'And you, Mrs. Rudinsky, don’t think for a moment that David doesn’t
understand. He’s had a bad time, the poor boy, but I know--Oh, I must
speak to him! Will he wake soon, do you think?'
Mr. Rudinsky left the room without a word.
'It’s all right,' said David’s mother, in reply to an anxious look from
Miss Ralston. 'He sleeps already the whole afternoon.'
It had grown almost dark while they talked. Mrs. Rudinsky now lighted
the lamps, apologizing to her guest for not having done so sooner, and
then she released Bennie from his prolonged attendance in the store.
Bennie came into the kitchen chewing his reward, some very gummy
confection. He was obliged to look the pent-up things he wanted to say,
until such time as he could clear his clogged talking-gear.
'Teacher,' he began, before he had finished swallowing, 'What for did
you say--'
'Bennie!' his mother reproved him, 'You must shame yourself to listen by
the door.'
'Well, there wasn’t any trade, ma,' he defended himself, 'only Bessie
Katz, and she brought back the peppermints she bought this morning, to
change them for taffy, but I didn’t because they were all dirty, and one
was broken--'
Bennie never had a chance to bring his speeches to a voluntary stop:
somebody always interrupted. This time it was his father, who came down
the stairs, looking so grave that even Bennie was impressed.
'He’s awake,' said Mr. Rudinsky. 'I lighted the lamp. Will you please
come up, ma’am?'
He showed her to the room where David lay, and closed the door on them
both. It was not he, but Miss Ralston, the American teacher, that his
boy needed. He went softly down to the kitchen, where his wife smiled at
him through unnecessary tears.
Miss Ralston never forgot the next hour, and David never forgot. The
woman always remembered how the boy’s eyes burned through the dusk of
the shadowed corner where he lay. The boy remembered how his teacher’s
voice palpitated in his heart, how her cool hands rested on his, how the
lamplight made a halo out of her hair. To each of them the dim room with
its scant furnishings became a spiritual rendezvous.
What did the woman say, that drew the sting of remorse from the child’s
heart, without robbing him of the bloom of his idealism? What did she
tell him that transmuted the offense of ages into the marrow and blood
of persecuted virtue? How did she weld in the boy’s consciousness the
scraps of his mixed inheritance, so that he saw his whole experience as
an unbroken thing at last? There was nobody to report how it was done.
The woman did not know nor the child. It was a secret born of the boy’s
need and the woman’s longing to serve him; just as in nature every want
creates its satisfaction.
When she was ready to leave him, Miss Ralston knelt for a moment at
David’s bedside, and once more took his small hot hands in hers.
'And I have made a discovery, David,' she said, smiling in a way of her
own. 'Talking with your parents downstairs I saw why it was that the
Russian Jews are so soon at home here in our dear country. In the hearts
of men like your father, dear, is the true America.'
BLUE REEFERS
BY ELIZABETH ASHE
'THE child will have to have a new dress if she’s to take part in the
Christmas entertainment.'
My mother spoke very low, so as not to wake me, but I heard her. I had
been too excited to fall asleep.
'Of course,' said my father in his big voice that never could get down
to a whisper.
'S-sh,' warned my mother; and then added, 'But we shouldn’t get it,
George. You know what the last doctor’s bill amounted to.'
'Oh, let the little thing have it. It’s her first chance to show off.'
'S-sh,' my mother warned again. After a moment I heard her say, 'Well,
perhaps it won’t cost so very much, and as you say it’s the first time.'
I turned over in bed and prayed, 'Dear Lord, please help my mother to
get me a new dress.' For a new dress was one of the chief joys of taking
part, and I had longed so to take part.
Although I had been a member of our Sunday school in good and regular
standing ever since I was three weeks old, and had been put on the
Cradle Roll, that being in the eyes of my parents the nearest approach
to dedication allowable to Baptists, I was taking part for the first
time, and I was seven. There had been numerous occasions in these seven
years for taking part: our Sunday school celebrated Easter, Children’s
Day, Anniversary Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas, with quite
appropriate exercises. But it was a large school, and I had freckles and
what Aunt Emma, my cousin Luella’s mother, called 'that child’s jaw.'
Aunt Emma meant my front teeth, which were really most dreadfully
prominent: in fact they stuck out to such an extent that Aunt Emma
seldom failed to see them when she saw me.
Aunt Emma wasn’t used to children with jaws. Her little Luella had the
prettiest teeth imaginable: she was pretty all over, pretty golden hair,
pretty blue eyes, pretty pink cheeks,--not a freckle,--and pretty arms
very plump and white. She was just my age, and she was invariably asked
to take part. It seemed reasonable that she should, and yet I felt that
if they only knew that I had a mind,--a mind was what an uncle once said
I had, after hearing me recite the one hundred and third Psalm, the
fifty-second chapter of Isaiah, and the thirteenth chapter of First
Corinthians, with only one mistake,--they would ask me too. A mind
should count for something, I thought, but it didn’t seem to with Miss
Miriam.
Miss Miriam was the assistant superintendent. She was a tall, thin,
youngish-looking woman, with fair hair and a sweet, rather white face.
She always wore very black dresses and a little gold cross, which one of
the Big Girls told us was left to her by her mother, who was an
Episcopalian. Miss Miriam got up all the entertainments, and it was she
who made out the list of the people who were to take part in them. Three
or four Sundays before an entertainment was to be given, Miss Miriam
would come from the Big Room to our Primary Department with a lot of
little white slips in her hand and a pad and pencil. While we were
having the closing exercises, she would walk very quietly from class to
class distributing the little white slips. The slips said, 'Please meet
me after Sunday school in the Ladies' Parlor.' If you were given a slip,
it meant you were chosen to take part.
Once I confided my longing to my mother.
'What makes you want to so much, Martha? You’re not a forward little
girl, I hope.'
Forwardness in my elders' opinion was the Eighth Deadly Sin, to be
abhorred by all little girls, especially those who had heard it said
that they had a mind. Little girls who had heard that might so easily,
from sheer pride of intellect, become 'forward.'
'I’m not forward,' I assured her. 'I--I, oh, mother, it’s so nice to be
in things.'
And now at last I was in things. I could still feel the touch of the
white slip which had been put into my hand only that afternoon; and I
turned over in my bed on my other side and prayed with even more fervor.
'O Lord, please help my mother to get me a new dress.'
He did. A week later my mother went to town. She brought back white
Persian lawn, the softest, sheerest stuff I had ever felt. I could see
the pink of my skin through it when I laid it over my hand.
'I’m going to have a new dress for the entertainment,' I told Luella on
my way to rehearsal. 'Are you?'
'Why, of course. I always do. Mine’s going to have five rows of lace
insertion in the skirt and tiny tucks too.'
'Mine’s to have tucks, but it won’t have but one row of lace in the
skirt. Mother says little girls' dresses don’t need much lace.'
'I like lots of lace,' said Luella; but her tone of finality did not
disturb my happiness. I was disturbed only when, at another rehearsal,
Luella told me that her mother was making a blue-silk slip to wear under
her white dress. Almost everyone wore slips when they spoke pieces.
I gave my mother this information.
'Isn’t the white dress pretty enough, Martha?'
I fingered the soft material she was sewing. 'It’s beautiful,' I said,
hiding my face in her neck. Then I whispered, 'I don’t mind if Luella
has a slip, mother.'
I did mind, but I knew I oughtn’t.
My mother raised my head and adjusted the bow on one of my skimpy little
pigtails. She looked as she did sometimes after my Aunt Emma had just
gone.
'We’ll see if you can have a slip. What color would you like--supposing
you can?'
'Pink,' I answered promptly, 'like my best hair-ribbons.'
Pink china silk was bought. When I tried it under the Persian lawn it
matched the ribbons exactly. I jiggled up and down on my toes--my only
way of expressing great joy.
The dress, when my mother was not working on it, lay in the spare room
on the bed. I made countless pilgrimages to the spare room. Once I
slipped the dress on by myself. I wanted to see how I looked. But the
mirror of the spare-room bureau was very small; so I inserted a
hair-brush. With the mirror tipped I could see quite all of me--only I
didn’t see quite all. I didn’t see my freckles, or my jaw, or my very
thin legs. I saw a glory of pink and white, and I grinned from sheer
rapture.
The spare room had no heat: there was a register, but unless we had
company the register was closed. My mother found me one day kneeling by
the bed, shivering, but in ecstatic contemplation of my dress, which I
had not dared to try on a second time. She gave me ginger tea. I gulped
it down meekly. I felt even then that as a punishment ginger tea is
exquisitely relevant. It chastens the soul but at the same time it warms
the stomach you’ve allowed to get cold.
I had been very much afraid that before the night of the
entertainment,--it was to be given the twenty-third of December,--something
would surely happen to my dress or to me; but the night arrived and
both were in a perfect state of preservation. To expedite matters, as
the Sunday school was to assemble at a quarter past seven, my mother
dressed me before supper. Just as the last button was fastened, we heard
footsteps on the front porch.
'There, Martha! Go show your father.'
I ran down into the hall and took up my position in the centre of it;
but when I heard the key turn in the latch of the inside door I wanted
to run away and hide. I had never felt so beautiful.
My father stopped short when he saw me. 'By the Lord!' he ejaculated.
'Why, George!'
My mother was on the stairs.
'Well, by the Great Guns then--you’re a--a vision, Marty.' I could only
grin.
'Here’s some more pinkness for you to wear,' he said, producing a long
tissue-paper package that he had been holding behind his back. He
chuckled as he unwrapped it. 'Twelve, Marty; twelve solid pink
carnations. What do you say to 'em? Show your mother.'
I said nothing. I only jiggled on my toes.
'George, dear, what made you? A little child like that can’t wear
flowers--and they’re seventy-five cents a dozen!'
All the chuckle went out of my father’s eyes: he looked at me, then at
the carnations, then at my mother, just like a little boy who finds that
after all he’s done the wrong thing. I wanted to run and take his hand;
but while I stood, wanting and not daring, my mother had crossed the
hall and was putting her arms around his neck.
'They’re beautiful, George dear. She can wear three or four of them,
anyway. They will make her so happy, and the rest we’ll put in her room.
Her room is pink too.'
'So it is.' He kissed my mother and then me. 'Say your piece,
Marty--quick! Before we have supper.'
I had learned my piece so thoroughly that the order was like turning on
a spigot. Four verses, four lines in each, gushed forth.
My father clapped. 'Now for something to eat,' he said.
Immediately after supper my mother and I set out, leaving my father to
shave and come later. It was a cold night with a great many bright
stars. At the corner we met Luella and her mother. Luella’s mother was
carrying over her arm Luella’s spring coat, her everyday one, a dark
blue reefer.
'Martha ought to have hers along, too,' said my Aunt Emma. 'If the
church should be chilly they’ll catch their death sitting in thin
dresses.'
My mother thought it was probable we would. So I was sent back to hunt
for my little reefer. It was like Luella’s, dark blue with tarnished
gilt anchors on the corners of the sailor collar, and like hers it was
second-best and outgrown.
Luella and I parted with our mothers at the door of the Sunday school
room.
'Don’t forget to take your reefers when you march in,' admonished my
Aunt Emma.
'Must we carry them while we march?' I almost wailed.
My mother came to the rescue. 'Hold them down between you and the little
girl you march with. Then no one will see.'
'Yes’m.' I was much relieved.
The Sunday school was a hubbub of noise and pink and blue hair-ribbons.
In among the ribbons, and responsible for some of the noise, were
close-cropped heads and white collars and very new ties, but you didn’t
notice them much. There were so many pink and blue ribbons. After a
while the room quieted down and we formed in line. Miss Miriam, who even
that night wore a black dress and her little gold cross, distributed
among us the eight silk banners which, when we weren’t marching, always
hung on the walls of the Sunday school rooms. There were subdued
whispers and last prinkings. Then the piano, which had been moved into
the church, gave the signal and we marched in.
We marched with our banners and our pink and blue hair-ribbons up and
down the aisles so that all the
Mothers-and-Fathers-and-Friends-of-the-School could see us. Whenever we
recognized our own special mother or father, we beamed. The marching
finally brought us to the pews assigned to our respective classes.
Luella’s class and mine were to sit together that night. I turned
round--almost every little girl, after she was seated and had
sufficiently smoothed out skirts and sash, turned round--and saw that my
mother and aunt were only two pews behind us. I grinned delightedly at
them, and they both nodded back. Then I told Luella. After that I
settled down.
The church was decorated with ropes of green and with holly wreaths. At
either side of the platform was a Christmas tree with bits of
cotton-batting scattered over it to represent snow. I had heard that
there were to be two Christmas trees, and I had looked forward to a
dazzling glitter of colored balls and tinsel and candles, maybe. The
cotton-batting was a little disappointing. It made you feel that it was
not a real Christmas tree, but just a church Christmas tree. Church
things were seldom real. The Boys Brigade of our church carried
interesting-looking cartridge-boxes, that made them look like real
soldiers; but when they drilled you found out that the cartridge-boxes
were only make-believe. They held Bibles. Still, the cotton-batting did
make you think of snow.
After what seemed like a very long wait the entertainment began. The
minister, of course, opened it with prayer. Then we all sang a carol. As
we were sitting down I felt some one poke my shoulder.
'Your mother says you must put on your jacket. She says you’ll take
cold,' whispered the little girl behind me.
I had not felt cold, but the command passed along over two church pews
had the force of a Thus-saith-the-Lord. While I was slipping the jacket
carefully over my ruffles, some one poked Luella and whispered to her.
Luella looked at me, then put on her jacket.
The superintendent was making a speech to the
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. When he finished, we rose
to sing another carol, and as we rose, quite automatically Luella and I
slipped off our jackets. I was very excited. After the carol there would
be a piece by one of the Big Girls; then the Infant Class would do
something; then I was to speak. I wondered if people would see the pink
of my slip showing through my dress as I spoke my piece. I bent my head
to get a whiff of carnation.
We were just seated when there came another poke and another whisper.
'Your mother says to keep on your jacket.
I looked back at my mother. She smiled and nodded, and Aunt Emma pointed
to Luella. We put on our jackets again. This time I buttoned it tight;
so did Luella. I felt the carnations remonstrate, but when one is very
excited one is very obedient: one obeys more than the letter of the law.
The Big Girl was speaking her piece. I didn’t hear the words; the words
of my own piece were saying themselves through my head; but I was aware
that she stopped suddenly, that she looked as though she were trying to
remember, that someone prompted her, that she went on. Suppose I should
forget that way, before my father and mother and the friends of the
school and Miss Miriam! It was a dreadful thought. I commenced
again,--with my eyes shut,--
'Some children think that Christmas day
Should come two times a year.'
I went through my verses five times, while the Infant Class individually
and collectively were holding up gilt cardboard bells and singing about
them. I was beginning the sixth time,--
'Some children think,--'
when the superintendent read out,--
'The next number on the programme will be a recitation by Martha Smith.'
I had been expecting this announcement for four weeks, but now that it
came, it gave me a queer feeling in my heart and stomach, half-fear,
half-joy. Conscious only that I was actually taking part, I rose from my
seat and made my way over the little girls in the pew, who scrunched up
themselves and their dresses into a small space so that I might pass.
As I started down the aisle I thought I heard my name frantically called
behind me; but not dreaming that any one would wish to have speech with
a person about to speak a piece, I kept on down, way, way down to the
platform, walking in a dim hot maze which smelled insistently of
carnations.
But the poor carnations warned in vain. I ascended the platform steps
with my reefer still buttoned tightly over my chest.
The reefer, as I have said, was dark blue, adorned with tarnished
anchors, and outgrown. Being outgrown, it showed several inches of my
thin little wrists, and being a reefer and tightly buttoned, it showed
of my pink and white glory a little more than the hem.
Still in that dim hot maze, I made my bow and gave the title of my
piece, 'Christmas Twice a Year,' and recited it from beginning to end,
and heard them clap, all the teachers and scholars and
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School. Then, quite dizzied with
happiness, I hurried down off the platform and up the aisle. People
smiled as I passed them and I smiled back, for once quite unconscious of
my jaw. As I neared my seat I prepared to smile upon my mother, but for
a moment she didn’t see me. Aunt Emma was saying something to her,
something that I didn’t hear, something that made two red spots flame in
my mother’s face.
'Isn’t it just like Martha to be a little fool! She’s always doing
things like that.'
Aunt Emma was one of those people who assume that you always do the
particular foolish thing you have just finished doing.
The red spots died out when my mother saw me. She smiled as though she
were very proud--and I was proud too. But before I could settle down to
enjoy my satisfaction, Luella’s name had been called and Luella was
starting down the aisle. Luella’s golden curls bobbed as she walked:
they bobbed over her blue reefer jacket which was buttoned snugly over
her plump body.
There was a suppressed exclamation from some one behind me, but Luella
kept on. Luella’s jacket was not short in the sleeves, but it was very
very tight. Only the hem of her blue and white glory peeped from beneath
it, and a little piece of ruffle she had not quite tucked in peeped out
from above it.
Luella bowed and spoke her piece. All the teachers and scholars, all the
Fathers-and-Mothers-and-Friends-of-the-School applauded.
A queer sound made me look round at my mother and aunt. Their heads were
bowed upon the pew in front. Their shoulders were shaking. When I turned
around again they were sitting up, wiping their eyes as if they had been
crying.
I could not understand then, nor did I understand late that night when
my father’s laugh woke me up.
'Poor Emma!' he chuckled. 'What did she say?'
And my mother answered, her voice curiously smothered, 'Why, you see,
she couldn’t very well say anything after what she had just said
before.'
'I suppose not. Poor Emma, I suppose not.'
My father’s laugh broke out again.
'S-sh, George--you’ll wake Martha.'
THE DEBT
BY KATHLEEN CARMAN
THE convent was a large square building of red brick, harsh of outline,
unlovely in its proportions. It stood on the rise of a barren hill,
unfriended by the trees of the little valley below, unsoftened by the
pleasant landscape above which its ugly bulk arose, stern and
domineering. To the south and west lay fertile fields and huddling
farm-buildings; to the east, beyond the little valley, rose many closely
wooded hills; while to the north,--ah, the north!--one of the greatest
wonders of all this wonderful world lay there; for if one climbed to the
highest story of the convent and looked out of any window to the north,
one beheld that never-ceasing miracle--the sea!
Sister Anne had known no other home but the convent for nearly half a
century, but the sight of those unresting waves never failed to set her
spirit free: free of unknown and enchanted worlds, worlds of wonder, of
mystery, and of heart-stirring beauty. She was merely a plain, silent,
hard-working, rather stupid old woman, who had never been in all her
life admired or considered, or even loved, unless one counts the tepid
affection of those with whom she lived. She had been brought here as a
young girl from the orphanage where she had passed her childhood; and
since she had been one of those who are always willing to do what is
asked of them, no matter how unpleasant or hard it may be, there had
fallen to her share all the humblest and meanest of the household tasks,
all the petty drudgeries which must be done and which no one wishes to
do. Her place was always in the kitchen or the laundry. She would have
liked to cook, but that had never been suggested. She had always been
put to washing dishes. Here again she had a preference: she would have
liked to wash the glassware, which came out of the hot suds like bubbles
and must be polished on the softest and cleanest of towels; or even the
clumsy plated forks and spoons, which to her were very beautiful. There
was nothing delicate or lovely about the great iron soup-kettles which
her patient hands must cleanse, or about the greasy roasting pans. And
it was the same way in the laundry. Only the coarsest, heaviest of the
washing was given to her: the rag mats that lay beside the beds in the
dormitories, the big aprons that the working sisters wore, the cloths
that were used in cleaning the lamps. Not for her the intricacies of
starching and skillful ironing and fluting.
Yet all the years of toil had not saddened Sister Anne. If any one had
questioned her and she had been able to express herself, she might have
said that the forces which had formed her sturdy body had given her also
a spirit capable of sustaining itself on the most meagre happiness. But
no one questioned her, and she was at all times slow and scant of
speech.
The sources of her contentment lay all without the convent walls; and
being there, it was strange that she should have discovered them. As a
matter of fact she had not discovered them. They had come, through a
slow and unconscious process, to be a part of her life. It had begun,
humbly enough, in the kitchen garden. When first she came to the convent
she had not been very well, and they had set her to weeding the
vegetables in order that she might be out of doors as much as possible.
Her simple, kindly nature had turned in solicitude and affection to this
springing life that responded to her tendance. No great and lovely lady
in her garden ever looked with more pride and admiration on her roses
and lilies than did Sister Anne on her beans and cabbages and early
peas. Through them she had come to watch with interest every change in
the weather, anxious for the needed rain, fearful of the early frost,
rejoicing when sun and air and moisture did their kindly best.