"OLD BEASTS INTO NEW"
Mother Carey went to sleep that night in greater peace than she had felt
for months. It had seemed to her, all these last sad weeks, as though
she and her brood had been breasting stormy waters with no harbor in
sight. There were friends in plenty here and there, but no kith and kin,
and the problems to be settled were graver and more complex than
ordinary friendship could untangle, vexed as it always was by its own
problems. She had but one keen desire: to go to some quiet place where
temptations for spending money would be as few as possible, and there
live for three or four years, putting her heart and mind and soul on
fitting the children for life. If she could keep strength enough to
guide and guard, train and develop them into happy, useful, agreeable
human beings,--masters of their own powers; wise and discreet enough,
when years of discretion were reached, to choose right paths,--that, she
conceived, was her chief task in life, and no easy one. "Happy I must
contrive that they shall be," she thought, "for unhappiness and
discontent are among the foxes that spoil the vines. Stupid they shall
not be, while I can think of any force to stir their brains; they have
ordinary intelligence, all of them, and they shall learn to use it; dull
and sleepy children I can't abide. Fairly good they will be, if they are
busy and happy, and clever enough to see the folly of being anything
_but_ good! And so, month after month, for many years to come, I must be
helping Nancy and Kathleen to be the right sort of women, and wives, and
mothers, and Gilbert and Peter the proper kind of men, and husbands, and
fathers. Mother Carey's chickens must be able to show the good birds the
way home, as the Admiral said, and I should think they ought to be able
to set a few bad birds on the right track now and then!"
Well, all this would be a task to frighten and stagger many a person,
but it only kindled Mrs. Carey's love and courage to a white heat.
Do you remember where Kingsley's redoubtable Tom the Water Baby swims
past Shiny Wall, and reaches at last Peacepool? Peacepool, where the
good whales lie, waiting till Mother Carey shall send for them "to make
them out of old beasts into new"?
Tom swims up to the nearest whale and asks the way to Mother Carey.
"There she is in the middle," says the whale, though Tom sees nothing
but a glittering white peak like an iceberg. "That's Mother Carey,"
spouts the whale, "as you will find if you get to her. There she sits
making old beasts into new all the year round."
"How does she do that?" asks Tom.
"That's her concern, not mine!" the whale remarks discreetly.
And when Tom came nearer to the white glittering peak it took the form
of something like a lovely woman sitting on a white marble throne. And
from the foot of the throne, you remember, there swam away, out and out
into the sea, millions of new-born creatures of more shapes and colors
than man ever dreamed. And they were Mother Carey's children whom she
makes all day long.
Tom expected,--I am still telling you what happened to the famous water
baby,--Tom expected (like some grown people who ought to know better)
that he would find Mother Carey snipping, piecing, fitting, stitching,
cobbling, basting, filing, planing, hammering, turning, polishing,
moulding, measuring, chiselling, clipping, and so forth, as men do when
they go to work to make anything. But instead of that she sat quite
still with her chin upon her hand, looking down into the sea with two
great blue eyes as blue as the sea itself. (As blue as our own mother's
blue velvet bonnet, Kitty would have said.)
Was Beulah the right place, wondered Mrs. Carey as she dropped asleep.
And all night long she heard in dreams the voice of that shining little
river that ran under the bridge near Beulah village; and all night long
she walked in fields of buttercups and daisies, and saw the June breeze
blow the tall grasses. She entered the yellow painted house and put the
children to bed in the different rooms, and the instant she saw them
sleeping there it became home, and her heart put out little roots that
were like tendrils; but they grew so fast that by morning they held the
yellow house fast and refused to let it go.
She looked from its windows onto the gardens "fore and aft," and they
seemed, like the rest of little Beulah village, full of sweet promise.
In the back were all sorts of good things to eat growing in profusion,
but modestly out of sight; and in front, where passers-by could see
their beauty and sniff their fragrance, old-fashioned posies bloomed and
rioted and tossed gay, perfumed heads in the sunshine.
She awoke refreshed and strong and brave, not the same woman who took
Nancy's idea to bed with her; for this woman's heart and hope had
somehow flown from the brick house in Charlestown and had built itself a
new nest in Beulah's green trees, the elms and willows that overhung the
shining river.
An idea of her own ran out and met Nancy's half way. Instead of going
herself to spy out the land of Beulah, why not send Gilbert? It was a
short, inexpensive railway journey, with no change of cars. Gilbert was
nearly fourteen, and thus far seemed to have no notion of life as a
difficult enterprise. No mother who respects her boy, or respects
herself, can ask him flatly, "Do you intend to grow up with the idea of
taking care of me; of having an eye to your sisters; or do you consider
that, since I brought you into the world, I must provide both for myself
and you until you are a man,--or forever and a day after, if you feel
inclined to shirk your part in the affair?"
Gilbert talked of his college course as confidently as he had before his
father's death. It was Nancy who as the eldest seemed the head of the
family, but Gilbert, only a year or so her junior, ought to grow into
the head, somehow or other. The way to begin would be to give him a few
delightful responsibilities, such as would appeal to his pride and sense
of importance, and gradually to mingle with them certain duties of
headship neither so simple nor so agreeable. Beulah would be a
delightful beginning. Nancy the Pathfinder would have packed a bag and
gone to Beulah on an hour's notice; found the real-estate dealer, in
case there was such a metropolitan article in the village; looked up her
father's old friend the Colonel with the forgotten surname; discovered
the owner of the charming house, rented it, and brought back the key in
triumph! But Nancy was a girl rich in courage and enterprise, while
Gilbert's manliness and leadership and discretion and consideration for
others needed a vigorous, decisive, continued push.
If Nancy's idea was good, Mother Carey's idea matched it! To see
Gilbert, valise in hand, eight dollars in pocket, leaving Charlestown on
a Friday noon after school, was equal to watching Columbus depart for an
unknown land. Thrilling is the only word that will properly describe it,
and the group that followed his departure from the upper windows used it
freely and generously. He had gone gayly downstairs and Nancy flung
after him a small packet in an envelope, just as he reached the door.
"There's a photograph of your mother and sisters!" she called. "In case
the owner refuses to rent the house to _you_, just show him the rest of
the family! And don't forget to say that the rent is exorbitant,
whatever it is!"
They watched him go jauntily down the street, Mother Carey with special
pride in her eyes. He had on his second best suit, and it looked well on
his straight slim figure. He had a gallant air, had Gilbert, and one
could not truly say it was surface gallantry either; it simply did not,
at present, go very deep. "No one could call him anything but a fine
boy," thought the mother, "and surely the outside is a key to what is
within!--His firm chin, his erect head, his bright eye, his quick tread,
his air of alert self-reliance,--surely here is enough, for any mother
to build on!"