MATILDA TEACHES
MATILDA seated herself bolt upright on one of the kitchen chairs and
drew a hard, stiff sigh.
"It'll be a great rest to get away," she said, "more of a rest than any
one but me will ever know. You see, she's left all she's got to me in
her will, so I'm bound in honor to keep a pretty sharp watch over
everything. I can't even take a chance at her sinking suddenly away,
with the room not picked up or a cobweb in some high corner. I've seen
her will, and she ain't left you a cent, so you won't have the same
responsibility. It'll be easier for you."
"I'll do my very best," said Jane.
"The trouble is I'm too conscientious," said Matilda. "I was always
conscientious, and she was always slack. It's an awful failing. It's a
warning, too, for now there she lays, snug as a bug in a rug, and me
with New Asthma in my arm from tending her and the house."
"You'll get over all that very soon," said the niece soothingly.
Matilda glanced at her suspiciously. "No, I shan't. I may get better,
but I shan't get over it. It's a nerve trouble and can't never be
completely cured. A doctor can alligator it, but he can't cure it. I'll
have it till I die."
Jane was silent.
"You wrote that you were some kind of a nurse. What kind did you say you
were?"
"I'm a Sunshine Nurse."
"A Sunshine Nurse! What's that? Some new idea of never pulling down the
shades?"
Jane laughed. "Not exactly. It's an Order just founded by a doctor. He
picked out the girls himself, and he sends them where he chooses for
training."
"What's the training?"
Jane looked at her and hesitated a little. "I expect you'll laugh," she
said finally; "it does sound funny to any one who isn't used to such
ideas. We're to see the sun as always shining, and always shine
ourselves, and our training consists in going where there isn't any
brightness and being bright, and going where there isn't any happiness
and teaching happiness."
"Sounds to me like nonsense," said Matilda, rising abruptly;
"don't you go letting up the sitting-room shades and fading the
upholstering,--that's all I've got to say. Come now and I'll show you
about locking up, and then we'll go to bed."
Jane obeyed with promptness and was most observant and attentive.
Matilda loaded her with behests and instructions and seemed appreciative
of the intelligence with which they were received.
"I wouldn't go in for nothing fancy," she said, as they completed their
task; "the less you stir up her and the house, the easier it'll be for
me when I come back. You don't want to ever forget that I'm coming back,
and don't put any fancy ideas into her head. There's plenty to do here
without going out of your way to upset my ways."
"I'll remember," said Jane.
Then they started up-stairs, and a few minutes later the Sunshine Nurse
was alone in her own room, free to stand quietly by the window and let
her outward gaze form a bond between the still beauty of a country night
and the glad vision of work in plenty, and that of a kind which Miss
Matilda couldn't prohibit, because she knew not the world in which such
work is done.
"Not--" said Jane to herself with a little whimsical smile--"not but
what I'm 'most sure that my teaching will be manifest in a lot of
material changes, too, but by the time that she comes back, her own
feelings will be sufficiently 'alligatored' so that she'll see life
differently also. God's plan is just as much for her good in sending her
away as it is for mine in sending me here, and I mustn't forget that for
a minute. I'll be busy and she'll be busy, and we'll both be learning
and we'll both be teaching and we'll both be being necessary."
She drew a chair close and sat down, full of her own bright and helpful
thoughts. Much of love and wonder came flooding into her through the
medium of the sweet, calm night without. "It's like being among angels,"
she fancied, and felt a close companionship with those who had known the
Great White Messengers face to face.
Long she sat there, praying the prayer that is just one indrawn breath
of content and uplifted consciousness. Not many girls of twenty-two
would have seen so much in that not unusual situation, and yet it was to
her so brimful of fair possibilities that she could hardly wait for
morning to begin work.
When she rose to undress, when she climbed into the plain, hard bed that
received her so kindly, when she slept at last, all was with the same
sense of responsibility mixed with energetic intention. All that she had
"asked" in the usual sense of "asking in prayer" had been "to be shown
exactly how," and because she was one of those who know every prayer to
be answered, in the hour of its making she knew that to be answered,
too. "I'll be led along," was her last thought before sleeping, and it
swept the fringe of her consciousness, leaving her to enter dreamland
with the happy security of a trusting child.
It really seemed no time at all before Matilda rapped loudly on her
door, bringing her suddenly to the knowledge that the hour to begin all
the longed-for work was at hand.
"Five o'clock!" Matilda howled gently through the crack.
"Yes, yes," she cried in response.
The door opened a bit wider. "You'd better get right up or you'll go to
sleep again," Matilda said, putting her head in, "right this minute."
"Yes, I will."
She sat up in bed to prove it.
"All right," said her aunt--and shut the door.
Jane had unpacked her small trunk the night before, and so was able to
dress quickly and get down-stairs without a minute wasted. She found
Matilda in the kitchen, very busy with the stove.
"I do hope you'll remember what I said last night," she said, shoveling
out ashes with an energy that filled the room with dust. "I can't have
her habits all upset. It'll be no good giving me this change if you go
and spoil her. Remember that."
"I won't make any trouble," promised Jane. "I'll always remember that
you're coming back."
As she spoke, she saw again the thin, hopeless face on the pillow
up-stairs and knew that Matilda herself was to know a glad surprise over
the change which should welcome her home-coming. It was the learning to
instantly realize the better side of those who insisted on exhibiting
their worst that was the leading force in the training of that beaming
little Order to which she belonged. The Sunshine Nurses were forbidden
to consider anything or anybody as fixedly wrong either in kind,
conception, or working out. It would be a very comfortable way of
looking at things--even for such mere, ordinary, everyday folk as you
and me.
Matilda now said, "Ugh, ugh!" over the dust and proceeded to dive into
the wood-box with one hand and get a sliver in her thumb.
"In the morning she has tea," she said, going to the window to put her
hand to rights. "One cup. Piece of bread. At noon, whatever is handy.
Night, cup of tea and whatever she fancies. Bread or a cracker usually.
She eats very little and less all the time. The cat eats more than she
does. He's a snooper, that cat,--you'll have to watch out."
Jane didn't seem to understand. "A--a snooper?"
"Steals food. Awful thief. Slap him when you catch him at it; it's all
you can do. Sometimes I throw water over him. He'll make off with what
would be a meal for a hired man, and he's sly as any other thief."
"Can't I help you with your hand?"
"No, you can't. I get lots of them. They bother me a little because Mrs.
Croft's cousin died of blood-poison from one. There, it's out. What was
I saying? Oh, yes, the cat."
"Where is she now?"
"It's a he. Named Alfred for her husband. He's up in her room now.
Always sleeps on her bed. She will have him, and I humor her. She's my
only sister and she can't live long and she's left me all her money, and
I humor her. It's my plain duty."
"Is it healthy for an invalid to sleep with a cat?"
"No, it ain't. But I promised to do whatever she said about the cat and
the garden, and I do."
"I'm sure it's very good in you," Jane murmured, looking out of the
window.
"It is. I'm a good woman. I do my whole duty, and there's not many in a
town this size can say as much."
"Where is the garden?"
"I'll show you, if you don't mind getting your feet wet. I have my
rubbers on already, to travel, so I can go right there now while the
fire is kindling."
"Is it wet?"
"Most grass is wet, at five in the morning."
Jane wanted to laugh. "I mean, isn't there a path?"
"Part way, and then you have to climb two fences."
"Climb! Two!" the niece turned in surprise.
"Climb two fences. You never saw such a place. The strip between is
rented for a cow-pasture. That's why there's two fences."
"But why not have gates?"
"Don't ask me. Find out if you can. I've lived here five years, and I
ain't found out. You try and see if you'll do better. She's very
secretive, and so was he before he died. I've just had to get along the
best I could. She fails and fails steady, but it don't seem to affect
her health none, and now at last it's affected mine instead and give me
neophytes in my left arm."
Jane turned her head and looked some more out of the window.
"We'll go now. Might as well. The kettle will get to boiling while we're
away, and then we'll have breakfast. It boils slow, because I've got the
eggs in it for my lunch. Come on."
The question of the wet grass seemed to have faded. They went out the
kitchen door. It was a clear, bright morning. "Weedy weather," commented
Matilda, and led the way down the path.
"It's a pretty place," said Jane, her eyes roaming happily.
"Yes, I suppose so. But it takes an artist or some one who hasn't lived
in it for five years to feel that way." She paused to climb the first
fence. It was three rails high and very awkward. "I'll go over first,"
she said. "Think of it; I've done this six times a day for five years."
Jane didn't wonder that she was so agile at it. "But how funny to have a
garden away off here!" she said.
Matilda was now over on the other side. "Yes, and think of keeping it
up. Folks about here make no bones of telling me that they were both
half-witted, only as she's my sister, they try to give me to understand
as she caught it from him. He was a miser, you know."
Jane was just getting her second leg over. "I don't know a thing about
him," she said.
"Well, you will, soon enough. The neighbors'll come flocking as soon as
I'm gone, and you'll soon know all there is to know about us all.
They'll pick me to pieces, too, and tell you I'm starving Susan to
death, but I don't care. Climbing these fences has hardened me to
calumny."
They crossed the strip of cow-pasture, and Matilda got over another
fence, saying as she did so: "Whom the Lord loveth He chasteneth,"
leaving Jane to make the application and follow her at the same time.
Then they found themselves in a trim little garden.
"How sweet," said the niece.
"You can see I've done my duty by it, too," said Matilda; "that's my
way. I'm hard and I ain't pretty to look at, but I do my duty, which is
more'n most handsome women do. Every last bean here is clawed around
like it ought to be, and the whole thing neat as wax. Same with Susan;
you'd think from her face I'd murdered her, and yet the Recording Angel
knows she's had a cold sponge and every last snarl combed out of her
hair every day since I came. I don't boast, but I do work."
"Dear me, it's a long way from the house," said Jane, forgetting her
higher philosophy for the minute.
"It's a good ten minutes to get here. A picking of peas is a half-hour's
job. And ten to one, when I get back, the cat's been at the cream."
Jane had had time to remember. "I can see you've been awfully good," she
said warmly, "and my, but you've worked hard. Everything shows that."
Matilda's face flushed with pleasure, the sudden pathetic flushing of
unexpected appreciation. "I just have," she declared. "I've worked hard
all my life and done a lot of good, and nobody's ever bothered to thank
me. She don't. She just lays there and lets me run up and down stairs
and climb fences and dig weeds and scamper back and forth with a extra
hike, when I hear the bell of the door, till it'll be a mercy if I don't
get neophytes all over, and the New Asthma in both legs, _I_ think."
After a brief tour of the tiny whole, devoted mainly to instructing the
novice, Matilda led the way back to the house.
"Does it ever need watering?" Jane asked, lapsing again to a lower
level.
"Sometimes," said Matilda briefly. Jane hadn't the heart to say another
word until--several steps further on--it occurred to her that the garden
also could be only a good factor in God's plan, if she wreathed it and
shrined it and saw it in her world, as He saw all His world on the day
when it was first manifest and set. "And God saw everything that He had
made, and behold, it was very good."