Afterwards, when they looked back upon that day, they knew that the
thing had decided itself then, though neither of them had said so.
“The truth was,” Robin used to say, “we had both been thinking the same
thing, as we always do, but we had been thinking it in the back part of
our minds. We were afraid to let it come to the front at first, because
it seemed such a big thing. But it went on thinking by itself. That
time, when you said ‘We shall _never_ see it,’ and I said, ‘How do you
know?’ we were both thinking about it in one way; and I know I was
thinking about it when I said, ‘We are not going to stay here always.
That is the first step up the Hill of Difficulty.’”
“And that day when you said you would not let it go by you,” Meg would
answer, “that was the day we reached the Wicket Gate.”
It seemed very like it, for from that day their strange, unchildish
purpose grew and ripened, and never for an hour was absent from the mind
of either. If they had been like other children, living happy lives,
full of young interests and pleasures, it might have been crossed out by
other and newer things; if they had been of a slighter mental build, and
less strong, they might have forgotten it; but they never did. When they
had counted the Treasure, and had realized how small it was after all,
they had sat and gazed at each other for a while with grave eyes, but
they had only been grave, and not despairing.
“Twenty-five dollars,” said Robin. “Well, that’s not much after nearly
six years; but we saved it nearly all by cents, you know, Meg.”
“And it takes a hundred cents to make a dollar,” said Meg; “and we were
poor people’s children.”
“And we bought the chickens,” said Robin.
“And you have always given me a present at Christmas, Robin, even if it
_was_ only a little one. That’s six Christmases.”
“We have eight months to work in,” said Robin, calculating. “If you get
four dollars a month, and I get four, that will be sixty-four dollars by
next June. Twenty-five dollars and sixty-four dollars make eighty-nine.
Eighty-nine dollars for us to live on and go to see all the things;
because we must see them all, if we go. And I suppose we shall have to
come back”—with a long breath.
“Oh, dear!” cried Meg, “how _can_ we come back?”
“I don’t know,” said Robin. “We shall hate it, but we have nowhere else
to go.”
“Perhaps we are going to seek our fortunes, and perhaps we shall find
them,” said Meg; “or perhaps Aunt Matilda won’t let us come back. Rob,”
with some awe, “do you think she will be angry?”
“I’ve thought about that,” Robin answered contemplatively, “and I don’t
think she will. She would be too busy to care much even if we ran away
and said nothing. But I shall leave a letter, and tell her we have saved
our money and gone somewhere for a holiday, and we’re all right, and she
need not bother.”
“She won’t bother even if she is angry,” Meg said, with mournful eyes.
“She doesn’t care about us enough.”
“If she loved us,” Rob said, “and was too poor to take us herself, we
couldn’t go at all. We couldn’t run away, because it would worry her so.
You can’t do a thing, however much you want to do it, if it is going to
hurt somebody who is good to you, and cares.”
“Well, then, we needn’t stay here because of Aunt Matilda,” said Meggy.
“That’s one sure thing. It wouldn’t interfere with her ploughing if we
were both to die at once.”
“No,” said Rob, deliberately, “that’s just what it would _not_.” And he
threw himself back on the straw and clasped his hands under his head,
gazing up into the dark roof above him with very reflective eyes.
But they had reached the Wicket Gate, and from the hour they passed it
there was no looking back. That in their utter friendlessness and
loneliness they should take their twelve-year-old fates in their own
strong little hands was, perhaps, a pathetic thing; that once having
done so they moved towards their object as steadily as if they had been
of the maturest years was remarkable, but no one ever knew or even
suspected the first until the last.
The days went by, full of work, which left them little time to lie and
talk in the Straw Parlor. They could only see each other in the leisure
hours, which were so few, and only came when the day was waning. Finding
them faithful and ready, those about them fell into the natural, easy,
human unworthiness of imposing by no means infrequently on their
inexperienced willingness and youth. So they were hard enough worked,
but each felt that every day that passed brought them nearer to the end
in view; and there was always something to think of, some detail to be
worked out mentally, or to be discussed, in the valuable moments when
they were together.
“It’s a great deal better than it used to be,” Meg said, “at all events.
It’s better to feel tired by working than to be tired of doing nothing
but think and think dreary things.”
As the weather grew colder it was hard enough to keep warm in their
hiding-place. They used to sit and talk, huddled close together, bundled
in their heaviest clothing, and with the straw heaped close around them
and over them.
There were so many things to be thought of and talked over! Robin
collected facts more sedulously than ever—facts about entrance fees,
facts about prices of things to eat, facts about places to sleep.
“Going to the Fair yourself, sonny?” Jones said to him one day. Jones
was fond of his joke. “You’re right to be inquirin’ round. Them
hotel-keepers is given to tot up bills several stories higher than their
hotels is themselves.”
“But I suppose a person needn’t go to a hotel,” said Robin. “There must
be plenty of poor people who can’t go to hotels, and they’ll have to
sleep somewhere.”
“Ah, there’s plenty of poor people,” responded Jones, cheerfully,
“plenty of ’em. Always is. But they won’t go to Chicago while the Fair’s
on. They’ll sleep at home—that’s where they’ll sleep.”
“That’s the worst of it,” Rob said to Meg afterwards; “you see, we have
to sleep _somewhere_. We could live on bread and milk or crackers and
cheese—or oatmeal—but we have to _sleep_ somewhere.”
“It will be warm weather,” Meg said, reflectively. “Perhaps we could
sleep out of doors. Beggars do. We don’t mind.”
“I don’t think the police would let us,” Robin answered. “If they
would—perhaps we might have to, some night; but we are going to that
place, Meg—we are _going_.”
Yes, they believed they were going, and lived on the belief. This being
decided, howsoever difficult to attain, it was like them both that they
should dwell upon the dream, and revel in it in a way peculiarly their
own. It was Meg whose imagination was the stronger, and it is true that
it was always she who made pictures in words and told stories. But Robin
was always as ready to enter into the spirit of her imaginings as she
was to talk about them. There was a word he had once heard his father
use which had caught his fancy, in fact, it had attracted them both, and
they applied it to this favorite pleasure of theirs of romancing with
everyday things. The word was “philander.”
“Now we have finished adding up and making plans,” he would say, putting
his ten-cent account-book into his pocket, “let us philander about it.”
And then Meg would begin to talk about the City Beautiful—a City
Beautiful which was a wonderful and curious mixture of the enchanted one
the whole world was pouring its treasures into, one hundred miles away,
and that City Beautiful of her own which she had founded upon the one
towards which Christian had toiled through the Slough of Despond and up
the Hill of Difficulty and past Doubting Castle. Somehow one could
scarcely tell where one ended and the others began, they were so much
alike, these three cities—Christian’s, Meg’s, and the fair, ephemeral
one the ending of the nineteenth century had built upon the blue lake’s
side.
“They must look alike,” said Meg. “I am sure they must. See what it says
in the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress.’ ‘Now just as the gates were opened to let
in the men, I looked in after them, and behold, the City shone like the
sun’—and then it says, ‘The talk they had with the Shining Ones was
about the glory of the place; who told them that the beauty and glory of
it were inexpressible.’ I always think of it, Robin, when I read about
those places like white palaces and temples and towers that are being
built. I am so glad they are white. Think how the City will ‘shine like
the sun’ when it stands under the blue sky and by the blue water, on a
sunshiny day.”
They had never read the dear old worn “Pilgrim’s Progress” as they did
in those days. They kept it in the straw near the Treasure, and always
had it at hand to refer to. In it they seemed to find parallels for
everything.
“Aunt Matilda’s world is the City of Destruction,” they would say. “And
our loneliness and poorness are like Christian’s ‘burden.’ We have to
carry it like a heavy weight, and it holds us back.”
“What was it that Goodwill said to Christian about it?” Robin asked.
Meg turned over the pages. She knew all the places by heart. It was easy
enough to find and read how “At last there came a grave person to the
gate, named Goodwill,” and in the end he said, “As to thy burden, be
content to bear it until thou comest to the place of deliverance; for
there it will fall from thy back itself.”
“But out of the ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’” Robin said, with his reflecting
air, “burdens don’t fall off by themselves. If you are content with them
they stick on and get bigger. Ours would, I know. You have to do
something yourself to get them off. But—” with a little pause for
thought, “I like that part, Meg. And I like Goodwill, because he told it
to him. It encouraged him, you know. You see it says next, ‘Then
Christian began to gird up his loins and address himself to his
journey.’”
“Robin,” said Meg, suddenly shutting the book and giving it a little
thump on the back, “it’s not only Christian’s City that is like our
City. _We_ are like Christian. We are pilgrims, and our way to that
place is our Pilgrims’ Progress.”