really ought to hear it before you start. I made a visit to Arden, on
the day after you performed the grand transformation scene in your
brotherhood extravaganza. I should have been greatly amused by what was
told me of this prank, if I had not seen that it had caused so much
trouble. Sylvia was in a wretched way, and in an extremely bad temper.
Marcia was almost as miserable, for she was acting the part of an
extinguisher not only to Sylvia's hopes and aspirations, but to her own.
So far as I could see there was no way out of the doleful dumps in which
you seemed to have plunged yourself and all parties concerned, but I set
to work to try what I could do to straighten out matters; my principal
object being, I candidly admit, to enable Marcia Raynor to feel free to
give up her position of watch-dog, and go to her National College, on
which her soul is set. But to accomplish this, I must first do something
with Sylvia; but that girl has a conscience like a fence post, and a
disposition like a squirrel that skips along the rails. I could do
nothing with her. She had sworn to be a Sister of Martha for life, and
yet she would not consent to act like an out and out sister, and give up
all that stuff about typewriting for you, and the other nonsensical
notions of co-Marthaism, with which you infected her. She stoutly stuck
to it, in spite of all the arguments I could use, that there was no good
reason why you and she, as well as the other sisters and some other
gentlemen, could not work together in the noble cause of I don't
remember what fol-de-rol. Pretty co-Marthas you and she would make!
"Then I tried to induce Marcia to give up her fancies of
responsibilities and all that, and to leave the girl in the charge of
the present Mother Inferior, an elderly woman called Sister Sarah, who
in my opinion could be quite as much of a griffin as the case demanded.
But she would not listen to me. She had been the cause of her cousin's
joining the sisterhood, and now she would not desert her, and she said a
lot about the case requiring not only vigilance, but kindness and
counsel, and that sort of thing. Then I went back to the city, and tried
my hand on Sylvia's mother, but with no success at all. She is like a
stone gate-post, and always was, and declared that as Sylvia had entered
the institution because Marcia was there, it was the latter's duty to
give up everything else, and to throw herself between Sylvia and your
mischievous machinations and to stay there until you were married to
somebody, and the danger was past."
"Machinations!" I ejaculated,--"a most unreasonable person."
"Perhaps so," said Miss Laniston, "but not a bit more than the rest of
you. You are the most unreasonable lot I ever met with. Having failed
utterly with the three women, I had some idea of sending for you, and of
trying to persuade you to marry some one who is not under the
sisterhood's restrictions, and so smooth out this wretched tangle, but I
knew that you were more obstinate and stiff-necked than any of them, and
so concluded to save myself the trouble of reasoning with you."
"A wise decision," I remarked.
"But I could not give up," she continued; "I could not bear the thought
that my friend Marcia Raynor should sacrifice herself in this way. I
went back to Arden in the hope that something might suggest itself; that
a gleam of sense might be shown by the one or the other of the lunatics
in gray for whose good I was racking my brains. But I found things worse
than I had left them. Sylvia had stirred herself into a spirit of
combativeness of which no one would have supposed her capable, and had
actually endeavored to brow-beat her Mother Superior into the belief
that a Brotherhood Annex was not only necessary to the prosperity and
success of the House of Martha, but that it was absolutely wicked not to
have it. She had gone on in this strain until Marcia had become angry,
and then there had been a scene and tears, and much subsequent misery.
"I talked first with one doleful sister, and then with the other, with
the only result that I became nearly as doleful as they. In my despair I
went to Marcia, and urged her to acknowledge herself vanquished, to give
up this contest, which would be her ruin, to show herself a true woman,
and to take up the true work of her life. 'Oh, I couldn't do it,' she
said, and she looked as if she were going to cry, a most unusual thing
with her; 'if I went away, to-morrow they would be together, making
mud-pies for the children of the poor.' I sprang to my feet. 'Marcia
Raynor,' I cried, 'you made this House of Martha. You are the head and
the front, the top and the bottom of it. You are its founder and its
autocrat, it lives on your money,--for everybody knows that what these
sisters make wouldn't buy their pillboxes,--and now, having run it all
these years, and having brought yourself and Sylvia to the greatest
grief by it, it is your duty to put an end to it, to abolish it.'
"'Abolish the House of Martha?' she cried, with her great eyes blazing
at me.
"'Yes,' I said, 'abolish it, destroy it, annihilate it, declare it null,
void, dead and gone, utterly extinguished, and out of existence. You can
do this, and you ought to do this. It is your only way out of the
dreadful situation in which you have got yourself and Sylvia. Let the
other sisters go to some other institutions, or wherever they like. You
and Sylvia will be free, that is the great point. Now do not hesitate.
Stop supplies, dissolve the organization, break up the House of Martha,
and do it instantly.'
"She made one step towards me and seized me by the wrist. 'Janet,' she
said, 'I will do it.' And she did it that day. At present there is no
House of Martha."
I sat and gazed at Miss Laniston without comprehending what I had heard.
"No House of Martha!" I ejaculated.
"That is precisely the state of the case," she answered; "the
establishment was dissolved at noon yesterday. As I had had all the
trouble of bringing this thing about, I considered that I had a right to
tell you of it myself. I thought it would interest me to see how you
took it."
I rose to my feet; I stepped towards her.
"No House of Martha," I gasped,--"and Sylvia?"
"Sylvia will go home to her mother, so she told me yesterday. I was
present at the dissolution. I think she will probably come to the city
this afternoon."
I snatched up my hat. "I must go to her instantly," I said. "I must see
her before she reaches her mother. I have lost time already."
"Upon my word!" exclaimed Miss Laniston, "your way of taking it is
indeed interesting. Not a word of thanks, not a sign of recognition"--
I had nearly reached the door, but now rushed back and seized her by the
hand. "Excuse me," I said, "but you can see for yourself"--and with one
violent shake I dropped her hand, and hurried away.
"Oh, yes," she cried, "I can easily see for myself," and as I left the
house I heard her hearty laugh.
I sprang into my cab, ordering the man to drive fast for the railroad
station. It mattered not to me whether Walkirk went to Europe or not.
All I cared for was to catch the next train which would take me to
Arden.
XLVIII.
IN A COLD, BARE ROOM.
When I reached Arden I took one of the melancholy vehicles which stand
at our station, and very much astonished the driver by ordering him to
take me, not to my own home, but to the House of Martha.
"You know they're busted up, sir," said the man, turning to me, as his
old horse hurried us along at the best of his speed.
"But the sisters have not left?" I eagerly asked.
"Not all," he said, "but two or three of them went down this morning."
"Drive on quicker," I replied, "I am in a hurry."
The man gave the horse a crack with his whip, which made no difference
whatever in our rate of speed, and said:--
"If you've got a bill agin any of them, sir, you needn't worry. The
Mother is still there, and she's all right, you know."
"Bill? Nonsense!" said I.
"I'm sorry they're busted," said the man; "they didn't do much hackin',
but they give us a lot of haulin' from the station."
As I hurried up the broad path which led to the front of the House of
Martha, I found the door of the main entrance open, something I had
never noticed before, although I had often passed the house. I entered
unceremoniously, and saw before me, in the hallway, a woman in gray,
stooping over a trunk. She turned, at the sound of my footsteps on the
bare floor, and I beheld Sister Sarah. Her eyes flashed as she saw me,
and I know that her first impulse was to order me out of the house. This
of course she now had no right to do, but there were private rights
which she still maintained.
"I should think," she said, "that a man who has done all the mischief
that you have done, who has worked and planned and plotted and
contrived, until he has undermined and utterly ruined the sisterhood of
pious women who ask nothing of this world but to be let alone to do
their own work in their own way, would be ashamed to put his nose into
this house; but I suppose a man who would do what you have done does not
know what shame is. Have you come here to sneer and jibe and scorn and
mock, and gloat over the misfortunes of the women whose home you have
broken up, ruined, and devastated?"
"Madam," said I, "can you tell me where I can find Miss Sylvia Raynor?"
She looked as if she were about to spring and bite.
"Atrocious!" she exclaimed. "I will not stay under the same roof,"--and
she marched out of the door.
I made my way into the reception room. I met no one, and the room was
empty, although I heard on the floor above the sound of many footsteps,
apparently those of the sisters preparing for departure.
I looked around for a bell, or some means of making my presence known.
The room appeared harder, barer, emptier than when I had seen it before.
In a moment it was filled with all the light and beauty of the world. A
door opened, and Sylvia entered.
"I saw you come," she said, advancing with outstretched hands, "and
hurried down as soon as I could."
She was in her gray dress, but without shawl or head covering. Her face
was filled with the most charming welcome. I hastened towards her. I did
not take her hands, but opening my arms I folded her in them, and kissed
her over and over again. With flushed face she pushed herself a little
from me.
"Isn't this taking a great deal for granted?" she said.
"Granted!" I exclaimed, "think of what has been denied. Think of the
weeks, the months"--
"We would a great deal better think somebody may come in here and see
us," said Sylvia, pushing herself still farther from me.
"But didn't you expect me to rush to you the instant I heard you were a
free woman? Did you suppose there was anything to be taken for granted
between us?"
"Oh no," she said, "I think we understood each other pretty well, but
then, don't you see, I didn't suppose it would be like this. I am
expecting a trunk from New York every minute, and I thought when it came
I should be dressed like other people. Now that I am not a sister, I did
not want you to see me in these dreary clothes. Then I would go to my
mother's house, and I thought you would call on me there, and things
would go on more regularly; but you are so impetuous."
"My dearest love," said I, "it fills me with rapture to take you in my
arms in the same dress you wore when I fell in love with you. Often and
often as I looked at you through that grating have I thought that it
would be to me the greatest joy on earth if I could take you in my arms
and tell you that I loved you."
"You thought that!" exclaimed Sylvia; "it was very wrong of you."
"Right or wrong, I did it," said I, "and now I have her, my dear little
nun, here in my arms."
She ceased to push and looked up at me with a merry smile.
"Do you remember," she said, "the morning the wasp came near stinging
me?"
"Indeed I do," I said vehemently.
"Well, before that wasp came," she continued, "I used to be a good deal
afraid of you. I thought you were very learned and dignified, but after
I was so frightened, and you saw me without my bonnet, and all that, I
felt we were very much more like friends, and that was the very
beginning of my liking you."
"My darling," I exclaimed, "that wasp was the best friend we ever had.
Do you want to see it?" and releasing her, I took from my pocket the
pasteboard box in which I had placed our friend Vespa. As she looked at
the insect, her face was lighted with joyous surprise.
"And that is the same wasp?" she said, "and you kept it?"
"Yes, and shall always keep it," I said, "even now it has not ceased to
be our friend." And then I told her how my desire to take with me this
memento of her had held me back from the rolling Atlantic, and brought
me to her. She raised her face to me with her beautiful eyes in a mist
of tenderness, and this time her arms were extended.
"You are the dearest man," she said.
In less than a minute after she had spoken these words, Mother Anastasia
entered the room. She stood for a moment amazed, and then she hastily
shut the door.
"Really," she exclaimed, "you two are incomprehensible beings. Don't you
know that people might come in here at any moment? It is fortunate that
I was the person who came in at this moment."
"But you knew he was here?" said Sylvia.
"Yes. I knew that," the other replied, "but I expected you would both
remember that at present this house might almost be considered a public
place."
"My dear Marcia," said Sylvia, "if you knew him as well as I do, you
would know that he would never remember anything about a place."
I turned to the ex-Mother Superior, who had already discarded the garb
of the sisterhood, and was dressed in a dark walking suit.
"If you knew me as well as I know myself," I said, reaching to her both
my hands, "you would know that my gratitude towards you is deeper than
the deepest depths of the earth." She took one of my hands.
"If you have anything to be grateful for," she said, "it is for the
lectures I have given you, and which, I am afraid, I ought to continue
to give you. As to what was done here yesterday I consider myself as
much benefited as anybody, and I suppose Sylvia is of the same opinion
regarding herself. But there is one person to whom you truly ought to be
grateful--Miss Laniston."
"I know that," I said. "I have seen her; she told me what she did, and I
treated her as I would treat a boy who had brushed my coat, but I shall
make amends."
"Indeed you shall," said Sylvia, "and I will go with you when you do
it."
"But you must not set yourself aside in this way," said I, addressing
the older lady, "it was you who fanned my hopes of winning Sylvia when
there seemed no reason why they should not fade away. It was you who
promised to help me, and who did help me."
"Did you do that, Marcia?" asked Sylvia.
The beautiful woman who had been Mother Anastasia flushed a little, as
she answered:--
"Yes, dear, but then you were only a sister on probation."
"And you wanted me to marry him?"
The other smiled and nodded, and in the next moment Sylvia's arms were
about her neck, and Sylvia's lips were on her cheek.
I was very much affected, and there is no knowing how my feelings and
gratitude might have been evinced, had not the clumping of a trunk upon
the stairs and the voices of sisters at the door called me to order.
XLIX.
MY OWN WAY.
When I went home to my grandmother, she was greatly surprised to see me,
and I lost no time in explaining my unexpected appearance.
"Really, really," she exclaimed, "I was just writing you a letter, which
I intended to send after you, so that you would get it when you arrived
in London; and in it I was going to tell you all about the breaking up
of the House of Martha, of which I first heard half an hour after you
left me. I was glad you had not known of it before you started, for I
thought it would be so much better for all the changes to be made while
you were away, and for Sylvia to be in her mother's house, where she
could get rid of her nunnish habits, and have some proper clothes made
up. Of course I knew you would come back soon, but I thought your own
mind would be in much better order for a little absence."
"My dear grandmother," I cried, "in mind and body I am in perfect order,
and it is presence, not absence, which made me so."
"Somehow or other," said she, smiling, "the fates seem to help you to
have your own way, and I am sure I am delighted that you will stay at
home. And what has become of Mr. Walkirk?"
"Upon my word!" I exclaimed--"I do not know."
Towards evening Walkirk returned, looking tired and out of spirits. I
truly regretted the carelessness and neglect with which I had treated
him, and explained and apologized to the best of my ability. He was a
good-natured fellow, and behaved magnanimously.
"Things have turned out wonderfully well," he said, as he took a seat,
"but I shall be more delighted with the state of affairs when I am a
little less fatigued. Minor annoyances ought not to be considered, but I
assure you I have had a pretty rough time of it. As the hour for sailing
drew near, and you did not make your appearance, I became more and more
nervous and anxious. I would not allow our baggage to be put on board,
for I knew a conference with a lady was likely to be of indefinite
duration, and when at last the steamer sailed, I went immediately to
Miss Laniston's house to inform you of the fact, and to find out what
you proposed to do; but Miss Laniston was not at home, and the servant
told me that a gentleman--undoubtedly you--had left the house nearly an
hour before, and his great haste made her think that he was trying to
catch a steamer.
"'People would not hurry like that,' she said, 'to catch a train, for
there's always another one in an hour or two.'
"Then I began to fear that in your haste you had gone on board the wrong
steamer--two others sailed to-day, a little later than ours, and I went
to their piers and made all sorts of inquiries, but I could find out
nothing. Then I went to your club, to your lawyer's office, and several
other places where I supposed you might go, but no one had seen or heard
of you. Then a fear began to creep over me that you had had some greatly
depressing news from Miss Laniston, and that you had made away with
yourself."
"Walkirk!" I exclaimed, "how dared you think that?"
"Men in the nervous condition I was," he answered, "think all sorts of
things, and that is one of the things I thought. Finally I went to Miss
Laniston's house again, and this time I found her, and learned what had
happened. Then I went to the pier, ordered the trunk sent back here, for
I knew there was no question now of the trip to Europe, and here I am."
It was easy to see that whatever pleasure the turn in my affairs may
have given Walkirk, he was disappointed at losing his trip to Europe;
but I thought it well not to reopen his wounds by any allusion to this
fact, and contented myself by saying the most earnest and cordial things
about what he had done and suffered for me that day, and inwardly
determining that I would make full amends to him for his lost journey.
In about ten days I received a message by cable from Liverpool, which
was sent by my stenographer, informing me that he had gone aboard the
steamer, as per agreement, and being busy writing letters to send back
by the pilot, had not discovered that Walkirk and I were not on board
until it was too late. The message was a long one, and its cost, as well
as that of the one by which I informed the stenographer that he might
come home, and the price of the man's passage to Liverpool and back,
besides the sum I was obliged to pay him for his lost time, might all
have been saved to me, had the fellow been thoughtful enough to make
himself sure that we were on board before he allowed himself to be
carried off. But little rubs of this kind were of slight moment to me at
that time.
On the day after things had been taken for granted between Sylvia and
myself, I saw her at her mother's house, and I must admit that although
it had given me such exquisite pleasure to feel that she was mine in the
coarse gray gown of a "sister," it delighted me more to feel she was
mine in the ordinary costume of society. She was as gay as a butterfly
ought to be which had just cast off its gray wrappings and spread its
wings to the coloring light.
I found Mrs. Raynor in a somewhat perturbed state of mind.
"I cannot accommodate myself," she said, "to these sudden and violent
mutations. I like to sit on the sands and stay there as long as I
please, and to feel that I know how high each breaker will be, and how
far the tide will come in, but these tidal waves which make beach of sea
and sea of beach sweep me away utterly; I cannot comprehend where I am.
A week ago I considered you as an enemy with active designs on the peace
of my daughter. I was about to write you a letter to demand that you
should cease from troubling her. But I heard you were going to Europe,
and then I felt that henceforth our paths would be smoother, for I
believed that absence would cure you of your absurd and objectless
infatuation; but suddenly, down goes the House of Martha, and up comes
the enemy, transformed into a suitor, who is loved by Sylvia, and
against whom I can have no possible objection. Now can not you see for
yourself how this sort of thing must affect a mind accustomed to a
certain uniformity of emotion?"
"Madam," said I, "it will be the object of my life to make you so happy
in our happiness that you shall remember this recent tumult of events as
something more gratifying to look back upon than your most cherished
memories of tranquil delight."
"You seem to have a high opinion of your abilities," she said, smiling,
"and of the value of what you offer me. I am perfectly willing that you
try what you can do; nevertheless I wish you had gone to Europe.
Everything would have turned out just the same, and the affair would
have been more seemly."
"Oh, we can easily make that all right," said I. "Sylvia and I will go
to Europe on our bridal trip."
As I finished these words Sylvia came into the room, accompanied by Miss
Laniston.
"Here is a gentleman," said my dear girl to her companion, "who has
declared his desire to thank you for something you have done for him,
and he has spoken so strongly about the way in which he intended to pour
out his gratitude, that I want to see how he does it."
"Mr. Vanderley," said Miss Laniston, "I forbid you to utter one word of
that outpouring, which you would have poured out yesterday morning, had
it not been so urgently necessary to catch a train. When I am ready for
the effusion referred to, I will fix a time for it and let you know the
day before, and I will take care that no one shall be present at it but
ourselves."
"Any way," said Sylvia, "he will tell me all about it."
"If he does," said Miss Laniston, "you will re-enter a convent."
L.
MY BOOK OF TRAVEL.
When the House of Martha had been formally abolished, the members of the
sisterhood made various dispositions of themselves. Some determined to
enter institutions of a similar character, while others who had homes
planned to retire to them, with the intention of endeavoring to do what
good they could without separating themselves from the world in which
they were to do it. Sister Sarah was greatly incensed at the dissolution
of the House, and much more so because, had it continued, she expected
to be at the head of it. She declared her intention of throwing herself
into the arms of the Mother Church, where a sisterhood meant something,
and where such nonsense and treachery as this would be impossible.
I did not enjoy the autumn of that year to the extent that I should have
enjoyed it had I been able to arrange matters according to my own ideas
of what was appropriate to the case.
Sylvia lived in the city, and I lived in the country, and although I
went to her whenever I could, and she and her mother dined several times
with my grandmother, there were often long stretches, sometimes
extending over the greater part of the day, when I did not see her at
all.
Thus it was that I had sometimes to think of other things, and one
morning I said to my under-study, "Walkirk, there is something I regret
very much, and that is the non-completion of my book. I shall never
finish it, I am sure, because every thing that has ever happened to me
is going to be made uninteresting and tedious by what is to happen.
Travel and life itself will be quite another thing to me, and I am sure
that I will be satisfied with enjoying it, and shall not want to write
about it. And so, good-by to the book."