ANOTHER BARRIER
Beth went home to Hudsonvale for the winter holidays, which lasted till
the middle of the first week in the new year. Molly went with her on
the train, as, of course, navigation on the river had ceased, keeping
on to Hambro--and the seven aunts--farther down the stream.
Beth was delighted to see her father and mother and the children. And
many of her old schoolmates beside Mary Devine came to see her.
But she did not see Larry. She had heard from him again, after that
first letter; and he had told her he would be away over the holidays.
Mrs. Euphemia had expressed a sudden wish to go to Old Point Comfort
and had insisted that Larry go with her.
“And what the Mater says, goes,” he had written to Beth. “She’s been
awfully good to me--especially since I came home from the law school.
Why! I never could have afforded such a fancy office if it hadn’t been
for her. She’s bribed me to take this trip; but I don’t really see how
the local bar is going to get along without me for a fortnight or
three weeks.”
Nevertheless, Beth felt distinctly disappointed that Larry was not in
Hudsonvale. There was something lacking in her holiday.
She had but one other source of worriment. And that she was not sure
should be a worriment.
She noticed that her father was thinner, grayer, and that his walk
seemed to have less springiness. She asked him if he did not feel well,
and he laughed at her. Yet the laugh was not convincing.
She would not whisper to her mother or to the other children her fears
for him. Mr. Baldwin had always been a thin and wiry man--one of the
kind, as he often said, that wears out, but does not rust out.
The holidays, however, were gay. Besides a party given for her young
friends by her mother on Christmas Eve, Beth went to the usual
midwinter ball at the Town House--a very popular affair, indeed. She
wore the poplin, and she danced many times with the men and boys who
remembered her from the night of Larry Haven’s “coming out” party.
There was one little thing that, strangely enough, rather marred Beth’s
enjoyment of the evening. She had never put on her pretty frock at
Rivercliff without wishing that she had her Great-grandmother Lomis’
corals to wear; and now she suggested to her mother that she be given a
second chance to display her heirloom.
Mrs. Baldwin suddenly looked troubled--exceedingly troubled.
Hesitatingly, she said: “My daughter, I do not think it would be wise.
You are really too young to wear such things yet. It caused, I believe,
some comment before.”
Beth laughed. She would not show her mother how deeply she was
disappointed. “I guess it’s because Mrs. Haven or Larry will not be
there, isn’t it? You wanted to show me off before them. Now confess,
Mother mine!”
Her mother seemed unable to laugh at this pleasantry. But Beth
cheerfully put Larry’s present into the lace at her bosom and went to
the ball. No taxicab this time, although there was snow on the ground.
She carried her slippers, like most Hudsonvale people, under her arm.
The holidays slipped away and Beth soon boarded the train again,
finding jolly Molly Granger, by agreement, in one of the parlor cars.
Molly had a warm invitation for Beth to spend a part of the summer
vacation at Hambro.
“We’ll neither of us get home at Easter, you know,” Molly declared.
“It’s too far to travel, and the time’s too short. And, as I tell the
aunties, we’ve got to work.”
“I shall have to work, that is sure,” proclaimed Beth. “I’m afraid I
spent too much money for Christmas presents. Oh dear!”
“How much money have you earned altogether?” demanded the curious Molly.
“I wouldn’t dare tell you. It might arouse your cupidity. And there’s
only a door between us at school,” laughed Beth. “But I’ll tell
you this: I put twenty-five dollars in the postal savings bank at
Rivercliff before we came away.”
“Oh, cracky-me! What a lot!” cried Molly. “You’ll be a millionairess
yet.”
“Not much, considering what I shall have to earn before next fall when
Rivercliff opens again. We have to pay half the year’s fees in advance,
you know.”
“I suppose it does mean a lot of work for you. My! the aunties think
you are wonderful to do it.”
“Haven’t done it yet,” sighed Beth. “But I hope to.”
“Oh, I hope we’ll both have a better half year this time than the last.”
Beth looked forward with equal hope, too; but it proved to be dashed
within the month. Her fears for Mr. Baldwin were realized. Her mother
wrote that he was ill.
Beth was in some suspense for several days, for the information at
first was very meager. But finally she learned the particulars. Her
father had been taken with a hemorrhage in the shops--a strain had
brought on the attack, the doctors said. But the trouble was deeper
than that.
“He must stop all indoor work for months--perhaps he can never go
back to the Locomotive Works,” Mrs. Baldwin wrote. “It is a sad
loss; of course, they will not hold his situation open. They never
do, no matter how long or how faithfully a man has worked for that
corporation.
“My dear, you must make the most of this year’s schooling that we
have paid for. I am afraid it will be your last. You cannot look
forward to being a teacher, my poor dear. Marcus has already got a
situation--‘job,’ he calls it. He insisted. He declares he is going
to be the man of the house till papa gets well.
“I am sorry for you, Daughter--after all your high hopes. But
there must be some good reason for it and He will not put upon our
shoulders a harder trouble than we can bear.”
Beth could not agree with this doctrine of her mother’s. Either she was
not sufficiently orthodox, or she had a clearer vision. She knew her
father had been warned years before by physicians that his work was
not suited to his constitution. And Mr. Baldwin had made no attempt to
change it.
“It isn’t fair,” thought the young girl, “to lay it on God. I could
not believe that He is love, if we suffered such trouble because He
willed it. We have brought it on ourselves--and I guess it’s our work
to hustle around and get the best of this trouble. Poor papa!”
She wasted no time in useless worry. First of all, she drew fifty
dollars from the bank and sent it home.
“I will not be behind brave, little Marcus,” she wrote her mother. “I
want you to use this. I can earn more--a lot more. And I’ll earn all I
can before I come home for the summer.”
She confided in nobody but Molly--and to her under promise of secrecy.
Beth shrank from the casual sympathy of others. Sympathy of that
quality is so apt to be mixed with curiosity.
Molly was heart-broken. “Beth Baldwin! you’ll never leave Rivercliff
before your three years are finished--never! Don’t tell me such a
horrid thing!”
“I don’t see how it can be helped,” her chum said. “It is a dreadful
blow to my hopes. Don’t say much about it, Molly dear, or I shall cry.”
Molly was already frankly sobbing. She ran into her own room and came
back again in a moment with her purse. The contents of this she dumped
into Beth’s lap.
“There!” she sobbed. “You can have all I’ve got--only say you’ll stay.
There’s most as much as you sent home. I’ll willingly go without
bonbons and ice-cream sodas and furbelows and all the rest of it, if
you’ll take it, dear, and say you’ll stay the three years out. I’ll
give you _all_ my pocket-money!”
“You dear goosie!” cried Beth, hugging her closely in her arms. “Oh!
how glad I am that I have such a friend. But I can’t take your money,
Molly. It would be right for neither you nor for me. You need bonbons
and furbelows just as much as I need money for other expenses. No, no,
dear! ‘Take back thy gold!’ I am Independent Elizabeth--and you must
not tempt me.”
Resolved, as before, to earn all the money possible, Beth did not
neglect her studies. Even Miss Hammersly had to admit that her standing
averaged better and better as the months went on. She was among the few
first students in the so-called freshman class.
In Easter week Beth made seventeen dollars by mending and repairing
lace and silk hose. The news that one of the girls did fine mending
spread outside of the school. Between Rivercliff School and the town
of Jackson City was a suburban district occupied by many wealthy
and well-to-do people. Some orders began to come to Beth from these
households.
The girl sent for a special thread and began to make a specialty of
repairing the fine lingerie of her more fortunate fellow-students. And
this work increased steadily.
Saturday afternoon at Rivercliff was always free. Beth, as the
spring advanced, began to refuse to spend this holiday with Molly
and her friends. “Four whole hours to myself!” she proclaimed to her
disappointed chum. “I cannot spare them, my child. I must make hay
while the sun shines.”
“But the sun isn’t shining to-day,” said Molly, pouting.
“The more reason, then, that I should get my cured hay in the barns,”
declared Beth, with a grim little nod. “‘Avaunt! Avaunt! I scorn thy
gold, likewise thy pedigree; I am betrothed to Ben-ja-min, who sails
upon the sea,’” quoted Beth from a burlesque verse that they were fond
of. “Tempt me not, I tell you.”
And on this very Saturday afternoon something happened that made Beth
very glad she had remained in her own room, working. A pair of very
plump bay horses, drawing an old-fashioned family carriage, came to
the main door of the school, and a footman as fat as the horses, who
sat beside the coachman fatter still, got stiffly down and puffed up
the steps.
He bore a card which he gave to Miss Small, who chanced to be in the
hall at the moment. The card read:
MRS. RICARDO SEVERN
“Does Miss Baldwin live here?” asked the fat footman, asthmatically.
“There is such a student,” the under housekeeper said, wonderingly.
“My missus sent me for her,” said the man, blinking sleepily.
“Mrs. Severn?” repeated Miss Small.
“Oh! who does Mrs. Severn want?” cried Maude Grimshaw, who chanced to
be passing through the hall and saw the footman’s gorgeous livery, as
well as heard the lady’s name mentioned.
She came swiftly to the under housekeeper’s side and whispered: “Mrs.
Severn is the e-nor-mously rich old lady who lives on the Boulevard, in
the stone house, with the parrot and a whole raft of servants. Who does
she want, dear Miss Small?”
“Miss Baldwin,” puffed the footman, gloomily.
“Oh!” gasped Maude, taken aback. Then her venomous tongue came to her
rescue: “Of course! She has heard that one of the girls of Rivercliff
goes out to service, I presume,” and she went away, laughing scornfully.
But Miss Small sent Mrs. Severn’s card up to Beth’s room. However,
Maude wrote home that day and told about the ridiculous way in which
Miss Hammersly was allowing “a pauper girl named Beth Baldwin to go out
to work by the day like a common servant.”
As it chanced, Maude’s equally light-headed mother read this part of
her foolish daughter’s letter to a caller. That caller made inquiries
and learned that Beth came from Hudsonvale. She knew Mrs. Euphemia
Haven of Hudsonvale--had recently met her at Old Point Comfort.
Immediately, this mutual friend wrote Mrs. Haven what Maude had written
to her mother. And something came of that!