BONNY BOWLS.
The great show house at Pomantic was almost finished. The
architect's and builder's cares were over. There was a stained glass
window to go in upon the high second landing of the splendid carved
oak staircase, through which gold and rose and purple light should
pour down upon the panels of the soft-tinted walls and the rich
inlaying of the floors. There was a little polishing of walnut work
and oiling of dark pine in kitchen and laundry, and the fastening on
of a few silver knobs and faucets here and there, up-stairs,
remaining to be done; then it would be ready for the upholsterer.
Mr. Newrich had builded better than he thought; thanks to the
delicate taste and the genius of his architect, and the careful
skill of his contractor. He was proud of his elegant mansion, and
fancied that it expressed himself, and the glory that his life had
grown to.
Frank Sunderline knew that it expressed _him_-self; for he had put
himself--his hope, his ambition, his sense of right and
fitness--into every stroke and line. Now that it was done, it was
more his than the man's who paid the bills,--"out of his waistcoat
pocket," as he exultingly said to his wife. The designer and the
builder had paid for it out of brain and heart and will, and were
the real men who had got a new creation and possession of their own,
though they should turn their backs upon their finished labor, and
never go within the walls again.
It was a kind of a Sunday feeling with which Frank Sunderline was
glad, though it was the middle of the week. The sense of
accomplishment is the Sunday feeling. It is the very feeling in
which God Himself rested; and out of his own joy, bade all his sons
rest likewise in their turn, every time that they should end a six
days' toil.
Frank Sunderline had been in Boston all the afternoon, making up
accounts and papers with his employer. He came round to Pilgrim
Street to tea.
He had got into a way of coming in to tell the Ingrahams the story
of his work as it went on, at the same time that he continued his
friendly relation with their own affairs, as always ready to do any
little turn for them in which a man could be of service. This Sunday
rest of his,--though a busier day had not gone over his head since
the week began,--must be shared and crowned by them.
There is no subtler test of an unspoken--perhaps an
unexamined--relation of a man with his women friends, than this
instinctive turning with his Sabbath content and rest to the
companionship he feels himself most moved to when it is in his
heart. All custom, however homely, grows out of some reality, more
than out of any mere convenience; this is why the Sunday coming of
the country lover means so much more than his common comings, and
sets an established seal upon them all.
Walking down Roulstone Street, the lowering afternoon sun full in
his face across the open squares, Frank Sunderline thought how
pleasant it would be to have Ray Ingraham go out to Pomantic such an
afternoon as this, and see what he had done; just now, while it was
still his work, warm from his hand, and before it was shut away from
her and him by the Newrich carpets and curtains and china and
servants going in and fastening the doors upon them.
He would make a treat of it,--a holiday,--if she would go; he would
come and take her with a horse and buggy. He would not ask her to go
with him in the cars and be stared at.
He had never thought of asking her to go to ride, or of showing her
any set "attention" before. Frank Sunderline was not one of the
young fellows who begin, and begin in a hurry, at that end.
He walked faster, as it came into his head at that moment; something
of the same perception that would come to her,--if she cared for
this asking of his,--came to him with the sudden suggestion that it
was the next, the natural thing to do; that their friendship had
grown so far as that. The story comes to a man with some such
beautiful, scarce-anticipated steps of revelation as it does to a
woman, when he takes his life in the true, whole, patient order, and
does not go about to make some pretty sham of living before he has
done any real living at all.
Yes; he would ask her to ride out to Pomantic with him to-morrow;
and he thought she would go.
He liked her looks, to-night; he looked at her with this plan in his
thoughts, and it lighted her up; he was conscious of his own notice
of her, and of what it had grown to in him, insensibly, knowing her
so well and long. He analyzed, or tried to analyze, his rest and
pleasure in her; the reason why all she did and wore and said had
such a sweet and winning fitness to him. What was it that made her
look so different from other girls, and yet so nice?
"I like the way you dress, Ray; you and Dot;" he said to her, when
tea was over and taken away, and she was replacing the cloth and
setting the sewing-lamp down upon the table. "You don't snarl
yourselves up. I can't bear a tangle of things."
Ray colored.
"You mean skirts, I suppose," she said, laughing "We can't afford
two apiece, at a time. So we have taken to aprons."
It was a very simple expedient, and yet it came near enough to
custom to avoid a strait and insufficient look. They wore plain
black cashmere dresses, plaited in at the waist, and belted to their
pretty figures, over these, round, full aprons, tied behind with
broad, hemmed bows. They were of cross-barred muslin, for every
day,--cheap and pretty and fresh; black silk ones replaced them upon
serious occasions. This was their house wear; in the street they
contented themselves with their plain basquines; and I think if
anybody missed the bunches and festoons, it was only as Frank
Sunderline said, with an unexplained impression of the absence of a
"snarl."
"There's one thing certin," put in Mrs. Ingraham. "Women can't be
dolls and live women too. I don't ever want anything on that'll
hender me from goin' right into whatever there is to be gone into.
It's cloe's that makes all the diffikelty nowadays. Young women
can't do housework because of their cloe's; 'tisn't because they
ain't as strong as their grandmothers; their grandmothers didn't try
to wear a load and move one too. Folks that live a little nicer than
common, and keep girls, don't have more than five hours to their
day; the rest of the time, they're dressed up; and that means _tied_
up. They can't _see_ to their girls; they grow helplesser all the
time and the help grows sozzlier; and so it comes to sauciness and
upstrupperousness, and changes; and there's an up-stairs and a
down-stairs to every house, and no _home_ anywhere. That's how it
is, and how it must be, till women take down some of their furbelows
and live real, and keep house, and take old-fashioned comfort in it.
Why, the help has to get into _their_ humpty-dumpties by three or
four o'clock, and see _their_ company. If there's sickness or
anything, that they can't, they're up a tree and off. I've known of
folks breakin' up and goin' to board, because they were _afraid_ of
sickness; they knew their girls would clear right out if there was
gruel to make and waitin' up and down to do. There ain't much left
to depend on but hotels and hospitals. _Home_ is too big a worry.
And I do believe, my soul, its cloe's that's at the bottom of it.
It's been growin' wuss and wuss ever since tight waists and holler
biasses came in, and that's five and twenty years ago."
Mrs. Ingraham grew more Yankee in her dialect,--as the Scotch grow
more Scotch,--with warming up to the subject.
Sunderline laughed.
"Well, I must go," he said; "though you do look so bright and cosy
here. Half past seven's the last train, and there's a little job at
home I promised mother I'd do to-night. I've been so busy lately
that I haven't had any hammer and nails of my own. Ray!"
He had come round behind her chair, where she had seated herself at
her sewing.
"It's pleasant out of town these fall days; and I want you to see my
house before I give it over. If I come for you to-morrow, will you
ride out with me to Pomantic?"
Ray felt half a dozen things at that moment between his question and
her reply. She felt her mother's eyes just lifted at her, without
another movement, over the silver rims of her spectacles; she felt
Dot's utter stillness; she felt her own heart spring with a single
quick beat, and her cheeks grow warm, and a moisture at her fingers'
ends as they held work and needle determinedly, and she set two or
three stitches with instinctive resolution of not stopping. She
felt, inwardly, the certainty that this would count for much in Mrs.
Ingraham's plain, old-fashioned way of judging things; she was
afraid of a misjudgment for Frank Sunderline, if he did not,
perhaps, mean anything particular by it; she would have refused him
ten times over, and let the refusal rest with her, sooner than have
him blamed; for what business had she, after all,--
"Well, Ray?"
She felt his hand upon the back of her chair, close to her shoulder;
she felt that he leaned down a little. She heard something in that
"Well, Ray," that she could not turn aside, though in an hour
afterward she would be taking herself to task that she had let it
seem like "anything."
"I was thinking," she said, quietly. "Yes, I think I could go. Thank
you, Frank."
Frank Sunderline was not sure, as he walked up Roulstone Street
afterward, whether Ray cared much. She made it seem all matter of
course, in a minute, with that calm, deliberate answer of hers. And
she sat so still, and let him go out of the room with hardly another
word or look. She never stopped sewing, either.
Well,--he did not see those ten stitches! He might not have been the
wiser if he had. They were not carpenter-work.
But Ray knew better than to pick them out, while her mother and Dot
were by.
That next day was made for them.
Days are made for separate people, though they shine or storm over
so many. Or the people are drifted into the right days; what is the
difference?
I must stop for the thought here, that has to do with this question
of rain and shine,--with need, and asking, and giving.
Prayers and special providences! Are these thrust out of the scheme,
because there is a scheme, and a steadfastness of administration in
God's laws? "No use to pray for rain, or the calming of the storm,
or a blessing on the medicine?" When it was all set going, was not
the _prayer_ provided for? It was answered a million of years
beforehand, in the heart of God, who put it into your heart and
nature to pray. Long before the want or the sin, the beseeching for
help or for forgiveness was anticipated; provision was made for the
undoing or the counteracting of the evil,--the healing of the
wrong,--just as it should be longed for in the needing and repenting
soul. The more law you have, the more all things come under its
foresight.
So, under the dear Law,--which is Love, and cares for the
sparrow,--came the fair October day, with its unflecked firmament,
its golden, conquering warmth, its richness of scent and color; and
they two went forth in it.
They went early, after dinner; so that the brightness might last
them home again; and because the Newriches, in their afternoon
drive, might be coming out from the city, perhaps, a little later,
to look at their waistcoat-pocket plaything.
Mrs. Ingraham turned away from the basement window with a long
breath, as they drove off.
"Well, I suppose _that's_ settled," she said, with the
mother-sadness, in the midst of the not wishing it by any means to
be otherwise, inflecting her voice.
"I don't believe Ray thinks so," said Dot.
In some of the hundred little indirect ways that girls find the use
of, Ray had managed to really impose this impression upon the sturdy
mind of Dot, without discussion. If Dot had had the least bit of
experience of her own, as yet, she would not have been imposed upon.
But Mrs. Ingraham had great reliance on Dorothy's common sense, and
she left no lee-way for uninitiation.
"Do you really mean to say, child," she asked, turning round
sharply, "that Ray don't suppose,--or don't want,--or don't
intend--? She's a goose if she don't, then; and they're both geese;
and I shouldn't have any patience with 'em! And that's _my_ mind
about it!"
It is not such a very beautiful drive straight out to Pomantic over
the Roxeter road. There are more attractive ones in many directions.
But no drive out of Boston is destitute of beauty; and even the long
turnpike stretches--they are turnpike stretches still, though the
Pike is turned into an Avenue, and built all along with blocks of
little houses, exactly alike, in those places where used to be the
flat, unoccupied intervals between the scattered suburban
residences--have their breaks of hill and orchard and garden, and
their glimpses across the marshes, of the sea.
Ray enjoyed every bit of it,--even the rows of new tenements with
their wooden door-steps, and their disproportionate Mansard roofs
that make them all look like the picture in "Mother Goose," of the
boy under a big hat that might be slid down over him and just cover
him up.
The rhyme itself came into Ray's head, and she said it to her
companion.
"Little lad, little lad, where were you born?
Far off in Lancashire, under a thorn,
Where they sup buttermilk from a ram's horn;
And a pumpkin scooped, with a yellow rim,
Is the bonny bowl they breakfast in."
"Those houses make me think of that," she said; "and the picture
over it--do you remember?"
Everybody remembers "Mother Goose." You can't quote or remind amiss
from her.
"To be sure," Frank answered, laughing. "And the histories and the
lives there carry out the idea. They all came from Lancashire, or
somewhere across the big sea, and they were all born under the
thorn, pretty much,--of poverty and pinches. But they sup their
buttermilk, and the bowl is bonny, if it is only a pumpkin rind.
Isn't that rhyme just the perfection of the glorifying of common
things by imagination?"
"It always seems to me that living _might_ be pretty in such places.
All just alike, and snug together. I should think Mrs. Fitzpatrick
and Mrs. Mahoney would have beautiful little ambitions and rivalries
about their tidy parlors and kitchens, setting up housekeeping side
by side, as they do. I should think they might have such nice
neighborliness, back and forth. It looks full of all possible
pleasantness; like the cottage quarters of the army families, down
at Fort Warren, that you see so white and pretty among the trees, as
you go by in the steamboat."
"Only they don't make it out," said Frank Sunderline, "after all.
The prettiest part of it is the going by in the steamboat. Here, I
mean. The 'Mother Goose' idea is very suggestive; but if you went
through that block, from beginning to end, I wonder how many 'bonny
bowls' you would really find, that you'd be willing to breakfast out
of?"
"I wonder how many bonny bowls there'll be, one of these days, in
the cook's closet of the grand house we're going to?" said Ray.
"That's it," said Sunderline. "It's pretty to build, and it's pretty
to look at; but I should like to hear what your mother would say to
the 'conveniences.' One convenience wants another to take care of
it, till there's such a compound interest of them that it takes a
regiment just to man the pumps and pipes, and open and shut the
cupboards. Living doesn't really need so much machinery. But every
household seems to want a little universe of its own, nowadays."
"I suppose they make it wrong side out," said Ray. "I mean all
outside."
Further on, along the bay shores, and across the long bridge, and
reaching over crests of hills that gave beautiful pictures of land
and waterscape, the way was pleasanter and pleasanter. Other and
different homesteads were set along the route, suggesting endless
imaginations of the different character and living of the dwellers.
More than once, either Ray or Frank was on the point of saying, as
they passed some modest, pretty structure, with its field and
garden-piece, its piazza, porch, or balcony, and its sunny
windows,--"There! _that_ is a nice place and way to live!"
But a young man and woman are shy of sharing such imaginations,
before the sharing is quite understood and openly promised. So, many
times a silence fell upon their casual talk, when the same thing was
in the thought of each.
For miles before they came to it, the sightly Newrich edifice gave
itself, in different aspects, to the view. Mr. Newrich, himself,
never saw anything else in his drives out, of sky, or hill, or
water, after the first glimpse of "my house," and the way it "showed
up" in the approach.
Men were busy wheeling away rubbish, as they drove in between the
great stone posts that marked the entrance, where the elegant,
light-wrought, gilded iron gates were not yet hung.
Other laborers were rolling the lawn and terraces, newly sown with
English grass seed that was to come up in the spring, and begin to
weave its green velvet carpet. Piles of bricks and boards were
gathered at the back of the house and about the stables.
The plate-glass windows glittered in the sun. The tiled-roofs, with
their towers and slopes, looked like those in pictures of palace
buildings. It was a group,--a pile; under these roofs a family of
five--Americans, republicans, with no law of primogeniture to
conserve the estate beyond a single lifetime--were to live like a
little royal household. And the father had made all his money in
fifteen years in Opal Street. This country of ours, and the ways of
it, are certainly pretty nearly the queerest under the sun, when one
looks it all through and thinks it all over.
Frank Sunderline pointed out the lovely work of the pillars in the
porched veranda; every pillar a triple column, of the slenderest
grace, capitaled with separate devices of leaf and flower.
Then they went into the wide, high hall, and through the lower
rooms, floored and ceiled and walled most richly; and up over the
stately staircase, copied from some grand old English architecture;
along the galleries into the wings, where were the sleeping and
dressing-rooms; up-stairs, again, into other sleeping-rooms,--places
for the many servants that there must be,--pressrooms, closets,
trunk-rooms,--space for stowing all the ample providings for use and
change from season to season. Every frame and wainscot and panel a
study of color and exact workmanship and perfect finish.
It was a "show house;" that was just what it was. "And I can't
imagine the least bit of home-iness in the whole of it," said Ray,
coming down from the high cupola whence they had looked far out to
sea, and over inland, upon blue hills and distant woods.
They stopped half way,--on the wide second landing where they had
seen, as they went up, that the great window space was open; the
boards that had temporarily covered it having been removed, and the
costly panes and sashes that were to fill it resting against the
wall at one side.
"That is the greatest piece of nonsense in the whole house,"
Sunderline had said. "A crack in that would be the spoiling of a
thousand dollars."
"How very silly," said Ray, quietly. "It is only fit for a church or
a chapel."
"It shuts out the stables," said Sunderline. "Take care of that open
frame," he had added, cautioning her.
Now, coming down, he stopped right here, and stood still with his
back to the opening, looking across the front hall at some
imperfection he fancied he detected in the joining of a carved
cornice. Ray stood on the staircase, a little way up, facing the
gorgeous window, and studying its glow of color.
"It won't do. The meeting of the pattern isn't perfect. Those
grape-bunches come too near together, and there's a leaf-tip taken
off at the corner. What a bungle! Come and look, Ray."
Ray turned her face toward him as he spoke, and saw what thrilled
her through with sudden horror. Saw him, utterly forgetful of where
he stood, against the dangerous vacancy, his heel upon the very
edge, beyond which would be death!
A single movement an inch further, and he would be off his balance.
Behind him was a fall of thirty feet, down to those piles of brick
and timber. And he would make the movement unless he were instantly
snatched away. His head was thrown back,--his shoulders leaned
backward, in the attitude of one who is endeavoring to judge of an
effect a little distance off.
Her face turned white, and her limbs quivered under her.
One gasping breath--and then--she turned, made two steps upward, and
flung herself suddenly, as by mischance, prostrate along the broad,
slowly-sloping stairs.
Half a dozen thoughts, in flashing succession, shaped themselves
with and into the action. She wondered, afterward, recollecting them
in a distinct order, how there had been time, and how she had
thought so fast.
"I must not scream. I must not move toward him. I must make him come
this way."
In the two steps up--"He might not follow; he would not understand.
He _must_: I must _make_ him come!" And then she flung herself down,
as if she had fallen.
Once down, her strength went from her as she lay; she turned really
faint and helpless.
It was all over. He was beside her.
"What is the matter, Ray? Are you ill? Are you hurt?" he said,
quickly, stooping down to lift her up. She sat up, then, on the
stair. She could not stand.
A man's step came rapidly through the lower hall, ringing upon the
solid floor, and sounding through the unfurnished house.
"Sunderline! Thank heaven, sir, you're safe! Do you know how near
you were to backing out of that confounded window? I saw you from
the outside. In the name of goodness, have that place boarded up
again! It shouldn't be left for five minutes."
"Was _that_ it?" asked Frank, still bending over Ray, while Mr.
Newrich said all this as he hurried up the stairs.
"I didn't fall, I tumbled down on purpose! It was the only thing I
could think of," said Ray, nervously smiling; justifying herself,
instinctively, from the betrayal of a feeling that makes girls faint
away in novels. "I felt weak afterward. Anybody would."
"That's a fact," said Mr. Newrich, stopping at the landing, and
glancing out through the aperture. "I shall never think of it,
without shivering. You were as good as gone: a hair's breadth more
would have done it. God bless my soul! If my place had had such a
christening as that!"
The whiteness came over Ray Ingraham's face again She was just
rising to her feet, with her hand upon the rail.
"Sit still," said Frank. "Let me go and bring you some water."
"She'll feel better to be by herself a minute or two, I dare say,"
said Mr. Newrich, following Frank as he went down. He had the tact
to think of this, but not to go without saying it.
"A quick-witted young woman," he remarked, as they passed out of her
hearing. "And sensible enough to keep her wits ahead of her
feelings. If she had come _at_ you, as half the women in the world
would have done, you'd be a dead man this minute. Your sister,
Sunderline?"
"No, sir--only a friend."
"Ah! _onlier_ than a sister, may be? Well!"
Sunderline replied nothing, beyond a look.
"I beg your pardon. It's none of my business."
"It's none of my business, so far as I know," said Frank. "If it
were, there would be no pardon to beg."
"You're a fine fellow; and she's a fine girl. I suppose I may say
that. I tell you what; if you _had_ come to grief, at the very end
of this job you've done so well for me, I believe I should have put
the place under the hammer. I couldn't have begun with such a piece
of Friday luck as that!"
There were long pauses between the talk, as Ray and Frank drove back
together into the city.
"Ray!" Frank said at last, suddenly, just as they came opposite to
the row of little brown big-hatted houses, where they had talked
about the bonny bowls,--"My life is either worth more or less to me,
after this. You are the only woman in the world I could like to owe
it to. Will you take what I owe? Will you be the _onliest_ woman in
the world to me?"
Oddly enough, that word of Mr. Newrich's, that had half affronted
him, came up to his lips involuntarily and unexpectedly, now. Words
are apt to come up so--in a sort of spite of us--that have made an
impression, even when it has been that of simple misuse.
Ray did not answer. She felt it quite impossible to speak.
Frank waited--three minutes perhaps. Then he said,
"Tell me, Ray. If it is to be no, let me know it."
"If it had been no. I could have said it sooner," Ray answered,
softly.
* * * * *
"May I come back?" he asked, when he helped her down at the door in
Pilgrim Street, and held her hand fast for a minute.
"O yes; come back and see mother," Ray replied, her face all
beautiful with smile and color.
Mother knew all the story, that minute, as well as when it was told
her afterward. She saw her child's face, and that holding of the
hand, from her upper window, where a half blind had fallen to.
Mothers do not miss the home-comings from such drives as that.
* * * * *
"There's one thing, Frank,"--said Ray. She was standing with him,
three hours afterward, at the low step of the entrance, he above her
on the sidewalk, looking down upon her upturned face. The happy tea
and family evening were over; that first family evening, when one
comes acknowledged in, who has been almost one of the family before;
and they were saying the first beautiful good-by, which has the
beginning of all joining and belonging in it. "There is one thing,
Frank. I'm under contract for the present; for quite a while. I'm
going into the bread business, after all. I've promised Miss Grapp
to take her bakery, and manage it for her, for a year or so."
"Who--is--Miss Grapp?" exclaimed Frank, pausing between the words in
his astonishment.
Ray laughed. "Haven't I told you? I thought everybody knew. It's too
long a story for the door-step. When you come again"--
"That'll be to-morrow."
"I'll tell you all about it."
"You'll have to manage the bakery and me too, somehow, before--a
'year or so'! How long do you suppose I expect to wait?"
"Dear me! how long _have_ you waited?" returned Ray, demurely.
She only meant the three hours since they had been engaged; but it
is a funny fact about the nature and prerogative of a man, that he
may take years in which to come to the point of asking--years in
which perhaps a woman's life is waiting, with a wear and an
uncertainty in it; but the point of _having_ must be moved up then,
to suit his sudden impatience of full purpose.
A woman shrinks from this hurry; she wants a little of the blessed
time of sure anticipation, after she knows that they belong to one
another; a time to dream and plan beautiful things together in; to
let herself think, safely and rightly, all the thoughts she has had
to keep down until now. It is the difference of attitude in the
asking and answering relations; a man's thoughts have been free
enough all along; he has dreamt his dream out, and stands claiming
the fulfillment.
Dot had her hair all down that night, and her nightgown on, and was
sitting on the bed, with her feet curled up, while Ray stood in
skirts and dressing-sack, before the glass, her braids half
unfastened, stock-still, looking in at herself, or through her own
image, with a most intent oblivion of what she pretended to be there
for.
"Well, Ray! Have you forgotten the way to the other side of your
head, or are you enchanted for a hundred years? I shall want the
glass to-morrow morning."
Ray roused up from her abstraction.
"I was thinking," she said.
"Yes'm. I suppose you'll be always thinking now. You had just
outgrown that trick, a little. It was the affliction of my
childhood; and now it's got to begin again. 'Don't talk, Dot; I'm
thinking.' Good-by."
There was half a whimper in Dorothy's last word.
"Dot! You silly little thing!"
And Rachel came over to the bedside, and put her arms round Dorothy,
all crumpled as she was into a little round white ball.
"I was thinking about Marion Kent."