IN THE PINES.
It was a glorious July morning, and there was nothing particular on
foot. In the afternoon, there would be drives and walks, perhaps; for
some hours, now, there would be intensifying heat. The sun had burned
away every cloud that had hung rosy about his rising, and the great gray
flanks of Washington glared in a pale scorch close up under the sky,
whose blue fainted in the flooding presence of the full white light of
such unblunted day. Here and there, adown his sides, something flashed
out in a clear, intense dazzle, like an enormous crystal cropping from
the granite, and blazing with reflected splendor. These were the leaps
of water from out dark rifts into the sun.
"Everybody will be in the pines to-day," said Martha Josselyn. "I think
it is better when they all go off and leave us."
"We can go up under our rock," said Sue, putting stockings and mending
cotton into a large, light basket. "Have you got the chess-board? What
_should_ we do without our mending-day?"
These two girls had bought new stockings for all the little feet at
home, that the weekly darning might be less for the mother while they
were away; and had come with their own patiently cared for old hose,
"which they should have nothing else to do but to embroider."
They had made a sort of holiday, in their fashion, of mending-day at
home, till it had come to seem like a positive treat and rest; and the
habit was so strong upon them that they hailed it even here. They always
got out their little chess-board, when they sat down to the big basket
together. They could darn, and consider, and move, and darn again; and
so could keep it up all day long, as else even they would have found it
nearly intolerable to do. So, though they seemed slower at it, they
really in the end saved time. Thursday night saw the tedious work all
done, and the basket piled with neatly folded pairs, like a heap of fine
white rolls. This was a great thing, and "enough for one day," as Mrs.
Josselyn said. It was disastrous if they once began to lie over. If they
could be disposed of between sun and sun, the girls were welcome to any
play they could get out of it.
"There they go, those two together. Always to the pines, and always with
a work-basket," said Leslie Goldthwaite, sitting on the piazza step at
the Green Cottage, by Mrs. Linceford's feet, the latter lady occupying
a Shaker rocking-chair behind. "What nice girls they seem to be,--and
nobody appears to know them much, beyond a 'good-morning'!"
"Henny-penny, Goosie-poosie, Turkey-lurky, Ducky-daddles, _and_ Chicken
Little!" said Mrs. Linceford, counting up from thumb to little finger.
"Dakie Thayne and Miss Craydocke, Marmaduke Wharne and these two,--they
just make it out," she continued, counting back again. "Whatever you do,
Les, don't make up to Fox Lox at last, for all our sakes!"
Out came Dakie Thayne, at this point, upon them, with his hands full.
"Miss Leslie, _could_ you head these needles for me with black wax? I
want them for my butterflies, and I've made _such_ a daub and scald of
it! I've blistered three fingers, and put lop-sided heads to two
miserable pins, and left no end of wax splutters on my table. I haven't
but two sticks more, and the deacon don't keep any; I must try to get a
dozen pins out of it, at least." He had his sealing-wax and a lighted
"homespun candle," as Leslie called the dips of Mrs. Green's
manufacture, in one hand, and a pincushion stuck full of needles waiting
for tops, in the other.
"I told you so," said Mrs. Linceford to Leslie. "That's it, then?" she
asked of Dakie Thayne.
"What, ma'am?"
"Butterflies. I knew you'd some hobby or other,--I said so. I'm glad
it's no worse," she answered, in her pleasant, smiling way. Dakie Thayne
had a great liking for Mrs. Linceford, but he adored Leslie Goldthwaite.
"I'd like to show them to you, if you'd care," he said. "I've got some
splendid ones. One great Turnus, that I brought with me in the
chrysalis, that hatched out while I was at Jefferson. I rolled it up in
a paper for the journey, and fastened it in the crown of my hat. I've
had it ever since last fall. The asterias worms are spinning now,--the
early ones. They're out on the carrot-tops in shoals. I'm feeding up a
dozen of 'em in a box. They're very handsome,--bright green with black
and yellow spots,--and it's the queerest thing to see them stiffen out
and change."
"_Can_ you? Do they do it all at once?" asked Etty Thoresby, slipping
into the rocking-chair, as Mrs. Linceford, by whom she had come and
placed herself within the last minute, rose and went in to follow her
laundress, just then going up the stairs with her basket.
"Pretty much; it seems so. The first thing you know they stick
themselves up by their tails, and spin a noose to hang back their heads
in, and there they are, like a papoose in a basket. Then their skin
turns a queer, dead, ashy color, and grows somehow straight and tight,
and they only squirm a little in a feeble way now and then, and grow
stiffer and stiffer till they can't squirm at all, and then they're
mummies, and that's the end of it till the butterflies are born. It's a
strange thing to see a live creature go into its own shroud, and hang
itself up to turn into a corpse. Sometimes a live one, crawling round to
find a place for itself, will touch a mummy accidentally; and then, when
they're not quite gone, I've seen 'em give an odd little quiver, under
the shell, as if they were almost at peace, and didn't want to be
intruded on, or called back to earthly things, and the new comer takes
the hint, and respects privacy, and moves himself off to find quarters
somewhere else. Miss Leslie, how splendidly you're doing those! What's
the difference, I wonder, between girls' fingers and boys'? I couldn't
make those atoms of balls so round and perfect, 'if I died and
suffered,' as Miss Hoskins says."
"It's only centrifugal force," said Leslie, spinning round between her
finger and thumb a needle to whose head she had just touched a globule
of the bright black wax. "The world and a pin-head--both made on the
same principle."
The Haddens and Imogen Thoresby strolled along together, and added
themselves to the group.
"Let's go over to the hotel, Leslie. We've seen nothing of the girls
since just after breakfast. They must be up in the hall, arranging about
the tableaux."
"I'll come by and by, if you want me; don't wait. I'm going to finish
these--properly;" and she dipped and twirled another needle with dainty
precision, in the pause between her words.
"Have you got a lot of brothers at home, Miss Leslie?" asked Dakie
Thayne.
"Two," replied Leslie; "not at home, though, now; one at Exeter, and the
other at Cambridge. Why?"
"I was thinking it would be bad--what do you call it--political economy
or something, if you hadn't any, that's all."
"Mamma wants you," said Ginevra Thoresby, looking out at the door to
call her sisters. "She's in the Haughtleys' room. They're talking about
the wagon for Minster Rock to-night. What _do_ you take up your time
with that boy for?" she added, not inaudibly, as she and Imogen turned
away together.
"Oh dear!" cried blunt Etty, lingering, "I wonder if she meant me. I
want to hear about the caterpillars. Mamma thinks the Haughtleys are
such nice people, because they came in their own carriage, and they've
got such big trunks, and a saddle-horse, and elegant dressing-cases, and
ivory-backed brushes! I wish she didn't care so much about such things."
Mrs. Thoresby would have been shocked to hear her little daughter's
arrangement and version of her ideas. She had simply been kind to these
strangers on their arrival, in their own comfortable carriage, a few
days since; had stepped forward,--as somehow it seemed to devolve upon
her, with her dignified air and handsome gray curls, when she chose, to
do,--representing by a kind of tacit consent the household in general,
as somebody in every such sojourn usually will; had interested herself
about their rooms, which were near her own, and had reported of them,
privately, among other things noted in these first glimpses, that "they
had everything about them in the most _per_fect style; ivory-backed
brushes, and lovely inlaid dressing-cases, Ginevra; the best all
_through_, and no sham!" Yes, indeed, if that could but be said truly,
and need not stop at brushes and boxes!
Imogen came back presently, and called to Etty from the stairs, and she
was obliged to go. Jeannie Hadden waited till they were fairly off the
landing, and then walked away herself, saying nothing, but wearing a
slightly displeased air.
Mrs. Thoresby and her elder daughter had taken a sort of dislike to
Dakie Thayne. They seemed to think he wanted putting down. Nobody knew
anything about him; he was well enough in his place, perhaps; but why
should he join himself to their party? The Routh girls had Frank
Scherman, and two or three other older attendants; among them he was
simply not thought of, often, at all. If it had not been for Leslie and
Mrs. Linceford, he would have found himself in Outledge, what boys of
his age are apt to find themselves in the world at large,--a sort of odd
or stray, not provided for anywhere in the general scheme of society.
For this very reason, discerning it quickly, Leslie had been loyal to
him; and he, with all his boy-vehemence of admiration and devotion, was
loyal to her. She had the feeling, motherly and sisterly in its mingled
instinct, by which all true and fine feminine natures are moved, in
behalf of the man-nature in its dawn, that so needs sympathy and gentle
consideration and provision, and that certain respect which calls forth
and fosters self-respect; to be allowed and acknowledged to be somebody,
lest for the want of this it should fail, unhappily, ever to be anybody.
She was not aware of it; she only followed her kindly instinct. So she
was doing, unconsciously, one of the best early bits of her woman-work
in the world.
Once in a while it occurred to Leslie Goldthwaite to wonder why it was
that she was able to forget--that she found she had forgotten, in a
measure--those little self-absorptions that she had been afraid of, and
that had puzzled her in her thoughtful moments. She was glad to be
"taken up" with something that could please Dakie Thayne; or to go over
to the Cliff and see Prissy Hoskins, and tell her a story; or help Dakie
to fence in safely her beds of flower-seedlings (she had not let her
first visit be her last, in these weeks since her introduction there),
or to sit an hour with dear old Miss Craydocke and help her in a bit of
charity work, and hear her sweet, simple, genial talk. She had taken up
her little opportunities as they came. Was it by instinct only, or
through a tender Spirit-leading, that she winnowed them and chose the
best, and had so been kept a little out of the drift and hurry that
might else have frothed away the hours? "Give us our daily bread," "Lead
us not into temptation,"--they have to do with each other, if we "know
the daily bread when we see it." But that also is of the grace of God.
There was the beginning of fruit under the leaf with Leslie Goldthwaite;
and the fine life-current was setting itself that way with its best
impulse and its rarest particles.
The pincushion was well filled with the delicate, bristling,
tiny-headed needles, when Miss Craydocke appeared, walking across, under
her great brown sun-umbrella, from the hotel.
"If you've nothing else to do, my dears, suppose we go over to the pines
together? Where's Miss Jeannie? Wouldn't she like it? All the breeze
there is haunts them always."
"I'm always ready for the pines," said Leslie. "Here, Dakie, I hope
you'll catch a butterfly for every pin. Oh, now I think of it, have you
found your _elephant_?"
"Yes, half way up the garret-stairs. I can't feed him comfortably, Miss
Leslie. He wants to eat incessantly, and the elm-leaves wilt so quickly,
if I bring them in, that the first thing I know, he's out of proper
provender and off on a raid. He needs to be on the tree; but then I
should lose him."
Leslie thought a minute. "You might tie up a branch with
mosquito-netting," she said.
"Isn't that bright? I'll go right and do it,--only I haven't any
netting," said he.
"Mrs. Linceford has. I'll go and beg a piece for you. And then, if
you'll just sit here a minute, I'll come, Miss Craydocke."
When she came back, she brought Jeannie with her. To use a vulgar
proverb, Jeannie's nose was rather out of joint since the Haughtleys had
arrived. Ginevra Thoresby was quite engrossed with them, and this often
involved Imogen. There was only room for six in Captain Green's wagon,
and nothing had been said to Jeannie about the drive to Minster Rock.
Leslie had hanging upon her finger, also, the finest and whitest and
most graceful of all possible little splint baskets, only just big
enough to carry a bit of such work as was in it now,--a strip of sheer,
delicate grass-linen, which needle and thread, with her deft guidance,
were turning into a cobweb border, by a weaving of lace-lines, strong,
yet light, where the woof of the original material had been drawn out.
It was "done for odd-minute work, and was better than anything she could
buy." Prettier it certainly was, when, with a finishing of the merest
edge of lace, it came to encircle her round, fair arms and shoulders, or
to peep out with its dainty revelation among the gathering treasures of
the linen-drawer I told you of. She had accomplished yards of it already
for her holiday work.
She had brought the netting, as she promised, for Dakie Thayne, who
received it with thanks, and straightway hastened off to get his
"elephant" and a piece of string, and to find a convenient elm-branch
which he could convert into a cage-pasture.
"I'll come round to the pines, afterward," he said.
And just then,--Sin Saxon's bright face and pretty figure showing
themselves on the hotel piazza, with a seeking look and
gesture,--Jeannie and Elinor were drawn off also to ask about the
tableaux, and see if they were wanted, with the like promise that "they
would come presently." So Miss Craydocke and Leslie walked slowly round,
under the sun-umbrella, to the head of the ledge, by themselves.
Up this rocky promontory it was very pretty little climbing, over the
irregular turf-covered crags that made the ascent; and once up, it was
charming. A natural grove of stately old pine-trees, with their glory of
tasseled foliage and their breath of perfume, crowned and sheltered it;
and here had been placed at cosy angles, under the deepest shade, long,
broad, elastic benches of boards, sprung from rock to rock, and made
secure to stakes, or held in place by convenient irregularities of the
rock itself. Pine-trunks and granite offered rough support to backs that
could so fit themselves; and visitors found out their favorite seats,
and spent hours there, with books or work, or looking forth in a
luxurious listlessness from out the cool upon the warm, bright
valley-picture, and the shining water wandering down from far heights
and unknown solitudes to see the world.
"It's better so," said Miss Craydocke, when the others left them. "I
had a word I wanted to say to you. What do you suppose those two came up
here to the mountains for?" And Miss Craydocke nodded up, indicatively,
toward the two girl-figures just visible by their draperies in a nook of
rock beyond and above the benches.
"To get the good of them, as we did, I suppose," Leslie answered,
wondering a little what Miss Craydocke might exactly mean.
"I suppose so, too," was the reply. "And I suppose--the Lord's love came
with them! I suppose He cares whether they get the full of the good. And
yet I think He leaves it, like everything else, a little to us."
Leslie's heart beat quicker, hearing these words. It beat quicker always
when such thoughts were touched. She was shy of seeking them; she almost
tried, in an involuntary way, to escape them at first, when they were
openly broached; yet she longed always, at the same time, for a deeper
understanding of them. "I should like to know the Miss Josselyns
better," she said presently, when Miss Craydocke made no haste to speak
again. "I have been thinking so this morning. I have thought so very
often. But they seem so quiet, always. One doesn't like to intrude."
"They ought to be more with young people," Miss Craydocke went on. "And
they ought to do less ripping and sewing and darning, if it could be
managed. They brought three trunks with them. And what do you think the
third is full of?"
Leslie had no idea, of course.
"Old winter dresses. To be made over. For the children at home. So that
their mother may be coaxed to take her turn and go away upon a visit
when they get back, seeing that the fall sewing will be half done!
That's a pretty coming to the mountains for two tired-out young things,
I think!"
"Oh dear!" cried Leslie pitifully; and then a secret compunction seized
her, thinking of her own little elegant, odd-minute work, which was all
she had to interfere with mountain pleasure.
"And isn't it some of our business, if we could get at it?" asked Miss
Craydocke, concluding.
"Dear Miss Craydocke!" said Leslie, with a warm brightness in her face,
as she looked up, "the world is full of business; but so few people find
out any but their own! Nobody but you dreamt of this, or of Prissy
Hoskins, till you showed us,--or of all the little Wigleys. How do you
come to know, when other people go on in their own way, and see
nothing,--like the priests and Levites?" This last she added by a sudden
occurrence and application, that half answered, beforehand, her own
question.
"When we think of people's needs as the _Master's!_" said Miss
Craydocke, evading herself, and never minding her syntax. "When we think
what every separate soul is to Him, that He came into the world to care
for as God cares for the sparrows! It's my faith that He's never gone
away from his work, dear; that his love lies alongside every life, and
in all its experience; and that his life is in his love; and that if we
want to find Him--_there_ we may! Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the
least of these, ye have done it unto me.'" She grew eloquent--the plain,
simple-speaking woman--when something that was great and living to her
would find utterance.
"How do you mean that?" said Leslie, with a sort of abruptness, as of
one who must have definiteness, but who hurried with her asking, lest
after a minute she might not dare. "That He really knows, and thinks, of
every special thing and person,--and cares? Or only _would?_"
"I take it as He said it," said Miss Craydocke. "'All power is given me
in heaven and in earth.' 'And lo! I am with you alway, even unto the end
of the world!' He put the two together himself, dear!"
A great, warm, instant glow seemed to rush over Leslie inwardly. In the
light and quickening of it, other words shone out and declared
themselves. "Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit
of itself, except it abide in the vine, no more can ye, except ye abide
in me." And this was the abiding! The sympathy, the interest, that found
itself side by side with his! The faith that felt his uniting presence
with all!
To this child of sixteen came a moment's glimpse of what might be,
truly, that life which is "hid with Christ in God," and which has its
blessed work with the Lord in the world,--came, with the word of a
plain, old, unconsidered woman, whom heedless girls made daily sport
of,--came, bringing with it "old and new," like a householder of the
kingdom of heaven; showing how the life and the fruit are inextricably
one,--how the growth and the withering are inevitably determined!
They reached the benches now; they saw the Josselyns busy up beyond,
with their chess-board between them, and their mending basket at their
feet; they would not go now and interrupt their game.
The seat which the sisters had chosen, because it was just a quiet
little corner for two, was a nook scooped out, as it were, in a jut of
granite; hollowed in behind and perpendicularly to a height above their
heads, and embracing a mossy little flat below, so that it seemed like a
great solid armchair into which two could get together, and a third
could not possibly intrude.
Miss Craydocke and Leslie settled themselves, and both were silent.
Presently Leslie spoke again, giving out a fragmentary link of the train
of thought that had been going on in her. "If it weren't for just one
thing!" she said, and there she stopped.
"What?" asked Miss Craydocke, as not a bit at a loss to made out the
unseen connection.
"The old puzzle. We _have_ to think and work a good deal of the time for
ourselves. And then we lose sight"--
"Of Him? Why?"
Leslie said no more, but waited. Miss Craydocke's tone was clear,
untroubled. The young girl looked, therefore, for this clear confidence
to be spoken out.
"Why, since He is close to _our_ life also, and cares tenderly for
that?--since, if we let him possess himself of it, it is one of his own
channels, by which He still gives himself unto the world? He didn't do
it all in one single history of three years, my child, or thirty-three,
out there in Judaea. He keeps on,--so I believe,--through every possible
way and circumstance of human living now, if only the life is grafted on
his. The Vine and the branches, and God tending all. And the fruit is
the kingdom of heaven."
It is never too late, and never impossible, for a human face to look
beautiful. In the soft light and shadow of the stirring pines, with the
moving from within of that which at once illumined and veiled, with an
exultation and an awe, there came a glory over the homely and faded
features which they could neither bar nor dim. And the thought took
possession of the word and tone, and made them simply grand and heavenly
musical.
After that they sat still again,--it matters not how many minutes. The
crisp green spines rustled dreamily over their heads; the wild birds
called to each other, far back in the closer lying woods; the water
glanced on, millions of new drops every instant making the self-same
circles and gushes and falls, and the wealth of summer sunshine holding
and vivifying all. Leslie had word and scene stamped together on her
spirit and memory in those moments. There was a Presence in the hush and
beauty. Two souls were here met together in the name of the living
Christ. And for that there is the promise.
Martha Josselyn and her sister sat and played and mended on.
By and by Dakie Thayne came; said a bright word or two; glanced round,
in restless boy-fashion, as if taking in the elements of the situation,
and considering what was to be made out of it; perceived the pair at
chess; and presently, with his mountain stick, went springing away from
point to point, up and around the piles and masses of rock and mound
that made up the broadening ascent of the ledge.
"Check to your queen," said Sue.
Martha put her elbow upon her knee, and held her needle suspended by its
thread. Sue darned away, and got a great hole laid lengthwise with
smooth lines, before her threatening move had been provided for. Then a
red knight came with gallant leap, right down in the midst of the white
forces, menacing in his turn right and left; and Martha drew a long
sigh, and sat back, and poised her needle-lance again, and went to work;
and it was Sue's turn to lean over the board with knit brows and holden
breath.
Something peered over the rock above them at this moment. A boy's head,
from which the cap had been removed.
"If only they'll play now, and not chatter!" thought Dakie Thayne, lying
prone along the cliff above, and putting up his elbows to rest his head
between his hands. "This'll be jolly, if it don't turn to eavesdropping.
Poor old Noll! I haven't had a game since I played with him!"
Sue would not withdraw her attack. She planted a bishop so that, if the
knight should move, it would open a course straight down toward a weak
point beside the red king.
"She means to 'fight it out on that line, if it takes all summer,'"
Dakie went on within himself, having grasped, during the long pause
before Sue's move, the whole position. "They're no fools at it, to have
got it into a shape like that! I'd just like Noll to see it!"
Martha looked, and drew a thread or two into her stocking, and looked
again. Then she stabbed her cotton-ball with her needle, and put up both
hands--one with the white stocking-foot still drawn over it--beside her
temples. At last she castled.
Sue was as calm as the morning. She always grew calm and strong as the
game drew near the end. She had even let her thoughts go off to other
things while Martha pondered and she wove in the cross-threads of her
darn.
"I wonder, Martha," she said now, suddenly, before attending to the new
aspect of the board, "if I couldn't do without that muslin skirt I made
to wear under my _piña_, and turn it into a couple of white waists to
carry home to mother? If she goes away, you know"--
"Aigh!"
It was a short, sharp, unspellable sound that came from above. Sue
started, and a red piece rolled from the board. Then there was a
rustling and a crashing and a leaping, and by a much shorter and more
hazardous way than he had climbed, Dakie Thayne came down and stood
before them. "I had to let you know! I couldn't listen. I was in hopes
you wouldn't talk. Don't move, please! I'll find the man. I do beg your
pardon,--I had no business,--but I so like chess,--when it's any sort of
a game!"
While he spoke, he was looking about the base of the rock, and by good
fortune spied and pounced upon the bit of bright-colored ivory, which
had rolled and rested itself against a hummock of sod.
"May I see it out?" he begged, approaching, and putting the piece upon
the board. "You must have played a good deal," looking at Sue.
"We play often at home, my sister and I; and I had some good practice
in"--There she stopped.
"In the hospital," said Martha, with the sharp little way she took up
sometimes. "Why shouldn't you tell of it?"
"Has Miss Josselyn been in the hospitals?" asked Dakie Thayne, with a
certain quick change in his tone.
"For the best of two years," Martha answered.
At this moment, seeing how Dakie was breaking the ice for them, up came
Miss Craydocke and Leslie Goldthwaite.
"Miss Leslie! Miss Craydocke! This lady has been away among our
soldiers, in the hospitals, half through the war! Perhaps--did you
ever"--But with that he broke off. There was a great flush on his face,
and his eyes glowed with boy-enthusiasm lit at the thought of the war,
and of brave men, and of noble, ministering women, of whom he suddenly
found himself face to face with one.
The game of chess got swept together. "It was as good as over," Martha
Josselyn said. And these five sat down together among the rocks, and in
half an hour, after weeks of mere "good-mornings," they had grown to be
old friends. But Dakie Thayne--he best knew why--left his fragment of a
question unfinished.