The parlor blinds were shut, and all the windows of the third-story
rooms were shaded; but the pantry window, looking out on a long low
shed, such as city houses have to keep their wood in and to dry
their clothes upon, was open; and out at this window had come two
little girls, with quiet steps and hushed voices, and carried their
books and crickets to the very further end, establishing themselves
there, where the shade of a tall, round fir tree, planted at the
foot of the yard below, fell across the building of a morning.
"It was prettier down on the bricks," Luclarion had told them. But
they thought otherwise.
"Luclarion doesn't know," said Frank. "People _don't_ know things, I
think. I wonder why, when they've got old, and ought to? It's like
the sea-shore here, I guess, only the stones are all stuck down, and
you mustn't pick up the loose ones either."
Frank touched lightly, as she spoke, the white and black and gray
bits of gravel that covered the flat roof.
"And it smells--like the pine forests!"
The sun was hot and bright upon the fir branches and along the
tar-cemented roof.
"How do you know about sea-shores and pine forests?" asked Laura,
with crushing common sense.
"I don't know; but I do," said Frank.
"You don't know anything but stories and pictures and one tree, and
a little gravel, all stuck down tight."
"I'm glad I've got one tree. And the rest of it,--why listen! It's
in the _word_, Laura. _Forest_. Doesn't that sound like thousands of
them, all fresh and rustling? And Ellen went to the sea-shore, in
that book; and picked up pebbles; and the sea came up to her feet,
just as the air comes up here, and you can't get any farther,"--said
Frank, walking to the very edge and putting one foot out over, while
the wind blew in her face up the long opening between rows of brick
houses of which theirs was in the midst upon one side.
"A great sea!" exclaimed Laura, contemptuously. "With all those
other wood-sheds right out in it, all the way down!"
"Well, there's another side to the sea; and capes, and islands,"
answered Frank, turning back. "Besides, I don't pretend it _is_; I
only think it seems a little bit like it. I'm often put in mind of
things. I don't know why."
"I'll tell you what it is like," said Laura. "It's like the gallery
at church, where the singers stand up in a row, and look down, and
all the people look up at them. I like high places. I like Cecilia,
in the 'Bracelets,' sitting at the top, behind, when her name was
called out for the prize; and 'they all made way, and she was on the
floor in an instant.' I should like to have been Cecilia!"
"Leonora was a great deal the best."
"I know it; but she don't _stand out_."
"Laura! You're just like the Pharisees! You're always wishing for
long clothes and high seats!"
"There ain't any Pharisees, nowadays," said Laura, securely. After
which, of course, there was nothing more to be insisted.
Mrs. Lake, the housekeeper, came to the middle upper window, and
moved the blind a little. Frank and Laura were behind the fir. They
saw her through the branches. She, through the farther thickness of
the tree, did not notice them.
"That was good," said Laura. "She would have beckoned us in. I hate
that forefinger of hers; it's always hushing or beckoning. It's only
two inches long. What makes us have to mind it so?"
"She puts it all into those two inches," answered Frank. "All the
_must_ there is in the house. And then you've got to."
"I wouldn't--if father wasn't sick."
"Laura," said Frank, gravely, "I don't believe father is going to
get well. What do you suppose they're letting us stay at home from
school for?"
"O, that," said Laura, "was because Mrs. Lake didn't have time to
sew the sleeves into your brown dress."
"I could have worn my gingham, Laura. What if he should die pretty
soon? I heard her tell Luclarion that there must be a change before
long. They talk in little bits, Laura, and they say it solemn."
The children were silent for a few minutes. Frank sat looking
through the fir-tree at the far-off flecks of blue.
Mr. Shiere had been ill a long time. They could hardly think, now,
what it would seem again not to have a sick father; and they had had
no mother for several years,--many out of their short remembrance of
life. Mrs. Lake had kept the house, and mended their clothes, and
held up her forefinger at them. Even when Mr. Shiere was well, he
had been a reserved man, much absorbed in business since his wife's
death, he had been a very sad man. He loved his children, but he was
very little with them. Frank and Laura could not feel the shock and
loss that children feel when death comes and robs them suddenly of a
close companionship.
"What do you suppose would happen then?" asked Laura, after awhile.
"We shouldn't be anybody's children."
"Yes, we should," said Frank; "we should be God's.'
"Everybody else is that,--_besides_," said Laura.
"We shall have black silk pantalets again, I suppose,"--she began,
afresh, looking down at her white ones with double crimped
ruffles,--"and Mrs. Gibbs will come in and help, and we shall have
to pipe and overcast."
"O, Laura, how nice it was ever so long ago!" cried Frank, suddenly,
never heeding the pantalets, "when mother sent us out to ask company
to tea,--that pleasant Saturday, you know,--and made lace pelerines
for our dolls while we were gone! It's horrid, when other girls have
mothers, only to have a _housekeeper_! And pretty soon we sha'n't
have anything, only a little corner, away back, that we can't hardly
recollect."
"They'll do something with us; they always do," said Laura,
composedly.
The children of this world, even _as_ children, are wisest in their
generation. Frank believed they would be God's children; she could
not see exactly what was to come of that, though, practically. Laura
knew that people always did something; something would be sure to
be done with them. She was not frightened; she was even a little
curious.
A head came up at the corner of the shed behind them, a pair of
shoulders,--high, square, turned forward; a pair of arms, long
thence to the elbows, as they say women's are who might be good
nurses of children; the hands held on to the sides of the steep
steps that led up from the bricked yard. The young woman's face was
thin and strong; two great, clear, hazel eyes looked straight out,
like arrow shots; it was a clear, undeviating glance; it never
wandered, or searched, or wavered, any more than a sunbeam; it
struck full upon whatever was there; it struck _through_ many things
that were transparent to their quality. She had square, white,
strong teeth, that set together like the faces of a die; they showed
easily when she spoke, but the lips closed over them absolutely and
firmly. Yet they were pleasant lips, and had a smile in them that
never went quite out; it lay in all the muscles of the mouth and
chin; it lay behind, in the living spirit that had moulded to itself
the muscles.
This was Luclarion.
"Your Aunt Oldways and Mrs. Oferr have come. Hurry in!"
Now Mrs. Oldways was only an uncle's wife; Mrs. Oferr was their
father's sister. But Mrs. Oferr was a rich woman who lived in New
York, and who came on grand and potent, with a scarf or a pair of
shoe-bows for each of the children in her big trunk, and a hundred
and one suggestions for their ordering and behavior at her tongue's
end, once a year. Mrs. Oldways lived up in the country, and was
"aunt" to half the neighborhood at home, and turned into an aunt
instantly, wherever she went and found children. If there were no
children, perhaps older folks did not call her by the name, but they
felt the special human kinship that is of no-blood or law, but is
next to motherhood in the spirit.
Mrs. Oferr found the open pantry window, before the children had
got in.
"Out there!" she exclaimed, "in the eyes of all the neighbors in the
circumstances of the family! Who does, or _don't_ look after you?"
"Hearts'-sake!" came up the pleasant tones of Mrs. Oldways from
behind, "how can they help it? There isn't any other out-doors. If
they were down at Homesworth now, there'd be the lilac garden and
the old chestnuts, and the seat under the wall. Poor little souls!"
she added, pitifully, as she lifted them in, and kissed them. "It's
well they can take any comfort. Let 'em have all there is."
Mrs. Oferr drew the blinds, and closed the window.
Frank and Laura remembered the strangeness of that day all their
lives. How they sat, shy and silent, while Luclarion brought in cake
and wine; how Mrs. Oferr sat in the large morocco easy-chair and
took some; and Mrs. Oldways lifted Laura, great girl as she was,
into her lap first, and broke a slice for her; how Mrs. Oldways went
up-stairs to Mrs. Lake, and then down into the kitchen to do
something that was needed; and Mrs. Oferr, after she had visited her
brother, lay down in the spare chamber for a nap, tired with her
long journey from New York, though it had been by boat and cars,
while there was a long staging from Homesworth down to Nashua, on
Mrs. Oldways' route. Mrs. Oldways, however, was "used," she said,
"to stepping round." It was the sitting that had tired her.
How they were told not to go out any more, or to run up and
down-stairs; and how they sat in the front windows, looking out
through the green slats at so much of the street world as they could
see in strips; how they obtained surreptitious bits of bread from
dinner, and opened a bit of the sash, and shoved out crumbs under
the blinds for the pigeons that flew down upon the sidewalk; how
they wondered what kind of a day it was in other houses, where there
were not circumstances in the family, where children played, and
fathers were not ill, but came and went to and from their stores;
and where two aunts had not come, both at once, from great ways off,
to wait for something strange and awful that was likely to befall.
When they were taken in, at bedtime, to kiss their father and say
good-night, there was something portentous in the stillness there;
in the look of the sick man, raised high against the pillows, and
turning his eyes wistfully toward them, with no slightest movement
of the head; in the waiting aspect of all things,--the appearance as
of everybody being to sit up all night except themselves.
Edward Shiere brought his children close to him with the magnetism
of that look; they bent down to receive his kiss and his good-night,
so long and solemn. He had not been in the way of talking to them
about religion in his life. He had only insisted on their truth and
obedience; that was the beginning of all religion. Now it was given
him in the hour of his death what he should speak; and because he
had never said many such words to them before, they fell like the
very touch of the Holy Ghost upon their young spirits now,--
"Love God, and keep His commandments. Good-by."
In the morning, when they woke, Mrs. Lake was in their room, talking
in a low voice with Mrs. Oferr, who stood by an open bureau. They
heard Luclarion dusting down the stairs.
Who was taking care of their father?
They did not ask. In the night, he had been taken care of. It was
morning with him, now, also.
Mrs. Lake and Mrs. Oferr were calculating,--about black pantalets,
and other things.
This story is not with the details of their early orphan life. When
Edward Shiere was buried came family consultations. The two aunts
were the nearest friends. Nobody thought of Mr. Titus Oldways. He
never was counted. He was Mrs. Shiere's uncle,--Aunt Oldways'
uncle-in-law, therefore, and grand-uncle to these children. But
Titus Oldways never took up any family responsibilities; he had been
shy of them all his single, solitary life. He seemed to think he
could not drop them as he could other things, if he did not find
them satisfactory. Besides, what would he know about two young
girls?
He saw the death in the paper, and came to the funeral; then he went
away again to his house in Greenley Street at the far West End, and
to his stiff old housekeeper, Mrs. Froke, who knew his stiff old
ways. And, turning his back on everybody, everybody forgot all about
him. Except as now and then, at intervals of years, there broke out
here or there, at some distant point in some family crisis, a sudden
recollection from which would spring a half suggestion, "Why,
there's Uncle Titus! If he was only,"--or, "if he would only,"--and
there it ended. Much as it might be with a housewife, who says of
some stored-away possession forty times, perhaps, before it ever
turns out available, "Why, there's that old gray taffety! If it were
only green, now!" or, "If there were three or four yards more of
it!"
Uncle Titus was just Uncle Titus, neither more nor less; so Mrs.
Oferr and Aunt Oldways consulted about their own measures and
materials; and never reckoned the old taffety at all. There was
money enough to clothe and educate; little more.
"I will take home _one_," said Mrs. Oferr, distinctly.
So, they were to be separated?
They did not realize what this was, however. They were told of
letters and visits; of sweet country-living, of city sights and
pleasures; of kittens and birds' nests, and the great barns; of
music and dancing lessons, and little parties,--"by-and-by, when it
was proper."
"Let me go to Homesworth," whispered Frank to Aunt Oldways.
Laura gravitated as surely to the streets and shops, and the great
school of young ladies.
"One taken and the other left," quoted Luclarion, over the packing
of the two small trunks.
"We're both going," says Laura, surprised. "_One_ taken? Where?"
"Where the carcass is," answered Luclarion.
"There's one thing you'll have to see to for yourselves. I can't
pack it. It won't go into the trunks."
"What, Luclarion?"
"What your father said to you that night."
They were silent. Presently Frank answered, softly,--"I hope I
shan't forget that."
Laura, the pause once broken, remarked, rather glibly, that she "was
afraid there wouldn't be much chance to recollect things at Aunt
Oferr's."
"She isn't exactly what I call a heavenly-minded woman," said
Luclarion, quietly.
"She is very much _occupied_," replied Laura, grandly taking up the
Oferr style. "She visits a great deal, and she goes out in the
carriage. You have to change your dress every day for dinner, and
I'm to take French lessons."
The absurd little sinner was actually proud of her magnificent
temptations. She was only a child. Men and women never are, of
course.
"I'm afraid it will be pretty hard to remember," repeated Laura,
with condescension.
"_That's_ your stump!"
Luclarion fixed the steadfast arrow of her look straight upon her,
and drew the bow with this twang.