THE BEE-HIVE.
When three years before, Hadyn Stuyvesant, the owner of the property
rented by the Carruths, had followed out Constance Carruth’s plans for a
model kitchen in which she could make her candy, he was not a little
surprised at the sixteen-year-old girl’s practical ideas. She asked him
to build an extension to the little cottage at the end of the grounds
occupied by Mammy and Charles, and had drawn the plans and
specifications herself. The result was a marvel to him.
The extension consisted of three rooms on the first floor and two on the
second. Upon entering the door one found one’s self in a good-sized
room, with rubber-tiled floor all blue and white, the walls snowy in
alabasterine. Here on numberless white enameled shelves were placed the
boxes of candy ready for shipment. From this attractive room opened the
packing room, floor, walls and ceiling scrupulous. Long zinc-covered
tables ready for the pans of candy, little portable stands at hand to
hold the boxes in which the candy was to be packed. Perhaps the most
practical feature of this packing room was the height of the tables, or
more correctly their lack of height. Constance had reason to know that
one can be foot-weary after several hours spent in candy-making.
Consequently these packing tables were made low enough to enable those
working at them to sit upon the comfortable bent-wood chairs while doing
the work, which often required several hours, for not only had the candy
to be packed in its pretty boxes, but the boxes had to be wrapped and
tied with dainty ribbons. Nothing must fall short of perfection.
But the crowning point of Constance’s practicability was shown in the
actual kitchen itself. This was also tiled, but the tiles were of
shining porcelain, washable, scrubable, scourable to the very limit. A
big gas range stood at one side, near it hung pans, pots and kettles of
every size and possible need, all of white enamel ware. A big porcelain
sink and draining tray stood next. Close at hand was a large table, its
top of white marble warranted to withstand the hottest candy which could
be poured upon it, to chill it quickly for handling or cutting, and to
come forth from its boiling baptism immaculate under the alchemy of hot
soapsuds.
On the walls were great hooks, upon which to pull long ropes of molasses
or cream candy. Along another side of the kitchen were shelves to hold
the hundred and one ingredients which were to be transformed into the
most toothsome of dainties, and these were too numerous to name. A
spacious closet held aprons, caps, towels, dish-cloths and what not,
needed in the work.
On the floor overhead, and reached by a quaint little stairway from the
shipping room, was the stock room, where boxes, labels, wrapping paper,
twine, and a hundred other needfuls were kept. In one corner a
business-like roll-top desk, with still more business-like ledgers, told
of the ability of this little lady to keep track of her finances. And
room number five? Ah, the eternal feminine! Who says she must waive all
claim to her womanly instincts, merge them in the coarser, less refined
ones of the hurrying, struggling world around her when she sets out to
be a bread-winner among her masculine contemporaries? If some do this,
Constance Carruth was not to be numbered among them, and no better proof
of it could have been offered than the “fifth wheel to her business
wagon,” as she laughingly called room number five. That little room is
worthy of minute description.
To begin with, the walls were tinted a soft ivory white, with a delft
blue frieze running around the top. The floor was of hard wood, with a
pretty blue and white rug spread in the center. On this stood a white
enameled table, with snowy linen cover, a reading lamp, the several
books and magazines testifying to its primal use. Four or five
comfortable wicker chairs, with cushions of pretty figured Japanese
crepe, stood about. In one corner a couch with a delft blue and white
cover and enough pillows to spell luxury, invited weary bodies to rest
when labors were ended, and yet never once hinted that by removing the
cover and pillows a bed stood ready for a guest if extra space were
needed. Book shelves of white enameled wood filled half one side of the
room, and held every sort of cook-book ever published, as well as many
of Constance’s favorite authors. A white chiffonnier held many necessary
articles, for after one has spent several hours over a boiling kettle
one longs for a tub and fresh garments; and all these were at hand in
the big closet. Opening from this restful room was a perfectly appointed
bathroom. Could plans have been more perfect?
Certainly the girl, bending over the big saucepan, stirring its boiling
contents, felt that _her_ little paradise had been gained when she
changed from the bustling, rushing Arcade to the peace, tranquillity and
refinement of her present surroundings. The accident which
short-circuited the switchboard wires in the telephone booth that
eventful Labor Day had brought to Mary Willing, even at the cost of a
good deal of physical suffering, present advantages and an outlook for
the future such as she had never pictured. Indeed, her horizon had been
much too circumscribed for her imagination to reach so far. It needed
the influence and environment of the past three years to make her fully
appreciate the vast difference between the acquisitions which mere
dollars can command, and those which true refinement of heart, mind,
soul and body hold as invaluable and indeprivable heritages. Possibly
the best proof that she had taken the lesson to heart lay in the fact
that “Pearl” Willing had completely dropped out of the world’s ken, and
in her stead, quiet, dignified Mary Willing moved and had her being.
Unconsciously Mrs. Carruth had undertaken to solve a knotty,
sociological problem, but the results already obtained seemed to justify
her belief that she was right in her estimate of this girl. At all
events she had reason to be sanguine of ultimate success in bending a
hitherto neglected twig. It needed courage, however, upon Mrs. Carruth’s
part to undertake this reformation. From her childhood, to her
nineteenth year Mary Willing’s environment had been, if not
demoralizing, certainly detrimental to a higher development in any girl.
Her associates were coarse, boisterous, heedless girls, without the
faintest sense of the fitness of things, or the first rudiments of
refinement. To earn enough money to clothe themselves in shoddy finery,
to contribute as small a percentage of their earnings to the family
purse as possible, and to have as much “fun,” never mind at whose
expense, or at what sacrifice of their own dignity, bounded their aims
and ambitions. And Mary Willing had seen no reason for not following in
their footsteps. Handsomer than any of her companions, and holding a
position where her personal charms were conspicuous for all who passed
to comment upon them, she had used them to attract the attention of
those whom she thought likely to contribute to her pleasure.
To make her more self-conscious, and senselessly pave the way to greater
evil, her mother had continually urged her to make the most of her good
looks while she had them, assuring her that unless she managed to “catch
a rich husband with her handsome face she needn’t hope to get one at
all.”
Was it any wonder the girl grew up vain, shallow, and with standards
poorly calculated to withstand temptations if offered opportunely?
Still, there was a certain something in her which, up to her nineteenth
year, had saved her from anything worse than shallow flirtations; and
then when everything seemed conspiring to lead her to more serious
consequences of her folly, Fate had established close at her side a
personality and atmosphere in such contrast to her own, and all she had
ever known, that it acted as a dash of cold water acts upon a
sleepwalker. At first she was startled, then roused, and finally
thoroughly wakened to the perilous path she was following.
But the strangest part of it all lay in the fact that the individual
which capricious Dame Fate had used as her instrument never for one
moment suspected that she was being used at all, but continued on her
sweet, cheery, sunny way entirely unconscious of her responsibilities.
Perhaps therein lay her greatest strength. Then came the accident on the
river, and Mrs. Carruth, quick to read and comprehend, found a field for
the sweetest missionary work a woman can enter upon—that of shaping the
life of a young girl for the noblest position to which she can attain—a
refined young womanhood, a beautiful wifehood, and a motherhood as
perfect as God will give her grace to make it. Mary Willing could hardly
have found a more beautiful example, and the three years had wrought
miracles.
Mrs. Carruth had made haste slowly. The first year Mary Willing entered
upon her duties in the candy kitchen she went and came daily, learning
and applying herself with all the enthusiasm her gratitude to those she
so admired and strove to emulate inspired. The relations between the
girl and Constance were those of valued employee and respected employer.
It could not have been otherwise. Mary had a vast deal to _un_learn, the
hardest of all things to accomplish, and when old impressions were
effaced to begin an entirely new page. Gradually as time passed on the
girl grew into her new environment. Old habits of manner and speech gave
way to gentler ones, old viewpoints shifted to those of these good
friends, who had risen up at such a crucial point in her life and were
fitting her to be a little woman in the truest sense. In the course of
the three years just passed she and Constance had grown closer to each
other. The latter, quick to see the former’s sincere desire to improve,
and take advantage of every opportunity to do so, felt the keenest
sympathy for her less fortunate sister, and the strongest desire to aid
her. Mary’s aim and ambition was to grow “just exactly like Constance
Carruth! The dearest, best and loveliest girl that ever lived,” as she
confided to her mother. The greatest obstacle to be overcome was the
unhappy influence in Mary Willing’s own home life. It sometimes seemed
to Mrs. Carruth that whatever good they accomplished in the five and a
half working days of the week was entirely undone during the one day and
a half which the girl spent in the hurly-burly, the untidiness and
hopeless shallowness of her own home, to say nothing of the coarsening
influence of a worthless, dissipated father’s presence. Mrs. Carruth
believed that Mary Willing had naturally been endowed with instincts far
above the average of her class, though from what source inherited she
could not understand, and that all needed to develop them was a more
wholesome atmosphere, wise guiding, and, of course, separation from
former contaminating influences. But she bided her time and, when least
expecting to do so, discovered the secret. At length, when she felt the
moment to be ripe, she suggested most tactfully that Mary come to live
with them, to occupy the little room which had once been Mammy’s, but,
since her marriage to Charles, and her removal to the snug cottage
adjoining the candy kitchen, had been newly decorated and furnished for
what Jean, in her characteristic fashion, termed “the left-overs;”
“left-overs” being any extra guest who might claim the hospitality of
the family when the other guest room was occupied. It was a pretty
little room, up in the third floor at the rear of the house, and
overlooked the lawn, the candy kitchen, Mammy’s cottage, and the rolling
country beyond owned by Jabe Raulsbury. It had been papered in the
softest green paper, with garlands of pink roses as a border. The floor
was carpeted with a deeper shade of ingrain filling, upon which lay two
pretty rugs in pink and green. Dimity curtains, looped back with chintz
bands, draped the windows. The furniture was of white enamel, with plain
white iron bedstead. Cushions and coverings, as well as table and bureau
scarfs, were of the chintz, edged with inexpensive lace—the bedspread of
snowy white. Had the room been designed for Mary Willing’s rich coloring
it could hardly have suited her more perfectly. But it had not; Fate was
simply working out her scheme not only in color but in influence. How
great the influence of that simple little room would prove not even Mrs.
Carruth suspected, although she was a firm believer in the influence of
one’s surroundings.
When Mrs. Carruth suggested that Mary remain with them in order to be at
hand whenever needed in an emergency, and to avoid during the cold,
stormy days of winter the long trip to and from her own home, the girl
had responded with an eagerness which touched Mrs. Carruth very deeply.
“And if I come here to live you must let me pay my board,” she cried,
impulsively. Then, noticing the color which crept into the older woman’s
face, she hastened to add, contritely: “Oh, dear me! Shall I ever learn
how to say things? I’m—I’m so—I mean I know so _little_. Please forgive
me, Mrs. Carruth. I didn’t stop to think how rude that was. I ought to
have said you must not pay me such a large salary if you let me live
here. I know that no amount of money that I could earn could pay my
board. I’ve learned _that_ much, you see, even if I don’t seem to have
learned very much more during the last two years. But I’m truly, truly
trying hard to learn.”
“I know it, dear. Perhaps I am over-sensitive. Old instincts are hard to
overcome. No, I do not think we will change the salary. Constance had
already thought of increasing the sum she is now paying you, for you
earn it. Work has increased rapidly during these two years, and you are
very proficient, and very valuable to her.”
“Oh, I am so glad! I want so much to be.”
“You are; so live here with us, and let the little room and the ‘bread
and salt’ stand as a part of your salary.”
Mary Willing had never had occasion to enter this room, and when
Constance led her to it upon the day she took up her residence with
them, the girl stopped short upon the threshold, clasped her hands in a
little ecstacy of rapture, and cried: “I’ll live up to every single
thing in it, for only a gentlewoman could have arranged such a room, and
only a gentlewoman has any right to live in it. It just speaks of that
dear, blessed little mother of yours from every corner, and from every
single rose on the paper and the chintz; and if I don’t live to make her
proud of me I shall want to know why.”