PUZZLING QUESTIONS
"THIS is lovely!" said Maybelle, as she drew the curtains, and pushed
her sewing chair closer to Mrs. Burnham's. "Isn't it nice to be alone
together? Erskine wanted me to go with them to the rehearsal and act as
prompter, but I told him I was going to follow the promptings of my own
heart and stay with you, especially since his mother must also be away.
If we lived all alone in a dear little home, you and I, I could take
care of you all the time."
"I am afraid I should need something besides lovely rooms and pretty
sewing," Mrs. Burnham said laughingly.
"Yes, indeed! but I could do them; all sorts of things. I used to do
things for Mrs. Parker, and for papa when he would let me. I was always
coaxing papa to have a little bit of a house just large enough for us
two, and let me take charge of it; I knew I could; I could learn, you
know, and Mrs. Parker taught me a great many things; but he never would.
Poor papa! he didn't want a home; he said that he had one once, and he
wanted it to live in his memory forever. He meant that time--before
mamma died. Do you think it is like most men to be so constant to a
memory?"
"I do not know," Mrs. Burnham said, with an effort. She never knew what
to say to Maybelle when she was in this mood. It was impossible to join
in the talk about a dead mother, and not feel herself a hypocrite. But
Maybelle was already on another theme.
"Dear Mrs. Burnham, I am glad we are alone to-night. There are matters
about which I want to talk with you.
"Do you know, I have been treated always like a little girl? and it
seems to me that the time has come for me to begin to be a woman. I used
to try to get papa to tell me about his affairs, but he never would.
During those last dreadful days, all he would tell me was that he had
left everything to Aunt Mamie, and I was to do just as she said. But I
have a feeling that papa was poor; and that he just made enough by his
pictures to support us, perhaps not always that; I have thought lately
that perhaps a great many of my nice things and--and opportunities, came
through Aunt Mamie. Madame Sternheim has dropped hints more than once
that have made me believe so. And now,--don't you think I ought to know
all about it, and be making plans to support myself?"
"My dear!" was all that Ruth could say, in an almost dismayed tone.
Maybelle's future and her connection with it were more puzzling to
Erskine Burnham's mother than they could possibly be to this child. The
earnest young voice went on:--
"I wrote to Aunt Mamie just how I felt, but she cannot see it as I do.
She says that she is alone in the world, that money is the only thing
she has enough of, and that papa gave me to her to take care of. She
does not understand why I should not be quite happy over such an
arrangement; but dear Mrs. Burnham, I am sure you do. It is not that I
do not love to belong to her, I mean to, always; and sometimes I cannot
sleep for the joy of thinking that she loves me so dearly; I can't think
why she does. But don't you think that a self-respecting girl wants to
support herself just as soon as she possibly can, unless she has a
father and mother who can do it as well as not, and want to?"
This also was a sore and embarrassing phase of the subject to poor Ruth.
Oh, to be able to say to her that her mother, her own mother, was in a
position to cover for her every need that money could supply and that
the man who now stood in the place of father to her would insist upon so
much tardy justice--if he knew of her existence! Yet Ruth's common sense
told her that even though there were no terrible reasons for silence for
the sake of others, the hardest blow that could be given to a girl like
Maybelle would be to destroy her beautiful illusions of her mother with
the base truth. That mother of sacred memory, alive, well, living in
ease and luxury and ignoring her as utterly as though she had never been
born! Could such a cruel blow as that be borne! Yet any words that this
much-tried woman could arrange in reply to the appeal just made, seemed
false. She hesitated, and knew that her face was flushing under the
girl's earnest gaze. At last, she said the only words there seemed left
for her to say.
"My dear, I am a little bit on both sides of this question. I certainly
sympathize with your view, and on general principles should agree with
you. But the circumstances are peculiar this time." And as she said the
words she felt like a hypocrite; how peculiar they were, that poor child
had not the least idea! "Miss Parker is, as she says, practically alone
in the world. Her brother's marriage is a coming event; then he will not
need her any more, in the special sense in which she can help him now,
and he does not need her money, for he has plenty of his own. Their
father discovered a gold mine, you know, as well as one of another
metal, almost more valuable than gold. So, if Miss Parker wants to spend
a little of her surplus money upon you, because she loves you, ought you
not to please her in this, and be governed by her advice, at least for
the present? When you are older, and especially when Miss Parker returns
home, which I think she will do before very long, probably some plans
can be made that will please you both. Cannot you wait, dear?"
Maybelle sat thoughtful for a moment, then she drew a long sigh.
"I suppose I must," she said. "Indeed, there is no other way for me at
present; only--I am to graduate, you know, in a few days, and I
thought--but of course I ought not, contrary to Aunt Mamie's wishes. But
I do not know what she wants me to do for the summer. She has not seemed
to remember it. I have always spent the summer vacations with her."
"You are not to forecast anxieties about the summer," Mrs. Burnham said,
trying to make her voice sound cheery and free from all anxiety, though
it struck her like a physical pain, the fact that she could not say to
this girl who was growing dearer to her with every passing day, "Come
home with me, child, of course;" that she could never invite her to her
home, and could never explain to her why she must not. She must simply
be silent and trust to Maybelle's shrewd guessing that there were
reasons why this new friend of hers did not feel at home in her own
home, and was not at liberty to take her friends there.
It was true that summer was upon them, and the air of the boarding
school was athrob with the plans of eager girls getting ready for the
home-going. Maybelle was almost the only one who had not some sort of
home to plan for. And yet Maybelle was to graduate! If only Mrs. Burnham
could say to her, "Come, we will make home together, and you may do for
me all that your heart prompts." There were hours when she was tempted
to do something of the kind. But her words to Maybelle revealed none of
her pain.
"There are lovely schemes maturing for the summer. 'Good times,' my
dear, and unlike the illustrious Gloriana McQuirk you are 'in 'em.' I am
not to divulge them before the appointed hour, but I empower you to say
to those envious schoolgirls that your summer plans are a delicious
secret even from yourself, being locked in the heart of that blessed
little schemer, Mrs. Roberts."
Maybelle's face was still serious, but, after a moment, she laughed
softly.
"I am the strangest girl!" she said. "I don't think there can be another
girl in the world who lives my kind of life. I have not what Madame
Sternheim calls a 'relative' this side heaven to care what becomes of
me, and I have the dearest company of people, on whom, according to
Madame again, I have not the shadow of a claim, who never weary of doing
for me! What more, for instance, could you and that dear Mrs. Roberts
and those girls and boys of hers do for me, even though I had that
potent charm, some of 'the same blood' in my veins? And yet, do you
know, selfish creature that I am, the Madame has so instilled her
principles into me that if I only had a sister or brother of my very own
to love and care for, I think I could give up joyfully all other
luxuries."
"Are you not forgetting your aunts in England, my dear?"
Maybelle shook her head and spoke resolutely. "I want to forget them; I
do not claim them as aunts of mine." Then, in response to Ruth's look
that might have meant reproach, she added:--
"They did not like mamma, Mrs. Burnham, and they were not good to her.
Papa told me as much as that. He said she was young, and away from all
her home friends and unhappy, and they led her a hard life. Papa could
not help feeling hard toward them for that. It was the reason why he
never went to England again after Grandmother died. He took me to see
Grandmother, did you know that? But she did not seem like a grandmother.
She wasn't _dear_, you know, and sweet, like the grandmothers in
stories, and in real life too,--some of the girls at school have lovely
ones,--but mine was stately and cold. She and my two aunts used to talk
about mamma right before me.
"'She looks like _her_,' one of them said, with a strong emphasis on the
'her' a contemptuous emphasis it seemed to me. And the other aunt
replied, 'But she isn't like her in disposition, apparently.' Then
Grandmother said quickly, 'Heaven forbid!' Could one love people who
talked in that way before a child about her dear dead mother? Not that
they meant me to understand," she added thoughtfully, after a moment, as
one who must do full justice even to one's enemies. "I don't think they
did; they were the kind of people who think that a child is deaf and
blind and stupid. I understood hints and shrugs of the shoulders and
curls of the lip and exclamations a great deal better than they thought
I did. I have no relatives, dear Mrs. Burnham, that I care for, but I
have friends whom I love with every bit of me. May I ask just one little
question?--and you need not answer it if it is part of the secret. Do
the summer plans include you? Because if they don't, and there could be
a way for me to have you for just a little piece of the summer, I--"
The tremble in her voice had grown so marked that she stopped abruptly.
She looked up, after a minute, with her eyes swimming in tears, and said
with a queer little attempt at a laugh:--
"I'm not going to cry, Mrs. Burnham, don't you be afraid. And I'm not
going to be selfish and babyish; I mean to be just as glad and happy and
grateful as I can be, even though you have to be away from me all summer
long."
It was just at that moment that Ruth resolved upon yielding to Flossy's
entreaties and spending at least part of the summer with them at their
new seaside cottage, which was to be a surprise to all the young people,
Maybelle included. Erskine expected her at home, but what were Erskine's
needs compared to this deserted child's?--and the child clung to her.
But she would not tell Maybelle, not just yet; so she spoke lightly,
commending the child's resolve to count her mercies, and then
admonishing her that she had better also count her stitches, as she was
making a mistake in the row she was crocheting.
There was a thoughtful silence on the part of both for a few minutes,
then Maybelle spoke again in what Mrs. Burnham called her grown-up tone.
"There is one strange question I have wanted to ask of somebody for a
long time. I tried to talk to Erskine about it without letting him know
that it was really a question in my mind; but Erskine is like all boys,
very wise and very positive, without being always able to give a reason
for what he believes."
"Which means," said Ruth, smiling, "that Erskine did not agree with
you."
"Well, he didn't," and Maybelle stopped to laugh at herself; then spoke
earnestly.
"That is, so far as I may be said to have an opinion on that subject; I
am not sure what I think, or at least I do not know why I think it. Mrs.
Burnham, do Christian people ever pray for their dead? And if they do
not, why not? Does the Bible say we must not? I have tried to find
something in the Bible about it, and I could not."
Ruth was much startled. This was very different from the question she
had expected. The young people argued vigorously upon every live
question of the day, not excepting interesting theological points, but
this was out of the regular line. While she considered just how best to
answer it, Maybelle explained.
"I suppose that seems to you a strange question; young people do not
often discuss such things, I suppose; but it interests me very much
because I have such a longing, sometimes, to pray for mamma, that I can
hardly keep her name from my lips; yet I thought perhaps it was wrong. I
began to have that feeling almost as soon as Aunt Mamie taught me to
pray. I had said my prayers before that time; papa taught me to say:
'Now I lay me down to sleep,' and 'Bless thy little lamb to-night.' I
used to like to say them, but I did not understand what praying really
was, until long after that time. But when Aunt Mamie made it plain to
me, and my heart took hold of the fact that I was really talking with
God, and that I could talk to Him about papa, and in that way help him,
I cannot tell you how glad I was! And then, very soon, I wanted to put
mamma in."
Nothing that the girl had said had ever startled Ruth as much as this.
Was there a woman living who needed prayer more than this child's
mother? Yet how could she counsel her daughter to pray for her?