"We must open a shutter," Mark said, groping his way.
"Grashy will be back," suggested Luke, fearfully.
"Guess so!" said Mark. "She ain't got coaxed to take her sun-bonnet
off yet, an' it'll take her ninety-'leven hours to get it on again."
He had let in the light now from the south window.
The red carpet on the floor; the high sofa of figured hair-cloth,
with brass-headed nails, and brass rosettes in the ends of the hard,
cylinder pillows; the tall, carved cupboard press, its doors and
drawers glittering with hanging brass handles; right opposite the
door by which they had come in, the large, leaning mirror,
gilt--garnished with grooved and beaded rim and an eagle and
ball-chains over the top,--all this, opening right in from the
familiar every-day kitchen and their Lake Ontario,--it certainly
meant something that such a place should be. It meant a great deal
more than sixteen feet square could hold, and what it really was did
not stop short at the gray-and-crimson stenciled walls.
The two were all alone in it; perhaps they had never been all alone
in it before. I think, notwithstanding their mischief and
enterprise, they never had.
And deep in the mirror, face to face with them, coming down, it
seemed, the red slant of an inner and more brilliant floor, they saw
two other little figures. Their own they knew, really, but elsewhere
they never saw their own figures entire. There was not another
looking-glass in the house that was more than two feet long, and
they were all hung up so high!
"There!" whispered Mark. "There they are, and they can't get out."
"Of course they can't," said sensible Luclarion.
"If we only knew the right thing to say, or do, they might," said
Mark. "It's that they're waiting for, you see. They always do. It's
like the sleeping beauty Grashy told us."
"Then they've got to wait a hundred years," said Luke.
"Who knows when they began?"
"They do everything that we do," said Luclarion, her imagination
kindling, but as under protest. "If we could jump in perhaps they
would jump out."
"We might jump _at_ 'em," said Marcus. "Jest get 'em going, and
may-be they'd jump over. Le's try."
So they set up two chairs from Lake Ontario in the kitchen doorway,
to jump from; but they could only jump to the middle round of the
carpet, and who could expect that the shadow children should be
beguiled by that into a leap over bounds? They only came to the
middle round of _their_ carpet.
"We must go nearer; we must set the chairs in the middle, and jump
close. Jest _shave_, you know," said Marcus.
"O, I'm afraid," said Luclarion.
"I'll tell you what! Le's _run_ and jump! Clear from the other side
of the kitchen, you know. Then they'll have to run too, and may-be
they can't stop."
So they picked up chairs and made a path, and ran from across the
broad kitchen into the parlor doorway, quite on to the middle round
of the carpet, and then with great leaps came down bodily upon the
floor close in front of the large glass that, leaned over them, with
two little fallen figures in it, rolling aside quickly also, over
the slanting red carpet.
But, O dear what did it?
Had the time come, anyhow, for the old string to part its last
fibre, that held the mirror tilting from the wall,--or was it the
crash of a completed spell?
There came a snap,--a strain,--as some nails or screws that held it
otherwise gave way before the forward pressing weight, and down,
flat-face upon the floor, between the children, covering them with
fragments of splintered glass and gilded wood,--eagle, ball-chains,
and all,--that whole magnificence and mystery lay prostrate.
Behind, where it had been, was a blank, brown-stained cobwebbed
wall, thrown up harsh and sudden against them, making the room
small, and all the enchanted chamber, with its red slanting carpet,
and its far reflected corners, gone.
The house hushed up again after that terrible noise, and stood just
the same as ever. When a thing like that happens, it tells its own
story, just once, and then it is over. _People_ are different. They
keep talking.
There was Grashy to come home. She had not got there in time to hear
the house tell it. She must learn it from the children. Why?
"Because they knew," Luclarion said. "Because, then, they could not
wait and let it be found out."
"We never touched it," said Mark.
"We jumped," said Luke.
"We couldn't help it, if _that_ did it. S'posin' we'd jumped in the
kitchen, or--the--flat-irons had tumbled down,--or anything? That
old string was all wore out."
"Well, we was here, and we jumped; and we know."
"We was here, of course; and of course we couldn't help knowing,
with all that slam-bang. Why, it almost upset Lake Ontario! We can
tell how it slammed, and how we thought the house was coming down. I
did."
"And how we were in the best parlor, and how we jumped," reiterated
Luclarion, slowly. "Marcus, it's a stump!"
They were out in the middle of Lake Ontario now, sitting right down
underneath the wrecks, upon the floor; that is, under water, without
ever thinking of it. The parlor door was shut, with all that
disaster and dismay behind it.
"Go ahead, then!" said Marcus, and he laid himself back desperately
on the floor. "There's Grashy!"
"Sakes and patience!" ejaculated Grashy, merrily, coming in.
"They're drownded,--dead, both of 'em; down to the bottom of Lake
Ontariah!"
"No we ain't," said Luclarion, quietly. "It isn't Lake Ontario now.
It's nothing but a clutter. But there's an awful thing in the best
parlor, and we don't know whether we did it or not. We were in
there, and we jumped."
Grashy went straight to the parlor door, and opened it. She looked
in, turned pale, and said "'Lection!"
That is a word the women have, up in the country, for solemn
surprise, or exceeding emergency, or dire confusion. I do not know
whether it is derived from religion or politics. It denotes a vital
crisis, either way, and your hands full. Perhaps it had the
theological association in Grashy's mind, for the next thing she
said was, "My soul!"
"Do you know what that's a sign of, you children?"
"Sign the old thing was rotten," said Marcus, rather sullenly.
"Wish that was all," said Grashy, her lips white yet. "Hope there
mayn't nothin' dreadful happen in this house before the year's out.
It's wuss'n thirteen at the table."
"Do you s'pose we did it?" asked Luke, anxiously.
"Where was you when it tumbled?"
"Right in front of it. But we were rolling away. _We_ tumbled."
"'Twould er come down the fust jar, anyway, if a door had slammed.
The string's cut right through," said Grashy, looking at the two
ends sticking up stiff and straight from the top fragment of the
frame. "But the mercy is you war'n't smashed yourselves to bits and
flinders. Think o'that!"
"Do you s'pose ma'll think of that?" asked Luclarion.
"Well--yes; but it may make her kinder madder,--just at first, you
know. Between you and me and the lookin'-glass, you see,--well, yer
ma is a pretty strong-feelin' woman," said Grashy, reflectively.
"'Fi was you I wouldn't say nothin' about it. What's the use? _I_
shan't."
"It's a stump," repeated Luclarion, sadly, but in very resolute
earnest.
Grashy stared.
"Well, if you ain't the curiousest young one, Luke Grapp!" said she,
only half comprehending.
When Mrs. Grapp came home, Luclarion went into her bedroom after
her, and told her the whole story. Mrs. Grapp went into the parlor,
viewed the scene of calamity, took in the sense of loss and narrowly
escaped danger, laid the whole weight of them upon the disobedience
to be dealt with, and just as she had said, "You little fool!" out
of the very shock of her own distress when Luke had burned her baby
foot, she turned back now, took the two children up-stairs in
silence, gave them each a good old orthodox whipping, and tucked
them into their beds.
They slept one on each side of the great kitchen-chamber.
"Mark," whispered Luke, tenderly, after Mrs. Grapp's step had died
away down the stairs. "How do you feel?"
"Hot!" said Mark. "How do you?"
"You ain't mad with me, be you?"
"No."
"Then I feel real cleared up and comfortable. But it _was_ a stump,
wasn't it?"
* * * * *
From that time forward, Luclarion Grapp had got her light to go by.
She understood life. It was "stumps" all through. The Lord set them,
and let them; she found that out afterward, when she was older, and
"experienced religion." I think she was mistaken in the dates,
though; it was _recognition_, this later thing; the experience was
away back,--at Lake Ontario.
It was a stump when her father died, and her mother had to manage
the farm, and she to help her. The mortgage they had to work off was
a stump; but faith and Luclarion's dairy did it. It was a stump when
Marcus wanted to go to college, and they undertook that, after the
mortgage. It was a stump when Adam Burge wanted her to marry him,
and go and live in the long red cottage at Side Hill, and she could
not go till they had got through with helping Marcus. It was a
terrible stump when Adam Burge married Persis Cone instead, and she
had to live on and bear it. It was a stump when her mother died, and
the farm was sold.
Marcus married; he never knew; he had a belles-lettres professorship
in a new college up in D----. He would not take a cent of the farm
money; he had had his share long ago; the four thousand dollars
were invested for Luke. He did the best he could, and all he knew;
but human creatures can never pay each other back. Only God can do
that, either way.
Luclarion did not stay in ----. There were too few there now, and
too many. She came down to Boston. Her two hundred and eighty
dollars a year was very good, as far as it went, but it would not
keep her idle; neither did she wish to live idle. She learned
dress-making; she had taste and knack; she was doing well; she
enjoyed going about from house to house for her days' work, and then
coming back to her snug room at night, and her cup of tea and her
book.
Then it turned out that so much sewing was not good for her; her
health was threatened; she had been used to farm work and "all
out-doors." It was a "stump" again. That was all she called it; she
did not talk piously about a "cross." What difference did it make?
There is another word, also, for "cross" in Hebrew.
Luclarion came at last to live with Mrs. Edward Shiere. And in that
household, at eight and twenty, we have just found her.