When Mrs. Eaton went to Mercer, the change in her life was absolute
and bewildering. Robert Blair’s enormous wealth was, at first,
simply not to be realized. The subdued and refined magnificence
of the house conveyed nothing to his sister’s mind, because she
had no standard of value. The pictures and tapestries implied not
money, but only beauty and joy, for she had never dreamed of buying
anything but food and clothes; so how could she guess that all the
money of all her sixteen years on a minister’s salary would not
have purchased, say, the small misty square of canvas that held in
one corner a wonderful and noble and peasant name?
The first night in the great wainscoted dining-room, with a man
bringing unknown dishes to her elbow, with candles shining on
elaborate and useless pieces of silver, with the glow of firelight
flickering out from under a superb chimney-piece of Mexican marble,
and dancing about the stately and dignified room--the beauty
and the graciousness and the wonder of it was an overwhelming
experience, though she had not the dimmest idea of the fortune it
represented--a fortune notorious and envied the land over. That she
had had no share in it until now did not wound her in the least;
she was grateful for the warmth and the comfort and the kindness,
now they had come; she never harked back to the painful years of
silence and forgetfulness.
Her brother and his wife watched her, amused and interested; her
dazzled admiration of everything was half touching, half droll. But
what a confession it was! Eleanor Blair realized this, and she said
to herself, warmly, that she would make up to Robert’s sister for
the past. She was in her element in arranging her sister-in-law’s
future; she made a dozen plans for her in the first week; but her
husband laughed and shook his head.
“Wait,” he said; “time enough when we see how we get along.”
But they got along very well. The children, after the first shy
awkwardness had worn off, were really attractive. Silas, an
eager brown-eyed boy of eleven, lovable in spite of his name,
made artless and pretty love to his pretty aunt, who found him a
delightful plaything. “The serious Esther,” as her uncle called
her, was a friendly little creature, when one came to know her; her
common-sense commended her to Mr. Blair, and her dressmaking and
her education were an immediate interest to her aunt.
So it came about that the visit was prolonged, and the project of a
little establishment of her own for Mrs. Eaton gradually given up;
at all events, for the present. It was very satisfactory as it was.
The house was so big, they were not in the way; and Mrs. Eaton’s
mourning kept her in the background in regard to society--which
“was just as well,” Mrs. Blair admitted, smiling to herself--but
it made no difference in her usefulness. She was really quite
useful in one way or another; she could write an intelligent note
to a tradesman, or reply (by formula) to a begging letter; so, by
and by, she was practically her sister-in-law’s secretary, and
certainly the Blairs had never had either a maid or a butler who
could begin to arrange flowers for a dinner party as Mrs. Eaton
did. She was silent, and rather vague, but always gentle, and ready
and eager to fetch and carry for anybody. She so rarely expressed
any opinion of her own, that when she did the two strong and
good-natured people who made her life so easy for her could hardly
take it seriously. She did, to be sure, decline to change her son’s
objectionable name, on the ground that it was his name, and so
could not be changed; “and,” Mrs. Blair complained once, “she won’t
let me send Esther to dancing-school. I asked her if she thought
dancing was wrong, and she said, ‘Oh, no; but Mr. Eaton did.’ Isn’t
it funny?”
Robert Blair laughed, and said he would straighten that out. But,
somehow, it was not straightened out. Esther teased, and Mrs.
Blair was just a little impatient and sarcastic. But Esther did not
go to dancing-school.
“I’m sorry to displease you, Eleanor,” Mrs. Eaton said, shrinking
as she spoke, like a frightened animal which expects a blow,
“but--I can’t allow it. Mr. Eaton would not have wished it.”
Yet, negative as she seemed, the little quiet woman was keenly
alive to the advantages of this full, rich life for the children,
and, indeed, for herself. Mere rest was such a luxury to her, for
she had lived and worked as only a country minister’s wife must.
So, to feel no anxiety, to have delicate food, to know the touch
of fine linen,--in fact, to be comfortable, meant more to her
than even her brother, enjoying his generosity towards her, could
possibly imagine.
So life began for his sister and her children in Robert Blair’s
beautiful great house in the new part of Mercer,--the new part
which is not offended by the sight of those great black chimneys
roaring with sapphire and saffron flames, or belching monstrous
coils of black smoke, threaded with showers of sparks,--those
chimneys and roofs which are not beautiful to look upon, but which
have made the “new” part of Mercer possible. When Mrs. Eaton came
to her brother’s house, these unlovely foundations of his fortune
were still for a month. There was a strike on, and Mercer was
cleaner and quieter than it had been for many months,--in fact,
than it had been since the last strike. The clang and clamor of the
machine-shops, the scream of the steel saws biting into the living,
glowing rails, the thunderous crash of plates being tested in the
hot gloom of the foundries, had all stopped.
“And, oh dear me,” said Mrs. Blair, “what a relief it is! Of course
it’s very annoying to have them strike, and all that, but when one
drives into town to get to the other side of the river, the noise
is perfectly intolerable. And when the wind is in that direction,
we can really hear the roar even out here.”
She said this to her clergyman, who looked at her with a veiled
sparkle of humor in his handsome eyes.
“So the puddlers shall starve to make a Mercer holiday,” he said
good-naturedly.
“If they choose to strike, they must take the consequences,” she
replied, with some spirit. “Besides, they are the most ungrateful
creatures! Well, I’m sure I don’t know what we’re coming to!”
“Something may be coming to us,” her visitor said, with a whimsical
look, but he sighed, and got up to take his leave. His charming
parishioner sighed too, prettily, and said with much feeling,--
“Of course, Mr. West, if there are any cases that need help, you’ll
let me know.”
“But, Nellie,” said Mrs. Eaton, who had been sitting silent, as
usual, and quite overlooked by the other two, “is there any use in
helping the people who are in trouble because they are out of work,
and yet not letting them go to work?”
Mrs. Blair laughed, in spite of herself, the protest was so
unexpected, and so absurd, coming from this meek source. “My dear,”
she said, “you don’t understand; they can go to work if they want
to.”
“Well,” Mrs. Eaton said anxiously, “I should think, either they are
wrong, and so you shouldn’t help them, or they are right, and they
ought to get what they want.”
Her sister stared at her, and then laughed again, greatly amused;
but William West put on his glasses and gave her a keen look.
“Mrs. Eaton, don’t you want to help us on the Organized Relief
Association?”
“Yes, sir,” said Lydia Eaton, “if there’s anything I can do.”
“I don’t want to steal your services away from any other parson,”
he said pleasantly. “I suppose you belong to Mr. Hudson’s flock?
You are a Presbyterian, of course?”
“No, sir, I am not,” she said, the color rising in her face.
“Oh, then you do belong to me?” he said smiling.
“I’m not an Episcopalian,” she answered, with a frightened look.
“Then what on earth are you?” Mrs. Blair asked her, laughing.
“I’m not--anything,” she said, her voice trembling; “but, Eleanor,
please don’t speak of it. The children must not know it. Mr. Eaton
would want them to be members of his church. So we must always go
there.”
There was an instant’s awkward pause. Mrs. Blair looked very
disapproving.
“Why, Lydia,” she said, “do you mean you don’t believe things? Why,
I never had a doubt in my life!” she exclaimed, turning to the
minister, who was silent.
Mrs. Eaton caught her breath, and looked at him too, her mild eyes
full of pain. “Nobody ever asked me before. I am sorry, but I can’t
help it. The Bible says people go to hell; but God is good, so
I don’t believe the Bible. But Mr. Eaton would wish me to go to
church.”
The perfectly simple logic, so primitive as to stop at “the Bible
says,” was irresistibly funny; yet, to William West, infinitely
touching. But he put the discussion aside quietly.
“So you will come on our committee?” he said. “We shall be glad to
have you.”
But when he went away he laughed a little to himself. “The iron
heel of Edwards, I suppose. But how direct! Two and two make four.
She is incapable of understanding that they sometimes make five.”
But Mrs. Blair did not dismiss it so lightly. She was annoyed at
the protest about the strikers, and that impelled her to straighten
out Mrs. Eaton’s religious beliefs. There was some irritation in
her voice as she began, but she was in earnest, and stopped in the
middle of “proofs” to tell Samuel to say she was “not at home.”
“But, Eleanor, you are,” Mrs. Eaton protested in a frightened way.
“My dear, that is a form of speech.”
“But it makes Samuel tell a lie,” she said nervously.
“Oh, Lily, don’t be silly,” Mrs. Blair said impatiently, and then
jumped from hell to the strikers,--though, as it happened, the
distance between them was not so great after all. “Really, now,
Lydia, I don’t think you ought to speak as you did before Mr. West
about the men. In the first place, business isn’t philanthropy, and
Robert can’t give in to them. And in the second place, they are
behaving outrageously! I should think you would have more loyalty
to Robert than to seem to uphold them.”
“I only meant”--Mrs. Eaton began breathlessly.
“Oh, my dear, you don’t know what you mean,” Mrs. Blair
interrupted, laughing and good-natured again. “But just remember,
will you, how kind Robert is? It seems to me he is always doing
things for this ungrateful place. Look at the fountain in the
square; that’s the last thing.”
“But wouldn’t the men rather have had running water in the
tenements?” Mrs. Eaton said; “there are only hydrants down in the
back yards.”
However, as that first year in Mercer slipped by, there were very
few such jars. The strike ended early in the fall, and there was
nothing to call out any objectionable opinion from Mrs. Eaton on
that line.
“As for Lydia,” Robert Blair said once, “you say ‘go,’ and she
goeth. She has absolutely no will of her own.”
This was, apparently, quite true. At all events, she had a genius
for obedience, and a terror of responsibility. In the organized
relief-work which Mrs. Blair’s clergyman had proposed, obedience
necessitated responsibility sometimes, and no one knew how the
silent little creature suffered when she had to decide anything.
But she did decide, usually with remarkable but very simple
common-sense.
“And always on the supposition that two and two make four,” Mr.
West said to himself. He found her literalness a little aggravating
just at first, but it was very diverting. He used to put on his
glasses and watch her anxious face when she talked to him or
received his orders (for such his requests or suggestions seemed
to her); and he would ask her questions to draw out her astounding
simplicity and directness of thought, and find her as refreshing as
a child. She used to sit up before him, saying, “Yes, sir,” and
“No, sir,” and looking, with her startled eyes, like a little gray
rabbit--for at the end of a year she took off her black dress, and
wore instead soft grays that were very pretty and becoming. Her
absolute literalness gave him much entertainment; but she never
knew it. If she had guessed it, she would have been humbly glad to
have been ridiculous, if it had amused him.
And so the first year and a half went by.