IN A PERFECTLY RIGHT WAY
WHEN Susan, looking out of the window, saw the two whom she had left
behind coming across the grass, she knew instantly.
"They've settled it somehow," she exclaimed in supremest joy, and
whirled to whisk the bacon off the stove.
"Auntie," said Jane, from outside the window, the minute after, "I am
just dumb. I don't believe I'll ever be able to lift up my head in life
again."
"Auntie," said Lorenzo, over her shoulder, "she's inherited her
fortune."
Susan gave a scream. "Oh, good mercy!"
"Yes, dear," said her niece, now in the doorway, "only I can't believe
it. I think that it's a dream."
"You see she still isn't able to rise to the proper heights of trust,"
laughed her lover, also now in the doorway, "but I have hopes of yet
teaching her to believe what she believes."
"Come straight in and help me set all this on the table, so that I can
listen with a free mind." Susan's appeal was pathetic in the extreme.
"Where _did_ she get it, anyhow?"
"Oh, Auntie, it's the most wonderful thing you ever heard of." Jane took
up the coffee-pot and led the way.
"I did it all, except I didn't provide the money," said Lorenzo, and the
next minute they were all seated, and he could tell the whole story.
Susan didn't scream. She sat still, a bit of toast in her hand,
listening breathlessly. When Lorenzo had finished, "Oh, that new
religion!" she murmured in an awed voice, and then, "Nothing like this
ever happened in this town before, I know."
"I'm more bewildered over it's being there for me and my not being able
to believe than I am by the money," said Jane. "Oh, Auntie, what a
lesson, what a lesson!"
"You would limit yourself, you see," said Lorenzo; "you wouldn't
believe."
"How could I ever imagine such a thing?"
"You didn't have to imagine,--you only had to expect."
"You laid limits, you see," said Susan, suddenly beginning to pour out
the coffee, and pouring with a glad dash that swept over cup and saucer
together. "I expect if God hadn't been patient--like Mr. Rath--He could
have very well hid that will forever. There may be a lot of such goings
on in the world, for all we know. My goodness, suppose I'd been like
Matilda and not have had old Mrs. Croft around for one minute,--it makes
me ill to think of it! It's a lesson for me, too."
"Life is all lessons," said Jane. "Dear me, think of Aunt Matilda's
surprise!"
"Think of it! Good mercy, how can I wait to tell her!" Susan's whole
face beamed. "I don't mind a bit her coming back now. That shows the
good of making that declaration about her. Those declarations are a
great thing. I've told myself Matilda was coming back in a perfectly
right way so many times that now, however she came back, I'd be positive
it was perfectly right."
"Ah, Auntie," said Jane, "you've got hold of another great truth. Every
one seems quicker than me."
"Well, you started us at it, anyhow," said Susan kindly. "Oh my, but I'm
happy! Why, I believe I'm really in a hurry now for Matilda to come
back, just so I can tell her. Think of that--me really and truly anxious
to see Matilda again! My, you Sunshine Jane, you--what a lot of
difference you've made in me."
"When is your aunt coming?" Lorenzo asked Jane.
"She went for three weeks," said Jane; "it will be three weeks next
Thursday."
"Goodness, only three weeks, and it seems like three years?" observed
Susan. "What a lot has happened! There's Jane--and her religion--and me
up and well--and old Mrs. Croft here and gone--and you, Mr. Rath,--and
then you and Jane--and now this money."
"I can't believe any of it," said Jane; "I try, but I just can't. I
guess I'm hopelessly limited. I'm too bewildered, I--"
"I'll tell you what ails you," said her aunt warmly. "It's that you've
spread yourself too much; you've given such a lot away everywhere that
you've got to just stop and let the tide run backwards into you yourself
for a while. It's nature. Nature and the new religion combined."
"I feel overwhelmed by the coming-back tide then," said Jane; "I don't
deserve it all."
Her aunt started to reply, but was stopped by a sudden loud bang
outside.
"Goodness, what's that?" she exclaimed.
"Auto tire burst, I think. I'll go and see," said Lorenzo, jumping up
and going out.
"Jane," said Susan solemnly, "that's a young man in a million. Think of
his finding that will. My, but he'll make a good husband!"
"I just can't realize any of it," said her niece. She seemed to be
totally unequal to any other view of her present situation.
"Well, you'd better realize it," said her aunt, "because it's coming
right along. What will Mrs. Mead say, I wonder! Dear me, how every one
will wish they'd tried to get up a plane or two by having old Mrs. Croft
to visit them. If that poor old thing could only come back, the whole
town would just adore to have her on a visit now, and every one would
sit up all night and listen to _Captain Jinks_ so cheerfully. She used
to sing _Rally round the flag, boys_ too,--I forgot that. She used to
sing it when she heard the roosters begin to crow. But nobody would have
minded, whatever she sang now."
"Oh, there's--" Jane hesitated and blushed.
Lorenzo stood in the door. "It wasn't a burst tire," he explained
briefly; "it's a new kind of siren they're using. It's friends from out
of town, Mr. and Mrs. Beamer."
"They've got the wrong house," said Susan. "I don't know any Beamers."
"They asked for Mrs. Ralston."
"Then they're selling something, grape-wine or hand-knit lace, or
something. I don't want to see 'em."
"I'll go," said Jane. And went at once. In the pretty, changed
sitting-room she found the visitors--Mrs. Beamer tall and of large
build, with a handsome motor-costume. Mr. Beamer also large, very wiry,
and with rampant gray hair. Mrs. Beamer was Matilda.
But what a changed Matilda! "Well, Jane," coming forward and holding out
both hands, "did you and Susan feel it?"
Jane staggered and laid hold of a chair. "Feel--" she stammered--"feel
what? Oh, Aunt Matilda!"
"Did you feel the good I've been doing you? How's my sister?"
"She--oh, she's all right."
"Up and dressed?"
"Yes."
"There, you see!" Matilda turned to Mr. Beamer, triumph radiating her
whole figure. "It worked,--oh, Matthew, it worked." Then she turned back
to Jane. "Get up right off, didn't she? Same day I left?"
"Y--yes." Jane clung more tightly to the chair. She began to doubt the
ground beneath her feet.
"Perfectly well, strong, able-bodied,--isn't she?"
"Yes."
"You see?--" to Mr. Beamer. Then, "Oh, it's too splendid! I s'pose the
cat's stopped snooping, too, hasn't he?"
"Y--yes."
"House all clean? Garden growing fine?"--
"Yes, indeed."
"And you, Jane, how are you?"
"Oh, I'm all right. I--I've become engaged."
"You hear that, Matthew? And the town?"
"Everybody's well."
"Did you ever in all your life!"
"Oh, old Mrs. Croft died!"
"Did she indeed. Katie happy?--"
"Katie was away. She died here."
"How nice! I expect she enjoyed every minute of it. Oh, Jane, you don't
know how happy your every word is making me!"
"Shan't I call auntie?"
"No, we'll go out and have breakfast with you. We had one breakfast so
as to make it easy for you to have us have it with you."
"Do come right out to the table." Jane led the way. "I can't think what
Aunt Susan will say!"
"Never mind what she says--it'll be just right. Everything always is.
Come, Matthew;" then Mrs. Matilda Beamer led off, and Mr. Matthew Beamer
followed, smiling cheerfully. He seemed to be a very cheerful man.
"Perhaps I'd better go first and just prepare auntie," Jane suggested
hastily.
"No need. She always yelled when she saw me suddenly, and this time it
will be for joy. Life is going to be all joy for Susan now."
Jane turned the button of the dining-room door. "Auntie Susan, it's Aunt
Matilda and Mr. Beamer."
Susan justified her sister's views by forthwith giving the yell of her
whole life. "Ma--tilda!--And Mr. Beamer!--"
Matilda went up to her, seized her, gave her a good hug and a real kiss.
"I've made lots of mistakes," she said, with a big tear in each eye,
"but somehow it was written that I should be allowed to make them right.
Susan, this is Matthew. Sit down, Matthew. Sit down, every one."
Lorenzo hastily pushed up chairs, and they all sat down.
"I'll get some more dishes," Jane exclaimed, hurrying into the pantry.
"Matilda!" Susan looked almost ready to faint. "Are you--are you--"
"I'm married," said Matilda. "I don't know what I've ever done to
deserve it, but I'm married. It's the most beautiful romance that ever
was in the world, and we've come to tell you all about it."
"Oh, do!" Susan exclaimed. "Jane, come back! Think of another romance,
and Matilda, too! Well, what next!"
Matilda smiled quite radiantly. "We met on the train the day I left
here," she began; "it was right off. He took me out on the back platform
of the car and opened my eyes to life, and we just suited, didn't we,
Matthew?"
"Tell it all," said Mr. Beamer; "tell the beginning."
"Yes," said his wife, "I will, I'll tell it all. It's so splendid it
would be a pity to skip anything. You see, he looked at me and--well,
really, Matthew, I think you'd better tell the first part."
"No, you tell," said Mr. Beamer.
"No, Matthew, you tell it, and I'll help anywhere I can."
"Well," said her husband, "then I'll begin with saying, Sister Susan,
Niece Jane, and young man, that I'd better tell you what I am, first of
all, because I'm the only one of the kind in the world so far as I know.
You see, one of those Bible miracles, that no one can seem to lay hold
of any more, got into me, and I'm the result."
"That is all true," interposed Matilda, her plain face quite
metamorphosed, as she looked at her husband and then at them. "Every
word he says is true, and it's all miracles."
"You see I was just a plain, ordinary man, with a nice business and a
good disposition," Mr. Beamer went on, "and I did get so awful tired of
things as they were going, and I used to wish everything was different,
and then one day, all of a God-blessed sudden, it came over me, with a
shock like lightning, that wanting things different is the first step to
getting 'em different, and that if you've got the brain to see what's
lacking, you've got the body to turn to and help fill up the hole. I
didn't get religion out of a book; I got it just like that. I was
sitting in a rocking-chair with a palm-leaf fan, and I got up and put
the fan on the shelf and knew I was all made new. The very next day I
read about a doctor as set up some nurses--"
"Oh, my goodness," Susan cried, "hear that, Jane!"
"--as was to spread sunshine, and I thought that was a good idea, only I
couldn't see a place in it for me, 'cause I wasn't young and wasn't no
girl to go 'round spreading nothing. I looked upon it that being a man,
my business wasn't to spread things--a man's business is to get the
stuff to spread; so I figured out that being as I was a man, I could
maybe help make the sunshine, and then any one could slather it on that
pleased. So I began to look about for some sunshine to make, and the
handiest field I see was folks with hard lines around their mouths;
there's a powerful lot of them around, you know,--ain't nothin' so hard
to break up in life as hard lines around mouths. So I set out to plow
fields of hard lines." He paused. It was a picture, a picture painted in
heavenly colors to see his face at the moment, full of its own
heartfelt, tried, and true enthusiasm, and the faces of those of his
four listeners, each touched with the spiritual light shed by recent
events over his or her own individual path.
"Do go on," Jane whispered softly.
"Well, whenever I'd see a hard man sitting alone, I'd go up to him and
hold out my hand and say, 'Well, I ain't laid eyes on you, I don't know
when!' That wasn't no lie, and 'most always we'd get a-talking. Then I'd
say, 'I'm a harmless crank that likes to go round making friends, and I
took a fancy to you right off.' It was wonderful all I come up against.
Why, the hardest folks was just aching to sit down and explain that they
wasn't hard at all. It was the most interesting thing I ever got hold
of. I got arrested once for a gold-brick man, and it give me a fine
chance at the jailers and some of the men in prison. Pretty soon
everything that turned up seemed to just come along to give me a chance
to make a little sunshine. Pretty soon life was all nothing but sunshine
chances. I got hold of some books that showed me that lots of others
were trying some similar games, and all working hard, and I picked out
one book that 'most anybody could understand, and I used to carry it to
read from. Would you believe that I wore out that book about a hundred
times and sold it more'n five hundred times and give it away 'most a
thousand times. I got where hard lines was just play to me. I've now got
where they're flowers in my garden. I just fly at 'em. If they don't
give up to one course, they do to another. I travel about looking for
'em. I was on my last trip when I see Matilda sittin' across the aisle
from me, and I said to myself right off, 'What fine lines!' So I went
right over and shook hands with her--"
"He said he feared maybe he'd made a mistake," interrupted his wife,
"and I said--God forgive me!--'If you speak to me again, I'll call out
to the conductors!'"
"And I said: 'Madam, excuse me, I'm only a harmless crank as is trying
to help folks as is sick or in trouble, and you look like a woman as
could tell me of some I could help, maybe!'"
"Then I thought of you, Susan," said the sister; "you see, I'd been
looking out of the window, and the view was so pretty, and it kind of
come over me how awful hard it was to lie in bed--and--and I felt kind
of bad, and his face looked kind, and I said: 'Well, sit down. I do know
somebody sick.'"
"So I set down," went on Mr. Beamer, "and in just a little while she let
up like everybody does and told me the whole story, and then I took her
out on the back platform and we was swinging 'round curves of mighty
lovely scenery, and I got out my book and I begin to read aloud to her."
"And I got hold of the idea like mad," said Matilda. "I said right off:
'Then Susan's really all well now?' an' he said: 'She's been well
always,' and I says: 'And my arm's well,' and he said: 'Nothin' ain't
ever ailed your arm except your own innard feelings, and they're gone
now,' and then I just put my hands over my face and says: 'Oh, God,
forgive me for lots and lots and lots of things.'"
There was another little pause, and then Susan said very low: "And God
did it."
"And then," said Mr. Beamer, "I says to her: 'Now, if you want to see
how true everything I've been saying is, we'll just put this to a
practical proof.' I'd noticed a woman with lines back there in the car
slapping two sleepy children, and I told Matilda we'd each take a child
for an hour and give her lines a chance to smooth out a little, and then
we'd come back on the platform and talk it over."
"So we did it," said Matilda, "and when I took the baby back to the
woman, she burst out crying and said she'd tried to hold in all day and
just couldn't any longer, cause her mother was sick and had been sick so
long, and she couldn't leave the children to go to her 'cause the
children was the neighbor's and left with her to board, and she'd never
liked children and only took 'em 'cause her mother needed the money."
"Showing," interrupted Mr. Beamer, "how we'd misjudged her and her hard
lines, which is another feature of my crusade, as lots don't think
enough about."
"But what come next was just like a story, too," Matilda said. "When I
got to Mrs. Camp's at last, I found Mrs. Camp so changed that if I
hadn't met Matthew on the train and got something to hold on to, I
couldn't have stayed in the house an hour."
"Why, what was the matter with Mrs. Camp?" Susan asked anxiously.
"Why, all Mrs. Camp's family is married now, and it seems she was so
lonely she's turned into a social settler or some such thing, and her
nice, quiet house where I'd looked to rest was one swarm of Italians
learning English and girls learning sewing and women asking advice and
such a chaos of Bedlam you never dreamed. If it hadn't been for my just
having got religion that way, I'd have turned around and come straight
back home. But as it was, I didn't have time to do anything but get into
my blue print and take hold right with her and get some order into
things in general."
"Oh, Aunt Matilda!" Jane's face was radiant.
"Afternoons Matthew came with an auto, and he'd take me off with the
back seat full of children, and we'd hunt hard lines anywhere they
looked likely."
"And then, of course, we soon got married," said Mr. Beamer.
"Yes, and that's all," said Matilda. "_Now did you ever?_"
There was a sudden hush, until finally Susan said, through tears: "Oh,
Matilda,--it's like something in heaven's got loose and fell right down
over us, isn't it?"
"I think it's all too wonderful," said Jane.
"Of course there really is something out of heaven spread over earth
every day," said Lorenzo, low, and very reverently; "only people don't
see it."
"But nowadays, everybody's beginning to recognize it," Jane murmured.
"It's like it says in one of my books," said Mr. Beamer. "God's a
reservoir and we're all pipes, just as soon as we're willing to be
pipes, and then He pours through us according to how willing we are,
because you're big or little just according to how willing you are."
"Let us all be very willing," said Jane.
"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "that sounds like a blessing to ask at the
table. Let's ask a blessing after this and just say: 'Let us all be very
willing!'"
"Amen," said Lorenzo.