Produced by Daniel Fromont. HTML version by Al Haines.
[Transcriber's note: This is the second of a series of four novels by
Susan Warner, all of which are in the Project Gutenberg collection:
1. What She Could
2. Opportunities
3. The House in Town
4. Trading]
OPPORTUNITIES,
A SEQUEL TO "WHAT SHE COULD."
BY THE AUTHOR OF
"THE WIDE WIDE WORLD," &c.
LONDON:
JAMES NISBET & CO., 21 BERNERS STREET.
MDCCCLXXI.
"Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it." Ecc. ix. 10.
OPPORTUNITIES.
CHAPTER I.
It was the morning after that Sunday when Matilda had been baptized.
The girls came down to prepare breakfast as usual; Maria in a very
unsettled humour. She was cloudy and captious to a degree that Matilda
could not understand. The kitchen was hot; the butter was soft; the
milk was turned; the bread was dry. All things went wrong.
"It is no wonder the bread is dry," said Matilda; "it has been baked
ever since last Friday."
"Thursday. I didn't say it was a wonder. Aunt Candy _will_ have the
bread dry. I hate it!"
"And it is no wonder the butter is soft, if you keep it up here in the
kitchen. The kitchen must be hot, with this hot stove. But the milkman
will be along directly."
"No, he won't. We always have to wait for him; or take the old milk.
And I can't be bothered to keep the butter down cellar and be running
for it fifty times in an hour. I have enough to do as it is. Whatever
possessed Aunt Erminia to want corn bread this morning!"
"Does she want corn bread?"
"Yes."
"Well, corn bread is nice. I am glad of it."
"You wouldn't be glad if you had to make it. There! I knew it would be
so. There isn't a speck of soda. Put on your bonnet, Matilda, and run
round to Mr. Sample's and get some soda, will you?--and be quick. We
shall be late, and then there will be a row."
"There won't be a _row_, Maria. Aunt Candy is always quiet."
"I wish she wouldn't, then. I hate people who are always quiet. I would
rather they would flare out now and then. It's safer."
"For what? _Safer_, Maria?"
"Do go along and get your soda!" exclaimed Maria. "Do you think it will
be safe to be late with breakfast?"
Maria was so evidently out of order this morning, that her sister
thought the best way was to let her alone; only she asked, "Aren't you
well, Maria?" and got a sharp answer; then she went out.
It was a delicious spring morning. The air stirred in her face its soft
and glad breaths of sweetness; the sunlight was the very essence of
promise; the village and the green trees, now out in leaf, shone and
basked in the fair day. It was better than breakfast, to be out in the
air. Matilda went round the corner, into Butternut Street, and made for
Mr. Sample's grocery store, every step being a delight. Why could not
the inside world be as pleasant as the outside? Matilda was musing and
wishing, when just before she reached Mr. Sample's door, she saw what
made her forget everything else; even the mischievous little boy who
belonged to Mrs. Dow. What was he doing here in Butternut Street?
Matilda's steps slackened. The boy knew her, for he looked and then
grinned, and then bringing a finger alongside of his nose in a peculiar
and mysterious expressiveness, he repeated his old words--
"Ain't you green?"
"I suppose so," said Matilda. "I dare say I am. What then? Green is not
the worst colour."
The boy looked at her, a little confounded.
"If you would come to Sunday-school," Matilda went on, "_you_ would be
a better colour than you are--by and by."
"What colour be I?" said the boy.
"You'd be a better colour," said Matilda. "Just come and see."
"I ain't green," the boy remonstrated.
Matilda passed on, went into Mr. Sample's and got her soda. She had a
few cents of change. A thought came into her head. Peeping out, she saw
that Mrs. Dow's boy was still lingering where she had left him.
Immediately Matilda requested to have the worth of those cents in
sugared-almonds; and with her little packages went into the street
again. The boy eyed her.
"What is your name?" said Matilda.
"Hain't got none."
"Yes, you have. What does your mother call you at home?"
"She calls me--the worst of all her plagues," said the fellow, grinning.
"No, no; but when she calls you from somewhere--what does she call you?"
"She calls me out of the garding and down from the attic."
"Look here," said Matilda, showing a sugar-plum; "I'll give you that,
if you will tell me."
The boy eyed it, and her, and finally said--
"Lem."
"Your name is Lem?"
He nodded.
"There, Lem, is a sugar-plum for you. Now if you'll come to
Sunday-school next Sunday, and stay and behave yourself, I'll give you
three more."
"Three more?" said the boy.
"Yes. Now come, and you'll like it."
And Matilda sped home with her soda.
"I should think you had been making the soda," said Maria; "you have
been long enough. What kept you?"
"How _do_ they make soda, I wonder?" said Matilda, looking at it. "Do
you know, Maria?"
"I have enough to do to know how to get breakfast. Tilly, run and grind
the coffee and make it--quick, will you? now I am in a hurry."
Matilda thought Maria might have done it herself, while she was waiting
for the soda. But she said nothing of that. In ten minutes more the
coffee was made, the corn bread was ready, and the ladies came down.
Matilda was in a mood as gentle as the morning, and almost as
cloudless. Her morning's work and walk and the meeting with Lem Dow had
given her an appetite; and the work of the night before had left a
harmony in her spirit, as if sweet music were sounding there. Her
little face was thus like the very morning itself, shining with the
fair shining of inward beauty; in contrast with all the other faces at
the table. For Clarissa's features were coldly handsome and calm; Mrs.
Candy's were set and purposeful; and poor Maria's were sadly clouded
and out of humour. Matilda took little heed of them all; she was
thinking of Lemuel Dow.
"Matilda," said her aunt, suddenly--"I wish you to come to me every
morning to read. A person who has taken the step you took last night,
is no longer a child, but deserves to be treated as a woman. It is
necessary that you should fit yourself for a woman's place. Come to me
at ten o'clock. I will have you read to me some books that will make
you better understand the things you have taken upon you, and the
things you have done."
"Why, I am a child yet, Aunt Candy," Matilda answered in some dismay.
"You think so, do you?"
"Yes, ma'am,--I feel so; and I _am_."
"I thought you considered yourself more than a child. But you have
assumed a woman's place, and it is now necessary that you should be
fitted for it. _I_ think the best way is to get the preparation first;
but in your church, it seems, they prefer the other course. You are
under my care in the house, at any rate, and I shall do my duty by you."
"I do not understand you, Aunt Candy," Matilda spoke, quite bewildered.
"No, my dear, I suppose not. That is just what I think so
objectionable. But we will do what we can to remedy it."
"What do you want to prepare me for, Aunt Erminia?"
"For your position, my dear, as a member of the Church. That is not a
child's position. You have placed yourself in it; and now the question
is how to enable you to maintain it properly. I cannot treat you as a
child any longer."
Matilda wondered very much how she was to be treated. However, silence
seemed the wisest plan at present.
"I suppose _I_ am a child still," remarked Maria.
"I have never observed anything inconsistent with that supposition, my
dear," her aunt serenely answered.
"And if I had been baptized last night, you would have more respect for
me," went on poor Maria.
"My respect is not wholly dependent on forms, my dear. If it had been
done in a proper way, of course, things would be different from what
they are. I _should_ have more respect for you."
"Clarissa has done it in a proper way, I suppose?"
"When she was of a proper age--yes; certainly."
"And then, what did she promise? All that they promised last night?"
"The vows are much the same."
"Well, people ought not to make vows till they are ready to keep
them--ought they?"
"Certainly they should not."
"Well----"
"My dear, it is a very bad habit to begin every sentence with a 'well.'
You do it constantly."
"Well, Aunt Candy----"
"There!" exclaimed Clarissa. "Again."
"Well, I don't care," said Maria. "I can't help it. I don't know when I
do it. I was going to ask--and you put everything out of my head.--Aunt
Candy, do you think Clarissa has given up, really, the pomps and
vanities and all that, you know? She spent twenty-four dollars, I heard
her say, on the trimming of that muslin dress; and she bought a parasol
the other day for ten dollars, when one for three would have done
perfectly well; and she pays always twelve dollars for her boots,
twelve and ten dollars; when she could get nice ones for four and five.
Now what's that?"
"It's impertinence," said Clarissa. "And untruth; for the four and five
dollar boots hurt my feet."
"They are _exactly_ the same," said Maria; "except the kid and the
trimming and the beautiful making."
"Very well," said Clarissa, "I have a right to wear comfortable shoes,
if I can get them."
"Then you have a right to pomps and vanities," returned Maria; "but I
say you _haven't_ a right, after you have declared and sworn you would
have nothing to do with them."
"Mamma," said Clarissa, but with heightened colour, "Is this a child?"
"After the Shadywalk pattern," Mrs. Candy answered.
"Girls in Shadywalk have a _little_ sense, when they get to be as old
as sixteen," Maria went on. "Where you have been, perhaps they do not
grow up so fast."
"People would put weights on their heads if they did," said Clarissa.
"It doesn't matter," said Maria. "You can imagine that I am as old as
you are; and I say that it is more respectable not to make promises and
vows than to make them and not keep them."
"Do not answer her, my dear," said Mrs. Candy.
"And that is the reason why I have _not_ been baptized, or whatever you
call it----"
"I never said so, Maria," said her aunt. "The two things are not the
same."
"Imagine it!" said Clarissa.
"Well, you said just now--I don't know what you said!--but you said at
any rate that if it had been done in a proper way, you would think more
of me; and _I_ say, that it is better not to make vows till you are
ready to keep them. I am not ready to give up dancing; and I would have
expensive hats and dresses, and feathers, and watches, and chains, and
everything pretty that money can buy, if I had the money; and I like
them; and I want them."
"I have not given up dancing," said Clarissa.
"Nor other things either," retorted Maria; "but they are pomps and
vanities. That is what I say. You promised you would have nothing to do
with them."
"Mamma!" said Clarissa, appealingly.
"Yes, my dear," said her mother. "The amount of ignorance in Maria's
words discourages me from trying to answer them."
"Ignorance and superstition, mamma."
"And superstition," said Mrs. Candy.
"Matilda thinks just the same way," Clarissa went on, meeting the broad
open astonished eyes of the little girl.
"Of course," said Mrs. Candy. "Matilda is too much a child to exercise
her own judgment on these matters. She just takes what has been told
her."
"Have you given up dancing too, Tilly?" Clarissa went on.
"I have never thought about it, Cousin Clarissa."
"Matilda all over!" exclaimed the young lady. "She has not thought
about it, mamma. When she thinks about it, she will know what her part
is."
"Very well," said Mrs. Candy. "She might do worse."
"I suppose you think I can't think," said poor Maria.
"No, my dear; I only think you have not begun yet to use your power in
that direction. When you do, you will see things differently."
"It would take a good deal of thinking, to make me see that giving up
the world and going into it were the same thing," said Maria. "And I
don't mean to promise to do it till I'm ready."
"Mamma, this is not very pleasant," said Clarissa.
"No, my dear. We will leave the field to Maria. Come to me at ten
o'clock, Matilda."
The two ladies filed off up-stairs, and Maria sat down to cry. Matilda
began to clear the table, going softly back and forth between the
basement and the kitchen as if there were trouble in the house. Maria
sobbed.
"Ain't they mean?" she exclaimed, starting up at length. Matilda was
busy going in and out, and said nothing.
"Matilda! Why don't you speak? I say, ain't they mean?"
"There's no use in talking so, Maria," said her little sister, looking
sorrowful.
"Yes, there is. People ought to hear the truth."
"But if you know what is right, why don't you _do_ it, Maria?"
"I do--as well as I can."
"But, Maria!--I mean, about what you were saying; giving up whatever is
not right."
"Things are right for other people, that are not right for members of
the Church. That's why I want to wait awhile. I am not ready."
"But, Maria, what makes them right for other people?"
"They have not promised anything about them. Clarissa has _promised_,
and she don't do."
"You have not promised."
"No, of course I haven't."
"But if they are right things, Maria, why _should_ you, or anybody,
promise not to have anything to do with them?"
"Oh, you are too wise, Matilda!" her sister answered impatiently.
"There is no need for you to go to read with Aunt Candy; you know
everything already."
The rest of the morning was very silent between the sisters, till it
came to the time for Matilda to present herself in her aunt's room.
There meanwhile a consultation had been held.
"Mamma, that girl is getting unendurable."
"Must wait a little while, my dear."
"What will you do with her then?"
"Something. I can send her to school, at any rate."
"But the expense, mamma?"
"It is not much, at the district school. That is where she has been
going."
"Matilda too?"
"I suppose that will be the best place. I am not sure about sending
Matilda. She's a fine child."
"She will be handsome, mamma."
"She is very graceful now. She has a singular manner."
"But she is spoiled, mamma!"
"I shall unspoil her. Tilly is very young yet, and she has not had
enough to do. I shall give her something else to think of, and get
these absurdities out of her head. She just wants something to do."
"Mamma, she is not an easy child to influence. She says so little and
keeps her own counsel. I think you don't know her."
"I never saw the child yet that was a match for me," said Mrs. Candy,
complacently. "I like best one that has some stuff in her. Maria is a
wet sponge; you can squeeze her dry in a minute; no character, no
substance. Matilda is different. I should like to keep Tilly."
"If you could keep her out of Mr. Richmond's influence, mamma, it would
be a help. That church ruins her. She will be fit for nothing."
"I will take the nonsense out of her," said Mrs. Candy. "I cannot take
her out of the church, while we remain here, for that would raise a hue
and cry; but I will do as well. Here she comes."
A little soft knock at the door was followed by the little girl
herself; looking demure and sweet, after her fashion lately. It used to
be arch and sweet. But Matilda had been very sober since her mother's
death. The room into which she came had an air now very unlike all the
rest of the house. Mrs. Englefield's modest preparations for the
comfort of her guests were quite overlaid and lost sight of. It was as
if some fairy had shaken her hand over the room, and let fall pleasant
things everywhere. On the Marseilles quilt a gorgeous silk coverlet lay
folded. On the dressing-table a confusion of vases and bottles, in
coloured glass and painted china, were mixed up with combs and brushes
and fans and watch pockets and taper stands. The table in the middle of
the floor was heaped with elegant books and trinkets and work-boxes and
writing implements; and book stands and book shelves were about, and
soft foot cushions were dropped on the carpet, and easy arm-chairs
stood conveniently, and some faint perfume breathed all through the
room. Mrs. Candy was in one arm-chair and Clarissa in another.
Matilda was bidden to take a cricket, which she privately resented, and
then her aunt placed in her hands a largish volume and pointed her to
the page where she was to begin. Glancing up and down, at the top of
the page and the beginning of the book, Matilda found it was a
treatise, or a collection of advices, for the instruction of persons
about to be received into the Church. Not a little dismayed by this
discovery, no less than by the heavy look of the pages, Matilda however
began her reading. It was dragging work, as she expected. Her thoughts
wandered. What could her aunt think she wanted with _this_, when she
had Mr. Richmond's instructions? What could these ponderous reasonings
be expected to add to his words? The immediate effect of them certainly
was not salutary to Matilda's mind.
"My dear, you do not read so well as usual," her aunt said at length.
Matilda paused, glad to stop even for a little.
"Your sentences come heavily from your tongue."
"Yes. They _are_ heavy, aunt Candy."
"My dear! Those are the words of the Rev. Benjamin Orderly--a very
famous writer, and loved by all good people. Those are excellent words
that you have been reading."
Matilda said nothing further.
"Did you understand them?"
"They did not interest me, aunt Candy."
"My dear, they ought to interest one who has just taken such a step as
you have taken."
Matilda wondered privately whether being baptized ought properly to
have any effect to change the natural taste and value of things; but
she did not answer.
"You understood what you read, did you?"
Matilda coloured a little.
"Aunt Candy, it was not interesting, and I did not think about it."
Mrs. Candy drew the book severely from Matilda's hand.
"After taking such a step as you took last night, you ought to try to
be interested, if it were only for consistency's sake. Do you see that
you were hasty? A person who does not care about the privileges and
duties of church membership most certainly ought not to be a church
member."
"But, aunt Candy, I do care," said Matilda.
"So it seems."
"I care about it as the Bible speaks of it; and as Mr. Richmond talks
about it."
"You are very fond of Mr. Richmond, I know."
Matilda added nothing to that, and there was a pause.
"Do you want anything more of me, Aunt Candy?"
"Yes. I want to teach you something useful. Here are a quantity of
stockings of yours that need mending. I am going to show you how to
mend them. Go and get your work-box and bring it here."
"Couldn't you tell me what you want me to do, Aunt Candy, and let me go
and do it where Maria is?"
"No. Maria is busy. And I have got to take a good deal of pains to
teach you, Tilly, what I want you to know. Go fetch your box and work
things."
Matilda slowly went. It was so pleasant to be out of that perfumed room
and out of sight of the Rev. Mr. Orderly's writings. She lingered in
the passages; looked over the balusters and listened, hoping that by
some happy chance Maria might make some demand upon her. None came; the
house was still; and Matilda had to go back to her aunt. She felt like
a prisoner.
"Now I suppose you have no darning cotton," said Mrs. Candy. "Here is a
needleful. Thread it, and then I will show you what next."
"This is three or four needlefuls, aunt Candy. I will break it. I
cannot sew with such a thread."
"Stop. Yes, you can. Don't break it. I will show you. Thread your
needle."
"I haven't one big enough."
That want was supplied.
"Now you shall begin with running this heel," said Mrs. Candy. "See,
you shall put this marble egg into the stocking, to darn upon. Now look
here. You begin down here, at the middle, so--and take up only one
thread at a stitch, do you see? and skip so many threads each time----"
"But there is no hole there, Aunt Erminia."
"I know that. Heels should always be run before they come to holes.
There are half-a-dozen heels here, I should think, that require to be
run. Now, do you see how I do it? You may take the stocking, and when
you have darned a few rows, come and let me see how you get on."
Matilda in a small fit of despair took the stocking to a little
distance and sat down to work. The marble egg was heavy to hold. It
took a long while to go up one side of the heel and down the other. She
was tired of sitting under constraint and so still. And her Aunt Candy
seemed like a jailer, and that perfumed room like a prison. The quicker
her work could be done, the better for her. So Matilda reflected, and
her needle went accordingly.
"I have done it, Aunt Erminia," she proclaimed at last.
"Done the heel?"
"Yes, ma'am."
"You cannot possibly. Come here and let me look at it. Why, of course!
That is not done as I showed you, Tilly; these rows of darning should
be close together, one stitch just in the middle between two other
stitches; you have just gone straggling over the whole heel. That will
have to come all out."
"But there is no hole in it," said Matilda.
"Always darn _before_ the holes come. That will not do. You must pick
it all out, Tilly."
"Now?" said Matilda, despairingly.
"Certainly now. You make yourself trouble in that way. I am sorry. Pick
it all neatly out."
Matilda went at it impatiently; tugged at the thread; pulled the heel
of her stocking into a very intricate drawn-up state; then had to
smooth it out again with difficulty.
"This is very hard to come out," she said.
"Yes, it is bad picking," said her aunt, composedly.
Matilda was very impatient and very weary besides. However, work did
it, in time.
"Now see if you can do it better," said Mrs. Candy.
"_Now_, Aunt Erminia?"
"Certainly. It is your own fault that you have made such a business of
it. You should have done as I told you."
"But I am _very_ tired."
"I dare say you are."
Matilda was very much in the mind to cry; but that would not have
mended matters, and would have hurt her pride besides. She went
earnestly to work with her darning needle instead. She could use it
nicely, she found, with giving pains and time enough. But it took a
great while to do a little. Up one side and down the other; then up
that side and down the first; threading long double needlefuls, and
having them used up with great rapidity; Matilda seemed to grow into a
darning machine. She was very still; only a deep-drawn long breath now
and then heaved her little breast. Impatience faded, however, and a
sort of dulness crept over her. At last she became very tired, so tired
that pride gave way, and she said so.
Mrs. Candy remarked that she was sorry.
"Aunt Candy, I think Maria may want me by this time."
"Yes. _That_ is of no consequence."
"Maria has got no one to help her."
"She will not hurt herself," Clarissa observed.
"Aunt Erminia, wouldn't you just as lieve I should finish this by and
by?"
"I will think of that," said her aunt. "All you have to do, is to work
on."
"I am very tired of it!"
"That is not a reason for stopping, my dear. Rather the contrary. One
must learn to do things after one is tired. That is a lesson I learned
a great while ago."
"I cannot work so well or so fast, when I am tired," said Matilda.
"And I cannot work at all while you are talking to me."
Matilda's slow fingers drew the needle in and out for some time longer.
Then to her great joy, the dinner bell rang.
"What does Maria mean?" said Mrs. Candy, looking at her watch. "It
wants an hour of dinner-time. Run and see what it is, Matilda."
Matilda ran down-stairs.
"Do you think I have five pairs of hands?" inquired Maria, indignantly.
"It is nice for you to be playing up-stairs, and I working as hard as I
can in the kitchen! I won't stand this, I can tell you."
"Playing!" echoed Matilda. "Well, Maria, what do you want done?"
"Look and see. You have eyes. About everything is to be done. There's
the castors to put in order, and the lettuce to get ready--I wish
lettuce wouldn't grow!--and the table to set, and the sauce to make for
the pudding. Now hurry."
It was absolutely better than play, to fly about and do all these
things, after the confinement of darning stockings. Matilda's glee
equalled Maria's discomfiture. Only, when it was all done and the
dinner ready, Matilda stood still to think. "I am sorry I was so
impatient this morning up-stairs," she said to herself.