Little the Careys suspected how their fortunes were mending, during
those last days of June! Had they known, they might almost have been
disappointed, for the spur of need was already pricking them, and their
valiant young spirits longed to be in the thick of the fray. Plans had
been formed for the past week, many of them in secret, and the very next
day after the close of the academy, various business projects would
burst upon a waiting world. One Sunday night Mother Carey had read to
the little group a poem in which there was a verse that struck on their
ears with a fine spirit:--
"And all the bars at which we fret,
That seem to prison and control,
Are but the doors of daring set
Ajar before the soul."
They recited it over and over to themselves afterwards, and two or three
of them wrote it down and pinned it to the wall, or tucked it in the
frame of the looking glass.
Olive Lord knocked at her father's study door the morning of the
twenty-first of June. Walking in quietly she said, "Father, yesterday
was my seventeenth birthday. Mother left me a letter to read on that
day, telling me that I should have fifty dollars a month of my own when
I was seventeen, Cyril to have as much when he is the same age."
"If you had waited courteously and patiently for a few days you would
have heard this from me," her father answered.
"I couldn't be sure!" Olive replied. "You never did notice a birthday;
why should you begin now?"
"I have more important matters to take up my mind than the consideration
of trivial dates," her father answered. "You know that very well, and
you know too, that notwithstanding my absorbing labors, I have
endeavored for the last few months to give more of my time to you
and Cyril."
"I realize that, or I should not speak to you at all," said Olive. "It
is because you have shown a little interest in us lately that I consult
you. I want to go at once to Boston to study painting. I will deny
myself everything else, if necessary, but I will go, and I will study!
It is the only life I care for, the only life I am likely to have, and I
am determined to lead it."
"You must see that you are too young to start out for yourself anywhere;
it is simply impossible."
"I shall not be alone. Mrs. Carey will find me a good home in
Charlestown, with friends of hers. You trust her judgment, if no
one else's."
"If she is charitable enough to conduct your foolish enterprises as well
as those of her own children, I have nothing to say. I have talked with
her frequently, and she knows that as soon as I have finished my last
volume I shall be able to take a more active interest in your affairs
and Cyril's."
"Then may I go?"
"When I hear from the person in Charlestown, yes. There is an expedition
starting for South America in a few months and I have been asked to
accompany the party. If you are determined to leave home I shall be free
to accept the invitation. Perhaps Mrs. Carey would allow Cyril to stay
with her during my absence."
"I dare say, and I advise you to go to South America by all means; you
will be no farther away from your family than you have always been!"
With this parting shot Olive Lord closed the study door behind her.
"That girl has the most unpleasant disposition, and the sharpest tongue,
I ever met in the course of my life!" said Henry Lord to himself as he
turned to his task.
Mother Carey's magic was working very slowly in his blood. It had roused
him a little from the bottomless pit of his selfishness, but much
mischief had been done on all sides, and it would be a work of time
before matters could be materially mended. Olive's nature was already
warped and embittered, and it would require a deal of sunshine to make a
plant bloom that had been so dwarfed by neglect and indifference.
Nancy's door of daring opened into an editorial office. An hour here, an
hour there, when the Yellow House was asleep, had brought about a story
that was on its way to a distant city. It was written, with incredible
care, on one side of the paper only; it enclosed a fully stamped
envelope for a reply or a return of the manuscript, and all day long
Nancy, trembling between hope and despair, went about hugging her first
secret to her heart.
Gilbert had opened his own particular door, and if it entailed no more
daring than that of Nancy's effort, it required twice the amount of
self-sacrifice. He was to be, from June twenty-seventh till August
twenty-seventh, Bill Harmon's post-office clerk and delivery boy, and
the first that the family would know about it would be his arrival at
the back door, in a linen jacket, with an order-book in his hand. Bravo,
Gilly! One can see your heels disappearing over the top of Shiny Wall!
The door of daring just ready to be opened by Kathleen and Julia was of
a truly dramatic and unexpected character.
Printed in plain letters, twenty-five circulars reposed in the folds of
Julia's nightdresses in her lower bureau drawer. The last thing to be
done at night and the first in the morning was the stealthy, whispered
reading of one of these documents, lest even after the hundredth time,
something wrong should suddenly appear to the eye or ear. They were
addressed, they were stamped, and they would be posted to twenty-five
families in the neighborhood on the closing day of the academy.