"It's never 'good' of me to come to talk with you, Letty!" And the
minister's wife sank into a comfortable seat and took off her
rigolette. "Enough virtue has gone out of me to-day to Christianize an
entire heathen nation! Oh! how I wish Luther would go and preach to a
tribe of cannibals somewhere, and make me superintendent of the
Sabbath-School! How I should like to deal, just for a change, with
some simple problem like the undesirability and indigestibility
involved in devouring your next-door neighbor! Now I pass my life in
saying, 'Love your neighbor as yourself'; which is far more difficult
than to say, 'Don't _eat_ your neighbor, it's such a disgusting
habit,--and wrong besides,'--though I dare say they do it half the
time because the market is bad. The first thing I'd do would be to get
my cannibals to raise sheep. If they ate more mutton, they wouldn't
eat so many missionaries."
Letty laughed. "You're so funny, Reba dear, and I was so sad before
you came in. Don't let the minister take you to the cannibals until
after I die!"
"No danger!--Letty, do you remember I told you I'd been trying my hand
on some verses for a Christmas card?"
"Yes; have you sent them anywhere?"
"Not yet. I couldn't think of the right decoration and color scheme
and was afraid to trust it all to the publishers. Now I've found just
what I need for one of them, and you gave it to me, Letty!"
"I?"
"Yes, you; to-night, as I came down the road. The house looked so
quaint, backed by the dark cedars, and the moon and the snow made
everything dazzling. I could see the firelight through the open
window, the Hessian soldier andirons, your mother's portrait, the
children asleep in the next room, and you, wrapped in your cape
waiting or watching for something or somebody."
"I wasn't watching or waiting! I was dreaming," said Letty hurriedly.
"You looked as if you were watching, anyway, and I thought if I were
painting the picture I would call it 'Expectancy,' or 'The Vigil,' or
'Sentry Duty.' However, when I make you into a card, Letty, nobody
will know what the figure at the window means, till they read my
verses."
"I'll give you the house, the room, the andirons, and even mother's
portrait, but you don't mean that you want to put _me_ on the card?"
And Letty turned like a startled deer as she rose and brushed a spark
from the hearth-rug.
"No, not the whole of you, of course, though I'm not clever enough to
get a likeness even if I wished. I merely want to make a color sketch
of your red-brown cape, your hair that matches it, your ear, an inch
of cheek, and the eyelashes of one eye, if you please, ma'am."
"That doesn't sound quite so terrifying." And Letty looked more
manageable.
"Nobody'll ever know that a real person sat at a real window and that
I saw her there; but when I send the card with a finished picture, and
my verses beautifully lettered on it, the printing people will be more
likely to accept it."
"And if they do, shall I have a dozen to give to my Bible-class?"
asked Letty in a wheedling voice.
"You shall have more than that! I'm willing to divide my magnificent
profits with you. You will have furnished the picture and I the
verses. It's wonderful, Letty,--it's providential! You just _are_ a
Christmas card to-night! It seems so strange that you even put the
lighted candle in the window when you never heard my verse. The candle
caught my eye first, and I remembered the Christmas customs we studied
for the church festival,--the light to guide the Christ Child as he
walks through the dark streets on the Eve of Mary."
"Yes, I thought of that," said Letty, flushing a little. "I put the
candle there first so that the house shouldn't be all dark when the
Pophams went by to choir-meeting, and just then I--I remembered, and
was glad I did it!"
"These are my verses, Letty." And Reba's voice was soft as she turned
her face away and looked at the flames mounting upward in the
chimney:--
My door is on the latch to-night,
The hearth fire is aglow.
I seem to hear swift passing feet,--
The Christ Child in the snow.
My heart is open wide to-night
For stranger, kith or kin.
I would not bar a single door
Where Love might enter in!
There was a moment's silence and Letty broke it. "It means the sort of
love the Christ Child brings, with peace and good-will in it. I'm glad
to be a part of that card, Reba, so long as nobody knows me, and--"
Here she made an impetuous movement and, covering her eyes with her
hands, burst into a despairing flood of confidence, the words crowding
each other and tumbling out of her mouth as if they feared to be
stopped.
"After I put the candle on the table ... I could not rest for thinking ...
I wasn't ready in my soul to light the Christ Child on his way ... I was
bitter and unresigned ... It is three years to-night since the children
were born ... and each year I have hoped and waited and waited and hoped,
thinking that David might remember. David! my brother, their father! Then
the fire on the hearth, the moon and the snow quieted me, and I felt that I
wanted to open the door, just a little. No one will notice that it's ajar,
I thought, but there's a touch of welcome in it, anyway. And after a few
minutes I said to myself: 'It's no use, David won't come; but I'm glad the
firelight shines on mother's picture, for he loved mother, and if she
hadn't died when he was scarcely more than a boy, things might have been
different.... The reason I opened the bedroom door--something I never do
when the babies are asleep--was because I needed a sight of their faces to
reconcile me to my duty and take the resentment out of my heart ... and it
did flow out, Reba,--out into the stillness. It is so dazzling white
outside, I couldn't bear my heart to be shrouded in gloom!"
"Poor Letty!" And Mrs. Larrabee furtively wiped away a tear. "How long
since you have heard? I didn't dare ask."
"Not a word, not a line for nearly three months, and for the half-year
before that it was nothing but a note, sometimes with a five-dollar
bill enclosed. David seems to think it the natural thing for me to
look after his children; as if there could be no question of any life
of my own."
"You began wrong, Letty. You were born a prop and you've been propping
somebody ever since."
"I've done nothing but my plain duty. When my mother died there was my
stepfather to nurse, but I was young and strong; I didn't mind; and he
wasn't a burden long, poor father. Then, after four years came the
shock of David's reckless marriage. When he asked if he might bring
that girl here until her time of trial was over, it seemed to me I
could never endure it! But there were only two of us left, David and
I; I thought of mother and said yes."
"I remember, Letty; I had come to Beulah then."
"Yes, and you know what Eva was. How David, how anybody, could have
loved her, I cannot think! Well, he brought her, and you know how it
turned out. David never saw her alive again, nor ever saw his babies
after they were three days old. Still, what can you expect of a father
who is barely twenty-one?"
"If he's old enough to have children, he's old enough to notice them,"
said Mrs. Larrabee with her accustomed spirit. "Somebody ought to jog
his sense of responsibility. It's wrong for women to assume men's
burdens beyond a certain point; it only makes them more selfish. If
you only knew where David is, you ought to bundle the children up and
express them to his address. Not a word of explanation or apology;
simply tie a tag on them, saying, 'Here's your Twins!'"
"But I love the babies," said Letty smiling through her tears, "and
David may not be in a position to keep them."
"Then he shouldn't have had them," retorted Reba promptly; "especially
not two of them. There's such a thing as a man's being too lavish with
babies when he has no intention of doing anything for them but bring
them into the world. If you had a living income, it would be one
thing, but it makes me burn to have you stitching on coats to feed and
clothe your half-brother's children!"
"Perhaps it doesn't make any difference--now!" sighed Letty, pushing
back her hair with an abstracted gesture. "I gave up a good deal for
the darlings once, but that's past and gone. Now, after all, they're
the only life I have, and I'd rather make coats for them than for
myself."
Letty Boynton had never said so much as this to Mrs. Larrabee in the
three years of their friendship, and on her way back to the parsonage,
the minister's wife puzzled a little over the look in Letty's face
when she said, "David seemed to think there could be no question of
any life of my own"; and again, "I gave up a good deal for the
darlings once!"
"Luther," she said to the minister, when the hymns had been chosen,
the sermon pronounced excellent, and they were toasting their toes
over the sitting-room fire,--"Luther, do you suppose there ever was
anything between Letty Boynton and your Dick?"
"No," he answered reflectively, "I don't think so. Dick always admired
Letty and went to the house a great deal, but I imagine that was
chiefly for David's sake, for they were as like as peas in a pod in
the matter of mischief. If there had been more than friendship between
Dick and Letty, Dick would never have gone away from Beulah, or if he
had gone, he surely would have come back to see how Letty fared. A
fellow yearns for news of the girl he loves even when he is content to
let silence reign between him and his old father.--What makes you
think there was anything particular, Reba?"
"What makes anybody think anything!--I wonder why some people are
born props, and others leaners or twiners? I believe the very
nursing-bottle leaned heavily against Letty when she lay on her infant
pillow. I didn't know her when she was a child, but I believe that
when she was eight all the other children of three and five in the
village looked to her for support and guidance!"
"It's a great vocation--that of being a prop," smiled the minister, as
he peeled a red Baldwin apple, carefully preserving the spiral and
eating it first.
"I suppose the wobbly vine thinks it's grand to be a stout trellis
when it needs one to climb on, but doesn't the trellis ever want to
twine, I wonder?" And Reba's tone was doubtful.
"Even the trellis leans against the house, Reba."
"Well, Letty never gets a chance either to lean or to twine! Her
family, her friends, her acquaintances, even the stranger within her
gates, will pass trees, barber poles, telephone and telegraph poles,
convenient corners of buildings, fence posts, ladders, and lightning
rods for the sake of winding their weakness around her strength. When
she sits down from sheer exhaustion, they come and prop themselves
against her back. If she goes to bed, they climb up on the footboard,
hang a drooping head, and look her wistfully in the eye for sympathy.
Prop on, prop ever, seems to be the underlying law of the universe!"
"Poor Reba! She is talking of Letty and thinking of herself!" And the
minister's eye twinkled.
"Well, a little!" admitted his wife; "but I'm only a village prop, not
a family one. Where you are concerned"--and she administered an
affectionate pat to his cheek as she rose from her chair--"I'm a
trellis that leans against a rock!"
[Illustration]