the free country home and the close, bricked up city. +</p> +<p> +"There isn't any out-doors there, you know—round the houses; <i>home</i> +out-doors; you have to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go +out. The streets are splendid, and there's lots to look at; but +they're only made to <i>get through</i>, you know, after all." +</p> +<p> +They were sitting, while she spoke, on a flat stone out under the +old elm-trees between the "fore-yard" and the barn. Up above was +great blue depth into which you could look through the delicate +stems and flickering leaves of young far tips of branches. One +little white cloud was shining down upon them as it floated in the +sun. Away off swelled billowy tops of hills, one behind another, +making you feel how big the world was. That was what Bel had been +saying. +</p> +<p> +"You feel so as long as you stay here," replied Miss Blin, "as if +there was room and chance for everything 'over the hills and far +away.' But in the city it all crowds up together; it gets just as +close as it can, and everybody is after the same chances. 'Tain't +<i>all</i> Fourth-of-July; you mustn't think it. Milk's ten cents a +quart, and <i>jest</i> as blue! Don't you 'spose you're better off up +here, after all? Do you think Mrs. Bree could get along without you, +now?" +</p> +<p> +Bel replied most irrelevantly. She sat watching the fowls +scratching around the barn-door. +</p> +<p> +"How different a rooster scratches from a hen!" said she. "He just +gives one kick,—out smart,—and picks up what he's after; <i>she</i> +makes ever so many little scrabbles, and half the time concludes it +ain't there!—What was it you were saying? About mother? O, <i>she</i> +don't want me! The trouble is, Aunt Blin, we two <i>don't</i> want each +other, and never did." She picked up a straw and bent it back and +forth, absently, into little bits, until it broke. Her lips curled +tremulously, and her bright eyes were sad. +</p> +<p> +Miss Blin knew it perfectly well without being told; but she +wouldn't have pretended that she did, for all the world. +</p> +<p> +"O, tut!" said she. "You get along well enough. You like one another +full as well as could be expected, only you ain't constituted +similar, that's all. She's great for turning off, and going +ahead, and she ain't got much patience. Such folks never has. You +can't be smart and easy going too. 'Tain't possible. She's +right-up-an'-a-comin', and she expects everybody else to be. But you +<i>like</i> her, Bel; you know you do. You ain't goin' away for that. I +won't have it that you are." +</p> +<p> +"I like her—yes;" said Bel, slowly. "I know she's smart. I <i>mean</i> +to like her. I do it on purpose. But I don't <i>love</i> her, with a +<i>can't help it</i>, you see. I feel as if I ought to; I want to have my +heart go out to her; but it keeps coming back again. I could be +happy with you, Aunt Blin, in your up-stairs room, with the blue +milk out in the window-sill. There'd be room, enough for <i>us</i>, but +this whole farm isn't comfortable for Ma and me!" +</p> +<p> +After that, Miss Blin only said that she would speak to Kellup; +meaning her brother, Caleb Bree. +</p> +<p> +Caleb Bree was just the sort of man that by divine compensation +generally marries, or gets married by a woman that is +"right-up-and-a-comin'." He "had no objections," to this plan of +Bel's, I mean; perhaps his favorite phrase would have expressed his +strongest feeling in the crisis just referred to, also; it was a +normal state of mind with him; he had gone through the world, thus +far, on the principle of <i>not</i> "having objections." He had none now, +"if Ma'am hadn't, and Blin saw best." He let his child go out from +his house down into the great, unknown, struggling, hustling, +devouring city, without much thought or inquiry. It settled <i>that</i> +point in his family. "Bel had gone down to Boston to be a +dress-maker, 'long of her Aunt Blindy," was what he had to say to +his neighbors. It sounded natural and satisfactory. House-holds +break up after the children are grown, of course; they all settle to +something; that is all it comes to—the child-life out of which if +they had died and gone away, there would have been wailing and +heart-breaking; the loving and tending and watching through cunning +ways and helpless prettiness and small knowledge-getting: they turn +into men and women, and they go out into the towns, or they get +married, even—and nobody thinks, then, that the little children are +dead! But they are: they are dead, out of the household, and they +never come back to it any more. +</p> +<p> +Caleb Bree let Bel go, never once thinking that after this she never +<i>could</i> come back the same. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Bree had her own two children,—and there might be more—that +would claim all that could be done for them. She would miss Bel's +telling them stories, and washing their faces, and carrying them off +into the barn or the orchard, and leaving the house quiet of a +Sunday or a busy baking-day. It had been "all Bel was good for;" +and it had been more than Mrs. Bree had appreciated at the time. Bel +cried when she kissed them and bade them good-by; but she was gone; +she and her round leather trunk and her little bird in its cage that +she could not leave behind, though Aunt Blin did say that "she +wouldn't altogether answer for it with Bartholomew." +</p> +<p> +Bel herself,—the other little bird,—who had never tried her +wings, or been shut up in strange places with fierce, prowling +creatures,—she could answer for her, she thought! +</p> +<p> +It is worth telling,—the advent of Bel and her bird in the +up-stairs room in Leicester Place, and what came of it with +Bartholomew. Miss Blin believed very much in her cat with the +apostolic name, though she had never tried his principles with a +caged bird. She had tutored him to refrain from meat and milk unless +they were set down for him in his especial corner upon the hearth. +He took his airings on the window-ledge where the sun slanted in of +a morning, beside the very brown paper parcel in which was wrapped +the mutton chop for dinner; he never touched the cheese upon the +table, though he knew the word "cheese" as well as if he could spell +it, and would stand up tall on his hind paws to receive his morsel +when he was told, even in a whisper, and without a movement, that he +might come and have some. He preferred his milk condensed in this +way; he got very little of it in the fluid form, and did not think +very highly of it when he did. He knew what was good, Aunt Blin +said. +</p> +<p> +He understood conversation; especially moral lectures and +admonitions; Miss Bree had talked to him precisely as if he had a +soul, for five years. He knew when she was coming back at one +o'clock to dinner, or at nine in the evening, by the ringing of the +bells. After she had told him so, he would be sitting at the door, +watching for its opening, from the instant of their first sound +until she came up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +When Aunt Blin thought over all this and told it to Bel, on their +way down in the cars, she almost persuaded her niece and quite +convinced herself, that Bartholomew could be dealt with on +principles of honor and confidence. They would not attempt to keep +the cage out of his reach; that would be almost to keep it out of +their own. She would talk to Bartholomew. She would show him the +bird, and make him understand that they set great store by it, that +it must not be meddled with on any account. "Why, he never <i>offers</i> +to touch my tame pigeon that hops in on the table to eat the +crumbs!" +</p> +<p> +"But a pigeon is pretty big, Aunt Blin," Bel answered, "and may be +Bartholomew suspects that it is old and tough. I <i>am</i> afraid about +my tiny, tender little bird." +</p> +<p> +Bel was charmed with Aunt Blin's room, when she opened the blinds +and drew up the colored shades, and let the street-light in until +she could find her matches and light the gas. It was just after dark +when they reached Leicester Place. The little lamp-lighter ran down +out of the court with his ladder as they turned in. There were two +bright lanterns whose flames flared in the wind; one just opposite +their windows, and one below at the livery stable. There was a big +livery stable at the bottom of the court, built right across the +end; and there was litter about the doors, and horse odor in the +air. But that is not the very worst kind of city smell that might +be, and putting up with that, the people who lived in Leicester +Court had great counterbalancing advantages. There was only one side +to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the +opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there +were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at +the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of +an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and +down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole +place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all +lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand; +certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and +gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one +little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told +about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really handsome +pattern of raised leaves; the round table in the middle with a red +cloth, and the square one in the corner with a brown linen one; the +little Parlor Beauty stove, with a boiler atop and an oven in the +side,—an oval braided mat before it, and a mantel shelf above with +some vases and books upon it,—all the books, some dozen in number, +that Aunt Blin had ever owned in the whole course of her life. One +of the blue vases had a piece broken out of its edge, but that was +turned round behind. The closets, one on each side of the +fire-place, answered for pantry, china closet, store-room, wardrobe, +and all. The <i>refrigerator</i> was out on the stone window-sill on the +east side. The room had corner windows, the house standing at the +head of a little paved alley that ran down to Hero Street. +</p> +<p> +"There!" says Aunt Blin turning up the gas cheerily, and dropping +her shawl upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then +I'll run for some muffins, and you can make a fire. You know where +all the things are, you know!" +</p> +<p> +That was the way she made Bel welcome; treating her at once as part +and parcel of everything. +</p> +<p> +Down stairs ran Aunt Blin; she came up more slowly, bringing the +great Bartholomew in her arms, and treading on her petticoats all +the way. +</p> +<p> +Straight up to the square table she walked, where Bel had set down +her bird-cage, with the newspaper pinned over it. Aunt Blin pulled +the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the +other arm. His big head stuck out before, and his big tail behind; +both eager, restless, wondering, in port and aspect. +</p> +<p> +"Now, Bartholomew," said Aunt Blin, in her calmest, most confident, +most deliberate tones, "see here! We've brought—home—a little +<i>bird</i>, Bartholomew!" +</p> +<p> +Bartholomew's big head was electric with feline expression; his ears +stood up, his eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on +end; he devoured poor little Cheeps already with his gaze; his tail +grew huger, and vibrated in great sweeps. +</p> +<p> +"O see, Aunt Blin!" cried Bel. "He's just ready to spring. He don't +care a bit for what you say!" +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin gave a fresh grip with her elbow against Bartholomew's +sides, and went on with unabated faith,—unhurried calmness. +</p> +<p> +"We set <i>everything</i> by that little bird, Bartholomew! We wouldn't +have it touched for all the world! Don't—you—never—go—<i>near</i> it! +Do you hear?" +</p> +<p> +Bartholomew heard. Miss Bree could not see his tail, fairly lashing +now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing like green fire. +She stroked his head, and went on preaching. +</p> +<p> +"The little bird <i>sings</i>, Bartholomew! You can hear it, mornings, +while you eat your breakfast. And you shall have CHEESE for +breakfast as long as you're good, and <i>don't</i>—<i>touch</i>—the <i>bird</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"O, Aunt Blin! He will! He means to! Don't show it to him any more! +Let me hang it way up high, where he <i>can't</i>!" +</p> +<p> +"Don't you be afraid. He understands now, that we're precious of it. +Don't you, Bartholomew? I want him to get used to it." +</p> +<p> +And Aunt Blin actually set the cat down, and turned round to take up +her shawl again. +</p> +<p> +Bartholomew was quiet enough for a minute; he must have his +cat-pleasure of crouching and creeping; he must wait till nobody +looked. He knew very well what he was about. But the tail trembled +still; the green eyes were still wild and eager. +</p> +<p> +"The kindlings are in the left-hand closet, you know," said Aunt +Blin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into +her shawl. "You'll want to get the fire going as quick as you can." +</p> +<p> +Poor Bel turned away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very +minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight +from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements +hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,—though he walked off +now like a deacon after a benediction,—she trembled in her poor +little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love +Aunt Blin's great gray pet as she supposed she ought. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just +emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed +the door to behind her with her foot, when—crash! bang!—what <i>had</i> +happened? +</p> +<p> +A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and +scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and +turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has +infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such +a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of +incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about +the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The +overturned cage,—the dragged-off table-cloth,—the clumsy +Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to +the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful +bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the +other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of +terror. +</p> +<p> +"You awful wild beast! I <i>knew</i> you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, +snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped +discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be +reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic +indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however +much one may want to do it. +</p> +<p> +"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as +if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her +denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns +most passionately,—if it does turn,—upon one's very own. +</p> +<p> +"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous, +abominable, great, gray—wolf! I knew you were!" +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree fairly gasped. +</p> +<p> +When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I +<i>thought</i> I could have trusted you! <i>Was</i> you a murderer in your +heart all the time? Go away! I've—no—<i>con</i>—fidence <i>in</i> you! No +<i>co-on</i>—fidence <i>in</i> you, Bartholomew Bree!" +</p> +<p> +It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their +grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation. +</p> +<p> +If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a +great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment, +under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and +disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do +exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care +about that? +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this +same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but +persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say +"<i>dogged</i>," except for a noble holding fast? It is a cat which is +selfishly, stolidly obstinate. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin, +with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little +bird!" +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the +creature cheese, but she could not give him "<i>con</i>fidence." +</p> +<p> +Bel and the bird illustrated something finer, higher, sweeter to her +now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand +for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that. +</p> +<p> +But Bel was so astonished at the sudden change,—it was so funny in +its meek manifestation,—that she forgot her wrath, and laughed +outright. +</p> +<p> +"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Your beautiful Bartholomew, who +understood, and let alone!" +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin shook her head. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. I <i>thought</i> so. But—I've no—<i>con</i>-fidence in him! +You'd better hang the cage up high. And I'll go out for the +muffins." +</p> +<p> +Bel heard her saying it over again, as she went down the stairs. +</p> +<p> +"No, I've no—<i>con</i>-fidence in him!" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0008"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER VIII. +</h2> +<h3> + TO HELP: SOMEWHERE. +</h3> +<p> +There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree +by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village. +</p> +<p> +All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to +make payment,—and all having demands against the same to present +accounts,—to Abigail S. Ingraham. +</p> +<p> +The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon +the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer +color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and +white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a +plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to +wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen +window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they +were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room, +looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices, +but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary +documents. +</p> +<p> +Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's +breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name +stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has +always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy +out the remainder of the bakery lease,—house and all. He was ready +to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in +the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for +relinquishing this and the goodwill. +</p> +<p> +Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was +different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she +had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and +incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for +the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She +understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps, +have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been +brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what +they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave +them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and +thought it all over. She remembered that they <i>were</i> women, and she +saw how that made all the difference. +</p> +<p> +"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate." +</p> +<p> +That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot +especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were +bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing, +could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve +the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what +might happen?" +</p> +<p> +She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she +said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that. +It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she +didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and +assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a +seven years' business on her hands. "Why—he might be a—anything," +was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this +point of her considerations. And if he were anything,—anything of a +man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,—what would they +do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to +her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will +be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real +womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found +out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you +must choose as a man does,—for your whole life, at the beginning of +it." +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this +turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed +her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took +up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot +of <i>working for others</i>. +</p> +<p> +"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be +safe and faithful; that will leave room." +</p> +<p> +She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat +talking with her over some building accounts one evening. +</p> +<p> +He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways; +beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his +own employer who held a small demand against the estate. +</p> +<p> +"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as +if I <i>must</i> have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to +keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot—how can +I tell what either of us"—she changed her word with brave honesty, +"might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were +forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for +journeymen,—girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be +brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want +business and they would be free, while they <i>were</i> girls, for +happier things that might happen." +</p> +<p> +"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best +right of all." +</p> +<p> +"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she +can't be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her. I +suppose <i>that</i> is what has kept women out of the real business +world,—the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm +willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me." +</p> +<p> +There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's +deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray +Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly +perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made +the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power +ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most +tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman +accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He +hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie +ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In +dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in +the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a +servant. He lays <i>help</i> upon him; He lays help for man upon the +woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help +meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "<i>help</i>" is to do the work +of the world. +</p> +<p> +Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said +that she would "help, somewhere." +</p> +<p> +What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say, +with a flash in his eyes,— +</p> +<p> +"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm <i>very</i> glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?" +</p> +<p> +"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,—flashy, I +mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to +build all sorts, you know. When I build <i>my</i> house—well, never +mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out. +He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the +care of it straight through,—stock, work, and all; and I'm to have +half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full, +you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this +year a whole street going up—with Mansard roofs, of course. +Everything is going into this house that <i>can</i> go into a house; and +to see that it gets in right will be—practice, anyhow." +</p> +<p> +Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray +what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was +so glad to be told. +</p> +<p> +He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when +she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a +few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the +little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the +Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer. +</p> +<p> +Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it +glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it +contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream +and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress," +she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a +reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together, +and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go +to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places; +folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities; +they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do. +</p> +<p> +Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before +her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else +left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green +dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room. +The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to +get her own pay. +</p> +<p> +What was the use of telling a girl like that—all flushed with +beauty and vanity, and gay expectation—about his having a house to +build? What would it seem to her,—his busy life all spring and +summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, +chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles +and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in +laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into +his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself +lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be +applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a +dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there +was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain; +only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of +people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate +amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare? +</p> +<p> +It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done +before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her +glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of +them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely, +lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very +face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all +enticing, outward complement and suggestion. +</p> +<p> +He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a +mistake. +</p> +<p> +Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with +herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself +manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses. +</p> +<p> +Was she glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this +poor side of her—making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, so much? +</p> +<p> +"Marion has something better in her than that," she made herself +say, when she replied. "Perhaps it will come out again, some day." +</p> +<p> +"I think she has. Perhaps it will. You have always been good and +generous to her, Ray." +</p> +<p> +What did he say that for? Why did he make it impossible for her to +let it go so? +</p> +<p> +"Don't!" she exclaimed. "I am not generous to her this minute! I +couldn't help, when you said it, being satisfied—that you should +see. I don't know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do +want people to see the truth." +</p> +<p> +She covered it up with that last sentence. The first left by +itself, might have shown him more. It was certainly so; that there +was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear +perception and her very honesty. When she could see a thing, it +seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she +ought to show them, that they might fairly understand. A half +understanding made her restless, even though the other half were +less kind and comfortable. +</p> +<p> +"You show the truth of yourself, too," said Frank. "And that is +grand, at any rate." +</p> +<p> +"You need not praise me," said Ray, almost coldly. "It is impossible +to be <i>quite</i> true, I think. The nearer you try to come to it, the +more you can't"—and then she stopped. +</p> +<p> +"How many changes there have been among us!" she began again, +suddenly, at quite a different point, "All through the village there +have been things happening, in this last year. Nobody is at all as +they were a year ago. And another year"— +</p> +<p> +"Will tell another year's story," said Frank Sunderline. "Don't you +like to think of that sometimes? That the story isn't done, ever? +That there is always more to tell, on and on? And that means more to +<i>do</i>. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right still, you +see,—why, the Lord might as well shut up the book!" +</p> +<p> +He was full of life, this young man, and full of the delight of +living. There was something in his calling that made him rejoice in +a confident strength. He was born to handle tools; hammer and chisel +were as parts of him. He builded; he believed in building; in +something coming of every stroke. Real work disposes and qualifies a +man to believe in a real destiny,—a real God. A carpenter can see +that nails are never driven for nothing. It is the sham work, +perhaps, of our day, that shakes faith in purpose and unity; a +scrambling, shifty living of men's own, that makes to their sight a +chance huddle and phantasm of creation. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Ingraham came down into the room where they were, at this +moment, and Dot presently followed. They began to talk of their +plans. They were going, now, to live with the grandmother in Boston, +in Pilgrim Street. +</p> +<p> +It was a comfortable, plain old house, in a little strip of +neighborhood long since left of fashion, and not yet demanded of +business; so Mrs. Rhynde could afford to occupy it. She had used, +for many years, to let out a part of her rooms,—these that the +Ingrahams would take,—in a tenement, as people used to say, making +no ambitious distinctions; now, it might be spoken of as "a flat," +or "apartments." Everything is "apartments" that is more than a +foothold. +</p> +<p> +The rooms were large, but low. At the back, they were sunny and +airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence +Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain. +There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces, +even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of +tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard. The step into +the front passage was a step down from the street. +</p> +<p> +Ray and Dot told these things; beguiled into reminiscences of +pleasant childish visiting days; Ray, of long domestication in still +later years. It would be a going home, after all. +</p> +<p> +Leicester Place was only a stone's throw from Pilgrim Street. From +old Mr. Sparrow's attic window, you could look across to the +Pilgrim Street roofs, and see women hanging out clothes there upon +the flat tops of one or two of the houses. But what of that, in a +great city? Will the Ingrahams ever come across Aunt Blin and bright +little Bel Bree? +</p> +<p> +In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a +leaf between them. A great many of us may be as near as that to each +other in the telling of the world's story, who never get the leaf +turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a +connecting word. +</p> +<p> +The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer. It was July +when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0009"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER IX. +</h2> +<h3> + INHERITANCE. +</h3> +<p> +Do you remember somebody else who lives in Boston? Have you heard of +the old house in Greenley Street, and Uncle Titus Oldways, and +Desire Ledwith, who came home with him after her mother and sisters +went off to Europe, and something had touched her young life that +had left for a while an ache after it? Do you know Rachel Froke, and +the little gray parlor, and the ferns, and the ivies, and the +canary,—and the old, dusty library, with its tall, crowded shelves, +and the square table in the midst, where Uncle Oldways sat? All is +there still, except Uncle Oldways. The very year that had been so +busy elsewhere, with its rushing minutes that clashed out events and +changes as moving atoms clash out heat—that had brought to pass all +that it has taken more than a hundred pages for me to tell,—that +had drawn toward one centre and focus, whither, as into a great +whirling maelstrom of life, so many human affairs and interests are +continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the +persons of one little history,—this same year had lifted Uncle +Titus up. Out of his old age, out of his old house,—out from among +his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the +youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing; +into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and +Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the +Divine. Not <i>away</i>; I do not believe that. Lifted up, in the life of +the spirit, if only taken within. +</p> +<p> +Outside,—just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life +had grown into his and into his home,—Desire remained, in this home +that he had given her. +</p> +<p> +People talked about her, eagerly, curiously. They said she was a +great heiress. Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her +overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation, +condolence and delight. They wanted her to come abroad at once, now, +and join them. What was there, any longer, to prevent? +</p> +<p> +Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood. +There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again. +She had come into Uncle Titus's living with him; he had let her do +that, and he had made it so that she could stay. She was not going +to leave him now. She would as soon have robbed him of his money and +run away, while the handling of his money had been his own. It was +but mere handling that made the difference. <i>Himself</i> was not +dependent on his breath. And it was himself that she was joined +with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off +with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion. +</p> +<p> +No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever," +they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she +lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed, +long-sufferingly. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and +out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen +Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery +and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary +work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings; +in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they +had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the +dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city +"on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much +power had been laid on their young heads and hands. +</p> +<p> +Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that +were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two +sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen +these two girls,—children almost,—whom he declared his "next of +kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he +left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the +income of each portion to be severally theirs,—Desire's without +restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each +should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two +should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other; +if neither should survive it,—then followed a division among +persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge, +and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved +to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly, +her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given +her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown +her to be truly, and of the will of God—not man, her own "next of +kin." +</p> +<p> +"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances +Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be +executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right +judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!" +</p> +<p> +Some people even laughed at such a document as this, made as if the +Almighty really had to do with things, and were surer than trustees +and cunning law-conditions. +</p> +<p> +"Two girls!" they said, "who will marry—the Lord knows whom—and +do, the Lord knows what, with it all!" +</p> +<p> +That was exactly what Titus Oldways believed. He believed the Lord +<i>did</i> know. He had shown him part; enough to go by to the end of +<i>his</i> beat; the rest was his. "Everything escheats to the King, at +last." +</p> +<p> +And so Desire Ledwith and Hazel Ripwinkley sat in the old house +together, and made their pure, young, generous plans; so they went +in and out, and did their work, blessedly; and Uncle Titus's +arm-chair stood there, where it always had, at the library table; +and the Book of the Gospels, with its silver cross, lay in its +silken cover where it always lay; and nothing had gone but the bent +old form from which the strength had risen and the real presence +loosened itself; and Uncle Titus's grand, beautiful life passed over +to them continually; for hands on earth, he had their hands; for +feet, their feet. There was no break, as Desire had said; it was the +wonderful "fellowship of the mystery" which God meant, in the +manifold wisdom that they know in heavenly places, when He ordained +the passing over. We call it death; we <i>make</i> it death; a +separation. We leave off there. We gather up the tools that loved +ones drop, and use them to carve out, selfishly, our own pleasures; +we let their <i>life</i> go, as if it were no matter to keep it up upon +the earth. We turn our backs, and go our ways, and leave saints' +hands outstretched invisibly in vain. +</p> +<p> +It was ever so bright and cheerful in this house into which +death—that was such a birth—had come. These children were +brimming over with happy thankfulness that Uncle Titus had loved and +trusted them so. They never solemnized their looks or lengthened +their accent when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer +to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to +approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been +hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to +their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work. +They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured +gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he was gladder than +either; they sat in Desire's large, bright chamber at their work, or +they went down to find out things in books in the library; and here, +though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled +reverently the volumes he had loved,—they used tenderly the +appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken +consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young +heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at +opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before +his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment +come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of +flowers beside the desk, at the left hand. +</p> +<p> +One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was +busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the +stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she +spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and +sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving. +</p> +<p> +I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that +had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home; +what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic +ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these +changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in +a country family of England, said it was like the real old places +there. +</p> +<p> +"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,—(she did her <i>thinking</i> deeply and +slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it +was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with +the needle,—"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread +as quick as you can,")—"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after +all." +</p> +<p> +"Desire!" +</p> +<p> +"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me." +</p> +<p> +"Desire Ledwith!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't +expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all +to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?" +</p> +<p> +"O!" +</p> +<p> +"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I +mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last +spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on +paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings; +you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books, +and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends' +letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind, +silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I think we'll +go." +</p> +<p> +"O, Desire, how nice!" +</p> +<p> +"That's it! One new word, or two, every time, and repeat. 'Now say +the five?' as Fay's Geography used to tell us." +</p> +<p> +"O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!" +</p> +<p> +"Good girl. Now, don't you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss +Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?" +</p> +<p> +"How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately! I mean, +all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly," said Hazel, +flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names. +"I wonder why it is fixed so, Des', that the <i>best</i> people—those +you want to get nearest to—are so busy <i>being</i> the best that you +don't get much chance?" +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps the chance is laid up," said Desire, thoughtfully. "I think +a good many things are. But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan. You +know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and +joined Miss Kirkbright's class? Not <i>beautiful</i>, I don't mean +exactly,—though one of them was that, too; but real"— +</p> +<p> +"Splendid!" filled out Hazel. "Real ready-made sort of girls. As if +they'd had chapel all their lives, somehow. Not like first-Sunday +girls at all." +</p> +<p> +"One of them <i>was</i> a chapel girl. Miss Kirkbright told me. She grew +up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in +the country. Now I must have those two in, you see. I don't know but +Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors, +if I pick out the ready-made. But this sort of thing—you must have +some reliance, you know; then there's something for the rest to come +to, and grow to. I think I shall begin about it before vacation, +while they're all together and alive to things. It takes so long to +warm up to the same point after the break. We might have one +meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing. O, how good +it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!" +</p> +<p> +If I had not so many things to tell before my story can be at all +complete, I should like nothing better than to linger here in Desire +Ledwith's room, where there was so really "a beautiful east window, +and the morning had come in." I should like to just stay in the +sunshine of it, and show what the stir of it was, and what it had +come to with these two; what a brightness, day by day, they lived +in. I should be glad to tell their piece of the story minutely; but +I should not be able to get at it to tell. We may touch such lives, +and feel the lovely pleasantness; but to enter in, and have the +whole—that may only be done in one way; by going and doing +likewise. +</p> +<p> +This talk of theirs gives one link; it shows you how easily and +naturally they came to have to do with the Ingrahams; how they +belonged in one sphere and drew to one centre; how simply things +happen, after all, when they have any business to happen. +</p> +<p> +Somebody speaks of the ascent of a lofty church spire, as giving +such a wonderful glimpse of the unity of a great city; showing its +converging movements, its net-work of connection,—its human +currents swayed and turned by intelligible drifts of purpose; all +which, when one is down among them, seem but whirls of a confusing +and distracting medley; a heaping and a rushing together of many +things and much conflicting action; where the wonder is that it +stays together at all, or that one part plays and fits in with any +other to harmony of service. If we could climb high enough, and see +deep enough, to read a spiritual panorama in like manner, we should +look into the mystery of the intent that builds the worlds and works +with "birth and death and infinite motion" to evolve the wonders of +all human and angelic history. We should only marvel, then, at what +we, with our little bit of wayward free will, hinder; not at what +God gently and mightily forecasts and brings to pass. +</p> +<p> +To find another link, we must go away and look in elsewhere. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0010"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER X. +</h2> +<h3> + FILLMER AND BYLLES. +</h3> +<p> +It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to +their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter +coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage, +bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and +untouchable,—with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a +sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,—saw in the windows early +peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in +mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet +mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their +globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched, +unsatisfied, feverish lips. +</p> +<p> +Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it. +</p> +<p> +Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps +of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piqués, muslins, piles of +frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were +tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the +forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there, +reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening, +or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits; +delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful +morning wrappers,—perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at +watering-places and in elegant summer homes. +</p> +<p> +Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the +sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles +were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before +each others' eyes. +</p> +<p> +For it was fearfully hot again this year. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down +yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house. +She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a +little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night +before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe +that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was +answered,—"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that +in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had +their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are +ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for +the <i>managing</i>, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt +together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were +very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the +pinch,—what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home +in a paper and made much of." +</p> +<p> +Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to +work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick, +knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the +forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others +had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what +they put on upon another. +</p> +<p> +It had taken Bel a fortnight to feel her ground, and to get exactly +the "lay of the land." Then she went to work, unhesitatingly, to set +some small things right. +</p> +<p> +This morning she had hurried herself and her aunt, come early, and +put Miss Bree down, resolutely, against all her disclaimers, in a +corner of the very best window in the room. To do this, she moved +Matilda Meane's sewing-machine a little. +</p> +<p> +When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the +world was moved. She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but +she elbowed about, she pushed her machine this way and that; she +behaved like a hen hustled off her nest and not quite making up her +mind whether she would go back to it or not. Miss Bree's nose grew +apprehensive; it drew itself up with a little, visible, trembling +gasp,—her small eyes glanced timidly from under the drawn, puckered +lids, it was evidently all she could do to hold her ground. But Bel +had put her there, and loyalty to Bel kept her passive. It is so +much harder for some poor meek things ever to take anything, than it +is forever to go without. Only for love and gratefulness can they +ever be made to assume their common human rights. +</p> +<p> +Presently it had to come out. +</p> +<p> +Bel was singing away, as she gathered her work together in an +opposite quarter of the room, keeping a glance out at her right +eye-corner, expectantly. +</p> +<p> +"Who moved this machine?" asked Matilda Meane, stopping short in her +endeavors to make it take up the middle of the window without +absolutely rolling it over Aunt Blin's toes. +</p> +<p> +"I did, a little," answered Bel, promptly. "There was plenty of room +for two; and if there hadn't been, Aunt Blin must have a good light, +and have it over her left shoulder, at that. She's the oldest person +in the room, Miss Meane!" +</p> +<p> +"She was spoken to yesterday about her buttonholes," she added, in +a lower tone, to Eliza Mokey, as she settled herself in her own seat +next that young lady. "And it was all because she could hardly see." +</p> +<p> +"Buttonholes or not," answered Eliza, who preferred to be called +"Elise," "I'm glad somebody has taken Mat Meane down at last. She +needed it. I wish you could take her in hand everywhere. If <i>you</i> +boarded at our house"— +</p> +<p> +"I shouldn't," interrupted Bel, decisively. "Not under any +circumstances, from what you tell of it." +</p> +<p> +"That's all very well to say now; you're in clover, comparatively. +'Chaters' and real tea,—<i>and</i> a three-ply carpet!" +</p> +<p> +Miss Mokey had gone home with Bel and Aunt Blin, one evening lately, +when there had been work to finish and they had made a "bee" of it. +</p> +<p> +"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin." +</p> +<p> +"Why couldn't I help myself as well as she? She had a nice place all +alone, before I came." +</p> +<p> +"She must have half starved herself to keep it, then. Stands to +reason. Dollar and a quarter a day, and five dollars a week for your +room. Where's your muffins, and your Oolong? Or else, where's your +shoes?—Where's that Hamburg edging?" +</p> +<p> +"We don't have any Hamburg edging," said Bel, laughing. +</p> +<p> +"Nonsense. You know what I mean. O, here it is, under all that +piqué! For mercy's sake, won't Miss Tonker blow?—Now I get my nine +dollars a week, and out of it I pay six for my share of that +miserable sky-parlor, and my ends of the crusts and the +cheese-parings. No place to myself for a minute. Why, I feel mixed +up sometimes to that degree that I'd almost like to die, and begin +again, to find out who I am!" +</p> +<p> +"Well, I wouldn't live so. And Aunt Blin wouldn't. I'm afraid she +<i>didn't</i> have other things quite so—corresponding—when she was by +herself; but she had the home comfort. And, truly, now, I shouldn't +wonder if there was real nourishment in just looking round,—at a +red carpet and things,—when you've got 'em all just to your own +mind. You can piece out with—peace!" +</p> +<p> +For two or three minutes, there was nothing heard after that in Bel +and Elise's corner, but the regular busy click of the machines, as +the tucks ran evenly through. Miss Tonker was hovering in the +neighborhood. But presently, as she moved off, and Elise had a spool +to change, Bel began again. +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you get up something different? Why couldn't a dozen, or +twenty, take a flat, or a whole house, and have a housekeeper, and +live nice? I believe I could contrive." +</p> +<p> +Bel was a born contriver. She was a born reformer, as all poets are; +only she did not know yet that she was either. That had been the +real trouble up in New Hampshire. She had her ideals, and she could +not carry them out; so she sat and dreamed of what she would do if +she could. If she might in any way have moulded her home to her own +more delicate instincts, it may be that her step-mother need not +have had to complain that "there was no spunk or snap to her about +anything." It was not in her to "whew round" among tubs and +whey,—to go slap-dash into soapmaking, or the coarse Monday's +washing, when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs +were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left +crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,—mantel +ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side +during a dusting, and left so,—carpets rough and untidy at the +corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear, +necessary <i>work</i> anywhere. She would have made home <i>home</i>; then she +would have worked for it. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin was like her. She would rather sit behind her blinds in +her neat, quiet room of a Sunday, too tired to go to church, but +with a kind of sacred rest about her, and a possible hushed thought +of a presence in a place that God had let her make that He might +abide with her in it,—than to live as these girls did,—even to +have been young like them; to have put on fine, gay things, bought +with the small surplus of her weekly earnings after the wretched +board was paid, and parade the streets, or sit in a pew, with a +Sunday-consciousness of gloves and new bonnet upon her. +</p> +<p> +"O, faugh!" said Elise Mokey, impatiently, to Bel's "I could +contrive." "I should like to see you, with girls like Matilda Meane. +You've got to <i>get</i> your dozen or twenty, first, and make them +agree." +</p> +<p> +Miss Mokey had very likely never heard of Mrs. Glass, or of the +"catching your hare," which is the impracticable hitch at the start +of most delicious things that might otherwise be done. +</p> +<p> +"I think this world is a kind of single-threaded machine, after all. +There's always something either too tight or too loose the minute +you double," she said, changing her tension-screw as she spoke. "No; +we've just got to make it up with cracker-frolics, the best way we +can; and that takes one more of somebody's nine dollars, every time. +There's some fun in it, after all, especially to see Matilda Meane +come to the table. I do believe that girl would sell her soul if she +could have a Parker House dinner every day. When it's a little +worse, or a little better than usual, when the milk gives out, or we +have a yesterday's lobster for tea,—I wish you could just see her. +She's so mad, or she's so eager. She <i>will</i> have claw-meat; it <i>is</i> +claw-meat with her, sure enough; and if anybody else gets it first, +or the dish goes round the other way and is all picked over,—she +<i>looks</i>! Why, she looks as if she desired the prayers of the +congregation, and nobody would pray!" +</p> +<p> +"What <i>are</i> you two laughing at?" broke in Kate Sencerbox, leaning +over from her table beyond. "Bel Bree, where are your crimps?" +</p> +<p> +In the ardor of her work, or talk, or both, Bel's hair, as usual, +had got pushed recklessly aside. +</p> +<p> +"O, I only have a little smile in my hair early in the morning," +replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all +gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's +like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the +morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it <i>giveth</i> up, +and is down flat." +</p> +<p> +"I guess you'll find it so," said Elise Mokey, splenetically. +</p> +<p> +"Was <i>that</i> what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you +choose rather aggravating subjects." +</p> +<p> +"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know +how," Bel Bree said. +</p> +<p> +"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise. +</p> +<p> +"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet +little Mary Pinfall. +</p> +<p> +"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a +plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's +perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time +you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it +isn't there." +</p> +<p> +"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by +aggravating." +</p> +<p> +Miss Proddle was tiresome; she always said things that had been said +before, or that needed no saying. Miss Proddle was another of those +old girls who, like Miss Bree among the young ones, have outlived +and lost their Christian names, with their vivacity. Never mind; it +is the Christian name, and the Lord knows them by it, as He did +Martha and Mary. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Reductio ad absurdum</i>," put in Grace Toppings, who had been at a +High School, and studied geometry. +</p> +<p> +"Grace Toppings!" called out Kate Sencerbox, shortly, "you've +stitched that flounce together with a twist in it!" +</p> +<p> +Miss Tonker heard, and came round again. +</p> +<p> +"Gyurls!" she said, with elegantly severe authority, "I <i>will</i> not +have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is +an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom! +No <i>room</i> for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures, +you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and +put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please, +unless you want to be put to plain yard-stitching." +</p> +<p> +"Eight inches and a half is <i>some</i> room for a flounce, I guess, if +it ain't nine inches," muttered the mathematical Grace, as she began +the slow ripping of the lock-stitched tucking, that would take half +an hour out of the value of her day. +</p> +<p> +"That's a comfort, ain't it?" whispered mischievous, sharp, +good-natured Kate. "Look here; I'll help, if you won't talk any more +Latin, or Hottentot." +</p> +<p> +It was of no use to tell those girls not to talk over their work. +The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a +steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, +who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in +listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and +wheels,—and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and +Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with +their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on +the tops of their bent heads,—kept time with silent thoughts to the +beat of their treadles and the clip of their needles against the +thimble-ends. +</p> +<p> +Elise Mokey stretched up her back slowly, and drew her shoulders +painfully out of their steady cramp. +</p> +<p> +"There! I went round without stopping! I put a sign on it, and I've +got my wish! I'd rather sweep a room, though, than do it again." +</p> +<p> +"You <i>might</i> sweep a room, instead," said Emma Hollen, in her low, +faint tone, moved to speak by some echo in that inward rhythm of her +thinking. "I partly wish <i>I</i> had, before now." +</p> +<p> +"O, you goose! Be a kitchen-wolloper!" +</p> +<p> +"May be I sha'n't be anything, very long. I should like to feel as +if I <i>could</i> stir round." +</p> +<p> +"I wouldn't care if anybody could see what it came to, or what there +was left of it at the year's end," said Elise Mokey. +</p> +<p> +"I'd sweep a room fast enough if it was my own," said Kate +Sencerbox. "But you won't catch me sweeping up other folks' dust!" +</p> +<p> +"I wonder what other folks' dust really is, when you've sifted it, +and how you'd pick out your own," said Bel. +</p> +<p> +"I'd have my own <i>place</i>, at any rate," responded Kate, "and the +dust that got into it would go for mine, I suppose." +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree tucked away. Tucked away thoughts also, as she worked. Not +one of those girls who had been talking had anything like a home. +What was there for them at the year's end, after the wearing round +and round of daily toil, but the diminishing dream of a happier +living that might never come true? The fading away out of their +health and prettiness into "old things like Miss Proddle and Aunt +Blin,"—to take their turn then, in being snubbed and shoved aside? +Bel liked her own life here, so far; it was pleasanter than that +which she had left; but she began to see how hundreds of other girls +were going on in it without reward or hope; unfitting themselves, +many of them utterly, by the very mode of their careless, rootless +existence,—all of them, more or less, by the narrow specialty of +their monotonous drudgery,—for the bright, capable, adaptive +many-sidedness of a happy woman's living in the love and use and +beauty of home. +</p> +<p> +Some of her thoughts prompted the fashion in which she recurred to +the subject during the hour's dinner-time. +</p> +<p> +They were grouped together—the same half dozen—in a little +ante-room, with a very dusty window looking down into an alley-way, +or across it rather, since unless they really leaned out from their +fifth story, the line of vision could not strike the base of the +opposite buildings, a room used for the manifold purposes of +clothes-hanging, hand-washing, brush and broom stowing, and +luncheon eating. +</p> +<p> +"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you +have for your choice, if you could get it?" +</p> +<p> +"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace +Toppings. +</p> +<p> +"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda +Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake. +</p> +<p> +"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said +Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the +third volume of her old novel in the other. +</p> +<p> +The girls shouted. +</p> +<p> +"That means you'd like a real good husband,—a Tom, or a Dick, or a +Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this +country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of +us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his +own, and have a house up in Chester Park!" +</p> +<p> +"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me, +instead of working my head and feet off making them for other +people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey. +</p> +<p> +"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply. +</p> +<p> +"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker +round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till +I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with +fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of +train and Yak-flounces!" +</p> +<p> +"That isn't <i>my</i> sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's +played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of +temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't <i>that</i> would +ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the +gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the +hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get <i>out</i> +of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with +my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and +<i>choose</i> what I would do?—when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of +July, nor Washington's Birthday, nor any day in particular? I think, +on the whole, I'd choose <i>not</i> to get up. A chance to be lazy; +that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!" +</p> +<p> +"O, dear!" cried Bel, despairingly. "Why don't some of you wish for +nice, cute little things?" +</p> +<p> +"Tell us what," said Kate. "I think we <i>have</i> wished for all sorts, +amongst us." +</p> +<p> +"O, a real little <i>home</i>—to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor +fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a +pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of +little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig +little kitchen; pies to make for Sundays and Thanksgivings; just +enough work to do in the mornings, and time in the afternoons to sit +and sew, and—somebody to read to you out loud in the evenings! I +think I'd do anything—that wasn't wicked—to come to live just like +that!" +</p> +<p> +"There isn't anybody that does live so nowadays," said Kate. +"There's nothing between horrid little stivey places, and a regular +scrub and squall and slop all the week round, and silk and snow and +ordering other folks about. You've got to be top or bottom; and if +it's all the same to you, I mean to be top if I can; even if"— +</p> +<p> +Kate was a great deal better than her pretences, after all. She did +not finish the bad sentence. +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great, +beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. All +the rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through Hero +Street, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courts +and places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand back +from each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move up +a little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there, +behind!" +</p> +<p> +"Say it, why don't you? I'll tell you who'd listen. Washington, +sitting on his big bronze horse, pawing in the air at Commonwealth +Avenue!" +</p> +<p> +"Well—Washington <i>would</i> listen, if he wasn't bronze. And its grand +for <i>everybody</i> to look at him there. I shouldn't really want the +houses to move up, I suppose. It's good to have grandness somewhere, +or else nobody would have any place to stretch in. But there must be +some sort of moving up that could be, to make things evener, if we +only knew!" +</p> +<p> +Poor little Bel Bree, just dropped down out of New Hampshire! What a +problem the great city was already to her! +</p> +<p> +Miss Tonker put her sub-aristocratic face in at the door. It is a +curious kind of reflected majesty that these important functionaries +get, who take at first hand the magnificent orders, and sustain +temporary relations of silk-and-velvet intimacy with Spreadsplendid +Park. +</p> +<p> +The hour was up. Mary Pinfall slid her romance into the pocket of +her waterproof; Matilda Meane swallowed her last mouthful of the +four cream-cakes which she had valorously demolished without +assistance, and hastily washed her hands at the faucet; Kate and +Elise and Grace brushed by her with a sniff of generous contempt. +</p> +<p> +In two minutes, the wheels and feeds were buzzing and clicking +again. What did they say, and emphasize, and repeat, in the ears +that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always. +They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or +memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and +consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the +rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it +can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started with in +mind or heart? +</p> +<a name="2HCH0011"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XI. +</h2> +<h3> + CRISTOFERO. +</h3> +<p> +A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York, +two days from her port. +</p> +<p> +A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white +crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm, +which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them +breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of +foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in +their manes. +</p> +<p> +The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a +morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet, +as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and +eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste +in the heart. +</p> +<p> +Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of +their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail. +</p> +<p> +One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel, +Boston,—coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight +weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright, +younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright, +tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone +out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a +ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the +business for himself; for the two last, he had represented also the +interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had +inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to +our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia. +</p> +<p> +"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools; +multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them +to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till +thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?" +</p> +<p> +"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be +about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry," +returned Mr. Vireo. +</p> +<p> +"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come +home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of +scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That +'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is +between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its +special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,—or was,—Vireo; but I knew +my way lay through it. I have been pausing—thinking—striving to +know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either. +There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self, +largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief +respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do +with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a +man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty +years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange +feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such +a business exile, and choose where one will make the first +link,—decide the first condition, which may draw after all the +rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the +remembrance of the little story my mother told me—about my name. I +think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then +of the destiny partly laid out for him already." +</p> +<p> +"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the +whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced +spiritually. +</p> +<p> +"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who +would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned +that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him, +till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus, +then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast +and pray. But he would not fast, since from his food came his +strength to serve with; nor pray, because it seemed to him idle; but +he went forth to help those who were in danger of being swept away, +as they struggled to cross the deep, wide River. He bore them +through upon his shoulders,—the weak, the little, the weary. At +last, he bore a little child who entreated him, and the child grew +heavy, and heavier, till, when they reached the other side, Offero +said,—'I feel as if I had borne the world upon my shoulders!' And +he was answered,—'Thou may'st say that; for thou hast borne Him who +made the world.' And then he knew that it was the Lord; and he was +called no more 'Offero,' but 'Cristofero.' My mother told me that +when I was a little child; and the story has grown in me. The Christ +has yet to be borne on men's shoulders." +</p> +<p> +Hilary Vireo stood and listened with gleaming eyes. Of course, he +knew the old saint-legend; of course, Christopher Kirkbright +supposed it; but these were men who understood without the saying, +that the verities are forever old and forever new. A mother's wise +and tender tale,—a child's life growing into a man's, and +sanctifying itself with a purpose,—these were the informing that +filled afresh every sentence of the story, and made its repetition a +most fair and sweet origination. +</p> +<p> +"And so,"— +</p> +<p> +"And so, I must earn my name," said Christopher Kirkbright, simply. +</p> +<p> +"Lift them up, and take them across," said Hilary Vireo, as if +thinking it over to himself. The old story had quickened him. A +grand perception came to him for his friend, who had begged him to +think for and advise him. "Lift them up and take them across!" he +repeated, looking into Mr. Kirkbright's face, and speaking the words +to him with warm energy. "They are waiting—so many of them! They +are sinking down—so many! They want to be lifted through. They +want—and they want terribly—a place of safety on the other side. +Go down into the river of temptation, and hardship, and sin, and +help them up out of it, Christopher. Take them up out of their cruel +conditions; make a place for some of them to begin over again in; +for some of them to rest in, once in a while, and take courage. Why +shouldn't there be cities of refuge, now, Kirkbright? Men are +mapping out towns for their own gain, all over the land, wherever a +water power or a railroad gives the chance for one to grow; why not +build a Hope for the hopeless? Nowhere on earth could that be done +as it could in our own land!" +</p> +<p> +"A City of Refuge'" Kirkbright repeated the words gravely, +earnestly; like those of some message of an angel of the Lord, that +sounded with self-attested authority in his ears. +</p> +<p> +After a pause, in which his thought followed out the word of +suggestion into a swift dream of possible fulfillment, he said to +his companion,— +</p> +<p> +"I believe there was nothing in that old Jewish economy, Vireo, that +was not given as a 'pattern of things' that should be. That whole +Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the kingdom coming. Only it +was but the first Adam. It was given right into the very conditions +that illustrated its need. It would have meant nothing, given into a +society of angels. Yet because men were not angels, but very mortal +and sinful men, we of to-day must fling contempt upon the Myth of +the Salvation of God! It will stand, for all that,—that history of +God's intimacy with men. It was <i>lived</i>, not told as a vision, that +it <i>might</i> stand! It was lived, to show how near, in spite of sin, +God came, and stayed. The second coming shall be without sin unto +salvation." +</p> +<p> +"I'm not sure, Kirkbright, but you ought to be a minister." +</p> +<p> +"Not to stand in a pulpit. God helping me, I mean to be a minister. +Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a +sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it, +live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and +save,—would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might +be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think. +He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the +course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you +preachers' best." +</p> +<p> +"I <i>know</i> it is," Hilary Vireo replied. +</p> +<p> +"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. "I want to +look up that old pattern. It will tell me something." +</p> +<p> +Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had +had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright's +state-room door. Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible. +</p> +<p> +He got hold of one word in that old ordination,—"unawares." +</p> +<p> +"'He that doeth it <i>unawares</i>," he repeated, holding the Bible with +his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth +chapter of Numbers. "How that reminds of, and connects with, the +Atoning Prayer,—'Forgive them, for they know not what they do!' +'Sins, negligences, ignorances;' how they shade and change into each +other! If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much +evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you +suppose?" +</p> +<p> +"Not more than there was before the mistakes began," replied Vireo. +"Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its +horrible expansion to a point again,—the point of a possibility; +the serpent suggestion of evil choice. When God has done his work of +forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the +woman shall set his heel upon its head." +</p> +<p> +"I wish I could see what lies behind this," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"'He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,' and after +that, 'the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.' +That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the +atonement by death. I cannot rest in that. I wish I could see its +whole meaning,—for meaning it must have, and a meaning of <i>life</i>." +</p> +<p> +"A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the +other," sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the +book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves, +as he did so. +</p> +<p> +"The glory is in the promise: 'he shall return into the land of his +possession.' His life shall be given back to him,—all that it was +meant to be. It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his +banishment is over. Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy +providing, an anointed commission of grace." +</p> +<p> +"But hear this," he continued, turning to the Epistle to the +Hebrews, "and put the suggestions alongside. All but God's final and +eternal <i>best</i> is transitional. 'They truly were many priests, +because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But +this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable +priesthood. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost, +that come to God by Him.' Did it ever occur to you to think about +that saving to the uttermost? Not a scrap of blessed possibility +forfeited, lost? All gathered up, restored, put into our hands +again, from the redeeming hands of Christ? Backward and forward, +through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and +found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until +not one silver piece is missing. That is the return into the land of +our possession. <i>That</i> is God's salvation, and his gospel! That is +what shall come to pass. Not yet; not while we are only under the +lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our +waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the +Lord!" +</p> +<p> +The speaker's face flushed and glowed; Hilary Vireo, always glad and +strong in look and bearing, was grandly joyful when the power of the +gospel he had to preach came upon him; the gospel of a full, +perfect, and unstinted hope. +</p> +<p> +"Is that what you tell your simple people?" asked Christopher +Kirkbright, fixing deeply eager eyes upon him. +</p> +<p> +"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It +is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to +men's souls? 'Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!' Build +your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of +the fulfillment." +</p> +<p> +Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before +lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from +the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher +Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the +door. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0012"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XII. +</h2> +<h3> + LETTERS AND LINKS. +</h3> +<p> +That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty +corner room at Mrs. Georgeson's,—just returned to her city life +from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,—had letters +brought to her door. +</p> +<p> +The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and +Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the +corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This +she opened first, for the English postmarks, associated with that +handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:— +</p> +<div class="bquote"> + <p>"<span class="sc">My dear Sister</span>,—Within a + very few days after this + will reach you, I hope myself to land in America, and to see + if, after all these years, you and I can do something about a + home together. We learn one good of long separations, by what + we get of them in this world. We can't help beginning again, + if not actually where we left off, at least with the thought + we left off at, 'live and fresh in our hearts. The thought, I + mean, as regards each other; we have both got some thoughts + uppermost by this time, doubtless, that we had not lived to + then. At any rate, I have, who had ten years ago only the + notions and dreams of twenty-one. I come straight to you with + them, just as I went from you, dear elder sister, with your + love and blessing upon me, into the great, working world.</p> + + <p>"Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and + Doubleday's, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found + Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see + Amy. That's the sort of thing I can't believe when I do see + it,—Mary's baby married and housekeeping! I'm glad you are my + elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you. + Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer + together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled + women as you <i>can</i> be at forty-three."</p> +</div> +<p> +With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended. +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you +think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her +for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true +beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure, +gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is +lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own +words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of +falseness? +</p> +<p> +If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes +as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would +have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had +gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not +stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering +of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or +smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only +made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her; +fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither +neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty +three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight, +beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her +face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it. +</p> +<p> +She saw a picture like this:— +</p> +<p> +Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves +imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as +lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never +learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest +harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of +consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented +play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to +soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; +there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that +it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and +smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest. +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I +guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of +perfect teeth. +</p> +<p> +"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up +and looked prettier yet. +</p> +<p> +"Why, I <i>will</i> not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really +indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had +half forgotten:— +</p> +<div class="bquote"> + <p class="ar">"<span class="sc">Brickfield Farms</span>, (near Tillington), Maine. +</p> + + <p> "<span class="sc">Dear Miss Euphrasia</span>,—I have not written to you + since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to + trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day + made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps + tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We + left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly + know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come. + Isn't it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out + of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad + been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there + across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through + the Glen.</p> + + <p> "Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia, + she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very + weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be + the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate, + we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such + good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice + it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the + present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved + about so much; and in all the places where we have been + before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it + was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and + then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was + too bracing. At Crawford's it was lovely, but the bill was + fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in + Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the + beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother + for all summer.</p> + + <p>"I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has + grown worse since. I can't help being afraid mother has been + dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there; + a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a + good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal + devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to + mother's room, and gave her all the little chat of the + place,—I'm afraid I don't amuse mother myself as much as I + ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when + you've seen more than enough of them yourself,—and she used + to take her out to drive nearly every day.</p> + + <p> "Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six + years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and + railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron + touched was sure to double.' She <i>meant</i> money; but I thought + of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has + managed to double <i>them</i>. He went to New York two or three + times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting + railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of + road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the + head of a company that had bought up all the land along the + route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the + railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it! + She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as + well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left + a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of + anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that + such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so + providential that she had met her here just now; and she was + always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.'</p> + + <p>"Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I + begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some + friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said; + 'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know + half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in + it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage + sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, + for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear + Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few + hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other + four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into + Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land + <i>doesn't</i> sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says + it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come + from.</p> + + <p>"I am saving all I can here, for the winter <i>must</i> cost. You + would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs. + Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and + so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't + feel as if that were quite right,—or comfortable, at least; + but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the + other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be + here all through October.</p> + + <p> "We are having lovely weather now; not a sign of frost. + Although this place is so far north, it is sheltered by great + hills, and seems to lie under the lee, both ways, of high + mountain ranges, so that the cold does not really set in very + early. It is a curious place. I wish I had left room to tell + you more about it. There is a great level basin, around which + slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side + except the south, until you get among the real mountain + regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords', and the + Applebees', and the Patchons', and the Stilphins'. Aren't they + quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have + such names among farmers. The name of the place,—or rather + neighborhood, for I don't know where the <i>place</i> actually + is—there are three places, and they are all four or five + miles off—Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of + the neighborhood,—Brickfield Farms, comes from there having + been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up. + The man who owned it got in debt, and failed, I believe; and + nobody has taken hold of it again, because it is so far from + lines of transportation; but there are some cottages about the + foot of Cone Hill, where the laborers used to live; and a big + queer, old red brick house, that looks as if it were walking + up stairs,—built on flat, natural steps of the rock, and so + climbing up, room behind room, with steps inside to + correspond. I have liked so much to go through it, and imagine + stories about it, though all the story there is, is that of + Mr. Flavius Josephus Browne, the man of the brick enterprise, + who built it in this odd way, and probably imagined a story + for himself that he never lived out in it, because his money + and his business came to an end. How strange it is that work + doesn't always make money, and that it takes so much + combination to make anything worth while! I wonder that even + men know just what to do. And as for women,—why, when they + take to elbowing men out, what will it all come to?</p> + + <p>"I have written on, until I have written off some of my heavy + feelings that I began with. If I could only <i>talk</i> to you, + dear Miss Euphrasia, I think they would all go. But I will not + trouble you any longer now; I am quite ashamed of the great + packet this will make when it is folded up. But you told me to + let you know all about myself, and I can't help minding such + an injunction as that!</p> + + <p class="ar"> "Yours gratefully and affectionately always, <br /> + "<span class="sc">Sylvie Argenter</span>."</p> +</div> +<p> +Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause. +Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the +letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said +about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia +stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that +blessed Mrs. Jeffords,—to let her think she is earning her board +with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!" +</p> +<p> +That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that +Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed +impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and +kiss that wasn't there. +</p> +<p> +"If I were an angel, I suppose I <i>could</i> wait," she went on saying +to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some +times. And so,—how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of +one's own little experience!—of that wonderful, blessed Day, when +all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the +Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human +that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to +be, but may not be yet!" +</p> +<p> +I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia's +life, or touch her with its circumstance, that she did not +straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a +Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself. +Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then, +of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from +spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached +themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with +her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of +her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes +were the larger part of it. +</p> +<p> +But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie's +letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if +she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her +mind about saying it:— +</p> +<p> +"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in +Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,—and +will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house, +or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach, +some hours in a day,—hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she +would not know." +</p> +<p> +This was essential. "Mother must not know." +</p> +<p> +The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia's mind +another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the +letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back +to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple +suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie's behalf. +</p> +<p> +But—"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard +those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had +heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,—somewhere down +East,—where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had +come into or passed through his hands for a debt? +</p> +<p> +"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into +my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be +unraveled?" +</p> +<p> +For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a +jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely +keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to +her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord +knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any +real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance—no +inconsequence—with Him. +</p> +<p> +"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she +said, as she tucked her brother's letter into a low, broad basket +beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd +minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and +put the other in her pocket. +</p> +<p> +"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire. +That, also, is a piece of this same morning." +</p> +<p> +Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and +repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit +by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the +Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the +story, were the things He daily puts together. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0013"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIII. +</h2> +<h3> + RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE. +</h3> +<p> +Desire was out. She had gone down to Neighbor Street, to see +Luclarion Grapp. +</p> +<p> +Luclarion had a Home there now; a place where girls and women came +and went, and always found a rest and a welcome, to stay a night, or +a week, or as long as they needed, provided only, that they entered +into the work and spirit of the house while they did stay. +</p> +<p> +Luclarion still sold her good, cheap white loaves and brown, her +muffins and her crumpets; and she had what she called her "big +baking room," where a dozen women could work at the troughs and the +kneaders and the ovens; and in this bakery they learned an honest +trade that would stand them in stead for self-support, whether to +furnish a commodity for sale, or in homes where daily bread must be +put together as well as prayed for. +</p> +<p> +"You can do something now that all the world wants done; that's as +good as a gold mine, and ever so much better," said Luclarion Grapp. +</p> +<p> +Then she had a laundry. From letting her lodgers wash and iron for +themselves, to put their scanty wardrobes into the best condition +and repair, she went on to showing them nice work and taking it in +for them to do; until now there were some dozen families who sent +her weakly washing, three to five dollars' worth each; and for ten +months in the year a hundred and eighty dollars were her average +receipts. +</p> +<p> +Down at "The Neighbors,"—as from the name of the street and the +spirit and growth of the thing it had come to be called,—they had +"Evenings;" when friends of the place came in and made it pleasant; +brought books and pictures, flowers and fruit, and made a little +treat of it for mind and heart and body. It was some plan for one of +these that had taken Desire and Hazel to Miss Grapp's to-day. +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia's first feeling was disappointment. It seemed as if +her morning were going a wee wrong after all. But her second +thought—that it was surely all in the day's work, and had happened +so by no mistake—took her in, with a cheery and really expectant +face, to Rachel Froke's gray parlor, to "sit her down a five +minutes, and rest." She confidently looked for her business then to +be declared to her, since the business she thought she had come upon +was set aside. +</p> +<p> +"I have had a great mind to come to thee," were the first words +Rachel said, as her visitor seated herself in the low chair, twin to +her own, which she kept for friends. Rachel Froke liked her own; but +she never felt any special comfort comfortably her own, until she +could hold it thus duplicated. +</p> +<p> +"I have wanted for a little while past to talk to some one, and +Hapsie Craydocke would not do. Everything she knows shines so +quickly out of those small kind eyes of hers. Hapsie would have +looked at me in an unspeakable way, and told it all out too soon. I +have a secret, Euphrasia, and it troubleth me; yet not very much for +myself; and I know it need not trouble me for anything. I have a +reason that may make me leave this place,—for a time at least; and +I am sorry for Desire, for she will miss me. Frendely can do all +that I do, and she hath the same wish for everything at heart; but +then who would help Frendely? She could not get on alone for thee +knows the house is large, and Desire is always very busy, with work +that should not be hindered. Can thee think of any way? I cannot +bear that any uncertain, trustless person should come in here. There +hath never been a common servant in this house. Doesn't thee think +the Lord hath some one ready since He makes my place empty? And how +shall we go rightly to find out?" +</p> +<p> +"Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter. Is it any trouble,—any +grief or pain?" +</p> +<p> +Rachel had quite forgot. The real trouble of it was this perplexity +that she had told. The rest of it—that she knew was all right. She +would not call it trouble—that which she simply had to wait and +bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to "go +rightly about,"—it was that she felt as the disquiet. +</p> +<p> +She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast. +</p> +<p> +"The doctor calls it trouble—trouble here. But it may be helped; +and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with +great skill. My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her +house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do. Thee +sees: I suppose I ought to go." +</p> +<p> +"And Desire knows nothing?" +</p> +<p> +"How could I tell the child, until I saw my way? Now, can thee +think?" +</p> +<p> +Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if +nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care +for and provide. She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy +to come first. She had grown quite used to this fact that she had +faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to +Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it. +</p> +<p> +It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact, +looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither +complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at +the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception, +and had made her pale and grave. +</p> +<p> +"Must it be a servant to do mere servant's work; or could some nice +young person, under Frendely's direction, relieve her of the actual +care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they +are?" +</p> +<p> +"That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure," said +Rachel. +</p> +<p> +"Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you, +though I had no knowledge of it in coming," said Miss Kirkbright. +</p> +<p> +"That looks like the Lord's leading," said Rachel Froke. "There is +always some sign to believe by." +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie's letter, as the best way of telling +the story, and put it into Rachel Froke's hand. She did not feel it +any breach of confidence to do so. Breach of confidence is letting +strange air in upon a tender matter. The self-same atmosphere, the +self-same temperature,—these do not harm or change anything. It is +only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let +it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same +response of understanding. There are friends one can trust with +one's self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word, +the thought, shall pass. Gossip—betrayal—sends from hand to hand, +from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the +misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface. From heart to +heart it may be given without disloyalty. That is the way God +Himself works round for us. +</p> +<p> +"It is very clear to me," said Rachel Froke, folding up the sheets +of the letter, and putting them back into their envelope. "Shall +Desire read this?" +</p> +<p> +"I think so. It would not be a real thing, unless she understood." +</p> +<p> +So Desire had the letter to read that day when she came home; and +then Rachel Froke told her how it was that she must go away for a +while; and Desire went round to Miss Euphrasia's room in the +twilight, and gave her back her letter, and talked it all over with +her; and they two next day explained the most of it to Hazel. It was +not needful that she should know the very whole about Rachel or the +Argenters; only enough was said to make plain the real companionship +that was coming, and the mutual help that it might be; enough of the +story to make Hazel cry out joyfully,—"Why, Desire! Miss +Kirkbright! She's another! She belongs!" And then, without such +drawback of sadness as the other two had had to feel, she caught +them each by a hand, and danced them up and down a little dance +before the fire upon the hearth-rug—singing,— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"Four of us know the Muffin-man,</p> + <p> Five of us know the Muffin-man,</p> + <p> All of us know the Muffin-man,</p> + <p class="i2"> That lives in Drury Lane."</p> +</div> +</div> +<a name="2HCH0014"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIV. +</h2> +<h3> + MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL. +</h3> +<p> +It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend +Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister. +</p> +<p> +It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel +of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness +that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for +twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned. +</p> +<p> +"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to +a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of +it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of +people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said +that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't +any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for +<i>this</i> life. He hoped there <i>was</i> something afterwards for them that +could get to it, but he didn't know." +</p> +<p> +"Aren't you <i>glad</i> of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a +pleasant day, even,—or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? +Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, +now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, +<i>that's</i> what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He +<i>never</i> means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're +all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. +What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings +truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. +Don't mind the strain; believe in the <i>note</i>, every time his finger +touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, +that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for." +</p> +<p> +The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in +his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by +day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began +from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though +they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began +to be according to the life. +</p> +<p> +"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of +what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then +forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a +hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; +or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his +well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally +more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the +middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find +out. If ever we <i>do</i> get it,—complete"— +</p> +<p> +"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo. +</p> +<p> +Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through +the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October +morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its +pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little +child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of +heaven. +</p> +<p> +They would all have a first sight of him to-day,—his first Sunday +among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might +easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs, +all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the +church above,—they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face, +voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike +Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there +amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left, +face to face, and hand to hand,—the Gospel appointed for that day. +</p> +<p> +"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall, +good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the +sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups. +</p> +<p> +"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look +for. We shall find <i>all</i> our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo, +hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began. +</p> +<p> +Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on +one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the +western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he +found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window +ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the +scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals, +that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and +forth upon the crisp autumn air. +</p> +<p> +"My brother—Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them. +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes +turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the +sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She +had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had +grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always +wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,—that +while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply +deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed +simultaneously from within and behind; it was the <i>transmitted</i> +light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord +and the people. +</p> +<p> +She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very +young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with +mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself, +with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet +in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself +to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance +truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut +nose,—the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest +and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,—the coolness, +the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her +complexion,—these were all details of character that had asserted +itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and +narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened +their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer +curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of +the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them. +</p> +<p> +It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself +toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name +and Desire's. +</p> +<p> +For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside +them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that +word,—"introduced." +</p> +<p> +"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave +me a glimpse of that girl,—her <i>self</i>. I don't think I was ever so +really introduced before." +</p> +<p> +He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one +of the chapel protégées; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where +not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were +helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody. +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply; +bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet +around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any +shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the +plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked +in where the velvet band was folded together around it. +</p> +<p> +Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her +church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those +who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of +their home-place weekly, at her side. +</p> +<p> +Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss +Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which +she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first +Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home +with him across the Atlantic. +</p> +<p> +There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was +praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close +beside; and all the people felt at least that <i>he</i> felt it, and that +therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we +all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father. +That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he +knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the +Will." +</p> +<p> +He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the +whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled +up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he +crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into +Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way +through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went +with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of +Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and +comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the +believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life. +</p> +<p> +"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our +Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before +us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence +of <i>the Lord</i>. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the +bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is +the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning, +<i>God</i> created the heavens and the earth; but <i>the Lord</i> spoke unto +Adam; <i>the Lord</i> appeared unto Abraham; <i>the Lord</i> was the God of +Israel. +</p> +<p> +"God is <i>our</i> Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to +meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us +continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the +human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our +sins,—to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward +kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and +toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the +long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful +and very far off." +</p> +<p> +The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the +corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave +them,—their way lying down the hill. +</p> +<p> +"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the +minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it." +</p> +<p> +"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole," +said Desire. +</p> +<p> +"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from +beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I +shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting +life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New." +</p> +<p> +"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. +</p> +<p> +"Leading—<i>by the hand</i>; giving—<i>morsel by morsel</i>," said Mr. +Kirkbright, emphasizing the near and dear detail. +</p> +<p> +"That makes me think," said Miss Euphrasia, suddenly. "Desire," she +went on, without explaining why, "we are going up to Brickfield +Farms next week, Christopher and I. Why shouldn't you go too,—and +bring her home, you know?" +</p> +<p> +As true as she lived, Miss Euphrasia hadn't a thought—whatever +<i>you</i> may think—of this and that, or anything, when she said it. +</p> +<p> +Except the simple fact, that it was beautiful October weather, and +that <i>she</i> should like it, and that Sylvie and Desire would get +acquainted. +</p> +<p> +"It will do you good. You'd better," said Mr. Vireo, kindly. +</p> +<p> +Christopher Kirkbright said nothing, of course. There was nothing +for him to say. He did not think very much. He only had a passing +feeling that it would be pleasant to see this grave-faced girl +again, and to understand her, perhaps, a little. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0015"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XV. +</h2> +<h3> + BONNY BOWLS. +</h3> +<p> +The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The +architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass +window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved +oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should +pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich +inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work +and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on +of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs, +remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the +delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful +skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and +fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had +grown to. +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed <i>him</i>-self; for he had put +himself—his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and +fitness—into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was +more his than the man's who paid the bills,—"out of his waistcoat +pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the +builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were +the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own, +though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and +never go within the walls again. +</p> +<p> +It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was +glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of +accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in +which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons +rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six +days' toil. +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up +accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim +Street to tea. +</p> +<p> +He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story +of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his +friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any +little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday +rest of his,—though a busier day had not gone over his head since +the week began,—must be shared and crowned by them. +</p> +<p> +There is no subtler test of an unspoken—perhaps an +unexamined—relation of a man with his women friends, than this +instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the +companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his +heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more +than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of +the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and +sets an established seal upon them all. +</p> +<p> +Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in +his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how +pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an +afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was +still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from +her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and +servants going in and fastening the doors upon them. +</p> +<p> +He would make a treat of it,—a holiday,—if she would go; he would +come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go +with him in the cars and be stared at. +</p> +<p> +He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her +any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the +young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end. +</p> +<p> +He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something +of the same perception that would come to her,—if she cared for +this asking of his,—came to him with the sudden suggestion that it +was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had +grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such +beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a +woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and +does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has +done any real living at all. +</p> +<p> +Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow; +and he thought she would go. +</p> +<p> +He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his +thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice +of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her +so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and +pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had +such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her +look so different from other girls, and yet so nice? +</p> +<p> +"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when +tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and +setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl +yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things." +</p> +<p> +Ray colored. +</p> +<p> +"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford +two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons." +</p> +<p> +It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to +custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain +black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their +pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with +broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every +day,—cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon +serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they +contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if +anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank +Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a +"snarl." +</p> +<p> +"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be +dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll +hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into. +It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women +can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they +ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try +to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than +common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their +day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means <i>tied</i> +up. They can't <i>see</i> to their girls; they grow helplesser all the +time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and +upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a +down-stairs to every house, and no <i>home</i> anywhere. That's how it +is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows +and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it. +Why, the help has to get into <i>their</i> humpty-dumpties by three or +four o'clock, and see <i>their</i> company. If there's sickness or +anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of +folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were <i>afraid</i> of +sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was +gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left +to depend on but hotels and hospitals. <i>Home</i> is too big a worry. +And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it. +It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler +biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,—as the Scotch grow +more Scotch,—with warming up to the subject. +</p> +<p> +Sunderline laughed. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy +here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at +home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately +that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!" +</p> +<p> +He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at +her sewing. +</p> +<p> +"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my +house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you +ride out with me to Pomantic?" +</p> +<p> +Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and +her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without +another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt +Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single +quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers' +ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or +three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She +felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs. +Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was +afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, +perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him +ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have +him blamed; for what business had she, after all,— +</p> +<p> +"Well, Ray?" +</p> +<p> +She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; +she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that +"Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour +afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it +seem like "anything." +</p> +<p> +"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank +you, Frank." +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street +afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of +course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And +she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another +word or look. She never stopped sewing, either. +</p> +<p> +Well,—he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the +wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work. +</p> +<p> +But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot +were by. +</p> +<p> +That next day was made for them. +</p> +<p> +Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over +so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the +difference? +</p> +<p> +I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question +of rain and shine,—with need, and asking, and giving. +</p> +<p> +Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme, +because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in +God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm, +or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not +the <i>prayer</i> provided for? It was answered a million of years +beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and +nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for +help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the +undoing or the counteracting of the evil,—the healing of the +wrong,—just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting +soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its +foresight. +</p> +<p> +So, under the dear Law,—which is Love, and cares for the +sparrow,—came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament, +its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and +they two went forth in it. +</p> +<p> +They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last +them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon +drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later, +to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long +breath, as they drove off. +</p> +<p> +"Well, I suppose <i>that's</i> settled," she said, with the +mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to +be otherwise, inflecting her voice. +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot. +</p> +<p> +In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use +of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy +mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of +experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon. +But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and +she left no lee-way for uninitiation. +</p> +<p> +"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round +sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,—or don't want,—or don't +intend—? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese; +and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's <i>my</i> mind +about it!" +</p> +<p> +It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over +the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions. +But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long +turnpike stretches—they are turnpike stretches still, though the +Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of +little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the +flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban +residences—have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and +their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea. +</p> +<p> +Ray enjoyed every bit of it,—even the rows of new tenements with +their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs +that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the +boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover +him up. +</p> +<p> +The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her +companion. +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"Little lad, little lad, where were you born?</p> + <p>Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn,</p> + <p> Where they sup buttermilk from a ram's horn;</p> + <p> And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim,</p> + <p>Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in."</p> +</div></div> +<p> +"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture +over it—do you remember?" +</p> +<p> +Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can't quote or remind amiss +from her. +</p> +<p> +"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the +lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or +somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the +thorn, pretty much,—of poverty and pinches. But they sup their +buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind. +Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common +things by imagination?" +</p> +<p> +"It always seems to me that living <i>might</i> be pretty in such places. +All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick +and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries +about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side +by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice +neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible +pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down +at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as +you go by in the steamboat." +</p> +<p> +"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all. +The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I +mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went +through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny +bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out +of?" +</p> +<p> +"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in +the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray. +</p> +<p> +"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty +to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to +the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of +it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a +regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the +cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every +household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays." +</p> +<p> +"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all +outside." +</p> +<p> +Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and +reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land +and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and +different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless +imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers. +More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as +they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and +garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny +windows,—"There! <i>that</i> is a nice place and way to live!" +</p> +<p> +But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations, +before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many +times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was +in the thought of each. +</p> +<p> +For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave +itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself, +never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or +water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed +up" in the approach. +</p> +<p> +Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the +great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant, +light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung. +</p> +<p> +Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with +English grass seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to +weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were +gathered at the back of the house and about the stables. +</p> +<p> +The plate-glass windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with +their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace +buildings. It was a group,—a pile; under these roofs a family of +five—Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to +conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime—were to live like a +little royal household. And the father had made all his money in +fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of +it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one +looks it all through and thinks it all over. +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the +porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest +grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower. +</p> +<p> +Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower +rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the +stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture; +along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and +dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,—places +for the many servants that there must be,—pressrooms, closets, +trunk-rooms,—space for stowing all the ample providings for use and +change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a +study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish. +</p> +<p> +It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can't +imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray, +coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to +sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods. +</p> +<p> +They stopped half way,—on the wide second landing where they had +seen, as they went up, that the great window space was open; the +boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the +costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the +wall at one side. +</p> +<p> +"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house," +Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a +thousand dollars." +</p> +<p> +"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or +a chapel." +</p> +<p> +"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open +frame," he had added, cautioning her. +</p> +<p> +Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his +back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some +imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved +cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the +gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color. +</p> +<p> +"It won't do. The meeting of the pattern isn't perfect. Those +grape-bunches come too near together, and there's a leaf-tip taken +off at the corner. What a bungle! Come and look, Ray." +</p> +<p> +Ray turned her face toward him as he spoke, and saw what thrilled +her through with sudden horror. Saw him, utterly forgetful of where +he stood, against the dangerous vacancy, his heel upon the very +edge, beyond which would be death! +</p> +<p> +A single movement an inch further, and he would be off his balance. +Behind him was a fall of thirty feet, down to those piles of brick +and timber. And he would make the movement unless he were instantly +snatched away. His head was thrown back,—his shoulders leaned +backward, in the attitude of one who is endeavoring to judge of an +effect a little distance off. +</p> +<p> +Her face turned white, and her limbs quivered under her. +</p> +<p> +One gasping breath—and then—she turned, made two steps upward, and +flung herself suddenly, as by mischance, prostrate along the broad, +slowly-sloping stairs. +</p> +<p> +Half a dozen thoughts, in flashing succession, shaped themselves +with and into the action. She wondered, afterward, recollecting them +in a distinct order, how there had been time, and how she had +thought so fast. +</p> +<p> +"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come +this way." +</p> +<p> +In the two steps up—"He might not follow; he would not understand. +He <i>must</i>: I must <i>make</i> him come!" And then she flung herself down, +as if she had fallen. +</p> +<p> +Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really +faint and helpless. +</p> +<p> +It was all over. He was beside her. +</p> +<p> +"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said, +quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the +stair. She could not stand. +</p> +<p> +A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the +solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house. +</p> +<p> +"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near +you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from +the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up +again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes." +</p> +<p> +"Was <i>that</i> it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr. +Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I +could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself, +instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint +away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would." +</p> +<p> +"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and +glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it, +without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more +would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a +christening as that!" +</p> +<p> +The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just +rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail. +</p> +<p> +"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water." +</p> +<p> +"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say," +said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact +to think of this, but not to go without saying it. +</p> +<p> +"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her +hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her +feelings. If she had come <i>at</i> you, as half the women in the world +would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister, +Sunderline?" +</p> +<p> +"No, sir—only a friend." +</p> +<p> +"Ah! <i>onlier</i> than a sister, may be? Well!" +</p> +<p> +Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look. +</p> +<p> +"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business." +</p> +<p> +"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it +were, there would be no pardon to beg." +</p> +<p> +"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say +that. I tell you what; if you <i>had</i> come to grief, at the very end +of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put +the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece +of Friday luck as that!" +</p> +<p> +There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back +together into the city. +</p> +<p> +"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to +the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked +about the bonny bowls,—"My life is either worth more or less to me, +after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe +it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the <i>onliest</i> woman in +the world to me?" +</p> +<p> +Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted +him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words +are apt to come up so—in a sort of spite of us—that have made an +impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse. +</p> +<p> +Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak. +</p> +<p> +Frank waited—three minutes perhaps. Then he said, +</p> +<p> +"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it." +</p> +<p> +"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered, +softly. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in +Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute. +</p> +<p> +"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all +beautiful with smile and color. +</p> +<p> +Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told +her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the +hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to. +Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +"There's one thing, Frank,"—said Ray. She was standing with him, +three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her +on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea +and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one +comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before; +and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the +beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing, +Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm +going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp +to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so." +</p> +<p> +"Who—is—Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in +his astonishment. +</p> +<p> +Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too +long a story for the door-step. When you come again"— +</p> +<p> +"That'll be to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you all about it." +</p> +<p> +"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before—a +'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?" +</p> +<p> +"Dear me! how long <i>have</i> you waited?" returned Ray, demurely. +</p> +<p> +She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it +is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he +may take years in which to come to the point of asking—years in +which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an +uncertainty in it; but the point of <i>having</i> must be moved up then, +to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose. +</p> +<p> +A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed +time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one +another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to +let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had +to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the +asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free +enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming +the fulfillment. +</p> +<p> +Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was +sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in +skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half +unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own +image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there +for. +</p> +<p> +"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your +head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the +glass to-morrow morning." +</p> +<p> +Ray roused up from her abstraction. +</p> +<p> +"I was thinking," she said. +</p> +<p> +"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just +outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my +childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm +thinking.' Good-by." +</p> +<p> +There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word. +</p> +<p> +"Dot! You silly little thing!" +</p> +<p> +And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy, +all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball. +</p> +<p> +"I was thinking about Marion Kent." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0016"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVI. +</h2> +<h3> + RECOMPENSE. +</h3> +<p> +That night, Marion Kent was fifty miles off, in the great, mixed-up, +manufacturing town of Loweburg. +</p> +<p> +She had three platform dresses now,—the earnings of some half-dozen +"evenings." The sea-green silk would not do forever, in place after +place; they would call her the mermaid. She must have a quiet, +elegant black one, and one the color of her hair, like that she had +seen the pretty actress, Alice Craike, so bewitching in. She could +deepen it with chestnut trimmings, all toning up together to one +rich, bright harmony. Her hair was "<i>blond cendré</i>,"—not the +red-golden of Alice Craike's; but the same subtle rule of art was +available; "<i>café-au-lait</i>" was her shade; and the darker velvet +just deepened and emphasized the effect. +</p> +<p> +She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden +leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair. She certainly knew +how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a +picture of. +</p> +<p> +The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone +down with a report that Miss Kent was "stunning;" and two or three +housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering +about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to +her carriage. It was just as good, so far as these things went, as +if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody. +</p> +<p> +And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than "these +things," yet. She reached, for herself, to just what she had been +able to appreciate in others. She had taken in the housemaid and +small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little +day of living it. She had not found out, yet, how short a time that +would last. "Verily," it was said for us all long ago, "ye shall +have each your reward," such as ye look and labor for. +</p> +<p> +One great boy was waiting for her, <i>ex officio</i>, and without +disguise,—the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to +read to-night. +</p> +<p> +He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her +carriage, and accompany her to the hall. +</p> +<p> +The little boys observed him with exasperation. The housemaids +dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the +staircase; her <i>café-au-lait</i> silk rolling and glittering behind +her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the +Phoenix Hotel stairs. +</p> +<p> +The President of the People's Lyceum Club heard the rustle of +elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended +arm. +</p> +<p> +That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the +space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the +sidewalk to the hack. What would you have? There could not have been +more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by. She +was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading. What more could Fanny +Kemble do? +</p> +<p> +Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were +gathered. She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some +passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building, +whence she would enter, in full glory, upon the platform. +</p> +<p> +She came in gracefully; a little breezy she could not help being; +it was the one movement of the universe to her at that moment, her +ten steps across the platform,—her little half bow, half droop, +before the applauding audience,—the taking up of the bouquet laid +upon her table,—her smile, with a scarcely visible inclination +again,—and the sitting down among those waves of amber that rose up +shining in the gas-light, about her, as she subsided among her +silken draperies. +</p> +<p> +She was imitative; she had learned the little outsides of her art +well; but you see the art was not high. +</p> +<p> +It was the same with her reading. She had had drill enough to make +her elocution passable; her voice was clear and sweet; she had a +natural knack, as we have seen, for speaking to the galleries. When +there was a sensational, dramatic point to make, she could make it +after her external fashion, strongly. The deep magnetism—the +electric thrill of soul-reality—these she had nothing to do with. +</p> +<p> +Yet she read some things that thrilled of themselves; the very words +of which, uttered almost anyhow, were fit to bring men to their feet +and women to tears, with sublimity and pathos. Somebody had helped +her choose effectively, and things very cunningly adaptive to +herself. +</p> +<p> +The last selection for the first part of her reading to-night was +Mrs. Browning's "Court Lady." +</p> +<p> +"Wear your fawn-colored silk when you read this," Virginia Levering +had counseled. +</p> +<p> +Her self-consciousness made the first lines telling. +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> +<p class="ih">"Her hair was tawny with gold,—her eyes with purple were dark;</p> +<p> Her cheeks pale opal burned with a red and restless spark."</p> +</div> +</div> +<p> +Her head, bright with its golden-dusty waves and braids, leaned +forward under the light as she uttered the words; her great, +gray-blue eyes, deepening with excitement to black, lifted +themselves and looked the crowd in the face; the color mounted like +a crimson spark; she glowed all over. Yes, over; not up, nor +through; but some things catch from the outside. A flush and rustle +ran over the faces, and the benches; she felt that every eye was +upon her, lit up with an admiring eagerness, that answered to her +eagerness to be admired. +</p> +<p> +O, this was living! There was a pulse and a rush in this! Marion +Kent <i>was</i> living, with all her nature that had yet waked up, at +that bewildering and superficial moment. +</p> +<p> +But she has got to live deeper. The Lord, who gave her life, will +not let her off so. It will come. It is coming. +</p> +<p> +We know not the day nor the hour; though we go on as if we knew all +things and were sure. +</p> +<p> +At this very instant, there is close upon you, Marion Kent, one of +those lightning shafts that run continually quivering to and fro +about the earth, with their net-work of fire, in this storm of life +under which we of to-day are born. All the air is tremulous with +quick, converging nerves; concentrating events, bringing each soul, +as it were, into a possible focus continually, under the forces that +are forging to bear down upon it. There are no delays,—no respites +of ignorance. Right into the midst of our most careless or most +selfish doing, comes the summons that arrests us in the Name of the +King. +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="i20"> "She rose to her feet with a spring.</p> + <p><i>That</i> was a Piedmontese! And this is the Court of the King!"</p> +</div> +</div> +<p> +She was upon her feet, as if the impulse of the words had lifted +her; she had learned by rote and practice when and how to do it; she +had been poised for the action through the reading of all those last +stanzas. +</p> +<p> +She did it well. One hand rested by the finger-tips upon the open +volume before her; her glistening robes fell back as she gained her +full height,—she swayed forward toward the assembly that leaned +itself toward her; the left hand threw itself back with a noble +gesture of generous declaring; the fingers curving from the open +palm as it might have been toward the pallet of the dead soldier at +her side. She was utterly motionless for an instant; then, as the +applause broke down the silence, she turned, and grandly passed out +along the stage, and disappeared. +</p> +<p> +Within the door of the anteroom stood a messenger from the hotel. He +had a telegraph envelope in his hand; he put it into hers. +</p> +<p> +She tore it open,—not thinking, scarcely noticing; the excitement +of the instant just past moved her nerves,—no apprehension of what +this might be. +</p> +<p> +Then the lightning reached her: struck her through and through. +</p> +<p> +"Your ma's dying: come back: no money." +</p> +<p> +Those last words were a mistake; the whole dispatch, in its absurd +homeliness and its pitiless directness, was the work of old Mrs. +Knoxwell, the blacksmith's wife, used to hammers and nails, and +believing in good, forceful, honest ways of doing things; feeling +also a righteous and neighborly indignation against this child, +negligent of her worn and lonely mother; "skitin' about the country, +makin' believe big and famous. She would let her know the truth, +right out plain; it would be good for her." +</p> +<p> +What she had meant to write at the end was "Pneumonia;" but spelling +it "Numoney," it had got transmitted as we have seen. +</p> +<p> +It struck Marion through and through; but she did not feel it at +first. It met the tide of her triumph and elation full in her +throbbing veins; and the two keen currents turned to a mere +stillness for a moment. +</p> +<p> +Then she dropped down where she was, all into the golden mass and +shine of her bright raiment, with her hands before her eyes, the +paper crumpled in the clinch of one of them. +</p> +<p> +The President of the People's Lyceum Club made a little speech, and +dismissed the audience. "Miss Kent had received by telegraph most +painful intelligence from her family; was utterly unable to appear +again." +</p> +<p> +The audience behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how +to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection +of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove +rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night +train down from Vermont. +</p> +<p> +That was on Friday night. +</p> +<p> +On Sunday morning Frank Sunderline came in on the service train, and +went up to Pilgrim Street. +</p> +<p> +"Mrs. Kent is dead," he told Kay. "Marion is in awful trouble. Can't +you come out to her?" +</p> +<p> +Ray was just leaving the house to go to church. Instead, she went +with Frank to the horse-railroad station, catching the eleven +o'clock car. She had been expecting him in the afternoon, to take +her to drink tea with his mother, who was not able to come in to see +her. +</p> +<p> +In an hour, she went in at Mrs. Kent's white gate,—Frank leaving +her there. They both felt, without saying, that it would not be kind +to appear together. Marion had that news, though, as she had had the +other; from her Job's comforter, Mrs. Knoxwell, who was persistently +"sitting with her." +</p> +<p> +"There's Frank Sunderline and Ray Ingraham at the gate. She's +coming in. They're engaged. It's just out." +</p> +<p> +"What <i>do</i> I care?" cried Marion, fiercely, turning upon her, and +astounding Mrs. Knoxwell by the sudden burst of angry words; for she +had not spoken for more than an hour, in which the blacksmith's wife +had administered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging +condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would go home!" +</p> +<p> +Every monosyllable was uttered with a desperate, wrathful +deliberateness and flinging away of all pretense and politeness. +</p> +<p> +"Well—'f I <i>never</i>!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her +voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach. +</p> +<p> +"Jest as you please, Marion—'f I ain't no more use!" And the +aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it, +"done <i>everything</i>," left the scene of her labors and her +animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by +her inability to "realize what she <i>did</i> feel." +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into +her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's +shoulder, and cried her very heart out. +</p> +<p> +"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody +else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my +birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the +world—to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's +gone—and mother. +</p> +<p> +"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do +for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray—I did, +truly! But she's dead—and I let her die!" +</p> +<p> +With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting +aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her +self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or +cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail +against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise. +</p> +<p> +"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been +better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a +strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild, +swollen eyes into hers,—"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was +only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and +selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin +burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a +silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in +the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor +little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and +left me to tend her. She wanted some water—Oh!" +</p> +<p> +Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as +she sat. +</p> +<p> +Ray sat perfectly still. She longed to beg her not to think about +it, not to say any more; but she knew she would feel better if she +did. +</p> +<p> +"I told her I'd go presently; and she waited—the patient little +thing! And I was making my blue bow, and fixing it on, and fussing +with the running, and I forgot! And she couldn't bear to bother me, +and didn't say a word, but waited till she dropped to sleep without +it; and her lips were so red and dry. It was a whole hour that I +let her lie so. She never knew anything after that. +</p> +<p> +"She waked up all in a rave of light-headedness! +</p> +<p> +"I thought I should never get over it, Ray. And I never did, way +down in my heart; but I got back into the same wretched nonsense, +and now—here's <i>mother</i>! +</p> +<p> +"It's no use to tell me. I've done it. I've lost my right. It'll +<i>never</i> be given back to me." +</p> +<p> +"Marion—I wish you could have Mr. Vireo to talk to you; or +Luclarion Grapp. Won't you come home with me, and let them come to +see you? They <i>know</i> about these things, dear." +</p> +<p> +"Would you take me home?" asked Marion, slowly, looking her in the +face. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, indeed. Will you come?" +</p> +<p> +"O, do take me and hide me away, and let me cry!" +</p> +<p> +She dropped herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's +hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could +not stay in that house alone, one day. +</p> +<p> +Ray stayed with her, until after the funeral. +</p> +<p> +Marion would not go to the church. She had let them decide +everything just as they pleased, thinking only that she could not +think about any of it. Mrs. Kent had been a faithful, humble +church-member for forty years, and the minister and her +fellow-members wanted her to be brought there. There was no room in +the little half-house, where she had lived, for neighbors and +friends to gather, and for the services properly to take place. +</p> +<p> +So it was decided. +</p> +<p> +But when the time came, and it was too late to change, Marion +said,—"She belonged to them, and they have done by her. They can +all go, but I can't. To sit up in the front pew as a mourner, and be +looked at, and prayed for, as if I had been a real child, and had +only <i>lost</i> my mother! You know I can't, Ray. I will stay here, and +bear my punishment. May be if I bear it <i>all</i> now—do you believe it +might make any difference?" +</p> +<p> +Ray stayed with her through the whole. +</p> +<p> +While all was still in the church, not ten rods off, a carriage came +for them to the little white gate. With the silken blinds down, and +the windows open behind them, it was driven to the cemetery, and in +beneath the sheltering trees, to a stopping place just upon a little +side turn, near the newly opened grave. No one, of those who +alighted from the vehicles of the short procession, knew exactly +when or how it had come. +</p> +<p> +The words of the prayer beside the grave,—most tenderly framed by +the good old minister, for the ear he knew they would reach—came in +soft and clear upon the pleasant air. +</p> +<p> +"And we know, Lord, as we lay these friends away, one after another, +that we give them into Thy hands,—into Thy heart; that we give into +Thy heart, also, all our love and our sorrow, and our penitence for +whatever more we might have been or done toward them; that through +Thee, our thought of them can reach them forever. We pray Thee to +forgive us, as we know we do forgive each other; to keep alive and +true in us the love by which we hold each other; and finally to +bring us face to face in Thy glory, which is Thy loving presence +among us all. We ask Thee to do this, by the pity and grace that are +in Thy Christ, our Saviour." +</p> +<p> +After that, they were driven straight in, over the long Avenue, to +the city, and to the quiet house in Pilgrim Street. +</p> +<p> +Ray herself, only, led Marion to the little room up-stairs which +had been made ready for her; Ray brought her up some tea, and made +her drink it; she saw her in bed for the night, and sat by her till +she fell asleep. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0017"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVII. +</h2> +<h3> + ERRANDS OF HOPE. +</h3> +<p> +"It is a very small world, after all." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and +moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find +it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or +try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,—how +this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have +done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other +after years and years, and find that they have not been very far +apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat +themselves, when we had thought that they were done with. +</p> +<p> +"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting +for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of +events,—yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all +instinct is,—toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see +at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines +must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the +coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either +blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too +shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we +read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the +writer,—the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only +catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger, +whose scripture is upon the stars. +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and +Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her. +</p> +<p> +"Christ died." +</p> +<p> +The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal +words. +</p> +<p> +"Yes,—Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about +such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been +strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its +sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and +had to cry up after the only Hope. +</p> +<p> +"But He could not forgive my letting <i>them</i> die. I have been reading +the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these +little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"— +</p> +<p> +She could not finish the quotation. +</p> +<p> +"Yes,—'<i>offend</i>;' turn aside out of the right—away from Him; +mislead. Hurt their <i>souls</i>, Marion." +</p> +<p> +Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the +comfort,—snatched it with a starving madness out of his. +</p> +<p> +"Do you think it means <i>that?</i>" she said. +</p> +<p> +"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may +sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up +lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we +must repent according to our sin; but we <i>may</i> repent, and they and +He will pity. It is the soul-killers—the corrupters—Christ so +terribly condemns." +</p> +<p> +"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ +die—suffer—for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts +worthy, die—suffer—for <i>their</i> world. The Lamb is forever slain; +the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come +to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in +his blood—have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are +glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it +brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' +He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a +divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the +single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer, +that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to +you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let +not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. +Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'" +</p> +<p> +"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them; +do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here! +Can I <i>ever</i> have my chances given back again?" +</p> +<p> +"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.' +That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do +their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link +yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it. +The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know +that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You +can be in heaven." +</p> +<p> +He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her +eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do. +</p> +<p> +She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were +busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl; +stitches dropped and twisted. +</p> +<p> +Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got +round so as to strike across her where she sat. +</p> +<p> +The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting +them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's +touch. One of the girls would be up soon. +</p> +<p> +Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and +embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds; +lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but +shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She +left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in +upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between +them and that heavenly enfolding. +</p> +<p> +She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and +picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled. +</p> +<p> +Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a +printed page since that night in Loweburg. +</p> +<p> +The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book +opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went +searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it +forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her +hand, she thought—she remembered—nothing. Her spirit went from out +of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her +voice, as one really <i>reading</i>; interpreting as she went. All her +elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not +touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had +only been the trick of <i>saying out</i>, which is no giving at all. +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very +pretty reading." +</p> +<p> +Dot came in, and she went away. +</p> +<p> +She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one; +she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but +her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,—"For your sake." +</p> +<p> +And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,—"He +that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's +reward." +</p> +<p> +These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she +went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old +self-accusations. +</p> +<p> +After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used +sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull +down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she +went,—"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I +am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors. +</p> +<p> +"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there. +</p> +<p> +And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea, +or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by +themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own +character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and +repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives +it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born." +</p> +<p> +"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray +Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The +kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,—people +who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of." +</p> +<p> +"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any +chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the +pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me +any good." +</p> +<p> +"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to +Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp. +</p> +<p> +"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to +take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman +to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual +destinies revealed to her. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the +consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And +these old worn-out consequences—why, He can turn them into +blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change; +until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of +everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a +while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty +sick time. It took—ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I +thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that +might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now +never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this +world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful +evil—in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the +easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know—and if you +hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put +into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See +here!" +</p> +<p> +And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the +fortieth chapter of Isaiah. +</p> +<p> +"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye +comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is +accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received +of the Lord's hand double for all her sins." +</p> +<p> +"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,—it took +wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,—and God's +forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them +all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't +safe to let them see both sides then. But He <i>trusts</i> us now; He +gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any +keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He +leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!" +</p> +<p> +"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!" +</p> +<p> +"Do you think He takes all this care of you,—lets them die for you +even,—and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad +and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had +tried,—and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little, +forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the +Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If +we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much +more against our mistakes,—our forgettings! and <i>they</i> are the +propitiation, too; their angels—the Christ of them—do always +behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the +Lord's interceding." +</p> +<p> +"If I could once more be let to do something for them—their very +selves!" +</p> +<p> +"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy +this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any +more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their +errands again." +</p> +<p> +Marion stood up on her feet. +</p> +<p> +"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it, +because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not +have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't +mean it; would He?" +</p> +<p> +She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of +Israel believed in the God of Abraham. +</p> +<p> +"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the +comfort, just as much as He does the blaming." +</p> +<p> +Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with +something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had +all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for +her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or +even asked anything as to what she should do next. +</p> +<p> +But now it came of itself. +</p> +<p> +"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think, +Miss Grapp? To be anything—an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook +to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little +children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here, +if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of +poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't +any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat +them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any +little girls that might be sick." +</p> +<p> +Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a +little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having +her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so +easily? +</p> +<p> +Ah, you call it easily! <i>She</i> knew, how, passing through the +furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the +fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old, +unworthy desire vanishes:—the living, awful breath of remorse. +</p> +<p> +"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs. +Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of +the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great, +new building, and there'll be people wanted." +</p> +<p> +"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how. +I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I +mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!" +</p> +<p> +"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go +anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody +that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother, +with little children round her"— +</p> +<p> +"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little +Sue!" +</p> +<p> +So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine; +so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their +own way, and brought her to a place of abiding. +</p> +<p> +Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's +ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of +the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast +enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is +reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness. +</p> +<p> +We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching +into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that +comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness. +</p> +<p> +She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten +years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She +had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague. +</p> +<p> +She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book +for children that had been Sue's. +</p> +<p> +After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look +back after something in the Scripture words. +</p> +<p> +It had come home to her,—that betrayal and desertion of the boy by +his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish +unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she +knew she had repented. +</p> +<p> +She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the +Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph. +</p> +<p> +"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye +sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.... +To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that +sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of +Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me." +</p> +<p> +A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her; +it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender +color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed +them. It was such an answer! +</p> +<p> +"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a +drink of water." +</p> +<p> +It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read +secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only +for her. She believed in spirit-communication,—for she knew it +came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any +outward spells. +</p> +<p> +She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She +came and raised the little head tenderly,—the child was hurt in the +back, and could not be lifted up,—and held the goblet to the gentle +lips; lips patient, like Sue's! +</p> +<p> +"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!" +</p> +<p> +The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the +child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her. +</p> +<p> +"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And +"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent. +</p> +<p> +The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty +triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,—she +could not trace out how. Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at +once, for her. With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration, +the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and +spoke it:— +</p> +<p class="center"> +"These are the lambs of the sacrifice: <i>this</i> is the court of the King!"</p> + +<a name="2HCH0018"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XVIII. +</h2> +<h3> + BRICKFIELD FARMS. +</h3> +<p> +It was a rainy, desolate day. +</p> +<p> +It had rained the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and half +cleared up last night; then this morning it had sullenly and +tiresomely begun again. +</p> +<p> +All the forenoon it grew worse; in the afternoon, heavy, pelting, +streaming showers came down, filling the Kiln Hollow with mist, and +hiding the tops of the hills about it with low, rolling, +ever-gathering and resolving clouds. +</p> +<p> +It seemed as if all the autumn joy were over; as if the pleasant +days were done with till another year. After this, the cold would +set in. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Jeffords had a bright fire built in Mrs. Argenter's room, +another in the family sitting-room. It looked cosy; but it reminded +the sojourners that they had not simply to draw themselves into +winter-quarters, and be comfortable; their winter-quarters were yet +to seek. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out +meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, +if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them +to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled among and over +them. +</p> +<p> +"This is what you liked so much at the Shakers' in Lebanon," she +said. "See if it isn't as nice as theirs, I think it is fresher. +Here is a tiny little pickle-fork, to eat with." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter took the offered dainty. +</p> +<p> +"You are a dear child," she said. "Come and eat some too." +</p> +<p> +"O, I ate as I went along. Now, I'll read to you." And she took up +"Blindpits," which her mother had laid down. +</p> +<p> +"If it only wouldn't storm so," said Mrs. Argenter. "Mrs. Jeffords +says there will be a freshet. The roads will be all torn up. We +shall never be able to get home." +</p> +<p> +"O yes, we shall," said Sylvie, cheerily; putting down the wonder +that arose obtrusively in her own mind as to where the home would be +that they should go to. +</p> +<p> +"Did Mrs. Jeffords tell you about last year's freshet? And the +apples?" +</p> +<p> +"She said they had an awful flood. The brooks turned into rivers, +and the rivers swallowed up everything." +</p> +<p> +"O, she didn't get to the funny part, then?" said Sylvie. "She +didn't tell you about the apples?" +</p> +<p> +"No. I think she keeps the funny parts for you, Sylvie." +</p> +<p> +"May be she does. She isn't sure that you feel up to them, always. +But I guess she means them to come round, when she tells them to me. +You see they had just been gathering their apples, in that great +lower orchard,—five acres of trees, and such a splendid crop! There +they were, all piled up,—can't you imagine? A perfect picture! Red +heaps, and yellow heaps; and greenings, and purple pearmains, and +streaked seek-no-furthers. Like great piles of autumn leaves! Well, +the flood came, and rose up over the flats, into the lower end of +the orchard. They went down over night, and moved all the piles +further up, The next day, they had to move them again. And the next +morning after that, when they woke up, the whole orchard was under +water, and every apple gone. Mr. Jeffords said he got down just in +time to see the last one swim round the corner. And when the flood +had fallen,—there, half a mile below, spread out over the meadow, +was three hundred barrels of apple sauce!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter laughed a feeble little <i>expected</i> laugh; her heart +was not free to be amused with an apple-story. No wonder Mrs. +Jeffords kept the funny parts for Sylvie. Mrs. Argenter quenched her +before she could possibly get to them. But was Sylvie's heart free +for amusement? What was the difference? The years between them? Mrs. +Jeffords was a far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her +cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls +together, over their work and their stories. That was it,—the work! +Sylvie was doing <i>all she could</i>. The cheerfulness of doing followed +irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept +out the fear and the repining. +</p> +<p> +"There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving +busy," Mrs. Jeffords said. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and +worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh. +</p> +<p> +Perhaps the hardest thing that Sylvie did through the day, was the +setting to work to "chipper" her mother up. It was lifting up a +weight that continually dropped back again. +</p> +<p> +"Do they think this rain will ever be over?" asked Mrs. Argenter, +turning her face toward the dripping panes again. +</p> +<p> +"Why, yes, mother; rains always <i>have</i> been over sometime. They +never knew one that wasn't, and they go by experience." +</p> +<p> +There was nothing more to be said upon the rain topic, after that +simple piece of logic. +</p> +<p> +"If there doesn't come Badgett up the hill in all the pour!" +</p> +<p> +Badgett drove the daily stage from Tillington up through Pemunk and +Sandon. He came round by Brickfields when there was anybody to +bring. +</p> +<p> +Badgett drove up over the turf door-yard, close to the porch. He +jumped off, unbuttoned the dripping canvas door, and flung it up. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Jeffords was in the entry on the instant; surprised, puzzled, +but all ready to be hospitable, to she didn't know whom. Relations +from Indiana, as likely as not. That is the way people arrive in the +country; and a whole houseful to stay over night does not startle +the hostess as an unexpected guest to dinner may a city one. +</p> +<p> +But the persons who alighted from the clumsy stage-wagon were Mr. +Christopher Kirkbright, Miss Euphrasia, and Desire Ledwith. +</p> +<p> +"Didn't you get our letter?" said Miss Euphrasia, as Sylvie, from +her mother's door-way, saw who she was, and sprang forward. +</p> +<p> +"Why, no, we didn't get no letter," said Mrs. Jeffords. "Father +hasn't been to the office for two days, it's stormed so continual. +But you're just as welcome, exactly. Step right in here." And she +flung open the door of her best parlor, where the new boughten +carpet was, for the damp feet and the dripping waterproof. +</p> +<p> +"No, indeed; not there; we couldn't have the conscience." +</p> +<p> +"'Tain't very comfortable either, after all," said Mrs. Jeffords, +changing her own mind in a bustle. "It's been kinder shut up. Come +right out to the sittin'-room-fire finally." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright and Miss Ledwith followed her; Miss Euphrasia went +right into Mrs. Argenter's room, after she had taken off her +waterproof in the hall. +</p> +<p> +As she came in at the door, a great flash of sunshine streamed from +under the western clouds, in at the parlor window, followed her +across the hall and enveloped her in light as she entered. +</p> +<p> +"Why, the storm's over!" cried Sylvie, joyfully. "You come in on a +sunbeam, like the Angel Gabriel. But you always do. How came you to +come?" +</p> +<p> +"I came to answer your letter. You know I don't like to write very +well. And I've brought my brother, and a dear friend of mine whom I +want you to know. It did not rain in Boston when we started, but it +came on again before noon, and all the afternoon it has been a +splendid down-pour. Something really worth while to be out in, you +know; not a little exasperating drizzle. That's the kind of rain one +can't bear, and catches cold in. How the showers swept round the +hills, and the cascades thundered and flashed as we came by! What a +lovely region you have discovered!" +</p> +<p> +"It's so beautiful that you're here! We'll go down to the cascades +to-morrow. Won't you just come and introduce me to the others, and +then come back to mother?" +</p> +<p> +The others were in the family-room, which was also dining-room. In +the kitchen beyond, Mrs. Jeffords' stove was roaring up for an early +tea, and she was whipping griddle-cakes together. +</p> +<p> +"My brother, Mr. Kirkbright—Miss Argenter. Miss Desire +Ledwith—Sylvie." +</p> +<p> +The two girls shook hands, and looked in each others faces. +</p> +<p> +"How clear, and strong, and trusty!" Sylvie thought. +</p> +<p> +"You dear little spirit!" thought Desire, seeing the delicate face, +and the brave sweetness through it. +</p> +<p> +This was the second real introduction Miss Euphrasia had made within +ten days. It was a great deal, of that sort, to happen in such space +of time. +</p> +<p> +"If it hadn't been for the storm, we might have hurried down and +missed you. Mother was beginning to dread the coming on of the +cold," said Sylvie. "But the rain came and settled it, for just now. +That rested me. A real good 'can't help' is such a comfort." +</p> +<p> +"The Father's No. Shutting us in with its grand, gentle forbiddance. +Many a rain-storm is that. I always feel so safe when I am shut up +by really impossible weather." +</p> +<p> +After the tea, they were still in time for the whole sunset, +wonderful after the storm. +</p> +<p> +Desire had gone from the table to the half-glazed door which opened +from the room into a broad porch, looking out directly across the +hollow, along a valley-line of side-hills, to the distant blue +peaks. +</p> +<p> +"O, come!" she cried back to the others, as she hastened out upon +the platform. "It is marvelous!" +</p> +<p> +Heavy lines of clouds lay banked together in the west, black with +the remnant and recoil of tempest; between these, through rifts and +breaks, poured down the sunlight across bright spaces into the +bosoms of the hills lighting them up with revelations. The sloping +outlines shone golden green with lingering summer color, and +discovered each separate wave and swell of upland. The searching +shafts fell upon every tree and bush and spire, moving slowly over +them and illuminating point after point, making each suddenly seem +distinct and near. What had been a mere margin of distant woods, +stood eliminated and relieved in bough and stem and leafage, with a +singular pre-Raphaelitic individuality. It was the standing-out of +all things in the last radiance; called up, one by one under the +flash of judgment—beautiful, clear, terrible. +</p> +<p> +Then the clouds themselves, as the sun dropped down, drank in the +splendor. They turned to rose and crimson; they floated, and spread, +and broke, and drifted up the valley, against the hills on right and +left. Rags and shreds of them, trailing gorgeous with color, clung +where the ridges caught them, and streamed like fragments of +heavenly banners. The sky repeated the October woods,—the woods the +sky,—in vivid numberless hues. +</p> +<p> +The sunset rolled up and around the watchers as they gazed. They +were <i>in</i> it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either +hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like +burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up +the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the +pervading glory. +</p> +<p> +It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to +window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling, +"Now! now! O, was there ever anything like that?" +</p> +<p> +At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining +waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky +gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and +diviner beauty. +</p> +<p> +A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like +rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, +foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats +floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there +it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with +saffron-touched blue. +</p> +<p> +So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the +day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and +peace of their rushing and melting together. +</p> +<p> +After all that, they came back by a step and a word—these mortal +observers,—to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and +especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about +bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. +Jeffords' hospitality. +</p> +<p> +"Where should she put them? Why, she was <i>always</i> ready. To be sure, +the <i>front</i> upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer +company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room +enough!" +</p> +<p> +"There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over +the sittin'-room, and there's <i>my</i> room! I ain't never put out!" +</p> +<p> +"But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be." +</p> +<p> +"Don't <i>care</i>!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the +kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all +right. Don't you worry." +</p> +<p> +"You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You +must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help +it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side +up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you. +You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a +long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when +the evening was over. +</p> +<p> +"So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference +the other way. I think I always <i>am</i> among people. At least it never +seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be +exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in +the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,—that +is, as fast as the morning gets round." +</p> +<p> +With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously +making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier +touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb +damsel. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far +as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, +knowing that "these same tribulations"—and joys also—are +accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; +knowing, too,—ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,—that +we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are +alive unto each other in the Lord. +</p> +<p> +The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of +wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them. +Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and +plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild +harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that +are born to make a part of it. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a +mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and +again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the +heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the +water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so +near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it +was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands +between the Jeffords' place and the Basin. +</p> +<p> +"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading +the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which +nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and +waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks +of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn +color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered. +</p> +<p> +They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew, +cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens +that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their +skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy +of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the +beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at +last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and +overlook and underlook the shining tumult,—the shifting, yet +enduring apparition of delight. +</p> +<p> +It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it +seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous +living creature. You <i>felt</i> it reach the first rock-landing; you +were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second +spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept +coming—coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet +never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the +magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of +evanescence, caught <i>in transitu</i>, and held for the eye and mind to +dwell on. +</p> +<p> +They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,—that +ought to be a pause,—for them to turn and go away. +</p> +<p> +"But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And +the Second Cataract is grander than this." +</p> +<p> +"You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright. +</p> +<p> +"Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don't they? +Our first is somebody's else last, I suppose, always." +</p> +<p> +"What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss +Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge. +</p> +<p> +"A little spirit waked up by touch of misfortune," said Miss +Euphrasia. "She would have gone through life blindfolded by purple +and fine linen, if things had been left as they were with her." +</p> +<p> +Desire and Sylvie walked on together. +</p> +<p> +"Leave them alone," said Miss Kirkbright to her brother. And she +stopped, and began to gather handfuls of the late ferns. +</p> +<p> +Now she had the chance given her, Desire said it straight out, as +she said everything. +</p> +<p> +"I came up here after you, Miss Argenter. Did you know it?" +</p> +<p> +"No. After me? How?" asked Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"To see if you and your mother would come and make your home with us +this winter,—pretty much as you do with Mrs. Jeffords. I can say +<i>us</i>, because Hazel Ripwinkley, my cousin, is with me nearly all +the time; but for the rest of it, I am all the family there really +is, now that Rachel Froke has gone away; unless you came to call my +dear old Frendely 'family,' as I do; seeing that next to Rachel, she +is root and spring of it. You could help me; you could help her; and +I think you would like my work. I should be glad of you; and your +mother could have Rachel Froke's gray parlor. It is a one-sided +proposition, because, you see, I know all about you already, from +Miss Euphrasia. You will have to take me at hazard, and find out by +trying." +</p> +<p> +"Do you think the old proverb isn't as true of good words as of +mischief,—that a dog who will fetch a bone will carry a bone?" said +Sylvie, laughing with the same impulse by which clear drops stood +suddenly in her eyes, and a quick rosiness came into her face. "Do +you suppose Miss Euphrasia hasn't told me of you?" +</p> +<p> +"I never thought I was one of the people to be told about," said +Desire, simply. "Do you think you could come? Miss Euphrasia +believed it would be what you wanted. There is plenty of room, and +plenty of work. I want you to know that I mean to keep you honestly +busy, because then you will understand that things come out honestly +even." +</p> +<p> +"Even! Dear Miss Ledwith!" +</p> +<p> +"Then you'll try it?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know how to thank Miss Euphrasia or you." +</p> +<p> +"There are no thanks in the bargain," said Desire, smiling. "I want +you; if you want me, it is a Q.E.D. If we <i>do</i> dispute about +anything, we'll leave it out to Miss Euphrasia. She knows how to +make everything right. She shall be our broker. It is a good thing +to have one, in some kinds of trade." +</p> +<p> +They had come around the curve in the road now, that brought them +alongside the shady gorge at the foot of Cone Hill. Here was the +little group of brick-makers' houses; empty, weather-beaten, their +door-yards overgrown with brakes and mulleins. Beyond, up the ledge, +to which a rough drive-way, long disused, led off, was the quaint, +rambling edifice that with its feet of stone and brick went "walking +up" the mountain. +</p> +<p> +"You must go in and see it," Sylvie said. "But first,—this is the +way to the cascade." +</p> +<p> +Another bar-place let them in again to another narrow, wild, +bush-grown path around the edge of the cliff, the lower spur of the +great hill; and down over shelving rocks, a long, gradual descent, +to the foot of the fall. +</p> +<p> +The water foamed and rippled to their feet, as they walked along its +varying edge-line on the smooth, sloping stone that stretched back +against the perpendicular rampart of the cliff. The fall itself was +hidden in the turn around which, above, they had followed the +tangled pathway. +</p> +<p> +At the farthest projection of the platform they were now treading, +they came upon it; beneath it, rather, they looked back and up at +its showery silver sheet, falling in sweet, continual thunder into +the dark, hollow, rock-encircled pool, thence to tumble away +headlong, from point to point, lower and lower yet, by a thousand +little breaks and plunges, till it came out into a broad meadow +stretch miles and miles away. +</p> +<p> +"What a hurry it is in, to get down where it is wanted," said +Desire. +</p> +<p> +She had seated herself beside the curling edge of the swift stream, +where it seemed to trace and keep by its own will its boundary upon +the nearly level rock, and was gazing up where the white radiance +poured itself as if direct from out the blue above. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright stood behind her. +</p> +<p> +"Most things come to us at last so quietly," he said. "It is good to +feel and see what a rush it starts with,—out of that heart of +heaven." +</p> +<p> +Desire had not said that; but it was just what she had been feeling. +Eager to get to us; coming in a hurry. Was that God's impulse toward +us? +</p> +<p> +"Making haste to help and satisfy the world," Mr. Kirkbright said +again. +</p> +<p> +"A river of clear water of life, coming down out of the throne," +said Miss Euphrasia. "What a sign it is!" +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright walked along the margin of the ledge, farther and +farther down. He tried with his stick some stones that lay across +the current at a narrow point where beneath the opposite cliff it +bent and turned away, losing itself from their sight as they stood +here. Then he sprang across; crept, stooping, along the narrow +foothold under the projecting rock, until he could follow with his +eye the course of the rapid water, falling continually to its lower +level as it sped on and on, all its volume gathered in one deep, +rocky, unchangeable bed. +</p> +<p> +"What a waiting power!" he exclaimed, springing safely back, and +coming up toward them. "What a stream for mills! And it turns +nothing but the farmers' grists, till it gets to Tillington." +</p> +<p> +Desire was a very little disappointed at this utilitarianism. She +had been so glad and satisfied with the reading of its type; the +type of its far-back impulse. +</p> +<p> +"If there had been mills here, we should not have seen that," she +said; forgetting to explain what. +</p> +<p> +But Christopher Kirkbright knew. +</p> +<p> +"What was it that we did see?" he asked, coming beside her. +</p> +<p> +"The gracious hurry," she answered, with a half-vexed surprise in +her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"And what is the next thing to seeing that? Isn't it to partake? To +be in a gracious hurry also, if we can?" +</p> +<p> +A smile came up now in Desire's face, and effaced gently the +vexation and the surprise. +</p> +<p> +"Do you know what a legible face you have?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, +seating himself near her on a step of rock. +</p> +<p> +Desire was a little disturbed again by this movement. The others had +begun to walk on, up the ledge, toward the old brick house; +gathering as they went, ferns that had escaped the frost, others +that had delicately whitened in it, and gorgeous maple-leaves, swept +from topmost, inaccessible branches,—where the most glorious color +always hangs,—by last night's rain and wind. +</p> +<p> +It was so foolish of her to have sat there until he came and did +this. Now she could not get right up and go away. This feeling, +coming simultaneously with his question about her legible face, was +doubly uncomfortable. But she had to answer. She did it briefly. +</p> +<p> +"Yes. It is a great bother. I don't like coarse print." +</p> +<p> +"Nor I. But my eyes are good; and the fine print is clear. I should +like very much to tell you of something that I have to do, Miss +Ledwith. I should like your thoughts upon it. For, you see, I have +hardly yet got acquainted with my ground. From what my sister tells +me, I think your work leads naturally up to mine. I should like to +find out whether it is quite ready for the join." +</p> +<p> +"I haven't much work," said Desire. "Luclarion Grapp has; and Miss +Kirkbright, and Mr. Vireo. I only help,—with some money that +belongs to it." +</p> +<p> +"And I have more money that belongs to it," said Mr. Kirkbright. +</p> +<p> +It was a curious way for a rich man and a rich woman to talk to each +other, about their money. But I do not believe it ought to be +curious. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you often come across people who cannot be helped much just +where they are? Don't you feel, sometimes, that there ought to be a +place to send them to, away, out of their old tracks, where they +could begin again; or even hide a while, in shame and repentance, +before they <i>dare</i> to begin again?" +</p> +<p> +"I <i>know</i> Luclarion does," said Desire, earnestly. +</p> +<p> +She would have it, still, that there was no work in her own name for +him to ask about. +</p> +<p> +"I must see this Luclarion of yours," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"Meanwhile, since I have got you to talk to, pray tell me all you +can, whoever found it out. Isn't there a need for a City of Refuge? +And suppose a place like this, away from the towns, where God's +beautiful water is coming down in a hurry, with a cry of power in +every leap,—where there is a great lake-basin full of material for +work, just stored away against men's need for their earning and +their building,—suppose this place taken and used for the giving of +a new chance of life to those who have failed and gone wrong, or +have perhaps hardly ever had any right chances. Do you think we +could manage it so as to <i>keep</i> it a place of refuge and new +beginning, and not let it spoil itself?" +</p> +<p> +"With the right people at each end, why not?" said Desire. "But O, +Mr. Kirkbright! how can I tell you! It is such a great idea; and I +don't know anything." +</p> +<p> +These words, that she happened to say, brought back to her—by one +of those little lightning threads that hold things together, and +flash and thrill our recollections through us—the rainy morning +when she went round in the storm to her Aunt Ripwinkley's, because +she could not sit in the bay-window at home, and wonder whether "it +was all finished," or whether anybody had got to contrive anything +more, "before they could sit behind plate-glass and let it rain." +She remembered it all by those same words that she had spoken then +to Rachel Froke,—"Behold, we know not anything,—Tennyson and I!" +</p> +<p> +Nonsense stays by us, often, in stickier fashion than sense does; +that is the good of nonsense, perhaps; it sticks, and draws the +sense along after it. +</p> +<p> +"I think one thing is certain," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Human +creatures are made for 'moving on.' I believe the Swedenborgians are +right in this,—that the places above, or below, are filled from the +human race, or races; and that the Lord Himself couldn't do much +with beings made as He has made us, without places to <i>move us +into</i>. New beginnings,—evenings and mornings; the very planet +cannot go on its way without making them for itself. Life bound down +to poor conditions,—and all conditions are poor in the sense of +being limited while the life is resistlessly expanding,—festers; +fevers; breaks out in violence and disease. I believe we want new +places more than anything. I came up here on purpose to see if I +could not begin one." +</p> +<p> +"How happened you to come just here?" questioned Desire. "What could +you know of this, beforehand?" +</p> +<p> +"My sister had Miss Argenter's letter; and at once she remembered +the name of the place and its story. That is the way things come +together, you know. My brother-in-law, Mr. Sherrett, owns, or did +own, this whole property. A 'dead stick,' he thought it. Well, +Aaron's rod was another dead stick. But he laid it up before the +Lord, and it blossomed." +</p> +<p> +Desire sat silent, looking at the white water in its gracious hurry. +Pouring itself away, unused,—unheeded; yet waiting there, pouring +always. The tireless impulse of the divine help; vehement; eager, +with a human eagerness; yet so patient, till men's hands should +reach out and lay hold of it! +</p> +<p> +She dreamed out a whole dream of life that might grow up beside this +help; of work that might be done there. She forgot that she was +lingering, and keeping Mr. Kirkbright lingering, behind the others. +</p> +<p> +"You would have to live here yourself, I should think," she said at +length, speaking out of her vision of the things that might be, and +so—would have to be. She had got drawn in to the contemplation of +the scheme, and had begun to weigh and arrange, involuntarily, its +details, forgetting that she "knew not anything." +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright smiled. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I see where you are," he said, "I had arrived at precisely the +same point myself. But the 'right people at the other end?' Who +should they be? Who shall send me my villagers,—my workers? Who +shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at +the source?" +</p> +<p> +"Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp," Desire repeated, +promptly. +</p> +<p> +"And yourself?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; I and Hazel, all we can. We help them. And now there will be +Miss Argenter. As Hazel said,—'We all of us know the Muffin-man.' +How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with +us! Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?" +</p> +<p> +"I'm afraid I don't know the Muffin-<i>man</i> literally, except what I +can guess of him by your application," said Mr. Kirkbright, +laughing. "I've no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good." +</p> +<p> +"You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out. Hazel +and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of +proprietorship; 'and quite proper, I'm sure'—Why, where are Miss +Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?" +</p> +<p> +Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the +present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her "quite proper" +quotation. +</p> +<p> +"If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside +the Muffin-man," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help +her up a steep, slippery place. +</p> +<p> +Desire foolishly blushed. She knew it, and knew that her hat did not +defend her in the least. She could not take it back now; she had +invited him. But what would he think of her blushing about it? +</p> +<p> +"You can learn what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said, +shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of +having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do +with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, +at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting +the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough +bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned +round and faced him; this time with a determinedly cool cheek. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know why I said that. I did not suppose you thought you +could learn anything of me," she said. "I was confused to think I +had asked you in that offhand way to my house. I have not been very +long used to being the head of a house." +</p> +<p> +She smiled one of those bits of smiles of hers; a mere relaxation of +the lips that showed the white tips of her front teeth and just +indicated the peculiar, pretty curve with which the others were set +behind them; feeling reassured and reinstated in her own +self-respect by her explanation. Then, without letting him answer, +she turned swiftly round again, and sprang up the rugged stairway of +the shelving rock. +</p> +<p> +But she had not uninvited him, after all. +</p> +<p> +They found Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie waiting for them at the red +house. It was a quaint structure, with a kind of old, foreign look +about it. It made you think either of an ancient family mansion in +some provincial French town, or of a convent for nuns. +</p> +<p> +It was of dark red brick,—the quality of which Mr. Kirkbright +remarked with satisfaction,—with high walls at the gable ends +carried above the slope of the roof. These were met and overclasped +at the corners by wide, massive eaves. A high, narrow door with a +fan-light occupied the middle of the end before which the party +stood. Windows above, with little balconies, were hung with old red +woolen damask, fading out in stripes; perishing, doubtless, with +moth and decay; in one was suspended a rusty bird-cage which had +once been gilt. +</p> +<p> +What an honest neighborhood this was, in which these things had +remained for years, and not even the panes of the windows had been +broken by little boys! But then the villages full of little boys +were miles away, and the single families at the nearer farms were +well ordered Puritan folk, fathered and mothered in careful, old +fashioned sort. There was some indefinite awe, also, of the lonely +place, and of the rich, far-off owner who might come any day to look +after his rights, and make a reckoning with them. +</p> +<p> +Up, from platform to platform of the terraced rock, as Sylvie had +said, climbed the successive sections of the dwelling. The front was +two and a half stories high; the last outlying projection was a +single square apartment with its own low roof; towards the back, +within, you went up flight after flight of short stairs from room to +room, from passage to passage. Once or twice, the few broad steps +between two apartments ran the whole width of the same. +</p> +<p> +"What a place for plays!" +</p> +<p> +"Or for a little children's school, ranged in rows, one above +another." +</p> +<p> +"The man who built it must have dreamt it first!" +</p> +<p> +These were the exclamations that they made to each other as they +passed through, exploring. +</p> +<p> +There was a great number of bedrooms, divided off here and there; +the upper front was one row of them with a gallery running across +the house, in whose windows toward the south hung the old red woolen +draperies and the bird-cage. +</p> +<p> +Below, at the back, the last room opened by a door upon a high, flat +table of the rock, around whose overhanging edge a light railing had +been run. Standing here, they looked up and down the beautiful +gorge, into the heart of the hill and the depth of its secret shaded +places on the one hand, and on the other into the rush and whirl of +the rapidly descending and broken torrent to where it flung itself +off the sudden brink, and changed into white mist and an everlasting +song. +</p> +<p> +"This last room ought to be a chapel," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Out +here could be open-air service in the beautiful weather, to the +sound of that continual organ." +</p> +<p> +"You have thought of it, too," exclaimed Desire. +</p> +<p> +"Of what?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, turning toward her. +</p> +<p> +"Of what you might make this place." +</p> +<p> +"What would you make of it?" +</p> +<p> +They were a little apart, by themselves, again. It kept happening +so. Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each +other. +</p> +<p> +"I would make it a moral sanatorium. I would take people in here, +and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin +the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work +and business, waiting just outside. I would have rooms for them +here, that they should feel the <i>own-ness</i> of; flowers to tend; +ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful +woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at +the very first! I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living +to win them back by,—to teach them pure things; yes,—and I would +have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in! That bird-cage in +the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe," she ended, +bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection. +</p> +<p> +"I knew you could tell me how," said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly. +</p> +<p> +"How Hazel would rejoice in this place! It is a place to set any one +dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the +man was in a dream when he planned it." +</p> +<p> +"I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived," said Christopher +Kirkbright. "At any rate, let us have the <i>vision</i> out, while we are +about it! What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough +working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them +to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for +the women and children, especially. Paper for hangings, say; then, +some time or other, the printing works, and the designing? Might it +not all grow? And then wouldn't we have a ladder all the way up, for +them to climb by,—out of the clay and common toil to art and +beauty?" +</p> +<p> +"You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright." +</p> +<p> +"I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it +pay," he answered. "Pay itself, and keep itself going. I do not need +to look for my fortune from it. The fortune is to be put into it. +But I have no right to lose,—to throw away,—the fortune. It must +come by degrees, like all things. You know some people say that God +dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and +then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the +Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two. If I cannot do +the whole, there may be others,—and if there are, we shall find +them,—who would help to build the city." +</p> +<p> +"I know who," said Desire, instantly. "Dakie Thayne, and Ruth! It is +just what they want." +</p> +<p> +"Will 'Dakie Thayne' build a railroad,—seven miles,—across to +Tillington,—for our transportation? We'll say he will. I have no +question it is Dakie Thayne, or somebody, who is waiting, and that +the right people are all linked together, ready to draw each other +in," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving rein to the very lightness of +gladness in the joy of the thought he was pursuing. "We don't know +how we stand leashed and looped, all over the world, until the Lord +begins to take us in hand, and bring us together toward his grand +intents. We shall want another Hilary Vireo to preach that gospel +here; and I don't doubt he is somewhere, though it would hardly seem +possible." +</p> +<p> +"Why don't we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable +unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she +left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher +Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush before +him. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know why we shouldn't. In fact, we could not help it. It +would be <i>all</i> gospel, wouldn't it? I know, at least, what I should +mean the whole thing to preach." +</p> +<p> +Saying this, he fell silent all at once. +</p> +<p> +"There is a great deal of wrong gospel preached in the world. If we +could only stop that, and begin again,—I think!" said Desire. +"Between the old, hopeless terrors and the modern smoothing away and +letting go, the real living help seems to have failed men. They +don't know where it is, or whether they need it, even." +</p> +<p> +"Yes, that is it," said Christopher Kirkbright, letting his silence +be broken through with the whole tide of his earnest, life-long, +pondered thought. "Men have put aside the old idea of the avenging +and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of +Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ +<i>is</i> that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say; +there <i>is</i> no pit of burning torment. But they know there is +something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak, +but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God +to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back +and declare pitilessly,—'There is <i>Law</i>. Law punishes; and Law is +inexorable. God Himself does not suspend or contradict his Law. You +have sinned; you must take the consequences.' Are you better off in +the clutch of that Law, than you were in the old hell? Isn't there +the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a +Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,—the forgiving side, +the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law? +You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help +you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the +hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law +will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will bear on +downward, through the eternities! This is what threatens the sinner; +and you have sinned. Beyond and above and through the necessities +that He seems to have made, God reveals himself supreme in love, in +the Face of Jesus Christ. He comes in the very midst of the clouds, +with power and great glory! 'I have <i>provided</i> a way,' He says, +'from the foundations,—for you to repent and for Me to take you +back. It was a part of my <i>plan</i> to forgive. You have seen but half +the revolution of my wheel of Law. Fling yourself upon it; believe; +you shall be broken; but you shall <i>not</i> be ground into powder. You +shall find yourselves lifted up into the eternal peace and safety; +you shall feel yourself folded in the arms of my tender compassion. +The bones that I have broken shall rejoice. Your life shall be set +right for you, notwithstanding the Law: yea, <i>by</i> the law. <i>I have +provided</i>. Only believe.' +</p> +<p> +"This is the word,—the Christ,—on God's part This is repentance +and saving faith, on our part. It is the Gospel. And it came by the +mouth, and the interpreting and confirming acts, of Jesus. The +<i>power</i> of the acts was little matter; the <i>expression</i> of the acts +was everything. He proclaimed forgiveness,—He healed disease; He +reversed evil and turned it back. He changed death into +life,—taking away the sting—the implantation—of it, which is sin. +For evermore the might of the Redemption stands above the might of +the Law that was transgressed." +</p> +<p> +"You have dedicated your chapel, Mr. Kirkbright." +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith said it, with that emotion which makes the voice +sound restrained and deep; and as she said it, she turned to go back +into the house. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0019"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XIX. +</h2> +<h3> + BLOSSOMING FERNS. +</h3> +<p> +The minister's covered carryall was borrowed from two miles off, to +take Mrs. Argenter down to Tillington. +</p> +<p> +All she knew about the winter plan was that Miss Ledwith was a +friend of Miss Kirkbright's, had a large, old-fashioned house, and +scarcely any household, and would be glad to have herself and Sylvie +take rooms with her for several months. She had a vague idea that +Miss Ledwith might be somewhat restricted in her means, and that to +receive lodgers in a friendly way would be an "object" to her. She +talked, indeed, with a gentle complaisance to Miss Kirkbright, about +its not being exactly what they had intended,—they had thought of +rooms at Hotel Pelham or Boylston, so central and so near the +Libraries; but after all, what she needed most was quiet and no +stairs; and she had a horror of elevators, and a dread of fire; so +that this was really better, perhaps; and Miss Ledwith was a very +sweet person. +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia smiled; "sweet," especially in the silvery tone in +which Mrs. Argenter uttered it, was the last monosyllabic epithet +she would have selected as applying to grave, earnest, downright +Desire. +</p> +<p> +At East Keaton, the train stopped for five minutes. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother's +foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just +returned with it. She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter's +feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her +chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which +the party was, and came up behind her. +</p> +<p> +She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose. +</p> +<p> +"I beg your pardon," she said, instinctively, and turned as she +spoke. +</p> +<p> +"What for?" asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and +grasping hers before she was well aware. +</p> +<p> +There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise +crimsoned her cheek. These two had not seen each other all summer. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other. +</p> +<p> +"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly +her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was +made to!" +</p> +<p> +"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for +your country summer? Aunt Effie! <i>You're</i> not surprised to see me? +Did you think I would let you go down without?" +</p> +<p> +No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday +afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to +come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this +moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in +the most inaccessible corner of the car. +</p> +<p> +"You're not going down to the city?" +</p> +<p> +But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her. +</p> +<p> +"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say. +One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all +others,—repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in +four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header, +straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the +confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a +pincushion." +</p> +<p> +"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a +little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did, +because she was so pleased she could not help it. +</p> +<p> +They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing +each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the +same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared +claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been +filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the +opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and +tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a +House of Refuge. +</p> +<p> +"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped +with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,—except <i>my</i> +home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia." +</p> +<p> +There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, +with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months +among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff. +</p> +<p> +Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you +anything before as concerning him. +</p> +<p> +He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning +at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and +harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and +kerseys; <i>driving</i>, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something +and making it go. +</p> +<p> +"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but +there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage; +that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and +the dust. Why, <i>this</i> is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't +make me deaf,—and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said, +with an indescribably pathetic demureness. +</p> +<p> +"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily. +</p> +<p> +"Well,—yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I +should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a +great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the +first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it +for two years, before I—ask him for anything else. I think I shall +have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about +my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They +always do." +</p> +<p> +What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him; +he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy. +</p> +<p> +But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in +all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash +should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound! +</p> +<p> +Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though +they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had +to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with +his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away +beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt +Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner, +reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little +with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange, +all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter +grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped +Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and +improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs. +Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on. +</p> +<p> +And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted +and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and +amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for +making of herself. +</p> +<p> +Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with +great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that +people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a +boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet. +</p> +<p> +"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an +urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves +wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms +dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive +here, for him to be let in." +</p> +<p> +Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never +do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback. +</p> +<p> +"Boy! Here! toss up your load!" +</p> +<p> +The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came +the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the +platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels +drooping all about him. +</p> +<p> +Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made +her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and +exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers +toward them with a smile. +</p> +<p> +"Such a quantity—for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into +her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were, +Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we +Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them +all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully +round and round into a heap. +</p> +<p> +No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf; +she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well +what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for. +</p> +<p> +In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns +again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and +significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into +her lap. +</p> +<p> +She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down +beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to +catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his +very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a +strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the +life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her. +</p> +<p> +It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, +neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, +were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October +afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, +some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that +evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take +the night train up),—"Why shouldn't we have <i>this</i> piece of our +lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed +off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it +just like this." +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him +on his cheek, saying nothing. +</p> +<p> +But to herself she said, after he had gone,— +</p> +<p> +"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out +together. And there never <i>is</i> any time like this time. How is +anybody sure of the rest of it?" +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0020"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XX. +</h2> +<h3> + "WANTED." +</h3> +<p> +The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took +possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not +been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful +in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, +into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's +sake. +</p> +<p> +She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and +if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. +Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be +unbricked? +</p> +<p> +"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is +so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the +draught is excellent." +</p> +<p> +"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the +carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter. +</p> +<p> +"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We +couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for +them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning." +</p> +<p> +Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming +back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was +sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found +the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before +the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel +that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three +little pitch-pine sticks. +</p> +<p> +There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright +blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black +layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness, +and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the +happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy +something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a +certain passive sense of participancy. +</p> +<p> +In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking +trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting +out toilet cases upon table and stand. +</p> +<p> +For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a +pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a +sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was +to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with +the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet +flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken +duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able +to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being +intruded upon. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week +which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had +told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made +no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a +quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she +were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as +she with much compunction practised upon her mother. +</p> +<p> +"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more +than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have +to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as +simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so. +</p> +<p> +"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said. +</p> +<p> +Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or +other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it +back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know +that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see +very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can +possibly gratify her mother in." +</p> +<p> +There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen, +in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any +little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not +miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie +was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to +play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for +her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess +in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,—work for +Neighbor Street it was, mostly,—into the gray parlor, and "sewed +for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy +might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the +content of seeing it. +</p> +<p> +On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful "Read-and-Talk," +when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the +"other girls"; when on the big table treasures of picture, map, +stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far +countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced +back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in +place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly +up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure +of years. And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the +standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could +"work in the ground fast," like Hamlet, or any other spirit. Their +hours stood for months; their two months had given them already +winters and summers of enchantment. +</p> +<p> +Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these +travelling parties. Ada had all her mother's resources of books, +engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a +carriage-full. Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with +its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum +and St. Peter's in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and +temples. Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a +dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the +obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with +a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or +fac-simile,—even a mummied finger and a scarabœus ring. +</p> +<p> +They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their +subject took them out of it. They could have a glimpse of Memphis, +or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an +allusion or synchronism. +</p> +<p> +Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the +perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and +laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism +that "tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little +different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you +all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the +whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every +separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton." +</p> +<p> +The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street. +I suppose you knew it would as well as I. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her +Aunt Blin's "finishings," at the thread-store where Dot tended. +(Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home, +since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade +and Matchett's.) Then they came across each other in their waitings +at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood. At +last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel +Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire's especial little +club at her own house. +</p> +<p> +After the travel-talk was over,—and they began with it early, so +that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,—very often +some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of +confidence or advice with Desire. These girls brought their plans to +her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions; +not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling +her. They knew she cared for them. It was the beginning of all +religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness. +Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the +experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without +it the Divine has never been revealed. +</p> +<p> +One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her +sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and +asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her. "We'll take the +car, presently," she said to Ray. "We shall be at home almost as +soon as you will." +</p> +<p> +"It is about the shop work," she said to Desire, who stepped back +into the library with her. +</p> +<p> +"I do not think I can do it much longer. I am pretty strong for some +things, but this terrible <i>standing</i>! I could <i>walk</i> all day; but +cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the +boxes and things,—I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as +if my bones had all been racked. I haven't told them at home, for +fear they would worry about me; they think now I've lost flesh, and +I suppose I have; and I don't have much appetite; it seems dragged +out of me. And then,—I can't say it before the others, for they're +in shops, some of 'em, and places may be different; but it's such a +window and counter parade, besides; and they do look out for it. +People stare in at the store as they go by; Margaret Shoey has the +glove counter at that end, and she knows Mr. Matchett keeps her +there on purpose to attract; she sets herself up and takes airs upon +it; and Sarah Cilley does everything she sees her do, and comes in +for the second-hand attention. Mr. Matchett asked me the other day +if I couldn't wear a panier, and do up my hair a little more +stylish! I can't stay there; it isn't fit for girls!" +</p> +<p> +Dot's cheeks flamed, and there were tears in her eyes. Desire +Ledwith stood with a thoughtful, troubled expression in her own. +</p> +<p> +"There ought to be other ways," she said. "There ought to be more +<i>sheltered</i> work for girls!" +</p> +<p> +"There is," said little Bel Bree from the doorway "in houses. If I +hadn't Aunt Blin, I'd go right into a family as seamstress or +anything. I don't believe in out-doors and shops. I've only lived in +the city a little while, but I've seen it. And just think of the +streets and streets of nice houses, where people live, and girls +have to live with 'em, to do real woman's home work! And it's all +given up to foreign servants, and <i>our</i> girls go adrift, and live +anyhow. 'Tain't right!" +</p> +<p> +"There is a good deal that isn't right about it," said Desire, +gravely; knowing better than Bel the difficulties in the way of new +domestic ideas. "And a part of it is that the houses aren't built, +or the ways of living planned, for 'our girls,' exactly. Our girls +aren't happy in underground kitchens and sky bedrooms." +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. They might as well be underground as in some of those +close, crowded shops. And their bedrooms can't be much to compare, +certain. I'm afraid they like the crowds best. If they wanted to, +and would work in, and try, they might contrive. Things fix +themselves accordingly, after a while. Somebody's got to begin. I +can't help thinking about it." +</p> +<p> +Desire smiled. +</p> +<p> +"Your thinking may be a first sign of good times, little Bel," she +said. "Think on. That is the way everything begins; with a +restlessness in some one or two heads about it. Perhaps that is just +what you have come down from New Hampshire for." +</p> +<p> +"I don't know," said Bel again. She began a good many of her +reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler +into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad +up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and +the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have such +good places!" +</p> +<p> +"You came yourself, you see?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. I wasn't contented. And things were particular with me. And I +had Aunt Blin. I don't want to go back, either. But I can see how it +is." +</p> +<p> +"Things are particular with each one, in some sort or another. That +is what settles it, I suppose, and ought to. The only thing is to be +sure that it is a <i>right</i> particular that does it; that we don't let +in any wrong particular, anywhere. For you, Dorothy, I don't believe +shop-life is the thing. You have found it out. Why not change at +once? There is the machine at home, and Ray is going to be busy in +Neighbor Street. Won't her work naturally come to you?" +</p> +<p> +"There isn't much of it, and it is so uncertain. The shops take up +all the bulk of work nowadays; everything is wholesale; and I don't +want to go into the rooms, if I can help it. I don't like days' +work, either. The fact is, I want a quiet place, and the same +things. I like my own machine. I would go with it into a family, if +I could have my own room, and be nice, and not have to eat with +careless, common servants in a dirty kitchen. Mother would spare +me,—to a real good situation; and I would come home Sundays." +</p> +<p> +"I see. What you want is somewhere, of course. Wouldn't you +advertise?" +</p> +<p> +"Would <i>you</i>?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I think I would. Say exactly what you want, wages and all. And +put it into some family Sunday paper,—the 'Christian Register,' for +instance. Those things get read over and over; and the same paper +lies about a week. In the dailies, one thing crowds out another; a +new list every night and morning. See here, I'll write one now. +Perhaps it wouldn't be too late for this week. Would you go out of +town?" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Wouldn't</i> I? I think sometimes that's just what ails me; wanting +to see soft roads and green grass and door-yards and sun between the +houses! But I couldn't go far, of course." +</p> +<p> +Desire's pencil was flying over the paper. +</p> +<p> +"'Wanted; a permanent situation in a pleasant family, as seamstress, +by a young girl used to all kinds of sewing, who will bring her own +machine. Would like a room to herself, and to have her meals +orderly and comfortable, whether with the family or otherwise. +Wages'—What?" +</p> +<p> +"By the day, I could get a dollar and a quarter, at least; but for a +real good home-place, I'd go for four dollars a week." +</p> +<p> +"'Wages, $4.00 per week. A little way out of town preferred.' There! +There are such places, and why shouldn't one come to you? Take that +down to the 'Register' office to-morrow morning, and have it put in +twice, unless stopped." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you. It's all easy enough, Miss Ledwith. Why didn't I work it +out myself?" +</p> +<p> +"It isn't quite worked out, yet. But things always look clearer, +somehow, through two pairs of eyes. Good-night. Let me know what you +hear about it." +</p> +<p> +"She'll surprise some family with such a seamstress as they read +about," said Bel Bree, on the door-step. "I should like to astonish +people, sometime, with a heavenly kind of general housework." +</p> +<p> +"That was a good idea of yours about the Sunday paper," said Sylvie, +as she and Hazel and Desire went back into the library to put away +the books. "But what when the common sort pick up the dodge, and +the weeklies get full of 'Wanteds'? Nothing holds out fresh, very +long." +</p> +<p> +"There <i>ought</i> to be," said Desire, "some filtered process for these +things; some way of sifting and certifying. A bureau of mutual +understanding between the 'real folks,'—employers and employed. I +believe it might be. There ought to be for this, and for many +things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward +degree. And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it +about. A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of +shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of +more careful managing. A mutual need,—or the seeing of it. The need +is now; these girls—half of them—want homes, more than anything; +and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls." +</p> +<p> +"Why don't you edit a paper, Desire? The 'Fellowship Register,' or +the 'Domestic Intelligencer,' or something! And keep lists of all +the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?" +</p> +<p> +"That isn't a bad notion, Hazie. Your notions never are. May be that +is what is waiting for you. Just cover up that 'raised Switzerland,' +will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the +Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas. +Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?" +</p> +<p> +The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where +Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus's neck for +the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after +the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their +cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. Nobody knew +all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every +dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone. +</p> +<p> +Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and +little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray +parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of +star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual +subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to +pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city +house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, +more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,—she +knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know +that? +</p> +<p> +It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, +boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, "You need +not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were +anything in the way, I would tell you." +</p> +<p> +But at last she had to say,—not, "I think I understand +Sylvie,"—but, "I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember. +I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life. +The right girls can." +</p> +<p> +And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it +with a loving grasp between his hands again,— +</p> +<p> +"Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world +where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, +then they don't make 'em, and never did!" +</p> +<a name="2HCH0021"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXI. +</h2> +<h3> + VOICES AND VISIONS. +</h3> +<p> +Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames +Fillmer & Bylles, one Saturday morning. +</p> +<p> +Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker +were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic, +so cumulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of +constant professional contact with the élite. Carriages had rolled +up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very +voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private +audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away +again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain +workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those +who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her +apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a +sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated +became—not the air of shop or business or down-town street—but the +air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land. +</p> +<p> +And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly +contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent +of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up +there came floating and spreading and shining in, on one portly and +magnificent person. +</p> +<p> +But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries! +Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little +faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so, +and she was appointed to see it done. +</p> +<p> +She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning. +Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had +been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were +dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss +Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable, +might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles +had given her word for it. +</p> +<p> +The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence, +warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the +confidence,—the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily +distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore +it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little +woman sat basting,—these things are indescribable. But they are in +human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself. +</p> +<p> +Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and +changed, and overwhelmed all things. +</p> +<p> +A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out +upon the landing. +</p> +<p> +"I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll +make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat," said Elise +Mokey. +</p> +<p> +One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand, +in this fashion, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers +advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by +courtesy. +</p> +<p> +Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her +slow fashion hind side before. +</p> +<p> +"We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?" +she asked, blandly, of Miss Bree. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin smiled. "They've been squabbling over it these five +minutes," she replied. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin was sure of some particular finishing, that none could do +like her precise old self. +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox jumped up impatiently, reaching over for some fringe. +</p> +<p> +"I shall have to give it up," she whispered emphatically into Bel +Bree's ear. "It's no use your asking me to go to Chapel any more. I +ain't sanctified a grain. I did begin to think there was a kind of +work of grace begun in me,—but I <i>can't</i> stand Miss Proddle! What +<i>are</i> people made to strike ten for, always, when it's eleven?" +</p> +<p> +"I think <i>we</i> are all striking <i>twelve</i>" said Bel Bree. "One's too +fast, and another's too slow, but the sun goes round exactly the +same." +</p> +<p> +Miss Tonker came back, and the talk hushed. +</p> +<p> +"Clock struck one, and down they run, hickory, dickory, dock," said +Miss Proddle, deliberately, so that her voice brought up the +subsiding rear of sound and was heard alone. +</p> +<p> +"What <i>under</i> the sun?" exclaimed Miss Tonker, with a gaze of +mingled amazement, mystification, and contempt, at the poor old +maiden making such unwonted noise. +</p> +<p> +"Yes'm," said Kate Sencerbox. "It is 'under the sun,' that we're +talking about; the way things turn round, and clocks strike; some +too fast, and some too slow; and—whether there's anything new under +the sun. I think there is; Miss Proddle made a bright speech, that's +all." +</p> +<p> +Miss Tonker, utterly bewildered, took refuge in solemn and +supercilious disregard; as if she saw the joke, and considered it +quite beneath remark. +</p> +<p> +"You will please resume your work, and remember the rules," she +said, and sailed down upon the cutters' table. +</p> +<p> +There was a certain silk evening dress, of singular and +indescribably lovely tint,—a tea-rose pink; just the color of the +blush and creaminess that mingle themselves into such delicious +anonymousness in the exquisite flower. It was all puffed and fluted +till it looked as if it had really blossomed with uncounted curving +petals, that showed in their tender convolutions each possible +deepening and brightening of its wonderful hue. +</p> +<p> +It <i>looked</i> fragrant. It conveyed a subtle sense of flavor. It fed +and provoked every perceptive sense. +</p> +<p> +It was not a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its +trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to +be made, and these others were only basted, as also the corsage. +</p> +<p> +After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin +aside. She uncovered the large white box in which it lay, +unfinished. +</p> +<p> +"You have a nice room, Miss Bree. Can you take this home and finish +it,—by Wednesday? In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here +daytimes, as usual. It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of +the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. <i>That</i> I +shall finish myself." +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin's voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered. She +thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some +possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the +favoring grace. +</p> +<p> +"Certainly, ma'am. I'll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a +white cloth on the table. Thank you, ma'am. Yes; I have a nice room, +and nothing gets meddled with. It'll be quite safe there. I'm sure +I'm no less than happy to be allowed. You're very kind, ma'am." +</p> +<p> +Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring. +She did not snub her, however; that was something. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box. +</p> +<p> +On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel. She could not help +it. +</p> +<p> +To have this beautiful dress in the house,—perhaps to have to stand +up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with +the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the +room,—why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if +the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by, +up-stairs? If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in +that blush-colored silk! She should like to look like that, just +once, to somebody! +</p> +<p> +Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living—all her busy +work and contentedness—all her bright notions of what might be +possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,—she +had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she +saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things +that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen! +</p> +<p> +A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her +aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time +it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door +stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they +had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron +to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of +each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did, +perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing +between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles +far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt +Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she +was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other. +After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had +opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, +courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin,—dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed +cats and birds,—<i>her</i> cat and bird, at least,—might be thrown +trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it +sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the +bird was "very, <i>very</i> precious,"—thought Mr. Hewland was "such a +nice young man." +</p> +<p> +And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman; +above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His +danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was +a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could +escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most +genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among +which his social position placed him. He had been singularly +attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a +wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he +had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now +and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet +laugh; or her raised, gleeful tone, as she said some funny, quick, +shrewd thing in her original fashion to her aunt. +</p> +<p> +Through the month of August, while work was slack, and the Hewland +family was away travelling, and other lodgers' rooms were vacated, +the Brees had been more at home, and Morris Hewland had been more in +his rooms above, than had been usual at most times. The music +mistress had taken a vacation, and gone into the country; only old +Mr. Sparrow, lame with one weak ankle, hopped up and down; and the +spare, odd-faced landlady glided about the passages with her prim +profile always in the same pose, reminding one of a badly-made +rag-doll, of which the nose, chin, and chest are in one invincible +flat line, interrupted feebly by an unsuccessful hint of drawing in +at the throat. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when +everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work. +</p> +<p> +The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home +sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him, +and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities." +</p> +<p> +He had secured in these out-of-the way-lodgings in Leicester Place, +one of the best north lights that could be had in the city; he would +not take a room among a lot of others in a Studio Building. So he +worked up his studies, painted his pictures, let nobody come near +him except as he chose to bring them, and when he wanted anything of +the world, went out into the world and got it. +</p> +<p> +Now, something had come right in here close to him, which brought +him a certain sense of such a world as he could not go out into at +will, to get what he wanted. A world of simplicities, of blessed +contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing +spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at +Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended +by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the +roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower +reveals the spring. +</p> +<p> +On her part, Bel Bree got a glimpse, she knew not how, of a world +above and beyond her own; a world of beauty, of power, of reach and +elevation, in which people like Morris Hewland dwelt. His step, his +voice, his words now and then to the friend or two whom he had the +habit of bringing in with him,—the mere knowledge that he "made +pictures," such pictures as she looked at in the windows and in +art-dealers' rooms, where any shop-girl, as freely as the most +elegant connoisseur, can go in and delight her eyes, and inform her +perceptions,—these, without the face even, which had turned its +magnetism straight upon hers only once or twice, and whose +revelation was that of a life related to things wide and full and +manifold,—gave her the stimulating sense of a something to which +she had not come, but to which she felt a strange belonging. +</p> +<p> +Beside,—alongside—in each mind, was the undeveloped mystery; the +spell under which a man receives such intuitions through a woman's +presence,—a woman through a man's. Yet these two individuals were +not, therefore, going to be necessary to each other, in the plan of +God. Other things might show that they were not meant, in rightness, +for each other; they represented mutually, something that each life +missed; but the something was in no special companionship; it was a +great deal wider and higher than that. They might have to learn that +it was so, nevertheless, by some briefly painful process of +experience. If in this process they should fall into mistake and +wrong,—ah, there would come the experience beyond the experience, +the depth they were not meant to sound, yet which, if they let their +game of life run that way, they could not get back from but through +the uttermost. They must play it out; the move could not be taken +back,—yet awhile. The possible better combinations are in God's +knowledge; how He may ever reset the pieces and give his good +chances again, remains the hidden hope, resting upon the Christ that +is in the heart of Him. +</p> +<p> +One morning Morris Hewland had come up the stairs with a handful of +tuberoses; he was living at home, then, through the pleasant +September, at his father's country place, whence the household would +soon remove to the city for the winter. +</p> +<p> +Miss Bree's door was open. She was just replacing her door-mat, +which she had been shaking out of the entry window. She had an old +green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody +could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word +with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if +he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses. +There was something pitiful in the contrast, perhaps, of the pure, +fresh, exquisite blossoms, and the breath of sweet air he and they +brought with them in their swift transit from the places where it +blessed all things to the places where so much languished in the +need of it, not knowing, even, the privation. The old, trodden, +half-cleansed door-mat in her hands,—the just-created beauty in +his. He stopped, and divided his handful. +</p> +<p> +"Here, Miss Bree,—you would like a piece of the country, I imagine, +this morning! I couldn't have come in without it." +</p> +<p> +The voice rang blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat, +basting machine work; the eyes went after the voice. +</p> +<p> +The light from the east window was full upon the shining hair, the +young, unworn outlines, the fresh, pure color of the skin. Few city +beauties could bear such morning light as that. Nothing but the +morning in the face can meet it. +</p> +<p> +Morris Hewland lifted his hat, and bowed toward the young girl, +silently. Then he passed on, up to his room. Bel heard his step, +back and forth, overhead. +</p> +<p> +The tuberoses were put into a clear, plain tumbler. Bel would not +have them in the broken vase; she would not have them in a <i>blue</i> +vase, at all. She laid a white napkin over the red of the +tablecloth, and set them on it. The perfume rose from them and +spread all through the room. +</p> +<p> +"I am so glad we have work at home to-day," said Bel. +</p> +<p> +There had been nothing but little things like these; out into Bel's +head, as she and Aunt Blin carried home the tea-blush silk, and laid +it by with care in its white box upon the sofa-end, came that little +wish, with a spring and a heart-beat,—"If she might have it on for +a minute, and if in that minute he might happen to come by!" +</p> +<p> +She did not think she was planning for it; but when on the Tuesday +evening the step went down the stairs at eight o'clock, while they +sat busily working, each at a sleeve, by the drop-light over the +white-covered table, a little involuntary calculation ran through +her thoughts. +</p> +<p> +"He always comes back by eleven. We shall have two hours' work—or +more,—on this, if we don't hurry; and it's miserable to hurry!" +</p> +<p> +They stitched on, comfortably enough; yet the sleeves were finished +sooner than she expected. Before nine o'clock, Aunt Blin was sewing +them in. Then Bel wanted a drink of water; then they could not both +get at the waist together; there was no need. +</p> +<p> +"I'll do it," said Bel, out of her conscience, with a jump of fright +as she said it, lest Aunt Blin should take her at her word, and +begin gauging and plaiting the skirt. +</p> +<p> +"No, you rest. I shall want you by and by, for a figure." +</p> +<p> +"May I have it <i>all</i> on?" says Bel eagerly. "Do, Auntie! I should +just like to be in such a dress once—a minute!" +</p> +<p> +"I don't see any reason why not. <i>You</i> couldn't do any hurt to it, +if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin. +</p> +<p> +"I'll do up my hair on the top of my head," said Bel. +</p> +<p> +And forthwith, at the far end of the room, away from the delicate +robe and its scattered material, she got out her combs and brushes, +and let down her gleaming brown hair. +</p> +<p> +It took different shades, from umber to almost golden, this "funny +hair" of hers, as she called it. She thought it was because she had +faded it, playing out in the sun when she was a child; but it was +more like having got the shine into it. It did not curl, or wave; +but it grew in lovely arches, with roots even set, around her +temple and in the curves of her neck; and now, as she combed it up +in a long, beautiful mass, over her grasping hand, raising it with +each sweep higher toward the crown of her pretty head, all this +vigorous, beautiful growth showed itself, and marked with its +shadowy outline the dainty shapings. One twist at the top for the +comb to go in, and then she parted it in two, and coiled it like a +golden-bronze cable; and laid it round and round till the foremost +turn rested like a wreath midway about her head. She pulled three +fresh geranium leaves and a pink-white umbel of blossom from the +plant in the window, and tucked the cluster among the soft front +locks against the coil above the temple. +</p> +<p> +Then she took off the loose wrapping-sack she had thrown over her +shoulders, washed her fingers at the basin, and came back to her +seat under the lamp. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin looked up at her and smiled. It was like having it all +herself,—this youth and beauty,—to have it belonging to her, and +showing its charming ways and phases, in little Bel. Why shouldn't +the child, with her fair, sweet freshness, and the deep-green, +velvety leaves making her look already like a rose against which +they leaned themselves, have on this delicate rose dress? If things +stayed, or came, where they belonged, to whom should it more +fittingly fall to wear it than to her? +</p> +<p> +Bel watched the clock and Aunt Blin's fingers. +</p> +<p> +It was ten when the plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt +basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and +in a hurry the next. +</p> +<p> +"It would be done too soon; but he might come in early; and, O dear, +they hadn't thought,—there was that puffing to put round the +corsage, bertha-wise, with the blonde edging. 'It was all ready; +give it to her.'" +</p> +<p> +"Now!" +</p> +<p> +The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she +stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from +her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet. +</p> +<p> +Was that anybody coming? +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had +been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold, +standing like this. +</p> +<p> +"O, it is <i>so</i> warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And +with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making +justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it, +Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full +toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just +a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody +will come," she said. +</p> +<p> +When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify +little Bel. I do not try to. +</p> +<p> +"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?" +</p> +<p> +"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and +stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You +shouldn't have sprung so, child." +</p> +<p> +The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink +tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked +in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought +of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment—in the +heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length +float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there +about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that +becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her +waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a +sensation of? +</p> +<p> +The door <i>did</i> shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a +few light springs. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly Bel was ashamed! +</p> +<p> +She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful +trap for herself! +</p> +<p> +"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered. +</p> +<p> +But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and +arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with +her professional eye. +</p> +<p> +The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift +bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright +light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with +the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the possible flush of +fair array, and marvelous blossom of consummate, adorned loveliness. +</p> +<p> +Somehow, it broke down the safeguard he had had. +</p> +<p> +In what was Bel Bree different, really, from women who wore such +robes as that, with whom he had danced and chatted in drawing-rooms? +Only in being a thousand times fresher and prettier. +</p> +<p> +After that, he began to make reasons for speaking to them. He +brought Aunt Blin a lot of illustrated papers; he lent them a +stereoscope, with Alpine and Italian views; he brought down a +picture of his own, one day, to show them; before October was out, +he had spent an evening in Aunt Blin's room, reading aloud to them +"Mirèio." +</p> +<p> +Among the strange metaphysical doublings which human nature +discovers in itself, there is such a fact, not seldom experienced, +as the dreaming of a dream. +</p> +<p> +It is one thing to dream utterly, so that one believes one is +awake; it is another to sleep in one's dream, and in a vision give +way to vision. It is done in sleep, it is done also in life. +</p> +<p> +This was what Bel Bree—and it is with her side of the experience +that I have business—was in danger now of doing. +</p> +<p> +It is done in life, as to many forms of living—as to religion, as +to art. People are religious, not infrequently because they are in +love with the idea of being so, not because they are simply and +directly devoted to God. They are æsthetic, because "The Beautiful" +is so beautiful, to see and to talk of, and they choose to affect +artistic having and doing; but they have not come even into that +sheepfold by the door, by the honest, inevitable pathway that their +nature took because it must,—by the entrance that it found through +a force of celestial urging and guidance that was behind them all +the while, though they but half knew it or understood. +</p> +<p> +Women fall in love that way, so often! It is a lovely thing to be +loved; there is new living, which seems to them rare and grand, into +which it offers to lift them up. They fall into a dream about a +dream; they do not lay them down to sleep and give the Lord their +souls to keep, till He shall touch their trustful rest with a divine +fire, and waken them into his apocalypse. +</p> +<p> +It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he +brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living, +that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew +that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited; +not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its +satisfying. If women will look, they can see this. +</p> +<p> +She knew—she had found out—that she was a fair picture in the +artist's eyes; that the perception keen to discover and test and +analyze all harmonies of form and tint,—holding a hallowed, +mysterious kinship in this power to the Power that had made and +spoken by them,—turned its search upon her, and found her lovely in +the study. It was as if a daisy bearing the pure message and meaning +of the heavenly, could thrill with the consciousness of its +transmission; could feel the exaltation of fulfilling to a human +soul, grand in its far up mystery and waiting upon God,—one of his +dear ideas. +</p> +<p> +There was something holy in the spirit with which she thus realized +her possession of maidenly beauty; her gift of mental charm and +fitness even; it was the countersign by which she entered into this +realm of which Morris Hewland had the freedom; it belonged to her +also,—she to it; she had received her first recognition. It was a +look back into Paradise for this Eve's daughter, born to labor, but +with a reminiscence in her nature out of which she had built all her +sweetest notions of being, doing, abiding; from which came +the-home-picture, so simple in its outlines, but so rich and gentle +in all its significance, that she had drawn to herself as "her +wish"; the thing she would give most, and do most, to have come +true. +</p> +<p> +But all this was not necessarily love, even in its beginning,—though +she might come for a while to fancy it so,—for this one +man. It was a thing between her own life and the Maker of it; an +unfolding of herself toward that which waited for her in Him, and +which she should surely come to, whatever she might grasp at +mistakenly and miss upon the way. +</p> +<p> +Morris Hewland—young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's +fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty, +of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive +cleverness—was treading dangerous ground. +</p> +<p> +He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes +he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and +drifted on. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin, with her simplicity,—her incapacity of believing, though +there might be wrong and mischief in the world, that anybody she +knew could ever do it, sat there between them, the most bewildered, +the most inwardly and utterly befooled of the three. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0022"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXII. +</h2> +<h3> + BOX FIFTY-TWO. +</h3> +<p> +In the midst of it all, she went and caught a horrible cold. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin, I mean. +</p> +<p> +It was all by wearing her india-rubbers a week too long, a week +after she had found the heels were split; and in that week there +came a heavy rain-storm. +</p> +<p> +She had to stay at home now. Bel went to the rooms and brought back +button-holes for her to make. She could not do much; she was +feverish and languid, and her eyes suffered. But she liked to see +something in the basket; she was always going to be "well enough +to-morrow." When the work had to be returned, Bel hurried, and did +the button-holes of an evening. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hewland brought grapes and oranges and flowers to Miss Bree. Bel +fetched home little presents of her own to her aunt, making a pet of +her: ice-cream in a paper cone, horehound candy, once, a tumbler of +black currant jelly. But that last was very dear. If Aunt Blin had +eaten much of other things, they could not have afforded it, for +there were only half earnings now. +</p> +<p> +To-morrow kept coming, but Miss Bree kept on not getting any better. +"She didn't see the reason," she said; "she never had a cold hang on +so. She believed she'd better go out and shake it off. If she could +have rode down-town she would, but somehow she didn't seem to have +the strength to walk." +</p> +<p> +The reason she "couldn't have rode," was because all the horses +were sick. It was the singular epidemic of 1872. There were no cars, +no teams; the queer sight was presented in a great city, of the +driveways as clear as the sidewalks; of nobody needed to guard the +crossings or unsnarl the "blocks;" of stillness like Sunday, day +after day; of men harnessed into wagons,—eight human beings +drawing, slowly and heavily, what any poor old prickle-ribs of a +horse, that had life left in him at all, would have trotted +cheerfully off with. A lady's trunk was a cartload; and a lady's +trunk passing through the streets was a curiosity; you could +scarcely get one carried for love or money. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin was a good deal excited; she always was by everything that +befell "her Boston." She would sit by the window in her blanket +shawl, and peer down the Place to see the mail-carts and express +wagons creep slowly by, along Tremont Street, to and from the +railways. She was proud for the men who turned to and did quadruped +work with a will in the emergency, and so took hold of its +sublimity; she was proud of the poor horses, standing in suffering +but royal seclusion in their stables, with hostlers sitting up +nights for them, and the world and all its business "seeing how it +could get along without them;" she was proud of all this crowd of +business that had, by hook or by crook (literally, now), to be done. +</p> +<p> +She wanted the evening paper the minute it came. She and the music +mistress took the "Transcript" between them, and had the first +reading weeks about. This was her week; she held herself lucky. +</p> +<p> +The epizootic was like the war: we should have to subside into +common items that would not seem like news at all when that was +over. +</p> +<p> +We all know, now, what the news was after the epizootic. +</p> +<p> +Meanwhile Aunt Blin believed, "on her conscience," she had got the +epidemic herself. +</p> +<p> +Bel had worked hard at the rooms this week, and late at home in the +evenings. Some of the girls lived out at the Highlands, and some in +South Boston; there were days when they could not get in from these +districts; for such as were on the spot there was double press and +hurry. And it was right in the midst of fall and winter work. Bel +earned twelve dollars in six days, and got her pay. +</p> +<p> +On Saturday night she brought home four Chater's crumpets, and a +pint of oysters. She stewed the oysters in a porringer out of which +everything came nicer than out of any other utensil. While they were +stewing, she made a bit of butter up into a "pat," and stamped it +with the star in the middle of the pressed glass saltcellar; she set +the table near the fire, and laid it out in a specially dainty way; +then she toasted the muffins, and it was past seven o'clock before +all was done. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin sat by, and watched and smelled. She was in no hurry; two +senses at a time were enough to have filled. She had finished the +paper,—it was getting to be an old and much rehashed story, +now,—and had sent it down to Miss Smalley. It would be hers first, +now, for a week. Very well, the excitement was over. That was all +she knew about it. +</p> +<p> +In the privacy and security of her own room, and with muffins and +oysters for tea, Aunt Blin took out her upper teeth, that she might +eat comfortably. Poor Aunt Blin! she showed her age and her thinness +so. She had fallen away a good deal since she had been sick. But +she was getting better. On Monday morning, she thought she would +certainly be able to go out. All she had to do now was to be careful +of her cough; and Bel had just bought her a new pair of rubbers. +</p> +<p> +Bartholomew had done his watching and smelling, likewise; he had +made all he could be expected to of that limited enjoyment. Now he +walked round the table with an air of consciousness that supper was +served. He sat by his mistress's chair, lifted one paw with +well-bred expressiveness, stretching out the digits of it as a +dainty lady extends her lesser fingers when she lifts her cup, or +breaks a bit of bread. It was a delicate suggestion of exquisite +appreciation, and of most excellent manners. Once he began a whine, +but recollected himself and suppressed it, as the dainty lady might +a yawn. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin gave him two oysters, and three spoonfuls of broth in his +own saucer, before she helped herself. After all, she ate in her +turn very little more. It was hardly worth while to have made a +business of being comfortable. +</p> +<p> +"I don't think they have such good oysters as they used to," she +remarked, stepping over her s'es in a very carpeted and +stocking-footed way. +</p> +<p> +"Perhaps I didn't put enough seasoning"—Bel began, but was +interrupted in the middle of her reply. +</p> +<p> +The big bell two squares off clanged a heavy stroke caught up on the +echo by others that sounded smaller farther and farther away, making +their irregular, yet familiar phrase and cadence on the air. +</p> +<p> +It was the fire alarm. +</p> +<p> +"H—zh! Hark!" Aunt Blin changed the muffled but eager monosyllable +to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her +napkin, for her "ornaments," as Bel called them. +</p> +<p> +But she counted the strokes before she put them in, nodding her +head, and holding up her finger to Bel and Bartholomew for silence. +Everything stopped where it was with Miss Bree when the fire alarm +sounded. +</p> +<p> +One—two—three—four—five. +</p> +<p> +"In the city," said Aunt Blin, with a certain weird unconscious +satisfaction; and whipped the porcelains into their places before +the second tolling should begin. They were like Pleasant Riderhood's +back hair: she was all twisted up, now, and ready. +</p> +<p> +One—two. +</p> +<p> +"That ain't fur off. Down Bedford Street way. Give me the fire-book, +and my glasses." +</p> +<p> +She turned the folds of the card with one hand, and adjusted her +spectacles with the other. +</p> +<p> +"Bedford and Lincoln. Why, that's close by where Miss Proddle +boards!" +</p> +<p> +"That's the <i>box</i>, Auntie. You always forget the fire isn't in the +box." +</p> +<p> +"Well, it will be if they don't get along with their steamers. I +ain't heard one go by yet." +</p> +<p> +"They haven't any horses, you know." +</p> +<p> +"Hark! there's one now! O, <i>do</i> hush! There's the bell again!" +</p> +<p> +Bel was picking up the tea-things for washing. She set down the +little pile which she had gathered, went to the window, and drew up +the blind. +</p> +<p> +"My gracious! And there's the fire!" +</p> +<p> +It shone up, red, into the sky, from over the tall roofs. +</p> +<p> +Ten strokes from the deep, deliberate bells. +</p> +<p> +"There comes Miss Smalley, todillating up to see," said Bel, +excitedly. +</p> +<p> +"And the people are just <i>rushing</i> along Tremont Street!" +</p> +<p> +"<i>Can</i> you see? asked Miss Smalley, bustling in like the last +little belated hen at feeding-time, with a look on all sides at once +to discover where the corn might be. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Isn't</i> it big, O?" And she stood up, tiptoe, by the window, as if +that would make any comparative difference between her height and +that of Hotel Devereux, across the square; or as if she could reach +up farther with her eyes after the great flashes that streamed into +the heavens. +</p> +<p> +Again the smiting clang,—repeated, solemn, exact. No flurry in +those measured sounds, although their continuance tolled out a +city's doom. +</p> +<p> +Twice twelve. +</p> +<p> +"There goes Mr. Sparrow," said the music mistress, as the +watchmaker's light, unequal hop came over the stairs. "I suppose he +can see from his window pretty near where it is." +</p> +<p> +A slight, dull color came up into the angles of the little lady's +face, as she alluded to the upper lodger's room, for there was a +tacit impression in the house—and she knew it—that if Miss Smalley +and Mr. Sparrow had been thrown together earlier in life, it would +have been very suitable; and that even now it might not be +altogether too late. +</p> +<p> +Another step went springing down. Bel knew that, but she said +nothing. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you think we might go out to the end of the street and see?" +suggested Miss Smalley. +</p> +<p> +Bel had on hat and waterproof in a moment. +</p> +<p> +"Don't you stir, Auntie, to catch cold, now! We'll be back +directly." +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley was already in her room below, snatching up hood and +shawl. +</p> +<p> +Down the Place they went, and on, out into the broad street. +Everybody was running one way,—northward. They followed, hurrying +toward the great light, glowing and flashing before them. +</p> +<p> +From every westward avenue came more men, speeding in ever +thickening lines verging to one centre. Like streams into a river +channel, they poured around the corners into Essex Street, at last, +filling it from wall to wall,—a human torrent. +</p> +<p> +"This is as far as we can go," Miss Smalley said, stopping in one of +the doorways of Boylston Market. A man in a blouse stood there, +ordering the driver of a cart. +</p> +<p> +"Where is the fire, sir?" asked Miss Smalley, with a ladylike air of +not being used to speak to men in the street, but of this being an +emergency. +</p> +<p> +"Corner of Kingston and Summer; great granite warehouse, five +stories high," said the man in the blouse, civilly, and proceeding +to finish his order, which was his own business at the moment, +though Boston was burning. +</p> +<p> +The two women turned round and went back. The heavy bells were +striking three times twelve. +</p> +<p> +A boy rushed past them at the corner by the great florist's shop. He +was going the other way from the fire, and was impatient to do his +errand and get back. He had a basket of roses to carry; ordered for +some one to whom it would come,—the last commission of that sort +done that night perhaps,—as out of the very smoke and terror of the +hour; a singular lovely message of peace, of the blessed thoughts +that live between human hearts though a world were in ashes. All +through the wild night, those exquisite buds would be silently +unfolding their gracious petals. How strange the bloomed-out roses +would look to-morrow! +</p> +<p> +All the house in Leicester Place was astir, and recklessly mixed +up, when Miss Smalley and Bel Bree came back. The landlady and her +servant were up in Mr. Sparrow's room, calling to Miss Bree below. +The whole place was full of red fierce light. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin, faithful to Bel's parting order, stood in the spirit of +an unrelieved sentinel, though the whole army had broken camp, +keeping herself steadfastly safe, in her own doorway. To be sure, +there was a draught there, but it was not her fault. +</p> +<p> +"I <i>must</i> go up and see it," she said eagerly, when Bel appeared. +Bel drew her into the room, put her first into a gray hospital +dressing-gown, then into a waterproof, and after all covered her up +with a striped blue and white bed comforter. She knew she would keep +dodging in and out, and she might as well go where she would stay +quiet. +</p> +<p> +And so these three women went up-stairs, where they had never been +before. The door of Mr. Hewland's room was open. A pair of slippers +lay in the middle of the floor; a newspaper had fluttered into a +light heap, like a broken roof, beside them; a dressing-gown was +thrown over the back of a chair. +</p> +<p> +Bel came last, and shut that door softly as she passed, not letting +her eyes intrude beyond the first involuntary glimpse. She was +maidenly shy of the place she had never seen,—where she had heard +the footsteps go in and out, over her head. +</p> +<p> +The five women crowded about and into Mr. Sparrow's little dormer +window. Miss Smalley lingered to notice the little black teapot on +the grate-bar, where a low fire was sinking lower,—the faded cloth +on the table, and the empty cup upon it,—the pipe laid down +hastily, with ashes falling out of it. She thought how lonesome Mr. +Sparrow was living,—doing for himself. +</p> +<p> +All the square open space down through which the blue heavens looked +between those great towering buildings, was filled with brightness +as with a flood. The air was lurid crimson. Every stone and chip and +fragment, lay revealed in the strange, transfiguring light. Away +across the stable-roofs, they could read far-off signs painted in +black letters upon brick walls. Church spires stood up, bathed in a +wild glory, pointing as out of some day of doom, into the +everlasting rest. The stars showed like points of clear, green, +unearthly radiance, against that contrast of fierce red. +</p> +<p> +It surged up and up, as if it would over-boil the very stars +themselves. It swayed to right,—to left; growing in an awful bulk +and intensity, without changing much its place, to their eyes, where +they stood. On the tops of the high Apartment Hotel, and all the +flat-roofed houses in Hero and Pilgrim streets, were men and women +gazing. Their faces, which could not have been discerned in the +daylight, shone distinct in this preternatural illumination. Their +voices sounded now and then, against the yet distant hum and crackle +of the conflagration, upon the otherwise still air. The rush had, +for a while, gone by. The streets in this quarter were empty. +</p> +<p> +Grand and terrible as the sight was to them in Leicester Place, they +could know or imagine little of what the fire was really doing. +</p> +<p> +"It backs against the wind," they heard one man say upon the +stable-roof. +</p> +<p> +They could not resist opening the window, just a little, now and +then, to listen; though Bel would instantly pull Aunt Blin away, and +then they would put it down. Poor Aunt Blin's nose grew very cold, +though she did not know it. Her nose was little and sensitive. It is +not the big noses that feel the cold the most. Aunt Blin took cold +through her face and her feet; and these the dressing-gown, and the +waterproof, and the comforter, did not protect. +</p> +<p> +"It must have spread among those crowded houses in Kingston and +South streets," Aunt Blin said; and as she spoke, her poor old +"ornaments" chattered. +</p> +<p> +"Aunt Blin, you <i>shall</i> come down, and take something hot, and go to +bed!" exclaimed Bel, peremptorily. "We can't stay here all night. +Mr. Sparrow will be back,—and everybody. I think the fire is going +down. It's pretty still now. We've seen it all. Come!" +</p> +<p> +They had never a thought, any of them, of more than a block or so, +burning. Of course the firemen would put it out. They always did. +</p> +<p> +"See! See!" cried the landlady. "O my sakes and sorrows!" +</p> +<p> +A huge, volcanic column of glittering sparks—of great flaming +fragments—shot up and soared broad and terrible into the deep sky. +A long, magnificent, shimmering, scintillant train—fire spangled +with fire—swept southward like the tail of a comet, that had at +last swooped down and wrapped the earth. +</p> +<p> +"The roofs have fallen in," said innocent old Miss Smalley. +</p> +<p> +"That will be the last. Now they will stop it," said Bel. "Come, +Auntie!" +</p> +<p> +And after midnight, for an hour or more, the house, with the five +women in it, hushed. Aunt Blin took some hot Jamaica ginger, and Bel +filled a jug with boiling water, wrapped it in flannel, and tucked +it into the bed at her feet. Then she gave her a spoonful of her +cough-mixture, took off her own clothes, and lay down. +</p> +<p> +Still the great fire roared, and put out the stars. Still the room +was red with the light of it. Aunt Blin fell asleep. +</p> +<p> +Bel lay and listened, and wondered. She would not move to get up and +look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the +boom of a great explosion. She started up. +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley's voice sounded at the door. +</p> +<p> +"It's awful!" she whispered, through the keyhole, in a ghostly way. +"I thought you ought to know. The cinders are flying everywhere. I +heard an engine come up from the railroad. People are running along +the streets, and teams are going, and everything,—<i>the other way</i>! +They're blowing up houses! There, don't you hear that?" +</p> +<p> +It was another sullen, heavy roar. +</p> +<p> +Bel sprang out of bed; hurried into her garments; opened the door to +Miss Smalley. They went and stood together in the entry-window. +</p> +<p> +"All Kingman's carriages are out; sick horses and all; they've +trundled wheelbarrow loads of things down to the stable. There's a +heap of furniture dumped down in the middle of the place. Women are +going up Tremont Street with bundles and little children. Where <i>do</i> +you s'pose it's got to?" +</p> +<p> +"See there!" said Bel, pointing across the square to the great, +dark, public building. High up, in one of the windows, a gas-light +glimmered. Two men were visible in the otherwise deserted place. +They were putting up a step-ladder. +</p> +<p> +"Do you suppose they are there nights,—other nights?" Bel asked +Miss Smalley. +</p> +<p> +"No. They're after books and things. They're going to pack up." +</p> +<p> +"The fire <i>can't</i> be coming here!" +</p> +<p> +Bel opened the window carefully, as she spoke. A man was standing in +the livery-stable door. A hack came rapidly down, and the driver +called out something as he jumped off. +</p> +<p> +"Where?" they heard the hostler ask. +</p> +<p> +"Most up to Temple Place." +</p> +<p> +"Do they mean the fire? They can't!" +</p> +<p> +They did; but they were, as we know, somewhat mistaken. Yet that +great, surf-like flame, rushing up and on, was rioting at the very +head of Summer Street, and plunging down Washington. Trinity Church +was already a blazing wreck. +</p> +<p> +"Has it come up Summer Street, or how?" asked Bel, helplessly, of +helpless Miss Smalley. "Do you suppose Fillmer & Bylles is burnt?" +</p> +<p> +"I <i>must</i> ask somebody!" +</p> +<p> +These women, with no man belonging to them to come and give them +news,—restrained by force of habit from what would have been at +another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter +exceptionality of this time,—while down among the hissing engines +and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate +dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and +friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the +spectacle,—while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington +Street, whose windows flashed like jewels in the far-shining flames, +where the wonderful bronze Washington sat majestic and still against +that sky of stormy fire as he sits in every change and beautiful +surprise of whatever sky of cloud or color may stretch about +him,—on Commonwealth Avenue, where splendid mansions stood with +doors wide open, and drays unloading merchandise saved from the +falling warehouses into their freely offered shelter,—ladies were +walking to and fro, as if in their own halls and parlors, watching, +and questioning whomsoever came, and saying to each other hushed and +solemn or excited words,—when the whole city was but one great home +upon which had fallen a mighty agony and wonder that drove its +hearts to each other as the hearts of a household,—these two, Bel +Bree and little Miss Smalley, knew scarcely anything that was +definite, and had been waiting and wondering all night, thinking it +would be improper to talk into the street! +</p> +<p> +A young lad came up the court at last; he lived next door; he was an +errand-boy in some great store on Franklin Street. His mother spoke +to him from her window. +</p> +<p> +"Bennie! how is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Mother! All Boston is gone up! Summer Street, High Street, Federal +Street, Pearl Street, Franklin Street, Milk Street, Devonshire +Street,—everything, clear through to the New Post Office. I've been +on the Common all night, guarding goods. There's another fellow +there now, and I've come home to get warm. I'm almost frozen." +</p> +<p> +His mother was at the door as he finished speaking, and took him in; +and they heard no more. +</p> +<p> +The boy's words were heavy with heavy meaning. He said them without +any boy-excitement; they carried their own excitement in the heart +of them. In those eight hours he had lived like a man; in an +experience that until of late few men have known. +</p> +<p> +They did not know how long they stood there after that, with +scarcely a word to each other,—only now and then some utterance of +sudden recollection of this and that which must have vanished away +within that stricken territory,—taking in, slowly, the reality, the +tremendousness of what had happened,—was happening. +</p> +<p> +It was five o'clock when Mr. Hewland came in, and up the stairs, and +found them there. Aunt Blin had not awaked. There was a trace of +morphine in her cough-drops, and Bel knew now, since she had slept +so long, that she would doubtless sleep late into the morning. That +was well. It would be time enough to tell her by and by. There would +be all day,—all winter,—to tell it in. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hewland told them, hastily, the main history of the fire. +</p> +<p> +"Is Trinity Church?"—asked poor Miss Smalley tremblingly. +</p> +<p> +She had not said anything about it to Bel Bree; she could not think +of that great stone tower as having let the fire in,—as not having +stood, cool and strong, against any flame. And Trinity Church was +<i>her</i> tower. She had sat in one seat in its free gallery for +fourteen years. If that were gone, she would hardly know where to +go, to get near to heaven. Only nine days ago,—All Saints' +Day,—she had sat there listening to beautiful words that laid hold +upon the faith of all believers, back through the church, back +before Christ to the prophets and patriarchs, and told how God was +<i>her</i> God because He had been theirs. The old faith,—and the Old +Church! "Was Trinity?"—She could not say,—"burned." +</p> +<p> +But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,—"Gone." +</p> +<p> +That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung, +that fearful night! +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hewland was wet and cold. He went up to his room and changed +his clothing. When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in, +he came down again. +</p> +<p> +"Would you not like to go down and see?" he said to Bel. +</p> +<p> +"Can I?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. There is no danger. The streets are comparatively clear. I +will go with you." +</p> +<p> +Bel asked Miss Smalley. +</p> +<p> +"Will you come? Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think." +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay. Of the two, it +was easier to go. To do—to see—something. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sparrow came in. He met them at the door, and turned directly +back with them. +</p> +<p> +He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity. He and the +music-mistress—they were both of English birth, hence of the same +national faith—had been used to go from the same dwelling, +separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite +galleries. But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old +words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation. +These links between them, of country and religion, which they had +never spoken of, were the real links. +</p> +<p> +As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first +time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they +felt another,—the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of +flame swept Paradise. +</p> +<p> +Plain old souls!—Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and +"todillating"—as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait—along +together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before +the sight of God. +</p> +<p> +Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked +together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the +unusualness. The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked +strange, when everything was so. +</p> +<p> +They went along by the Common fence. In the street, a continuous +line of wagons passed them, moving southward. Gentlemen sat on +cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of +property to places of bestowal. Inside the inclosure, in the malls, +along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were +heaps of merchandise. Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked +goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in +piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and +fro among them all. People were wrapped against the keen November +cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on. A group of men +pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great +soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped +borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and +dragged upon the muddy ground. +</p> +<p> +Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of +coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous +serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in +pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere. +</p> +<p> +They went down Winter Street, stepping over the hose-coils, and +across the leaking streams; they came to the crossing of Washington, +where yesterday throngs of women passed, shopping from stately store +to store. +</p> +<p> +Beyond, were smoke and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry, +chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and +protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden +in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the beautiful +"Transcript" building. +</p> +<p> +They stood, fearful and watchful, under the broken granite walls +opposite Trinity Church. +</p> +<p> +Windows and doors were gone from the grand old edifice; inside, the +fire was shining; devouring at its dreadful ease, the sacred +architecture and furnishings that it had swept down to the ground. +</p> +<p> +"See! There he is!" whispered Miss Smalley to Mr. Sparrow, as she +gazed with unconscious tears falling fast down her pale old cheeks. +</p> +<p> +It was the Rector of Trinity, who thought to have stood this morning +in the holy place to speak to his people. Down the middle of the +street he came, and went up to the cumbered threshold and the open +arch, within which a terrible angel was speaking in his stead. +</p> +<p> +"Do you think he remembers now, what he said about the God of +Daniel, as he looks into the blazing fiery furnace?" +</p> +<p> +"I dare say he doesn't ever remember what he <i>said</i>; but he +remembers always what <i>is</i>," answered the watch-maker. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0023"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIII. +</h2> +<h3> + EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY. +</h3> +<p> +The strange, sad Sunday wore along. +</p> +<p> +The teams rolled on, incessantly, through the streets; the blaze and +smoke went up from the sixty acres of destruction; friends gathered +together and talked of the one thing, that talk as they might, would +not be put into any words. Men whose wealth had turned to ashes in a +night went to and fro in the same coats they had worn yesterday, and +hardly knew yet whether they themselves were the same or not. It +seemed, so strangely, as if the clock might be set back somehow, and +yesterday be again; it was so little way off! +</p> +<p> +Women who had received, perhaps, their last wages for the winter on +Saturday night, sat in their rooms and wondered what would be on +Monday. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin was excited; strong with excitement. She went down-stairs +to see Miss Smalley, who was too tired to sit up. +</p> +<p> +Out of the fire, Bel Bree and Paulina Smalley had each brought +something that remained by them secretly all this day. +</p> +<p> +When they had stopped there under those smoked and shattered walls, +and Morris Hewland had drawn Bel's hand within his arm to keep her +from any movement into danger, he had gently laid his own fingers, +in care and caution, upon hers. A feeling had come to them both with +the act, and for a moment, as if the world, with all its great +built-up barriers of stone, had broken down around them, and lay at +their feet in fragments, among which they two stood free together. +</p> +<p> +The music-mistress and the watchmaker, looking in upon their place +of prayer, seeing it empty and eaten out by the yet lingering +tongues of fire, had exchanged those words about the things that +<i>are</i>. For a minute, through the emptiness, they reached into the +eternal deep; for a minute their simple souls felt themselves, over +the threshold of earthly ruin, in the spaces where there is no need +of a temple any more; they forgot their worn and far-spent +lives,—each other's old and year-marked faces; they were as two +spirits, met without hindrance or incongruity, looking into each +other's spiritual eyes. +</p> +<p> +Poor old Miss Smalley, when she came home and took off her hood +before her little glass, and saw how pale she was with her night's +watching and excitement, and how the thin gray hairs had straggled +over her forehead, came back with a pang into the flesh, and was +afraid she had been ridiculous; but lying tired upon her bed, in the +long after hours of the day, she forgot once more what manner of +outside woman she was, and remembered only, with a pervading peace, +how the watchmaker had spoken. +</p> +<p> +Night came. The pillar of smoke that had gone up all day, turned +again into a pillar of fire, and stood in the eastern heavens. +</p> +<p> +The time of safety, when there had been no flaming terror, was +already so far off, that people, fearing this night to surrender +themselves to sleep, wondered that in any nights they had ever +dared,—wondered that there had ever been anything but fear and +burning, in this great, crowded city. +</p> +<p> +The guards paced the streets; the roll of wagons quieted. The +stricken town was like a fever patient seized yesterday with a +sudden, devouring rage of agony,—to-day, calmed, put under care, a +rule established, watchers set. +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley went from window to window as the darkness—and the +apparition of flame—came on. Rested by the day's surrender to +exhaustion, she was alert and apprehensive and excited now. +</p> +<p> +"It will be sure to burst out again," she said; "it always does." +</p> +<p> +"Don't say so to Aunt Blin," whispered Bel. "Look at her cheeks, and +her eyes. She is sick-abed this minute, and she <i>will</i> keep up!" +</p> +<p> +At nine o'clock, the very last thing, she spoke with the +music-mistress again, at the door. Miss Smalley kept coming up into +the passage to look out at that end window. +</p> +<p> +"I don't mean to get up if it does burn," Bel said, resolutely. "It +won't come here. We ought to sleep. That's our business. There'll be +enough to do, maybe, afterwards." +</p> +<p> +But for all that, in the dead of the night, she was roused again. +</p> +<p> +A sound of bells; a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great +explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks +overhanging the stars as it did before, and paling them out. +</p> +<p> +It seemed as if it had always been so; as if there had never been a +still, dark heaven under which to lie down tranquilly and sleep. +</p> +<p> +"The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can't help it," +sounded Miss Smalley's voice, meek and deprecating, through the +keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving. +</p> +<p> +Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage. +</p> +<p> +Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place +itself. +</p> +<p> +The great rush and blaze were all this way, now. They were right +under the storm of it. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Blin woke up. +</p> +<p> +"What is it?" she asked, excitedly. "Is it begun again? Is it +coming?" And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry +floor with her bare feet. +</p> +<p> +A floating cinder fell and struck the sash. +</p> +<p> +"We must be dressed! We must pack up! Make haste, Bel! Where's +Bartholomew?" +</p> +<p> +Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss +Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong. +</p> +<p> +They got her into bed again, and brought her to. But with +circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever. In half an +hour she was in a burning heat, wandering and crying out +deliriously. +</p> +<p> +"O what shall we do? We must have a doctor. She'll die!" cried Bel. +</p> +<p> +"If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?" said the spinster, +timidly. +</p> +<p> +Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the +same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor +old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and +she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown +tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and +fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and +fifty. +</p> +<p> +"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you +wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?" +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved +at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked. +</p> +<p> +Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as +he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now. +</p> +<p> +As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the +door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the +flame outside, in darkness. +</p> +<p> +In house and street it was the same. Miss Smalley called out that it +was so. "The stable light is gone," she said. "Yes,—and the lights +down Tremont Street." +</p> +<p> +Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders, +seemed sweeping against the window panes. +</p> +<p> +Only that terrible light over all the town. +</p> +<p> +"O, what does it mean?" said Bel. +</p> +<p> +"It is Chicago over again," the young man answered her, with a grave +dismay in his voice. +</p> +<p> +"See there,—and there!" said Miss Smalley, at the window. "People +are up, lighting candles." +</p> +<p> +"But Aunt Blin is sick!" said Bel. "We must take care of her. What +shall we do?" +</p> +<p> +"I'll go and send a doctor; and I'll bring you news. Have you a +candle? Stop; I'll fetch you something." +</p> +<p> +He sprang up-stairs, and returned with a box of small wax tapers. +They were only a couple of inches long, and the size of her little +finger. +</p> +<p> +"I'll get you something better if I can; and don't be frightened." +</p> +<p> +The great glare, though it shed its light luridly upon all outside, +was not enough to find things by within. Bel took courage at this, +thinking the heart of it must still be far off. She gave one look +into the depth of the street, shadowed by its buildings, and having +a strange look of eerie gloom, even so little way beneath that upper +glow. Then she drew down the painted shades, and shut the sky +phantom out. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Hewland will come and tell us," she said. "We must work." +</p> +<p> +She heated water and got a bath for Aunt Blin's feet. She put a +cool, wet bandage on her head. She mixed some mustard and spread a +cloth and laid it to her chest. Miss Bree breathed easier; but the +bandage upon her head dried as though the flame had touched it. +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you what," said good, inopportune Miss Smalley; "she's +going to be dreadful sick, I'm afraid. It'll be head and lungs both. +That's what my sister had." +</p> +<p> +"<i>Don't</i> tell me what!" cried Bel, irritatedly. +</p> +<p> +But the doctor told her what, when he came. +</p> +<p> +Not in words; doctors don't do that. But she read it in his grave +carefulness; she detected it in the orders which he gave. People +brought up in the country,—where neighbors take care of each other, +and where every symptom is talked over, and the history of every +fatal disorder turns into a tradition,—learn about sickness and the +meanings of it; on its ghastly and ominous side, at any rate. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Hewland came back and brought two candles, which he had with +difficulty procured from a hotel. He brought word, also, that the +fire was under control; that they need feel no more alarm. +</p> +<p> +And so this second night of peril and disaster passed painfully and +slowly by. +</p> +<p> +But on the Monday, the day in which Boston was like a city given +over into the hands of a host,—when its streets were like +slow-moving human glaciers, down the midst of which in a narrow +channel the heavier flow of burdened teams passed scarcely faster +forward than the hindered side streams,—Aunt Blin lay in the grasp +and scorch of a fire that feeds on life; wasting under that which +uplifts and frenzies, only to prostrate and destroy. +</p> +<p> +I shall not dwell upon it. It had to be told; the fire also had to +be told; for it happened, and could not be ignored. It happened, +intermingling with all these very things of which I write; +precipitating, changing, determining much. +</p> +<p> +Before the end of that first week, in which the stun and shock were +reacting in prompt, cheerful, benevolent organizing and +providing,—in which, through wonderful, dreamlike ruins, like the +ruins of the far-off past, people were wandering, amazed, seeing a +sudden torch laid right upon the heart and centre of a living +metropolis and turning it to a shadow and a decay,—in which human +interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously +approached each other before,—in which the little household of +independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an +almost family relation all at once, after years of mere +juxtaposition,—before the end of that week, Aunt Blin died. +</p> +<p> +It was as though the fiery thrust that had transpierced the heart of +"her Boston," had smitten the centre of her own vitality in the +self-same hour. +</p> +<p> +All her clothes hung in the closet; the very bend of her arm was in +the sleeve of the well worn alpaca dress, the work-basket, with a +cloth jacket-front upon it, in which was a half-made button-hole, +left just at the stitch where all her labor ended, was on the round +table; Cheeps was singing in the window; Bartholomew was winking on +the hearth-rug; and little Bel, among these belongings that she knew +not what to do with any more, was all alone. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0024"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIV. +</h2> +<h3> + TEMPTATION. +</h3> +<p> +The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry. +</p> +<p> +Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came +there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight +from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money, +with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life +the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of +class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the +moment, both ways. +</p> +<p> +"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent +movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the +hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help +themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and +cry "hands off!" to the rich women. +</p> +<p> +What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation, +between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements? +</p> +<p> +In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought +neither yet. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree was one. +</p> +<p> +The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with +her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps +and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was +shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one +broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day +she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her +brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by +disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly, +conscious. +</p> +<p> +"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree." +</p> +<p> +"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;" +concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good +folks,—Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to +keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though." +</p> +<p> +Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any +rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire. +</p> +<p> +There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been +together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again. +But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would +be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them +now; girls without tie or belonging,—holding on where they could. +Elise Mokey had said to her,—"See if you could help yourself if you +hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that +great, dark "If." +</p> +<p> +Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have +been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not +quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came. +And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort—all the meaning of +it—was gone. +</p> +<p> +They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till +Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her +be miserable, just a little while. +</p> +<p> +Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the +music-mistress was out, giving her lessons. +</p> +<p> +Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the +doorway, and talked with him. +</p> +<p> +He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew +her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he +hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word +of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt +such a tenderness for. +</p> +<p> +"I can't bear to give things up,—because they <i>were</i> pleasant," Bel +said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there +isn't anybody to make home <i>with</i> any more. I know what I <i>had</i> +thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might +do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to +look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet." +</p> +<p> +"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers. +</p> +<p> +"Yes,—friends. But the friends are all outside, after all." +</p> +<p> +Hewland stood silent. +</p> +<p> +How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as +this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved +and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,—"Let us belong +together. Make home with <i>me</i>!" +</p> +<p> +Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not +say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl +of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no +girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the +first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself. +And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer +have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And +all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold +one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as +poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor. +Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,—now, +right off,—everything. +</p> +<p> +Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of +money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to +himself; and what had the world to do with it? +</p> +<p> +"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you +go with me?" +</p> +<p> +The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let +have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through +them before he knew. +</p> +<p> +"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes,—home," said the young man, hesitating. +</p> +<p> +"Where your mother lives?" +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of +defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge. +</p> +<p> +"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or +her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of +you all your life; all <i>my</i> life. And I would. I will never make a +home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust +me,—always. So help me God!" +</p> +<p> +He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any +more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of +his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should +not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew +he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he +could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments, +with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace +and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door, +and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up +for them in his father's house. +</p> +<p> +His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and +indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would +never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as +this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a +girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by God at all, as her +daughters were, and her son's wife should be. +</p> +<p> +"Do you care enough for me?" +</p> +<p> +Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions +before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not +to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could +answer him. +</p> +<p> +He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in +her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in +him. He must make her speak,—say that she cared. +</p> +<p> +"<i>Don't</i> you care? Bel—you do! You are my little wife; and the +world has not anything to do with it!" +</p> +<p> +She broke away from him; she shrunk back. +</p> +<p> +"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world +is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think +me bad." +</p> +<p> +There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving, +handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,—strong enough,—to +denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was +tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance +tempted the Christ,—"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me." +</p> +<p> +Yet she shrunk, bewildered. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland." +</p> +<p> +She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to +the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it +after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking, +for him to go. +</p> +<p> +He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon +her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed +it to. She had <i>left</i>, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she +did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe +the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to +marry her secretly, and hide her away. +</p> +<p> +"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt +Blin!—She <i>can't</i> have gone so very far away, quite yet!" +</p> +<p> +She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out. +</p> +<p> +She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the +old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her +face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had +bent to its tasks in it. +</p> +<p> +"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any +good—any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?" +</p> +<p> +She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came +away, and sat down. +</p> +<p> +She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this +doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she +did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her. +</p> +<p> +"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they +might help us?" +</p> +<p> +She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for +them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go +<i>in</i>; not to reach painfully up, and away,—after that world in +which we also, though blindly, dwell. +</p> +<p> +On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses. +</p> +<p> +Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, +came suddenly into her mind. +</p> +<p> +"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because +they read, always, the living Word in heaven." +</p> +<p> +Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them? +</p> +<p> +She moved slowly to the table. +</p> +<p> +It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it +low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter +portion. She opened it in Matthew,—to the nineteenth chapter. +</p> +<p> +When she had read that, she knew what she was to do. +</p> +<p> +She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night. +</p> +<p> +In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the +day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all +gone. +</p> +<p> +She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did +she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk, +and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of +that. She was not ashamed—she had no misgiving—of this that she +was going to do now. +</p> +<p> +She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one +to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing, +whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never +even asked herself that question. +</p> +<p> +She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the +stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half +hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door +unlatched and closed again. +</p> +<p> +Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open +door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She +could not see him till he passed; and he might pass without turning. +Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung +inward from the far corner. No matter. +</p> +<p> +He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door. +But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the +second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed +around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had +stood last night. +</p> +<p> +She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly, +with any half intent, to give <i>him</i> new opportunity for words. There +was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to +say. He saw it, and went back. +</p> +<p> +He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale. +</p> +<p> +"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice. +</p> +<p> +He followed her in. +</p> +<p> +"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer +them. I want to ask you one question, now." +</p> +<p> +She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red +cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had +read it. +</p> +<p> +She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the +finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a +little child to read; and his eye followed it. +</p> +<p> +"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall +cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh. +</p> +<p> +"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore +God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." +</p> +<p> +"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,—before +them all?" she said. +</p> +<p> +He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that +it <i>was</i> to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he +had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to +her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did +not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had +joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The +angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of +the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look +turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin. +</p> +<p> +"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of +living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set +them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or +misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and +wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it. +</p> +<p> +As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should +not have been his wife before anybody. +</p> +<p> +Her young face grew paler, and turned stern. +</p> +<p> +His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him, +marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and +stood so before the child. +</p> +<p> +She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the +book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of +her presence. +</p> +<p> +"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a +grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the +voice of an angel. +</p> +<p> +When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted. +</p> +<p> +An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a +little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went +down into the street. +</p> +<p> +Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to +Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0025"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXV. +</h2> +<h3> + BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING. +</h3> +<p> +Desire Ledwith had a great many secrets to keep. Everybody came and +told her one. +</p> +<p> +All these girls whom she knew, had histories; troubles, +perplexities, wrongs, temptations,—greater or less. Gradually, they +all confessed to her. The wrong side of the world's patchwork looked +ugly to her, sometimes. +</p> +<p> +Now, here came Bel Bree; with her story, and her little leather bag; +her homelessness, her friendlessness. No, not that; for Desire +Ledwith herself contradicted it; even Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley +were a great deal better than nothing. Not friendlessness, then, +exactly; but <i>belonglessness</i>. +</p> +<p> +Desire sent down to Leicester Place for Bel's box; for Cheeps also. +Bel wrote a note to Miss Smalley, asking her to take in Bartholomew. +What came of that, I may as well tell here as anywhere; it will not +take long. It is not really an integral part of our story, but I +think you will like to know. +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley herself answered the note. It was easy enough to evade +any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal +more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she +wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides, +Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied with her own concerns. +</p> +<p> +"There was the room," she said; "and there was the furniture. Now, +would Bel Bree let the things to her, just as they stood, if +she,—well, if Mr. Sparrow,—for she didn't mind telling Bel that +she and Mr. Sparrow had made up their minds to look after each +other's comfort as well as they could the rest of their lives, +seeing how liable we all were to need comfort and company, at fires +and things;—if Mr. Sparrow hired the room of Mrs. Pimminy? And as +to Bartholomew, Mr. Sparrow wouldn't mind him, and she didn't think +Bartholomew would object to Mr. Sparrow. Cats rather took to him, he +thought. They would make the creature welcome, and make much of him; +and not expect it to be considered at all." +</p> +<p> +Bel concluded the arrangement. She thought it would be a comfort to +know that Aunt Blin's little place was not all broken up, but that +somebody was happy there; that Bartholomew had his old corner of the +rug, and his airings on the sunny window-sill; and Miss +Smalley—Mrs. Sparrow that was to be—would pay her fifteen dollars +a year for the things, and make them last. +</p> +<p> +"That carpet?" she had said; "why, it hadn't begun to pocket yet; +and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the +hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it +would turn, when it came to that, and last on—as long as ever. +There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a +single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his +slippers, the minute ever he got in." +</p> +<p> +Desire's library was full on Wednesday evenings, now. The girls came +for instruction, for social companionship, for comfort. On the table +in the dining-room were almost always little parcels waiting, ready +done up for one and another; little things Desire and Hazel "thought +of" beforehand, as what they "might like and find convenient; and +what they"—Desire and Hazel—"happened to have." Sometimes it was a +paper of nice prunes for a delicate appetite that was kept too much +to dry, economical food. Perhaps it was a jar of "Liebig's Extract" +for Emma Hollen, that she might make beef-tea for herself; or a +remnant of flannel that "would just do for a couple of undervests." +It was sure to be something just right; something with a real +thought in it. +</p> +<p> +And out here in the dining-room, as they took their little +parcels,—or lingering in the hall aside from the others, or +stopping in a corner of the library,—they would have their "words" +with Desire and Hazel and Sylvie; always some confidence, or some +question, or some telling of how this or that had gone on or turned +out. +</p> +<p> +In these days after the Great Fire, no wonder that the dozen or +fifteen became twenty, or even thirty; the very pigeons and sparrows +tell each other where the people are who love and feed them; no +wonder that all the chairs had to be brought in, and that the room +was full; that the room in heart and brain, for sympathy and plan +and counsel, was crowded also, or would have been, if heart and +brain were not made to grow as fast as they take in tendernesses and +thoughts. If, too, one need did not fit right in and help another; +and if being "right in the midst of the work" did not continually +give light and suggestion and opportunity. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree came among them now, with her heart full. +</p> +<p> +"I know it better than ever," she said to Miss Desire. "I <i>know</i> +that what ever so many of these girls want, most of all, is <i>home</i>. +A place to work in where they can rest between whiles, if it is only +for snatches; not to be out, and on their feet, and just <i>driving</i>, +with the minutes at their heels, all day long. Girls want to work +under cover; they can favor themselves then, and not slight the work +either. And especially, they want to <i>belong</i> somewhere. They can't +fling themselves about, separate, anywhere, without a great many +getting spoiled, or lost. They want some signs of care over them; +and I believe there are places where they could have it. If they can +put twenty tucks into a white petticoat for a cent a piece, and work +half a day at it, and find their own fire and bread and tea, why +can't they do it for half a cent a tuck, even, in people's houses, +where they can have fire and lodging and meals, and a name, at any +rate, of being seen to?" +</p> +<p> +"Say so to them, Bel. Tell them yourself, what you mean to do, and +find out who will do it with you. If this movement could come from +the girls themselves,—if two or three would join together and +begin,—I believe the leaven would work. I believe it is the next +thing, and that somebody is to lead the way. Why not you?" +</p> +<p> +That night, the Read-and-Talk left off the reading. Miss Ledwith +told them that there was so much to say,—so much she wanted a word +from them about,—that they would give up the books for one evening. +They would think about home, instead of far-off places; about +themselves,—each other,—and things that were laid out for them to +do, instead of people who had taken their turn at the world's work +hundreds of years ago. They would try and talk it out,—this hard +question of work, and place, and living; and see, if they could, +what way was provided,—as in the nature of things there must be +some way,—for everybody to be busy, and everybody to be better +satisfied. She thought Bel Bree had got a notion of one way, that +was open, or might be, to a good many, a way that it remained, +perhaps, for themselves to open rightly. +</p> +<p> +"Now, Bel, just tell us all how you feel about it. There isn't any +of us whom you wouldn't say it to alone; and every one of us is only +listening separately. When you have finished, somebody else may have +a word to answer." +</p> +<p> +"I don't know as I <i>could</i> finish," said Bel Bree, "except by going +and living it out. And that is just what I think we have got to do. +I've said it before; the girls know I have; but I'm surer than ever +of it now. Why, where does all the work come from, but out of the +homes? I know some kinds may always have to be done in the lump; but +there's ever so much that might be done where it is wanted, and +everybody be better off. We want homes; and we want real people to +work for; those two things. I <i>know</i> we do. A lot of <i>stuff</i>, and +miles of stitches, ain't <i>work</i>; it don't make real human beings, I +think. It makes business, I suppose, and money; I don't know what it +all comes round to, though, for anybody; more spending, perhaps, and +more having, but not half so much being. At any rate, it don't come +round in that to us; and we've got to look out for ourselves. If we +get right, who knows but other folks may get righter in consequence? +What I think is, that wherever there's a family,—a father and a +mother and little children,—there's work to do, and a home to do it +in; and we girls who haven't homes and little children, and perhaps +sha'n't ever have,—ain't much likely to have as things are +now,—could be happier and safer, and more used to what we ought to +be used to in case we should,"—(Bel's sentences were getting to be +very rambling and involved, but her thoughts urged her on, and +everybody's in the room followed her),—"if we went right in where +the things were wanted, and did them. The sewing,—and the +cooking,—and the sweeping, too; everything; I mean, whatever we +could; any of it. You call it 'living out,' and say you won't do it, +but what you do <i>now</i> is the living out! We could <i>afford</i> to go and +say to people who are worrying about poor help and awful +wages,—'We'll come and do well by you for half the money. We know +what homes are worth.' And wouldn't some of them think the +millennium was come? <i>I</i> am going to try it." +</p> +<p> +Bel stopped. She did not think of such a thing as having made a +speech; she had only said a little—just as it came—of what she was +full of. +</p> +<p> +"You'll get packed in with a lot of dirty servants. You won't have +the home. You'll only have the work of it." +</p> +<p> +"No, Kate Sencerbox. I sha'n't do that; because I'm going to +persuade you to go with me. And we'll make the home, if they give us +ever so little a corner of it. And as soon as they find out what we +are, they'll treat us accordingly." +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox shrugged her shoulders. +</p> +<p> +"The world isn't going to be made all over in a day,—nor Boston +either; not if it <i>is</i> all burnt up to begin with." +</p> +<p> +"That is true, Kate," said Desire Ledwith. "You will have +difficulties. But you have difficulties now. And wouldn't it be +worth while to change these that are growing worse, for such as +might grow better? Wouldn't it be grand to begin to make even a +little piece of the world over?" +</p> +<p> +"We could start with new people," said Bel. "Young people. They are +the very ones that have the hardest time with the old sort of +servants. We could go out of town, where the old sort won't stay. +You see it's <i>homes</i> we're after; real ones; and to help make them; +and it's homes they hate!" +</p> +<p> +"Where did you find it all out, Bel?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't know. Talk; and newspapers. And it's in the air." +</p> +<p> +Bel was her old, quick, bright, earnest self, taking hold of this +thing that she so truly meant. She turned round to it eagerly, +escaping from the thoughts which she resolutely flung out of her +mind. There was perhaps a slight impetus of this hurry of escape in +her eagerness. But Bel was strong; strong in her purity; in her real +poet-nature, that reached for and demanded the real soul of living; +in her incapacity to care for the shadow or pretense,—far more the +<i>sullied</i> sham,—of anything. Contempt of the evil had come swiftly +to cure the sting of the evil. Satan would fain have had her, to +sift her like wheat; but she had been prayed for; and now that she +was saved, she was inspired to strengthen her sisters. +</p> +<p> +"I don't think I could do anything but sewing," said Emma Hollen, +plaintively. "I'm not strong enough. And ladies won't see to their +own sewing, now, in their houses. It's so much easier to go right +into Feede & Treddle's, and buy ready-made, that we've done the +stitching for at forty cents a day, hard work, and find ourselves!" +</p> +<p> +"I don't say that every girl in Boston can walk right into a nice +good home, and be given something to do there. But I say there's no +danger of too many trying it yet awhile; and by the time they do, +maybe we'll have changed things a little for them. I'm willing to be +the thin edge of the wedge," said Bel Bree. +</p> +<p> +"Right things have the power. God sees to that," said Desire. "The +right cannot stop working. The life is in it." +</p> +<p> +"The thing I think of," said Elise Mokey, decidedly, "is suller +kitchens. I ain't ready to be put underground,—not yet awhile. Not +even by way of going to heaven, every night; or as near as four +flights can carry me." +</p> +<p> +"In the country they don't have cellar kitchens. And anyway, there's +always a window, and a fire; and with things clean and cheerful, and +some green thing growing for Cheeps to sing to, I'll do," said Bel. +"You've got to begin with what there is, as the Pilgrim Fathers +did." +</p> +<p> +Ray Ingraham could have told them, if she had been there this +Wednesday evening, how Dot had begun. Miss Ledwith said nothing +about it, because she felt that it was an exceptional case. She +would not put a falsely flattering precedent before these girls, to +win them to an experiment which with them might prove a hard and +disappointing one. Desire Ledwith was absolutely fair-minded in +everything she did. The feeling on their part that she was so, was +what gave them their trust in her. To bring a subject to her +consideration and judgment, was to bring it into clear sunlight. +</p> +<p> +Dot had gone up to Z——, to live with the Kincaids, at the Horse +Shoe. +</p> +<p> +Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will +run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good. +Circumstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we +think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach +forth and draw together; to bring into one circle of communication +people and plans of one spirit and purpose. Then, before we know how +it is, we find them linking and fitting here and there, helping +wonderfully to make a beautiful organism of result that we could not +have planned or foreseen beforehand, any more than we could have +planned our own bodies. It is the growing up into one body in +Christ. +</p> +<p> +Hazel Ripwinkley said it all came of "knowing the Muffin Man:" and +so it did. The Bread-Giver; the Provider. It is queer they should +have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you +can't help making parables, do what you will. +</p> +<p> +Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen. +</p> +<p> +He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart +way; but another,—the practical way of day's doing and +ordering,—he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating +everything. +</p> +<p> +While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing +her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight +below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven. +</p> +<p> +But when Mrs. Waters—who was one of those born nurses whom +everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of +sickness—had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her +niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had +another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the +nights long, and the baby <i>would</i> not settle his relations with the +solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time, +kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the +midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,—the nice little +systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated +fell into hopeless uncertainties. +</p> +<p> +Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to +leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired. +It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be +punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow +into matter-of-course service. +</p> +<p> +And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not +been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but +which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a +houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable +procrastinations. +</p> +<p> +[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with <i>her</i> baby, +averred that <i>these</i> were the angels who came to declare that time +should be no longer.] +</p> +<p> +Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her +baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her +paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white, +hemmed dishcloths. +</p> +<p> +"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together." +</p> +<p> +When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot +Ingraham's advertisement. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and +found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in +Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the +public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for +Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called +resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put +into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself +a little human being, and not a tadpole." +</p> +<p> +Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She +became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done. +Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants, +which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed +tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter +time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom. +</p> +<p> +They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got +done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a +week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her +mother. +</p> +<p> +All went blessedly at the Horse Shoe; but there is not a Horse Shoe +everywhere. It is always a piece of luck to find one. +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith knew that; so she held her peace about it for a +while, among these girls to whom Bel Bree was preaching her crusade. +All they knew was that Dot Ingraham and her machine were gone away +into a family eighteen miles from Boston. +</p> +<p> +"If <i>you</i> find anything for me to do, Miss Ledwith, I'll do it," +said Kate Sencerbox. "But I won't go into one of those offices, nor +off into the country for the winter. I want to keep something to +hold on to,—not run out to sea without a rope." +</p> +<p> +Desire did not propose advertising, as she had done to Dot; she +would let Kate wait a week. A week in the new condition of things +might teach her a good deal. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0026"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVI. +</h2> +<h3> + TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'. +</h3> +<p> +There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household. +</p> +<p> +The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six +weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid +fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"—as his mother +said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the +"Looking Glass,"—upon a stick. +</p> +<p> +Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,—the very happiest +and most reckless kind,—in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman, +who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was +twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological +principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon +constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family +idiosyncrasies. +</p> +<p> +Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names. +</p> +<p> +Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with +grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the +first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then—how <i>am</i> I +accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear +old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?" +</p> +<p> +But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was +disapproval. +</p> +<p> +"It was bad enough," they said,—these orderers of household +administration,—"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and +no laundress!" +</p> +<p> +"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes +slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time +from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the +child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes +and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too +thin!" +</p> +<p> +"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend, +calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid +nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week, +an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not +even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a +laundress!" +</p> +<p> +"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But +the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin' +round?" +</p> +<p> +"Ad<i>ver</i>tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after +yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the +other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with +ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an' +send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer +<i>consider</i>. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an +ad<i>ver</i>tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and +prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'. +I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a +change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little +sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies. +Yer'll see 'em come in,—betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the +cars arrives,—hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives +which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate; +an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells +'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit +yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer +toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter. +Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!" +</p> +<p> +Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and +small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to +be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, +as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and +forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was +a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to +be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual +preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond +hours, and general defiance,—takes sides in the kitchen against the +family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and +particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty +of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their +breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, +left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling +down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the +washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, +picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an +umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him +summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a +syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped +head. +</p> +<p> +It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish +recollection,—what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the +kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of +it. +</p> +<p> +"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in +the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick, +carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful +condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead +with arnica water. +</p> +<p> +"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the +consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated +'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied." +</p> +<p> +"You <i>what</i>?" +</p> +<p> +"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too +big. And little sparrows don't fly—down-stairs. They hop round, and +pick up crumbs." +</p> +<p> +"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in +the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness. +</p> +<p> +"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either. +The trouble is, you haven't <i>quite</i> turned into a little bird, yet. +You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to +fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow." +</p> +<p> +"I <i>ta'h</i> wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!" +</p> +<p> +"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave, +funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's +got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined +to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible—I mean +impossible—place in the house." +</p> +<p> +"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see +here! Little birds that live in houses <i>never</i> fly. And they never +pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own +little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they +can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows, +and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds; +mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless +she takes you." +</p> +<p> +"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside +her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?" +</p> +<p> +Asenath looked up at her husband. +</p> +<p> +"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It +has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,—God's +sparrows." +</p> +<p> +"In cages?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There! +That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little +birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back." +</p> +<p> +She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all, +that was just waking. +</p> +<p> +Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite +contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and +lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the +nursery carpet. +</p> +<p> +"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't +have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help +themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone." +</p> +<p> +Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she +was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being +always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the +same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of +speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not +keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of +apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she +sharpened their little wits continually against her own without +straining them. +</p> +<p> +And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of +graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever. +Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery +talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up +dinner-tables and drawing-rooms. +</p> +<p> +"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables +and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there +is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort +by it in the end,—Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special +taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one +thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in +our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as +well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she +would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for +the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe +more in growing up than in coming out." +</p> +<p> +If there was a reflex action in the mental influence, how much more +in the tender and spiritual! How many a word came back into her own +heart like a dove, that she first thought of in giving it to her +child! +</p> +<p> +She sat now in her chamber bathing and dressing baby Karen; and all +the perplexities of the day,—the days or weeks, perhaps,—that had +stretched out before her, melted into a sweetness, remembering that +she herself was but one of God's sparrows, fed out of his hand; and +that all her limitations, as well as her unsuspected safeties, were +the fine wires with which He surrounded and held her in. +</p> +<p> +"He knows my cage," she thought. "He has put me here Himself, and He +will not forget me." +</p> +<p> +Frank dined down town; Asenath had her lunch of bread and butter, +and beef tea; and an egg beaten in a tumbler, with sugar and cream, +for her dessert. The children, with their biscuit and milk and baked +apple, were easily cared for. They played "sparrow" all day; Asenath +put their little bowls and spoons on the low nursery table, and left +them to "help themselves." +</p> +<p> +Honest, rough Mrs. M'Cormick fetched and carried for her, and +"cleaned up" down-stairs. Then Asenath wrote a few lines to Desire +Ledwith, told her strait, and asked if she could take a little +trouble for her, and send her some one. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. M'Cormick went round to Greenley Street, and delivered the +note. +</p> +<p> +"There!" said Desire, when she had read it, to Bel Bree who was in +the room. "The Providence mail is in, early; and this is for you." +</p> +<p> +When Bel had seen what it was, she realized suddenly that Providence +had taken her at her word. She was in for it now; here was this +thing for her to do. Her breath shortened with the thought of it, as +with a sudden plunge into water. Who could tell how it would turn +out? She had been so brave in counseling and urging others; what if +she should make a mistake of it, herself? +</p> +<p> +"She hasn't anybody; she would take Kate, maybe Kate must just go. +It won't be half a chance to try it, if I can't try it my way." +</p> +<p> +"It is a clear stage," said Desire Ledwith. "If you can act out your +little programme anywhere, you can act it at the Schermans'." +</p> +<p> +"Is it a cellar kitchen?" +</p> +<p> +Bel laughed as soon as she had asked the question. She caught +herself turning catechetical at once, after the servant-girl +fashion. +</p> +<p> +"I was thinking about Kate. But I don't wonder they inquire about +things. It's a question of home." +</p> +<p> +"Of course it is. There ought to be questions,—on both parts. Every +fair person knows <i>that</i> is fair. Neither side ought to assume the +pure bestowal of a favor. But the one who has the home already may +be supposed to consider at least as carefully whom she will take in, +as she who comes to offer service as an equivalent. I believe it is +a cellar kitchen; at least, a basement. The house is on the lower +side; there must be good windows." +</p> +<p> +"I'll go right round for Kate, and we'll just call and see. I don't +know in the least how to begin about it when I get there. I could do +the <i>thing</i>, if I can make out the first understanding. I hope Kate +won't be very Kate-y!" +</p> +<p> +She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her. +</p> +<p> +"You needn't be afraid. I'm bound to astonish somebody. Impertinence +wouldn't do that. I shall strike out a new line. I'm the cook,—or +the chambermaid,—which is it? that they haven't had any of before. +I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table. You +might discriminate, Bel! I know I've got a kind of a pert, +snappy-sounding name,—just like the outside of me; but if you stop +to look at it, it isn't <i>Saucebox</i>, but <i>Sensebox</i>! They're related, +sometimes, and they ain't bad together; but yet, apart, they're +different." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0027"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVII. +</h2> +<h3> + BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM. +</h3> +<p> +Mrs. Frank Scherman's front door-bell rang. Of course she had to go +down and open it herself. When she did so, she let in two girls +whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met +hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or +errand. +</p> +<p> +She did not know them; they might be anybody's daughters, yet they +hardly looked like <i>technical</i> "young ladies." +</p> +<p> +They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she +had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,— +</p> +<p> +"We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman. Miss Ledwith +told us." +</p> +<p> +How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman? There was +something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that +amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so +far. +</p> +<p> +"Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,—or for either of +you?" she asked, as she led the way up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +"I must bring you up where the children are," she said. "I cannot +leave them." +</p> +<p> +They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the +parlor. The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs. +Scherman's own. There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a +red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor. Baby +Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed. +</p> +<p> +"You see, this is the family,—except Mr. Scherman. I want two good, +experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in +the nursery. I say two for general work, because I want some things +equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion. Do +you want places for yourselves?" +</p> +<p> +She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility. +These girls did not look much like it. There was no half-suspicious, +half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet. It was time for +it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all +precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves. Why +didn't they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their +muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and +lips that moved as little as possible,—"What wages, mum?" or +"What's the conveniences—or the privileges—mum?" +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree had got her arm round little Sinsie, who had crept up to +her side inquisitively; and Kate was making a funny face over her +shoulder at Marmaduke, alternately with the pleased attentive glance +she gave to his pretty young mother and her speaking. +</p> +<p> +"Yes'm," Bel answered. "We want places. We are sewing-girls. We have +lost our work by the fire, and we were getting tired of it before. +We have made up our minds to try families. We want a real place to +live, you see. And we want to go together, so as to make our own +place. We mightn't like things just as they happened, where there +was others." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman's own face lighted up afresh. This was something that +did not happen every day. She grew cordial with a pleased surprise. +"Do you think you could? Do you know about housework, about +cooking?" +</p> +<p> +"It's very good of you to put it in that way," said Kate Sencerbox. +"We just do know <i>about</i> it, and perhaps that's all, at present. But +we're Yankees, and we <i>mean</i> to know." +</p> +<p> +"And you would like to experiment with me?" +</p> +<p> +"Well, it wouldn't be altogether experiment, from the very +beginning," said Bel. "I'm sure I can make good bread, and tea, and +toast, and broil chickens or steaks; I can stew up sauces, I can do +oysters. I can make a <i>splendid</i> huckleberry pudding! We had one +every Sunday all last August." +</p> +<p> +"Where?" asked Asenath, gravely. +</p> +<p> +"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire," +said Bel, simply. +</p> +<p> +Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle +quieted in her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently. +"This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen: +and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is +very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I +have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you +thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would +have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And +the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little +children!" +</p> +<p> +Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting +beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was +frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that +there might be doubts as to her service suiting them. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox. +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman +has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully, +and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had +any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before +Thursday morning." +</p> +<p> +"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate. +</p> +<p> +"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to +be rather awful. But after that, we <i>do</i> expect to live. We couldn't +hold our breaths till Thursday." +</p> +<p> +"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere," +said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not +meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't +straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, +doesn't she?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I +can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, +I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now." +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still +minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little +bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite +end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside +down again. Which <i>was</i> upside down, or right side up? +</p> +<p> +She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings. +</p> +<p> +Kate spoke out at last. +</p> +<p> +"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said. +</p> +<p> +"What do you mean?" +</p> +<p> +"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to +the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already +experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that +official altogether. +</p> +<p> +"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It +came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as +usual, with the grasping of demand. +</p> +<p> +"Four dollars to the cook. Which <i>is</i> the cook?" +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the +glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be +me. Kate can make molasses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for +much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I +feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan." +</p> +<p> +With that covert suggestion and encouragement, she stopped, leaving +the lead to Kate again. +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox was as earnest as a judge. +</p> +<p> +"How much to the others?" said she. +</p> +<p> +"Three dollars each." +</p> +<p> +"That's ten dollars a week. Now, if you only had Bel and me, and +paid us three or three and a half a piece, couldn't you put +out—say, five dollars' worth of fine washing? Wouldn't the nurse's +board and wages come to that? And I'd engage to help with the baby +as much as you say you get helped now." +</p> +<p> +"But you would want some time to yourself?" +</p> +<p> +"Babies can't be awake all the time. I guess I should get it. I've +never had anything but evenings, so far. The thing is, Mrs. +Scherman, if I can try this anywhere, I can try it here. I don't +suppose people have got things fixed just as they would have been if +there'd always been a home all over the house. If we go to live with +anybody, we mean to make it living <i>in</i>, not living <i>out</i>. And we +shall find out ways as we go along,—all round. If you're willing, +we are. It's Bel's idea, not mine; though she's let me take it to +myself, and do the talking. I suppose because she thought I should +be the hardest of the two to be suited. And so I am. I didn't +believe in it at first. But I begin to see into it; and I've got +interested. I'd like to work it out on this line, now. Then I shall +know." +</p> +<p> +There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be. +Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a +half a week each. +</p> +<p> +"It's a kind of a kitchen gospel," said Bel Bree, as they walked up +Summit Street. "And it's got to come from the <i>girls</i>. What can the +poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full +of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and +clearing out? They can't say their souls are their own. They can't +plan their work, or say how many they'll have to do it. The more +they have, the more they'll have to have. It ain't Mr. and Mrs. +Scherman, and those two little children,—or two and a half,—that +makes all the to-do. Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and +the Mondays heavier. Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than +up, with a nurse for every baby! Think of the tracking and +travelling, the wear and tear. Every one makes work for one, and +dirt for two. It's taking in a regiment down below, and laying the +trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs! And the +ladies don't see through it. They just keep getting another parlor +girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things +don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about +fractions,—where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you +can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look +at it." +</p> +<p> +"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?" +</p> +<p> +"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves +while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the +truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever +the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all +right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight. +It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we +had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it +according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free, +and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal +property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I +sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing +it." +</p> +<p> +An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather +bags. +</p> +<p> +Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let +them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie +hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a +surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed, +the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted. +Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and +her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their +suppers. +</p> +<p> +The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a +bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compass in her head. +</p> +<p> +"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them. +And it's real nice their opening out on a level." +</p> +<p> +Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front basement for +a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A +short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran +up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen +and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and +the additional space to where the first window opened in the western +wall. +</p> +<p> +In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over +them, and formed a sideboard. Opposite, beside the fire-place, were +sink and boiler; between the windows, a white-topped table. There +were four dark painted wooden chairs. A clock over the table, and a +rolling-towel beside the sink; green Holland window-shades; these +were the only adornments and drapery. There was a closet at each end +of the room. +</p> +<p> +"Will you go up to your room now, or wait till after tea?" asked +Mrs. Scherman. +</p> +<p> +"We might take up our things, now," said Bel, looking round at the +four chairs. "They would be in the way here, perhaps." +</p> +<p> +Kate took up her bag from the table. +</p> +<p> +"We can find the room," she said, "if you will direct us." +</p> +<p> +"Up three flights; two from the dining-room; the back chamber. You +can stop at my room as you come down, and we will think about tea. +Mr. Scherman will soon be home; and I should like to surprise him +with something very comfortable." +</p> +<p> +The girls found their way up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +The room, when they reached it, looked pleasant, though bare. The +sun had gone below the horizon, beyond the river which they could +not see; but the western light still shone in across the roofs. +There were window-seats in the two windows, uncushioned. A square of +clean, but faded carpet was laid down before the bed and reached to +the table,—simple maple-stained pine, uncovered,—that stood +beneath a looking-glass in a maple frame, between the windows. There +were three maple-stained chairs in the room. A door into a good, +deep closet stood open; there was a low grate in the chimney, unused +of course, with no fire-irons about it, and some scraps of refuse +thrown into it and left there; this was the only actual untidiness +about the room, where there was not the first touch of cosiness or +comfort. The only depth of color was in a heavy woven dark-blue and +white counterpane upon the bed. +</p> +<p> +"Now, Kate Sencerbox, shut up!" said Bel Bree, turning round upon +her, after the first comprehensive glance, as Kate came in last, and +closed the door. +</p> +<p> +Kate put her muff down on the bed, folded her hands meekly, and +looked at Bel with a mischievous air that said plainly enough "Ain't +I?" and which she would not falsify by speech. +</p> +<p> +"Yes, I know you are; but—<i>stay</i> shut up! All this isn't as it is a +going to be,—though it's <i>not</i> bad even now!" +</p> +<p> +Kate resolutely stayed shut up. +</p> +<p> +"You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I +dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the +old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of +breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's +faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay +raveled long. And I've got things. Just wait till my trunk comes. My +ottoman, I mean. That's what it turns into. Have you got a stuffed +cover to your trunk, Katie?" +</p> +<p> +Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence. +</p> +<p> +"Of course you can, when you're asked a question. You've had time +now for second thoughts. I wasn't going to let you fly right out +with discouragements." +</p> +<p> +"It is you that flies out with taking for granteds," said Kate +Sencerbox, in a subdued monotone of quietness. "I was only going to +remark that we had got neither cellar windows, nor attic skylights +after all. I'm favorably surprised with the accommodations. I've +paid four dollars a week for a great deal worse. And I wouldn't cast +reflections by arguing objections that haven't been made, if I were +the leader of this enterprise, Miss Bree." +</p> +<p> +"Kate! That's what I call real double lock-stitch pluck! That goes +back of everything. You needn't shut up any more. Now let's come +down and see about supper." +</p> +<p> +They had pinned on linen aprons, with three-cornered bibs; such as +they wore at their machines. When they came down into Mrs. +Scherman's room, that young matron said within herself,—"I wonder +if it's real or if we're in a charade! At any rate, we'll have a +real tea in the play. They do sometimes." +</p> +<p> +"What is the nicest, and quickest, and easiest thing to get, I +wonder?" she asked of her waiting ministers. "Don't say toast. We're +so tired of toast!" +</p> +<p> +"Do you like muffins and stewed oysters?" asked Bel Bree, drawing +upon her best experience. +</p> +<p> +"Very much," Mrs. Scherman answered. +</p> +<p> +And Kate, looking sharply on, delighted herself with the guarded +astonishment that widened the lady's beautiful eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Only we have neither muffins nor oysters in the house; and the +grocery and the fish-market are down round the corner, in Selchar +Street." +</p> +<p> +"I could go for them right off. What time do you have tea?" +</p> +<p> +Really, Asenath Scherman had never acted in a charade where her cues +were so unexpected. +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if I'm getting mixed up again," she thought. "Which <i>is</i> +the cook?" +</p> +<p> +Of course a cook never would have offered to go out and order +muffins and oysters. Mrs. Scherman could not have <i>asked</i> it of the +parlor-maid. +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox relieved her. +</p> +<p> +"I'll go, Bel," she interposed. "I guess it's my place. That is, if +you like, Mrs. Scherman." +</p> +<p> +"I like it exceedingly," said Asenath, congratulating herself upon +the happy inspiration of her answer, which was not surprise nor +thanks, but cordial and pleased enough for either. "The shops are +next each other, just beyond Filbert Street. Have the things charged +to Mrs. Francis Scherman. A quart of oysters,—and how many muffins? +A dozen I think; then if there are two or three left, they'll be +nice for breakfast. They will send them up. Say that we want them +directly." +</p> +<p> +"I can bring the muffins. I suppose they'll want the oyster-can +back." +</p> +<p> +It may be a little doubtful whether Kate's spirit of supererogatory +doing would have gone so far, if it had not been for the +deliciousness of piling up the wonder. She retreated, upon the word, +magnanimously, remitting further reply; and Bel directly after +descended to her kitchen, to make the needful investigations among +saucepans and toasters. +</p> +<p> +"Don't be frightened at anything you may find," Mrs. Scherman said +to her as she went. "I won't answer for the insides of cupboards and +pans. But we will make it all right as fast as possible. You shall +have help if you need it; and at the worst, we can throw away and +get new, you know. Suppose, Bel," she added, with enchanting +confidence and accustomedness, "we were to have a cup of coffee with +the oysters? There is some real Mocha in the japanned canister in +the china closet, and there are eggs in the pantry, to clear with; +you know how? Mr. Scherman is so fond of coffee." +</p> +<p> +Bel knew how; and Bel assented. As the door closed after her, below +stairs, Mrs. Scherman caught up Sinsie into her lap, and gave her a +great congratulatory hug. +</p> +<p> +"Do you suppose it will last, little womanie? If it isn't all gone +in the morning, what comfort we'll have in keeping house and taking +care of baby!" +</p> +<p> +The daughter is so soon the "little womanie" to the mother's loving +anticipation! +</p> +<p> +Marmaduke was lustily struggling with and shouting to a tin horse +six inches long, and tipping up a cart filled with small pebbles on +the carpet. He was outside already; the housekeeping was nothing to +him, except as it had to do with the getting in of coals. +</p> +<p> +When Mr. Scherman opened the front door, the delicious aroma of +oysters and coffee saluted his chilled and hungry senses. He +wondered if there were unexpected company, and what Asenath could +have done about it. He passed the parlor door cautiously, but there +was no sound of voices. Up-stairs, all was still; the children were +in crib and cradle, and Asenath was shaking and folding little +garments,—shapes out of which the busy spirits had slidden. +</p> +<p> +He came up behind her, where she stood before the fire. +</p> +<p> +"All well, little mother?" he questioned. "Or tired to death? There +are festive odors in the house. Has anybody repented and come back +again?" +</p> +<p> +"Not a bit of it!" Sin exclaimed triumphantly, turning round and +facing him, all rosy with the loving romp she had been having just a +little while before with her babies. "Frank! I've got a pair of +Abraham's angels down-stairs! Or Mrs. Abraham's,—if she ever had +any. I don't remember that they used to send them to women much, now +I think of it, after Eve demeaned herself to entertain the old +serpent. Ah! the <i>babies</i> came instead; that was it! Well; there is +a couple in the kitchen now, at any rate; and they're toasting and +stewing in the most E—<i>lys</i>ian manner! That's what you smell." +</p> +<p> +"Angels? Babies? What terrible ambiguity! What, or who, is stewing, +if you please, dear?" +</p> +<p> +"Muffins. No! oysters. There! you sha'n't know anything about it +till you go down to tea. But the millennium's come, and it's begun +in our house." +</p> +<p> +"I knew that, six years ago," said Frank Scherman. "There are +exactly nine hundred and ninety-four left of it. I can wait till +tea-time with the patience of the saints." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0028"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXVIII. +</h2> +<h3> + "LIVING IN." +</h3> +<p> +Desire Ledwith went over to Leicester Place with Bel Bree, when she +returned there for the first needful sorting and packing and +removing. Bel could not go alone, to risk any meeting; to put +herself, voluntarily and unprotected in the way again. Miss Ledwith +took a carriage and called for her. In that manner they could bring +away nearly all. What remained could be sent for. +</p> +<p> +Miss Smalley possessed some movables of her own, though the +furnishings in her room had been mostly Mrs. Pimminy's. There were +some things of her aunt's that Bel would like, and which she had +asked leave to bring to Mrs. Scherman's. +</p> +<p> +The light, round table, with its old fashioned slender legs and claw +feet, its red cloth, and the books and little ornaments, Bel wanted +in her sleeping-room. "Because they were Aunt Blin's," she said, +"and nothing else would seem so pleasant. She should like to take +them with her wherever she went." +</p> +<p> +The two trunks—hers and Katy's—(Bel had Aunt Blin's great +flat-topped one now, with its cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and +Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth +that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,—in +the recesses. A red and white patchwork quilt, done in stars, Bel's +own work before she ever came to Boston, lay folded across the foot +of the bed, in patriotic contrast with the blue,—reversing the +colors in stars and stripes. Bel had found in the attic a discarded +stairway drugget, scarlet and black, of which, the centre was worn +to threads, but the bright border still remained; and this she had +asked for and sewed around the square of neutral tinted carpet, upon +whose middle the round table stood, covering its dullness with red +again, the color of the cloth. There was plenty of bordering left, +of which she pieced a foot-mat for the floor before the +dressing-glass, and in the open grate now lay a little unlighted +pile of kindlings and coals, as carefully placed behind well +blackened bars and a facing of paper, as that in the parlor below. +</p> +<p> +"It looks nice," Bel said to Mrs. Scherman, "and we don't expect to +light it, unless one of us is sick, or something." +</p> +<p> +"Light it whenever you wish for it," Mrs. Scherman had replied. "I +am perfectly willing to trust your reasonableness for that." +</p> +<p> +So on Sunday afternoons, or of a bitter cold morning, they had their +own little blaze to sit or dress by; and it made the difference of a +continual feeling of cheeriness and comfort to them, always possible +when not immediately actual; and of a bushel or two of coal, +perhaps, in the winter's supply of fuel. +</p> +<p> +"Where were the babies of a Sunday afternoon,—and how about the +offered tending?" +</p> +<p> +This was one more place for them also; a treat and a change to +Sinsie and Marmaduke, or a perfectly safe and sweet and comfortable +resource in tending Baby Karen, who would lie content on the soft +quilts by the half hour, feeling in the blind, ignorant way that +little babies certainly do, the novelty and rest. +</p> +<p> +The household, you see, was melting into one; the spirit of home +was above and below. It was home as much as wages, that these girls +had come for; and they expected to help make it. Not that they +parted with their own individual lives and interests, either; every +one must have things that are separate; it is the way human souls +and lives are made. It would have been so with daughters, or +sisters. But in a true living, it is the individual interests that +at once aggregate and specialize, it is a putting into the common +stock that which must be distinct and real that it may be put in at +all. It was not money and goods alone, that the early Christians had +in common. +</p> +<p> +Instead of a part of their house being foreign and +distasteful,—tolerated through necessity only, that the rest might +be ministered to,—there was a region in it, now, of new, extended +family pleasure. "It was as good as building out a conservatory, or +a billiard-room," Asenath said. "It was just so much more to enjoy." +</p> +<p> +There was a little old rocking-chair, railed round till it was +almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit +into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned +patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short, +giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot +an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged, +impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in +the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it as a sewing chair, was +to tip conveniently, as she might wish to bend and reach, to pick up +scissors or spool, or draw to herself any of those surroundings of +part, pattern, or material, which are sure, at the moment one wants +them to be on the opposite side of the table. +</p> +<p> +Bel brought this away from Leicester Place, and had it in the +kitchen. Mrs. Scherman, then seeing that there remained for Kate +only the choice of the four wooden chairs, and pleased with the cosy +expression they were causing to pervade their precincts, suggested +their making space for a short, broad lounge that she would spare to +them from an upper room which was hardly ever used. It was an old +one that she had had sent from home among some other things that +were reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year +after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and +resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a +comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to +learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of +its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but +had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded +over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick +fringe fell below, a garnishing along the front. +</p> +<p> +"Let it be," said Asenath. "I don't think you'll set the soup-kettle +or the roasting-pan down on it; and you can always shake it out +fresh and make it comfortable. It was only getting full of dust +up-stairs. There's a square pillow in the trunk-room that you can +have too, and cover with something. A five minutes' level rest is +nice, between times, I know. I wonder I never thought of it before." +</p> +<p> +How would Bel or Kate have ever got a "five minutes' level rest," +over their machine-driving at Fillmer & Bylles? Bel had said well, +that girls and women need to work under cover; in a <i>home</i>, where +they can "rest by snatches." A mere roof is not a cover; there may +be driving afield in a great warehouse, as well as out upon a +plantation. +</p> +<p> +The last touch and achievement was more of the dun-gray carpet, +like that in their bedroom, and more of the scarlet and black +stair-border, made into a rug, which was spread down when work was +over, and rolled up under the table when dinner was to dish, or a +wash was going on. They had been with Mrs. Scherman a month before +they ventured upon that asking. +</p> +<p> +When it was finished, Sin brought her husband down after tea one +night, to look at it. +</p> +<p> +"It is the most fascinating room in the house," she said. +</p> +<p> +There was a side gas-light over the white-topped table, burning +brightly. Upon the table were work-baskets, and a volume from the +Public Library. The lounge was just turned out from the wall a +little, towards it, and opposite stood the round rocking-chair. +Cheeps, in his cage at the farther window, was asleep in a yellow +ball, his head under his wing. Bel was hanging the last dish-towel +upon a little folding-horse in the chimney corner, and they could +hear Kate singing up-stairs to a gentle clatter of the dishes that +she was putting away from the dining-room use. +</p> +<p> +"It looks as a kitchen ought to," said Mr. Scherman. "As my +grandmother's used to look; as if all the house-comfort came from +it." +</p> +<p> +"It isn't a place to forbid children out of, is it?" asked Asenath. +</p> +<p> +"I should think the only condition would be their own best +behavior," returned her husband. +</p> +<p> +"They're almost always good down here," said Bel. "Children like to +be where things are doing. They always feel put away, out of the +good times, I think, in a nursery." +</p> +<p> +"My housekeeping is all turning round on a new pivot," said Sin to +Frank, after they were seated again up-stairs. "Don't take up the +'Skelligs' yet; I want to tell you. If I thought the pivot would +really <i>stay</i>, there are two or three more things I should do. And +one of them is,—I'd have the nursery—a day-nursery—down-stairs; +that is, if I could coax you into it." +</p> +<p> +"It seems the new pivot is two very large 'ifs,'" said Frank, +laughing. "And not much space to turn in, either. Would you take the +cellar, or build out? And if so, where?" +</p> +<p> +"I'd take the dining-room, Frank; and eat in the back parlor." +</p> +<p> +"I wish you would. I don't like dining-rooms. I was brought up to a +back parlor." +</p> +<p> +"You do? You don't? You were? Why, Frank, I thought you'd hate it," +cried Asenath, pouring forth her exclamations all in a heap, and +coming round to lean upon his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you before! +Just think of those south dining-room windows that they'll have the +good of all the forenoon, and that all we do with is to shade them +down at dinner-time! And the horse-chestnut tree, and the +grape-vines, making it green and pleasant, by and by! And the saving +of going over the stairs, and the times one of the girls might help +me when I <i>couldn't</i> ring her away up to my room; and the tending of +table, with baby only to be looked after in here. Why, I should sit +here, myself, mornings, always; and everything would be all together +and the up-stairs work,—it would be better than two nurse-girls to +have it so!" +</p> +<p> +"Then why not have it so right off? The more you turn on your pivot, +the smoother it gets, you know. And the more nicely you balance and +concentrate, the longer your machine will last." +</p> +<p> +Asenath lay awake late, and woke early, that night and the next +morning, "planning." +</p> +<p> +When Frank saw a certain wide, intent, shining, "don't-speak-to-me" +look in her eyes, he always knew that she was "planning." And he had +found that out of her plans almost always resulted some charming +novelty, at least, that gave one the feeling of beginning life over +again; if it were only the putting of his bureau on the other side +of the room, so that he started the wrong way for a few days, +whenever he wanted to get a clean collar; or the setting the +bedstead with side instead of head to the wall; issuing in +delightful bewilderments of mind, when wakened suddenly and asked to +find a match or turn up the dressing-room gas in the night, to meet +some emergency of the baby's. +</p> +<p> +This time the development was a very busy Friday forenoon; in which +the silver rubbing was omitted, and the dinner preparations put +off,—the man who came for "chores" detained for heavy lifting,—the +large dining-table turned up on edge and rolled into the back +parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa, +which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,—nine +square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up +by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy's, and tacked carefully down by seam +and stripe, under Asenath's personal direction; cradle, +rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from +the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,—the children +themselves following back and forth untiringly with their +one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the +rods of the balusters,—some little shabby treasure always hugged +in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to +their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also; +until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber, +reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and +bleak with the little life gone out of it. +</p> +<p> +But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below, +where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were +chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the +western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new +moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep. +</p> +<p> +With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could +be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and +on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of +this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it, +and said to herself when all was done,— +</p> +<p> +"How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all! +It <i>isn't</i> nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the +whole day's muss!" +</p> +<p> +The final thing was done the next morning. The carpenter came and +put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would +now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back +stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to +the parlor dining-room. China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in +that angle, also. +</p> +<p> +A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls. The +sparrows were caged again. +</p> +<p> +"What would you have done if they hadn't been?" asked Hazel +Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening +to be just as they were. She had come over one morning with Miss +Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangements. +</p> +<p> +"What should we have done if anything hadn't been?" asked Asenath, +in return. "Everything always has been, somehow, in my life. I don't +believe we have anything to do with the 'ifs' way back, do you, Miss +Hapsie? We couldn't stop short of the 'if' out of which we came into +the world,—or the world came out of darkness! I think that's the +very beauty of living." +</p> +<p> +"The very everlasting livingness," said Miss Hapsie. "We don't want +to see the strings by which the earths and moons are hung up; nor, +any more, the threads that hold our little daily possibilities." +</p> +<p> +Asenath had other visitors, sometimes, with whom it was not so easy +to strike the key-note of things. +</p> +<p> +Glossy Megilp and her mother had come home from Europe. They and the +Ledwiths were in apartments in one of the great "Babulous" hotels, +as Sin called them, with a mingling of idea and etymology. +</p> +<p> +"Good places enough," she said, "for the prologue and the epilogue +of life; but not for the blessed meanwhile; for the acting of all +the dear heart and home parts." +</p> +<p> +The two families had managed very well by taking two small "suites" +and making a common parlor; thus bestowing themselves in one room +less than they could possibly have done apart. They were very +comfortable and content, made economical breakfasts and teas +together, dined at the café, and had long forenoons in which to run +about and look in upon their friends. +</p> +<p> +Glossy had always "cultivated" Asenath Scherman for though that +young dame lived at present a very retired and domestic life, Miss +Megilp was quite aware that she <i>might</i> come out, and in precisely +the right place, at any minute she chose; and meanwhile it was +exceedingly suitable to know her well in this same intimate +privilege of domesticity. +</p> +<p> +Glossy Megilp was very polite; but she did not believe in the new +order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed +it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath <i>just now</i>; +but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In +short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims. +Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away +back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue +against and clear away prospective ones. +</p> +<p> +"Bad things have lasted long enough," she said; "I don't see why the +good ones should not, when once they have begun." +</p> +<p> +"They won't begin; one swallow never makes a summer. This has +happened to you, but it is absolutely exceptional; it will never be +pandemic," said Mrs. Megilp, who was fond of picking up little +knowing terms of speech, and delivering herself of them at her +earliest subsequent convenience. +</p> +<p> +"'Never' is the only really imposing word in the language," said +Asenath, innocently. "I don't believe either you or I quite +understand it. But I fancy everything begins with exceptions, and +happens in spots,—from the settling of a continent to the doing up +of back-hair in new fashions. I shouldn't wonder if it were an +excellent way to take life, to make it as exceptional as you can, in +all unexceptionable directions. To help to thicken up the good +spots till the world gets confluent with them. I suppose that is +what is meant by making one's mark in it, don't you?" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Megilp headed about, as if in the turn the talk had taken she +suddenly found no thoroughfare; and asked Asenath if she had been to +hear Rubinstein. +</p> +<p> +Of course it was not in talk only, that—up-stairs or +down-stairs—the exceptional household found its difficulties. It +was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating +"living happy ever after." +</p> +<p> +There were days now and then when the baby fretted, or lost her nap, +and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time; when the door-bell +rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice. Stormy +Mondays happened when clothes would not dry, entailing Tuesdays and +Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service +elsewhere. +</p> +<p> +If Asenath Scherman's real life had been anywhere but in her home +and with her children,—if it had consisted in being dressed in +train-skirt and panier, lace sleeves and bracelets, with hair in a +result of hour-long elaboration, at twelve o'clock; or of being out +making calls in high street toilet from that time until two; or if +her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening +parties; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing +friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to +reduce and evade, that the real purpose and desire might sweep on +unimpeded,—she would soon have given up her experiment in despair. +</p> +<p> +Or if, on the other part, there had been a household below, +struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to +meet, that it might get to its own separate interests and +"privileges,"—if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in +idea and perception, only watchful that no "hand's turn" should be +required of it beyond those set down in the bond,—resenting every +occurrence, however unavoidable, which changed or modified the day's +ordering,—there would speedily have come the old story of worry, +discontent, unreliance, disruption. +</p> +<p> +But Asenath's heart was with her little ones; she went back into her +own childhood with and for them, bringing out of it and living over +again all its bright, blessed little ways. +</p> +<p> +"She would be grown up again," she said, "by and by, when they +were." +</p> +<p> +She was keeping herself winsomely gay and fresh against the +time,—laying up treasure in the kingdom of all sweet harmonies +and divine intents, that need not be banished beyond the +grave,—although of that she never thought. It would come by +and by, for her reward. +</p> +<p> +She played with Sinsie in her baby-house; she did over again, with +her, in little, the things she was doing on not so very much larger +scale, for actual every day. She invented plays for Marmaduke which +kept the little man in him busy and satisfied. She collected, +eagerly, all treasures of small song and story and picture, to help +build the world of imagination into which all child-life must open +out. +</p> +<p> +As for Baby Karen, she was, for the most part, only manifest as one +of those little embodiments that are but given and grown out of such +loyal and happy motherhood. She was a real baby,—not a little +interloping animal. She was never nursed or tended in a hurry. +Babies blossom, as plants do, under the tender touch. +</p> +<p> +Kate Sencerbox, or Bel Bree, was glad to come into this nest-warm +pleasantness, when the mother must leave it for a while. It was not +an irksomeness flung by, like a tangled skein, for somebody else to +tug at and unravel; it was a joy in running order. +</p> +<p> +When the hard Monday came, or the baby had her little tribulations, +or it took a good tithe of the time to run and tell callers that +Mrs. Scherman was "very much engaged"—(why can't it be the fashion +to put those messages out upon the door-knob, or to tie it up +with—a silk duster, or a knot of tape?)—Kate or Bel would look one +at another and say, as they began with saying,—"Now, shut up!" It +was an understood thing that they were not to "fly out with +discouragements." +</p> +<p> +And nobody knows how many things would straighten themselves if that +could only be made the law of the land. +</p> +<p> +On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Scherman always managed it that they +should both go to Desire Ledwith's, for the Read-and-Talk. +</p> +<p> +You may say Jerusalem is not taken yet, after all; there are plenty +of "hard places," where girls like Kate Sencerbox and Bel Bree would +not stay a week; there are hundreds of women, heads of houses, who +would not be bothered with so much superfluous intelligence,—with +refinements so nearly on a level with their own. +</p> +<p> +Granted: but it is the first steps that cost. Do you not think—do +you not <i>know</i>—that a real good, planted in the world,—in social +living,—<i>must</i> spread, from point to point where the circumstance +is ready, where it is the "next thing?" If you do not believe this, +you do not practically believe in the kingdom ever coming at all. +</p> +<p> +There is a rotation of crops in living and in communities, as well +as in the order of vegetation of secret seeds that lie in the +earth's bosom. +</p> +<p> +We shall not always be rank with noisome weeds and thistles; here +and there, the better thought is swelling toward the germination; +the cotyledons of a fairer hope are rising through the mould. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0029"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXIX. +</h2> +<h3> + WINTERGREEN. +</h3> +<p> +To tell of what has been happening with Sylvie Argenter's thread of +our story, we must go back some weeks and pages to the time just +after the great fire. +</p> +<p> +As it was with the spread of the conflagration itself, so it proved +also with the results,—of loss, and deprivation, and change. Many +seemed at first to stand safely away out on the margin, mere +lookers-on, to whom presently, with more or less direct advance, the +great red wave of ruin reached, touching, scorching, consuming. +</p> +<p> +It was a week afterward that Sylvie Argenter learned that the +Manufacturers' Insurance Company, in which her mother had, at her +persuasion, invested the little actual, tangible remnant of her +property, had found itself swallowed up in its enormous debt; must +reorganize, begin again, with fresh capital and new stockholders. +</p> +<p> +They had nothing to reinvest. The money in the Continental Bank +would just about last through the winter, paying the seven dollars a +week for Mrs. Argenter, and spending as nearly nothing for other +things as possible. Unless something came from Mr. Farron Saftleigh +before the spring, that would be the end. +</p> +<p> +Thus far they had heard nothing from these zealous friends since +they had parted from them at Sharon, except one sentimental letter +from Mrs. Farron Saftleigh to Mrs. Argenter, written from Newport in +September. +</p> +<p> +Early in December, another just such missive came this time from +Denver City. Not a word of business; a pure woman's letter, as Mrs. +Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy; +nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond +and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted, +referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand +elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and +beyond all fact and literalness, into the tender vague, the rare +empyrean. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter read it over and over, and wished plaintively that she +could go out to Denver, and be near her friend. She should like a +new place; and such appreciation and affection were not be met with +everywhere, or often in a lifetime. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie read the letter once, and had great necessity of +self-restraint not to toss it contemptuously and indignantly into +the fire. +</p> +<p> +She made up her mind to one thing, at least; that if, at the end of +the six months, nothing were heard from Mr. Saftleigh himself, she +would write to him upon her own responsibility, and demand some +intelligence as to her mother's investments in the Latterend and +Donnowhair road, the reason why a dividend was not forthcoming, and +a statement in regard to actual or probable sales of land, which he +had given them reason to expect would before that time have been +made. +</p> +<p> +One afternoon she had gone down with Desire and Hazel among the +shops; Desire and the Ripwinkleys were very busy about Christmas; +they had ever so many "notches to fill in" in their rather mixed up +and mutable memoranda. Sylvie only accompanied them as far as Winter +Street corner, where she had to buy some peach-colored double-zephyr +for her mother; then she bade them good-by, saying that two were bad +enough dragging each other about with their two shopping lists, but +that a third would extinguish fatally both time and space and taking +her little parcel in her hand, and wondering how many more such she +could ever buy, she returned home over the long hill alone. So it +happened that on reaching Greenley Street, she had quite to herself +a surprise and pleasure which she found there. +</p> +<p> +She went straight to the gray room first of all. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was asleep on the low sofa near the fire, her crochet +stripe-work fallen by her side upon the carpet, her book laid face +down with open leaves upon the cushion. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie passed softly into her own chamber, took off her outside +things, and returned with careful steps through her mother's room to +the hall, and into the library, to find a book which she wanted. +</p> +<p> +On the table, at the side which had come of late to be considered +hers, lay an express parcel directed to herself. She knew the +writing,—the capital "S" made with a quick, upward, slanting line, +and finished with a swell and curl upon itself like a portly figure +"5" with the top-pennant left off; the round sweep after final +letters,—the "t's" crossed backward from their roots, and the +stroke stopped short like a little rocket just in poise of bursting. +She knew it all by heart, though she had never received but one +scrap of it before,—the card that had been tied to the ivy-plant, +with Rodney Sherrett's name and compliments. +</p> +<p> +She had heard nothing now of Rodney for two months. She was glad to +be alone to wonder at this, to open it with fingers that trembled, +to see what he could possibly have put into it for her. +</p> +<p> +Within the brown wrapper was a square white box. Up in the corner +of its cover was a line of writing in the same hand; the letters +very small, and a delicate dash drawn under them. How neatly special +it looked! +</p> +<p> +"A message from the woods for 'Sylvia.'" +</p> +<p> +She lifted it off, as if she were lifting it from over a thought +that it concealed, a something within all, that waited for her to +see, to know. +</p> +<p> +Inside,—well, the thought was lovely! +</p> +<p> +It was a mid-winter wreath; a wreath of things that wait in the +heart of the woodland for the spring; over which the snows slowly +gather, keeping them like a secret which must not yet be told, but +which peeps green and fresh and full of life at every melting, in +soft sunny weather, such as comes by spells beforehand; that must +have been gathered by somebody who knew the hidden places and had +marked them long ago. +</p> +<p> +It was made of clusters, here and there, of the glossy daphne-like +wintergreen, and most delicate, tiny, feathery plumes of +princess-pine; of stout, brave, constant little shield-ferns and +spires of slender, fine-notched spleenwort, such as thrust +themselves up from rough rock-crevices and tell what life is, that +though the great stones are rolled against the doors of its +sepulchre, yet finds its way from the heart of things, somehow, to +the light. Mitchella vines, with thread-like, wandering stems, and +here and there a gleaming scarlet berry among small, round, +close-lying waxy leaves; breaths of silvery moss, like a frosty +vapor; these flung a grace of lightness over the closer garlanding, +and the whole lay upon a bed of exquisitely curled and laminated +soft gray lichen. +</p> +<p> +A message. Yes, it was a simple thing, an unostentatious +remembrance; no breaking, surely, of his father's conditions. Rodney +loyally kept away and manfully stuck to his business, but every +spire and frond and leaf of green in this winter wreath shed off the +secret, magnetic meaning with which it was charged. Heart-light +flowed from them, and touching the responsive sensitivity, made +photographs that pictured the whole story. It was a fuller telling +of what the star-leaved ferns had told before. +</p> +<p> +Rodney was not to "offer himself" to Sylvie Argenter till the two +years were over; he was to let her have her life and its chances; he +was to prove himself, and show that he could earn and keep a little +money; he was to lay by two thousand dollars. This was what he had +undertaken to do. His father thought he had a right to demand these +two years, even extending beyond the term of legal freedom, to +offset the half-dozen of boyish, heedless extravagance, before he +should put money into his son's hands to begin responsible work +with, or consent approvingly to his making of what might be only a +youthful attraction, a tie to bind him solemnly and unalterably for +life. +</p> +<p> +But the very stones cry out. The meaning that is repressed from +speech intensifies in all that is permitted. You may keep two +persons from being nominally "engaged," but you cannot keep two +hearts, by any mere silence, from finding each other out; and the +inward betrothal in which they trust and wait,—that is the most +beautiful time of all. The blessedness of acknowledgment, when it +comes, is the blessedness of owning and looking back together upon +what has already been. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie made a space for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in +her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green +cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a +while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling +touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its +written sentence her last remaining broidered and laced +handkerchief. The wreath would dry, she knew; it must lose its first +glossy freshness with which it had come from under the snows; but it +should dry there where Rodney put it, and not a leaf should fall out +of it and be lost. +</p> +<p> +She was happier in these subtle signs that revealed inward relation +than she would have been just now in an outspokenness that demanded +present, definite answer and acceptance of outward tie. It might +come to be: who could tell? But if she had been asked now to let it +be, there would have been her troubles to give, with her affection. +How could she burden anybody doubly? How could she fling all her +needs and anxieties into the life of one she cared for? +</p> +<p> +There was a great deal for Sylvie to do between now and any +marriage. Her worry soon came back upon her with a dim fear, as the +days passed on, touching the very secret hope and consciousness that +she was happy in. What might come to be her plain duty, now, very +shortly? Something, perhaps, that would change it all; that would +make it seem strange and unsuitable for Rodney Sherrett ever to +interpret that fair message into words. Something that would put +social distance between them. +</p> +<p> +Her mother, above all, must be cared for; and her mother's money was +so nearly gone! +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith was kind, but she must not live on anybody's +kindness. As soon as she possibly could, she must find something to +do. There must be no delay, no lingering, after the little need +there was of her here now, should cease. Every day of willing +waiting would be a day of dishonorable dependence. +</p> +<p> +It was now three months since Mrs. Froke had gone away; and letters +from her brought the good tidings of successful surgical treatment +and a rapid gaining of strength. She might soon be able to come +back. Sylvie knew that Desire could either continue to contrive work +for her a while longer, or spare her to other and more full +employment, could such be found. She watched the "Transcript" list +of "Wants," and wished there might be a "Want" made expressly for +her. +</p> +<p> +How many anxious eyes scan those columns through with a like +longing, every night! +</p> +<p> +If she could get copying to do,—if she could obtain a situation +in the State House, that paradise of well paid female scribes! +If she could even learn to set up type, and be employed in a +printing-office? If there were any chance in a library? Even work of +this sort would take her away from her mother in the daytime; she +would have to provide some attendance for her. She must furnish her +room nicely, wherever it was; that she could do from the remnants of +their household possessions stored at Dorbury; and her mother must +have a delicate little dinner every day. For breakfast and tea—she +could see to those before and after work; and her own dinners could +be anything,—anywhere. She must get a cheap rooms where some tidy +lodging woman would do what was needful; and that would take,—oh, +dear! she <i>couldn't</i> say less than six or seven dollars a week, and +where were food and clothes to come from? At any rate, she must +begin before their present resources were utterly exhausted, or what +would become of her mother's cream, and fruit, and beef-tea? +</p> +<p> +Mingled with all her troubled and often-reviewed calculations, would +intrude now and then the thought,—shouldn't she have to be willing +to wear out and grow ugly, with hard work and insufficient +nourishing? And she would have so liked to keep fresh and pretty for +the time that might have come! +</p> +<p> +In the days when these things were keeping her anxious, the winter +wreath was also slowly turning dry. +</p> +<p> +She found herself hemmed in and headed at every turn by the pitiless +hedge and ditch of circumstance, at which girls and women in our +time have to chafe and wait; and from which there seems to be no way +out. Yet there are ways out from this, as from all things. One +way—the way of thorough womanly home-helpfulness—was not clear to +her; there are many to whom it is not clear. Yet if those to whom it +is, or might be, would take it,—if those who might give it, in many +forms, <i>would give</i>,—who knows what relief and loosening would come +to others in the hard jostle and press? +</p> +<p> +There is another way out of all puzzle and perplexity and hardness; +it is the Lord's special way for each one, that we cannot foresee, +and that we never know until it comes. Then we discern that there +has never been impossibility; that all things are open before his +eyes; and that there is no temptation,—no trying of us,—to which +He will not provide some end or escape. +</p> +<p> +In the first week of January, Sylvie acted upon her resolve of +writing to Mr. Farron Saftleigh. She asked brief and direct +questions; told him that she was obliged to request an answer +without the least delay; and begged that he would render them a +clear statement of all their affairs. She reminded him that he had +<i>told</i> them that he would be responsible for their receiving a +dividend of at least four per cent, at the end of the six months. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Farron Saftleigh "told" people a great many things in his +genial, exhilarating business talks, which he was a great deal too +wise ever to put down on paper. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie waited ten days; a fortnight; three weeks; no answer came. +Mr. Farron Saftleigh had simply destroyed the letter, of no +consequence at all as coming from a person not primarily concerned +or authorized, and set off from Denver City the same day for a +business visit to San Francisco. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie saw the plain fact; that they were penniless. And this could +not be told to her mother. +</p> +<p> +She went to Desire Ledwith, and asked her what she could do. +</p> +<p> +"I would go into a household anywhere, as Dot Ingraham and Bel Bree +have done, to earn board and wages, and spend my money for my +mother; but I can't leave her. And there's no sewing work to get, +even if I could do it at night and in honest spare time. I know, as +it is, that my service isn't worth what you give me in return, and +of course I cannot stay here any longer now." +</p> +<p> +"Of course you can stay where God puts you, dear," answered Desire +Ledwith. "Let your side of it alone for a minute, and think of mine. +If you were in my place,—trying to live as one of the <i>large +household</i>, remember, and looking for your opportunities,—what +would you say,—what would you plainly hear said to you,—about +this?" +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was silent. +</p> +<p> +"Tell me truly, Sylvie. Put it into words. What would it be? What +would you hear?" +</p> +<p> +"Just what you do, I suppose," said Sylvie, slowly "But I <i>don't</i> +hear it on my side. My part doesn't seem to chord." +</p> +<p> +"Your part just pauses. There are no notes written just here, in +your score. Your part is to wait. Think, and see if it isn't. The +Dakie Thaynes are going out West again. Mr. Thayne knows about +lands, and such things. He would do something, and let you know. A +real business man would make this Saftleigh fellow afraid." +</p> +<p> +The Thaynes—Mrs. Dakie Thayne is our dear little old friend Ruth +Holabird, you know—had been visiting in Boston; staying partly +here, and partly at Mrs. Frank Scherman's. At Asenath's they were +real "comfort-friends;" Asenath had the faculty of gathering only +such about her. She felt no necessity, with them, for grand, late +dinners, or any show; there was no trouble or complication in her +household because of them. Ruth insisted upon the care of her own +room; it was like the "coöperative times" at Westover. Mrs. Scherman +said it was wonderful, when your links were with the right people, +how simple you could make your art of living, you could actually be +"quite Holabird-y," even in Boston! But this digresses. +</p> +<p> +"I shall speak to Mr. Thayne about it," said Desire. "And now, dear, +if you could just mark these towels this morning?" +</p> +<p> +Sylvie sat marking the towels, and Desire passed to and fro, +gathering things which were to go to Neighbor Street in the +afternoon. +</p> +<p> +"Do you see," she said, stopping behind Sylvie a while after, and +putting her fingers upon her hair with a caressing little +touch,—"the sun has got round from the east to the south. It shines +into this window now. And you have been keeping quiet, just doing +your own little work of the moment. The world is all alive, and +changing. Things are working—away up in the heavens—for us all. +When people don't know which way to turn, it is very often good not +to turn at all; if they are <i>driven</i>, they do know. Wait till you +are driven, or see; you will be shown, one way or the other. It is +almost always when things are all blocked up and impossible, that a +happening comes. It has to. A dead block can't last, any more than a +vacuum. If you are sure you are looking and ready, that is all you +need. God is turning the world round all the time." +</p> +<p> +Desire did not say one word about the ninety-eight dollars which lay +in one of the locked drawers of her writing desk, in precisely the +shape in which every two or three weeks she had let Sylvie put the +money into her hands. There would be a right time for that. She +would force nothing. Sylvie would come near enough, yet, for that +perfect understanding in which those bits of stamped paper would +cease to be terrible between their hands, <i>either</i> way. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0030"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXX. +</h2> +<h3> + NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY. +</h3> +<p> +Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what +would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia, +and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in +Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course +he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast +as she heard it. +</p> +<p> +"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she +said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning. +"People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets +poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent +human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I <i>can't</i> act as if they +weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to +keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!" +</p> +<p> +"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just +such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her +Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go. +</p> +<p> +Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at +her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and +telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help, +or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss +Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an +irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this +Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into +some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the +title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these +fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at +present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in +the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond +Latterend. +</p> +<p> +"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote +back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I +am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her +mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a +hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I +shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger +putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up +here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly +see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my +imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your +discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?" +</p> +<p> +The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as +this fine manœuvrer,—pulling wires whose ends laid hold of +character, not circumstance,—believed and meant. It had only added +to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper +than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another +might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a +right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would +take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss +Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of +provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She +would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence +and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a +little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented +to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there +might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to +hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until +an absolute necessity should be upon them. +</p> +<p> +She bade Rodney be patient yet a few weeks more, and to leave it to +her to write to his father. She did write: but she also put Rodney's +letter in. +</p> +<p> +"Things which <i>are</i> might as well, and more truly, be taken into +account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett. +"There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I +have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will +modify everything. This is just what the Lord has given Rodney to +do. It is not your plan, or authority, but this in his heart, which +has set him to work, and made him save his money. Why not let them +begin to live the life while it is yet alive? It wears by waiting; +it cannot help it. You must not expect a miracle of your boy; you +must take the motive while it is fresh, and let it work in God's +way. The power is there; but you must let the wheels be put in gear. +Simply, I advise you to permit the engagement, and the marriage. If +you do not, I think you will rob them of a part of their real +history which they have a right to. Marriage is a making of life +together; not a taking of it after it is made." +</p> +<p> +It was February when this letter was sent out. +</p> +<p> +One day in the middle of the month, Desire Ledwith, Hazel +Ripwinkley, and Sylvie had business with Luclarion in Neighbor +Street. There was work to carry; a little basket of things for the +fine laundry; some bakery orders to give. There was always Luclarion +herself to see. Just now, besides and especially, they were all +interested in Ray Ingraham's rooms that were preparing in the next +house to the Neighbors; a house which Mr. Geoffrey and others had +bought, enlarged, and built up; fitting it in comfortable suites for +housekeeping, at rents of from twenty-five to thirty dollars a +month, each. They were as complete and substantial in all their +appointments as apartments as the Commonwealth or the Berkeley; +there was only no magnificence, and there was no "locality" to pay +for. The locality was to be ministered to and redeemed, by the very +presence of this growth of pure and pleasant and honorable living in +its midst. For the most part, those who took up an abiding here had +enough of the generous human sense in them to account it a +satisfaction so to contribute themselves; for the rest, there was a +sprinkling of decent people, who were glad to get good homes cheap +in the heart of a dear city; and the public, Christian intent of the +movement sheltered and countenanced them with its chivalrous +respectability. +</p> +<p> +Frank Sunderline and Ray were to live here for a year; they were to +be married the first of March. Frank had said that Ray would have to +manage him and the Bakery too, and Ray was prepared to fulfill both +obligations. +</p> +<p> +She was going to carry out here, with Luclarion Grapp, her idea of +public supply for the chief staple of food. They were going to try a +manufacture of breadstuffs and cakestuffs, on real home principles, +by real domestic receipts. They were going to have sale shops in +different quarters,—at the South and West ends. Already their +laundry sustained itself by doing excellent work at moderate prices; +why should they not, in still another way meet and play into the +movement of the time for simplifying it, and making household +routine more independent? +</p> +<p> +"Why shouldn't there be," Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, "a +place to buy <i>cup</i> cake, and <i>composition</i> cake, and <i>sponge</i> cake, +tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia? Why shouldn't +there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother's, +and nice wholesome little puddings? Everybody knew that since the +war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials +and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to +buy and call cake in the city. Why shouldn't somebody begin again, +honest? And here, where they didn't count upon outrageous profits, +why couldn't it be as well as not? When there was a good thing to be +had in one place, other places would have to keep up. It would make +a difference everywhere, sooner or later." +</p> +<p> +"And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set +up anywhere!" said Hazel Ripwinkley. "Everybody eats! Just a new +thing, if it's only new trash, sells for a while; and these new, +old-fashioned, grandmother's cupboard things,—why, people would +just <i>swarm</i> after them! Cooks never knew how, and ladies +didn't have time. Don't forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger +pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth! Everything +was so good at Homesworth—the place was named out of comforts! +Why don't you call it the Homesworth Bakery? That would be +double-an-tender,—eh, Lukey!" +</p> +<p> +Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her +sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a +wedding-present. For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her +heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but +had never alluded to. +</p> +<p> +"You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you +to know that I'm contented, and there isn't a grudge in my heart. +You and Frank have both been too much to me for that. I can see how +it was, though. It was a hand's turn once. But I went my way and you +kept quietly on. It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he +wanted for a wife. It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and +when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It +fell right off from me. You can't suffer <i>all through</i> with more +than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew +I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more +than another? It was what I had let go <i>out of the world</i>, Ray, that +made the whole world a prison and a punishment. I couldn't have +taken a happiness, if it had come to me. All I wanted was work and +forgiveness." +</p> +<p> +"Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the +spirit that is in you! And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever +that is full of it! I <i>don't</i> think it is any one thing,—not even +any one marrying." +</p> +<p> +So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other +house—Luclarion's. +</p> +<p> +That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so +rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork +stitchery,—to the young girls this afternoon. +</p> +<p> +She showed the quilt with loving pride and praise, but the story of +it she kept in her heart, among her prayers. Frank Sunderline never +knew more than the fair fabric and color, and the name of the giver, +told him. Frank Sunderline scarcely knew so much as these two women +did, of the unanalyzed secrets of his own life. +</p> +<p> +Luclarion waited till all this was over, and Desire Ledwith had +come back from Ray Ingraham's rooms to hers, leaving Hazel and +Sylvie among the fascinations of new crockery and bridal tin pans, +before she said anything about a very sad and important thing she +had to tell her and consult about. She took her into her own little +sitting-room to hear the story, and then up-stairs, to see the woman +of whom the story had to be told. +</p> +<p> +"It was Mr. Tipps, the milkman, came to me yesterday with it all," +said Luclarion. "He's a good soul, Tipps; as clever as ever was. He +was just in on his early rounds, at four o'clock in the morning,—an +awful blustering, cold night, night before last was,—and he was +coming by Graves Alley, when he heard a queer kind of crazy howling +down there out of sight. He wouldn't have minded it, I suppose, for +there's always drunken noise enough about in those places, but it +was a woman's voice, and a baby's crying was mixed up with it. So he +just flung his reins down over his horse's back, and jumped off his +wagon, and ran down. It was this girl,—Mary Moxall her name is, and +Mocks-all it ought to be, sure enough, to finish up after that pure, +blessed name so many of these miserables have got christened with; +and she was holding the child by the heels, head down, swinging it +back and for'ard, as you'd let a gold ring swing on a hair in a +tumbler, to try your fortune by, waiting till it would hit and ring. +</p> +<p> +"It was all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was +muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all +crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew +and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a +tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back +with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists +and gave it a grip,—just twist enough to make the other hand come +after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was +all she could do; she was just a mad thing. She lost her balance, of +course, and went down; he put his foot on her chest, just enough to +show her he could master her; and then she went from howling to +crying. 'Finish me, and I wouldn't care!' she said; and then lay +still, all in a heap, moaning. 'I won't hurt ye,' says Tipps. 'I +never hurt a woman yet, soul nor body. What was ye goin' to do with +this 'ere little baby?' 'I was goin' to send it out of the hell it's +born into,' she said, with an awful hate in the sound of her voice. +'Goin' to <i>kill</i> it! You wouldn't ha' done that?' 'Yes, I would. I'd +'a done it, if I was hanged for it the next minute. Isn't it my +business that ever it was here?' +</p> +<p> +"'Now look here!' says Tipps. 'You're calmed down a little. If +you'll stay calm, and come with me, I'll take you to a safe place. +If you don't, I'll call a policeman, and you'll go to the lock-up. +Which'll ye have?' 'You've got me,' she said, in a kind of a sulk. +'I s'pose you'll do what you like with me. That's the way of it. +Anybody can be as bad and as miserable as they please, but they +won't be let out of it. It's hell, I tell you,—this very world. And +folks don't know they've got there.' +</p> +<p> +"Tipps says there's hopes of her from just that word bad. She +wouldn't have put that in, otherways. Well, he brought her here, and +the baby. And they're both up-stairs. She's as weak as water, now +the drink is out of her. But it wasn't all drink. The desperation is +in her eyes, though it's give way, and helpless. And what to do with +'em next, I <i>don't</i> know." +</p> +<p> +"I do," said Desire, with her eyes full. "She must be comforted up. +And then, Mr. Vireo must know, the first thing. Afterwards, he will +see." +</p> +<p> +Luclarion took Desire up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +The girl was lying, in a clean night-dress, in a clean, white bed. +Her hair, dark and beautiful, was combed and braided away from her +face, and lay back, in two long, heavy plaits, across the pillow. +Her features were sharp, but delicate, and were meant to have been +pretty. But her eyes! Out of them a suffering demon seemed to look, +with a still, hopeless rage. +</p> +<p> +Desire came up to the bedside. +</p> +<p> +"What do you want?" the girl said, slowly, with a deep, hard, +resentful scorn in her voice. "Have you come to see what it is all +like? Do you want to feel how clean you are beside me? That's a part +of it; the way they torment." +</p> +<p> +It was like the cry of the devil out of the man against the Son of +God. +</p> +<p> +"No," said Desire, just as slowly, in her turn. "I can only feel the +cleanness in you that is making you suffer against the sin. The +badness doesn't belong to you. Let it go, and begin again." +</p> +<p> +It was the word of the Lord,—"Hold thy peace, and come out of him." +Desire Ledwith spoke as she was that minute moved of the Spirit. The +touch of power went down through all the misery and badness, to the +woman's soul, that knew itself to be just clean enough for agony. +She turned her eyes, with the fiery gloom in them, away, pressing +her forehead down against the pillow. +</p> +<p> +"God sees it better than I do," said Desire, gently. +</p> +<p> +An arm flung itself out from under the bedclothes, thrusting them +off. The head rolled itself over, with the face away. +</p> +<p> +"God! Pf!" +</p> +<p> +So far from Him; and yet so close, in the awful hold of his +unrelaxing love! +</p> +<p> +Desire kept silence; she could not force upon her the thought, the +Name: the Name for whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the +holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender. +</p> +<p> +"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face +still turned away. +</p> +<p> +"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this +moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is +alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You +feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul. +If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at +all." +</p> +<p> +Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but +half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She +shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself; +from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience; +but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use +her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and +contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of +incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no +separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked +or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's +thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was +touching and stirring her own. +</p> +<p> +"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can, +Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help +in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you +will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side, +I am afraid. The <i>under</i> side; the side turned down toward"— +</p> +<p> +"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an +utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness. +</p> +<p> +But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the +reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let +go of to perish. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went +down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock. +</p> +<p> +When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left +them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went +home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some +of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to +Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely +left her, lately, so long as this. +</p> +<p> +How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt +sure they must hear,—when they had to leave Greenley Street and go +into that cheap little lodging-room, and she had to stay away from +her mother all day long? +</p> +<p> +She remembered the time when she had thought it would be nice to +have a "few things;" nice to earn her own living; to be one of the +"Other Girls." +</p> +<a name="2HCH0031"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXI. +</h2> +<h3> + CHOSEN: AND CALLED. +</h3> +<p> +Desire Ledwith found nobody at home at Mr. Vireo's. The maid-servant +said that she could not tell when they would return. Mrs. Vireo was +at her mother's, and she believed they would not come back to tea. +</p> +<p> +Desire knew that it was one of the minister's chapel nights. She +went away, up Savin Street, disappointed; wishing that she could +have sent instant help to Mary Moxall, who, she thought, could not +withstand the evangel of Hilary Vireo's presence. It is so sure that +nothing so instantly brings the heavenly power to bear upon a soul +as contact with a humanity in which it already abides and rules. She +wanted this girl to touch the hem of a garment of earthly living, +with which it had clothed itself to do a work in the world. For the +Christ still finds and puts such garments on to walk the earth; the +seamless robes of undivided consecration to Himself. +</p> +<p> +As Desire crossed to Borden Street, and went on up the hill, there +came suddenly to her mind recollection of the Sunday noon, years +since, when she had walked over that same sidewalk with Kenneth +Kincaid; when he had urged her to take up Mission work, and she had +answered him with her girlish bluffness, that "she thought he did +not approve of brokering business; it was all there, why should they +not take it for themselves? Why should she set up to go between?" +She thought how she had learned, since, the beautiful links of +endless ministry; the prismatic law of mediation,—that there is no +tint or shade of spiritual being, no angle at which any soul catches +the Divine beam, that does not join and melt into the next above and +the next below; that the farther apart in the spectrum of humanity +the red of passion and the violet of peace, the more place and need +for every subdivided ray, to help translate the whole story of the +pure, whole whiteness. +</p> +<p> +She remembered what she had said another time about "seeing blue, +and living red." She was thinking out by the type the mystery of +difference,—the broken refractions that God lets his Spirit fall +into,—when, looking up as she was about to pass some person, she +met the face of Christopher Kirkbright. +</p> +<p> +He had not been at home of late; he had been busy up at Brickfield +Farms. +</p> +<p> +For nearly four months past, Cone Hill and the Clay Pits had been +his by purchase and legal transfer. He had lost no time in making +his offer to his brother-in-law. Ten words by the Atlantic cable had +done it, and the instructions had come back by the first mail +steamer. Repairing and building had been at once begun; an odd, +rambling wing, thrown out eastward, slanting off at a wholly +unarchitectural angle from the main house, and climbing the terraced +rock where it found best space and foothold, already made the quaint +structure look more like a great two-story Chinese puzzle than ever, +and covered in space for an ample, airy, sunny work-saloon above a +range of smaller rooms calculated for individual and home occupancy. +</p> +<p> +But the details of the plan at Brickfields would make a long story +within a story; we may have further glimpses of it, on beyond; we +must not leave our friends now standing in the street. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright held out his hand to Desire, as he stopped to speak +with her. +</p> +<p> +"I am going down to Vireo's," he said. "I have come to a place in my +work where I want him." +</p> +<p> +"So have I," said Desire. "But he is not at home. I was going next +to Miss Euphrasia." +</p> +<p> +"And you and I are sent to stop each other. My sister is away, at +Milton, for two days." +</p> +<p> +Desire turned round. "Then I must go home again," she said. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired. +</p> +<p> +"Yes," returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him. "If +you could go down to Luclarion Grapp's,—the Neighbors, you +know,—and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just +been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world; +a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who +says that the world is hell, and people don't know they've got into +it. Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up +at Brickfields." +</p> +<p> +"You have been to her? What have you told her yourself, already?" +</p> +<p> +"I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the +misery of the badness. That her pain at it was God's pain for her. +That if He had done with her, she would be dead." +</p> +<p> +"Would she believe you? Did she seem to begin to believe?" +</p> +<p> +"I do not think she believes anything. She can't until the things to +believe in come to her. Mr. Vireo—or you—would make her see. I +told her I would send somebody who had more for her than I." +</p> +<p> +"You have told her the first message,—that the kingdom is at hand. +The Christ-errand must be done next. The full errand of <i>help</i>. That +was what was sent to the world, after the voice had cried in the +wilderness. It isn't Mr. Vireo or I,—but the helping hand; the +righting of condition; the giving of the new chance. We must not +leave all that to death and the angels. Miss Desire, this woman must +go to our mountain-refuge; to our sanatorium of souls. I have a good +deal to tell you about that." +</p> +<p> +They had walked on again, as they talked; they had come to the foot +of Borden Street. They must now turn two different ways. +</p> +<p> +They were standing a moment at the corner, as Mr. Kirkbright spoke. +When he said "our refuge,—our sanatorium,"—Desire blushed again as +she had blushed at Brickfields. +</p> +<p> +She was provoked at herself; why need personal pronouns come in at +all? Why, if they did, need they remind her of herself and him, +instead of merely the thoughts that they had had together, the +intent of which was high above them both? Why need she be pleased +and shy in her selfhood,—ashamed lest he should detect the thought +of pleasure in her at his sharing with her his grand purpose, +recognizing in her the echo of his inspiration? What made it so +different that Christopher Kirkbright should discover and +acknowledge such a sympathy between them, from her meeting it, as +she had long done, in Miss Euphrasia? +</p> +<p> +She would not let it be different; she would not be such a fool. +</p> +<p> +It was twilight, and her little lace veil was down. She took +courage behind it, and in her resolve,—for she knew that to be very +determined would make her pale, not red; and the next time she would +be on her guard, and very determined. +</p> +<p> +She gave him the hand he held out his own for, and bade him good +evening, with her head lifted just imperceptibly higher than was its +wont, and her face turned full toward him. Her eyes met his with an +honest calmness; she had summoned herself back. +</p> +<p> +He saw strength and earnestness; a flush of feeling; the face of a +woman made to look nobleness and enthusiasm into the soul of a man. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +She sat in the library that evening at nine o'clock. +</p> +<p> +She had drawn up her large chair to the open fire; her feet were +resting on the low fender; her eyes were watching shapes in the +coals. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Lewes's "Middlemarch" lay on her lap; she had just begun to +read it. Her hands, crossed upon each other, had fallen upon the +page; she had found something of herself in those first chapters. +Something that reminded of her old longings and hindrances; of the +shallowness and half-living that had been about her, and the chafe +of her discontent in it. +</p> +<p> +She did not wonder that Dorothea was going to marry Mr. Casaubon. +Into some dream-trap just such as that she might have fallen, had a +Mr. Casaubon come in her way. +</p> +<p> +Instead, had come pain and mistake; a keen self-searching; a +learning to bear with all her might, to work, and to wait. +</p> +<p> +She had not been waiting for any making good in God Providence of +that special happiness which had passed her by. If she had, she +would not have been doing the sort of work she had taken into her +hands. When we wait for one particular hope, and will not be +satisfied with any other, the whole force of ourselves bends toward +it; we dictate to life, and wrest its tendencies at every turn. +</p> +<p> +The thing comes. Ask,—with the real might of whatever asking there +is in you,—and it shall be given you. But when you have got it, it +may not be the thing you thought it would be. Whosoever will have +his life shall lose it. +</p> +<p> +No; Desire Ledwith had rather turned away from all special hope, +thinking it was over for her. But she came to believe that all the +good in God's long years was not over; that she had not been +hindered from one thing, save to be kept for some other that He saw +better. She was willing to wait for his better,—his best. When she +paused to look at her life objectively, she rejoiced in it as the +one thread—a thread of changing colors—in God's manifold work, +that He was letting her follow alone with Him, and showing her the +secret beauty of. Up and down, in and out, backward and forward, she +wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it +fell into combinations that she had never planned,—made surprises +for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of +mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; +but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest +sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as +the beauty of children's plays is the parable they cannot help +having in them. Patient and careful doing, after a law and +rule,—and the gradual apparition of result, foreseen by the deviser +of the law and rule; it is life measured out upon a canvas. Who +knows how,—in this spiritual Kindergarten of a world,—the +rudiments of all small human devices were set in human faculty and +aptness for its own object-teaching toward a perfect heavenly +enlightenment? +</p> +<p> +Desire was thinking to-night, how impossible it is, as the pattern +of life grows, to help seeing a little of the shapes it may be +taking; to refrain from a looking forward that becomes eager with a +hint of possible unfolding. +</p> +<p> +Once, a while ago, she had thought that she discerned a green beauty +springing out from the dull, half-filled background; tender leaves +forming about a bare and awkward shoot; but suddenly there were no +more stitches in that direction that she could set; the leaves +stopped short in half-developed curves that never were completed. +The pattern set before her—given but one bit at a time, as life +patterns are, like part etchings of a picture in which you know not +how the spaces are to be filled up and related—changed; the place, +and the tint of the thread, changed also; she had to work on in a +new part, and in a different way. She could not discover then, that +these abortive leaves were the slender claspings of a calyx, in +whose midst might sometime fit the rose-bloom of a wonderful joy. +Was she discovering it now? For browns and grays,—generous and +strong, tender and restful,—was a flush of blossom hues that she +had not looked for, coming to be woven in? Was the empty calyx +showing the first shadowy petal-shapes of a most perfect flower? +</p> +<p> +It might be the flower of a gracious friendship only a joining of +hands in work for the kingdom-building; she did not let herself go +farther than this. But it was a friendship across which there lay +no bar and somehow, while she put from herself the thought that it +might ever be so promised to her as to be hers of all the world and +to the world's exclusion,—while she resented in herself that +foolish girl's blush, and resolved that it should never come +again,—she sat here to-night thinking how grand and perfect a thing +for a woman a grand man's friendship is; how it is different from +any, the most pure and sweet, of woman-tenderness; how the crossing +of her path with such a path as Christopher Kirkbright's, if it were +only once a day, or once a week, or once a month, would be a thing +to reckon joy and courage from; to live on from, as she lived on +from her prayers. +</p> +<p> +An hour had come in her life which gathered about her realities of +heaven, whether the earthly correspondence should concur, or no. A +noble influence which had met and moved her, seemed to come and +abide about her,—a thought-presence. +</p> +<p> +And a thought-presence was precisely what it was. A thousand +circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links +and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an +impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact +subsists—and in rare moments we know it—when that which belongs to +us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the +footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned +toward us. Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the +will—the blessed purpose—is accomplished at once on earth and in +heaven. +</p> +<p> +When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine +o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, +Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular +recall,—that was less a change than a transfer of the same +perception,—from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to +suppose it,—no ordinary reason why,—but she was suddenly persuaded +that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside +her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone. +</p> +<p> +She did not even wonder for what he could have come. She did not +move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her +open book. She did not break the external conditions in which unseen +forces had been acting. If she had moved,—pushed back her +chair,—put by her book,—it would have begun to seem strange, she +would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have +embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an +unusual hour. But to have the verity come in and fill the +dream,—this was not strange. And yet Christopher Kirkbright had +scarcely been in that house ten times before. +</p> +<p> +She heard him ask if Miss Ledwith were still below; if he might see +her. She heard Frendely close the outer door, and precede him toward +the door of the library. He entered, and she lifted her eyes. +</p> +<p> +"Don't move," he said quickly. "I have been seeing you sitting like +that, all the evening. It is a reverie come true. Only I have walked +out of my end of it, and into yours. May I stay a little while?" +</p> +<p> +Her face answered him in a very natural way. There was a wonder in +her eyes, and in the smile that crept over her lips; there were +wonder and waiting in the silence which she kept, answering in her +face only, at the first, that peculiar greeting. Perhaps any woman, +who had had no dream, would have found other response as difficult. +</p> +<p> +"I am going back to Brickfields to-morrow. I am more eager than +ever to get the home finished there, for those who are waiting for +its shelter. I have had a busy day,—a busy evening; it has not been +a <i>still</i> reverie in which I have seen you. In this last half hour, +I have been with Vireo. He has found a woman for me who can be a +directress of work; can manage the sewing-room. A good woman, too, +who will <i>mother</i>—not 'matron'—the girls. I have bought five +machines. They will make their own garments first; then they will +work for pay, some hours each day, or a day or two every week,—in +turn. That money will be their own. The rest of the time will be due +to the commonwealth. There will be a farm-kitchen, where they will +cook—and learn to cook well—for the farm hands; they will wash and +iron; they will take care of fruit and poultry. As they learn the +various employments, they will take their place as teachers to +new-comers; we shall keep them busy, and shall make a life around +them, that will be worth their laboring for; as God makes all the +beauty of the world for us to live in, in compensation for the +little that He leaves it needful for us to do. There is where I +think our privilege comes in, after the similitude of his; to +supplement broadly that which shall not hinder honest and +conditional exertion. I have been longing to tell you about it; I +have had a vision of you in the midst of my work and talk; I have +had a feeling of you this evening, waiting just so and there; I had +to come. I went to see your Mary Moxall, Miss Desire." +</p> +<p> +"In the midst of all you had to do!" +</p> +<p> +"Was it not a part? 'All in the day's work' is a good proverb." +</p> +<p> +"What did you say to her?" +</p> +<p> +"I asked her if she would come up into the country with my sister, +to a home among great, still, beautiful hills, and take care of her +baby, and some flowers." +</p> +<p> +"It was like asking her to come home—to God!" +</p> +<p> +"Yes,—I think it was asking her God's way. How can we, standing +among all the helps and harmonies of our lives, ask them to come +straight up to Him,—His invisible unapproachable Self,—out of the +terrible darkness and chaos of theirs? There are no steps." +</p> +<p> +"Tell me more about the steps you have been making—in the hills. +You said 'flowers.'" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; there will be a conservatory. I must have them all the year +through; the short summer gardening would not be ministry enough. +Beyond the Chapel Rock runs back a large new wing, with sewing and +living rooms; they only wait good weather for finishing. A dozen +women can live and work there. As they grow fit and willing, and +numerous enough to colonize off, there are little houses to be built +that they can move into, set up homes, earn their machines, and at +last, in cases where it proves safe and wise, their homes +themselves. I shall provide a depot for their needlework in the +city; and as the village grows it will create a little demand of its +own. Mr. Thayne is going to build the cottages, and he and I have +contracted for the seven miles of railroad to Tillington, as a +private enterprise. The brickmaking is to begin at once; we shall do +something for the building of the new, fire-proof Boston. Your +thought is growing into a fact, Miss Desire; and I think I have not +forgotten any particular of it. Now, I have come back to you for +more,—a great deal more, if I can get it. First, a name. We can't +<i>call</i> it a City of Refuge, beautiful as such a city is—to <i>be</i>. +Neither will I call it a Home, or an Asylum. The first thing Mary +Moxall said to me was,—'I won't go to no Refuges nor Sile'ums. I +don't want to be raked up, mud an' all, into a heap that everybody +knows the name of. If the world was big enough for me to begin +again,—in a clean place; but there ain't no clean places!' And then +I asked her to come home with me and my sister." +</p> +<p> +"You mean, of course, a neighborhood name, for the settlement, as it +grows?" +</p> +<p> +"Exactly. 'Brickfield Farms' belongs to the outlying husbandry and +homesteads. And 'Clay Pits!' It is <i>out</i> of the pit and the miry +clay that we want to bring them. The suggestion of that is too much +like Mary Moxall's 'heap that everybody knows the name of.'" +</p> +<p> +"Why not call it 'Hill-hope'? 'The hills, whence cometh our +strength;' 'the mountain of the height of Israel where the Lord will +plant it, and the dry tree shall flourish'?" +</p> +<p> +"Thank you," said Mr. Kirkbright, heartily. "That is the right word. +It is named." +</p> +<p> +Desire said nothing. She looked quietly into the fire with a flush +of deep pleasure on her face. Mr. Kirkbright remained silent also +for a few minutes. +</p> +<p> +He looked at her as she sat there, in this room that was her own; +that was filled with home-feeling and association for her; where a +solemnly tender commission and opportunity had been given her, and +had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging +itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right +to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it +to be given him. Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a +question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman. Why +had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken? If there +were not possibly, in this woman's keeping, the ordained and perfect +answer? +</p> +<p> +While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that +he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips. +</p> +<p> +"I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend! What are +we to do about it?" +</p> +<p> +Desire's eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited +not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake. The color was +bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous. Then the +eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,—with words. +</p> +<p> +So far as he had spoken, she had answered. +</p> +<p> +"I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home +around which other homes may grow. There ought to be a heart in it, +and I cannot do it alone. Could you—<i>will</i> you—come? Will you be +to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and +strength help me to help your sisters?" +</p> +<p> +He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was +between them. He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held +out his hands. +</p> +<p> +Desire stood up and laid hers in them. +</p> +<p> +"It must be right. You have come for me. I cannot possibly do +otherwise than this." +</p> +<p> +The deep, gracious, divine fact had asserted itself. A house here, +or a house there could not change or bind it. They belonged +together. There was a new love in the world, and the world would +have to arrange itself around it. Around it and the Will that it was +to be wedded to do. +</p> +<p> +They stood together, hands in hands. Christopher Kirkbright leaned +over and laid his lips against her forehead. +</p> +<p> +He whispered her name, set in other syllables that were only for +him to say to her. I shall not say them over on this page to you. +</p> +<p> +But there is a line in the blessed Scripture that we all know, and +God had fulfilled it to his heart. +</p> +<p> +Strangely—more strangely than any story can contrive—are the +happenings of life put side by side. +</p> +<p> +As they sat there a little longer in the quiet library, forgetting +the late evening hour, because it was morning all at once to them; +forgetting Sylvie Argenter and her mother as they were at just this +moment in the next room; only remembering them among those whom this +new relation and joining of purpose must make surer and safer, not +less carefully provided for in the changes that would occur,—the +door of the gray parlor opened; a quick step fell along the passage, +and Sylvie unlatched the library door, and stood in the entrance +wide-eyed and pale. +</p> +<p> +"Desire! Come!" +</p> +<p> +"Sylvie! <i>What</i>, dear?" cried Desire, quickly, as she sprang to meet +her, her voice chording responsive to Sylvie's own, catching in it +the indescribable tone that tells so much more than words. She did +not need the further revelation of her face to know that something +deep and strange had happened. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie said not a syllable more, but turned and hurried back along +the hall. +</p> +<p> +Desire and Mr. Kirkbright followed her. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter was sitting in the deep corner of her broad, low sofa, +against the two large pillows. +</p> +<p> +"A minute ago," said Sylvie, in the same changed voice, that spoke +out of a different world from the world of five minutes before, "she +was <i>here</i>! She gave me her plate to put away on the sideboard, and +<i>now</i>,—when I turned round,"— +</p> +<p> +She was <i>There</i>. +</p> +<p> +The plate, with its bits of orange-rind, and an untasted section of +the fruit, stood upon the sideboard. The book she had been reading +fifteen minutes since lay, with her eye-glasses inside it, at the +page where she had stopped, upon the couch; her left hand had +fallen, palm upward, upon the cushioned seat; her life had gone +instantly and without a sign, out from her mortal body. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Argenter had died of that disease which lets the spirit free +like the uncaging of a bird. +</p> +<p> +Hypertrophy of the heart. The gradual thickening and hardening of +those mysterious little gates of life and the walls in which they +are set; the slower moving of them on their palpitating hinges, till +a moment comes when they open or close for the last time, and in +that pause ajar the soul flits out, like some curious, unwary thing, +over a threshold it may pass no more again, forever. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0032"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXII. +</h2> +<h3> + EASTER LILIES. +</h3> +<p> +Bright, soft days began to come; days in which windows stood open, +and pots of plants were set out on the window-sills; days +alternating as in the long, New England spring they always do, with +bleak intervals of sharp winds and cold sea-storms; yet giving sweet +anticipation tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she +cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the +charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and +breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year +comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of +pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you +needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!" +</p> +<p> +People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations, +on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be +making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from +the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you +meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens +are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in +through sense and spirit. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never +would be afraid again in all her life; she <i>knew</i> how things were +measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent +while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort +had been kept back." +</p> +<p> +She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke +should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit. +She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress, +now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to +accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries. +</p> +<p> +Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra +yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because +she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage +was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which +she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self. +</p> +<p> +"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for +quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had." +</p> +<p> +There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of +good plenishing that would last for years. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other +girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief" +since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck +and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their +hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately. +</p> +<p> +She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining +Desire's own. The white box lay upon a round, damask-covered-stand +in the corner, under her mother's picture painted in the graceful +days of the gray silks and llama laces; and around this, drooping +and trailing till they touched the little table and veiled the box +that held the beautiful secret,—seeming to say, "We know it too, +for we are a part,"—wreathed the shining sprays of blossomy fern. +</p> +<p> +In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being +happy. The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of +the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for +a new summer's grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the +air different, already, from the airs of winter. +</p> +<p> +Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence. +</p> +<p> +All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer +from over the water. Of all the letters that went safely into mail +bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of +all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those +bags were opened,—somehow—it can never be told how,—that +particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or +missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss +Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a +letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he +had just arrived after a visit to Berlin. +</p> +<p> +"I have had no family news," he wrote, "of later date than January +20th. Trust all is well. Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th." +</p> +<p> +The date of that was March 20th. +</p> +<p> +The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire +Ledwith's marriage. +</p> +<p> +Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous. Desire would have her +in time, but not for any fatigues. +</p> +<p> +The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before +she left it. The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and +brown canary was singing in his cage. There was nothing to remind of +the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its +last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so +noiselessly and solemnly in. +</p> +<p> +Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and +co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley. +</p> +<p> +"It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for +anybody," she said. "There must be a real life in it, as long as we +can order it so." +</p> +<p> +The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with +Hazel. Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard +Street, was to "spill over" from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill +house. "She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care +and comfort. Them shouldn't be any hurt, and there would be lots of +help." +</p> +<p> +There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; "just as neat +as a row of pins;" but who had had less and less to be neat with for +seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as +compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could +earn twelve hundred dollars a year. The youngest had to stay at home +and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together. +They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course +they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that. +That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do +without. +</p> +<p> +Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a +bee-hive. +</p> +<p> +"And whenever I marry," Hazel said, "I hope he won't be building a +town of his own to take me to; for I shall <i>have</i> to bring him here. +I'm the last of the line." +</p> +<p> +"That will all be taken care of as the rest has been. There isn't +half as much left for us to manage as we think," said Desire, +putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus's will which they +had been reading over together. "He knew the executorship into +which he gave it." +</p> +<p> +Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish +telling you how it all was? +</p> +<p> +There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the +Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,—in those few +pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more +engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving +sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb. +</p> +<p> +We can turn back afterwards for that. I think you would like to hear +about the wedding. +</p> +<p> +Does it never occur to you that this "going back and living up" in a +story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the +divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and +miss of, now? It does to me. I know that <i>That</i> can manage at least +as well as mine can. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the +library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt +all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now +another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the +first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters—Mrs. Megilp and Glossy—were there, of +course. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about +the homestead and old associations, and "Daisy's great love and +reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she +certainly owed everything;" about the journey to New York, and the +few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend +and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("<i>Sir</i> Marmaduke he +would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English +title that belonged to him"),—who was too infirm to come on to the +wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as +possible to their estate in the country,—Hill-hope,—where Mr. +Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of +a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,"—all this to +account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which +of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy +Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old +drawing-room which was hardly ever used. +</p> +<p> +But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches +had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity +was present at Desire Ledwith's wedding. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Vireo officiated; there was something in his method and manner +which Mrs. Megilp decidedly objected to. +</p> +<p> +It was "everyday," she thought. "It didn't give you a feeling of +sanctity. It was just as if he was used to the Almighty, and didn't +mind! It seemed as if he were just mentioning things, in a quiet +way, to somebody who was right at his elbow. For her part, she liked +a little lifting up." +</p> +<p> +Hazel Ripwinkley heard her, and told Sylvie and Diana that "that +came of having all your ideas of home in the seventh story; of +course you wanted an elevator to go up in." +</p> +<p> +Desire Ledwith looked what she was, to-day; a grand, pure woman; a +fit woman to stand up beside a man like Christopher Kirkbright, in +fair white garments, and say the words that made her his wife. +There was a beautiful, sweet majesty in her giving of herself. +</p> +<p> +She did not disdain rich robes to-day,—she would give herself at +her very best, with all generous and gracious outward sign. +</p> +<p> +She wore a dress of heavy silk, long-trained; the cream-white folds, +unspoiled by any frippery of lace, took, as they dropped around her, +the shade and convolutions of a lily. Upon her bosom, and fastening +her veil, were deep green leaves that gave the contrast against +which a lily rests itself. Around her throat were links of frosted +silver, from which hung a pure plain silver cross; these were the +gift of Hazel. The veil, of point, and rarely beautiful, fell back +from her head,—lovely in its shape, and the simple wreathing of the +dark, soft hair,—like a drift of water spray; not covering or +misting her all over,—only lending a touch of delicate suggestion +to the pure, cool, graceful, flower-like unity of her whole air and +apparel. +</p> +<p> +"Desire is beautiful!" said Hazel Ripwinkley to her mother. "She +never <i>stopped</i> to be <i>pretty</i>!" +</p> +<p> +White calla-lilies, with their tall stems and great shadowy leaves, +were in the Pompeiian vases on the mantel; in the India jars in the +corners below; in a large Oriental china bowl that was set upon the +closed desk on the library table, wheeled back for the first time +that anybody there had seen it so, against the wall. +</p> +<p> +Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's +chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess +at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married. +</p> +<p> +"Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do +God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you +both in this his world? Will you, Desire Ledwith, take Christopher +Kirkbright to be your wedded husband; will you, Christopher +Kirkbright, take Desire Ledwith to be your wedded wife; and do you +thereto mutually make your vows in the sight of God and before this +company?" +</p> +<p> +And they answered together, "We do." +</p> +<p> +It was a promise for more than each other; it was a +life-consecration. It was a gathering up and renewal of all that had +been holy in the resolves of either while they had lived apart; a +joining of two souls in the Lord. +</p> +<p> +Hilary Vireo would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words, +a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would +take, and keep to, each other. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Megilp thought it was "so jumbled!" "If it was <i>her</i> daughter, +she should not think she was half married." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Megilp put it more shrewdly than she had intended. +</p> +<p> +Desire and Christopher Kirkbright were very sure they had <i>not</i> been +"half married." It was not the world's half marriage that they had +stood up there together for. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0033"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXIII. +</h2> +<h3> + KITCHEN CRAMBO. +</h3> +<p> +Elise Mokey and Mary Pinfall came in one evening to see Bel Bree and +Kate. +</p> +<p> +There had been company to tea up-stairs, and the dishes were more +than usual, and the hour was a little later. +</p> +<p> +Kate was putting up the last of the cooking utensils, and scalding +down the big tin dish-pan and the sink. Bel was up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +A table with a fresh brown linen cloth upon it, two white plates and +cups, and two white <i>napkins</i>, stood out on the kitchen floor under +the gas-light. The dumb-waiter came rumbling down, with toast dish, +tea and coffee pots, oyster dish and muffin plate. Several slices of +cream toast were left, and there was a generous remnant of nicely +browned scalloped oysters. The half muffins, buttered hot, looked +tender and tempting still. +</p> +<p> +Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nice +little stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred the +food from the china to these, laying it neatly together, and +replaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The tea +and coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot in +readiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed the +porcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and set +them safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in the +gas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, just +as much as they would have done in actual using. +</p> +<p> +"But what a lot of trouble!" said Elise Mokey. +</p> +<p> +"Half a dozen dishes?" returned Kate. "Just three minutes' work; and +a warm, fresh supper to make it worth while. Besides rubbing the +silver once in four weeks, instead of every Friday. A Yankee kitchen +is a labor-saving institution, Mrs. Scherman says." +</p> +<p> +Down came the waiter again, and down the stairs came Bel. Kate +brought two more cups and plates and napkins. +</p> +<p> +"Now, girls, come and take some tea," she said, drawing up the +chairs. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman was not strict about "kitchen company." She gave the +girls freely to understand that a friend or two happening in now and +then to see them, were as welcome to their down-stairs table as her +own happeners in were to hers. "I know it is just the cosiness and +the worth-while of home and living," she said. "And I'll trust the +'now and then' of it to you." +</p> +<p> +The hint of reasonable limit, and the word of trust, were better +than lock and law. +</p> +<p> +"How nice this is!" said Mary Pinfall, as Bel put a hot muffin, +mellow with sweet butter, upon her plate. +</p> +<p> +"If Matilda Meane only knew which side—and where—bread <i>was</i> +buttered! She's living on 'relief,' yet; and she buys cream-cakes +for dinner, and peanuts for tea! But, Bel, what were you up-stairs +for? I thought you was queen o' the kitchen!" +</p> +<p> +"Kate gives me her chance, sometimes. We change about, to make +things even. The best of it is in the up-stairs work, and waiting at +table is the first-best chance of all. You see, you 'take it in at +the pores,' as the man says in the play." +</p> +<p> +"Tea and oysters?" said Elise, with an exclamatory interrogation. +</p> +<p> +"You know better. See here, Elise. You don't half believe in this +experiment, though you appreciate the muffins. But it isn't just +loaves and fishes. There's a <i>living</i> in the world, and a way to +earn it, besides clothes, and bread and butter. If you want it, you +can choose your work nearest to where the living is. And wherever +else it may or mayn't be, it <i>is</i> in houses, and round tea-tables +like this." +</p> +<p> +"Other people's living,—for you to look at and wait on," said +Elise. "I like to be independent." +</p> +<p> +"They can't keep it back from us, if they wanted to," said Bel. "And +you <i>can't</i> be independent; there's no such thing in the world. It's +all give and take." +</p> +<p> +"How about 'other folks' dust,' Kate? Do you remember?" +</p> +<p> +"There's only one place, I guess, after all," said Kate, "where you +can be shut up with nothing but your own dust!" +</p> +<p> +"Sharper than ever, Kate Sencerbox! I guess you <i>do</i> get rubbed up!" +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Stalworth is there to-night," said Bel. "He tells as good +stories as he writes. And they've been talking about Tyndall's +Essays, and the spectroscope. Mrs. Scherman asked questions that I +don't believe she'd any particular need of answers to, herself; and +she stopped me once when I was going out of the room for something. +I knew by her look that she wanted me to hear." +</p> +<p> +"If they want you to hear, why don't they ask you to sit down and +hear comfortably?" said Elise Mokey, who had got her social +science—with a <i>little</i> warp in it—from Boffin's Bower. +</p> +<p> +"Because it's my place to stand, at that time," said Bel, stoutly; +"and I shouldn't be comfortable out of my place. I haven't earned a +place like Mrs. Scherman's yet, or married a man that has earned it +for me. There are proper things for everybody. It isn't always +proper for Mrs. Scherman to sit down herself; or for Mr. Scherman to +keep his hat on. It's the knowing what's proper that sets people +really up; it <i>never</i> puts them down!" +</p> +<p> +"There's one thing," said Kate Sencerbox. "You might be parlor +people all your days, and not get into everybody's parlor, either. +There's an up-side and a down-side, all the way through, from top to +bottom. The very best chance, for some people, if they only knew it, +into some houses, would be up through the kitchen." +</p> +<p> +"Never mind," said Bel, putting sugar into Mary Pinfall's second cup +of coffee. "I've got the notion of those lines, Kate,—I was going +to tell you,—into my head at last, I do believe. Red-hot iron makes +a rainbow through a prism, like any light; but iron-<i>steam</i> stops a +stripe of the color; and every burning thing does the same +way,—stops its own color when it shines through its own vapor; +there! Let's hold on to that, and we'll go all over it another time. +There's a piece about it in last month's Scribner." +</p> +<p> +"What <i>are</i> you talking about?" said Elise Mokey. +</p> +<p> +"The way they've been finding out what the sun is made of. By the +black lines across the rainbow colors. It's a telegraph; they've +just learned to read it." +</p> +<p> +"But what do <i>you</i> care?" +</p> +<p> +"I guess it's put there as much, for me as anybody," said Bel. "I +don't think we should ever pick up such things, though, among the +basting threads at Fillmer & Bylles'. They're lying round here, +loose; in books and talk, and everything. They're going to have +Crambo this evening, Kate. After these dishes are washed, I mean to +try my hand at it. They were laughing about one Mrs. Scherman made +last time; they couldn't quite remember it. I've got it. I picked it +up among the sweepings. I shall take it in to her by and by." +</p> +<p> +Bel went to her work-basket as she spoke, and lifting up some calico +pieces that lay upon it, drew from underneath two or three folded +bits of paper. +</p> +<p> +"This is it," she said, selecting one, and coming back and reading. +</p> +<p> +(Do you see, let me ask in a hurried parenthesis,—how the tone of +this household might easily have been a different one, and pervaded +differently its auxiliary department? How, in that case, it might +have been nothing better than a surreptitious scrap of silk or +velvet, that would have lain in Bel Bree's work-basket, with a story +about it of how, and for what gayety, it had been made; a scrap out +of a life that these girls could only gossip and wonder about,—not +participate, and with self-same human privilege and faculty delight +in; and yet the only scrap that—"out of the sweepings"—they could +have picked up? <i>There</i> is where, if you know it, dear parlor +people, the up-side, by just living, can so graciously and +generously be always helping the down.) +</p> +<p> +Bel read:— +</p> +<p> +"'What of that second great fire that was prophesied to come before +Christmas?'—'Peaches.'" +</p> +<p> +"You've got to get that word into the answer, you see and it hasn't +the very least thing to do with it! Now see:— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">'A prophet, after the event,</p> + <p class="i2">No startling wisdom teaches;</p> + <p>A second fire would scarce be sent</p> + <p>To gratify the morbid bent</p> + <p class="i2">That for fresh horror reaches.</p> + <p>But, friend, do tell me why you went</p> + <p class="i2">And mixed it up with <i>peaches!</i>'</p> +</div> +</div> +<p class="noindent"> +It's great fun! And sometimes it's lovely, real poetry. Kate, +you've got to give me some words and questions, I'm going to take to +Crambo." +</p> +<p> +"You'll have to mix it up with dish-washing," said Elise. +"Dish-washing and dust,—you can't get rid of them!" +</p> +<p> +"We do, though!" said Kate, alertly, jumping up and beginning to +fetch the plates and cups from the dumb-waiter. "Here, Bel!" And she +tossed three or four long, soft, clean towels over to her from the +shelf beside the china. +</p> +<p> +"And about that dusting," she went on, after the noise of the hot +water rushing from the faucet was over, and she began dropping the +things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan +full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little +mop,—"about the dusting, I didn't finish. It's a work of art to +dust Mrs. Scherman's parlor. Don't you think there's a pleasure in +handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things? +Don't they get to be a part of our having, too? Don't I take as much +comfort in her fernery as she does? I know every little green and +woolly loop that comes up in it. It's the only sense there is in +things. There's a picture there, of cows coming home, down a green +lane, and the sun striking through, and lighting up the gravel, and +a patch of green grass, and the red hair on the cows' necks. You +think you just catch it <i>coming</i>, suddenly, through the trees, when +you first look up at it. And you go right into a little piece of the +country, and stand there. Mr. Scherman doesn't own that lane, or +those cows, though he bought the picture. All he owns is what he +gets by the signs; and I get that, every day, for the dusting! There +are things to be earned and shared where people <i>live</i>, that you +can't earn in the sewing-shops." +</p> +<p> +"That's what Bel said. Well, I'm glad you like it. Sha'n't I wipe up +some of those cups?" +</p> +<p> +"They're all done now," said Bel, piling them together. +</p> +<p> +In fifteen minutes after their own tea was ended, the kitchen was in +order again; the dumb-waiter, with its freight, sent up to the china +closet; the brown linen cloth and the napkins folded away in the +drawer, and the white-topped table ready for evening use. Bel Bree +had not been brought up in a New England farm-house, and seen her +capable stepmother "whew round," to be hard put to it, now, over +half a dozen cups and tumblers more or less. +</p> +<p> +"We must go," said Elise Mokey. "I've got the buttons to sew on to +those last night-gowns of Miss Ledwith's. I want to carry them back +to-morrow." +</p> +<p> +"You're lucky to sew for her," said Bel. "But you see we all have to +do for somebody, and I'd as lief it would be teacups, for my part, +as buttons." +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree's old tricks of rhyming were running in her head. This game +of Crambo—a favorite one with the Schermans and their bright little +intimate circle—stirred up her wits with a challenge. And under +the wits,—under the quick mechanic action of the serving +brain,—thoughts had been daily crowding and growing, for which +these mere mental facilities were waiting, the ready instruments. +</p> +<p> +I have said that Bel Bree was a born reformer and a born poet; and +that the two things go together. To see freshly and clearly,—to +discern new meaning in old living,—living as old as the world is; +to find by instinct new and better ways of doing, the finding of +which is often only returning to the heart and simplicity of the +old living before it <i>was</i> old with social circumventions and needed +to be fresh interpreted; these are the very heavenly gift and office +of illumination and leadership. Just as she had been made, and just +where she had been put,—a girl with the questions of woman-life +before her in these days of restless asking and uncertain +reply,—with her lot cast here, in this very crowding, fermenting, +aspiring, great New England metropolis, in the hour of its most +changeful and involved experience,—she brought the divine talisman +of her nature to bear upon the nearest, most practical point of the +wide tangle with which it came in contact. And around her in this +right place that she had found and taken, gathered and wrought +already, by effluence and influence, forces and results that gather +and work about any nucleus of life, however deep hidden it may be in +a surrounding deadness. All things,—creation itself,—as Asenath +had said, must begin in spots; and she and Bel Bree had begun a fair +new spot, in which was a vitality that tends to organic +completeness, to full establishment, and triumphant growth. +</p> +<p> +Upon Bel herself reflected quickly and surely the beneficent action +of this life. She was taking in truly, at every pore. How long would +it have been before, out of the hard coarse limits in which her one +line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have +come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to +breathe and abide in? To help make also; to stand at its practical +mainspring, and keep it possible that it should move on. +</p> +<p> +The talk, the ideas of the day, were in her ears; the books, the +periodicals of the day were at hand, and free for her to avail +herself of. The very fun at Mrs, Scherman's tea-table was the sort +of fun that can only sparkle out of culture. There was a grace that +her aptness caught, and that was making a lady of her. +</p> +<p> +"I'll give in," said Elise Mokey, "that you're getting <i>style</i>; +though I can't tell how it is either. It ain't in your calico +dresses, nor the doing up of your hair." +</p> +<p> +Perhaps it was a good deal in the very simplifying of these from the +exaggerated imitations of the shop and street, as well as in the +tone of all the rest with which these inevitably fell into harmony. +</p> +<p> +But I want to tell you about Bel's kitchen Crambo. I want to show +you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows +itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the +quietest background of homely use. +</p> +<p> +She brought out pencil and paper, and made Kate write question slips +and detached words. +</p> +<p> +"I feel just tingling to try," she said. "There's a kind of dancing +in my head, of things that have been there ever so long. I believe I +shall make a poem to-night. It's catching, when you're predisposed; +and it's partly the spring weather, and the sap coming up. 'Put a +name to it,' Katie! Almost anything will set me off." +</p> +<p> +Kate wrote, on half a dozen scraps; then tossed them up, and pushed +them over for Bel to draw. +</p> +<p> +"How do you like the city in the spring?" was the question; and the +word, suggested by Kate's work at the moment, was,—"Hem." +</p> +<p> +Bel put her elbows on the table, and her hands up against her ears. +Her eyes shone, as they rested intent upon the two penciled bits. +The link between them suggested itself quickly and faintly; she was +grasping at an elusive something with all the fine little quivering +brain-tentacles that lay hold of spiritual apprehension. +</p> +<p> +Just at that moment the parlor bell rang. +</p> +<p> +"I'll go," she said. "You keep to your sewing. It's for the nursery, +I guess, and I'll do my poem up there." +</p> +<p> +She caught up pencil and paper, and the other fragment also,—Mrs. +Scherman's own rhyme about the "peaches." +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman met her at the parlor door. +</p> +<p> +"I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said; "but the baby is stirring. +Could you, or Kate, go up and try to hush her off again? If I go, +she'll keep me." +</p> +<p> +"I will," said Bel. "Here is that 'Crambo' you were talking of at +tea, Mrs. Scherman. I kept it. Kate picked it up with the scraps." +</p> +<p> +"O, thank you! Why, Bel, how your face shines!" +</p> +<p> +Bel hurried off, for Baby Karen "stirred" more emphatically at this +moment. Asenath went back into the parlor. +</p> +<p> +"Here is that rhyme of mine, Frank, that you were asking for. Bel +found it in the dust-pan. I believe she's writing rhymes herself. +She tries out every idea she picks up among us. She had a pencil in +her hand, and her face was brimful of something. Mr. Stalworth, if +<i>I</i> find anything in the dust-pan, I shall turn it over to you. +'First and Last' is bound to act up to its title, and transpose +itself freely, according to Scripture." +</p> +<p> +"'First and Last' will receive, under either head, whatever you will +indorse, Mrs. Scherman,—and the last not least,"—returned the +benign and brilliant editor. +</p> +<p> +Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that +small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences +precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if <i>she</i> woke up +in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if +pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much +patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper +edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and +by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs +fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do; +little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant, +as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again. +She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least. +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a +baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to make +out her own necessity by constant "tending." +</p> +<p> +Bel did not go down-stairs again. She could do better here than with +Kate sitting opposite, aware of all her scratches and poetical +predicaments. +</p> +<p> +An hour went by. Bel was hardly equal yet to five-minute Crambo; and +besides, she was doing her best; trying to put something clearly +into syllables that said itself, unsyllabled, to her. +</p> +<p> +She did not hear Mrs. Scherman when she came up the stairs. She had +just read over to herself the five completed stanzas of her poem. +</p> +<p> +It had really come. It was as if a violet had been born to actual +bloom from the thought, the intangible vision of one. She wondered +at the phrasing, marveling how those particular words had come and +ranged themselves at her call. She did not know how she had done it, +or whether she herself had done it at all. She began almost to think +she must have read it before somewhere. Had she just picked it up +out of her memory? Was it a borrowing, a mimicry, a patchwork? +</p> +<p> +But it was very pretty, very sweet! It told her own feelings over to +her, with more that she had not known she had felt or perceived. +She read it again from beginning to end in a whisper. Her mouth was +bright with a smile and her eyes with tears when she had ended. +</p> +<p> +Asenath Scherman with her light step came in and stood beside her. +</p> +<p> +"Won't you tell <i>me</i>?" the sweet, gracious voice demanded. +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree looked up. +</p> +<p> +"I thought I'd try, in fun," she said, "and it came in real +earnest." +</p> +<p> +Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and +the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A +lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through +it. +</p> +<p> +She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips. +</p> +<p> +Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away, +up-stairs. +</p> +<p> +"Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with +it?"—Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day. +</p> +<p> +Bel blushed. She had been a little frightened in the morning to +think of what had happened over night. She could not quite recollect +all the words of her verses, and she wondered if they were really as +pretty as she had fancied in the moment of making them. +</p> +<p> +All she could answer was that Mrs. Scherman was "very kind." +</p> +<p> +"Then you'll trust me?" +</p> +<p> +And Bel, wondering very much, but too shy to question, said she +would. +</p> +<p> +A few days after that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had +rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up a note. +</p> +<p> +"We were just in time with our little spring song," she said. +"<i>Blue</i>birds have to sing early; at least a month beforehand. See +here! Is this all right?" and she put into Bel's hand a little +roughish slip of paper, upon which was printed:— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="i6">"THE CITY IN SPRING.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"It is not much that makes me glad:</p> + <p>I hold more than I ever had.</p> + <p>The empty hand may farther reach,</p> + <p>And small, sweet signs all beauty teach.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"I like the city in the spring,</p> + <p>It has a hint of everything.</p> + <p>Down in the yard I like to see</p> + <p>The budding of that single tree.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"The little sparrows on the shed;</p> + <p>The scrap of soft sky overhead;</p> + <p>The cat upon the sunny wall;</p> + <p>There's so much <i>meant</i> among them all.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"The dandelion in the cleft</p> + <p>A broken pavement may have left,</p> + <p>Is like the star that, still and sweet,</p> + <p>Shines where the house-tops almost meet.</p> +</div> +<div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih"> "I like a little; all the rest</p> + <p>Is somewhere; and our Lord knows best</p> + <p>How the whole robe hath grace for them</p> + <p>Who only touch the garment's hem."</p> +</div> +</div> +<p> +At the bottom, in small capitals, was the signature,—<span class="sc">Bel +Bree</span>. +</p> +<p> +"I don't understand," said Bel, bewildered. "What is it? Who did +it?" +</p> +<p> +"It is a proof," said Mrs. Scherman. "A proof-sheet. And here is +another kind of proof that came with it. Your spring song is going +into the May number of 'First and Last.'" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman reached out a slip of paper, printed and filled in. +</p> +<p> +It was a publisher's check for fifteen dollars. +</p> +<p> +"You see I'm very unselfish, Bel," she said. "I'm going to work the +very way to lose you." +</p> +<p> +Bel's eyes flashed up wide at her. +</p> +<p> +The way to lose her! Why, nobody had ever got such a hold upon her +before! The printed verses and the money were wonderful surprises, +but they were not the surprise that had gone straight into her +heart, and dropped a grapple there. Mrs. Scherman had believed in +her; and she had <i>kissed</i> her. Bel Bree would never forget that, +though she should live to sing songs of all the years. +</p> +<p> +"When you can earn money like this, of course I cannot expect to +keep you in my kitchen," said Mrs. Scherman, answering her look. +</p> +<p> +"I might never do it again in all my life," sensible Bel replied. +"And I hope you'll keep me somewhere. It wouldn't be any reason, I +think, because one little green leaf has budded out, for a plant to +say that it would not be kept growing in the ground any longer. I +couldn't go and set up a poem-factory, without a home and a living +for the poems to grow up out of. I'm pleased I can write!" she +exclaimed, brimming up suddenly with the pleasure she had but half +stopped to realize. "I <i>thought</i> I could. But I know very well that +the best and brightest things I've ever thought have come into my +head over the ironing-board or the bread-making. Even at home. And +<i>here</i>,—why, Mrs. Scherman, it's <i>living</i> in a poem here! And if +you can be in the very foundation part of such living, you're in the +realest place of all, I think. I don't believe poetry can be skimmed +off the top, till it has risen up from the bottom!" +</p> +<p> +"But you <i>ought</i> to come into my parlor, among my friends! People +would be glad to get you into their parlors, by and by, when you +have made the name you can make. I've no business to keep you down. +And you don't know yourself. You won't stay." +</p> +<p> +"Just please wait and see," said Bel. "I haven't a great deal of +experience in going about in parlors; but I don't think I should +much like it,—<i>that</i> way. I'd rather keep on being the woman that +made the name, than to run round airing it. I guess it would keep +better." +</p> +<p> +"I see I can't advise you. I shouldn't dare to meddle with +inspirations. But I'm proud, and glad, Bel; and you're my friend! +The rest will all work out right, somehow." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, dear Mrs. Scherman," said Bel, her voice full of +feeling. "And—if you please—will you have the grouse broiled +to-day, or roasted with bread-sauce?" +</p> +<p> +At that, the two young women laughed out, in each other's faces. +</p> +<p> +Bel stopped first. +</p> +<p> +"It isn't half so funny as it sounds," she said. "It's part of the +poetry; the rhyme's inside; it is to everything. We're human people: +that's the way we get it." +</p> +<p> +And Bel went away, and stuffed the grouse, and grated her +bread-crumbs, and sang over her work,—not out loud with her lips, +but over and over to a merry measure in her mind,— +</p> +<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> + <p class="ih">"Everything comes to its luck some day:</p> + <p>I've got chickens! What will folks say?"</p> +</div> +</div> +<p> +"I'm solving more than I set out to do," Sin Scherman said to her +husband. "Westover was nothing to it. I know one thing, though, that +I'll do next." +</p> +<p> +"<i>One</i> thing is reasonable," said Frank. "What is it?" +</p> +<p> +"Take her to York with us, this summer. Row out on the river with +her. Sit on the rocks, and read and sew, and play with the children. +Show her the ocean. She never saw it in all her life." +</p> +<p> +"How wonderful is 'one thing' in the mind of a woman! It is a +germ-cell, that holds all things." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, my dear. If I weren't helping you to soup, I'd get up +and make you a courtesy. But what a grand privilege it is for a man +to live with a woman, after he has found that out! And how cosmical +a woman feels herself when her capacity is recognized!" +</p> +<p> +Mrs. Scherman has told her plan to Bel. Kate also has a plan for the +two summer months in which the household must be broken up. +</p> +<p> +"I mean to see the mountains myself," she said, boldly. "I don't see +why I shouldn't go to the country. There are homes there that want +help, as well as here. I can get my living where the living goes. +That's just where it fays in, different from other work. Bel knows +places where I could get two dollars a week just for a little +helping round; or I could even afford to pay board, and buy a little +time for resting. I shall have clothes to make, and fix over. It +always took all I could earn, before, to keep me from hand to mouth. +I never saw six months' wages all together, in my life. I feel real +rich." +</p> +<p> +"I will pay you half wages for the two months," said Mrs. Scherman, +"if you will come back to me in September. And next year, if we all +keep together, it will be your turn, if you like, to go with me." +</p> +<p> +Kate feels the spring in her heart, knowing that she is to have a +piece of the summer. The horse-chestnut tree in the yard is not a +mockery to her. She has a property in every promise that its great +brown buds are making. +</p> +<p> +"The pleasant weather used to be like the spring-suits," she said. +"Something making up for other people. Nothing to me, except more +work, with a little difference. Now, somewhere, the hills are +getting green for me! I'm one of the meek, that inherit the earth!" +</p> +<p> +"You are earning a <i>whole</i> living," Bel said, reverting to her +favorite and comprehensive conclusion. +</p> +<p> +"And yet,—<i>somebody</i> has got to run machines," said Kate. +</p> +<p> +"But <i>all</i> the bodies haven't. That is the mistake we have been +making. That keeps the pay low, and makes it horrid. There's a +<i>little</i> more room now, where you and I were. Anyhow, we Yankee +girls have a right to our turn at the home-wheels. If we had been as +cute as we thought we were, we should have found it out before." +</p> +<p> +Bel Bree has written half a dozen little poems at odd times, since +the rhyme that began her fortune. Mr. Stalworth says they are +stamped with her own name, every one; breezy, and freshly delicious. +For that very reason, of course, people will not believe, when they +see the name in print, that it is a real name. It is so much easier +to believe in little tricks of invention, than in things that simply +come to pass by a wonderful, beautiful determination, because they +belong so. They think the poem is a trick of invention, too. They +think that of almost everything that they see in print. Their +incredulity is marvelously credulous! There is no end to that which +mortals may contrive; but the limit is such a measurable one to that +which can really be! We slip our human leash so easily, and get +outside of all creation, and the "Divinity that shapes our ends," to +shape and to create, ourselves! +</p> +<p> +For my part, the more stories I write out, the more I learn how, +even in fiction, things happen and take relation according to some +hidden reality; that we have only to stand by, and see the shiftings +and combinings, and with what care and honesty we may, to put them +down. +</p> +<p> +If there is anything in this story that you cannot credit,—if you +cannot believe in such a relation, and such a friendship, and such a +mutual service, as Asenath Scherman's and Bel Bree's,—if you cannot +believe that Bel Bree may at this moment be ironing Mrs. Scherman's +damask table-cloths, and as the ivy leaf or morning-glory pattern +comes out under the polish, some beautiful thought in her takes line +and shade under the very rub of labor, and shows itself as it would +have done no other way, and that by and by it will shine on a +printed page, made substantive in words,—then, perhaps, you have +only not lived quite long—or deep—enough. There is a more real and +perfect architecture than any that has ever got worked out in stone, +or even sketched on paper. +</p> +<p> +Neither Boston, nor the world, is "finished" yet. There may be many +a burning and rebuilding, first. Meanwhile, we will tell what we can +see. +</p> +<p> +And that word sends me back to Bel herself, of whom this present +seeing and telling can read and recite no further. +</p> +<p> +Are you dissatisfied to leave her here? Is it a pity, you think, +that the little glimmer of romance in Leicester Place meant nothing, +after all? There are blind turns in the labyrinth of life. Would you +have our Bel lost in a blind turn? +</p> +<p> +The <i>right and the wrong</i> settled it, as they settle all things. +The right and the wrong are the reins with which we are guided into +the very best, sooner or later; yes,—sooner <i>and</i> later. If we will +go God's way, we shall have manifold more in this present world, and +in the world to come life everlasting. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0034"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXIV. +</h2> +<h3> + WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP. +</h3> +<p> +Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright went away to New York on the afternoon of +their marriage. +</p> +<p> +Miss Euphrasia went up to Brickfields. Sylvie Argenter was to follow +her on Thursday. It had been settled that she should remain with +Desire, who, with her husband, would reach home on Saturday. +</p> +<p> +It was a sweet, pleasant spring day, when Sylvie Argenter, with some +last boxes and packages, took the northward train for Tillington. +</p> +<p> +She was going to a life of use and service. She was going into a +home; a home that not only made a fitting place for her in it, and +was perfect in itself, but that, with noble plan and enlargement, +found way to reach its safety and benediction, and the contagion of +its spirit, over souls that would turn toward it, come under its +rule, and receive from it, as their only shelter and salvation; over +a neighborhood that was to be a planting of Hope,—a heavenly +feudality. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie's own dreams of a possible future for herself were only +purple lights upon a far horizon. +</p> +<p> +It seemed a very great way off, any bringing to speech and result +the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret +strength and joy and hope of her girl's heart. +</p> +<p> +She had a thought of Rodney Sherrett that she was sure she had a +right to. That was all she wanted, yet. Of course, Rodney was not +ready to marry; he was too young; he was not much older than she +was, and that was very young for a man. She did not even think about +it; she recognized the whole position without thinking. +</p> +<p> +She remembered vividly the little way-station in Middlesex, where he +had bought the ferns, that day in last October; she thought of him +as the train ran slowly alongside the platform at East Keaton. She +wondered if he would not sometimes come up for a Sunday; to spend it +with his uncle and his Aunt Euphrasia. It was a secret gladness to +her that she was to be where he partly, and very affectionately, +belonged. She was sure she should see him, now and then. Her life +looked pleasant to her, its current setting alongside one current, +certainly, of his. +</p> +<p> +She sat thinking how he had come up behind her that day in the +drawing-room car, and of all the happy nonsense they had begun to +talk, in such a hurry, together. She was lost in the imagination of +that old surprise, living it over again, remembering how it had +seemed when she suddenly knew that it was he who touched her +shoulder. Her thought of him was a backward thought, with a sense in +it of his presence just behind her again, perhaps, if she should +turn her head,—which she would not do, for all the world, to break +the spell,—when suddenly,—face to face,—through the car-window, +she awoke to his eyes and smile. +</p> +<p> +"How did you know?" she asked, as he came in and took the seat +beside her. Then she blushed to think what she had taken for +granted. +</p> +<p> +"I didn't," he answered; "except as a Yankee always knows things, +and a cat comes down upon her feet. I am taking a week's holiday, +and I began it two days sooner, that I might run up to see Aunt +Effie before I go down to Boston to meet my father. The steamer +will be due by Saturday. It is my first holiday since I went to +Arlesbury. I'm turning into a regular old Gradgrind, Miss Sylvie." +</p> +<p> +Sylvie smiled at him, as if a regular old Gradgrind were just the +most beautiful and praiseworthy creature a bright, hearty young +fellow could turn into. +</p> +<p> +"You'd better not encourage me," he said, shaking his head. "It +would be a dreadful thing if I should get sordid, you know. I'm not +apt to stop half way in anything; and I'm awfully in earnest now +about saving up money." +</p> +<p> +He had to stop there. He was coming close to motives, and these he +could say nothing about. +</p> +<p> +But a sudden stop, in speech as in music, is sometimes more +significant than any stricken note. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie did not speak at once, either. She was thinking what +different reasons there might be, for spending or saving; how there +might be hardest self-denial in most uncalculating extravagance. +</p> +<p> +When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,—"I +suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue +nor blame in just saving or not saving." +</p> +<p> +"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he +thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm +very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out +of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever +planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a +foothold." +</p> +<p> +"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely +place." +</p> +<p> +"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise. +</p> +<p> +"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter." +</p> +<p> +"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice +and plucky about those little things, isn't there?" +</p> +<p> +It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked +perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just +then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He +was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to +come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be +kept back, was here. +</p> +<p> +He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he +speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he +wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it +through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what +he was keeping his probation for? +</p> +<p> +So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them +only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing. +</p> +<p> +After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so, +giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break +in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we +not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time? +Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in +them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of +whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us. +"This is my Body, broken for you." +</p> +<p> +If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world +might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went +out to the end of the platform to find the boxes. Two vehicles had +been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon +for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself. +</p> +<p> +Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled +upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to +the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her +and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive. +</p> +<p> +Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air. How could +he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon +the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"Shall you be afraid of me?" he asked, as he tossed in his valise +for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie's shawl against the +back, to cushion her more comfortably. "Do you suppose we can manage +to get over there without running down a bake-shop?" +</p> +<p> +"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt +your exploits to circumstances." +</p> +<p> +Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown +country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as +perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then +flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to +a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the +water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the +bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the +descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she +did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She +was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving. +</p> +<p> +The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and +beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering +and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths +and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of +song gushed forth. +</p> +<p> +The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly +furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring +wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors +and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the +pasture bushes. +</p> +<p> +The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind, +perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we +believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes. +</p> +<p> +"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as +they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly +believe in these hills." +</p> +<p> +Her own words reminded her. +</p> +<p> +"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the +other world is only a little way out." +</p> +<p> +"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you +know that." +</p> +<p> +His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and +pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk. +</p> +<p> +And he had dropped the prefix from her name. +</p> +<p> +He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was +another little falling out that he could not help. The things he +could not help were the most comfortable. +</p> +<p> +"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said +Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came +so tenderly! I had dreaded sickness and pain for her." +</p> +<p> +"It has been all hard for you. I hope it will be easier now. I hope +it will always be easier." +</p> +<p> +"I am going to live with Mrs. Kirkbright," said Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"Tell me about my new aunt," said Rodney. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie was glad to go on about Desire, about the wedding, about +Hill-hope, and the plans for living there. +</p> +<p> +"I think it will be almost like heaven," she said. "It will be home +and happiness; all that people look forward to for themselves. And +yet, right alongside, there will be the work and the help. It will +open right out into it, as heaven does into earth. Mr. Kirkbright is +a grand man." +</p> +<p> +"Yes. He's one of the ten-talent people. But I suppose we can all do +something. It is good to have some little one-horse teams for the +light jobs." +</p> +<p> +"I never could <i>be</i> Desire," said Sylvie. "But I am glad, to work +with her. I am glad to live one of the little lives." +</p> +<p> +There would always be a boy and girl simpleness between these two, +and in their taking of the world together. And that is good for the +world, as well. It cannot be all made of mountains. If all were high +and grand, it would be as if nothing were. Heaven itself is not +built like that. +</p> +<p> +"There goes some of Uncle Christopher's stuff, I suppose," said +Rodney, a while afterward, as they came to the top of a long ascent. +He pointed to a great loaded wain that stood with its three powerful +horses on the crest of a forward hill. It was piled high up with +tiling and drain-pipe, packed with straw. The long cylinders showed +their round mouths behind, like the mouths of cannon. +</p> +<p> +"A nice cargo for these hills, I should think." +</p> +<p> +"They have brakes on the wheels, of course," said Sylvie. "And the +horses are strong. That must be for the new houses. They will soon +make all those things here. Mr. Kirkbright has large contracts for +brick, already. He has been sending down specimens. They say the +clay is of remarkably fine quality." +</p> +<p> +"We shall have to get by that thing, presently," said Rodney. "I +hope the horse will take it well." +</p> +<p> +"Are you trying to frighten me?" asked Sylvie, smiling. "I'm used to +these roads. I have spent half a summer here, you know." +</p> +<p> +But Rodney knew that it was the "being used" that would be the +question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had +ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a +steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered +the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side +spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not +more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was dropping +behind the hills. +</p> +<p> +"I shall take you out, and lead him by," he said. "I've no wish to +give you another spill. We won't go on through life in that way." +</p> +<p> +It was quite as well that they had only another mile to go. Rodney +was keeping his promise, but the thread of it was wearing very thin. +</p> +<p> +They rode slowly up the opposite slope, then waited, in their turn, +on the top, to give the team time to reach the next level. +</p> +<p> +They heard it creak and grind as it wore heavily down, taking up +the whole track with careful zigzag tackings; they could see, as it +turned, how the pole stood sharp up between the shoulders of the +straining wheel horses, as their haunches pressed out either way, +and their backs hollowed, and their noses came together, and the +driver touched them dexterously right and left upon their flanks to +bring them in again. +</p> +<p> +"Uncle Kit has a good teamster there," said Rodney. +</p> +<p> +Just against the foot of the next rise, they overtook him. The gray +nag that Rodney drove pricked his ears and stretched his head up, +and began to take short, cringing steps, as they drew near the +formidable, moving mass. +</p> +<p> +Rodney jumped out, and keeping eye and hand upon him, helped down +Sylvie also. Then he threw the long reins over his arm, and took the +horse by the bridle. +</p> +<p> +The animal made a half parenthesis of himself, curving skittishly, +and watching jealously, as he went by the frightsome pile. +</p> +<p> +"You see it was as well not to risk it," Rodney said, as Sylvie came +up with him beyond. "He would have had us down there among the +blackberry vines. He's all right now. Will you get in?" +</p> +<p> +"Let us walk on to the top," said Sylvie. "It is so pleasant to feel +one's feet upon the ground." +</p> +<p> +They kept on, accordingly; the slow team rumbling behind them. At +the top, was a wide, beautiful level; oak-trees and maples grew +along the roadside, and fields stretched out along a table land to +right and left. Before them, lying in the golden mist of twilight, +was a sea of distant hill-tops,—purple and shadow-black and gray. +The sky bent down its tender, mellow sphere, and touched them +softly. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie stood still, with folded hands, and Rodney stopped the +horse. A rod or two back, just at the edge of the level, the loaded +wagon had stopped also. +</p> +<p> +"Hills,—and the sunset,—and stillness," said Sylvie. "They always +seem like heaven." +</p> +<p> +Rodney stood with his right hand, from which fell the looped reins, +reached up and resting on the saddle. +</p> +<p> +"I never saw a sight like that before," he said. +</p> +<p> +While they looked, the evening star trembled out through the clear +saffron, above the floating mist that hung among the hills. +</p> +<p> +"O, they never can help it!" exclaimed Sylvie, suddenly. +</p> +<p> +"Help it? Who?" asked Rodney, wondering. +</p> +<p> +"Beginning again. Growing good. Those people who are coming up to +Hill-hope. There's a man coming, with his wife; a young man, who got +into bad ways, and took to drinking. Mr. Vireo has been watching and +advising him so long! He married them, five years ago, and they have +two little children. The wife is delicate; she has worried through +everything. She has taken in working-men's washing, to earn the +rent; and he had a good trade, too; he was a plasterer. He has +really tried; but it was no use in the city; it was all around him. +And he lost character and chances; the bosses wouldn't have him, he +said. When he was trying most, sometimes, they wouldn't believe in +him; and then there would come idle days, and he would meet old +companions, and get led off, and then there would be weeks of +misery. Now he is coming away from it all. There is a little cottage +ready, with a garden; the little wife is so happy! He <i>can't</i> get it +here; and he will have work at his trade, and will learn +brickmaking. Do you know, I think a place like this, where such +work is doing, is almost better than heaven, where it is all done, +Rodney!" +</p> +<p> +She spoke his name, as he had hers a little while ago, without +thinking. He turned his face toward her with a look which kindled +into sudden light at that last word, but which had warmed all +through before with the generous pathos of what she told him, and +the earnest, simple way of it. +</p> +<p> +"I've found out that even in our own affairs, <i>making</i> is better +than ready-made," he said. "This last year has been the best year of +my life. If my father had given me fifty thousand dollars, and told +me I might—have all my own way with it,—I shouldn't have thanked +him as much to-day, as I do. But I wish that steamer were in, and he +were here! He has got something which belongs to me, and I want him +to give it back." +</p> +<p> +After enunciating this little riddle, Rodney changed hands with his +reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching his other to +Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"You had better jump in," he said; and there was a tone and an +inflection at the pause, as if another word, that would have been +tenderly spoken, hung refrained upon it. "We must get well ahead of +that old catapult." +</p> +<p> +They drove on rapidly along the level; then they came to the long, +gradual slope that brought them down into Brickfields. +</p> +<p> +To the right, just before reaching the Basin, a turn struck off that +skirted round, partly ascending again until it fell into the Cone +Hill road and so led direct to Hill-hope. +</p> +<p> +They could see the buildings, grouped picturesquely against rocks +and pines and down against the root of the green hill. They had all +been painted of a light gray or slate color, with red roofs. +</p> +<p> +They passed on, down into the shadows, where trees were thick and +dark. A damp, rich smell of the woods was about them,—a different +atmosphere from the breath of the hill-top. They heard the tinkle of +little unseen streams, and the far-off, foaming plunge of the +cascades. +</p> +<p> +Suddenly, there came a sound behind them like the rush of an +avalanche; a noise that seemed to fill up all the space of the air, +and to gather itself down toward them on every side alike. +</p> +<p> +"O, Rodney, turn!" cried Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +But there was a horrible second in which he could not know how to +turn. +</p> +<p> +He did not stop to look, even. He sprang, with one leap, he knew not +how,—over step or dasher,—to the horse's head. He seized him by +the bridle, and pulled him off the road, into a thicket of +bush-branches, in a hollow rough with stones. +</p> +<p> +The wheels caught fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to +rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant of the +half-overturned vehicle. +</p> +<p> +There was only a single instant. Down, with the awful roar of an +earthquake, came crashing swift and headlong, passing within a +hand's breadth of their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team; +its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads, +haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant +more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that +made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more +suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly +up into the air, and showed dimly in the dusky light. +</p> +<p> +The gray horse quieted, cowed by the very terror and the hush. +Sylvie slipped down from the tilting buggy, and found her feet upon +a stone. +</p> +<p> +Rodney reached out one hand, and she came to his side. He put his +arm around her, and drew her close. +</p> +<p> +"My darling little Sylvie!" he said. +</p> +<p> +She turned her face, and leaned it down upon his shoulder. +</p> +<p> +"O, Rodney, the poor man is killed!" +</p> +<p> +But as they stood so, a figure came toward them, over the high +water-bar below which they had stopped. +</p> +<p> +"For God's sake, is anybody hurt?" asked a strange, hoarse voice +with a tremble in it. +</p> +<p> +"Nobody!" +</p> +<p> +"O, are you the driver? I thought you must be killed! How +thankful!"—And Sylvie sobbed on Rodney's shoulder. +</p> +<p> +"Can I help you?" asked the man. +</p> +<p> +"No, look after your horses." And the man went on, down into the +dust, where the wreck was. +</p> +<p> +"We'll go, and send help to you," shouted Rodney. +</p> +<p> +Then he backed the gray horse carefully out upon the road again. +</p> +<p> +"Will you dare get in?" he asked of Sylvie. +</p> +<p> +"I do not think we had better. How can we tell how it is down there? +We may not be able to pass." +</p> +<p> +"It is below the turn, I think. But come,—we'll walk." +</p> +<p> +He took the bridle again, and gave his other hand to Sylvie. Holding +each other so, they went along. +</p> +<p> +When they came to the turn, they could see, just beyond the mass of +ruin; the great wagon, three wheels in the air,—one rolled away +into the ditch; the broken freight, flung all across the road, and +lying piled about the wagon. One horse was dead,—buried underneath. +Another lay motionless, making horrid moans. The teamster was +freeing the third—the leader, which stood safe—from chains and +harness. +</p> +<p> +Leading him, the man came up with Rodney and Sylvie, as they turned +into the side road. +</p> +<p> +"I knew you were just ahead, when it happened. I thought you were +gone for certain." +</p> +<p> +"There was a Mercy over us all!" said Sylvie, with sweet, tremulous +intenseness. +</p> +<p> +The rough man lifted his hand to his bare head. Rodney clasped +tighter the little fingers that lay within his own. +</p> +<p> +"What did happen?" he asked. +</p> +<p> +"The brake-rod broke; the pole-strap gave way; it was all in a heap +in a minute. I saw it was no use; I had to jump. And then I thought +of you. I'm glad you saw me, sir. You know I was sober." +</p> +<p> +"I know you were sober, and managing most skillfully. I had been +saying that." +</p> +<p> +"Thank you, sir. It's an awful job." +</p> +<p> +"Hark!" said Sylvie. "There's the man with the trunks." +</p> +<p> +"I forgot all about him," said Rodney. +</p> +<p> +"That's a fact," said the teamster. "Turn down here, to let him by. +Hallo!" +</p> +<p> +"Hallo! Come to grief?" +</p> +<p> +"We just have, then. Go ahead, will you, and bring back—<i>something +to shoot with</i>," he added, in a lower tone, and coming +close,—remembering Sylvie. "I had a crow-bar, but it's lost in the +jumble. I'll stay here, now." +</p> +<p> +The wagon drove by, rapidly. The man led his horse down by the wall, +to wait there. Sylvie and Rodney, hand in hand, walked on. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie shivered with the horrible excitement; her teeth chattered; a +nervous trembling was taking hold of her. +</p> +<p> +Rodney put his arm round her again. "Don't tremble, dear," he said. +</p> +<p> +"O, Rodney! What were we kept alive for?" +</p> +<p> +"For each other," whispered Rodney. +</p> +<a name="2HCH0035"><!-- H2 anchor --></a> + +<div style="height: 4em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + +<h2> + CHAPTER XXXV. +</h2> +<h3> + HILL-HOPE. +</h3> +<p> +They were sitting together, the next day, on the rock below the +cascade, in the warm sunshine. +</p> +<p> +Aunt Euphrasia knew all about it; Aunt Euphrasia had let them go +down there together. She was as content as Rodney in the thing that +could not now be helped. +</p> +<p> +"I've broken my promise," said Rodney to Sylvie. "I agreed with my +father that I wouldn't be engaged for two years." +</p> +<p> +"Why, we aren't engaged,—yet,—are we?" asked Sylvie, with +bewitching surprise. +</p> +<p> +"I don't know," said Rodney, his old, merry, mischievous twinkle +coming in the corners of his eyes, as he flashed them up at her. "I +think we've got the refusal of each other!" +</p> +<p> +"Well. We'll keep it so. We'll wait. You shall not break any promise +for me," said Sylvie, still sweetly obtuse. +</p> +<p> +"I'm satisfied with that way of looking at it," said Rodney, +laughing out. "Unless—you mean to be as cunning about everything +else, Sylvie. In that case, I don't know; I'm afraid you'd be +dangerous." +</p> +<p> +"I wonder if I'm always going to be dangerous to you," said Sylvie, +gravely, taking up the word. "I always get you into an accident." +</p> +<p> +"When we take matters quietly, the way they were meant to go, we +shall leave off being hustled, I suppose," said Rodney, just as +gravely. "There has certainly been intent in the way we have +been—thrown together!" +</p> +<p> +"I don't believe you ought to say such things, Rodney,—yet! You are +talking just as if"— +</p> +<p> +"We weren't waiting. O, yes! I'm glad you invented that little +temporary arrangement. But it's a difficult one to carry out. I +shall be gladder when my father comes. I'm tired of being +Casabianca. I don't see how we can talk at all. Mayn't I tell you +about a little house there is at Arlesbury, with a square porch and +a three-windowed room over it, where anybody could sit and +sew—among plants and things—and see all up and down the road, to +and from the mills? A little brown house, with turf up to the +door-stone, and only a hundred dollars a year? Mayn't I tell you how +much I've saved up, and how I like being a real working man with a +salary, just as you liked being one of the Other Girls?" +</p> +<p> +"Yes; you may tell me that; that last," said Sylvie, softly. "You +may tell me anything you like about yourself." +</p> +<p> +"Then I must tell you that I never should have been good for +anything if it hadn't been for you." +</p> +<p> +"O, dear!" said Sylvie. "I don't see how we <i>can</i> talk. It keeps +coming back again. I've had all those plants kept safe that you sent +me, Rodney," she began, briskly, upon a fresh tack. +</p> +<p> +"Those very ivies? Ah, the little three-windowed room!" +</p> +<p> +"Rodney! I didn't think you were so unprincipled!" said Sylvie, +getting up. "I wouldn't have come down here, if I had known there +was a promise! I shall certainly help you keep it. I shall go away." +</p> +<p> +She turned round, and met a gentleman coming down along the slope of +the smooth, broad rock. +</p> +<p> +"Mr. Sherrett!—Rodney!" +</p> +<p> +Rodney sprang to his feet. +</p> +<p> +"My boy! How are you?" +</p> +<p> +"Father! When—how—did you come?" +</p> +<p> +"I came to Tillington by the late train last night, and have just +driven over. I went to Arlesbury yesterday." +</p> +<p> +"But the steamer! She wasn't due till Sunday. You sailed the +<i>ninth</i>?" +</p> +<p> +"No. I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London. +I came by the Palmyra. But you don't let me speak to Sylvie." +</p> +<p> +He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken +her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney's. +</p> +<p> +"Father, I've broken my promise; but I don't think anybody could +have helped it. You couldn't have helped it yourself." +</p> +<p> +"I've seen Aunt Euphrasia. I've been here almost an hour. I have +thanked God that nothing is broken <i>but</i> the promise, Rodney; and I +think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been +so faithfully kept. I'm satisfied with <i>one</i> year. I believe all the +rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little +lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word." +</p> +<p> +And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking +softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead. +</p> +<p> +Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look +upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear, +earnest expression. +</p> +<p> +"I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,—I hope you feel sure,"—she said, +"that I wouldn't have been engaged to Rodney while there was a +promise?" +</p> +<p> +"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett, +smiling. +</p> +<p> +"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then +they all three laughed together. +</p> +<hr /> +<p> +I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in +these few days; except—that this book was to be all printed by the +twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in. +</p> +<p> +That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr. +Dakie Thayne. +</p> +<p> +He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him +close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had +obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his +knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result +had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the +railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of +five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek +payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter. +</p> +<p> +Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to +investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,—I +am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part +of Dakie Thayne, was—in some proportion at least,—a piece of a +horse-shoe! +</p> +<p> +If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know +what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it +had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,—their little +section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,—might be +made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said +to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks. +</p> +<p> +"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,—or if ever I +came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good +with it,—that there would be one special way I should like to take. +I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into +the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and +wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single +bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people +who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are +obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who +are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a +mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people. +I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr. +John Westlock!" +</p> +<p> +So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out +and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good +luck in the way for people to stumble upon,—and to act the part +generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing +than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge +at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed +themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe, +to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables +were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie +Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is +undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think +Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand +dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie +Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he +brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as +money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and +Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning. +</p> +<p> +There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out +upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its +greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter. +</p> +<p> +Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the +day; the Prayer, that God "who had given his only Son to die for our +sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so +to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might +always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the Assurance of "the +victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of +God," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that +"the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"—in our +redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came +back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be +unto you," <i>showing them his hands and his side</i>. +</p> +<p> +He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God +for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where +their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel +it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it +to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that +the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his +peace upon us; because <i>He suffers</i> till we are at peace. That so +his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering, +and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in +one, that if we receive the one,—if we bear the pain with which He +touches us,—we shall also receive the other. +</p> +<p> +"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of +your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done +nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in +the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his +resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of +sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God, +through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" +</p> +<p> +Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on +her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her. +Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men +and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their +Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast, +wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and +blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the +scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew. +</p> +<p> +They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to +remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender +color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy. +There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen +with the heavenliest things that are seen. +</p> +<p> +Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling +of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer +pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first. +</p> +<p> +After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper +gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and +whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook +upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes +already established, and the buildings that were making ready for +more. +</p> +<p> +Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to +accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over +there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the +spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that +left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad. +</p> +<p> +"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two +hundred acres," he said. +</p> +<p> +"And for the home,—you must make that large and beautiful, Desire! +We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to +bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us, +close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us; +there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other +and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let +<i>him</i> call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name +for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to +make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent +delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so +for <i>your</i> sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,—content, in ways +that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in." +</p> +<p> +"<i>Is</i> not your Desire satisfied?" +</p> +<p> +"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very +Desire of my heart has come to me!" +</p> +<p> +Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and +finished their talk together,—this April number of it, I +mean,—about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and +the grass plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the +mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with +her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the +ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at +Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the +Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the +porch room! +</p> +<p> +"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall +ever want to spend for anything!" +</p> +<p> +"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to +grow proud and snobbish." +</p> +<p> +"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the +riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us." +</p> + + +<div style="height: 6em;"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /></div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. 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T. Whitney + +Release Date: July 19, 2005 [EBook #16329] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OTHER GIRLS *** + + + + +Produced by Janet Kegg and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +THE OTHER GIRLS + +By + +MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY + + +BOSTON AND NEW YORK +HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY +The Riverside Press, Cambridge +1893 + + + +Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by +JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY, +in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. + + + * * * * * + + By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney. + + WRITINGS. New Edition, from new plates. The set, 17 + vols. 16mo, $21.25. + FAITH GARTNEY'S GIRLHOOD. 16mo, $1.25. + HITHERTO: A Story of Yesterdays. 16mo, $1.25. + PATIENCE STRONG'S OUTINGS. 16mo, $1.25. + THE GAYWORTHYS. 16mo, $1.25. + A SUMMER IN LESLIE GOLDTHWAITE'S LIFE. 16mo, $1.25. + WE GIRLS: A Home Story. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + REAL FOLKS. 16mo, $1.25. + THE OTHER GIRLS. 16mo, $1.25. + SIGHTS AND INSIGHTS. 2 vols. 16mo, $2.50. + ODD, OR EVEN? 16mo, $1.25. + BONNYBOROUGH. 16mo, $1.25. + BOYS AT CHEQUASSET. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + MOTHER GOOSE FOR GROWN FOLKS. Enlarged + Edition. Illustrated by HOPPIN. 16mo, $1.25. + HOMESPUN YARNS. Short Stories. 16mo, $1.25. + ASCUTNEY STREET. A Neighborhood Story. 16mo, $1.25. + A GOLDEN GOSSIP. Neighborhood Story Number Two. 16mo, $1.25. + DAFFODILS. Poems. Illustrated. 16mo, $1.25. + PANSIES. Poems. New Edition. 16mo, $1.25. + HOLY-TIDES. Seven Songs for the Church's Seasons. + 16mo, illuminated paper, 75 cents. + BIRD-TALK. New Poems. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, $1.00. + JUST HOW: A Key to the Cook-Books. 16mo, $1.00. + + HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. + BOSTON AND NEW YORK. + + * * * * * + + +PREFACE. + + +"Wait until you are helped, my dear! Don't touch the pie until it is +cut!" + +The old Mother, Life, keeps saying that to us all. + +As individuals, it is well for us to remember it; that we may not +have things until we are helped; at any rate, until the full and +proper time comes, for courageously and with right assurance helping +ourselves. + +Yet it is good for _people_, as people, to get a morsel--a +flavor--in advance. It is well that they should be impatient for the +King's supper, to which we shall all sit down, if we will, one day. + +So I have not waited for everything to happen and become a usage, +that I have told you of in this little story. I confess that there +are good things in it which have not yet, literally, come to pass. I +have picked something out of the pie beforehand. + +I meant, therefore, to have laid all dates aside; especially as I +found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these +"Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately, +known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or +experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem +to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs +could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be +remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential +Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all +have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have +not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the +prophecies be justified as speedily as the prochronisms will. + +The Great Fire, you see, came in and dated it. I could not help +that; neither could I leave the great fact out. + +Not any more could I possibly tell what sort of April days we should +have, when I found myself fixed to the very coming April and Easter, +for the closing chapters of my tale. If persistent snow-storms fling +a falsehood in my face, it will be what I have not heretofore +believed possible,--a _white_ one; and we can all think of balmy +Aprils that have been, and that are yet to be. + +With these appeals for trifling allowance,--leaving the larger need +to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no +slight fiction can adequately handle,--I give you leave to turn the +page. + + A. D. T. W. +BOSTON, _March_, 1873. + + + + +CONTENTS. + + CHAPTER + I. SPILLED OUT + II. UP-STAIRS + III. TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN + IV. NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT + V. SPILLED OUT AGAIN + VI. A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR + VII. BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW + VIII. TO HELP: SOMEWHERE + IX. INHERITANCE + X. FILLMER AND BYLLES + XI. CHRISTOFERO + XII. LETTERS AND LINKS + XIII. RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE + XIV. MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL + XV. BONNY BOWLS + XVI. RECOMPENSE + XVII. ERRANDS OF HOPE + XVIII. BRICKFIELD FARMS + XIX. BLOSSOMING FERNS + XX. "WANTED" + XXI. VOICES AND VISIONS + XXII. BOX FIFTY-TWO + XXIII. EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY + XXIV. TEMPTATION + XXV. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING + XXVI. TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS' + XXVII. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM + XXVIII. "LIVING IN" + XXIX. WINTERGREEN + XXX. NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY + XXXI. CHOSEN: AND CALLED + XXXII. EASTER LILIES + XXXIII. KITCHEN CRAMBO + XXXIV. WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP + XXXV. HILL-HOPE + + + + + +THE OTHER GIRLS + + + + +CHAPTER I. + +SPILLED OUT. + + +Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little +basket-phaeton. + +There was a story about this little basket-phaeton, a story, and a +bit of domestic diplomacy. + +The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right +here in this first page, let it do. It would tell--taking the little +carriage for a text and key--ever so much about aims and ways and +principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the +busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great +universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things, +as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and +atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet. + +But the diplomacy had been this:-- + +"There is one thing, Argie, I should really like Sylvie to have. It +is getting to be almost a necessity, living out of town as we do." + +Mr. Argenter's other names were "Increase Muchmore;" but his wife +passed over all that, and called him in the grace of conjugal +intimacy, "Argie." + +Increase Muchmore Argenter. + +A curious combination; but you need not say it could not have +happened. I have read half a dozen as funny combinations in a single +advertising page of a newspaper, or in a single transit of the city +in a horse-car. + +It did not happen altogether without a purpose, either. Mr. +Argenter's father had been fond of money; had made and saved a +considerable sum himself; and always meant that his son should make +and save a good deal more. So he signified this in his cradle and +gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the +elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been +named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain +Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or +because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like +original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the +later christening, if you can call it such; and now, therefore, +resulted Increase Muchmore Argenter. The father hung, as it were, a +charm around his son's neck, as Catholics do, giving saints' names +to their children. But young Increase found it, in his earlier +years, rather of the nature of a millstone. It was a good while, for +instance, before Miss Maria Thorndike could make up her mind to take +upon herself such a title. She did not much mind it now. "I.M. +Argenter" was such a good signature at the bottom of a check; and +the surname was quite musical and elegant. "Mrs. Argenter" was all +she had put upon her cards. There was no other Mrs. Argenter to be +confounded with. The name stood by itself in the Directory. All the +rest of the Argenters were away down in Maine in Poggowantimoc. + +"Living out of town as we do." Mrs. Argenter always put that in. It +was the nut that fastened all her screws of argument. + +"Away out here as we are, we _must_ keep an expert cook, you know; +we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an +emergency, as we did in town." "We _must_ have a seamstress in the +house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile +circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,--"Sylvie _ought_ to have a +little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends; +no running in and out and making little daily plans, as girls do in +a neighborhood. All the girls of her class have their own +pony-chaises now; it is a part of the plan of living." + +"It isn't any part of _my_ plan," said Mr. Argenter, who had his +little spasms of returning to old-fashioned ideas he was brought up +in, but had long ago practically deserted; and these spasms mostly +took him, it must be said, in response to new propositions of Mrs. +Argenter's. His own plans evolved gradually; he came to them by +imperceptible steps of mental process, or outward constraint; Mrs. +Argenter's "jumped" at him, took him at unawares, and by sudden +impinging upon solid shield of permanent judgment struck out sparks +of opposition. She could not very well help that. He never had time +to share her little experiences, and interests, and perplexities, +and so sympathize with her as she went along, and up to the agreeing +and consenting point. + +"I won't set her up with any such absurdities," said Mr. Argenter. +"It's confounded ruinous shoddy nonsense. Makes little fools of them +all. Sylvie's got airs enough now. It won't do for her to think she +can have everything the Highfords do." + +"It isn't that," said Mrs. Argenter, sweetly. Her position, and the +soft "g" in her name, giving her a sense of something elegant and +gentle-bred to be always sustained and acted up to, had really +helped and strengthened Mrs. Argenter in very much of her +established amiability. We don't know, always, where our ties and +braces really are. We are graciously allowed many a little temporary +stay whose hold cannot be quite directly raced to the everlasting +foundations. + +"It isn't _that_; I don't care for the Highfords, particularly. +Though I do like to have Sylvie enjoy things as she sees them +enjoyed all around her, in her own circle. But it's the convenience; +and then, it's a real means of showing kindness. She can so often +ask other girls, you know, to drive with her; girls who haven't +pony-chaises." + +"_Showing_ kindness, yes; you've just hit it there. But it isn't +always _fun to the frogs_, Mrs. A.!" + +Now if Mrs. Argenter disliked one thing more than another, that her +husband ever did, it was his calling her "Mrs. A.;" and I am very +much afraid, I was going to say, that he knew it; but of course he +did when she had mildly told him so, over and over,--I am afraid he +_recollected_ it, at this very moment, and others similar. + +"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Argenter," she said, with some +quiet coldness. + +"I mean, I know how she takes _other_ girls to ride; she _sets them +down at the small gray house,--the house without any piazza or bay +window, Michael_!" and Mr. Argenter laughed. That was the order he +had heard Sylvie give one day when he had come up with his own +carriage at the post-office in the village, whither he had walked +over for exercise and the evening papers. Sylvie had Aggie Townsend +with her, and she put her head out at the window on one side just as +her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very +elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid. +Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed +off, but he had kept up the joke. + +"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie +will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady, +there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having +things." + +"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr. +Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a +kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top +buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases." + +And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended--or had better end--the +conversation. + +For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise, +after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer +weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend +days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent +continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began +again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of +it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages. +Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just +when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr. +Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now +being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little +low phaeton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's +mother was always lending it to her. + +So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over +to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by +Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves +of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken, +politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some +small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever +the former had the basket-phaeton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken +demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little +comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about +so easily with a pony-carriage. + +But there was something else to be accomplished this time that +Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with +some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the +Ingraham brown bread. + +Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his +tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red +Squirrel, to make out the team; for which, if he should come to any +grief, Rodgers, the coachman, would have to bear responsibility for +being persuaded to let Duke out in such manner. + +Just as Sylvie Argenter drew up her pony at the baker's door, Rod +Sherrett came spinning round the corner in grand style. But Duke was +not used to tandem harness, and Red Squirrel, put ahead, took flying +side-leaps now and then on his own account; and Duke, between his +comrade's escapades and his driver's checks and admonitions, was to +that degree perplexed in his mind and excited off his well-bred +balance, that he was by this time becoming scarcely more reliable in +the shafts. Rod found he had his hands full. He found this out, +however, only just in time to realize it, as they were suddenly +relieved and emptied of their charge; for, before his call and the +touch of his long whip could bring back Red Squirrel into line at +this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the +"trap" down upon the little phaeton. There was a lock and a crash; a +wheel was off the phaeton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie +Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the +threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road, +a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering +away through the scared Corner Village, with the wreck at their +heels. + +Sylvie's arm was bruised, and her dress torn; that was all. She felt +a little jarred and dizzy at first, when Mr. Ingraham lifted her up, +and Rodney Sherrett, picking himself out of the dust with a shake +and a stamp, found his own bones unbroken, and hurried over to ask +anxiously--for he was a kind-hearted fellow--how much harm he had +done, and to express his vehement regret at the "horrid spill." + +Rod Sherrett and Sylvie Argenter had danced together at the Roxeter +Assemblies, and the little Dorbury "Germans;" they had boated, and +picknicked, and skated in company, but to be tumbled together into a +baker's shop, torn and frightened, and dusty,--each feeling, also, +in a great scrape,--this was an odd and startling partnership. +Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to +dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never +intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his +hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and +looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply, +they both laughed. Then Rodney shrugged his shoulders, and walked +over and picked up his hat. + +"It might have been worse," he said, coming back, as Mr. Ingraham +and the man who had held Sylvie's pony took the latter out of the +shafts and led him to a post to fasten him, and then proceeded +together, as well as they could, to lift the disabled phaeton and +roll it over to the blacksmith's shop to be set right. + +"You'll be all straight directly," he said, "and I'm only thankful +you're not much hurt. But I _am_ in a mess. Whew! What the old +gentleman will say if Duke don't come out of it comfortable, is +something I'd rather not look ahead to. I must go on and see. I'll +be back again, and if there's anything--anything _more_," he added +with a droll twinkle, "that I can do for you, I shall be happy, and +will try to do it a little better." + +The feminine Ingrahams were all around Sylvie by this time: Mrs. +Ingraham, and Ray, and Dot. They bemoaned and exclaimed, and were +"thankful she'd come off as she had;" and "she'd better step right +in and come up-stairs." The village boys were crowding round,--all +those who had not been in time to run after the "smash,"--and Sylvie +gladly withdrew to the offered shelter. Rod Sherrett gave his hair a +toss or two with his hands, struck the dust off his wide-awake, put +it on, and walked off down the hill, through the staring and +admiring crowd. + + + + +CHAPTER II. + +UP-STAIRS. + + +The two Ingraham girls had been sitting in their own room over the +shop when the accident occurred, and it was there they now took +Sylvie Argenter, to have her dress tacked together again, and to +wash her face and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham +came bustling after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were +all very delighted and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's +daughter quite to themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait +upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good +deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although +baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation, +born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and +universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of +society out of the Roxeter town library. + +There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and +re-arranging were all done. The axle of the phaeton had been split, +and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for +Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned, +dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window, +and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much. + +She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere +before. She didn't know--as we don't about the moon--whether there +might _be_ atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here +she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a +bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually _did_ live, much +after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a +worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the +windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint +rocker in the other,--with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of +dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,--white quilted +covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted +foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end +of the bed. + +She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner +but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,--only she never +really supposed about it,--some sort of places, behind and above it, +under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they +weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never +exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses +that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off +down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both +hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup +of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,--the latter _not_ out +of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor +cupboard,--she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and +plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn, +bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips +without distaste or harm. + +"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham. + +The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a +silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie +thought she must mean _before_ her start, about which she was +growing anxious. + +"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed. +"I wonder if the phaeton will be ready soon?" + +"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll +be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite +concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess +you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them +fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames." + +Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread +edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned +together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea. + +The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the +front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around +with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the +street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green, +swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or +forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less +impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a +wheel, or get a horse shod. + +"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out +involuntarily. + +Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes. + +"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got +turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never +seemed the same again." + +If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been +reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the +house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a +good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk +vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as +delicately as she did. + +Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's +was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming, +pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most +elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed, +quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell +off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth, +neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot +was different: she was dark too, not _so_ dark; her eyes were full, +brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and +comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was +large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of, +like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her +mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to +perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate +about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness, and +every-day-ness too. + +Sylvie sat silent after this, and looked at her, wondering, more +than she had wondered about the furniture. Thinking, "how many girls +there were in the world! All sorts--everywhere! What did they all +do, and find to care for?" These were not the "other" girls of whom +her mother had blandly said that she could show kindnesses by taking +them to drive. Those were such as Aggie Townsend, the navy captain's +widow's daughter,--nice, but poor; girls whom everybody noticed, of +course, but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That +made such a difference! These were _otherer_ yet! And for all that +they were girls,--girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and +companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story, +is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls! +Heaven only knows what there is _not_ represented, and suggested, +and foreshadowed there! + +Sylvie Argenter, with all her nonsense, had a way of putting +herself, imaginatively, into other people's places. She used to tell +her mother, when she was a little child and said her hymns,--which +Mrs. Argenter, not having any very fresh, instant spiritual life, I +am afraid, out of which to feed her child, chose for her in dim +remembrance of what had been thought good for herself when she was +little,--that she "didn't know exactly as she _did_ 'thank the +goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled.'" She "should +like pretty well to have been a little--Lapland girl with a sledge; +or--a Chinese; or--a kitchen girl; a little while, I mean!" + +She had a way of intimacy with the servants which Mrs. Argenter +found it hard to check. She liked to get into Jane's room when she +was "doing herself up" of an afternoon, and look over her cheap +little treasures in her band-box and chest-drawer. She made especial +love to a carnelian heart, and a twisted gold ring with two clasped +hands on it. + +"I think it's real nice to have only _two_ or _three_ things, and to +'clean yourself up,' and to have a 'Sunday out!'" she said. + +Mrs. Argenter was anxiously alarmed at the child's low tastes. Yet +these were very practicably compatible with the alternations of +importance in being driven about in her father's barouche, taking +Aggie Townsend up on the road, and "setting her down at the small +gray house." + +Sylvie thought, this afternoon, looking at Ray Ingraham, in her +striped lilac and white calico, with its plaited waist and +cross-banded, machine-stitched double skirt, sitting by her shady +window, beyond which, behind the garden angle, rose up the red brick +wall of the bakehouse, whence came a warm, sweet smell of many +new-drawn loaves,--looking around within, at the snug tidiness of +the simple room, and even out at the street close by, with its stir +and curious interest, yet seen from just as real a shelter as she +had in her own chamber at home,--that it might really be nice to be +a baker's daughter and live in the village,--"when it wasn't your +own fault, and you couldn't help it." + +Ray nodded to some one out of her window. + +Sylvie saw a bright color come up in her cheeks, and a sparkle into +her eyes as she did so, while a little smile, that she seemed to +think was all to herself, crept about her mouth and lingered at the +dimpled corners. There was an expression as if she hid herself quite +away in some consciousness of her own, from any recollection of the +strange girl sitting by. + +The strange girl glanced from _her_ window, and saw a young +carpenter with his box of tools go past under the elm, with some +sort of light subsiding also in like manner from his face. He was in +his shirt sleeves,--but the sleeves were white,--and his straw hat +was pushed back from his forehead, about which brown curls lay damp +with heat. Sylvie did not believe he had even touched his hat, when +he had looked up through the friendly elm boughs and bowed to the +village girl in her shady corner. His hands were full, of course. +Such people's hands were almost always full. That was the reason +they did not learn such things. But how cute it had been of Ray +Ingraham _not_ to sit in the front window! He was certain to come +by, too, she supposed. To be sure; that was the street. Ray Ingraham +would not have cared to live up a long avenue, to wait for people to +come on purpose, in carriages. + +She got as far as this in her thinkings, at the same moment that she +came to the bottom of her cup of tea. And then she caught a glimpse +of Rylocks, rolling the phaeton across from the smithy. + +"What a funny time I have had! And how kind you have all been!" she +said, getting up. "I am ever so much obliged, Miss Ingraham. I +wonder"--and then, suddenly, she thought it might not be quite civil +to wonder. + +Ray Ingraham laughed. + +"So do I!" she said quickly, with a bright look. She knew well +enough what Sylvie stopped at. + +Each of these two girls wondered if there would ever be any more +"getting in behind" for them, as regarded each other, in their two +different lives. + +As Sylvie Argenter came out at the shop-door, Rodney Sherrett +appeared at the same point, safely mounted on the runaway Duke. The +team had been stopped below at the river; he had found a stable and +a saddle, had left Red Squirrel and the broken vehicle to be sent +for, and was going home, much relieved and assured by being able to +present himself upon his father's favorite roadster, whole in bones +and with ungrazed skin. + +The street boys stood round again, as he dismounted to make fresh +certainty of Sylvie's welfare, handed her into her phaeton, and then, +springing to the saddle, rode away beside her, down the East Dorbury +road. + +Mrs. Argenter was sitting with her worsted work in the high, +many-columned terrace piazza which gave grandeur to the great +show-house that Mr. Argenter had built some five years since, when +Sylvie, with Rod Sherrett beside her, came driving up the long +avenue, or, as Mrs. Argenter liked to call it, out of the English +novels, the _approach_. She laid back her canvas and wools into the +graceful Fayal basket-stand, and came down the first flight of stone +steps to meet them. + +"How late you are, Sylvie! I had begun to be quite worried," she +said, when Sylvie dropped the reins around the dasher and stood up +in the low carriage, nodding at her mother. She felt quite brave and +confident about the accident, now that Rodney Sherrett had come all +the way with her to the very door, to account for it and to help her +out with the story. + +Rodney lifted his hat to the lady. + +"We've had a great spill, Mrs. Argenter. All my fault, and Red +Squirrel's. Miss Argenter has brought home more than I have from the +_melee_. I started with a tandem, and here I am with only Gray Duke +and a borrowed saddle. It was out at Ingraham's Corner,--a quick +turn, you know,--and Miss Argenter had just stopped when Squirrel +sprang round upon her. My trap is pretty much into kindlings, but +there are no bones broken. You must let me send Rodgers round on his +way to town to-morrow, to take the phaeton to the builder's. It wants +a new axle. I'm awful sorry; but after all"--with a bright +smile,--"I can't think it altogether an ill wind,--for _me_, at any +rate. I couldn't help enjoying the ride home." + +"I don't believe you could help enjoying the whole of it, except +the very minute of the tip-out itself, before you knew," said +Sylvie, laughing. + +"Well, it _was_ a lark; but the worst is coming. I've got to go home +all alone. I wish you'd come and tell the tale for _me_, Miss +Sylvie. I shouldn't be half so afraid!" + + + + +CHAPTER III. + +TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN. + + +The seven o'clock morning train was starting from Dorbury Upper +Village. + +Early business men, mechanics, clerks, shop-girls, sewing-girls, +office-boys,--these made up the list of passengers. Except, perhaps, +some travellers now and then, bound for a first express from Boston, +or an excursion party to take a harbor steamer for a day's trip to +Nantasket or Nahant. + +Did you ever contrast one of these trains--when perhaps you were +such traveller or excursionist--with the after, leisurely, +comfortable one at ten or eleven; when gentlemen who only need to be +in the city through banking hours, and ladies bent on calls or +elegant shopping, come chatting and rustling to their seats, and +hold a little drawing-room exchange in the twenty-five minutes' +trip? + +If you have,--and if you have a little sympathetic imagination that +fills out hints,--you have had a glimpse of some of these "other +girls" and the thing that daily living is to them, with which my +story means to concern itself. + +Have you noticed the hats, with the rose or the feather behind or at +top, scrupulously according to the same dictate of style that rules +alike for seven and ten o'clock, but which has often to be worn +through wet and dry till the rose has been washed by too many a +shower, and the feather blown by too many a dusty wind, to stand for +anything but a sign that she knows what should be where, if she +only had it to put there? Have you seen the cheap alpacas, in two +shades, sure to fade in different ways and out of kindred with each +other, painfully looped in creasing folds, very much sat upon, but +which would not by any means resign themselves to simple smoothed +straightness, while silks were hitched and crisp Hernanis puffed? + +Yet the alpacas, and all their innumerable cousinhood, have also +their first mornings of fresh gloss, when the newness of the counter +is still upon them; there is a youth for all things; a first time, a +charm that seems as if it might last, though we know it neither will +nor was meant to; if it would, or were, the counters might be taken +down. And people who wear gowns that are creased and faded, have +each, one at a time, their days of glory, when they begin again. The +farther apart they come, perhaps the more of the spring-time there +is in them. + +Marion Kent bloomed out this clear, sweet, clean summer morning in a +span new tea-colored zephyrine polonaise with three little frills +edged with tiny brown braid, which set it off trimly with the due +contrasting depth of color, and cost nearly nothing except the +stitches and the kerosene she burned late in the hot July nights in +her only time for finishing it. She had covered her little old +curled leaf of a hat with a tea-colored corner that had been left, +and puffed it up high and light to the point of the new style, with +brown veil tissue that also floated off in an abundant cloudy grace +behind; and she had such an air of breezy and ecstatic elegance as +she came beaming and hastening into the early car, that nobody +really looked down to see that the underskirt was the identical +black brilliantine that had done service all the spring in the +dismal mornings of waterproofs and india-rubbers and general damp +woolen smells and blue nips and shivers. + +Marion Kent always made you think of things that never at all +belonged to her. She gave you an impression of something that she +seemed to stand for, which she could not wholly be. Her zephyrine, +with its silky shine, hinted at the real lustres of far more costly +fabrics; her hat, perked up with puffs of grenadine (how all these +things do rhyme and repeat their little Frenchy tags of endings!) +put you in mind of lace and feathers, and a general float and +flutter of gay millinery; her step and expression, as she came +airily into this second-rate old car, put on for the "journeymen" +train, brought up a notion, almost, of some ball-room advent, +flushed and conscious and glad with the turning of all admiring eyes +upon it; her face, even, without being absolutely beautiful, +sparkled out at you a certain will and force and intent of beauty +that shot an idea or suggestion of brilliant prettiness instantly +through your unresisting imagination, compelling you to fill out +whatever was wanting; and what more, can you explain, do feature and +bearing that come nearest to perfect fulfillment effect? + +The middle-aged cabinet-maker looked over his newspaper at her as +she came in; he had little daughters of his own growing up to +girlhood, and there might have been some thought in his head not +purely admiring; but still he looked up. The knot of office-boys, +crowding and skylarking across a couple of seats, stopped their +shuffle and noise for a second, and one said, "My! ain't she +stunning?" A young fellow, rather spruce in his own way also, with +precise necktie, deep paper cuffs and dollar-store studs and initial +sleeve-buttons, touched his hat with an air of taking credit to +himself, as she glanced at him; and another, in a sober old gray +suit, with only a black ribbon knotted under his linen collar, +turned slightly the other way as she approached, and with something +like a frown between his brows, looked out of the window at a +wood-pile. + +Marion's cheeks were a tint brighter, and her white teeth seemed to +flash out a yet more determined smile, as, passing him by, she +seated herself with friendly bustle among some girls a little behind +him. + +"In again, Marion?" said one. "I thought you'd left." + +"Only in for a transient," said Marion, with a certain clear tone +that reminded one of the stage-trainer's direction to "speak to the +galleries." "Nellie Burton is sick, and Lufton sent for me. I'll do +for a month or so, and like it pretty well; then I shall have a +tiff, I suppose, and fling it up again; I can't stand being ordered +round longer than that." + +"Or longer than the _new_ lasts," said the other slyly, touching the +drapery sleeve of the zephyrine. "It _is_ awful pretty, Marry!" + +"Yes, and while the new lasts Lufton'll be awful polite," returned +Marion. "He likes to see his girls look stylish, I can tell you. +When things begin to shab out, then the snubbing begins. And how +they're going to help shabbing out I should like to know, dragging +round amongst the goods and polishing against the counters? and +who's going to afford ready-made, or pay for sewing, out of six +dollars a week and cars and dinners, let alone regular board, that +some of 'em have to take off? Why there isn't enough left for shoes! +No wonder Lufton's always changing. Well--there's one good of it! +You can always get a temporary there. Save up a month and then put +into port and refit. That's the way I do." + +"But what does it come to, after all's said and done? and what if +you hadn't the port?" asked Hannah Upshaw, the girl with the shawl +on, who never wore suits. + +Marion Kent shrugged her shoulders. + +"I don't know, yet. I take things as they come to me. I don't +pretend to calculate for anybody else. I know one thing, though, +there is other things to be done,--and it isn't sewing-machines +either, if you can once get started. And when I can see my way +clear, I mean to start. See if I don't!" + +The train stopped at the Pomantic station. The young man in the gray +clothes rose up, took something from under the car-seat and went +out. What he had with him was a carpenter's box. It was the same +youth who had greeted Ray Ingraham from beneath the elm branches. As +the train got slowly under way again, Marion looked straight out at +her window into Frank Sunderline's face, and bowed,--very modestly +and sweetly bowed. He was waiting for that instant on the platform, +until the track should be clear and he could cross. + +What he caught in Marion's look, as she turned it full upon him, +nobody could see; but there was a quieter earnest in it, certainly, +when she turned back; and the young man had responded to her +salutation with a relaxing glance of friendly pleasantness that +seemed more native to his face than the frown of a few minutes +before. + +Marion Kent had several selves; several relations, at any rate, into +which she could put herself with others. I think she showed young +Sunderline, for that instant, out of gentler, questioning, almost +beseeching eyes, a something she could not show to the whole +car-full with whom at the moment of her entrance she had been in +rapport, through frills and puffs and flutters, into which she had +allowed her consciousness to pass. Behind the little window he could +only see a face; a face quieted down from its gay flippancy; a face +that showed itself purposely and simply to him; eyes that said, +"What was that you thought of me just now? _Don't_ think it!" + +They were old neighbors and child-friends. They had grown up +together; had they been growing away from each other in some things +since they had been older? Often it appeared so; but it was Marion +chiefly who seemed to change; then, all at once, in some unspoken +and intangible way, for a moment like this, she seemed to come +suddenly back again, or he seemed to catch a glimpse of that in her, +hidden, not altered, which _might_ come back one of these days. Was +it a glimpse, perhaps, like the sight the Lord has of each one of +us, always? + +Meanwhile, what of Ray Ingraham? + +Ray Ingraham was sweet, and proper, and still; just what Frank +Sunderline thought was prettiest and nicest for a woman to be. He +was always reminded by her ways of what it would be so pretty and +nice for Marion Kent to be. But Marion _would_ sparkle; and it is so +hard to be still and sparkle too. He liked the brightness and the +airiness; a little of it, near to; he did not like a whole car-full, +or room-full, or street full,--he did not like to see a woman +sparkle all round. + +Mr. Ingraham had come into Dorbury Upper Village some half dozen +years since; had leased the bakery, house, and shop; and two years +afterward, Rachel had come home to stay. She had been left in Boston +with her grandmother when the family had moved out of the city, that +she might keep on a while with the school that she was used to and +stood so well in; with her Chapel classes, also, where she heard +literature and history lectures, each once a week. Ray could not +bear to leave them, nor to give up her Sunday lessons in the dear +old Mission Rooms. Dot was three years younger; she could begin +again anywhere, and their mother could not spare both. Besides, +"what Ray got she could always be giving to Dot afterwards." That is +not so easy, and by no means always follows. Dot turned out the +mother's girl,--the girl of the village, as was said; practical, +comfortable, pleasant, capable, sensible. Ray was something of all +these, with a touch of more; alive in a higher nature, awakened to +receive through upper channels, sensitive to some things that +neither pleased nor troubled Mrs. Ingraham and Dot. + +It took a good while to come to know a girl like Ray Ingraham; most +of her young acquaintance felt the _step up_ that they must take to +stand fairly beside her, or come intimately near. Frank Sunderline +felt it too, in certain ways, and did not suppose that she could see +in him more than he saw in himself: a plain fellow, good at his +trade, or going to be; bright enough to know brightness in other +people when he came across it, and with enough of what, independent +of circumstances, goes to the essential making of a gentleman, to +perceive and be attracted by the delicate gentleness that makes a +lady. + +That was just what Ray Ingraham did see; only he hardly set it down +in his self-estimate at its full value. + +Do you perceive, story-reader, story-raveller, that Frank Sunderline +was not quite in love with either of these girls? Do you see that it +is not a matter of course that he should be? + +I can tell you, you girls who make a romance out of the first word, +and who can tell from the first chapter how it will all end, that +you will make great mistakes if you go to interpreting life +so,--your own, or anybody's else. + +I can tell you that men--those who are good for very much--come +often more slowly to their life-conclusions than you think; that +woman-_nature_ is a good deal to a man, and is meant to be, in +gradual bearing and influence, in the shaping of his perception, the +working of comparison, the coming to an understanding of his own +want, and the forming of his ideal,--yes, even in the mere general +pleasantness and gentle use of intercourse--before the _individual_ +woman reveals herself, slowly or suddenly, as the one only central +need, and motive, and reward, and satisfying, that the world holds +and has kept for him. For him to gain or to lose: either way, to +have mightily to do with that soul-forging and shaping that the +Lord, in his handling of every man, is about. + +That night they all came out together in the last train. Ray +Ingraham had gone in after dinner to make some purchases for her +mother, and had been to see some Chapel friends. Marion, as she came +in through the gate at the station, saw her far before, walking up +the long platform to the cars. She watched her enter the second in +the line, and hastened on, making up her mind instantly, like a +field general, to her own best manoeuvre. It was not exactly what +every girl would have done; and therein showed her generalship. She +would get into the same carriage, and take a seat with her. She knew +very well that Frank Sunderline would jump on at Pomantic, his day's +work just done. If he came and spoke to Ray he should speak also to +her. She did not risk trying _which_ he would come and speak to. It +should be, that joining them, and finding it pleasant, he should +not quite know which, after all, had most made it so. Different as +they were, she and Ray Ingraham toned and flavored each other, and +Marion knew it. They were like rose-color and gray; or like spice +and salt: you did not stop to think which ruled the taste, or which +your eye separately rested on. Something charming, delicious, +resulted of their being together; they set each other off, and +helped each other out. Then it was something that Frank Sunderline +should see that Ray would let her be her friend; that she was not +altogether too loud and pronounced for her. Ray did not turn aside +and look at wood-piles, and get rid of her. + +Furthermore, the way home from the Dorbury depot, for Frank and +Marion both, lay _past_ the bakery, on down the under-hill road. + +Marion did not _think out_ a syllable of all this; she grasped the +situation, and she acted in an instant. I told you she acted like a +general in the field: perhaps neither she nor the general would be +as skillful, always, with the maps and compasses, and time to plan +beforehand. I do not think Marion _was_ ever very wise in her +fore-thoughts. + +Beyond Pomantic, the next one or two stations took off a good many +passengers, so that they had their part of the car almost to +themselves. Frank Sunderline had come in and taken a place upon the +other side; now he moved over into the seat behind them, accosting +them pleasantly, but not interrupting the conversation which had +been busily going on between them all the way. Ray was really +interested in some things Marion had brought up to notice; her face +was intent and thoughtful; perhaps she was not quite so pretty when +she was set thinking; her dimples were hidden; but Marion was +beaming, exhilarated partly by her own talk, somewhat by an honest, +if half mischievous earnestness in her subject, and very much also +by the consciousness of the young mechanic opposite, within +observing and listening distance. Marion could not help talking over +her shoulders, more or less, always. + +"Men take the world in the rough, and do the work; women help, and +come in for the finishing off," said Rachel, just as Frank +Sunderline changed his place and joined them. "_We_ could not handle +those, for instance," she said, with a shy, quiet sign toward the +carpenter's tools, and lowering her already gentle voice. + +"Men break in the fields, and plough, and sow, and mow; and women +ride home on the loads,--is that it?" said Marion, laughing, and +snatching her simile from a hay-field with toppling wagons, that the +train was at that moment skimming by. "Well, may be! All is, I shall +look out for my ride. After things _are_ broken in, I don't see why +we shouldn't get the good of it." + +"Value is what things stand for, or might procure, isn't it?" said +Ray, turning to Sunderline, and taking him frankly and friendlily +into the conversation. + +"No fair!" cried Marion. "He doesn't understand the drift of it. Do +you, see, Mr. Sunderline, why a man should be paid any more than a +woman, for standing behind a counter and measuring off the same +goods, or at a desk and keeping the same accounts? I don't! That's +what I'm complaining of." + +"That's the complaint of the day, I know," said Sunderline. "And no +doubt there's a good deal of special unfairness that needs righting, +and will get it. But things don't come to be as they are quite +without a reason, either. There's a principle in it, you've got to +look back to that." + +"Well?" said Marion, gleefully interrogatory, and settling herself +with an air of attention, and of demurely giving up the floor. She +was satisfied to listen, if only Frank Sunderline would talk. + +"I believe I see what you meant," he said to Ray. "About the values +that things stand for. A man represents a certain amount of power in +the world." + +"O, does he?" put in Marion, with an indescribable inflection. "I'm +glad to know." + +"He _could_ be doing some things that a woman could not do at +all--was never meant to do. He stands for so much force. You may +apply things as you please, but if you don't use them according to +their relative capacity, the unused value has to be paid +for--somewhere." + +"That's a nice principle!" said Marion. "I like that I should like +to be paid for what I _might_ be good for!" + +Frank Sunderline laughed. + +"It's a good principle; because by it things settle themselves, in +the long run. You may take mahogany or pine to make a table, and one +will answer the common convenience of a table as well as the other; +but you will learn not to take mahogany when the pine will serve the +purpose. You will keep it for what the pine wouldn't be fit for; +which wouldn't come to pass if the pine weren't cheapest. Women +wouldn't get those places to tend counters and keep books, if the +world hadn't found out that it was poor economy, as a general rule, +to take men for it." + +"But what do you say about mental power? About pay for teaching, for +instance?" asked Ray. + +"Why, you're coming round to _my_ side!" exclaimed Marion. "I should +really like to know _where_ you are?" + +"I am wherever I can get nearest to the truth of things," said Ray, +smiling. + +"That," said Sunderline, "is one of the specialties that is +getting righted. Women _are_ being paid more, in proportion, for +intellectual service, and the nearer you come to the pure mental +power, the nearer you come to equality in recompense. A woman who +writes a clever book, or paints a good picture, or sculptures a good +statue, can get as much for her work as a man. But where _time_ is +paid for,--where it is personal service,--the old principle at the +root of things comes in. Men open up the wildernesses, men sail the +seas, work the mines, forge the iron, build the cities, defend the +nations while they grow, do the physical work of the world, _make +way_ for all the finishings of education and opportunity that come +afterward, and that put women where they are to-day. And men must be +counted for such things. It is man's work that has made these +women's platforms. They have the capital of strength, and capital +draws interest. The right of the strongest isn't necessarily +_oppression_ by the strongest. That's the way I look at it. And I +think that what women lose in claim they gain in privilege." + +"Only when women come to knock about the world without any claims, +they don't seem to get much privilege," said Marion. + +"I don't know. It seems rude to say so, perhaps, but they find a +world ready made to knock round _in_, don't they? And it is because +there's so much done that they couldn't have done themselves, that +they find the chances waiting for them that they do. And the chances +are multiplying with civilization, all the time. You see the +question really goes back to first conditions, and lies upon the +fact that first conditions may come back any day,--do come back, +here and there, continually. Put man and woman together on the +primitive earth, and it is the man that has got to subdue it; the +woman is what Scripture calls her,--the helpmeet. And my notion is +that if everything was right, a woman never should have to 'knock +round alone.' It isn't the real order of Providence. I think +Providence has been very much interfered with." + +"There are widows," said Rachel, gently. + +"Yes; and the 'fatherless and the widows' are everybody's charge to +care for. I said--if things were right. I wish the energy was spent +in bringing round the right that is used up in fitting things to the +wrong." + +"They say there are too many women in the world altogether!" said +Marion, squarely. + +"I guess not--for all the little children," said Frank Sunderline; +and his tone sounded suddenly sweet and tender. + +He was helping them out of the car, now, at the village station, and +they went up the long steps to the street. All three walked on +without more remark, for a little way. Then Marion broke out in her +odd fashion,-- + +"Ray Ingraham! you've got a home and everything sure and +comfortable. Just tell me what you'd do, if you were a widow and +fatherless or anything, and nobody took you in charge." + +"The thing I knew best, I suppose," said Rachel, quietly. "I think +very likely I could be--a baker. But I'm certain of this much," she +added lightly. "I never would make a brick loaf; that always seemed +to me a man's perversion of the idea of bread." + +A small boy was coming down the street toward them as she spoke, +from the bake-shop door; a brick loaf sticking out at the two ends +of an insufficient wrap of yellow brown paper under his arm. + +As Ray glanced on beyond him, she caught sight of that which put +the brick loaf, and their talk, instantly out of her mind. The +doctor's chaise,--the horse fastened by the well-known strap and +weight,--was standing before the house. She quickened her steps, +without speaking. + +"I say," called out the urchin at the same moment, looking up at her +as he passed by with a queer expression of mixed curiosity and +knowing eagerness,--"Yer know yer father's sick? Fit--or sunthin'!" + +But Ray made no sign--to anybody. She had already hurried in toward +the side door, through the yard, under the elm. + +A neighborly looking woman--such a woman as always "steps in" on an +emergency--met her at the entrance. "He's dreadful sick, I'm afraid, +dear," she said, reaching out and putting her hand on Ray's +shoulder. "The doctor's up-stairs; ben there an hour. And I believe +my soul every identical child in the village's ben sent in for a +brick loaf." + +Marion and Sunderline kept on down the Underhill road. The +conversation was broken off. It was a startling occurrence that had +interrupted it; but it does not need startling occurrences to turn +aside the chance of talk just when one would have said something +that one was most anxious to say. A very little straw will do it. It +is like a game at croquet. The ball you want to hit lies close; but +it is not quite your turn; a play intervenes; and before you can be +allowed your strike the whole attitude and aspect are changed. +Nothing lies where it did a minute before. You yourself are driven +off, and forced into different combinations. + +Marion wanted to try Sunderline with certain new notions--certain +half-purposes of her own, in the latter part of this walk they would +have together. Everything had led nicely up to it; when here, just +at the moment of her opportunity, it became impossible to go on from +where they were. An event had thrust itself in. It was not seemly to +disregard it. They could not help thinking of the Ingrahams. And +yet, "if it would have done," Marion Kent could have put off her +sympathies, made her own little point, and then gone back to the +sympathies again, just as really and truly, ten minutes afterward. +They would have kept. Why are things jostled up so? + +"I am sorry for Ray," she said, presently. + +Frank Sunderline, with a grave look, nodded his head thoughtfully, +twice. + +"If anything happens to Mr. Ingraham, won't it be strange that I +should have asked her what I did, just that minute?" + +"What? O, yes!" + +It had fairly been jostled out of the young man's mind. They walked +on silently again. But Marion could not give it up. + +"I don't doubt she _would_ be a baker; carry on the whole +concern,--if there was money. She keeps all her father's accounts, +now." + +"Does she?" + +"She wouldn't have had the chance if there had been a boy. That's +what I say isn't fair." + +"I think you are mistaken. You can't change the way of the world. +There isn't anything to hinder a woman's doing work like that,--even +going on with it, as you say,--when it is set for her by special +circumstances. It's natural, and a duty; and the world will treat +her well and think the more of her. Things are so that it is +getting easier every day for it to be done. The facilities of the +times can't help serving women as much as men. But people won't +generally bring up their daughters to the work or the prospects that +they do their sons, simply because they can't depend upon them in +the same way afterwards. If a girl marries,--and she ought to if she +can _right_,"-- + +"And what if she _has_ to, if she can, wrong?" + +"Then she interferes with Providence again. She hasn't patience. She +takes what wasn't meant for her, and she misses what was; whether +it's work, or--somebody to work for her." + +They were coming near Mrs. Kent's little white gate. + +"I've a great mind to tell you," said Marion, "I don't have anybody +to help me judge." + +Sunderline was a little disconcerted. It is a difficult position for +a young man to find himself in: that of suddenly elected confidant +and judge concerning a young woman's personal affairs; unless, +indeed, he be quite ready to seek and assume the permanent +privilege. It is a hazardous appeal for a young woman to make. It +may win or lose, strengthen or disturb, much. + +"Your mother"--began Sunderline. + +"O, mother doesn't see; she doesn't understand. How can she, living +as she does? I could make her advise me to suit myself. She never +goes about. The world has run ahead of her. She says I must conclude +as I think best." + +Sunderline was silent. + +"I've a chance," said Marion, "if I will take it. A chance to do +something that I like, something that I think I _could_ do. I can't +stand the shops; there's a plenty of girls that are crazy for the +places; let them have 'em. And I can't stay at home and iron lace +curtains for other folks, or go round to rip up and make over other +folks' old dirty carpets. I don't mean mother shall do it much +longer. This is what I can do: I can get on to the lecture list, for +reading and reciting. The Leverings,--you remember Virginia +Levering, who gave a reading here last winter; her father was with +her,--Hamilton Levering, the elocutionist? Well, I know them very +well; I've got acquainted with them since; they say they'll help me, +and put me forward. Mr. Levering will give me lessons and get me +some evenings. He thinks I would do well. And next year they mean to +go out West, and want me to go with them. Would you?" + +Marion looked eagerly and anxiously in Sunderline's face as she +asked the question. He could not help seeing that she cared what he +might think. And on his part, he could not help caring a good deal +what she might do. He did not like to see this girl, whom he had +known and been friends with from childhood, spoilt. There was good, +honest stuff in her, in spite of her second-rate vanities and +half-bred ambitions. If she would only grow out of these, what a +womanly woman she might be! That fair, grand-featured face of hers, +what might it not come to hold and be beautiful with, if it could +once let go its little airs and consciousnesses that cramped it? It +had a finer look in it now than she thought of, as she waited with +real ingenuous solicitude, his answer. + +He gave it gravely and conscientiously. + +"I don't think I have any business to advise. But I don't exactly +believe in that sort of thing. It isn't a genuine trade." + +"Why not? People like it. Virginia Levering makes fifty dollars a +night, even when they have to hire a hall." + +"And how often do the nights come? And how long is it likely to +last?" + +"Long enough to make money, I guess," said Marion, laughing. She was +a little reassured at Sunderline's toleration of the idea, even so +far as to make calm and definite objection. "And it's pleasant at +the time. I like going about. I like to please people. I like to be +somebody. It may be silly, but that's the truth." + +"And what would you be afterward, when you had had your day? For +none of these days last long, especially with women." + +"O!" exclaimed Marion, with remonstrative astonishment. "Mrs. +Kemble! Charlotte Cushman!" + +"It won't do to quote them, I'm afraid. I suppose you'd hardly +expect to come up into that row?" said Sunderline, smiling. + +"They began, some time," returned Marion. + +"Yes; but for one thing, it wasn't a time when everybody else was +beginning. Shall I tell you plainly how it seems to me?" + +"I wish you would." + +They had walked slowly for the last three or four minutes, till they +had come to the beginning of the paling in which, a little further +on, was the white gate. They paused here; Frank Sunderline rested +his box of tools on the low wall that ran up and joined the fence, +and Marion turned and stood with her face toward him in the western +light, and her little pink-lined linen sunshade up between her and +the low sun,--between her and the roadway also, down which might +come any curious passers-by. + +"It seems to me," said Frank Sunderline, "that women are getting on +to the platforms nowadays, not so much for any real errand they have +there, as just for the sake of saying, I'm here! I think it is very +much the 'to be seen of men' motive,--the poorest part of women's +characters,--that plays itself out in this way, as it always has +done in dancing and dressing and acting, and what not. It isn't that +a woman might not be on a platform, if she were called there, as +well as anywhere else. There never was a woman came out before the +world in any grand, true way, that she wasn't all the more honored +and attended to because she _was_ a woman. There are some things too +good to be made common; things that ought to be saved up for a +special time, so that they may _be_ special. If it falls to a woman +to be a Queen, and to open and dismiss her Parliament, nobody in all +the kingdom but thinks the words come nobler and sweeter for a +woman's saying them. But that's because she is _put_ there, not +because she climbs up some other way. If a woman honestly has +something that she must say--some great word from the Lord, or for +her country, or for suffering people,--then let her say it; and +every real woman's husband, and every real mother's son, will hear +her with his very heart. Or if even she has some sure wonderful +gift,--if she can sing, or read, or recite; if she can stir people +up to good and beautiful things as _one in a thousand_, that's her +errand; let her do it, and let the thousand come to hear. But she +ought to be certain sure, or else she's leaving her real errand +behind. Don't let everybody, just because the door is open, rush in +without any sort of a pass or countersign. That's what it's coming +to. A _sham trade_, like hundreds of other sham trades; and the +shammer and the shamefuller, because women demean themselves to it. +I can't bear to see women changing so, away from themselves. We +shan't get them back again, this generation. The _homes_ are going. +Young men of these days have got to lose their wives--that they +ought to have--and their homes that they looked forward to, such as +their mothers made. It's hard upon them; it takes away their hopes +and their motives; it's as bad for them as for the women. It's the +abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. There's no end +to the mischief; but it works first and worst with exactly girls of +your class--_our_ class, Marion. Girls that are all upset out of +their natural places, and not really fit for the new things they +undertake to do. As I said,--how long will it last? How long will +the Mr. Hamilton Leverings put you forward and find chances for you? +Just as long as you are young and pretty and new. And then, what +have you got left? What are you going to turn round to?" + +Sunderline stopped. The color flushed up in his face. He had spoken +faster and freer and longer than he had thought of; the feeling that +he had in him about this thing, and the interest he had in Marion +Kent, all rushed to words together, so that he almost forgot that +Marion Kent in bodily presence stood listening before him, he was +dealing so much more with his abstract thought of her, and his +notion of real womanhood. + +But Marion Kent did stand there. She flushed up too, when he said, +"We are going to lose our wives by it." What did he mean? Would he +lose anything, if she took to this that she thought of, and went +abroad into the world, and before it? Why didn't he say so, then? +Why didn't he give her the choice? + +But what difference need it make, in any such way? Why shouldn't a +girl be doing her part beforehand, as a man does? He was getting +ahead in his trade, and saving money. By and by, he would think he +had got enough, and then he would ask somebody to be his wife. What +should the wife have been doing in the mean time--before she was +sure that she should ever be a wife? Why shouldn't she look out for +herself? + +She said so. + +"I don't see exactly, Mr. Sunderline." + +She called him "Mr. Sunderline," though she remembered very well +that in the earnestness of his talk he had called her "Marion." They +had grown to that time of life when a young man and a girl who have +known each other always, are apt to drop the familiar Christian +name, and not take up anything else if they can help it. The time +when they carefully secure attention before they speak, and then use +nothing but pronouns in addressing each other. A girl, however, says +"Mr." a little more easily than a man says "Miss." The girl has +always been "Miss" to the world in general; the boy grows up to his +manly title, and it is not a special personal matter to give it to +him. There is something, even, in the use of it, which delicately +marks an attitude--not of distance, but of a certain maidenly and +bewitching consciousness--in a girl friend grown into a woman, and +recognizing the man. + +"I don't see, exactly, Mr. Sunderline," said Marion. "Why shouldn't +a girl do the best she can? Will she be any the worse for it +afterwards? Why should the wives be all spoilt, any more than the +husbands?" + +"Real work wouldn't spoil; only the sham and the show. Don't do it, +Marion. I wouldn't want my sister to, if I had one--there!" + +He had not meant so directly to answer her question. He came to this +end involuntarily. + +Marion felt herself tingle from head to foot with the suddenness of +the negative that she had asked for and brought down upon herself. +Now, if she acted, she must act in defiance of it. She felt angrily +ashamed, too, of the position in which his words put her; that of a +girl seeking notoriety, for mere show's sake; desiring to do a sham +work; to make a pretension without a claim. How did he know what her +claim might be? She had a mind to find out, and let him see. Sister! +what did he say that for? He needn't have talked about sisters, or +wives either, after that fashion. Spoilt! Well, what should she save +herself for? It was pretty clear it wouldn't be much to him. + +The color died down, and she grew quiet, or thought she did. She +meant to be very quiet; very indifferent and calm. She lifted up her +eyes, and there was a sort of still flash in them. Now that her +cheek was cool, they burned,--burned their own color, blue-gray that +deepened almost into black. + +"I've a good will, however," she said slowly, "to find out what I +_can_ do. Perhaps neither you nor I know that, yet. Then I can make +up my mind. I rather believe in taking what comes. A bird in the +hand is worth two in the bush. Very likely nobody will ever care +particularly whether I'm spoilt or not. And if I'm spoilt for one +thing, I may be made for another. There have got to be all sorts of +people in the world, you know." + +She was very handsome, with her white chin up, haughtily; her nose +making its straight, high line, as she turned her face half away; +her eyes so dark with will, and the curve of hurt pride in her lips +that yet might turn easily to a quiver. She spoke low and smooth; +her words dropped cool and clear, without a tone of temper in them; +if there was passionate force, it was from a fire far down. + +If she could do so upon a stage; if she could look like that saying +other people's words--words out of a book: if she could feel into +the passions of a world, and interpret them; then, indeed! But +Marion Kent had never entered into heights and depths of thought and +of experience; she knew only Marion Kent's little passions as they +came to her, and spoke themselves in homely, unchoice words. Mrs. +Kemble or Charlotte Cushman might have made a study from that face +that would have served for a Queen Katharine; but Queen Katharine's +grand utterances would never have thrilled Marion Kent to wear the +look as she wore it now, piqued by the plain-speaking--and the _not_ +speaking--of the young village carpenter. + +"I hope you don't feel hurt with me; I've only been honest, and I +meant to be kind," said Frank Sunderline. + +"No, indeed; I dare say you did," returned Marion. "After all, +everybody has got to judge for themselves. I was silly to think +anybody could help me." + +"Perhaps you could help yourself better," said the young man, loth +to leave her in this mood, "if you thought how you would judge for +somebody you cared for. If your own little sister"-- + +Now the quiver came. Now all the hurt, and pique, and shame, and +jealous disappointment rushed together to mingle and disguise +themselves with a swell and pang that always rose in her at the name +of her little dead sister,--dead six years ago, when she was nine +and Marion twelve. + +The tears sprang to the darkened eyes, and quenched down their +burning; the color swept into her face, like the color after a +blow; the lips gave way; and with words that came like a cry she +exclaimed passionately,-- + +"Don't speak of little Sue! I can't bear it! I never could! I don't +know what I say now. Good-night, good-by." + +And she left him there with his box upon the wall; turned and +hurried along the path, and in through the little white gate. + + + + +CHAPTER IV. + +NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT. + + +Rodney Sherrett got up from the breakfast table, where he had eaten +half an hour later than the rest of the family, threw aside the +newspaper that had served to accompany his meal as it had previously +done his father's, and walked out through the conservatory upon the +slope of lawn scattered over with bright little flower-beds, among +which his sister, with a large shade hat on, and a pair of garden +scissors and a basket in her hands, was moving about, cutting +carnations and tea-roses and bouvardia and geranium leaves and bits +of vines, for her baskets and shells and vases. + +"I say, Amy, why haven't you been over to the Argenters' this long +while? Why don't you get Sylvie here?" + +"Why, I did go, Rod! Just when you asked me to. And she has been +here; she called three weeks ago." + +"O, poh! After the spill! Of course you did. Just called; and she +called. Why need that be the end of it? Why don't you make much of +her? I can tell you she's a girl you _might_ make much of. She +behaved like a lady, that day; and a _woman_,--that's more. She was +neither scared nor mad; didn't scream, nor pout; nor even stand +round to keep up the excitement. She was just cool and quiet, and +took herself off properly. I don't know another girl that would have +done so. She saved me out of the scrape as far as she was concerned; +she might have made it ten times the muss it was. I'd rather run +down a whole flock of sheep than graze the varnish off a woman's +wheel, as a general principle. There's real backbone to Sylvie +Argenter, besides her prettiness. My father would like her, I know. +Why don't you bring her here; get intimate with her? I can't do +it,--too fierce, you know." + +Amy Sherrett laughed. + +"What a nice little cat's-paw a sister makes! Doesn't she, Rod?" + +"I wonder if cats don't like chestnuts too, sometimes," said Rod; +and then he whistled. + +"What a worry you are, Rod!" said Amy, with a little frown that some +pretty girls have a way of making; half real and half got up for the +occasion; a very becoming little pucker of a frown that seems to put +a lovely sort of perplexed trouble into the beautiful eyes, only to +show how much too sweet and tender they really are ever to be +permitted a perplexity, and what a touching and appealing thing it +would be if a trouble should get into them in any earnest. "In term +time I'm always wishing it well over, for fear of what dreadful +thing you may do next; and when it is vacation, it gets to be so +much worse, here and there and everywhere, that I'm longing for you +to be safe back in Cambridge." + +"Coming home Saturday nights? Well, you do get about the best of me +so. And we fellows get just the right little sprinkle of family +influence, too. It loses its affect when you have it all the time. +That's what I tell Truesdaile, when he goes on about home, and what +a thing it is to have a sister,--he doesn't exactly say _my_ sister; +I suppose he believes in the tenth commandment. By the way, he's +knocking round at the seashore some where using up the time. I've +half a mind to hunt him up and get him back here for the last week +or so. I think he'd like it." + +"Nonsense, Rod! You can't. When Aunt Euphrasia's away." + +"She would come back, if you asked her; wouldn't she? I think it +would be a charity. Put it to her as an opportunity. She'd drop +anything she might be about for an opportunity. I wonder if she ever +goes back upon her tracks and finishes up? She's something like a +mowing machine: a grand good thing, but needs a scythe to follow +round and pick out the stumps and corners." + +Amy shook her head. + +"I don't believe I'll ask her, Rod. She's perfectly happy up there +in New Ipswich, painting wild flowers and pressing ferns, and +swinging those five children in her hammock, and carrying them all +to drive in her pony-wagon, and getting up hampers of fish and +baskets of fruit, and beef sirloins by express, and feeding them all +up, and paying poor dear cousin Nan ten dollars a week for letting +her do it. I guess it's my opportunity to get along here without +her, and let her stay." + +"Incorruptible! Well--you're a good girl, Amy. I must come down to +plain soft-sawder. Put some of those things together prettily, as +you know how, and drive over and take them to Sylvie Argenter this +afternoon, will you?" + +"Fish and fruit and sirloins!" + +"Amy, you're an aggravator!" + +"No. I'm only grammatical. I'm sure those were the antecedents." + +"If you don't, I will." + +"If you will, I will too, Rod! Drive me over, that's a good boy, and +I'll go." + +Amy seized with delicate craft her opportunity for getting her +brother off from one of his solitary, roaming expeditions with Red +Squirrel that ended too often in not being solitary, but in bringing +him into company with people who knew about horses, or had them to +show, and were planning for races, and who were likely to lead +Rodney, in spite of his innate gentlemanhood, into more of mere +jockeyism than either she or her father liked. + +"But the flowers, I fancy, Rod, would be coals to Newcastle. They +have a greenhouse." + +"And have never had a decent man to manage it. It came to nothing +this year. She told me so. You see it just is a literal _new_ +castle. Mr. Argenter is too busy in town to look after it; and +they've been cheated and disappointed right and left. They're not to +blame for being new," he continued, seeing the least possible little +_lifted_ look about Amy's delicate lips and eyebrows. "I hate _that_ +kind of shoddiness." + +"'Don't fire--I'll come down,'" said Amy, laughing. "And I don't +think I ever get _very_ far up, beyond what's safe and reasonable +for a"-- + +"Nice, well-bred little coon," said Rodney, patting her on the +shoulder, in an exuberance of gracious approval and beamingly serene +content. "I'll take you in my gig with Red Squirrel," he added, by +way of reward of merit. + +Now Amy in her secret heart was mortally afraid of Red Squirrel, but +she would have been upset ten times over--by Rodney--sooner than say +so. + +When Sylvie Argenter, that afternoon, from her window with its cool, +deep awning, saw Rodney Sherrett and his sister coming up the drive, +there flashed across her, by a curious association, the thought of +the young carpenter who had gone up the village street and bowed to +Ray Ingraham, the baker's daughter. + +After all, the gentleman's "place," apart and retired, and the long +"approach," were not so very much worse, when the "people in the +carriages,"--the right people,--really came: and "on purpose" was +not such a bad qualification of the coming, either. + +And when Mrs. Argenter, hearing the bell, and the movement of an +arrival, and not being herself summoned in consequence, rung +in her own room for the maid, and received for answer to her +inquiry,--"Miss Sherrett and young Mr. Sherrett, ma'am, to see Miss +Sylvie,"--she turned back to her volume of "London Society," much +and mixedly reconciled in her thoughts to two things that occurred +to her at once,--one of them adding itself to the other as +manifestly in the same remarkable order of providence; "that +tip-out" from the basket-phaeton, and the new white frill-trimmed +polonaise that Miss Sylvie would put on, so needlessly, this +afternoon, in spite of her remonstrance that the laundress had just +left without warning, and there was no knowing when they should ever +find another. + +"There is certainly a fate in these matters," she said to herself, +complacently. "_One_ thing always follows another." + +Mrs. Argenter was apt to make to herself a "House that Jack built" +out of her providences. She had always a little string of them to +rehearse in every history; from the malt that lay in the house, and +the rat that ate the malt, up to the priest all shaven and shorn, +that married the man that kissed the maid--and so on, all the way +back again. She counted them up as they went along. "There was the +overturn," she would say, by and by "and there was Rodney +Sherrett's call because of that, and then his sister's because no +doubt he asked her, and then their both coming together; and there +was your pretty white polonaise, you know, the day they did come; +and there was"--Mrs. Argenter has not counted up to that yet. +Perhaps it may be a long while before she will so readily count it +in. + +It had turned out a hot day; one of those days in the nineties, when +if you once hear from the thermometer, or in any way have the fact +forcibly brought home to you, you relinquish all idea of exertion +yourself, and look upon the world outside as one great pause, out of +which no movement can possibly come, unless there first come the +beneficence of an east wind, which the dwellers on Massachusetts Bay +have always for a reserve of hope. Yet it may quite well occur to +here and there an individual with a resolute purpose in the day, to +actually live through it and pursue the intended plan, without +realizing the extra degrees of Fahrenheit at all, and to learn with +surprise at set of sun when the deeds are done, of the excelsior +performances of the mercury. With what secret amazement and dismay +is one's valor recognized, however, when it has led one to render +one's self at four in the afternoon on such a day, near one's friend +who _has_ been vividly conscious of the torrid atmosphere! Did you +ever make or receive such an afternoon call? + +Mrs. Argenter, comfortable in her thin wrapper, reading her thin +romance, did not trouble herself to be astonished. "They were young +people; young people could do anything," she dimly thought; and +putting the white polonaise into the structure of the House that +Jack built, she interrupted herself no farther than presently to +ring her bell again, and tell the maid on no account to admit any +one to see herself, and to be sure that there were plenty of +raspberries brought in for tea. + +Meanwhile, away in the cities, the thermometer had climbed and +climbed. Pavements were blistering hot; watering carts went +lumbering round only to send up a reek of noisome mist and to leave +the streets whitening again a few yards behind them. Blinds were +closed up and down the avenues, where people had either long left +their houses vacant or were sheltering themselves in depths of gloom +in the tomb-like coolness of their double walls. Builders' trowels +and hammers had a sound that made you think of sparks struck out, as +if the world were a great forge and all its matter at a white heat. +Down in the poor, crowded places, where the gutters fumed with +filth, and doors stood open upon horrible passages and staircases, +little children, barefooted, with one miserable garment on, sat on +grimy stone steps, or played wretchedly about the sidewalks, +impeding the passers of a better class who hastened with bated +breath, amidst the fever-breeding nuisances, along to railway +stations whence they would escape to country and sea-side homes. + +On the wharves was the smell of tarred seams and +cordage,--sweltering in the sun; in the counting-rooms the clerks +could barely keep the drops of moisture from their faces from +falling down to blot their toilsome lines of figures on the +faultless pages of the ledgers; on the Common, common men +surreptitiously stretched themselves in shady corners on the grass, +regardless of the police, until they should be found and ordered +off; little babies in second-rate boarding-houses, where their +fathers and mothers had to stay for cheapness the summer through +wailed the helpless, pitiful cry of a slowly murdered infancy; and +out on the blazing thoroughfares where business had to be busy, +strong men were dropping down, and reporters were hovering about +upon the skirts of little crowds, gathering their items; making +_their_ hay while this terrible sun was shining. + +What did Mrs. Argenter care? + +The sun would be going down now, in a little while; then the cool +piazzas, and the raspberries and cream, and the iced milk,--yellow +Alderney milk,--would be delightful. Once or twice she did think of +"Argie" in New York,--gone thither on some perplexing, hurried +errand, which he had only half told her, and the half telling of +which she had only half heard,--and remembered that the heat must be +"awful" there. But to-night he would be on board the splendid Sound +steamer, coming home; and to-morrow, if this lasted, she would +surely speak to him about getting off for a while to Rye, or Mount +Desert. + +She came by and by to the end of her volume, and found that the +serial she was following ran on into the next. + +"Provoking," she said, tossing it down to the end of the sofa, "and +neither Sylvie nor I can get into town in this heat, and Argie +thinks it such a bother to be asked to go to Loring's." + +Just then Sylvie's step came lightly up the stairs. She looked into +the large cool dressing-room where her mother lay. + +"I'm only up for my 'Confession Album'," she said. "But O Mater +Amata! if you'd just come down and help me through! I know they'd +stay to tea and go home in the cool, if I only knew how to ask them; +but if I said a word I should be sure to drive them away. _You_ can +do it; and they would if you came. Please do!" + +"You silly child! Won't you ever be able to do anything yourself? +When you were a little girl, you wouldn't carry a message, because +you could get into a house, but didn't know how to get out! And now +you are grown up, you can get people into the house to see you, but +you don't know how to ask them to stay to tea! What _shall_ I ever +do with you?" + +"I don't know. I'm awfully afraid of--_nice_ girls!" + +"Sylvie, I'm ashamed of you! As if you had any other kind of +acquaintance, or weren't as nice as any of them! I wouldn't suggest +it, even to myself, if I were you." + +"And I don't," said Sylvie boldly--"when I'm _by_ myself. But +there's a kind of a little misgiving somehow, when they come, or +when I go, as if--well, as if there _might_ be something to it that +I didn't know of, or behind it that I hadn't got; or else, that +there were things that they had nothing to do with that I know too +much of. A kind of a--Poggowantimoc feeling, mother! Amy Sherrett is +so _fearfully_ refined,--all the way through! It doesn't seem as if +she ever had any common things to say or do. Don't you think it +_takes_ common things to get people really near to each other? It +doesn't seem to me I could ever be intimate--or very easy--with Amy +Sherrett." + +"You seemed to get on well enough with her brother, the other day." + +"Boys aren't half so bad. There isn't any such wax-work about boys. +Besides,"--and Sylvie laughed a low, gay little laugh,--we got spilt +out together, you know." + +"Well, don't stand talking. You mustn't keep them waiting. It isn't +time to speak about tea, yet. Look over the album, and get at some +music. _Keep_ them without saying anything about it. When people +think every minute they are just going, is just when they are having +the very pleasantest time." + +"I know it. But you'll come, won't you, and make it all right? Put +on something loose and cool; that lovely black lace jacket with the +violet lining, and your gray silk skirt. It won't take you a minute. +Your hair's perfectly sweet now." And Sylvie hurried away. + +Mrs. Argenter came down, twenty minutes afterwards, into the great +summer drawing-room, where the finest Indian matting, and dark, rich +Persian rugs, and inner window blinds folded behind lace curtains +that fell like the foam of waterfalls from ceiling to floor, made a +pleasantness out of the very heat against which such furnishings +might be provided. + +In her silken skirt of silver gray, and the llama sack, violet +lined, to need no tight corsage beneath, her fair wrists and arms +showing white and cool in the wide drapery sleeves, she looked a +very lovely lady. Sylvie was proud of her handsome, elegant mother. +She grew a great deal braver always when Mrs. Argenter came in. She +borrowed a second consciousness from her in which she took courage, +assured that all was right. Chairs and rugs gave her no such +confidence, though she knew that the Sherretts themselves had no +more faultless surroundings. Anybody could have rugs and chairs. It +was the presence among them that was wanted; and poor Sylvie seemed +to herself to melt quite away, as it were, before such a girl as Amy +Sherrett, and not to be able to be a presence at all. + +It was all right now, as Sylvie had said. They could not leave +immediately upon Mrs. Argenter joining them and her joining them was +of itself a welcome and an invitation. So Sylvie called upon her +mother to admire the lovely basket, wherein on damp, tender, bright +green moss, clustered the most exquisite blossoms, and the most +delicate trails of stem and leafage wandered and started up lightly, +and at last fell like a veil over rim and handle, and dropped below +the edge of the tiny round table with Siena marble top, on which +Sylvie had placed it between the curtains of the recess that led +through to their conservatory, which had been "a failure this year." + +"I would not tell you of it, Amata. I wanted you just to see it," +she said. And Mrs. Argenter admired and thanked, and then lamented +their own ill-success in greenhouse and garden culture. + +"I am not strong enough to look after it much myself, and Mr. +Argenter never has time," she said; "and our first man was a +tipsifier, and the last was a rogue. He sold off quantities of the +best young plants, we found, just before they came to show for +anything." + +"Our man has been with us for eight years," said Rodney Sherrett. "I +dare say he could recommend some one to you, if you liked; and he +wouldn't send anybody that wasn't right. Shall I ask him?" + +Mrs. Argenter would be delighted if he would; and then Mr. Sherrett +must come into the conservatory, where a few ragged palm ferns, +their great leaves browning and crumbling at the edges,--some +daphnes struggling into green tips, having lost their last growth of +leaf and dropped all their flower buds, and several calmly enduring +orange and lemon trees, gave all the suggestion of foliage that the +place afforded, and served, much like the painter's inscription at +the bottom of his canvas merely to signify by the scant glimpse +through the drawing-room draperies,--"This is a conservatory." + +Mrs. Argenter asked Rodney something about the best arrangement for +the open beds, and wanted to know what would be surest to do well +for the rockery, and whether it was in a good part of the +house,--sufficiently shaded? Meanwhile, Amy and Sylvie were turning +over music, and when they all gathered together again the call had +extended to a two hours' visit. + +"It is really unpardonable," Amy Sherrett was saying, and picking up +the pretty little hat which she had thrown down upon a chair,--"it +had been so warm to wear anything a minute that one need not." And +then Mrs. Argenter said so easily and of course, that they +"certainly would not think of going now, when it would soon be +really pleasant for a twilight drive; tea would be ready early, for +she and Sylvie were alone, and all they had cared for to-day had +been a cold lunch at one. They would have it on the north veranda;" +and she touched a bell to give the order. + +Perhaps Amy Sherrett would hardly have consented, but that Rodney +gave her a look, comical in its appeal, over Sylvie's shoulder, as +she stood showing him a great scarlet Euphorbia in a portfolio of +water-colors, and said with a beseeching significance,-- + +"Consider Red Squirrel, Amy. He really did have a pretty hard pull; +and what with the heat and the flies, I dare say he would take it +with more equanimity after sundown,--since Mrs. Argenter is so very +kind." + +And so they stayed; and Mrs. Argenter laid another little brick in +her "House that Jack built." + + * * * * * + +At this same time,--how should she know it?--something very +different was going on in one of the rooms of a great hotel in New +York. Somebody else who had meant before now to have left for home, +had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the +road by dark instead of by daylight. By dark,--though there should +be broad, beating sunshine over the world again when the journey +should be made. + +While Mrs. Argenter's maid was bringing out the tray with delicate +black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated +with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries, +and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming +crystal flagon,--and ranging them all on the rustic veranda +table,--something very different,--very grim,--at which the +occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it passed their open +doors,--was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in +the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very +grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants' Union Telegraph +Company's Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch, +addressed to "Mrs. I.M. Argenter, Dorbury, Mass.," and signed +"Philip Burkmayer, M.D." + +Nobody knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially, +when the office in State Street would be closed. Closed, with that +name outside the door that stood for nobody now. + +The news must go bare and unbroken to her. + +Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just +handing the slip to the attendant. + +"Stop; give me that again, a minute," he said; and tearing it in +two, he wrote another, and then another. + +"Send this on at once, and the second in an hour," he said; as if +they might have been prescriptions to be administered. "They may +both be delivered together after all," he continued to himself, as +he turned away. "But it is all I can do. When a weight is let drop, +it has got to fall. You can't ease it up much with a string measured +out for all the way down!" + +The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury +Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came +in after her half-hour supper time. She set the wires and responded, +and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins. + +"Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick," and so on. The +girl's face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along. She +answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly +upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door. + +"Sim! Here--quick!" she called to a youth opposite, in a +stable-yard. + +"This has got to go down to the Argenter Place. And mind how you +give it. It's bad news." + +"How can _I_ mind?" said Sim, gruffly. "I spose I must give it to +who comes." + +"You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or +the minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her, +_I_ know. Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can, +besides lightning!" + +"Donno's I can go travellin' round after 'em, if that's what you +mean," said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket, +and turning off. + +Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts +good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring +in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty +covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not quite +like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry +just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in. + +"A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter," said Sim, seizing his opportunity, +and speaking to whom it might concern. "Eighty cents to pay, and I +'blieve it's bad news." + +"O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!" cried Sylvie, turning white in the +dim light. "What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, +until I see? Won't you come in again? Mother will be frightened to +death, and I'm all alone." + +"Jump out, Amy; I'll take Squirrel round," was Rodney's answer. "Go +right up; I'll come." + +And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two +girls silently passed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the +eighty cents which nobody thought of at that moment or ever again, +and sent him off. + +Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the +long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before +coming out into the evening air again. + +"I think I shall open it myself," whispered Sylvie, tremulously; "it +would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has +such a horror of a telegram." She looked at it on both sides, drew a +little shivering breath, and paused again. + +"Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be--only grandma, +perhaps? Do you suppose it could _possibly_ be--my _father_?" + +And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little +Sylvie's voice. + +"Wait a minute," said Amy, kindly. "Here's Rod." + + "OFFICE OF WESTERN UNION TELEGRAPH CO., + NEW YORK, _July_ 24_th_, 187-. + + "To MRS. I. M. ARGENTER, Dorbury, Mass. + + "Mr. Argenter has had a sunstroke. Insensible. Very serious. + Will telegraph again. + + "PHILIP BURKMAYER, M.D." + +Sylvie's eyes, so roundly innocent, so star-like in their usual +bright uplifting, were raised now with a wide terror in them, first +to Rodney, then to Amy; and "O--O!" broke in short, subdued gasps +from her lips. + +Then they heard Mrs. Argenter's step up-stairs. + +"What is the matter, Sylvie? What are you doing? Who is with you +down there?" she said, over the baluster, from the hall above. + +"O, mother!" cried Sylvie, "they aren't gone! Something has _come_! +Go up and tell her, Amy, please!" And forgetting all about Amy as +"Miss Sherrett," and all her fear of "nice girls," she dropped down +on the lower step of the staircase after Amy had passed her upon her +errand, put her face between her hands and caught her breath with +frightened sobs. + +Rodney, leaning against the newel post, looked down at her, and +said, after the manner of men,--"Don't cry. It mayn't be very bad, +after all. You'll hear again in an hour or two. Can't I do +something? I'll go to the telegraph office. I'll get somebody for +your mother. Whom shall I go for?" + +"O, you are very kind. I don't know. Wait a minute. They didn't say +any place! We ought to go right to New York, and we don't know +where! O, dear!" She had lifted her head a little, just to say these +broken sentences, and then it went down again. + +Rodney did not answer instantly. It occurred to him all at once +what this "not saying any place" might mean. + +Just as he began,--"You couldn't go until to-morrow,"--came Mrs. +Argenter's sharp cry from her room above. Amy had walked right on +into the open, lighted apartment, Mrs. Argenter following, not +daring to ask what she came and did this strange thing for, till Amy +made her sit down in her own easy chair, and taking her hands, said +gently,-- + +"It is a telegram from New York. Mr. Argenter--is very ill." Then +Mrs. Argenter cried out, "That's not all! I know how people bring +news! Tell me the whole." And Sylvie sprang to her feet, hearing the +quick, excited words, and leaving Rodney Sherrett standing there, +rushed up into the dressing-room. + +This was the way the same sort of news came to Sylvie Argenter as +had come to the baker's daughter. Did it really make any +difference--the different surrounding of the two? The great +house--the lights--the servants--the friends; and the open bake-shop +door, the village street, the blunt, common-spoken neighbor-woman, +and the boy with the brick loaf? + +These two were to be fatherless: their mothers were both to be +widows: that was all. + +Did it happen strangely with the two--in this same story? Who know, +always, when they are in the same story? These things are happening +every day, and one great story holds us all. If one could see wide +enough, one could tell the whole. + +These things happen: and then the question comes,--alike in high and +low places,--alike with money and without it,--what the women and +the girls are to do? + +Rodney Sherrett took his sister home; drove three miles round and +brought Mrs. Argenter's sister to her from River Point, and then +turned toward Dorbury Upper Village and the telegraph office. But he +met Sim Atwill on the way, received the telegram from him, and +hurried back. + +It was the dispatch of the hour later, and this was it:-- + + "Mr. Argenter died at five o'clock. His remains will be sent + home to-morrow, carefully attended. + + "PHILIP BURKMAYER." + + + + +CHAPTER V. + +SPILLED OUT AGAIN. + + +There were paragraphs in the papers; there were resolutions at +meetings of the Board of Trade, and of the Directors of the +Trimountain Bank; there was a funeral from the "late residence," +largely attended; there were letters and calls of condolence; there +was making of crape and bombazine and silk into "mourning;" there +were friends and neighbors asking each other, after mention of the +sad suddenness, "how it would be;" "how much he had left;" "was +there a will?" + +And there was a will; made three years before. One hundred thousand +dollars, outright, to Increase M. Argenter's beloved wife; also the +use of the homestead; fifty thousand dollars to his daughter Sylvia +on her reaching the age of twenty-five, or on her marriage; all else +to be Mrs. Argenter's for her life-time, reverting afterward to +Sylvia or her heirs. + +There was just time for this to be ascertained and told of; just +time for Sylvie to be named as an heiress, and then all at once +something else came to light and was told of. + +There was a mining speculation out in Colorado; there was Mr. +Argenter's signature for heavy security; there were memoranda of +good safe stocks that had stood in his name a little while ago, and +no certificates; there had been sales and sacrifices; going in +deeper and to more certain loss, because of risk and danger already +run. + +Mr. Sherrett, senior, came home to dinner one day with news from +the street. + +"I've been very sorry to hear this morning that Argenter left things +in a bad way, after all. There won't be much of anything +forthcoming. All swallowed up in mines and lands that have gone +under. That explains the sunstroke. Half the cases are mere worry +and drive. In the old, calm times it was scarcely heard of. Now, of +a hot summer's day in New York, a hundred or two men drop down. And +then they talk of unprecedented heat. It is the heat and the ferment +that have got into life." + +"Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish," said the quiet +voice of Aunt Euphrasia. "How strange it is that men have never +interpreted yet!" + +"Ah, well! I'm not sure about sins and judgments. I don't undertake +to blame," said Mr. Sherrett. "People are born into a whirl, +nowadays,--the mass of them. How can they help it?" + +"I don't know. But we begin to see how true the words were, and in +what pity they must have been spoken," said Aunt Euphrasia. +"Tremendous physical forces have been grasped and set to work for +mere material ends. Spiritual uses and living haven't kept pace. And +so there is a terrible unbalance, and the tower falls upon men's +heads." + +"Well, poor Argenter wasn't a sinner above all that dwelt in +Jerusalem. And now, there are his wife and daughter. I'm sorry for +them. They'll find it a hard time." + +"I'm sorry, too," said Aunt Euphrasia, with heart-gentleness. She +could not help seeing the eternal laws; she read the world and the +Word with the inner illumining; but she was tender over all the poor +souls who were not to blame for the whirl of fever and falseness +they were born into; who could not or dared not fling themselves out +of it upon the simple, steadfast, everlasting verities, and--be +broken; upon whom, therefore, these must fall, and grind them to +powder. + +"How will it be with them?" she asked. + +"Do you mean there isn't anything left, sir? Nothing to carry out +the will?" + +Rodney had dropped his spoon and left his soup untasted, since his +father first spoke: he had lifted up his eyes quickly, and listened +with his whole face, but he had kept silence until now. + +Amy had looked up also; startled by the news, and waiting to hear +more. The young people were both too really interested, from their +intimate knowledge of the first misfortune, to reply with any common +"Is it possible?" to this. + +"The will, I am afraid, is only a magnificent 'might have been,'" +said Mr. Sherrett. "There may be something secured; there ought to +be. Mrs. Argenter had a small property, I believe. Otherwise, as +such things turn out, I should suppose there would be less than +nothing." + +"What will they do?" The question came from Aunt Euphrasia, again. +"Can't somebody help them? There is so much money in the world." + +"Yes, Effie. And there is gold in the mines. And there are plenty of +kind affections in the world, too; but there's loneliness and broken +heartedness, for all that. The difficulty always is to bring things +together." + +"I suppose that is just what _people_ were made for." + +"It will be one more family of precisely that sort whom nobody can +help, directly, and who scarcely know how to help themselves. The +hardest kind of cases." + +"It's an awful spill-out, this time," Rodney said to Amy, as she +followed him, after her usual fashion, to the piazza, when dinner +was over. "And no mistake!" + +Rodney had brought a cigar with him, but he had forgotten his match, +and he stood crumbling the end of it, frowning his brows together in +a way they were not often used to. + +"Will they have to go away?" asked Amy. + +"Out of that house? Of course. They'll be just tipped out of +everything." + +"How dreadful it will be for Sylvie!" + +"She won't stand round lamenting. I've seen her tipped out before. +Amy, I'll tell you what; you ought to stick by. Maybe she won't +want you, at first; but you ought to do it. Father,"--as Mr. +Sherrett came out with his evening paper to his cane reclining +chair,--"you'll go and see Mrs. Argenter, shall you not?" + +"Why, yes, if I could be of any service. But one wouldn't like to +intrude. There are executors to the will. I don't know that it is +quite my place." + +"I don't believe there will be much intruding--of _your_ sort. And +the executors have got nothing to do now. Who are they?" + +"Jobling and Cardwell, I believe. Men down town. Perhaps she might +like to see a neighbor. Yes, I think I will go. You can drive me +round, Rodney, some evening soon. Whom has she, of her own people, I +wonder?" + +"Only her sister, Mrs. Lowndes, you know. The brother-in-law isn't +much, I imagine." + +"Stephen A. Lowndes? No. Broken-down and out of the world. He +couldn't advise to any purpose. I fancy Argenter has been holding +_him_ up." + +"I think they'll be very glad to see you, sir." + +Rodney drove his father over the next night. Mr. Sherrett went in +alone. Rodney sat in the chaise outside. + +Mr. Sherrett waited some minutes after he had sent up his card, and +then Sylvie came down to him, looking pale in her black dress, and +with the trouble really in her young eyes, over which the brows bent +with a strange heaviness. + +"I could not persuade mother to come down," she said. "She does not +feel able to see anybody. But I wanted to thank you for coming, Mr. +Sherrett." + +"I thought an old neighbor might venture to ask if he could be of +use. A lady needs some one to talk things over with. I know your +mother must have much to think of, and she cannot have been used to +business. I should not come for a mere call at such a time. I should +be glad to be of some service." + +"Would you be kind enough to sit down a few minutes and talk with +me, Mr. Sherrett?" + +There was a difference already between the Sylvie of to-day and the +Sylvie of a few weeks ago. It was no longer a question of little +nothings,--of how she should get people in and how she could get +them out,--of what she should do and say to seem "nice all through," +like Amy Sherrett. Mr. Sherrett had not come for a "mere call," as +he said; and there was no mere "receiving." The llama lace and the +gray silk and the small _savoir faire_ could not help her now. Mrs. +Argenter was up-stairs in a black tamise wrapper with a large plain +black shawl folded about her, as she lay in the chill of a suddenly +cool August evening, on the sofa in her dressing-room, which for the +last week or two she had rarely left. All at once, Sylvie found that +she must think and speak both for her mother and herself. + +Mrs. Argenter could run smoothly in one polished groove; she was +thrown out now, and to her the whole world was off its axis. Her +House that Jack built had tumbled down; she thought so, not +accepting this strange block that had come to be wrought in. She had +been counting little brick after little brick that she had watched +idly in the piling; now there was this great weight that she could +not deal with, laid upon her hands for bearing and for using; she +let it crush her down, not knowing that, fitting it bravely into her +life that was building, it might stand there the very threshold over +which she should pass into perfect shelter of content. + +"Mother has been entirely bewildered by all this trouble," said +Sylvie, quietly, to Mr. Sherrett. "I don't think she really +understands. She has lived so long with things as they are, that she +cannot imagine them different. I think it is easier with me, +because, you know, I haven't been used to _anything_ such a _very_ +long while." + +Sylvie even smiled a tremulous little smile as she said this; and +Mr. Sherrett looked at her with one upon his own face that had as +much pitiful tenderness in it as could have shown through tears. + +"You see we shall have to do something right off,--go somewhere; and +mother can't change the least thing. She can't spare Sabina, who has +heard of a good place, and must go soon at any rate, because nobody +else would know where things belonged or are put away, or fetch her +anything she wanted. And the very things, I suppose, don't belong to +us. How shall we break through and begin again?" Sylvie looked up +earnestly at Mr. Sherrett, asking this question. This was what she +really wanted to know. + +"You will remove, I suppose?" said Mr. Sherrett "If you could hear +of a house,--if you could propose something definite,--if you and +Sabina could begin to pack up,--how would that be?" + +He met her inquiry with primary, practical suggestions, just what +she needed, wasting no words. He saw it was the best service he +could do this little girl who had suddenly become the real head of +the household. + +"I have thought, and thought," said Sylvie; "and after all, mother +must decide. Perhaps she wouldn't want to keep house. I don't know +whether we could. She spoke once about boarding. But boarding costs +a great deal, doesn't it?" + +"To live as you would need to,--yes." + +"I should hate to have to manage small, and change round, in +boarding. I know some people who live so. It would give me a very +mean feeling. It would be like trying to get a bite of everybody's +bread and butter. I'd rather have my own little loaf." + +"You are a brave, true little woman," said Mr. Sherrett, warmly. +"All you want is to be set in the right direction, and see your way. +You'll be sure to go on." + +"I _think_ I should. If mother can only be contented. I think I +should rather like it. I could _understand_ living better. There +would only be a little at a time. A great deal, and a great many +things, make it a puzzle." + +"Have you any knowledge about the property?" + +"Mr. Cardwell has been here two or three times. He says there are +twelve thousand dollars secured to mother by a note and mortgage on +this place. It was money of hers that was put into it. We shall have +the income of that; and there might be things, perhaps, that we +should have the right to sell, or keep to furnish with. Seven and a +half per cent, on twelve thousand dollars would be nine hundred +dollars a year. If we had to pay sixteen dollars a week to board, it +would take eight hundred and thirty-two; almost the whole of it. But +perhaps we could find a place for less; and our clothes would last a +good while, I suppose." + +Sylvie went through her little calculation, just as she had made it +over and over before, all by herself; she did not stop to think that +she was doing the small sum now for the enlightenment of the great +Mr. Sherrett, who calculated in millions for himself and others, +every day. + +"You would hardly be comfortable in a house which you could rent for +less than--say, four hundred dollars, and that would leave very +little for your living. Perhaps I should advise you to board." + +"But we could _do_ things, maybe, if we lived by ourselves, amongst +other people in small houses. We can't be _two_ things, Mr. +Sherrett, rich and poor; and it seems to me that is what we should +be trying for, if we got into a boarding-house. We should have to be +idle and ashamed. I want to take right hold. I'd like to earn +something and make it do." + +Sylvie's eyes really shone. The spirit that had worked in her as a +little child, to make her think it would be nice to be a "kitchen +girl, and have a few things in boxes, and Sundays out," threw a +charm of independence and enterprise and cosy thrift over her +changed position, and the chance it gave her. Mr. Sherrett wondered +at the child, and admired her very much. + +"Could you teach something? Could you keep a little school?" + +"I've thought about it. But a person must know ever to much, +nowadays, to keep even the least little school. They want +Kindergartens, and all the new plans, that I haven't learnt. And +it's just so about music. You must be scientific; and all I really +know is a few little songs. But I can _dance_ well, Mr. Sherrett. I +could teach that." + +There was something pathetically amusing in this bringing to market +of her one exquisite accomplishment, learned for pleasure, and the +suggestion of it at this moment, as she sat in her strange black +dress, with the pale, worn look on her face, in the home so shadowed +by heavy trouble, and about to pass away from their possession. + +"You will be sure to do something, I see," said Mr. Sherrett. "Yes, +I think you had better have a quiet little home. It will be a centre +to work from, and something to work for. You can easily furnish it +from this house. Whatever has to be done, you could certainly be +allowed such things as you might make a schedule of. Would you like +me to talk for you with Mr. Cardwell, and have something arranged?" + +"O, if you would! Mother dreads the very sound of Mr. Cardwell's +name, and the thought of business. She cannot bear it now. But your +advice would be so different!" + +Sylvie knew that it would go far with Mrs. Argenter that Mr. Howland +Sherrett, in the relation of neighbor and friend, should plan and +suggest for them, rather than Mr. Richard Cardwell, a stranger and +mere man of business, should come and tell them things that must be. + +"I'm afraid you'll think I don't realize things, I've planned and +imagined so much," Sylvie began again, "but I couldn't help +thinking. It is all I have had to do. There's a little house in +Upper Dorbury that always seemed to me so pretty and pleasant; and +nobody lives there now. At least, it was all shut up the last time +I drove by. The house with the corner piazza and the green side +yard, and the dark red roof sloping down, just off the road in the +shady turn beside the bank that only leads to two other little +houses beyond. Do you know?" + +Mr. Sherrett did know. They were three houses built by members of +the same family, some years ago, upon an old village homestead +property. Two of them had passed into other hands; one--this +one--remained in its original ownership, but had been rented of +late; since the war, in which the proprietor had made money, and +with it had bought a city residence in Chester Park. + +"You see we must go where things will be convenient. We can't ride +round after them any more. And we could get a girl up there, as +other people do, for general housework. I'm afraid mother wouldn't +quite like being in the village, but of course there can't be +anything that she _would quite_ like, now. And we aren't really +separate people any longer; at least, we don't belong to the +separate kind of people, and I couldn't bear to be _lonesomely_ +separate. It's good to belong to _some_ kind of people; isn't it?" + +"I think it is very good to belong to _your_ kind, where-ever they +are, Miss Sylvie. Tell your mother I say she may be glad of her +daughter. I'll find out about the house for you, at any rate. And +I'll see Mr. Cardwell; and I'll call again. Good-night, my dear. God +bless you!" + +And the grand Mr. Howland Sherrett pressed Sylvie Argenter's hand in +both of his, as a father might have pressed it, and went out with +the feeling of a warm rush from his heart toward his eyes. + +"That's a girl like a--whatever there is that means the noblest +sort of woman, and I'm not sure it _is_ a queen!" he said to Rodney, +as he seated himself in the chaise, and took the reins from his +son's hands. + +Mr. Sherrett was apt to say to Rodney, "You may drive me to this or +that place," but he was very apt, also, to do the driving himself, +after all; especially if he was somewhat preoccupied, and forgot, as +he did now. + +The way Mr. Howland Sherrett inquired about the red-roofed house, +was this: + +He went down to Mr. John Horner's store, in Opal Street, and asked +him what was the rent of it. + +"Six hundred and fifty dollars." + +"Rather high, isn't it, for the situation?" + +"Not for the situation of the _land_, I guess," said Mr. Horner. "I'm +paying annexation taxes." + +"What will you sell the property for as it stands?" + +"Eighty-five hundred dollars." + +"I'll give you eight thousand, Mr. Horner, in cash, upon condition +that you will not mention its having changed hands. I have some +friends whom I wish should live there," he added, lest some deep +speculating move should be surmised. + +Mr. Horner thought for the space of thirty seconds, after the rapid, +Opal Street fashion, and said,-- + +"You may have it. When will you take the deed?" + +"To-morrow morning, at eleven o'clock. Will that be convenient?" + +"All right. Yes, sir." + +And the next morning at eleven o'clock, the two gentlemen exchanged +papers; Mr. Horner received a check on the First National Bank for +eight thousand dollars, and Mr. Sherrett the title-deed to house and +land on North Centre Street, Dorbury, known as part of the John +Horner estate, and bordering so and so, and so on. + +The same afternoon, Mr. Sherrett called at Mrs. Argenter's, and +told her of the quiet, pleasant, retired, yet central house and +garden in Upper Dorbury, which he found she could have on a lease of +two or three years, for a rent of three hundred and fifty dollars. +It was in the hands of a lawyer in the village, who would make out +the lease and receive the payments. He had inquired it out, and +would conclude the arrangements for her, if she desired. + +"I don't know that I desire anything, Mr. Sherrett. I suppose I must +do what I can, since it seems I am not to be left in my own home +which I put my own money into. If it appears suitable to you, I have +no doubt it is right. I am very much obliged to you, I am sure. +Sylvie knows the house, and has an idea she likes it. She is +childish, and likes changing. She will have enough of it, I am +afraid." + +She did not even care to go over and inspect the house. Sylvie was +glad of that, for she knew it could be made to seem more homelike, +if she and Sabina could get the parlor and her mother's rooms ready +before Mrs. Argenter saw it. During the removal, it was settled that +they should go and stay with Mrs. Lowndes, at River Point. This +practically resulted in Mrs. Argenter's remaining with her sister, +while Sylvie and Sabina spent their time, night as well as day, +often, between Argenter Place and the new house. + +Rodney Sherrett rode through the village one day, when they were +busy there with their arrangements. + +Sylvie stood on a high flight of steps in the bay-window, putting up +some white muslin curtains, with little frills on the edges. They +had been in a sleeping-room at Argenter Place. All the furniture of +the house had been appraised, and an allowance made of two thousand +dollars, to which amount Mrs. Argenter might reserve such articles +as she wished, at the valuation. So much, and two thousand dollars +in cash, were given her in exchange for her homestead and her right +of dower in the unincumbered portion of the estate, upon which was +one other smaller mortgage. No other real property appeared in the +list of assets. Mr. Argenter had, unfortunately, invested almost +wholly in bonds, stocks, and those last ruinous mining ventures. The +land out in Colorado was useless, and besides, being wild land, did +not come under the law of dower. + +Mrs. Argenter thought it was all very strange, especially that a sum +of money,--eighteen hundred dollars, which was in her husband's +desk, the proceeds of some little mortgage that he had just +sold,--was not hers to keep. She came very near stealing it from the +estate, quietly appropriating it, without meaning to be dishonest; +regarding it as simply money in the house, which her husband "would +have given her, if she had wanted it, the very day before he died." + +Possibly he might; but the day after he died, it was no longer his +nor hers. + +To go back to Sylvie in the bay-window. Rodney rode by, then wheeled +about and came back as far as the stone sidewalk before the Bank +entrance. He jumped off, hitched Red Squirrel to one of the posts +that sentineled the curbstone, and passed quietly round into the +"shady turn." + +The front door was open, and boxes stood in the passage; he walked +in as far as the parlor door; then he tapped with his riding-whip +against the frame of it. Sylvie started on her perch, and began to +come down. + +"Don't stop. I couldn't help coming in, seeing you as I went by," +said Rodney. + +Sylvie sat down on one of the middle steps. She would rather keep +still than exhibit herself in any further movement. Rodney ought to +have known better than go in then; if indeed he did _not_ know +better than Sylvie herself did, how very pretty and graceful she +looked, all out of regular and ordinary gear. + +She had taken off her hoops, for her climbing; her soft, long black +dress fell droopingly about her figure and rested in folds around +and below her feet as she sat upon the step-ladder; one thick braid +of her sunshiny hair had dropped from the fastening which had looped +it up to her head, and hung, raveling into threads of light, down +over her shoulder and into her lap; her cheeks were bright with +exercise; her eyes, that trouble and thought had sobered lately to +dove-gray, were deep, brilliant blue again. She was excited with her +work, and flushed now with the surprise of Rodney's coming in. + +"How pretty you are going to look here," said Rodney, glancing +about. + +The carpet Sylvie had chosen to keep for the parlor--for though Mrs. +Argenter had feebly discussed and ostensibly dictated the list as +Sylvie wrote it down, she had really given up all choosing to her +with a reiterated, helpless, "As you please," at every question that +came up--was a small figured Brussels of a soft, shadowy water-gray, +with a border in an arabesque pattern. This had been upon a guest +chamber; the winter carpet of the drawing-room was an Axminster, and +Sylvie's ideas did not base themselves on Axminsters now, even if +they might have done so with a two thousand dollar allowance. She +only hoped her mother would not feel as if there were no drawing +room at all, but the whole house had been put up-stairs. + +The window draperies were as I have said; there was a large, plain +library table in the middle of the room, with books and baskets and +little easels with pictures, and paper weights and folders, and +other such like small articles of use and grace and cosy expression +lying about upon it, as if people had been there quite a while and +grown at home. There were bronze candelabra on the mantel and upon +brackets each side the bay window. Pictures were already +hung,--portraits, and gifts, not included in the schedule,--a few +nice engravings, and one glowing piece of color, by Mrs. Murray, +which Sylvie said was like a fire in the room. + +"I am only afraid it is too fine," said she, replying to Rodney. "I +really want to be like our neighbors,--to _be_ a neighbor. We belong +here now. People should not drop out of the world, between the +ranks, when changes happen; they can't change out of humanity. Do +you know, Mr. Sherrett,--if it wasn't for the thought of my poor +father, and my mother not caring about anything any more,--I know I +should enjoy the chance of being a village girl?" + +"You'll be a village girl, I imagine, as your parlor is a village +parlor. All in good faith, but wearing the rue with a difference." + +"I don't mean to. I've been thinking,--_ever_ so much, and I've +found out a good many things. It's this not falling _on_ to anything +that keeps people in the misery of falling. I mean to come to land, +right here. I guess I preexisted as a barefoot maiden. There's a +kind of homeishness about it, that there never was in being elegant. +I wonder if I _have_ got anything in here that has no business?" + +"Not a scrap. I've no doubt the blacksmith's wife's parlor is +finer. But you can't put the _character_ out." + +"I mean to have plants, now; in this bay window. I guess I can, now +that we have no conservatory. Village people always have plants in +their windows, and mother won't want to see the street staring in." + +"Have you brought some?" + +"How could I? Those great oranges and daphnes? No: I shall have +little window plants and raise them." + +"But meanwhile, won't the street be staring in?" + +"Well, we can keep the blinds shut, for the warm weather." + +"Amy will come and see you, when you are settled; Amy and Aunt +Euphrasia; you'll let them, won't you? You don't mean to be such a +violent village girl as to cut all your old friends?" + +"Old friends?" Sylvie repeated, thoughtfully "Well, it does seem +almost old. But I didn't think I knew any of you _very_ well, only a +little while ago." + +"Until the overturns," said Rodney. "It takes a shaking up, I +suppose, sometimes, to set things right. That's what the Shaker +people believe has got to be generally. Do you know, the +Scotch--Aunt Euphrasia is Scotch--have a way of using the word +'upset' to mean 'set up.' I think that is what you make it mean, +Miss Sylvie. I understand the philosophy of it now. I got my first +illustration when I tipped you out there at the baker's door." + +"You tipped me out into one of the nicest places I ever was in. I've +no doubt it was a piece of the preparation. I mean to have Ray +Ingraham for my intimate friend." + +Rodney Sherrett did not say anything immediately to this. He sat on +the low cricket upon which he had placed himself near the door, +turning his soft felt hat over and over between his hands. He was +not quite ready to perceive as yet, that the baker's daughter was +just the person for Sylvie Argenter's intimate friend; and he had a +dim suspicion, likewise, that there was something in the girl +constitution that prevented the being able to have more than one +intimate friend. + +He repeated presently his assurance that Amy and Aunt Euphrasia +would come over to see them, and took himself off, saying that he +knew he must have been horribly in the way all the time. + +The next morning, a light covered wagon, driven by Mr. Sherrett's +man, Rodgers, came up the Turn. There was nobody at the red-roofed +house so early, and he set down in the front porch what he took +carefully, one at a time, from the vehicle,--some two dozen lovely +greenhouse plants, newly potted from the choicest and most +flourishing growth of the season. + +When Sylvie and Sabina came round from the ten o'clock street car, +they stumbled suddenly upon this beauty that incumbered the +entrance. To a branch of glossy green, luxuriant ivy was tied a +card,-- + + "RODNEY SHERRETT, + With friendly compliments." + +Sylvie really sung at her work to-day, placing and replacing till +she had grouped the whole in her wire frames in the bay window so as +to show every leaf and spray in light and line aright. + +"Why, it is prettier than it ever was at the old place; isn't it +Sabina? It's full and perfect; and that was always a great +barrenness of glass. The street can't stare in now. I think mother +will be able to forget that there is even a street at all." + +"It's real nobby," said Sabina. + +The room was all soft green and gray: green rep chairs and sofa, +green topped library table; green piano cover; green inside blinds; +a green velvet grape leaf border around the gray papered walls. + +Sabina, though a very elegant housemaid, patronized and approved +cheerfully. She was satisfied with the new home. There had not been +a word of leaving since it was decided upon. She had her reasons. +Sabina was "promised to be married" next spring. Dignity in her +profession was not so much of an object meantime, nor even wages; +she had laid up money and secured her standing, living always in the +first families; she could afford to take it in a quiet way; "it +wouldn't be so bothering nor so dressy;" Sabina had a saving turn +with her best things, that spared both trouble and money. Besides, +her kitchen windows and the back door suited her; they looked across +a bit of unoccupied land to the back street where the cabinet-shop +buildings were. Sabina was going to marry into the veneering +profession. + + + + +CHAPTER VI. + +A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR. + + +Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's +chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were +sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie +there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to +feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and +submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right. + +The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold +out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which +Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters +were not willing to think of yet. + +Rachel quietly said,--as soon as her father was so far restored and +comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,-- + +"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay. +I spoke to them Saturday night." + +Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after +the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into +the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her +father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as +he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them +all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the +business. + +"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?" + +"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest, +and the stupidest--if a quick heart and a willing will can be +stupid--of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly +hitched on. + +Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She +must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new +ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done +for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves, +family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to +be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them +ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake +rhyme. + +Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,--if +they could stop to make them and knew how,--home bread and cake +could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity. +She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do +better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced +to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been +necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was +machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for +baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled +with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the +breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times +heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. + +Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that +touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she +felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I _will_ +work; I _will_ speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if +you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are +widening in the very nature and development of things; they are +showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business, +here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is +no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do +nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the +clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose +shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that. + +Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a +sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and +from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and +Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East +Mills, and River Point. + +"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when +she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put +brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar +cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her +sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like. +She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in +to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse. + +"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I +to have any neighbors?" + +The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn; +Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also +in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She +liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is; +that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original +land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression. + +Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the +Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in +the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination. + +Ray took it more quietly and coolly. + +"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said. +"We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we +will try and come, some day." + +"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to _call_, +though I said so. I want you to come right in and _see_ me. I never +could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again." + +The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid +gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that +Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last +shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in +their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it; +a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and +exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the +delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray. + +The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening +at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a +book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been +there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone +in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped, +physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what +one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds +upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been +taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet +sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to +restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to +breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport +with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world. + +"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were +gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything. + +"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice +girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my +accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she +added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I +should like them to come." + +"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered, +listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion. + +"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright +gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender +finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know +such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a +little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them. +All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people." + +"You certainly forget the Sherretts." + +"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just +edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a +little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the +purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you +should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it, +and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could." + +"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by +the roots, and there is the end of it." + +It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and +she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her +mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife, +or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs. +Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come +together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so +much more of the same things than their mothers did. + +Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no +difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for +her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore +away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always +lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out +under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread +carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders; +the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of +quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always +glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little +purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in +her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury +library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not +so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds, +where all sorts of blooms,--bright petunias and verbenas, delicate +sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy +deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and +rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised +on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged +things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,--made a glory +and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the +grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery, +against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines. + +"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in +her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one +evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother. +"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same +things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees +put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a +view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a +peep at the hills. But you are right down _amongst_ such niceness! +There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling +along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down +the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the +shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had +all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good +time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate +properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread +smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so +much better. Somebody came here to _do_ something; and the rest +was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be +exquisite!" + +"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet, +cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia +Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone. + +"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living. +The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory." + +"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard, +beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed +quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and +she liked them. + +"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden +flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in +glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings +behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every +evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He +himself begins and ends?" + +"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham, +perceiving. + +"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of +their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun +makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of +us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find +it all, by and by, ready,--whatever we think we have missed; the +building not made with hands." + +"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us," +said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods +to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or +epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion. + +"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same +thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being +clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment. +You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole +chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the +same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new +thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move +and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some +fresh phase of what is one and everlasting." + +Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so--given the right +circumstances to draw her forth--than she could help breathing. Her +whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of. +Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams +and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown +in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day +experience and incident. + +But she never went on--and "went over," exhorting. She did not +believe in _discourses_, she said, even from the pulpit--very much. +She believed in a _sermon_, and letting it go. And a sermon is just +a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to +any soul. + +So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to +break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it +herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little +business that she had come to ask Dot. + +"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?" + +It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she +took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all +one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of +living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so +pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being +played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music +afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to +send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures +following. + +Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric +neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She +folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright +took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her +three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,-- + +"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a +real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your +house." + +"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said +good-by, and passed out through the shop. + +"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her +disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged +to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go +out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There +is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he +would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great +desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him." + +"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for +her being so happy." + +"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new +pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn, +unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old +and tired, which _I_ think there is never any need of doing." + +"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause +in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a +little suggestion from it. + +"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these +days." + +"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be +done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright +held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I +mean,"--she gathered herself up bravely to say,--"I should like +dearly to do _anything_ for Amy; but I have thought it would be a +good plan--if I could--to do something like that for the sake of +earning; as Dot Ingraham does." + +"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss +Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt. + +"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always +things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the +grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,--which we _have_ to +have,--turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages--and mother's +wine--and cream--and fresh eggs,--I get so worried when the bills +come in!" + +Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling +her money and housekeeping troubles. + +"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just +as much as I can do,--of those kinds of work,--and a poor girl would +waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much, +myself. If Sabina were to go,--and she will next spring,--I am +afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two." + +For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that +she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is +wonderful how much work one person, who _does_ none of it and who +must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs. +Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the +morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she +never _could_ remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,--she +needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And +she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it; +one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of +her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the +cabinet-maker. + +"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss +Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You +can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay." + +Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so +graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold +of them, by their honest handles,--as they were meant to be taken +hold of. + +"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village +girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat +projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They +had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty +minutes. + +"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite +_been it_, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now. +That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us +in,--all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you +weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs. +Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a +sort of a way,--well, it _was_ just like a dog sniffing round for +something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old, +black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her. +'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she _sposed_.' Everybody +isn't like the Ingrahams." + +"No garment of _this_ life fits exactly. There was only one +seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The +body is more. And at last,--somehow, sometime,--we shall be all +clothed perfectly--with his righteousness." + +This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking +for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a +meaning. + +"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any +outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me +plainer, Miss Euphrasia." + +"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not _clothes_ so much as +_life_; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears +and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history, +circumstance. 'Raiment,'--'garment,'--the words always stand for +this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his +_garment_,'--He gave up his own life that He might have been +living,--to come and wash our feet!" + +"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into +Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently. + +"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us +with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we +lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will +give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it +will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves. +And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we +shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but +rightness?" + +"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of +our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?" + +"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old +letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously +true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it _is things_ +they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They +talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an +abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly +that his 'justifying' is _setting everything right_ for them, and +round them, and in them: his _rightness_ is sufficient for them; +they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute +they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for +them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul +ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings +forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes +for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of +regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord +heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He _knows_ +that we have _need_," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly. +"Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as +people run for their lives from fire or flood." + +Sylvie had listened with a shining face. + +"You get it all from that one word,--'raiment.' Your words--the +words you find out, Miss Kirkbright--are living things." + +"Yes, words _are_ living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God +does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit, +and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they +were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words, +inspired. We talk about their _being_ inspired, as if it were a +passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe +ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given +over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never +need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that +He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the +more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand +their speech." + +"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'--that words in the Bible +stand for,--Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?" + +"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled. + +"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly. + +"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't +believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in +it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming +into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to +worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We +should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to +Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one +place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the +one part to the other part under heaven. _Lightening_--not +lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the +sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day +after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night +after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward +dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,--received it, wonderfully; +but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having +heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about +the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass +away, but the Word shall never pass away." + +"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?" + +The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the +red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell. + +"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could +tell it to my mother!" + +"Can't you?" + +"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,--with me," Sylvie answered, with +a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am +taking to her. I can take,--but I can't give, and I always feel so +that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come +and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?" + +"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say. +Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about +such sort of giving--in words--as a duty. Even with people whom I +work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so +much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near +and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that +are equal--or similarly related--to the same thing, are related to +one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time. +Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to +my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort." + +"I think you go to everything for it--and to everybody with it," +said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the +car-step. + +Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie +through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle +cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all +her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let +them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless +pressure. + +For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily. +The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made +pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into +established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The +difficulties--the grapples--came thick and forceful about her. At +the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her. + +She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the +countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in +upholding her. It was a link with the old things--the very best of +the old things,--that stood as a continual assurance that they +themselves were not altered--lowered in any way--by their alterings. +This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs. +Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts +indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out +altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright +thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings +with them in a friendly--even intimate--fashion. If Sylvie chose to +sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia +did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the +maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when +she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over +knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might +well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her +window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs. +Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the +relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts +and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart +somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to +Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could +find little other. + +Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs. +Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and +thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had +these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after +all, pretty hard to endure. + +The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly +neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and +the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as +she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not +draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt +bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward +Dot and Ray. + +Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never +went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her +sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young +carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and +discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what +shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a +village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course, +Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a +voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared +mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's +proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew +beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between +the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally +and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took +in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though +the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all +these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social +"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic +benediction, all the way down. + +I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie +nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in +their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts. +This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy +was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at +Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss +Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work +all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress, +went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no +more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no +more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All +that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly. +Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year +Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These +plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving +home. + +Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss +Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions +were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into +next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would +come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow +patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite." + +[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude +to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and +Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain +that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in +expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities +whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much +pitch-forked up into heaps behind.] + +Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been +growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of +her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine +and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the +slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie +for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she +developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the +yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a +soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to +be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and +harder. + +Sabina Bowen went away. + +She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the +cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,--neat +and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread +work about the eaves and porch,--which was to be vacated at that +time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances, +the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the +remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina +eagerly one evening with the news. + +Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright +double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round +table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other; +of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her +bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and +hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread, +and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning +when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the +towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person; +it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to +dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for +dinner. + +And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of +despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if +one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one +very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as +it may be. + +She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then +flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs, +because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't +pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next +one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and +in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of +ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a +fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish, +jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the +heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like +considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the +use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the +ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her +about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her +using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon +the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance +that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their +apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a +week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard +enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool +she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers." + +That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place +before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was +no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the +village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices. +By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent +servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of +them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the +oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would +cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs. +Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she +made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by +the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All +this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled +underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any +plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean." + +At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not +pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their +little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a +poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars. +They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at +last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half, +respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and +they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs. +Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do +but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and +effectually done it. + +But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would +they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the +principal every six months? + +In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must +give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first +place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A +cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for +rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season +in that village,--nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be +just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to +provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and +everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to +make, and girls going off every Monday morning? + +She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be +able to answer a word. But the lease,--for another year? What should +they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands? + +If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how! + +The little poem of village living,--of home simpleness and frugal +prettiness,--of _that_, the two first lines alone had rhymed! + +They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they +came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was +harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer +and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the +year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away. + +Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother; +and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see +her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie. + +God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds +in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under; +even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When +Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away +her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing +was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she +would,--have what she wanted. + +Then she went to see Mr. Frost. + +"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an +answer of himself. + +The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any +moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy. +It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily. + +Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out. +She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when +he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines +without moving from his seat. + +"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after +all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and +by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned +back to his other papers,--his notes of yesterday's debate in the +House. + + * * * * * + +Early in June, there came lovely days. + +Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the +end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the +remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a +year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and +dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and +the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of +service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs +asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying +themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no +moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire." + +She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own +rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one +afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost +shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but +village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and +names were suddenly announced. + +"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!" + +Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have +said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang +to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry. + +"What _shall_ I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth _is_ +my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss +Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what +hair!" + +She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust +in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged +black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all +right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that +cloudiness beneath which they shone. + +Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and +told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered +then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed +to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful +spring. + +"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must +have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to +Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in +the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the +city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she +wants." + +Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed; +at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year +ago. + +"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?" + +"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot +Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston; +then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill +them." + +Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some +minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his +handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had +anticipated. + +By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to +ask her for Class Day. + +"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt +Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list, +you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter. +I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it +probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it +were?" + +"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to +the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness +in letting her know. "I _wish_ I could! But we shall be gone." + +"Not before Class Day?" + +"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry." + +Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for +nothing. + +Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps +Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told +Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge +of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that +lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful +wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be +crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets +discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great +and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that +men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with +their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which +the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of +his grand, pure heights." + +All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed +thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given +and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt +Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not +be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to +speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had +said--had done--nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither +knew it of the other; that was the worst. + +When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia +turned round to Sylvie with a question. + +"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?" + +"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up +all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't +mind using it. And it is _mother's_ money; and Dr. Sainswell says +she _cannot_ have a long life." + +Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear +and calm,--only tender. + +"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her +face. + +"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't +money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to +me--after mother's feebleness--is the changing; the not staying of +anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss +Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged." + +"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly. +"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the +Lord working. That is the comfort,--the certainty." + +The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in +Sylvie's eyes, at that word. + +"How _do_ you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall +never forget that now." + +Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away +toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not +help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully, +in most ways, from "putting things in his head." + +"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer. + +Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be +as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people +are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads." + +"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a +very great good-for-nothing?" + +"No, indeed. Why?" + +"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure +whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I +haven't had anything to do with _horses_ this winter; I sent Red +Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a +fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the +bad? What is there so abominable about them?" + +"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand +and splendid,--in _type_,--you know. Horses are powers; men are made +to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct +of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he +stops there,--playing with the signs. He might as well ride a +stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do, +all his life." + +Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no +answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,-- + +"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up +things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words, +just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I _might_ do +something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy, +and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real +driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my +father?" + +"I don't _know_ that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but +it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You +ought to be quite sure what you stay for." + +"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night." + +"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it +all out honestly with him." + +Which advice--the first clause of it--Rodney proceeded instantly to +follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam +and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one +of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and +passive thing. + +When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery +stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him. + +The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with +you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten." + +Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of +uncomfortableness,--of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter. +He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope, +Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes. + +"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will +be up presently to take away these things." + +The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond +which were sleeping and bath-rooms. + +Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while +Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the +latter carefully in two, and lit one half. + +"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal +beginning after they should be closeted and seated,--"I've been +thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm +rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,--before I +take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more +in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I +ought to have got ahead a little by that time." + +Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He +wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it. + +"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?" + +"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'--as Nurse Pond used +to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough +to do for a gentleman,--a _man_, I hope. But I _should_ like to take +hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want +to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want +something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't +take care of myself--and more." + +"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door." + +After that, of course, we cannot listen. + +They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr. +Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two +little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which +his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at +this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and +wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched +sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of +his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What +he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned +to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that +heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man, +can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they +came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,-- + +"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,--for +both your sakes." + +"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were +young." + +"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If +anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,--you may talk, if you like, +to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her." + +And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of +our story. + +We may leave it here for a while. + + + + +CHAPTER VII. + +BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW. + + + "Kroo! kroo! I've cramp in my legs, + Sitting so long atop of my eggs! + Never a minute for rest to snatch; + I wonder when they are going to hatch! + + "Cluck! cluck! listen! tseep! + Down in the nest there's a stir and a peep. + Everything comes to its luck some day; + I've got chickens! What will folks say?" + +Bel Bree made that rhyme. It came into her head suddenly one +morning, sitting in her little bedroom window that looked right +over the grass yard into the open barn-door, where the hens +stalked in and out; and one, with three chickens, was at that +minute airing herself and her family that had just come out of +their shells into the world, and walked about already as if the +great big world was only there, just as they had of course +expected it to be. The hen was the most astonished. _She_ was just +old enough to begin to be able to be astonished. Her whole mind +expressed itself in that proud cluck, and pert, excited carriage. +She had done a wonderful thing, and she didn't know how she had +done it. Bel "read it like coarse print,"--as her step-mother was +wont to say of her own perspicacities,--and put it into jingle, as +she had a trick of doing with things. + +Bel Bree lived in New Hampshire; fifteen miles from a railway; in +the curious region where the old times and the new touch each +other and mix up; where the women use towels, and table-cloths, and +bed-spreads, of their mothers' own hand-weaving, and hem their new +ones with sewing-machines brought by travelling agents to their +doors; where the men mow and rake their fields with modern +inventions, but only get their newspapers once a week; where the +"help" are neighbors' girls, who wear overskirts and high hats, and +sit at the table with the family; where there are rag carpets and +"painted chamber-sets;" where they feed calves and young turkeys, +and string apples to dry in the summer, and make wonderful patchwork +quilts, and wax flowers, and worsted work, perhaps, in the long +winters; where they go to church and to sewing societies from miles +about, over tremendous hills and pitches, with happy-go-lucky wagons +and harnesses that never come to grief; where they have few schools +and intermitted teaching, yet turn out, somehow, young men who work +their way into professions, and girls who take the world by +instinct, and understand a great deal perfectly well that is beyond +their practical reach; where the old Puritan stiffness keeps them +straight, but gets leavened in some marvelous way with the broader +and more generous thought of the time, and wears a geniality that it +is half unconscious of; the region where, if you are lucky enough to +get into it to know it, you find yourself, as Miss Euphrasia said, +encouraged and put in heart again about the world. Things are so +genuine; when they make a step forward, they are really there. + +But Bel Bree was not very happy in her home, though she sat at the +window and made rhymes in half merry fashion; though she loved the +hills, and the lights, and the shadows, the sweet-blossoming springs +and the jeweled autumns, the sunsets, and the great rains, that set +all the wild little waterfalls prancing and calling to each other +among the ravines. + +Bel had two lives; one that she lived in these things, and one +within the literal and prosaic limit of the farmhouse, where her +father, as farmers must, had married a smart second wife to "look +after matters." + +Not that Mrs. Bree ever looked _after_ anything: nothing ever got +ahead of her; she "whewed round;" when she was "whewing," she +neither wanted Bel to hinder nor help; the child was left to +herself; to her idleness and her dreams; then she neglected +something that she might and ought to have done, and then there was +reproach, and hard speech; partly deserved, but running over into +that wherein she should not have been blamed,--the precinct of her +step-mother's own busy and self-arrogated functions. She was taunted +and censured for incapacity in that to which she was not admitted; +"her mother made ten cheeses a week, and flung them in her face," +she said. On the other hand, Mrs. Bree said "Bel hadn't got a mite +of _snap_ to her." One might say that, perhaps, of an electric +battery, if the wrong poles were opposed. Mrs. Bree had not found +out where the "snap" lay in Bel's character. She never would find +out. + +Bel longed, as human creatures who are discontent always do, to get +away. The world was big; there must be better things somewhere. + +There was a pathos of weariness, and an inspiration of hope, in her +little rhyme about the hen. + +Bel was named for her Aunt Belinda. Miss Belinda Bree came up for a +week, sometimes, in the summer, to the farm. All the rest of the +year she worked hard in the city. She put a good face upon it in +her talk among her old neighbors. She spoke of the grand streets, +the parades, Duke's balls,--for which she made dresses,--and +jubilees, of which she heard afar off,--as if she were part and +parcel of all Boston enterprise and magnificence. It was a great +thing, truly, to live in the Hub. Honestly, she had not got over it +since she came there, a raw country girl, and began her +apprenticeship to its wonders and to her own trade. She could not +turn a water faucet, nor light her gas, nor count the strokes of the +electric fire alarm, without feeling the grandeur of having +Cochituate turned on to wash her hands,--of making her one little +spark of the grand illumination under which the Three Hills shone +every night,--of dwelling within ear-shot and protection of the +quietly imposing system of wires and bells that worked by lightning +against a fierce element of daily danger. She was proud of +policemen; she was thrilled at the sound of steam-engines thundering +along the pavements; she felt as if she had a hand in it. When they +fired guns upon the Common, she could only listen and look out of +windows; the little boys ran and shouted for her in the streets; +that is what the little boys are for. Somebody must do the running +and the shouting to relieve the instincts of older and busier +people, who must pretend as if they didn't care. + +All this kept Miss Belinda Bree from utterly wearing out at her dull +work in the great warerooms, or now and then at days' seamstressing +in families. It really keeps a great many people from wearing out. + +Miss Bree's work _was_ dull. The days of her early "mantua making" +were over. Twenty years had made things very different in Boston. +The "nice families" had been more quiet then; the quietest of them +now cannot manage things as they did in those days; for the same +reason that you cannot buy old-fashioned "wearing" goods; they are +not in the market. "Sell and wear out; wear out and sell;" that is +the principle of to-day. You must do as the world does; there is no +other path cut through. If you travel, you must keep on night and +day, or wait twenty-four hours and start in the night again. + +Nobody--or scarcely anybody--has a dress-maker now, in the old, cosy +way, of the old, cosy sort, staying a week, looking over the +wardrobes of the whole family, advising, cutting, altering, +remaking, getting into ever so much household interest and history +in the daily chat, and listening over daily work: sitting at the +same table; linking herself in with things, spring and fall, as the +leaves do with their goings and comings; or like the equinoxes, that +in March and September shut about us with friendly curtains of rain +for days, in which so much can be done in the big up-stairs room +with a cheerful fire, that is devoted to the rites and mysteries of +scissors and needle. We were always glad, I remember, when our +dress-making week fell in with the equinoctial. + +But now, all poor Miss Bree's "best places" had slipped away from +her, and her life had changed. People go to great outfitting stores, +buy their goods, have themselves measured, and leave the whole thing +to result a week afterward in a big box sent home with everything +fitted and machined and finished, with the last inventions and +accumulations of frills, tucks, and reduplications; and at the +bottom of the box a bill tucked and reduplicated in the same modern +proportions. + +Miss Bree had now to go out, like any other machine girl, to the +warerooms; except when she took home particular hand-work of button +holes and trimmings, or occasionally engaged herself for two or +three days to some family mother who could not pay the big bills, +and who ran her own machine, cut her own basques and gores, and +hired help for basting and finishing. She had almost done with even +this; most people liked young help; brisker with their needles, +sewing without glasses, nicer and fresher looking to have about. +Poor "Aunt Blin" overheard one man ask his wife in her dressing-room +before dinner, "Why, if she must have a stitching-woman in the +house, she couldn't find a more comfortable one to look at; somebody +a little bright and cheerful to bring to the table, instead of that +old callariper?" + +Miss Bree behaved like a saint; it was not the lady's fault; she +resisted the temptation to a sudden headache and declining her +dinner, for fear of hurting the feelings of her employer, who had +always been kind to her; she would not let her suspect or be afraid +that the speech had come to her ears; she smoothed her thin old +hair, took off her glasses, wiped her eyes a little, washed her +hands, and went down when she was called; but after that day she +"left off going out to work for families." + +The warehouses did not pay her very well; neither there was she able +to compete with the smart young seamstresses; she only got a dollar +and a quarter a day, and had to lodge and feed herself; yet she kept +on; it was her lot and living; she looked out at her third-story +window upon the roofs and spires, listened to the fire alarms, heard +the chimes of a Sunday, saw carriages roll by and well-dressed +people moving to and fro, felt the thrill of the daily bustle, and +was, after all, a part of this great, beautiful Boston! Strange +though it seem, Miss Belinda Bree was content. + +Content enough to tell charming stories of it, up in the country, +to her niece Bel, when she was questioned by her. + +Of her room all to herself, so warm in winter, with a red carpet +(given her by the very Mrs. "Callariper" who could not help a +misgiving, after all, that Miss Bree's vocation had been ended with +that wretched word), and a coal stove, and a big, splendid brindled +gray cat--Bartholomew--lying before it; of her snug little +housekeeping, with kindlings in the closet drawer, and milk-jug out +on the stone window-sill; of the music-mistress who had the room +below, and who came up sometimes and sat an hour with her, and took +her cat when she came away, leaving in return, in her own absences, +her great English ivy with Miss Bree. Of the landlady who lived in +the basement, and asked them all down, now and then, to play a game +of cassino or double cribbage, and eat a Welsh rabbit: of things +outside that younger people did,--the girls at the warerooms and +their friends. Of Peck's cheap concerts, and the Public Library +books to read on holidays and Sundays; of ten-cent trips down the +harbor, to see the surf on Nantasket Beach; of the brilliant streets +and shops; of the Public Garden, the flowers and the pond, the boats +and the bridge; of the great bronze Washington reared up on his +horse against the evening sky; of the deep, quiet old avenues of the +Common; of the balloons and the fireworks on the "Fourth of Julies." + +I do not think she did it to entice her; I do not think it occurred +to her that she was putting anything into Bel's head; but when Bel +all at once declared that she meant to go to Boston herself and seek +her fortune,--do machine-work or something,--Aunt Blin felt a sudden +thankful delight, and got a glimpse of a possible cheerfulness +coming to herself that she had never dreamed of. If it was pleasant +to tell over these scraps of her small, husbanded enjoyments to Bel, +what would it be to have her there, to share and make and enlarge +them? To bring young girls home sometimes for a chat, or even a cup +of tea; to fetch books from the library, and read them aloud of a +winter evening, while she stitched on by the gas-light with her +glasses on her little homely old nose? The little old nose radiated +the concentrated delight of the whole diminutive, withered face; the +intense gleam of the small, pale blue eyes that bent themselves +together to a short focus above it, and the eagerness of the thin, +shrunken lips that pursed themselves upward with an expression that +was keener than a smile. Bel laughed, and said she was "all puckered +up into one little admiration point!" + +After that, it was of no use to be wise and to make objections. + +"I'll take you right in with me, and look after you, if you do!" +said Miss Bree. "And two together, we can housekeep real +comfortable!" + +It was as if a new wave of youth, from the far-retreated tide, had +swept back upon the beach sands of her life, to spend its sparkle +and its music upon the sad, dry level. Every little pebble of +circumstance took new color under its touch. Something belonging to +her was still young, strong, hopeful. Bel would be a brightness in +the whole old place. The middle-aged music-mistress would like +her,--perhaps even give her some fragmentary instruction in the +clippings of her time. Mrs. Pimminy, the landlady,--old Mr. Sparrow, +the watch-maker, who went up and down stairs to and from his nest +under the eaves,--the milliner in the second-floor-back,--why, she +would make friends with them all, like the sunshine! There would be +singing in the house! The middle-aged music-mistress did not +sing,--only played. And this would be her doing,--her bringing; it +would be the third-floor-front's glory! The pert girls at the +wareroom would not snub the old maid any more, and shove her into +the meanest corner. She had got a piece of girlhood of her own +again. Let them just see Bel Bree--that was all! + +Yet she did set before Bel, conscientiously, the difference between +the free country home and the close, bricked up city. + +"There isn't any out-doors there, you know--round the houses; _home_ +out-doors; you have to be dressed up and go somewhere, when you go +out. The streets are splendid, and there's lots to look at; but +they're only made to _get through_, you know, after all." + +They were sitting, while she spoke, on a flat stone out under the +old elm-trees between the "fore-yard" and the barn. Up above was +great blue depth into which you could look through the delicate +stems and flickering leaves of young far tips of branches. One +little white cloud was shining down upon them as it floated in the +sun. Away off swelled billowy tops of hills, one behind another, +making you feel how big the world was. That was what Bel had been +saying. + +"You feel so as long as you stay here," replied Miss Blin, "as if +there was room and chance for everything 'over the hills and far +away.' But in the city it all crowds up together; it gets just as +close as it can, and everybody is after the same chances. 'Tain't +_all_ Fourth-of-July; you mustn't think it. Milk's ten cents a +quart, and _jest_ as blue! Don't you 'spose you're better off up +here, after all? Do you think Mrs. Bree could get along without you, +now?" + +Bel replied most irrelevantly. She sat watching the fowls +scratching around the barn-door. + +"How different a rooster scratches from a hen!" said she. "He just +gives one kick,--out smart,--and picks up what he's after; _she_ +makes ever so many little scrabbles, and half the time concludes it +ain't there!--What was it you were saying? About mother? O, _she_ +don't want me! The trouble is, Aunt Blin, we two _don't_ want each +other, and never did." She picked up a straw and bent it back and +forth, absently, into little bits, until it broke. Her lips curled +tremulously, and her bright eyes were sad. + +Miss Blin knew it perfectly well without being told; but she +wouldn't have pretended that she did, for all the world. + +"O, tut!" said she. "You get along well enough. You like one another +full as well as could be expected, only you ain't constituted +similar, that's all. She's great for turning off, and going +ahead, and she ain't got much patience. Such folks never has. You +can't be smart and easy going too. 'Tain't possible. She's +right-up-an'-a-comin', and she expects everybody else to be. But you +_like_ her, Bel; you know you do. You ain't goin' away for that. I +won't have it that you are." + +"I like her--yes;" said Bel, slowly. "I know she's smart. I _mean_ +to like her. I do it on purpose. But I don't _love_ her, with a +_can't help it_, you see. I feel as if I ought to; I want to have my +heart go out to her; but it keeps coming back again. I could be +happy with you, Aunt Blin, in your up-stairs room, with the blue +milk out in the window-sill. There'd be room, enough for _us_, but +this whole farm isn't comfortable for Ma and me!" + +After that, Miss Blin only said that she would speak to Kellup; +meaning her brother, Caleb Bree. + +Caleb Bree was just the sort of man that by divine compensation +generally marries, or gets married by a woman that is +"right-up-and-a-comin'." He "had no objections," to this plan of +Bel's, I mean; perhaps his favorite phrase would have expressed his +strongest feeling in the crisis just referred to, also; it was a +normal state of mind with him; he had gone through the world, thus +far, on the principle of _not_ "having objections." He had none now, +"if Ma'am hadn't, and Blin saw best." He let his child go out from +his house down into the great, unknown, struggling, hustling, +devouring city, without much thought or inquiry. It settled _that_ +point in his family. "Bel had gone down to Boston to be a +dress-maker, 'long of her Aunt Blindy," was what he had to say to +his neighbors. It sounded natural and satisfactory. House-holds +break up after the children are grown, of course; they all settle to +something; that is all it comes to--the child-life out of which if +they had died and gone away, there would have been wailing and +heart-breaking; the loving and tending and watching through cunning +ways and helpless prettiness and small knowledge-getting: they turn +into men and women, and they go out into the towns, or they get +married, even--and nobody thinks, then, that the little children are +dead! But they are: they are dead, out of the household, and they +never come back to it any more. + +Caleb Bree let Bel go, never once thinking that after this she never +_could_ come back the same. + +Mrs. Bree had her own two children,--and there might be more--that +would claim all that could be done for them. She would miss Bel's +telling them stories, and washing their faces, and carrying them off +into the barn or the orchard, and leaving the house quiet of a +Sunday or a busy baking-day. It had been "all Bel was good for;" +and it had been more than Mrs. Bree had appreciated at the time. Bel +cried when she kissed them and bade them good-by; but she was gone; +she and her round leather trunk and her little bird in its cage that +she could not leave behind, though Aunt Blin did say that "she +wouldn't altogether answer for it with Bartholomew." + +Bel herself,--the other little bird,--who had never tried her +wings, or been shut up in strange places with fierce, prowling +creatures,--she could answer for her, she thought! + +It is worth telling,--the advent of Bel and her bird in the +up-stairs room in Leicester Place, and what came of it with +Bartholomew. Miss Blin believed very much in her cat with the +apostolic name, though she had never tried his principles with a +caged bird. She had tutored him to refrain from meat and milk unless +they were set down for him in his especial corner upon the hearth. +He took his airings on the window-ledge where the sun slanted in of +a morning, beside the very brown paper parcel in which was wrapped +the mutton chop for dinner; he never touched the cheese upon the +table, though he knew the word "cheese" as well as if he could spell +it, and would stand up tall on his hind paws to receive his morsel +when he was told, even in a whisper, and without a movement, that he +might come and have some. He preferred his milk condensed in this +way; he got very little of it in the fluid form, and did not think +very highly of it when he did. He knew what was good, Aunt Blin +said. + +He understood conversation; especially moral lectures and +admonitions; Miss Bree had talked to him precisely as if he had a +soul, for five years. He knew when she was coming back at one +o'clock to dinner, or at nine in the evening, by the ringing of the +bells. After she had told him so, he would be sitting at the door, +watching for its opening, from the instant of their first sound +until she came up-stairs. + +When Aunt Blin thought over all this and told it to Bel, on their +way down in the cars, she almost persuaded her niece and quite +convinced herself, that Bartholomew could be dealt with on +principles of honor and confidence. They would not attempt to keep +the cage out of his reach; that would be almost to keep it out of +their own. She would talk to Bartholomew. She would show him the +bird, and make him understand that they set great store by it, that +it must not be meddled with on any account. "Why, he never _offers_ +to touch my tame pigeon that hops in on the table to eat the +crumbs!" + +"But a pigeon is pretty big, Aunt Blin," Bel answered, "and may be +Bartholomew suspects that it is old and tough. I _am_ afraid about +my tiny, tender little bird." + +Bel was charmed with Aunt Blin's room, when she opened the blinds +and drew up the colored shades, and let the street-light in until +she could find her matches and light the gas. It was just after dark +when they reached Leicester Place. The little lamp-lighter ran down +out of the court with his ladder as they turned in. There were two +bright lanterns whose flames flared in the wind; one just opposite +their windows, and one below at the livery stable. There was a big +livery stable at the bottom of the court, built right across the +end; and there was litter about the doors, and horse odor in the +air. But that is not the very worst kind of city smell that might +be, and putting up with that, the people who lived in Leicester +Court had great counterbalancing advantages. There was only one side +to the place; and though the street way was very narrow, the +opposite walls shut in the grounds of a public building, where there +were trees and grass, and above which there was really a chance at +the sky. Further along, at the corner, loomed the eight stories of +an apartment hotel. All up and down this great structure, and up and +down the little three-storied fronts of the Court as well, the whole +place was gay with illumination, for these last were nearly all +lodging houses, and at night at least, looked brilliant and grand; +certainly to Bel Bree's eyes, seeing three-storied houses and +gas-lights for the first time. Inside, at number eight, the one +little gas jet revealed presently just what Aunt Blin had told +about: the scarlet and black three-ply carpet in a really handsome +pattern of raised leaves; the round table in the middle with a red +cloth, and the square one in the corner with a brown linen one; the +little Parlor Beauty stove, with a boiler atop and an oven in the +side,--an oval braided mat before it, and a mantel shelf above with +some vases and books upon it,--all the books, some dozen in number, +that Aunt Blin had ever owned in the whole course of her life. One +of the blue vases had a piece broken out of its edge, but that was +turned round behind. The closets, one on each side of the +fire-place, answered for pantry, china closet, store-room, wardrobe, +and all. The _refrigerator_ was out on the stone window-sill on the +east side. The room had corner windows, the house standing at the +head of a little paved alley that ran down to Hero Street. + +"There!" says Aunt Blin turning up the gas cheerily, and dropping +her shawl upon a chair. "Now I'll go and get Bartholomew, and then +I'll run for some muffins, and you can make a fire. You know where +all the things are, you know!" + +That was the way she made Bel welcome; treating her at once as part +and parcel of everything. + +Down stairs ran Aunt Blin; she came up more slowly, bringing the +great Bartholomew in her arms, and treading on her petticoats all +the way. + +Straight up to the square table she walked, where Bel had set down +her bird-cage, with the newspaper pinned over it. Aunt Blin pulled +the paper off with one hand, holding Bartholomew fast under the +other arm. His big head stuck out before, and his big tail behind; +both eager, restless, wondering, in port and aspect. + +"Now, Bartholomew," said Aunt Blin, in her calmest, most confident, +most deliberate tones, "see here! We've brought--home--a little +_bird_, Bartholomew!" + +Bartholomew's big head was electric with feline expression; his ears +stood up, his eyes sent out green sparks; hair and whiskers were on +end; he devoured poor little Cheeps already with his gaze; his tail +grew huger, and vibrated in great sweeps. + +"O see, Aunt Blin!" cried Bel. "He's just ready to spring. He don't +care a bit for what you say!" + +Aunt Blin gave a fresh grip with her elbow against Bartholomew's +sides, and went on with unabated faith,--unhurried calmness. + +"We set _everything_ by that little bird, Bartholomew! We wouldn't +have it touched for all the world! Don't--you--never--go--_near_ it! +Do you hear?" + +Bartholomew heard. Miss Bree could not see his tail, fairly lashing +now, behind her back, nor the fierce eyes, glowing like green fire. +She stroked his head, and went on preaching. + +"The little bird _sings_, Bartholomew! You can hear it, mornings, +while you eat your breakfast. And you shall have CHEESE for +breakfast as long as you're good, and _don't_--_touch_--the _bird_!" + +"O, Aunt Blin! He will! He means to! Don't show it to him any more! +Let me hang it way up high, where he _can't_!" + +"Don't you be afraid. He understands now, that we're precious of it. +Don't you, Bartholomew? I want him to get used to it." + +And Aunt Blin actually set the cat down, and turned round to take up +her shawl again. + +Bartholomew was quiet enough for a minute; he must have his +cat-pleasure of crouching and creeping; he must wait till nobody +looked. He knew very well what he was about. But the tail trembled +still; the green eyes were still wild and eager. + +"The kindlings are in the left-hand closet, you know," said Aunt +Blin, with a big pin in her mouth, and settling her shoulders into +her shawl. "You'll want to get the fire going as quick as you can." + +Poor Bel turned away with a fearful misgiving; not for that very +minute, exactly; she hardly supposed Bartholomew would go straight +from the sermon to sin; but for the resistance of evil enticements +hereafter, under Miss Bree's trustful system,--though he walked off +now like a deacon after a benediction,--she trembled in her poor +little heart, and was sorely afraid she could not ever come to love +Aunt Blin's great gray pet as she supposed she ought. + +Aunt Blin had not fairly reached the passage-way, Bel had just +emerged from the closet with her hands full of kindlings, and pushed +the door to behind her with her foot, when--crash! bang!--what _had_ +happened? + +A Boston earthquake? The room was full of a great noise and +scramble. It seemed ever so long before Bel could comprehend and +turn her face toward the centre of it; a second of time has +infinitesimal divisions, all of which one feels and measures in such +a crisis. Then she and Aunt Blin came together at a sharp angle of +incidence in the middle of the room, the kindlings scattered about +the carpet; and there was the corollary to the exhortation. The +overturned cage,--the dragged-off table-cloth,--the clumsy +Bartholomew, big and gray, bewildered, yet tenacious, clinging to +the wires and sprawling all over them on one side with his fearful +bulk, and the tiny green and golden canary flattened out against the +other side within, absolutely plane and prone with the mere smite of +terror. + +"You awful wild beast! I _knew_ you didn't mind!" shrieked Bel, +snatching at the little cage from which Bartholomew dropped +discomfited, and chirping to Cheepsie with a vehemence meant to be +reassuring, but failing of its tender intent through frantic +indignation. It is impossible to scold and chirp at once, however +much one may want to do it. + +"You dreadful tiger cat!" she repeated. It almost seemed as +if her love for Aunt Blin let loose more desperately her +denunciations. There is something in human nature which turns +most passionately,--if it does turn,--upon one's very own. + +"I can't bear you! I never shall! You're a horrid, monstrous, +abominable, great, gray--wolf! I knew you were!" + +Miss Bree fairly gasped. + +When she got breath, she said slowly, mournfully, "O Bartholomew! I +_thought_ I could have trusted you! _Was_ you a murderer in your +heart all the time? Go away! I've--no--_con_--fidence _in_ you! No +_co-on_--fidence _in_ you, Bartholomew Bree!" + +It is impossible to write or print the words so as to suggest their +grieved abandonment of faith, their depth of loving condemnation. + +If Bartholomew had been a human being! But he was not; he was only a +great gray cat. He retreated, shamefaced enough for the moment, +under the table. He knew he was scolded at; he was found out and +disappointed; but there was no heart-shame in him; he would do +exactly the same again. As to being trusted or not, what did he care +about that? + +"I don't believe you do," said Aunt Blin, thinking it out to this +same point, as she watched his face of greed, mortified, but +persistent; not a bit changed to any real humility. Why do they say +"_dogged_," except for a noble holding fast? It is a cat which is +selfishly, stolidly obstinate. + +"I don't know as I shall really like you any more," said Aunt Blin, +with a terrible mildness. "To think you would have ate that little +bird!" + +Aunt Blin's ideal Bartholomew was no more. She might give the +creature cheese, but she could not give him "_con_fidence." + +Bel and the bird illustrated something finer, higher, sweeter to her +now. Before, there had only been Bartholomew; he had had to stand +for everything; there was a good deal, to be sure, in that. + +But Bel was so astonished at the sudden change,--it was so funny in +its meek manifestation,--that she forgot her wrath, and laughed +outright. + +"Why, Auntie!" she cried. "Your beautiful Bartholomew, who +understood, and let alone!" + +Aunt Blin shook her head. + +"I don't know. I _thought_ so. But--I've no--_con_-fidence in him! +You'd better hang the cage up high. And I'll go out for the +muffins." + +Bel heard her saying it over again, as she went down the stairs. + +"No, I've no--_con_-fidence in him!" + + + + +CHAPTER VIII. + +TO HELP: SOMEWHERE. + + +There was an administratrix's notice tacked up on the great elm-tree +by the Bank door, in Upper Dorbury Village. + +All indebted to the estate of Joseph Ingraham were called upon to +make payment,--and all having demands against the same to present +accounts,--to Abigail S. Ingraham. + +The bakery was shut up. The shop and house-blinds were closed upon +the street. The bright little garden at the back was gay with summer +color; roses, geraniums, balsams, candytuft; crimson and purple, and +white and scarlet flashed up everywhere. But Mrs. Ingraham had on a +plain muslin cap, instead of a ribboned one such as she was used to +wear; and Dot was in a black calico dress; they sat in the kitchen +window together, ripping up some breadths of faded cloth that they +were going to send to the dye-house. Ray was in the front room, +looking over papers. Mrs. Ingraham's name appeared in the notices, +but Ray really did the work, all except the signing of the necessary +documents. + +Everything was very different here, the moment Joseph Ingraham's +breath was gone from his body. Everything that had stood in his name +stood now in the name of an "estate." Large or small, an estate has +always to be settled. There had been a man already applying to buy +out the remainder of the bakery lease,--house and all. He was ready +to take it for eight years, including the one it had yet to run in +the present occupancy; he would pay them a considerable bonus for +relinquishing this and the goodwill. + +Ray had stood at the helm and brought the vessel to port; that was +different from undertaking another voyage. She did not see that she +had any right to hazard her mother's and sister's little means, and +incur further risks which she had not actual capital to meet, for +the ambition, or even possible gain, of carrying on a business. She +understood it perfectly; she could have done it; she could, perhaps, +have worked out some of her own new ideas; if she and Dot had been +brothers, instead of sisters, it would very likely have been what +they would have done. There was enough to pay all debts and leave +them upwards of a thousand dollars apiece. But Ray sat down and +thought it all over. She remembered that they _were_ women, and she +saw how that made all the difference. + +"Suppose either of us should wish to marry? Dot might, at any rate." + +That was the way she said it to herself. She really thought of Dot +especially and first; for it would be her doing if her sister were +bound and hampered in any way; and even though Dot were willing, +could she see clear to decide upon an undertaking that would involve +the seven best years of the child's life, in which "who knew what +might happen?" + +She did not look straight in the face her own possibilities, yet she +said simply in her own mind, "A woman ought to leave room for that. +It might be cheating some one else, as well as herself, if she +didn't." And she saw very well that a woman could not marry and +assume family ties, with a seven years' lease of a bakehouse and a +seven years' business on her hands. "Why--he might be a--anything," +was the odd little wording with which she mentally exclaimed at this +point of her considerations. And if he were anything,--anything of a +man, and doing anything in the world as a man does,--what would they +do with two businesses? The whole vexed question solved itself to +her mind in this home-fashion. "It isn't natural; there never will +be much of it in the world," she said. "Young women, with their real +womanhood in them, won't; and by the time they've lived on and found +out, the chances will be over. To do business as a man does, you +must choose as a man does,--for your whole life, at the beginning of +it." + +Ray Ingraham, with all her capacity and courage, at this +turning-point where choice was given her, and duty no longer showed +her one inevitable way, chose deliberately to be a woman. She took +up a woman's lot, with all its uncertainty and disadvantage; the lot +of _working for others_. + +"I can find something simply to do and to be paid for; that will be +safe and faithful; that will leave room." + +She said something like that to Frank Sunderline, when he sat +talking with her over some building accounts one evening. + +He had come in as a friend and had helped them in many little ways; +beside having especial occasion in this matter, as representing his +own employer who held a small demand against the estate. + +"I am too young," she told him. "Dot is too young. I should feel as +if I _must_ have her with me if I kept on, and we should need to +keep all the little money together. How can I tell what Dot--how can +I tell what either of us"--she changed her word with brave honesty, +"might have a wish for, before seven years were over? If I were +forty years old, and could do it, I would; I would take girls for +journeymen,--girls who wanted work and pay; then they would be +brought up to a very good business for women, if they came to want +business and they would be free, while they _were_ girls, for +happier things that might happen." + +"That is good Woman's Rights doctrine; it doesn't leave out the best +right of all." + +"A woman can't shape out her life all beforehand, as a man can; she +can't be sure, you see; and nobody else could feel sure about her. I +suppose _that_ is what has kept women out of the real business +world,--the ordering and heading of things. But they can help. I'm +willing to help, somehow; and I guess the world will let me." + +There was something that went straight to Frank Sunderline's +deepest, unspoken apprehension of most beautiful things, in Ray +Ingraham's aspect as she said these words. The man in him suddenly +perceived, though vaguely, something of what God meant when He made +the woman. Power shone through the beauty in her face; but power +ready to lay itself aside; ready to help, not lead. Made the most +tender, because most perfect outcome and blossom of humanity, woman +accepts her conditions, as God Himself accepts his own, when He +hides Himself away under limitations, that the secret force may lie +ready to the work man thinks he does upon the earth and with it. In +dumb, waiting nature, his own very Self bides subject; yes, and in +the things of the Spirit, He gives his Son in the likeness of a +servant. He lays _help_ upon him; He lays help for man upon the +woman. He took her nearest to Himself when He made her to be a help +meet in all things to his Adam-child. To "_help_" is to do the work +of the world. + +Ray's face shone with the splendor of self-forgetting, when she said +that she would "help, somewhere." + +What made him suddenly think of his own work? What made him say, +with a flash in his eyes,-- + +"I've got a job of my own, Ray, at last. Did you know it?" + +"I'm _very_ glad," said Ray, earnestly. "What is it?" + +"A house at Pomantic. Rather a shoddy kind of house,--flashy, I +mean, and ridiculously grand; but it's work; and somebody has to +build all sorts, you know. When I build _my_ house--well, never +mind! Holder has put this contract right into my hands to carry out. +He'll step over and look round, once in a while, but I'm to have the +care of it straight through,--stock, work, and all; and I'm to have +half the profits. Isn't that high of Holder? He has his hands full, +you know, at River Point. There's no end of building there, this +year a whole street going up--with Mansard roofs, of course. +Everything is going into this house that _can_ go into a house; and +to see that it gets in right will be--practice, anyhow." + +Sunderline chattered on like a boy; almost like a girl, telling Ray +what he was so glad of. And Ray listened, her cheek glowing; she was +so glad to be told. + +He had not said a word of this to Marion Kent that afternoon, when +she had stopped him at her window, going by. He had stood there a +few minutes, leaning against the white fence, and looking across the +little door-yard, to answer the questions she asked him; about the +Ingrahams, the questions were; but he did not offer to come nearer. + +Marion was sewing on a rich silk dress, sea-green in color; it +glistened as she shifted it with busy fingers under the light; it +contrasted exquisitely with her fair, splendid hair, and the cream +and rose of her full blonde complexion. It was a "platform dress," +she told him, laughing; she was going with the Leverings on a +reading and musical tour; they had got a little company together, +and would give entertainments in the large country towns; perhaps go +to some of the fashionable springs, or up among the mountain places; +folks liked their amusements to come after them, from the cities; +they were sure of audiences where people had nothing to do. + +Marion was in high spirits. She felt as if she had the world before +her. She would travel, at any rate; whether there were anything else +left of it or not, she would have had that; that, and the sea-green +dress. While she talked, her mother was ironing in the back room. +The dress was owed for. She could not pay for it till she began to +get her own pay. + +What was the use of telling a girl like that--all flushed with +beauty and vanity, and gay expectation--about his having a house to +build? What would it seem to her,--his busy life all spring and +summer among the chips and shavings, hammering, planing, fitting, +chiseling, buying screws, and nails, and patent fastenings, tiles +and pipes; contriving and hurrying, working out with painstaking in +laborious detail an agreement, that a new rich man might get into +his new rich house by October? When she had only to make herself +lovely and step out among the lights before a gay assembly, to be +applauded and boqueted, to be stared at and followed; to live in a +dream, and call it her profession? When Frank Sunderline knew there +was nothing real in it all; nothing that would stand, or remain; +only her youth, and prettiness, and forwardness, and the facility of +people away from home and in by-places to be amused with second-rate +amusement, as they manage to feed on second-rate fare? + +It was no use to say this to her, either; to warn her as he had done +before. She must wear out her illusions, as she would wear out her +glistening silk dress. He must leave her now, with the shimmer of +them all about her imagination, bewildering it, as the lovely, +lustrous heap upon her lap threw a bewilderment about her own very +face and figure, and made it for the moment beautiful with all +enticing, outward complement and suggestion. + +He told Ray Ingraham; and he said what a pity it was; what a +mistake. + +Ray did not answer for a minute; she had a little struggle with +herself; a little fight with that in her heart which made itself +manifest to her in a single quick leap of its pulses. + +Was she glad? Glad that Marion Kent was living out, perversely, this +poor side of her--making a mistake? Losing, perhaps, so much? + +"Marion has something better in her than that," she made herself +say, when she replied. "Perhaps it will come out again, some day." + +"I think she has. Perhaps it will. You have always been good and +generous to her, Ray." + +What did he say that for? Why did he make it impossible for her to +let it go so? + +"Don't!" she exclaimed. "I am not generous to her this minute! I +couldn't help, when you said it, being satisfied--that you should +see. I don't know whether it is mean or true in me, that I always do +want people to see the truth." + +She covered it up with that last sentence. The first left by +itself, might have shown him more. It was certainly so; that there +was a little severity in Ray Ingraham, growing out of her clear +perception and her very honesty. When she could see a thing, it +seemed as if everybody ought to see it; if they did not, as if she +ought to show them, that they might fairly understand. A half +understanding made her restless, even though the other half were +less kind and comfortable. + +"You show the truth of yourself, too," said Frank. "And that is +grand, at any rate." + +"You need not praise me," said Ray, almost coldly. "It is impossible +to be _quite_ true, I think. The nearer you try to come to it, the +more you can't"--and then she stopped. + +"How many changes there have been among us!" she began again, +suddenly, at quite a different point, "All through the village there +have been things happening, in this last year. Nobody is at all as +they were a year ago. And another year"-- + +"Will tell another year's story," said Frank Sunderline. "Don't you +like to think of that sometimes? That the story isn't done, ever? +That there is always more to tell, on and on? And that means more to +_do_. We are all making a piece of it. If we stayed right still, you +see,--why, the Lord might as well shut up the book!" + +He was full of life, this young man, and full of the delight of +living. There was something in his calling that made him rejoice in +a confident strength. He was born to handle tools; hammer and chisel +were as parts of him. He builded; he believed in building; in +something coming of every stroke. Real work disposes and qualifies a +man to believe in a real destiny,--a real God. A carpenter can see +that nails are never driven for nothing. It is the sham work, +perhaps, of our day, that shakes faith in purpose and unity; a +scrambling, shifty living of men's own, that makes to their sight a +chance huddle and phantasm of creation. + +Mrs. Ingraham came down into the room where they were, at this +moment, and Dot presently followed. They began to talk of their +plans. They were going, now, to live with the grandmother in Boston, +in Pilgrim Street. + +It was a comfortable, plain old house, in a little strip of +neighborhood long since left of fashion, and not yet demanded of +business; so Mrs. Rhynde could afford to occupy it. She had used, +for many years, to let out a part of her rooms,--these that the +Ingrahams would take,--in a tenement, as people used to say, making +no ambitious distinctions; now, it might be spoken of as "a flat," +or "apartments." Everything is "apartments" that is more than a +foothold. + +The rooms were large, but low. At the back, they were sunny and +airy; they looked through, overlapping a court-way, into Providence +Square. It was a real old Boston homestead, of which so few remain. +There were corner beams and wainscots, some tiled chimney-pieces, +even. It made you think of the pre-Revolutionary days of +tea-drinkings, before the tea was thrown overboard. The step into +the front passage was a step down from the street. + +Ray and Dot told these things; beguiled into reminiscences of +pleasant childish visiting days; Ray, of long domestication in still +later years. It would be a going home, after all. + +Leicester Place was only a stone's throw from Pilgrim Street. From +old Mr. Sparrow's attic window, you could look across to the +Pilgrim Street roofs, and see women hanging out clothes there upon +the flat tops of one or two of the houses. But what of that, in a +great city? Will the Ingrahams ever come across Aunt Blin and bright +little Bel Bree? + +In the book that binds up this story, there is but the turn of a +leaf between them. A great many of us may be as near as that to each +other in the telling of the world's story, who never get the leaf +turned over, or between whom the chapters are divided, with never a +connecting word. + +The Ingrahams moved into Boston in the early summer. It was July +when Bel came down from the hill-country with Aunt Blin. + + + + +CHAPTER IX. + +INHERITANCE. + + +Do you remember somebody else who lives in Boston? Have you heard of +the old house in Greenley Street, and Uncle Titus Oldways, and +Desire Ledwith, who came home with him after her mother and sisters +went off to Europe, and something had touched her young life that +had left for a while an ache after it? Do you know Rachel Froke, and +the little gray parlor, and the ferns, and the ivies, and the +canary,--and the old, dusty library, with its tall, crowded shelves, +and the square table in the midst, where Uncle Oldways sat? All is +there still, except Uncle Oldways. The very year that had been so +busy elsewhere, with its rushing minutes that clashed out events and +changes as moving atoms clash out heat--that had brought to pass all +that it has taken more than a hundred pages for me to tell,--that +had drawn toward one centre and focus, whither, as into a great +whirling maelstrom of life, so many human affairs and interests are +continually drifting, the far-apart persons that were to be the +persons of one little history,--this same year had lifted Uncle +Titus up. Out of his old age, out of his old house,--out from among +his books, where he thought and questioned and studied, into the +youth and vigor to which, underneath the years, he had been growing; +into the knowledges that lie behind and beyond all books and +Scriptures; into the house not made with hands, the Innermost, the +Divine. Not _away_; I do not believe that. Lifted up, in the life of +the spirit, if only taken within. + +Outside,--just a little outside, for she loved him, and her life +had grown into his and into his home,--Desire remained, in this home +that he had given her. + +People talked about her, eagerly, curiously. They said she was a +great heiress. Her mother and Mrs. Megilp had written letters to her +overflowing with a mixture of sentiment and congratulation, +condolence and delight. They wanted her to come abroad at once, now, +and join them. What was there, any longer, to prevent? + +Desire wrote back to them that she did not think they understood. +There was no break, she said; there was to be no beginning again. +She had come into Uncle Titus's living with him; he had let her do +that, and he had made it so that she could stay. She was not going +to leave him now. She would as soon have robbed him of his money and +run away, while the handling of his money had been his own. It was +but mere handling that made the difference. _Himself_ was not +dependent on his breath. And it was himself that she was joined +with. "How can people turn their backs on people so?" She broke off +with that, in her old, odd, abrupt, blindly significant fashion. + +No: they could not understand. "Desire was just queerer than ever," +they said. "It was such a pity, at her age. What would she be if she +lived to be as old as Uncle Titus himself?" Mrs. Megilp sighed, +long-sufferingly. + +Mrs. Froke lived on in the gray parlor; Hazel Ripwinkley ran in and +out; she hardly knew which was most home now, Greenley or Aspen +Street. She and Desire were together in everything; in the bakery +and laundry and industrial asylum that Luclarion Grapp's missionary +work was taking shape in; in Chapel classes and teachers meetings; +in a Wednesday evening Read-and-Talk, as they called it, that they +had gathered some dozen girls and young women into, for which the +dear old library was open weekly; in walks to and fro about the city +"on errands;" in long plans and consultations, now, since so much +power had been laid on their young heads and hands. + +Uncle Oldways had made "the strangest will that ever was," if that +were not said almost daily of men's last disposals. Out of the two +sister's families, the Ripwinkleys and the Ledwiths, he had chosen +these two girls,--children almost,--whom he declared his "next of +kin, in a sense that the Lord and they would know;" and to them he +left, in not quite equal shares, the bulk of his large property; the +income of each portion to be severally theirs,--Desire's without +restriction, Hazel's under her mother's guardianship, until each +should come to the age of twenty-five years. If either of the two +should die before that age, her share should devolve upon the other; +if neither should survive it,--then followed a division among +persons and charities, such, as he said, with his best knowledge, +and the Lord's help, he felt himself at the moment of devising moved +to direct. At twenty-five he counseled each heir to make, promptly, +her own legal testament, searching, meanwhile, by the light given +her in the doing of her duty, for whom or whatsoever should be shown +her to be truly, and of the will of God--not man, her own "next of +kin." + +"For needful human form," he said, in conclusion, "I name Frances +Ripwinkley executrix of this my will; but the Lord Himself shall be +executor, above and through all; may He give unto you a right +judgment in all things, and keep us evermore in his holy comfort!" + +Some people even laughed at such a document as this, made as if the +Almighty really had to do with things, and were surer than trustees +and cunning law-conditions. + +"Two girls!" they said, "who will marry--the Lord knows whom--and +do, the Lord knows what, with it all!" + +That was exactly what Titus Oldways believed. He believed the Lord +_did_ know. He had shown him part; enough to go by to the end of +_his_ beat; the rest was his. "Everything escheats to the King, at +last." + +And so Desire Ledwith and Hazel Ripwinkley sat in the old house +together, and made their pure, young, generous plans; so they went +in and out, and did their work, blessedly; and Uncle Titus's +arm-chair stood there, where it always had, at the library table; +and the Book of the Gospels, with its silver cross, lay in its +silken cover where it always lay; and nothing had gone but the bent +old form from which the strength had risen and the real presence +loosened itself; and Uncle Titus's grand, beautiful life passed over +to them continually; for hands on earth, he had their hands; for +feet, their feet. There was no break, as Desire had said; it was the +wonderful "fellowship of the mystery" which God meant, in the +manifold wisdom that they know in heavenly places, when He ordained +the passing over. We call it death; we _make_ it death; a +separation. We leave off there. We gather up the tools that loved +ones drop, and use them to carve out, selfishly, our own pleasures; +we let their _life_ go, as if it were no matter to keep it up upon +the earth. We turn our backs, and go our ways, and leave saints' +hands outstretched invisibly in vain. + +It was ever so bright and cheerful in this house into which +death--that was such a birth--had come. These children were +brimming over with happy thankfulness that Uncle Titus had loved and +trusted them so. They never solemnized their looks or lengthened +their accent when they spoke of him; he had come a great deal nearer +to them in departing than he had ever known how to come, or they to +approach him, before. Something young in his nature that had been +hidden by gray hairs and slowness of years, sprang to join itself to +their youth on which he had laid his bequest of the Lord's work. +They ran lightly up and down where he had walked with measured +gravity; they chatted and laughed, for they knew he was gladder than +either; they sat in Desire's large, bright chamber at their work, or +they went down to find out things in books in the library; and here, +though nothing fell with any chill upon their spirits, they handled +reverently the volumes he had loved,--they used tenderly the +appliances that had been his daily convenience. With an unspoken +consent, they never sat in the seat that had been his. The young +heiresses of his place and trust made each a place for herself at +opposite ends of the large writing-table, and left his chair before +his desk as if he himself had just left it and might at any moment +come in and sit again there with them. They always kept a vase of +flowers beside the desk, at the left hand. + +One day, that summer, they were up-stairs, sewing. Rachel Froke was +busy below; they could hear some light movement now and then, in the +stillness; or her voice came up through the open windows as she +spoke to Frendely, the dear old serving woman, helping her dust and +sort over glasses and jars for the yearly preserving. + +I cannot tell you what an atmosphere of things and relations that +had grown and sweetened and mellowed there was about this old home; +what a lovely repose of stability, in the midst of the domestic +ferments that are all about us in the changing households of these +changing days. Frendely, who had served her maiden apprenticeship in +a country family of England, said it was like the real old places +there. + +"Hazel," said Desire, suddenly,--(she did her _thinking_ deeply and +slowly, but she had never got over her old suddenness in speech; it +was like the way a good old seamstress I knew used to advise with +the needle,--"Take your stitch deliberate, but pull out your thread +as quick as you can,")--"Hazel! I think I may go to Europe after +all." + +"Desire!" + +"And more than that, Hazie, you are to go with me." + +"Desire Ledwith!" + +"Yes, those are my names. I haven't any more; so your surprise can't +expend itself any further in that direction. Now, listen. It's all +to be done in our Wednesday evening Read-and-Talks. See?" + +"O!" + +"Very well; begin on interjections; they'll last some time. What I +mean is, an idea that I got from Mrs. Hautayne, when I saw her last +spring at the Schermans'. She says she always travelled so much on +paper; and that paper travelling is very much like paper weddings; +you can get all sorts of splendid things into it. There are books, +and maps, and gazetteers, and pictures, and stereoscopes. Friends' +letters and art galleries. I took it right up into my mind, +silently, for my class, sometime. And pretty soon, I think we'll +go." + +"O, Desire, how nice!" + +"That's it! One new word, or two, every time, and repeat. 'Now say +the five?' as Fay's Geography used to tell us." + +"O, Desire Ledwith, how nice!" + +"Good girl. Now, don't you think that Mrs. Geoffrey and Miss +Kirkbright would lend us pictures and things?" + +"How little we seem to have seen of the Geoffreys lately! I mean, +all this spring, even before they went down to Beverly," said Hazel, +flying off from the subject in hand at the mention of their names. +"I wonder why it is fixed so, Des', that the _best_ people--those +you want to get nearest to--are so busy _being_ the best that you +don't get much chance?" + +"Perhaps the chance is laid up," said Desire, thoughtfully. "I think +a good many things are. But to keep on, Hazel, about my plan. You +know those two beautiful girls who came in Sunday before last, and +joined Miss Kirkbright's class? Not _beautiful_, I don't mean +exactly,--though one of them was that, too; but real"-- + +"Splendid!" filled out Hazel. "Real ready-made sort of girls. As if +they'd had chapel all their lives, somehow. Not like first-Sunday +girls at all." + +"One of them _was_ a chapel girl. Miss Kirkbright told me. She grew +up there till she was sixteen years old; then she went to live in +the country. Now I must have those two in, you see. I don't know but +Mr. Vireo would say it was making a feast for friends and neighbors, +if I pick out the ready-made. But this sort of thing--you must have +some reliance, you know; then there's something for the rest to come +to, and grow to. I think I shall begin about it before vacation, +while they're all together and alive to things. It takes so long to +warm up to the same point after the break. We might have one +meeting, just to organize, and make it a settled thing. O, how good +it will be when Mr. Vireo comes home!" + +If I had not so many things to tell before my story can be at all +complete, I should like nothing better than to linger here in Desire +Ledwith's room, where there was so really "a beautiful east window, +and the morning had come in." I should like to just stay in the +sunshine of it, and show what the stir of it was, and what it had +come to with these two; what a brightness, day by day, they lived +in. I should be glad to tell their piece of the story minutely; but +I should not be able to get at it to tell. We may touch such lives, +and feel the lovely pleasantness; but to enter in, and have the +whole--that may only be done in one way; by going and doing +likewise. + +This talk of theirs gives one link; it shows you how easily and +naturally they came to have to do with the Ingrahams; how they +belonged in one sphere and drew to one centre; how simply things +happen, after all, when they have any business to happen. + +Somebody speaks of the ascent of a lofty church spire, as giving +such a wonderful glimpse of the unity of a great city; showing its +converging movements, its net-work of connection,--its human +currents swayed and turned by intelligible drifts of purpose; all +which, when one is down among them, seem but whirls of a confusing +and distracting medley; a heaping and a rushing together of many +things and much conflicting action; where the wonder is that it +stays together at all, or that one part plays and fits in with any +other to harmony of service. If we could climb high enough, and see +deep enough, to read a spiritual panorama in like manner, we should +look into the mystery of the intent that builds the worlds and works +with "birth and death and infinite motion" to evolve the wonders of +all human and angelic history. We should only marvel, then, at what +we, with our little bit of wayward free will, hinder; not at what +God gently and mightily forecasts and brings to pass. + +To find another link, we must go away and look in elsewhere. + + + + +CHAPTER X. + +FILLMER AND BYLLES. + + +It was a hot morning in the heart of summer. The girls, coming in to +their work, after breakfasts of sour rolls, cheap, raw, bitter +coffee and blue milk, with a greasy relish, perhaps, of sausage, +bacon, fried potatoes, or whatever else was economical and +untouchable,--with the world itself frying in the fervid blaze of a +sun rampant for fifteen hours a day,--saw in the windows early +peaches, cool salads, and fresh berries; yellow and red bananas in +mellow, heavy clusters; morning bouquets lying daintily on wet +mosses; pale, beryl-green, transparent hothouse grapes hanging their +globes of sweet, refrigerant juices before toil-parched, +unsatisfied, feverish lips. + +Let us hope that it did them good; it is all we can do now about it. + +Up in the work-room of a great dress-making establishment were heaps +of delicate cambric, Victoria lawn, piques, muslins, piles of +frillings, Hamburg edgings, insertions, bands. Machines were +tripping and buzzing; cutters were clipping at the tables; the +forewoman was moving about, directing here, hurrying there, +reproving now and then for some careless tension, rough fastening, +or clumsy seam. Out of it all were resulting lovely white suits; +delicate, cloud-like, flounced robes of bewitching tints; graceful +morning wrappers,--perfect toilets of all kinds for girls at +watering-places and in elegant summer homes. + +Orders kept coming down from the mountains, up from the +sea-beaches, in from the country seats, where gay, friendly circles +were amusing away the time, and making themselves beautiful before +each others' eyes. + +For it was fearfully hot again this year. + +Bel Bree did not care. It all amused her. She had not got worn down +yet, and she did not live in a cheap, working-girls' boarding-house. +She had had radishes that morning with her bread and butter, and a +little of last year's fruit out of a tin can for supper the night +before. That was the way Miss Bree managed about peaches. I believe +that was the way she thought the petition in the Litany was +answered,--"Preserve to our use the kindly fruits of the earth, that +in due time we may enjoy them;" after the luckier people have had +their fill, and begun on the new, and the cans are cheap. There are +ways of managing things, even with very little money. If you pay for +the _managing_, you have to do without the things. Bel and her aunt +together, with their united earnings and their nice, cosy ways, were +very far from being uncomfortable. Bel said she liked the +pinch,--what there was of it. She liked "a little bit brought home +in a paper and made much of." + +Bel had been just a fortnight in the city. She had gone right to +work with her aunt at Fillmer & Bylles, she was bright and quick, +knew how to run a "Wilcox & Gibbs," and had "some perception," the +forewoman said, grimly; with a delicate implication that some others +had not. Miss Tonker's praises always pared off on one side what +they put on upon another. + +It had taken Bel a fortnight to feel her ground, and to get exactly +the "lay of the land." Then she went to work, unhesitatingly, to set +some small things right. + +This morning she had hurried herself and her aunt, come early, and +put Miss Bree down, resolutely, against all her disclaimers, in a +corner of the very best window in the room. To do this, she moved +Matilda Meane's sewing-machine a little. + +When Matilda Meane came in, she looked as though she thought the +world was moved. She did not exactly dare to order Miss Bree up; but +she elbowed about, she pushed her machine this way and that; she +behaved like a hen hustled off her nest and not quite making up her +mind whether she would go back to it or not. Miss Bree's nose grew +apprehensive; it drew itself up with a little, visible, trembling +gasp,--her small eyes glanced timidly from under the drawn, puckered +lids, it was evidently all she could do to hold her ground. But Bel +had put her there, and loyalty to Bel kept her passive. It is so +much harder for some poor meek things ever to take anything, than it +is forever to go without. Only for love and gratefulness can they +ever be made to assume their common human rights. + +Presently it had to come out. + +Bel was singing away, as she gathered her work together in an +opposite quarter of the room, keeping a glance out at her right +eye-corner, expectantly. + +"Who moved this machine?" asked Matilda Meane, stopping short in her +endeavors to make it take up the middle of the window without +absolutely rolling it over Aunt Blin's toes. + +"I did, a little," answered Bel, promptly. "There was plenty of room +for two; and if there hadn't been, Aunt Blin must have a good light, +and have it over her left shoulder, at that. She's the oldest person +in the room, Miss Meane!" + +"She was spoken to yesterday about her buttonholes," she added, in +a lower tone, to Eliza Mokey, as she settled herself in her own seat +next that young lady. "And it was all because she could hardly see." + +"Buttonholes or not," answered Eliza, who preferred to be called +"Elise," "I'm glad somebody has taken Mat Meane down at last. She +needed it. I wish you could take her in hand everywhere. If _you_ +boarded at our house"-- + +"I shouldn't," interrupted Bel, decisively. "Not under any +circumstances, from what you tell of it." + +"That's all very well to say now; you're in clover, comparatively. +'Chaters' and real tea,--_and_ a three-ply carpet!" + +Miss Mokey had gone home with Bel and Aunt Blin, one evening lately, +when there had been work to finish and they had made a "bee" of it. + +"See if you could help yourself if you hadn't Aunt Blin." + +"Why couldn't I help myself as well as she? She had a nice place all +alone, before I came." + +"She must have half starved herself to keep it, then. Stands to +reason. Dollar and a quarter a day, and five dollars a week for your +room. Where's your muffins, and your Oolong? Or else, where's your +shoes?--Where's that Hamburg edging?" + +"We don't have any Hamburg edging," said Bel, laughing. + +"Nonsense. You know what I mean. O, here it is, under all that +pique! For mercy's sake, won't Miss Tonker blow?--Now I get my nine +dollars a week, and out of it I pay six for my share of that +miserable sky-parlor, and my ends of the crusts and the +cheese-parings. No place to myself for a minute. Why, I feel mixed +up sometimes to that degree that I'd almost like to die, and begin +again, to find out who I am!" + +"Well, I wouldn't live so. And Aunt Blin wouldn't. I'm afraid she +_didn't_ have other things quite so--corresponding--when she was by +herself; but she had the home comfort. And, truly, now, I shouldn't +wonder if there was real nourishment in just looking round,--at a +red carpet and things,--when you've got 'em all just to your own +mind. You can piece out with--peace!" + +For two or three minutes, there was nothing heard after that in Bel +and Elise's corner, but the regular busy click of the machines, as +the tucks ran evenly through. Miss Tonker was hovering in the +neighborhood. But presently, as she moved off, and Elise had a spool +to change, Bel began again. + +"Why don't you get up something different? Why couldn't a dozen, or +twenty, take a flat, or a whole house, and have a housekeeper, and +live nice? I believe I could contrive." + +Bel was a born contriver. She was a born reformer, as all poets are; +only she did not know yet that she was either. That had been the +real trouble up in New Hampshire. She had her ideals, and she could +not carry them out; so she sat and dreamed of what she would do if +she could. If she might in any way have moulded her home to her own +more delicate instincts, it may be that her step-mother need not +have had to complain that "there was no spunk or snap to her about +anything." It was not in her to "whew round" among tubs and +whey,--to go slap-dash into soapmaking, or the coarse Monday's +washing, when all nicer cares were evaded or forbidden, when chairs +were shoved back against each other into corners, table-cloths left +crooked, and dragging and crumby, drawing the flies,--mantel +ornaments of uncouth odds and ends pushed all awry and one side +during a dusting, and left so,--carpets rough and untidy at the +corners; no touch of prettiness or pleasantness, nothing but clear, +necessary _work_ anywhere. She would have made home _home_; then she +would have worked for it. + +Aunt Blin was like her. She would rather sit behind her blinds in +her neat, quiet room of a Sunday, too tired to go to church, but +with a kind of sacred rest about her, and a possible hushed thought +of a presence in a place that God had let her make that He might +abide with her in it,--than to live as these girls did,--even to +have been young like them; to have put on fine, gay things, bought +with the small surplus of her weekly earnings after the wretched +board was paid, and parade the streets, or sit in a pew, with a +Sunday-consciousness of gloves and new bonnet upon her. + +"O, faugh!" said Elise Mokey, impatiently, to Bel's "I could +contrive." "I should like to see you, with girls like Matilda Meane. +You've got to _get_ your dozen or twenty, first, and make them +agree." + +Miss Mokey had very likely never heard of Mrs. Glass, or of the +"catching your hare," which is the impracticable hitch at the start +of most delicious things that might otherwise be done. + +"I think this world is a kind of single-threaded machine, after all. +There's always something either too tight or too loose the minute +you double," she said, changing her tension-screw as she spoke. "No; +we've just got to make it up with cracker-frolics, the best way we +can; and that takes one more of somebody's nine dollars, every time. +There's some fun in it, after all, especially to see Matilda Meane +come to the table. I do believe that girl would sell her soul if she +could have a Parker House dinner every day. When it's a little +worse, or a little better than usual, when the milk gives out, or we +have a yesterday's lobster for tea,--I wish you could just see her. +She's so mad, or she's so eager. She _will_ have claw-meat; it _is_ +claw-meat with her, sure enough; and if anybody else gets it first, +or the dish goes round the other way and is all picked over,--she +_looks_! Why, she looks as if she desired the prayers of the +congregation, and nobody would pray!" + +"What _are_ you two laughing at?" broke in Kate Sencerbox, leaning +over from her table beyond. "Bel Bree, where are your crimps?" + +In the ardor of her work, or talk, or both, Bel's hair, as usual, +had got pushed recklessly aside. + +"O, I only have a little smile in my hair early in the morning," +replies quick, cheery Bel. "It never crimps decidedly, and it all +gets straightened out prim enough as the day's work comes on. It's +like the grass of the field, and a good many other things; in the +morning it is fresh and springeth up; in the evening it _giveth_ up, +and is down flat." + +"I guess you'll find it so," said Elise Mokey, splenetically. + +"Was _that_ what you were laughing at?" asked Kate. "Seems to me you +choose rather aggravating subjects." + +"Aggravations are as good as anything to laugh at, if you only know +how," Bel Bree said. + +"They're always handy, at any rate," said Elise. + +"I thought 'aggravate' meant making worse than it is," said quiet +little Mary Pinfall. + +"Just it, Molly!" answered Bel Bree, quick as a flash. "Take a +plague, make it out seven times as bad as it is, so that it's +perfectly ridiculous and impossible, and then laugh at it. Next time +you put your finger on it, as the Irishman said of the flea, it +isn't there." + +"That's hommerpathy," said Miss Proddle. "Hommerpathy cures by +aggravating." + +Miss Proddle was tiresome; she always said things that had been said +before, or that needed no saying. Miss Proddle was another of those +old girls who, like Miss Bree among the young ones, have outlived +and lost their Christian names, with their vivacity. Never mind; it +is the Christian name, and the Lord knows them by it, as He did +Martha and Mary. + +"_Reductio ad absurdum_," put in Grace Toppings, who had been at a +High School, and studied geometry. + +"Grace Toppings!" called out Kate Sencerbox, shortly, "you've +stitched that flounce together with a twist in it!" + +Miss Tonker heard, and came round again. + +"Gyurls!" she said, with elegantly severe authority, "I _will_ not +have this talking over the work. Miss Toppings, this whole skirt is +an unmitigated muddle. Head-tucks half an inch too near the bottom! +No _room_ for your flounce. If you can't keep to your measures, +you'd better not undertake piece-work. Take that last welt out, and +put it in over the top. And make no more blunders, if you please, +unless you want to be put to plain yard-stitching." + +"Eight inches and a half is _some_ room for a flounce, I guess, if +it ain't nine inches," muttered the mathematical Grace, as she began +the slow ripping of the lock-stitched tucking, that would take half +an hour out of the value of her day. + +"That's a comfort, ain't it?" whispered mischievous, sharp, +good-natured Kate. "Look here; I'll help, if you won't talk any more +Latin, or Hottentot." + +It was of no use to tell those girls not to talk over their work. +The more work they had in them, the more talk; it was a test, like a +steam-gauge. Only the poor, pale, worn-out ones, like Emma Hollen, +who coughed and breathed short, and could not spend strength even in +listening, amidst the conflicting whirr of the feeds and +wheels,--and the old, sobered-down, slow ones, like Miss Bree and +Miss Proddle, button-holing and gather-sewing for dear life, with +their spectacles over their noses, and great bald places showing on +the tops of their bent heads,--kept time with silent thoughts to the +beat of their treadles and the clip of their needles against the +thimble-ends. + +Elise Mokey stretched up her back slowly, and drew her shoulders +painfully out of their steady cramp. + +"There! I went round without stopping! I put a sign on it, and I've +got my wish! I'd rather sweep a room, though, than do it again." + +"You _might_ sweep a room, instead," said Emma Hollen, in her low, +faint tone, moved to speak by some echo in that inward rhythm of her +thinking. "I partly wish _I_ had, before now." + +"O, you goose! Be a kitchen-wolloper!" + +"May be I sha'n't be anything, very long. I should like to feel as +if I _could_ stir round." + +"I wouldn't care if anybody could see what it came to, or what there +was left of it at the year's end," said Elise Mokey. + +"I'd sweep a room fast enough if it was my own," said Kate +Sencerbox. "But you won't catch me sweeping up other folks' dust!" + +"I wonder what other folks' dust really is, when you've sifted it, +and how you'd pick out your own," said Bel. + +"I'd have my own _place_, at any rate," responded Kate, "and the +dust that got into it would go for mine, I suppose." + +Bel Bree tucked away. Tucked away thoughts also, as she worked. Not +one of those girls who had been talking had anything like a home. +What was there for them at the year's end, after the wearing round +and round of daily toil, but the diminishing dream of a happier +living that might never come true? The fading away out of their +health and prettiness into "old things like Miss Proddle and Aunt +Blin,"--to take their turn then, in being snubbed and shoved aside? +Bel liked her own life here, so far; it was pleasanter than that +which she had left; but she began to see how hundreds of other girls +were going on in it without reward or hope; unfitting themselves, +many of them utterly, by the very mode of their careless, rootless +existence,--all of them, more or less, by the narrow specialty of +their monotonous drudgery,--for the bright, capable, adaptive +many-sidedness of a happy woman's living in the love and use and +beauty of home. + +Some of her thoughts prompted the fashion in which she recurred to +the subject during the hour's dinner-time. + +They were grouped together--the same half dozen--in a little +ante-room, with a very dusty window looking down into an alley-way, +or across it rather, since unless they really leaned out from their +fifth story, the line of vision could not strike the base of the +opposite buildings, a room used for the manifold purposes of +clothes-hanging, hand-washing, brush and broom stowing, and +luncheon eating. + +"Girls! What would you do most for in this world? What would you +have for your choice, if you could get it?" + +"Stories to read, and theatre tickets every night," said Grace +Toppings. + +"Something decent to eat, as often as I was hungry," said Matilda +Meane, speaking thick through a big mouthful of cream-cake. + +"To be married to Lord Mortimer, and go and live in an Abbey," said +Mary Pinfall, who sat on a box with a cracker in one hand, and the +third volume of her old novel in the other. + +The girls shouted. + +"That means you'd like a real good husband,--a Tom, or a Dick, or a +Harry," said Kate Sencerbox. "Lord Mortimers don't grow in this +country. We must take the kind that do. And so we will, every one of +us, when we can get 'em. Only I hope mine will keep a store of his +own, and have a house up in Chester Park!" + +"If I can ever see the time that I can have dresses made for me, +instead of working my head and feet off making them for other +people, I don't care where my house is!" said Elise Mokey. + +"Or your husband either, I suppose," said Kate, sharply. + +"Wouldn't I just like to walk in here some day, and order old Tonker +round?" said Elise, disregarding. "I only hope she'll hold out till +I can! Won't I have a black silk suit as thick as a board, with +fifteen yards in the kilting? And a violet-gray, with a yard of +train and Yak-flounces!" + +"That isn't _my_ sort," said Kate Sencerbox, emphatically. "It's +played out, for me. People talk about our being in the way of +temptation, always seeing what we can't have. It isn't _that_ would +ever tempt me; I'm sick of it. I know all the breadth-seams, and the +gores, and the gathers, and the travelling round and round with the +hems and trimmings and bindings and flouncings. If I could get _out_ +of it, and never hear of it again, and be in a place of my own, with +my time to myself! Wouldn't I like to get up in the morning and +_choose_ what I would do?--when it wasn't Fast Day, nor Fourth of +July, nor Washington's Birthday, nor any day in particular? I think, +on the whole, I'd choose _not_ to get up. A chance to be lazy; +that's my vote, after all, Bel Bree!" + +"O, dear!" cried Bel, despairingly. "Why don't some of you wish for +nice, cute little things?" + +"Tell us what," said Kate. "I think we _have_ wished for all sorts, +amongst us." + +"O, a real little _home_--to take care of," said Bel. "Not fine, nor +fussy; but real sweet and pleasant. Sunny windows and flowers, and a +pretty carpet, and white curtains, and one of those chromos of +little round, yellow chickens. A best china tea-set, and a real trig +little kitchen; pies to make for Sundays and Thanksgivings; just +enough work to do in the mornings, and time in the afternoons to sit +and sew, and--somebody to read to you out loud in the evenings! I +think I'd do anything--that wasn't wicked--to come to live just like +that!" + +"There isn't anybody that does live so nowadays," said Kate. +"There's nothing between horrid little stivey places, and a regular +scrub and squall and slop all the week round, and silk and snow and +ordering other folks about. You've got to be top or bottom; and if +it's all the same to you, I mean to be top if I can; even if"-- + +Kate was a great deal better than her pretences, after all. She did +not finish the bad sentence. + +"I'll tell you what I do wonder at," said Bel Bree. "So many great, +beautiful homes in this city, and so few people to live in them. All +the rest crowded up, and crowded out. When I go round through Hero +Street, and Pilgrim Street, and past all the little crammy courts +and places, out into the big avenues where all the houses stand back +from each other with such a grand politeness, I want to say, Move up +a little, can't you? There's such small room for people in there, +behind!" + +"Say it, why don't you? I'll tell you who'd listen. Washington, +sitting on his big bronze horse, pawing in the air at Commonwealth +Avenue!" + +"Well--Washington _would_ listen, if he wasn't bronze. And its grand +for _everybody_ to look at him there. I shouldn't really want the +houses to move up, I suppose. It's good to have grandness somewhere, +or else nobody would have any place to stretch in. But there must be +some sort of moving up that could be, to make things evener, if we +only knew!" + +Poor little Bel Bree, just dropped down out of New Hampshire! What a +problem the great city was already to her! + +Miss Tonker put her sub-aristocratic face in at the door. It is a +curious kind of reflected majesty that these important functionaries +get, who take at first hand the magnificent orders, and sustain +temporary relations of silk-and-velvet intimacy with Spreadsplendid +Park. + +The hour was up. Mary Pinfall slid her romance into the pocket of +her waterproof; Matilda Meane swallowed her last mouthful of the +four cream-cakes which she had valorously demolished without +assistance, and hastily washed her hands at the faucet; Kate and +Elise and Grace brushed by her with a sniff of generous contempt. + +In two minutes, the wheels and feeds were buzzing and clicking +again. What did they say, and emphasize, and repeat, in the ears +that bent over them? Mechanical time-beats say something, always. +They force in and in upon the soul its own pulses of thought, or +memory, or purpose; of imagination or desire. They weld and +consolidate our moods, our elements. Twenty miles of musing to the +rhythmic throbbings of a railroad train, who does not know how it +can shape and deepen and confirm whatever one has started with in +mind or heart? + + + + +CHAPTER XI. + +CRISTOFERO. + + +A September morning on the deck of a steamer bound into New York, +two days from her port. + +A fair wind; waves gleaming as they tossed landward, with the white +crests and the grand swell that told of some mid-Atlantic storm, +which had given them their impulse days since, and would send them +breaking upon the American capes and beaches, in splendid tumult of +foam, and roar, and plunge; "white horses," wearing rainbows in +their manes. + +The blue heaven full of sunshine; the air full of sea-tingle; a +morning to feel the throb and spring of the vessel under one's feet, +as an answer to the throb and spring of one's own life and +eagerness; the leap of strength in the veins, and the homeward haste +in the heart. + +Two gentlemen, who had talked much together in the nine days of +their ship-companionship, stood together at the taffrail. + +One was the Reverend Hilary Vireo, minister of Mavis Place Chapel, +Boston,--coming back to his work in glorious renewal from his eight +weeks' holiday in Europe. The other was Christopher Kirkbright, +younger partner of the house of Ferguson, Ramsay, and Kirkbright, +tea and silk merchants, Hong Kong. Christopher Kirkbright had gone +out to China from Glasgow, at the age of twenty-one, pledged to a +ten years' stay. For five years past, he had had a share in the +business for himself; for the two last, he had represented also the +interest of Grahame Kirkbright, his uncle, third partner; had +inherited, besides, half of his estate; the other half had come to +our friend at home, his sister, Miss Euphrasia. + +"I had no right to stay out there any longer, making my tools; +multiplying them, without definite purpose. It was time to put them +to their use; and I have come home to find it. A man may take till +thirty-one to get ready, mayn't he, Mr. Vireo?" + +"The man who took up the work of the world's salvation, began to be +about thirty years of age when he came forth to public ministry," +returned Mr. Vireo. + +"I never thought of that before. I wonder I never did. It has come +home to me, in many other parts of that Life, how full it is of +scarcely recognized analogy to prevailing human experience. That +'driving into the Wilderness!' What an inevitable interval it is +between the realizing of a special power and the finding out of its +special purpose! I am in the Wilderness,--or was,--Vireo; but I knew +my way lay through it. I have been pausing--thinking--striving to +know. The temptations may not have been wanting, altogether, either. +There are so many things one can do easily; considering one's self, +largely, in the plan. My whole life has waited, in some chief +respects, till the end of these ten pledged years. What was I to do +with it? Where was I to look for, and find most speedily, all that a +man begins to feel the desire to establish for himself at thirty +years old? Home, society, sphere; I can tell you it is a strange +feeling to take one's fortune in one's hand and come forth from such +a business exile, and choose where one will make the first +link,--decide the first condition, which may draw after all the +rest. Happily, I had my sister to come home to; and I had the +remembrance of the little story my mother told me--about my name. I +think she looked forward for the boy who could know so little then +of the destiny partly laid out for him already." + +"About your name?" reminded Mr. Vireo. He always liked to hear the +whole of a thing; especially a thing that touched and influenced +spiritually. + +"Yes. The story of Saint Cristofero. The strong man, Offero, who +would serve the strongest; who served a great king, till he learned +that the king feared Satan; who then sought Satan and served him, +till he found that Satan feared the Cross; who sought for Jesus, +then, that he might serve Him, and found a hermit who bade him fast +and pray. But he would not fast, since from his food came his +strength to serve with; nor pray, because it seemed to him idle; but +he went forth to help those who were in danger of being swept away, +as they struggled to cross the deep, wide River. He bore them +through upon his shoulders,--the weak, the little, the weary. At +last, he bore a little child who entreated him, and the child grew +heavy, and heavier, till, when they reached the other side, Offero +said,--'I feel as if I had borne the world upon my shoulders!' And +he was answered,--'Thou may'st say that; for thou hast borne Him who +made the world.' And then he knew that it was the Lord; and he was +called no more 'Offero,' but 'Cristofero.' My mother told me that +when I was a little child; and the story has grown in me. The Christ +has yet to be borne on men's shoulders." + +Hilary Vireo stood and listened with gleaming eyes. Of course, he +knew the old saint-legend; of course, Christopher Kirkbright +supposed it; but these were men who understood without the saying, +that the verities are forever old and forever new. A mother's wise +and tender tale,--a child's life growing into a man's, and +sanctifying itself with a purpose,--these were the informing that +filled afresh every sentence of the story, and made its repetition a +most fair and sweet origination. + +"And so,"-- + +"And so, I must earn my name," said Christopher Kirkbright, simply. + +"Lift them up, and take them across," said Hilary Vireo, as if +thinking it over to himself. The old story had quickened him. A +grand perception came to him for his friend, who had begged him to +think for and advise him. "Lift them up and take them across!" he +repeated, looking into Mr. Kirkbright's face, and speaking the words +to him with warm energy. "They are waiting--so many of them! They +are sinking down--so many! They want to be lifted through. They +want--and they want terribly--a place of safety on the other side. +Go down into the river of temptation, and hardship, and sin, and +help them up out of it, Christopher. Take them up out of their cruel +conditions; make a place for some of them to begin over again in; +for some of them to rest in, once in a while, and take courage. Why +shouldn't there be cities of refuge, now, Kirkbright? Men are +mapping out towns for their own gain, all over the land, wherever a +water power or a railroad gives the chance for one to grow; why not +build a Hope for the hopeless? Nowhere on earth could that be done +as it could in our own land!" + +"A City of Refuge'" Kirkbright repeated the words gravely, +earnestly; like those of some message of an angel of the Lord, that +sounded with self-attested authority in his ears. + +After a pause, in which his thought followed out the word of +suggestion into a swift dream of possible fulfillment, he said to +his companion,-- + +"I believe there was nothing in that old Jewish economy, Vireo, that +was not given as a 'pattern of things' that should be. That whole +Old Testament is a type and prophecy of the kingdom coming. Only it +was but the first Adam. It was given right into the very conditions +that illustrated its need. It would have meant nothing, given into a +society of angels. Yet because men were not angels, but very mortal +and sinful men, we of to-day must fling contempt upon the Myth of +the Salvation of God! It will stand, for all that,--that history of +God's intimacy with men. It was _lived_, not told as a vision, that +it _might_ stand! It was lived, to show how near, in spite of sin, +God came, and stayed. The second coming shall be without sin unto +salvation." + +"I'm not sure, Kirkbright, but you ought to be a minister." + +"Not to stand in a pulpit. God helping me, I mean to be a minister. +Wouldn't a preacher be satisfied to have studied a week upon a +sermon, if he knew that on Sunday, preaching it, he had sent it, +live, into one living soul? Fifty-two souls a year, to reach and +save,--would not that be enough? Well, then, every day a man might +be giving the Lord's word out somewhere, in some fashion, I think. +He needn't wait for the Sundays. Everybody has a congregation in the +course of the week. I don't doubt the week-day service is often you +preachers' best." + +"I _know_ it is," Hilary Vireo replied. + +"Come down into the cabin with me," said Mr. Kirkbright. "I want to +look up that old pattern. It will tell me something." + +Down in the cabin they seated themselves together where they had +had many a talk before, at a corner table near Mr. Kirkbright's +state-room door. Out of the state-room he had brought his Bible. + +He got hold of one word in that old ordination,--"unawares." + +"'He that doeth it _unawares_," he repeated, holding the Bible with +his finger between the half-shut leaves, at that thirty-fifth +chapter of Numbers. "How that reminds of, and connects with, the +Atoning Prayer,--'Forgive them, for they know not what they do!' +'Sins, negligences, ignorances;' how they shade and change into each +other! If all the mistakes could be forgiven and set right, how much +evil, virulent and unmixed, would there be left in the world, do you +suppose?" + +"Not more than there was before the mistakes began," replied Vireo. +"Like the Arabian genie, the monster would be drawn down from its +horrible expansion to a point again,--the point of a possibility; +the serpent suggestion of evil choice. When God has done his work of +forgiving, there is where it will be, I think; and the Son of the +woman shall set his heel upon its head." + +"I wish I could see what lies behind this," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"'He shall abide in it unto the death of the high-priest,' and after +that, 'the slayer shall return into the land of his possession.' +That might almost seem to point to the old sacrificial idea; the +atonement by death. I cannot rest in that. I wish I could see its +whole meaning,--for meaning it must have, and a meaning of _life_." + +"A temporary ministry; a limited exile; the one the measure of the +other," sail Hilary Vireo, slowly thinking it out, and taking the +book from the hand of his friend, to look over the words themselves, +as he did so. + +"The glory is in the promise: 'he shall return into the land of his +possession.' His life shall be given back to him,--all that it was +meant to be. It shall be kept open for him, till the time of his +banishment is over. Meanwhile, over even this period is a holy +providing, an anointed commission of grace." + +"But hear this," he continued, turning to the Epistle to the +Hebrews, "and put the suggestions alongside. All but God's final and +eternal _best_ is transitional. 'They truly were many priests, +because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death. But +this man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable +priesthood. Wherefore He is able also to save them to the uttermost, +that come to God by Him.' Did it ever occur to you to think about +that saving to the uttermost? Not a scrap of blessed possibility +forfeited, lost? All gathered up, restored, put into our hands +again, from the redeeming hands of Christ? Backward and forward, +through all that was irretrievable to us; sought, and traced, and +found, and brought back with rejoicing; the whole house swept, until +not one silver piece is missing. That is the return into the land of +our possession. _That_ is God's salvation, and his gospel! That is +what shall come to pass. Not yet; not while we are only under the +lesser ministry; but when that priesthood over the time of our +waiting ends, and we have believed unto the full appearing of the +Lord!" + +The speaker's face flushed and glowed; Hilary Vireo, always glad and +strong in look and bearing, was grandly joyful when the power of the +gospel he had to preach came upon him; the gospel of a full, +perfect, and unstinted hope. + +"Is that what you tell your simple people?" asked Christopher +Kirkbright, fixing deeply eager eyes upon him. + +"Yes; just that. In simplest words, changed and repeated often. It +is the whole burden of my message. What other message is there, to +men's souls? 'Repent, and receive the remission of your sins!' Build +your city of refuge, Mr. Kirkbright, and show them a beginning of +the fulfillment." + +Whist and euchre tables not far off were breaking up, just before +lunch, with laughter and raised voices. Ladies were coming down from +the deck. In the stir, Mr. Vireo rose and went away. Christopher +Kirkbright carried his Bible back into his state-room, and shut the +door. + + + + +CHAPTER XII. + +LETTERS AND LINKS. + + +That same September morning, Miss Euphrasia, sitting in her pretty +corner room at Mrs. Georgeson's,--just returned to her city life +from the rest and sweetness of a country summer,--had letters +brought to her door. + +The first was in a thin, strong, blue envelope, with London and +Liverpool postmarks, and "per Steamer Calabria," written up in the +corner, business-wise, with the date, and a dash underneath. This +she opened first, for the English postmarks, associated with that +handwriting, gave her a sudden thrill of bewildered surprise:-- + + "MY DEAR SISTER,--Within a very few days after this + will reach you, I hope myself to land in America, and to see + if, after all these years, you and I can do something about a + home together. We learn one good of long separations, by what + we get of them in this world. We can't help beginning again, + if not actually where we left off, at least with the thought + we left off at, 'live and fresh in our hearts. The thought, I + mean, as regards each other; we have both got some thoughts + uppermost by this time, doubtless, that we had not lived to + then. At any rate, I have, who had ten years ago only the + notions and dreams of twenty-one. I come straight to you with + them, just as I went from you, dear elder sister, with your + love and blessing upon me, into the great, working world. + + "Send a line to meet me in New York at Frazer and + Doubleday's, and let me know your exact whereabouts. I found + Sherrett here, and had a run to Manchester with him to see + Amy. That's the sort of thing I can't believe when I do see + it,--Mary's baby married and housekeeping! I'm glad you are my + elder, Effie; I shall not see much difference in you. + Thirty-one and forty-three will only have come nearer + together. And you are sure to be what only such fresh-souled + women as you _can_ be at forty-three." + +With this little touch of loving compliment the letter ended. + +Miss Euphrasia got up and walked over to her toilet-glass. Do you +think, with all her outgoing goodness, she had not enough in her +for this, of that sweet woman-feeling that desires a true +beauty-blossoming for each good season of life as it comes? A pure, +gentle showing, in face and voice and movement, of all that is +lovely for a woman to show, and that she tells one of God's own +words by showing, if only it be true, and not a putting on of +falseness? + +If Miss Euphrasia had not cared what she would seem like in the eyes +as well as to the heart of this brother coming home, there would +have been something wanting to her of genuine womanhood. Yet she had +gone daily about her Lord's business, thinking of that first; not +stopping to watch the graying or thinning of hairs, or the gathering +of life-lines about eyes and mouth, or studying how to replace or +smooth or disguise anything. She let her life write itself; she only +made all fair, according to the sense of true grace that was in her; +fair as she could with that which remained. She had neither +neglected, nor feverishly contrived and worried; and so at forty +three she was just what Christopher, with his Scotch second-sight, +beheld her; what she beheld herself now as she went to look at her +face in the glass, and to guess what he would think of it. + +She saw a picture like this:-- + +Soft, large eyes, with no world-harass in them; little curves +imprinted at the corners that may be as beautiful in later age as +lip-dimples are in girlhood; a fair, broad forehead, that had never +learned to frown; lines about mouth and chin, in sweet, honest +harmony with the record of the eyes; no strain, no distortion of +consciousness grown into haggard wornness; a fine, open, contented +play of feature had wrought over all like a charm of sunshine, to +soften and brighten continually. Her hair had been golden-brown; +there was plenty of it still; it had kept so much of the gold that +it was now like a tender mist through which the light flashes and +smiles. Of all color-changes, this is the rarest. + +Miss Euphrasia smiled at her own look. "It is the home-face, I +guess; Christie will know it." Smiling, she showed white edges of +perfect teeth. + +"What a silly old thing I am!" she said, softly; and she blushed up +and looked prettier yet. + +"Why, I _will_ not be such a fool!" she exclaimed, then, really +indignant; and sat down to read her second letter, which she had +half forgotten:-- + + "BRICKFIELD FARMS, (near Tillington), Maine. + + "DEAR MISS EUPHRASIA,--I have not written to you + since we left Conway, because there seemed so little really to + trouble you with; but your kind letter coming the other day + made me feel as if I must have a talk with you, and perhaps + tell you something which I did not fully tell you before. We + left our address with Mr. Dill, although except you, I hardly + know of anybody from whom a letter would be likely to come. + Isn't it strange, how easily one may slip aside and drop out + of everything? We heard of this place from some people who bad + been to Sebago Lake and Pleasant Mountain, and up from there + across the country to Gorham, and so round to Conway through + the Glen. + + "Mother was not well at Conway; indeed, dear Miss Euphrasia, + she is more ill, perhaps, than I dare to think. She is very + weak; I dread another move, and the winter is so near! May be + the pleasant October weather will build her up; at any rate, + we must stay here until she is much better. We have found such + good, kind, plain people! I will tell you presently how nice + it is for us, and the plans I have been able to make for the + present. It has been a very expensive summer; we have moved + about so much; and in all the places where we have been + before, the board has been so high. At Lebanon and Sharon it + was dreadful; I really had to worry mother to get away; and + then Stowe was not much better, and at Jefferson the air was + too bracing. At Crawford's it was lovely, but the bill was + fearful! So we drifted down, till we finished August in + Conway, and heard of this. I wish we had known of it at the + beginning; but then I suppose it would not have suited mother + for all summer. + + "I had a great worry at Sharon, Miss Euphrasia, and it has + grown worse since. I can't help being afraid mother has been + dreadfully cheated. We got acquainted with some people there; + a Mr. and Mrs. Farron Saftleigh, rich Westerners, who made a + good deal of show of everything; money, and talk, and conjugal + devotion, and friendship. Mrs. Saftleigh came a great deal to + mother's room, and gave her all the little chat of the + place,--I'm afraid I don't amuse mother myself as much as I + ought, but some things do seem so tiresome to tell over, when + you've seen more than enough of them yourself,--and she used + to take her out to drive nearly every day. + + "Well, it seemed that Mr. Saftleigh had gone out West only six + years ago, and had made all his money since, in land and + railroad business. Mrs. Saftleigh said that 'whatever Farron + touched was sure to double.' She _meant_ money; but I thought + of our perplexities when she said it, and he certainly has + managed to double _them_. He went to New York two or three + times while we were at the Springs; he was transacting + railroad business; getting stock taken up in the new piece of + road laid out from Latterend to Donnowhair; and he was at the + head of a company that had bought up all the land along the + route. 'Sure to sell at enormous profits any time after the + railroad was opened.' Poor mother got so feverish about it! + She didn't see why our little money shouldn't be doubled as + well as other people's. And then she cried so about being left + a widow, with nobody out in the world to get a share of + anything for her; and Mrs. Saftleigh used to tell her that + such work was just what friends were made for, and it was so + providential that she had met her here just now; and she was + always calling her 'sweet Mrs. Argenter.' + + "Nobody could help it; mother worried herself sick, when I + begged her to wait till we could come home and consult some + friend we knew. 'The chance would be lost forever,' she said; + 'and who could be kinder than the Saftleighs, or could know + half so much? Mr. Farron Saftleigh risked his own money in + it.' And at last, she wrote home and had her Dorbury mortgage + sold, and paid eight thousand dollars of it to Mr. Saftleigh, + for shares in the railroad, and land in Donnowhair. And, dear + Miss Euphrasia, that is all we've got now, except just a few + hundred dollars on deposit in the Continental, and the other + four thousand of the mortgage, that mother put into + Manufacturers' Insurance stock, to pacify me. If the land + _doesn't_ sell out there in six months, as Mr. Saftleigh says + it will, I don't know where any more income for us is to come + from. + + "I am saving all I can here, for the winter _must_ cost. You + would laugh if you knew how I am saving! I am helping Mrs. + Jeffords do her work, and she doesn't charge me any board, and + so I lay up the money without letting mother know it. I don't + feel as if that were quite right,--or comfortable, at least; + but after all, why shouldn't she be cheated a little bit the + other way, if it is possible? That is why I hope we shall be + here all through October. + + "We are having lovely weather now; not a sign of frost. + Although this place is so far north, it is sheltered by great + hills, and seems to lie under the lee, both ways, of high + mountain ranges, so that the cold does not really set in very + early. It is a curious place. I wish I had left room to tell + you more about it. There is a great level basin, around which + slope the uplands, rising farther and farther on every side + except the south, until you get among the real mountain + regions. On these slopes are the farms; the Jeffords', and the + Applebees', and the Patchons', and the Stilphins'. Aren't they + quaint, comfortable old country names? I think they only have + such names among farmers. The name of the place,--or rather + neighborhood, for I don't know where the _place_ actually + is--there are three places, and they are all four or five + miles off--Mill Village, and Pemunk, and Sandon; the name of + the neighborhood,--Brickfield Farms, comes from there having + been brickmaking done here at one time; but it was given up. + The man who owned it got in debt, and failed, I believe; and + nobody has taken hold of it again, because it is so far from + lines of transportation; but there are some cottages about the + foot of Cone Hill, where the laborers used to live; and a big + queer, old red brick house, that looks as if it were walking + up stairs,--built on flat, natural steps of the rock, and so + climbing up, room behind room, with steps inside to + correspond. I have liked so much to go through it, and imagine + stories about it, though all the story there is, is that of + Mr. Flavius Josephus Browne, the man of the brick enterprise, + who built it in this odd way, and probably imagined a story + for himself that he never lived out in it, because his money + and his business came to an end. How strange it is that work + doesn't always make money, and that it takes so much + combination to make anything worth while! I wonder that even + men know just what to do. And as for women,--why, when they + take to elbowing men out, what will it all come to? + + "I have written on, until I have written off some of my heavy + feelings that I began with. If I could only _talk_ to you, + dear Miss Euphrasia, I think they would all go. But I will not + trouble you any longer now; I am quite ashamed of the great + packet this will make when it is folded up. But you told me to + let you know all about myself, and I can't help minding such + an injunction as that! + + "Yours gratefully and affectionately always, + "SYLVIE ARGENTER." + +Miss Kirkbright had not read this straight through without a pause. +Two or three times she had let her hands drop to her lap with the +letter in them, and sat thinking. When she came to what Sylvie said +about her "laughing to know how she had been saving," Miss Euphrasia +stopped, not to laugh, but to wipe tears from her eyes. + +"The poor, dear, brave little soul!" she said to herself. "And that +blessed Mrs. Jeffords,--to let her think she is earning her board +with ironing sheets, perhaps, and washing dishes! Km!" + +That last unspellable sound was a half choke and half chuckle, that +Miss Euphrasia surprised herself in making out of the sudden, mixed +impulse to sob, and laugh, and to catch somebody in her arms and +kiss that wasn't there. + +"If I were an angel, I suppose I _could_ wait," she went on saying +to herself after that. "But even for them, it must be hard work some +times. And so,--how the great Reasons Why flash upon one out of +one's own little experience!--of that wonderful, blessed Day, when +all shall be made right, the angels in heaven know not, neither the +Son, but the Father only! The Lord cannot even trust the pure human +that is in Himself to dwell, separately, upon that End which is to +be, but may not be yet!" + +I do not suppose anything whatever could come into Miss Euphrasia's +life, or touch her with its circumstance, that she did not +straightway read in it the wider truth beyond the letter. She was a +Swedenborgian, not after Swedenborg, but by the living gift itself. +Her insight was no separate thing, taken up and used now and then, +of a purpose. It was as different from that as eyes are from +spectacles. She could not help her little sermons. They preached +themselves to her and in her, continually. So, if we go along with +her, we must take her with her interpretations. Some friend said of +her once, that she was a life with marginal notes; and the notes +were the larger part of it. + +But Miss Euphrasia found a postscript, presently, to Sylvie's +letter, written hurriedly on the other side of the last leaf; as if +she had made haste, before she should lose courage and change her +mind about saying it:-- + +"Do you think it would be possible to find any sort of place in +Boston where I could do something to help pay, this winter,--and +will you try for me? I could sew, or do little things about a house, +or read or write for somebody. I could help in a nursery, or teach, +some hours in a day,--hours when mother likes to be quiet; and she +would not know." + +This was essential. "Mother must not know." + +The finding of this postscript drove out of Miss Euphrasia's mind +another thought that had suddenly come into it as she turned the +letter over in her fingers. It was some minutes before she went back +to it; minutes in which she was quite absorbed with simple +suggestions and peradventures in Sylvie's behalf. + +But--"Brickfield Farms? Sandon? Josephus Browne." When had she heard +those names before? What hopeless piece of property was it she had +heard her brother-in-law speak of long ago,--somewhere down +East,--where there were old kilns and clay-pits? Something that had +come into or passed through his hands for a debt? + +"There is a great tangling of links here. What are they shaken into +my fingers for, I wonder? What is there here to be tied, or to be +unraveled?" + +For she believed firmly, always, that things did not happen in a +jumble, however jumbled they might seem. Though she could scarcely +keep two thoughts together of the many crowded ones that had come to +her, one upon another, this strange morning, she was sure the Lord +knew all about it, and that He had not sent them upon her in any +real confusion. She knew that there was no precipitance--no +inconsequence--with Him. + +"They are threads picked out for some work that He will do," she +said, as she tucked her brother's letter into a low, broad basket +beside the white and rose and violet wools with which she was at odd +minutes crocheting a dainty footspread for an invalid friend, and +put the other in her pocket. + +"Now I will tie my bonnet on, and go, as I had meant, to see Desire. +That, also, is a piece of this same morning." + +Miss Kirkbright, likewise, watched and learned a story that told and +repeated itself as it went along, of a House that was building bit +by bit, and of life that lay about it. Only hers was the house the +Lord builds; and the stories of it, and all the sentences of the +story, were the things He daily puts together. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII. + +RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE. + + +Desire was out. She had gone down to Neighbor Street, to see +Luclarion Grapp. + +Luclarion had a Home there now; a place where girls and women came +and went, and always found a rest and a welcome, to stay a night, or +a week, or as long as they needed, provided only, that they entered +into the work and spirit of the house while they did stay. + +Luclarion still sold her good, cheap white loaves and brown, her +muffins and her crumpets; and she had what she called her "big +baking room," where a dozen women could work at the troughs and the +kneaders and the ovens; and in this bakery they learned an honest +trade that would stand them in stead for self-support, whether to +furnish a commodity for sale, or in homes where daily bread must be +put together as well as prayed for. + +"You can do something now that all the world wants done; that's as +good as a gold mine, and ever so much better," said Luclarion Grapp. + +Then she had a laundry. From letting her lodgers wash and iron for +themselves, to put their scanty wardrobes into the best condition +and repair, she went on to showing them nice work and taking it in +for them to do; until now there were some dozen families who sent +her weakly washing, three to five dollars' worth each; and for ten +months in the year a hundred and eighty dollars were her average +receipts. + +Down at "The Neighbors,"--as from the name of the street and the +spirit and growth of the thing it had come to be called,--they had +"Evenings;" when friends of the place came in and made it pleasant; +brought books and pictures, flowers and fruit, and made a little +treat of it for mind and heart and body. It was some plan for one of +these that had taken Desire and Hazel to Miss Grapp's to-day. + +Miss Euphrasia's first feeling was disappointment. It seemed as if +her morning were going a wee wrong after all. But her second +thought--that it was surely all in the day's work, and had happened +so by no mistake--took her in, with a cheery and really expectant +face, to Rachel Froke's gray parlor, to "sit her down a five +minutes, and rest." She confidently looked for her business then to +be declared to her, since the business she thought she had come upon +was set aside. + +"I have had a great mind to come to thee," were the first words +Rachel said, as her visitor seated herself in the low chair, twin to +her own, which she kept for friends. Rachel Froke liked her own; but +she never felt any special comfort comfortably her own, until she +could hold it thus duplicated. + +"I have wanted for a little while past to talk to some one, and +Hapsie Craydocke would not do. Everything she knows shines so +quickly out of those small kind eyes of hers. Hapsie would have +looked at me in an unspeakable way, and told it all out too soon. I +have a secret, Euphrasia, and it troubleth me; yet not very much for +myself; and I know it need not trouble me for anything. I have a +reason that may make me leave this place,--for a time at least; and +I am sorry for Desire, for she will miss me. Frendely can do all +that I do, and she hath the same wish for everything at heart; but +then who would help Frendely? She could not get on alone for thee +knows the house is large, and Desire is always very busy, with work +that should not be hindered. Can thee think of any way? I cannot +bear that any uncertain, trustless person should come in here. There +hath never been a common servant in this house. Doesn't thee think +the Lord hath some one ready since He makes my place empty? And how +shall we go rightly to find out?" + +"Tell me first, Rachel, of your own matter. Is it any trouble,--any +grief or pain?" + +Rachel had quite forgot. The real trouble of it was this perplexity +that she had told. The rest of it--that she knew was all right. She +would not call it trouble--that which she simply had to wait and +bear; but that in which she had to do, and knew not just how to "go +rightly about,"--it was that she felt as the disquiet. + +She smiled, and laid her hand upon her breast. + +"The doctor calls it trouble--trouble here. But it may be helped; +and there is a man in Philadelphia who treats such ailments with +great skill. My cousin-in-law, Lydia Froke, will receive me at her +house for this winter, if I will come and try what he can do. Thee +sees: I suppose I ought to go." + +"And Desire knows nothing?" + +"How could I tell the child, until I saw my way? Now, can thee +think?" + +Rachel Froke repeated her simple question with an earnestness as if +nothing were between them at this moment but the one thing to care +for and provide. She waited for no word of personal pity or sympathy +to come first. She had grown quite used to this fact that she had +faced for herself, and scarcely remembered that it must be a pain to +Miss Kirkbright for her sake to hear it. + +It was hard even for Miss Kirkbright to feel it at once as a fact, +looking in the fair, placid, smiling face that spoke of neither +complaint nor pain nor fear; though a thrill had gone through her at +the first word and gesture which conveyed the terrible perception, +and had made her pale and grave. + +"Must it be a servant to do mere servant's work; or could some nice +young person, under Frendely's direction, relieve her of the actual +care that you have taken, and keep things in the kitchen as they +are?" + +"That is precisely the best thing, if we could be sure," said +Rachel. + +"Then I think perhaps I came here with an errand straight to you, +though I had no knowledge of it in coming," said Miss Kirkbright. + +"That looks like the Lord's leading," said Rachel Froke. "There is +always some sign to believe by." + +Miss Euphrasia took out Sylvie's letter, as the best way of telling +the story, and put it into Rachel Froke's hand. She did not feel it +any breach of confidence to do so. Breach of confidence is letting +strange air in upon a tender matter. The self-same atmosphere, the +self-same temperature,--these do not harm or change anything. It is +only widening graciously that which the confidence came for, to let +it touch a heart tuned to the celestial key, ready with the same +response of understanding. There are friends one can trust with +one's self so; sure that only by true and inward channels the word, +the thought, shall pass. Gossip--betrayal--sends from hand to hand, +from mouth to mouth; tosses about our sacredness, or the +misinterpreted sign of it, on the careless surface. From heart to +heart it may be given without disloyalty. That is the way God +Himself works round for us. + +"It is very clear to me," said Rachel Froke, folding up the sheets +of the letter, and putting them back into their envelope. "Shall +Desire read this?" + +"I think so. It would not be a real thing, unless she understood." + +So Desire had the letter to read that day when she came home; and +then Rachel Froke told her how it was that she must go away for a +while; and Desire went round to Miss Euphrasia's room in the +twilight, and gave her back her letter, and talked it all over with +her; and they two next day explained the most of it to Hazel. It was +not needful that she should know the very whole about Rachel or the +Argenters; only enough was said to make plain the real companionship +that was coming, and the mutual help that it might be; enough of the +story to make Hazel cry out joyfully,--"Why, Desire! Miss +Kirkbright! She's another! She belongs!" And then, without such +drawback of sadness as the other two had had to feel, she caught +them each by a hand, and danced them up and down a little dance +before the fire upon the hearth-rug--singing,-- + + "Four of us know the Muffin-man, + Five of us know the Muffin-man, + All of us know the Muffin-man, + That lives in Drury Lane." + + + + +CHAPTER XIV. + +MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL. + + +It was on the corner of Merle Street and Mavis Place. The Reverend +Hilary Vireo, as I have told you, was the minister. + +It might have been called, if anybody had thought of it, "The Chapel +of the New Song." For it was the very gospel of hope and gladness +that Hilary Vireo preached there, and had preached and lived for +twenty years, making lives to sing that would have moaned. + +"Haven't you a song in your heart, somewhere?" was his word once, to +a man of hard life, who came to him in a trouble, and telling him of +it, passed to a spiritual confidence, such as Vireo drew out of +people without the asking. At the end of his story, the man had said +that "he supposed it was as good as he ought to expect; he hadn't +any business to look for better, and he must just bear it, for +_this_ life. He hoped there _was_ something afterwards for them that +could get to it, but he didn't know." + +"Aren't you _glad_ of things, sometimes?" said Mr. Vireo. "Of a +pleasant day, even,--or a strong, fresh feeling in the morning? +Don't you touch the edge of the great gladness that is in the world, +now and then, in spite of your own little single worries? Well, +_that's_ what God means; and the worry is the interruption. He +_never_ means that. There's a great song forever singing, and we're +all parts and notes of it, if we will just let Him put us in tune. +What we call trouble is only his key, that draws our heart-strings +truer, and brings them up sweet and even to the heavenly pitch. +Don't mind the strain; believe in the _note_, every time his finger +touches and sounds it. If you are glad for one minute in the day, +that is his minute; the minute He means, and works for." + +The man was a tuner of pianofortes. He went away with that lesson in +his heart, to come back to him repeatedly in his own work, day by +day. He had been believing in the twists and stretches; he began +from that moment to believe in the music touches, far apart though +they might come. He lived from a different centre; the growth began +to be according to the life. + +"It's queer," he said once, long afterward, reminding Mr. Vireo of +what he had spoken in the moment it was given through him, and then +forgotten. "A man can put himself a'most where he pleases. Into a +hurt finger or a toothache, till it is all one great pain with him; +or outside of that, into something he cares for, or can do with his +well hand, till he gets rid of it and forgets it. There's generally +more comfort than ache, I do suppose, if we didn't live right in the +middle of the ache. But you see, that's the great secret to find +out. If ever we _do_ get it,--complete"-- + +"Ah, that's the resurrection and the life," said Mr. Vireo. + +Among the crowd that waited about the open chapel doors, and through +the porches, and upon the stair-ways, one clear, sunny, October +morning, on which the congregation would not gather quietly to its +pews, stood this man, and many another man, and woman, and little +child, to whom a word from Hilary Vireo was a word right out of +heaven. + +They would all have a first sight of him to-day,--his first Sunday +among them after the whole summer's absence in Europe. He might +easily not get into his pulpit at all, but give his gift in crumbs, +all the way along from the street curb-stones to the aisles in the +church above,--they waylaid him so to snatch at it from hand, face, +voice, as he should come in. It would not be altogether unlike +Hilary Vireo, if seeing things this way, he stopped right there +amongst them, to deal out heart-cheer and sympathy right and left, +face to face, and hand to hand,--the Gospel appointed for that day. + +"What a crowd there'll be in heaven about some people!" said a tall, +good-looking man to Hilary Vireo, in an undertone, as he came up the +sidewalk with him into the edge of these waiting groups. + +"May be. There'll be some scattering, I fancy, that we don't look +for. We shall find _all_ our centres there," returned Mr. Vireo, +hastily, as his people closed about him and the hand-shaking began. + +Christopher Kirkbright made his way to the stairs, as the passage on +one side became cleared by the drifting of the parish over to the +western door, by which the minister was entering. A little way up he +found his sister, sitting with a young woman in the deep window +ledge at the turn, whence they could look quietly down and watch the +scene. Overhead, the heavy bell swung out slow, intermitted peals, +that thrilled down through all the timbers of the building, and +forth upon the crisp autumn air. + +"My brother--Miss Ledwith," said Miss Euphrasia, introducing them. + +Desire Ledwith looked up, The intensity that was in her gray eyes +turned full into Christopher Kirkbright's own. It was like the +sudden shifting of a lens through which sun-rays were pouring. She +had been so absorbed with watching and thinking, that her face had +grown keen and earnest without her knowing, as it had been always +wont to do; only it was different from the old way in this,--that +while the other had been eager, asking, unsatisfied, this was simply +deep, intent; a searching outward, that was answered and fed +simultaneously from within and behind; it was the _transmitted_ +light by which the face of Moses shone, standing between the Lord +and the people. + +She was not beautiful now, any more than she had been as a very +young girl, when we first knew her; in feature, that is, and with +mere outward grace; but her earnestness had so shaped for itself, +with its continual, unthwarted flow, a natural and harmonious outlet +in brow and eyes; in every curve by which the face conforms itself +to that which genuinely animates it, that hers was now a countenance +truly radiant of life, hope, purpose. The small, thin, clear cut +nose,--the lip corners dropped with untutored simplicity into a rest +and decision that were better than sparkle and smile,--the coolness, +the strength, that lay in the very tint and tone of her +complexion,--these were all details of character that had asserted +itself. It had changed utterly one thing; the old knitting and +narrowing of the forehead were gone; instead, the eyes had widened +their spaces with a real calm that had grown in her, and their outer +curves fell in lines of largeness and content toward the contour of +the cheeks, making an artistic harmony with them. + +It was not a face, so much as a living soul, that turned itself +toward Miss Euphrasia's brother, as Miss Kirkbright spoke his name +and Desire's. + +For some reason, he found himself walking into the church beside +them afterward, thinking oddly of the etymology of that +word,--"introduced." + +"Brought within; behind the barriers; made really known. Effie gave +me a glimpse of that girl,--her _self_. I don't think I was ever so +really introduced before." + +He did not know at all who Miss Ledwith was; she might have been one +of the chapel protegees; from Hanover or Neighbor Street, or where +not; they all looked nice, in their Sunday dress; those who were +helped to dress were made to look as nice as anybody. + +Desire Ledwith had on a dark maroon-colored serge, made very simply; +bordered, I believe, with just a little roll binding of velvet +around the upper skirt. Any shop-girl might have worn that; any +shop-girl would perhaps have been scarcely satisfied to wear the +plain black hat, with just one curly tip of ostrich feather tucked +in where the velvet band was folded together around it. + +Desire sat with her class; it was her family, she said; her +church-family, at any rate; she had chosen her scholars from those +who had no parents to come with, and sit by; they were all glad of +their home-place weekly, at her side. + +Miss Kirkbright and her brother went into the minister's pew. Miss +Kirkbright did not usually come to the service; the school, in which +she taught, met in the afternoon; but this was Mr. Vireo's first +Sunday, and his friend, her brother Christopher, had just come home +with him across the Atlantic. + +There was singing, in which nearly every voice joined; there was +praying, in which one voice spoke as to a Presence felt close +beside; and all the people felt at least that _he_ felt it, and that +therefore it must be there. They believed in it through him, as we +all believe in it through Christ, who is in the bosom of the Father. +That they might some time come where he stood now, and know as he +knew, many of them were simply, carefully, daily striving to "do the +Will." + +He spoke to them of "journeyings;" of how God was everywhere in the +whole earth; of how Abraham had the Lord with him, as he travelled +up through a land he knew not, as he dwelt in Padan Aram, as he +crossed the desert and came down through the hill-country into +Canaan. Of how the Lord met Jacob at Bethel, when he was on his way +through strange places, to go and serve his uncle Laban; how he went +with Joseph into Egypt, and afterwards led out the children of +Israel through forty years of wandering, showing them signs, and +comforting them all the way; how "He leadeth me" is still the +believer's song, still the heart-meaning of every human life. + +"Whether we go or stay, as to place, we all move on; from our +Mondays to our Saturdays; from one experience to another; and before +us and beside us, passes always and abides near that presence +of _the Lord_. Do you know what 'the Lord' means? It is the +bread-giver; the feeder; the provider of every little thing. That is +the name of God when He comes close to humanity. In the beginning, +_God_ created the heavens and the earth; but _the Lord_ spoke unto +Adam; _the Lord_ appeared unto Abraham; _the Lord_ was the God of +Israel. + +"God is _our_ Lord; our daily leader; our bread-giver, from meal to +meal, from mouthful to mouthful. The Angel of his Presence saves us +continually. And in these latter days, the 'Lord' is 'Christ;' the +human love of Him come down into our souls, to take away our +sins,--to give us bread from heaven to eat; to fulfill in the inward +kingdom every type and sign of the old leading; through need and +toil, through strange places, through tedious waitings, through the +long wilderness, and over the river into the Land that is beautiful +and very far off." + +The four walked away from the church together; they stopped on the +corner of Borden Street. Here Desire and Mr. Vireo would leave +them,--their way lying down the hill. + +"I liked your doctrine of the Lord," said Miss Euphrasia to the +minister. "That is true New Church interpretation, as I receive it." + +"How can any one help seeing it? It shines so through the whole," +said Desire. + +"Leader and Giver; it is the one revelation of Scripture, from +beginning to end," said Mr. Vireo. "'Come forth into the land that I +shall show thee.' 'Follow Me, and I will give unto you everlasting +life.' The same call in the Old Testament and in the New." + +"'One Lord, one faith, one baptism,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. + +"Leading--_by the hand_; giving--_morsel by morsel_," said Mr. +Kirkbright, emphasizing the near and dear detail. + +"That makes me think," said Miss Euphrasia, suddenly. "Desire," she +went on, without explaining why, "we are going up to Brickfield +Farms next week, Christopher and I. Why shouldn't you go too,--and +bring her home, you know?" + +As true as she lived, Miss Euphrasia hadn't a thought--whatever +_you_ may think--of this and that, or anything, when she said it. + +Except the simple fact, that it was beautiful October weather, and +that _she_ should like it, and that Sylvie and Desire would get +acquainted. + +"It will do you good. You'd better," said Mr. Vireo, kindly. + +Christopher Kirkbright said nothing, of course. There was nothing +for him to say. He did not think very much. He only had a passing +feeling that it would be pleasant to see this grave-faced girl +again, and to understand her, perhaps, a little. + + + + +CHAPTER XV. + +BONNY BOWLS. + + +The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The +architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass +window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved +oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should +pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich +inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work +and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on +of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs, +remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer. + +Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the +delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful +skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and +fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had +grown to. + +Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed _him_-self; for he had put +himself--his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and +fitness--into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was +more his than the man's who paid the bills,--"out of his waistcoat +pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the +builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were +the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own, +though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and +never go within the walls again. + +It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was +glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of +accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in +which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons +rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six +days' toil. + +Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up +accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim +Street to tea. + +He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story +of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his +friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any +little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday +rest of his,--though a busier day had not gone over his head since +the week began,--must be shared and crowned by them. + +There is no subtler test of an unspoken--perhaps an +unexamined--relation of a man with his women friends, than this +instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the +companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his +heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more +than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of +the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and +sets an established seal upon them all. + +Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in +his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how +pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an +afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was +still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from +her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and +servants going in and fastening the doors upon them. + +He would make a treat of it,--a holiday,--if she would go; he would +come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go +with him in the cars and be stared at. + +He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her +any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the +young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end. + +He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something +of the same perception that would come to her,--if she cared for +this asking of his,--came to him with the sudden suggestion that it +was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had +grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such +beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a +woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and +does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has +done any real living at all. + +Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow; +and he thought she would go. + +He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his +thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice +of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her +so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and +pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had +such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her +look so different from other girls, and yet so nice? + +"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when +tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and +setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl +yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things." + +Ray colored. + +"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford +two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons." + +It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to +custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain +black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their +pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with +broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every +day,--cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon +serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they +contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if +anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank +Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a +"snarl." + +"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be +dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll +hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into. +It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women +can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they +ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try +to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than +common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their +day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means _tied_ +up. They can't _see_ to their girls; they grow helplesser all the +time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and +upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a +down-stairs to every house, and no _home_ anywhere. That's how it +is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows +and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it. +Why, the help has to get into _their_ humpty-dumpties by three or +four o'clock, and see _their_ company. If there's sickness or +anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of +folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were _afraid_ of +sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was +gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left +to depend on but hotels and hospitals. _Home_ is too big a worry. +And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it. +It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler +biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago." + +Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,--as the Scotch grow +more Scotch,--with warming up to the subject. + +Sunderline laughed. + +"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy +here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at +home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately +that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!" + +He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at +her sewing. + +"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my +house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you +ride out with me to Pomantic?" + +Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and +her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without +another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt +Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single +quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers' +ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or +three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She +felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs. +Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was +afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not, +perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him +ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have +him blamed; for what business had she, after all,-- + +"Well, Ray?" + +She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder; +she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that +"Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour +afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it +seem like "anything." + +"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank +you, Frank." + +Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street +afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of +course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And +she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another +word or look. She never stopped sewing, either. + +Well,--he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the +wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work. + +But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot +were by. + +That next day was made for them. + +Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over +so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the +difference? + +I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question +of rain and shine,--with need, and asking, and giving. + +Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme, +because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in +God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm, +or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not +the _prayer_ provided for? It was answered a million of years +beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and +nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for +help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the +undoing or the counteracting of the evil,--the healing of the +wrong,--just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting +soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its +foresight. + +So, under the dear Law,--which is Love, and cares for the +sparrow,--came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament, +its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and +they two went forth in it. + +They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last +them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon +drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later, +to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything. + +Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long +breath, as they drove off. + +"Well, I suppose _that's_ settled," she said, with the +mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to +be otherwise, inflecting her voice. + +"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot. + +In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use +of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy +mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of +experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon. +But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and +she left no lee-way for uninitiation. + +"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round +sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,--or don't want,--or don't +intend--? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese; +and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's _my_ mind +about it!" + +It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over +the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions. +But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long +turnpike stretches--they are turnpike stretches still, though the +Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of +little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the +flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban +residences--have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and +their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea. + +Ray enjoyed every bit of it,--even the rows of new tenements with +their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs +that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the +boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover +him up. + +The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her +companion. + + "Little lad, little lad, where were you born? + Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn, + Where they sup buttermilk from a ram's horn; + And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim, + Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in." + +"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture +over it--do you remember?" + +Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can't quote or remind amiss +from her. + +"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the +lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or +somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the +thorn, pretty much,--of poverty and pinches. But they sup their +buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind. +Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common +things by imagination?" + +"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places. +All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick +and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries +about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side +by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice +neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible +pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down +at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as +you go by in the steamboat." + +"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all. +The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I +mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went +through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny +bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out +of?" + +"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in +the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray. + +"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty +to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to +the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of +it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a +regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the +cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every +household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays." + +"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all +outside." + +Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and +reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land +and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and +different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless +imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers. +More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as +they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and +garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny +windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!" + +But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations, +before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many +times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was +in the thought of each. + +For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave +itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself, +never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or +water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed +up" in the approach. + +Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the +great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant, +light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung. + +Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with +English grass seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to +weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were +gathered at the back of the house and about the stables. + +The plate-glass windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with +their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace +buildings. It was a group,--a pile; under these roofs a family of +five--Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to +conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime--were to live like a +little royal household. And the father had made all his money in +fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of +it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one +looks it all through and thinks it all over. + +Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the +porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest +grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower. + +Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower +rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the +stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture; +along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and +dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,--places +for the many servants that there must be,--pressrooms, closets, +trunk-rooms,--space for stowing all the ample providings for use and +change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a +study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish. + +It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can't +imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray, +coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to +sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods. + +They stopped half way,--on the wide second landing where they had +seen, as they went up, that the great window space was open; the +boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the +costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the +wall at one side. + +"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house," +Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a +thousand dollars." + +"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or +a chapel." + +"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open +frame," he had added, cautioning her. + +Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his +back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some +imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved +cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the +gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color. + +"It won't do. The meeting of the pattern isn't perfect. Those +grape-bunches come too near together, and there's a leaf-tip taken +off at the corner. What a bungle! Come and look, Ray." + +Ray turned her face toward him as he spoke, and saw what thrilled +her through with sudden horror. Saw him, utterly forgetful of where +he stood, against the dangerous vacancy, his heel upon the very +edge, beyond which would be death! + +A single movement an inch further, and he would be off his balance. +Behind him was a fall of thirty feet, down to those piles of brick +and timber. And he would make the movement unless he were instantly +snatched away. His head was thrown back,--his shoulders leaned +backward, in the attitude of one who is endeavoring to judge of an +effect a little distance off. + +Her face turned white, and her limbs quivered under her. + +One gasping breath--and then--she turned, made two steps upward, and +flung herself suddenly, as by mischance, prostrate along the broad, +slowly-sloping stairs. + +Half a dozen thoughts, in flashing succession, shaped themselves +with and into the action. She wondered, afterward, recollecting them +in a distinct order, how there had been time, and how she had +thought so fast. + +"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come +this way." + +In the two steps up--"He might not follow; he would not understand. +He _must_: I must _make_ him come!" And then she flung herself down, +as if she had fallen. + +Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really +faint and helpless. + +It was all over. He was beside her. + +"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said, +quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the +stair. She could not stand. + +A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the +solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house. + +"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near +you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from +the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up +again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes." + +"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr. +Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs. + +"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I +could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself, +instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint +away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would." + +"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and +glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it, +without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more +would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a +christening as that!" + +The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just +rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail. + +"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water." + +"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say," +said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact +to think of this, but not to go without saying it. + +"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her +hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her +feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world +would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister, +Sunderline?" + +"No, sir--only a friend." + +"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!" + +Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look. + +"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business." + +"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it +were, there would be no pardon to beg." + +"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say +that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end +of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put +the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece +of Friday luck as that!" + +There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back +together into the city. + +"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to +the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked +about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me, +after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe +it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in +the world to me?" + +Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted +him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words +are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an +impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse. + +Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak. + +Frank waited--three minutes perhaps. Then he said, + +"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it." + +"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered, +softly. + + * * * * * + +"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in +Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute. + +"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all +beautiful with smile and color. + +Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told +her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the +hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to. +Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that. + + * * * * * + +"There's one thing, Frank,"--said Ray. She was standing with him, +three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her +on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea +and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one +comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before; +and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the +beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing, +Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm +going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp +to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so." + +"Who--is--Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in +his astonishment. + +Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too +long a story for the door-step. When you come again"-- + +"That'll be to-morrow." + +"I'll tell you all about it." + +"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before--a +'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?" + +"Dear me! how long _have_ you waited?" returned Ray, demurely. + +She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it +is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he +may take years in which to come to the point of asking--years in +which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an +uncertainty in it; but the point of _having_ must be moved up then, +to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose. + +A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed +time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one +another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to +let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had +to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the +asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free +enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming +the fulfillment. + +Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was +sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in +skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half +unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own +image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there +for. + +"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your +head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the +glass to-morrow morning." + +Ray roused up from her abstraction. + +"I was thinking," she said. + +"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just +outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my +childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm +thinking.' Good-by." + +There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word. + +"Dot! You silly little thing!" + +And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy, +all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball. + +"I was thinking about Marion Kent." + + + + +CHAPTER XVI. + +RECOMPENSE. + + +That night, Marion Kent was fifty miles off, in the great, mixed-up, +manufacturing town of Loweburg. + +She had three platform dresses now,--the earnings of some half-dozen +"evenings." The sea-green silk would not do forever, in place after +place; they would call her the mermaid. She must have a quiet, +elegant black one, and one the color of her hair, like that she had +seen the pretty actress, Alice Craike, so bewitching in. She could +deepen it with chestnut trimmings, all toning up together to one +rich, bright harmony. Her hair was "_blond cendre_,"--not the +red-golden of Alice Craike's; but the same subtle rule of art was +available; "_cafe-au-lait_" was her shade; and the darker velvet +just deepened and emphasized the effect. + +She was putting this dress on to-night, with some brown and golden +leaves in the high, massed braids of her hair. She certainly knew +how to make a picture of herself; she was just made to make a +picture of. + +The hotel waitress who had brought up her tea on a tray, had gone +down with a report that Miss Kent was "stunning;" and two or three +housemaids and a number of little boys were vibrating and loitering +about the hall and doorway below, watching for her to come down to +her carriage. It was just as good, so far as these things went, as +if she had been Mrs. Kemble, or Christine Nilsson, or anybody. + +And Marion, poor child, had really got no farther than "these +things," yet. She reached, for herself, to just what she had been +able to appreciate in others. She had taken in the housemaid and +small-boy view of famousness, and she was having her shallow little +day of living it. She had not found out, yet, how short a time that +would last. "Verily," it was said for us all long ago, "ye shall +have each your reward," such as ye look and labor for. + +One great boy was waiting for her, _ex officio_, and without +disguise,--the President of the Lyceum Club, before which she was to +read to-night. + +He sat serenely in the reception-room, ready to hand her to her +carriage, and accompany her to the hall. + +The little boys observed him with exasperation. The housemaids +dropped their lower jaws with wonder, when she swept down the +staircase; her _cafe-au-lait_ silk rolling and glittering behind +her, as if the breakfast for all Loweburg were pouring down the +Phoenix Hotel stairs. + +The President of the People's Lyceum Club heard the rustle of +elegance, and met her at the stair-foot with bowing head and bended +arm. + +That was a beautiful, triumphant moment, in which she crossed the +space between the staircase and the door, and went down over the +sidewalk to the hack. What would you have? There could not have been +more of it, in her mind, though all Loweburg were standing by. She +was Miss Kent, going out to give her Reading. What more could Fanny +Kemble do? + +Around the hall doors, when they arrived, other great boys were +gathered. She was passed in quickly, to the left, through some +passages and committee rooms, to the other end of the building, +whence she would enter, in full glory, upon the platform. + +She came in gracefully; a little breezy she could not help being; +it was the one movement of the universe to her at that moment, her +ten steps across the platform,--her little half bow, half droop, +before the applauding audience,--the taking up of the bouquet laid +upon her table,--her smile, with a scarcely visible inclination +again,--and the sitting down among those waves of amber that rose up +shining in the gas-light, about her, as she subsided among her +silken draperies. + +She was imitative; she had learned the little outsides of her art +well; but you see the art was not high. + +It was the same with her reading. She had had drill enough to make +her elocution passable; her voice was clear and sweet; she had a +natural knack, as we have seen, for speaking to the galleries. When +there was a sensational, dramatic point to make, she could make it +after her external fashion, strongly. The deep magnetism--the +electric thrill of soul-reality--these she had nothing to do with. + +Yet she read some things that thrilled of themselves; the very words +of which, uttered almost anyhow, were fit to bring men to their feet +and women to tears, with sublimity and pathos. Somebody had helped +her choose effectively, and things very cunningly adaptive to +herself. + +The last selection for the first part of her reading to-night was +Mrs. Browning's "Court Lady." + +"Wear your fawn-colored silk when you read this," Virginia Levering +had counseled. + +Her self-consciousness made the first lines telling. + + "Her hair was tawny with gold,--her eyes with purple were dark; + Her cheeks pale opal burned with a red and restless spark." + +Her head, bright with its golden-dusty waves and braids, leaned +forward under the light as she uttered the words; her great, +gray-blue eyes, deepening with excitement to black, lifted +themselves and looked the crowd in the face; the color mounted like +a crimson spark; she glowed all over. Yes, over; not up, nor +through; but some things catch from the outside. A flush and rustle +ran over the faces, and the benches; she felt that every eye was +upon her, lit up with an admiring eagerness, that answered to her +eagerness to be admired. + +O, this was living! There was a pulse and a rush in this! Marion +Kent _was_ living, with all her nature that had yet waked up, at +that bewildering and superficial moment. + +But she has got to live deeper. The Lord, who gave her life, will +not let her off so. It will come. It is coming. + +We know not the day nor the hour; though we go on as if we knew all +things and were sure. + +At this very instant, there is close upon you, Marion Kent, one of +those lightning shafts that run continually quivering to and fro +about the earth, with their net-work of fire, in this storm of life +under which we of to-day are born. All the air is tremulous with +quick, converging nerves; concentrating events, bringing each soul, +as it were, into a possible focus continually, under the forces that +are forging to bear down upon it. There are no delays,--no respites +of ignorance. Right into the midst of our most careless or most +selfish doing, comes the summons that arrests us in the Name of the +King. + + "She rose to her feet with a spring. + _That_ was a Piedmontese! And this is the Court of the King!" + +She was upon her feet, as if the impulse of the words had lifted +her; she had learned by rote and practice when and how to do it; she +had been poised for the action through the reading of all those last +stanzas. + +She did it well. One hand rested by the finger-tips upon the open +volume before her; her glistening robes fell back as she gained her +full height,--she swayed forward toward the assembly that leaned +itself toward her; the left hand threw itself back with a noble +gesture of generous declaring; the fingers curving from the open +palm as it might have been toward the pallet of the dead soldier at +her side. She was utterly motionless for an instant; then, as the +applause broke down the silence, she turned, and grandly passed out +along the stage, and disappeared. + +Within the door of the anteroom stood a messenger from the hotel. He +had a telegraph envelope in his hand; he put it into hers. + +She tore it open,--not thinking, scarcely noticing; the excitement +of the instant just past moved her nerves,--no apprehension of what +this might be. + +Then the lightning reached her: struck her through and through. + +"Your ma's dying: come back: no money." + +Those last words were a mistake; the whole dispatch, in its absurd +homeliness and its pitiless directness, was the work of old Mrs. +Knoxwell, the blacksmith's wife, used to hammers and nails, and +believing in good, forceful, honest ways of doing things; feeling +also a righteous and neighborly indignation against this child, +negligent of her worn and lonely mother; "skitin' about the country, +makin' believe big and famous. She would let her know the truth, +right out plain; it would be good for her." + +What she had meant to write at the end was "Pneumonia;" but spelling +it "Numoney," it had got transmitted as we have seen. + +It struck Marion through and through; but she did not feel it at +first. It met the tide of her triumph and elation full in her +throbbing veins; and the two keen currents turned to a mere +stillness for a moment. + +Then she dropped down where she was, all into the golden mass and +shine of her bright raiment, with her hands before her eyes, the +paper crumpled in the clinch of one of them. + +The President of the People's Lyceum Club made a little speech, and +dismissed the audience. "Miss Kent had received by telegraph most +painful intelligence from her family; was utterly unable to appear +again." + +The audience behaved as an American People's Club knows so well how +to behave; dispersed quietly, without a grumble, or a recollection +of the half value of the tickets lost. Miss Kent's carriage drove +rapidly from a side door. In two hours, she was on board the night +train down from Vermont. + +That was on Friday night. + +On Sunday morning Frank Sunderline came in on the service train, and +went up to Pilgrim Street. + +"Mrs. Kent is dead," he told Kay. "Marion is in awful trouble. Can't +you come out to her?" + +Ray was just leaving the house to go to church. Instead, she went +with Frank to the horse-railroad station, catching the eleven +o'clock car. She had been expecting him in the afternoon, to take +her to drink tea with his mother, who was not able to come in to see +her. + +In an hour, she went in at Mrs. Kent's white gate,--Frank leaving +her there. They both felt, without saying, that it would not be kind +to appear together. Marion had that news, though, as she had had the +other; from her Job's comforter, Mrs. Knoxwell, who was persistently +"sitting with her." + +"There's Frank Sunderline and Ray Ingraham at the gate. She's +coming in. They're engaged. It's just out." + +"What _do_ I care?" cried Marion, fiercely, turning upon her, and +astounding Mrs. Knoxwell by the sudden burst of angry words; for she +had not spoken for more than an hour, in which the blacksmith's wife +had administered occasional appropriate sentences of stinging +condolence and well-meant retrospection. "I wish you would go home!" + +Every monosyllable was uttered with a desperate, wrathful +deliberateness and flinging away of all pretense and politeness. + +"Well--'f I _never_!" gasped Mrs. Knoxwell, with a sound in her +voice as if she had received a blow in the pit of her stomach. + +"Jest as you please, Marion--'f I ain't no more use!" And the +aggrieved matron, who had, as she said afterward in recounting it, +"done _everything_," left the scene of her labors and her +animadversions, with a face perfectly emptied of all expression by +her inability to "realize what she _did_ feel." + +Ray Ingraham came in, went straight up to Marion, and took her into +her arms without a word. And Marion put her head down on Ray's +shoulder, and cried her very heart out. + +"You needn't try to comfort me. I can't be comforted like anybody +else. It's the day of judgment come down into my life. I've sold my +birthright: I've nobody belonging to me any more. I wanted the +world--to be free in it; and I'm turned out into it now; and home's +gone--and mother. + +"I never thought of her dying. I expected one of these days to do +for her, and not let her work any more. I meant to, Ray--I did, +truly! But she's dead--and I let her die!" + +With sentences like these, Marion broke out now and again, putting +aside all Ray's consolations; going back continually to her +self-upbraidings, after every pause in which Ray had let her rest or +cry quietly; after every word with which she tried to prevail +against her despair and soothe her with some hope or promise. + +"They are none of them for me!" she cried. "It would have been +better if I had never been born. Ray!" she said suddenly, in a +strained, hollow voice, grasping Rachel's arm and looking with wild, +swollen eyes into hers,--"I was just as bad by little Sue. I was +only fourteen then, but it was the same evil, unsuitable vanity and +selfishness. I was busy, while she was sick, making a white muslin +burnouse to wear to a fair. I had teased mother for it. It was a +silly thing for a girl like me to wear; it had a blue ribbon run in +the hem of the hood, and a bow and long blue ends behind. Poor +little Sue was just down with the fever. Mother had to go out, and +left me to tend her. She wanted some water--Oh!" + +Marion broke down, and sobbed, with her head bowed to her knees as +she sat. + +Ray sat perfectly still. She longed to beg her not to think about +it, not to say any more; but she knew she would feel better if she +did. + +"I told her I'd go presently; and she waited--the patient little +thing! And I was making my blue bow, and fixing it on, and fussing +with the running, and I forgot! And she couldn't bear to bother me, +and didn't say a word, but waited till she dropped to sleep without +it; and her lips were so red and dry. It was a whole hour that I +let her lie so. She never knew anything after that. + +"She waked up all in a rave of light-headedness! + +"I thought I should never get over it, Ray. And I never did, way +down in my heart; but I got back into the same wretched nonsense, +and now--here's _mother_! + +"It's no use to tell me. I've done it. I've lost my right. It'll +_never_ be given back to me." + +"Marion--I wish you could have Mr. Vireo to talk to you; or +Luclarion Grapp. Won't you come home with me, and let them come to +see you? They _know_ about these things, dear." + +"Would you take me home?" asked Marion, slowly, looking her in the +face. + +"Yes, indeed. Will you come?" + +"O, do take me and hide me away, and let me cry!" + +She dropped herself, as it were passively, into Rachel Ingraham's +hands. She could not stay among the neighbors, she said. She could +not stay in that house alone, one day. + +Ray stayed with her, until after the funeral. + +Marion would not go to the church. She had let them decide +everything just as they pleased, thinking only that she could not +think about any of it. Mrs. Kent had been a faithful, humble +church-member for forty years, and the minister and her +fellow-members wanted her to be brought there. There was no room in +the little half-house, where she had lived, for neighbors and +friends to gather, and for the services properly to take place. + +So it was decided. + +But when the time came, and it was too late to change, Marion +said,--"She belonged to them, and they have done by her. They can +all go, but I can't. To sit up in the front pew as a mourner, and be +looked at, and prayed for, as if I had been a real child, and had +only _lost_ my mother! You know I can't, Ray. I will stay here, and +bear my punishment. May be if I bear it _all_ now--do you believe it +might make any difference?" + +Ray stayed with her through the whole. + +While all was still in the church, not ten rods off, a carriage came +for them to the little white gate. With the silken blinds down, and +the windows open behind them, it was driven to the cemetery, and in +beneath the sheltering trees, to a stopping place just upon a little +side turn, near the newly opened grave. No one, of those who +alighted from the vehicles of the short procession, knew exactly +when or how it had come. + +The words of the prayer beside the grave,--most tenderly framed by +the good old minister, for the ear he knew they would reach--came in +soft and clear upon the pleasant air. + +"And we know, Lord, as we lay these friends away, one after another, +that we give them into Thy hands,--into Thy heart; that we give into +Thy heart, also, all our love and our sorrow, and our penitence for +whatever more we might have been or done toward them; that through +Thee, our thought of them can reach them forever. We pray Thee to +forgive us, as we know we do forgive each other; to keep alive and +true in us the love by which we hold each other; and finally to +bring us face to face in Thy glory, which is Thy loving presence +among us all. We ask Thee to do this, by the pity and grace that are +in Thy Christ, our Saviour." + +After that, they were driven straight in, over the long Avenue, to +the city, and to the quiet house in Pilgrim Street. + +Ray herself, only, led Marion to the little room up-stairs which +had been made ready for her; Ray brought her up some tea, and made +her drink it; she saw her in bed for the night, and sat by her till +she fell asleep. + + + + +CHAPTER XVII. + +ERRANDS OF HOPE. + + +"It is a very small world, after all." + +Mr. Dickens, who touched the springs of the whole world's life, and +moved all its hearts with tears and laughter, said so; and we find +it out, each in our own story, or in any story that we know of or +try to tell. How things come round and join each other again,--how +this that we do, brings us face to face with that which we have +done, and with its work and consequence; how people find each other +after years and years, and find that they have not been very far +apart after all; how the old combinations return, and almost repeat +themselves, when we had thought that they were done with. + +"As the doves fly to their windows," where the crumbs are waiting +for them, we find ourselves borne by we know not what instinct of +events,--yet we do know; for it is just the purpose of God, as all +instinct is,--toward these conjunctions and recurrences. We can see +at the end of weeks, or months, or years, how in some Hand the lines +must have all been gathered, and made to lead and draw to the +coincidence. We call it fate, sometimes; stopping short, either +blindly inapprehensive of the larger and surer blessedness, or too +shyly reverent of what we believe to say it easily out. Yet when we +read it in a written story, we call it the contrivance of the +writer,--the trick of the trade. Dearly beloved, the writer only +catches, in such poor fashion as he may, the trick of the Finger, +whose scripture is upon the stars. + +Marion Kent is received into the Ingraham home. Hilary Vireo and +Luclarion Grapp preach the gospel to her. + +"Christ died." + +The minister uttered his evangel of mercy in those two eternal +words. + +"Yes,--Christ," murmured the girl, who had never questioned about +such things before, and to whose lips the holy name had been +strange, unsuitable, impossible; but whose soul, smitten with its +sin and need, broke through the wretched outward hinderance now, and +had to cry up after the only Hope. + +"But He could not forgive my letting _them_ die. I have been reading +the New Testament, Mr. Vireo, 'Whosoever shall offend one of these +little ones, it were better for him that a millstone"-- + +She could not finish the quotation. + +"Yes,--'_offend_;' turn aside out of the right--away from Him; +mislead. Hurt their _souls_, Marion." + +Marion gave a grasping look into his face. Her eyes seized the +comfort,--snatched it with a starving madness out of his. + +"Do you think it means _that?_" she said. + +"I do. I know the word 'offend' means simply to 'turn away.' We may +sin against each other's outward good, grievously; we may lay up +lives full of regrets to bear; we may hurt, we may kill; and then we +must repent according to our sin; but we _may_ repent, and they and +He will pity. It is the soul-killers--the corrupters--Christ so +terribly condemns." + +"But listen to me, Marion," he began again. "God let his Christ +die--suffer--for the whole world. Christ lets them whom he counts +worthy, die--suffer--for _their_ world. The Lamb is forever slain; +the sacrifice of the holy is forever making. It is so that they come +to walk in white with Him; because they have washed their robes in +his blood--have partaken of his sacrifice. Do you not think they are +glad now, with his joy, to have given themselves for you; if it +brings you back? 'If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto me.' +He who knew how to lay hold of the one great heart of humanity by a +divine act, knows how to give his own work to those who can draw the +single cords, and save with love the single souls. They must suffer, +that they may also reign with Him. It is his gift to them and to +you. Will you take your part of it, and make theirs perfect? 'Let +not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me. +Ye believe in me, believe also in these.'" + +"But I want to come where they are. I want to love and do for them; +do something for them in heaven, Mr. Vireo, that I did not do here! +Can I _ever_ have my chances given back again?" + +"You have them now. Go and do something for 'the least of these.' +That is how we work for our Christs who have been lifted up. Do +their errands; enter into the sacrifice with them; be a link +yourself in the divine chain, and feel the joy and the life of it. +The moment you give yourself, you shall feel that. You shall know +that you are joined to them. You need not wait to go to heaven. You +can be in heaven." + +He left her with that to think of; left her with a new peace in her +eyes. She looked round that hour for something to do. + +She went up into old Mrs. Rhynde's room. She knew Ray and Dot were +busy. She found the old lady's knitting work all in a snarl; +stitches dropped and twisted. + +Some coals had rolled out upon the hearth, and the sun had got +round so as to strike across her where she sat. + +The grandmother was waiting patiently, closing her eyes, and resting +them, letting the warm sun lie upon her folded hands like a friend's +touch. One of the girls would be up soon. + +Marion came in softly, brushed up the hearth, laid the sticks and +embers together, made the fire-place bright. She changed the blinds; +lowered one, raised another; kept the sunshine in the room, but +shielded away the dazzle that shot between face and fingers. She +left the shade with careful note, just where it let the warm beam in +upon those quiet hands. Some instinct told her not to come between +them and that heavenly enfolding. + +She took the knitting-work and straightened it; raveled down, and +picked up, and with nimble stitches restored the lost rows. + +Mrs. Rhynde looked up at her and smiled. + +Then she offered to read. She had not read a word aloud from a +printed page since that night in Loweburg. + +The old lady wanted a hymn. Marion read "He leadeth me." The book +opened of itself to that place. She read it as one whose soul went +searching into the words to find what was in them, and bring it +forth. Of Marion Kent, sitting in the chair with the book in her +hand, she thought--she remembered--nothing. Her spirit went from out +of her, into spiritual places. So she followed the words with her +voice, as one really _reading_; interpreting as she went. All her +elocution had taught her nothing like this before. It had not +touched the secret of the instant receiving and giving again; it had +only been the trick of _saying out_, which is no giving at all. + +"Thank you, dear," said the soft toothless voice. "That's very +pretty reading." + +Dot came in, and she went away. + +She had done a little "errand for her mother." A very little one; +she did not deserve, yet, that more should be given her to do; but +her heart went up saying tenderly, remorsefully,--"For your sake." + +And back into her heart came the fulfillment of the promise,--"He +that doeth it in the name of a disciple, shall receive a disciple's +reward." + +These comforts, these reprievals, came to her; then again, she +went down into the blackness of the old memories, the old +self-accusations. + +After she had found her way to Luclarion Grapp's, she used +sometimes, when these things seized her, to tie on her bonnet, pull +down her thick veil, and crying and whispering behind it as she +went,--"Mother! Susie! do you know how I love you now? how sorry I +am?" would hurry down, through the busy streets, to the Neighbors. + +"Give me something to do," she would say, when she got there. + +And Luclarion would give her something to do; would keep her to tea, +or to dinner; and in the quietness, when they were left by +themselves, would say words that were given her to say in her own +character and fashion. It is so blessed that the word is given and +repeated in so many characters and fashions! That each one receives +it and passes it on, "in that language into which he was born." + +"I wish you could hear Luclarion Grapp's way of talking," Ray +Ingraham had said to her just after she had brought her home. "The +kind of comfort she finds for the most wicked and miserable,--people +who have done such shocking things as you never dreamed of." + +"I want to hear somebody talk to the very wickedest. If there's any +chance for me, there's where I must find it. I can't listen with the +pretty-good people, any longer. It doesn't belong to me, or do me +any good." + +"Come and hear the gospel then." And so Ray had taken her down to +Neighbor Street, to Luclarion Grapp. + +"But the sin stays. You can't wipe the fact out; and you've got to +take the consequences," said Marion Kent to the strong, simple woman +to whom she came as to a second-seer, to have her spiritual +destinies revealed to her. + +"Yes," said Luclarion, gravely, but very sweetly, "you have. But the +consequences wear out. Everything wears out but the Lord's love. And +these old worn-out consequences--why, He can turn them into +blessings; and He means to, as they go along, and fade, and change; +until, by and by, we may be safer and stronger, and fuller of +everlasting life, than if we hadn't had them. I was vaccinated a +while ago this summer; everybody was down here; and I had a pretty +sick time. It took--ferocious! Well, I got over it, and then I +thought about it. I'd got something out of my system forever, that +might have come upon me, to destruction, all of a sudden; but now +never will! It appears to me almost as if we were sent into this +world, like a kind of hospital, to be vaccinated against the awful +evil--in our souls; to suffer a little for it; to take it the +easiest way we can take it, and so be safe. I don't know--and if you +hadn't repented, I wouldn't put it into your head; but it's been put +into my head, after I've repented, and I guess it's mainly true. See +here!" + +And she took down a big leather-bound Bible, and opened it to the +fortieth chapter of Isaiah. + +"Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord. Speak ye +comfortably to Jerusalem, and say unto her that her warfare is +accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned; for she hath received +of the Lord's hand double for all her sins." + +"The Old Testament is full of the New; men's wickedness,--it took +wicked men to show the way of the Lord in the earth,--and God's +forgiveness, and his leading it all round right, in spite of them +all! Only He didn't turn the right side out all at once; it wasn't +safe to let them see both sides then. But He _trusts_ us now; He +gave his whole heart in Jesus Christ; He tells us, without any +keeping back, what He means our very sins shall do for us, and He +leaves it to us, after that, to take hold and help Him!" + +"If it weren't for them! If I hadn't let them suffer and die!" + +"Do you think He takes all this care of you,--lets them die for you +even,--and don't take as much for them? Do you think they ain't glad +and happy now? Do you think you could have hurt them, if you had +tried,--and you didn't try, you only let them alone a little, +forgetting? It says, 'If any man sin, we have an advocate with the +Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation.' If +we have somebody to take part with us against our sins, how much +more against our mistakes,--our forgettings! and _they_ are the +propitiation, too; their angels--the Christ of them--do always +behold the face of the Father. Their interceding is a part of the +Lord's interceding." + +"If I could once more be let to do something for them--their very +selves!" + +"You can. You can pray, 'Lord give them some beautiful heavenly joy +this day that thou knowest of, for my asking; because I cannot any +more do for them on the earth.' And then you can turn round to their +errands again." + +Marion stood up on her feet. + +"I will say that prayer for them every day! I shall believe in it, +because you told me. If I had thought of it myself, I should not +have dared. But He wouldn't send such a message by you if He didn't +mean it; would He?" + +She believed in the God of Luclarion Grapp, as the children of +Israel believed in the God of Abraham. + +"He never sends any message that He doesn't mean. He means the +comfort, just as much as He does the blaming." + +Another day, a while after, Marion came down to Neighbor Street with +something very much on her mind to say, and to ask about. They had +all waited for her own plans to suggest themselves, or rather for +her work to be given her to do. No one had mentioned, or urged, or +even asked anything as to what she should do next. + +But now it came of itself. + +"Couldn't I get a place in some asylum, or hospital, do you think, +Miss Grapp? To be anything--an under nurse, or housemaid, or a cook +to make gruels? So that I could do for poor women and little +children? That would seem to come the very nearest. I'd come here, +if you wanted me; but I think I should like best to take care of +poor, good women, whose children had died, or gone away; who haven't +any one to look after them except asylum people. I like to treat +them as if they were all my mothers; and especially to wait on any +little girls that might be sick." + +Was this the same Marion Kent who had given her whole soul, a +little while ago, to fine dressing and public appearing, and having +her name on placards? Had all that life dropped off from her so +easily? + +Ah, you call it easily! _She_ knew, how, passing through the +furnace, it had been burned away; shriveled and annihilated with the +fierce, hot sweep of a spiritual flame before which all old, +unworthy desire vanishes:--the living, awful breath of remorse. + +"I've no doubt you can," said Luclarion. "I'll make inquiries. Mrs. +Sheldon comes here pretty often; and she is one of the managers of +the Women and Children's Hospital. They've just got into a great, +new building, and there'll be people wanted." + +"I'll begin with anything, remember; only to get in, and learn how. +I'll do so they'll want to keep me, and give me more; more work, I +mean. If I could come to nursing, and being depended on!" + +"They train nurses, regular, there. Learn them, so that they can go +anywhere. Then you might some time have a chance to go to somebody +that needed great care; some sick woman or child, or a sick mother, +with little children round her"-- + +"And every day send up some good turn by them to mother and little +Sue!" + +So they bound up her wounds for her, and poured in the oil and wine; +so they put her on their own beast of service, and set her in their +own way, and brought her to a place of abiding. + +Three weeks afterward, she went in as housemaid for the children's +ward to the Hospital; the beautiful charity which stands, a token of +the real best growth of Boston, in that new quarter of her fast +enlarging borders, where the tide of her wealth and her life is +reaching out southward, toward the pure country pleasantness. + +We must leave her there, now; at rest from her ambitions; reaching +into a peace they could never have given her; doing daily work that +comes to her as a sign and pledge of acceptance and forgiveness. + +She sat by a child's bed one Sunday; the bed of a little girl ten +years old, whom she had singled out to do by for Susie's sake. She +had taken the place of a nurse, to-day, who was ill with an ague. + +She read to Maggie the Bible story of Joseph, out of a little book +for children that had been Sue's. + +After the child had fallen asleep, Marion fetched her Bible, to look +back after something in the Scripture words. + +It had come home to her,--that betrayal and desertion of the boy by +his brethren; it stood with her now for a type of her own selfish +unfaithfulness; it thrust a rebuke and a pain upon her, though she +knew she had repented. + +She wanted to see exactly how it was, when, in the Land beyond the +Desert, his brethren came face to face again with Joseph. + +"Now, therefore, be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye +sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life.... +To save your lives with a great deliverance. So it was not you that +sent me hither, but God.... And thou shalt dwell in the land of +Goshen, and thou shalt be near unto me." + +A great throb of thankfulness, of gladness, came rushing up in her; +it filled her eyes with light; it flushed her cheeks with tender +color. The tears sprung shining; but they did not fall. Peace stayed +them. It was such an answer! + +"How pretty you are!" said Maggie, awakening. "Please, give me a +drink of water." + +It was as if Susie thought of it, and gave her the chance! She read +secret, loving meanings now, in things that had their meanings only +for her. She believed in spirit-communication,--for she knew it +came; but in its own beautiful, soul-to-soul ways; not by any +outward spells. + +She went for the water; she found a piece of ice and put in it. She +came and raised the little head tenderly,--the child was hurt in the +back, and could not be lifted up,--and held the goblet to the gentle +lips; lips patient, like Sue's! + +"O, you move me so nice! You give me the drink so handy!" + +The beauty was in Marion's face still, warm with an inward joy; the +child's eyes followed her as she rose from bending over her. + +"Real pretty," she said again, softly, liking to look at her. And +"real" was beginning to be the word, at last, for Marion Kent. + +The glory of that poem she had read, thinking only of her own petty +triumph, came suddenly over her thought by some association,--she +could not trace out how. Its grand meaning was a meaning, all at +once, for her. With a changed phrasing, like a heavenly inspiration, +the last line sprang up in her mind, as if somebody stood by and +spoke it:-- + + "These are the lambs of the sacrifice: _this_ is the court + of the King!" + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII. + +BRICKFIELD FARMS. + + +It was a rainy, desolate day. + +It had rained the day before yesterday, and yesterday, and half +cleared up last night; then this morning it had sullenly and +tiresomely begun again. + +All the forenoon it grew worse; in the afternoon, heavy, pelting, +streaming showers came down, filling the Kiln Hollow with mist, and +hiding the tops of the hills about it with low, rolling, +ever-gathering and resolving clouds. + +It seemed as if all the autumn joy were over; as if the pleasant +days were done with till another year. After this, the cold would +set in. + +Mrs. Jeffords had a bright fire built in Mrs. Argenter's room, +another in the family sitting-room. It looked cosy; but it reminded +the sojourners that they had not simply to draw themselves into +winter-quarters, and be comfortable; their winter-quarters were yet +to seek. + +Sylvie had been cracking a plateful of butternuts; picking out +meats, I mean, from the cracked nuts, to make a plateful; and that, +if you know butternuts, you know is no small task. She brought them +to her mother, with some grated maple sugar sprinkled among and over +them. + +"This is what you liked so much at the Shakers' in Lebanon," she +said. "See if it isn't as nice as theirs, I think it is fresher. +Here is a tiny little pickle-fork, to eat with." + +Mrs. Argenter took the offered dainty. + +"You are a dear child," she said. "Come and eat some too." + +"O, I ate as I went along. Now, I'll read to you." And she took up +"Blindpits," which her mother had laid down. + +"If it only wouldn't storm so," said Mrs. Argenter. "Mrs. Jeffords +says there will be a freshet. The roads will be all torn up. We +shall never be able to get home." + +"O yes, we shall," said Sylvie, cheerily; putting down the wonder +that arose obtrusively in her own mind as to where the home would be +that they should go to. + +"Did Mrs. Jeffords tell you about last year's freshet? And the +apples?" + +"She said they had an awful flood. The brooks turned into rivers, +and the rivers swallowed up everything." + +"O, she didn't get to the funny part, then?" said Sylvie. "She +didn't tell you about the apples?" + +"No. I think she keeps the funny parts for you, Sylvie." + +"May be she does. She isn't sure that you feel up to them, always. +But I guess she means them to come round, when she tells them to me. +You see they had just been gathering their apples, in that great +lower orchard,--five acres of trees, and such a splendid crop! There +they were, all piled up,--can't you imagine? A perfect picture! Red +heaps, and yellow heaps; and greenings, and purple pearmains, and +streaked seek-no-furthers. Like great piles of autumn leaves! Well, +the flood came, and rose up over the flats, into the lower end of +the orchard. They went down over night, and moved all the piles +further up, The next day, they had to move them again. And the next +morning after that, when they woke up, the whole orchard was under +water, and every apple gone. Mr. Jeffords said he got down just in +time to see the last one swim round the corner. And when the flood +had fallen,--there, half a mile below, spread out over the meadow, +was three hundred barrels of apple sauce!" + +Mrs. Argenter laughed a feeble little _expected_ laugh; her heart +was not free to be amused with an apple-story. No wonder Mrs. +Jeffords kept the funny parts for Sylvie. Mrs. Argenter quenched her +before she could possibly get to them. But was Sylvie's heart free +for amusement? What was the difference? The years between them? Mrs. +Jeffords was a far older woman than Mrs. Argenter, and had had her +cares and troubles; yet she and Sylvie laughed like two girls +together, over their work and their stories. That was it,--the work! +Sylvie was doing _all she could_. The cheerfulness of doing followed +irresistibly after, into the loops and intervals of time, and kept +out the fear and the repining. + +"There was nothing that chippered you up so, as being real driving +busy," Mrs. Jeffords said. + +Mrs. Argenter sat in her low easy-chair, watched away the time, and +worried about the time to come. It left no leisure for a laugh. + +Perhaps the hardest thing that Sylvie did through the day, was the +setting to work to "chipper" her mother up. It was lifting up a +weight that continually dropped back again. + +"Do they think this rain will ever be over?" asked Mrs. Argenter, +turning her face toward the dripping panes again. + +"Why, yes, mother; rains always _have_ been over sometime. They +never knew one that wasn't, and they go by experience." + +There was nothing more to be said upon the rain topic, after that +simple piece of logic. + +"If there doesn't come Badgett up the hill in all the pour!" + +Badgett drove the daily stage from Tillington up through Pemunk and +Sandon. He came round by Brickfields when there was anybody to +bring. + +Badgett drove up over the turf door-yard, close to the porch. He +jumped off, unbuttoned the dripping canvas door, and flung it up. + +Mrs. Jeffords was in the entry on the instant; surprised, puzzled, +but all ready to be hospitable, to she didn't know whom. Relations +from Indiana, as likely as not. That is the way people arrive in the +country; and a whole houseful to stay over night does not startle +the hostess as an unexpected guest to dinner may a city one. + +But the persons who alighted from the clumsy stage-wagon were Mr. +Christopher Kirkbright, Miss Euphrasia, and Desire Ledwith. + +"Didn't you get our letter?" said Miss Euphrasia, as Sylvie, from +her mother's door-way, saw who she was, and sprang forward. + +"Why, no, we didn't get no letter," said Mrs. Jeffords. "Father +hasn't been to the office for two days, it's stormed so continual. +But you're just as welcome, exactly. Step right in here." And she +flung open the door of her best parlor, where the new boughten +carpet was, for the damp feet and the dripping waterproof. + +"No, indeed; not there; we couldn't have the conscience." + +"'Tain't very comfortable either, after all," said Mrs. Jeffords, +changing her own mind in a bustle. "It's been kinder shut up. Come +right out to the sittin'-room-fire finally." + +Mr. Kirkbright and Miss Ledwith followed her; Miss Euphrasia went +right into Mrs. Argenter's room, after she had taken off her +waterproof in the hall. + +As she came in at the door, a great flash of sunshine streamed from +under the western clouds, in at the parlor window, followed her +across the hall and enveloped her in light as she entered. + +"Why, the storm's over!" cried Sylvie, joyfully. "You come in on a +sunbeam, like the Angel Gabriel. But you always do. How came you to +come?" + +"I came to answer your letter. You know I don't like to write very +well. And I've brought my brother, and a dear friend of mine whom I +want you to know. It did not rain in Boston when we started, but it +came on again before noon, and all the afternoon it has been a +splendid down-pour. Something really worth while to be out in, you +know; not a little exasperating drizzle. That's the kind of rain one +can't bear, and catches cold in. How the showers swept round the +hills, and the cascades thundered and flashed as we came by! What a +lovely region you have discovered!" + +"It's so beautiful that you're here! We'll go down to the cascades +to-morrow. Won't you just come and introduce me to the others, and +then come back to mother?" + +The others were in the family-room, which was also dining-room. In +the kitchen beyond, Mrs. Jeffords' stove was roaring up for an early +tea, and she was whipping griddle-cakes together. + +"My brother, Mr. Kirkbright--Miss Argenter. Miss Desire +Ledwith--Sylvie." + +The two girls shook hands, and looked in each others faces. + +"How clear, and strong, and trusty!" Sylvie thought. + +"You dear little spirit!" thought Desire, seeing the delicate face, +and the brave sweetness through it. + +This was the second real introduction Miss Euphrasia had made within +ten days. It was a great deal, of that sort, to happen in such space +of time. + +"If it hadn't been for the storm, we might have hurried down and +missed you. Mother was beginning to dread the coming on of the +cold," said Sylvie. "But the rain came and settled it, for just now. +That rested me. A real good 'can't help' is such a comfort." + +"The Father's No. Shutting us in with its grand, gentle forbiddance. +Many a rain-storm is that. I always feel so safe when I am shut up +by really impossible weather." + +After the tea, they were still in time for the whole sunset, +wonderful after the storm. + +Desire had gone from the table to the half-glazed door which opened +from the room into a broad porch, looking out directly across the +hollow, along a valley-line of side-hills, to the distant blue +peaks. + +"O, come!" she cried back to the others, as she hastened out upon +the platform. "It is marvelous!" + +Heavy lines of clouds lay banked together in the west, black with +the remnant and recoil of tempest; between these, through rifts and +breaks, poured down the sunlight across bright spaces into the +bosoms of the hills lighting them up with revelations. The sloping +outlines shone golden green with lingering summer color, and +discovered each separate wave and swell of upland. The searching +shafts fell upon every tree and bush and spire, moving slowly over +them and illuminating point after point, making each suddenly seem +distinct and near. What had been a mere margin of distant woods, +stood eliminated and relieved in bough and stem and leafage, with a +singular pre-Raphaelitic individuality. It was the standing-out of +all things in the last radiance; called up, one by one under the +flash of judgment--beautiful, clear, terrible. + +Then the clouds themselves, as the sun dropped down, drank in the +splendor. They turned to rose and crimson; they floated, and spread, +and broke, and drifted up the valley, against the hills on right and +left. Rags and shreds of them, trailing gorgeous with color, clung +where the ridges caught them, and streamed like fragments of +heavenly banners. The sky repeated the October woods,--the woods the +sky,--in vivid numberless hues. + +The sunset rolled up and around the watchers as they gazed. They +were _in_ it; it lay at their very feet, and beside them at either +hand. Below, the sheet of water in the "Clay-Pits," gleamed like +burnished gold. Here and there, from among the tree-tops, came up +the smoke of little cascades, reaching for baptism into the +pervading glory. + +It was chilly, and they had to go in; but they kept coming back to +window and door, looking out through the closed sashes, and calling, +"Now! now! O, was there ever anything like that?" + +At last it turned into a heavenly vision of still, far, shining +waters; the earth and the pools upon it darkened, and the sky +gathered up into itself the glory, and disclosed its own wider and +diviner beauty. + +A great rampart of gray, blue, violet clouds lay jagged, grand, like +rocks along a shore. Up over them rushed light, crimson surf, +foaming, tossing. Beyond, a rosy sea. In it, little golden boats +floated. The flamy light flung itself up into the calm zenith; there +it met the still heaven-color, and the sky was tender with +saffron-touched blue. + +So the tempest of trouble met the tempest of love in the end of the +day, and the world rolled on into the night under the glory and +peace of their rushing and melting together. + +After all that, they came back by a step and a word--these mortal +observers,--to practical consultation such as mortals must have, and +especially if they be upon their travels; to questions about +bestowal, and the homely, kindly, funny little details of Mrs. +Jeffords' hospitality. + +"Where should she put them? Why, she was _always_ ready. To be sure, +the _front_ upper room had had the carpets taken up since the summer +company went, and the beds were down; but, la, there was room +enough!" + +"There's the east down-stairs bedroom, and the little west-room over +the sittin'-room, and there's _my_ room! I ain't never put out!" + +"But you are; out of your room; and you ought not to be." + +"Don't _care_!" said Mrs. Jeffords, triumphantly. "There's the +kitchen bedroom, that I keep apurpose to camp down in. It's all +right. Don't you worry." + +"You never care; that's the reason I do worry," said Sylvie. + +"I've learnt not to care," said Mrs. Jeffords. "'Tain't no use. You +must take things as they are. They will be so, and you can't help +it. If they fall right side up, well and good; if they're wrong side +up, let 'em lay. And they ain't wrong side up yet, I can tell you. +You just go and sit down and enjoy yourselves." + +Mrs. Argenter was brighter this evening than she had been for a +long while. "It was nice to be among people again," she said, when +the evening was over. + +"So it is," said Sylvie. "But somehow I didn't feel the difference +the other way. I think I always _am_ among people. At least it never +seems to me as if they were very far off. Next door mayn't be +exactly alongside, but it is next door for all that, and it is in +the world. And the world wakes up all together every morning,--that +is, as fast as the morning gets round." + +With her "mayn't be's" and her "is'es," Sylvie was unconsciously +making a habit of the trick of Susan Nipper, but with a kindlier +touch to her antitheses than pertained to those of that acerb +damsel. + +Mrs. Argenter wanted tangible presences. She had not reached so far +as her child into that inner living where all feel each other, +knowing that "these same tribulations"--and joys also--are +accomplished among the brotherhood that is in all the earth; +knowing, too,--ah! that is the blessedness when we come to it,--that +we may walk, already, in the heavenly places with all them that are +alive unto each other in the Lord. + +The next morning after deep rains in a hill-country is a morning of +wonders; if you can go out among them, and know where to find them. +Down the ravines, from the far back, greater heights, rush and +plunge the streams whitened with ecstasy, turned to sweet wild +harmonies as they go. It is a day of glory for the water-drops that +are born to make a part of it. + +Sylvie knew the way down through the glen, from fall to fall, half a +mile apart. She and Bob Jeffords had come down to them, time and +again; after nearly every little summer shower; for with all the +heat, the night rains had been plentiful and frequent, and the +water-courses had been kept full. The brick-fields, that looked so +near from the farms, were really more than two miles away; and it +was a constant descent, from brow to brow, over the range of uplands +between the Jeffords' place and the Basin. + +"The First Cataracts are in here," said Sylvie, gleefully, leading +the way in by a bar-place upon a very wet path, the wetness of which +nobody minded, all having come defended with rubbers and +waterproofs, and tucked up their petticoats boot-high. Great bosks +of ferns grew beside, and here and there a bush burning with autumn +color. Everything shone and dripped; the very stones glittered. + +They climbed up rocky slopes, on which the short gray moss grew, +cushiony. They followed the line of maples and alders and evergreens +that sentineled and hid away the shouting stream, spreading their +skirts and intertwining their arms to shelter it, like the privacy +of some royal child at play, and to keep back from the pilgrims the +beautiful surprise. Upon a rough table-ledge, they came to it at +last; the place where they could lean in between the trees, and +overlook and underlook the shining tumult,--the shifting, yet +enduring apparition of delight. + +It came in two leaps, down a winding channel, through which it +seemed to turn and spring, like some light, graceful, impetuous +living creature. You _felt_ it reach the first rock-landing; you +were conscious of the impetus which forced it on to take the second +spring which brought it down beneath your feet. And it kept +coming--coming. It was an eternal moment; a swift, vanishing, yet +never over-and-done movement of grace and splendor. That is the +magic of a waterfall. Something exquisite by very suggestion of +evanescence, caught _in transitu_, and held for the eye and mind to +dwell on. + +They were never tired of looking. The chance would not come,--that +ought to be a pause,--for them to turn and go away. + +"But there are more," Sylvie said at length, admonishing them. "And +the Second Cataract is grander than this." + +"You number them going down," said Mr. Kirkbright. + +"Yes. People always number things as they come to them, don't they? +Our first is somebody's else last, I suppose, always." + +"What a little spirit that is!" said Christopher Kirkbright to Miss +Euphrasia, dropping back to help his sister down a rocky plunge. + +"A little spirit waked up by touch of misfortune," said Miss +Euphrasia. "She would have gone through life blindfolded by purple +and fine linen, if things had been left as they were with her." + +Desire and Sylvie walked on together. + +"Leave them alone," said Miss Kirkbright to her brother. And she +stopped, and began to gather handfuls of the late ferns. + +Now she had the chance given her, Desire said it straight out, as +she said everything. + +"I came up here after you, Miss Argenter. Did you know it?" + +"No. After me? How?" asked Sylvie. + +"To see if you and your mother would come and make your home with us +this winter,--pretty much as you do with Mrs. Jeffords. I can say +_us_, because Hazel Ripwinkley, my cousin, is with me nearly all +the time; but for the rest of it, I am all the family there really +is, now that Rachel Froke has gone away; unless you came to call my +dear old Frendely 'family,' as I do; seeing that next to Rachel, she +is root and spring of it. You could help me; you could help her; and +I think you would like my work. I should be glad of you; and your +mother could have Rachel Froke's gray parlor. It is a one-sided +proposition, because, you see, I know all about you already, from +Miss Euphrasia. You will have to take me at hazard, and find out by +trying." + +"Do you think the old proverb isn't as true of good words as of +mischief,--that a dog who will fetch a bone will carry a bone?" said +Sylvie, laughing with the same impulse by which clear drops stood +suddenly in her eyes, and a quick rosiness came into her face. "Do +you suppose Miss Euphrasia hasn't told me of you?" + +"I never thought I was one of the people to be told about," said +Desire, simply. "Do you think you could come? Miss Euphrasia +believed it would be what you wanted. There is plenty of room, and +plenty of work. I want you to know that I mean to keep you honestly +busy, because then you will understand that things come out honestly +even." + +"Even! Dear Miss Ledwith!" + +"Then you'll try it?" + +"I don't know how to thank Miss Euphrasia or you." + +"There are no thanks in the bargain," said Desire, smiling. "I want +you; if you want me, it is a Q.E.D. If we _do_ dispute about +anything, we'll leave it out to Miss Euphrasia. She knows how to +make everything right. She shall be our broker. It is a good thing +to have one, in some kinds of trade." + +They had come around the curve in the road now, that brought them +alongside the shady gorge at the foot of Cone Hill. Here was the +little group of brick-makers' houses; empty, weather-beaten, their +door-yards overgrown with brakes and mulleins. Beyond, up the ledge, +to which a rough drive-way, long disused, led off, was the quaint, +rambling edifice that with its feet of stone and brick went "walking +up" the mountain. + +"You must go in and see it," Sylvie said. "But first,--this is the +way to the cascade." + +Another bar-place let them in again to another narrow, wild, +bush-grown path around the edge of the cliff, the lower spur of the +great hill; and down over shelving rocks, a long, gradual descent, +to the foot of the fall. + +The water foamed and rippled to their feet, as they walked along its +varying edge-line on the smooth, sloping stone that stretched back +against the perpendicular rampart of the cliff. The fall itself was +hidden in the turn around which, above, they had followed the +tangled pathway. + +At the farthest projection of the platform they were now treading, +they came upon it; beneath it, rather, they looked back and up at +its showery silver sheet, falling in sweet, continual thunder into +the dark, hollow, rock-encircled pool, thence to tumble away +headlong, from point to point, lower and lower yet, by a thousand +little breaks and plunges, till it came out into a broad meadow +stretch miles and miles away. + +"What a hurry it is in, to get down where it is wanted," said +Desire. + +She had seated herself beside the curling edge of the swift stream, +where it seemed to trace and keep by its own will its boundary upon +the nearly level rock, and was gazing up where the white radiance +poured itself as if direct from out the blue above. + +Mr. Kirkbright stood behind her. + +"Most things come to us at last so quietly," he said. "It is good to +feel and see what a rush it starts with,--out of that heart of +heaven." + +Desire had not said that; but it was just what she had been feeling. +Eager to get to us; coming in a hurry. Was that God's impulse toward +us? + +"Making haste to help and satisfy the world," Mr. Kirkbright said +again. + +"A river of clear water of life, coming down out of the throne," +said Miss Euphrasia. "What a sign it is!" + +Mr. Kirkbright walked along the margin of the ledge, farther and +farther down. He tried with his stick some stones that lay across +the current at a narrow point where beneath the opposite cliff it +bent and turned away, losing itself from their sight as they stood +here. Then he sprang across; crept, stooping, along the narrow +foothold under the projecting rock, until he could follow with his +eye the course of the rapid water, falling continually to its lower +level as it sped on and on, all its volume gathered in one deep, +rocky, unchangeable bed. + +"What a waiting power!" he exclaimed, springing safely back, and +coming up toward them. "What a stream for mills! And it turns +nothing but the farmers' grists, till it gets to Tillington." + +Desire was a very little disappointed at this utilitarianism. She +had been so glad and satisfied with the reading of its type; the +type of its far-back impulse. + +"If there had been mills here, we should not have seen that," she +said; forgetting to explain what. + +But Christopher Kirkbright knew. + +"What was it that we did see?" he asked, coming beside her. + +"The gracious hurry," she answered, with a half-vexed surprise in +her eyes. + +"And what is the next thing to seeing that? Isn't it to partake? To +be in a gracious hurry also, if we can?" + +A smile came up now in Desire's face, and effaced gently the +vexation and the surprise. + +"Do you know what a legible face you have?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, +seating himself near her on a step of rock. + +Desire was a little disturbed again by this movement. The others had +begun to walk on, up the ledge, toward the old brick house; +gathering as they went, ferns that had escaped the frost, others +that had delicately whitened in it, and gorgeous maple-leaves, swept +from topmost, inaccessible branches,--where the most glorious color +always hangs,--by last night's rain and wind. + +It was so foolish of her to have sat there until he came and did +this. Now she could not get right up and go away. This feeling, +coming simultaneously with his question about her legible face, was +doubly uncomfortable. But she had to answer. She did it briefly. + +"Yes. It is a great bother. I don't like coarse print." + +"Nor I. But my eyes are good; and the fine print is clear. I should +like very much to tell you of something that I have to do, Miss +Ledwith. I should like your thoughts upon it. For, you see, I have +hardly yet got acquainted with my ground. From what my sister tells +me, I think your work leads naturally up to mine. I should like to +find out whether it is quite ready for the join." + +"I haven't much work," said Desire. "Luclarion Grapp has; and Miss +Kirkbright, and Mr. Vireo. I only help,--with some money that +belongs to it." + +"And I have more money that belongs to it," said Mr. Kirkbright. + +It was a curious way for a rich man and a rich woman to talk to each +other, about their money. But I do not believe it ought to be +curious. + +"Don't you often come across people who cannot be helped much just +where they are? Don't you feel, sometimes, that there ought to be a +place to send them to, away, out of their old tracks, where they +could begin again; or even hide a while, in shame and repentance, +before they _dare_ to begin again?" + +"I _know_ Luclarion does," said Desire, earnestly. + +She would have it, still, that there was no work in her own name for +him to ask about. + +"I must see this Luclarion of yours," said Mr. Kirkbright. +"Meanwhile, since I have got you to talk to, pray tell me all you +can, whoever found it out. Isn't there a need for a City of Refuge? +And suppose a place like this, away from the towns, where God's +beautiful water is coming down in a hurry, with a cry of power in +every leap,--where there is a great lake-basin full of material for +work, just stored away against men's need for their earning and +their building,--suppose this place taken and used for the giving of +a new chance of life to those who have failed and gone wrong, or +have perhaps hardly ever had any right chances. Do you think we +could manage it so as to _keep_ it a place of refuge and new +beginning, and not let it spoil itself?" + +"With the right people at each end, why not?" said Desire. "But O, +Mr. Kirkbright! how can I tell you! It is such a great idea; and I +don't know anything." + +These words, that she happened to say, brought back to her--by one +of those little lightning threads that hold things together, and +flash and thrill our recollections through us--the rainy morning +when she went round in the storm to her Aunt Ripwinkley's, because +she could not sit in the bay-window at home, and wonder whether "it +was all finished," or whether anybody had got to contrive anything +more, "before they could sit behind plate-glass and let it rain." +She remembered it all by those same words that she had spoken then +to Rachel Froke,--"Behold, we know not anything,--Tennyson and I!" + +Nonsense stays by us, often, in stickier fashion than sense does; +that is the good of nonsense, perhaps; it sticks, and draws the +sense along after it. + +"I think one thing is certain," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Human +creatures are made for 'moving on.' I believe the Swedenborgians are +right in this,--that the places above, or below, are filled from the +human race, or races; and that the Lord Himself couldn't do much +with beings made as He has made us, without places to _move us +into_. New beginnings,--evenings and mornings; the very planet +cannot go on its way without making them for itself. Life bound down +to poor conditions,--and all conditions are poor in the sense of +being limited while the life is resistlessly expanding,--festers; +fevers; breaks out in violence and disease. I believe we want new +places more than anything. I came up here on purpose to see if I +could not begin one." + +"How happened you to come just here?" questioned Desire. "What could +you know of this, beforehand?" + +"My sister had Miss Argenter's letter; and at once she remembered +the name of the place and its story. That is the way things come +together, you know. My brother-in-law, Mr. Sherrett, owns, or did +own, this whole property. A 'dead stick,' he thought it. Well, +Aaron's rod was another dead stick. But he laid it up before the +Lord, and it blossomed." + +Desire sat silent, looking at the white water in its gracious hurry. +Pouring itself away, unused,--unheeded; yet waiting there, pouring +always. The tireless impulse of the divine help; vehement; eager, +with a human eagerness; yet so patient, till men's hands should +reach out and lay hold of it! + +She dreamed out a whole dream of life that might grow up beside this +help; of work that might be done there. She forgot that she was +lingering, and keeping Mr. Kirkbright lingering, behind the others. + +"You would have to live here yourself, I should think," she said at +length, speaking out of her vision of the things that might be, and +so--would have to be. She had got drawn in to the contemplation of +the scheme, and had begun to weigh and arrange, involuntarily, its +details, forgetting that she "knew not anything." + +Mr. Kirkbright smiled. + +"Yes, I see where you are," he said, "I had arrived at precisely the +same point myself. But the 'right people at the other end?' Who +should they be? Who shall send me my villagers,--my workers? Who +shall discriminate for me, and keep things true and unconfused at +the source?" + +"Your sister, Mr. Vireo, Luclarion Grapp," Desire repeated, +promptly. + +"And yourself?" + +"Yes; I and Hazel, all we can. We help them. And now there will be +Miss Argenter. As Hazel said,--'We all of us know the Muffin-man.' +How queer that that ridiculous play should come to mean so much with +us! Luclarion Grapp is actually a muffin-woman, you know?" + +"I'm afraid I don't know the Muffin-_man_ literally, except what I +can guess of him by your application," said Mr. Kirkbright, +laughing. "I've no doubt I ought to, and that it would do me good." + +"You will have to come to Greenley Street, and find him out. Hazel +and Miss Craydocke manage all the introductions, as having a kind of +proprietorship; 'and quite proper, I'm sure'--Why, where are Miss +Kirkbright and Miss Argenter?" + +Coming back to light common speech, she came back also to the +present circumstance; reminded also, perhaps, by her "quite proper" +quotation. + +"If I may come to Greenley Street, I may learn a good deal beside +the Muffin-man," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving her his hand to help +her up a steep, slippery place. + +Desire foolishly blushed. She knew it, and knew that her hat did not +defend her in the least. She could not take it back now; she had +invited him. But what would he think of her blushing about it? + +"You can learn what we all learn. I am only a scholar," she said, +shortly. And then she stood accused before her own truthfulness of +having covered up her blush by a disclaimer that had nothing to do +with it. She was conscious that she had colored like any silly girl, +at she hardly knew what. She was provoked with herself, for letting +the shadow of such things touch her. She hurried on, up the rough +bank, before Mr. Kirkbright. When she reached the top, she turned +round and faced him; this time with a determinedly cool cheek. + +"I don't know why I said that. I did not suppose you thought you +could learn anything of me," she said. "I was confused to think I +had asked you in that offhand way to my house. I have not been very +long used to being the head of a house." + +She smiled one of those bits of smiles of hers; a mere relaxation of +the lips that showed the white tips of her front teeth and just +indicated the peculiar, pretty curve with which the others were set +behind them; feeling reassured and reinstated in her own +self-respect by her explanation. Then, without letting him answer, +she turned swiftly round again, and sprang up the rugged stairway of +the shelving rock. + +But she had not uninvited him, after all. + +They found Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie waiting for them at the red +house. It was a quaint structure, with a kind of old, foreign look +about it. It made you think either of an ancient family mansion in +some provincial French town, or of a convent for nuns. + +It was of dark red brick,--the quality of which Mr. Kirkbright +remarked with satisfaction,--with high walls at the gable ends +carried above the slope of the roof. These were met and overclasped +at the corners by wide, massive eaves. A high, narrow door with a +fan-light occupied the middle of the end before which the party +stood. Windows above, with little balconies, were hung with old red +woolen damask, fading out in stripes; perishing, doubtless, with +moth and decay; in one was suspended a rusty bird-cage which had +once been gilt. + +What an honest neighborhood this was, in which these things had +remained for years, and not even the panes of the windows had been +broken by little boys! But then the villages full of little boys +were miles away, and the single families at the nearer farms were +well ordered Puritan folk, fathered and mothered in careful, old +fashioned sort. There was some indefinite awe, also, of the lonely +place, and of the rich, far-off owner who might come any day to look +after his rights, and make a reckoning with them. + +Up, from platform to platform of the terraced rock, as Sylvie had +said, climbed the successive sections of the dwelling. The front was +two and a half stories high; the last outlying projection was a +single square apartment with its own low roof; towards the back, +within, you went up flight after flight of short stairs from room to +room, from passage to passage. Once or twice, the few broad steps +between two apartments ran the whole width of the same. + +"What a place for plays!" + +"Or for a little children's school, ranged in rows, one above +another." + +"The man who built it must have dreamt it first!" + +These were the exclamations that they made to each other as they +passed through, exploring. + +There was a great number of bedrooms, divided off here and there; +the upper front was one row of them with a gallery running across +the house, in whose windows toward the south hung the old red woolen +draperies and the bird-cage. + +Below, at the back, the last room opened by a door upon a high, flat +table of the rock, around whose overhanging edge a light railing had +been run. Standing here, they looked up and down the beautiful +gorge, into the heart of the hill and the depth of its secret shaded +places on the one hand, and on the other into the rush and whirl of +the rapidly descending and broken torrent to where it flung itself +off the sudden brink, and changed into white mist and an everlasting +song. + +"This last room ought to be a chapel," said Mr. Kirkbright. "Out +here could be open-air service in the beautiful weather, to the +sound of that continual organ." + +"You have thought of it, too," exclaimed Desire. + +"Of what?" asked Mr. Kirkbright, turning toward her. + +"Of what you might make this place." + +"What would you make of it?" + +They were a little apart, by themselves, again. It kept happening +so. Miss Kirkbright and Sylvie had a great deal to say to each +other. + +"I would make it a moral sanatorium. I would take people in here, +and nurse them up by beautiful living, till they were ready to begin +the world again; and then I would have the little new world, of work +and business, waiting just outside. I would have rooms for them +here, that they should feel the _own-ness_ of; flowers to tend; +ferneries in the windows; they could make them from these beautiful +woods, and send them away to the cities; that would be a business at +the very first! I would have all the lovely, natural ways of living +to win them back by,--to teach them pure things; yes,--and I would +have the chapel to teach them the real gospel in! That bird-cage in +the gallery window made me think of it all, I believe," she ended, +bringing herself back out of her enthusiasm with a recollection. + +"I knew you could tell me how," said Mr. Kirkbright, quietly. + +"How Hazel would rejoice in this place! It is a place to set any one +dreaming, I think; because, perhaps, as Miss Kirkbright said, the +man was in a dream when he planned it." + +"I mean to try if one dream cannot be lived," said Christopher +Kirkbright. "At any rate, let us have the _vision_ out, while we are +about it! What do you think of brickmaking for the hard, rough +working men, with families, with those cottages and more like them +to live in; and paper-making, in mills down there, for others; for +the women and children, especially. Paper for hangings, say; then, +some time or other, the printing works, and the designing? Might it +not all grow? And then wouldn't we have a ladder all the way up, for +them to climb by,--out of the clay and common toil to art and +beauty?" + +"You can dream delightfully, Mr. Kirkbright." + +"I will see if I cannot begin to turn it into fact, and make it +pay," he answered. "Pay itself, and keep itself going. I do not need +to look for my fortune from it. The fortune is to be put into it. +But I have no right to lose,--to throw away,--the fortune. It must +come by degrees, like all things. You know some people say that God +dreamed the heavens and the earth in those six wonderful days, and +then took his millions of years for the everlasting making, with the +Sabbath of his divine satisfaction between the two. If I cannot do +the whole, there may be others,--and if there are, we shall find +them,--who would help to build the city." + +"I know who," said Desire, instantly. "Dakie Thayne, and Ruth! It is +just what they want." + +"Will 'Dakie Thayne' build a railroad,--seven miles,--across to +Tillington,--for our transportation? We'll say he will. I have no +question it is Dakie Thayne, or somebody, who is waiting, and that +the right people are all linked together, ready to draw each other +in," said Mr. Kirkbright, giving rein to the very lightness of +gladness in the joy of the thought he was pursuing. "We don't know +how we stand leashed and looped, all over the world, until the Lord +begins to take us in hand, and bring us together toward his grand +intents. We shall want another Hilary Vireo to preach that gospel +here; and I don't doubt he is somewhere, though it would hardly seem +possible." + +"Why don't we preach it ourselves?" said Desire, with inimitable +unwittingness. She was so utterly and wholly in the vision, that she +left her present self standing there on the rock with Christopher +Kirkbright, and never even thought of a reason why to blush before +him. + +"I don't know why we shouldn't. In fact, we could not help it. It +would be _all_ gospel, wouldn't it? I know, at least, what I should +mean the whole thing to preach." + +Saying this, he fell silent all at once. + +"There is a great deal of wrong gospel preached in the world. If we +could only stop that, and begin again,--I think!" said Desire. +"Between the old, hopeless terrors and the modern smoothing away and +letting go, the real living help seems to have failed men. They +don't know where it is, or whether they need it, even." + +"Yes, that is it," said Christopher Kirkbright, letting his silence +be broken through with the whole tide of his earnest, life-long, +pondered thought. "Men have put aside the old idea of the avenging +and punishing God, until they think they have no longer any need of +Christ. God is Love, they tell us; not recognizing that the Christ +_is_ that very Love of God. He will not cast us into hell, they say; +there _is_ no pit of burning torment. But they know there is +something that follows after sin; they know that God is not weak, +but abides by his own truth. Therefore, when they have made out God +to be Love, and blotted away the old, literal hell, they turn back +and declare pitilessly,--'There is _Law_. Law punishes; and Law is +inexorable. God Himself does not suspend or contradict his Law. You +have sinned; you must take the consequences.' Are you better off in +the clutch of that Law, than you were in the old hell? Isn't there +the same need as ever crying up from hearts of suffering men for a +Saviour? Of a side of God to be shown to them,--the forgiving side, +the restoring right hand? The power to grasp and curb his own law? +You must have Jesus again! You must have the Christ of God to help +you against the Law of God that you have put in the place of the +hell you will not believe in. Without a counteracting force, law +will run on forever. The impetus that sin started will bear on +downward, through the eternities! This is what threatens the sinner; +and you have sinned. Beyond and above and through the necessities +that He seems to have made, God reveals himself supreme in love, in +the Face of Jesus Christ. He comes in the very midst of the clouds, +with power and great glory! 'I have _provided_ a way,' He says, +'from the foundations,--for you to repent and for Me to take you +back. It was a part of my _plan_ to forgive. You have seen but half +the revolution of my wheel of Law. Fling yourself upon it; believe; +you shall be broken; but you shall _not_ be ground into powder. You +shall find yourselves lifted up into the eternal peace and safety; +you shall feel yourself folded in the arms of my tender compassion. +The bones that I have broken shall rejoice. Your life shall be set +right for you, notwithstanding the Law: yea, _by_ the law. _I have +provided_. Only believe.' + +"This is the word,--the Christ,--on God's part This is repentance +and saving faith, on our part. It is the Gospel. And it came by the +mouth, and the interpreting and confirming acts, of Jesus. The +_power_ of the acts was little matter; the _expression_ of the acts +was everything. He proclaimed forgiveness,--He healed disease; He +reversed evil and turned it back. He changed death into +life,--taking away the sting--the implantation--of it, which is sin. +For evermore the might of the Redemption stands above the might of +the Law that was transgressed." + +"You have dedicated your chapel, Mr. Kirkbright." + +Desire Ledwith said it, with that emotion which makes the voice +sound restrained and deep; and as she said it, she turned to go back +into the house. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX. + +BLOSSOMING FERNS. + + +The minister's covered carryall was borrowed from two miles off, to +take Mrs. Argenter down to Tillington. + +All she knew about the winter plan was that Miss Ledwith was a +friend of Miss Kirkbright's, had a large, old-fashioned house, and +scarcely any household, and would be glad to have herself and Sylvie +take rooms with her for several months. She had a vague idea that +Miss Ledwith might be somewhat restricted in her means, and that to +receive lodgers in a friendly way would be an "object" to her. She +talked, indeed, with a gentle complaisance to Miss Kirkbright, about +its not being exactly what they had intended,--they had thought of +rooms at Hotel Pelham or Boylston, so central and so near the +Libraries; but after all, what she needed most was quiet and no +stairs; and she had a horror of elevators, and a dread of fire; so +that this was really better, perhaps; and Miss Ledwith was a very +sweet person. + +Miss Euphrasia smiled; "sweet," especially in the silvery tone in +which Mrs. Argenter uttered it, was the last monosyllabic epithet +she would have selected as applying to grave, earnest, downright +Desire. + +At East Keaton, the train stopped for five minutes. + +Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother's +foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just +returned with it. She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter's +feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her +chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which +the party was, and came up behind her. + +She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose. + +"I beg your pardon," she said, instinctively, and turned as she +spoke. + +"What for?" asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and +grasping hers before she was well aware. + +There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise +crimsoned her cheek. These two had not seen each other all summer. + +Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other. + +"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly +her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was +made to!" + +"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for +your country summer? Aunt Effie! _You're_ not surprised to see me? +Did you think I would let you go down without?" + +No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday +afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to +come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this +moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in +the most inaccessible corner of the car. + +"You're not going down to the city?" + +But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her. + +"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say. +One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all +others,--repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in +four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header, +straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the +confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a +pincushion." + +"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a +little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did, +because she was so pleased she could not help it. + +They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing +each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the +same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared +claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been +filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the +opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and +tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a +House of Refuge. + +"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped +with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,--except _my_ +home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia." + +There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie, +with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months +among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff. + +Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you +anything before as concerning him. + +He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning +at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and +harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and +kerseys; _driving_, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something +and making it go. + +"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but +there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage; +that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and +the dust. Why, _this_ is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't +make me deaf,--and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said, +with an indescribably pathetic demureness. + +"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily. + +"Well,--yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I +should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a +great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the +first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it +for two years, before I--ask him for anything else. I think I shall +have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about +my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They +always do." + +What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him; +he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy. + +But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in +all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash +should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound! + +Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though +they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had +to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with +his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away +beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt +Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner, +reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little +with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange, +all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter +grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped +Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and +improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs. +Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on. + +And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted +and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and +amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for +making of herself. + +Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with +great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that +people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a +boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet. + +"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an +urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves +wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms +dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive +here, for him to be let in." + +Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never +do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback. + +"Boy! Here! toss up your load!" + +The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came +the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the +platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels +drooping all about him. + +Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made +her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and +exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers +toward them with a smile. + +"Such a quantity--for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into +her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were, +Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we +Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them +all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully +round and round into a heap. + +No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf; +she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well +what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for. + +In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns +again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and +significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into +her lap. + +She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down +beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to +catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his +very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a +strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the +life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her. + +It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it, +neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking, +were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October +afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true, +some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that +evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take +the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our +lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed +off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it +just like this." + +Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him +on his cheek, saying nothing. + +But to herself she said, after he had gone,-- + +"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out +together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is +anybody sure of the rest of it?" + +Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers. + + + + +CHAPTER XX. + +"WANTED." + + +The half of course and half critical way in which Mrs. Argenter took +possession of the gray parlor would have been funny, if it had not +been painful, to Sylvie, feeling almost wrong and wickedly deceitful +in betraying her mother, through ignorance of the real arrangements, +into a false and unsuitable attitude; and to Desire, for Sylvie's +sake. + +She thought it would do nicely if the windows weren't too low, and +if the little stove-grate could be replaced by an open wood fire. +Couldn't she have a Franklin, or couldn't the fire-place be +unbricked? + +"I don't think you'll mind, with cannel coal," said Sylvie. "That is +so cheerful; and there won't be any smoke, for Miss Ledwith says the +draught is excellent." + +"But it stands out, and takes up room; and people never keep the +carpet clean behind it!" said Mrs. Argenter. + +"I'll take care of that," said Sylvie. "It is my business. We +couldn't have these rooms, you see, except just as I have agreed for +them; and you know I like making things nice myself in the morning." + +Desire had delicately withdrawn by this time; and presently coming +back with a cup of tea upon a little tray, which refreshment she was +sure Mrs. Argenter would need at once after her journey, she found +the lady sitting quite serenely in the low cushioned chair before +the obnoxious grate, in which Sylvie had kindled the lump of cannel +that lay all ready for the match, in a folded newspaper, with three +little pitch-pine sticks. + +There was something so dainty and compact about it, and the bright +blaze answered so speedily to the communicating touch, the black +layers falling away from each other in rich, bituminous flakiness, +and letting the fire-tongues through, that she looked on in the +happy complacence with which idle or disabled persons always enjoy +something that does itself, yet can be followed in the doing with a +certain passive sense of participancy. + +In the same manner she watched Sylvie putting away wraps, unlocking +trunks, laying forth dressing-gowns and night-clothes, and setting +out toilet cases upon table and stand. + +For the gray parlor contained now, for Mrs. Argenter's use, a +pretty, low, curtained French bed, and the other appliances of a +sleeping-room. A bedroom adjoining, which had been Mrs. Froke's, was +to be Sylvie's; and this had a further communication directly with +the kitchen, which would be just the thing for Sylvie's quiet +flittings to and fro in the fulfillment of her gladly undertaken +duties. All Mrs. Argenter knew about it was that she should be able +to have her hot water promptly in the mornings, without being +intruded upon. + +Sylvie had insisted upon Desire's receiving the seven dollars a week +which she was still able to pay for her mother's board. Nobody had +told her of Miss Ledwith's very large wealth, and it would have made +no difference if she had known it, except the exciting in her of a +quick question why they had been taken in at all, and whether she +were not indeed being in her turn benevolently practised upon, as +she with much compunction practised upon her mother. + +"I know very well that I could not earn, beyond my own board, more +than the difference between that and the ten dollars she would have +to pay anywhere else," she said, simply. And Miss Kirkbright as +simply told Desire, privately, to let it be so. + +"If you don't need the pay, she needs the payment," she said. + +Desire quietly put it all aside, as she received it. "Sometime or +other I shall be able to tell her all about it, and make her take it +back," she said. "When she has come to understand, she will know +that it is no more mine than hers; and if I do not keep it I can see +very well it will all go after the rest, for whatever whims she can +possibly gratify her mother in." + +There began to be happy times for Sylvie now, in Frendely's kitchen, +in Desire's library; all over the house, wherever there was any +little care to take, any service to render. Mrs. Argenter did not +miss her; she read a great deal, and slept a great deal, and Sylvie +was rarely gone long at a time. She was always ready at twilight to +play backgammon, or a game of what she called "skin-deep chess," for +her mother was not able to bear the exertion or excitement of chess +in real, deep earnest. Sylvie brought her sewing, also,--work for +Neighbor Street it was, mostly,--into the gray parlor, and "sewed +for two," on the principle of the fire-watching, that something busy +might be going on in the room, and Mrs. Argenter might have the +content of seeing it. + +On the Wednesday evenings recurred the delightful "Read-and-Talk," +when the Ingrahams came, and Bel Bree, and a dozen or so more of the +"other girls"; when on the big table treasures of picture, map, +stereoscope and story were brought forth; when they traversed far +countries, studied in art-galleries and frescoed churches, traced +back old historic associations; did not hurry or rush, but stayed in +place after place, at point after point, looking it all thoroughly +up, enjoying it like people who could take the world in the leisure +of years. And as they did not have the actual miles to go over, the +standing about to do, and the fatigues to sleep between, they could +"work in the ground fast," like Hamlet, or any other spirit. Their +hours stood for months; their two months had given them already +winters and summers of enchantment. + +Hazel Ripwinkley, and very often Ada Geoffrey, was here at these +travelling parties. Ada had all her mother's resources of books, +engravings, models, specimens, at her command; she would come with a +carriage-full. Sometimes the library was Rome for an evening, with +its Sistine Raphaels, its curious relics and ornaments, its Coliseum +and St. Peter's in alabaster, its views of tombs, and baths, and +temples. Sometimes it was Venice; again it was transformed into a +dream of Switzerland, and again, there were the pyramids, the +obelisks, the sphinxes, the giant walls and gateways of Egypt, with +a Nile boat, and lotus flowers, and papyrus reeds, in reality or +fac-simile,--even a mummied finger and a scaraboeus ring. + +They were not restricted, even, to a regular route, when their +subject took them out of it. They could have a glimpse of Memphis, +or Babylon, or Alexandria, or Athens, by way of following out an +allusion or synchronism. + +Hazel and Ada almost came to the conclusion that this was the +perfection of travelling, and the supersedure of all literal and +laborious sightseeing; and Sylvie Argenter ventured the Nipperism +that "tea and coffee and spices might or might not be a little +different right off the bush, but if shiploads were coming in to you +all the time, you might combine things with as much comfort on the +whole, perhaps, as you would have in sailing round for every +separate pinch to Ceylon, and Java, and Canton." + +The leaf had got turned between Leicester Place and Pilgrim Street. +I suppose you knew it would as well as I. + +Bel Bree had met Dorothy first in silk-and-button errands for her +Aunt Blin's "finishings," at the thread-store where Dot tended. +(Such machine-sewing as they could obtain, Ray had done at home, +since they came into the city; and Dot had taken this place at Brade +and Matchett's.) Then they came across each other in their waitings +at the Public Library, and so found out their near neighborhood. At +last, growing intimate, Dorothy had introduced Bel to the Chapel +Bible class, and thence brought her into Desire's especial little +club at her own house. + +After the travel-talk was over,--and they began with it early, so +that all might reach home at a safe hour in the evening,--very often +some one or two would linger a few moments for some little talk of +confidence or advice with Desire. These girls brought their plans to +her; their disappointments, their difficulties, their suggestions; +not one would make a change, or take any new action, without telling +her. They knew she cared for them. It was the beginning of all +religion that she taught them in this faith, this friendliness. +Every soul wants some one to come to; it is easy to pass from the +experience of human sympathy to the thought of the Divine; without +it the Divine has never been revealed. + +One bright night in this October, Dot Ingraham waited, letting her +sister walk on with Frank Sunderline, who had called for them, and +asking Bel Bree to stop a minute and go with her. "We'll take the +car, presently," she said to Ray. "We shall be at home almost as +soon as you will." + +"It is about the shop work," she said to Desire, who stepped back +into the library with her. + +"I do not think I can do it much longer. I am pretty strong for some +things, but this terrible _standing_! I could _walk_ all day; but +cramped up behind those counters, and then reaching up and down the +boxes and things,--I feel sometimes when I get through at night, as +if my bones had all been racked. I haven't told them at home, for +fear they would worry about me; they think now I've lost flesh, and +I suppose I have; and I don't have much appetite; it seems dragged +out of me. And then,--I can't say it before the others, for they're +in shops, some of 'em, and places may be different; but it's such a +window and counter parade, besides; and they do look out for it. +People stare in at the store as they go by; Margaret Shoey has the +glove counter at that end, and she knows Mr. Matchett keeps her +there on purpose to attract; she sets herself up and takes airs upon +it; and Sarah Cilley does everything she sees her do, and comes in +for the second-hand attention. Mr. Matchett asked me the other day +if I couldn't wear a panier, and do up my hair a little more +stylish! I can't stay there; it isn't fit for girls!" + +Dot's cheeks flamed, and there were tears in her eyes. Desire +Ledwith stood with a thoughtful, troubled expression in her own. + +"There ought to be other ways," she said. "There ought to be more +_sheltered_ work for girls!" + +"There is," said little Bel Bree from the doorway "in houses. If I +hadn't Aunt Blin, I'd go right into a family as seamstress or +anything. I don't believe in out-doors and shops. I've only lived in +the city a little while, but I've seen it. And just think of the +streets and streets of nice houses, where people live, and girls +have to live with 'em, to do real woman's home work! And it's all +given up to foreign servants, and _our_ girls go adrift, and live +anyhow. 'Tain't right!" + +"There is a good deal that isn't right about it," said Desire, +gravely; knowing better than Bel the difficulties in the way of new +domestic ideas. "And a part of it is that the houses aren't built, +or the ways of living planned, for 'our girls,' exactly. Our girls +aren't happy in underground kitchens and sky bedrooms." + +"I don't know. They might as well be underground as in some of those +close, crowded shops. And their bedrooms can't be much to compare, +certain. I'm afraid they like the crowds best. If they wanted to, +and would work in, and try, they might contrive. Things fix +themselves accordingly, after a while. Somebody's got to begin. I +can't help thinking about it." + +Desire smiled. + +"Your thinking may be a first sign of good times, little Bel," she +said. "Think on. That is the way everything begins; with a +restlessness in some one or two heads about it. Perhaps that is just +what you have come down from New Hampshire for." + +"I don't know," said Bel again. She began a good many of her +reflective, suggestive little speeches with that hesitating feeler +into the fog of social perplexity she essayed. "They're just as bad +up there, now. They all get away to the towns, and the trades, and +the stores They won't go into the houses; and they might have such +good places!" + +"You came yourself, you see?" + +"Yes. I wasn't contented. And things were particular with me. And I +had Aunt Blin. I don't want to go back, either. But I can see how it +is." + +"Things are particular with each one, in some sort or another. That +is what settles it, I suppose, and ought to. The only thing is to be +sure that it is a _right_ particular that does it; that we don't let +in any wrong particular, anywhere. For you, Dorothy, I don't believe +shop-life is the thing. You have found it out. Why not change at +once? There is the machine at home, and Ray is going to be busy in +Neighbor Street. Won't her work naturally come to you?" + +"There isn't much of it, and it is so uncertain. The shops take up +all the bulk of work nowadays; everything is wholesale; and I don't +want to go into the rooms, if I can help it. I don't like days' +work, either. The fact is, I want a quiet place, and the same +things. I like my own machine. I would go with it into a family, if +I could have my own room, and be nice, and not have to eat with +careless, common servants in a dirty kitchen. Mother would spare +me,--to a real good situation; and I would come home Sundays." + +"I see. What you want is somewhere, of course. Wouldn't you +advertise?" + +"Would _you_?" + +"Yes, I think I would. Say exactly what you want, wages and all. And +put it into some family Sunday paper,--the 'Christian Register,' for +instance. Those things get read over and over; and the same paper +lies about a week. In the dailies, one thing crowds out another; a +new list every night and morning. See here, I'll write one now. +Perhaps it wouldn't be too late for this week. Would you go out of +town?" + +"_Wouldn't_ I? I think sometimes that's just what ails me; wanting +to see soft roads and green grass and door-yards and sun between the +houses! But I couldn't go far, of course." + +Desire's pencil was flying over the paper. + +"'Wanted; a permanent situation in a pleasant family, as seamstress, +by a young girl used to all kinds of sewing, who will bring her own +machine. Would like a room to herself, and to have her meals +orderly and comfortable, whether with the family or otherwise. +Wages'--What?" + +"By the day, I could get a dollar and a quarter, at least; but for a +real good home-place, I'd go for four dollars a week." + +"'Wages, $4.00 per week. A little way out of town preferred.' There! +There are such places, and why shouldn't one come to you? Take that +down to the 'Register' office to-morrow morning, and have it put in +twice, unless stopped." + +"Thank you. It's all easy enough, Miss Ledwith. Why didn't I work it +out myself?" + +"It isn't quite worked out, yet. But things always look clearer, +somehow, through two pairs of eyes. Good-night. Let me know what you +hear about it." + +"She'll surprise some family with such a seamstress as they read +about," said Bel Bree, on the door-step. "I should like to astonish +people, sometime, with a heavenly kind of general housework." + +"That was a good idea of yours about the Sunday paper," said Sylvie, +as she and Hazel and Desire went back into the library to put away +the books. "But what when the common sort pick up the dodge, and +the weeklies get full of 'Wanteds'? Nothing holds out fresh, very +long." + +"There _ought_ to be," said Desire, "some filtered process for these +things; some way of sifting and certifying. A bureau of mutual +understanding between the 'real folks,'--employers and employed. I +believe it might be. There ought to be for this, and for many +things, a fellowship organized, between women of different outward +degree. And something will happen, sooner or later, to bring it +about. A money crisis, perhaps, to throw these girls out of +shop-employment, and to make heads of households look into ways of +more careful managing. A mutual need,--or the seeing of it. The need +is now; these girls--half of them--want homes, more than anything; +and the homes are suffering for the help of just such girls." + +"Why don't you edit a paper, Desire? The 'Fellowship Register,' or +the 'Domestic Intelligencer,' or something! And keep lists of all +the nice, real housekeepers, and the nice, real, willing girls?" + +"That isn't a bad notion, Hazie. Your notions never are. May be that +is what is waiting for you. Just cover up that 'raised Switzerland,' +will you, and bring it over here? And roll up the 'Course of the +Rhine,' and set it in the corner. There; now we may put out the gas. +Sylvie, has your mother had her fresh camomile tea?" + +The three girls bade each other good-night at the stairs; just where +Desire had stood once, and put her arms about Uncle Titus's neck for +the first time. She often thought of it now, when they went up after +the pleasant evenings, and came down in the bright mornings to their +cheery breakfasts. She liked to stop on just that step. Nobody knew +all it meant to her, when she did. There are places in every +dwelling that keep such secrets for one heart and memory alone. + +Yes, indeed. Sylvie was very happy now. All her pretty pictures, and +little brackets, and her mother's stands and vases in the gray +parlor, were hung with the lovely, wreathing, fairy stems of +star-leaved, blossomy fern; and the sweet, dry scent was a perpetual +subtle message. That day in the train from East Keaton was a day to +pervade the winter, as this woodland breath pervaded the old city +house. Sylvie could wait with what she had, sure that, sometime, +more was coming. She could wait better than Rodney. Because,--she +knew she was waiting, and satisfied to wait. How did Rodney know +that? + +It was what he kept asking his Aunt Euphrasia in his frequent, +boyish, yet most manly, letters. And she kept answering, "You need +not fear. I think I understand Sylvie. I can see. If there were +anything in the way, I would tell you." + +But at last she had to say,--not, "I think I understand +Sylvie,"--but, "I understand girls, Rodney. I am a woman, remember. +I have been a girl, and I have waited. I have waited all my life. +The right girls can." + +And Rodney said, tossing up the letter with a shout, and catching it +with a loving grasp between his hands again,-- + +"Good for you, you dear, brave, blessed ace of hearts in a world +where hearts are trumps! If you ain't one of the right old girls, +then they don't make 'em, and never did!" + + + + +CHAPTER XXI. + +VOICES AND VISIONS. + + +Madame Bylles herself walked into the great work-room of Mesdames +Fillmer & Bylles, one Saturday morning. + +Madame Bylles was a lady of great girth and presence. If Miss Tonker +were sub-aristocratic, Madame Bylles was almost super-aristocratic, +so cumulative had been the effect upon her style and manner of +constant professional contact with the elite. Carriages had rolled +up to her door, until she had got the roll of them into her very +voice. Airs and graces had swept in and out of her private +audience-room, that had not been able to take all of themselves away +again. As the very dust grows golden and precious where certain +workmanship is carried on, the touch and step and speech of those +who had come ordering, consulting, coaxing, beseeching, to her +apartments, had filled them with infinitesimal particles of a +sublime efflorescence, by which the air itself in which they floated +became--not the air of shop or business or down-town street--but the +air of drawing-room, and bon-ton, and Beacon Hill or the New Land. + +And Madame Bylles breathed it all the time; she dwelt in the courtly +contagion. When she came in among her work-people, it was an advent +of awe. It was as if all the elegance that had ever been made up +there came floating and spreading and shining in, on one portly and +magnificent person. + +But when Madame Bylles came in, in one of her majestic hurries! +Then it was as if the globe itself had orders to move on a little +faster, and make out the year in two hundred and eighty days or so, +and she was appointed to see it done. + +She was in one of these grand and grave accelerations this morning. +Miss Pashaw's marriage was fixed for a fortnight earlier than had +been intended, business calling Mr. Soldane abroad. There were +dresses to be hurried; work for over-hours was to be given out. Miss +Tonker was to use every exertion; temporary hands, if reliable, +might be employed. All must be ready by Thursday next; Madame Bylles +had given her word for it. + +The manner in which she loftily transmitted this grand intelligence, +warm from the high-born lips that had favored her with the +confidence,--the air of intending it for Miss Tonker's secondarily +distinguished ear alone, while the carriage-roll in her accents bore +it to the farthest corner in the room, where the meekest little +woman sat basting,--these things are indescribable. But they are in +human nature: you can call them up and scrutinize them for yourself. + +Madame Bylles receded like a tidal wave, having heaved up, and +changed, and overwhelmed all things. + +A great buzz succeeded her departure; Miss Tonker followed her out +upon the landing. + +"I'll speak for that cashmere peignoir that is just cut out. I'll +make it nights, and earn me an ostrich band for my hat," said Elise +Mokey. + +One spoke for one thing; one another; they were claimed beforehand, +in this fashion, by a kind of work-women's code; as publishers +advertise foreign books in press, and keep the first right by +courtesy. + +Miss Proddle stopped her machine at last, and caught the news in her +slow fashion hind side before. + +"We might some of us have overwork, I should think; shouldn't you?" +she asked, blandly, of Miss Bree. + +Aunt Blin smiled. "They've been squabbling over it these five +minutes," she replied. + +Aunt Blin was sure of some particular finishing, that none could do +like her precise old self. + +Kate Sencerbox jumped up impatiently, reaching over for some fringe. + +"I shall have to give it up," she whispered emphatically into Bel +Bree's ear. "It's no use your asking me to go to Chapel any more. I +ain't sanctified a grain. I did begin to think there was a kind of +work of grace begun in me,--but I _can't_ stand Miss Proddle! What +_are_ people made to strike ten for, always, when it's eleven?" + +"I think _we_ are all striking _twelve_" said Bel Bree. "One's too +fast, and another's too slow, but the sun goes round exactly the +same." + +Miss Tonker came back, and the talk hushed. + +"Clock struck one, and down they run, hickory, dickory, dock," said +Miss Proddle, deliberately, so that her voice brought up the +subsiding rear of sound and was heard alone. + +"What _under_ the sun?" exclaimed Miss Tonker, with a gaze of +mingled amazement, mystification, and contempt, at the poor old +maiden making such unwonted noise. + +"Yes'm," said Kate Sencerbox. "It is 'under the sun,' that we're +talking about; the way things turn round, and clocks strike; some +too fast, and some too slow; and--whether there's anything new under +the sun. I think there is; Miss Proddle made a bright speech, that's +all." + +Miss Tonker, utterly bewildered, took refuge in solemn and +supercilious disregard; as if she saw the joke, and considered it +quite beneath remark. + +"You will please resume your work, and remember the rules," she +said, and sailed down upon the cutters' table. + +There was a certain silk evening dress, of singular and +indescribably lovely tint,--a tea-rose pink; just the color of the +blush and creaminess that mingle themselves into such delicious +anonymousness in the exquisite flower. It was all puffed and fluted +till it looked as if it had really blossomed with uncounted curving +petals, that showed in their tender convolutions each possible +deepening and brightening of its wonderful hue. + +It _looked_ fragrant. It conveyed a subtle sense of flavor. It fed +and provoked every perceptive sense. + +It was not a dress to be hurried with; every quill and gather of its +trimming must be "set just so;" and there was still one flounce to +be made, and these others were only basted, as also the corsage. + +After the hours were up that afternoon, Miss Tonker called Aunt Blin +aside. She uncovered the large white box in which it lay, +unfinished. + +"You have a nice room, Miss Bree. Can you take this home and finish +it,--by Wednesday? In over-hours, I mean; I shall want you here +daytimes, as usual. It has been tried on; all but for the hanging of +the skirt; you can take the measures from the white one. _That_ I +shall finish myself." + +Aunt Blin's voice trembled with humble ecstasy as she answered. She +thanked Miss Tonker in a tone timid with an apprehension of some +possible unacceptableness which should disturb or change the +favoring grace. + +"Certainly, ma'am. I'll spread a sheet on the floor, and put a +white cloth on the table. Thank you, ma'am. Yes; I have a nice room, +and nothing gets meddled with. It'll be quite safe there. I'm sure +I'm no less than happy to be allowed. You're very kind, ma'am." + +Miss Tonker said nothing at all to the meekly nervous outpouring. +She did not snub her, however; that was something. + +Miss Bree and her niece, between them, carried home the large box. + +On the way, a dream ran through the head of Bel. She could not help +it. + +To have this beautiful dress in the house,--perhaps to have to stand +up and be tried to, for the fall of its delicate, rosy trail; with +the white cloth on the floor, and the bright light all through the +room,--why it would be almost like a minute of a ball; and what if +the door should be open, and somebody should happen to go by, +up-stairs? If she could be so, and be seen so, just one minute, in +that blush-colored silk! She should like to look like that, just +once, to somebody! + +Ah, little Bel! behind all her cosy, practical living--all her busy +work and contentedness--all her bright notions of what might be +possible, for the better, in things that concerned her class,--she +had her little, vague, bewildering flashes of vision, in which she +saw impossible things; things that might happen in a book, things +that must be so beautiful if they ever did really happen! + +A step went up and down the stairs and along the passage by her +aunt's room, day by day, that she had learned to notice every time +it came. A face had glanced in upon her now and then, when the door +stood open for coolness in the warm September weather, when they +had been obliged to have a fire to make the tea, or to heat an iron +to press out seams in work that they were doing. One or two days of +each week, they had taken work home. On those days, they did, +perhaps, their own little washing or ironing, besides; sewing +between whiles, and taking turns, and continuing at their needles +far on into the night. Once Mr. Hewland had come in, to help Aunt +Blin with a blind that was swinging by a single hinge, and which she +was trying, against a boisterous wind, to reset with the other. +After that, he had always spoken to them when he met them. He had +opened and shut the street-door for them, standing back, +courteously, with his hat in his hand, to let them pass. + +Aunt Blin,--dear old simple, kindly-hearted Aunt Blin, who believed +cats and birds,--_her_ cat and bird, at least,--might be thrown +trustfully into each other's company, if only she impressed it +sufficiently upon the quadruped's mind from the beginning, that the +bird was "very, _very_ precious,"--thought Mr. Hewland was "such a +nice young man." + +And so he was. A nice, genial, well-meaning, well-bred gentleman; +above anything ignoble, or consciously culpable, or common. His +danger lay in his higher tendencies. He had artistic tastes; he was +a lover of all grace and natural sweetness; no line of beauty could +escape him. More than that, he drew toward all that was most +genuine; he cared nothing for the elegant artificialities among +which his social position placed him. He had been singularly +attracted by this little New Hampshire girl, fresh and pretty as a +wild rose, and full of bright, quaint ways and speech, of which he +had caught glimpses and fragments in their near neighborhood. Now +and then, from her open window up to his had come her gay, sweet +laugh; or her raised, gleeful tone, as she said some funny, quick, +shrewd thing in her original fashion to her aunt. + +Through the month of August, while work was slack, and the Hewland +family was away travelling, and other lodgers' rooms were vacated, +the Brees had been more at home, and Morris Hewland had been more in +his rooms above, than had been usual at most times. The music +mistress had taken a vacation, and gone into the country; only old +Mr. Sparrow, lame with one weak ankle, hopped up and down; and the +spare, odd-faced landlady glided about the passages with her prim +profile always in the same pose, reminding one of a badly-made +rag-doll, of which the nose, chin, and chest are in one invincible +flat line, interrupted feebly by an unsuccessful hint of drawing in +at the throat. + +Mr. Hewland liked June for his travels; and July and August, when +everybody was out of the way, for his quiet summer work. + +The Hewlands called him odd, and let him go; he stayed at home +sometimes, and he happened in and out, they knew where to find him, +and there was "no harm in Morris but his artistic peculiarities." + +He had secured in these out-of-the way-lodgings in Leicester Place, +one of the best north lights that could be had in the city; he would +not take a room among a lot of others in a Studio Building. So he +worked up his studies, painted his pictures, let nobody come near +him except as he chose to bring them, and when he wanted anything of +the world, went out into the world and got it. + +Now, something had come right in here close to him, which brought +him a certain sense of such a world as he could not go out into at +will, to get what he wanted. A world of simplicities, of blessed +contents, of unworn, joyous impulses, of little new, unceasing +spontaneities; a world that he looked into, as we used to do at +Sattler's Cosmoramas, through the merest peepholes, and comprehended +by the merest hints; but which the presence of this girl under the +roof with himself as surely revealed to him as the wind-flower +reveals the spring. + +On her part, Bel Bree got a glimpse, she knew not how, of a world +above and beyond her own; a world of beauty, of power, of reach and +elevation, in which people like Morris Hewland dwelt. His step, his +voice, his words now and then to the friend or two whom he had the +habit of bringing in with him,--the mere knowledge that he "made +pictures," such pictures as she looked at in the windows and in +art-dealers' rooms, where any shop-girl, as freely as the most +elegant connoisseur, can go in and delight her eyes, and inform her +perceptions,--these, without the face even, which had turned its +magnetism straight upon hers only once or twice, and whose +revelation was that of a life related to things wide and full and +manifold,--gave her the stimulating sense of a something to which +she had not come, but to which she felt a strange belonging. + +Beside,--alongside--in each mind, was the undeveloped mystery; the +spell under which a man receives such intuitions through a woman's +presence,--a woman through a man's. Yet these two individuals were +not, therefore, going to be necessary to each other, in the plan of +God. Other things might show that they were not meant, in rightness, +for each other; they represented mutually, something that each life +missed; but the something was in no special companionship; it was a +great deal wider and higher than that. They might have to learn that +it was so, nevertheless, by some briefly painful process of +experience. If in this process they should fall into mistake and +wrong,--ah, there would come the experience beyond the experience, +the depth they were not meant to sound, yet which, if they let their +game of life run that way, they could not get back from but through +the uttermost. They must play it out; the move could not be taken +back,--yet awhile. The possible better combinations are in God's +knowledge; how He may ever reset the pieces and give his good +chances again, remains the hidden hope, resting upon the Christ that +is in the heart of Him. + +One morning Morris Hewland had come up the stairs with a handful of +tuberoses; he was living at home, then, through the pleasant +September, at his father's country place, whence the household would +soon remove to the city for the winter. + +Miss Bree's door was open. She was just replacing her door-mat, +which she had been shaking out of the entry window. She had an old +green veil tied down over her head to keep the dust off; nobody +could suspect any harm of a wish or a willingness to have a word +with her; Morris Hewland could not have suspected it of himself, if +he had indeed got so far as to investigate his passing impulses. +There was something pitiful in the contrast, perhaps, of the pure, +fresh, exquisite blossoms, and the breath of sweet air he and they +brought with them in their swift transit from the places where it +blessed all things to the places where so much languished in the +need of it, not knowing, even, the privation. The old, trodden, +half-cleansed door-mat in her hands,--the just-created beauty in +his. He stopped, and divided his handful. + +"Here, Miss Bree,--you would like a piece of the country, I imagine, +this morning! I couldn't have come in without it." + +The voice rang blithe and bright into the room where Bel sat, +basting machine work; the eyes went after the voice. + +The light from the east window was full upon the shining hair, the +young, unworn outlines, the fresh, pure color of the skin. Few city +beauties could bear such morning light as that. Nothing but the +morning in the face can meet it. + +Morris Hewland lifted his hat, and bowed toward the young girl, +silently. Then he passed on, up to his room. Bel heard his step, +back and forth, overhead. + +The tuberoses were put into a clear, plain tumbler. Bel would not +have them in the broken vase; she would not have them in a _blue_ +vase, at all. She laid a white napkin over the red of the +tablecloth, and set them on it. The perfume rose from them and +spread all through the room. + +"I am so glad we have work at home to-day," said Bel. + +There had been nothing but little things like these; out into Bel's +head, as she and Aunt Blin carried home the tea-blush silk, and laid +it by with care in its white box upon the sofa-end, came that little +wish, with a spring and a heart-beat,--"If she might have it on for +a minute, and if in that minute he might happen to come by!" + +She did not think she was planning for it; but when on the Tuesday +evening the step went down the stairs at eight o'clock, while they +sat busily working, each at a sleeve, by the drop-light over the +white-covered table, a little involuntary calculation ran through +her thoughts. + +"He always comes back by eleven. We shall have two hours' work--or +more,--on this, if we don't hurry; and it's miserable to hurry!" + +They stitched on, comfortably enough; yet the sleeves were finished +sooner than she expected. Before nine o'clock, Aunt Blin was sewing +them in. Then Bel wanted a drink of water; then they could not both +get at the waist together; there was no need. + +"I'll do it," said Bel, out of her conscience, with a jump of fright +as she said it, lest Aunt Blin should take her at her word, and +begin gauging and plaiting the skirt. + +"No, you rest. I shall want you by and by, for a figure." + +"May I have it _all_ on?" says Bel eagerly. "Do, Auntie! I should +just like to be in such a dress once--a minute!" + +"I don't see any reason why not. _You_ couldn't do any hurt to it, +if 'twas made for a queen," responded Aunt Blin. + +"I'll do up my hair on the top of my head," said Bel. + +And forthwith, at the far end of the room, away from the delicate +robe and its scattered material, she got out her combs and brushes, +and let down her gleaming brown hair. + +It took different shades, from umber to almost golden, this "funny +hair" of hers, as she called it. She thought it was because she had +faded it, playing out in the sun when she was a child; but it was +more like having got the shine into it. It did not curl, or wave; +but it grew in lovely arches, with roots even set, around her +temple and in the curves of her neck; and now, as she combed it up +in a long, beautiful mass, over her grasping hand, raising it with +each sweep higher toward the crown of her pretty head, all this +vigorous, beautiful growth showed itself, and marked with its +shadowy outline the dainty shapings. One twist at the top for the +comb to go in, and then she parted it in two, and coiled it like a +golden-bronze cable; and laid it round and round till the foremost +turn rested like a wreath midway about her head. She pulled three +fresh geranium leaves and a pink-white umbel of blossom from the +plant in the window, and tucked the cluster among the soft front +locks against the coil above the temple. + +Then she took off the loose wrapping-sack she had thrown over her +shoulders, washed her fingers at the basin, and came back to her +seat under the lamp. + +Aunt Blin looked up at her and smiled. It was like having it all +herself,--this youth and beauty,--to have it belonging to her, and +showing its charming ways and phases, in little Bel. Why shouldn't +the child, with her fair, sweet freshness, and the deep-green, +velvety leaves making her look already like a rose against which +they leaned themselves, have on this delicate rose dress? If things +stayed, or came, where they belonged, to whom should it more +fittingly fall to wear it than to her? + +Bel watched the clock and Aunt Blin's fingers. + +It was ten when the plaits and gathers were laid, and the skirt +basted to its band for the trying. Bel was dilatory one minute, and +in a hurry the next. + +"It would be done too soon; but he might come in early; and, O dear, +they hadn't thought,--there was that puffing to put round the +corsage, bertha-wise, with the blonde edging. 'It was all ready; +give it to her.'" + +"Now!" + +The wonderful, glistening, aurora-like robe goes over her head; she +stands in the midst, with the tender glowing color sweeping out from +her upon the white sheet pinned down above the carpet. + +Was that anybody coming? + +Aunt Blin left her for an instant to put up the window-top that had +been open to cool the lighted and heated room. Bel might catch cold, +standing like this. + +"O, it is _so_ warm, Auntie! We can't have everything shut up!" And +with this swift excuse instantly suggesting itself and making +justification to her deceitful little heart that lay in wait for it, +Bel sprang to the opposite corner where the doorway opened full +toward her, diagonally commanding the room. She set it hastily just +a hand's length ajar. "There is no wind in the entry, and nobody +will come," she said. + +When she was only excitedly afraid there wouldn't! I cannot justify +little Bel. I do not try to. + +"Now, see! isn't it beautiful?" + +"It sags just a crumb, here at the left," said Aunt Blin, poking and +stooping under Bel's elbow. "No; it is only a baste give way. You +shouldn't have sprung so, child." + +The bare neck and the dimpled arms showed from among the cream-pink +tints like the high white lights upon the rose. Bel had not looked +in the glass yet: Aunt Blin was busy, and she really had not thought +of it; she was happy just in being in that beautiful raiment--in the +heart of its color and shine; feeling its softly rustling length +float away from her, and reach out radiantly behind. What is there +about that sweeping and trailing that all women like, and that +becomes them so? That even the little child pins a shawl about her +waist and walks to and fro, looking over her shoulder, to get a +sensation of? + +The door _did_ shut, below. A step did come up the stairs, with a +few light springs. + +Suddenly Bel was ashamed! + +She did not want it, now that it had come! She had set a dreadful +trap for herself! + +"O, Aunt Blin, let me go! Put something over me!" she whispered. + +But Aunt Blin was down on the floor, far behind her, drawing out and +arranging the slope of the train, measuring from hem to band with +her professional eye. + +The footstep suddenly checked; then, as if with an as swift +bethinking, it went by. But through that door ajar, in that bright +light that revealed the room, Morris Hewland had been smitten with +the vision; had seen little Bel Bree in all the possible flush of +fair array, and marvelous blossom of consummate, adorned loveliness. + +Somehow, it broke down the safeguard he had had. + +In what was Bel Bree different, really, from women who wore such +robes as that, with whom he had danced and chatted in drawing-rooms? +Only in being a thousand times fresher and prettier. + +After that, he began to make reasons for speaking to them. He +brought Aunt Blin a lot of illustrated papers; he lent them a +stereoscope, with Alpine and Italian views; he brought down a +picture of his own, one day, to show them; before October was out, +he had spent an evening in Aunt Blin's room, reading aloud to them +"Mireio." + +Among the strange metaphysical doublings which human nature +discovers in itself, there is such a fact, not seldom experienced, +as the dreaming of a dream. + +It is one thing to dream utterly, so that one believes one is +awake; it is another to sleep in one's dream, and in a vision give +way to vision. It is done in sleep, it is done also in life. + +This was what Bel Bree--and it is with her side of the experience +that I have business--was in danger now of doing. + +It is done in life, as to many forms of living--as to religion, as +to art. People are religious, not infrequently because they are in +love with the idea of being so, not because they are simply and +directly devoted to God. They are aesthetic, because "The Beautiful" +is so beautiful, to see and to talk of, and they choose to affect +artistic having and doing; but they have not come even into that +sheepfold by the door, by the honest, inevitable pathway that their +nature took because it must,--by the entrance that it found through +a force of celestial urging and guidance that was behind them all +the while, though they but half knew it or understood. + +Women fall in love that way, so often! It is a lovely thing to be +loved; there is new living, which seems to them rare and grand, into +which it offers to lift them up. They fall into a dream about a +dream; they do not lay them down to sleep and give the Lord their +souls to keep, till He shall touch their trustful rest with a divine +fire, and waken them into his apocalypse. + +It was this atmosphere in which Morris Hewland lived, and which he +brought about him to transfuse the heavier air of her lowly living, +that bewildered Bel. And she knew that she was bewildered. She knew +that it was the poetic side of her nature that was stirred, excited; +not the real deep, woman's heart of her that found, suddenly, its +satisfying. If women will look, they can see this. + +She knew--she had found out--that she was a fair picture in the +artist's eyes; that the perception keen to discover and test and +analyze all harmonies of form and tint,--holding a hallowed, +mysterious kinship in this power to the Power that had made and +spoken by them,--turned its search upon her, and found her lovely in +the study. It was as if a daisy bearing the pure message and meaning +of the heavenly, could thrill with the consciousness of its +transmission; could feel the exaltation of fulfilling to a human +soul, grand in its far up mystery and waiting upon God,--one of his +dear ideas. + +There was something holy in the spirit with which she thus realized +her possession of maidenly beauty; her gift of mental charm and +fitness even; it was the countersign by which she entered into this +realm of which Morris Hewland had the freedom; it belonged to her +also,--she to it; she had received her first recognition. It was a +look back into Paradise for this Eve's daughter, born to labor, but +with a reminiscence in her nature out of which she had built all her +sweetest notions of being, doing, abiding; from which came +the-home-picture, so simple in its outlines, but so rich and gentle +in all its significance, that she had drawn to herself as "her +wish"; the thing she would give most, and do most, to have come +true. + +But all this was not necessarily love, even in its beginning,--though +she might come for a while to fancy it so,--for this one +man. It was a thing between her own life and the Maker of it; an +unfolding of herself toward that which waited for her in Him, and +which she should surely come to, whatever she might grasp at +mistakenly and miss upon the way. + +Morris Hewland--young, honest-hearted, but full of a young man's +fire and impulse, of an artist's susceptibility to outward beauty, +of the ready delight of educated taste in fresh, natural, responsive +cleverness--was treading dangerous ground. + +He, too, knew that he was bewildered; and that if he opened his eyes +he should see no way out of it. Therefore he shut his eyes and +drifted on. + +Aunt Blin, with her simplicity,--her incapacity of believing, though +there might be wrong and mischief in the world, that anybody she +knew could ever do it, sat there between them, the most bewildered, +the most inwardly and utterly befooled of the three. + + + + +CHAPTER XXII. + +BOX FIFTY-TWO. + + +In the midst of it all, she went and caught a horrible cold. + +Aunt Blin, I mean. + +It was all by wearing her india-rubbers a week too long, a week +after she had found the heels were split; and in that week there +came a heavy rain-storm. + +She had to stay at home now. Bel went to the rooms and brought back +button-holes for her to make. She could not do much; she was +feverish and languid, and her eyes suffered. But she liked to see +something in the basket; she was always going to be "well enough +to-morrow." When the work had to be returned, Bel hurried, and did +the button-holes of an evening. + +Mr. Hewland brought grapes and oranges and flowers to Miss Bree. Bel +fetched home little presents of her own to her aunt, making a pet of +her: ice-cream in a paper cone, horehound candy, once, a tumbler of +black currant jelly. But that last was very dear. If Aunt Blin had +eaten much of other things, they could not have afforded it, for +there were only half earnings now. + +To-morrow kept coming, but Miss Bree kept on not getting any better. +"She didn't see the reason," she said; "she never had a cold hang on +so. She believed she'd better go out and shake it off. If she could +have rode down-town she would, but somehow she didn't seem to have +the strength to walk." + +The reason she "couldn't have rode," was because all the horses +were sick. It was the singular epidemic of 1872. There were no cars, +no teams; the queer sight was presented in a great city, of the +driveways as clear as the sidewalks; of nobody needed to guard the +crossings or unsnarl the "blocks;" of stillness like Sunday, day +after day; of men harnessed into wagons,--eight human beings +drawing, slowly and heavily, what any poor old prickle-ribs of a +horse, that had life left in him at all, would have trotted +cheerfully off with. A lady's trunk was a cartload; and a lady's +trunk passing through the streets was a curiosity; you could +scarcely get one carried for love or money. + +Aunt Blin was a good deal excited; she always was by everything that +befell "her Boston." She would sit by the window in her blanket +shawl, and peer down the Place to see the mail-carts and express +wagons creep slowly by, along Tremont Street, to and from the +railways. She was proud for the men who turned to and did quadruped +work with a will in the emergency, and so took hold of its +sublimity; she was proud of the poor horses, standing in suffering +but royal seclusion in their stables, with hostlers sitting up +nights for them, and the world and all its business "seeing how it +could get along without them;" she was proud of all this crowd of +business that had, by hook or by crook (literally, now), to be done. + +She wanted the evening paper the minute it came. She and the music +mistress took the "Transcript" between them, and had the first +reading weeks about. This was her week; she held herself lucky. + +The epizootic was like the war: we should have to subside into +common items that would not seem like news at all when that was +over. + +We all know, now, what the news was after the epizootic. + +Meanwhile Aunt Blin believed, "on her conscience," she had got the +epidemic herself. + +Bel had worked hard at the rooms this week, and late at home in the +evenings. Some of the girls lived out at the Highlands, and some in +South Boston; there were days when they could not get in from these +districts; for such as were on the spot there was double press and +hurry. And it was right in the midst of fall and winter work. Bel +earned twelve dollars in six days, and got her pay. + +On Saturday night she brought home four Chater's crumpets, and a +pint of oysters. She stewed the oysters in a porringer out of which +everything came nicer than out of any other utensil. While they were +stewing, she made a bit of butter up into a "pat," and stamped it +with the star in the middle of the pressed glass saltcellar; she set +the table near the fire, and laid it out in a specially dainty way; +then she toasted the muffins, and it was past seven o'clock before +all was done. + +Aunt Blin sat by, and watched and smelled. She was in no hurry; two +senses at a time were enough to have filled. She had finished the +paper,--it was getting to be an old and much rehashed story, +now,--and had sent it down to Miss Smalley. It would be hers first, +now, for a week. Very well, the excitement was over. That was all +she knew about it. + +In the privacy and security of her own room, and with muffins and +oysters for tea, Aunt Blin took out her upper teeth, that she might +eat comfortably. Poor Aunt Blin! she showed her age and her thinness +so. She had fallen away a good deal since she had been sick. But +she was getting better. On Monday morning, she thought she would +certainly be able to go out. All she had to do now was to be careful +of her cough; and Bel had just bought her a new pair of rubbers. + +Bartholomew had done his watching and smelling, likewise; he had +made all he could be expected to of that limited enjoyment. Now he +walked round the table with an air of consciousness that supper was +served. He sat by his mistress's chair, lifted one paw with +well-bred expressiveness, stretching out the digits of it as a +dainty lady extends her lesser fingers when she lifts her cup, or +breaks a bit of bread. It was a delicate suggestion of exquisite +appreciation, and of most excellent manners. Once he began a whine, +but recollected himself and suppressed it, as the dainty lady might +a yawn. + +Aunt Blin gave him two oysters, and three spoonfuls of broth in his +own saucer, before she helped herself. After all, she ate in her +turn very little more. It was hardly worth while to have made a +business of being comfortable. + +"I don't think they have such good oysters as they used to," she +remarked, stepping over her s'es in a very carpeted and +stocking-footed way. + +"Perhaps I didn't put enough seasoning"--Bel began, but was +interrupted in the middle of her reply. + +The big bell two squares off clanged a heavy stroke caught up on the +echo by others that sounded smaller farther and farther away, making +their irregular, yet familiar phrase and cadence on the air. + +It was the fire alarm. + +"H--zh! Hark!" Aunt Blin changed the muffled but eager monosyllable +to a sharper one; and being reminded, felt in her lap, under her +napkin, for her "ornaments," as Bel called them. + +But she counted the strokes before she put them in, nodding her +head, and holding up her finger to Bel and Bartholomew for silence. +Everything stopped where it was with Miss Bree when the fire alarm +sounded. + +One--two--three--four--five. + +"In the city," said Aunt Blin, with a certain weird unconscious +satisfaction; and whipped the porcelains into their places before +the second tolling should begin. They were like Pleasant Riderhood's +back hair: she was all twisted up, now, and ready. + +One--two. + +"That ain't fur off. Down Bedford Street way. Give me the fire-book, +and my glasses." + +She turned the folds of the card with one hand, and adjusted her +spectacles with the other. + +"Bedford and Lincoln. Why, that's close by where Miss Proddle +boards!" + +"That's the _box_, Auntie. You always forget the fire isn't in the +box." + +"Well, it will be if they don't get along with their steamers. I +ain't heard one go by yet." + +"They haven't any horses, you know." + +"Hark! there's one now! O, _do_ hush! There's the bell again!" + +Bel was picking up the tea-things for washing. She set down the +little pile which she had gathered, went to the window, and drew up +the blind. + +"My gracious! And there's the fire!" + +It shone up, red, into the sky, from over the tall roofs. + +Ten strokes from the deep, deliberate bells. + +"There comes Miss Smalley, todillating up to see," said Bel, +excitedly. + +"And the people are just _rushing_ along Tremont Street!" + +"_Can_ you see? asked Miss Smalley, bustling in like the last +little belated hen at feeding-time, with a look on all sides at once +to discover where the corn might be. + +"_Isn't_ it big, O?" And she stood up, tiptoe, by the window, as if +that would make any comparative difference between her height and +that of Hotel Devereux, across the square; or as if she could reach +up farther with her eyes after the great flashes that streamed into +the heavens. + +Again the smiting clang,--repeated, solemn, exact. No flurry in +those measured sounds, although their continuance tolled out a +city's doom. + +Twice twelve. + +"There goes Mr. Sparrow," said the music mistress, as the +watchmaker's light, unequal hop came over the stairs. "I suppose he +can see from his window pretty near where it is." + +A slight, dull color came up into the angles of the little lady's +face, as she alluded to the upper lodger's room, for there was a +tacit impression in the house--and she knew it--that if Miss Smalley +and Mr. Sparrow had been thrown together earlier in life, it would +have been very suitable; and that even now it might not be +altogether too late. + +Another step went springing down. Bel knew that, but she said +nothing. + +"Don't you think we might go out to the end of the street and see?" +suggested Miss Smalley. + +Bel had on hat and waterproof in a moment. + +"Don't you stir, Auntie, to catch cold, now! We'll be back +directly." + +Miss Smalley was already in her room below, snatching up hood and +shawl. + +Down the Place they went, and on, out into the broad street. +Everybody was running one way,--northward. They followed, hurrying +toward the great light, glowing and flashing before them. + +From every westward avenue came more men, speeding in ever +thickening lines verging to one centre. Like streams into a river +channel, they poured around the corners into Essex Street, at last, +filling it from wall to wall,--a human torrent. + +"This is as far as we can go," Miss Smalley said, stopping in one of +the doorways of Boylston Market. A man in a blouse stood there, +ordering the driver of a cart. + +"Where is the fire, sir?" asked Miss Smalley, with a ladylike air of +not being used to speak to men in the street, but of this being an +emergency. + +"Corner of Kingston and Summer; great granite warehouse, five +stories high," said the man in the blouse, civilly, and proceeding +to finish his order, which was his own business at the moment, +though Boston was burning. + +The two women turned round and went back. The heavy bells were +striking three times twelve. + +A boy rushed past them at the corner by the great florist's shop. He +was going the other way from the fire, and was impatient to do his +errand and get back. He had a basket of roses to carry; ordered for +some one to whom it would come,--the last commission of that sort +done that night perhaps,--as out of the very smoke and terror of the +hour; a singular lovely message of peace, of the blessed thoughts +that live between human hearts though a world were in ashes. All +through the wild night, those exquisite buds would be silently +unfolding their gracious petals. How strange the bloomed-out roses +would look to-morrow! + +All the house in Leicester Place was astir, and recklessly mixed +up, when Miss Smalley and Bel Bree came back. The landlady and her +servant were up in Mr. Sparrow's room, calling to Miss Bree below. +The whole place was full of red fierce light. + +Aunt Blin, faithful to Bel's parting order, stood in the spirit of +an unrelieved sentinel, though the whole army had broken camp, +keeping herself steadfastly safe, in her own doorway. To be sure, +there was a draught there, but it was not her fault. + +"I _must_ go up and see it," she said eagerly, when Bel appeared. +Bel drew her into the room, put her first into a gray hospital +dressing-gown, then into a waterproof, and after all covered her up +with a striped blue and white bed comforter. She knew she would keep +dodging in and out, and she might as well go where she would stay +quiet. + +And so these three women went up-stairs, where they had never been +before. The door of Mr. Hewland's room was open. A pair of slippers +lay in the middle of the floor; a newspaper had fluttered into a +light heap, like a broken roof, beside them; a dressing-gown was +thrown over the back of a chair. + +Bel came last, and shut that door softly as she passed, not letting +her eyes intrude beyond the first involuntary glimpse. She was +maidenly shy of the place she had never seen,--where she had heard +the footsteps go in and out, over her head. + +The five women crowded about and into Mr. Sparrow's little dormer +window. Miss Smalley lingered to notice the little black teapot on +the grate-bar, where a low fire was sinking lower,--the faded cloth +on the table, and the empty cup upon it,--the pipe laid down +hastily, with ashes falling out of it. She thought how lonesome Mr. +Sparrow was living,--doing for himself. + +All the square open space down through which the blue heavens looked +between those great towering buildings, was filled with brightness +as with a flood. The air was lurid crimson. Every stone and chip and +fragment, lay revealed in the strange, transfiguring light. Away +across the stable-roofs, they could read far-off signs painted in +black letters upon brick walls. Church spires stood up, bathed in a +wild glory, pointing as out of some day of doom, into the +everlasting rest. The stars showed like points of clear, green, +unearthly radiance, against that contrast of fierce red. + +It surged up and up, as if it would over-boil the very stars +themselves. It swayed to right,--to left; growing in an awful bulk +and intensity, without changing much its place, to their eyes, where +they stood. On the tops of the high Apartment Hotel, and all the +flat-roofed houses in Hero and Pilgrim streets, were men and women +gazing. Their faces, which could not have been discerned in the +daylight, shone distinct in this preternatural illumination. Their +voices sounded now and then, against the yet distant hum and crackle +of the conflagration, upon the otherwise still air. The rush had, +for a while, gone by. The streets in this quarter were empty. + +Grand and terrible as the sight was to them in Leicester Place, they +could know or imagine little of what the fire was really doing. + +"It backs against the wind," they heard one man say upon the +stable-roof. + +They could not resist opening the window, just a little, now and +then, to listen; though Bel would instantly pull Aunt Blin away, and +then they would put it down. Poor Aunt Blin's nose grew very cold, +though she did not know it. Her nose was little and sensitive. It is +not the big noses that feel the cold the most. Aunt Blin took cold +through her face and her feet; and these the dressing-gown, and the +waterproof, and the comforter, did not protect. + +"It must have spread among those crowded houses in Kingston and +South streets," Aunt Blin said; and as she spoke, her poor old +"ornaments" chattered. + +"Aunt Blin, you _shall_ come down, and take something hot, and go to +bed!" exclaimed Bel, peremptorily. "We can't stay here all night. +Mr. Sparrow will be back,--and everybody. I think the fire is going +down. It's pretty still now. We've seen it all. Come!" + +They had never a thought, any of them, of more than a block or so, +burning. Of course the firemen would put it out. They always did. + +"See! See!" cried the landlady. "O my sakes and sorrows!" + +A huge, volcanic column of glittering sparks--of great flaming +fragments--shot up and soared broad and terrible into the deep sky. +A long, magnificent, shimmering, scintillant train--fire spangled +with fire--swept southward like the tail of a comet, that had at +last swooped down and wrapped the earth. + +"The roofs have fallen in," said innocent old Miss Smalley. + +"That will be the last. Now they will stop it," said Bel. "Come, +Auntie!" + +And after midnight, for an hour or more, the house, with the five +women in it, hushed. Aunt Blin took some hot Jamaica ginger, and Bel +filled a jug with boiling water, wrapped it in flannel, and tucked +it into the bed at her feet. Then she gave her a spoonful of her +cough-mixture, took off her own clothes, and lay down. + +Still the great fire roared, and put out the stars. Still the room +was red with the light of it. Aunt Blin fell asleep. + +Bel lay and listened, and wondered. She would not move to get up and +look again, lest she should rouse her aunt. Suddenly, she heard the +boom of a great explosion. She started up. + +Miss Smalley's voice sounded at the door. + +"It's awful!" she whispered, through the keyhole, in a ghostly way. +"I thought you ought to know. The cinders are flying everywhere. I +heard an engine come up from the railroad. People are running along +the streets, and teams are going, and everything,--_the other way_! +They're blowing up houses! There, don't you hear that?" + +It was another sullen, heavy roar. + +Bel sprang out of bed; hurried into her garments; opened the door to +Miss Smalley. They went and stood together in the entry-window. + +"All Kingman's carriages are out; sick horses and all; they've +trundled wheelbarrow loads of things down to the stable. There's a +heap of furniture dumped down in the middle of the place. Women are +going up Tremont Street with bundles and little children. Where _do_ +you s'pose it's got to?" + +"See there!" said Bel, pointing across the square to the great, +dark, public building. High up, in one of the windows, a gas-light +glimmered. Two men were visible in the otherwise deserted place. +They were putting up a step-ladder. + +"Do you suppose they are there nights,--other nights?" Bel asked +Miss Smalley. + +"No. They're after books and things. They're going to pack up." + +"The fire _can't_ be coming here!" + +Bel opened the window carefully, as she spoke. A man was standing in +the livery-stable door. A hack came rapidly down, and the driver +called out something as he jumped off. + +"Where?" they heard the hostler ask. + +"Most up to Temple Place." + +"Do they mean the fire? They can't!" + +They did; but they were, as we know, somewhat mistaken. Yet that +great, surf-like flame, rushing up and on, was rioting at the very +head of Summer Street, and plunging down Washington. Trinity Church +was already a blazing wreck. + +"Has it come up Summer Street, or how?" asked Bel, helplessly, of +helpless Miss Smalley. "Do you suppose Fillmer & Bylles is burnt?" + +"I _must_ ask somebody!" + +These women, with no man belonging to them to come and give them +news,--restrained by force of habit from what would have been at +another time strange to do, and not knowing even yet the utter +exceptionality of this time,--while down among the hissing engines +and before the face of the conflagration stood girls in delicate +dress under evening wraps, come from gay visits with brothers and +friends, and drawn irresistibly by the grand, awful magnetism of the +spectacle,--while up on the aristocratic avenues, along Arlington +Street, whose windows flashed like jewels in the far-shining flames, +where the wonderful bronze Washington sat majestic and still against +that sky of stormy fire as he sits in every change and beautiful +surprise of whatever sky of cloud or color may stretch about +him,--on Commonwealth Avenue, where splendid mansions stood with +doors wide open, and drays unloading merchandise saved from the +falling warehouses into their freely offered shelter,--ladies were +walking to and fro, as if in their own halls and parlors, watching, +and questioning whomsoever came, and saying to each other hushed and +solemn or excited words,--when the whole city was but one great home +upon which had fallen a mighty agony and wonder that drove its +hearts to each other as the hearts of a household,--these two, Bel +Bree and little Miss Smalley, knew scarcely anything that was +definite, and had been waiting and wondering all night, thinking it +would be improper to talk into the street! + +A young lad came up the court at last; he lived next door; he was an +errand-boy in some great store on Franklin Street. His mother spoke +to him from her window. + +"Bennie! how is it?" + +"Mother! All Boston is gone up! Summer Street, High Street, Federal +Street, Pearl Street, Franklin Street, Milk Street, Devonshire +Street,--everything, clear through to the New Post Office. I've been +on the Common all night, guarding goods. There's another fellow +there now, and I've come home to get warm. I'm almost frozen." + +His mother was at the door as he finished speaking, and took him in; +and they heard no more. + +The boy's words were heavy with heavy meaning. He said them without +any boy-excitement; they carried their own excitement in the heart +of them. In those eight hours he had lived like a man; in an +experience that until of late few men have known. + +They did not know how long they stood there after that, with +scarcely a word to each other,--only now and then some utterance of +sudden recollection of this and that which must have vanished away +within that stricken territory,--taking in, slowly, the reality, the +tremendousness of what had happened,--was happening. + +It was five o'clock when Mr. Hewland came in, and up the stairs, and +found them there. Aunt Blin had not awaked. There was a trace of +morphine in her cough-drops, and Bel knew now, since she had slept +so long, that she would doubtless sleep late into the morning. That +was well. It would be time enough to tell her by and by. There would +be all day,--all winter,--to tell it in. + +Mr. Hewland told them, hastily, the main history of the fire. + +"Is Trinity Church?"--asked poor Miss Smalley tremblingly. + +She had not said anything about it to Bel Bree; she could not think +of that great stone tower as having let the fire in,--as not having +stood, cool and strong, against any flame. And Trinity Church was +_her_ tower. She had sat in one seat in its free gallery for +fourteen years. If that were gone, she would hardly know where to +go, to get near to heaven. Only nine days ago,--All Saints' +Day,--she had sat there listening to beautiful words that laid hold +upon the faith of all believers, back through the church, back +before Christ to the prophets and patriarchs, and told how God was +_her_ God because He had been theirs. The old faith,--and the Old +Church! "Was Trinity?"--She could not say,--"burned." + +But Mr. Hewland answered in one word,--"Gone." + +That word answered so many questions on which life and love hung, +that fearful night! + +Mr. Hewland was wet and cold. He went up to his room and changed +his clothing. When the daylight, pale and scared, was creeping in, +he came down again. + +"Would you not like to go down and see?" he said to Bel. + +"Can I?" + +"Yes. There is no danger. The streets are comparatively clear. I +will go with you." + +Bel asked Miss Smalley. + +"Will you come? Auntie will be sure to sleep, I think." + +Miss Smalley had scarcely heart either to go or stay. Of the two, it +was easier to go. To do--to see--something. + +Mr. Sparrow came in. He met them at the door, and turned directly +back with them. + +He, too, was a free-seat worshipper at Old Trinity. He and the +music-mistress--they were both of English birth, hence of the same +national faith--had been used to go from the same dwelling, +separately, to the same house of worship, and sit in opposite +galleries. But their hearts had gone up together in the holy old +words that their lips breathed in the murmur of the congregation. +These links between them, of country and religion, which they had +never spoken of, were the real links. + +As they went forth this Sunday morning, in company for the first +time, toward the church in which they should never kneel again, they +felt another,--the link that Eve and Adam felt when the sword of +flame swept Paradise. + +Plain old souls!--Plain old bodies, I mean, hopping and +"todillating"--as Bel expressed the little spinster's gait--along +together; their souls walked in a sweet and gracious reality before +the sight of God. + +Bel and Mr. Hewland were beside each other. They had never walked +together before, of course; but they hardly thought of the +unusualness. The time broke down distinctions; nothing looked +strange, when everything was so. + +They went along by the Common fence. In the street, a continuous +line of wagons passed them, moving southward. Gentlemen sat on +cart-fronts beside the teamsters, accompanying their fragments of +property to places of bestowal. Inside the inclosure, in the malls, +along under the trees, upon the grass, away back to the pond, were +heaps of merchandise. Boxes, bales, hastily collected and unpacked +goods of all kinds, from carpets to cotton-spools, were thrown in +piles, which men and boys were guarding, the police passing to and +fro among them all. People were wrapped against the keen November +cold, in whatsoever they could lay their hands on. A group of men +pacing back and forth before a pyramid of cases, had thrown great +soft white blankets about their shoulders, whose bright striped +borders hung fantastically about them, and whose corners fell and +dragged upon the muddy ground. + +Down by Park Street corner, and at Winter Street, black columns of +coal smoke went up from the steamers; the hose, like monstrous +serpents, twisted and trailed along the pavements; water stood in +pools and flowed in runnels, everywhere. + +They went down Winter Street, stepping over the hose-coils, and +across the leaking streams; they came to the crossing of Washington, +where yesterday throngs of women passed, shopping from stately store +to store. + +Beyond, were smoke and ruin; swaying walls, heaps of fallen masonry, +chevaux-de-frises of bristling gas and water-pipes, broken and +protruding. A little way down, to the left, sheets of flame, golden +in the gray daylight, were pouring from the face of the beautiful +"Transcript" building. + +They stood, fearful and watchful, under the broken granite walls +opposite Trinity Church. + +Windows and doors were gone from the grand old edifice; inside, the +fire was shining; devouring at its dreadful ease, the sacred +architecture and furnishings that it had swept down to the ground. + +"See! There he is!" whispered Miss Smalley to Mr. Sparrow, as she +gazed with unconscious tears falling fast down her pale old cheeks. + +It was the Rector of Trinity, who thought to have stood this morning +in the holy place to speak to his people. Down the middle of the +street he came, and went up to the cumbered threshold and the open +arch, within which a terrible angel was speaking in his stead. + +"Do you think he remembers now, what he said about the God of +Daniel, as he looks into the blazing fiery furnace?" + +"I dare say he doesn't ever remember what he _said_; but he +remembers always what _is_," answered the watch-maker. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIII. + +EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY. + + +The strange, sad Sunday wore along. + +The teams rolled on, incessantly, through the streets; the blaze and +smoke went up from the sixty acres of destruction; friends gathered +together and talked of the one thing, that talk as they might, would +not be put into any words. Men whose wealth had turned to ashes in a +night went to and fro in the same coats they had worn yesterday, and +hardly knew yet whether they themselves were the same or not. It +seemed, so strangely, as if the clock might be set back somehow, and +yesterday be again; it was so little way off! + +Women who had received, perhaps, their last wages for the winter on +Saturday night, sat in their rooms and wondered what would be on +Monday. + +Aunt Blin was excited; strong with excitement. She went down-stairs +to see Miss Smalley, who was too tired to sit up. + +Out of the fire, Bel Bree and Paulina Smalley had each brought +something that remained by them secretly all this day. + +When they had stopped there under those smoked and shattered walls, +and Morris Hewland had drawn Bel's hand within his arm to keep her +from any movement into danger, he had gently laid his own fingers, +in care and caution, upon hers. A feeling had come to them both with +the act, and for a moment, as if the world, with all its great +built-up barriers of stone, had broken down around them, and lay at +their feet in fragments, among which they two stood free together. + +The music-mistress and the watchmaker, looking in upon their place +of prayer, seeing it empty and eaten out by the yet lingering +tongues of fire, had exchanged those words about the things that +_are_. For a minute, through the emptiness, they reached into the +eternal deep; for a minute their simple souls felt themselves, over +the threshold of earthly ruin, in the spaces where there is no need +of a temple any more; they forgot their worn and far-spent +lives,--each other's old and year-marked faces; they were as two +spirits, met without hindrance or incongruity, looking into each +other's spiritual eyes. + +Poor old Miss Smalley, when she came home and took off her hood +before her little glass, and saw how pale she was with her night's +watching and excitement, and how the thin gray hairs had straggled +over her forehead, came back with a pang into the flesh, and was +afraid she had been ridiculous; but lying tired upon her bed, in the +long after hours of the day, she forgot once more what manner of +outside woman she was, and remembered only, with a pervading peace, +how the watchmaker had spoken. + +Night came. The pillar of smoke that had gone up all day, turned +again into a pillar of fire, and stood in the eastern heavens. + +The time of safety, when there had been no flaming terror, was +already so far off, that people, fearing this night to surrender +themselves to sleep, wondered that in any nights they had ever +dared,--wondered that there had ever been anything but fear and +burning, in this great, crowded city. + +The guards paced the streets; the roll of wagons quieted. The +stricken town was like a fever patient seized yesterday with a +sudden, devouring rage of agony,--to-day, calmed, put under care, a +rule established, watchers set. + +Miss Smalley went from window to window as the darkness--and the +apparition of flame--came on. Rested by the day's surrender to +exhaustion, she was alert and apprehensive and excited now. + +"It will be sure to burst out again," she said; "it always does." + +"Don't say so to Aunt Blin," whispered Bel. "Look at her cheeks, and +her eyes. She is sick-abed this minute, and she _will_ keep up!" + +At nine o'clock, the very last thing, she spoke with the +music-mistress again, at the door. Miss Smalley kept coming up into +the passage to look out at that end window. + +"I don't mean to get up if it does burn," Bel said, resolutely. "It +won't come here. We ought to sleep. That's our business. There'll be +enough to do, maybe, afterwards." + +But for all that, in the dead of the night, she was roused again. + +A sound of bells; a long alarm of which she lost the count; a great +explosion. Then that horrible cataract of flame and sparks +overhanging the stars as it did before, and paling them out. + +It seemed as if it had always been so; as if there had never been a +still, dark heaven under which to lie down tranquilly and sleep. + +"The wind has changed, and the fire is awful, and I can't help it," +sounded Miss Smalley's voice, meek and deprecating, through the +keyhole, at which she had listened till she had heard Bel moving. + +Bel lit the gas, and then went out into the passage. + +Flakes of fire were coming down over the roofs into the Place +itself. + +The great rush and blaze were all this way, now. They were right +under the storm of it. + +Aunt Blin woke up. + +"What is it?" she asked, excitedly. "Is it begun again? Is it +coming?" And before Bel could stop her, she was out on the entry +floor with her bare feet. + +A floating cinder fell and struck the sash. + +"We must be dressed! We must pack up! Make haste, Bel! Where's +Bartholomew?" + +Making a movement, hurriedly, to go back across her own room, Miss +Bree turned faint and giddy, and fell headlong. + +They got her into bed again, and brought her to. But with +circulation and consciousness, came the rush of fever. In half an +hour she was in a burning heat, wandering and crying out +deliriously. + +"O what shall we do? We must have a doctor. She'll die!" cried Bel. + +"If I dared to go up and call Mr. Sparrow?" said the spinster, +timidly. + +Her thought reverted as instantly to Mr. Sparrow, and yet with the +same conscious shyness, as if she had been eighteen, and the poor +old watchmaker twenty-one. Because, you see, she was a woman; and +she had but been a woman the longer, and her woman's heart grown +tenderer and shyer, in its unlived life, that she was four and +fifty, and not eighteen. There are three times eighteen in four and +fifty. + +"O, Mr. Sparrow isn't any good!" cried Bel, impetuously. "If you +wouldn't mind seeing whether Mr. Hewland is up-stairs?" + +Miss Smalley did not mind that at all; and though numbly aggrieved +at the reflection upon Mr. Sparrow, went up and knocked. + +Bel heard Morris Hewland's spring upon the floor, and his voice, as +he asked the matter. Heavy with fatigue, he had not roused till now. + +As he came down, five minutes later, and Bel Bree met him at the +door, the gas suddenly went out, and they stood, except for the +flame outside, in darkness. + +In house and street it was the same. Miss Smalley called out that it +was so. "The stable light is gone," she said. "Yes,--and the lights +down Tremont Street." + +Then that fearful robe of fire, thick sown with spangling cinders, +seemed sweeping against the window panes. + +Only that terrible light over all the town. + +"O, what does it mean?" said Bel. + +"It is Chicago over again," the young man answered her, with a grave +dismay in his voice. + +"See there,--and there!" said Miss Smalley, at the window. "People +are up, lighting candles." + +"But Aunt Blin is sick!" said Bel. "We must take care of her. What +shall we do?" + +"I'll go and send a doctor; and I'll bring you news. Have you a +candle? Stop; I'll fetch you something." + +He sprang up-stairs, and returned with a box of small wax tapers. +They were only a couple of inches long, and the size of her little +finger. + +"I'll get you something better if I can; and don't be frightened." + +The great glare, though it shed its light luridly upon all outside, +was not enough to find things by within. Bel took courage at this, +thinking the heart of it must still be far off. She gave one look +into the depth of the street, shadowed by its buildings, and having +a strange look of eerie gloom, even so little way beneath that upper +glow. Then she drew down the painted shades, and shut the sky +phantom out. + +"Mr. Hewland will come and tell us," she said. "We must work." + +She heated water and got a bath for Aunt Blin's feet. She put a +cool, wet bandage on her head. She mixed some mustard and spread a +cloth and laid it to her chest. Miss Bree breathed easier; but the +bandage upon her head dried as though the flame had touched it. + +"I'll tell you what," said good, inopportune Miss Smalley; "she's +going to be dreadful sick, I'm afraid. It'll be head and lungs both. +That's what my sister had." + +"_Don't_ tell me what!" cried Bel, irritatedly. + +But the doctor told her what, when he came. + +Not in words; doctors don't do that. But she read it in his grave +carefulness; she detected it in the orders which he gave. People +brought up in the country,--where neighbors take care of each other, +and where every symptom is talked over, and the history of every +fatal disorder turns into a tradition,--learn about sickness and the +meanings of it; on its ghastly and ominous side, at any rate. + +Mr. Hewland came back and brought two candles, which he had with +difficulty procured from a hotel. He brought word, also, that the +fire was under control; that they need feel no more alarm. + +And so this second night of peril and disaster passed painfully and +slowly by. + +But on the Monday, the day in which Boston was like a city given +over into the hands of a host,--when its streets were like +slow-moving human glaciers, down the midst of which in a narrow +channel the heavier flow of burdened teams passed scarcely faster +forward than the hindered side streams,--Aunt Blin lay in the grasp +and scorch of a fire that feeds on life; wasting under that which +uplifts and frenzies, only to prostrate and destroy. + +I shall not dwell upon it. It had to be told; the fire also had to +be told; for it happened, and could not be ignored. It happened, +intermingling with all these very things of which I write; +precipitating, changing, determining much. + +Before the end of that first week, in which the stun and shock were +reacting in prompt, cheerful, benevolent organizing and +providing,--in which, through wonderful, dreamlike ruins, like the +ruins of the far-off past, people were wandering, amazed, seeing a +sudden torch laid right upon the heart and centre of a living +metropolis and turning it to a shadow and a decay,--in which human +interests and experiences came to mingle that had never consciously +approached each other before,--in which the little household of +independent existences in Leicester Place was fused into an +almost family relation all at once, after years of mere +juxtaposition,--before the end of that week, Aunt Blin died. + +It was as though the fiery thrust that had transpierced the heart of +"her Boston," had smitten the centre of her own vitality in the +self-same hour. + +All her clothes hung in the closet; the very bend of her arm was in +the sleeve of the well worn alpaca dress, the work-basket, with a +cloth jacket-front upon it, in which was a half-made button-hole, +left just at the stitch where all her labor ended, was on the round +table; Cheeps was singing in the window; Bartholomew was winking on +the hearth-rug; and little Bel, among these belongings that she knew +not what to do with any more, was all alone. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIV. + +TEMPTATION. + + +The Relief Committee was organizing in Park Street Vestry. + +Women with help in their hands and sympathy in their hearts, came +there to meet women who wanted both; came, many of them, straight +from the first knowledge of the loss of almost all their own money, +with word and act of fellowship ready for those upon whose very life +the blow fell yet closer and harder. Over the separating lines of +class and occupation a divine impulse reached, at least for the +moment, both ways. + +"Boffin's Bower" was all alert with aggressive, independent +movement. Here, they did not believe in the divine impulse of the +hour. They would stay on their own side of the line. They would help +themselves and each other. They would stand by their own class, and +cry "hands off!" to the rich women. + +What was to be done, for lasting understanding and true relation, +between these conflicting, yet mutually dependent elements? + +In their own separate places sat solitary girls and women who sought +neither yet. + +Bel Bree was one. + +The little room which had been home while Aunt Blin lived there with +her, was suddenly become only a dreary, lonely lodging-room. Cheeps +and Bartholomew were there, chirping and purring, the sun was +shining in; the things were all hers, for Aunt Blin had written one +broad, straggling, unsteady line upon a sheet of paper the last day +she lived, when the fever and confusion had ebbed away out of her +brain as life ebbed slowly back, beaten from its outworks by +disease, toward her heart, and she lay feebly, but clearly, +conscious. + +"I give all I leave in the world to my niece Belinda Bree." + +"Kellup" came down and buried his sister, and "looked into things;" +concluded that "Bel was pretty comfortable, and with good +folks,--Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley; 'sposed she calc'lated to +keep on, now; she could come back if she wanted to, though." + +Bel did not want to. She would stay here a little while, at any +rate, and think. So Kellup went back into New Hampshire. + +There was a little money laid up since Miss Bree and Bel had been +together; Bel could get along, she thought, till work began again. +But it was no longer living; it would not be living then; it would +be only work and solitude. She was like a great many others of them +now; girls without tie or belonging,--holding on where they could. +Elise Mokey had said to her,--"See if you could help yourself if you +hadn't Aunt Blin!" and now she began to look forward against that +great, dark "If." + +Everything had come together. If work had kept on, there would have +been these little savings to fall back upon when earnings did not +quite meet outlay. But now she should use them up before work came. +And what did it signify, anyhow? All the comfort--all the meaning of +it--was gone. + +They were all kind to her; Miss Smalley sat with her evenings, till +Bel wished she would have the wiser kindness to go away and let her +be miserable, just a little while. + +Morris Hewland knocked at the door one afternoon when the +music-mistress was out, giving her lessons. + +Bel did not ask him in to sit down; she stood just within the +doorway, and talked with him. + +He made some friendly inquiries that led to conversation; he drew +her to say something of her plans. He had not come on purpose; he +hardly knew what he had come for. He had only knocked to say a word +of kindness; to look in the poor, pretty little face that he felt +such a tenderness for. + +"I can't bear to give things up,--because they _were_ pleasant," Bel +said. "But I suppose I shall have to go away. It isn't home; there +isn't anybody to make home _with_ any more. I know what I _had_ +thought of, a while ago; I believe I know what there is that I might +do; I am just waiting until the thoughts come back, and begin to +look as they did. Nothing looks as it did yet." + +"Nothing?" asked Morris Hewland, his eyes questioning of hers. + +"Yes,--friends. But the friends are all outside, after all." + +Hewland stood silent. + +How beautiful it might be to make home for such a little heart as +this! To surround her with comfort and prettiness, such as she loved +and knew how to contrive out of so little! To say,--"Let us belong +together. Make home with _me_!" + +Satan, as an angel of light, entered into him. He knew he could not +say this to her as he ought to say it; as he would say it to a girl +of his own class whom father and mother would welcome. There was no +girl of his own class he had ever cared to say it to. This was the +first woman he had found, with whom the home thought joined itself. +And this could not rightly be. If he took her, he would no longer +have the things to give her. They would be cast out together. And +all he could do was to make pictures, of which he had never sold +one, or thought to sell one, in all his life. He would be just as +poor as she was; and he felt that he did not know how to be poor. +Besides, he wanted to be rich for her. He wanted to give her,--now, +right off,--everything. + +Why shouldn't he give? Why shouldn't she take? He had plenty of +money; he was his father's only son. He meant right; so he said to +himself; and what had the world to do with it? + +"I wish I could take care of you, Bel! Would you let me? Would you +go with me?" + +The words seemed to have said themselves. The devil, whom he had let +have his heart for a minute, had got his lips and spoken through +them before he knew. + +"Where?" asked Bel. "Home?" + +"Yes,--home," said the young man, hesitating. + +"Where your mother lives?" + +Bel Bree's simplicity went nigh to being a stronger battery of +defense than any bristling of alarmed knowledge. + +"No," said Morris Hewland. "Not there. It would not do for you, or +her either. But I could give you a little home. I could take care of +you all your life; all _my_ life. And I would. I will never make a +home for anybody else. I will be true to you, if you will trust +me,--always. So help me God!" + +He meant it; there was no dark, deliberate sin in his heart, any +more than in hers; he was tempted on the tenderest, truest side of +his nature, as he was tempting her. He did not see why he should +not choose the woman he would live with all his life, though he knew +he could not choose her in the face of all the world, though he +could not be married to her in the Church of the Holy Commandments, +with bridesmaids and ushers, and music and flowers, and point lace +and white satin, and fifty private carriages waiting at the door, +and half a ton of gold and silver plate and verd antique piled up +for them in his father's house. + +His father was a hard, proud, unflinching man, who loved and +indulged his son, after his fashion and possibility; but who would +never love or indulge him again if he offended in such a thing as +this. His mother was a woman who simply could not understand that a +girl like Bel Bree was a creature made by God at all, as her +daughters were, and her son's wife should be. + +"Do you care enough for me?" + +Bel stood utterly still. She had never been asked any such questions +before, but she felt in some way, that this was not all; ought not +to be all; that there was more he was to say, before she could +answer him. + +He came toward her. He put his hands on hers. He looked eagerly in +her eyes. He did not hesitate now; the man's nature was roused in +him. He must make her speak,--say that she cared. + +"_Don't_ you care? Bel--you do! You are my little wife; and the +world has not anything to do with it!" + +She broke away from him; she shrunk back. + +"Don't do that," he said, imploringly. "I'm not bad, Bel. The world +is bad. Let us be as good and loving as we can be in it. Don't think +me bad." + +There was not anything bad in his eyes; in his young, loving, +handsome face. Bel was not sure enough,--strong enough,--to +denounce the evil that was using the love; to say to that which was +tempting him, and her by him, as Peter's passionate remonstrance +tempted the Christ,--"Thou art Satan. Get thee behind me." + +Yet she shrunk, bewildered. + +"I don't know; I can't understand. Let me go now Mr. Hewland." + +She turned away from him, into the chamber, and reached her hand to +the door as she turned, putting her fingers on its edge to close it +after him. She stood with her back to him; listening, not looking, +for him to go. + +He retreated, then, lingeringly, across the threshold, his eyes upon +her still. She shut the door slowly, walking backward as she pushed +it to. She had _left_, if not driven the devil behind her. Yet she +did not know what she had done. She was still bewildered. I believe +the worst she thought of what had happened was that he wanted to +marry her secretly, and hide her away. + +"Aunt Blin!" she cried, when she felt herself all alone. "Aunt +Blin!--She _can't_ have gone so very far away, quite yet!" + +She went over to the closet, with her arms stretched out. + +She went in, where Aunt Blin's clothes were hanging. She grasped the +old, worn dress, that was almost warm with the wearing. She hid her +face against the sleeve, curved with the shape of the arm that had +bent to its tasks in it. + +"Tell me, Aunt Blin! You can see clear, where you are. Is there any +good--any right in it? Ought I to tell him that I care?" + +She cried, and she waited; but she got no answer there. She came +away, and sat down. + +She was left all to herself in the hard, dreary world, with this +doubt, this temptation to deal with. It was her wilderness; and she +did not remember, yet, the Son of God who had been there before her. + +"Why do they go off so far away in that new life, out of which they +might help us?" + +She did not know how close the angels were. She listened outside for +them, when they were whispering already at her heart. We need to go +_in_; not to reach painfully up, and away,--after that world in +which we also, though blindly, dwell. + +On the table lay Aunt Blin's great Bible; beside it her glasses. + +Something that Miss Euphrasia had told them one day at the chapel, +came suddenly into her mind. + +"The angels are always near us when we are reading the Word, because +they read, always, the living Word in heaven." + +Was that the way? Might she enter so, and find them? + +She moved slowly to the table. + +It was growing dark. She struck a match and lit the gas, turning it +low. She laid back the leaves of the large volume, to the latter +portion. She opened it in Matthew,--to the nineteenth chapter. + +When she had read that, she knew what she was to do. + +She heard nothing more from Morris Hewland that night. + +In the morning, early, she had her room bright and ready for the +day. The light was calm and clear about her. The shadows were all +gone. + +She opened her door, and sat down, waiting, before the fire. Did +she think of that night when she had had on the rose-colored silk, +and had set the door ajar? Something in her had made her ashamed of +that. She was not ashamed--she had no misgiving--of this that she +was going to do now. + +She was all alone; she had no other place to wait in she had no one +to tell her anything. She was going to do a plain, right thing, +whether it was just what anybody else would do, or not. She never +even asked herself that question. + +She heard Mr. Sparrow, with his hop and step, come down over the +stairs. He always came down first of all. Then for another half +hour, she sat still. At the end of that time, Morris Hewland's door +unlatched and closed again. + +Her heart beat quick. She stood up, with her face toward the open +door. At the foot of that upper flight, she heard him pause. She +could not see him till he passed; and he might pass without turning. +Unless he turned, she would be out of his sight; for the door swung +inward from the far corner. No matter. + +He went by with a slow step. He could not help seeing the open door. +But he did not stop or turn, until he reached the stairhead of the +second flight; then he had to face this way again. And as he passed +around the railing, he looked up; for Bel was standing where she had +stood last night. + +She had put herself in his way; but she had not done it lightly, +with any half intent, to give _him_ new opportunity for words. There +was a pure, gentle quiet in her face; she had something herself to +say. He saw it, and went back. + +He colored, as he gave her his hand. Her face was pale. + +"Come in a moment, Mr. Hewland," said the simple, girlish, voice. + +He followed her in. + +"You asked me questions last night, and I did not know how to answer +them. I want to ask you one question, now." + +She had brought him to the side of the round table, upon whose red +cloth the large Bible lay. It was open at the place where she had +read it. + +She put her finger on the page, and made him look. She drew the +finger slowly down from line to line, as if she were pointing for a +little child to read; and his eye followed it. + +"For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall +cleave to his wife; and they twain shall be one flesh. + +"Wherefore, they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore +God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." + +"Is that the way you will make a home and give it to me,--before +them all?" she said. + +He forgot the sophistries he might have used; he forgot to say that +it _was_ to leave father and mother and join himself to her, that he +had purposed; he forgot to tell her again that he would be true to +her all his life, and that nothing should put them asunder. He did +not take up those words, as men have done, and say that God had +joined their hearts together and made them in his sight one. The +angels were beside him, in his turn, as he read. Those sentences of +the Christ, shining up at him from the page, were like the look +turned back upon Peter, showing him his sin. + +"One flesh:" to be seen and known as one. To have one body of +living; to be outwardly joined before the face of men. None to set +them asunder, or hold them separate by thought, or accident, or +misunderstanding. This was the sacred acknowledgment of man and +wife, and he knew that he had not meant to make it. + +As he stood there, silent, she knew it too. She knew that she should +not have been his wife before anybody. + +Her young face grew paler, and turned stern. + +His flushed: a slow, burning, relentless flush, that betrayed him, +marking him like Cain. He lowered his eyes in the heat of it, and +stood so before the child. + +She looked steadfastly at him for one instant; then she shut the +book, and turned away, delivering him from the condemning light of +her presence. + +"No: I will not go to that little home with you," she said with a +grief and scorn mingled in her voice, as they might have been in the +voice of an angel. + +When she looked round again, he was gone. Their ways had parted. + +An hour later, Bel Bree turned the key outside her door, and with a +little leather bag in her hand, saying not a word to any one, went +down into the street. + +Across the Common, and over the great hill, she walked straight to +Greenley Street, and to Miss Desire. + + + + +CHAPTER XXV. + +BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING. + + +Desire Ledwith had a great many secrets to keep. Everybody came and +told her one. + +All these girls whom she knew, had histories; troubles, +perplexities, wrongs, temptations,--greater or less. Gradually, they +all confessed to her. The wrong side of the world's patchwork looked +ugly to her, sometimes. + +Now, here came Bel Bree; with her story, and her little leather bag; +her homelessness, her friendlessness. No, not that; for Desire +Ledwith herself contradicted it; even Mrs. Pimminy and Miss Smalley +were a great deal better than nothing. Not friendlessness, then, +exactly; but _belonglessness_. + +Desire sent down to Leicester Place for Bel's box; for Cheeps also. +Bel wrote a note to Miss Smalley, asking her to take in Bartholomew. +What came of that, I may as well tell here as anywhere; it will not +take long. It is not really an integral part of our story, but I +think you will like to know. + +Miss Smalley herself answered the note. It was easy enough to evade +any close questions on her part; she thought it was "a good deal +more suitable for Bel not to stay at Mrs. Pimminy's alone, and she +wasn't an atom surprised to know she had concluded so;" besides, +Miss Smalley was very much preoccupied with her own concerns. + +"There was the room," she said; "and there was the furniture. Now, +would Bel Bree let the things to her, just as they stood, if +she,--well, if Mr. Sparrow,--for she didn't mind telling Bel that +she and Mr. Sparrow had made up their minds to look after each +other's comfort as well as they could the rest of their lives, +seeing how liable we all were to need comfort and company, at fires +and things;--if Mr. Sparrow hired the room of Mrs. Pimminy? And as +to Bartholomew, Mr. Sparrow wouldn't mind him, and she didn't think +Bartholomew would object to Mr. Sparrow. Cats rather took to him, he +thought. They would make the creature welcome, and make much of him; +and not expect it to be considered at all." + +Bel concluded the arrangement. She thought it would be a comfort to +know that Aunt Blin's little place was not all broken up, but that +somebody was happy there; that Bartholomew had his old corner of the +rug, and his airings on the sunny window-sill; and Miss +Smalley--Mrs. Sparrow that was to be--would pay her fifteen dollars +a year for the things, and make them last. + +"That carpet?" she had said; "why, it hadn't begun to pocket yet; +and there hadn't been any breadths changed; and the mats saved the +hearth-front and the doorway, and she could lay down more. And it +would turn, when it came to that, and last on--as long as ever. +There was six years in that carpet, without darning, if there was a +single day; and Mr. Sparrow always took off his boots and put on his +slippers, the minute ever he got in." + +Desire's library was full on Wednesday evenings, now. The girls came +for instruction, for social companionship, for comfort. On the table +in the dining-room were almost always little parcels waiting, ready +done up for one and another; little things Desire and Hazel "thought +of" beforehand, as what they "might like and find convenient; and +what they"--Desire and Hazel--"happened to have." Sometimes it was a +paper of nice prunes for a delicate appetite that was kept too much +to dry, economical food. Perhaps it was a jar of "Liebig's Extract" +for Emma Hollen, that she might make beef-tea for herself; or a +remnant of flannel that "would just do for a couple of undervests." +It was sure to be something just right; something with a real +thought in it. + +And out here in the dining-room, as they took their little +parcels,--or lingering in the hall aside from the others, or +stopping in a corner of the library,--they would have their "words" +with Desire and Hazel and Sylvie; always some confidence, or some +question, or some telling of how this or that had gone on or turned +out. + +In these days after the Great Fire, no wonder that the dozen or +fifteen became twenty, or even thirty; the very pigeons and sparrows +tell each other where the people are who love and feed them; no +wonder that all the chairs had to be brought in, and that the room +was full; that the room in heart and brain, for sympathy and plan +and counsel, was crowded also, or would have been, if heart and +brain were not made to grow as fast as they take in tendernesses and +thoughts. If, too, one need did not fit right in and help another; +and if being "right in the midst of the work" did not continually +give light and suggestion and opportunity. + +Bel Bree came among them now, with her heart full. + +"I know it better than ever," she said to Miss Desire. "I _know_ +that what ever so many of these girls want, most of all, is _home_. +A place to work in where they can rest between whiles, if it is only +for snatches; not to be out, and on their feet, and just _driving_, +with the minutes at their heels, all day long. Girls want to work +under cover; they can favor themselves then, and not slight the work +either. And especially, they want to _belong_ somewhere. They can't +fling themselves about, separate, anywhere, without a great many +getting spoiled, or lost. They want some signs of care over them; +and I believe there are places where they could have it. If they can +put twenty tucks into a white petticoat for a cent a piece, and work +half a day at it, and find their own fire and bread and tea, why +can't they do it for half a cent a tuck, even, in people's houses, +where they can have fire and lodging and meals, and a name, at any +rate, of being seen to?" + +"Say so to them, Bel. Tell them yourself, what you mean to do, and +find out who will do it with you. If this movement could come from +the girls themselves,--if two or three would join together and +begin,--I believe the leaven would work. I believe it is the next +thing, and that somebody is to lead the way. Why not you?" + +That night, the Read-and-Talk left off the reading. Miss Ledwith +told them that there was so much to say,--so much she wanted a word +from them about,--that they would give up the books for one evening. +They would think about home, instead of far-off places; about +themselves,--each other,--and things that were laid out for them to +do, instead of people who had taken their turn at the world's work +hundreds of years ago. They would try and talk it out,--this hard +question of work, and place, and living; and see, if they could, +what way was provided,--as in the nature of things there must be +some way,--for everybody to be busy, and everybody to be better +satisfied. She thought Bel Bree had got a notion of one way, that +was open, or might be, to a good many, a way that it remained, +perhaps, for themselves to open rightly. + +"Now, Bel, just tell us all how you feel about it. There isn't any +of us whom you wouldn't say it to alone; and every one of us is only +listening separately. When you have finished, somebody else may have +a word to answer." + +"I don't know as I _could_ finish," said Bel Bree, "except by going +and living it out. And that is just what I think we have got to do. +I've said it before; the girls know I have; but I'm surer than ever +of it now. Why, where does all the work come from, but out of the +homes? I know some kinds may always have to be done in the lump; but +there's ever so much that might be done where it is wanted, and +everybody be better off. We want homes; and we want real people to +work for; those two things. I _know_ we do. A lot of _stuff_, and +miles of stitches, ain't _work_; it don't make real human beings, I +think. It makes business, I suppose, and money; I don't know what it +all comes round to, though, for anybody; more spending, perhaps, and +more having, but not half so much being. At any rate, it don't come +round in that to us; and we've got to look out for ourselves. If we +get right, who knows but other folks may get righter in consequence? +What I think is, that wherever there's a family,--a father and a +mother and little children,--there's work to do, and a home to do it +in; and we girls who haven't homes and little children, and perhaps +sha'n't ever have,--ain't much likely to have as things are +now,--could be happier and safer, and more used to what we ought to +be used to in case we should,"--(Bel's sentences were getting to be +very rambling and involved, but her thoughts urged her on, and +everybody's in the room followed her),--"if we went right in where +the things were wanted, and did them. The sewing,--and the +cooking,--and the sweeping, too; everything; I mean, whatever we +could; any of it. You call it 'living out,' and say you won't do it, +but what you do _now_ is the living out! We could _afford_ to go and +say to people who are worrying about poor help and awful +wages,--'We'll come and do well by you for half the money. We know +what homes are worth.' And wouldn't some of them think the +millennium was come? _I_ am going to try it." + +Bel stopped. She did not think of such a thing as having made a +speech; she had only said a little--just as it came--of what she was +full of. + +"You'll get packed in with a lot of dirty servants. You won't have +the home. You'll only have the work of it." + +"No, Kate Sencerbox. I sha'n't do that; because I'm going to +persuade you to go with me. And we'll make the home, if they give us +ever so little a corner of it. And as soon as they find out what we +are, they'll treat us accordingly." + +Kate Sencerbox shrugged her shoulders. + +"The world isn't going to be made all over in a day,--nor Boston +either; not if it _is_ all burnt up to begin with." + +"That is true, Kate," said Desire Ledwith. "You will have +difficulties. But you have difficulties now. And wouldn't it be +worth while to change these that are growing worse, for such as +might grow better? Wouldn't it be grand to begin to make even a +little piece of the world over?" + +"We could start with new people," said Bel. "Young people. They are +the very ones that have the hardest time with the old sort of +servants. We could go out of town, where the old sort won't stay. +You see it's _homes_ we're after; real ones; and to help make them; +and it's homes they hate!" + +"Where did you find it all out, Bel?" + +"I don't know. Talk; and newspapers. And it's in the air." + +Bel was her old, quick, bright, earnest self, taking hold of this +thing that she so truly meant. She turned round to it eagerly, +escaping from the thoughts which she resolutely flung out of her +mind. There was perhaps a slight impetus of this hurry of escape in +her eagerness. But Bel was strong; strong in her purity; in her real +poet-nature, that reached for and demanded the real soul of living; +in her incapacity to care for the shadow or pretense,--far more the +_sullied_ sham,--of anything. Contempt of the evil had come swiftly +to cure the sting of the evil. Satan would fain have had her, to +sift her like wheat; but she had been prayed for; and now that she +was saved, she was inspired to strengthen her sisters. + +"I don't think I could do anything but sewing," said Emma Hollen, +plaintively. "I'm not strong enough. And ladies won't see to their +own sewing, now, in their houses. It's so much easier to go right +into Feede & Treddle's, and buy ready-made, that we've done the +stitching for at forty cents a day, hard work, and find ourselves!" + +"I don't say that every girl in Boston can walk right into a nice +good home, and be given something to do there. But I say there's no +danger of too many trying it yet awhile; and by the time they do, +maybe we'll have changed things a little for them. I'm willing to be +the thin edge of the wedge," said Bel Bree. + +"Right things have the power. God sees to that," said Desire. "The +right cannot stop working. The life is in it." + +"The thing I think of," said Elise Mokey, decidedly, "is suller +kitchens. I ain't ready to be put underground,--not yet awhile. Not +even by way of going to heaven, every night; or as near as four +flights can carry me." + +"In the country they don't have cellar kitchens. And anyway, there's +always a window, and a fire; and with things clean and cheerful, and +some green thing growing for Cheeps to sing to, I'll do," said Bel. +"You've got to begin with what there is, as the Pilgrim Fathers +did." + +Ray Ingraham could have told them, if she had been there this +Wednesday evening, how Dot had begun. Miss Ledwith said nothing +about it, because she felt that it was an exceptional case. She +would not put a falsely flattering precedent before these girls, to +win them to an experiment which with them might prove a hard and +disappointing one. Desire Ledwith was absolutely fair-minded in +everything she did. The feeling on their part that she was so, was +what gave them their trust in her. To bring a subject to her +consideration and judgment, was to bring it into clear sunlight. + +Dot had gone up to Z----, to live with the Kincaids, at the Horse +Shoe. + +Drops of quicksilver, if they are put anywise near together, will +run into each other. And that is the law of the kingdom of good. +Circumstances are far more fluid to the blessed magnetism than we +think. The whole tendency of the right, neighborly life is to reach +forth and draw together; to bring into one circle of communication +people and plans of one spirit and purpose. Then, before we know how +it is, we find them linking and fitting here and there, helping +wonderfully to make a beautiful organism of result that we could not +have planned or foreseen beforehand, any more than we could have +planned our own bodies. It is the growing up into one body in +Christ. + +Hazel Ripwinkley said it all came of "knowing the Muffin Man:" and +so it did. The Bread-Giver; the Provider. It is queer they should +have made such an unconscious parable in that nonsense-play. But you +can't help making parables, do what you will. + +Rosamond Kincaid had her hands full now, she had her little Stephen. + +He came like a little angel of delight, in one way; the real, heart +way; but another,--the practical way of day's doing and +ordering,--he came like a little Hun, overrunning and devastating +everything. + +While Rosamond had been up-stairs, and Mrs. Waters had been nursing +her, and Miss Arabel coming in and out to see that all was straight +below, it had been lovely; it was the peace of heaven. + +But when Mrs. Waters--who was one of those born nurses whom +everybody who has any sort of claim sends for in all emergency of +sickness--had to pack up her valise and go to Portland, where her +niece's son was taken with rheumatic fever, and her niece had +another bleeding at the lungs; when the days grew short, and the +nights long, and the baby _would_ not settle his relations with the +solar system, but having begun his earthly career in the night-time, +kept a dead reckoning accordingly, and continued to make the +midnight hours his hours of demand and enterprise,--the nice little +systematic calculations by which the household had been regulated +fell into hopeless uncertainties. + +Dorris had so many music scholars now, that she was obliged to +leave home at nine in the morning; and at night she was very tired. +It was indispensable for her and for Kenneth that dinner should be +punctual. Rosamond could not let Miss Arabel's labors of love grow +into matter-of-course service. + +And then there were all the sewing and mending to do; which had not +been anything to think of when there had been plenty of time; but +which, now that the baby devoured all the minutes, and made a +houseful of work beside, began to grow threatening with inevitable +procrastinations. + +[Barbara Goldthwaite, who was at home at West Hill with _her_ baby, +averred that _these_ were the angels who came to declare that time +should be no longer.] + +Rosamond would not have a nursery maid; she "would not give up her +baby to anybody;" neither would she let a "kitchen girl" into her +paradisiacal realm of shining tins, and top-over cups, and white, +hemmed dishcloths. + +"Let's have a companion!" said Dorris. "Let's afford her together." + +When their "Christian Register" came, that very week, there was Dot +Ingraham's advertisement. + +Mr. Kincaid went into the city, and round to Pilgrim Street, and +found her; and now, in this November when every machine girl in +Boston was thrown back upon her savings, or her friends, or the +public contribution, she was tucking up little short dresses for +Stephen, whom Rosamond, according to the family tradition, called +resolutely by his name, and whom she would, at five months old, put +into the freedom of frocks, "in which he could begin to feel himself +a little human being, and not a tadpole." + +Dot helped in the kitchen, too; but this was a home kitchen. She +became one of themselves, for whatever there was to be done. +Especially she took triumphant care of Rosamond's stand of plants, +which, under her quickly recognized touch and tending, rushed +tumultuously into a green splendor, and even at this early winter +time, showed eager little buds of bloom, of all that could bloom. + +They had books and loud reading over their work. Everything got +done, and there were leisure hours again. Dot earned four dollars a +week, and once a fortnight went home and spent a Sunday with her +mother. + +All went blessedly at the Horse Shoe; but there is not a Horse Shoe +everywhere. It is always a piece of luck to find one. + +Desire Ledwith knew that; so she held her peace about it for a +while, among these girls to whom Bel Bree was preaching her crusade. +All they knew was that Dot Ingraham and her machine were gone away +into a family eighteen miles from Boston. + +"If _you_ find anything for me to do, Miss Ledwith, I'll do it," +said Kate Sencerbox. "But I won't go into one of those offices, nor +off into the country for the winter. I want to keep something to +hold on to,--not run out to sea without a rope." + +Desire did not propose advertising, as she had done to Dot; she +would let Kate wait a week. A week in the new condition of things +might teach her a good deal. + + + + +CHAPTER XXVI. + +TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'. + + +There was trouble in Mrs. Frank Scherman's pretty little household. + +The trouble was, it did not stay little. Baby Karen was only six +weeks old, and Marmaduke was only three years; great, splendid +fellow though he was at that, and "galumphing round,"--as his mother +said, who read nonsense to Sinsie out of "Wonderland," and the +"Looking Glass,"--upon a stick. + +Of course she read nonsense, and talked nonsense,--the very happiest +and most reckless kind,--in her nursery; this bright Sin Scherman, +who "had lived on nonsense," she declared, "herself, until she was +twenty years old; and it did her good." Therefore, on physiological +principles, she fed it to her little ones. It agreed with the Saxon +constitution. There was nothing like understanding your own family +idiosyncrasies. + +Everything quaint and odd came naturally to them; even their names. + +Asenath: Marmaduke: Kerenhappuch. + +"I didn't go about to seek or invent them," said Mrs. Scherman, with +grave, innocent eyes and lifted brows. "I didn't name myself, in the +first place; did I? Sinsie had to be Sinsie; and then--how _am_ I +accountable for the blessed luck that gave me for best friends dear +old Marmaduke Wharne and Kerenhappuch Craydocke?" + +But down in the kitchen, and up in the nursery, there was +disapproval. + +"It was bad enough," they said,--these orderers of household +administration,--"when there was two. And no second nurse-girl, and +no laundress!" + +"If Mrs. Scherman thinks I'm going to put up with baby-clothes +slopping about all days of the week, whenever a nurse can get time +from tending, and the parlor girl havin' to accommodate and hold the +child when she gets her meals, and nobody to fetch out the dishes +and give me a chance to clear up, I can just tell her it's too +thin!" + +"Ye'r a fool to stay," was the expostulation of an outside friend, +calling one day to see and condole with and exasperate the aforesaid +nurse. "When ther's places yer might have three an' a half a week, +an' a nurse for the baby separate, an' not a stitch to wash, not +even yer own things! If they was any account at all, they'd keep a +laundress!" + +"I know there's places," said the aggrieved, but wary Agnes. "But +the thing is to be sure an' git 'em. And what would I do, waitin' +round?" + +"Ad_ver_tiss," returned the friend. "Yer'd have heaps of 'em after +yer. It's fun to see the carriages rollin' along, one after the +other, in a hurry, and the coachmen lookin' out for the number with +ther noses turned up. An' then yer take it quite calm, yer see, an' +send 'em off agin till yer find out how many more comes; an' yer +_consider_. That's the time yer'll know yer value! I've got an +ad_ver_tiss out now; an' I've had twenty-three of 'em, beggin' and +prayin', down on ther bare knees all but, since yesterday mornin'. +I've been down to Pinyon's to-day, with my croshy-work, for a +change. Norah Moyle's there, with the rest of 'em; doin' ther little +sewin' work, an' hearin' the news, an' aggravatin' the ladies. +Yer'll see 'em come in,--betune ten an' eleven's the time, when the +cars arrives,--hot and flustered, an' not knowin' for their lives +which way to turn; an' yer talks 'em all up and down, deliberate; +an' makes 'em answer all the questions yer like, and then yer tells +'em, quite perlite, at the end, that yer don't think 'twould suit +yer expectash'ns; it's not precisely what yer was lookin' for. Yer +toss 'em over for all the world as they tosses goods on the counter. +Ah, yer can see a deal of life, that way, of a mornin'!" + +Agnes feels, naturally, after this, that she makes a very paltry and +small appearance in the eyes of her friend, and betrays herself to +be very much behindhand in the ways of the world, putting up meekly, +as she is, with a new baby and no second nurse or laundress; and +forgetting the day when she thought her fortune was made and she was +a lady forever, coming from general housework in Aberdeen Street to +be nursery-maid in Harrisburg Square, she begins the usual +preliminaries of neglect, and sauciness, and staying out beyond +hours, and general defiance,--takes sides in the kitchen against the +family regime, and so helps on the evolution of things all and +particular, that at the end of another fortnight the house is empty +of servants, Mr. and Mrs. Scherman are gracefully removing their +breakfast dishes from the dining-room to the kitchen, and Marmaduke, +left to the sugar-bowl and his own further devices, comes tumbling +down the stairs just in time to meet Mrs. M'Cormick, the +washerwoman, arrived for the day. She, used to her own half dozen, +picks him up as if she had expected him, shuts him up like an +umbrella, hustles him under her big, strong arm, and bears him +summarily to the cold-water faucet, which, without uttering a +syllable, she turns upon his small, bewildered, and pitifully bumped +head. + +It will be always a confused and mysterious riddle to his childish +recollection,--what strange gulf he fell into that day, and how the +kitchen sink and those great, grabbing arms came to be at the end of +it. + +"How happened Dukie to tumble down-stairs?" asked Mrs. Scherman, in +the way mothers do, when she had released him from Mrs. M'Cormick, +carried him to the nursery, got him on her knee in a speechful +condition, and was tenderly sopping the blue lump on his forehead +with arnica water. + +"I dicher tumber," said the little Saxon, stoutly, replacing all the +consonant combinations that he couldn't skip, with the aspirated +'ch;' "I dicher tumber. I f'ied." + +"You _what_?" + +"F'ied. I icher pa'yow. On'y die tare too big!" + +"Yes, indeed," said Sin, laughing. "The stairs are a great deal too +big. And little sparrows don't fly--down-stairs. They hop round, and +pick up crumbs." + +"Ho I did," said Marmaduke, showing his white little front teeth in +the midst of a surrounding shine of stickiness. + +"Yes. I see. Sugar. But you didn't manage that much better, either. +The trouble is, you haven't _quite_ turned into a little bird, yet. +You haven't any little beak to pick up clean with, nor any wings to +fly with. You'll have to wait till you grow." + +"I _ta'h_ wa'he. I icher pa'yow now!" + +"What shall I do with this child, Frank?" asked Sin, with her grave, +funny lifting of her brows, as her husband came into the room. "He's +got hypochondriasis. He thinks he's a sparrow, and he's determined +to fly. We shall have him trying it off every possible--I mean +impossible--place in the house." + +"Put him in a cage," said Mr. Scherman, with equal gravity. + +"Yes, of course. That's where little house-birds belong. Duke, see +here! Little birds that live in houses _never_ fly. And they never +pick up crumbs, either, except what are put for them into their own +little dishes. They live in tiny wire rooms, fixed so that they +can't fly out. Like your nursery, with the bars across the windows, +and the gate at the door. You and Sinsie are two little birds; +mamma's sparrows. And you mustn't try to get out of your cage unless +she takes you." + +"Then you're the great sparrow," put in Sinsie, coming up beside +her, laughing. "Whose sparrow are you?" + +Asenath looked up at her husband. + +"Yes; it's a true story, after all. You can't make up anything. It +has been all told before. We're all sparrows, Sinsie,--God's +sparrows." + +"In cages?" + +"Yes. Only we can't always see the wires. They are very fine. There! +That's as far as you or I can understand. Now be good little +birdies, and hop round here together till mamma comes back." + +She went into her own room, to the tiniest little birdie of all, +that was just waking. + +Sinsie and Marmaduke had got a new play, now. They were quite +contented to be sparrows, and chirp at each other, springing and +lighting about, from one green spot to another in the pattern of the +nursery carpet. + +"I'll tell you what," said Sinsie, confidentially; "sparrows don't +have girls to interfere, do they? They live in the cages and help +themselves. I like it. I'm glad Agnes is gone." + +Sinsie was four and a half; she had "talked plain" ever since she +was one; and the nonsense that her mother had talked to her being +always bright nonsense, such as she would talk to anybody on the +same subject, there was something quaint in the child's fashion of +speech and her unexpected use of words. Asenath Scherman did not +keep two dictionaries, nor pare off an idea, as she would a bit of +apple before she gave it to a child. It was noticeable how she +sharpened their little wits continually against her own without +straining them. + +And there was a reflex action to this sharpening. She was fuller of +graceful little whims, of quick and keen illustrations, than ever. +Her friends who were admitted to nursery intimacies and nursery +talk, said it was ever so much better than any grown-up +dinner-tables and drawing-rooms. + +"Well," she would answer, "I'm not much in the way of dinner-tables +and drawing-rooms. I just have to live right along, and what there +is of me comes out here. I rather think we'll save time and comfort +by it in the end,--Sinsie and I. She won't want so much special +taking into society by and by, before she can learn to tell one +thing from another. Frank and I, with such friends as come here in +our own fashion, will make a society for her from the beginning, as +well as we can. She will get more from us in twenty years than she +would from 'society' in two. And if I 'kept up' outside, now, for +the sake of her future, that would be the alternative? I believe +more in growing up than in coming out." + +If there was a reflex action in the mental influence, how much more +in the tender and spiritual! How many a word came back into her own +heart like a dove, that she first thought of in giving it to her +child! + +She sat now in her chamber bathing and dressing baby Karen; and all +the perplexities of the day,--the days or weeks, perhaps,--that had +stretched out before her, melted into a sweetness, remembering that +she herself was but one of God's sparrows, fed out of his hand; and +that all her limitations, as well as her unsuspected safeties, were +the fine wires with which He surrounded and held her in. + +"He knows my cage," she thought. "He has put me here Himself, and He +will not forget me." + +Frank dined down town; Asenath had her lunch of bread and butter, +and beef tea; and an egg beaten in a tumbler, with sugar and cream, +for her dessert. The children, with their biscuit and milk and baked +apple, were easily cared for. They played "sparrow" all day; Asenath +put their little bowls and spoons on the low nursery table, and left +them to "help themselves." + +Honest, rough Mrs. M'Cormick fetched and carried for her, and +"cleaned up" down-stairs. Then Asenath wrote a few lines to Desire +Ledwith, told her strait, and asked if she could take a little +trouble for her, and send her some one. + +Mrs. M'Cormick went round to Greenley Street, and delivered the +note. + +"There!" said Desire, when she had read it, to Bel Bree who was in +the room. "The Providence mail is in, early; and this is for you." + +When Bel had seen what it was, she realized suddenly that Providence +had taken her at her word. She was in for it now; here was this +thing for her to do. Her breath shortened with the thought of it, as +with a sudden plunge into water. Who could tell how it would turn +out? She had been so brave in counseling and urging others; what if +she should make a mistake of it, herself? + +"She hasn't anybody; she would take Kate, maybe Kate must just go. +It won't be half a chance to try it, if I can't try it my way." + +"It is a clear stage," said Desire Ledwith. "If you can act out your +little programme anywhere, you can act it at the Schermans'." + +"Is it a cellar kitchen?" + +Bel laughed as soon as she had asked the question. She caught +herself turning catechetical at once, after the servant-girl +fashion. + +"I was thinking about Kate. But I don't wonder they inquire about +things. It's a question of home." + +"Of course it is. There ought to be questions,--on both parts. Every +fair person knows _that_ is fair. Neither side ought to assume the +pure bestowal of a favor. But the one who has the home already may +be supposed to consider at least as carefully whom she will take in, +as she who comes to offer service as an equivalent. I believe it is +a cellar kitchen; at least, a basement. The house is on the lower +side; there must be good windows." + +"I'll go right round for Kate, and we'll just call and see. I don't +know in the least how to begin about it when I get there. I could do +the _thing_, if I can make out the first understanding. I hope Kate +won't be very Kate-y!" + +She said so to Miss Sencerbox when she found her. + +"You needn't be afraid. I'm bound to astonish somebody. Impertinence +wouldn't do that. I shall strike out a new line. I'm the cook,--or +the chambermaid,--which is it? that they haven't had any of before. +I shall keep my sharp relishes for our own private table. You +might discriminate, Bel! I know I've got a kind of a pert, +snappy-sounding name,--just like the outside of me; but if you stop +to look at it, it isn't _Saucebox_, but _Sensebox_! They're related, +sometimes, and they ain't bad together; but yet, apart, they're +different." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVII. + +BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM. + + +Mrs. Frank Scherman's front door-bell rang. Of course she had to go +down and open it herself. When she did so, she let in two girls +whose pretty faces, bright with a sort of curious expectation, met +hers in a way by which she could hardly guess their station or +errand. + +She did not know them; they might be anybody's daughters, yet they +hardly looked like _technical_ "young ladies." + +They stepped directly in without asking; they moved aside till she +had closed the door against the keen November wind; then Bel said,-- + +"We came to see what help you wanted, Mrs. Scherman. Miss Ledwith +told us." + +How did Bel know so quickly that it was Mrs. Scherman? There was +something in her instant conclusion and her bright directness that +amused Asenath, while it bore its own letter of recommendation so +far. + +"Do you mean you wished to inquire for yourselves,--or for either of +you?" she asked, as she led the way up-stairs. + +"I must bring you up where the children are," she said. "I cannot +leave them." + +They were all in the large back room, with western windows, over the +parlor. The doors through a closet passage stood open into Mrs. +Scherman's own. There were blocks, and linen picture-books, and a +red tin wagon full of small rag-dolls, about on the floor. Baby +Karen was rolled up in a blanket on the middle of a bed. + +"You see, this is the family,--except Mr. Scherman. I want two good, +experienced girls for general work, and another to help me here in +the nursery. I say two for general work, because I want some things +equally divided, and others exchanged willingly upon occasion. Do +you want places for yourselves?" + +She paused to repeat the question, hardly sure of the possibility. +These girls did not look much like it. There was no half-suspicious, +half-aggressive expression on their faces even yet. It was time for +it; time for her own cross-examination to begin, according to all +precedent, if they were really looking out for themselves. Why +didn't they sit up straight and firm, with their hands in their +muffs and their eyes on hers, and say with a rising inflection and +lips that moved as little as possible,--"What wages, mum?" or +"What's the conveniences--or the privileges--mum?" + +Bel Bree had got her arm round little Sinsie, who had crept up to +her side inquisitively; and Kate was making a funny face over her +shoulder at Marmaduke, alternately with the pleased attentive glance +she gave to his pretty young mother and her speaking. + +"Yes'm," Bel answered. "We want places. We are sewing-girls. We have +lost our work by the fire, and we were getting tired of it before. +We have made up our minds to try families. We want a real place to +live, you see. And we want to go together, so as to make our own +place. We mightn't like things just as they happened, where there +was others." + +Mrs. Scherman's own face lighted up afresh. This was something that +did not happen every day. She grew cordial with a pleased surprise. +"Do you think you could? Do you know about housework, about +cooking?" + +"It's very good of you to put it in that way," said Kate Sencerbox. +"We just do know _about_ it, and perhaps that's all, at present. But +we're Yankees, and we _mean_ to know." + +"And you would like to experiment with me?" + +"Well, it wouldn't be altogether experiment, from the very +beginning," said Bel. "I'm sure I can make good bread, and tea, and +toast, and broil chickens or steaks; I can stew up sauces, I can do +oysters. I can make a _splendid_ huckleberry pudding! We had one +every Sunday all last August." + +"Where?" asked Asenath, gravely. + +"In our room; Aunt Blin and I. Aunt Blin died just after the fire," +said Bel, simply. + +Asenath's gravity grew sweeter and more real; the tremulous twinkle +quieted in her eyes. + +"I don't know what to answer you, exactly," she said, presently. +"This is just what we housekeepers have been saying ought to happen: +and now that it does happen, I feel afraid of taking you in. It is +very odd; but the difficulties on your side begin to come to me. I +have no doubt that on my side it would be lovely. But have you +thought about this 'real place to live' that you want? what it would +have to be? Do you think you would be contented in a kitchen? And +the washing? Our washings are so large, with all these little +children!" + +Yes, it was odd. Without waiting to be catechised, or resenting +beforehand the spirit of jealous inquiry, Asenath Scherman was +frankly putting it in the heads of these unused applicants that +there might be doubts as to her service suiting them. + +"I suppose we could do anything reasonable," said Kate Sencerbox. + +"I wonder if it is reasonable!" said Mrs. Scherman. "Mr. Scherman +has six shirts a week, and the children's things count up fearfully, +and the ironing is nice work. I'm afraid you wouldn't think you had +any time left for living. The clothes hardly ever all come up before +Thursday morning." + +"And the cooking and all are just the same those days?" asked Kate. + +"Why yes, pretty nearly, except just Mondays. Monday always has to +be rather awful. But after that, we _do_ expect to live. We couldn't +hold our breaths till Thursday." + +"I guess there's something that isn't quite reasonable, somewhere," +said Kate. "But I don't think it's you, Mrs. Scherman, not +meaningly. I wonder if two or three sensible people couldn't +straighten it out? There ought to be a way. The nursery girl helps, +doesn't she?" + +"Yes. She does the baby's things. But while baby is so little, I +can't spare her for much more. With doing them, and her own clothes, +I don't seem to have her more than half the time, now." + +Kate Sencerbox sat still, considering. + +Bel Bree was afraid that was the last of it. In that one still +minute she could almost feel her beautiful plan crumbling, by little +bits, like a heap of sand in a minute-glass, away into the opposite +end where things had been before, with nobody to turn them upside +down again. Which _was_ upside down, or right side up? + +She had not thought a word about big, impossible washings. + +Kate spoke out at last. + +"Every one brings the work of one, you see," she said. + +"What do you mean?" + +"I wish there needn't be any nursery girl." + +Mrs. Scherman lifted her eyebrows in utter amaze. The suggestion to +the ordinary Irish mind would have been, as she had already +experienced, another nurse; certainly not the dispensing with that +official altogether. + +"What wages do you pay, Mrs. Scherman?" was Kate's next question. It +came, evidently in the process of a reasoning calculation; not, as +usual, with the grasping of demand. + +"Four dollars to the cook. Which _is_ the cook?" + +"I don't believe we know yet," answered Bel Bree, laughing in the +glee of her recovering spirits. "But I think it would probably be +me. Kate can make molasses candy, but she hasn't had the chance for +much else. And I should like to have the kitchen in my charge. I +feel responsible for the home-iness of it, for I started the plan." + +With that covert suggestion and encouragement, she stopped, leaving +the lead to Kate again. + +Kate Sencerbox was as earnest as a judge. + +"How much to the others?" said she. + +"Three dollars each." + +"That's ten dollars a week. Now, if you only had Bel and me, and +paid us three or three and a half a piece, couldn't you put +out--say, five dollars' worth of fine washing? Wouldn't the nurse's +board and wages come to that? And I'd engage to help with the baby +as much as you say you get helped now." + +"But you would want some time to yourself?" + +"Babies can't be awake all the time. I guess I should get it. I've +never had anything but evenings, so far. The thing is, Mrs. +Scherman, if I can try this anywhere, I can try it here. I don't +suppose people have got things fixed just as they would have been if +there'd always been a home all over the house. If we go to live with +anybody, we mean to make it living _in_, not living _out_. And we +shall find out ways as we go along,--all round. If you're willing, +we are. It's Bel's idea, not mine; though she's let me take it to +myself, and do the talking. I suppose because she thought I should +be the hardest of the two to be suited. And so I am. I didn't +believe in it at first. But I begin to see into it; and I've got +interested. I'd like to work it out on this line, now. Then I shall +know." + +There were not many more words after that; there did not need to be. +Mrs. Scherman engaged them to come, at once, for three dollars and a +half a week each. + +"It's a kind of a kitchen gospel," said Bel Bree, as they walked up +Summit Street. "And it's got to come from the _girls_. What can the +poor ladies do, up in their nurseries, with their big houses, full +of everything, on their hands, and the servants dictating and +clearing out? They can't say their souls are their own. They can't +plan their work, or say how many they'll have to do it. The more +they have, the more they'll have to have. It ain't Mr. and Mrs. +Scherman, and those two little children,--or two and a half,--that +makes all the to-do. Every girl they get makes the dinners more, and +the Mondays heavier. Why, the family grows faster down-stairs than +up, with a nurse for every baby! Think of the tracking and +travelling, the wear and tear. Every one makes work for one, and +dirt for two. It's taking in a regiment down below, and laying the +trouble all off on to the poor little last baby up-stairs! And the +ladies don't see through it. They just keep getting another parlor +girl, or door girl, or nursery girl, and wondering that the things +don't grow easier. It's like that queer rule in arithmetic about +fractions,--where dividing and multiplying get all mixed up, and you +can't hold on to the reason why, in your mind, long enough to look +at it." + +"Why didn't you go down and see the kitchen?" + +"Because, how could she leave those tots to take care of themselves +while she showed us? Our minds were made up. You said just the +truth; if we can try it anywhere, we can try it there. And whatever +the kitchen is, it's only our place to begin on. We'll have it all +right, or something near it, before we've been there a fortnight. +It's only a room we take, where the work is given in to do. If we +had one anywhere else, we should expect to fix up and settle in it +according to our own notions, and why not there? We're rent free, +and paid for our work. I'm going to have things of my own; personal +property. If I want a chandelier, I'll save up and get one; only I +sha'n't want it. There's ways to contrive, Kate; and real fun doing +it." + +An hour afterward, they were on their way back, with their leather +bags. + +Baby Karen was asleep, and Mrs. Scherman came down-stairs to let +them in again, with Marmaduke holding to her hand, and Sinsie +hopping along behind. They all went into the kitchen together. + +Mrs. McCormick had "cleared it up," so that there was at least a +surface tidiness and cheerfulness. The floor was freshly scrubbed, +the table-tops scoured down, the fire made, and the gas lighted. +Mrs. McCormick had gone home, to be ready for her own husband and +her two "boys" when they should come in from their work to their +suppers. + +The kitchen was in an L; there were two windows looking out upon a +bricked yard. Bel Bree kept the points of the compass in her head. + +"Those are south windows," said she. "We can have plants in them. +And it's real nice their opening out on a level." + +Forward, the house ran underground. They used the front basement for +a store-room. Above the kitchen, in the L, was the dining-room. A +short, separate flight of stairs led to it; also a dumb waiter ran +up and down between china closet and kitchen pantry. Both kitchen +and dining-room were small; the L had only the width of the hall and +the additional space to where the first window opened in the western +wall. + +In one corner of the kitchen were set tubs; a long cover slid over +them, and formed a sideboard. Opposite, beside the fire-place, were +sink and boiler; between the windows, a white-topped table. There +were four dark painted wooden chairs. A clock over the table, and a +rolling-towel beside the sink; green Holland window-shades; these +were the only adornments and drapery. There was a closet at each end +of the room. + +"Will you go up to your room now, or wait till after tea?" asked +Mrs. Scherman. + +"We might take up our things, now," said Bel, looking round at the +four chairs. "They would be in the way here, perhaps." + +Kate took up her bag from the table. + +"We can find the room," she said, "if you will direct us." + +"Up three flights; two from the dining-room; the back chamber. You +can stop at my room as you come down, and we will think about tea. +Mr. Scherman will soon be home; and I should like to surprise him +with something very comfortable." + +The girls found their way up-stairs. + +The room, when they reached it, looked pleasant, though bare. The +sun had gone below the horizon, beyond the river which they could +not see; but the western light still shone in across the roofs. +There were window-seats in the two windows, uncushioned. A square of +clean, but faded carpet was laid down before the bed and reached to +the table,--simple maple-stained pine, uncovered,--that stood +beneath a looking-glass in a maple frame, between the windows. There +were three maple-stained chairs in the room. A door into a good, +deep closet stood open; there was a low grate in the chimney, unused +of course, with no fire-irons about it, and some scraps of refuse +thrown into it and left there; this was the only actual untidiness +about the room, where there was not the first touch of cosiness or +comfort. The only depth of color was in a heavy woven dark-blue and +white counterpane upon the bed. + +"Now, Kate Sencerbox, shut up!" said Bel Bree, turning round upon +her, after the first comprehensive glance, as Kate came in last, and +closed the door. + +Kate put her muff down on the bed, folded her hands meekly, and +looked at Bel with a mischievous air that said plainly enough "Ain't +I?" and which she would not falsify by speech. + +"Yes, I know you are; but--_stay_ shut up! All this isn't as it is a +going to be,--though it's _not_ bad even now!" + +Kate resolutely stayed shut up. + +"You see that carpet is just put there; within this last hour, I +dare say. Look at the clean ravel in the end. They've taken away the +old, tramped one. That's a piece out of saved-up spare ends of +breadths, left after some turn-round or make-over, I know! It's +faded, and it's homely; but it's spandy clean! I sha'n't let it stay +raveled long. And I've got things. Just wait till my trunk comes. My +ottoman, I mean. That's what it turns into. Have you got a stuffed +cover to your trunk, Katie?" + +Kate lifted up her eyebrows for permission to break silence. + +"Of course you can, when you're asked a question. You've had time +now for second thoughts. I wasn't going to let you fly right out +with discouragements." + +"It is you that flies out with taking for granteds," said Kate +Sencerbox, in a subdued monotone of quietness. "I was only going to +remark that we had got neither cellar windows, nor attic skylights +after all. I'm favorably surprised with the accommodations. I've +paid four dollars a week for a great deal worse. And I wouldn't cast +reflections by arguing objections that haven't been made, if I were +the leader of this enterprise, Miss Bree." + +"Kate! That's what I call real double lock-stitch pluck! That goes +back of everything. You needn't shut up any more. Now let's come +down and see about supper." + +They had pinned on linen aprons, with three-cornered bibs; such as +they wore at their machines. When they came down into Mrs. +Scherman's room, that young matron said within herself,--"I wonder +if it's real or if we're in a charade! At any rate, we'll have a +real tea in the play. They do sometimes." + +"What is the nicest, and quickest, and easiest thing to get, I +wonder?" she asked of her waiting ministers. "Don't say toast. We're +so tired of toast!" + +"Do you like muffins and stewed oysters?" asked Bel Bree, drawing +upon her best experience. + +"Very much," Mrs. Scherman answered. + +And Kate, looking sharply on, delighted herself with the guarded +astonishment that widened the lady's beautiful eyes. + +"Only we have neither muffins nor oysters in the house; and the +grocery and the fish-market are down round the corner, in Selchar +Street." + +"I could go for them right off. What time do you have tea?" + +Really, Asenath Scherman had never acted in a charade where her cues +were so unexpected. + +"I wonder if I'm getting mixed up again," she thought. "Which _is_ +the cook?" + +Of course a cook never would have offered to go out and order +muffins and oysters. Mrs. Scherman could not have _asked_ it of the +parlor-maid. + +Kate Sencerbox relieved her. + +"I'll go, Bel," she interposed. "I guess it's my place. That is, if +you like, Mrs. Scherman." + +"I like it exceedingly," said Asenath, congratulating herself upon +the happy inspiration of her answer, which was not surprise nor +thanks, but cordial and pleased enough for either. "The shops are +next each other, just beyond Filbert Street. Have the things charged +to Mrs. Francis Scherman. A quart of oysters,--and how many muffins? +A dozen I think; then if there are two or three left, they'll be +nice for breakfast. They will send them up. Say that we want them +directly." + +"I can bring the muffins. I suppose they'll want the oyster-can +back." + +It may be a little doubtful whether Kate's spirit of supererogatory +doing would have gone so far, if it had not been for the +deliciousness of piling up the wonder. She retreated, upon the word, +magnanimously, remitting further reply; and Bel directly after +descended to her kitchen, to make the needful investigations among +saucepans and toasters. + +"Don't be frightened at anything you may find," Mrs. Scherman said +to her as she went. "I won't answer for the insides of cupboards and +pans. But we will make it all right as fast as possible. You shall +have help if you need it; and at the worst, we can throw away and +get new, you know. Suppose, Bel," she added, with enchanting +confidence and accustomedness, "we were to have a cup of coffee with +the oysters? There is some real Mocha in the japanned canister in +the china closet, and there are eggs in the pantry, to clear with; +you know how? Mr. Scherman is so fond of coffee." + +Bel knew how; and Bel assented. As the door closed after her, below +stairs, Mrs. Scherman caught up Sinsie into her lap, and gave her a +great congratulatory hug. + +"Do you suppose it will last, little womanie? If it isn't all gone +in the morning, what comfort we'll have in keeping house and taking +care of baby!" + +The daughter is so soon the "little womanie" to the mother's loving +anticipation! + +Marmaduke was lustily struggling with and shouting to a tin horse +six inches long, and tipping up a cart filled with small pebbles on +the carpet. He was outside already; the housekeeping was nothing to +him, except as it had to do with the getting in of coals. + +When Mr. Scherman opened the front door, the delicious aroma of +oysters and coffee saluted his chilled and hungry senses. He +wondered if there were unexpected company, and what Asenath could +have done about it. He passed the parlor door cautiously, but there +was no sound of voices. Up-stairs, all was still; the children were +in crib and cradle, and Asenath was shaking and folding little +garments,--shapes out of which the busy spirits had slidden. + +He came up behind her, where she stood before the fire. + +"All well, little mother?" he questioned. "Or tired to death? There +are festive odors in the house. Has anybody repented and come back +again?" + +"Not a bit of it!" Sin exclaimed triumphantly, turning round and +facing him, all rosy with the loving romp she had been having just a +little while before with her babies. "Frank! I've got a pair of +Abraham's angels down-stairs! Or Mrs. Abraham's,--if she ever had +any. I don't remember that they used to send them to women much, now +I think of it, after Eve demeaned herself to entertain the old +serpent. Ah! the _babies_ came instead; that was it! Well; there is +a couple in the kitchen now, at any rate; and they're toasting and +stewing in the most E--_lys_ian manner! That's what you smell." + +"Angels? Babies? What terrible ambiguity! What, or who, is stewing, +if you please, dear?" + +"Muffins. No! oysters. There! you sha'n't know anything about it +till you go down to tea. But the millennium's come, and it's begun +in our house." + +"I knew that, six years ago," said Frank Scherman. "There are +exactly nine hundred and ninety-four left of it. I can wait till +tea-time with the patience of the saints." + + + + +CHAPTER XXVIII. + +"LIVING IN." + + +Desire Ledwith went over to Leicester Place with Bel Bree, when she +returned there for the first needful sorting and packing and +removing. Bel could not go alone, to risk any meeting; to put +herself, voluntarily and unprotected in the way again. Miss Ledwith +took a carriage and called for her. In that manner they could bring +away nearly all. What remained could be sent for. + +Miss Smalley possessed some movables of her own, though the +furnishings in her room had been mostly Mrs. Pimminy's. There were +some things of her aunt's that Bel would like, and which she had +asked leave to bring to Mrs. Scherman's. + +The light, round table, with its old fashioned slender legs and claw +feet, its red cloth, and the books and little ornaments, Bel wanted +in her sleeping-room. "Because they were Aunt Blin's," she said, +"and nothing else would seem so pleasant. She should like to take +them with her wherever she went." + +The two trunks--hers and Katy's--(Bel had Aunt Blin's great +flat-topped one now, with its cushion and flounce of Turkey red; and +Kate had speedily stitched up a cover for hers to match, of cloth +that Mrs. Scherman gave her) stood one each side the chimney,--in +the recesses. A red and white patchwork quilt, done in stars, Bel's +own work before she ever came to Boston, lay folded across the foot +of the bed, in patriotic contrast with the blue,--reversing the +colors in stars and stripes. Bel had found in the attic a discarded +stairway drugget, scarlet and black, of which, the centre was worn +to threads, but the bright border still remained; and this she had +asked for and sewed around the square of neutral tinted carpet, upon +whose middle the round table stood, covering its dullness with red +again, the color of the cloth. There was plenty of bordering left, +of which she pieced a foot-mat for the floor before the +dressing-glass, and in the open grate now lay a little unlighted +pile of kindlings and coals, as carefully placed behind well +blackened bars and a facing of paper, as that in the parlor below. + +"It looks nice," Bel said to Mrs. Scherman, "and we don't expect to +light it, unless one of us is sick, or something." + +"Light it whenever you wish for it," Mrs. Scherman had replied. "I +am perfectly willing to trust your reasonableness for that." + +So on Sunday afternoons, or of a bitter cold morning, they had their +own little blaze to sit or dress by; and it made the difference of a +continual feeling of cheeriness and comfort to them, always possible +when not immediately actual; and of a bushel or two of coal, +perhaps, in the winter's supply of fuel. + +"Where were the babies of a Sunday afternoon,--and how about the +offered tending?" + +This was one more place for them also; a treat and a change to +Sinsie and Marmaduke, or a perfectly safe and sweet and comfortable +resource in tending Baby Karen, who would lie content on the soft +quilts by the half hour, feeling in the blind, ignorant way that +little babies certainly do, the novelty and rest. + +The household, you see, was melting into one; the spirit of home +was above and below. It was home as much as wages, that these girls +had come for; and they expected to help make it. Not that they +parted with their own individual lives and interests, either; every +one must have things that are separate; it is the way human souls +and lives are made. It would have been so with daughters, or +sisters. But in a true living, it is the individual interests that +at once aggregate and specialize, it is a putting into the common +stock that which must be distinct and real that it may be put in at +all. It was not money and goods alone, that the early Christians had +in common. + +Instead of a part of their house being foreign and +distasteful,--tolerated through necessity only, that the rest might +be ministered to,--there was a region in it, now, of new, extended +family pleasure. "It was as good as building out a conservatory, or +a billiard-room," Asenath said. "It was just so much more to enjoy." + +There was a little old rocking-chair, railed round till it was +almost like a basket, with just a break in the front palings to sit +into. It had a soft down cushion, covered with a damask patterned +patch of wild and divaricating device; and its rockers were short, +giving a jerk and thud if you leaned to and fro in it, like the trot +an old nurse gives a child in an ordinary, four-legged, +impracticable seat. All the better for that; the rockers were not in +the way; and all Aunt Blin had wanted of it as a sewing chair, was +to tip conveniently, as she might wish to bend and reach, to pick up +scissors or spool, or draw to herself any of those surroundings of +part, pattern, or material, which are sure, at the moment one wants +them to be on the opposite side of the table. + +Bel brought this away from Leicester Place, and had it in the +kitchen. Mrs. Scherman, then seeing that there remained for Kate +only the choice of the four wooden chairs, and pleased with the cosy +expression they were causing to pervade their precincts, suggested +their making space for a short, broad lounge that she would spare to +them from an upper room which was hardly ever used. It was an old +one that she had had sent from home among some other things that +were reminiscences, when her father and mother, the second year +after her marriage, had broken up their household in New York, and +resolved on a holiday, late in life, in Europe. It was a +comfortable, shabby old thing, that she had used to curl up on to +learn her German, with the black kitten in her lap, and the tip of +its tail for a pointer. She had always meant to cover it new, but +had never had time. There was a large gray travelling shawl folded +over it now, making extra padding for back and seat, and the thick +fringe fell below, a garnishing along the front. + +"Let it be," said Asenath. "I don't think you'll set the soup-kettle +or the roasting-pan down on it; and you can always shake it out +fresh and make it comfortable. It was only getting full of dust +up-stairs. There's a square pillow in the trunk-room that you can +have too, and cover with something. A five minutes' level rest is +nice, between times, I know. I wonder I never thought of it before." + +How would Bel or Kate have ever got a "five minutes' level rest," +over their machine-driving at Fillmer & Bylles? Bel had said well, +that girls and women need to work under cover; in a _home_, where +they can "rest by snatches." A mere roof is not a cover; there may +be driving afield in a great warehouse, as well as out upon a +plantation. + +The last touch and achievement was more of the dun-gray carpet, +like that in their bedroom, and more of the scarlet and black +stair-border, made into a rug, which was spread down when work was +over, and rolled up under the table when dinner was to dish, or a +wash was going on. They had been with Mrs. Scherman a month before +they ventured upon that asking. + +When it was finished, Sin brought her husband down after tea one +night, to look at it. + +"It is the most fascinating room in the house," she said. + +There was a side gas-light over the white-topped table, burning +brightly. Upon the table were work-baskets, and a volume from the +Public Library. The lounge was just turned out from the wall a +little, towards it, and opposite stood the round rocking-chair. +Cheeps, in his cage at the farther window, was asleep in a yellow +ball, his head under his wing. Bel was hanging the last dish-towel +upon a little folding-horse in the chimney corner, and they could +hear Kate singing up-stairs to a gentle clatter of the dishes that +she was putting away from the dining-room use. + +"It looks as a kitchen ought to," said Mr. Scherman. "As my +grandmother's used to look; as if all the house-comfort came from +it." + +"It isn't a place to forbid children out of, is it?" asked Asenath. + +"I should think the only condition would be their own best +behavior," returned her husband. + +"They're almost always good down here," said Bel. "Children like to +be where things are doing. They always feel put away, out of the +good times, I think, in a nursery." + +"My housekeeping is all turning round on a new pivot," said Sin to +Frank, after they were seated again up-stairs. "Don't take up the +'Skelligs' yet; I want to tell you. If I thought the pivot would +really _stay_, there are two or three more things I should do. And +one of them is,--I'd have the nursery--a day-nursery--down-stairs; +that is, if I could coax you into it." + +"It seems the new pivot is two very large 'ifs,'" said Frank, +laughing. "And not much space to turn in, either. Would you take the +cellar, or build out? And if so, where?" + +"I'd take the dining-room, Frank; and eat in the back parlor." + +"I wish you would. I don't like dining-rooms. I was brought up to a +back parlor." + +"You do? You don't? You were? Why, Frank, I thought you'd hate it," +cried Asenath, pouring forth her exclamations all in a heap, and +coming round to lean upon his shoulder. "I wish I'd told you before! +Just think of those south dining-room windows that they'll have the +good of all the forenoon, and that all we do with is to shade them +down at dinner-time! And the horse-chestnut tree, and the +grape-vines, making it green and pleasant, by and by! And the saving +of going over the stairs, and the times one of the girls might help +me when I _couldn't_ ring her away up to my room; and the tending of +table, with baby only to be looked after in here. Why, I should sit +here, myself, mornings, always; and everything would be all together +and the up-stairs work,--it would be better than two nurse-girls to +have it so!" + +"Then why not have it so right off? The more you turn on your pivot, +the smoother it gets, you know. And the more nicely you balance and +concentrate, the longer your machine will last." + +Asenath lay awake late, and woke early, that night and the next +morning, "planning." + +When Frank saw a certain wide, intent, shining, "don't-speak-to-me" +look in her eyes, he always knew that she was "planning." And he had +found that out of her plans almost always resulted some charming +novelty, at least, that gave one the feeling of beginning life over +again; if it were only the putting of his bureau on the other side +of the room, so that he started the wrong way for a few days, +whenever he wanted to get a clean collar; or the setting the +bedstead with side instead of head to the wall; issuing in +delightful bewilderments of mind, when wakened suddenly and asked to +find a match or turn up the dressing-room gas in the night, to meet +some emergency of the baby's. + +This time the development was a very busy Friday forenoon; in which +the silver rubbing was omitted, and the dinner preparations put +off,--the man who came for "chores" detained for heavy lifting,--the +large dining-table turned up on edge and rolled into the back +parlor, the sideboard brought in and put in the place of a sofa, +which was wheeled to an obtuse angle with the fire-place,--nine +square yards of gray drugget, with a black Etruscan border, sent up +by Mr. Scherman from Lovejoy's, and tacked carefully down by seam +and stripe, under Asenath's personal direction; cradle, +rocking-horse, baby-house, tin carts and picture-books removed from +the nursery and arranged in the new quarters,--the children +themselves following back and forth untiringly with their +one-foot-foremost hop over the stairs, and their hands clasping the +rods of the balusters,--some little shabby treasure always hugged +in the spare arm, chairs and crickets, and the low table suited to +their baby-chairs, at which they played and ate, transferred also; +until Asenath stood with a sudden sadness in the deserted chamber, +reduced to the regular bedroom furnishings, and looking dead and +bleak with the little life gone out of it. + +But the warm south sun was beaming full into the pretty room below, +where the small possessors of a whole new, beautiful world were +chattering and dancing with delight; and up here, by and by, the +western shine would come to meet them at their bedtime, and the new +moon and the star-twinkle would peep in upon their sleep. + +With her own hands, Asenath made the room as fresh and nice as could +be; put little frilled covers over the pillows of the low bed, and +on the half-high bureau top; brought in and set upon the middle of +this last a slender vase from her own table, with a tea-rose in it, +and said to herself when all was done,-- + +"How sweet and still it will be for them to come up to, after all! +It _isn't_ nice for children to be put to sleep in the midst of the +whole day's muss!" + +The final thing was done the next morning. The carpenter came and +put a little gate across the head of the short stairway which would +now only be used as required between play-room and kitchen; the back +stairway of the main house giving equal access on the other side to +the parlor dining-room. China closet and dumb waiter were luckily in +that angle, also. + +A second little railed gate barred baby trespass into the halls. The +sparrows were caged again. + +"What would you have done if they hadn't been?" asked Hazel +Ripwinkley, speaking of the china closet and dumb waiter happening +to be just as they were. She had come over one morning with Miss +Craydocke, for a nursery visit and to see the new arrangements. + +"What should we have done if anything hadn't been?" asked Asenath, +in return. "Everything always has been, somehow, in my life. I don't +believe we have anything to do with the 'ifs' way back, do you, Miss +Hapsie? We couldn't stop short of the 'if' out of which we came into +the world,--or the world came out of darkness! I think that's the +very beauty of living." + +"The very everlasting livingness," said Miss Hapsie. "We don't want +to see the strings by which the earths and moons are hung up; nor, +any more, the threads that hold our little daily possibilities." + +Asenath had other visitors, sometimes, with whom it was not so easy +to strike the key-note of things. + +Glossy Megilp and her mother had come home from Europe. They and the +Ledwiths were in apartments in one of the great "Babulous" hotels, +as Sin called them, with a mingling of idea and etymology. + +"Good places enough," she said, "for the prologue and the epilogue +of life; but not for the blessed meanwhile; for the acting of all +the dear heart and home parts." + +The two families had managed very well by taking two small "suites" +and making a common parlor; thus bestowing themselves in one room +less than they could possibly have done apart. They were very +comfortable and content, made economical breakfasts and teas +together, dined at the cafe, and had long forenoons in which to run +about and look in upon their friends. + +Glossy had always "cultivated" Asenath Scherman for though that +young dame lived at present a very retired and domestic life, Miss +Megilp was quite aware that she _might_ come out, and in precisely +the right place, at any minute she chose; and meanwhile it was +exceedingly suitable to know her well in this same intimate +privilege of domesticity. + +Glossy Megilp was very polite; but she did not believe in the new +order of things; and her eyelids and the corners of her mouth showed +it. Mrs. Megilp admired; thought it lovely for Asenath _just now_; +but of course not a thing to count upon, or to expect generally. In +short, they treated it all as a whim; a coincidence of whims. +Asenath, although she would not trouble herself about the "ifs away +back," had a spirit of looking forward which impelled her to argue +against and clear away prospective ones. + +"Bad things have lasted long enough," she said; "I don't see why the +good ones should not, when once they have begun." + +"They won't begin; one swallow never makes a summer. This has +happened to you, but it is absolutely exceptional; it will never be +pandemic," said Mrs. Megilp, who was fond of picking up little +knowing terms of speech, and delivering herself of them at her +earliest subsequent convenience. + +"'Never' is the only really imposing word in the language," said +Asenath, innocently. "I don't believe either you or I quite +understand it. But I fancy everything begins with exceptions, and +happens in spots,--from the settling of a continent to the doing up +of back-hair in new fashions. I shouldn't wonder if it were an +excellent way to take life, to make it as exceptional as you can, in +all unexceptionable directions. To help to thicken up the good +spots till the world gets confluent with them. I suppose that is +what is meant by making one's mark in it, don't you?" + +Mrs. Megilp headed about, as if in the turn the talk had taken she +suddenly found no thoroughfare; and asked Asenath if she had been to +hear Rubinstein. + +Of course it was not in talk only, that--up-stairs or +down-stairs--the exceptional household found its difficulties. It +was not all pleasant arranging and contriving for an undeviating +"living happy ever after." + +There were days now and then when the baby fretted, or lost her nap, +and somebody had to hold her nearly all the time; when the door-bell +rang as if with a continuous and concerted intent of malice. Stormy +Mondays happened when clothes would not dry, entailing Tuesdays and +Wednesdays and Thursdays of interrupted and irregular service +elsewhere. + +If Asenath Scherman's real life had been anywhere but in her home +and with her children,--if it had consisted in being dressed in +train-skirt and panier, lace sleeves and bracelets, with hair in a +result of hour-long elaboration, at twelve o'clock; or of being out +making calls in high street toilet from that time until two; or if +her strength had had to be reserved for and repaired after evening +parties; if family care had been merely the constantly increasing +friction which the whole study of the art of living must be to +reduce and evade, that the real purpose and desire might sweep on +unimpeded,--she would soon have given up her experiment in despair. + +Or if, on the other part, there had been a household below, +struggling continually to escape the necessity it was paid to +meet, that it might get to its own separate interests and +"privileges,"--if it had been utterly foreign and unsympathetic in +idea and perception, only watchful that no "hand's turn" should be +required of it beyond those set down in the bond,--resenting every +occurrence, however unavoidable, which changed or modified the day's +ordering,--there would speedily have come the old story of worry, +discontent, unreliance, disruption. + +But Asenath's heart was with her little ones; she went back into her +own childhood with and for them, bringing out of it and living over +again all its bright, blessed little ways. + +"She would be grown up again," she said, "by and by, when they +were." + +She was keeping herself winsomely gay and fresh against the +time,--laying up treasure in the kingdom of all sweet harmonies +and divine intents, that need not be banished beyond the +grave,--although of that she never thought. It would come by +and by, for her reward. + +She played with Sinsie in her baby-house; she did over again, with +her, in little, the things she was doing on not so very much larger +scale, for actual every day. She invented plays for Marmaduke which +kept the little man in him busy and satisfied. She collected, +eagerly, all treasures of small song and story and picture, to help +build the world of imagination into which all child-life must open +out. + +As for Baby Karen, she was, for the most part, only manifest as one +of those little embodiments that are but given and grown out of such +loyal and happy motherhood. She was a real baby,--not a little +interloping animal. She was never nursed or tended in a hurry. +Babies blossom, as plants do, under the tender touch. + +Kate Sencerbox, or Bel Bree, was glad to come into this nest-warm +pleasantness, when the mother must leave it for a while. It was not +an irksomeness flung by, like a tangled skein, for somebody else to +tug at and unravel; it was a joy in running order. + +When the hard Monday came, or the baby had her little tribulations, +or it took a good tithe of the time to run and tell callers that +Mrs. Scherman was "very much engaged"--(why can't it be the fashion +to put those messages out upon the door-knob, or to tie it up +with--a silk duster, or a knot of tape?)--Kate or Bel would look one +at another and say, as they began with saying,--"Now, shut up!" It +was an understood thing that they were not to "fly out with +discouragements." + +And nobody knows how many things would straighten themselves if that +could only be made the law of the land. + +On Wednesday evenings, Mrs. Scherman always managed it that they +should both go to Desire Ledwith's, for the Read-and-Talk. + +You may say Jerusalem is not taken yet, after all; there are plenty +of "hard places," where girls like Kate Sencerbox and Bel Bree would +not stay a week; there are hundreds of women, heads of houses, who +would not be bothered with so much superfluous intelligence,--with +refinements so nearly on a level with their own. + +Granted: but it is the first steps that cost. Do you not think--do +you not _know_--that a real good, planted in the world,--in social +living,--_must_ spread, from point to point where the circumstance +is ready, where it is the "next thing?" If you do not believe this, +you do not practically believe in the kingdom ever coming at all. + +There is a rotation of crops in living and in communities, as well +as in the order of vegetation of secret seeds that lie in the +earth's bosom. + +We shall not always be rank with noisome weeds and thistles; here +and there, the better thought is swelling toward the germination; +the cotyledons of a fairer hope are rising through the mould. + + + + +CHAPTER XXIX. + +WINTERGREEN. + + +To tell of what has been happening with Sylvie Argenter's thread of +our story, we must go back some weeks and pages to the time just +after the great fire. + +As it was with the spread of the conflagration itself, so it proved +also with the results,--of loss, and deprivation, and change. Many +seemed at first to stand safely away out on the margin, mere +lookers-on, to whom presently, with more or less direct advance, the +great red wave of ruin reached, touching, scorching, consuming. + +It was a week afterward that Sylvie Argenter learned that the +Manufacturers' Insurance Company, in which her mother had, at her +persuasion, invested the little actual, tangible remnant of her +property, had found itself swallowed up in its enormous debt; must +reorganize, begin again, with fresh capital and new stockholders. + +They had nothing to reinvest. The money in the Continental Bank +would just about last through the winter, paying the seven dollars a +week for Mrs. Argenter, and spending as nearly nothing for other +things as possible. Unless something came from Mr. Farron Saftleigh +before the spring, that would be the end. + +Thus far they had heard nothing from these zealous friends since +they had parted from them at Sharon, except one sentimental letter +from Mrs. Farron Saftleigh to Mrs. Argenter, written from Newport in +September. + +Early in December, another just such missive came this time from +Denver City. Not a word of business; a pure woman's letter, as Mrs. +Farron Saftleigh chose to rank a woman's thought and sympathy; +nothing practical, nothing that had to do with coarse topics of bond +and scrip; taking the common essentials of life for granted, +referring to the inignorable catastrophe of the fire as a grand +elemental phenomenon and spectacle, and soaring easily away and +beyond all fact and literalness, into the tender vague, the rare +empyrean. + +Mrs. Argenter read it over and over, and wished plaintively that she +could go out to Denver, and be near her friend. She should like a +new place; and such appreciation and affection were not be met with +everywhere, or often in a lifetime. + +Sylvie read the letter once, and had great necessity of +self-restraint not to toss it contemptuously and indignantly into +the fire. + +She made up her mind to one thing, at least; that if, at the end of +the six months, nothing were heard from Mr. Saftleigh himself, she +would write to him upon her own responsibility, and demand some +intelligence as to her mother's investments in the Latterend and +Donnowhair road, the reason why a dividend was not forthcoming, and +a statement in regard to actual or probable sales of land, which he +had given them reason to expect would before that time have been +made. + +One afternoon she had gone down with Desire and Hazel among the +shops; Desire and the Ripwinkleys were very busy about Christmas; +they had ever so many "notches to fill in" in their rather mixed up +and mutable memoranda. Sylvie only accompanied them as far as Winter +Street corner, where she had to buy some peach-colored double-zephyr +for her mother; then she bade them good-by, saying that two were bad +enough dragging each other about with their two shopping lists, but +that a third would extinguish fatally both time and space and taking +her little parcel in her hand, and wondering how many more such she +could ever buy, she returned home over the long hill alone. So it +happened that on reaching Greenley Street, she had quite to herself +a surprise and pleasure which she found there. + +She went straight to the gray room first of all. + +Mrs. Argenter was asleep on the low sofa near the fire, her crochet +stripe-work fallen by her side upon the carpet, her book laid face +down with open leaves upon the cushion. + +Sylvie passed softly into her own chamber, took off her outside +things, and returned with careful steps through her mother's room to +the hall, and into the library, to find a book which she wanted. + +On the table, at the side which had come of late to be considered +hers, lay an express parcel directed to herself. She knew the +writing,--the capital "S" made with a quick, upward, slanting line, +and finished with a swell and curl upon itself like a portly figure +"5" with the top-pennant left off; the round sweep after final +letters,--the "t's" crossed backward from their roots, and the +stroke stopped short like a little rocket just in poise of bursting. +She knew it all by heart, though she had never received but one +scrap of it before,--the card that had been tied to the ivy-plant, +with Rodney Sherrett's name and compliments. + +She had heard nothing now of Rodney for two months. She was glad to +be alone to wonder at this, to open it with fingers that trembled, +to see what he could possibly have put into it for her. + +Within the brown wrapper was a square white box. Up in the corner +of its cover was a line of writing in the same hand; the letters +very small, and a delicate dash drawn under them. How neatly special +it looked! + +"A message from the woods for 'Sylvia.'" + +She lifted it off, as if she were lifting it from over a thought +that it concealed, a something within all, that waited for her to +see, to know. + +Inside,--well, the thought was lovely! + +It was a mid-winter wreath; a wreath of things that wait in the +heart of the woodland for the spring; over which the snows slowly +gather, keeping them like a secret which must not yet be told, but +which peeps green and fresh and full of life at every melting, in +soft sunny weather, such as comes by spells beforehand; that must +have been gathered by somebody who knew the hidden places and had +marked them long ago. + +It was made of clusters, here and there, of the glossy daphne-like +wintergreen, and most delicate, tiny, feathery plumes of +princess-pine; of stout, brave, constant little shield-ferns and +spires of slender, fine-notched spleenwort, such as thrust +themselves up from rough rock-crevices and tell what life is, that +though the great stones are rolled against the doors of its +sepulchre, yet finds its way from the heart of things, somehow, to +the light. Mitchella vines, with thread-like, wandering stems, and +here and there a gleaming scarlet berry among small, round, +close-lying waxy leaves; breaths of silvery moss, like a frosty +vapor; these flung a grace of lightness over the closer garlanding, +and the whole lay upon a bed of exquisitely curled and laminated +soft gray lichen. + +A message. Yes, it was a simple thing, an unostentatious +remembrance; no breaking, surely, of his father's conditions. Rodney +loyally kept away and manfully stuck to his business, but every +spire and frond and leaf of green in this winter wreath shed off the +secret, magnetic meaning with which it was charged. Heart-light +flowed from them, and touching the responsive sensitivity, made +photographs that pictured the whole story. It was a fuller telling +of what the star-leaved ferns had told before. + +Rodney was not to "offer himself" to Sylvie Argenter till the two +years were over; he was to let her have her life and its chances; he +was to prove himself, and show that he could earn and keep a little +money; he was to lay by two thousand dollars. This was what he had +undertaken to do. His father thought he had a right to demand these +two years, even extending beyond the term of legal freedom, to +offset the half-dozen of boyish, heedless extravagance, before he +should put money into his son's hands to begin responsible work +with, or consent approvingly to his making of what might be only a +youthful attraction, a tie to bind him solemnly and unalterably for +life. + +But the very stones cry out. The meaning that is repressed from +speech intensifies in all that is permitted. You may keep two +persons from being nominally "engaged," but you cannot keep two +hearts, by any mere silence, from finding each other out; and the +inward betrothal in which they trust and wait,--that is the most +beautiful time of all. The blessedness of acknowledgment, when it +comes, is the blessedness of owning and looking back together upon +what has already been. + +Sylvie made a space for the white box upon a broad old bureau-top in +her room. She put its cover on again over the message in green +cipher; she would only care to look at it on purpose, and once in a +while; she would not keep it out to the fading light and soiling +touch of every day. She spread across the cover itself and its +written sentence her last remaining broidered and laced +handkerchief. The wreath would dry, she knew; it must lose its first +glossy freshness with which it had come from under the snows; but it +should dry there where Rodney put it, and not a leaf should fall out +of it and be lost. + +She was happier in these subtle signs that revealed inward relation +than she would have been just now in an outspokenness that demanded +present, definite answer and acceptance of outward tie. It might +come to be: who could tell? But if she had been asked now to let it +be, there would have been her troubles to give, with her affection. +How could she burden anybody doubly? How could she fling all her +needs and anxieties into the life of one she cared for? + +There was a great deal for Sylvie to do between now and any +marriage. Her worry soon came back upon her with a dim fear, as the +days passed on, touching the very secret hope and consciousness that +she was happy in. What might come to be her plain duty, now, very +shortly? Something, perhaps, that would change it all; that would +make it seem strange and unsuitable for Rodney Sherrett ever to +interpret that fair message into words. Something that would put +social distance between them. + +Her mother, above all, must be cared for; and her mother's money was +so nearly gone! + +Desire Ledwith was kind, but she must not live on anybody's +kindness. As soon as she possibly could, she must find something to +do. There must be no delay, no lingering, after the little need +there was of her here now, should cease. Every day of willing +waiting would be a day of dishonorable dependence. + +It was now three months since Mrs. Froke had gone away; and letters +from her brought the good tidings of successful surgical treatment +and a rapid gaining of strength. She might soon be able to come +back. Sylvie knew that Desire could either continue to contrive work +for her a while longer, or spare her to other and more full +employment, could such be found. She watched the "Transcript" list +of "Wants," and wished there might be a "Want" made expressly for +her. + +How many anxious eyes scan those columns through with a like +longing, every night! + +If she could get copying to do,--if she could obtain a situation +in the State House, that paradise of well paid female scribes! +If she could even learn to set up type, and be employed in a +printing-office? If there were any chance in a library? Even work of +this sort would take her away from her mother in the daytime; she +would have to provide some attendance for her. She must furnish her +room nicely, wherever it was; that she could do from the remnants of +their household possessions stored at Dorbury; and her mother must +have a delicate little dinner every day. For breakfast and tea--she +could see to those before and after work; and her own dinners could +be anything,--anywhere. She must get a cheap rooms where some tidy +lodging woman would do what was needful; and that would take,--oh, +dear! she _couldn't_ say less than six or seven dollars a week, and +where were food and clothes to come from? At any rate, she must +begin before their present resources were utterly exhausted, or what +would become of her mother's cream, and fruit, and beef-tea? + +Mingled with all her troubled and often-reviewed calculations, would +intrude now and then the thought,--shouldn't she have to be willing +to wear out and grow ugly, with hard work and insufficient +nourishing? And she would have so liked to keep fresh and pretty for +the time that might have come! + +In the days when these things were keeping her anxious, the winter +wreath was also slowly turning dry. + +She found herself hemmed in and headed at every turn by the pitiless +hedge and ditch of circumstance, at which girls and women in our +time have to chafe and wait; and from which there seems to be no way +out. Yet there are ways out from this, as from all things. One +way--the way of thorough womanly home-helpfulness--was not clear to +her; there are many to whom it is not clear. Yet if those to whom it +is, or might be, would take it,--if those who might give it, in many +forms, _would give_,--who knows what relief and loosening would come +to others in the hard jostle and press? + +There is another way out of all puzzle and perplexity and hardness; +it is the Lord's special way for each one, that we cannot foresee, +and that we never know until it comes. Then we discern that there +has never been impossibility; that all things are open before his +eyes; and that there is no temptation,--no trying of us,--to which +He will not provide some end or escape. + +In the first week of January, Sylvie acted upon her resolve of +writing to Mr. Farron Saftleigh. She asked brief and direct +questions; told him that she was obliged to request an answer +without the least delay; and begged that he would render them a +clear statement of all their affairs. She reminded him that he had +_told_ them that he would be responsible for their receiving a +dividend of at least four per cent, at the end of the six months. + +Mr. Farron Saftleigh "told" people a great many things in his +genial, exhilarating business talks, which he was a great deal too +wise ever to put down on paper. + +Sylvie waited ten days; a fortnight; three weeks; no answer came. +Mr. Farron Saftleigh had simply destroyed the letter, of no +consequence at all as coming from a person not primarily concerned +or authorized, and set off from Denver City the same day for a +business visit to San Francisco. + +Sylvie saw the plain fact; that they were penniless. And this could +not be told to her mother. + +She went to Desire Ledwith, and asked her what she could do. + +"I would go into a household anywhere, as Dot Ingraham and Bel Bree +have done, to earn board and wages, and spend my money for my +mother; but I can't leave her. And there's no sewing work to get, +even if I could do it at night and in honest spare time. I know, as +it is, that my service isn't worth what you give me in return, and +of course I cannot stay here any longer now." + +"Of course you can stay where God puts you, dear," answered Desire +Ledwith. "Let your side of it alone for a minute, and think of mine. +If you were in my place,--trying to live as one of the _large +household_, remember, and looking for your opportunities,--what +would you say,--what would you plainly hear said to you,--about +this?" + +Sylvie was silent. + +"Tell me truly, Sylvie. Put it into words. What would it be? What +would you hear?" + +"Just what you do, I suppose," said Sylvie, slowly "But I _don't_ +hear it on my side. My part doesn't seem to chord." + +"Your part just pauses. There are no notes written just here, in +your score. Your part is to wait. Think, and see if it isn't. The +Dakie Thaynes are going out West again. Mr. Thayne knows about +lands, and such things. He would do something, and let you know. A +real business man would make this Saftleigh fellow afraid." + +The Thaynes--Mrs. Dakie Thayne is our dear little old friend Ruth +Holabird, you know--had been visiting in Boston; staying partly +here, and partly at Mrs. Frank Scherman's. At Asenath's they were +real "comfort-friends;" Asenath had the faculty of gathering only +such about her. She felt no necessity, with them, for grand, late +dinners, or any show; there was no trouble or complication in her +household because of them. Ruth insisted upon the care of her own +room; it was like the "cooeperative times" at Westover. Mrs. Scherman +said it was wonderful, when your links were with the right people, +how simple you could make your art of living, you could actually be +"quite Holabird-y," even in Boston! But this digresses. + +"I shall speak to Mr. Thayne about it," said Desire. "And now, dear, +if you could just mark these towels this morning?" + +Sylvie sat marking the towels, and Desire passed to and fro, +gathering things which were to go to Neighbor Street in the +afternoon. + +"Do you see," she said, stopping behind Sylvie a while after, and +putting her fingers upon her hair with a caressing little +touch,--"the sun has got round from the east to the south. It shines +into this window now. And you have been keeping quiet, just doing +your own little work of the moment. The world is all alive, and +changing. Things are working--away up in the heavens--for us all. +When people don't know which way to turn, it is very often good not +to turn at all; if they are _driven_, they do know. Wait till you +are driven, or see; you will be shown, one way or the other. It is +almost always when things are all blocked up and impossible, that a +happening comes. It has to. A dead block can't last, any more than a +vacuum. If you are sure you are looking and ready, that is all you +need. God is turning the world round all the time." + +Desire did not say one word about the ninety-eight dollars which lay +in one of the locked drawers of her writing desk, in precisely the +shape in which every two or three weeks she had let Sylvie put the +money into her hands. There would be a right time for that. She +would force nothing. Sylvie would come near enough, yet, for that +perfect understanding in which those bits of stamped paper would +cease to be terrible between their hands, _either_ way. + + + + +CHAPTER XXX. + +NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY. + + +Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what +would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia, +and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in +Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course +he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast +as she heard it. + +"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she +said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning. +"People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets +poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent +human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I _can't_ act as if they +weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to +keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!" + +"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just +such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her +Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go. + +Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at +her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and +telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help, +or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother. + +Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss +Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an +irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this +Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into +some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the +title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these +fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at +present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in +the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond +Latterend. + +"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote +back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I +am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her +mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a +hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I +shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger +putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up +here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly +see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my +imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your +discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?" + +The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as +this fine manoeuvrer,--pulling wires whose ends laid hold of +character, not circumstance,--believed and meant. It had only added +to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper +than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another +might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a +right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would +take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss +Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of +provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She +would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence +and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a +little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented +to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there +might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to +hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until +an absolute necessity should be upon them. + +She bade Rodney be patient yet a few weeks more, and to leave it to +her to write to his father. She did write: but she also put Rodney's +letter in. + +"Things which _are_ might as well, and more truly, be taken into +account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett. +"There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I +have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will +modify everything. This is just what the Lord has given Rodney to +do. It is not your plan, or authority, but this in his heart, which +has set him to work, and made him save his money. Why not let them +begin to live the life while it is yet alive? It wears by waiting; +it cannot help it. You must not expect a miracle of your boy; you +must take the motive while it is fresh, and let it work in God's +way. The power is there; but you must let the wheels be put in gear. +Simply, I advise you to permit the engagement, and the marriage. If +you do not, I think you will rob them of a part of their real +history which they have a right to. Marriage is a making of life +together; not a taking of it after it is made." + +It was February when this letter was sent out. + +One day in the middle of the month, Desire Ledwith, Hazel +Ripwinkley, and Sylvie had business with Luclarion in Neighbor +Street. There was work to carry; a little basket of things for the +fine laundry; some bakery orders to give. There was always Luclarion +herself to see. Just now, besides and especially, they were all +interested in Ray Ingraham's rooms that were preparing in the next +house to the Neighbors; a house which Mr. Geoffrey and others had +bought, enlarged, and built up; fitting it in comfortable suites for +housekeeping, at rents of from twenty-five to thirty dollars a +month, each. They were as complete and substantial in all their +appointments as apartments as the Commonwealth or the Berkeley; +there was only no magnificence, and there was no "locality" to pay +for. The locality was to be ministered to and redeemed, by the very +presence of this growth of pure and pleasant and honorable living in +its midst. For the most part, those who took up an abiding here had +enough of the generous human sense in them to account it a +satisfaction so to contribute themselves; for the rest, there was a +sprinkling of decent people, who were glad to get good homes cheap +in the heart of a dear city; and the public, Christian intent of the +movement sheltered and countenanced them with its chivalrous +respectability. + +Frank Sunderline and Ray were to live here for a year; they were to +be married the first of March. Frank had said that Ray would have to +manage him and the Bakery too, and Ray was prepared to fulfill both +obligations. + +She was going to carry out here, with Luclarion Grapp, her idea of +public supply for the chief staple of food. They were going to try a +manufacture of breadstuffs and cakestuffs, on real home principles, +by real domestic receipts. They were going to have sale shops in +different quarters,--at the South and West ends. Already their +laundry sustained itself by doing excellent work at moderate prices; +why should they not, in still another way meet and play into the +movement of the time for simplifying it, and making household +routine more independent? + +"Why shouldn't there be," Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, "a +place to buy _cup_ cake, and _composition_ cake, and _sponge_ cake, +tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia? Why shouldn't +there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother's, +and nice wholesome little puddings? Everybody knew that since the +war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials +and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to +buy and call cake in the city. Why shouldn't somebody begin again, +honest? And here, where they didn't count upon outrageous profits, +why couldn't it be as well as not? When there was a good thing to be +had in one place, other places would have to keep up. It would make +a difference everywhere, sooner or later." + +"And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set +up anywhere!" said Hazel Ripwinkley. "Everybody eats! Just a new +thing, if it's only new trash, sells for a while; and these new, +old-fashioned, grandmother's cupboard things,--why, people would +just _swarm_ after them! Cooks never knew how, and ladies +didn't have time. Don't forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger +pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth! Everything +was so good at Homesworth--the place was named out of comforts! +Why don't you call it the Homesworth Bakery? That would be +double-an-tender,--eh, Lukey!" + +Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her +sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a +wedding-present. For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her +heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but +had never alluded to. + +"You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you +to know that I'm contented, and there isn't a grudge in my heart. +You and Frank have both been too much to me for that. I can see how +it was, though. It was a hand's turn once. But I went my way and you +kept quietly on. It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he +wanted for a wife. It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and +when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It +fell right off from me. You can't suffer _all through_ with more +than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew +I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more +than another? It was what I had let go _out of the world_, Ray, that +made the whole world a prison and a punishment. I couldn't have +taken a happiness, if it had come to me. All I wanted was work and +forgiveness." + +"Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the +spirit that is in you! And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever +that is full of it! I _don't_ think it is any one thing,--not even +any one marrying." + +So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other +house--Luclarion's. + +That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so +rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork +stitchery,--to the young girls this afternoon. + +She showed the quilt with loving pride and praise, but the story of +it she kept in her heart, among her prayers. Frank Sunderline never +knew more than the fair fabric and color, and the name of the giver, +told him. Frank Sunderline scarcely knew so much as these two women +did, of the unanalyzed secrets of his own life. + +Luclarion waited till all this was over, and Desire Ledwith had +come back from Ray Ingraham's rooms to hers, leaving Hazel and +Sylvie among the fascinations of new crockery and bridal tin pans, +before she said anything about a very sad and important thing she +had to tell her and consult about. She took her into her own little +sitting-room to hear the story, and then up-stairs, to see the woman +of whom the story had to be told. + +"It was Mr. Tipps, the milkman, came to me yesterday with it all," +said Luclarion. "He's a good soul, Tipps; as clever as ever was. He +was just in on his early rounds, at four o'clock in the morning,--an +awful blustering, cold night, night before last was,--and he was +coming by Graves Alley, when he heard a queer kind of crazy howling +down there out of sight. He wouldn't have minded it, I suppose, for +there's always drunken noise enough about in those places, but it +was a woman's voice, and a baby's crying was mixed up with it. So he +just flung his reins down over his horse's back, and jumped off his +wagon, and ran down. It was this girl,--Mary Moxall her name is, and +Mocks-all it ought to be, sure enough, to finish up after that pure, +blessed name so many of these miserables have got christened with; +and she was holding the child by the heels, head down, swinging it +back and for'ard, as you'd let a gold ring swing on a hair in a +tumbler, to try your fortune by, waiting till it would hit and ring. + +"It was all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was +muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all +crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew +and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a +tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back +with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists +and gave it a grip,--just twist enough to make the other hand come +after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was +all she could do; she was just a mad thing. She lost her balance, of +course, and went down; he put his foot on her chest, just enough to +show her he could master her; and then she went from howling to +crying. 'Finish me, and I wouldn't care!' she said; and then lay +still, all in a heap, moaning. 'I won't hurt ye,' says Tipps. 'I +never hurt a woman yet, soul nor body. What was ye goin' to do with +this 'ere little baby?' 'I was goin' to send it out of the hell it's +born into,' she said, with an awful hate in the sound of her voice. +'Goin' to _kill_ it! You wouldn't ha' done that?' 'Yes, I would. I'd +'a done it, if I was hanged for it the next minute. Isn't it my +business that ever it was here?' + +"'Now look here!' says Tipps. 'You're calmed down a little. If +you'll stay calm, and come with me, I'll take you to a safe place. +If you don't, I'll call a policeman, and you'll go to the lock-up. +Which'll ye have?' 'You've got me,' she said, in a kind of a sulk. +'I s'pose you'll do what you like with me. That's the way of it. +Anybody can be as bad and as miserable as they please, but they +won't be let out of it. It's hell, I tell you,--this very world. And +folks don't know they've got there.' + +"Tipps says there's hopes of her from just that word bad. She +wouldn't have put that in, otherways. Well, he brought her here, and +the baby. And they're both up-stairs. She's as weak as water, now +the drink is out of her. But it wasn't all drink. The desperation is +in her eyes, though it's give way, and helpless. And what to do with +'em next, I _don't_ know." + +"I do," said Desire, with her eyes full. "She must be comforted up. +And then, Mr. Vireo must know, the first thing. Afterwards, he will +see." + +Luclarion took Desire up-stairs. + +The girl was lying, in a clean night-dress, in a clean, white bed. +Her hair, dark and beautiful, was combed and braided away from her +face, and lay back, in two long, heavy plaits, across the pillow. +Her features were sharp, but delicate, and were meant to have been +pretty. But her eyes! Out of them a suffering demon seemed to look, +with a still, hopeless rage. + +Desire came up to the bedside. + +"What do you want?" the girl said, slowly, with a deep, hard, +resentful scorn in her voice. "Have you come to see what it is all +like? Do you want to feel how clean you are beside me? That's a part +of it; the way they torment." + +It was like the cry of the devil out of the man against the Son of +God. + +"No," said Desire, just as slowly, in her turn. "I can only feel the +cleanness in you that is making you suffer against the sin. The +badness doesn't belong to you. Let it go, and begin again." + +It was the word of the Lord,--"Hold thy peace, and come out of him." +Desire Ledwith spoke as she was that minute moved of the Spirit. The +touch of power went down through all the misery and badness, to the +woman's soul, that knew itself to be just clean enough for agony. +She turned her eyes, with the fiery gloom in them, away, pressing +her forehead down against the pillow. + +"God sees it better than I do," said Desire, gently. + +An arm flung itself out from under the bedclothes, thrusting them +off. The head rolled itself over, with the face away. + +"God! Pf!" + +So far from Him; and yet so close, in the awful hold of his +unrelaxing love! + +Desire kept silence; she could not force upon her the thought, the +Name: the Name for whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the +holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender. + +"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face +still turned away. + +"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this +moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is +alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You +feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul. +If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at +all." + +Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but +half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She +shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself; +from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience; +but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use +her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and +contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of +incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no +separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked +or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's +thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was +touching and stirring her own. + +"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can, +Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help +in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you +will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side, +I am afraid. The _under_ side; the side turned down toward"-- + +"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an +utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness. + +But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the +reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let +go of to perish. + +Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went +down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock. + +When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left +them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went +home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some +of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to +Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely +left her, lately, so long as this. + +How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt +sure they must hear,--when they had to leave Greenley Street and go +into that cheap little lodging-room, and she had to stay away from +her mother all day long? + +She remembered the time when she had thought it would be nice to +have a "few things;" nice to earn her own living; to be one of the +"Other Girls." + + + + +CHAPTER XXXI. + +CHOSEN: AND CALLED. + + +Desire Ledwith found nobody at home at Mr. Vireo's. The maid-servant +said that she could not tell when they would return. Mrs. Vireo was +at her mother's, and she believed they would not come back to tea. + +Desire knew that it was one of the minister's chapel nights. She +went away, up Savin Street, disappointed; wishing that she could +have sent instant help to Mary Moxall, who, she thought, could not +withstand the evangel of Hilary Vireo's presence. It is so sure that +nothing so instantly brings the heavenly power to bear upon a soul +as contact with a humanity in which it already abides and rules. She +wanted this girl to touch the hem of a garment of earthly living, +with which it had clothed itself to do a work in the world. For the +Christ still finds and puts such garments on to walk the earth; the +seamless robes of undivided consecration to Himself. + +As Desire crossed to Borden Street, and went on up the hill, there +came suddenly to her mind recollection of the Sunday noon, years +since, when she had walked over that same sidewalk with Kenneth +Kincaid; when he had urged her to take up Mission work, and she had +answered him with her girlish bluffness, that "she thought he did +not approve of brokering business; it was all there, why should they +not take it for themselves? Why should she set up to go between?" +She thought how she had learned, since, the beautiful links of +endless ministry; the prismatic law of mediation,--that there is no +tint or shade of spiritual being, no angle at which any soul catches +the Divine beam, that does not join and melt into the next above and +the next below; that the farther apart in the spectrum of humanity +the red of passion and the violet of peace, the more place and need +for every subdivided ray, to help translate the whole story of the +pure, whole whiteness. + +She remembered what she had said another time about "seeing blue, +and living red." She was thinking out by the type the mystery of +difference,--the broken refractions that God lets his Spirit fall +into,--when, looking up as she was about to pass some person, she +met the face of Christopher Kirkbright. + +He had not been at home of late; he had been busy up at Brickfield +Farms. + +For nearly four months past, Cone Hill and the Clay Pits had been +his by purchase and legal transfer. He had lost no time in making +his offer to his brother-in-law. Ten words by the Atlantic cable had +done it, and the instructions had come back by the first mail +steamer. Repairing and building had been at once begun; an odd, +rambling wing, thrown out eastward, slanting off at a wholly +unarchitectural angle from the main house, and climbing the terraced +rock where it found best space and foothold, already made the quaint +structure look more like a great two-story Chinese puzzle than ever, +and covered in space for an ample, airy, sunny work-saloon above a +range of smaller rooms calculated for individual and home occupancy. + +But the details of the plan at Brickfields would make a long story +within a story; we may have further glimpses of it, on beyond; we +must not leave our friends now standing in the street. + +Mr. Kirkbright held out his hand to Desire, as he stopped to speak +with her. + +"I am going down to Vireo's," he said. "I have come to a place in my +work where I want him." + +"So have I," said Desire. "But he is not at home. I was going next +to Miss Euphrasia." + +"And you and I are sent to stop each other. My sister is away, at +Milton, for two days." + +Desire turned round. "Then I must go home again," she said. + +Mr. Kirkbright moved on, down the hill beside her. + +"Can I do anything for you?" he inquired. + +"Yes," returned Desire, pausing, and looking gravely up at him. "If +you could go down to Luclarion Grapp's,--the Neighbors, you +know,--and carry some kind of a promise to a poor thing who has just +been brought there, and who thinks there is no promise in the world; +a woman who tried to kill her baby to get him out of it, and who +says that the world is hell, and people don't know they've got into +it. Go and tell her some of the things you told me, that morning up +at Brickfields." + +"You have been to her? What have you told her yourself, already?" + +"I told her that it was not all badness when one could feel the +misery of the badness. That her pain at it was God's pain for her. +That if He had done with her, she would be dead." + +"Would she believe you? Did she seem to begin to believe?" + +"I do not think she believes anything. She can't until the things to +believe in come to her. Mr. Vireo--or you--would make her see. I +told her I would send somebody who had more for her than I." + +"You have told her the first message,--that the kingdom is at hand. +The Christ-errand must be done next. The full errand of _help_. That +was what was sent to the world, after the voice had cried in the +wilderness. It isn't Mr. Vireo or I,--but the helping hand; the +righting of condition; the giving of the new chance. We must not +leave all that to death and the angels. Miss Desire, this woman must +go to our mountain-refuge; to our sanatorium of souls. I have a good +deal to tell you about that." + +They had walked on again, as they talked; they had come to the foot +of Borden Street. They must now turn two different ways. + +They were standing a moment at the corner, as Mr. Kirkbright spoke. +When he said "our refuge,--our sanatorium,"--Desire blushed again as +she had blushed at Brickfields. + +She was provoked at herself; why need personal pronouns come in at +all? Why, if they did, need they remind her of herself and him, +instead of merely the thoughts that they had had together, the +intent of which was high above them both? Why need she be pleased +and shy in her selfhood,--ashamed lest he should detect the thought +of pleasure in her at his sharing with her his grand purpose, +recognizing in her the echo of his inspiration? What made it so +different that Christopher Kirkbright should discover and +acknowledge such a sympathy between them, from her meeting it, as +she had long done, in Miss Euphrasia? + +She would not let it be different; she would not be such a fool. + +It was twilight, and her little lace veil was down. She took +courage behind it, and in her resolve,--for she knew that to be very +determined would make her pale, not red; and the next time she would +be on her guard, and very determined. + +She gave him the hand he held out his own for, and bade him good +evening, with her head lifted just imperceptibly higher than was its +wont, and her face turned full toward him. Her eyes met his with an +honest calmness; she had summoned herself back. + +He saw strength and earnestness; a flush of feeling; the face of a +woman made to look nobleness and enthusiasm into the soul of a man. + + * * * * * + +She sat in the library that evening at nine o'clock. + +She had drawn up her large chair to the open fire; her feet were +resting on the low fender; her eyes were watching shapes in the +coals. + +Mrs. Lewes's "Middlemarch" lay on her lap; she had just begun to +read it. Her hands, crossed upon each other, had fallen upon the +page; she had found something of herself in those first chapters. +Something that reminded of her old longings and hindrances; of the +shallowness and half-living that had been about her, and the chafe +of her discontent in it. + +She did not wonder that Dorothea was going to marry Mr. Casaubon. +Into some dream-trap just such as that she might have fallen, had a +Mr. Casaubon come in her way. + +Instead, had come pain and mistake; a keen self-searching; a +learning to bear with all her might, to work, and to wait. + +She had not been waiting for any making good in God Providence of +that special happiness which had passed her by. If she had, she +would not have been doing the sort of work she had taken into her +hands. When we wait for one particular hope, and will not be +satisfied with any other, the whole force of ourselves bends toward +it; we dictate to life, and wrest its tendencies at every turn. + +The thing comes. Ask,--with the real might of whatever asking there +is in you,--and it shall be given you. But when you have got it, it +may not be the thing you thought it would be. Whosoever will have +his life shall lose it. + +No; Desire Ledwith had rather turned away from all special hope, +thinking it was over for her. But she came to believe that all the +good in God's long years was not over; that she had not been +hindered from one thing, save to be kept for some other that He saw +better. She was willing to wait for his better,--his best. When she +paused to look at her life objectively, she rejoiced in it as the +one thread--a thread of changing colors--in God's manifold work, +that He was letting her follow alone with Him, and showing her the +secret beauty of. Up and down, in and out, backward and forward, she +wrought it after his pattern, and discerned continually where it +fell into combinations that she had never planned,--made surprises +for her of effects that were not her own. There is much ridicule of +mere tapestry and broidery work, as a business for women's fingers; +but I think the secret, uninterpreted charm of it, to the silliest +sorters of colors and counters of stitches, is beyond the fact, as +the beauty of children's plays is the parable they cannot help +having in them. Patient and careful doing, after a law and +rule,--and the gradual apparition of result, foreseen by the deviser +of the law and rule; it is life measured out upon a canvas. Who +knows how,--in this spiritual Kindergarten of a world,--the +rudiments of all small human devices were set in human faculty and +aptness for its own object-teaching toward a perfect heavenly +enlightenment? + +Desire was thinking to-night, how impossible it is, as the pattern +of life grows, to help seeing a little of the shapes it may be +taking; to refrain from a looking forward that becomes eager with a +hint of possible unfolding. + +Once, a while ago, she had thought that she discerned a green beauty +springing out from the dull, half-filled background; tender leaves +forming about a bare and awkward shoot; but suddenly there were no +more stitches in that direction that she could set; the leaves +stopped short in half-developed curves that never were completed. +The pattern set before her--given but one bit at a time, as life +patterns are, like part etchings of a picture in which you know not +how the spaces are to be filled up and related--changed; the place, +and the tint of the thread, changed also; she had to work on in a +new part, and in a different way. She could not discover then, that +these abortive leaves were the slender claspings of a calyx, in +whose midst might sometime fit the rose-bloom of a wonderful joy. +Was she discovering it now? For browns and grays,--generous and +strong, tender and restful,--was a flush of blossom hues that she +had not looked for, coming to be woven in? Was the empty calyx +showing the first shadowy petal-shapes of a most perfect flower? + +It might be the flower of a gracious friendship only a joining of +hands in work for the kingdom-building; she did not let herself go +farther than this. But it was a friendship across which there lay +no bar and somehow, while she put from herself the thought that it +might ever be so promised to her as to be hers of all the world and +to the world's exclusion,--while she resented in herself that +foolish girl's blush, and resolved that it should never come +again,--she sat here to-night thinking how grand and perfect a thing +for a woman a grand man's friendship is; how it is different from +any, the most pure and sweet, of woman-tenderness; how the crossing +of her path with such a path as Christopher Kirkbright's, if it were +only once a day, or once a week, or once a month, would be a thing +to reckon joy and courage from; to live on from, as she lived on +from her prayers. + +An hour had come in her life which gathered about her realities of +heaven, whether the earthly correspondence should concur, or no. A +noble influence which had met and moved her, seemed to come and +abide about her,--a thought-presence. + +And a thought-presence was precisely what it was. A thousand +circumstances may stretch that hyphen which at once links +and separates the sign-syllables of the wonderful fact; an +impossibility, of physical conditions, may be between; but the fact +subsists--and in rare moments we know it--when that which belongs to +us comes invisibly and takes us to itself; when we feel the +footsteps afar off which may or may not be feet of the flesh turned +toward us. Yet even this conjunction does happen, now and again; the +will--the blessed purpose--is accomplished at once on earth and in +heaven. + +When many minutes after the city bells had ceased to sound for nine +o'clock, the bell of her own door rang with a clear, strong stroke, +Desire Ledwith thought instantly of Mr. Kirkbright with a singular +recall,--that was less a change than a transfer of the same +perception,--from the inward to the actual. She had no reason to +suppose it,--no ordinary reason why,--but she was suddenly persuaded +that the friend who in the last hour had stood spiritually beside +her, stood now, in reality, upon her door-stone. + +She did not even wonder for what he could have come. She did not +move from her chair; she did not lift her crossed hands from off her +open book. She did not break the external conditions in which unseen +forces had been acting. If she had moved,--pushed back her +chair,--put by her book,--it would have begun to seem strange, she +would have been back in a bond of circumstance which would have +embarrassed her; she would have been receiving an evening call at an +unusual hour. But to have the verity come in and fill the +dream,--this was not strange. And yet Christopher Kirkbright had +scarcely been in that house ten times before. + +She heard him ask if Miss Ledwith were still below; if he might see +her. She heard Frendely close the outer door, and precede him toward +the door of the library. He entered, and she lifted her eyes. + +"Don't move," he said quickly. "I have been seeing you sitting like +that, all the evening. It is a reverie come true. Only I have walked +out of my end of it, and into yours. May I stay a little while?" + +Her face answered him in a very natural way. There was a wonder in +her eyes, and in the smile that crept over her lips; there were +wonder and waiting in the silence which she kept, answering in her +face only, at the first, that peculiar greeting. Perhaps any woman, +who had had no dream, would have found other response as difficult. + +"I am going back to Brickfields to-morrow. I am more eager than +ever to get the home finished there, for those who are waiting for +its shelter. I have had a busy day,--a busy evening; it has not been +a _still_ reverie in which I have seen you. In this last half hour, +I have been with Vireo. He has found a woman for me who can be a +directress of work; can manage the sewing-room. A good woman, too, +who will _mother_--not 'matron'--the girls. I have bought five +machines. They will make their own garments first; then they will +work for pay, some hours each day, or a day or two every week,--in +turn. That money will be their own. The rest of the time will be due +to the commonwealth. There will be a farm-kitchen, where they will +cook--and learn to cook well--for the farm hands; they will wash and +iron; they will take care of fruit and poultry. As they learn the +various employments, they will take their place as teachers to +new-comers; we shall keep them busy, and shall make a life around +them, that will be worth their laboring for; as God makes all the +beauty of the world for us to live in, in compensation for the +little that He leaves it needful for us to do. There is where I +think our privilege comes in, after the similitude of his; to +supplement broadly that which shall not hinder honest and +conditional exertion. I have been longing to tell you about it; I +have had a vision of you in the midst of my work and talk; I have +had a feeling of you this evening, waiting just so and there; I had +to come. I went to see your Mary Moxall, Miss Desire." + +"In the midst of all you had to do!" + +"Was it not a part? 'All in the day's work' is a good proverb." + +"What did you say to her?" + +"I asked her if she would come up into the country with my sister, +to a home among great, still, beautiful hills, and take care of her +baby, and some flowers." + +"It was like asking her to come home--to God!" + +"Yes,--I think it was asking her God's way. How can we, standing +among all the helps and harmonies of our lives, ask them to come +straight up to Him,--His invisible unapproachable Self,--out of the +terrible darkness and chaos of theirs? There are no steps." + +"Tell me more about the steps you have been making--in the hills. +You said 'flowers.'" + +"Yes; there will be a conservatory. I must have them all the year +through; the short summer gardening would not be ministry enough. +Beyond the Chapel Rock runs back a large new wing, with sewing and +living rooms; they only wait good weather for finishing. A dozen +women can live and work there. As they grow fit and willing, and +numerous enough to colonize off, there are little houses to be built +that they can move into, set up homes, earn their machines, and at +last, in cases where it proves safe and wise, their homes +themselves. I shall provide a depot for their needlework in the +city; and as the village grows it will create a little demand of its +own. Mr. Thayne is going to build the cottages, and he and I have +contracted for the seven miles of railroad to Tillington, as a +private enterprise. The brickmaking is to begin at once; we shall do +something for the building of the new, fire-proof Boston. Your +thought is growing into a fact, Miss Desire; and I think I have not +forgotten any particular of it. Now, I have come back to you for +more,--a great deal more, if I can get it. First, a name. We can't +_call_ it a City of Refuge, beautiful as such a city is--to _be_. +Neither will I call it a Home, or an Asylum. The first thing Mary +Moxall said to me was,--'I won't go to no Refuges nor Sile'ums. I +don't want to be raked up, mud an' all, into a heap that everybody +knows the name of. If the world was big enough for me to begin +again,--in a clean place; but there ain't no clean places!' And then +I asked her to come home with me and my sister." + +"You mean, of course, a neighborhood name, for the settlement, as it +grows?" + +"Exactly. 'Brickfield Farms' belongs to the outlying husbandry and +homesteads. And 'Clay Pits!' It is _out_ of the pit and the miry +clay that we want to bring them. The suggestion of that is too much +like Mary Moxall's 'heap that everybody knows the name of.'" + +"Why not call it 'Hill-hope'? 'The hills, whence cometh our +strength;' 'the mountain of the height of Israel where the Lord will +plant it, and the dry tree shall flourish'?" + +"Thank you," said Mr. Kirkbright, heartily. "That is the right word. +It is named." + +Desire said nothing. She looked quietly into the fire with a flush +of deep pleasure on her face. Mr. Kirkbright remained silent also +for a few minutes. + +He looked at her as she sat there, in this room that was her own; +that was filled with home-feeling and association for her; where a +solemnly tender commission and opportunity had been given her, and +had centred, and he almost doubted whether the thing that was urging +itself with him to be asked for last and greatest of all, were right +to ask; whether it existed for him, and a way could be made for it +to be given him. Yet the question was in him, strong and earnest; a +question that had never been in him before to ask of any woman. Why +had it been put there if it might not at least be spoken? If there +were not possibly, in this woman's keeping, the ordained and perfect +answer? + +While he sat and scrupled about it, it sprang, with an impulse that +he did not stop to scruple at, to his lips. + +"I shall want to ask you questions every day, dear friend! What are +we to do about it?" + +Desire's eyes flashed up at him with a happiness in them that waited +not to weigh anything; that he could not mistake. The color was +bright upon her cheek; her lips were soft and tremulous. Then the +eyes dropped gently away again; she answered nothing,--with words. + +So far as he had spoken, she had answered. + +"I want you there, by my side, to help me make a real human home +around which other homes may grow. There ought to be a heart in it, +and I cannot do it alone. Could you--_will_ you--come? Will you be +to me the one woman of the world, and out of your purity and +strength help me to help your sisters?" + +He had risen and walked the few steps across the distance that was +between them. He stopped before her, and bending toward her, held +out his hands. + +Desire stood up and laid hers in them. + +"It must be right. You have come for me. I cannot possibly do +otherwise than this." + +The deep, gracious, divine fact had asserted itself. A house here, +or a house there could not change or bind it. They belonged +together. There was a new love in the world, and the world would +have to arrange itself around it. Around it and the Will that it was +to be wedded to do. + +They stood together, hands in hands. Christopher Kirkbright leaned +over and laid his lips against her forehead. + +He whispered her name, set in other syllables that were only for +him to say to her. I shall not say them over on this page to you. + +But there is a line in the blessed Scripture that we all know, and +God had fulfilled it to his heart. + +Strangely--more strangely than any story can contrive--are the +happenings of life put side by side. + +As they sat there a little longer in the quiet library, forgetting +the late evening hour, because it was morning all at once to them; +forgetting Sylvie Argenter and her mother as they were at just this +moment in the next room; only remembering them among those whom this +new relation and joining of purpose must make surer and safer, not +less carefully provided for in the changes that would occur,--the +door of the gray parlor opened; a quick step fell along the passage, +and Sylvie unlatched the library door, and stood in the entrance +wide-eyed and pale. + +"Desire! Come!" + +"Sylvie! _What_, dear?" cried Desire, quickly, as she sprang to meet +her, her voice chording responsive to Sylvie's own, catching in it +the indescribable tone that tells so much more than words. She did +not need the further revelation of her face to know that something +deep and strange had happened. + +Sylvie said not a syllable more, but turned and hurried back along +the hall. + +Desire and Mr. Kirkbright followed her. + +Mrs. Argenter was sitting in the deep corner of her broad, low sofa, +against the two large pillows. + +"A minute ago," said Sylvie, in the same changed voice, that spoke +out of a different world from the world of five minutes before, "she +was _here_! She gave me her plate to put away on the sideboard, and +_now_,--when I turned round,"-- + +She was _There_. + +The plate, with its bits of orange-rind, and an untasted section of +the fruit, stood upon the sideboard. The book she had been reading +fifteen minutes since lay, with her eye-glasses inside it, at the +page where she had stopped, upon the couch; her left hand had +fallen, palm upward, upon the cushioned seat; her life had gone +instantly and without a sign, out from her mortal body. + +Mrs. Argenter had died of that disease which lets the spirit free +like the uncaging of a bird. + +Hypertrophy of the heart. The gradual thickening and hardening of +those mysterious little gates of life and the walls in which they +are set; the slower moving of them on their palpitating hinges, till +a moment comes when they open or close for the last time, and in +that pause ajar the soul flits out, like some curious, unwary thing, +over a threshold it may pass no more again, forever. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXII. + +EASTER LILIES. + + +Bright, soft days began to come; days in which windows stood open, +and pots of plants were set out on the window-sills; days +alternating as in the long, New England spring they always do, with +bleak intervals of sharp winds and cold sea-storms; yet giving sweet +anticipation tenderly, as a mother gives beforehand that which she +cannot find in her heart to keep back till the birthday. That is the +charm of Nature with us; the motherliness in her that offsets, and +breaks through with loving impulse, her rule of rigidness. The year +comes slowly to its growth, but she relaxes toward it with a kind of +pity, and says, "There, take this! It isn't time for it, but you +needn't wait for everything till you're grown up!" + +People feel happy, in advance of all their hopes and realizations, +on such days; the ripeness of the year, in whatever good it may be +making for them, touches them like the soft air that blows up from +the south. There is a new look on men's and women's faces as you +meet them in the street; a New Jerusalem sort of look; the heavens +are opened upon them, and the divineness of sunshine flows in +through sense and spirit. + +Sylvie Argenter was very peaceful. She told Desire that she never +would be afraid again in all her life; she _knew_ how things were +measured, now. She was "so glad the money had almost all been spent +while mother lived; that not a dollar that could buy her a comfort +had been kept back." + +She was quite content to stay now; at least till Rachel Froke +should come; she was busily helping Desire with her wedding outfit. +She was willing to receive from her the fair wages of a seamstress, +now that she could freely give her time, and there was no one to +accept and use an invalid's expensive luxuries. + +Desire would not have thought it needful that hundreds of extra +yards of cambric and linen should be made up for her, simply because +she was going to be married, if it had not been that her marriage +was to be so especially a beginning of new life and work, in which +she did not wish to be crippled by any present care for self. + +"I see the sense of it now, so far as concerns quantity; as for +quality, I will have nothing different from what I have always had." + +There was no trousseau to exhibit; there were only trunks-full of +good plenishing that would last for years. + +Sylvie cut out, and parceled. Elise Mokey, and one or two other +girls who had had only precarious employment and Committee "relief" +since the fire, had the stitching given them to do; and every tuck +and hem was justly paid for. When the work came back from their +hands, Sylvie finished and marked delicately. + +She had the sunny little room, now, over the gray parlor, adjoining +Desire's own. The white box lay upon a round, damask-covered-stand +in the corner, under her mother's picture painted in the graceful +days of the gray silks and llama laces; and around this, drooping +and trailing till they touched the little table and veiled the box +that held the beautiful secret,--seeming to say, "We know it too, +for we are a part,"--wreathed the shining sprays of blossomy fern. + +In these sunny days of early spring, Sylvie could not help being +happy. The snows were gone now, except in deep, dark places, out of +the woods; the ferns and vines and grasses were alive and eager for +a new summer's grace and fullness; their far-off presence made the +air different, already, from the airs of winter. + +Yet Rodney Sherrett had kept silence. + +All these weeks had gone by, and Miss Euphrasia had had no answer +from over the water. Of all the letters that went safely into mail +bags, and of all the mail bags that went as they were bound, and of +all the white messages that were scattered like doves when those +bags were opened,--somehow--it can never be told how,--that +particular little white, folded sheet got mishandled, mislaid, or +missent, and failed of its errand; and at the time when Miss +Euphrasia began to be convinced that it must be so, there came a +letter from Mr. Sherrett to herself, written from London, where he +had just arrived after a visit to Berlin. + +"I have had no family news," he wrote, "of later date than January +20th. Trust all is well. Shall sail from Liverpool on the 9th." + +The date of that was March 20th. + +The fourteenth of April, Easter Monday, was fixed for Desire +Ledwith's marriage. + +Rachel Froke came back on the Friday previous. Desire would have her +in time, but not for any fatigues. + +The gray parlor was all ready; everything just as it had been before +she left it. The ivies had been carefully tended, and the golden and +brown canary was singing in his cage. There was nothing to remind of +the different life to which, the place had been lent, making its +last hours restful and pleasant, or of the death that had stepped so +noiselessly and solemnly in. + +Desire had formally made over this house to her cousin and +co-heiress, Hazel Ripwinkley. + +"It must never be left waiting, a mere possible convenience, for +anybody," she said. "There must be a real life in it, as long as we +can order it so." + +The Ripwinkleys were to leave Aspen Street, and come here with +Hazel. Miss Craydocke, who never had half room enough in Orchard +Street, was to "spill over" from the Bee-hive into the Mile-hill +house. "She knew just whom to put there; people who would take care +and comfort. Them shouldn't be any hurt, and there would be lots of +help." + +There was a widow with three daughters, to begin with; "just as neat +as a row of pins;" but who had had less and less to be neat with for +seven years past; one of the daughters had just got a situation as +compositor, and another as a book-keeper; between them, they could +earn twelve hundred dollars a year. The youngest had to stay at home +and help her mother do the work, that they might all keep together. +They could pay three hundred dollars for four rooms; but of course +they could not get decent ones, in a decent neighborhood, for that. +That was what Bee-hives were for; houses that other people could do +without. + +Hazel had her wish; it came to pass that they also should make a +bee-hive. + +"And whenever I marry," Hazel said, "I hope he won't be building a +town of his own to take me to; for I shall _have_ to bring him here. +I'm the last of the line." + +"That will all be taken care of as the rest has been. There isn't +half as much left for us to manage as we think," said Desire, +putting back into the desk the copy of Uncle Titus's will which they +had been reading over together. "He knew the executorship into +which he gave it." + +Shall I stop here with them until the Easter tide, and finish +telling you how it all was? + +There is a little bit about Bel Bree and Kate Sencerbox and the +Schermans, which belongs somewhat earlier than that,--in those few +pleasant days when March was beguiling us to believe in the more +engaging of his double moods, and in the possibility of his behaving +sweetly at the end, and going out after all like a lamb. + +We can turn back afterwards for that. I think you would like to hear +about the wedding. + +Does it never occur to you that this "going back and living up" in a +story-book is a sign of a possibility that may be laid by in the +divine story-telling, for the things we have to hurry away from, and +miss of, now? It does to me. I know that _That_ can manage at least +as well as mine can. + + * * * * * + +Christopher Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith were married in the +library, where they had betrothed themselves; where Desire had felt +all the sacredness of her life laid upon her; where she took up now +another trust, that was only an outgrowth and expansion of the +first, and for which she laid down nothing of its spirit and intent. + +Mrs. Ledwith and the sisters--Mrs. Megilp and Glossy--were there, of +course. + +Mrs. Megilp had said over to herself little imaginary speeches about +the homestead and old associations, and "Daisy's great love and +reverence for all that touched the memory of her uncle, to whom she +certainly owed everything;" about the journey to New York, and the +few days they had to give there to Mr. Oldway's life-long friend +and Desire's adviser, Mr. Marmaduke Wharne ("_Sir_ Marmaduke he +would be, everybody knew, if he had chosen to claim the English +title that belonged to him"),--who was too infirm to come on to the +wedding; and the necessity there was for them to go as fast as +possible to their estate in the country,--Hill-hope,--where Mr. +Kirkbright was building "mills and a village and a perfect castle of +a house, and a private railroad and heaven knows what,"--all this to +account, indirectly, for the quiet little ordinary ceremony, which +of course would otherwise have been at the Church of the Holy +Commandments; or at least up-stairs in the long, stately old +drawing-room which was hardly ever used. + +But none of the people were there to whom any such little speeches +had to be made; nobody who needed any accounting to for its oddity +was present at Desire Ledwith's wedding. + +Mr. Vireo officiated; there was something in his method and manner +which Mrs. Megilp decidedly objected to. + +It was "everyday," she thought. "It didn't give you a feeling of +sanctity. It was just as if he was used to the Almighty, and didn't +mind! It seemed as if he were just mentioning things, in a quiet +way, to somebody who was right at his elbow. For her part, she liked +a little lifting up." + +Hazel Ripwinkley heard her, and told Sylvie and Diana that "that +came of having all your ideas of home in the seventh story; of +course you wanted an elevator to go up in." + +Desire Ledwith looked what she was, to-day; a grand, pure woman; a +fit woman to stand up beside a man like Christopher Kirkbright, in +fair white garments, and say the words that made her his wife. +There was a beautiful, sweet majesty in her giving of herself. + +She did not disdain rich robes to-day,--she would give herself at +her very best, with all generous and gracious outward sign. + +She wore a dress of heavy silk, long-trained; the cream-white folds, +unspoiled by any frippery of lace, took, as they dropped around her, +the shade and convolutions of a lily. Upon her bosom, and fastening +her veil, were deep green leaves that gave the contrast against +which a lily rests itself. Around her throat were links of frosted +silver, from which hung a pure plain silver cross; these were the +gift of Hazel. The veil, of point, and rarely beautiful, fell back +from her head,--lovely in its shape, and the simple wreathing of the +dark, soft hair,--like a drift of water spray; not covering or +misting her all over,--only lending a touch of delicate suggestion +to the pure, cool, graceful, flower-like unity of her whole air and +apparel. + +"Desire is beautiful!" said Hazel Ripwinkley to her mother. "She +never _stopped_ to be _pretty_!" + +White calla-lilies, with their tall stems and great shadowy leaves, +were in the Pompeiian vases on the mantel; in the India jars in the +corners below; in a large Oriental china bowl that was set upon the +closed desk on the library table, wheeled back for the first time +that anybody there had seen it so, against the wall. + +Hazel had hung a lily-wreath upon the carved back of Uncle Titus's +chair, that no one might sit down in it, and placed it in the recess +at Desire's left hand, as she should stand up to be married. + +"Will you two take each other, to love and dwell together, and to do +God's work, as He shall show and help you, so long as He keeps you +both in this his world? Will you, Desire Ledwith, take Christopher +Kirkbright to be your wedded husband; will you, Christopher +Kirkbright, take Desire Ledwith to be your wedded wife; and do you +thereto mutually make your vows in the sight of God and before this +company?" + +And they answered together, "We do." + +It was a promise for more than each other; it was a +life-consecration. It was a gathering up and renewal of all that had +been holy in the resolves of either while they had lived apart; a +joining of two souls in the Lord. + +Hilary Vireo would not have dared to lead to perjury, by such words, +a common man and woman. It was enough for such to ask if they would +take, and keep to, each other. + +Mrs. Megilp thought it was "so jumbled!" "If it was _her_ daughter, +she should not think she was half married." + +Mrs. Megilp put it more shrewdly than she had intended. + +Desire and Christopher Kirkbright were very sure they had _not_ been +"half married." It was not the world's half marriage that they had +stood up there together for. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIII. + +KITCHEN CRAMBO. + + +Elise Mokey and Mary Pinfall came in one evening to see Bel Bree and +Kate. + +There had been company to tea up-stairs, and the dishes were more +than usual, and the hour was a little later. + +Kate was putting up the last of the cooking utensils, and scalding +down the big tin dish-pan and the sink. Bel was up-stairs. + +A table with a fresh brown linen cloth upon it, two white plates and +cups, and two white _napkins_, stood out on the kitchen floor under +the gas-light. The dumb-waiter came rumbling down, with toast dish, +tea and coffee pots, oyster dish and muffin plate. Several slices of +cream toast were left, and there was a generous remnant of nicely +browned scalloped oysters. The half muffins, buttered hot, looked +tender and tempting still. + +Kate removed the dishes, sent up the waiter, and producing some nice +little stone-ware nappies hot from the hot closet, transferred the +food from the china to these, laying it neatly together, and +replaced them in the closet, to wait till Bel should come. The tea +and coffee she poured into small white pitchers, also hot in +readiness, and set them on the range corner. Then she washed the +porcelain and silver in fresh-drawn scalding water, wiped and set +them safely on the long, white sideboard. There they gleamed in the +gas-light, and lent their beauty to the brightness of the room, just +as much as they would have done in actual using. + +"But what a lot of trouble!" said Elise Mokey. + +"Half a dozen dishes?" returned Kate. "Just three minutes' work; and +a warm, fresh supper to make it worth while. Besides rubbing the +silver once in four weeks, instead of every Friday. A Yankee kitchen +is a labor-saving institution, Mrs. Scherman says." + +Down came the waiter again, and down the stairs came Bel. Kate +brought two more cups and plates and napkins. + +"Now, girls, come and take some tea," she said, drawing up the +chairs. + +Mrs. Scherman was not strict about "kitchen company." She gave the +girls freely to understand that a friend or two happening in now and +then to see them, were as welcome to their down-stairs table as her +own happeners in were to hers. "I know it is just the cosiness and +the worth-while of home and living," she said. "And I'll trust the +'now and then' of it to you." + +The hint of reasonable limit, and the word of trust, were better +than lock and law. + +"How nice this is!" said Mary Pinfall, as Bel put a hot muffin, +mellow with sweet butter, upon her plate. + +"If Matilda Meane only knew which side--and where--bread _was_ +buttered! She's living on 'relief,' yet; and she buys cream-cakes +for dinner, and peanuts for tea! But, Bel, what were you up-stairs +for? I thought you was queen o' the kitchen!" + +"Kate gives me her chance, sometimes. We change about, to make +things even. The best of it is in the up-stairs work, and waiting at +table is the first-best chance of all. You see, you 'take it in at +the pores,' as the man says in the play." + +"Tea and oysters?" said Elise, with an exclamatory interrogation. + +"You know better. See here, Elise. You don't half believe in this +experiment, though you appreciate the muffins. But it isn't just +loaves and fishes. There's a _living_ in the world, and a way to +earn it, besides clothes, and bread and butter. If you want it, you +can choose your work nearest to where the living is. And wherever +else it may or mayn't be, it _is_ in houses, and round tea-tables +like this." + +"Other people's living,--for you to look at and wait on," said +Elise. "I like to be independent." + +"They can't keep it back from us, if they wanted to," said Bel. "And +you _can't_ be independent; there's no such thing in the world. It's +all give and take." + +"How about 'other folks' dust,' Kate? Do you remember?" + +"There's only one place, I guess, after all," said Kate, "where you +can be shut up with nothing but your own dust!" + +"Sharper than ever, Kate Sencerbox! I guess you _do_ get rubbed up!" + +"Mr. Stalworth is there to-night," said Bel. "He tells as good +stories as he writes. And they've been talking about Tyndall's +Essays, and the spectroscope. Mrs. Scherman asked questions that I +don't believe she'd any particular need of answers to, herself; and +she stopped me once when I was going out of the room for something. +I knew by her look that she wanted me to hear." + +"If they want you to hear, why don't they ask you to sit down and +hear comfortably?" said Elise Mokey, who had got her social +science--with a _little_ warp in it--from Boffin's Bower. + +"Because it's my place to stand, at that time," said Bel, stoutly; +"and I shouldn't be comfortable out of my place. I haven't earned a +place like Mrs. Scherman's yet, or married a man that has earned it +for me. There are proper things for everybody. It isn't always +proper for Mrs. Scherman to sit down herself; or for Mr. Scherman to +keep his hat on. It's the knowing what's proper that sets people +really up; it _never_ puts them down!" + +"There's one thing," said Kate Sencerbox. "You might be parlor +people all your days, and not get into everybody's parlor, either. +There's an up-side and a down-side, all the way through, from top to +bottom. The very best chance, for some people, if they only knew it, +into some houses, would be up through the kitchen." + +"Never mind," said Bel, putting sugar into Mary Pinfall's second cup +of coffee. "I've got the notion of those lines, Kate,--I was going +to tell you,--into my head at last, I do believe. Red-hot iron makes +a rainbow through a prism, like any light; but iron-_steam_ stops a +stripe of the color; and every burning thing does the same +way,--stops its own color when it shines through its own vapor; +there! Let's hold on to that, and we'll go all over it another time. +There's a piece about it in last month's Scribner." + +"What _are_ you talking about?" said Elise Mokey. + +"The way they've been finding out what the sun is made of. By the +black lines across the rainbow colors. It's a telegraph; they've +just learned to read it." + +"But what do _you_ care?" + +"I guess it's put there as much, for me as anybody," said Bel. "I +don't think we should ever pick up such things, though, among the +basting threads at Fillmer & Bylles'. They're lying round here, +loose; in books and talk, and everything. They're going to have +Crambo this evening, Kate. After these dishes are washed, I mean to +try my hand at it. They were laughing about one Mrs. Scherman made +last time; they couldn't quite remember it. I've got it. I picked it +up among the sweepings. I shall take it in to her by and by." + +Bel went to her work-basket as she spoke, and lifting up some calico +pieces that lay upon it, drew from underneath two or three folded +bits of paper. + +"This is it," she said, selecting one, and coming back and reading. + +(Do you see, let me ask in a hurried parenthesis,--how the tone of +this household might easily have been a different one, and pervaded +differently its auxiliary department? How, in that case, it might +have been nothing better than a surreptitious scrap of silk or +velvet, that would have lain in Bel Bree's work-basket, with a story +about it of how, and for what gayety, it had been made; a scrap out +of a life that these girls could only gossip and wonder about,--not +participate, and with self-same human privilege and faculty delight +in; and yet the only scrap that--"out of the sweepings"--they could +have picked up? _There_ is where, if you know it, dear parlor +people, the up-side, by just living, can so graciously and +generously be always helping the down.) + +Bel read:-- + +"'What of that second great fire that was prophesied to come before +Christmas?'--'Peaches.'" + +"You've got to get that word into the answer, you see and it hasn't +the very least thing to do with it! Now see:-- + + 'A prophet, after the event, + No startling wisdom teaches; + A second fire would scarce be sent + To gratify the morbid bent + That for fresh horror reaches. + But, friend, do tell me why you went + And mixed it up with _peaches_!' + +It's great fun! And sometimes it's lovely, real poetry. Kate, +you've got to give me some words and questions, I'm going to take to +Crambo." + +"You'll have to mix it up with dish-washing," said Elise. +"Dish-washing and dust,--you can't get rid of them!" + +"We do, though!" said Kate, alertly, jumping up and beginning to +fetch the plates and cups from the dumb-waiter. "Here, Bel!" And she +tossed three or four long, soft, clean towels over to her from the +shelf beside the china. + +"And about that dusting," she went on, after the noise of the hot +water rushing from the faucet was over, and she began dropping the +things carefully down through the cloud of steam into the great pan +full of suds, and fishing them up again with a fork and a little +mop,--"about the dusting, I didn't finish. It's a work of art to +dust Mrs. Scherman's parlor. Don't you think there's a pleasure in +handling and touching up and setting out all those pretty things? +Don't they get to be a part of our having, too? Don't I take as much +comfort in her fernery as she does? I know every little green and +woolly loop that comes up in it. It's the only sense there is in +things. There's a picture there, of cows coming home, down a green +lane, and the sun striking through, and lighting up the gravel, and +a patch of green grass, and the red hair on the cows' necks. You +think you just catch it _coming_, suddenly, through the trees, when +you first look up at it. And you go right into a little piece of the +country, and stand there. Mr. Scherman doesn't own that lane, or +those cows, though he bought the picture. All he owns is what he +gets by the signs; and I get that, every day, for the dusting! There +are things to be earned and shared where people _live_, that you +can't earn in the sewing-shops." + +"That's what Bel said. Well, I'm glad you like it. Sha'n't I wipe up +some of those cups?" + +"They're all done now," said Bel, piling them together. + +In fifteen minutes after their own tea was ended, the kitchen was in +order again; the dumb-waiter, with its freight, sent up to the china +closet; the brown linen cloth and the napkins folded away in the +drawer, and the white-topped table ready for evening use. Bel Bree +had not been brought up in a New England farm-house, and seen her +capable stepmother "whew round," to be hard put to it, now, over +half a dozen cups and tumblers more or less. + +"We must go," said Elise Mokey. "I've got the buttons to sew on to +those last night-gowns of Miss Ledwith's. I want to carry them back +to-morrow." + +"You're lucky to sew for her," said Bel. "But you see we all have to +do for somebody, and I'd as lief it would be teacups, for my part, +as buttons." + +Bel Bree's old tricks of rhyming were running in her head. This game +of Crambo--a favorite one with the Schermans and their bright little +intimate circle--stirred up her wits with a challenge. And under +the wits,--under the quick mechanic action of the serving +brain,--thoughts had been daily crowding and growing, for which +these mere mental facilities were waiting, the ready instruments. + +I have said that Bel Bree was a born reformer and a born poet; and +that the two things go together. To see freshly and clearly,--to +discern new meaning in old living,--living as old as the world is; +to find by instinct new and better ways of doing, the finding of +which is often only returning to the heart and simplicity of the +old living before it _was_ old with social circumventions and needed +to be fresh interpreted; these are the very heavenly gift and office +of illumination and leadership. Just as she had been made, and just +where she had been put,--a girl with the questions of woman-life +before her in these days of restless asking and uncertain +reply,--with her lot cast here, in this very crowding, fermenting, +aspiring, great New England metropolis, in the hour of its most +changeful and involved experience,--she brought the divine talisman +of her nature to bear upon the nearest, most practical point of the +wide tangle with which it came in contact. And around her in this +right place that she had found and taken, gathered and wrought +already, by effluence and influence, forces and results that gather +and work about any nucleus of life, however deep hidden it may be in +a surrounding deadness. All things,--creation itself,--as Asenath +had said, must begin in spots; and she and Bel Bree had begun a fair +new spot, in which was a vitality that tends to organic +completeness, to full establishment, and triumphant growth. + +Upon Bel herself reflected quickly and surely the beneficent action +of this life. She was taking in truly, at every pore. How long would +it have been before, out of the hard coarse limits in which her one +line of labor and association had first placed her, she would have +come up into such an atmosphere as was here, ready made for her to +breathe and abide in? To help make also; to stand at its practical +mainspring, and keep it possible that it should move on. + +The talk, the ideas of the day, were in her ears; the books, the +periodicals of the day were at hand, and free for her to avail +herself of. The very fun at Mrs, Scherman's tea-table was the sort +of fun that can only sparkle out of culture. There was a grace that +her aptness caught, and that was making a lady of her. + +"I'll give in," said Elise Mokey, "that you're getting _style_; +though I can't tell how it is either. It ain't in your calico +dresses, nor the doing up of your hair." + +Perhaps it was a good deal in the very simplifying of these from the +exaggerated imitations of the shop and street, as well as in the +tone of all the rest with which these inevitably fell into harmony. + +But I want to tell you about Bel's kitchen Crambo. I want to show +you how what is in a woman, in heart and mind, springs up and shows +itself, and may grow to whatever is meant for it, out of the +quietest background of homely use. + +She brought out pencil and paper, and made Kate write question slips +and detached words. + +"I feel just tingling to try," she said. "There's a kind of dancing +in my head, of things that have been there ever so long. I believe I +shall make a poem to-night. It's catching, when you're predisposed; +and it's partly the spring weather, and the sap coming up. 'Put a +name to it,' Katie! Almost anything will set me off." + +Kate wrote, on half a dozen scraps; then tossed them up, and pushed +them over for Bel to draw. + +"How do you like the city in the spring?" was the question; and the +word, suggested by Kate's work at the moment, was,--"Hem." + +Bel put her elbows on the table, and her hands up against her ears. +Her eyes shone, as they rested intent upon the two penciled bits. +The link between them suggested itself quickly and faintly; she was +grasping at an elusive something with all the fine little quivering +brain-tentacles that lay hold of spiritual apprehension. + +Just at that moment the parlor bell rang. + +"I'll go," she said. "You keep to your sewing. It's for the nursery, +I guess, and I'll do my poem up there." + +She caught up pencil and paper, and the other fragment also,--Mrs. +Scherman's own rhyme about the "peaches." + +Mrs. Scherman met her at the parlor door. + +"I'm sorry to interrupt you," she said; "but the baby is stirring. +Could you, or Kate, go up and try to hush her off again? If I go, +she'll keep me." + +"I will," said Bel. "Here is that 'Crambo' you were talking of at +tea, Mrs. Scherman. I kept it. Kate picked it up with the scraps." + +"O, thank you! Why, Bel, how your face shines!" + +Bel hurried off, for Baby Karen "stirred" more emphatically at this +moment. Asenath went back into the parlor. + +"Here is that rhyme of mine, Frank, that you were asking for. Bel +found it in the dust-pan. I believe she's writing rhymes herself. +She tries out every idea she picks up among us. She had a pencil in +her hand, and her face was brimful of something. Mr. Stalworth, if +_I_ find anything in the dust-pan, I shall turn it over to you. +'First and Last' is bound to act up to its title, and transpose +itself freely, according to Scripture." + +"'First and Last' will receive, under either head, whatever you will +indorse, Mrs. Scherman,--and the last not least,"--returned the +benign and brilliant editor. + +Bel had a knack with a baby. She knew enough to understand that +small human beings have a good many feelings and experiences +precisely like those of large ones. She knew that if _she_ woke up +in the night, she should not be likely to fall asleep again if +pulled up out of her bed into the cold; nor if she were very much +patted and talked to. So she just took gently hold of the upper +edge of the small, fine blanket in which Baby Karen was wrapped, and +by it drew her quietly over upon her other side. The little limbs +fell into a new place and sensation of rest, as larger limbs do; +little Karen put off waking up and crying for one delicious instant, +as anybody would; and in that instant sleep laid hold of her again. +She was safe, now, for another hour or two, at least. + +Mrs. Scherman said she had really never had so little trouble with a +baby as with this one, who had nobody especially appointed to make +out her own necessity by constant "tending." + +Bel did not go down-stairs again. She could do better here than with +Kate sitting opposite, aware of all her scratches and poetical +predicaments. + +An hour went by. Bel was hardly equal yet to five-minute Crambo; and +besides, she was doing her best; trying to put something clearly +into syllables that said itself, unsyllabled, to her. + +She did not hear Mrs. Scherman when she came up the stairs. She had +just read over to herself the five completed stanzas of her poem. + +It had really come. It was as if a violet had been born to actual +bloom from the thought, the intangible vision of one. She wondered +at the phrasing, marveling how those particular words had come and +ranged themselves at her call. She did not know how she had done it, +or whether she herself had done it at all. She began almost to think +she must have read it before somewhere. Had she just picked it up +out of her memory? Was it a borrowing, a mimicry, a patchwork? + +But it was very pretty, very sweet! It told her own feelings over to +her, with more that she had not known she had felt or perceived. +She read it again from beginning to end in a whisper. Her mouth was +bright with a smile and her eyes with tears when she had ended. + +Asenath Scherman with her light step came in and stood beside her. + +"Won't you tell _me_?" the sweet, gracious voice demanded. + +Bel Bree looked up. + +"I thought I'd try, in fun," she said, "and it came in real +earnest." + +Asenath forgot that the face turned up to hers, with the smile and +the tears and the color in it, was the face of her hired servant. A +lovely soul, all alight with thought and gladness, met her through +it. + +She bent down and touched Bel's forehead with her lady-lips. + +Bel put the little scribbled paper in her hand, and ran away, +up-stairs. + +"Will you give it to me, Bel, and let me do what I please with +it?"--Mrs. Scherman went to Bel and asked next day. + +Bel blushed. She had been a little frightened in the morning to +think of what had happened over night. She could not quite recollect +all the words of her verses, and she wondered if they were really as +pretty as she had fancied in the moment of making them. + +All she could answer was that Mrs. Scherman was "very kind." + +"Then you'll trust me?" + +And Bel, wondering very much, but too shy to question, said she +would. + +A few days after that, Asenath called her up-stairs. The postman had +rung five minutes before, and Kate had carried up a note. + +"We were just in time with our little spring song," she said. +"_Blue_birds have to sing early; at least a month beforehand. See +here! Is this all right?" and she put into Bel's hand a little +roughish slip of paper, upon which was printed:-- + + "THE CITY IN SPRING. + + "It is not much that makes me glad: + I hold more than I ever had. + The empty hand may farther reach, + And small, sweet signs all beauty teach. + + "I like the city in the spring, + It has a hint of everything. + Down in the yard I like to see + The budding of that single tree. + + "The little sparrows on the shed; + The scrap of soft sky overhead; + The cat upon the sunny wall; + There's so much _meant_ among them all. + + "The dandelion in the cleft + A broken pavement may have left, + Is like the star that, still and sweet, + Shines where the house-tops almost meet. + + "I like a little; all the rest + Is somewhere; and our Lord knows best + How the whole robe hath grace for them + Who only touch the garment's hem." + +At the bottom, in small capitals, was the signature,--BEL +BREE. + +"I don't understand," said Bel, bewildered. "What is it? Who did +it?" + +"It is a proof," said Mrs. Scherman. "A proof-sheet. And here is +another kind of proof that came with it. Your spring song is going +into the May number of 'First and Last.'" + +Mrs. Scherman reached out a slip of paper, printed and filled in. + +It was a publisher's check for fifteen dollars. + +"You see I'm very unselfish, Bel," she said. "I'm going to work the +very way to lose you." + +Bel's eyes flashed up wide at her. + +The way to lose her! Why, nobody had ever got such a hold upon her +before! The printed verses and the money were wonderful surprises, +but they were not the surprise that had gone straight into her +heart, and dropped a grapple there. Mrs. Scherman had believed in +her; and she had _kissed_ her. Bel Bree would never forget that, +though she should live to sing songs of all the years. + +"When you can earn money like this, of course I cannot expect to +keep you in my kitchen," said Mrs. Scherman, answering her look. + +"I might never do it again in all my life," sensible Bel replied. +"And I hope you'll keep me somewhere. It wouldn't be any reason, I +think, because one little green leaf has budded out, for a plant to +say that it would not be kept growing in the ground any longer. I +couldn't go and set up a poem-factory, without a home and a living +for the poems to grow up out of. I'm pleased I can write!" she +exclaimed, brimming up suddenly with the pleasure she had but half +stopped to realize. "I _thought_ I could. But I know very well that +the best and brightest things I've ever thought have come into my +head over the ironing-board or the bread-making. Even at home. And +_here_,--why, Mrs. Scherman, it's _living_ in a poem here! And if +you can be in the very foundation part of such living, you're in the +realest place of all, I think. I don't believe poetry can be skimmed +off the top, till it has risen up from the bottom!" + +"But you _ought_ to come into my parlor, among my friends! People +would be glad to get you into their parlors, by and by, when you +have made the name you can make. I've no business to keep you down. +And you don't know yourself. You won't stay." + +"Just please wait and see," said Bel. "I haven't a great deal of +experience in going about in parlors; but I don't think I should +much like it,--_that_ way. I'd rather keep on being the woman that +made the name, than to run round airing it. I guess it would keep +better." + +"I see I can't advise you. I shouldn't dare to meddle with +inspirations. But I'm proud, and glad, Bel; and you're my friend! +The rest will all work out right, somehow." + +"Thank you, dear Mrs. Scherman," said Bel, her voice full of +feeling. "And--if you please--will you have the grouse broiled +to-day, or roasted with bread-sauce?" + +At that, the two young women laughed out, in each other's faces. + +Bel stopped first. + +"It isn't half so funny as it sounds," she said. "It's part of the +poetry; the rhyme's inside; it is to everything. We're human people: +that's the way we get it." + +And Bel went away, and stuffed the grouse, and grated her +bread-crumbs, and sang over her work,--not out loud with her lips, +but over and over to a merry measure in her mind,-- + + "Everything comes to its luck some day: + I've got chickens! What will folks say?" + +"I'm solving more than I set out to do," Sin Scherman said to her +husband. "Westover was nothing to it. I know one thing, though, that +I'll do next." + +"_One_ thing is reasonable," said Frank. "What is it?" + +"Take her to York with us, this summer. Row out on the river with +her. Sit on the rocks, and read and sew, and play with the children. +Show her the ocean. She never saw it in all her life." + +"How wonderful is 'one thing' in the mind of a woman! It is a +germ-cell, that holds all things." + +"Thank you, my dear. If I weren't helping you to soup, I'd get up +and make you a courtesy. But what a grand privilege it is for a man +to live with a woman, after he has found that out! And how cosmical +a woman feels herself when her capacity is recognized!" + +Mrs. Scherman has told her plan to Bel. Kate also has a plan for the +two summer months in which the household must be broken up. + +"I mean to see the mountains myself," she said, boldly. "I don't see +why I shouldn't go to the country. There are homes there that want +help, as well as here. I can get my living where the living goes. +That's just where it fays in, different from other work. Bel knows +places where I could get two dollars a week just for a little +helping round; or I could even afford to pay board, and buy a little +time for resting. I shall have clothes to make, and fix over. It +always took all I could earn, before, to keep me from hand to mouth. +I never saw six months' wages all together, in my life. I feel real +rich." + +"I will pay you half wages for the two months," said Mrs. Scherman, +"if you will come back to me in September. And next year, if we all +keep together, it will be your turn, if you like, to go with me." + +Kate feels the spring in her heart, knowing that she is to have a +piece of the summer. The horse-chestnut tree in the yard is not a +mockery to her. She has a property in every promise that its great +brown buds are making. + +"The pleasant weather used to be like the spring-suits," she said. +"Something making up for other people. Nothing to me, except more +work, with a little difference. Now, somewhere, the hills are +getting green for me! I'm one of the meek, that inherit the earth!" + +"You are earning a _whole_ living," Bel said, reverting to her +favorite and comprehensive conclusion. + +"And yet,--_somebody_ has got to run machines," said Kate. + +"But _all_ the bodies haven't. That is the mistake we have been +making. That keeps the pay low, and makes it horrid. There's a +_little_ more room now, where you and I were. Anyhow, we Yankee +girls have a right to our turn at the home-wheels. If we had been as +cute as we thought we were, we should have found it out before." + +Bel Bree has written half a dozen little poems at odd times, since +the rhyme that began her fortune. Mr. Stalworth says they are +stamped with her own name, every one; breezy, and freshly delicious. +For that very reason, of course, people will not believe, when they +see the name in print, that it is a real name. It is so much easier +to believe in little tricks of invention, than in things that simply +come to pass by a wonderful, beautiful determination, because they +belong so. They think the poem is a trick of invention, too. They +think that of almost everything that they see in print. Their +incredulity is marvelously credulous! There is no end to that which +mortals may contrive; but the limit is such a measurable one to that +which can really be! We slip our human leash so easily, and get +outside of all creation, and the "Divinity that shapes our ends," to +shape and to create, ourselves! + +For my part, the more stories I write out, the more I learn how, +even in fiction, things happen and take relation according to some +hidden reality; that we have only to stand by, and see the shiftings +and combinings, and with what care and honesty we may, to put them +down. + +If there is anything in this story that you cannot credit,--if you +cannot believe in such a relation, and such a friendship, and such a +mutual service, as Asenath Scherman's and Bel Bree's,--if you cannot +believe that Bel Bree may at this moment be ironing Mrs. Scherman's +damask table-cloths, and as the ivy leaf or morning-glory pattern +comes out under the polish, some beautiful thought in her takes line +and shade under the very rub of labor, and shows itself as it would +have done no other way, and that by and by it will shine on a +printed page, made substantive in words,--then, perhaps, you have +only not lived quite long--or deep--enough. There is a more real and +perfect architecture than any that has ever got worked out in stone, +or even sketched on paper. + +Neither Boston, nor the world, is "finished" yet. There may be many +a burning and rebuilding, first. Meanwhile, we will tell what we can +see. + +And that word sends me back to Bel herself, of whom this present +seeing and telling can read and recite no further. + +Are you dissatisfied to leave her here? Is it a pity, you think, +that the little glimmer of romance in Leicester Place meant nothing, +after all? There are blind turns in the labyrinth of life. Would you +have our Bel lost in a blind turn? + +The _right and the wrong_ settled it, as they settle all things. +The right and the wrong are the reins with which we are guided into +the very best, sooner or later; yes,--sooner _and_ later. If we will +go God's way, we shall have manifold more in this present world, and +in the world to come life everlasting. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXIV. + +WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP. + + +Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright went away to New York on the afternoon of +their marriage. + +Miss Euphrasia went up to Brickfields. Sylvie Argenter was to follow +her on Thursday. It had been settled that she should remain with +Desire, who, with her husband, would reach home on Saturday. + +It was a sweet, pleasant spring day, when Sylvie Argenter, with some +last boxes and packages, took the northward train for Tillington. + +She was going to a life of use and service. She was going into a +home; a home that not only made a fitting place for her in it, and +was perfect in itself, but that, with noble plan and enlargement, +found way to reach its safety and benediction, and the contagion of +its spirit, over souls that would turn toward it, come under its +rule, and receive from it, as their only shelter and salvation; over +a neighborhood that was to be a planting of Hope,--a heavenly +feudality. + +Sylvie's own dreams of a possible future for herself were only +purple lights upon a far horizon. + +It seemed a very great way off, any bringing to speech and result +the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret +strength and joy and hope of her girl's heart. + +She had a thought of Rodney Sherrett that she was sure she had a +right to. That was all she wanted, yet. Of course, Rodney was not +ready to marry; he was too young; he was not much older than she +was, and that was very young for a man. She did not even think about +it; she recognized the whole position without thinking. + +She remembered vividly the little way-station in Middlesex, where he +had bought the ferns, that day in last October; she thought of him +as the train ran slowly alongside the platform at East Keaton. She +wondered if he would not sometimes come up for a Sunday; to spend it +with his uncle and his Aunt Euphrasia. It was a secret gladness to +her that she was to be where he partly, and very affectionately, +belonged. She was sure she should see him, now and then. Her life +looked pleasant to her, its current setting alongside one current, +certainly, of his. + +She sat thinking how he had come up behind her that day in the +drawing-room car, and of all the happy nonsense they had begun to +talk, in such a hurry, together. She was lost in the imagination of +that old surprise, living it over again, remembering how it had +seemed when she suddenly knew that it was he who touched her +shoulder. Her thought of him was a backward thought, with a sense in +it of his presence just behind her again, perhaps, if she should +turn her head,--which she would not do, for all the world, to break +the spell,--when suddenly,--face to face,--through the car-window, +she awoke to his eyes and smile. + +"How did you know?" she asked, as he came in and took the seat +beside her. Then she blushed to think what she had taken for +granted. + +"I didn't," he answered; "except as a Yankee always knows things, +and a cat comes down upon her feet. I am taking a week's holiday, +and I began it two days sooner, that I might run up to see Aunt +Effie before I go down to Boston to meet my father. The steamer +will be due by Saturday. It is my first holiday since I went to +Arlesbury. I'm turning into a regular old Gradgrind, Miss Sylvie." + +Sylvie smiled at him, as if a regular old Gradgrind were just the +most beautiful and praiseworthy creature a bright, hearty young +fellow could turn into. + +"You'd better not encourage me," he said, shaking his head. "It +would be a dreadful thing if I should get sordid, you know. I'm not +apt to stop half way in anything; and I'm awfully in earnest now +about saving up money." + +He had to stop there. He was coming close to motives, and these he +could say nothing about. + +But a sudden stop, in speech as in music, is sometimes more +significant than any stricken note. + +Sylvie did not speak at once, either. She was thinking what +different reasons there might be, for spending or saving; how there +might be hardest self-denial in most uncalculating extravagance. + +When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,--"I +suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue +nor blame in just saving or not saving." + +"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he +thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm +very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out +of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever +planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a +foothold." + +"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely +place." + +"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise. + +"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter." + +"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice +and plucky about those little things, isn't there?" + +It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked +perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just +then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He +was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to +come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be +kept back, was here. + +He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he +speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he +wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it +through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what +he was keeping his probation for? + +So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them +only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing. + +After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so, +giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break +in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we +not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time? +Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in +them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of +whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us. +"This is my Body, broken for you." + +If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world +might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness. + +Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went +out to the end of the platform to find the boxes. Two vehicles had +been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon +for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself. + +Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled +upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to +the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her +and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive. + +Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air. How could +he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon +the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie. + +"Shall you be afraid of me?" he asked, as he tossed in his valise +for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie's shawl against the +back, to cushion her more comfortably. "Do you suppose we can manage +to get over there without running down a bake-shop?" + +"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt +your exploits to circumstances." + +Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown +country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as +perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then +flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to +a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the +water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the +bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the +descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she +did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She +was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving. + +The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and +beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering +and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths +and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of +song gushed forth. + +The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly +furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring +wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors +and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the +pasture bushes. + +The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind, +perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we +believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes. + +"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as +they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly +believe in these hills." + +Her own words reminded her. + +"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the +other world is only a little way out." + +"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you +know that." + +His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and +pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk. + +And he had dropped the prefix from her name. + +He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was +another little falling out that he could not help. The things he +could not help were the most comfortable. + +"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said +Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came +so tenderly! I had dreaded sickness and pain for her." + +"It has been all hard for you. I hope it will be easier now. I hope +it will always be easier." + +"I am going to live with Mrs. Kirkbright," said Sylvie. + +"Tell me about my new aunt," said Rodney. + +Sylvie was glad to go on about Desire, about the wedding, about +Hill-hope, and the plans for living there. + +"I think it will be almost like heaven," she said. "It will be home +and happiness; all that people look forward to for themselves. And +yet, right alongside, there will be the work and the help. It will +open right out into it, as heaven does into earth. Mr. Kirkbright is +a grand man." + +"Yes. He's one of the ten-talent people. But I suppose we can all do +something. It is good to have some little one-horse teams for the +light jobs." + +"I never could _be_ Desire," said Sylvie. "But I am glad, to work +with her. I am glad to live one of the little lives." + +There would always be a boy and girl simpleness between these two, +and in their taking of the world together. And that is good for the +world, as well. It cannot be all made of mountains. If all were high +and grand, it would be as if nothing were. Heaven itself is not +built like that. + +"There goes some of Uncle Christopher's stuff, I suppose," said +Rodney, a while afterward, as they came to the top of a long ascent. +He pointed to a great loaded wain that stood with its three powerful +horses on the crest of a forward hill. It was piled high up with +tiling and drain-pipe, packed with straw. The long cylinders showed +their round mouths behind, like the mouths of cannon. + +"A nice cargo for these hills, I should think." + +"They have brakes on the wheels, of course," said Sylvie. "And the +horses are strong. That must be for the new houses. They will soon +make all those things here. Mr. Kirkbright has large contracts for +brick, already. He has been sending down specimens. They say the +clay is of remarkably fine quality." + +"We shall have to get by that thing, presently," said Rodney. "I +hope the horse will take it well." + +"Are you trying to frighten me?" asked Sylvie, smiling. "I'm used to +these roads. I have spent half a summer here, you know." + +But Rodney knew that it was the "being used" that would be the +question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had +ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a +steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered +the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side +spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not +more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was dropping +behind the hills. + +"I shall take you out, and lead him by," he said. "I've no wish to +give you another spill. We won't go on through life in that way." + +It was quite as well that they had only another mile to go. Rodney +was keeping his promise, but the thread of it was wearing very thin. + +They rode slowly up the opposite slope, then waited, in their turn, +on the top, to give the team time to reach the next level. + +They heard it creak and grind as it wore heavily down, taking up +the whole track with careful zigzag tackings; they could see, as it +turned, how the pole stood sharp up between the shoulders of the +straining wheel horses, as their haunches pressed out either way, +and their backs hollowed, and their noses came together, and the +driver touched them dexterously right and left upon their flanks to +bring them in again. + +"Uncle Kit has a good teamster there," said Rodney. + +Just against the foot of the next rise, they overtook him. The gray +nag that Rodney drove pricked his ears and stretched his head up, +and began to take short, cringing steps, as they drew near the +formidable, moving mass. + +Rodney jumped out, and keeping eye and hand upon him, helped down +Sylvie also. Then he threw the long reins over his arm, and took the +horse by the bridle. + +The animal made a half parenthesis of himself, curving skittishly, +and watching jealously, as he went by the frightsome pile. + +"You see it was as well not to risk it," Rodney said, as Sylvie came +up with him beyond. "He would have had us down there among the +blackberry vines. He's all right now. Will you get in?" + +"Let us walk on to the top," said Sylvie. "It is so pleasant to feel +one's feet upon the ground." + +They kept on, accordingly; the slow team rumbling behind them. At +the top, was a wide, beautiful level; oak-trees and maples grew +along the roadside, and fields stretched out along a table land to +right and left. Before them, lying in the golden mist of twilight, +was a sea of distant hill-tops,--purple and shadow-black and gray. +The sky bent down its tender, mellow sphere, and touched them +softly. + +Sylvie stood still, with folded hands, and Rodney stopped the +horse. A rod or two back, just at the edge of the level, the loaded +wagon had stopped also. + +"Hills,--and the sunset,--and stillness," said Sylvie. "They always +seem like heaven." + +Rodney stood with his right hand, from which fell the looped reins, +reached up and resting on the saddle. + +"I never saw a sight like that before," he said. + +While they looked, the evening star trembled out through the clear +saffron, above the floating mist that hung among the hills. + +"O, they never can help it!" exclaimed Sylvie, suddenly. + +"Help it? Who?" asked Rodney, wondering. + +"Beginning again. Growing good. Those people who are coming up to +Hill-hope. There's a man coming, with his wife; a young man, who got +into bad ways, and took to drinking. Mr. Vireo has been watching and +advising him so long! He married them, five years ago, and they have +two little children. The wife is delicate; she has worried through +everything. She has taken in working-men's washing, to earn the +rent; and he had a good trade, too; he was a plasterer. He has +really tried; but it was no use in the city; it was all around him. +And he lost character and chances; the bosses wouldn't have him, he +said. When he was trying most, sometimes, they wouldn't believe in +him; and then there would come idle days, and he would meet old +companions, and get led off, and then there would be weeks of +misery. Now he is coming away from it all. There is a little cottage +ready, with a garden; the little wife is so happy! He _can't_ get it +here; and he will have work at his trade, and will learn +brickmaking. Do you know, I think a place like this, where such +work is doing, is almost better than heaven, where it is all done, +Rodney!" + +She spoke his name, as he had hers a little while ago, without +thinking. He turned his face toward her with a look which kindled +into sudden light at that last word, but which had warmed all +through before with the generous pathos of what she told him, and +the earnest, simple way of it. + +"I've found out that even in our own affairs, _making_ is better +than ready-made," he said. "This last year has been the best year of +my life. If my father had given me fifty thousand dollars, and told +me I might--have all my own way with it,--I shouldn't have thanked +him as much to-day, as I do. But I wish that steamer were in, and he +were here! He has got something which belongs to me, and I want him +to give it back." + +After enunciating this little riddle, Rodney changed hands with his +reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching his other to +Sylvie. + +"You had better jump in," he said; and there was a tone and an +inflection at the pause, as if another word, that would have been +tenderly spoken, hung refrained upon it. "We must get well ahead of +that old catapult." + +They drove on rapidly along the level; then they came to the long, +gradual slope that brought them down into Brickfields. + +To the right, just before reaching the Basin, a turn struck off that +skirted round, partly ascending again until it fell into the Cone +Hill road and so led direct to Hill-hope. + +They could see the buildings, grouped picturesquely against rocks +and pines and down against the root of the green hill. They had all +been painted of a light gray or slate color, with red roofs. + +They passed on, down into the shadows, where trees were thick and +dark. A damp, rich smell of the woods was about them,--a different +atmosphere from the breath of the hill-top. They heard the tinkle of +little unseen streams, and the far-off, foaming plunge of the +cascades. + +Suddenly, there came a sound behind them like the rush of an +avalanche; a noise that seemed to fill up all the space of the air, +and to gather itself down toward them on every side alike. + +"O, Rodney, turn!" cried Sylvie. + +But there was a horrible second in which he could not know how to +turn. + +He did not stop to look, even. He sprang, with one leap, he knew not +how,--over step or dasher,--to the horse's head. He seized him by +the bridle, and pulled him off the road, into a thicket of +bush-branches, in a hollow rough with stones. + +The wheels caught fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to +rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant of the +half-overturned vehicle. + +There was only a single instant. Down, with the awful roar of an +earthquake, came crashing swift and headlong, passing within a +hand's breadth of their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team; +its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads, +haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant +more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that +made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more +suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly +up into the air, and showed dimly in the dusky light. + +The gray horse quieted, cowed by the very terror and the hush. +Sylvie slipped down from the tilting buggy, and found her feet upon +a stone. + +Rodney reached out one hand, and she came to his side. He put his +arm around her, and drew her close. + +"My darling little Sylvie!" he said. + +She turned her face, and leaned it down upon his shoulder. + +"O, Rodney, the poor man is killed!" + +But as they stood so, a figure came toward them, over the high +water-bar below which they had stopped. + +"For God's sake, is anybody hurt?" asked a strange, hoarse voice +with a tremble in it. + +"Nobody!" + +"O, are you the driver? I thought you must be killed! How +thankful!"--And Sylvie sobbed on Rodney's shoulder. + +"Can I help you?" asked the man. + +"No, look after your horses." And the man went on, down into the +dust, where the wreck was. + +"We'll go, and send help to you," shouted Rodney. + +Then he backed the gray horse carefully out upon the road again. + +"Will you dare get in?" he asked of Sylvie. + +"I do not think we had better. How can we tell how it is down there? +We may not be able to pass." + +"It is below the turn, I think. But come,--we'll walk." + +He took the bridle again, and gave his other hand to Sylvie. Holding +each other so, they went along. + +When they came to the turn, they could see, just beyond the mass of +ruin; the great wagon, three wheels in the air,--one rolled away +into the ditch; the broken freight, flung all across the road, and +lying piled about the wagon. One horse was dead,--buried underneath. +Another lay motionless, making horrid moans. The teamster was +freeing the third--the leader, which stood safe--from chains and +harness. + +Leading him, the man came up with Rodney and Sylvie, as they turned +into the side road. + +"I knew you were just ahead, when it happened. I thought you were +gone for certain." + +"There was a Mercy over us all!" said Sylvie, with sweet, tremulous +intenseness. + +The rough man lifted his hand to his bare head. Rodney clasped +tighter the little fingers that lay within his own. + +"What did happen?" he asked. + +"The brake-rod broke; the pole-strap gave way; it was all in a heap +in a minute. I saw it was no use; I had to jump. And then I thought +of you. I'm glad you saw me, sir. You know I was sober." + +"I know you were sober, and managing most skillfully. I had been +saying that." + +"Thank you, sir. It's an awful job." + +"Hark!" said Sylvie. "There's the man with the trunks." + +"I forgot all about him," said Rodney. + +"That's a fact," said the teamster. "Turn down here, to let him by. +Hallo!" + +"Hallo! Come to grief?" + +"We just have, then. Go ahead, will you, and bring back--_something +to shoot with_," he added, in a lower tone, and coming +close,--remembering Sylvie. "I had a crow-bar, but it's lost in the +jumble. I'll stay here, now." + +The wagon drove by, rapidly. The man led his horse down by the wall, +to wait there. Sylvie and Rodney, hand in hand, walked on. + +Sylvie shivered with the horrible excitement; her teeth chattered; a +nervous trembling was taking hold of her. + +Rodney put his arm round her again. "Don't tremble, dear," he said. + +"O, Rodney! What were we kept alive for?" + +"For each other," whispered Rodney. + + + + +CHAPTER XXXV. + +HILL-HOPE. + + +They were sitting together, the next day, on the rock below the +cascade, in the warm sunshine. + +Aunt Euphrasia knew all about it; Aunt Euphrasia had let them go +down there together. She was as content as Rodney in the thing that +could not now be helped. + +"I've broken my promise," said Rodney to Sylvie. "I agreed with my +father that I wouldn't be engaged for two years." + +"Why, we aren't engaged,--yet,--are we?" asked Sylvie, with +bewitching surprise. + +"I don't know," said Rodney, his old, merry, mischievous twinkle +coming in the corners of his eyes, as he flashed them up at her. "I +think we've got the refusal of each other!" + +"Well. We'll keep it so. We'll wait. You shall not break any promise +for me," said Sylvie, still sweetly obtuse. + +"I'm satisfied with that way of looking at it," said Rodney, +laughing out. "Unless--you mean to be as cunning about everything +else, Sylvie. In that case, I don't know; I'm afraid you'd be +dangerous." + +"I wonder if I'm always going to be dangerous to you," said Sylvie, +gravely, taking up the word. "I always get you into an accident." + +"When we take matters quietly, the way they were meant to go, we +shall leave off being hustled, I suppose," said Rodney, just as +gravely. "There has certainly been intent in the way we have +been--thrown together!" + +"I don't believe you ought to say such things, Rodney,--yet! You are +talking just as if"-- + +"We weren't waiting. O, yes! I'm glad you invented that little +temporary arrangement. But it's a difficult one to carry out. I +shall be gladder when my father comes. I'm tired of being +Casabianca. I don't see how we can talk at all. Mayn't I tell you +about a little house there is at Arlesbury, with a square porch and +a three-windowed room over it, where anybody could sit and +sew--among plants and things--and see all up and down the road, to +and from the mills? A little brown house, with turf up to the +door-stone, and only a hundred dollars a year? Mayn't I tell you how +much I've saved up, and how I like being a real working man with a +salary, just as you liked being one of the Other Girls?" + +"Yes; you may tell me that; that last," said Sylvie, softly. "You +may tell me anything you like about yourself." + +"Then I must tell you that I never should have been good for +anything if it hadn't been for you." + +"O, dear!" said Sylvie. "I don't see how we _can_ talk. It keeps +coming back again. I've had all those plants kept safe that you sent +me, Rodney," she began, briskly, upon a fresh tack. + +"Those very ivies? Ah, the little three-windowed room!" + +"Rodney! I didn't think you were so unprincipled!" said Sylvie, +getting up. "I wouldn't have come down here, if I had known there +was a promise! I shall certainly help you keep it. I shall go away." + +She turned round, and met a gentleman coming down along the slope of +the smooth, broad rock. + +"Mr. Sherrett!--Rodney!" + +Rodney sprang to his feet. + +"My boy! How are you?" + +"Father! When--how--did you come?" + +"I came to Tillington by the late train last night, and have just +driven over. I went to Arlesbury yesterday." + +"But the steamer! She wasn't due till Sunday. You sailed the +_ninth_?" + +"No. I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London. +I came by the Palmyra. But you don't let me speak to Sylvie." + +He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken +her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney's. + +"Father, I've broken my promise; but I don't think anybody could +have helped it. You couldn't have helped it yourself." + +"I've seen Aunt Euphrasia. I've been here almost an hour. I have +thanked God that nothing is broken _but_ the promise, Rodney; and I +think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been +so faithfully kept. I'm satisfied with _one_ year. I believe all the +rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little +lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word." + +And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking +softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead. + +Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look +upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear, +earnest expression. + +"I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,--I hope you feel sure,"--she said, +"that I wouldn't have been engaged to Rodney while there was a +promise?" + +"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett, +smiling. + +"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then +they all three laughed together. + + * * * * * + +I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in +these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the +twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in. + +That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr. +Dakie Thayne. + +He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him +close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had +obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his +knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result +had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the +railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of +five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek +payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter. + +Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to +investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I +am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part +of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a +horse-shoe! + +If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know +what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it +had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little +section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be +made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said +to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks. + +"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I +came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good +with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take. +I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into +the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and +wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single +bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people +who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are +obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who +are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a +mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people. +I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr. +John Westlock!" + +So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out +and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good +luck in the way for people to stumble upon,--and to act the part +generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing +than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge +at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed +themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe, +to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables +were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie +Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is +undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think +Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand +dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie +Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he +brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as +money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not. + +Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and +Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning. + +There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out +upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its +greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter. + +Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the +day; the Prayer, that God "who had given his only Son to die for our +sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so +to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might +always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the Assurance of "the +victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of +God," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that +"the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"--in our +redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came +back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be +unto you," _showing them his hands and his side_. + +He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God +for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where +their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel +it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it +to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that +the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his +peace upon us; because _He suffers_ till we are at peace. That so +his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering, +and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in +one, that if we receive the one,--if we bear the pain with which He +touches us,--we shall also receive the other. + +"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of +your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done +nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in +the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his +resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of +sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God, +through Jesus Christ our Lord.'" + +Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on +her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her. +Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men +and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their +Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast, +wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and +blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the +scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew. + +They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to +remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender +color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy. +There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen +with the heavenliest things that are seen. + +Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling +of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer +pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first. + +After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper +gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and +whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook +upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes +already established, and the buildings that were making ready for +more. + +Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to +accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over +there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the +spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that +left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad. + +"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two +hundred acres," he said. + +"And for the home,--you must make that large and beautiful, Desire! +We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to +bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us, +close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us; +there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other +and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let +_him_ call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name +for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to +make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent +delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so +for _your_ sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,--content, in ways +that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in." + +"_Is_ not your Desire satisfied?" + +"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very +Desire of my heart has come to me!" + +Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and +finished their talk together,--this April number of it, I +mean,--about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and +the grass plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the +mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with +her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the +ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at +Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the +Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the +porch room! + +"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall +ever want to spend for anything!" + +"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to +grow proud and snobbish." + +"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the +riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us." + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. 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