A FAMILY SECRET.
YOU are not to suppose that during this press of work the moving spirit
in it did not have her homesick hours, when it seemed to her that she
must fly to her mother, and that at once; that she did not have her
anxious hours, when to provide as she would like for that dear mother
and that beautiful young sister seemed a dreary impossibility; that
she did not have her discouraged hours, when new carpet and frescoing
and stained-glass windows seemed only "vanity of vanities," and the
sharp-toned cabinet organ seemed to wheeze loud enough to drive all
other improvements out of mind. But there was always this comfort; she
was much too busy to brood long or often over thoughts like these; and
another thing; weary and disheartened as some rainy evening might
find her, there was forever an undertone of thanksgiving about Bud
and Harry Matthews, not only, but about others as well; not excepting
several of the girls, who, though Christians before she knew them,
had stepped upon higher planes of thought and action--been vitalized,
indeed, in their Christian life, and would never go back to the follies
of the past. Then came the trouble in the Ansted home, and the weeks of
waiting and watching, and the final defeat which was still a triumph.
During the solemnities of those hours, things which had seemed like
trials sank into trivialities, and life grew to her more earnest and
solemn than ever before.
In all these ways the summer waned. And now changes of various
kinds were pending. Harry Matthews was about closing his engagement
with the telegraph company, to enter upon a secretaryship under his
uncle--a position involving grave responsibilities and conscientious
stewardship. What joy it was to remember that the new young man was
equal to the trust. Bud was to be regularly entered as a pupil at the
Academy, and his face was radiant. The Ansteds were to stay at South
Plains all winter, and the girls were happy over the prospect of
uniting with the little church at its coming communion. Mrs. Ansted had
subscribed a hundred dollar addition to the minister's salary, and told
the people that they ought to feel disgraced for not each giving doubly
the original amount; that her son Louis, she felt sure, would have
taken the matter up had he lived, and she could not rest until she saw
it accomplished.
Meantime, there was more or less gossip in the town, of course, about
affairs with which the people, if they had really stopped to think,
had nothing to do. Among other things, there was wonderment as to why
Harold Chessney came to South Plains so often. What business was there
in this direction which could require so much attention? To be sure, he
was one of the Directors of the railroad, but this branch of it had not
heretofore been considered so important as to need constant looking
after by its chief. Also there were some who thought it very strange
that that Miss Benedict would receive so many attentions from him, when
she was as good as Louis Ansted's widow! Of course that was so, for
Mrs. Ansted herself had as good as said so dozens of times; and see how
intimate she was with the entire family. Yes, they knew that Harold
Chessney was a very particular friend of Louis Ansted; but they should
think that would hardly account for such a degree of intimacy, when
Louis had only been buried a few weeks.
Meantime, the central figures of this anxious talk went their busy
ways, and seemed in no sense troubled by the tongues. Harold Chessney
came often, and always visited the Ansteds and the Academy, and the
intimacy between all parties seemed to increase instead of diminish.
It was about this time that Claire received an unusually lengthy letter
from Dora; a letter over which she laughed much, and also shed some
tears.
Dora had some family perplexities to ask advice about, and indulged
rather more than was her wont over forebodings in regard to the coming
winter. Then suddenly she launched into the main channel of her letter
after this fashion:
"Oh, Claire, my dear, you are good! If I could be half like you, or
even one third, it would be such a relief to mamma as well as to
myself. But Claire (this next that I am going to say is mean, and
small, and will serve to show you that I have a correct estimate of
myself), I can not help thinking it would be much easier for me to
be good if I were away off in South Plains, or North Mountains, or
anywhere else than here, right around the corner from the old home. Do
you have any conception of what a difference it makes to be around the
corner from things, instead of being on the same street with them? I
think it possible that I might throw myself intensely into plans for
that North Mountain Church, you know, if I were there, and forget this
one, and these people, and the old ways.
"Claire, part of the time I am pretty good; I am, indeed; but really
and truly, it is hard. The girls try to be good, too, some of them.
Occasionally I think if they did not _try_ so hard, I could get along
better. You see, they stop talking about things when I appear, for
fear I will be hurt, and I am hurt; but it is because they think I
will be foolish enough to care for what they have been saying. Do
you understand that? It reads as though there were no sense in it;
but I know what I mean. It is clothes, half of the time. Clothes are
dreadful! I find I had no conception of their cost. Not that I am
having any new ones. Don't be frightened, dear. I am not so lost to
a sense of what has befallen us as such a proceeding would indicate.
Why, even a pair of gloves is often beyond my means! Neither am I
complaining. It is not the gloves; I am quite willing to go without
them. If mamma could have the things which we used to consider
necessities for her I would be willing to go bare-handed for the rest
of my days.
"Well, what am I talking about? Let me see if I can put it into
words. The girls, you know, are always arranging for this and that
entertainment. I meet them oftener, now that you have insisted on
my going back to the music class. To some of these entertainments I
am invited, and to more of them I am not. I never go, on account of
clothes and some other things.
"Imagine a party of girls gathered in the music-room or the hall, in
full tide of talk about what they will wear, and how they will arrange
their hair, and their ribbons, and all that sort of thing; and imagine
a sudden silence settling over them because I have appeared in sight,
as though I were a grim fairy before whom it was their misfortune to
have to be forever silent about everything that was pretty, or cost
money!
"Now I am going to make a confession, and I know it is just as silly as
it can be, but sometimes I can not help rushing home, and running up
to my room, and locking my door, and crying as though my heart would
break.
"I am thoughtful, though, about choosing times and occasions for these
outbreaks. I generally select an afternoon when mamma is out executing
some of your numerous commissions; but even then I have to bathe my
eyes for half an hour so that the poor, dear, sweet, patient woman will
know nothing about it. I never do let her know, Claire. She thinks that
I am good and happy, and occasionally she tells me that I am growing
self-controlled like you, and then I feel like a hypocrite; but all the
same, for her own good I don't enlighten her.
"Claire, dear, don't you suppose it is the silly parties to which I do
not go which trouble me. I have not the slightest desire to go, and I
don't think of them often; I don't, really. Well, that about having no
desire, needs qualifying. I mean I would not have, if I could go; I
mean I should like to be perfectly able to go if I chose, and then to
choose to remain at home. Do you understand?
"If the girls would only be free and social, and talk with me as
though nothing had happened, I should learn not to care. But it is so
hard to always feel that people are saying: 'Hush! there she comes,
poor thing, don't talk about it now, or we shall hurt her feelings!' I
would rather have them drop me entirely, I believe, as Estelle Mitchell
has done. She doesn't bow to me any more, even when we meet face to
face; doesn't see me, you know, but she does even _that_ politely.
I don't know how she manages. Claire, do you remember the time papa
signed that ten thousand dollar note for her father? Well, never mind.
I am writing a silly and, a wicked letter. I haven't written so to you
before, have I? I'll tell you what has stirred me so, lately, everybody
is in a flutter about the house. Claire, it is sold. You know what
house I mean; the dear old one on the avenue, every separate stone of
which speaks of papa. That Mr. Chessney bought it, who spends half
of his time abroad. There is a rumor that he is to be married some
time--nobody seems to know just when--and bring his bride there to
live. It is well for me that I shall not have a chance to move in her
circle, for I feel almost certain that I should have to hate her a
little.
"It is very absurd, of course, but the girls are actually beginning
already to talk about the possible reception, though they don't even
know who the prospective bride is. Some have located her in Chicago,
and some in Europe. I can not discover that there is an absolute
certainty about there being any bride, and yet some of the young ladies
are planning what would be pretty and unique to wear.
"Estelle Mitchell is sure of being invited, because her brother Dick
used to be quite intimately acquainted with one of the Chessney family;
and Dora Benedict is sure of not being invited, because she is not
intimately acquainted with anybody any more. I wonder who will have our
rooms--our dear old rooms? Yes, that largest blot is a tear. I couldn't
help it, and I haven't time to copy, and could not afford to waste the
paper, if I had. I don't cry very often, but I was foolish enough to
walk by the blessed old home this morning, and look up at the open
window in papa's study!
"Oh, Claire, darling, I wish you could come home, if it is only for a
little while, and we could go away from here. Don't you think mamma
might be made comfortable in South Plains for the winter?
"Oh, that is foolish, I know; and you are a dear, brave,
self-sacrificing sister, to give up your vacation and work away all
summer to help support us. To-morrow I shall not care anything about
this, only to be dreadfully ashamed that I sent you this wicked letter.
"I am going down now to make tea, and a bit of cream toast for mother,
and I shall be as bright as a gold eagle, and hover around her like
a moth-miller in the gaslight, and tell her all sorts of pleasant
nothings, and never a word of the house, or the sale, or the possible
new mistress for the old home. I am learning, dear, though from this
letter you might not think it. But I live such a pent-up, every-day
life that I have to say things to you once in a while, else what would
become of me?"
Claire laughed a great deal over this letter, pitiful as the undertone
in it must have been to a sympathetic heart. The tears came once or
twice; but after all, the predominant feeling seemed to be amusement.
It was not answered promptly; in fact, she waited three days; then came
Mr. Chessney for one of his brief visits, and she read the letter aloud
to him.
What Dora would have thought, could she have seen that proceeding,
passes my imagination.
What would she have thought of human sympathy, could she have heard the
bursts of laughter over parts of it; albeit Mr. Chessney did once or
twice brush away a tear!
What would she have thought could she have heard the conversation which
followed:
"Now, my dear Claire, I hope you are convinced of your
hard-heartedness. Poor Dora ought not to have this strain kept on her
during the autumn, especially when it is so utterly unnecessary.
"The house will be in complete order in a few weeks' time, and Dora's
reception is just the thing. I can write to Phillips, and put every
arrangement into his hands and we can appoint Dora manager-in-chief.
"Claire, I have a plan worth a dozen of yours. Let us have the mother
and Dora here for a visit. They want to see the little church which
they have helped to build. Nothing could be pleasanter. Then all your
girls, and all your boys, could be present at the ceremony. Think what
that would be for Bud! He would never forget it. Neither would this
struggling minister; it would afford an excuse for doing for him just
what we want to do. The law does not regulate the amount of marriage
fees, you know."
Mr. Chessney was an eloquent pleader; and Dora's letter, it must be
confessed, plead against the delay that Claire had thought was wise.
Of course, she demurred; of course, she hinted at the plans that she
had formed for getting ready; but the party on the opposite side had
an answer for every argument. He was sure that the way to do would be
to get ready afterward, when she would have leisure and his invaluable
presence and advice, instead of being hampered with music-scholars,
and he miles away, alone, waiting, and Dora waiting and suffering,
and the mother thinking her sad thoughts. Happy surprises were all
very well; they were delightful. He was entirely in sympathy with her
desire to tell mamma and Dora the story of the new home in person, only
he believed with all his heart that it would be cruel, and therefore
wrong, to burden that young heart with the question of ways and means a
moment longer than was necessary. As for Mrs. Foster, she could supply
Claire's place quietly, and thereby make some poor music-teacher's
heart unexpectedly glad.
Of course, Claire was overruled. She had really not one sensible reason
to offer why she should remain exiled from mamma and Dora any longer.
There was a little feeling of pride, it is true, about the "getting
ready afterward;" but as she looked it over carefully and prayerfully,
it seemed, even to herself, a mean pride, unworthy of the woman who was
to be Harold Chessney's wife.
Then there was a fascination in the thought of Dora planning for that
reception--really being the one to invite whom she would among "the
girls," instead of being the one left out in the cold.
Also it was pleasant to think what an event it would be to her girls,
and to Bud; and her cheeks glowed over the thought of the marriage-fee
that would find its way into the lean pocket-book of the overburdened
minister.
I would like to tell you the whole story in detail: what Dora said
when the letter came imploring her mother and herself to come to South
Plains for a few weeks' visit; how the mother demurred on the ground of
expense, and yet confessed that it made her heart beat wildly to think
of getting her arms around Claire again.
"But I can not think what has become of the dear child's good sense,"
she would add, with a sigh. "Why, Dora dear, she did not come home,
you know, because the trip would cost so much, and here she is planning
for two of us to take it."
"Never mind, mamma," would Dora reply, for Dora was desperately
determined on this trip to South Plains, "Claire has planned a way;
and we shall save our food if we stay two weeks, and that will be
something; and she has sent us the tickets, so the money is spent. Oh,
mamma, let us go _anyway_."
And of course they went. Yes, I would delight to tell you all about it.
What a sensation there was in South Plains, and how full the little
church was, and how well Bud looked walking down the aisle as one of
the ushers, and how people said the Ansteds certainly would not come,
they would feel it a family insult, but how the Ansteds not only came,
but took almost entire charge of everything.
Above all, I should like to have you look in with me at the parsonage,
in the study, where the minister and his wife stopped to break the
seal of that special envelope after it was all over; how he rubbed his
eyes, and looked, and looked again, and turned pale, and said, huskily:
"There is some mistake here, Mary; he has given me the wrong paper."
And how she came and looked over his shoulder, and said:
"Why, it has your full name. How can there be a mistake?" And then she
read, "Pay to Rev. Henry Ramsey, or order, one thousand dollars. ----
----."
Who ever heard of such a marriage-fee as that!
Oh, now, I have; there have been just such marriage-fees as that,
really and truly. There had been such before Harold Chessney and Claire
Benedict were married, and there will be such again. There are poor
ministers and grand, rich men, and there will be, I presume, while the
world stands. More things than some people dream of are going on in
this world of ours.
There is one thing which it gives me great pleasure to record. There
was a reception given in the old home. It was after mamma and Dora had
been established for several days in their old rooms, and it was the
evening after the arrival of the bride and groom, and Estelle Mitchell
was invited to the reception. Not because her brother Dick had been
intimate with one of the Chessneys, but because because--
"My brother Harold gave me liberty to invite whoever I pleased among my
classmates, and it would give me pleasure to see you there."
Dora spoke truth. It really gave her great pleasure to see Estelle
Mitchell at the wedding reception of the Chessneys, and to realize that
she was her guest!
"Oh, you wicked, wicked Dora!" some of them said, when the excitement
caused by the reception cards was at his height, "there you heard us
talking about the new furniture, and wondering as to who was the bride,
and you never gave us so much as a hint!"
Dora laughed, and kept her own counsel. She did not choose to tell
them that during those trying days no hint of it had come to her.
That was their pretty family secret, with which outsiders were not to
intermeddle.
They agreed, every one of them, that Dora made a charming young
hostess, and Estelle Mitchell said she was glad she was back in her old
home, for she just fitted.
There are but two things which remain to tell you. One grew out of Ruth
Jennings' farewell words to her beloved music-teacher, spoken while she
was half-laughing, half-crying, and wholly heart-broken:
"But the organ _does_ squeak horribly; you know it does; and it is
always getting out of tune."
Mr. Chessney heard it, and during their wedding-trip he said to his
wife:
"There is one thing I want you to help me select. I have not made my
thank-offering yet to that blessed little church where I found you.
It must have an organ that will keep in tune, and that will worthily
commemorate the harmony that was begun there."
Imagine, please, for I shall not attempt to tell you, the delight, to
say nothing of the unspeakable wonder, of the girls, and of the entire
community, when the beautifully-finished, exquisitely-toned bit of
mechanism was set up in the church.
Accompanying it were two organ stools, one for the church and one for
Ruth Jennings' home; so she sits on dictionaries and Patent Office
Reports no more.
The other item can be told more briefly. It is embodied in a sentence
which the gentle mother spoke one morning at the breakfast-table:
"By the way, Claire, the committee about the Mission Band entertainment
was here yesterday while you and Harold were out, to see if you would
help them. I told them I thought you would."
The face of the bride flushed deeply, and a peculiarly tender light
shone in her eyes as she said:
"How very strange that is! It is the same Band which was preparing for
that exercise about which I told you. We were to have had it on the
day in which papa was buried."
"It is the same exercise," Dora said, speaking gently. "The girls
dropped it entirely, and could never persuade themselves to take hold
of it again, until last week they voted to attempt it."
"You were only interrupted in your work, you see," Mr. Chessney said,
smiling down on eyes that were filling with tears. "Interrupted, that
you might set some wheels in motion that had been clogged; now you are
called back to finish the other, and I am here to help you."
THE PANSY BOOKS.
By "PANSY" (Mrs. G. R. Alden).
"Mrs. Alden's writings are so pure, earnest, and hopeful that a
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54. Dr. Deane's Way.
55. Miss Priscilla Hunter.
56. Mrs. Deane's Way.
57. What She Said.
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58. At Home and Abroad.
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60. Couldn't Be Bought.
61. Five Friends.
62. In the Woods and Out.
63. Jessie Wells.
64. Modern Sacrifice (A).
65. Mrs. Harry Harper's Awakening.
66. New Year's Tangles.
67. Next Things.
68. Older Brother (The).
69. Pansy's Scrap Book.
70. Some Young Heroines.
71. Worth Having.
72. Young Folks Worth Knowing.
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73. Bernie's White Chicken.
74. Docia's Journal.
75. Getting Ahead.
76. Helen Lester.
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81. Stories Told for a Purpose.
82. That Boy Bob.
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88. Glimpses of Boyhood.
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90. Grace Holbrook.
91. Hedge Fence.
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94. Kaleidoscope (The).
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96. Side by Side.
97. Six o'Clock in the Evening.
98. Stories from the Life of Jesus.
99. Stories of Great Men.
100. Stories of Remarkable Women.
101. Story of Puff.
102. Their Vacation.
103. We Twelve Girls.
104. World of Little People (A).
PANSY
TRADE-MARK REGISTERED JUNE 4, 1895.
_At all Bookstores, or sent postpaid upon receipt of price._
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.
THE PANSY BOOKS.
By "PANSY" (Mrs. G. R. Alden).
"There is something so pure and earnest and elevating in all Mrs.
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1. As in a Mirror.
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7. Endless Chain (An).
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11. Hall in the Grove (The).
12. Her Associate Members.
13. Household Puzzles.
14. Interrupted.
15. John Remington, Martyr.
16. Judge Burnham's Daughters.
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19. Links in Rebecca's Life.
20. Little Fishers and Their Nets.
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22. Man of the House.
23. Mrs. Solomon Smith Looking On.
24. New Graft on the Family Tree (A).
25. One Commonplace Day.
26. Overruled.
27. Pocket Measure (The).
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29. Randolphs (The).
30. Ruth Erskine's Crosses.
31. Sevenfold Trouble (A).
32. Spun from Fact.
33. Stephen Mitchell's Journey.
34. Those Boys.
35. Three People.
36. Tip Lewis and His Lamp.
37. Twenty Minutes Late.
38. Wanted.
39. What They Couldn't.
40. Wise and Otherwise.
41. Yesterday Framed in To-day.
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42. Cunning Workmen.
43. Divers Women.
44. Echoing and Reëchoing.
45. From Different Standpoints.
46. Grandpa's Darlings.
47. Miss Dee Dunmore Bryant.
48. Modern Exodus (A).
49. Modern Prophets.
50. Only Ten Cents.
51. Profiles.
52. Reuben's Hindrances.
53. Sidney Martin's Christmas.
PANSY
TRADE-MARK REGISTERED JUNE 4, 1895.
_At all Bookstores, or sent postpaid upon receipt of price._
LOTHROP PUBLISHING COMPANY, Boston.
* * * * *
Transcriber's Notes:
Punctuation errors repaired.
Page 49, "daugther" changed to "daughter" (course not, daughter)
Page 52, "supurb" changed to "superb" (it was simply superb)
Page 142, "yon" changed to "you" (best help you)
Page 142, "umbarrassing" changed to "embarrassing" (embarrassing or
trying)
Page 214, "dependent" changed to "dependant" (boy dependant on)
Page 402, "fron" changed to "from" (from this ordeal)
Page 414, "greal" changed to "great" (had great power)
The final two pages, the booklists, seemed to be out of order. This was
retained.