They parted, and Jane returned to the house. She was not so entirely spiritual that she could repress a very human kind of smile over Emily's project.
EMILY IS HERSELF FREELY
AS Emily turned from Mrs. Ralston's gate, she felt more buoyant happiness than anything in life had ever hitherto brought her. She felt licensed on high authority to revel in the hitherto forbidden. She wanted Lorenzo Rath, and she thought that she understood how to get him. We may follow her thought and then we will follow where it led her, for in all the surge of the new teaching there is no lesson greater to learn than this which Emily had failed to grasp,—that the possession of tools does not make one a carver; that all things spiritual must be learned exactly as all things material. One may have so lived previously that the learning is a mere showinghow, but without experience nothing, either spiritual, mental, or physical, can be efficaciously handled. When people declare that something is not true because they tried it and it failed to work, remember Emily Mead. Emily had acquired just one idea out of Jane's exposition: "That you could get anything that you want." It is the idea that hosts of people find most attractive in this world, quite irrespective of its correlative esotericism,—that the soul growing towards infinite power learns every upward step by resolutely liking what it gets. No man can climb a stair by hacking down every step passed; he climbs by being so firm upon each step that he can poise his whole weight thereon as he mounts. It is part of the supremely beautiful logic of the highest teaching that the same effort which Jesus made—every great teacher has made—is sure to make, too. We must see the Divine embodied in the Present and the Weak and the Humble, before in our own spirit we may deal, forthe good of all, with the Future and Strength and Power. When one seizes upon anything God-given as a means of acquiring earth-gifts, one has but seized the empty air; the idea and then ideal have never been in the possession of such an one. There is nothing shut away from those who really make God's teaching a vital part of themselves, but such men and women are no longer keen to selfishly possess, and the good which they reach out for flows easily in for their further distribution; in other words, they become what we were all designed to be,—the outward manifestations of God's purpose, the living breathing, blessed servants of His will.
How far this interpretation lay from poor Emily's comprehension the reader knows.
She hurried along, her whole being bounding with joy over the simplicity of the new lesson. It all seemed almost too story-book-like to be happening in her stupid, commonplace life. She had spent so many long hours in thinking over how thingswould never happen for her, that she had entirely lost faith in their ever changing their ways and now, all of a sudden, here was a complete reversal. Bonds were turned into wings; that unattainable being, a live man, was not only at hand, but available; she felt herself bidden not to doubt her power; she judged herself advised to say frankly all the things that girls may never say. This was the day of feminine freedom. To wish was to have. What one wanted was the thing that was best for one. Emily—with all of Jane's ideas swimming upside down in her head—felt superbly joyous and confident. After all, being alive was a pretty good thing.
She turned a corner into the lane that led in a roundabout way to her mother's back garden gate and walked swiftly. She was a fine, straight girl with a lithe, springy walk. Perhaps Lorenzo Rath could not have done better, from most standpoints, than to marry such an one. Many men do worse. And there was old Mr. Cattermole's money,too. Some of these views float in all human atmosphere to-day—float there securely, because the world is a practical world, and an automobile is obvious, while love and trust are absolutely unknown to many. "Ye cannot serve God and Mammon too," and Mammon is very plain and practical, rolling on rubber tires to the best restaurant. Emily could not have reduced her roseate visions to any such sordid reasoning, but love to her meant leaving town and having a good-looking and lively young man to take her about. This was not really love, any more than the means by which she expected to acquire it were the religion taught by Jane. We hear much of the downfall of love and the downfall of religion in these days, but no one even stops to realize that religion and love cannot possibly even shake on their thrones. Their counterfeits may crumble and tumble, but real truth can never fail. It was the counterfeits at which Emily, like many another, grasped eagerly.
So now she was tripping lightly along and, turning the twist by the great chestnut tree, her heart gave a sudden flop, for just ahead she saw her quarry. He was propped against the fence, using his knees for an easel, while he made a rapid water-color sketch. He was good at those little impressions of an artistic bit, that nearly always show forth in youth a great artist struggling to grow.
Emily started, for she was very close to him before she saw him, and her rampant thoughts led her to blush, apologize, and stammer precisely as she might have done, had her sex never advanced at all but merely remained the dominant note that they have always been.
"Why, Mr. Rath," and then she paused.
Lorenzo—who wanted to finish his sketch—nodded pleasantly without looking up. "Grand day for walking," he said, as a supremely polite hint, and continued to work rapidly.
Emily went close beside him and lookeddownward upon the canvas. "How pretty! I wish I knew more about pictures. What is that brown hill? You can't see a hill from here."
"That's a cow," said Lorenzo, painting very fast indeed, "but don't ask me to explain things, for I can't work and talk at the same time."
Emily sank down beside him with a pleasant sense of proprietorship now that she could get him by will power alone. "I've just come from Mrs. Ralston's. They're in such distress over old Mrs. Croft."
"Is she worse?" The artist forgot to paint all of a sudden, and turned quickly towards her.
"Oh, no,—she was asleep when I left. Jane didn't seem a bit troubled, but Mrs. Ralston is almost wild over not knowing what to say to her sister when she comes back and finds that awful old woman there. It's a terrible situation. Everybody knows that young Mrs. Croft has run away. Shejust hated to stay and now she's gone. Isn't it awful?"
"Oh, I don't know," said Lorenzo, suddenly regaining his deep interest in work, "I have a distinct feeling that Miss Grey will bring things out all right for most people always. It's her way."
"Yes, she's a dear girl," said Emily, and paused to have time to consider things a little while, feeling that the conversation should be continued by the man. The man didn't continue the conversation, however, merely wielding his brush and looking completely absorbed.
Then she remembered her mission. "Mr. Rath, do you believe in frankness always?"
"I wish that I did."
"But don't you?"
"Civilization wouldn't stand for it."
"Perhaps not every one could bear it, but some could. I could, I'm sure."
"Are you so sure?"
"Yes, I am sure. I was talking with Jane alone just at the gate before I left, andshe believes that frankness is best always."
"It's easiest, certainly." Lorenzo raised his eyebrows a little impatiently, but she paid no attention.
"Do you think so?"
"Why, of course. When one wants to be let alone and blurts out, 'Let me alone,' why, one gets let alone."
"Oh, but that would be impolite," said Emily, feeling that for an artist he used very crude metaphor. "Of course, Jane and I were not talking about that kind of people, or that kind of ways. We were talking of people like you and me—nice people, you know. Jane advised me to be quite frank with you."
Lorenzo opened his eyes widely. "About what, please?"
"Oh, about all things. You see I meet so few men, and men are so interesting, and I enjoy talking with them. I've read a good deal, and I don't care for the life in this place. I want to leave it dreadfully."
"So do I," said the artist. "I quite agree with you there."
"You see, Jane has been teaching me to understand life, and I am getting the feeling that I am meant for something else than just helping my mother, wandering about town, and going to church. I'm very tired and restless."
Lorenzo painted fast.
"Mr. Rath, if you—a man—felt as I do, what would you do?"
"Get out."
"But where?"
"Everybody can find a way, if they really want to."
"It isn't as if I had talent, you see."
"A good many people haven't talent and yet do very well, indeed."
"But I don't want to be a shop-girl or anything like that."
"Naturally not."
There was a pause.
"I'm very much interested in the progress women are making," said Emily. "Iread all I can get hold of about it. Don't you think it remarkable?"
"I don't think much about it, and I skip everything on the subject."
"Oh, Mr. Rath!"
"I'm a jealous brute. I don't like to realize that a woman can do everything that is a man's work, even to the verge of driving him to starvation, while he can't do any of her work under any circumstances."
"He could wash and cook and sweep."
"Oh, he's invented machines to save her that."
"I see you've no sympathy with the advanced woman."
"Yes, I have. I'm very sorry for her. A nice mess the next generation will be."
"Oh, dear."
"My one comfort is that boys take after their mothers, and I'm looking to see a future generation of men so strong-minded that they smash ladies back to where they belong—in the rear with the tents."
"Goodness, Mr. Rath, then you don't like any of the ways things are going?"
"Of course I don't. Once upon a time a busy man's time was sacred; now any woman who feels like taking it, appropriates it mercilessly."
"I should lock the door, if I felt that way. But now really, don't you think that we might speak quite openly and frankly?"
Lorenzo began to put up his paints.
"I want to get to the bottom of a lot of things."
"Well?"
"You're the first man that I've ever known that I felt could understand what I meant, and I do want to know the man's side of things."
"A man hasn't got any side nowadays. He's not allowed one."
Emily looked a little surprised. "You speak bitterly."
"I think I've a right. Men are still observing the rules of the game and suffering bitter consequences."
"What do you mean?"
"Women with homes have gone into the world to earn some extra pocket money until they've knocked the bottom out of all wage systems, and you never can make the wildest among them see that women can't expect men's pay unless they do men's work. A man's work is only half of it in business, the other half is supporting a family. Women want equal pay and to spend the result as they please. The man's wages go usually on bread and the woman's on bonnets, to speak broadly. He goes to his own home at night and has every single bill for four to ten people. She goes to somebody else's house and has only her own needs to face, with perhaps some contribution towards those off somewhere."
"Dear me," said Emily, "I never thought of that."
"No," said Lorenzo, snapping the lid of his color box shut, "women don't think of that. But men do."
"But surely there are loads and loads of women who do support families."
"Yes, and who are dragged down by the injustice of what economists call 'The Law of Supplemented Earnings'!"
Emily felt that the experience of conversing frankly with a live man was not exactly what she had anticipated. It certainly was in no way romantic. She felt baffled and a good deal chilled. The conversation had taken a horrid twist away from what she had intended.
"You think that women have no right to go out in the world then?" she said. "You don't sympathize with the modern trend?"
"I sympathize with nature and human nature," said Lorenzo, "but not with civilization." He rose to his feet.
"Oh, Mr. Rath!" she looked upward, expecting to be assisted to rise.
"I believe in life, lived by live things in the way God meant. I loathe this modern institution limping along with its burden ofcarefully fed and tended idiots and invalids and babies, better dead. I wish that I were a Zulu."
"Good Heavens!"
"Come," said the man, picking up his load, "we can go now."
"Had you finished?" She scrambled to her feet.
"I'd done all that I could under the circumstances."
"I suppose the light changes so fast at this time...." Emily was quite unsuspicious and content. The intuition that used to reign supreme in women was especially lacking in her. She had not the least idea of what her presence meant to the unhappy artist.
"Come, come," he repeated impatiently.
They walked away then through the pretty winding lane.
"It seems to me so awful that we are all so hopeless," Emily went on presently. "We are all put here and often see just what should be done and can't do it possibly."
"I do exactly what I choose," said Lorenzo,—then he added: "as a usual thing."
"You must be very happy." She paused. "I suppose that you have plenty of money to live as you please."
"I'm fortunate enough not to have any."
"Goodness!" the exclamation was sincere. The shock to Emily was dreadful. "Why do you call that fortunate?" she asked, after a little hasty agony of downfall as to rich and generous travel, spaced off by going to the theater.
"Because it makes me know that I shall do something in the world. A very little money is enough to swamp a man nowadays, when the idea of later being supported by a woman is always a possibility. Oh," said Lorenzo, with sudden irritation, "if there weren't so many perfectly splendid women and girls in the world, I'd go off and become a Trappist. Everything's being knocked into a cocked hat. I've had girls practically make love to me. Disgusting."
Emily felt her heart hammer hard. "You're very old-fashioned in your views," she said, a little faintly.
They came out by her mother's back gate as she spoke.
"Yes, I am," said Lorenzo, "I admit it."
Mrs. Mead came running out of the back door. "Oh, Emily," she cried, "old Mrs. Croft is dead. Jane sent for the doctor—she sent a boy running—but she's dead. Wherever have you been for so long?"
JANE'S CONVERTS
THE feelings which revolved around the dead body of old Mrs. Croft can be better imagined than described; everybody had wondered as to every contingency except this. In the midst of the confusion Jane moved quietly, a little white and with lips truly saddened. "And I meant to do such a lot for her,—I meant to help her so much," she murmured from time to time.
The doctor, a ponderous gentleman of great weight in all ways, was very grave. The doctor said that he had warned the daughter of such a possible ending twenty years before. "Heart failure wasalwaysimminent," he declared severely, looking upon Jane, Susan, and Mrs. Cowmull, whohad driven out with him and thus become instantly a privileged person. "She never ought to have been left alone a minute during these last forty years. Even if she had lived to be a hundred, the danger was always there. Such neglect is awful." He stopped and shook his head vigorously. "Awful," he declared again with emphasis, "awful!"
"I didn't know that she had heart disease," said Jane.
"No blame attaches to you," said the doctor, veering suddenly about as to the point in discussion; "nobody can blame you. I shall exonerate you completely. Of course, if you were not aware of the state of the case, you couldn't be expected to consider its vital necessities."
"Oh, and it was so vital," sobbed Mrs. Cowmull. "Dear, sweet, old Mrs. Croft. Our sunbeam. And to go off like that. What good is life when people can die any minute. Oh! Oh!"
There was a brief pause for silent sorrow.
"I never looked for her to die," Mrs.Cowmull went on, shaking her head. "I always told Emily she'd outlive even Brother Cattermole. So many people will, you know. Dear, kind, loving friend! And now to think she's gone. I can't make it seem true. She's been alive so long. Seems only yesterday that I was up to see Katie about making a pie for the social, and our dear, sweet friend was singing her favorite song,Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines, all the time. What spirits she did have everywhere, except in her legs."
Susan sat perfectly quiet. The doctor took Jane's arm and led her into the hall, there to speak of the first few necessary steps to be taken. Then he returned to the sitting-room, gathered up Mrs. Cowmull and departed, saying that he would send "some practical person at once." Mrs. Cowmull, who was widely known as having practical designs on him, did not resent the implied slur at her own abilities at all.
After they were gone, there was a slight further pause, and then Susan rose slowlyand went and laid her hands upon her niece's shoulders. "Oh, Jane, that religion of yours is a wonderful thing. I'm converted."
Jane started. "Converted, Auntie?"
"Yes. You were sure that it would come out all right and now see."
Then a little white smile had to cross the young girl's face. "The poor old woman," she said gently, "to think of her lying there all alone all that day. I thought that she was sleeping so quietly."
"Well, she was," said Susan.
"Yes, of course she was. It's just our little petty way of thinking that masks all of what is truly sacred and splendid behind a veil of wrong thinking. Of course she was sleeping quietly."
"It'll be sort of awful if they can't find Katie, though," Susan said next; "she left no address, and I think it's almost silly to try to hunt her up. I'm only too pleased to pay for the funeral, I'm sure, and there won't be any real reason for her returning."
"No," said Jane thoughtfully.
"And I really can look forward to Matilda's coming back now," pursued Susan. "I shan't mind a bit. Old Mrs. Croft has done that much good, anyway,—she's made me feel that Matilda's coming back is just nothing at all. You see you knew that everything was coming out all right, but I'd never had any experience with that kind of doings up till now, and it was all new to me. I was only thinking of when you and me would have to face Matilda. Matilda would have looked pretty queer if she'd come home to old Mrs. Croft to tend, and me up and lively."
Jane didn't seem to hear. "I never once thought of her dying," she said again; "oh, dear, she had so much to learn. I expected to do her such a lot of good."
"I wouldn't complain, Jane. I wouldn't find fault with a thing. Goodness, think if she'd begun singingCaptain Jinkslast night. I've heard that sometimes she'd sing it six hours at a stretch."
Jane shook her head. "Who is to go down and pack up that house?" she wondered.
"Oh, the house can be rented furnished. It's a nice home for anybody," said Susan, "and the rent'll buy her a lovely monument."
The funeral was fixed for the third day, and some effort made to trace the daughter-in-law. But that lady evidently didn't care to be found.
"It's hardly any use going to a great deal of expense to hunt her up," Lorenzo said to Jane, "because the house is all there is, and a thorough search with detectives would just about eat it up alive."
He probably was not wholly disinterested in his outlook, for the next bit of news that shook the community was that Lorenzo Rath had taken Mrs. Croft's house and moved in! Naturally Mrs. Cowmull was far from pleased. "Of course it means he's going to get married," she said to Miss Vane, "but what folly to take a house sosoon. Who's to cook for him? And who's he going to marry? Not Emily, I know. She wouldn't have him."
Miss Vane didn't know and didn't care. "Not my Madeleine," she said promptly, for her part; "she gets a letter every day. She'll marry that man."
"Then it's Jane Grey," said Mrs. Cowmull. The town was greatly exercised, and not as positive as to Emily's state of mind as her aunt.
"It'll be one of those two," Mrs. Ball said to Miss Crining (both very superior women and much given to meeting at the grocery store). "They're both after him. Emily chases him wherever he's posing woods and cows, and the little appetite that Mrs. Cowmull says he has, after going to Mrs. Ralston's, shows what they're thinking of."
Miss Crining shook her head. "Once on a time girls were so sweet and womanly," she said.
"My," said Mrs. Ball, "I remember when my husband asked me. I almostfell flat. I'd never so much as thought of him. I was engaged to a boy named Richie Kendall, and Mr. Ball was bald, and had all those children older than I was. There was some romance about life then."
"And me," said Miss Crining, with a gentle sigh, "I never told a soul I was in love till months after he was drowned. I didn't know I was in love myself. Girls used to be like that, modest, timid."
"Mr. Rath's very severe on girls nowadays, Mrs. Cowmull says," said Mrs. Ball; "but he's blind like all men are and will get hooked when he ain't looking, like they all do."
But Lorenzo Rath didn't care about any of the gossip; he was so happy over his home. "I'll have a woman come and cook occasionally," he explained blithely to Jane and Susan, "and I'll get all my illustrating off my hands in short order."
"Do you illustrate?" Jane asked.
"Yes, that's my bread-and-butter job."
"It'll be nice to have you in the neighborhood,"said Susan placidly; "to think how it's all come about, too. I'm in heaven, no matter what I'm doing. I just sit about and pray to understand more of Jane's religion. I'm gasping it down in big swallows. I think it's so beautiful how she does right, without having to take the consequences."
Jane laughed a little at that and went out to get supper.
"She's a nice girl," Lorenzo said, looking after her; "when she leaves here, what shall we do?"
"Oh, heavens, I don't know," said Susan. "I try never to think of it."
"And what is she going to do?"
"Oh, she's going back to her nursing, and I want to cry when I think that other people will have her around and I shan't. I'll be here alone with Matilda. Not but what I'm a good deal more reconciled than I was, when I thought I'd be alone with Matilda and old Mrs. Croft, too."
"Yes, that would have been bad," saidLorenzo soberly. "Well, I must be running along. I've got a lot of work to do and a lot of thinking, too."
Susan contemplated him earnestly. "Well," she said, with fervor, "when Jane goes, I'll still have you, anyway."
Lorenzo, who had just risen, stopped short at that. "Do you know an idea that I'm just beginning to hold?" he asked suddenly.
"No; how should I?"
"It's this. Why shouldn't you and I try working Jane's Rule of Life a little? I'm dreadfully impressed with a lot she says. Suppose you and I pulled together and made up our minds that she was going to stay here in some perfectly right and pleasant and proper way. How, then? Don't you believe maybe we could manage it?"
Susan stared. "But there couldn't be any perfectly right, pleasant, proper way," she said sadly, "because she wants to go."
"I'd like to try."
The aunt shook her head, sighing heavily."It's no use. There isn't a way. Nothing could keep her. You see, she's got some family debts to pay, and she can't rest till she's paid 'em. I've begged and prayed her to stay; I've told her that her own flesh and blood has first claim, but she won't hear to any kind of sense."
"I wish that we might try," Lorenzo insisted. "I've listened to her till I just about believe she really does know what she's talking about. It seems as if it's all so logical and after all, it's the way God made the world, surely."
"Yes, I know, but you and I ain't equal to making worlds and won't be yet awhile."
"I don't care," said the young man, turning towards the door, "I'm going at it alone, then. I don't believe that any one in the world needs her as much as I do, and I'm going to have her, and that by her own methods, too."
Susan's mouth opened in widest amazement. "Mercy on us, you ain't proposing to her by way of me, are you? You don'tmean that you really do want to marry her, do you?"
"No, I don't mean that I want to marry her. I mean that I'm going to marry her."
"Oh! Oh!" the aunt cried faintly. "Oh, goodness me! But I don't know why I'm surprised, for I said you was in love with her right from the start. I couldn't see how you could help but be."
"Of course I couldn't help but be. Who could? She's one of the few real girls that are left in the world these days. The regular girls with lectures and diplomas and stiff collars have spoiled the sweetest things God ever made. Men don't thank Heaven for any of these late innovations wrought in womankind."
"Oh, I know," said Susan; "my husband was old-fashioned, too. I"—she stopped short, because just then the door opened, and Jane came in.
REAL CONVERSATION
BOTH Susan and lover jumped rather guiltily, but Jane didn't notice. Or if she did notice, it did not impress her as anything worthy consideration. Among the little weeds in the rose-garden of life, did you ever think of what a common one is that bother over how people act when you "come in suddenly"? It is one of the petty tortures of everyday existence. "They stopped talking the instant they saw me!" "They both turned red, when I opened the door!" Well, what if they did? Is it a happening of the slightest moment? Unless one is guilty and in dread of discovery, what can it matter who chatters or of what?Stop and realize the real, separate, distinct meaning of the phrase "He was above suspicion," and see how it applies equally to being safe from the evil thoughtsofothers as well as being safe from the holding of evil thoughtstowardsothers. If people change color at your approach and it makes you uncomfortable, you are not above suspicion either of or from others. Then look to it well that henceforth you manage to root out the double evil. There are a whole lot of very uncomfortable family happenings founded on the absolutely natural crossings of family intercourse, and the only possible way to go smoothly through such rapids is—as the Irishman said—to pick up your canoe and port around them. Don't go down to the level of anything beneath your own standard, because when you go down anywhere for any reason, your standard goes down with you. There is that peculiarity about standards that we keep them right with us, whether we go up or whether we go down.
"Oh, Jane," said Susan, "we're having such an interesting time talking about your religion."
Jane smiled. "I'm glad," she said simply. "Did you decide to absorb some of it?"
"Oh, I'm converted, anyhow," said the aunt; "nobody could live in the house with you and not be, and Mr. Rath is going to try it for a while, too."
Jane looked at Lorenzo a little roguishly. "It's a contagion in the town," she said; "I feel like an ancient missionary."
"I know," said Susan, "holding up a cross. I've seen them in pictures."
"Yes, and I hold up the cross, too," said Jane, "only most people wouldn't know it. Do you know what the cross meant in the long-ago times,—before the Christian era?" she asked Lorenzo quickly.
"No."
"It's the sunbeam transfixing and vivifying the earth-surface. It was the holiest symbol of the power of God. It embodieddivine life descending straight from heaven and making itself a part of earth."
"My!" exclaimed Susan, really amazed.
Jane smiled and laid her hand upon her aunt's affectionately. "I love my cross," she said; "it's the greatest emblem that humanity can know, and, just because we are human, it will always keep coming back into our lives. Only it shouldn't be preached as a burden, it should be preached as an opportunity."
Lorenzo sat watching her. A curious white look passed over his face. He felt for the moment that he hardly ought to dare hope that this girl who was so full of help for all should narrow her field of labor to just him.
"You'll end by being like Dinah inAdam Bede," he said, trying to laugh; "you like to teach and preach, don't you?"
"I don't know," said Jane; "it's always there, right on my heart and lips. I feel as if the personal 'I' was only its voice."
"I don't think she's exactly human,"said Susan meditatively; "she doesn't strike me so."
"Don't say that, Auntie," said the young girl quickly; "I want to be human more than anything else. I don't want to make you or anybody feel that I'm not. It would be as dreadfully lonely to be looked upon as unhuman as to be looked upon as inhuman. I want to work and love and be loved."
"But you're so different from everybody else," said her aunt.
"But I don't want to be different. I want to just be a woman—or a girl."
Some kindly intuition prompted Susan to change the subject. "Mr. Rath and I were talking about girls just now; we both thought what a pity it is that there are so few in these days."
"I guess there are just as many girls as ever, only they aren't so conspicuous," Jane said, laughing at Lorenzo.
"I think they're more conspicuous," said Lorenzo, "only they're the wrong kind."
"I liked the old kind," said Susan, "the kind that stayed at home and wasn't wild to get away and be going into business."
Jane laughed again. "You ought not to blame the girls, Auntie. Lots of them feel dreadfully over leaving home. But they have to go out and work. I had to, I know. It's some kind of big world-change that's pushing us all on into different places."
"I wasn't thinking of girls who do something nice and quiet like you. I was thinking of the others."
"They have to go, too," said Jane. "There's a fearful pressure that we don't understand behind it all. A restlessness and discontent that no one can alter."
"Yes, that's true," said Lorenzo; "I never thought of it, but I can see that it is so now that you've put it into my head."
"I've seen a lot of it. It's curious that it seems to come equally to women who want to work and to women who don't. I'm sure I never wanted to earn my living, butI was forced to it. And ever so many others are, too. It's rather an awful feeling that you're in the grip of a power that sweeps your life beyond your guidance. I'm trying hard to be big enough to live in this century, but I'd have liked the last better."
"Don't you consider that there's anything voluntary in the way women are acting now?" Lorenzo asked, with real interest.
"No, I'm afraid not. I think that there's something we don't understand, or grasp, or—or quite see rightly. I believe that everything is ordered and ordered ultimately for the best, and I see the problems of to-day as surely here by God's will and to be worked out by learning the conduct of the current instead of opposing it. But still I really don't understand it all as I wish that I did."
"You really do feel God as a friend," said Lorenzo, watching her illuminated face. "He isn't just a religion to you, then?"
"He'severythingto me," said Jane reverently,"Help and Sunlight and Strength and Daily Bread. That part of Him that is energy manifests in us in one way, and that part of Him that is divine right and justice manifests in us in another way. My part in this life is to learn to use them together, but they and all else are all God."
Susan rose from her seat and stood contemplating her niece and Lorenzo by turns. "To think of talking like this in my house," she said; "this is what I call real conversation. I tell you, Jane, you certainly did lift me into another life when you invited old Mrs. Croft here. Every kind of religion sinks right into me now, and I can believe without the least bother. It's wonderful, but I'm going to have a short-cake for tea, so I'll have to go."
She went away, and Lorenzo turned to the window.
There was a little pause while he wondered about many things. Finally he held out his hand abruptly. "You've gone a long way, Jane," he said, "you've got a biggrip on life and its meaning, and you make me understand as I never did before how hopeless it is to wish that the wheels of time will turn backward. But whatever you may preach, you only prove what I said and what I feel, that the old-fashioned, sweet, home-keeping, winning and winnable girl is gone, only she's gone in a different way from what most people understand. When she still exists, she exists for herself—not for a man."
Jane felt her eyes fill suddenly. "Why do you say that?"
"Because you prove it. A man might adore you, but he couldn't hope to get you. Could he?"
Her eyes dropped. "Do you think that it's all any harder on the man than it is on the girl?" she asked. "If men feel bad nowadays over the changes, how do you suppose it is with the woman, unfitted to fight and forced into the battle. A woman isn't built as a man is; she's created for another kind of work, much harder andlasting, much longer than any man's labor. And she has to leave that work of her own either undone or only half-done and do things unsuited to her. Of course there are some girls and women who like it,—but most of them don't. Most of them feel dreadfully and would give anything to be able to stay in a home and live the life God meant to be woman's. There's always a pitiful story behind nine out of every ten bread-winning women, whether they go out washing or are artists like you. A woman never leaves her home until she's forced to do so."
"Are you sure that you know what you're talking about? Aren't you an idealist? Look at Emily Mead—" he smiled in spite of his earnestness. "If she had a rag of a chance, she'd fly off to-morrow. It wouldn't take force."
Jane remained carefully grave. "That's more her mother's fault than hers. Her mother has taught her that girls only live to marry."
"And quite right, too. Don't you believe it?"
"It used to be true, but it isn't now. A girl can't marry without a man, and the world's all disjointed. It's a part of that strange new leaven which causes civilization to drive men and women both to become homeless by separating them widely on earth."
"Of course it's a governmental crime to send men by the hundreds of thousands to fight it out alone in Canada and leave their sisters to be old maids in England, but governments are pretty stupid, nowadays."
"We are all pretty stupid. We build all our difficulties and then hang to them and their consequences for dear life. It's too bad in us."
"Do you mean woman?"
"No, I mean everybody."
"It's depressing, isn't it?"
"I don't think so. I think it's grand."
"Grand!"
"Yes, because I like to struggle in a big way. And then, too, if I'm a woman forced to work because I'm one part of the problem, I'm also gloriously happy in being part of the new upburst of comprehension that's balancing and will soon overbalance such a lot of the troubles."
"You mean? Oh, you mean your way of looking at things."
"Of course I do. I'm so blessedly glad of every circumstance in my life, because each one led to my getting hold of just what I have got hold of. I'm perfectly happy and perfectly content. It's so beautiful to be guided by a rule that never fails."
Lorenzo couldn't but laugh. "I tell you what," he said gayly, "I'll let you into a little secret. I've made up my mind to go to work and learn how to work that game of yours myself. I want to be blessedly glad and gloriously happy, too."
"You've got to be in earnest, you know," Jane said. "It's handling live wires to amuse oneself with any force of God, andwill-power is more of a force than electricity."
"Oh, I'm in earnest," said the artist. "I've made my picture—as you say—and I hang to it for grim death. Only I can't see, if you feel as you do about home and marriage, and all that, why you don't make one, too."
"I'm making ever so many homes," said Jane. "I'm teaching home-making. That's a Sunshine Nurse's business, and it would be selfish in me to desert my task. Besides—" she paused.
THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER HAPPENED
SHE stopped and hesitated.
"Yes," he said impatiently, "besides—?"
"I wonder if it would be right to be quite frank with you?"
"Nothing sincere is ever wrong. Of course you ought to be quite frank with me,—aren't you that with every one?"
Still she considered.
"What stops you?" he asked. "Go on. Tell me everything. It's my right."
"Why is it your right?"
"Because I love you, and you know it."
She started violently, then turned very white. "Don't say that. I've alwaysthought of you as engaged to Madeleine. She was talking to me, and I thought—I—" She stopped, quite shaken.
"You misunderstand her. She's always been in love with one fellow—the one that her parents are against. He's even poorer than I am."
Then Jane pressed her lips together and interlocked her fingers. "I can never marry. I never think of it. There's money to be paid, nobody to pay it but me, and no way to get it except to earn it."
Lorenzo looked almost sternly at her. "What about the book you lent me; it would say that that was setting limits. It says that we've not to concern ourselves with ways and means. I've only to concern myself with loving you. The rest will come along of its own accord."
She shook her head. "No, it won't. This world is all learning, and it's part of my lesson not to be able to apply it in absolute faith to myself. So many teachers have wisdom to give away which they can'tquite take unto themselves, you know." She smiled a little tremulously.
"But you ought to take it unto yourself. It ought to be easy and simple for you to realize that if conditions are false, they don't exist; that if you want a home, it's because you are going to have one; that if I love you, it's because it's right that you should be loved."
She put her hands down helplessly on each side of the chair-seat. "I never even think of such things," she said, almost in a whisper.
"But why not?"
"I've always been so necessary to others. I've no rights in my own life."
"But if life is a thing to guide, why not guide your beneficence as well from a basis of home as from one of homelessness?"
"Nothing has ever seemed to be for me, myself. Everything has always pointed to me for others."
Lorenzo paced back and forth. "But it is the women like you who should show theway out of the wilderness and back to the right, instead of attempting to order the chaos while sweeping on with it. If there be a real truth in this new teaching which lays hold of all those who are in earnest so easily and so quickly, its first care should be to demonstrate happiness in the lives of its believers,—not the negative happiness of wide-spread devotion to others, but the positive lessons of joy in the center from which springs—must spring—the next generation of better, wiser men and women, those among whom I expect to live as an old man."
Jane turned her face away, her eyes filled with tears. "You make me feel very small and petty," she said; "you show me a way beyond what I had guessed. But I can't grasp at it; I'm too used to asking nothing for myself. I'm always so sure that God is managing for me. And I have so much to do."
"Perhaps realization that God is managing is all that you need to set right. Perhapsthat confidence will bring you all things. Even me." He laughed a little.
"It has brought me all that I needed. Daily bread, daily possibilities of helpfulness,—I don't ask more, except 'more light.'"
"It sounds a little presumptuous coming from me, but perhaps I can help you towards your end, even as to 'more light.' At any rate, I'll try if you'll let me."
She sat quite still. Finally she lifted up her eyes—and they were beautiful eyes, big and true—and said, the words coming softly forth: "It would be so wonderful."
Lorenzo didn't speak. He felt choked and gasping. To him it was also "so wonderful," as wonderful as if he hadn't lived with it night and day ever since the first minute of knowing her. "I think I'd better go," he said very gently, realizing keenly that he must not press her in this first blush of the new spring-time. "I've 'made my picture' you know, and I won't let it fade, you may be sure. And you must believein happiness for yourself,—you tell us that the first step is all that counts. Get the seed into the ground then. I'll do the rest."
She sat quite still. "If I could only try," she whispered. He turned quickly away and was gone.
After a dizzy little while she rose and went into the kitchen. Susan was moving briskly about.
"Two cups flour, four teaspoonfuls baking powder, one of sugar, one of salt, two of butter, two of lard, cup half water, half milk, pour in pan greased and bake in hot oven. Scotch scone-bread for lunch," she said, almost suiting the deed to the word. "Is Mr. Rath still here?"
"No, he's gone."
"You know, Jane, he's caught your religion. I never heard anything like it. He's got the whole thing pat. I'd be almost scared to go round teaching a thing like that. Why, folks'll be doing anything they please soon. I've been wondering if I could get strong enough to kind of dispose ofMatilda, in some perfectly right way, you know. I wouldn't think of anything that wasn't perfectly right, you know."
Jane seemed a little numb and stood watching the buttering of the scone-pan without speaking.
"I keep saying: 'Matilda doesn't want to come back. Matilda's disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way.' I've been saying it ever since I began on those scones. I guess I've said it twenty times, and I'm beginning to make a real impression on myself. I'm beginning to feel sure God is fixing things up. It's too beautiful to feel God taking an interest in your affairs. Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda is completely disposed of in a perfectly pleasant way." Susan's accents were very emphatic.
"Auntie," said Jane, turning her eyes towards her and rallying her attention by a strong effort, "you know your perfect faith is because Aunt Matilda really isn't anxious to come home. It's only if you're doubtingthat there's any doubt about it. One doesn't alter Destiny, one only apprehends it. Oh, dear," she said though, sitting down suddenly, and hiding her face in her hands, "the thing about light is that it always keeps bursting over you with a new light, and my own teaching has suddenly come to me as if I'd never known what any of it meant before. I'm too stunned at seeing how I've limited myself. I'm really too stupid."
Susan glanced at her as she poured the batter into the pan, and then kept glancing. Her face grew softened, "I wouldn't worry, dear," she said finally, "don't you bother over anything. God's taking care of everything and everybody. It's every bit of it all right. You must know that yourself, or you never could have taught it to me."
"Yes, I do know it,—but in spite of myself I can't see—I can't dare think—"
"You told me not to worry over old Mrs. Croft," said Susan, coming around by her side and putting her arm about her; "yousaid worry spoiled everything. And I did try so hard."
"Yes, I know, I'll try. I really will—But—" suddenly she turned deep crimson, "it seems too awful for me to take one minute to work on myself or my life. I need all my time for others."
"But you don't have to," said Susan, "all you've got to do is to know things are right. You know they're right because they are right. Everything's coming along fine, and you just feel it coming; that's your part. My goodness, Jane, isn't this funny? There isn't a blessed thing you've preached to me that I ain't having to preach back to you now. You don't seem to have sensed hardly any of your own meaning. Talk about being a channel; you'd better choke up a little and hold back some for yourself."
Jane threw her arms around her and kissed her. "Auntie, you're right, you're right. I won't doubt a mite more. I'll try to know as much as I seem to have taught."
"Just be yourself, you Sunshine Jane, you," Susan was clinging close to the girl she loved so well, "just be yourself. Nothing else is needed."
"Yes," Jane whispered, "I will."
"That's the thing," said Susan; "'cause you've certainly taught us a lot. I'll lay the table now," she moved towards the door, "Matilda doesn't want to come home. Matilda wants to stay away in some perfectly pleasant way," she added with heavy emphasis, passed through, and let the door close.
Jane was left alone in the kitchen.
"He said he loved me!" she thought over and over. "It seems so wonderful—the most wonderful thing that has ever happened since the world was made. He said he loved me!"
She went up-stairs to her own room and shut the door softly. "Of course I can never marry him," she whispered aloud, "but he did say he loved me. Oh, I know that nothing so wonderful ever was in this world before!"
WHY JANE SHOULD HAVE BELIEVED
THE Sunshine Nurse was long in seeking sleep that night and early to rise the next morning. She found herself suddenly metamorphosed—facing a new world—two worlds in fact. There was the world of Lorenzo's actually loving her, which was a dream from which she would surely awaken, and then there was that second world of wonder, the world of her own teaching, a world in which she started, big-eyed, at all in which she had trusted, and wondered if it could be possible that what she believed firmly and preached so ardently was really true. "It isn't setting limits to face what must be," she said over and over to herself, "and Imustpaypoor father's debts, and there is no possible way for me to get the money except to earn it bit by bit." The statement had gone to bed with her, and it rose with her when she rose; it looked indisputable, incontrovertible, as all fixed statements have a way of looking—and yet each time that she made it she felt hot with guilt. "It's setting limits," cried her soul, "it's saying that God can't possibly do what He pleases," and, as she listened to the strong, heaven-sent cry of rebellion against petty earthly laws, she struggled in the meshes of her own old earlier learning, the "old garment" which clings so close about us all, and which we simply must discard before we can don the new robe of Infinite Hope and Radiant Belief in God's law of Only Good for Each and Every One.
Jane always rose an hour before her aunt. The hour was spent in opening windows, brushing up and building the kitchen fire. It was always a pleasant hour, for she usually filled it to the brim with work welldone and thoughts sent strongly and happily out over the coming time. But to-day all this was changed; new thoughts rioted forth on every side, and a sort of chaos took the place of her usually sunny calm. This riot and chaos is the common, logical outcome of all who feel sure that they are wiser than God. You cannot possibly set any border to His Kingdom and then be happy in that outer darkness which you have deliberately chosen for your own part. As well ask a cow to shut herself out of her pasture and rest happy in the waste beyond. "I mustn't think, because it is none of it for me—" she repeated over and over, much as if the aforesaid cow declared, "I am barred out—I can never get back—I must starve contentedly." Jane—who would have laughed at my illustration quite as you have laughed yourself—saw only distress in her own, and had to wink away so many tears that finally in maddest self-defense she rushed out doors and fled to the little garden that had, through somany years, been Susan's refuge in such a droll way.
And Lorenzo was there!
He looked very blithe and happy. "Well," he said, "have you thought it over and decided that you're right, after all?"
She was panting, and surprise flooded her face with color. "Oh—" she gasped, "oh!" and then: "Right—of course I'm right!"
He approached, his hand extended. "Right in believing, or right in mistrusting?"
She gave him her hand, and he took it. "Don't put it that way," she said; "it isn't that way."
"But, dear Jane, that's the only way to put it. It's the way you've been teaching us. Either we can look up and ahead confidently, or you're all wrong. I can't believe that you're ever even a little bit wrong, so I'm going to believe that it's all true."
"No, no—it isn't—I mean—Oh, inmy case, it can't be so. Everything that I said was true, only I myself am meant to—to work—not to—to marry. It's a kind of pledge I've taken to myself. It doesn't change the teaching." Then she dragged her hand free.
Lorenzo smiled. "You can't tell me any of that. I know. I'm the happiest man in the world." Then he went on, taking up the rake and scratching a little here and there: "Like other pupils, I've surpassed my teacher. You've preached, and I practice; you can describe God's thoughts, and I think them. You're sure that He can do anything, and I know what He's going to do. I've been let straight into one of His secrets. It's been revealed to me how the world is run."
Jane stared. "How can you talk so?"
"I talk so because I know so. Everything's coming right for you."
"You're crazy," she tried to laugh.
"I've heard people say that of you. Not that it matters."
She stood watching him and considering his words. "I wouldn't let you give me the money to straighten out my father's affairs, even if you were ever so rich, you know," she said slowly. "I couldn't."
"I know it."
"And I wouldn't let Auntie pay the debts."
"I know. God doesn't require either your aunt's help or mine in this matter."
Jane's eyes moistened slightly. "Please don't make a joke of anything so hard and sad."
"I'm not joking; I'm a veritable apostle of joy. I'm as happy as I can be."
She looked at him with real wonder because his appearance certainly bore out his words. "I wish that I knew what you meant."
He dropped the rake, came to her side, and caught her hand. "Can't you trust God—can't you trust me?—won't you try?"
She looked up into his face. "I wish that I could, but how can I?"
"You ought to know. So deep and big and true a nature. Surely you ought to be able to understand your own teaching!"
"But I can't see any way."
"Your book says that one must not think of ways; one must just look straight to the good end."
"Oh, but there isn't any such end possible for me."
Lorenzo dropped her hand and laughed out loud. And then he caught her in his arms and kissed her.
She screamed. To her it was the greatest shock of her life, for no man had ever kissed her before. "Oh—oh, mercy!"
Matters were not helped much by Susan's looking over the fence just then and crying out abruptly: "Well, I declare!"
"Mrs. Ralston," said Lorenzo, not even blushing, "you're the very person we need this minute. I want to marry Jane, and she won't hear to it because of her father's debts. The debts are all right and everything's all right, only she won't believe it.I wish you'd climb the fence and help me persuade her, for although Iknowshe'll end by marrying me, I've just set my heart on converting her to her own religion first."
Susan swung easily over the fence. "You're just right, Mr. Rath, you ought to marry her. She's the nicest person to have around the house that I ever saw; she's far too good to be a nurse. How much did your father owe, you Sunshine Jane, you? Maybe I can pay it. I will if I can."
"There," said Lorenzo; "see how easy it is to evolve money if you'd only trust a little?"
Jane looked at him and then at Susan. "I couldn't take your money, Auntie," said she, quite gently, but quite firmly. "And then, too," she added, with her roguish smile, "you've left it to Aunt Matilda."
"Yes, but dear," Susan's face became suddenly radiant, "you know I've been working your religion on her; maybe sheisn't coming back at all; maybe something will happen; maybe she's going to be drowned or something like that in some perfectly right way."
"No," said Lorenzo soberly. "It isn't necessary to plan as to God's business at all. He knows. I don't think that Jane ought to take anybody's money; she ought to pay the debts with her own money, but I can't see why she can't trust and know it's coming."
"Because there's no place for it to come from," said Jane firmly.
"Unless Matilda—" Susan interposed.
"I believe I'm better at her religion than she is herself," said Lorenzo. "I declare, I believe that there's nothing that I can't get now. I wanted a house, and I worked just as the book said! I saw myself living cosily alone, and in less than a week I was living cosily alone. Now I want Jane with me in the house, and I mean to have her, and I shall have her, and there's no doubt about that; but I do wish—with all myheart—that she could rise to a higher plane."
"If that's all, I know how to manage that easily enough," said Susan. "We could get old Mr. Cattermole in for a week and raise Jane's plane with him, just like she raised mine with Mrs. Croft."
"Oh, she'll rise," said her lover quietly. "We must give her time and help her, that's all."
Jane stood doubting between them. Her aunt regarded her wistfully. "Dear me," she said, "I wonder if I could screw myself up to believing she'll come in for a fortune. I want to help, but I'm a little like her—I can't for the life of me see where it's to come from."
"But that isn't the question at all," said Lorenzo, "the question isn't how—the question is just the faith. Why, it's the corner-stone of the whole thing! It's the moving into God's world where nothing but good can be, and you know you're there because you see only good coming inall directions! Just good—nothing but good! I don't see why Jane holds back so. I know that she can get that money and get every other thing she wants in life, including me, and I'm one of the nicest fellows alive—"
"That's so—" interposed Susan.
"If she'll only put out her hand with confidence. I've studied that book till I'm full of it, and I know that I'm going to have her for my wife, and I know it absolutely, and I want her to know it, too."
Susan began to get back over the fence. "I'm going in about breakfast," she said; "the trouble with us is we all need hot coffee to brace up our souls."
"Keep on declaring the truth," Lorenzo reminded her, as she walked off upon the other side.
"I will. I'll say 'Jane is going to get some money' and 'Matilda doesn't want to come home to live,' alternately."
When she was out of hearing the twoyoung people remained silent for a few seconds. Then the man spoke.
"Dear," his voice was very gentle, "I want to tell you something. I've had a very great experience in the last twenty-four hours. It isn't loving you—it's that I've been allowed to see a little bit of life from God's standpoint. Don't you want to know the real truth about all this?"
"What do you mean?"
"I'm going to tell you, because you'll see the lesson and learn it with me. We don't doubt that God knows all that has been or is to be, do we?—or that in our minutes of fiercest pain or trouble He looks calmly to the end beyond?"
She shook her head. "No, of course not."
"Well, dearest girl, I was allowed last night to put myself in the Deity's place and see one corner of the universe as He must see the whole."
Her eyes grew big. "What do you mean?"
"I mean this. I want you, and I understandperfectly about the money. I sat down last night and I labored with myself until I made myselfknowthat it was yours. I can't tell you just how it came to me, but I knew it. It is yours and yours absolutely, and now I want you to realize it and believe in it without question, before I give it to you. Will you do that? I'm asking of you the faith that Jesus preached. Can you believe?"
Jane looked at him wonderingly. "You mean—"
"I mean just what I say."
"I can't receive money from you."
"It isn't my money."
"I don't understand. I only know that there is no way that I can get the money."
Lorenzo looked at her a minute, and then said slowly and very gently: "I've found Mrs. Croft's will. She left all that she had to whoever took care of her the night she died. It appears that she had a good deal more than any one supposed. It's all yours, dear. Now you see why you should have trusted."