PEAS AND RADISHES.
Mr. Dillwyn, as I said, did not come near Shampuashuh. He took his
indemnification in sending all sorts of pleasant things. Papers and
magazines overflowed, flowed over into Mrs. Marx's hands, and made her
life rich; flowed over again into Mr. Hotchkiss's hands, and
embroidered his life for him. Mr. Dillwyn sent fruit; foreign fruit,
strange and delicious, which it was a sort of education even to eat,
bringing one nearer to the countries so far and unknown, where it grew.
He sent music; and if some of it passed under Lois's ban as "nonsense,"
that was not the case with the greater part. "She has a marvellous true
appreciation of what is fine," Mrs. Barclay wrote; "and she rejects
with an accuracy which surprises me, all that is merely pretty and
flashy. There are some bits of Handel that have great power over the
girl; she listens to them, I might almost say, devoutly, and is never
weary. Madge is delighted with Rossini; but Lois gives her adherence to
the German classics, and when I play Haydn or Mozart or Mendelssohn,
stands rapt in her delighted listening, and looking like--well, I will
not tantalize you by trying to describe to you what I see every day. I
marvel only where the girl got these tastes and susceptibilities; it
must be blood; I believe in inheritance. She has had until now no
training or experience; but your bird is growing her wings fast now,
Philip. If you can manage to cage her! Natures hereabout are not tame,
by any means."
Mr. Dillwyn, I believe I mentioned, sent engravings and exquisite
photographs; and these almost rivalled Haydn and Mozart in Lois's mind.
For various reasons, Mrs. Barclay sought to make at least this source
of pleasure common to the whole family; and would often invite them all
into her room, or carry her portfolio out into their general
sitting-room, and display to the eyes of them all the views of foreign
lands; cities, castles and ruins, palaces and temples, Swiss mountains
and Scotch lochs, Paris Boulevards and Venetian canals, together with
remains of ancient art and works of modern artists; of all which Philip
sent an unbounded number and variety. These evenings were unendingly
curious to Mrs. Barclay. Comment was free, and undoubtedly original,
whatever else might be said of it; and character, and the habit of life
of her audience, were unconsciously revealed to her. Intense curiosity
and eagerness for information were observable in them all; but tastes,
and the power of apprehension and receptiveness towards new and strange
ideas, and the judgment passed upon things, were very different in the
different members of the group. These exhibitions had further one good
effect, not unintended by the exhibitor; they brought the whole family
somewhat in tone with the new life to which two of its members were
rising. It was not desirable that Lois should be too far in advance of
her people, or rather that they should be too far behind her. The
questions propounded to Mrs. Barclay on these occasions, and the
elucidations she found it desirable to give without questions,
transformed her part into that of a lecturer; and the end of such an
evening would find her tired with her exertions, yet well repaid for
them. The old grandmother manifested great curiosity, great admiration,
with frequently an expression of doubt or disapproval; and very often a
strange, slight, inexpressible air of one who felt herself to belong to
a different world, to which all these things were more or less foreign.
Charity showed also intense eagerness and curiosity, and
inquisitiveness; and mingled with those, a very perceptible flavour of
incredulity or of disdain, the latter possibly born of envy. But Lois
and Madge were growing with every journey to distant lands, and every
new introduction to the great works of men's hands, of every kind and
of every age.
After receiving that letter of Mrs. Barclay's mentioned in the last
chapter, Philip Dillwyn would immediately have attacked Tom Caruthers
again on the question of his liking for Miss Lothrop, to find out
whether possibly there were any the least foundation for Mrs. Barclay's
scruples and fears. But it was no longer in his power. The Caruthers
family had altered their plans; and instead of going abroad in the
spring, had taken their departure with the first of December, after an
impromptu wedding of Julia to her betrothed. Mr. Dillwyn did not
seriously believe that there was anything his plan had to fear from
this side; nevertheless he preferred not to move in the dark; and he
waited. Besides, he must allow time for the work he had sent Mrs.
Barclay to do; to hurry matters would be to spoil everything; and it
was much better on every ground that he should keep away from
Shampuashuh. As I said, he busied himself with Shampuashuh affairs all
he could, and wore out the winter as he best might; which was not very
satisfactorily. And when spring came he resolutely carried out his
purpose, and sailed for Europe. Till at least a year had gone by he
would not try to see Lois; Mrs. Barclay should have a year at least to
push her beneficent influence and bring her educational efforts to some
visible result; he would keep away; but it would be much easier to keep
away if the ocean lay between them, and he went to Florence and
northern Italy and the Adriatic.
Meanwhile the winter had "flown on soft wings" at Shampuashuh. Every
day seemed to be growing fuller and richer than its predecessors; every
day Lois and Madge were more eager in the search after knowledge, and
more ready for the reception of it. A change was going on in them, so
swift that Mrs. Barclay could almost see it from day to day. Whether
others saw it I cannot tell; but Mrs. Marx shook her head in the fear
of it, and Charity opined that the family "might whistle for a garden,
and for butter and cheese next summer." Precious opportunity of winter
days, when no gardening nor dairy work was possible! and blessed long
nights and mornings, after sunset and before sunrise, when no housework
of any sort put in claims upon the leisure of the two girls. There were
no interruptions from without. In Shampuashuh, society could not be
said to flourish. Beyond an occasional "sewing society" meeting, and a
much more rare gathering for purely social purposes, nothing more than
a stray caller now and then broke the rich quiet of those winter days;
the time for a tillage, and a sowing, and a growth far beyond in
preciousness all "the precious things put forth by the sun" in the more
genial time of the year. But days began to become longer, nevertheless,
as the weeks went on; and daylight was pushing those happy mornings and
evenings into lesser and lesser compass; and snow quite disappeared
from the fields, and buds began to swell on the trees and take colour,
and airs grew more gentle in temperature; though I am bound to say
there is a sharpness sometimes in the nature of a Shampuashuh spring,
that quite outdoes all the greater rigours of the winter that has gone.
"The frost is out of the ground!" said Lois one day to her friend.
"Well," said Mrs. Barclay innocently; "I suppose that is a good thing."
Lois went on with her drawing, and made no answer.
But soon Mrs. Barclay began to perceive that less reading and studying
were done; or else some drawing lingered on its way towards completion;
and the deficits became more and more striking. At last she demanded
the reason.
"O," said Madge, "the cows have come in, and I have a good deal to do
in the dairy now; it takes up all my mornings. I'm so sorry, I don't
know what to do! but the milk must be seen to, and the butter churned,
and then worked over; and it takes time, Mrs. Barclay."
"And Lois?"
"O, Lois is making garden."
"Making garden!"
"Yes; O, she always does it. It's her particular part of the business.
We all do a little of everything; but the garden is Lois's special
province, and the dairy mine, and Charity takes the cooking and the
sewing. O, we all do our own sewing, and we all do grandmother's
sewing; only Charity takes head in that department."
"What does Lois do in the garden?"
"O, everything. We get somebody to plough it up in the fall; and in the
spring we have it dug over; but all the rest she does. We have a good
garden too," said Madge, smiling.
"And these things take your morning and her morning?"
"Yes, indeed; I should think they did. Rather!"
Mrs. Barclay held her peace then, and for some time afterwards. The
spring came on, the days became soft and lovely, after March had blown
itself out; the trees began to put forth leaves, the blue-birds were
darting about, like skyey messengers; robins were whistling, and
daffodils were bursting, and grass was green. One lovely warm morning,
when everything without seemed beckoning to her, Mrs. Barclay threw on
a shawl and hat, and made her way out to the old garden, which up to
this day she had never entered.
She found the great wide enclosure looking empty and bare enough. The
two or three old apple trees hung protectingly over the wooden bench in
the middle, their branches making pretty tracery against the tender,
clear blue of the sky; but no shade was there. The branches only showed
a little token of swelling and bursting buds, which indeed softened in
a lovely manner the lines of their interlacing network, and promised a
plenty of green shadow by and by. No shadow was needed at present, for
the sun was too gentle; its warmth was welcome, and beneficent, and
kindly. The old cherry tree in the corner was beginning to open its
wealth of white blossoms; everywhere else the bareness and brownness of
winter was still reigning, only excepting the patches of green turf
around the boles and under the spreading boughs of the trees here and
there. The garden was no garden, only a spread of soft, up-turned brown
loam. It looked a desolate place to Mrs. Barclay.
In the midst of it, the one point of life and movement was Lois. She
was in a coarse, stout stuff dress, short, and tucked up besides, to
keep it out of the dirt. Her hands were covered with coarse, thick
gloves, her head with a little old straw hat. At the moment Mrs.
Barclay came up, she was raking a patch of ground which she had
carefully marked out, and bounded with a trampled footway; she was
bringing it with her rake into a condition of beautiful level
smoothness, handling her tool with light dexterity. As Mrs. Barclay
came near, she looked up with a flash of surprise and a smile.
"I have found you," said the lady. "So this is what you are about!"
"It is what I am always about at this time of year."
"What are you doing?"
"Just here I am going to put in radishes and lettuce."
"Radishes and lettuce! And that is instead of French and philosophy!"
"This is philosophy," said Lois, while with a neat movement of her rake
she threw off some stones which she had collected from the surface of
the bed. "Very good philosophy. Surely the philosophy of life is
first--to live."
Mrs. Barclay was silent a moment upon this.
"Are radishes and lettuce the first thing you plant in the spring,
then?"
"O dear, no!" said Lois. "Do you see all that corner? that's in
potatoes. Do you see those slightly marked lines--here, running across
from the walk to the wall?--peas are there. They'll be up soon. I think
I shall put in some corn to-morrow. Yonder is a bed of radishes and
lettuce just out of the ground. We'll have some radishes for tea,
before you know it."
"And do you mean to say that _you_ have been planting potatoes? _you?_"
"Yes," said Lois, looking at her and laughing. "I like to plant
potatoes. In fact, I like to plant anything. What I do not always like
so well, is the taking care of them after they are up and growing."
Mrs. Barclay sat down and watched her. Lois was now tracing delicate
little drills across the breadth of her nicely-prepared bed; little
drills all alike, just so deep and just so far apart. Then she went to
a basket hard by for a little paper of seeds; two papers; and began
deftly to scatter the seed along the drills, with delicate and careful
but quick fingers. Mrs. Barclay watched her till she had filled all the
rows, and began to cover the seeds in; that, too, she did quick and
skilfully.
"That is not fit work for you to do, Lois."
"Why not?"
"You have something better to do."
"I do not see how I can. This is the work that is given me."
"But any common person could do that?"
"We have not got the common person to do it," said Lois, laughing; "so
it comes upon an uncommon one."
"But there is a fitness in things."
"So you will think, when you get some of my young lettuce." The drills
were fast covered in, but there were a good many of them, and Lois went
on talking and working with equal spirit.
"I do not think I shall--" Mrs. Barclay answered the last statement.
"I like to do this, Mrs. Barclay. I like to do it very much. I _am_
pulled a little two ways this spring--but that only shows this is good
for me."
"How so?"
"When anybody is living to his own pleasure, I guess he is not in the
best way of improvement."
"Is there no one but you to do all the weeding, by and by, when the
garden will be full of plants?"
"Nobody else," said Lois.
"That must take a great deal of your time!"
"Yes," said Lois, "it does; that and the fruit-picking."
"Fruit-picking! Mercy! Why, child, _must_ you do all that?"
"It is my part," said Lois pleasantly. "Charity and Madge have each
their part. This is mine, and I like it better than theirs. But it is
only so, Mrs. Barclay, that we are able to get along. A gardener would
eat up our garden. I take only my share. And there is a great deal of
pleasure in it. It is pleasant to provide for the family's wants, and
to see the others enjoy what I bring in;--yes, and to enjoy it myself.
And then, do you see how pleasant the work is! Don't you like it out
here this morning?"
Mrs. Barclay cast a glance around her again. There was a slight spring
haze in the air, which seemed to catch and hold the sun's rays and
diffuse them in gentle beneficence. Through it the opening cherry
blossoms gave their tender promise; the brown, bare apple trees were
softened; an indescribable breath of hope and life was in the air, to
which the birds were doing all they could to give expression; there was
a delicate joy in Nature's face, as if at being released from the bands
of Winter and having her hands free again. The smell of the upturned
earth came fresh to Mrs. Barclay's nostrils, along with a salt savour
from the not distant sea. Yes, it was pleasant, with a rare and
wonderful pleasantness; and yet Mrs. Barclay's eyes came discontentedly
back to Lois.
"It would be possible to enjoy all this, Lois, if you were not doing
such evil work."
"Evil work! O no, Mrs. Barclay. The work that the Lord gives anybody to
do cannot be evil. It must be the very best thing he can do. And I do
not believe I should enjoy the spring--and the summer--and the
autumn--near so well, if I were not doing it."
"Must one be a gardener, to have such enjoyment?"
"_I_ must," said Lois, laughing. "If I do not follow my work, my work
follows me; and then it comes like a taskmaster, and carries a whip."
"But, Lois! that sort of work will make your hands rough."
Lois lifted one of her hands in its thick glove, and looked at it.
"Well," she said, "what then? What are hands made for?"
"You know very well what I mean. You know a time may come when you
would like to have your hands white and delicate."
"The time is come now," said Lois, laughing. "I have not to wait for
it. I like white hands, and delicate hands, as well as anybody. Mine
must do their work, all the same. Something might be said for my feet,
too, I suppose," she added, with another laugh.
At the moment she had finished outlining an other bed, and was now
trampling a little hard border pathway round it, making the length of
her foot the breadth of the pathway, and setting foot to foot close
together, so bit by bit stamping it round. Mrs. Barclay looked on, and
wished some body else could have looked on, at the bright, fresh face
under the little old hat, and the free action and spirit and accuracy
with which everything that either feet or hands did was done. Somehow
she forgot the coarse dress, and only saw the delicate creature in it.
"Lois, I do not like it!" she began again. "Do you know, some people
are very particular about these little things--fastidious about them.
You may one day yet want to please one of those very men."
"Not unless he wants to please me first!" said Lois, with a glance from
her path-treading.
"Of course. I am supposing that."
"I don't know him!" said Lois. "And I don't see him in the distance!"
"That proves nothing."
"And it wouldn't make any difference if I did."
"You are mistaken in thinking that. You do not know yet what it is to
be in love, Lois."
"I don't know," said Lois. "Can't one be in love with one's
grandmother?"
"But, Lois, this is going to take a great deal of your time."
"Yes, ma'am."
"And you want all your time, to give to more important things. I can't
bear to have you drop them all to plant potatoes. Could not somebody
else be found to do it?"
"We could not afford the somebody, Mrs. Barclay."
It was not doubtfully or regretfully that the girl spoke; the brisk
content of her answers drove Mrs. Barclay almost to despair.
"Lois, you owe something to yourself."
"What, Mrs. Barclay?"
"You owe it to yourself to be prepared for what I am sure is coming to
you. You are not made to live in Shampuashuh all your life. Somebody
will want you to quit it and go out into the wide world with him."
Lois was silent a few minutes, with her colour a little heightened,
fresh as it had been already; then, having tramped all round her new
bed, she came up to where Mrs. Barclay and her basket of seeds were.
"I don't believe it at all," she said. "I think I shall live and die
here."
"Do you feel satisfied with that prospect?"
Lois turned over the bags of seeds in her basket, a little hurriedly;
then she stopped and looked up at her questioner.
"I have nothing to do with all that," she said. "I do not want to think
of it. I have enough in hand to think of. And I am satisfied, Mrs.
Barclay, with whatever God gives me." She turned to her basket of seeds
again, searching for a particular paper.
"I never heard any one say that before," remarked the other lady.
"As long as I can say it, don't you see that is enough?" said Lois
lightly. "I enjoy all this work, besides; and so will you by and by
when you get the lettuce and radishes, and some of my Tom Thumb peas.
And I am not going to stop my studies either."
She went back to the new bed now, where she presently was very busy
putting more seeds in. Mrs. Barclay watched her a while. Then, seeing a
small smile break on the lips of the gardener, she asked Lois what she
was thinking of? Lois looked up.
"I was thinking of that geode you showed us last night."
"That geode!"
"Yes, it is so lovely. I have thought of it a great many times. I am
wanting very much to learn about stones now. I thought always _till_
now that stones were only stones. The whole world is changed to me
since you have come, Mrs. Barclay."
Yes, thought that lady to herself, and what will be the end of it?
"To tell the truth," Lois went on, "the garden work comes harder to me
this spring than ever it did before; but that shows it is good for me.
I have been having too much pleasure all winter."
"Can one have too much pleasure?" said Mrs. Barclay discontentedly.
"If it makes one unready for duty," said Lois.