WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP.
Mr. and Mrs. Kirkbright went away to New York on the afternoon of
their marriage.
Miss Euphrasia went up to Brickfields. Sylvie Argenter was to follow
her on Thursday. It had been settled that she should remain with
Desire, who, with her husband, would reach home on Saturday.
It was a sweet, pleasant spring day, when Sylvie Argenter, with some
last boxes and packages, took the northward train for Tillington.
She was going to a life of use and service. She was going into a
home; a home that not only made a fitting place for her in it, and
was perfect in itself, but that, with noble plan and enlargement,
found way to reach its safety and benediction, and the contagion of
its spirit, over souls that would turn toward it, come under its
rule, and receive from it, as their only shelter and salvation; over
a neighborhood that was to be a planting of Hope,--a heavenly
feudality.
Sylvie's own dreams of a possible future for herself were only
purple lights upon a far horizon.
It seemed a very great way off, any bringing to speech and result
the mute, infrequent signs of what was yet the very real, secret
strength and joy and hope of her girl's heart.
She had a thought of Rodney Sherrett that she was sure she had a
right to. That was all she wanted, yet. Of course, Rodney was not
ready to marry; he was too young; he was not much older than she
was, and that was very young for a man. She did not even think about
it; she recognized the whole position without thinking.
She remembered vividly the little way-station in Middlesex, where he
had bought the ferns, that day in last October; she thought of him
as the train ran slowly alongside the platform at East Keaton. She
wondered if he would not sometimes come up for a Sunday; to spend it
with his uncle and his Aunt Euphrasia. It was a secret gladness to
her that she was to be where he partly, and very affectionately,
belonged. She was sure she should see him, now and then. Her life
looked pleasant to her, its current setting alongside one current,
certainly, of his.
She sat thinking how he had come up behind her that day in the
drawing-room car, and of all the happy nonsense they had begun to
talk, in such a hurry, together. She was lost in the imagination of
that old surprise, living it over again, remembering how it had
seemed when she suddenly knew that it was he who touched her
shoulder. Her thought of him was a backward thought, with a sense in
it of his presence just behind her again, perhaps, if she should
turn her head,--which she would not do, for all the world, to break
the spell,--when suddenly,--face to face,--through the car-window,
she awoke to his eyes and smile.
"How did you know?" she asked, as he came in and took the seat
beside her. Then she blushed to think what she had taken for
granted.
"I didn't," he answered; "except as a Yankee always knows things,
and a cat comes down upon her feet. I am taking a week's holiday,
and I began it two days sooner, that I might run up to see Aunt
Effie before I go down to Boston to meet my father. The steamer
will be due by Saturday. It is my first holiday since I went to
Arlesbury. I'm turning into a regular old Gradgrind, Miss Sylvie."
Sylvie smiled at him, as if a regular old Gradgrind were just the
most beautiful and praiseworthy creature a bright, hearty young
fellow could turn into.
"You'd better not encourage me," he said, shaking his head. "It
would be a dreadful thing if I should get sordid, you know. I'm not
apt to stop half way in anything; and I'm awfully in earnest now
about saving up money."
He had to stop there. He was coming close to motives, and these he
could say nothing about.
But a sudden stop, in speech as in music, is sometimes more
significant than any stricken note.
Sylvie did not speak at once, either. She was thinking what
different reasons there might be, for spending or saving; how there
might be hardest self-denial in most uncalculating extravagance.
When she found that they were growing awkwardly quiet, she said,--"I
suppose the right thing is to remember that there is neither virtue
nor blame in just saving or not saving."
"My father lost a good deal by the fire," said Rodney. "More than he
thought, at first. He is coming home sooner, in consequence. I'm
very glad I did not go abroad. I should have been just whirled out
of everything, if I had. As it is, I'm in a place; I've got a lever
planted. It's no time now for a fellow to look round for a
foothold."
"You like Arlesbury?" asked Sylvie. "I think it must be a lovely
place."
"Why?" said Rodney, taken by surprise.
"From the piece of it you sent me in the winter."
"Oh! those ferns? I'm glad you liked them. There's something nice
and plucky about those little things, isn't there?"
It was every word he could think of to reply. He had a provoked
perception that was not altogether nice and plucky, of himself, just
then. But that was because the snow was still unlifted from him. He
was under a burden of coldness and constraint. Somebody ought to
come and take it away. It was time. The spring, that would not be
kept back, was here.
He had not said a word to Sylvie about her mother. How could he
speak of what had left her alone in the world, and not say that he
wanted to make a new world for her? That he had longed for it
through all her troubles, and that this, and nothing else, was what
he was keeping his probation for?
So they came to Tillington at last, and there had been between them
only little drifting talk of the moment, that told nothing.
After all, do we not, for a great part, drift through life so,
giving each other crumbs off the loaf that will only seem to break
in that paltry way? And by and by, when the journey is over, do we
not wonder that we could not have given better and more at a time?
Yet the crumbs have the leaven and the sweetness of the loaf in
them; the commonest little wayside things are charged full of
whatever is really within us. God's own love is broken small for us.
"This is my Body, broken for you."
If life were nothing but what gets phrased and substanced, the world
might as well be rolled up and laid away again in darkness.
Sylvie had a handful of checks; Rodney took them from her, and went
out to the end of the platform to find the boxes. Two vehicles had
been driven over from Hill-hope to meet her; an open spring-wagon
for the luggage, and a chaise-top buggy to convey herself.
Trunks, boxes, and the great padlocked basket were speedily piled
upon the wagon; then the two men who had come jumped up together to
the front seat of the same, and Sylvie saw that it was left for her
and Rodney to proceed together for the seven-mile drive.
Rodney came back to her with an alert and felicitous air. How could
he help the falling out of this? Of course he could not ride upon
the wagon and leave a farm-boy to charioteer Sylvie.
"Shall you be afraid of me?" he asked, as he tossed in his valise
for a footstool, and carefully bestowed Sylvie's shawl against the
back, to cushion her more comfortably. "Do you suppose we can manage
to get over there without running down a bake-shop?"
"Or a cider-mill," said Sylvie, laughing. "You will have to adapt
your exploits to circumstances."
Up and down, through that beautiful, wild hill-country, the brown
country roadway wound; now going straight up a pitch that looked as
perpendicular as you approached it as the side of a barn; then
flinging itself down such a steep as seemed at every turn to come to
a blank end, and to lead off with a plunge, into air; the
water-bars, ridged across at rough intervals, girding it to the
bosom of the mountain, and breaking the accelerated velocity of the
descending wheels. Sylvie caught her breath, more than once; but she
did it behind shut lips, with only a dilatation of her nostrils. She
was so afraid that Rodney might think she doubted his driving.
The woods were growing tender with fretwork of swelling buds, and
beautiful with bright, young hemlock-tips; there was a twittering
and calling of birds all through the air; the first little breaths
and ripples of spring music before the whole gay, summer burst of
song gushed forth.
The fields lay rich in brown seams, where the plough had newly
furrowed them. Farmers were throwing in seed of barley and spring
wheat. The cattle were standing in the low sunshine, in barn-doors
and milking-yards. Sheep were browsing the little buds on the
pasture bushes.
The April day would soon be over. To-morrow might bring a cold wind,
perhaps; but the winter had been long and hard; and after such, we
believe in the spring pleasantness when it comes.
"What a little way brings us into a different world!" said Sylvie as
they rode along. "Just back there in the city, you can hardly
believe in these hills."
Her own words reminded her.
"I suppose we shall find, sometime," she said gently, "that the
other world is only a little way out."
"I've been very sorry for you, Sylvie," said Rodney. "I hope you
know that."
His slight abruptness told her how the thought had been ready and
pressing for speech, underneath all their casual talk.
And he had dropped the prefix from her name.
He had not meant to, but he could not go back and put it on. It was
another little falling out that he could not help. The things he
could not help were the most comfortable.
"Mother would have had a very hard time if she had lived," said
Sylvie. "I am glad for her. It was a great deal better. And it came
so tenderly! I had dreaded sickness and pain for her."
"It has been all hard for you. I hope it will be easier now. I hope
it will always be easier."
"I am going to live with Mrs. Kirkbright," said Sylvie.
"Tell me about my new aunt," said Rodney.
Sylvie was glad to go on about Desire, about the wedding, about
Hill-hope, and the plans for living there.
"I think it will be almost like heaven," she said. "It will be home
and happiness; all that people look forward to for themselves. And
yet, right alongside, there will be the work and the help. It will
open right out into it, as heaven does into earth. Mr. Kirkbright is
a grand man."
"Yes. He's one of the ten-talent people. But I suppose we can all do
something. It is good to have some little one-horse teams for the
light jobs."
"I never could _be_ Desire," said Sylvie. "But I am glad, to work
with her. I am glad to live one of the little lives."
There would always be a boy and girl simpleness between these two,
and in their taking of the world together. And that is good for the
world, as well. It cannot be all made of mountains. If all were high
and grand, it would be as if nothing were. Heaven itself is not
built like that.
"There goes some of Uncle Christopher's stuff, I suppose," said
Rodney, a while afterward, as they came to the top of a long ascent.
He pointed to a great loaded wain that stood with its three powerful
horses on the crest of a forward hill. It was piled high up with
tiling and drain-pipe, packed with straw. The long cylinders showed
their round mouths behind, like the mouths of cannon.
"A nice cargo for these hills, I should think."
"They have brakes on the wheels, of course," said Sylvie. "And the
horses are strong. That must be for the new houses. They will soon
make all those things here. Mr. Kirkbright has large contracts for
brick, already. He has been sending down specimens. They say the
clay is of remarkably fine quality."
"We shall have to get by that thing, presently," said Rodney. "I
hope the horse will take it well."
"Are you trying to frighten me?" asked Sylvie, smiling. "I'm used to
these roads. I have spent half a summer here, you know."
But Rodney knew that it was the "being used" that would be the
question with the horse. He doubted if the little country beast had
ever seen drain-pipe before. He had once driven Red Squirrel past a
steam boiler that was being transported on a truck. He remembered
the writhe with which the animal had doubled himself, and the side
spring he had made. It was growing dusk, now, also. They were not
more than a mile from Brickfield Basin, and the sun was dropping
behind the hills.
"I shall take you out, and lead him by," he said. "I've no wish to
give you another spill. We won't go on through life in that way."
It was quite as well that they had only another mile to go. Rodney
was keeping his promise, but the thread of it was wearing very thin.
They rode slowly up the opposite slope, then waited, in their turn,
on the top, to give the team time to reach the next level.
They heard it creak and grind as it wore heavily down, taking up
the whole track with careful zigzag tackings; they could see, as it
turned, how the pole stood sharp up between the shoulders of the
straining wheel horses, as their haunches pressed out either way,
and their backs hollowed, and their noses came together, and the
driver touched them dexterously right and left upon their flanks to
bring them in again.
"Uncle Kit has a good teamster there," said Rodney.
Just against the foot of the next rise, they overtook him. The gray
nag that Rodney drove pricked his ears and stretched his head up,
and began to take short, cringing steps, as they drew near the
formidable, moving mass.
Rodney jumped out, and keeping eye and hand upon him, helped down
Sylvie also. Then he threw the long reins over his arm, and took the
horse by the bridle.
The animal made a half parenthesis of himself, curving skittishly,
and watching jealously, as he went by the frightsome pile.
"You see it was as well not to risk it," Rodney said, as Sylvie came
up with him beyond. "He would have had us down there among the
blackberry vines. He's all right now. Will you get in?"
"Let us walk on to the top," said Sylvie. "It is so pleasant to feel
one's feet upon the ground."
They kept on, accordingly; the slow team rumbling behind them. At
the top, was a wide, beautiful level; oak-trees and maples grew
along the roadside, and fields stretched out along a table land to
right and left. Before them, lying in the golden mist of twilight,
was a sea of distant hill-tops,--purple and shadow-black and gray.
The sky bent down its tender, mellow sphere, and touched them
softly.
Sylvie stood still, with folded hands, and Rodney stopped the
horse. A rod or two back, just at the edge of the level, the loaded
wagon had stopped also.
"Hills,--and the sunset,--and stillness," said Sylvie. "They always
seem like heaven."
Rodney stood with his right hand, from which fell the looped reins,
reached up and resting on the saddle.
"I never saw a sight like that before," he said.
While they looked, the evening star trembled out through the clear
saffron, above the floating mist that hung among the hills.
"O, they never can help it!" exclaimed Sylvie, suddenly.
"Help it? Who?" asked Rodney, wondering.
"Beginning again. Growing good. Those people who are coming up to
Hill-hope. There's a man coming, with his wife; a young man, who got
into bad ways, and took to drinking. Mr. Vireo has been watching and
advising him so long! He married them, five years ago, and they have
two little children. The wife is delicate; she has worried through
everything. She has taken in working-men's washing, to earn the
rent; and he had a good trade, too; he was a plasterer. He has
really tried; but it was no use in the city; it was all around him.
And he lost character and chances; the bosses wouldn't have him, he
said. When he was trying most, sometimes, they wouldn't believe in
him; and then there would come idle days, and he would meet old
companions, and get led off, and then there would be weeks of
misery. Now he is coming away from it all. There is a little cottage
ready, with a garden; the little wife is so happy! He _can't_ get it
here; and he will have work at his trade, and will learn
brickmaking. Do you know, I think a place like this, where such
work is doing, is almost better than heaven, where it is all done,
Rodney!"
She spoke his name, as he had hers a little while ago, without
thinking. He turned his face toward her with a look which kindled
into sudden light at that last word, but which had warmed all
through before with the generous pathos of what she told him, and
the earnest, simple way of it.
"I've found out that even in our own affairs, _making_ is better
than ready-made," he said. "This last year has been the best year of
my life. If my father had given me fifty thousand dollars, and told
me I might--have all my own way with it,--I shouldn't have thanked
him as much to-day, as I do. But I wish that steamer were in, and he
were here! He has got something which belongs to me, and I want him
to give it back."
After enunciating this little riddle, Rodney changed hands with his
reins, and faced about toward the vehicle, reaching his other to
Sylvie.
"You had better jump in," he said; and there was a tone and an
inflection at the pause, as if another word, that would have been
tenderly spoken, hung refrained upon it. "We must get well ahead of
that old catapult."
They drove on rapidly along the level; then they came to the long,
gradual slope that brought them down into Brickfields.
To the right, just before reaching the Basin, a turn struck off that
skirted round, partly ascending again until it fell into the Cone
Hill road and so led direct to Hill-hope.
They could see the buildings, grouped picturesquely against rocks
and pines and down against the root of the green hill. They had all
been painted of a light gray or slate color, with red roofs.
They passed on, down into the shadows, where trees were thick and
dark. A damp, rich smell of the woods was about them,--a different
atmosphere from the breath of the hill-top. They heard the tinkle of
little unseen streams, and the far-off, foaming plunge of the
cascades.
Suddenly, there came a sound behind them like the rush of an
avalanche; a noise that seemed to fill up all the space of the air,
and to gather itself down toward them on every side alike.
"O, Rodney, turn!" cried Sylvie.
But there was a horrible second in which he could not know how to
turn.
He did not stop to look, even. He sprang, with one leap, he knew not
how,--over step or dasher,--to the horse's head. He seized him by
the bridle, and pulled him off the road, into a thicket of
bush-branches, in a hollow rough with stones.
The wheels caught fast; Rodney clung to the horse, who tried to
rear; Sylvie sat still on the seat sloped with the sharp cant of the
half-overturned vehicle.
There was only a single instant. Down, with the awful roar of an
earthquake, came crashing swift and headlong, passing within a
hand's breadth of their wheel, the enormous, toppling, loaded team;
its three strong horses in a wild, plunging gallop; heels, heads,
haunches, one dark, frantic, struggling tumble and rush. An instant
more, of paralyzed breathlessness, and then a thundering fall, that
made the ground quiver under their feet; then a stillness more
suddenly dreadful than the noise. A great cloud of dust rose slowly
up into the air, and showed dimly in the dusky light.
The gray horse quieted, cowed by the very terror and the hush.
Sylvie slipped down from the tilting buggy, and found her feet upon
a stone.
Rodney reached out one hand, and she came to his side. He put his
arm around her, and drew her close.
"My darling little Sylvie!" he said.
She turned her face, and leaned it down upon his shoulder.
"O, Rodney, the poor man is killed!"
But as they stood so, a figure came toward them, over the high
water-bar below which they had stopped.
"For God's sake, is anybody hurt?" asked a strange, hoarse voice
with a tremble in it.
"Nobody!"
"O, are you the driver? I thought you must be killed! How
thankful!"--And Sylvie sobbed on Rodney's shoulder.
"Can I help you?" asked the man.
"No, look after your horses." And the man went on, down into the
dust, where the wreck was.
"We'll go, and send help to you," shouted Rodney.
Then he backed the gray horse carefully out upon the road again.
"Will you dare get in?" he asked of Sylvie.
"I do not think we had better. How can we tell how it is down there?
We may not be able to pass."
"It is below the turn, I think. But come,--we'll walk."
He took the bridle again, and gave his other hand to Sylvie. Holding
each other so, they went along.
When they came to the turn, they could see, just beyond the mass of
ruin; the great wagon, three wheels in the air,--one rolled away
into the ditch; the broken freight, flung all across the road, and
lying piled about the wagon. One horse was dead,--buried underneath.
Another lay motionless, making horrid moans. The teamster was
freeing the third--the leader, which stood safe--from chains and
harness.
Leading him, the man came up with Rodney and Sylvie, as they turned
into the side road.
"I knew you were just ahead, when it happened. I thought you were
gone for certain."
"There was a Mercy over us all!" said Sylvie, with sweet, tremulous
intenseness.
The rough man lifted his hand to his bare head. Rodney clasped
tighter the little fingers that lay within his own.
"What did happen?" he asked.
"The brake-rod broke; the pole-strap gave way; it was all in a heap
in a minute. I saw it was no use; I had to jump. And then I thought
of you. I'm glad you saw me, sir. You know I was sober."
"I know you were sober, and managing most skillfully. I had been
saying that."
"Thank you, sir. It's an awful job."
"Hark!" said Sylvie. "There's the man with the trunks."
"I forgot all about him," said Rodney.
"That's a fact," said the teamster. "Turn down here, to let him by.
Hallo!"
"Hallo! Come to grief?"
"We just have, then. Go ahead, will you, and bring back--_something
to shoot with_," he added, in a lower tone, and coming
close,--remembering Sylvie. "I had a crow-bar, but it's lost in the
jumble. I'll stay here, now."
The wagon drove by, rapidly. The man led his horse down by the wall,
to wait there. Sylvie and Rodney, hand in hand, walked on.
Sylvie shivered with the horrible excitement; her teeth chattered; a
nervous trembling was taking hold of her.
Rodney put his arm round her again. "Don't tremble, dear," he said.
"O, Rodney! What were we kept alive for?"
"For each other," whispered Rodney.