ONE DROP OF OIL
NOW you know that some of you are anxious to hear all about that
marriage which took place in the First Church, the next evening. You
want to be told how the bride was dressed, and whether she had any
bridesmaids, and whether Dr. Dennis appeared well, and how Grace Dennis
was dressed, and how she acted, and who performed the ceremony, and
whether it was a lengthy one, and every little detail of the whole
matter; also, you are desirous of knowing how the “little gathering”
that the Erskines gave, soon after, was managed—whether Mrs. Erskine
became reconciled to the “black silk” and the “lace bow;” whether
Susan proved to be yielding, or obstinate, and how Ruth bore up under
the numerous petty embarrassments, which you plainly foresee the
evening had in store for her. But, then, there are those discerning and
sympathetic beings—the critics—standing all ready to pronounce on us,
and say, that we are “prolix” and “commonplace” and “tedious;” that
we spend too much time in telling about trivialities, and do not give
the startling points fast enough, as if that were not exactly what we
and they are doing all the time! Who lives exclamation points every
day? There comes occasionally one into most lives (and assuredly Ruth
Erskine believed that hers had come to her); but, for the most part,
lives are made up of commas and interrogations and dashes. There is
this comfort about professional critics—those that live behind the
scenes know that when they are particularly hard on a book, one of two
things is the case—either they have been touched in a sensitive spot
by some of the characters delineated or opinions expressed, or else
they have an attack of indigestion, and the first subject that comes
under their dissecting-knives must bear the savage consequences.
Very well, let us give them a touch of “trivialities.” The bride’s
dress was a soft sheeny grey, just the sort of dress for enduring a
long, westward-bound journey, and yet rich enough, and soft enough,
and delicate enough to look appropriate in the church. As for Dr.
Dennis. There is this satisfaction about a man’s dress, it is easy of
description. When you have said it was black, and neat-fitting, what is
there left to say? Some gentlemen look exceedingly well dressed, and
some look ungainly; and every one of them may have on black clothes,
that look to the uninitiated as though they were well-fitted. What
makes the difference? What lady can tell?
The bright-eyed, fair-faced daughter of the house of Dennis was
really the beauty of that evening; and, if the truth were known, the
bride-elect had expended more thought and care upon the details of
this young girl’s attire than she had on her own. Eurie Mitchell and
Mr. Harrison were bridesmaid and groomsman. There were those in the
church who wondered at that, and thought that Mr. Harrison would have
liked some one better than “that Mitchell girl” with him, under the
circumstances. But Eurie herself, and you and I, know better. We know
he has chosen her, from all others, to stand by him forever.
After all, I can tell you nothing but the commonplaces. Is there ever
anything else told about weddings? Who is able to put on paper the
heart-throbs and the solemnities of such an hour? It is like all other
things in life—that which is told is the least important of all the
story.
Old Dr. Armington, whose hair was white with the snows of more than
seventy winters, spoke the solemn words that made them man and wife....
For half a century he had been, from time to time, repeating that
solemn sentence.
“You are the two hundred and ninety-seventh couple that I have, in the
name of my Master, joined for life. God bless you.”
This was his low-spoken word to Dr. and Mrs. Dennis, as he took their
hands in after greeting. Someway, it made Marion feel more solemn than
before. Two hundred and ninety-six brides! She seemed to see the long
procession filing past. She wondered where they all were, and what had
been their life-histories. Later in the evening, she could not resist
the temptation to ask him, further:
“How many of the two hundred and ninety-six have you buried, Dr.
Armington?”
And the old man’s lip trembled, and his voice was husky, as he said:
“Don’t ask me, child. A long array of names, among them two of my own
daughters. But I shall sit down with a great many of them soon, at ‘the
marriage supper of the Lamb.’ I hope none of them will wear starless
crowns.”
And Marion turned from him quickly, feeling that she had gotten her
word to live by.
About that party. They lived through it, and, in a sense, it was a
success. There were, of course, many mortifications; but by dint of
shutting her eyes and her ears as far as possible, and keeping on the
alert in every direction, and remembering her recent resolutions,
very solemnly renewed, Ruth bore the ordeal reasonably well. She had
more help than she knew of. Susan Erskine had inherited more of her
father’s nature than her mother’s. It was not easy for her to yield,
and she did not enjoy being managed. She could sacrifice her will, or
her plans, or her comfort, if she saw a _need-be_ for it, or if, in
any sense, the strong, and, to her, solemn word, “Duty,” could be put
in as a plea; but to be controlled in the mere matter of her dress—and
that, after she had determined that to spend time and money, other
than was absolutely necessary, on the adorning of the perishing body,
was a moral wrong—was something that could not be expected of her. She
was not conscious of any other feeling than that of duty; but, in her
heart, she was grieved, not to say insulted. Here had they—her mother
and herself—been ignored for eighteen years, allowed to dress as they
pleased, and go where they pleased, or not go at all; and, now that
their tardy rights were being in a degree recognized, it was the paltry
question of _dress_ that must absorb them! She was willing to make many
concessions to Ruth. There were times when she pitied her. In fact, she
had constant and sincere sympathy for her in this invasion of home and
name. She realized that the blame was in no sense Ruth’s, and to shield
her, as much as possible, from the inevitable suffering, was Susan’s
natural feeling. But, when it came to strictly personal questions—what
colors she should wear, and what material, and how it should be made
up—she rebelled. Surely those were matters which she had a right to
decide for herself. Mother might be easily managed, if she would;
perhaps it was well that she could be. But, for herself, Susan felt
that it would be impossible, and hoped most earnestly that no attempt
would be made in that direction.
As for Ruth, she thought of the matter in a troubled way, and
shrank from entering into detail. The most she had done was to ask,
hesitatingly, what she—Susan—would wear, on the evening in question.
And Susan had answered her, coldly, that she “had not given the matter
a thought, as yet.” She supposed it would be time enough to think about
that when the hour for dressing arrived. In her heart she knew that
she had but one thing to wear; and Ruth knew it too, and knew that it
was ill-chosen and ill-made, and in every way inappropriate. Yet she
actually turned away, feeling unable to cope with the coldness and the
evident reserve of this young woman over whom she could not hope to
have influence.
Curiously enough, it was gentle little Flossy who stepped into these
troubled waters, and poured her noiseless drop of oil. She came in
the morning, waiting for Ruth to go with her to make a farewell call
on Marion Wilbur, the morning before the wedding; and in the library,
among the plants, giving them loving little touches here and there, was
Susan.
“What is Marion to wear for travelling, do you know?” Flossy had asked
of Ruth, as some word about the journey suggested the thought. And Ruth
had answered briefly, almost savagely:
“I don’t know. It is a blessed thing that no one will have to give it a
thought. Marion will be sure to choose the most appropriate thing, and
to have every detail in exquisite keeping with it. It is only lately
that I have realized what a gift she had in that direction.”
Then Ruth had gone away to make ready, and wise little Flossy, looking
after her with the far-away, thoughtful look in her soft eyes, began to
see one of her annoyances plainly, and to wonder if there were any way
of helping. Then she went down the long room to Susan, busy among the
plants.
“How pretty they are!” she said, sweetly. “What gorgeous coloring, and
delicate tracery in the leaves! Does it ever occur to you to wonder
that such great skill should have been expended in just making them
look pretty to please our eyes?”
“No,” said Susan, earnest and honest, “I don’t think I ever thought of
it.”
“I do often. Just think of that ivy, it would have grown as rapidly and
been quite as healthy if the leaves had been square, and all of them an
intense green, instead of being shaded into that lovely dark, scolloped
border all around the outer edge. ‘He has made every thing beautiful
in his time.’ I found that verse one day last week, and I liked it _so
much_. Since then I seem to be noticing everybody and everything, to
see whether the beauty remains. I find it everywhere.”
All this was wonderfully new to Susan Erskine. She was silent and
thoughtful. Presently she said, “It doesn’t apply to human beings—at
least to many it doesn’t. I know good men and women who are not
beautiful at all.”
“Wouldn’t that depend a little on what one meant by beauty?” Flossy
said, timidly. Argument was not her forte. “And then, you know,
He _made_ the plants and flowers—created their beauty for them, I
mean, because they are soulless things—I think he left to us who are
immortal, a great deal of the fashioning to do for ourselves.”
“Oh, of course, there is a moral beauty which we find in the faces of
the most ordinary, but I was speaking of physical beauty.”
“So was I,” said Flossy, with an emphatic nod of her pretty little
head. “I didn’t mean anything deep and wise, at all. I don’t know
anything about what they call ‘esthetics,’ or any of those scientific
phrases. I mean just pretty things. Now, to show you how simple my
thought was, that ivy leaf made me think of a pretty dress, well made
and shapely, you know, and fitted to the face and form of the wearer.
I thought the One who made such lovely plants, and finished them so
exquisitely, must be pleased to see us study enough of His works to
make ourselves look pleasing to the eyes of others.”
Susan Erskine turned quite away from the plants and stared at her guest
with wide, open, amazed eyes, for a full minute. “Don’t you think,”
she asked at last, and her tone was of that stamp which indicates
suppressed force—“don’t you think that a great deal of time, and a
great deal of money, and a great deal of force, which might do wonders
elsewhere, are wasted on dress?”
“Yes,” said Flossy, simply and sweetly, “I know that is so. After I
was converted, for a little while it troubled me very much. I had been
in the habit of spending a great deal of time and not a little money
in that way, and I knew it must be wrong, and I was greatly in danger
of going to the other extreme. I think for a few days I made myself
positively ugly to my father and mother, by the unbecoming way in which
I thought I ought to dress. But after awhile it came to me, that it
really took very little more time to look _well_ than it did to look
ill-dressed; and that if certain colors became the form and complexion
that God had given me, and certain others did not, there could be no
religion in wearing those not fitted to me. God made them all, and he
must have meant some of them specially for me, just as he specially
thought about me in other matters. Oh, I haven’t gone into the question
very deeply; I want to understand it better. I am going to ask Mr.
Roberts about it the very next time he comes. But, meantime, I feel
sure that the Lord Jesus wants me to please my parents and my sister in
every reasonable way. Sister Kitty is really uncomfortable if colors
don’t assimilate, and what right have I to make her uncomfortable, so
long as the very rose leaves are tinted with just the color of all
others that seemed fitted to them?”
Susan mused.
“What would you do,” she asked presently, “if you had been made with
that sense of the fitness of things left out? I mean, suppose you
hadn’t the least idea whether you ought to wear green, or yellow, or
what. Some people are so constituted that they don’t know what you
mean when you tell them that certain colors don’t assimilate; what are
_they_ to do?”
“Yes,” said Flossy, gently and sweetly, “I know what you mean, because
people are made very differently about these things. I am trying to
learn how to make bread. I don’t know in the least. I can make cake,
and desserts, and all those things, but Mr. Roberts likes the bread
that our cook makes, and as I don’t know how to make that kind, nor any
other, I thought I ought to learn. It isn’t a bit natural to me. I have
to be very particular to remember all the tiresome things about it; I
hadn’t an idea there were so many. And I say to the cook, ‘Now, Katy,
what am I to do next? this doesn’t look right at all.’ And she comes
and looks over my shoulder, and says, ‘Why, child, you need more flour;
always put in flour till you get rid of that dreadful stickiness.’ Then
I say to myself, ‘That dreadful stickiness is to be gotten rid of, and
flour will rid me of it, it seems,’ and I determine in my own mind that
I will remember that item for future use. I don’t really like the work
at all. It almost seems as though bread ought to be made without such
an expenditure of time and strength. But it isn’t, you know, and so I
try; and when I think of how Mr. Roberts likes it, I feel glad that I
am taking time and pains to learn. You know there are so many things
to remember about it, from the first spoonful of yeast, down to the
dampening of the crust and tucking up the loaves when they come out
of the oven, that it really takes a good deal of memory. I asked Mr.
Roberts once if he thought there would be any impropriety in my asking
for ability to take in all the details that I was trying to learn. He
laughed at me a little—he often does—but he said there could be no
impropriety in praying about anything that it was proper to do.”
“Thank you,” said Susan Erskine, promptly. Then she did what was an
unusual thing for her to do. She came over to the daintily dressed
little blossom on the sofa, and bending her tall form, kissed the
delicately flushed cheek, lightly and tenderly.
“Ruth,” said little Flossy, as they made their way toward the
street-car. “I think I like your new sister very much, indeed. I am not
sure but she is going to be a splendid woman. I think she has it in her
to be grandly good.”
“When did you become such a discerner of character, little girlie?” was
Ruth’s answer, but she felt grateful to Flossy. The words had helped
her.
As for Susan, she went back to the plants, and hovered over them
quite as lovingly, but more thoughtfully than before. She studied the
delicately-veined leaves and delicately-tinted blossoms all the while,
with a new light in her eyes. This small sweet-faced girl, who had
looked to the plainly-attired, narrow-visioned Susan, like a carefully
prepared edition of a late fashion-plate, had given her some entirely
new ideas in regard to this question of dress. It seemed that there
was a _duty_ side to it that she had not canvassed. “What right have I
to make her uncomfortable?” gentle Flossy had asked, speaking of her
sister Kitty. Susan repeated the sentence to herself, substituting
Ruth’s name for Kitty’s. Presently she went to her own room.
“Ruth,” she said, later in the day, when they were for a moment alone
together “would you like to have me get a new dress for the tea-party?”
Tea-party was a new name for the social gathering, but it was what
Susan had heard such gatherings called. Ruth hesitated, looked at the
questioner doubtfully a moment, then realizing that here was one with
whom she could be straightforward, said frankly, “Yes, I would, very
much.”
“What would you like me to get?”
“I think you would look well in one of those dark greens that are
almost like an ivy-leaf in tint. Do you know what I mean?”
Susan laughed. She did not take in the question; she was thinking that
it was a singular and a rather pleasant coincidence that she should be
advised to dress after the fashion of the ivy-leaf which had served for
illustration in the morning.
“I don’t suppose I ever looked well in my life,” she said at last,
smiling brightly. “Perhaps it would be well to try the sensation. If
you will be so kind, I should like you to select and purchase a dress
for me that shall be according to your taste, only remembering that I
dress as plainly as is consistent with circumstances, from principle.”
When she was alone again, she said, with an amused smile curving her
lip, “I must get rid of that dreadful stickiness, and flour will do
it!” That is what the dear little thing said. “Dark green will do it
for me, it seems. If I find that to be the case I must remember it.”
Ruth dressed for shopping with a relieved heart. She was one of those
to whom shopping was an artistic pleasure, besides she had never had
anyone, save herself, on which to exhibit taste. She was not sure that
it would be at all disagreeable.
“She begins to comprehend the necessities of the position a little, I
believe,” she said, meaning Susan. And _she_ didn’t know that Flossy
Shipley’s gentle little voice, and carefully chosen words, had laid
down a solid plank of _duty_ for her uncompromising sister to tread
upon.