It took them more than an hour to do that, all working hard; and a wonderful thing it was truly, when it was done. Mrs. Scherman and Desire Ledwith directed all the putting together, and the grouping was something astonishing.
There were men and women,—the Knowers, Sin called them; she said that was what she always thought the old gentleman's name was, in the days when she first heard of him, because he knew so much; and in the backgrounds of the same sheets were their country cousins, the orangs, and the little apes. Then came the elephants, and the camels, and the whales; "for why shouldn't the fishes be put in, since they must all have been swimming round sociably, if they weren't inside; and why shouldn't the big people be all kept together properly?"
There were happy families of dogs and cats and lions and snakes and little humming-birds; and in the last part were all manner of bugs, down to the little lady-bugs in blazes of red and gold, and the gray fleas and mosquitoes which Sin improvised with pen and ink, in a swarm at the end.
"And after that, I don't believe they wanted any more," she said; and handed over the parts to Miss Craydocke to be tied together. For this volume had had to be made in many folds, and Mrs. Ripwinkley's blue ribbon would by no means stretch over the back.
And by that time it was eleven o'clock, and they had worked four hours. They all jumped up in a great hurry then, and began to say good-by.
"This must not be the last we are to have of you, Miss Holabird," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, laying Rosamond's shawl across her shoulders.
"Of course not," said Mrs Scherman, "when you are all coming to our house to tea to-morrow night."
Rosamond bade the Ripwinkleys good-night with a most sweet cordiality, and thanks for the pleasure she had had, and she told Hazel and her mother that it was "neither beginning nor end, she believed; for it seemed to her that she had only found a little new piece of her world, and that Aspen Street led right out of Westover in the invisible geography, she was sure."
"Come!" said Miss Craydocke, standing on the doorsteps. "It is all invisible geography out here, pretty nearly; and we've all our different ways to go, and only these two unhappy gentlemen to insist on seeing everybody home."
So first the whole party went round with Miss Hapsie, and then Kenneth and Dorris, who always went home with Desire, walked up Hanley Street with the Schermans and Rosamond, and so across through Dane Street to Shubarton Place.
But while they were on their way, Hazel Ripwinkley was saying to her mother, up in her room, where they made sometimes such long good-nights,—
"Mother! there were some little children taken away from you before we came, you know? And now we've got this great big house, and plenty of things, more than it takes for us."
"Well?"
"Don't you think it's expected that we should do something with the corners? There's room for some real good little times for somebody. I think we ought to begin a beehive."
Mrs. Ripwinkley kissed Hazel very tenderly, and said, only,—
"We can wait, and see."
Those are just the words that mothers so often put children off with! But Mrs. Ripwinkley, being one of the real folks, meant it; the very heart of it.
In that little talk, they took the consecration in; they would wait and see; when people do that, with an expectation, the beehive begins.
Up Hanley Street, the six fell into pairs.
Mrs. Scherman and Desire, Dorris and Mr. Scherman, Rosamond and Kenneth Kincaid.
It only took from Bridgeley Street up to Dane, to tell Kenneth Kincaid so much about Westover, in answer to his questions, that he too thought he had found a new little piece of his world. What Rosamond thought, I do not know; but a girl never gives a young man so much as she gave Kenneth in that little walk without having some of the blessed consciousness that comes with giving. The sun knows it shines, I dare say; or else there is a great waste of hydrogen and other things.
There was not much left for poor little Desire after they parted from the Schermans and turned the corner of Dane Street. Only a little bit of a way, in which new talk could hardly begin, and just time for a pause that showed how the talk that had come to an end was missed or how, perhaps, it stayed in the mind, repeating itself, and keeping it full.
Nobody said anything till they had crossed B—— Street; and then Dorris said, "How beautiful,—realbeautiful, Rosamond Holabird is!" And Kenneth answered, "Did you hear what she said to Mrs. Ripwinkley?"
They were full of Rosamond! Desire did not speak a word.
Dorris had heard and said it over. It seemed to please Kenneth to hear it again. "A piece of her world!"
"How quickly a true person springs to what belongs to—their life!" said Kenneth, using that wrong little pronoun that we shall never be able to do without.
"People don't always get what belongs, though," blurted Desire at last, just as they came to the long doorsteps. "Some people's lives are like complementary colors, I think; they see blue, and live red!"
"But the colors are only accidentally—I mean temporarily—divided; they are together in the sun; and they join somewhere—beyond."
"I hate beyond!" said Desire, recklessly. "Good-night. Thank you." And she ran up the steps.
Nobody knew what she meant. Perhaps she hardly knew herself.
They only thought that her home life was not suited to her, and that she took it hard.
"I've got a discouragement at my stomach," said Luclarion Grapp.
"What's the matter?" asked Mrs. Ripwinkley, naturally.
"Mrs. Scarup. I've been there. There ain't any bottom to it."
"Well?"
Mrs. Ripwinkley knew that Luclarion had more to say, and that she waited for this monosyllable.
"She's sick again. And Scarup, he's gone out West, spending a hundred dollars to see whether or no there's a chance anywhere for asmartman,—and that ain't he, so it's a double waste,—to make fifty. No girl; and the children all under foot, and Pinkie looking miserable over the dishes."
"Pinkie isn't strong."
"No. She's powerful weak. I just wish you'd seen that dirty settin'-room fire-place; looks as if it hadn't been touched since Scarup smoked his pipe there, the night before he went off a wild-gandering. And clo'es to be ironed, and the girl cleared out, because 'she'd always been used to fust-class families.' There wasn't anything to your hand, and you couldn't tell where to begin, unless you began with a cataplasm!"
Luclarion had heard, by chance, of a cataclysm, and that was what she meant.
"It wants—creation, over again! Mrs. Scarup hadn't any fit breakfast; there was burnt toast, made out of tough bread, that she'd been trying to eat; and a cup of tea, half drunk; something the matter with that, I presume. I'd have made her some gruel, if there'd been a fire; and if there'd been any kindlings, I'd have made her a fire; but there 'twas; there wasn't any bottom to it!"
"You had better make the gruel here, Luclarion."
"That's what I come back for. But—Mrs. Ripwinkley!"
"Well?"
"Don't it appear to you it's a kind of a stump? I don't want to do it just for the satisfaction; though itwouldbe a satisfaction to plough everything up thorough, and then rake it over smooth; what do you think?"
"What have you thought, Luclarion? Something, of course."
"She wants a real smart girl—for two dollars a week. She can't get her, because she ain't. And I kind of felt as though I should like to put in. Seemed to me it was a—but there! I haven't any right to stumpyou."
"Wouldn't it be rather an aggravation? I don't suppose you would mean to stay altogether?"
"Not unless—but don't go putting it into my head, Mrs. Ripwinkley. I shall feel as if Iwas. And I don't think it goes quite so far as that, yet. We ain't never stumped to more than one thing at a time. What she wants is to be straightened out. And when things once lookedmyway, she might get a girl, you see. Anyhow, 'twould encourage Pinkie, and kind of set her going. Pinkie likes things nice; but it's such a Hoosac tunnel to undertake, that she just lets it all go, and gets off up-stairs, and sticks a ribbon in her hair. That's all shecando. I s'pose 'twould take a fortnight, maybe?"
"Take it, Luclarion," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, smiling. Luclarion understood the smile.
"I s'pose you think it's as good as took. Well, perhaps it is—spoke for. But it wasn't me, you know. Now what'll you do?"
"Go into the kitchen and make the pudding."
"But then?"
"We are not stumped for then, you know."
"There was a colored girl here yesterday, from up in Garden Street, asking if there was any help wanted. I think she came in partially, to look at the flowers; the 'sturtiumsaresplendid, and I gave her some. She was awfully dressed up,—for colors, I mean; but she looked clean and pleasant, and spoke bright. Maybe she'd come, temporary. She seemed taken with things. I know where to find her, and I could go there when I got through with the gruel. Mrs. Scarup must have that right off."
And Luclarion hurried away.
It was not the first time Mrs. Ripwinkley had lent Luclarion; but Miss Grapp had not found a kitchen mission in Boston heretofore. It was something new to bring the fashion of simple, prompt, neighborly help down intact from the hills, and apply it here to the tangle of city living, that is made up of so many separate and unrecognized struggles.
When Hazel came home from school, she went all the way up the garden walk, and in at the kitchen door. "That was the way she took it all," she said; "first the flowers, and then Luclarion and what they had for dinner, and a drink of water; and then up-stairs, to mother."
To-day she encountered in the kitchen a curious and startling apparition of change.
A very dusky brown maiden, with a petticoat of flashing purple, and a jacket of crimson, and extremely puzzling hair tied up with knots of corn color, stood in possession over the stove, tending a fricassee, of which Hazel recognized at once the preparation and savor as her mother's; while beside her on a cricket, munching cold biscuit and butter with round, large bites of very white little teeth, sat a small girl of five of the same color, gleaming and twinkling as nothing human ever does gleam and twinkle but a little darkie child.
"Where is Luclarion?" asked Hazel, standing still in the middle of the floor, in her astonishment.
"I don't know. I'm Damaris, and this one's little Vash. Don't go for callin' me Dam, now; the boys did that in my last place, an' I left, don' yer see? I ain't goin' to be swore to, anyhow!"
And Damaris glittered at Hazel, with her shining teeth and her quick eyes, full of fun and good humor, and enjoyed her end of the joke extremely.
"Have you come tostay?" asked Hazel.
"'Course. I don' mostly come for to go."
"What does it mean, mother?" Hazel asked, hurrying up into her mother's room.
And then Mrs. Ripwinkley explained.
"But whatisshe? Black or white? She's got straight braids and curls at the back of her head, like everybody's"—
"'Course," said a voice in the doorway. "An' wool on top,—place where wool ought to grow,—same's everybody, too."
Damaris had come up, according to orders, to report a certain point in the progress of the fricassee.
"They all pulls the wool over they eyes, now-days, an sticks the straight on behind. Where's the difference?"
Mrs. Ripwinkley made some haste to rise and move toward the doorway, to go down stairs, turning Damaris from her position, and checking further remark. Diana and Hazel stayed behind, and laughed. "What fun!" they said.
It was the beginning of a funny fortnight; but it is not the fun I have paused to tell you of; something more came of it in the home-life of the Ripwinkleys; that which they were "waiting to see."
Damaris wanted a place where she could take her little sister; she was tired of leaving her "shyin' round," she said. And Vash, with her round, fuzzy head, her bright eyes, her little flashing teeth, and her polished mahogany skin,—darting up and down the house "on Aarons," or for mere play,—dressed in her gay little scarlet flannel shirt-waist, and black and orange striped petticoat,—was like some "splendid, queer little fire-bug," Hazel said, and made a surprise and a picture wherever she came. She was "cute," too, as Damaris had declared beforehand; she was a little wonder at noticing and remembering, and for all sorts of handiness that a child of five could possibly be put to.
Hazel dressed rag babies for her, and made her a soap-box baby-house in the corner of the kitchen, and taught her her letters; and began to think that she should hate to have her go when Luclarion came back.
Damaris proved clever and teachable in the kitchen; and had, above all, the rare and admirable disposition to keep things scrupulously as she had found them; so that Luclarion, in her afternoon trips home, was comforted greatly to find that while she was "clearing and ploughing" at Mrs. Scarup's, her own garden of neatness was not being turned into a howling wilderness; and she observed, as is often done so astutely, that "when youdofind a neat, capable, colored help, it's as good help as you can have." Which you may notice is just as true without the third adjective as with.
Luclarion herself was having a splendid time.
The first thing she did was to announce to Mrs. Scarup that she was out of her place for two weeks, and would like to come to her at her wages; which Mrs. Scarup received with some such awed and unbelieving astonishment as she might have done the coming of a legion of angels with Gabriel at their head. And when one strong, generous human will, with powers of brain and body under it sufficient to some good work, comes down upon it as Luclarion did upon hers, thereiswhat Gabriel and his angels stand for, and no less sent of God.
The second thing Luclarion did was to clean that "settin'-room fire-place," to restore the pleasant brown color of its freestone hearth and jambs, to polish its rusty brasses till they shone like golden images of gods, and to lay an ornamental fire of chips and clean little sticks across the irons. Then she took a wet broom and swept the carpet three times, and dusted everything with a damp duster; and then she advised Mrs. Scarup, whom the gruel had already cheered and strengthened, to be "helped down, and sit there in the easy-chair, for a change, and let her take her room in hand." And no doctor ever prescribed any change with better effect. There are a good many changes that might be made for people, without sending them beyond their own doors. But it isn't the doctors who always knowwhatchange, or would dare to prescribe it if they did.
Mrs. Scarup was "helped down," it seemed,—really up, rather,—into a new world. Things had begun all over again. It was worth while to get well, and take courage. Those brasses shone in her face like morning suns.
"Well, I do declare to Man, Miss Grapp!" she exclaimed; and breath and expression failed together, and that was all she could say.
Up-stairs, Luclarion swept and rummaged. She found the sheet and towel drawers, and made everything white and clean. She laid fresh napkins over the table and bureau tops, and set the little things—boxes, books, what not,—daintily about on them. She put a clean spread on the bed, and gathered up things for the wash she meant to have, with a recklessness that Mrs. Scarup herself would never have dared to use, in view of any "help" she ever expected to do it.
And then, with Pinkie to lend feeble assistance, Luclarion turned to in the kitchen.
It was a "clear treat," she told Mrs. Ripwinkley afterward. "Things had got to that state of mussiness, that you just began at one end and worked through to the other, and every inch looked new made over after you as you went along."
She put the children out into the yard on the planks, and gave them tin pans and clothes-pins to keep house with, and gingerbread for their dinner. She and Pinkie had cups of tea, and Mrs. Scarup had her gruel, and went up to bed again; and that was another new experience, and a third stage in her treatment and recovery.
When it came to the cellar, Luclarion got the chore-man in; and when all was done, she looked round on the renovated home, and said within herself, "If Scarup, now, will only break his neck, or get something to do, and stay away with his pipes and his boots and his contraptions!"
And Scarup did. He found a chance in some freight-house, and wrote that he had made up his mind to stay out there all winter; and Mrs. Scarup made little excursions about the house with her returning strength, and every journey was a pleasure-trip, and the only misery was that at the end of the fortnight Miss Grapp was going away, and then she should be "all back in the swamp again."
"No, you won't," said Luclarion; "Pinkie's waked up, and she's going to take pride, and pick up after the children. She can do that, now; but she couldn't shoulder everything. And you'll have somebody in the kitchen. See if you don't. I've 'most a mind to say I'll stay till you do."
Luclarion's faith was strong; she knew, she said, that "if she was doing at her end, Providence wasn't leaving off at his. Things would come round."
This was how they did come round.
It only wanted a little sorting about. The pieces of the puzzle were all there. Hazel Ripwinkley settled the first little bit in the right place. She asked her mother one night, if she didn't think they might begin their beehive with a fire-fly? Why couldn't they keep little Vash?
"And then," said Diana, in her quiet way, slipping one of the big three-cornered pieces of the puzzle in, "Damaris might go to Mrs. Scarup for her two dollars a week. She is willing to work for that, if she can get Vash taken. And this would be all the same, and better."
Desire was with them when Luclarion came in, and heard it settled.
"How is it that things always fall right together for you, so? HowcameDamaris to come along?"
"You just take hold of something and try," said Luclarion. "You'll find there's always a working alongside. Put up your sails, and the wind will fill 'em."
Uncle Titus wanted to know "what sort of use a thing like that could be in a house?"
He asked it in his very surliest fashion. If they had had any motives of fear or favor, they would have been disconcerted, and begun to think they had made a mistake.
But Hazel spoke up cheerily,—
"Why, to wait on people, uncle. She's the nicest little fetch-and-carrier you ever saw!"
"Humph! who wants to be waited on, here? You girls, with feet and hands of your own? Your mother doesn't, I know."
"Well, to waiton, then," says Hazel, boldly. "I'm making her a baby-house, and teaching her to read; and Diana is knitting scarlet stockings for her, to wear this winter. We like it."
"O, if you like it! That's always a reason. I only want to have people give the real one."
And Uncle Titus walked off, so that nobody could tell whetherheliked it or not.
Nobody told him anything about the Scarups. But do you suppose he didn't know? Uncle Titus Oldways was as sharp as he was blunt.
"I guess I know, mother," said Hazel, a little while after this, one day, "how people write stories."
"Well?" asked her mother, looking up, ready to be amused with Hazel's deep discovery.
"If they can just begin with one thing, you see, that makes the next one. It can't help it, hardly. Just as it does with us. What made me think of it was, that it seemed to me there was another little piece of our beehive story all ready to put on; and if we went and did it,—I wonder if you wouldn't, mother? It fits exactly."
"Let me see."
"That little lame Sulie at Miss Craydocke's Home, that we like so much. Nobody adopts her away, because she is lame; her legs are no use at all, you know, and she just sits all curled up in that great round chair that Mrs. Geoffrey gave her, and sews patchwork, and makes paper dolls. And when she drops her scissors, or her thread, somebody has to come and pick it up. She wants waiting on; she just wants a little lightning-bug, like Vash, to run round for her all the time. And we don't, you see; and we've got Vash! And Vash—likes paper dolls."
Hazel completed the circle of her argument with great triumph.
"An extra piece of bread to finish your too much butter," said Diana.
"Yes. Doesn't it just make out?" said Hazel, abating not a jot of her triumph, and taking things literally, as nobody could do better than she, upon occasion, for all her fancy and intuition.
"I wonder what Uncle Oldways would say to that," said Diana.
"He'd say 'Faugh, faugh!' But he doesn't mean faugh, faugh, half the time. If he does, he doesn't stick to it. Mother," she asked rather suddenly, "do you think Uncle Oldways feels as if we oughtn't to do—other things—with his money?"
"What other things?"
"Why,theseothers. Vash, and Sulie, perhaps. Wouldn't he like it if we turned his house into a Beehive?"
"It isn't his house," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, "He has given it to me."
"Well,—do you feel 'obligated,' as Luclarion says?'
"In a certain degree,—yes. I feel bound to consider his comfort and wishes, as far as regards his enjoyment with us, and fulfilling what he reasonably looked for when he brought us here."
"Would that interfere?"
"Suppose you ask him, Hazel?"
"Well, I could do that."
"Hazel wouldn't mind doing anything!" said Diana, who, to tell the truth was a little afraid of Uncle Titus, and who dreaded of all things, being snubbed.
"Only," said Hazel, to whom something else had just occurred, "wouldn't he think—wouldn't it be—yourbusiness?"
"It is all your plan, Hazel. I think he would see that."
"And you are willing, if he doesn't care?"
"I did not quite say that. It would be a good deal to think of."
"Then I'll wait till you've thought," said clear-headed little Hazel.
"But it fits right on. I can see that. And Miss Craydocke said things would, after we had begun."
Mrs. Ripwinkley took it into her thoughts, and carried it about with her for days, and considered it; asking herself questions.
Was it going aside in search of an undertaking that did not belong to her?
Was it bringing home a care, a responsibility, for which they were not fitted,—which might interfere with the things they were meant, and would be called, to do?
There was room and opportunity, doubtless, for them to do something; Mrs. Ripwinkley had felt this; she had not waited for her child to think of it for her; she had only waited, in her new, strange sphere, for circumstances to guide the way, and for the Giver of all circumstance to guide her thought. She chose, also, in the things that would affect her children's life and settle duties for them, to let them grow also to those duties, and the perception of them, with her. To this she led them, by all her training and influence; and now that in Hazel, her child of quick insight and true instincts, this influence was bearing fruit and quickening to action, she respected her first impulses; she believed in them; they had weight with her, as argument in themselves. These impulses, in young, true souls, freshly responding, are, she knew, as the proof-impressions of God's Spirit.
Yet she would think; that was her duty; she would not do a thing hastily, or unwisely.
Sulie Praile had been a good while, now, at the Home.
A terrible fall, years ago, had caused a long and painful illness, and resulted in her present helplessness. But above those little idle, powerless limbs, that lay curled under the long, soft skirt she wore, like a baby's robe, were a beauty and a brightness, a quickness of all possible motion, a dexterous use of hands, and a face of gentle peace and sometimes glory, that were like a benediction on the place that she was in; like the very Holy Ghost in tender form like a dove, resting upon it, and abiding among them who were there.
In one way, it would hardly be so much a giving as a taking, to receive her in. Yet there was care to assume, the continuance of care to promise or imply; the possibility of conflicting plans in much that might be right and desirable that Mrs. Ripwinkley should do for her own. Exactly what, if anything, it would be right to undertake in this, was matter for careful and anxious reflection.
The resources of the Home were not very large; there were painful cases pressing their claims continually, as fast as a little place was vacated it could be filled; was wanted, ten times over; and Sulie Praile had been there a good while. If somebody would only take her, as people were very ready to take—away to happy, simple, comfortable country homes, for mere childhood's sake—the round, rosy, strong, and physically perfect ones! But Sulie must be lifted and tended; she must keep somebody at home to look after her; no one could be expected to adopt a child like that.
Yet Hazel Ripwinkley thought they could be; thought, in her straightforward, uncounting simplicity, that it was just the natural, obvious, beautiful thing to do, to take her home—into a real home—into pleasant family life; where things would not crowd; where she could be mothered and sistered, as girls ought to be, when there are so many nice places in the world, and not so many people in them as there might be. When there could be so much visiting, and spare rooms kept always in everybody's house, why should not somebody who needed to, just come in and stay? What were the spare places made for?
"We might have Sulie for this winter," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, at last. "They would let her come to us for that time; and it would be a change for her, and leave a place for others. Then if anything made it impossible for us to do more, we should not have raised an expectation to be disappointed. And if we can and ought to do more, it will be shown us by that time more certainly."
She asked Miss Craydocke about it, when she came home from Z—— that fall. She had been away a good deal lately; she had been up to Z—— to two weddings,—Leslie Goldthwaite's and Barbara Holabird's. Now she was back again, and settled down.
Miss Craydocke thought it a good thing wisely limited.
"Sulie needs to be with older girls; there is no one in the Home to be companion to her; the children are almost all little. A winter here would be a blessing to her!"
"But the change again, if she should have to make it?" suggested Mrs. Ripwinkley.
"Good things don't turn to bad ones because you can't have them any more. A thing you're not fit for, and never ought to have had, may; but a real good stays by; it overflows all the rest. Sulie Praile's life could never be so poor again, after a winter here with you, as it might be if she had never had it. If you'd like her, let her come, and don't be a bit afraid. We're only working by inches, any of us; like the camel's-hair embroiderers in China. But it gets put together; and it is beautiful, and large, and whole, somewhere."
"Miss Craydocke always knows," said Hazel.
Nobody said anything again, about Uncle Titus. A winter's plan need not be referred to him. But Hazel, in her own mind, had resolved to find out what was Uncle Titus's, generally and theoretically; how free they were to be, beyond winter plans and visits of weeks; how much scope they might have with this money and this house, that seemed so ample to their simple wants, and what they might do with it and turn it into, if it came into their heads or hearts or consciences.
So one day she went in and sat down by him in the study, after she had accomplished some household errand with Rachel Froke.
Other people approached him with more or less of strategy, afraid of the tiger in him; Desire Ledwith faced him courageously; only Hazel came and nestled up beside him, in his very cage, as if he were no wild beast, after all.
Yet he pretended to growl, even at her, sometimes; it was so funny to see her look up and chirp on after it, like some little bird to whom the language of beasts was no language at all, and passed by on the air as a very big sound, but one that in no wise concerned it.
"We've got Sulie Praile to spend the winter, Uncle Titus," she said.
"Who's Sulie Praile?"
"The lame girl, from the Home. We wanted somebody for Vash to wait on, you know. She sits in a round chair, that twists, like yours; and she's—just like a lily in a vase!" Hazel finished her sentence with a simile quite unexpected to herself.
There was something in Sulie's fair, pale, delicate face, and her upper figure, rising with its own peculiar lithe, easily swayed grace from among the gathered folds of the dress of her favorite dark green color, that reminded—if one thought of it, and Hazel turned the feeling of it into a thought at just this moment—of a beautiful white flower, tenderly and commodiously planted.
"Well, I suppose it's worth while to have a lame girl to sit up in a round chair, and look like a lily in a vase, is it?"
"Uncle Titus, I want to know what you think about some things."
"That is just what I want to know myself, sometimes. To find out what one thinks about things, is pretty much the whole finding, isn't it?"
"Don't be very metaphysical, please, Uncle Titus. Don't turn your eyes round into the back of your head. That isn't what I mean."
"What do you mean?"
"Just plain looking."
"O!"
"Don't you think, when there are places, all nice and ready,—and people that would like the places and haven't got 'em,—that the people ought to be put into the places?"
"'The shirtless backs put into the shirts?'"
"Why, yes, of course. What are shirts made for?"
"For some people to have thirty-six, and some not to have any," said Mr. Oldways.
"No," said Hazel. "Nobody wants thirty-six, all at once. But what I mean is, rooms, and corners, and pleasant windows, and seats at the table; places where people come in visiting, and that are kept saved up. I can't bear an empty box; that is, only for just one pleasant minute, while I'm thinking what I can put into it."
"Where's your empty box, now?"
"Our housewasrather empty-boxy. Uncle Titus, do you mind how we fill it up,—because you gave it to us, you know?"
"No. So long as you don't crowd yourselves out."
"Or you, Uncle Titus. We don't want to crowd you out. Does it crowd you any to have Sulie and Vash there, and to have us 'took up' with them, as Luclarion says?"
How straight Witch Hazel went to her point!
"Your catechism crowds me just a little, child," said Uncle Titus. "I want to see you go your own way. That is what I gave you the house for. Your mother knows that. Did she send you here to ask me?"
"No. I wanted to know. It was I that wanted to begin a kind of a Beehive—like Miss Craydocke's. Would you care if it was turned quite into a Beehive, finally?"
Hazel evidently meant to settle the furthest peradventure, now she had begun.
"Ask your mother to show you the deed. 'To Frances Ripwinkley, her heirs and assigns,'—that's you and Diana,—'for their use and behoof, forever.' I've no more to do with it."
"'Use, and behoof,'" said Hazel, slowly. And then she turned the leaves of the great Worcester that lay upon the study table, and found "Behoof."
"'Profit,—gain,—benefit;' then that's what you meant; that we should make as much more of it as we could. That's what I think, Uncle Titus. I'm glad you put 'behoof in."
"They always put it in, child!"
"Do they? Well, then, they don't always work it out!" and Hazel laughed.
At that, Mr. Oldways pulled off his spectacles, looked sharp at Hazel with two sharp, brown eyes,—set near together, Hazel noticed for the first time, like Desire's,—let the keenness turn gradually into a twinkle, suffered the muscles that had held his lips so grim to relax, and laughed too; his peculiar, up-and-down shake of a laugh, in which head and shoulders made the motions, as if he were a bottle, and there were a joke inside of him which was to be well mixed up to be thoroughly enjoyed.
"Go home to your mother, jade-hopper!" he said, when he had done; "and tell her I'm coming round to-night, to tea, amongst your bumble-bees and your lilies!"
Let the grapes be ever so sweet, and hang in plenty ever so low, there is always a fair bunch out of reach.
Mrs. Ledwith longed, now, to go to Europe.
At any rate, she was eager to have her daughters go. But, after just one year, to take what her Uncle Oldways had given her, in return for her settling herself near him, andunsettle herself, and go off to the other side of the world! Besides, what he had given her would not do it. That was the rub, after all. What was two thousand a year, now-a-days? Nothing is anything, now-a-days. And it takes everything to do almost nothing.
The Ledwiths were just as much pinched now as they were before they ever heard from Uncle Oldways. People with unlimited powers of expansion always are pinched; it is good for them; one of the saving laws of nature that keeps things decently together.
Yet, in the pink room of a morning, and in the mellow-tinted drawing-room of an evening, it was getting to be the subject oftenest discussed. It was that to which they directed the combined magnetism of the family will; everything was brought to bear upon it; Bridget's going away on Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs, the strike-price of coal, and the overcharge of the grocer; Florence's music, Helena's hopeless distress over French and German; even Desire's listlessness and fidgets; most of all Mrs. Megilp's plans, which were ripening towards this long coveted end. She and Glossy really thought they should go this winter.
"It is a matter of economy now; everybody's going. The Fargo's and the Fayerwerses, and the Hitherinyons have broken all up, and are going out to stay indefinitely. The Fayerwerses have been saving up these four years to get away, there are so many of them, you know; the passage money counts, and the first travelling; but after youareover, and have found a place to settle down in,"—then followed all the usual assertions as to cheap delights and inestimable advantages, and emancipation from all American household ills and miseries.
Uncle Oldways came up once in a while to the house in Shubarton Place, and made an evening call. He seemed to take apricot-color for granted, when he got there, as much as he did the plain, old, unrelieved brown at Mrs. Ripwinkley's; he sat quite unconcernedly in the grand easy chair that Laura wheeled out for him; indeed, it seemed as if he really, after a manner, indorsed everything by his acceptance without demur of what he found. But then one must sit down on something; and if one is offered a cup of coffee, or anything on a plate, one cannot easily protest against sea-green china. We do, and we have, and we wear, and we say, a great many things, and feel ourselves countenanced and confirmed, somehow,—perhaps excused,—because nobody appears surprised or says anything. But what should they say; and would it be at all proper that they should be surprised? If we only thought of it, and once tried it, we might perhaps find it quite as easy and encouraging, on the same principle,notto have apricot rep and sea-green china.
One night Mr. Oldways was with them when the talk turned eastwardly over the water. There were new names in the paper, of people who had gone out in theAleppo, and a list of Americans registered at Bowles Brothers,' among whom were old acquaintance.
"I declare, how they all keep turning up there" said Mrs. Ledwith.
"The war doesn't seem to make much difference," said her husband.
"To think how lucky the Vonderbargens were, to be in Paris just at the edge of the siege!" said Glossy Megilp. "They came back from Como just in time; and poor Mr. Washburne had to fairly hustle them off at last. They were buying silks, and ribbons, and gloves, up to the last minute, for absolutely nothing. Mrs. Vonderbargen said it seemed a sin to come away and leave anything. I'm sure I don't know how they got them all home; but they did."
Glossy had been staying lately with the Vonderbargens in New York. She stayed everywhere, and picked up everything.
"You have been abroad, Mrs. Scherman?" said Mrs. Ledwith, inquiringly, to Asenath, who happened to be calling, also, with her husband, and was looking at some photographs with Desire.
"No, ma'am," answered Mrs. Scherman, very promptly, not having spoken at all before in the discussion. "I do not think I wish to go. The syphon has been working too long."
"The Syphon?"
Mrs. Ledwith spoke with a capital S in her mind; but was not quite sure whether what Mrs. Scherman meant might be a line of Atlantic steamers or the sea-serpent.
"Yes, ma'am. The emptying back and forth. There isn't much that is foreign over there, now, nor very much that is native here. The hemispheres have got miserably mixed up. I think when I go 'strange countries for to see,' it will have to be Patagonia or Independent Tartary."
Uncle Oldways turned round with his great chair, so as to face Asenath, and laughed one of his thorough fun digesting laughs, his keen eyes half shut with the enjoyment, and sparkling out through their cracks at her.
But Asenath had resumed her photographs with the sweetest and quietest unconsciousness.
Mrs. Ledwith let her alone after that; and the talk rambled on to the schools in Munich, and the Miracle Plays at Oberammergau.
"To think ofthatinvasion!" said Asenath, in a low tone to Desire, "and corruptingthatinto a show, with a run of regular performances! I do believe they have pulled down the last unprofaned thing now, and trampled over it."
"If we go," said Mrs. Megilp, "we shall join the Fayerwerses, and settle down with them quietly in some nice place; and then make excursions. We shall not try to do all Europe in three months; we shall choose, and take time. It is the only way really to enjoy or acquire; and the quiet times are so invaluable for the lessons and languages."
Mrs. Megilp made up her little varnishes with the genuine gums of truth and wisdom; she put a beautiful shine even on to her limited opportunities and her enforced frugalities.
"Mrs. Ledwith, yououghtto let Agatha and Florence go too. I would take every care of them; and the expense would be so divided—carriages, and couriers, and everything—that it would be hardly anything."
"It is a great opportunity," Mrs. Ledwith said, and sighed. "But it is different with us from what it is with you. We must still be a family here, with nearly the same expenses. To be sure Desire has done with school, and she doesn't care for gay society, and Helena is a mere child yet; if it ever could"—
And so it went on between the ladies, while Mr. Oldways and Mr. Ledwith and Frank Scherman got into war talk, and Bismarck policy, and French poss—no,im-possibilities.
"I don't think Uncle Oldways minded much," said Mrs. Ledwith to Agatha, and Mrs. Megilp, up-stairs, after everybody had gone who was to go.
"He never minds anything," said Agatha.
"I don't know," said Mrs. Megilp, slowly. "He seemed mightily pleased with what Asenath Scherman said."
"O, she's pretty, and funny; it makes no difference what she says; people are always pleased."
"We might dismiss one girl this winter," said Mrs. Ledwith, "and board in some cheap country place next summer. I dare say we could save it in the year's round; the difference, I mean. When you weren't actually travelling, it wouldn't cost more than to have you here,—dress and all.
"They wouldn't need to have a new thing," said Glossy.
"Those people out at Z—— want to buy the house. I've a great mind to coax Grant to sell, and take a slice right out, and send them," said Mrs. Ledwith, eagerly. She was always eager to accomplish the next new thing for her children; and, to say the truth, did not much consider herself. And so far as they had ever been able, the Ledwiths had always been rather easily given to "taking the slice right out."
The Megilps had had a little legacy of two or three thousand dollars, and were quite in earnest in their plans, this time, which had been talk with them for many years.
"Those poor Fayerwerses!" said Asenath to her husband, walking home. "Going out now, after the cheap European living of a dozen years ago! The ghost always goes over on the last load. I wonder at Mrs. Megilp. She generally knows better."
"She'll do," said Frank Scherman. "If the Fayerwerses stick anywhere, as they probably will, she'll hitch on to the Fargo's, and turn up at Jerusalem. And then there are to be the Ledwiths, and their 'little slice.'"
"O, dear! what a mess people do make of living!" said Asenath.
Uncle Titus trudged along down Dorset Street with his stick under his arm.
"Try 'em! Find 'em out!" he repeated to himself. "That's what Marmaduke said. Try 'em with this,—try 'em with that; a good deal, or a little; having and losing, and wanting. That's what the Lord does with us all; and I begin to see He has a job of it!"
The house was sold, and Agatha and Florence went.
It made home dull for poor Desire, little as she found of real companionship with her elder sisters. But then she was always looking for it, and that was something. Husbands and wives, parents and children, live on upon that, through years of repeated disappointments, and never give up the expectation of that which is somewhere, and which these relations represent to them, through all their frustrated lives.
That is just why. Itissomewhere.
It turned out a hard winter, in many ways, for Desire Ledwith. She hated gay company, and the quiet little circle that she had become fond of at her Aunt Ripwinkley's was broken somewhat to them all, and more to Desire than, among what had grown to be her chronic discontents, she realized or understood, by the going away for a time of Kenneth Kincaid.
What was curious in the happening, too, he had gone up to "And" to build a church. That had come about through the Marchbankses' knowledge of him, and this, you remember, through their being with the Geoffreys when the Kincaids were first introduced in Summit Street.
The Marchbankses and the Geoffreys were cousins. A good many Boston families are.
Mr. Roger Marchbanks owned a good deal of property in And. The neighborhood wanted a church; and he interested himself actively and liberally in behalf of it, and gave the land,—three lots right out of the middle of Marchbanks Street, that ran down to the river.
Dorris kept her little room, and was neighborly as heretofore; but she was busy with her music, and had little time but her evenings; and now there was nobody to walk home with Desire to Shubarton Place, if she stayed in Aspen Street to tea. She came sometimes, and stayed all night; but that was dreary for Helena, who never remembered to shut the piano or cover up the canary, or give the plants in the bay window their evening sprinkle, after the furnace heat had been drying them all day.
Kenneth Kincaid came down for his Sundays with Dorris, and his work at the Mission; a few times he called in at Uncle Oldways' after tea, when the family was all together; but they saw him very seldom; he gave those Sunday evenings mostly to needed rest, and to quiet talk with Dorris.
Desire might have gone to the Mission this winter, easily enough, after all. Agatha and Florence and Glossy Megilp were not by to make wondering eyes, or smile significant smiles; but there was something in herself that prevented; she knew that it would be more than half toget, and she still thought she had so little to give! Besides, Kenneth Kincaid had never asked her again, and she could not go to him and say she would come.
Desire Ledwith began to have serious question of what life was ever going to be for her. She imagined, as in our early years and our first gray days we are all apt to imagine, that she had found out a good deal that it wasnotgoing to be.
She was not going to be beautiful, or accomplished, or even, she was afraid, agreeable; she found that such hard work with most people. She was not ever—and that conclusion rested closely upon these foregoing—to be married, and have a nice husband and a pretty house, and go down stairs and make snow-puddings and ginger-snaps of a morning, and have girls staying with her, and pleasant people in to tea; like Asenath Scherman. She couldn't write a book,—that, perhaps, was one of her premature decisions, since nobody knows till they try, and the books are lying all round, in leaves, waiting only to be picked up and put together,—or paint a picture; she couldn't bear parties, and clothes were a fuss, and she didn't care to go to Europe.
She thought she should rather like to be an old maid, if she could begin right off, and have a little cottage out of town somewhere, or some cosy rooms in the city. At least, she supposed that was what she had got to be, and if that were settled, she did not see why it might not be begun young, as well as married life. She could not endure waiting, when a thing was to be done.
"Aunt Frances," she said one day, "I wish I had a place of my own. What is the reason I can't? A girl can go in for Art, and set up a studio; or she can go to Rome, and sculp, and study; she can learn elocution, and read, whether people want to be read to or not; and all that is Progress and Woman's Rights; why can't she set up ahome?"
"Because, I suppose, a house is not a home; and the beginning of a home is just what she waits for. Meanwhile, if she has a father and a mother, she would not put a slight ontheirhome, or fail of her share of the duty in it."
"But nobody would think I failed in my duty if I were going to be married. I'm sure mamma would think I was doing it beautifully. And I never shall be married. Why can't I live something out for myself, and have a place of my own? I have got money enough to pay my rent, and I could do sewing in a genteel way, or keep a school for little children. I'd rather—take in back stairs to wash," she exclaimed vehemently, "than wait round for things, and be nothing! And I should like to begin young, while there might be some sort of fun in it. You'd like to come and take tea with me, wouldn't you, Aunt Frank?"
"If it were all right that you should have separate teas of your own."
"And if I had waffles. Well, I should. I think, just now, there's nothing I should like so much as a little kitchen of my own, and a pie-board, and a biscuit-cutter, and a beautiful baking oven, and a Japan tea-pot."
"The pretty part. But brooms, and pails, and wash-tubs, and the back stairs?"
"I specified back stairs in the first place, of my own accord. I wouldn't shirk. Sometimes I think that real good old-fashioned hard work is what I do want. I should like to find the right, honest thing, and do it, Aunt Frank."
She said it earnestly, and there were tears in her eyes.
"I believe you would," said Mrs. Ripwinkley. "But perhaps the right, honest thing, just now, is to wait patiently, with all your might."
"Now, that's good," said Desire, "and cute of you, too, that last piece of a sentence. If you had stopped at 'patiently,' as people generally do! That's what exasperates; when you want to do something with all your might. It almost seems as if I could, when you put it so."
"It is a 'stump,' Luclarion would say."
"Luclarion is a saint and a philosopher. I feel better," said Desire.
She stayed feeling better all that afternoon; she helped Sulie Praile cut out little panels from her thick sheet of gray painting-board, and contrived her a small easel with her round lightstand and a book-rest; for Sulie was advancing in the fine arts, from painting dollies' paper faces in cheap water colors, to copying bits of flowers and fern and moss, with oils, on gray board; and she was doing it very well, and with exquisite delight.
To wait, meant something to wait for; something coming by and by; that was what comforted Desire to-day, as she walked home alone in the sharp, short, winter twilight; that, and the being patient with all one's might. To be patient, is to be also strong; this she saw, newly; and Desire coveted, most of all, to be strong.
Something to wait for. "He does not cheat," said Desire, low down in her heart, to herself. For the child had faith, though she could not talk about it.
Something; but very likely not the thing you have seen, or dreamed of; something quite different, it may be, when it comes; and it may come by the way of losing, first, all that you have been able yet, with a vague, whispering hope, to imagine.
The things we do not know! The things that are happening,—the things that are coming; rising up in the eastward of our lives below the horizon that we can yet see; it may be a star, it may be a cloud!
Desire Ledwith could not see that out at Westover, this cheery winter night, it was one of dear Miss Pennington's "Next Thursdays;" she could not see that the young architect, living away over there in the hundred-year-old house on the side of East Hill, a boarder with old Miss Arabel Waite, had been found, and appreciated, and drawn into their circle by the Haddens and the Penningtons and the Holabirds and the Inglesides; and that Rosamond was showing him the pleasant things in their Westover life,—her "swan's nest among the reeds," that she had told him of,—that early autumn evening, when they had walked up Hanley Street together.