David had found it necessary to take a journey which might keep him away
for several weeks.
He told Marcia in the evening when he came home from the office. He told
her as he would have told his clerk. It meant nothing to him but an
annoyance that he had to start out in the early winter, leave his business
in other’s hands for an indefinite period, and go among strangers. He did
not see the whitening of Marcia’s lips, nor the quick little movement of
her hand to her heart. Even Marcia herself did not realize all that it
meant to her. She felt as if a sudden shock had almost knocked her off her
feet. This quiet life in the big house, with only David at intervals to
watch and speak to occasionally, and no one to open her true heart to, had
been lonely; and many a time when she was alone at night she had wept
bitter tears upon her pillow,—why she did not quite know. But now when she
knew that it was to cease, and David was going away from her for a long
time, perhaps weeks, her heart suddenly tightened and she knew how sweet
it had been growing. Almost the tears came to her eyes, but she made a
quick errand to the hearth for the teapot, busying herself there till they
were under control again. When she returned to her place at the table she
was able to ask David some commonplace question about the journey which
kept her true feeling quite hidden from him.
He was to start the next evening if possible. It appeared that there was
something important about railroading coming up in Congress. It was
necessary that he should be present to hear the debate, and also that he
should see and interview influential men. It meant much to the success of
the great new enterprises that were just in their infancy that he should
go and find out all about them and write them up as only he whose heart
was in it could do. He was pleased to have been selected for this; he was
lifted for the time above himself and his life troubles, and given to feel
that he had a work in the world that was worth while, a high calling, a
chance to give a push to the unrolling of the secret possibilities of the
universe and help them on their way.
Marcia understood it all, and was proud and glad for him, but her own
heart which beat in such perfect sympathy with the work felt lonely and
left out. If only she could have helped too!
There was no time for David to take Marcia to her home to stay during his
absence. He spoke of it regretfully just as he was about to leave, and
asked if she would like him to get some one to escort her by coach to her
father’s house until he could come for her; but she held back the tears by
main force and shook her head. She had canvassed that question in the
still hours of the night. She had met in imagination the home village with
its kindly and unkindly curiosity, she had seen their hands lifted in
suspicion; heard their covert whispers as to why her husband did not come
with her; why he had left her so soon after the honeymoon; why—a hundred
things. She had even thought of Aunt Polly and her acrid tongue and made
up her mind that whatever happened she did not want to go home to stay.
The only other alternative was to go to the aunts. David expected it, and
the aunts spoke of it as if nothing else were possible. Marcia would have
preferred to remain alone in her own house, with her beloved piano, but
David would not consent, and the aunts were scandalized at the suggestion.
So to the aunts went Marcia, and they took her in with a hope in their
hearts that she might get the same good from the visit that the sluggard
in the Bible is bidden to find.
“We must do our duty by her for David’s sake,” said Aunt Hortense, with
pursed lips and capable, folded hands that seemed fairly to ache to get at
the work of reconstructing the new niece.
“Yes, it is our opportunity,” said Aunt Amelia with a snap as though she
thoroughly enjoyed the prospect. “Poor David!” and so they sat and laid
out their plans for their sweet young victim, who all unknowingly was
coming to one of those tests in her life whereby we are tried for greater
things and made perfect in patience and sweetness.
It began with the first breakfast—the night before she had been company,
at supper—but when the morning came they felt she must be counted one of
the family. They examined her thoroughly on what she had been taught with
regard to housekeeping. They made her tell her recipes for pickling and
preserving. They put her through a catechism of culinary lore, and always
after her most animated account of the careful way in which she had been
trained in this or that housewifely art she looked up with wistful eyes
that longed to please, only to be met by the hard set lips and steely
glances of the two mentors who regretted that she should not have been
taught their way which was so much better.
Aunt Hortense even went so far once as to suggest that Marcia write to her
stepmother and tell her how much better it was to salt the water in which
potatoes were to be boiled before putting them in, and was much offended
by the clear girlish laugh that bubbled up involuntarily at the thought of
teaching her stepmother anything about cooking.
“Excuse me,” she said, instantly sobering as she saw the grim look of the
aunt, and felt frightened at what she had done. “I did not mean to laugh,
indeed I did not; but it seemed so funny to think of my telling mother how
to do anything.”
“People are never too old to learn,” remarked Aunt Hortense with offended
mien, “and one ought never to be too proud when there is a better way.”
“But mother thinks there is no better way I am sure. She says that it
makes potatoes soggy to boil them in salt. All that grows below the ground
should be salted after it is cooked and all that grows above the ground
should be cooked in salted water, is her rule.”
“I am surprised that your stepmother should uphold any such superstitious
ideas,” said Aunt Amelia with a self-satisfied expression.
“One should never be too proud to learn something better,” Aunt Hortense
said grimly, and Marcia retreated in dire consternation at the thought of
what might follow if these three notable housekeeping gentlewomen should
come together. Somehow she felt a wicked little triumph in the thought
that it would be hard to down her stepmother.
Marcia was given a few light duties ostensibly to “make her feel at home,”
but in reality, she knew, because the aunts felt she needed their
instruction. She was asked if she would like to wash the china and glass;
and regularly after each meal a small wooden tub and a mop were brought in
with hot water and soap, and she was expected to handle the costly
heirlooms under the careful scrutiny of their worshipping owners, who
evidently watched each process with strained nerves lest any bit of
treasured pottery should be cracked or broken. It was a trying ordeal.
The girl would have been no girl if she had not chafed under this
treatment. To hold her temper steady and sweet under it was almost more
than she could bear.
There were long afternoons when it was decreed that they should knit.
Marcia had been used to take long walks at home, over the smooth crust of
the snow, going to her beloved woods, where she delighted to wander among
the bare and creaking trees; fancying them whispering sadly to one another
of the summer that was gone and the leaves they had borne now dead. But it
would be a dreadful thing in the aunts’ opinion for a woman, and
especially a young one, to take a long walk in the woods alone, in winter
too, and with no object whatever in view but a walk! What a waste of time!
There were two places of refuge for Marcia during the weeks that followed.
There was home. How sweet that word sounded to her! How she longed to go
back there, with David coming home to his quiet meals three times a day,
and with her own time to herself to do as she pleased. With housewifely
zeal that was commendable in the eyes of the aunts, Marcia insisted upon
going down to her own house every morning to see that all was right,
guiltily knowing that in her heart she meant to hurry to her beloved books
and piano. To be sure it was cold and cheerless in the empty house. She
dared not make up fires and leave them, and she dared not stay too long
lest the aunts would feel hurt at her absence, but she longed with an
inexpressible longing to be back there by herself, away from that terrible
supervision and able to live her own glad little life and think her own
thoughts untrammeled by primness.
Sometimes she would curl up in David’s big arm-chair and have a good cry,
after which she would take a book and read until the creeping chills down
her spine warned her she must stop. Even then she would run up and down
the hall or take a broom and sweep vigorously to warm herself and then go
to the cold keys and play a sad little tune. All her tunes seemed sad like
a wail while David was gone.
The other place of refuge was Aunt Clarinda’s room. Thither she would
betake herself after supper, to the delight of the old lady. Then the
other two occupants of the house were left to themselves and might unbend
from their rigid surveillance for a little while. Marcia often wondered if
they ever did unbend.
There was a large padded rocking chair in Aunt Clarinda’s room and Marcia
would laughingly take the little old lady in her arms and place her
comfortably in it, after a pleasant struggle on Miss Clarinda’s part to
put her guest into it. They had this same little play every evening, and
it seemed to please the old lady mightily. Then when she was conquered she
always sat meekly laughing, a fine pink color in her soft peachy cheek,
the candle light from the high shelf making flickering sparkles in her old
eyes that always seemed young; and she would say: “That’s just as David
used to do.”
Then Marcia drew up the little mahogany stool covered with the worsted dog
which Aunt Clarinda had worked when she was ten years old, and snuggling
down at the old lady’s feet exclaimed delightedly: “Tell me about it!” and
they settled down to solid comfort.
There came a letter from David after he had been gone a little over a
week. Marcia had not expected to hear from him. He had said nothing about
writing, and their relations were scarcely such as to make it necessary.
Letters were an expensive luxury in those days. But when the letter was
handed to her, Marcia’s heart went pounding against her breast, the color
flew into her cheeks, and she sped away home on feet swift as the wings of
a bird. The postmaster’s daughter looked after her, and remarked to her
father: “My, but don’t she think a lot of him!”
Straight to the cold, lonely house she flew, and sitting down in his big
chair read it.
It was a pleasant letter, beginning formally: “My dear Marcia,” and asking
after her health. It brought back a little of the unacquaintedness she had
felt when he was at home, and which had been swept away in part by her
knowledge of his childhood. But it went on quite happily telling all about
his journey and describing minutely the places he had passed through and
the people he had met on the way; detailing every little incident as only
a born writer and observer could do, until she felt as if he were talking
to her. He told her of the men whom he had met who were interested in the
new project. He told of new plans and described minutely his visit to the
foundry at West Point and the machinery he had seen. Marcia read it all
breathlessly, in search of something, she knew not what, that was not
there. When she had finished and found it not, there was a sense of
aloofness, a sad little disappointment which welled up in her throat. She
sat back to think about it. He was having a good time, and he was not
lonely. He had no longing to be back in the house and everything running
as before he had gone. He was out in the big glorious world having to do
with progress, and coming in contact with men who were making history. Of
course he did not dream how lonely she was here, and how she longed, if
for nothing else, just to be back here alone and do as she pleased, and
not to be watched over. If only she might steal Aunt Clarinda and bring
her back to live here with her while David was away! But that was not to
be thought of, of course. By and by she mustered courage to be glad of her
letter, and to read it over once more.
That night she read the letter to Aunt Clarinda and together they
discussed the great inventions, and the changes that were coming to pass
in the land. Aunt Clarinda was just a little beyond her depth in such a
conversation, but Marcia did most of the talking, and the dear old lady
made an excellent listener, with a pat here, and a “Dearie me! Now you
don’t say so!” there, and a “Bless the boy! What great things he does
expect. And I hope he won’t be disappointed.”
That letter lasted them for many a day until another came, this time from
Washington, with many descriptions of public men and public doings, and a
word picture of the place which made it appear much like any other place
after all if it was the capitol of the country. And once there was a
sentence which Marcia treasured. It was, “I wish you could be here and see
everything. You would enjoy it I know.”
There came another letter later beginning, “My dear little girl.” There
was nothing else in it to make Marcia’s heart throb, it was all about his
work, but Marcia carried it many days in her bosom. It gave her a thrill
of delight to think of those words at the beginning. Of course it meant no
more than that he thought of her as a girl, his little sister that was to
have been, but there was a kind of ownership in the words that was sweet
to Marcia’s lonely heart. It had come to her that she was always looking
for something that would make her feel that she belonged to David.