HILL-HOPE.
They were sitting together, the next day, on the rock below the
cascade, in the warm sunshine.
Aunt Euphrasia knew all about it; Aunt Euphrasia had let them go
down there together. She was as content as Rodney in the thing that
could not now be helped.
"I've broken my promise," said Rodney to Sylvie. "I agreed with my
father that I wouldn't be engaged for two years."
"Why, we aren't engaged,--yet,--are we?" asked Sylvie, with
bewitching surprise.
"I don't know," said Rodney, his old, merry, mischievous twinkle
coming in the corners of his eyes, as he flashed them up at her. "I
think we've got the refusal of each other!"
"Well. We'll keep it so. We'll wait. You shall not break any promise
for me," said Sylvie, still sweetly obtuse.
"I'm satisfied with that way of looking at it," said Rodney,
laughing out. "Unless--you mean to be as cunning about everything
else, Sylvie. In that case, I don't know; I'm afraid you'd be
dangerous."
"I wonder if I'm always going to be dangerous to you," said Sylvie,
gravely, taking up the word. "I always get you into an accident."
"When we take matters quietly, the way they were meant to go, we
shall leave off being hustled, I suppose," said Rodney, just as
gravely. "There has certainly been intent in the way we have
been--thrown together!"
"I don't believe you ought to say such things, Rodney,--yet! You are
talking just as if"--
"We weren't waiting. O, yes! I'm glad you invented that little
temporary arrangement. But it's a difficult one to carry out. I
shall be gladder when my father comes. I'm tired of being
Casabianca. I don't see how we can talk at all. Mayn't I tell you
about a little house there is at Arlesbury, with a square porch and
a three-windowed room over it, where anybody could sit and
sew--among plants and things--and see all up and down the road, to
and from the mills? A little brown house, with turf up to the
door-stone, and only a hundred dollars a year? Mayn't I tell you how
much I've saved up, and how I like being a real working man with a
salary, just as you liked being one of the Other Girls?"
"Yes; you may tell me that; that last," said Sylvie, softly. "You
may tell me anything you like about yourself."
"Then I must tell you that I never should have been good for
anything if it hadn't been for you."
"O, dear!" said Sylvie. "I don't see how we _can_ talk. It keeps
coming back again. I've had all those plants kept safe that you sent
me, Rodney," she began, briskly, upon a fresh tack.
"Those very ivies? Ah, the little three-windowed room!"
"Rodney! I didn't think you were so unprincipled!" said Sylvie,
getting up. "I wouldn't have come down here, if I had known there
was a promise! I shall certainly help you keep it. I shall go away."
She turned round, and met a gentleman coming down along the slope of
the smooth, broad rock.
"Mr. Sherrett!--Rodney!"
Rodney sprang to his feet.
"My boy! How are you?"
"Father! When--how--did you come?"
"I came to Tillington by the late train last night, and have just
driven over. I went to Arlesbury yesterday."
"But the steamer! She wasn't due till Sunday. You sailed the
_ninth_?"
"No. I exchanged passages with a friend who was detained in London.
I came by the Palmyra. But you don't let me speak to Sylvie."
He pronounced her name with a kind emphasis; he had turned and taken
her hand, after the first grasp of Rodney's.
"Father, I've broken my promise; but I don't think anybody could
have helped it. You couldn't have helped it yourself."
"I've seen Aunt Euphrasia. I've been here almost an hour. I have
thanked God that nothing is broken _but_ the promise, Rodney; and I
think the term of that was broken only because the intent had been
so faithfully kept. I'm satisfied with _one_ year. I believe all the
rest of your years will be safer and better for having this little
lady to promise to, and to help you keep your word."
And he bent down his splendid gray head, with the dark eyes looking
softly at her, and kissed Sylvie on the forehead.
Sylvie stood still a moment, with a very lovely, happy, shy look
upon her downcast face; then she lifted it up quickly, with a clear,
earnest expression.
"I hope you think, Mr. Sherrett,--I hope you feel sure,"--she said,
"that I wouldn't have been engaged to Rodney while there was a
promise?"
"Not more than you could possibly help," said Mr. Sherrett,
smiling.
"Not the very least little bit!" said Sylvie, emphatically; and then
they all three laughed together.
* * * * *
I don't know why everything should have happened as it did, just in
these few days; except--that this book was to be all printed by the
twenty-third of April, and it all had to go in.
That very afternoon there came a letter to Miss Euphrasia from Mr.
Dakie Thayne.
He had found Mr. Farron Saftleigh in Dubuque; he had pressed him
close upon the matter of his transactions with Mrs. Argenter; he had
obtained a hold upon him in some other business that had come to his
knowledge in the course of his inquiries at Denver: and the result
had been that Mr. Farron Saftleigh had repurchased of him the
railroad bonds and the deeds of Donnowhair land, to the amount of
five thousand dollars; which sum he inclosed in his own cheek
payable to the order of Sylvia Argenter.
Knowing, morally, some things that I have not had opportunity to
investigate in detail, and cannot therefore set down as verities,--I
am privately convinced that this little business agency on the part
of Dakie Thayne, was--in some proportion at least,--a piece of a
horse-shoe!
If you have not happened to read "Real Folks," you will not know
what that means. If you have, you will now get a glimpse of how it
had come to Ruth and Dakie that their horse-shoe,--their little
section of the world's great magnet of loving relation,--might be
made. Indeed, I do know, and can tell you, the very words Ruth said
to Dakie one day when they had been married just three weeks.
"I've always thought, Dakie, that if ever I had money,--or if ever I
came to advise or help anybody who had, and who wanted to do good
with it,--that there would be one special way I should like to take.
I should like to sit up in the branches, and shake down fruit into
the laps of some people who never would know where it came from, and
wouldn't take it if they did; though they couldn't reach a single
bough to pick for themselves. I mean nice, unlucky people; people
who always have a hard time, and need to have a good one; and are
obliged in many things to pretend they do. There are a good many who
are willing and anxious to help the very poor, but I think there's a
mission waiting for somebody among the pinched-and-smiling people.
I've been a Ruth Pinch myself, you see; and I know all about it, Mr.
John Westlock!"
So I know they looked about for crafty little chances to piece out
and supplement small ways and means; to put little traps of good
luck in the way for people to stumble upon,--and to act the part
generally of a human limited providence, which is a better thing
than fairy godmothers, or enchanted cats, or frogs under the bridge
at the world's end, in which guise the gentle charities clothed
themselves in the old elf fables, that were told, I truly believe,
to be lived out in real doing, as much as the New Testament Parables
were. And a great deal of the manifold responsibility that Mr. Dakie
Thayne undertakes, as broker or agent in the concerns of others, is
undertaken with a deliberate ulterior design of this sort. I think
Mr. Farron Saftleigh probably was made to pay about three thousand
dollars of the sum he had wheedled Mrs. Argenter out of. Dakie
Thayne makes things yield of themselves as far as they will; he
brings capacity and character to bear upon his ends as well as
money; he knows his money would not last forever if he did not.
Mr. Sherrett and Rodney stayed at Hill-hope over the Sunday. Mr. and
Mrs. Kirkbright arrived on Saturday morning.
There was a first home-service in the Chapel-Room that looked out
upon the Rock, and into which the conservatory already gave its
greenness and sweetness, that first Sunday after Easter.
Christopher Kirkbright read the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel for the
day; the Prayer, that God "who had given his only Son to die for our
sins, and to rise again for our justification, would grant them so
to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that they might
always serve Him in pureness and truth"; the Assurance of "the
victory that overcometh the world, even our faith in the Son of
God," who came "not by water only, but by water and blood"; and that
"the spirit and the water and the blood agree in one,"--in our
redemption; the Story of that First Day of the week, when Jesus came
back to his disciples, after his resurrection, and said, "Peace be
unto you," _showing them his hands and his side_.
He spoke to them of the Blood of Christ, which is the Pain of God
for every one of us; which touches the quick of our own souls where
their life is joined to his or else is dead. Of how, when we feel
it, we know that this Divine Pain comes down that we may die by it
to sin and live again to justification, in pureness and truth, that
the Lord shows us his wounds for us, and waits to pronounce his
peace upon us; because _He suffers_ till we are at peace. That so
his goodness leads us to repentance; that the blood of suffering,
and the water of cleansing, and the spirit of life renewed, agree in
one, that if we receive the one,--if we bear the pain with which He
touches us,--we shall also receive the other.
"Bear, therefore, whatever crucifixion you have to bear, because of
your wrong-doing. We, indeed, suffer justly; but He, who hath done
nothing amiss, suffers at our side. 'If we are planted together in
the likeness of his death, we shall also be in the likeness of his
resurrection;' our old life is crucified with Him, that the body of
sin might be destroyed. 'We are dead unto sin, but alive unto God,
through Jesus Christ our Lord.'"
Mary Moxall was there, clothed and in her right mind; her baby on
her lap. Good Mrs. Crumford, the mother-matron, sat beside her.
Andrew Dorray, the plasterer, and his wife, Annie, were there. Men
and women from the farmhouse and the cottages, dressed in their
Sabbath best; and little children, looking in with steadfast,
wondering eyes, at the open conservatory door, upon the vines and
blooms steeped in sunshine, and mingling their sweet odors with the
scent of the warm, moist earth in which they grew.
They would all have pinks and rosebuds to carry away with them, to
remember the Sunday by, and to be forever linked, in their tender
color and fragrance, with the dim apprehension of somewhat holy.
There would be an association for them of the heavenly things unseen
with the heavenliest things that are seen.
Mr. Kirkbright had given especial pains and foresight to the filling
of this little greenhouse. He meant that there should be a summer
pleasantness at Hill-hope from the very first.
After dinner he and Desire walked up and down the long front upper
gallery upon which their own rooms and their guest-rooms opened, and
whence the many windows on the other hand gave the whole outlook
upon Farm and Basin, the smoking kilns, the tidy little homes
already established, and the buildings that were making ready for
more.
Christopher Kirkbright told his wife of many things he hoped to
accomplish. He pointed out here and there what might be done. Over
there was a maple wood where they would have sugar-makings in the
spring. There was a quarry in yonder hill. Down here, through that
left hand hollow and ravine, would run their bit of railroad.
"A little world of itself might almost grow up here on these two
hundred acres," he said.
"And for the home,--you must make that large and beautiful, Desire!
We are not shut up here to guard and rule a penitentiary; we are to
bring the best and sweetest and most beautiful life possible to us,
close to the life we want to help. There is room for them and us;
there is opportunity for their world and ours to touch each other
and grow toward one. We must have friends here, Daisy"; (she let
_him_ call her "Daisy"; had he not the right to give her a new name
for her new life?) "friends to enjoy the delicious summers, and to
make the long winters full of holiday times. You must invent
delights as well as uses: delights that will be uses. It must be so
for _your_ sake; I must have my Desire satisfied,--content, in ways
that perhaps she herself would not find out her need in."
"_Is_ not your Desire satisfied?"
"What a blessed little double name you have! Yes, Daisy, the very
Desire of my heart has come to me!"
Rodney and Sylvie walked down again to the Cascade Rock, and
finished their talk together,--this April number of it, I
mean,--about the brown house and the three-windowed, sunny room, and
the grass plot where they would play croquet, and the road to the
mills that was shaded all the way down, so that she could walk with
her bonnet off to meet him when he was coming up to tea. About the
ivies that the "good Miss Goodwyns" had kept safe and thriving at
Dorbury, and the furniture that Sylvie had stored in a loft in the
Bank Block. How pretty the white frilled curtains would be in the
porch room!
"And the interest of the five thousand dollars will be all I shall
ever want to spend for anything!"
"We shall be quite rich people, Sylvie. We must take care not to
grow proud and snobbish."
"We had much better walk than ride, Rodney. I think that is the
riddle that all our spills have been meant to read us."
End of Project Gutenberg's The Other Girls, by Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney