enthusiasm, at this first convenient opportunity. "And it is very wise
of you all to keep up our confidence in the face of such facts as
these. You can hardly have the heart to scold any more about the
malpractice of patients when we believe in you so humbly and so
ignorantly. You are always safe though, for our consciences are
usually smarting under the remembrance of some transgression which
might have hindered you if it did not. Poor humanity," she added in a
tone of compassion. "It has to grope its way through a deal of
darkness."
The doctor sighed, but he was uncommonly restful and comfortable in
the large arm-chair before the fender. It was quite dark out of doors
now, and the fire gave all the light that was in the room. Presently
he roused himself a little to say "'Poor humanity,' indeed! And I
suppose nobody sees the failures and miseries as members of my
profession do. There will be more and more sorrow and defeat as the
population increases and competition with it. It seems to me that to
excel in one's work becomes more and more a secondary motive; to do a
great deal and be well paid for it ranks first. One feels the injury
of such purposes even in Oldfields."
"I cannot see that the world changes much. I often wish that I could,
though surely not in this way," said the lame woman from her seat by
the window, as the doctor rose to go away. "I find my days piteously
alike, and you do not know what a pleasure this talk has been. It
satisfies my hungry mind and gives me a great deal to think of; you
would not believe what an appetite I had. Oh, don't think I need any
excuses, it is a great pleasure to see you drive in and out of the
gate, and I like to see your lamp coming into the study, and to know
that you are there and fond of me. But winter looked very long and
life very short before you came in this afternoon. I suppose you have
had enough of society for one day, so I shall not tell you what I mean
to have for tea, but next Sunday night I shall expect you to come and
bring your ward. Will you please ring, so that Martha will bring the
lights? I should like to send Nan a nice letter to read which came
yesterday from my little grand-daughter in Rome. I shall be so glad
when they are all at home again. She is about Nan's age, you know; I
must see to it that they make friends with each other. Don't put me on
a dusty top shelf again and forget me for five or six weeks," laughed
the hostess, as her guest protested and lingered a minute still before
he opened the door.
"You won't say anything of my confidences?" at which Mrs. Graham
shakes her head with satisfactory gravity, though if Doctor Leslie had
known she was inwardly much amused, and assured herself directly that
she hoped to hear no more of such plans; how could he tell that the
girl herself would agree to them, and whether Oldfields itself would
favor Nan as his own successor and its medical adviser? But John
Leslie was a wise, far-seeing man, with a great power of holding to
his projects. He really must be kept to his promise of a weekly visit;
she was of some use in the world after all, so long as these
unprotected neighbors were in it, and at any rate she had gained her
point about the poor child's clothes.
As for the doctor, he found the outer world much obscured by the
storm, and hoped that nobody would need his services that night, as he
went stumbling home though the damp and clogging snow underfoot. He
felt a strange pleasure in the sight of a small, round head at the
front study window between the glass and the curtain, and Nan came to
open the door for him, while Marilla, whose unwonted Sunday afternoon
leisure seemed to have been devoted to fragrant experiments in
cookery, called in pleased tones from the dining-room that she had
begun to be afraid he was going to stay out to supper. It was somehow
much more homelike than it used to be, the doctor told himself, as he
pushed his feet into the slippers which had been waiting before the
fire until they were in danger of being scorched. And before Marilla
had announced with considerable ceremony that tea was upon the table,
he had assured himself that it had been a very pleasant hour or two at
Mrs. Graham's, and it was the best thing in the world for both of them
to see something of each other. For the little girl's sake he must try
to keep out of ruts, and must get hold of somebody outside his own
little world.
But while he called himself an old fogy and other impolite names he
was conscious of a grave and sweet desire to make the child's life a
successful one,--to bring out what was in her own mind and capacity,
and so to wisely educate her, to give her a place to work in, and
wisdom to work with, so far as he could; for he knew better than most
men that it is the people who can do nothing who find nothing to do,
and the secret of happiness in this world is not only to be useful,
but to be forever elevating one's uses. Some one must be intelligent
for a child until it is ready to be intelligent for itself, and he
told himself with new decision that he must be wise in his laws for
Nan and make her keep them, else she never would be under the grace of
any of her own.
XI
NEW OUTLOOKS
Dr. Leslie held too securely the affection of his townspeople to be
in danger of losing their regard or respect, yet he would have been
half pained and half amused if he had known how foolishly his plans,
which came in time to be his ward's also, were smiled and frowned upon
in the Oldfields houses. Conformity is the inspiration of much
second-rate virtue. If we keep near a certain humble level of morality
and achievement, our neighbors are willing to let us slip through life
unchallenged. Those who anticipate the opinions and decisions of
society must expect to be found guilty of many sins.
There was not one of the young village people so well known as the
doctor's little girl, who drove with him day by day, and with whom he
kept such delightful and trustful companionship. If she had been asked
in later years what had decided her to study not only her profession,
but any profession, it would have been hard for her to answer anything
beside the truth that the belief in it had grown with herself. There
had been many reasons why it seemed unnecessary. There was every
prospect that she would be rich enough to place her beyond the
necessity of self-support. She could have found occupation in simply
keeping the doctor's house and being a cordial hostess in that home
and a welcome guest in other people's. She was already welcome
everywhere in Oldfields, but in spite of this, which would have seemed
to fill the hearts and lives of other girls, it seemed to her like a
fragment of her life and duty; and when she had ordered her
housekeeping and her social duties, there was a restless readiness for
a more absorbing duty and industry; and, as the years went by, all her
desire tended in one direction. The one thing she cared most to learn
increased its attraction continually, and though one might think the
purpose of her guardian had had its influence and moulded her
character by its persistence, the truth was that the wise doctor
simply followed as best he could the leadings of the young nature
itself, and so the girl grew naturally year by year, reaching out half
unconsciously for what belonged to her life and growth; being taught
one thing more than all, that her duty must be followed eagerly and
reverently in spite of the adverse reasons which tempted and sometimes
baffled her. As she grew older she was to understand more clearly that
indecision is but another name for cowardice and weakness; a habit of
mind that quickly increases its power of hindrance. She had the faults
that belonged to her character, but these were the faults of haste and
rashness rather than the more hopeless ones of obstinacy or a lack of
will and purpose.
The Sunday evening tea-drinking with Mrs. Graham, though somewhat
formidable at first to our heroine, became quickly one of her dearest
pleasures, and led to a fast friendship between the kind hostess and
her young guest. Soon Nan gave herself eagerly to a plan of spending
two or three evenings a week across the way for the purpose of reading
aloud, sometimes from books she did not understand, but oftener from
books of her own choice. It was supposed to be wholly a kindness on
the young girl's part, and Mrs. Graham allowed the excuse of a
temporary ailment of her own strong and useful eyes to serve until
neither she nor Nan had the least thought of giving up their pleasant
habit of reading together. And to this willing listener Nan came in
time with her youthful dreams and visions of future prosperities in
life, so that presently Mrs. Graham knew many things which would have
surprised the doctor, who on the other hand was the keeper of equally
amazing and treasured confidences of another sort. It was a great
pleasure to both these friends, but most especially to the elderly
woman, that Nan seemed so entirely satisfied with their friendship.
The busy doctor, who often had more than enough to think and worry
about, sometimes could spare but little time to Nan for days together,
but her other companion was always waiting for her, and the smile was
always ready by way of greeting when the child looked eagerly up at
the parlor window. What stories of past days and memories of youth and
of long-dead friends belonging to the dear lady's own girlhood were
poured into Nan's delighted ears! She came in time to know Mrs.
Graham's own immediate ancestors, and the various members of her
family with their fates and fortunes, as if she were a contemporary,
and was like another grandchild who was a neighbor and beloved crony,
which real blessing none of the true grandchildren had ever been lucky
enough to possess. She formed a welcome link with the outer world, did
little Nan, and from being a cheerful errand-runner, came at last to
paying friendly visits in the neighborhood to carry Mrs. Graham's
messages and assurances. And from all these daily suggestions of
courtesy and of good taste and high breeding, and helpful fellowship
with good books, and the characters in their stories which were often
more real and dear and treasured in her thoughts than her actual
fellow townsfolk, Nan drew much pleasure and not a little wisdom; at
any rate a direction for which she would all her life be thankful. It
would have been surprising if her presence in the doctor's house had
not after some time made changes in it, but there was no great
difference outwardly except that she gathered some trifling
possessions which sometimes harmonized, and as often did not, with the
household gods of the doctor and Marilla. There was a shy sort of
intercourse between Nan and Mrs. Graham's grandchildren, but it was
not very valuable to any of the young people at first, the country
child being too old and full of experience to fellowship with the
youngest, and too unversed in the familiar machinery of their social
life to feel much kinship with the eldest.
It was during one of these early summer visits, and directly after a
tea-party which Marilla had proudly projected on Nan's account, that
Dr. Leslie suddenly announced that he meant to go to Boston for a few
days and should take Nan with him. This event had long been promised,
but had seemed at length like the promise of happiness in a future
world, reasonably certain, but a little vague and distant. It was a
more important thing than anybody understood, for a dear and familiar
chapter of life was ended when the expectant pair drove out of the
village on their way to the far-off railway station, as another had
been closed when the door of the Thacher farm-house had been shut and
padlocked, and Nan had gone home one snowy night to live with the
doctor. The weather at any rate was different now, for it was early
June, the time when doctors can best give themselves a holiday; and
though Dr. Leslie assured himself that he had little wish to take the
journey, he felt it quite due to his ward that she should see a little
more of the world, and happily due also to certain patients and his
brother physicians that he should visit the instrument-makers' shops,
and some bookstores; in fact there were a good many important errands
to which it was just as well to attend in person. But he watched Nan's
wide-open, delighted eyes, and observed her lack of surprise at
strange sights, and her perfect readiness for the marvelous, with
great amusement. He was touched and pleased because she cared most for
what had concerned him; to be told where he lived and studied, and to
see the places he had known best, roused most enthusiasm. An afternoon
in a corner of the reading-room at the Athenæum library, in which he
had spent delightful hours when he was a young man, seemed to please
the young girl more than anything else. As he sat beside the table
where he had gathered enough books and papers to last for many days,
in his delight at taking up again his once familiar habit, Nan looked
on with sympathetic eyes, or watched the squirrels in the trees of the
quiet Granary Burying Ground, which seemed to her like a bit of
country which the noisy city had caught and imprisoned. Now that she
was fairly out in the world she felt a new, strange interest in her
mysterious aunt, for it was this hitherto unknown space outside the
borders of Oldfields to which her father and his people belonged. And
as a charming old lady went by in a pretty carriage, the child's gaze
followed her wistfully as she and the doctor were walking along the
street. With a sudden blaze of imagination she had wished those
pleasant eyes might have seen the likeness to her father, of which she
had been sometimes told, and that the carriage had been hurried back,
so that the long estrangement might be ended. It was a strange thing
that, just afterward, Dr. Leslie had, with much dismay, caught sight
of the true aunt; for Miss Anna Prince of Dunport had also seen fit to
make one of her rare visits to Boston. She looked dignified and
stately, but a little severe, as she went down the side street away
from them. Nan's quick eyes had noticed already the difference between
the city people and the country folks, and would have even recognized
a certain provincialism in her father's sister. The doctor had only
seen Miss Prince once many years before, but he had known her again
with instinctive certainty, and Nan did not guess, though she was most
grateful for it, why he reached for her hand, and held it fast as they
walked together, just as he always used to do when she was a little
girl. She was not yet fully grown, and she never suspected the sudden
thrill of dread, and consciousness of the great battle of life which
she must soon begin to fight, which all at once chilled the doctor's
heart. "It's a cold world, a cold world," he had said to himself.
"Only one thing will help her through safely, and that is her
usefulness. She shall never be either a thief or a beggar of the
world's favor if I can have my wish." And Nan, holding his hand with
her warm, soft, childish one, looked up in his face, all unconscious
that he thought with pity how unaware she was of the years to come,
and of their difference to this sunshine holiday. "And yet I never was
so happy at her age as I am this summer," the doctor told himself by
way of cheer.
They paid some visits together to Dr. Leslie's much-neglected friends,
and it was interesting to see how, for the child's sake, he resumed
his place among these acquaintances to whom he had long been linked
either personally in times past, or by family ties. He was sometimes
reproached for his love of seclusion and cordially welcomed back to
his old relations, but as often found it impossible to restore
anything but a formal intercourse of a most temporary nature. The
people for whom he cared most, all seemed attracted to his young ward,
and he noted this with pleasure, though he had not recognized the fact
that he had been, for the moment, basely uncertain whether his
judgment of her worth would be confirmed. He laughed at the
insinuation that he had made a hermit or an outlaw of himself; he
would have been still more amused to hear one of his old friends say
that this was the reason they had seen so little of him in late years,
and that it was a shame that a man of his talent and many values to
the world should be hiding his light under the Oldfields bushel, and
all for the sake of bringing up this child. As for Nan, she had little
to say, but kept her eyes and ears wide open, and behaved herself
discreetly. She had ceased to belong only to the village she had left;
in these days she became a citizen of the world at large. Her horizon
had suddenly become larger, and she might have discovered more than
one range of mountains which must be crossed as the years led her
forward steadily, one by one.
There is nothing so interesting as to be able to watch the change and
progress of the mental and moral nature, provided it grows eagerly
and steadily. There must be periods of repose and hibernation like the
winter of a plant, and in its springtime the living soul will both
consciously and unconsciously reach out for new strength and new
light. The leaves and flowers of action and achievement are only the
signs of the vitality that works within.
XII
AGAINST THE WIND
During the next few years, while Nan was growing up, Oldfields itself
changed less than many country towns of its size. Though some faces
might be missed or altered, Dr. Leslie's household seemed much the
same, and Mrs. Graham, a little thinner and older, but more patient
and sweet and delightful than ever, sits at her parlor window and
reads new books and old ones, and makes herself the centre of much
love and happiness. She and the doctor have grown more and more
friendly, and they watch the young girl's development with great
pride: they look forward to her vacations more than they would care to
confess even to each other; and when she comes home eager and gay, she
makes both these dear friends feel young again. When Nan is not there
to keep him company, Dr. Leslie always drives, and has grown more
careful about the comfort of his carriages, though he tells himself
with great pleasure that he is really much more youthful in his
feelings than he was twenty years before, and does not hesitate to say
openly that he should have been an old fogy by this time if it had not
been for the blessing of young companionship. When Nan is pleased to
command, he is always ready to take long rides and the two saddles are
brushed up, and they wonder why the bits are so tarnished, and she
holds his horse's bridle while he goes in to see his patients, and is
ready with merry talk or serious questions when he reappears. And one
dark night she listens from her window to the demand of a messenger,
and softly creeps down stairs and is ready to take her place by his
side, and drive him across the hills as if it were the best fun in the
world, with the frightened country-boy clattering behind on his
bare-backed steed. The moon rises late and they come home just before
daybreak, and though the doctor tries to be stern as he says he cannot
have such a piece of mischief happen again, he wonders how the girl
knew that he had dreaded for once in his life the drive in the dark,
and had felt a little less strong than usual.
Marilla still reigns in noble state. She has some time ago accepted a
colleague after a preliminary show of resentment, and Nan has little
by little infused a different spirit into the housekeeping; and when
her friends come to pay visits in the vacations they find the old home
a very charming place, and fall quite in love with both the doctor and
Mrs. Graham before they go away. Marilla always kept the large east
parlor for a sacred shrine of society, to be visited chiefly by
herself as guardian priestess; but Nan has made it a pleasanter room
than anybody ever imagined possible, and uses it with a freedom which
appears to the old housekeeper to lack consideration and respect. Nan
makes the most of her vacations, while the neighbors are all glad to
see her come back, and some of them are much amused because in summer
she still clings to her childish impatience at wearing any head
covering, and no matter how much Marilla admires the hat which is
decorously worn to church every Sunday morning, it is hardly seen
again, except by chance, during the week, and the brown hair is sure
to be faded a little before the summer sunshine is past. Nan goes
about visiting when she feels inclined, and seems surprisingly
unchanged as she seats herself in one of the smoke-browned Dyer
kitchens, and listens eagerly to whatever information is offered, or
answers cordially all sorts of questions, whether they concern her own
experiences or the world's in general. She has never yet seen her
father's sister, though she still thinks of her, and sometimes with a
strange longing for an evidence of kind feeling and kinship which has
never been shown. This has been chief among the vague sorrows of her
girlhood. Yet once when her guardian had asked if she wished to make
some attempt at intercourse or conciliation, he had been answered,
with a scorn and decision worthy of grandmother Thacher herself, that
it was for Miss Prince to make advances if she ever wished for either
the respect or affection of her niece. But the young girl has clung
with touching affection to the memory and association of her
childhood, and again and again sought in every season of the year the
old playgrounds and familiar corners of the farm, which she has grown
fonder of as the months go by. The inherited attachment of generations
seems to have been centred in her faithful heart.