charming point in any fireplace to look as if it were constantly ready
for use. Inflammable draperies, however pretty, militate against this
look, and so are a mistake in taste, especially in our changeful New
England climate, where, even in midsummer, a little blaze may at any
moment be desirable to cheer a dull day or warm a chilly evening.
But May herself was forced to admit that the room looked "comfortable"
when the square of pretty ingrain carpeting of a warm golden brown was
tacked into its place, and the furniture brought back from the attic and
arranged. Things at once fell into harmonious relation with each other,
as in a well-thought-out room they should do. The creamy, bright paper
made a pleasant background; there was an air of cheerfulness even on
cloudy days. May could not understand the reason of this, or why on such
days her reds and pinks and drabs and greens and blues never seemed to
warm her out of dulness.
"I am sure my colors are a great deal brighter than yours," she would
say; "I cannot imagine why they don't light up better."
Eleanor did not try for many evanescent prettinesses. In fact, she could
not, even had she wished to do so, for her money was all spent; so, as
she told her mother, she contented herself with having secured things
that would wear, and a pretty color. She put short curtains of "scrim"
at her windows, and plain serviceable towels which could be often washed
on her bureau and table-tops. The bureau was enlivened by a large,
square scarlet pincushion, the only bit of finery in which Eleanor
indulged. Amid the subdued tone of its surroundings it looked absolutely
brilliant, like the famous red wafer which the great Turner stuck in the
foreground of his dim-tinted landscape, and which immediately seemed to
take the color out of the bright pictures on either side.
Later, when Eleanor had learned to do the pretty Mexican work, now in
fashion, she decorated some special towels for her table and bureau,
with lace-like ends, and a pair of pillow-covers. Meanwhile, she bore
very well the knowledge that May and most of the other girls of their
set considered her room rather "plain and bare." It suited her own
fancy, and that satisfied her.
"I do like room to turn about in and not too many things, and not to
smell of dust," she told her mother.
Here is Eleanor's budget of expenses, to set against May's:--
Wall-paper, twelve rolls $1.80
Use of brush and roller .18
Kalsomining ceiling 1.75
Picture-moulding 2.00
Two gallons of mixed paint, at $1.80 per gallon 3.60
Brush .30
Nine yards of ingrain carpeting at sixty-five cents a yard 5.85
Carpet thread and tacks .20
Pine shelving 1.00
Chintz for chair-cover put on by Eleanor herself 1.75
Satin and ribbon for cushion 1.12
------
Total $19.86
This was two years ago. If you could take a peep at the rival rooms in
Ninety-three and Ninety-four to-day, you would find Eleanor's looking
quite as pretty as when new, or prettier; for she has used it
carefully, and each year has added something to its equipments, as years
will. When a girl has once secured a good foundation for her room, her
friends are apt to make their gifts work in toward its further
beautification.
With May it is different. Her room has lost the freshness which was its
one good point. The chintz has become creased and a little faded, the
muslin and scrim from repeated washings are no longer crisp, and look
limp and threadbare; all the ribbons and scarfs are shabby and tumbled;
while the green carpet and the blue wall "swear" as vigorously at each
other as they did at first. May sighs over it frequently, and wishes she
had tried for a more permanent effect. Next time she will do better, she
avers; but next times are slow in coming where the family exchequer has
not the recuperative powers of Fortunatus's purse.
The Moral of this simple tale may be divided into three heads. I object
to morals myself as a wind-up for stories, and I dare say most of you
who read this are no fonder of them than I am; still, a three-headed
moral is such a novelty that it may be urged as an excuse. The three
heads are these:--
1. When you have only a small sum to spend on renovations, choose those
that will last.
2. Ingenuity and energy count for more than mere money can.
3. Once make sure in a room of convenience, cheerfulness, and a good
color, and you can afford to wait for gimcracks--or "Jamescracks"--or
any of the thousand and one little duds which so many people consider
indispensable features of pleasantness. Rooms have their anatomy as well
as human beings. There must be a good substructure of bones rightly
placed to underlie the bloom and sparkle in the one; and in like manner
for the other the laws of taste, which are immutable, should underlie
and support the evanescent and passing fancies and fashions of every
day.
THE SORROWS OF FELICIA.
It was a pretty chamber, full of evidences of taste and loving care.
White curtains draped the windows and the looking-glass. There was a
nice writing-table, set where the light fell upon it exactly as it
should for convenience to the writer. There was a book-shelf full of
gayly bound books, a pretty blue carpet, photographs on the faintly
tinted blue wall,--somebody had evidently taken pains to make the room
charming, and just as evidently to make it charming for the use of a
girl. And there lay the girl on the sofa,--Felicia, or, in schoolroom
parlance, Felie Bliss. Was she basking in the comfort and tastefulness
of her room? Not at all! A volume of "In Memoriam" was in her hand. Her
face was profoundly long and dismal. She murmured mournful lines over to
herself, only pausing now and then to reach out her hand and fill a
tumbler from a big jug of lemonade which stood on a little table beside
her. Felie always provided herself with lemonade when she retired to her
bedroom to enjoy the pleasures of woe for a season.
From the door, which was locked, sounded a chorus of knocks and
irreverent voices.
"Sister, are you in there?" demanded one.
"Are you thinking about Life, sister?" asked another.
"Have you got your sharp-pointed scissors with you?" cried the first
voice. "Oh, Felie, Felie, stay your rash hand."
"We like lemonade just as much as you," chimed in Dimple, the youngest
of the four.
"Let us in. We are very thirsty, and we long to comfort you," said voice
the second, with a stifled giggle.
Felicia paid no attention whatever to these observations, only murmured
to herself,--
"But what to her shall be the end?
And what to me remains of good?
To her perpetual maidenhood--"
"Who is 'her'?" demanded that bad Jenny through the door. "If you mean
Mrs. Carrington, you are all wrong. May Curtis says her engagement is
announced to Mr. Collins."
"Oh, children, do go away!" cried Felie in a despairing tone.
"Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confessions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in Thy wisdom make me wise."
"Hear her!" said Betty outside. "She's having it very badly to-day. I
wish I knew Tennyson. I should like to tell him what I think of his
writing a horrid, melancholy, caterwauling book, and making the Bliss
family miserable. Felie, if you've drunk up all your lemonade, you might
at least lend us the pitcher."
It was no use. Felicia either did not, or would not, hear. So, with a
last thump on the panels of the long-suffering door, the trio departed
in search of another pitcher.
If anybody had told Felie Bliss, at seventeen, that she really had not
a grief in the world worthy of the name, she would have resented it
deeply. She was a tall girl, whose bones and frame were meant for the
use of a large woman, when their owner should have arrived at all that
nature meant her to be, but who at this period of her life was almost
startlingly long and thin. She had "outgrown her strength," as people
say, which was Felie's only excuse for the almost tragic enjoyment
which she took in mournful things. She was in fair health, and had
an excellent appetite, and a real school-girl love for raisins,
stick-cinnamon, sugar-plums, and soda-water; tastes which were
highly at variance with the rôle which she wished to play,--that of a
sweetly-resigned and long-suffering being, whose hopes had faded from
earth, into the distant heaven toward which she was hastening. Felie's
sweet-tooth was quite a trial to her; but she struggled with it, and
resisted enjoyment as far as was possible with her naturally cheerful
disposition.
She was an interesting perplexity to her family, who were contented,
reasonable folk, of the sort which, happily for the world, is called
commonplace. To her younger sisters, especially, Felicia was a
never-failing and exciting conundrum, the answer to which they were
always guessing, but never could find out. For days together she would
be as cheerful as possible, full of fun and contrivance, and the life of
the house; then, all of a sudden, gloom would envelop her like a soft
fog, and she would retire to her room with "In Memoriam," or some other
introspective volume, and the fat jug of lemonade, lock the door, and
just "drink and weep for hours together," as her sister Jenny expressed
it. It was really unaccountable.
All her books were deeply scored with lines against the woful passages,
and such pencilled remarks as "Alas!" and "All too true!" She sat in
church with a carefully arranged sad smile on her face; but this, as
unsuitable to her natural expression, was not always a success. Felie
was much aggrieved one day at being told, by an indiscriminating friend,
that her face "seemed made to laugh,--no one could imagine it anything
but bright." This, for a girl who was posing for "Patience on a monument
smiling at grief," was rather a trial; but then the friend had never
seen her reading "King John," and murmuring,--
"Here I and sorrow sit--"
with a long brown stick of cinnamon, in process of crunch, occupying the
other corner of her mouth. But perhaps the friend might have found even
this funny,--there are such unfeeling people in the world!
Felie's letters were rather dull reading, because she told so little of
what she had said or done, and hinted so liberally at her own aching
heart and thwarted hopes. But her correspondents, who were mostly jolly
school-girls, knew her pretty well, and dismissed these jeremiads as,
"Just Felie's way. She does love to be miserable, you know, but nobody
is better fun than she when she doesn't think it her duty to be
unhappy."
Felie didn't come down to tea on the evening of the day on which our
story opens. An afternoon of lemonade had dampened her appetite, but at
bedtime she stole out in her dressing-gown and slippers, helped herself
to a handful of freshly baked cookies and a large green cucumber pickle,
and, by the aid of these refreshments, contrived to stave off the pangs
of hunger till next morning, when she appeared at breakfast cheerful and
smiling, with no sign upon her spirits of the eclipse of the day before.
Her family made no allusion to that melancholy episode,--they were used
to such,--only Mr. Bliss asked, between two mouthfuls of toast, "Where
were you gadding to last night, child? I didn't hear you come home."
"I was not out. I didn't feel very--very bright, and went to bed early."
"Oh!"--Mr. Bliss understood.
"He who makes truth unlovely commits high treason against virtue," says
an old writer; but he who simulates grief, and makes it ridiculous,
commits an almost equal crime against true feeling. Felie had been
playing at sorrow where no sorrow was. That very day a real sorrow came,
and she woke up to find her world all changed into a reality of pain and
puzzle and bewilderment, which was very different from the fictitious
loss and the sham suffering which she had found so much to her mind.
She had no idea, as she watched her father and mother drive off that
afternoon, that anything terrible was about to happen. Only the "seers"
of the Scotch legends could see the shroud drawn up over the breast of
those who are "appointed to die" suddenly; the rest of us see nothing.
The horse which Mr. Bliss drove was badly broken, but he had often gone
out before and come back safely. It was only on this particular day that
the combination of circumstances occurred which made the risky horse
dangerous,--the shriek of the railroad-whistle, the sharp turn in the
road, the heap of stones. There was a runaway, an overset, and two hours
from the time when the youthful sisters, unexpectant of misfortune, had
watched their parents off, they were brought back, Mr. Bliss dead, Mrs.
Bliss with a broken arm, and injuries to the spine so severe that there
was little chance of her ever being able to leave her bed again. So much
can be done in one fatal moment.
It is at such dark, dark times that real character shows itself. Felie's
little affectations, her morbid musings and fancies, fell from her like
some light, fantastic drapery, which is shrivelled in sudden heat. Her
real self--hopeful, self-reliant, optimistic--rose into action as soon
as the first paralyzing shock of pain was past, and she had taken in the
reality of this new and strange thing. All the cares of the house, the
management of affairs, the daily wear and tear of life, which has to be
borne by _some one_, fell upon her inexperienced hands. Her mother was
too shaken and ill to be consulted, the younger girls instinctively
leaned on what they felt to be a strength superior to their own. It was
a heavy load for young shoulders, and Felie was not yet eighteen!
She made mistakes of course,--mistakes repented of with bitter crying
and urgent resolutions. She was often tried, often discouraged; things
did not smooth themselves easily, or the world go much out of its usual
course, because Felie Bliss was perplexed and in trouble. There were no
mornings to spare for tragedy, or Tennyson. Felie's eyeballs often
longed for the relief of a good fit of tears; that troublesome little
lump would come into her throat which is the price of tears resolutely
held back, but there was too much to do to allow of such a weakening
self-indulgence. Mother must be cared for, the house must be looked
after, people on business must be seen, the "children," as she called
her sisters, must not be suffered to be too sad. And then, again, "In
Memoriam," beautiful as it is, and full of sweet and true and tender
feeling, did not satisfy Felie now as it had done when she was forced to
cultivate an artificial emotion outside of herself.
"If I had time and knew how to write poetry, I could say a great many
things that Tennyson never thought of," she told Jenny, one day. It is
so with all who suffer. No poet ever voiced the full and complete
expression of our own personal pain. There is always something
beyond,--an individual pang recognized and understood only by ourselves.
So the years went on, as years do even when their wheels seem weighted
with lead. The first sharpness of their loss abated. They became used to
the sight of their father's empty chair, of his closed desk; they ceased
to listen for the sound of his step on the porch, his key in the door.
Mrs. Bliss gradually regained a more comfortable measure of health, but
she remained an invalid, the chief variation in her life being when she
was lifted from bed to sofa, and back again from sofa to bed. Felie was
twenty-four, and the younger ones were no longer children, though she
still called them so. Even Dimple wore long dresses, and had set up
something very like a lover, though Felie sternly refused to have him
called so till Dimple was older. Felie was equally severe with Dr.
Ernest Allen, on her own account. "She was a great deal too busy to
think of such a thing," she declared; but Dr. Allen, who had faith in
time, simply declared that he "didn't mind waiting," and continued to
hang his hat on the hat-tree in the Bliss's entry three times a week.
Indeed, looking at Felicia Bliss, now that she had rounded physically
and mentally into what she was meant to become, you would not wonder
that any man should be willing to wait a while in hope of winning such a
prize. A certain bright cheer and helpfulness was her charm. "The room
grew pleasanter as soon as she came into it," Dimple declared. Certainly
Dr. Allen thought so; and as a man may willingly put off building a
house till he can afford to have one which fronts the sun, so he
considered it worth while to delay, for a few years, even, if need be,
and secure for life a daily shining which should make all life
pleasanter. He had never known Felie in her morbid days, and she could
never make him quite believe her when she tried to tell of that past
phase of her girlhood.
"It is simply impossible. You must exaggerate, if you have not dreamed
it," he said.
"Not a bit. Ask Dimple,--ask any of them."
"I prefer to ask my own eyes, my own convictions," declared the lover.
"You are the most 'wholesome' woman, through and through, that I ever
knew. A doctor argues from present indications to past conditions. I am
sure you are mistaken about yourself. If I can detect with the
stethoscope the spot in your lungs where five years back pneumonia left
a trace, surely I ought to be able to make out a similar spot in your
nervous temperament. The idea is opposed to all that you are."
"But not to all that I was. Really and truly, Dr. Allen, I used to be
the most absurd girl in the world. If you could have seen me!"
"But what cured you in this radical and surprising manner?"
"Well," said Felie, demurely, "I suppose the remedy was what you would
call homeopathic. I had revelled in a sort of imaginary sorrowfulness,
but when that dreadful time came, and I tasted real sorrow, I found that
it took all my strength to meet it, and I was glad enough of everything
bright and cheering that I could get at to help me through.
"I wonder if there are many girls in the world who are nursing imaginary
miseries as I used to do," she went on. "If there are, I should like to
tell them how foolish it is, and how bad for them. But, dear me, there
are so many girls and one can't get at them! I suppose each must learn
the lesson for herself and fight her fight out somehow, and I hope they
will all get through safely, and learn, as I have, that happiness is the
most precious thing in the world, and that it is so, _so_ foolish not to
enjoy and make the most of it while we have it. Because, you know,
_some_ day trouble must come to everybody. And it is such a pity to have
to look back and know that you have wasted a chance."
IMPRISONED.
The big house stood in the middle of a big open space, with wide lawns
about it shaded by cherry-trees and lilac-bushes, toward the south an
old-fashioned garden, and back of that the apple-orchard.
The little house was on the edge of the grounds, and had its front
entrance on the road. Its doors were locked and its windows shuttered
now, for no one had lived in it for several years.
Three little girls lived in the big house. Lois, who was eight years
old, and Emmy, who was seven, were sisters. Kitty, their cousin, also
seven, had lived with them so long that she seemed like another sister.
There was, besides, Marianne, the cook's baby; but as she was not quite
three, she did not count for much with the older ones, though they
sometimes condescended to play with her.
It was a place of endless pleasure to these happy country children, and
they needed no wider world than it afforded them. All summer long they
played in the open air. They built bowers in the feathery asparagus;
they knew every bird's-nest in the syringa-bushes and the thick
guelder-roses, and were so busy all the time that they rarely found a
moment in which to quarrel.
One day in July their mother and father had occasion to leave home for a
long afternoon and evening.
"You can stay outdoors till half-past six," Mrs. Spenser said to her
little girls; "then you must come in to tea, and at half-past seven you
must go to bed as usual. You may play where you like in the grounds, but
you must not go outside the gate." She kissed them for good-by.
"Remember to be good," she said. Then she got into the carriage and
drove away.
The children were very good for several hours. They played that little
Marianne was their baby, and was carried off by a gypsy. Lois was the
gypsy, and the chase and recapture of the stolen child made an exciting
game.
At last they got tired of this, and the question arose: "What shall we
do next?"
"I wish mother would let us play down the road," said Emmy. "The Noyse
children's mother lets them."
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Lois, struck by a sudden bright
idea. "Let's go down to the shut-up house. That isn't outside the gate."
"O Lois! yes, it is. You can't go to the front door without walking on
the road."
"Well, who said anything about the front door? I'm going to look in at
the back windows. Mother never said we mustn't do that."
Still, it was with a sense of guilt that the three stole across the
lawn; and they kept in the shadow of the hedge, as if afraid some one
would see and call them back. Little Marianne, with her rag doll in her
arms, began to run after them.
"There's that little plague tagging us," said Kitty.
"Go back, Marianne; we don't want you." Then, when Marianne would not go
back, they all ran away, and left her crying.
The shut-up house looked dull and ghostly enough. The front was in deep
shadow from the tall row of elms that bordered the road, but at the
back the sun shone hotly. It glowed through the low, dusty window of a
cellar, and danced and gleamed on something bright which lay on the
floor within.
"What do you suppose it is?" said Emmy, as they all stooped to look. "It
looks like real gold. Perhaps some pirates hid it there, and no one has
come since but us."
"Or perhaps it's a mine," cried Lois,--"a mine of jewels. See, it's all
purple, like the stones in mother's breastpin. Wouldn't it be fun if it
was? We wouldn't tell anybody, and we could buy such splendid things."
"We must get in and find out," added Kitty.
Just then a wail sounded close at hand, and a very woful, tear-stained
little figure appeared. It was Marianne. The poor baby had trotted all
the long distance in the sun after her unkind playfellows.
"Oh, dear! You little nuisance! What made you come?" demanded Emmy.
"I 'ant to," was all Marianne's explanation.
"Well, don't cry. Now you've come, you can play," remarked Lois; and
Marianne was consoled.
They began to try the windows in turn, and at last found one in a
wood-shed which was unfastened. Kitty scrambled in, and admitted the
others, first into the wood-shed and then into a very dusty kitchen. The
cellar stairs opened from this. They all ran down, but--oh,
disappointment!--the jewel-mine proved to be only the half of a broken
teacup with a pattern on it in gold and lilac. This was a terrible
come-down from a pirate treasure.
"Pshaw!" said Kitty. "Only an old piece of crockery. I don't think it's
fair to cheat like that."
Little Marianne had been afraid to venture down into the cellar, and now
stayed at the top waiting for them.
"Let's run away from her," suggested Kitty, who was cross after her
disappointment.
So they all hopped over Marianne, and, deaf to her cries, ran upstairs
to the second story as fast as they could go. There were four bare,
dusty chambers, all unfurnished.
"There she comes," cried Kitty, as Marianne was heard climbing the
stairs. "Where shall we hide from her? Oh, here's a place!"
She had spied a closet door, fastened with a large old-fashioned iron
latch. She flew across the room. It was a narrow closet, with a shelf
across the top of it.
"Hurry, hurry!" called Kitty. The others made haste. They squeezed
themselves into the closet, and banged the door to behind them. Not till
it was firmly fastened did they notice that there was no latch inside,
or handle of any sort, and that they had shut themselves in, and had no
possible way of getting out again.
Their desire to escape from Marianne changed at once into dismay. They
kicked and pounded, but the stout old-fashioned door did not yield.
Marianne could be heard crying without. There was a round hole in the
door just above the latch. Putting her eye to this, Lois could see the
poor little thing, doll in arms, standing in the middle of the floor,
uncertain what to do.
"Marianne!" she called, "here we are, in the closet. Come and let us
out, that's a good baby. Put your little hand up and push the latch. You
can, if you will only try."