UNREST.
Flossy went to the window and stood looking out into the starless night.
The pain in her heart deepened with every moment.
"If there was only some one to ask, some one to say a word to me," she
sighed to herself. "It seems as though I could never go to sleep with
this feeling clinging to me. I wonder what can be the matter? Perhaps I
am sick and am going to die. It feels almost like that, and I am not fit
to die--I am afraid. I wonder if Ruth Erskine is afraid to die? I have
almost a mind to ask her. I wonder if she ever prays? People who are not
afraid of death are always those who pray. Perhaps she will to-night. I
feel as though I wanted to pray: I think if I only knew how it would be
just the thing to do. If she kneels down I mean to go and kneel beside
her."
These were some of the thoughts that whirled through her brain as she
stood with her nose pressed to the glass. But Ruth did not pray. She
went around with the composed air of one who was at peace with all the
world; and when her elaborate preparations for rest were concluded she
laid her head on her pillow without one thought of prayer.
"Why in the name of sense don't you come to bed?" she presently asked,
surveying with curious glance the quiet little creature whose face was
hidden from her, and who was acting entirely out of accordance with
anything she had ever seen in her before. "What can you possibly find to
keep you gazing out of that window? It can't be called star-gazing, for
to my certain knowledge there isn't a single star visible; in fact, I
should say nothing could be visible but the darkness."
For a minute Flossy made no answer. She did not move nor turn her head;
but presently she said, in a low and gentle voice:
"Ruth, should you be afraid to die?"
"To die!" said Ruth; and I have no means of telling you what an
astonished face and voice she had. "Flossy Shipley, what do you mean?"
"Why, I mean _that_," said Flossy, in the same quiet tone. "Of course we
have got to die, and everybody knows it; and what I say is, should you
be afraid if it were to-night, you know?"
"Humph!" said Ruth, turning her pillow and waiting to beat it into shape
before she spoke further. "I haven't the least idea of dying to-night."
"But how can you be _sure_ of that? You might _have_ to die to-night,
you know people do sometimes."
"I know one thing, am perfectly certain of it, and that is, that you
will take cold standing there and making yourself dismal. You are
shivering like a leaf, I can see you from here. If that is all the good
to be gotten from the 'religious impressions' that they harp about being
so great here, the less religion they have the better, and there is
quite little enough you may be sure." Saying which, Ruth turned her
pillow again and her head, so that she could not see the small creature
at the window. She was unaccountably rasped, not to say startled, by
her question, and she did not like to be startled; she liked to have her
current of life run smoothly.
As for Flossy, she gave a great sigh of disappointment and unrest, and
turned slowly from the window. She had vaguely hoped for help of some
sort from Ruth, and as she lay down on her prayerless pillow she said to
herself, "If she had only knelt down I should certainly have done so,
too; and perhaps I might have been helped out of this dreadful feeling."
Yet so ignorant was she of the way that it never once occurred to her to
kneel alone and pray.
No more words were spoken by those two girls that night, but each lay
awake for a long time and tossed about restlessly. Ruth had been most
effectually disturbed, and try as best she could it was impossible to
banish the memory of those quiet words: "You might _have_ to die
to-night; people do, you know." To actually _have_ to do something that
she had not planned to do and was not quite ready for, would be a new
experience to this girl. Yet when would she be ready to plan for dying?
At last she grew thoroughly vexed, and vented her disgust on the
"religionists" who got up camp-meeting excitements for the purpose of
turning weak brains like Flossy Shipley's. After that she went to sleep.
"Flossy Shipley, for pity's sake _don't_ rig your self up in that awful
cashmere! It rains yet and you will just be going around with five
wrinkles on your forehead all day, besides spoiling your dress."
It was morning, and the door of communication between the two
sleeping-rooms being thrown open the four girls were in full tide of
talk and preparation for Fairpoint. Flossy, though kept her strangely
quiet face and manner; the night had not brought her peace; she had
tossed restlessly for hours, and when at last she slept it was only to
be haunted with troubled dreams. With the first breath of morning she
opened her eyes and felt that the weight of yesterday was still pressing
on her heart.
"What _shall_ I wear?" she asked, in an absent, bewildered way of Eurie,
who had objected to the cashmere.
"I'm sure I don't know. Didn't you bring anything suited to the rain?
Let me go fishing in that ponderous trunk and see if I can't find
something."
The "fishing" produced nothing more suitable than a heavy black silk,
elaborately trimmed, and looking, as Eurie phrased it, "elegantly out of
place."
Through much confusion and frolicking the four were at last entering the
grounds at Chautauqua. By reason of their superior knowledge Marion and
Flossy led the way, while the others followed eagerly, looking and
exclaiming.
"I'll tell you what it is, girls," Eurie said, eagerly. "Let's come over
here and board. We'll have a tent or a cottage. A tent will be jollier,
and it will be twice as much fun as to stay at the hotel."
There being no dissenting voice to this proposal, they started in much
glee to look up a home; only Flossy demurred timidly.
"Can't we go to the meeting, girls, and look for the tent afterward? The
meeting has commenced; I hear them singing."
"It's nothing in the world but a Bible service," Eurie said. "That man
at the gate handed me a programme. Who wants to go to a Bible service?
We have Bibles enough at home. We want to be on hand at eleven o'clock,
because Edward Eggleston is to speak on 'The Paradise of Childhood.' My
childhood was anything but paradise, but I am anxious to know what he
will make of it."
Flossy succumbed, of course, as every one expected she would; and the
party went in search of tents and accommodations. It was no easy matter
to suit them, as the patient and courteous President found.
"I don't like the location of any one of them," Ruth Erskine said. Of
course she was the hardest to suit. "Why can't we have one of those in
that row on the hill?"
"Those are the guest tents, ma'am."
"The guest tents?" Eurie exclaimed, in surprise. "I wonder if they
entertain guests here! Who are they?"
"Why, those who have been invited to take part in the exercises, of
course. You did not suppose that they paid their own expenses and did
the work besides, did you?"
This explanation was given by Marion, who, by virtue of her experience
as reporter was better versed in the ways of these great gatherings
than the others.
"What an idea!" Eurie said. "Fancy being a guest and speaking at this
great meeting. Being a person of distinction, you know; so that people
would be pointing you out, and telling their neighbors who you were.
"There goes Miss Mitchell. She is the leading speaker on Sunday-school
books. How does that sound? Only, on the whole, I should choose some
other department than Sunday-school books; they are all so horridly
good--the people in them, I mean--that one can't get through with more
than two in a season. I tried to read one last week for Sunday, but I
abandoned it in despair."
This was an aside, while Ruth was questioning the President. She was
looking dismayed.
"Can't we have one of the tents on that side near the stand?"
"Those were taken months ago. This is a large gathering, you know."
"I should think it was! Then, it seems, we must go back to the hotel. I
thought you would be glad to let us have accommodations at any price."
The gentlemanly President here carefully repressed an amused smile.
Here were people who had evidently misunderstood Chautauqua.
"Oh, yes," he said, "we can give you accommodations, only not the very
best, I am sorry to say. Our best tents were secured many months ago.
Still, we will do the best we can for you, and I think we can make you
entirely comfortable."
"People have different ideas as to the meaning of that word," Miss Eurie
said, loftily.
Then she moved to another tent, over which she exclaimed in dismay:
"Why, the bed isn't made up! Pray, are we to sleep on the slats?"
"Oh, no. But you have to hire all those things, you know. Have you seen
our bulletin? There are parties on the ground prepared to fit up
everything that you need, and to do it very reasonably. Of course we can
not know what degree of expense those requiring tents care to incur, so
we leave that matter for them to decide for themselves. You can have as
many or as few comforts as you choose, and pay accordingly."
"And are all four of us expected to occupy this one room?" There was an
expression of decided disgust on Miss Erskine's face.
"Why, you see," explained the amused President, "this tent is designed
for four; two good-sized bedsteads set up in it; and the necessity seems
to be upon us to crowd as much as we can conveniently. There will be no
danger of impure air, you know, for you have all out-doors to breathe."
"And you really don't have toilet stands or toilet accommodations! What
a way to live!"
Another voice chimed in now, which was the very embodiment of refined
horror.
"And you don't have pianos nor sofas, and the room isn't lighted with
gas! I'm sure I don't see how we can live! It is not what we have been
accustomed to."
This was Marion, with the most dancing eyes in the world, and the
President completed the scene by laughing outright. Suddenly Ruth
discovered that she was acting the part of a simpleton, and with flushed
face she turned from them, and walked to a vacant seat, in the opposite
direction from where they were standing.
"We will take this one," she said, haughtily, without vouchsafing it a
look. "I presume it is as good as any of them, and, since we are fairly
into this absurd scrape we must make the best of it."
"Or the worst of it," Marion said, still laughing. "You are bent on
doing that, I think, Ruthie."
By a violent effort and rare good sense Ruth controlled herself
sufficiently to laugh, and the embarrassment vanished. There were
splendid points about this girl's character, not the least among them
being the ability to laugh at a joke that had been turned toward
herself. At least the effect was splendid. The reasons, therefore, might
have been better. It was because her sharp brain saw the better effect
that her ability to do this thing immediately produced on the people
around her. But I shall have to confess that a poise of character strong
enough to gracefully avert unpleasant effects arising from causes of her
own making ought to have been strong enough to have suppressed the
causes.
The question of an abiding-place being thus summarily disposed of, the
party set themselves to work with great energy to get settled, Marion
and Eurie taking the lead. Both were used to both planning and working,
and Marion at least had so much of it to do as to have lost all desire
to lead unnecessarily, and therefore everything grew harmonious.
There was a good deal of genuine disgust in Ruth's part of it, though,
her eyes having been opened, she bravely tried to hide the feeling from
the rest. But you will remember that she had lived and breathed in an
atmosphere of elegant refinement all her life, accepting the luxuries of
life as common necessities until they had really become such to her, and
the idea of doing without many things that people during camp life
necessarily find themselves _obliged_ to do without was not only strange
to her but exceedingly disagreeable. The two leaders being less used to
the extremes of luxury, and more indifferent to them by nature, could
not understand and had little sympathy with her feeling.
"We shall have to go back after all to the hotel," Eurie said, as she
dived both hands into the straw tick and tried to level the bed. "We
have too fine a lady among us; she cannot sleep on a bedstead that
doesn't rest its aristocratic legs on a velvet carpet. She doesn't see
the fun at all. I thought Flossy would be the silly one, but Flossy is
in a fit of the dumps. I never saw her so indifferent to her dress
before. See her now, bringing that three-legged stand, without regard to
rain! There is one comfort in this perpetual rain, we shall have less
dust. After all, though, I don't know as that is any improvement, so
long as it goes and makes itself up into mud. Look at the mud on my
dress! That tent we were looking at first would have been ever so much
the best, but after Ruth's silliness I really hadn't the face to suggest
a change--I thought we had given trouble enough. She makes a mistake;
she thinks this is a great hotel, where people are bound to get all the
money they can and give as little return, instead of its being a place
where people are striving to be as accommodating as they can, and give
everybody as good a time as possible."
In the midst of all this talk and work they left and ran up the hill to
the Tabernacle, where the crowds were gathering to hear Dr. Eggleston.
It was a novel sight to these four girls; the great army of eager,
strong, expectant faces; the ladies, almost without an exception,
dressed to match the rain and the woods, looking neither tired nor
annoyed about anything--looking only in earnest. To Ruth, especially, it
came like a revelation. She looked around her with surprised eyes. There
were intellectual faces on every hand. There was the hum of conversation
all about her, for the meeting was not yet opened, and the tone of their
words was different from any with which her life had been familiar; they
seemed lifted up, enthused; they seemed to have found something worthy
of enthusiasm. As a rule Ruth had not enjoyed enthusiastic people; they
had seemed silly to her; and you will admit that there is a silly side
to the consuming of a great deal of that trait on the dress for an
evening party, or the arrangement of programmes for a fancy concert.
Just now she had a glimmering fancy that there might be something worthy
of arresting and holding one's eager attention.
"They look alive," she said, turning from right to left among the rows
and rows of faces. "They look as though they had a good deal to do, and
they thought it was worth doing."
Then, curiously enough, there came suddenly to her mind that question
which she had banished the night before, and she wondered if these
people had all really answered it to their satisfaction.
Flossy took a seat immediately in front of the speaker. She was hungry
for something, and she did not know what to call it--something that
would set her fevered heart at rest. As for Marion and Eurie, they hoped
with all their hearts that the "Hoosier Schoolmaster" would give them a
rich intellectual treat, at least Marion was after the intellectual.
Eurie would be contented if she got the fun, and a man like Dr.
Eggleston has enough of both those elements to make sure of satisfying
their hopes. But would he bring something to help Flossy?