PEACE MAYTHORNE
"After you have seen Mrs. Littlejohn, and explained why she went
supperless last night," said Mrs. Breynton, "I want you to do an errand
for me."
"What is it?" asked Gypsy, pleasantly. She felt very humble, and much
ashamed, this morning, and anxious to make herself useful.
"I want you to find out where Peace Maythorne's room is,--it is in the
same house,--and carry her this, with my love."
Mrs. Breynton took up a copy of "Harper's Magazine," and handed it to
Gypsy.
"Tell her I have turned the leaf down at some articles I think will
interest her, and ask her if the powder I left her put her to sleep."
"Who is Peace Maythorne?" asked Gypsy, wondering. "Is she poor?"
"Yes."
"How funny to send her a 'Harper's,'" said Gypsy. "Why don't you give her
some money, or something?"
"Some things are worth more than money to some people," said Mrs.
Breynton, smiling.
"Why! then you had been into that house before I found Mrs. Littlejohn?"
said Gypsy, as the thought first struck her.
"Oh, yes; many times."
Gypsy started off, with the Magazine under her arm, wondering if there
were a house in town, filled with these wretched poor, in which her mother
was not known as a friend.
Her heart sank a little as she climbed the dark stairs to Mrs.
Littlejohn's room. She had begged of her mother a tiny pailful of green
peas, with which she hoped to pacify the old woman, but she was somewhat
in dread of hearing her talk, and ashamed to confess her own neglect.
Mrs. Littlejohn was eating the very nice breakfast which Mrs. Rowe had
sent over, and groaning dolefully over it, as Gypsy entered.
"Good morning," said Gypsy.
"Good morning," said Mrs. Littlejohn, severely.
"I went out to play in the hay with Sarah Rowe, and forgot all about your
supper last night, and I'm just as sorry as I can be," said Gypsy, coming
to the point frankly, and without any attempt to excuse herself.
"Oh, of course!" said Mrs. Littlejohn, in the tone of a martyr. "It's all
I expect. I'm a poor lone widdy with a bone broke, and I'm used to
bein'clock forgot. Little gals that has everything they want, and five
dollars besides, and promises me salmon and such, couldn't be expected to
remember the sufferin'clock and afflicted,--of course not."
It was not an easy nor a pleasant thing to apologize to a person to whom
she had played the charitable lady the day before; and Mrs. Littlejohn's
manner of receiving the explanation certainly made it no easier. But
Gypsy, as the saying goes, "swallowed her pride," and felt that she
deserved it.
"I've brought you some peas," she said, meekly.
"Oh!" said the old woman, relenting a little, "you have, have you? Well,
I'm obleeged to you, and you can set 'em in the cupboard."
Gypsy emptied her peas into a yellow bowl which she found in the cupboard,
and then asked,--
"Can I do anything for you?"
"I'm terrible thirsty!" said Mrs. Littlejohn, with a long groan. "There's
some water in that air pail."
Gypsy went into the corner where the pail stood, and filled the mug with
water; then, not being able to think of anything more to say, she
concluded to go.
"Good mornin'clock," said Mrs. Littlejohn, in a forgiving tone; "I hope
you'll come agin."
Gypsy secretly thought it was doubtful if she ever did. Her charity, like
that of most young people of her age and experience, was not of the sort
calculated to survive under difficulties, or to deal successfully with
shrewish old women.
After inquiring in vain of the group of staring children where Peace
Maythorne's room was, Gypsy resorted to her friend, the red-faced woman,
who directed her to a door upon the second story.
It was closed, and Gypsy knocked.
"Come in," said a quiet voice. Gypsy went in, wondering why Peace
Maythorne did not get up and open the door, and if she did not know it was
more polite. She stopped short, as she entered the room, and wondered no
longer.
It was a plain, bare room, but neat enough, and not unpleasant nor
unhomelike, because of the great flood of morning sunlight that fell in
and touched everything to golden warmth. It touched most brightly, and
lingered longest, on a low bed drawn up between the windows. A girl lay
there, with a pale face turned over on the pillows, and weak, thin hands,
folded on the counterpane. She might, from her size, have been about
sixteen years of age; but her face was like the face of a woman long grown
old. The clothing of the bed partially concealed her shoulders, which were
cruelly rounded and bent.
So Peace Maythorne was a cripple.
Gypsy recovered from her astonishment with a little start, and said,
blushing, for fear she had been rude,--
"Good morning. I'm Gypsy Breynton. Mother sent me down with a magazine."
"I am glad to see you," said Peace Maythorne, smiling. "Won't you sit
down?"
Gypsy took a chair by the bed, thinking how pleasant the old, pale face,
was, after all, and how kindly and happy the smile.
"Your mother is very kind," said Peace; "she is always doing something for
me. She has given me a great deal to read."
"Do you like to read?--I don't," said Gypsy.
"Why, yes!" said Peace, opening her eyes wide; "I thought everybody liked
to read. Besides I can't do anything else, you know."
"Nothing at all?" asked Gypsy.
"Only sometimes, when the pain isn't very bad, I try to help aunt about
her sewing, I can't do much."
"Oh, you live with your aunt?" said Gypsy.
"Yes. She takes in sewing. She's out, just now."
"Does your back pain you a great deal?" asked Gypsy.
"Oh, yes; all the time. But, then, I get used to it, you know," said
Peace.
"_All the time!_--oh, I am so sorry!" said Gypsy, drawing a long breath.
"Oh, it might be worse," said Peace, smiling.
"I've only lain here three years. Some people can't move for forty. The
doctor says I sha'n't live so long as that."
Gypsy looked at the low bed, the narrow room, the pallid face and shrunken
body cramped there, moveless, on the pillows. Three years! Three years to
lie through summer suns and winter snows, while all the world was out at
play, and happy!
"Well," said Gypsy, as the most appropriate comment suggesting itself;
"you _are_ rather different from Mrs. Littlejohn!"
Peace smiled. There was something rare about Peace Maythorne's smile.
"Poor Mrs. Littlejohn! You see, she isn't used to being sick, and I am;
that makes the difference."
"Oh, I forgot!" said Gypsy, abruptly, "mother said I was to ask if those
powders she left you put you to sleep."
"Nicely. They're better than anything the doctor gave me; everything your
mother does seems to be the best sort, somehow. She can't touch your hand,
or smooth your pillow, without doing it differently from other people."
"That's so!" said Gypsy, emphatically. "There isn't anybody else like her.
Do you lie awake very often?"
Peace answered in the two quiet words that were on her lips so often, in
the quiet voice that never complained,--
"Oh, yes."
There was a little silence. Gypsy was watching Peace. Peace had her eyes
turned away from her visitor, but she was conscious of every quick,
nervous breath Gypsy drew, and every impatient little flutter of her
hands.
The two girls were studying each other. Gypsy's investigations, whatever
they were, seemed to be very pleasant, for she started at last with a bit
of a sigh, and announced the result of them in the characteristic words,--
"I like you!"
To her surprise, Peace just turned up her eyes and turned them away, and
the eyes were full of tears. After a moment,--
"Thank you. I don't see many people so young--except the children. I tell
them stories sometimes."
"But you won't like me," said Gypsy.
"I rather think I shall."
"No you won't," said Gypsy, shaking her head decidedly; "not a bit. I know
you won't. I'm silly,--well, I'll tell you what I am by-and-by. First, I
want to hear all about you,--everything, I mean," she added, with a quick
delicacy, of which, for "blundering Gypsy," she had a great
deal,--"everything that you care to tell me."
"Why, I've nothing to tell," said Peace, smiling, "cooped up here all the
time; it's all the same."
"That's just what I want to hear about. About the being cooped up. I don't
see _how you bear it_!" said Gypsy, impetuously.
Peace smiled again. Gypsy had a fancy that the smile had stolen one of the
sunbeams that lay in such golden, flickering waves, upon the bed.
Too much self-depreciation is often a sign of the extremest vanity. Peace
had nothing of this. Seeing that Gypsy was in earnest in her wish to hear
her story, she quietly began it without further parley. It was very
simple, and quickly told.
"We used to live on a farm on the mountains--father and mother and I.
There were a great many cattle, and so much ground it tired me to walk
across it. I always went to school, and father read to us in the evenings.
I suppose that's the way I've learned to love to read, and I've been so
glad since. I was pretty small when they died,--first father, then mother.
I remember it a little; at least I remember about mother,--she kissed me
so, and cried. Then Aunt Jane came for me, and brought me here. We lived
in a pleasant house up the street, at first. I used to work in the mill,
and earned enough to pay aunt what I cost her. Then one day, when I was
thirteen years old, we were coming out at noon, all of us girls, in a
great hurry and frolic, and I felt sick and dizzy watching the wheels go
round, and,--well, they didn't mean to,--but they pushed me, and I fell."
"Down stairs?"
"All the way,--it was a long, crooked flight. I struck my spine on every
step."
"Oh, Peace!" said Gypsy, half under her breath.
"I was sick for a little while; then I got better. I thought it was all
over. Then one day I found a little curve between my shoulders, and
so,--well, it came so slowly I hardly knew it, till at last I was in bed
with the pain. We had come here because it was hard times, and aunt had to
support me,--and then there were the doctor's bills."
"Doesn't he say you can _ever_ get well? never sit up a little while?"
"Oh, no."
Gypsy gasped a little, as if she were suffocating.
"And your aunt,--is she kind to you?"
"Oh, yes."
A certain flitting expression, that the face of Peace caught with the
words, Gypsy could not help seeing.
"But I mean, real kind. Does she love you?"
The girl's cheek flushed to a pale, quick crimson, then faded slowly.
"She is very good to me. I am a great trouble. You know I am not her own.
It is very hard for her that I can't support myself."
Gypsy said something just then, in her innermost thought of thoughts,
about Aunt Jane, that Aunt Jane would not have cared to hear.
"If I could only earn something!" said Peace, with a quick breath, that
sounded like a sigh. "That is hardest of all. But it's all right somehow."
"Peace Maythorne!" said Gypsy, in a little flash, "I don't see! never to
go out in the wind and jump on the hay, and climb the mountains, and run
and row and snowball,--why, it would _kill_ me! And you lie here so sweet
and patient, and you haven't said a cross word all the while you've been
telling me about it. I don't understand! How can you, _can_ you bear it?"
"I couldn't, if I didn't tell Him," said Peace, softly.
"Whom?"
"God."
There was a long silence. Gypsy looked out of the window, winking very
hard, and Peace lay quite still upon the bed.
"There!" said Gypsy, at last, with a jump. "I shall be late to school."
"Oh," said Peace, "you haven't told me anything about yourself; you said
you would."
"Well," said Gypsy, tying on her hat, "that's easy enough done. I'm silly
and cross, and forgetful and blundering."
"I don't believe it," said Peace, laughing.
"I am," said Gypsy, confidentially; "it's all true; and I'm always tearing
my dresses, and worrying father, and getting mad at Winnie, and bothering
Miss Melville, and romping round, and breaking my neck! and then, when
things don't go right, how I scold!"
Peace smiled, and looked incredulous.
"It's just so," said Gypsy, giving a little sharp nod to emphasize her
words. "And here you lie, and never think of being cross and impatient,
and love everybody and everybody loves you, and--well, all I have to say
is, if I were you I should have scolded everybody out of the house long
before this!"
"You mustn't talk so about me," said Peace, a faint shadow of pain
crossing her face. "You don't know how wicked I am--nobody knows; I am
cross very often. Sometimes when my back aches as if I should scream, and
aunt is talking, I hide my face under the clothes, and don't say a word to
her."
"You call _that_ being cross!" said Gypsy, with her eyes very wide open.
She buttoned on her sack, and started to go, but stopped a minute.
"I don't suppose you'd want me to come again--I'm so noisy, and all."
"Oh, I should be so glad!" said Peace, with one of those rare smiles: "I
didn't dare to ask you."
"Well; I'll come. But I told you you wouldn't like me."
"I do," said Peace. "I like you very much."
"How funny!" said Gypsy. Then she bade her good-by, and went to school.
"Mother," she said, at night, "did you have any particular reason in
sending me to Peace Maythorne?"
"Perhaps so," said Mrs. Breynton, smiling. "Why?"
"Nothing, only I thought so. You were a very wise woman."
A while after she spoke up, suddenly.
"Mother, don't the Quakers say good matches are made in heaven?"
"Who's been putting sentimental ideas into the child's head?" said her
father, in an undertone.
"Why, Gypsy Breynton!" said Winnie, looking very much shocked; "you hadn't
ought to say such things. Of course, the brimstone falls down from hell,
and they pick it up and put it on the matches!"
"What made you ask the question?" said Mrs. Breynton, when the laugh had
subsided.
"Oh, I was only thinking, I guessed Peace Maythorne's name was made in
heaven. It so exactly suits her."
After that, the cripple's little quiet room became one of the places Gypsy
loved best in Yorkbury.
Two or three weeks after that Mrs. Littlejohn, who had been gaining
rapidly in strength and good temper under Mrs. Breynton's wise and kindly
care, took it into her head one morning, when she was alone, to walk
across the room, and look out of the window. The weakened limb was not in
a fit state to be used at all, and the shock given to it was very great.
Inflammation set in, and fever, and the doctor shook his head, and asked
if the old woman had any friends living anywhere; if so, they had better
be sent for. But the poor creature seemed to be desolate enough; declared
she had no relatives, and was glad of it; she only wanted to be let alone,
and she should get well fast enough.
She never said that when Mrs. Breynton was in the room. Gypsy went down
one evening with her mother, to help her carry a bundle of fresh
bed-clothing, and she was astonished at the gentleness which had crept
into the old withered face and peevish voice. Mrs. Littlejohn called her
up to the bed, just as she started to go.
"I say, little gal, I told ye a fib the day ye fust come. I did have a
dinner, though it war a terrible measly one--Mrs. Breynton, marm!"
Mrs. Breynton stepped up to her.
"What was that ye read t'other day, 'bout liars not goin'clock into the
kingdom of heaven?--I 'most forgot."
Gypsy crept out, softly. She was wondering how her mother had managed her
charity to this fretful old woman so wisely, that her words, unfitly
spoken, were becoming a trouble to herself, and her hours of increasing
pain turned into hours of late, faint repentance. Perhaps the charm lay in
a certain old book, dog-eared and worn, and dusty from long disuse on the
cupboard shelf. This little book Mrs. Breynton had found, and she had read
in it many times, until that painful groaning ceased.
And so one night it chanced that the old yellow cat sat blinking at the
light, and the yellow, furrowed face turned over on the pillow and smiled,
and lay still. The light burned out, and the morning came; the cat jumped
purring upon the bed, and seeing what was there, curled up by it, with a
mournful mewing cry.
"Peace Maythorne says," said Gypsy, "that if Mrs. Littlejohn went to
heaven, she will be so happy _to find she doesn't scold_! Isn't it funny,
in Peace, to think of such things?"