LOOKING BACKWARD
MRS. BURNHAM came into the room with the air of one in doubt as to whom
she was to meet. Probably it was some one whom she ought to recognize;
and if she did not, it would be embarrassing.
"She would not give any name, ma'am," the maid had said. "She says she
is an old acquaintance, and she wants to see if you will know her."
But Ruth did not know her. She had a fairly good memory for faces, yet
as she advanced she told herself that this woman was mistaken in the
person. There must be some other Mrs. Burnham whom she had known. But
the lady who arose to meet her was apparently not disappointed, and was
at her ease and eager.
"I hope you will forgive this intrusion, dear Mrs. Burnham. I could not
resist the temptation to see if you had a lingering remembrance of the
silly girl to whom you were once very good. It was foolish in me to
fancy such a thing. I was just at the age to change much in a few
years."
Mrs. Burnham was studying the fair and singularly reposeful face; taking
in unconsciously at the same time the grace of the whole perfect
picture, hair and eyes and dress and form, all in exquisite harmony.
"A perfect lady!" she told herself. "How rarely the phrase fits, and how
exactly it applies here. Yet where before have I seen that face?" She
was back in the old college town, away back, among the early years. What
had suddenly taken her there? She was--this was not!--
"You are surely not," she began, and hesitated.
The fair face broke into rippling smiles.
"Yes," she said, "I am. Do you really remember Mamie Parker just a
little bit?"
"I remember her, perfectly, but--"
"But I am changed? Yes, fifteen years make changes in young people. I
was not much over eighteen then, and very young for my years. But you
have not changed, Mrs. Burnham; I should have known you anywhere.
Perhaps that is partly because I have carried you around in my heart all
these years. It must be beautiful to be able to do for girls all that
you did for me. If I could do it, if I could be to one young girl what
you became to me, I should know that I had not lived in vain."
Mrs. Burnham was almost embarrassed. What did the woman mean!
"My dear friend, I do not understand," she said. "There must be some
strange mistake. Have you not confused me with some other friend? What
could I possibly have done for you in the few, the very few times that
we met?"
Her caller laughed a low, sweet laugh, and as she spoke made an
inimitable gesture with her hands that emphasized her words.
"You did everything for me," she said. "Everything! You gave me ideals,
you refashioned my entire view of life; you were the means God used to
breathe into me the spirit of real living. May I claim a little of your
time to-day, and tell you just a little bit of the story, for a purpose?
I had only this one day here, and I felt compelled to intrude without
permission."
Mrs. Burnham heard her almost as one in a dream. She was struggling with
her memories; trying to find in this fair vision, with her refined voice
and dress, and cultured language and perfect manner, a trace of the
singularly ill-bred, loud-voiced, outspoken Mamie Parker. How had such a
transformation been possible?
"You have but one day here?" she said, remembering her duties as
hostess. "What does that mean, please? Are you staying in the
neighborhood, and will you not come to us for a visit?"
"Thank you, I cannot. I am about to leave the country, and am paying a
very brief farewell visit to my friends the Carletons, who are at their
summer home in Carleton Park. I have broken away to-day from the
numerous engagements they have made for me, and run over here alone, in
the hope of securing an interview with you; I have been planning for
this a long time. Dear Mrs. Burnham, may I claim the privilege of an old
acquaintance and ask to see you quite alone where there will be no
danger of interruption? I want to talk fast and put a good deal into a
small space, because my own time is so limited, and I do not want to
take more of yours than is necessary. I have a purpose which I think,
and I hope you will think, justifies my intrusion."
Still as one under a spell, Mrs. Burnham led the way to her private
sitting room and established her guest in an easy-chair, from which she
looked about her eagerly.
"This is charming!" she said. "I remember your other room perfectly,
Mrs. Burnham, and I think I should have recognized this as yours without
being told. Rooms have a great deal of individuality, don't you think?
Do you remember that parlor in the house where my dear brother Jim
boarded? No, of course you don't, but I do, and I thought it very
elegant until I was admitted to yours. May I tell you very briefly just
a little of what you have been to me? That winter when I met you and
your son--it was my first flight from home. I was young, you remember,
and unformed in every way; I was, in fact, a young simpleton, with as
little knowledge of the world as a girl reared as I had been would be
likely to have. Up to that time I had cared very little for study of any
kind. My opportunities were limited enough, but I had made very poor use
even of them. My chief idea of a successful life was to marry young,
some one who had plenty of money and who would be good to me and let me
have a good time. I was what is called a popular girl in the little
country village where I lived, and was much sought after because I was
what they called 'lively' and could 'make things go.' When my brother
invited me to visit him, I went in a flutter of anticipation. I had
grown rather tired of the country boys by whom I was surrounded, and I
believed that the fateful hour of my life had at last arrived."
She stopped to laugh at her folly; then said, apologetically, "I am
giving you the whole crude story, but it is for a purpose. I can laugh
at that silly girl, now, but there have been times in my life when I
cried over her. She knew so little in any direction, and there were such
possibilities of danger, such imminent fear of a wrecked life. She
needed a friend, as every girl does; and I can never cease to be
thankful that she found one.
"Mrs. Burnham, I presume you have never understood what you did for me
by calling on me and inviting me to your home, and opening to me a new
world. We were very plain people with limited opportunities in every
way, and my father's sudden financial success but a short time before
had almost turned our heads; mine, at least, so that I was ready to be
injured in many ways. Do you remember me sufficiently to realize the
possibilities?"
"I remember you perfectly, my dear," said her puzzled and charmed
hostess. "But I do not understand in the least why you think, or how you
can think, that I--"
Miss Parker interrupted her eagerly.
"Mrs. Burnham, you were a revelation to me. I had never before come into
close contact with a perfect lady. At first, I was afraid of you, which
was a new feeling to me, and in itself good for me; and then, for a
while, I hated you; I thought that you came between me and some of my
ambitions, I called them; now I know that they were utter follies."
There was a heightened color on the fair face, and for a moment her eyes
drooped. Then she laughed softly at her girlish follies.
"I recovered from them," she said briskly, "and enshrined you in my
heart; made you my idol, and, better than that, my ideal. I had
discovered from you what woman was meant to be.
"And, dear friend, I learned another lesson also, deeper and more
far-reaching than any other. Up to that time I had always thought of
religion as a very serious but somewhat tiresome experience that came to
the old, or the sick, after they had got all they could out of life. It
was Mr. Erskine Burnham who first showed me my utter misunderstanding of
the whole matter. I do not know that he understood at the time what he
was doing for me, but he gave me a hint of what Jesus Christ was, not
only to you, but to himself, a young man in the first flush of youthful
successes. I could not understand it at first, and it half vexed me by
its strangeness; but there came a time in my life, afterward, when I was
disappointed in all my plans, and unhappy. Then I thought of what had
been said to me about Christ, and, almost as an experiment, I tried it.
Mrs. Burnham, He stooped even to that low plane and revealed Himself to
me, and I have counted it all joy to love and serve Him ever since And
for this, too, I have to thank you and yours."
"My dear," said Mrs. Burnham, the tears shining in her eyes, "thank you;
thank you very much; it is beautiful, although I do not understand it in
the least--my part of it; I did nothing, _nothing_! I thought of it
afterward with deep regret; what I might have said, and did not."
"You did better than that," said Miss Parker, gently. "You _lived_. But
now, believe me, I did not intrude upon your leisure merely to talk
about myself. I wanted you to understand the possibility of saving a
girl's life to her, because--"
She broke off suddenly to introduce what seemed an entirely irrelevant
topic.
"Mrs. Burnham, I saw your daughter down town to-day, for a moment. I did
not know her, and should not have imagined it was she, if I had not been
told. She has changed very much since I saw her last."
"Were you acquainted with my daughter, Miss Parker? Is it Miss Parker,
now? I am taking a great deal for granted."
"Oh, yes; I am still 'Miss Parker'; and expect so to remain. No, I
cannot be said to have been acquainted with your daughter, though I knew
of her; knew a great deal about her, in fact, when she was a young girl.
They were the one great family in our little town, Mrs. Burnham--her
uncle's family, with whom she lived; they had a fine old place, three
miles from the station, and your daughter used to drive to and from the
train in what seemed to me then like royal state. I watched her on all
possible occasions and admired and envied her always, though I do not
suppose she ever heard of me in her life. She was not so very much older
than I, only three years, but I remember I was still counted as a little
girl when her sudden marriage took us all by surprise and overwhelmed me
with jealous envy."
"Pardon me," said Mrs. Burnham, sitting erect and looking not only
perplexed but troubled. "I am somewhat dazed by this sudden return to
the long ago, and I must be getting things mixed. I thought until a
moment ago that you were speaking of my son's wife."
"So I am, Mrs. Burnham. She was Irene Carpenter when I was at the
envious stage; and she became Irene Somerville in the autumn that I was
fourteen. I shall never forget the vision I had of her on her wedding
day. It was at the station and the train was late, so I had ample
opportunity to admire and make note of and sigh over the glories of her
bridal travelling outfit. Although I was only fourteen and accounted a
little girl by others, I by no means considered myself such; and the
wild and foolish visions I had already indulged with regard to my own
splendid future, make me blush even now to recall. Girls are so foolish,
Mrs. Burnham, and so easily led! If there were only always some wise,
sweet one at hand to lead them safely!"
Mrs. Burnham arose suddenly and closed both of the doors opening into
the hall. She knew that her son was in town, and that his wife had gone
by appointment to meet him there; but it seemed to her that such
extraordinary talk as this must be closed away from the hall through
which they must presently pass. What could this woman mean? She but
fourteen when Irene was married? Yet she was at least eighteen when she
visited her brother in the college town, and that was nearly fifteen
years ago! Irene a married woman seventeen or eighteen years ago! She
could see a line in that fateful foreign letter from her son as
distinctly as though she were reading it from the page, 'although she is
so young, barely twenty-six, she has,' etc. Of course there was some
absurd mistake. Irene could not have been more than eight or nine years
old at that time when some one whom Mamie Parker fancied was the same
person, was married.
"How old do you think my son's wife is?" she asked suddenly. A few
statistics, such as she could furnish, would help to clear up this
absurd blunder.
"Oh, I know exactly. I have a vivid recollection of the wonderful doings
there were in honor of her sixteenth birthday. It happens that our
birthdays fall on the very same month and day, the eleventh of November;
so that on the day she was sixteen, I was thirteen. I remember how
sorely I took to heart the contrast between the two celebrations. It was
before my father had made his successes, and we were much straitened at
the time."
Mrs. Burnham's pulses were athrob with her effort at self-control. It
was true that Irene's birthday fell on the eleventh of November. It had
been celebrated with much circumstance that very season; but instead of
its being her twenty-seventh, Miss Parker's story would make it her
thirty-seventh! That was absurd! And yet--how often had the thought
occurred to her that Irene looked much older than her years! Her maiden
name, too, was Carpenter, and her married name had been Somerville.
Still, there must have been a cousin, or some near relative of the same
name. It was an insult to the family to suppose for a moment that Irene
could deceive her husband as to her exact age!
And then, Miss Parker made a remark before which all else that she had
said sank into insignificance.
"Mrs. Erskine Burnham as I saw her to-day, seemed to me a very beautiful
woman, though she does not look in the least as she did when a girl. But
her daughter does. At seventeen, Maybelle is really the image of what
her mother was at that age. I wish so much that you could see her just
now, in all her girlish beauty."