"WHATSOEVER."
I AM not sure that I can explain to you the state of mind in which
Dorothy opened her eyes to the world on Monday morning. Unless you
have had a like experience you will not understand it. She had always
been a repressed rather than an indifferent girl. Under the apparently
apathetic exterior there had boiled a perfect volcano of unsettled
longing. She had not known what she wanted; she had not felt the least
hope of ever discovering how her thoughts had taken new shape; she
was in another world; she was another person; old things had passed
away; all things had become new. She stood before her bit of mirror,
and tried to arrange her heavy braids of hair as Louise wore hers;
and, meantime, she was in a very eager, very unsettled state of mind.
What was she to do? Where commence? The bare walls of her uninviting
little room had always seemed to shut her in, and she had always
hated them. Now it seemed to her that she had a right to get away
from them—get outside, somewhere, and do something. How was it all to
be accomplished? She looked with disdain upon her life; she felt her
years, thus far, to have been wasted ones. Now she was ready to make a
fresh start, only she could not imagine which stop to take first. You
see her danger. Many a young life has shipwrecked its usefulness on
just such rocks.
She threw down the covering of her bed, opened the window to let in the
crisp winter morning, smelled of the frosty, sunlighted air, and looked
abroad over her little world, shut in by hills and far-stretching
meadows and home-like farms, and wondered just what she should do; and
the sense of longing to get away from all this, whore there seemed
nothing to do, was the strongest feeling that possessed her, unless the
determination to accomplish it was a shade stronger.
She stepped out into the narrow little hall, and came face to face with
Louise, who was fresh and smiling in a fresh calico and ruffles.
"Louise," said Dorothy, a whole world of repressed eagerness in her
voice, "what am I going to do?"
"Ever so many things, I hope, dear," was Louise's prompt and cheery
reply, and she emphasized it with a kiss.
"Yes," said Dorothy, with shining eyes, "I mean to, oh, I mean to;
but—I don't know where to commence. What is there to do?—I mean for a
beginning—and how shall I get to the first thing?"
"I think," said Louise, with smiling mouth and eyes, and sweet, decided
voice, "I think, my dear, if I were you, I would begin with that black
kettle."
Then you should have seen the sudden changing of Dorothy's face.
Surprise, disappointment, intense mortification, all struggling with a
sense of being misunderstood, being wronged, spoke in her eyes and the
quiver of her lips.
"You think I am teasing you, Dorrie," and her new sister's voice was
very tender. "Nothing is further from my intention. I honestly mean
what I say. That very kettle which gives you Monday morning trouble
can help you to a first victory; and it is a symbol of all the other
things, small in themselves but amounting to much counted together,
that can be made to serve you to-day."
"I did mean to try to do right; but I wanted to do something for
Christ."
Dorothy's voice was subdued.
"And you think that Jesus Christ has nothing to do with the black
kettle, or the boiler, or the sink, or a dozen other things with which
you will come in contact to-day? That is such a mistake. Don't you
begin your Christian life by supposing that all these duties which fall
upon us in such numbers consume just so much time that must be counted
out, and with the piece that is left we are to serve him. Remember it
is he who said, 'Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye
do, do all to the glory of God.' Doesn't that 'whatsoever' cover the
pudding-kettle too, Dorrie?"
New light was struggling on Dorrie's face—just a glimmer, though,
shadowed by bewilderment.
"It sounds as though it ought to," she said slowly. "And yet I cannot
see how. What can my dish-washing have to do with serving Jesus? It
seems almost irreverent."
"It can't be irreverent, dear, because he said it himself. 'Diligent in
business, serving the Lord.' There is no period dividing these. I long
ago discovered that I could make a bed and sweep a room for his sake
as surely as I could speak a word for him. It is my joy, Dorrie, that
he has not separated any moment of my life from him, saying, 'Here, so
much drudgery each day, from which I must be entirely separated; then,
when that is done, you may serve me.' Work so divided would be drudgery
indeed. I bless him that I may constantly serve, whether I am wiping
the dust from my table or whether I am on my knees."
"Well, how?" said Dorothy. She had a habit of occasionally flashing
a question at one, a direct, firm way that meant business. The tone
of this one said, "This is all new to me, but I mean to get at it, I
intend to understand it and do it." "Louise, how could I be doing one
thing for Jesus while I was washing the pudding-kettle?"
"Did you ever hear of the young servant-girl who was converted, and
presented herself to the pastor desiring to be received into the
Church? He asked her what proof she had that she was a Christian, and
she answered, 'I sweeps the corners clean now.' I always thought that
the poor girl gave good evidence of a changed purpose. I don't know
whether she knew that verse, 'By their fruits ye shall know them;' but
it is true, Dorrie, with pudding-kettles as well as with everything
else."
I suppose that that simple little talk in that upper hall, on that
Monday morning, actually changed the whole current of Dorothy Morgan's
future life. Hitherto religion had had nothing whatever to do with
pudding-kettles, or Monday mornings in the kitchen, or with the
thousand little cares of everyday life. She had regarded them as so
many nuisances, to be pushed aside as much as possible for actual
work. I may as well frankly own to you that this young girl hated the
neatly-painted kitchen in which most of her life was spent. She hated
the dish-pan and the sink and the dishtowels with a perfect hatred. She
hated brooms and dusters and scrub-brushes, and all the paraphernalia
of household drudgery. It was literally drudgery to her.
Her new sister's wise eyes had singled out the thing which she perhaps
hated most with which to illustrate this germ of truth that she had
dropped into the soil of Dorothy's heart. An old-fashioned, heavy,
black kettle, which had been handed down as an heirloom in the Morgan
family for generations, and in which the favourite Sunday evening dish,
hasty-pudding, was invariably cooked. Simmering slowly over the fire
all Sunday afternoon, the pudding eaten at supper-time, the kettle
filled with water and left to soak over night, and appearing on the
scene with relentless regularity every Monday morning to be scraped and
scrubbed by Dorothy's disgusted fingers. Dorothy hated hasty-pudding.
Dorothy almost never washed that kettle with the degree of nicety that
Mother Morgan demanded. She almost invariably left little creases
of scorched pudding clinging to the sides, and a general greasiness
of appearance about it that was fruitful of many sharp words on the
mother's part and sullen defiance on Dorothy's. The idea that her
religion actually had to do with this pudding-kettle came to Dorothy
like a revelation. She went downstairs thinking it over. She realized
that the thought gave new interest to life. If the fruits of Christian
living were actually to be looked for in pudding-dishes, then what
place was there where they could not show? There was a dignity in
living, after all. It was not simple drudgery, and nothing else. She
thought of it when the foaming milk was brought in, John setting down
the pail with a thud, and saying,—
"Tend to that, and give us the pail; and don't be all day about it
either."
I shall have to admit that Dorothy was more or less accustomed to this
form of address, and yet that it always irritated her, and she was
apt to reply, "I shall be just as long as I please; if you want it
done quicker, do it yourself." Then would follow other cross or sullen
words, neither person meaning to the full the words used, yet both
feeling crosser when they parted. A sad state of living, truly, yet
it had actually become a habit with these two, so much so that John
looked at his sister in surprise when she lifted the pail silently, and
presently returned it to him, with no other remark than the statement
that Brownie was giving more milk than before. He made no answer to
this, and went away actually surprised at the quietness of the kitchen.
It is not my purpose to let you follow Dorothy closely through that day
in the kitchen.
Monday morning is a time, you will remember, that tries the souls
of many women. Mrs. Morgan was no exception. For some reason, best
known to herself, she was particularly tried this morning. Nothing
went right, and nothing could be made to go right. The fire at first
would not burn enough; and then it burned too much, and sent the suds
from the boiler sputtering over on the bright tins that Dorothy had
arranged on the hearth to dry; and Mrs. Morgan was betrayed into saying
that a child ten years old would have known better than to have put
tins in such a place. And, despite Dorothy's earnest care, the starch
presently lumped; and, worse than that, certain cloudy-looking streaks,
coming from no one knew where, mixed with its clearness, and the
mother affirmed that Dorothy ought to have her ears boxed for being so
careless. Try as the daughter would, the mother was not to be pleased
that morning. And Dorothy did struggle bravely. She made the smooth,
black sides of the hated pudding-kettle shine as they had not before on
any Monday morning on record. She scoured every knife, not forgetting
the miserable little one with a notch in the end and a rough place in
the handle, a knife that she had longed to throw away, and to which
the mother pertinaciously clung; she rubbed at the hated sink until it
shone like burnished steel; she rubbed at the dish-cloth, for which she
had a separate and special feeling of disgust, until it hung white and
dry on its line; she neglected no cup, or spoon, or shelf-corner, and
she moved with brisk step and swift fingers, only to hear the metallic
voice say, as it made its entrance from the outer kitchen where the
rubbing and rinsing were going on,—
"I wonder if you are going to be all day washing that handful of
dishes! I could have had them all put away and the kitchen swept an
hour ago. I can't see how I came to have such a dawdler as you!"
Dear me! Have you been so fortunate as never to have heard mothers
speak in this way? Good, honest mothers too. Mothers who would have
sat with unwinking eyes and patient hands, night after night, caring
for the wants, real and imaginary, of their sick daughters, who yet
will stab them with unthinking words all day long. Words not true; for
Mrs. Morgan knew perfectly well that she could not have finished all
this work an hour before. Yet be just to her; she actually believed,
energetic woman as she was, that she could have accomplished it all in
much less time. For the matter of that, I suppose she could. Certainly
Dorothy had not her mother's skill. The wonder was that the mother
should have expected young hands to be as deft as her own.
So the day wore on. A trying one at every turn to poor young Dorothy,
who had just enlisted, and was trying to buckle her armour on, and who
kept up a brave struggle, and went steadily from one duty to another,
doing not one of them as well as her mother could have done, but doing
each one of them as well as she could. Could an angel do more? A hard
day, both over the dishes and the dust and at the wash-tub; yet not by
any means so hard as it might have been but for that bit of talk in
the upper hall in the morning—a new idea that made a song in her heart
despite all the trials—so much of a song that occasionally it flowed
into words, and Dorothy's untrained voice was sweet and clear. She
rarely used it over her work, but on this Monday twice she sang clear
and loud,—
"Mine is an unchanging love;
Higher than the heights above."
Mrs. Morgan heard it—heard the tune; caught no words—wanted to hear
none. The spirit of song was not in her heart that morning. All she
said was,—
"Don't, for pity's sake, go to singing over the dish-pan. I always
thought that was a miserable, shiftless habit. There is a time for all
things."
And Dorothy, wondering much when was her time to sing, hushed her
voice and finished the melody in her heart. So it seemed to her, when
the day was done, that really it had been an unusually hard one. Many
steps added to the usual routine. A dish broken; a leaking pail sending
water all over the clean floor; John's muddy feet tracking through the
kitchen just after the mopping was done; John's hands—traces of them on
the clean towel; and then, by reason of trying to do two things at once
at the mother's bidding, she actually allowed the starch to scorch. So
that, in truth, when she sat down in the wooden-seated chair of her
own room for a moment's breathing space, before it was time to set the
table for tea, she looked back over the day with a little wondering
sigh. What had she done this day for the glory of God? How could he
possibly get any glory out of her honest efforts to do her whole duty
that day? True, she had resisted the temptation to slam the door hard,
to set down the tea-kettle with a bang, to say, in an undertone, "I
don't care whether it is clean or dirty," when her attention was called
to some undone task. Yet what had been the result? Mother certainly had
never been so hard to please.
"She has found more to blame to-day than she ever did in the days when
I only half tried," said poor Dorothy to herself.
So where was there any glory for the Master to be found in the day?
Even then came the mother's voice calling,—
"Well, are we to have any supper to-night? or must I get it, with all
the rest?"
Then Dorothy went down, and I am afraid that she set the cups and
saucers on the table with more force than was needed. Life looked full
of pin-pricks that hurt for the time being as much, or at least she
thought they did, as though they had been made with lancets.
What was the trouble with Mother Morgan?
I do want you to understand her. She did not understand herself,
to be sure; but that is no reason why you should not show more
discrimination. It had been an unusually trying day to her. Apart
from the pressure of domestic cares, which she, in common with many
other housekeepers, made always twice as heavy as they should be, her
nerves, or her heart, or her conscience, or all these combined, had
been stirred within her by the words of prayer in the twilight of the
Sabbath. Memory took her back to an old hillside farmhouse, surrounded
by fields less rich and fruitful than those near which she dwelt; to
an old arm-chair, in which an old man sat night and morning, by his
side another chair, in which an old woman sat night and morning; and
together they read out of the same Bible, together they knelt and
prayed, and this cold-faced mother had heard herself prayed for many
a time, not only by that old man, but by the gray-haired woman. And
they were her father and her mother, both sleeping now, side by side,
under the snow; and being dead, yet speaking—speaking loudly to her on
that very Monday. As she looked at Dorothy she felt as though she were
wronging her of a birthright. Dorothy had never heard her mother pray
as she had heard her old mother many a time. Dorothy's mother had never
said to her,—
"Dorothy, I want you to be a servant of God more than I want anything
else."
That was what leer mother had said to her when she was Dorothy's age,
and many a time afterward; and she was not a servant of God yet, and
her conscience reproached her; and her child had never heard such
words, and her heart reproached her. As truly as I write it, she pitied
Dorothy. Yet, can you understand that this very feeling actually made
her voice sharper and her words more impatient when she spoke to her?
The human heart unchanged is a very strange and contradictory thing.
But I want to tell you what Dorothy Morgan does not know.
Her mother did discover the immaculate condition of the pudding-kettle,
and said aloud—
"I declare, for once this is clean!"