During the weeks that followed they spent more time than ever in their
hiding-place. They had an absorbing topic of conversation, a new and
wonderful thing, better than their old books, even better than the
stories Meg made when she lay on the straw, her elbows supporting her,
her cheeks on her hands, and her black-lashed gray eyes staring into
space. Hers were always good stories, full of palaces and knights and
robber chiefs and fairies. But this new thing had the thrill of being a
fairy story which was real—so real that one could read about it in the
newspapers, and everybody was talking about it, even Aunt Matilda, her
neighbors, and the work-hands on the farm. To the two lonely children,
in their high nest in the straw-stack, it seemed a curious thing to hear
these people in the world below talk about it in their ordinary,
everyday way, without excitement or awe, as if it was a new kind of big
ploughing or winnowing machine. To them it was a thing so beautiful that
they could scarcely find the words to express their thoughts and dreams
about it, and yet they were never alone together without trying to do
so.
On wet, cheerless days, in which they huddled close together in their
nest to keep from being chilled, it was their comfort to try to imagine
and paint pictures of the various wonders until, in their interest, they
forgot the dampness of the air, and felt the unending patter of the
rain-drops on the barn roof merely a pleasant sort of accompaniment to
the stories of their fancies.
Since the day when they had listened to Jones and Jerry joking, down
below them in the barn, Rob had formed the habit of collecting every
scrap of newspaper relating to the wonder. He cut paragraphs out of Aunt
Matilda’s cast-aside newspapers; he begged them from the farm-hands and
from the country store-keepers. Anything in the form of an illustration
he held as a treasure beyond price, and hoarded it to bring to Meg with
exultant joy.
How they pored over these things, reading the paragraphs again and
again, until they knew them almost by heart. How they studied the
pictures, trying to gather the proportions and color of every column and
dome and arch! What enthusiast, living in Chicago itself, knew the
marvel as they did, and so dwelt on and revelled in its beauties! No one
knew of their pleasure; like the Straw Parlor, it was their secret. The
strangeness of their lives lay in the fact that absolutely no one knew
anything about them at all, or asked anything, thinking it quite
sufficient that their friendlessness was supplied with enough animal
heat and nourishment to keep their bodies alive.
Of that other part of them—their restless, growing young brains and
naturally craving hearts, which in their own poor enough but still human
little home had at least been recognized and cared for—Aunt Matilda knew
nothing, and, indeed, had never given a thought to it. She had not
undertaken the care of intelligences and affections; her own were not of
an order to require supervision. She was too much occupied with her
thousand-acre farm, and the amazing things she was doing with it. That
the children could read and write and understood some arithmetic she
knew. She had learned no more herself, and had found it enough to build
her fortune upon. She had never known what it was to feel lonely and
neglected, because she was a person quite free from affections and quite
enough for herself. She never suspected that others could suffer from a
weakness of which she knew nothing, because it had never touched her.
If any one had told her that these two children, who ate her plentiful,
rough meals at her table, among field-hands and servants, were neglected
and lonely, and that their dim knowledge of it burned in their childish
minds, she would have thought the announcement a piece of idle,
sentimental folly; but that no solid detail of her farming was a fact
more real than this one was the grievous truth.
“When we were at home,” was Meg’s summing-up of the situation, “at least
we belonged to somebody. We were poor, and wore our clothes a long time,
and had shabby shoes, and couldn’t go on excursions, but we had our
little bench by the fire, and father and mother used to talk to us and
let us read their books and papers, and try to teach us things. I don’t
know what we were going to be when we grew up, but we were going to do
some sort of work, and know as much as father and mother did. I don’t
know whether that was a great deal or not, but it was something.”
“It was enough to teach school,” said Robin. “If we were not so far out
in the country now, I believe Aunt Matilda would let us go to school if
we asked her. It wouldn’t cost her anything if we went to the public
school.”
“She wouldn’t if we didn’t ask her,” said Meg. “She would never think of
it herself. Do you know what I was thinking yesterday? I was looking at
the pigs in their sty. Some of them were eating, and one was full, and
was lying down going to sleep. And I said to myself, ‘Robin and I are
just like you. We live just like you. We eat our food and go to bed, and
get up again and eat some more food. We don’t learn anything more than
you do, and we are not worth as much to anybody. We are not even worth
killing at Christmas.’”
If they had never known any other life, or if nature had not given them
the big, questioning eyes and square little jaws and strong, nervous
little fists, they might have been content to sink into careless
idleness and apathy. No one was actively unkind to them; they had their
Straw Parlor, and were free to amuse themselves as they chose. But they
had been made of the material of which the world’s workers are built,
and their young hearts were full of a restlessness and longing whose
full significance they themselves did not comprehend.
And this wonder working in the world beyond them—this huge, beautiful
marvel, planned by the human brain and carried out by mere human hands;
this great thing with which all the world seemed to them to be
throbbing, and which seemed to set no limit to itself and prove that
there was no limit to the power of human wills and minds—this filled
them with a passion of restlessness and yearning greater than they had
ever known before.
“It is an enchanted thing, you know, Robin—it’s an enchanted thing,” Meg
said one day, looking up from her study of some newspaper clippings and
a magazine with some pictures in it.
“It seems like it,” said Robin.
“I’m sure it’s enchanted,” Meg went on. “It seems so tremendous that
people should think they could do such huge things. As if they felt as
if they could do anything or bring anything from anywhere in the world.
It almost frightens me sometimes, because it reminds me of the Tower of
Babel. Don’t you remember how the people got so proud that they thought
they could do anything, and they began to build the tower that was to
reach to heaven; and then they all woke up one morning and found they
were all speaking different languages and could not understand each
other. Suppose everybody was suddenly struck like that some morning
now—I mean the Fair people!” widening her eyes with a little shiver.
“They won’t be,” said Rob. “Those things have stopped happening.”
“Yes, they have,” said Meg. “Sometimes I wish they hadn’t. If they
hadn’t, perhaps—perhaps if we made burnt offerings, we might be taken by
a miracle to see the World’s Fair.”
“We haven’t anything to burn,” said Rob, rather gloomily.
“We’ve got the chickens,” Meg answered as gloomily, “but it wouldn’t do
any good. Miracles are over.”
“The world is all different,” said Robin. “You have to do your miracle
yourself.”
“It will be a miracle,” Meg said, “if we ever get away from Aunt
Matilda’s world, and live like people instead of like pigs who are
comfortable—and we shall have to perform it ourselves.”
“There is no one else,” said Robin. “You see, there is no one else in
the world.”
He threw out his hand and it clutched Meg’s, which was lying in the
straw near him. He did not know why he clutched it—he did not in the
least know why; nor did she know why a queer sound in his voice suddenly
made her feel their unfriendedness in a way that overwhelmed her. She
found herself looking at him, with a hard lump rising in her throat. It
was one of the rainy days, and the hollow drumming and patter of the big
drops on the roof seemed somehow to shut them in with their loneliness
away from all the world.
“It’s a strange thing,” she said, almost under her breath, “to be two
children, only just twelve years old, and to be quite by ourselves in
such a big world, where there are such millions and millions of people
all busy doing things and making great plans, and none of them knowing
about us, or caring what we are going to do.”
“If we work our miracle ourselves,” said Rob, holding her hand quite
tight, “it will be better than having it worked for us. Meg!”—as if he
were beginning a new subject—“Meg!”
“What?” she answered, still feeling the hard lump in her throat.
“Do you think we are going to stay here always?”
“I—oh, Robin, I don’t know.”
“Well, I do, then. We are _not_—and that’s the first step up the Hill of
Difficulty.”