CARES; AND WHAT CAME OF THEM.
"To speed to-day, to be put back to-morrow;
To feed on hope, to pine with feare and sorrow;
· · · · ·
To fret thy soul with crosses and with cares;
To eate thy heart through comfortlesse dispaires."
SPENCER.
Two years and more had passed since the New Year's dance at the
Rushleighs'.
The crisis of '57 and '58 was approaching its culmination. The great
earthquake that for months had been making itself heard afar off by its
portentous rumbling was heaving to the final crash. Already the weaker
houses had fallen and were forgotten.
When a great financial trouble sweeps down upon a people, there are
three general classes who receive and feel it, each in its own peculiar
way.
There are the great capitalists--the enormously rich--who, unless a
tremendous combination of adversities shall utterly ruin here and there
one, grow the richer yet for the calamities of their neighbors. There
are also the very poor, who have nothing to lose but their daily labor
and their daily bread--who may suffer and starve; but who, if by any
little saving of a better time they can manage just to buy bread, shall
be precisely where they were, practically, when the storm shall have
blown over. Between these lies the great middle class--among whom, as on
the middle ground, the world's great battle is continually waging--of
persons who are neither rich nor poor; who have neither secured
fortunes to fall back upon, nor yet the independence of their hands to
turn to, when business and its income fail. This is the class that
suffers most. Most keenly in apprehension, in mortification, in after
privation.
Of this class was the Gartney family.
Mr. Gartney was growing pale and thin. No wonder; with sleepless nights,
and harassed days, and forgotten, or unrelished meals. His wife watched
him and waited for him, and contrived special comforts for him, and
listened to his confidences.
Faith felt that there was a cloud upon the house, and knew that it had
to do with money. So she hid her own little wants as long as she could,
wore her old ribbons, mended last year's discarded gloves, and yearned
vaguely and helplessly to do something--some great thing if she only
could, that might remedy or help.
Once, she thought she would learn Stenography. She had heard somebody
speak one day of the great pay a lady shorthand writer had received at
Washington, for some Congressional reports. Why shouldn't she learn how
to do it, and if the terrible worst should ever come to the worst, make
known her secret resource, and earn enough for all the family?
Something like this--some "high and holy work of love"--she longed to
do. Longed almost--if she were once prepared and certain of herself--for
even misfortune that should justify and make practicable her generous
purpose.
She got an elementary book, and set to work, by herself. She toiled
wearily, every day, for nearly a month; despairing at every step, yet
persevering; for, beside the grand dream for the future, there was a
present fascination in the queer little scrawls and dots.
It cannot be known how long she might have gone on with the attempt, if
her mother had not come to her one day with some parcels of cut-out
cotton cloth.
"Faithie, dear," said she, deprecatingly, "I don't like to put such work
upon you while you go to school; but I ought not to afford to have Miss
McElroy this spring. Can't you make up some of these with me?"
There were articles of clothing for Faith, herself. She felt the present
duty upon her; and how could she rebel? Yet what was to become of the
great scheme?
By and by would come vacation, and in the following spring, at farthest,
she would leave school, and then--she would see. She would write a book,
maybe. Why not? And secretly dispose of it, for a large sum, to some
self-regardless publisher. Should there never be another Fanny Burney?
Not a novel, though, or any grown-up book, at first; but a juvenile, at
least, she could surely venture on. Look at all the Cousin Maries, and
Aunt Fannies, and Sister Alices, whose productions piled the
booksellers' counters during the holiday sales, and found their way,
sooner or later, into all the nurseries, and children's bookcases! And
think of all the stories she had invented to amuse Hendie with! Better
than some of these printed ones, she was quite sure, if only she could
set them down just as she had spoken them under the inspiration of
Hendie's eager eyes and ready glee.
She made two or three beginnings, during the summer holidays, but always
came to some sort of a "sticking place," which couldn't be hobbled over
in print as in verbal relation. All the links must be apparent, and
everything be made to hold well together. She wouldn't have known what
they were, if you had asked her--but the "unities" troubled her. And
then the labor loomed up so large before her! She counted the lines in a
page of a book of the ordinary juvenile size, and the number of letters
in a line, and found out the wonderful compression of which manuscript
is capable. And there must be two hundred pages, at least, to make a
book of tolerable size.
There seemed to be nothing in the world that she could do. She could not
give her time to charity, and go about among the poor. She had nothing
to help them with. Her father gave, already, to ceaseless applications,
more than he could positively spare. So every now and then she
relinquished in discouragement her aspirations, and lived on, from day
to day, as other girls did, getting what pleasure she could; hampered
continually, however, with the old, inevitable tether, of "can't
afford."
"If something only would happen!" If some new circumstance would creep
into her life, and open the way for a more real living!
Do you think girls of seventeen don't have thoughts and longings like
these? I tell you they do; and it isn't that they want to have anybody
else meet with misfortune, or die, that romantic combinations may
thereby result to them; or that they are in haste to enact the everyday
romance--to secure a lover--get married--and set up a life of their own;
it is that the ordinary marked-out bound of civilized young-lady
existence is so utterly inadequate to the fresh, vigorous, expanding
nature, with its noble hopes, and its apprehension of limitless
possibilities.
Something did happen.
Winter came on again. After a twelvemonth of struggle and pain such as
none but a harassed man of business can ever know or imagine, Mr.
Gartney found himself "out of the wood."
He had survived the shock--his last mote was taken up--he had labored
through--and that was all. He was like a man from off a wreck, who has
brought away nothing but his life.
He came home one morning from New York, whither he had been to attend a
meeting of creditors of a failed firm, and went straight to his chamber
with a raging headache.
The next day, the physician's chaise was at the door, and on the
landing, where Mrs. Gartney stood, pale and anxious, gazing into his
face for a word, after the visit to the sick room was over, Dr. Gracie
drew on his gloves, and said to her, with one foot on the stair:
"Symptoms of typhoid. Keep him absolutely quiet."