“FOR YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT MAY COME.”
This was the thought: Suppose Dirk Colson should want to take his
sister. Sallie did not believe it in the least probable; she had not
that amount of faith in Dirk Colson; but suppose he should, Mart could
not go, for the reason that she would have nothing to wear.
And here was Sallie's pretty cape, which would cover the worst of her
dress, and her pretty bonnet, which she knew would make a picture of
Mart; but if she lent them it meant staying at home to Sallie. _Could_
she do it? Could she bear to think of such a thing? What would Mark say?
What would he do with his other ticket?
Would she be likely ever to have another chance to go to that wonderful
hall, and be like other folks?
But _Mart_ had never been anywhere in her life.
“And I,” said poor Sallie, catching her breath with a sob, “have been
often for a walk on the brightest streets, and looked in at the shop
windows, and everything. I 'most know I will help her to go if I can.”
Young Ried had no conception of the sacrifice for which he had asked.
It is little wonder, surely, that Sallie's voice faltered that same
evening, as she explained to Mart, who had slipped in for a bit of talk,
that if ever she wanted to go anywhere very bad, she was to let Sallie
know, and she should have her cape and bonnet to wear. Then she had
anxiously planned for her a way to mend her dress, so that it would look
quite well under the cape, and she had even urged:--
“Now do, Mart, if anybody should want you to go don't say you won't; but
take your chance, for you don't know what may come.”
Also she bore with patience Mart's scornful laugh, and emphatic
statement that no chances ever came to her, and nobody ever wanted her
to go anywhere. As she talked she grew interested and eloquent;
urged earnestly that Mart should embrace the first opportunity to go
somewhere, and wear her new cape and bonnet. At the same time she was
silent about the lecture. Suppose no chance should come? Then it would
be doubly hard to Mart to have had the possibility suggested. The same
delicate reasoning had held her from dwelling on her own prospects. Some
people would have been very much astonished over the amount of delicate
consideration for the feelings of others which could be found in that
little room.
Dirk loitered strangely over his meagre dinner the next afternoon. It
was late, for he had secured a position at last in one of the printing
offices, and was apt to take his meals at any hour when it happened to
be convenient to do without him at the office. He had only been three
days at work, and Mart had taken little notice of the new departure,
except to remark grimly that it would not last; but to Sallie she had
boasted that Dirk had gone to work as hard as anybody. If somebody could
only have told Dirk that his sister ever boasted of him it might have
helped him much during these days.
“What are you hanging around for? You've got all there will be to eat in
this house to-day, and it is time you were off.” This was the ungracious
manner in which the sister took note of his lingering. She was painfully
afraid that he had already grown weary of regular employment, and the
fear made her voice gruffer than usual.
His reply amazed her; in fact, it amazed himself:--
“Mart, I've got tickets to a show,--a nice place,--and I want you to go
along.”
“Humph!” said Mart, “that is a likely story!”
Then he grew earnest, displayed his treasures, and urged her
acceptance--quite astonished with himself the while. _Did_ he really
want her to go, he wondered, or did he want to please Mrs. Roberts?
You would have been interested, an hour later, to have seen Mart skip up
the rickety stairs leading to the Calkins abode. You would probably have
thought that she endangered life or limb by her rapid movements; but
Mart was used to such staircases, and the news she had to communicate
required haste.
“There's a chance!” she said, breathless with speed and eagerness;
“Sallie Calkins, there's a chance, and you'd never guess how. Dirk he
wants me to go to a show with him this very night! He's got tickets. It
is a big show,--where all the grand folks go. It is in the very biggest
hall in this city, and Dirk he says I am to go. Sallie Calkins, do you
mean it, truly, that I am to wear your lovely new bonnet and cape? Do
you suppose I can really go anywhere? I don't known why Dirk wants me to
so bad, but he coaxed and coaxed.”
Poor Sallie! She stooped quickly to pick up a pin from the floor, so
that Mart might not get a glimpse of her eyes with the sudden tears in
them. Yet, as she stooped, she made her final, grand sacrifice--Mart
should go!
Then she entered with entire abandon into the preparations. Not only her
bonnet and cape, but her shoes--new ones that Mark had bought her with
his first earnings after his illness--were to attend the lecture.
She rejoiced over the excellent fit of the shoes. She did more than
this. As Mart watched the process of buttoning them, and remarked
complacently that she shouldn't wonder if Dirk would buy her a pair some
day, when he earned money enough, she kept her lip from curling with
an incredulous sneer. You will remember that she had not the slightest
faith in Dirk.
Neither must I forget that there was another thing to lend--her comb,
in order that Mart's wonderful yellow hair might be for once reduced
to something like order. And at the risk of leading you to think that
Sallie was altogether too “aesthetic” for her position in life, I shall
have to confess that this was her hardest bit of sacrifice; her comb was
so new and so pretty!
However, it did its duty on Mart's tawny locks, and the transforming
effect was marvellous. In fact, when all was ready, the cape adjusted,
the hat which Mrs. Roberts had shown her how to wear set on the yellow
head, Sallie said not a word, but went to the packing-box in the corner
which served as a treasure cupboard, and drew forth the one possession
about which she had been utterly silent--a little hand-glass which Mark
had brought her one winter evening just before he was hurt. A cheap,
little, ugly glass, which you would have turned from in disgust, saying
that it made your nose awry, and your chin protrude and your eyes
squint, and was altogether horrid; but, held before Mart's glowing face,
what a secret did it reveal! Mart looked, and was silent, too; and went
home in a hushed frame of mind to wait for Dirk. Home was deserted. The
mother had dragged her wearied body out for a day of “light” work. The
time had gone by when she was able to do any that people called heavy.
Where the father was, none of the family knew, and their chief hope
concerning him was that he would stay away as long as possible.
I find myself longing to give you an idea of what that elegant,
brilliantly lighted hall, with its brilliant audience, was to this girl,
and being unable to do it.
When people live so far below us that our every-day experiences are to
them like a day at the World's Fair, it is very hard indeed to describe
how our special treats affect them.
It is a treat to everybody to hear Gough. How then can I tell you
what it was to this girl and her brother? Dirk listened; he must
have listened well, for long afterward he was able to repeat entire
paragraphs, and to imitate the manner of the great orator with
remarkable skill;--yet at the time he would have seemed to a close
watcher to have been absorbed in another way. He looked at Mart somewhat
as he had on that Sabbath when his acquaintance with Mrs. Roberts began.
But the thought which had dimly haunted him that day blossomed on this
evening. Certainly Mart looked like Mrs. Roberts! It might be folly to
think so; doubtless the fellows would make no end of fun of him if he
should ever tell them so, which he meant to take excellent care not to
do; but the fact remained, that in Sallie's bonnet and cape, and, above
all, with the waves of hair floating about her, there was a look which
instantly and strongly reminded him of that lady.
There was another listener at the lecture who was unexpectedly present.
Part of poor Sallie's trial had been to tell her brother, who had been
radiant for a week over the prospect of taking her, that she had with
her own hand put away the blessing. How would Mark take it? Dirk's
forlorn-looking sister was no favorite of his. I think it would have
been very difficult to have convinced him that there was a trace of Mrs.
Roberts in her face.
But such curious creatures are we that it actually hurt Sallie to see
how quietly he took the great sad news of her sacrifice. After the first
start of surprise, he seemed preoccupied, and she could almost have
thought that he did not hear her explanation. She had much ado to keep
back the tears, but she had made a special little feast for him that
evening, with a white cloth on the table, and a cup of actual tea,
and the cup set in a saucer. She was not going to spoil the scene with
tears; so after a little she said, cheerily:--
“Now you have a chance to do something nice for somebody. Who will you
take on your ticket?”
“I was thinking,” he answered, slowly. “You know it is a temperance
lecture, and it is by a wonderful man. The fellows in the shop have been
talking about him all day, and they say you just can't help _thinking_
when he gets agoing; and I was just thinking, What if we could get _him_
to go, and he would listen, and get to thinking.”
There are no italics that will give you an idea of the peculiar emphasis
which the boy put on the pronouns. Sallie understood; that “he” could
mean but one person in the world. But her brother must have answered the
look on her face, for she spoke no word.
“Sometimes they _do_, Sallie. There was old Pete, you know.”
Oh, yes, Sallie knew old Pete; every body in that alley knew him; a
notorious drunkard once, of the sort which people, even good Christian
people, are apt to pronounce hopeless; yet now he wore a neat suit of
clothes every day, and brought home twenty pounds of flour at one
time in a sack, and bought his coal by the barrel. Wonderful things
occasionally happened in that alley.
“Yes,” said Sally, “that is true; and old Pete wasn't much like him.”
The tone spoke volumes. It would have almost angered her, even now, to
have had it hinted that old Pete was superior to that father, though
hardly a person acquainted with the two but would have said that there
was more hope for old Pete, even in his miserable past, than for this
one.
How they managed it, those two: the difficult task of getting him
persuaded to go, find then the more difficult task of keeping him
sufficiently sober to get there, would make a story in itself. I fancy
there are many such stories in real life which will never get told. The
probabilities are, if they were, some wise critic would pronounce them
unnatural and sensational.
Suffice it to say that the task was accomplished, and among the most
attentive listeners to the great speaker that evening was Sallie's
father, while she sat at home and mended a badly torn jacket, and
cried now and then, and was glad and sorry and proud and frightened and
hopeful by turns all that long evening.
I am not sure but it was better for her that she sat at home. I don't
know just what she might have done had she been in the hall to see her
father, at the close of the meeting, shamble forward with the crowd, and
sign his name to the total abstinence pledge.
She might have screamed out in her excitement, or she might have
fainted; for although there were those who said--some with a sneer, and
some with a sigh--that “signing the pledge would not amount to anything;
the miserable fellow could not keep a pledge to save his life!” Sally
would have thought nothing of the kind. She had faith in her father's
word.
It is a wonderful stimulus to have some one who believes in us.