A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR.
Mr. Ingraham, the baker, did not die that day when the doctor's
chaise stood at the door, and all the children in the village were
sent in for brick loaves. He was only struck down helpless; to lie
there and be waited on; to linger, and wonder why he lingered; to
feel himself in the way, and a burden; to get used to all this, and
submit to it, and before he died to see that it had been all right.
The bakery lease had yet two years to run. It might have been sold
out, but that would have involved a breaking up and a move, which
Ingraham himself was not fit to bear, and his wife and daughters
were not willing to think of yet.
Rachel quietly said,--as soon as her father was so far restored and
comfortable that he could think and speak of things with them,--
"I can go on with the bakehouse. I know how. The men will all stay.
I spoke to them Saturday night."
Ray kept the accounts, and when Saturday night came, the first after
the misfortune fell upon them, she called all the journeymen into
the little bakery office, where she sat upon the high stool at her
father's desk. She gave each his week's wages, asking each one, as
he signed his name in receipt, to wait a minute. Then she told them
all, that she meant, if her father consented, to keep on with the
business.
"He may get well," she said. "Will you all stand by and help me?"
"'Deed and we wull," said Irish Martin, the newest, the smallest,
and the stupidest--if a quick heart and a willing will can be
stupid--of them all. Some stupidity is only brightness not properly
hitched on.
Ray found that she had to go on making brick loaves, however. She
must keep her men; she could not expect to train them all to new
ways; she must not make radical experiments in this trust-work, done
for her father, to hold things as they were for him. Brick loaves,
family loaves, rolls, brown bread, crackers, cookies, these had to
be made as the journeymen knew how; as bakers' men had made them
ever since and before Mother Goose wrote the dear old pat-a-cake
rhyme.
Ray wondered why, when everybody liked home bread and home cake,--if
they could stop to make them and knew how,--home bread and cake
could not be made in big bakehouse ovens also, and by the quantity.
She thought this was one of the things women might be able to do
better than men; one of the bits of world business that women forced
to work outside of homes might accomplish. Once, men had been
necessary for the big, heavy, multiplied labor; now, there was
machinery to help, for kneading, for rolling; there was steam for
baking, even; there were no longer the great caverns to be filled
with fire-wood, and cleared by brawny, seasoned arms, when the
breath of them was like the breath of the furnace seven times
heated, in which walked Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
Ray had often thoughts to herself; thoughts here and there, that
touched from fresh sides the great agitations of the day, which she
felt instinctively were beginning wrong and foremost. "I _will_
work; I _will_ speak," cry the women. Very well; what hinders, if
you have anything really to do, really to say? Opportunities are
widening in the very nature and development of things; they are
showing themselves at many a turn; but they give definite business,
here and there; they quiet down those who take real hold. Outcry is
no business; that is why the idle women take to it, and will do
nothing else. It is not they who are moving the world forward to the
clear sun-rising of the good day that must shine. People whose
shoulders are at steady, small, unnoticed wheels are doing that.
Dot stayed in the house and helped her mother. She had a
sewing-machine also, and she took in work from the neighbors, and
from ladies like Miss Euphrasia Kirkbright, and Mrs. Greenleaf, and
Mrs. Farland, who drove over to bring it from Roxeter, and East
Mills, and River Point.
"Why don't you call and see me?" Sylvie Argenter asked one day, when
she had walked over to the shop with a small basket, in which to put
brown bread, little fine rolls for her mother, and some sugar
cookies. Ray and Dot were both there. Dot was sitting with her
sewing, putting in finishing stitches, button-holes, and the like.
She was behind the counter, ready to mind the calls. Ray had come in
to see what was wanting of fresh supplies from the bakehouse.
"I've been expecting you ever since we moved into the Turn. Ain't I
to have any neighbors?"
The little court-way behind the Bank had come to be called the Turn;
Sylvie took the name as she found it; as it named itself to her also
in the first place, before she knew that others called it so. She
liked it; it was one of those names that tell just what a thing is;
that have made English nomenclature of places, in the old, original
land above all, so quaint and full of pleasant home expression.
Dot looked up in surprise. It had never entered her head that the
Argenters would expect them to call; and truly, the Argenters, in
the plural, were very far indeed from any such imagination.
Ray took it more quietly and coolly.
"We are always very busy, since my father has been sick," she said.
"We hardly go to see our old friends. But if you would like it, we
will try and come, some day."
"I want you to," said Sylvie. "But I don't want you to _call_,
though I said so. I want you to come right in and _see_ me. I never
could bear calls, and I don't mean ever to begin with them again."
The Highfords had come and "called," in the carriage, with pearl-kid
gloves and long-tailed carriage dresses; called in such a way that
Sylvie knew they would probably never call again. It was a last
shading off of the old acquaintance; a decent remembrance of them in
their low estate, just not to be snobbish on the vulgar face of it;
a visit that had sent her mother to bed with a mortified and
exasperated headache, and taken away her slight appetite for the
delicate little "tea" that Sylvie brought up to her on a tray.
The Ingrahams saw she really meant it, and they came in one evening
at first, when they were walking by, and Sylvie sat alone, with a
book, in the twilight, on the corner piazza. Her mother had been
there; her easy-chair stood beside the open window, but she had gone
in and lain down upon the sofa. Mrs. Argenter had drooped,
physically, ever since the grief and change. It depends upon what
one's life is, and where is the spring of it, and what it feeds
upon, how one rallies from a shock of any sort. The ozone had been
taken out of her atmosphere. There was nothing in all the sweet
sunshine of generous days, or the rest of calm-brooding nights, to
restore her, or to belong to her any more. She had nothing to
breathe. She had nothing to grow to, or to put herself in rapport
with. She was out of relation with all the great, full world.
"Whom did you have there?" she asked Sylvie, when Ray and Dot were
gone, and she came in to see if her mother would like anything.
"The Ingrahams, mother; our neighbors, you know; they are nice
girls; I like them. And they were very kind to me the day of my
accident, you remember. I called first, you see! And besides," she
added, loving the whole truth, "I told them the other morning I
should like them to come."
"I don't suppose it makes any difference," Mrs. Argenter answered,
listlessly, turning her head away upon the sofa cushion.
"It makes the difference, Amata," said Sylvie, with a bright
gentleness, and touching her mother's pretty hair with a tender
finger, "that I shall be a great deal happier and better to know
such girls; people we have got to live amongst, and ought to live a
little like. You can't think how pleasant it was to talk with them.
All my life it has seemed as if I never really got hold of people."
"You certainly forget the Sherretts."
"No, I don't. But I never got hold of them much while I was just
edging alongside. I think some people grasp hands the better for a
little space to reach across. You mayn't be born quite in the
purple, as Susan Nipper would say, but it isn't any reason you
should try to pinch yourself black and blue. I've got all over it,
and I like the russet a great deal better. I wish you could."
"I can't begin again," said Mrs. Argenter. "My life is torn up by
the roots, and there is the end of it."
It was true. Sylvie felt that it was so, as her mother spoke, and
she reproached herself for her own light content. How could her
mother make intimacy with Mrs. Knoxwell, the old blacksmith's wife,
or Mrs. Pevear, the carriage-painter's? Or even good, homely Mrs.
Ingraham, over the bake-shop? It is so much easier for girls to come
together; girls of this day, especially, who in all classes get so
much more of the same things than their mothers did.
Sylvie, authorized by this feeble acquiescence in what made "no
difference," went on with her intention of having Ray Ingraham for
her intimate friend. She spent many an hour, as the summer wore
away, at the time in the afternoon when Mrs. Argenter was always
lying down, in the pleasant bedroom over the shop, that looked out
under the elm-tree. This was Ray Ingraham's leisure also; the bread
carts did not come in till tea time, with their returns and orders;
the day's second baking was in the oven; she had an hour or two of
quiet between the noon business and the night; then she was always
glad to see Sylvie Argenter come down the street with her little
purple straw work-basket swinging from her forefinger, or a book in
her hand. Sylvie and Ray read new books together from the Dorbury
library, and old ones from Mrs. Argenter's book-shelves. Dot was not
so often with them; her leisure was given more to her flower beds,
where all sorts of blooms,--bright petunias and verbenas, delicate
sweet peas and golden lantanas, scarlet bouvardias and snowy
deutzias, fairy, fragrant jessamines, white and crimson and
rose-tinted fuchsias with their purple hearts, and pansies, poised
on their light stems, in every rich color, like beautiful winged
things half alighted in a great fluttering flock,--made a glory
and a sweetness in the modest patch of ground between the
grape-trellised wall of the house-end and the bricks of the bakery,
against which grew, appropriately enough, some strings of hop vines.
"I think it is just the nicest place in the world," said Sylvie, in
her girlish, unqualified speech, as they all stood there one
evening, while Dot was cutting a bouquet for Sylvie's mother.
"People that set out to have everything beautiful, get the same
things over and over; graveled drives and a smooth lawn, and trees
put into groups tidily, and circles and baskets of flowers, and a
view, perhaps, of a village away off, or a piece of the harbor, or a
peep at the hills. But you are right down _amongst_ such niceness!
There's the river, close by; you can hear it all night, tumbling
along behind the mills and the houses; there are the woods just down
the lane beside the bakehouse; and here is the door-stone and the
shady trellis, and the yard crowded full of flowers, as if they had
all come because they wanted to, and knew they should have a good
time, like a real country party, instead of standing off in separate
properness, as people do who 'go into society.' And the new bread
smells so sweet! I think it's what-for and because that make it so
much better. Somebody came here to _do_ something; and the rest
was, and happened, and grew. I can't bear things fixed up to be
exquisite!"
"That is the real doctrine of the kingdom of heaven," said a sweet,
cheery voice behind them. They all turned round; Miss Euphrasia
Kirkbright stood upon the door-stone.
"Being and doing. Then the surrounding is born out of the living.
The Lord, up there, lets the saints make their own glory."
"Then you don't think the golden streets are all paved hard,
beforehand?" said Sylvie. She understood Miss Euphrasia, and chimed
quickly into her key. She had had talks with her before this, and
she liked them.
"No more than that," said Miss Kirkbright, pointing to the golden
flush under the soft, piling clouds in the west, that showed in
glimpses beneath the arches of the trees and across the openings
behind the village buildings. "'New every morning, and fresh every
evening.' Doesn't He show us how it is, every day's work that He
himself begins and ends?"
"Do you think we shall ever live like that?" asked Ray Ingraham,
perceiving.
"'Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun, in the kingdom of
their Father,'" repeated Miss Euphrasia. "And the shining of the sun
makes his worlds around him, doesn't it? We shall create outside of
us whatever is in us. We do it now, more than we know. We shall find
it all, by and by, ready,--whatever we think we have missed; the
building not made with hands."
"I'm afraid we shall find ourselves in queer places, some of us,"
said Dot. Dot had a way of putting little round, practical periods
to things. She did not do it with intent to be smart, or
epigrammatic. She simply announced her own most obvious conclusion.
"'The first last, and the last first.' That is a part of the same
thing. The rich man and Lazarus; knowing as we are known; being
clothed upon; unclothed and not found naked; the wedding garment.
You cannot touch one link of spiritual fact, without drawing a whole
chain after it. Some other time, laying hold somewhere else, the
same sayings will be brought to mind again, to confirm the new
thought. It is all alive, breathing; spirit in atoms, given to move
and crystallize to whatever central magnetism, always showing some
fresh phase of what is one and everlasting."
Miss Euphrasia could no more help talking so--given the right
circumstances to draw her forth--than she could help breathing. Her
whole nature was fluid to the truth, as the atoms she spoke of.
Talking with her, you saw, as in a divine kaleidoscope, the gleams
and shiftings and combinings of heavenly and internal things; shown
in simplest movings and relations of most real and every day
experience and incident.
But she never went on--and "went over," exhorting. She did not
believe in _discourses_, she said, even from the pulpit--very much.
She believed in a _sermon_, and letting it go. And a sermon is just
a word; as the Word gives itself, in some fresh manna-particle, to
any soul.
So when the girls stood silent, as girls will, not knowing how to
break a pause that has come upon such speaking, she broke it
herself, with a very simple question; a question of mere little
business that she had come to ask Dot.
"Were the little under-kerchiefs done?"
It was just the same sweet, cheery tone; she dropped nothing, she
took up nothing, turning from the inward to the outside. It was all
one quiet, harmonious sense of wholeness; living, and expression of
living. That was what made Miss Euphrasia's "words" chord so
pleasantly, always, without any jar, upon whatever string was being
played; and the impulse and echo of them to run on through the music
afterward, as one clear bell-stroke marking an accent, will seem to
send its lingering impression through the unaccented measures
following.
Dot went into the house and got the things; fine cambric
neck-covers, frilled around the throat with delicate lace. She
folded them small, and put them in a soft paper. Miss Kirkbright
took the parcel, and paid Dot the money for her work; she gave her
three dollars. Then she said to Sylvie,--
"Will you walk as far as the car corner with me? I have missed a
real call that I meant to have had with you. I have been to your
house."
"Did you see mother?" Sylvie asked, as they walked on, having said
good-by, and passed out through the shop.
"No: Sabina said she was lying down, and I would not have her
disturbed. I came partly to tell you a little news. Amy is engaged
to Mr. Robert Truesdaile. They will be married in the fall, and go
out to England. He has relatives there; his mother's family. There
is an uncle living near Manchester; a large cotton manufacturer; he
would like to take his nephew into the business; he has a great
desire to get him there and make an Englishman of him."
"Does Amy like it? I mean, going to England? I am ever so glad for
her being so happy."
"Yes, she likes it. At any rate she likes, as we all do, the new
pleasant beginnings. We are all made to like fresh corners to turn,
unless they seem very dark ones, or unless we have grown very old
and tired, which _I_ think there is never any need of doing."
"How busy she will be!" was Sylvie's next remark, made after a pause
in which she realized to herself the news, and received also a
little suggestion from it.
"Yes, pretty busy. But such preparations are made easily in these
days."
"Won't there be ever so many little things of that sort to be
done?" asked Sylvie, signifying the parcel which Miss Kirkbright
held lightly in her fingers. "I wish I could do some of them. I
mean,"--she gathered herself up bravely to say,--"I should like
dearly to do _anything_ for Amy; but I have thought it would be a
good plan--if I could--to do something like that for the sake of
earning; as Dot Ingraham does."
"Do you not have quite enough money, my dear?" asked Miss
Kirkbright, in her kindly direct way that could never hurt.
"Not quite. At least, it don't seem to go very far. There are always
things that we didn't expect. And things count up so at the
grocer's. And a little nice meat every day,--which we _have_ to
have,--turns out so very expensive. And Sabina's wages--and mother's
wine--and cream--and fresh eggs,--I get so worried when the bills
come in!"
Sylvie's voice trembled with the effort and excitement of telling
her money and housekeeping troubles.
"Sometimes I think we ought to have a cheaper girl; but I have just
as much as I can do,--of those kinds of work,--and a poor girl would
waste everything if I left her to go on. And I don't know much,
myself. If Sabina were to go,--and she will next spring,--I am
afraid it would turn out that we should have to keep two."
For all Sylvie's little "afternoons out," it was very certain that
she, and Sabina also, did have their hands full at home. It is
wonderful how much work one person, who _does_ none of it and who
must live fastidiously, can make in a small household. From Mrs.
Argenter's hot water, and large bath, and late breakfast in the
morning to her glass of milk at nine o'clock at night, which she
never _could_ remember to carry up herself from the tea-table,--she
needed one person constantly to look after her individual wants. And
she couldn't help it, poor lady, either; that is the worst of it;
one gets so as not to be able to help things; "it was the shape of
her head," Sabina said, in a phrase she had learned of the
cabinet-maker.
"You shall have anything you can do; just as Dot does," said Miss
Euphrasia. "And Amy will like it all the better for your doing. You
can put the love into the work, as much as we shall into the pay."
Was there ever anybody who handled the bare facts of life so
graciously as this Miss Euphrasia? She did it by taking right hold
of them, by their honest handles,--as they were meant to be taken
hold of.
"You like your home? You haven't grown tired of being a village
girl?" she said, as she and Sylvie sat down on a great flat
projecting rock in the shaded walk beside the railroad track. They
had just missed one car; there would not be another for twenty
minutes.
"O, yes. No; I haven't got tired; but I don't feel as if I had quite
_been it_, yet. I don't think I am exactly that, or anything, now.
That is the worst of it. People don't understand. They won't take us
in,--all of them. It's just as hard to get into a village, if you
weren't born in it, as it is to get into upper-ten-dom. Mrs.
Knoxwell called, and looked round all the time with her nose up in a
sort of a way,--well, it _was_ just like a dog sniffing round for
something. And she went off and told about mother's poor, dear, old,
black silk dress, that I made into a cool skirt and jacket for her.
'Some folks must be always set up in silk, she _sposed_.' Everybody
isn't like the Ingrahams."
"No garment of _this_ life fits exactly. There was only one
seamless robe. But we mustn't take thought for raiment, you see. The
body is more. And at last,--somehow, sometime,--we shall be all
clothed perfectly--with his righteousness."
This was too swift and light in its spiritual touching and linking
for Sylvie to follow. She had to ask, as the disciples did, for a
meaning.
"It isn't clothes that I am thinking of, or that trouble me; or any
outside. And I know it isn't actual clothes you mean. Please tell me
plainer, Miss Euphrasia."
"I mean that I think He meant by 'raiment,' not _clothes_ so much as
_life_; what we put on or have put on to us; what each soul wears
and moves in, to feel itself by and to be manifest; history,
circumstance. 'Raiment,'--'garment,'--the words always stand for
this, beyond their temporary and technical sense. 'He laid aside his
_garment_,'--He gave up his own life that He might have been
living,--to come and wash our feet!"
"And the people cast their garments before Him, when He rode into
Jerusalem," Sylvie said presently.
"Yes; that is the way He must come into his kingdom, and lead us
with Him. We are to give up our old ways, and the selfish things we
lived in once, and not think about our own raiment any more. He will
give it to us, as He gives it to the lilies; and the glory of it
will be something that we could not in any way spin for our selves.
And by and by it will come to be full and right, all through; we
shall be clothed with his righteousness. What is righteousness but
rightness?"
"I thought it only meant goodness. That we hadn't any goodness of
our own; that we mustn't trust in it, you know?"
"But that his, by faith, is to cover us? That is the old
letter-doctrine, which men didn't look through to see how graciously
true it is, and how it gives them all things. For it _is things_
they want, all the time; realities, of experience and having. They
talk about an abstract 'justification by faith,' and struggle for an
abstract experience; not seeing how good God is to tell them plainly
that his 'justifying' is _setting everything right_ for them, and
round them, and in them: his _rightness_ is sufficient for them;
they need not go about, worrying, to establish their own. The minute
they give up their wrongness, and fall into its line, it works for
them as no working of their own could do. God doesn't forgive a soul
ideally, and leave it a mere clean, naked consciousness; He brings
forth the best robe and puts it on; a ring for the hand, and shoes
for the feet. People try painfully to achieve a ghostly sort of
regeneration that strips them and leaves them half dead. The Lord
heals and binds up, and puts his own garment upon us; He _knows_
that we have _need_," Miss Kirkbright repeated, earnestly.
"Salvation is a real having; not an escape without anything, as
people run for their lives from fire or flood."
Sylvie had listened with a shining face.
"You get it all from that one word,--'raiment.' Your words--the
words you find out, Miss Kirkbright--are living things."
"Yes, words _are_ living things," Miss Kirkbright answered. "God
does not give us anything dead. But the life of them is his spirit,
and his spirit is an instant breath. You can take them as if they
were dead, if you do not inspire. Men who wrote these words,
inspired. We talk about their _being_ inspired, as if it were a
passive thing; and quarrel about it, and forget to breathe
ourselves. It is all there, just as live as it ever was; it is given
over again every time we go for it; when we find it so, we never
need trouble any more about authority. We shall only thank God that
He has kept in the world the records of his talk with men; and the
more we talk with Him ourselves, the deeper we shall understand
their speech."
"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'--that words in the Bible
stand for,--Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?"
"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled.
"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly.
"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't
believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in
it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming
into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to
worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We
should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to
Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one
place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the
one part to the other part under heaven. _Lightening_--not
lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the
sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day
after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night
after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward
dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,--received it, wonderfully;
but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having
heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about
the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass
away, but the Word shall never pass away."
"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?"
The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the
red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell.
"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could
tell it to my mother!"
"Can't you?"
"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,--with me," Sylvie answered, with
a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am
taking to her. I can take,--but I can't give, and I always feel so
that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come
and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?"
"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say.
Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about
such sort of giving--in words--as a duty. Even with people whom I
work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so
much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near
and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that
are equal--or similarly related--to the same thing, are related to
one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time.
Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to
my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort."
"I think you go to everything for it--and to everybody with it,"
said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the
car-step.
Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie
through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle
cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all
her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let
them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless
pressure.
For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily.
The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made
pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into
established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The
difficulties--the grapples--came thick and forceful about her. At
the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her.
She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the
countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in
upholding her. It was a link with the old things--the very best of
the old things,--that stood as a continual assurance that they
themselves were not altered--lowered in any way--by their alterings.
This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs.
Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts
indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out
altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright
thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings
with them in a friendly--even intimate--fashion. If Sylvie chose to
sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia
did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the
maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when
she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over
knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might
well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her
window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs.
Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the
relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts
and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart
somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to
Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could
find little other.
Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs.
Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and
thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had
these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after
all, pretty hard to endure.
The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly
neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and
the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as
she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not
draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt
bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward
Dot and Ray.
Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never
went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her
sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young
carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and
discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what
shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a
village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course,
Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a
voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared
mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's
proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew
beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between
the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally
and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took
in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though
the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all
these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social
"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic
benediction, all the way down.
I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie
nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in
their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts.
This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy
was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at
Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss
Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work
all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress,
went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no
more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no
more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All
that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly.
Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year
Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These
plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving
home.
Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss
Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions
were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into
next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would
come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow
patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite."
[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude
to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and
Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain
that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in
expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities
whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much
pitch-forked up into heaps behind.]
Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been
growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of
her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine
and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the
slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie
for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she
developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the
yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a
soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to
be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and
harder.
Sabina Bowen went away.
She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the
cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,--neat
and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread
work about the eaves and porch,--which was to be vacated at that
time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances,
the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the
remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina
eagerly one evening with the news.
Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright
double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round
table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other;
of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her
bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and
hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread,
and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning
when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the
towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person;
it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to
dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for
dinner.
And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of
despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if
one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one
very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as
it may be.
She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then
flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs,
because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't
pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next
one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and
in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of
ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a
fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish,
jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the
heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like
considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the
use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the
ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her
about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her
using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon
the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance
that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their
apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a
week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard
enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool
she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers."
That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place
before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was
no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the
village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices.
By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent
servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of
them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the
oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would
cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs.
Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she
made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by
the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All
this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled
underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any
plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean."
At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not
pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their
little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a
poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.
They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at
last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half,
respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and
they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs.
Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do
but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and
effectually done it.
But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would
they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the
principal every six months?
In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must
give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first
place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A
cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for
rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season
in that village,--nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be
just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to
provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and
everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to
make, and girls going off every Monday morning?
She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be
able to answer a word. But the lease,--for another year? What should
they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands?
If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how!
The little poem of village living,--of home simpleness and frugal
prettiness,--of _that_, the two first lines alone had rhymed!
They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they
came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was
harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer
and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the
year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away.
Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother;
and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see
her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie.
God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds
in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under;
even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When
Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away
her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing
was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she
would,--have what she wanted.
Then she went to see Mr. Frost.
"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an
answer of himself.
The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any
moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy.
It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily.
Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out.
She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when
he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines
without moving from his seat.
"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after
all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and
by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned
back to his other papers,--his notes of yesterday's debate in the
House.
* * * * *
Early in June, there came lovely days.
Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the
end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the
remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a
year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and
dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and
the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of
service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs
asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying
themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no
moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire."
She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own
rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one
afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost
shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but
village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and
names were suddenly announced.
"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!"
Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have
said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang
to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry.
"What _shall_ I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth _is_
my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss
Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what
hair!"
She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust
in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged
black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all
right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that
cloudiness beneath which they shone.
Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and
told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered
then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed
to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful
spring.
"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must
have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to
Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in
the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the
city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she
wants."
Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed;
at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year
ago.
"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?"
"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot
Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston;
then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill
them."
Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some
minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his
handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had
anticipated.
By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to
ask her for Class Day.
"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt
Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list,
you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter.
I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it
probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it
were?"
"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to
the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness
in letting her know. "I _wish_ I could! But we shall be gone."
"Not before Class Day?"
"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry."
Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for
nothing.
Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps
Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told
Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge
of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that
lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful
wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be
crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets
discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great
and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that
men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with
their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which
the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of
his grand, pure heights."
All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed
thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given
and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt
Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not
be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to
speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had
said--had done--nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither
knew it of the other; that was the worst.
When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia
turned round to Sylvie with a question.
"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?"
"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up
all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't
mind using it. And it is _mother's_ money; and Dr. Sainswell says
she _cannot_ have a long life."
Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear
and calm,--only tender.
"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her
face.
"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't
money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to
me--after mother's feebleness--is the changing; the not staying of
anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss
Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged."
"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly.
"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the
Lord working. That is the comfort,--the certainty."
The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in
Sylvie's eyes, at that word.
"How _do_ you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall
never forget that now."
Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away
toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not
help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully,
in most ways, from "putting things in his head."
"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer.
Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be
as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people
are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads."
"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a
very great good-for-nothing?"
"No, indeed. Why?"
"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure
whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I
haven't had anything to do with _horses_ this winter; I sent Red
Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a
fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the
bad? What is there so abominable about them?"
"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand
and splendid,--in _type_,--you know. Horses are powers; men are made
to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct
of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he
stops there,--playing with the signs. He might as well ride a
stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do,
all his life."
Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no
answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,--
"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up
things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words,
just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I _might_ do
something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy,
and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real
driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my
father?"
"I don't _know_ that," returned Miss Kirkbright. "It might be; but
it is a thing to consider seriously, before you give it up. You
ought to be quite sure what you stay for."
"I won't stay for any nonsense. I mean to talk with him to-night."
"Talk with yourself, first, Rod; find yourself out, and then talk it
all out honestly with him."
Which advice--the first clause of it--Rodney proceeded instantly to
follow; he did not say another word all the way over the Mill Dam
and up Beacon Hill, and Aunt Euphrasia let him blessedly alone; one
of the few women, as she was, capable of doing that great and
passive thing.
When he had left her at her door, and driven his horse to the livery
stable, he went round to his father's rooms and took tea with him.
The meal over, he pushed back his chair, saying, "I want a talk with
you, father. Can I have it now? I must be back at Cambridge by ten."
Mr. Sherrett looked in his son's face. There was nothing there of
uncomfortableness,--of conscious bracing up to a difficult matter.
He repressed his first instinctive inquiry of "No scrape, I hope,
Rod?" The question was asked and answered between their eyes.
"Certainly, my boy," he said, rising. "Step in there; the man will
be up presently to take away these things."
The door stood open to an inner apartment; a little study, beyond
which were sleeping and bath-rooms.
Rodney stepped upon the threshold, leaning against the frame, while
Mr. Sherrett went to the mantel, found a match and a cigar, cut the
latter carefully in two, and lit one half.
"The thing is, father," said Rodney, not waiting for a formal
beginning after they should be closeted and seated,--"I've been
thinking that I'd better not go abroad, if you don't mind. I'm
rather waking up to the idea of earning my own way first,--before I
take it. It's time I was doing something. If I use up a year or more
in travelling, I shall be going on to twenty-two, you see; and I
ought to have got ahead a little by that time."
Mr. Sherrett turned round, surprised. This was a new phase. He
wondered how deep it went, and what had occasioned it.
"Do you mean you wish to study a profession, after all?"
"No. I don't think I've much of a 'head-piece'--as Nurse Pond used
to say. At least, in the learned direction. I've just about enough
to do for a gentleman,--a _man_, I hope. But I _should_ like to take
hold of something and make it go. I'll tell you why, father. I want
to see what's in me in the first place; and then, I might want
something, sometime, that I should have no right to if I couldn't
take care of myself--and more."
"Come in, Rodney, and shut the door."
After that, of course, we cannot listen.
They two sat together for almost two hours. In that time, Mr.
Sherrett was first discomposed; then set right upon one or two
little points that had puzzled and disappointed him, and to which
his son could furnish the key; then thoroughly roused and anxious at
this first dealing with his boy as a man, with all a man's hopes and
wishes quickening him to a serious purpose; at last, touched
sympathetically, as a good father must be, with the very desire of
his child, and the fears and uncertainties that may environ it. What
he suggested, what he proposed and promised, what was partly planned
to be afterward concluded in detail, did not transpire through that
heavy closed door; neither we, nor the white-jacketed serving-man,
can be at this moment the wiser. It will appear hereafter. When they
came out together at last, Mr. Sherrett was saying,--
"Two years, remember. Not a word of it, decisively, till then,--for
both your sakes."
"Let what will happen, father? You don't remember when you were
young."
"Don't I?" said his father, with emphasis, and a kindly smile. "If
anything happens, come to me. Meanwhile,--you may talk, if you like,
to Aunt Euphrasia. I'll trust her."
And so the Lord set this angel of his to watch over this thread of
our story.
We may leave it here for a while.