BLOSSOMING FERNS.
The minister's covered carryall was borrowed from two miles off, to
take Mrs. Argenter down to Tillington.
All she knew about the winter plan was that Miss Ledwith was a
friend of Miss Kirkbright's, had a large, old-fashioned house, and
scarcely any household, and would be glad to have herself and Sylvie
take rooms with her for several months. She had a vague idea that
Miss Ledwith might be somewhat restricted in her means, and that to
receive lodgers in a friendly way would be an "object" to her. She
talked, indeed, with a gentle complaisance to Miss Kirkbright, about
its not being exactly what they had intended,--they had thought of
rooms at Hotel Pelham or Boylston, so central and so near the
Libraries; but after all, what she needed most was quiet and no
stairs; and she had a horror of elevators, and a dread of fire; so
that this was really better, perhaps; and Miss Ledwith was a very
sweet person.
Miss Euphrasia smiled; "sweet," especially in the silvery tone in
which Mrs. Argenter uttered it, was the last monosyllabic epithet
she would have selected as applying to grave, earnest, downright
Desire.
At East Keaton, the train stopped for five minutes.
Sylvie had begged Mr. Kirkbright beforehand to get her mother's
foot-warmer filled with hot water at the station, and he had just
returned with it. She was busily arranging it under Mrs. Argenter's
feet again, and wrapping the rug about her, kneeling beside her
chair to do so, when some one entered the drawing-room car in which
the party was, and came up behind her.
She thought she was in the way of some stranger, and hastily arose.
"I beg your pardon," she said, instinctively, and turned as she
spoke.
"What for?" asked Rodney Sherrett, holding out both hands, and
grasping hers before she was well aware.
There were morning stars in her eyes, and a beautiful sunrise
crimsoned her cheek. These two had not seen each other all summer.
Aunt Euphrasia looked from one face to the other.
"Not to say anything for two years!" she thought, recalling inwardly
her brother's wise injunction. "It says itself, though; and it was
made to!"
"How do you do, Mrs. Argenter? I hope you are feeling better for
your country summer? Aunt Effie! _You're_ not surprised to see me?
Did you think I would let you go down without?"
No; Aunt Effie, when she had written him that regular little Sunday
afternoon note from Brickfield, telling him that they were all to
come down on Tuesday, had thought no such thing. And she was at this
moment, with wise forethought, packed in behind all the others, in
the most inaccessible corner of the car.
"You're not going down to the city?"
But he was. Rodney's eyes sparkled as he told her.
"Your own doctrine exemplified. Things always happen, you say.
One of the mills is stopped for just this very day of all
others,--repairing machinery. I'm off work, for the first time in
four months. There has been no low water all summer. Regular header,
straight through. Don't you see I'm perfectly emaciated with the
confinement? I've breathed in wool-stuffing till I feel like a
pincushion."
"An emaciated wool-stuffed pincushion! Yes, I think you do look a
little like it!" Aunt Euphrasia talked nonsense just as he did,
because she was so pleased she could not help it.
They paired, naturally. Miss Kirkbright and Mrs. Argenter, facing
each other in the corner, were eating tongue sandwiches out of the
same basket; and Sylvie had poured out for her mother the sugared
claret and water with which her little travelling flask had been
filled. Mr. Kirkbright had monopolized Desire, sitting upon the
opposite side of the car, with another long talk, about brick and
tile making, and the compatibility of a paper manufactory and a
House of Refuge.
"I will not have it called that, though. It shall not be stamped
with any stereotyped name. It shall not even be a Home,--except _my_
home; and I'll just take them in: I and Euphrasia."
There was nothing for Rodney to do, but to sit down beside Sylvie,
with three hours before him, which he had earned by four months
among the wheels and cranks and wool-fluff.
Of all these four months there has been no chance to tell you
anything before as concerning him.
He had been at Arlesbury; learning to be a manufacturer; beginning
at the beginning with the belts and rollers, spindles, shuttles, and
harnesses; finding out the secrets of satinets and doeskins and
kerseys; _driving_, as he had wanted to do; taking hold of something
and making it go.
"It isn't exactly like trotting tandem," he told Sylvie, "but
there's a something living in it, too; a creature to bit and manage;
that's what I like about it. But I hate the oil, and the noise, and
the dust. Why, _this_ is pin-drop silence to it! I hope it won't
make me deaf,--and dumb! Father will feel bad if it does," he said,
with an indescribably pathetic demureness.
"Was it your father's plan?" asked Sylvie, laughing merrily.
"Well,--yes! At least I told him to take me and set me to work; or I
should pretty soon be good for nothing; and so he looked round in a
great fright and hurry, as you may imagine, and put me into the
first thing he could think of, and that was this. I'm to stay at it
for two years, before I--ask him for anything else. I think I shall
have a good right then, don't you? I'm thinking all the time about
my Three Wishes. I suppose I may wish three times when I begin? They
always do."
What could he talk but nonsense? Earnestness had been forbidden him;
he had to cover it up with the absurdity of a boy.
But what a blessing that it made no manner of difference! That in
all things of light and speech, the gracious law is that the flash
should go so much farther, as well as faster than the sound!
Something between them unspoken told the story that words, though
they be waited for, never tell half so well. She knew that she had
to do with his being in earnest. She knew that she had to do with
his being at play, this moment, laughing and joking the time away
beside her on this railroad trip. He had come to join Aunt
Euphrasia? Yes, indeed, and there sat Aunt Euphrasia in her corner,
reading the "Vicar's Daughter," and between times talking a little
with Mrs. Argenter. Not ten sentences did aunt and nephew exchange,
all the way from East Keaton down to Cambridge. When Mrs. Argenter
grew tired as the day wore on, and a sofa was vacated, Rodney helped
Sylvie to move the shawls and the foot-warmer, and the rug, and
improvise cushions, and make her mother comfortable; then, as Mrs.
Argenter fell asleep, they sat near her and chatted on.
And Aunt Euphrasia read her book, and considered herself escorted
and attended to, which is just such a convenience as a judicious and
amiably disposed female relative appreciates the opportunity for
making of herself.
Down somewhere in Middlesex, boys began to come into the cars with
great bunches of trailing ferns to sell; exquisite things that
people have just begun to find out and clamor for, and that so a
boy-supply has vigorously arisen to meet.
"O, how lovely!" cried Sylvie, at one stopping-place, where an
urchin stood with his arms full; the glossy, delicate leaves
wreathed round and round in long loops, and the feathery blossoms
dropping like mist-tips from among them. "And we're too exclusive
here, for him to be let in."
Of course the window would not open; drawing-room car windows never
do. Rodney rushed to the door; held up a dollar greenback.
"Boy! Here! toss up your load!"
The long train gave its first spasm and creak at starting; up came
the tangle of beauty; down fluttered the bit of paper to the
platform; and Rodney came in with the rare garlands and tassels
drooping all about him.
Everybody was delighted; Aunt Euphrasia dropped her book, and made
her way out of her corner; Desire and Mr. Kirkbright handled and
exclaimed; Mrs. Argenter opened her eyes, and held out her fingers
toward them with a smile.
"Such a quantity--for everybody!" said Sylvie, as he put them into
her lap, and she began to shake out the bunches. "How kind you were,
Mr. Sherrett! We've longed so to find some of these, haven't we
Amata? Has anybody got a newspaper, or two? We'd better keep them
all together till we get home." And she coiled the sprays carefully
round and round into a heap.
No matter if they should be all given away to the very last leaf;
she could thank innocently "for everybody"; but she knew very well
what the last leaf, falling to her to keep, would stand for.
In years and years to come, Sylvie will never see climbing ferns
again, without a feeling as of all the delicate beauty and
significance of the world gathered together in a heap and laid into
her lap.
She had seen the dollar that Rodney paid for them, flutter down
beside the window as the car moved on, and the boy spring forward to
catch it. Rodney Sherrett earned his dollars now. It was one of his
very, very own that he spent for her that day. A girl feels a
strange thrill when she sees for the first time, a fragment of the
life she cares for given, representatively, thus, for her.
It is useless to analyze and explain. Sylvie did not stop to do it,
neither did Rodney; but that ride, that little giving and taking,
were full of parable and heart-telegraphy between them. That October
afternoon was a long, beautiful dream; a dream that must come true,
some time. Yet Rodney said to his aunt, as he bade her good-by that
evening, at her own door (he had to go back to the station to take
the night train up),--"Why shouldn't we have _this_ piece of our
lives as well as the rest, Auntie? Why should two years be cribbed
off? There won't be any too much of it, and there won't be any of it
just like this."
Aunt Euphrasia only stooped down from the doorstep, and kissed him
on his cheek, saying nothing.
But to herself she said, after he had gone,--
"I don't see why, either. They would be so happy, waiting it out
together. And there never _is_ any time like this time. How is
anybody sure of the rest of it?"
Aunt Euphrasia knew. She had not been sure of the rest of hers.