NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY.
Rodney Sherrett had heard of the Argenters' losses by the fire; what
would have been the good of his correspondence with Aunt Euphrasia,
and how would she have expected to keep him pacified up in
Arlesbury, if he could not get, regularly, all she knew? Of course
he ferreted out of her, likewise, the rest of the business, as fast
as she heard it.
"It's really a dreadful thing to be so confided in, all round!" she
said to Desire Ledwith, when they had been talking one morning.
"People don't know half the ways in which everything that gets
poured into my mind concerns everything else. As an intelligent
human being, to say nothing of sympathies, I _can't_ act as if they
weren't there. I feel like a kind of Judas with a bag of secrets to
keep, and playing the traitor with every one of them!"
"What a nice world it would be if there were only plenty more just
such Judases to carry the bags!" Desire answered, buttoning on her
Astrachan collar, and picking up her muff to go.
Whereupon five minutes after, the amiable traitress was seated at
her writing-desk replying to Rodney's last imperative inquiry, and
telling him, under protest, as something he could not possibly help,
or have to do with, the further misfortune of Sylvie and her mother.
Mr. Dakie Thayne had honestly expressed his conviction to Miss
Kirkbright and Desire Ledwith, that the Donnowhair business was an
irresponsible, loose speculation. He said that he had heard of this
Farron Saftleigh and his schemes; that he might frighten him into
some sort of small restitution, and that he would look into the
title of the lands for Mrs. Argenter; but that the value of these
fell of course, with the railroad shares; and the railroad was, at
present, at any rate, mere moonshine; stopped short, probably, in
the woods somewhere, waiting for the country to be settled up beyond
Latterend.
"Am I bound by my promise against such a time as this?" Rodney wrote
back to Aunt Euphrasia. "Can't I let Sylvie know, at least, that I
am working for her, and that if she will say so, I will be her
mother's son? I could get a little house here in Arlesbury, for a
hundred dollars a year. I am earning fifteen hundred now, and I
shall save my this year's thousand. I shall not need any larger
putting into business. I don't care for it. I shall work my way up
here. I believe I am better off with an income that I can clearly
see through, than with one which sits loose enough around my
imagination to let me take notions. Can't you stretch your
discretionary power? Don't you see my father couldn't but consent?"
The motive had touched Rodney Sherrett's love and manliness, just as
this fine manoeuvrer,--pulling wires whose ends laid hold of
character, not circumstance,--believed and meant. It had only added
to the strength and loyalty of his purpose. She had looked deeper
than a mere word-faithfulness in communicating to him what another
might have deemed it wiser not to let him know. She thought he had a
right to the motives that were made for him. But when a month would
take this question of his abroad and bring back an answer, Miss
Euphrasia would not force beyond the letter any interpretation of
provisional authority which her brother-in-law had deputed. She
would only draw herself closer to Sylvie in all possible confidence
and friendliness. She would only move her to acquiescence yet a
little longer in what her friends offered and urged. She represented
to her that they must at least wait to hear from Mr. Thayne; there
might be something coming from the West; and it would be cruel to
hurry her mother into a life which could not but afflict her, until
an absolute necessity should be upon them.
She bade Rodney be patient yet a few weeks more, and to leave it to
her to write to his father. She did write: but she also put Rodney's
letter in.
"Things which _are_ might as well, and more truly, be taken into
account, and put in their proper tense," she urged, to Mr. Sherrett.
"There is a bond between these two lives which neither you nor I
have the making or the timing of. It will assert itself; it will
modify everything. This is just what the Lord has given Rodney to
do. It is not your plan, or authority, but this in his heart, which
has set him to work, and made him save his money. Why not let them
begin to live the life while it is yet alive? It wears by waiting;
it cannot help it. You must not expect a miracle of your boy; you
must take the motive while it is fresh, and let it work in God's
way. The power is there; but you must let the wheels be put in gear.
Simply, I advise you to permit the engagement, and the marriage. If
you do not, I think you will rob them of a part of their real
history which they have a right to. Marriage is a making of life
together; not a taking of it after it is made."
It was February when this letter was sent out.
One day in the middle of the month, Desire Ledwith, Hazel
Ripwinkley, and Sylvie had business with Luclarion in Neighbor
Street. There was work to carry; a little basket of things for the
fine laundry; some bakery orders to give. There was always Luclarion
herself to see. Just now, besides and especially, they were all
interested in Ray Ingraham's rooms that were preparing in the next
house to the Neighbors; a house which Mr. Geoffrey and others had
bought, enlarged, and built up; fitting it in comfortable suites for
housekeeping, at rents of from twenty-five to thirty dollars a
month, each. They were as complete and substantial in all their
appointments as apartments as the Commonwealth or the Berkeley;
there was only no magnificence, and there was no "locality" to pay
for. The locality was to be ministered to and redeemed, by the very
presence of this growth of pure and pleasant and honorable living in
its midst. For the most part, those who took up an abiding here had
enough of the generous human sense in them to account it a
satisfaction so to contribute themselves; for the rest, there was a
sprinkling of decent people, who were glad to get good homes cheap
in the heart of a dear city; and the public, Christian intent of the
movement sheltered and countenanced them with its chivalrous
respectability.
Frank Sunderline and Ray were to live here for a year; they were to
be married the first of March. Frank had said that Ray would have to
manage him and the Bakery too, and Ray was prepared to fulfill both
obligations.
She was going to carry out here, with Luclarion Grapp, her idea of
public supply for the chief staple of food. They were going to try a
manufacture of breadstuffs and cakestuffs, on real home principles,
by real domestic receipts. They were going to have sale shops in
different quarters,--at the South and West ends. Already their
laundry sustained itself by doing excellent work at moderate prices;
why should they not, in still another way meet and play into the
movement of the time for simplifying it, and making household
routine more independent?
"Why shouldn't there be," Ray said, with appetizing emphasis, "a
place to buy _cup_ cake, and _composition_ cake, and _sponge_ cake,
tender and rich, made with eggs instead of ammonia? Why shouldn't
there be pies with sweet butter-crust crisp and good like mother's,
and nice wholesome little puddings? Everybody knew that since the
war, when the confectioners began to economize in their materials
and double their prices at the same time, there was nothing fit to
buy and call cake in the city. Why shouldn't somebody begin again,
honest? And here, where they didn't count upon outrageous profits,
why couldn't it be as well as not? When there was a good thing to be
had in one place, other places would have to keep up. It would make
a difference everywhere, sooner or later."
"And all these girls to be learning a business that they could set
up anywhere!" said Hazel Ripwinkley. "Everybody eats! Just a new
thing, if it's only new trash, sells for a while; and these new,
old-fashioned, grandmother's cupboard things,--why, people would
just _swarm_ after them! Cooks never knew how, and ladies
didn't have time. Don't forget, Luclarion, the bright yellow ginger
pound-cake that we used to have up at Homesworth! Everything
was so good at Homesworth--the place was named out of comforts!
Why don't you call it the Homesworth Bakery? That would be
double-an-tender,--eh, Lukey!"
Marion Kent made a beautiful silk quilt for Ray Ingraham, out of her
sea-green and buff dresses, and had given it to her for a
wedding-present. For the one only time as she did so, she spoke her
heart out upon that which they had both perfectly understood, but
had never alluded to.
"You know, Ray, just as I do, what might have been, and I want you
to know that I'm contented, and there isn't a grudge in my heart.
You and Frank have both been too much to me for that. I can see how
it was, though. It was a hand's turn once. But I went my way and you
kept quietly on. It was the real woman, not the sham one, that he
wanted for a wife. It doesn't trouble me now; it's all right; and
when it might have troubled me, it didn't add a straw's weight. It
fell right off from me. You can't suffer _all through_ with more
than one thing; when you were engaged, I had my load to bear. I knew
I had forfeited everything; what difference did one part make more
than another? It was what I had let go _out of the world_, Ray, that
made the whole world a prison and a punishment. I couldn't have
taken a happiness, if it had come to me. All I wanted was work and
forgiveness."
"Dear Marion, how certainly you must know you are forgiven, by the
spirit that is in you! And for happiness, dear, there is a Forever
that is full of it! I _don't_ think it is any one thing,--not even
any one marrying."
So the two kissed each other, and went down into the other
house--Luclarion's.
That had been only a few days ago, and Ray had shown the quilt, so
rich and lustrous, and delicate with beautiful shellwork
stitchery,--to the young girls this afternoon.
She showed the quilt with loving pride and praise, but the story of
it she kept in her heart, among her prayers. Frank Sunderline never
knew more than the fair fabric and color, and the name of the giver,
told him. Frank Sunderline scarcely knew so much as these two women
did, of the unanalyzed secrets of his own life.
Luclarion waited till all this was over, and Desire Ledwith had
come back from Ray Ingraham's rooms to hers, leaving Hazel and
Sylvie among the fascinations of new crockery and bridal tin pans,
before she said anything about a very sad and important thing she
had to tell her and consult about. She took her into her own little
sitting-room to hear the story, and then up-stairs, to see the woman
of whom the story had to be told.
"It was Mr. Tipps, the milkman, came to me yesterday with it all,"
said Luclarion. "He's a good soul, Tipps; as clever as ever was. He
was just in on his early rounds, at four o'clock in the morning,--an
awful blustering, cold night, night before last was,--and he was
coming by Graves Alley, when he heard a queer kind of crazy howling
down there out of sight. He wouldn't have minded it, I suppose, for
there's always drunken noise enough about in those places, but it
was a woman's voice, and a baby's crying was mixed up with it. So he
just flung his reins down over his horse's back, and jumped off his
wagon, and ran down. It was this girl,--Mary Moxall her name is, and
Mocks-all it ought to be, sure enough, to finish up after that pure,
blessed name so many of these miserables have got christened with;
and she was holding the child by the heels, head down, swinging it
back and for'ard, as you'd let a gold ring swing on a hair in a
tumbler, to try your fortune by, waiting till it would hit and ring.
"It was all but striking the brick walls each side, and she was
muttering and howling like a young she-devil over it, her eyes all
crazy and wild, and her hair hanging down her shoulders. Tipps flew
and grabbed the baby, and then she turned and clawed him like a
tiger-cat. But he's a strong man, and cool; he held the child back
with one hand, and with the other he got hold of one of her wrists
and gave it a grip,--just twist enough to make the other hand come
after his; and then he caught them both. She spit and kicked; it was
all she could do; she was just a mad thing. She lost her balance, of
course, and went down; he put his foot on her chest, just enough to
show her he could master her; and then she went from howling to
crying. 'Finish me, and I wouldn't care!' she said; and then lay
still, all in a heap, moaning. 'I won't hurt ye,' says Tipps. 'I
never hurt a woman yet, soul nor body. What was ye goin' to do with
this 'ere little baby?' 'I was goin' to send it out of the hell it's
born into,' she said, with an awful hate in the sound of her voice.
'Goin' to _kill_ it! You wouldn't ha' done that?' 'Yes, I would. I'd
'a done it, if I was hanged for it the next minute. Isn't it my
business that ever it was here?'
"'Now look here!' says Tipps. 'You're calmed down a little. If
you'll stay calm, and come with me, I'll take you to a safe place.
If you don't, I'll call a policeman, and you'll go to the lock-up.
Which'll ye have?' 'You've got me,' she said, in a kind of a sulk.
'I s'pose you'll do what you like with me. That's the way of it.
Anybody can be as bad and as miserable as they please, but they
won't be let out of it. It's hell, I tell you,--this very world. And
folks don't know they've got there.'
"Tipps says there's hopes of her from just that word bad. She
wouldn't have put that in, otherways. Well, he brought her here, and
the baby. And they're both up-stairs. She's as weak as water, now
the drink is out of her. But it wasn't all drink. The desperation is
in her eyes, though it's give way, and helpless. And what to do with
'em next, I _don't_ know."
"I do," said Desire, with her eyes full. "She must be comforted up.
And then, Mr. Vireo must know, the first thing. Afterwards, he will
see."
Luclarion took Desire up-stairs.
The girl was lying, in a clean night-dress, in a clean, white bed.
Her hair, dark and beautiful, was combed and braided away from her
face, and lay back, in two long, heavy plaits, across the pillow.
Her features were sharp, but delicate, and were meant to have been
pretty. But her eyes! Out of them a suffering demon seemed to look,
with a still, hopeless rage.
Desire came up to the bedside.
"What do you want?" the girl said, slowly, with a deep, hard,
resentful scorn in her voice. "Have you come to see what it is all
like? Do you want to feel how clean you are beside me? That's a part
of it; the way they torment."
It was like the cry of the devil out of the man against the Son of
God.
"No," said Desire, just as slowly, in her turn. "I can only feel the
cleanness in you that is making you suffer against the sin. The
badness doesn't belong to you. Let it go, and begin again."
It was the word of the Lord,--"Hold thy peace, and come out of him."
Desire Ledwith spoke as she was that minute moved of the Spirit. The
touch of power went down through all the misery and badness, to the
woman's soul, that knew itself to be just clean enough for agony.
She turned her eyes, with the fiery gloom in them, away, pressing
her forehead down against the pillow.
"God sees it better than I do," said Desire, gently.
An arm flung itself out from under the bedclothes, thrusting them
off. The head rolled itself over, with the face away.
"God! Pf!"
So far from Him; and yet so close, in the awful hold of his
unrelaxing love!
Desire kept silence; she could not force upon her the thought, the
Name: the Name for whose hallowing to pray, is to pray for the
holiness in ourselves that alone can make it tender.
"What do you know about God?" the voice asked defiantly, the face
still turned away.
"I know that his Living Spirit touches your thought and mine, this
moment, and moves them to each other. As you and I are alive, He is
alive beside us and between us. Your pain is his pain for you. You
feel it just where you are joined to Him; in the quick of your soul.
If it were not for that, you would be dead; you could not feel at
all."
Was this the Desire Ledwith of the old time, with deep thoughts but
half understood, and shrinking always from any recognizing word? She
shrunk now, just as much, from any needless expression of herself;
from any parade or talking over of sacred perception and experience;
but the real life was all the stronger in her; all the surer to use
her when its hour came. She had escaped out of all shams and
contradictions. Unconsent to the divine impulse comes of
incongruity. There was no incongruity now, to shame or to deter; no
separate or double consciousness to stand apart in her soul, rebuked
or repugnant. She gave herself quietly, simply, freely, to God's
thought for this other child of his; the Thought that she knew was
touching and stirring her own.
"I shall send somebody to you who can tell you more than I can,
Mary," she said, presently. "You will find there is heart and help
in the world that can only be God's own. Believe in that, and you
will come to believe in Him. You have seen only the wrong, bad side,
I am afraid. The _under_ side; the side turned down toward"--
"Hell-fire," said Mary Moxall, filling Desire's hesitation with an
utterance of hard, unrecking distinctness.
But Desire Ledwith knew that the hard unreckingness was only the
reflex of a tenderness quick, not dead, which the Lord would not let
go of to perish.
Sylvie and Hazel came in below, and she left Mary Moxall and went
down to them. The three took leave, for it was after five o'clock.
When they got out from the street-car at Borden Square, Desire left
them, to go round by Savin Street, and see Mr. Vireo. Hazel went
home; Mrs. Ripwinkley expected her to-night; Miss Craydocke and some
of the Beehive people were to come to tea. Sylvie hastened on to
Greenley Street, anxious to return to her mother. She had rarely
left her, lately, so long as this.
How would it be when they had heard from Mr. Thayne what she felt
sure they must hear,--when they had to leave Greenley Street and go
into that cheap little lodging-room, and she had to stay away from
her mother all day long?
She remembered the time when she had thought it would be nice to
have a "few things;" nice to earn her own living; to be one of the
"Other Girls."