“Frieda was telling a story and the others were listening attentively.”–Page184.
“Frieda was telling a story and the others were listening attentively.”–Page184.
185Winifred never refused to sing, and Hannah slipped into the house, tuned her dear Geige and brought it out. Then she played very softly, while Winifred’s sweet voice sang one quiet song after another. Dr. Harlow’s tired face relaxed and, leaning back in the chair, he presently dropped off to sleep. The young people were very still, and Winifred smiled softly as she sang. Dr. Helen, coming out from the office after an interview with a wearying patient, stood in her turn watching. The blues and pinks and greens of the girls’ frocks, the boys’ white flannels and the great tree spreading above them, made a pretty background and setting for the central group of Hannah bending her brown head earnestly over her violin, and Winifred lifting her delicate little face while she sang.
“Bravo!” shouted a big voice behind Dr. Helen. Bert, on his way home from one of his spasmodic “jobs,” dropped in to say “Hello!” and incidentally break the spell. Dr. Harlow woke and looked guiltily about him. His wife joined him, and Max and Archie shook the kinks out of their long legs, as the girls began to gather up their sewing and flutter about Catherine with good-bys.
“I say, Miss Hannah,” said Bert, making his way to her. “I didn’t know you played. That’s a jolly little fiddle you’ve got there. Do you know the Merry Widow waltzes?”
Hannah laughed. “I don’t,” she confessed, “but perhaps I could learn them. Bring them up some time and I’ll try.”
“Hannah, are you awake?”
Hannah turned over, and opened an eye uncertainly.
“No, I guess so.”
“Well, do wake up and look at me. Isn’t it awful?”
Hannah unscrewed the other eye, and blinked blindly for a minute.
“What is it?” she asked, yawning.
“My cheek. Can’t you see? Toothache. It’s all swollen up, and it hurts.”
Hannah roused herself a little more, then shut her eyes quickly. She didn’t want to laugh at Catherine.
“Can’t you do anything for it?”
“I suppose so, but it won’t go down in time for Sunday-school, and who will take my class?”
Hannah groaned. “Who would ever get up in the middle of the night and worry about a Sunday-school class, when they had a toothache? It’s unnormal! Go back to bed, unless there is something I can do for you. Can’t I call your mother?”
187“No, there’s no use bothering her. I know what to do well enough, but I am so worried about the class.”
“O, go along to sleep. I’ll take your old class.”
Hannah was asleep herself before Catherine had finished sighing with grateful relief and returned to her own room.
An hour later, Hannah woke with a start to the consciousness that something unpleasant had happened. Almost immediately that vagueness gave way to irritating clearness. She got up and peeped into Catherine’s room. She was sleeping, but the swollen cheek left no room for hope that the whole episode was a nightmare. Hannah dressed quietly, frowning the while at her unconsidered offer of the early morning.
“I do think this town would be twice as nice if there weren’t any children in it. They spoil everything. I never taught anybody anything in all my life. And I never went to Sunday-school either, except in Germany. She will just have to get some one else,” she fussed. “A promise like that doesn’t count. I was so sleepy I didn’t know what I was saying.”
With unwelcome plainness she recalled the facts that Dorcas and Polly had classes of their own, Bertha and Agnes were out of town, and Dot and Win and Bess belonged to another denomination.
“Why couldn’t she have waited till Alice came?188She’s always ready for things like that. O, dear. I suppose I’ll have to try. Catherine would keep a promise herself, if she made it in delirium tremens!”
She stole down stairs before any one was stirring, save Inga in the kitchen, found a Bible and took it over to the window-seat, where she opened it gingerly.
“I wonder where they begin,” she thought. “Might as well look Genesis over first, to refresh my memory.” She spread the thin pages open, and began to read. Outside the open window the birds were noisily celebrating the sunny morning. Inga ground the coffee. A bell rang for early service somewhere. Hannah’s eyes wandered from the page.
“‘And there was evening and there was morning, a second day.’ It sounds just like poetry,” she thought. “But what could I tell youngsters about it? They would be sure to want to know just how the waters were kept off the firmaments. I hope–no, I know, Elsmereisin that class!” In silent horror, Hannah sat staring out of the window. Memories of Catherine’s Sunday dinner talk swarmed back into her mind. She had thought the stories amusing: how Elsmere had chewed gum and put it into the collection envelope; how Perdita Osgood had described in vivid detail her seasickness of a summer before; how the little Hamilton girl had asked personal and embarrassing189questions of Catherine herself. It had sounded funny, when Catherine told the tales in her quiet way,–but to be alone with them for an hour! Hannah’s heart failed her entirely. She shut the Bible and marched up to Catherine’s room. Catherine was dressing, as far away from the mirror as possible.
“Hannah, dear,” she called, seeing the brown hair and blue eyes through a crack in the door. “Do come in. You don’t know what a dear you were to take that class. I went straight to sleep, and didn’t mind the pain nearly so much after that. It worried me so. You see, the Sunday-school is so small and I had been over and over it in my mind, and couldn’t think of any one who would do. It’s the last class any one is ever willing to take.”
“Why?” asked Hannah, her prepared refusal suspended.
“O, because it’s so big, and there are all ages of little people in it. But you’ll do beautifully. Children always love you. Do you know what the lesson is?”
Hannah hesitated. Then a glance at Catherine’s distorted face made her ashamed of herself, and she answered bravely:
“No. What is it? I’ll have to study up a lot.”
“You’ll find plenty of material in those leaflets and books in the pile there on the table by my190Bible. It’s about the Good Shepherd. And if you’re going down, will you ask mother to come in before breakfast? I don’t believe I’ve been doing the right things.”
So Hannah, laden with Helps and Hints, went slowly down stairs again, and after having sent Dr. Helen up to see her afflicted daughter, resumed her place in the window-seat and put her mind resolutely on the subject of the lesson.
“‘Bring in the 23rd Psalm,’” she read in one suggestion. “That’s good. I know that much and I can make them repeat it the whole hour, if nothing else comes into my head. How is she, Dr. Helen?”
Dr. Helen smiled ruefully. “She will be all right after a while, but it is a pity, isn’t it? You were a good girl to relieve her mind about that class. She cares so much about it. Good morning, Frieda!Hast du gut geschlafen?”
The Three Gables household was a church-going one. Hannah, in her white gown with sweet-peas scattered over it, met the doctors in the hall.
“Is Frieda late?” she asked, putting on her gloves. “It isn’t like her.”
“No, but she begged so hard to stay with Catherine whose state seems to waken deeps of pity in her, that I couldn’t refuse. She said she would do anything for her, even to reading poetry!”
They all laughed, for Frieda’s English reading191was distinctly lacking in smoothness, and her rendering of poetry would doubtless be harrowing.
“That would hurt Catherine more than the toothache,” said Hannah, “but they will find something better to do,” and she walked sedately down the path between the doctors, her Bible and Quarterly in her hands, wondering if martyrs on the way to the stake chatted on indifferent topics, and noticed birds and bees and grasshoppers.
Meanwhile Catherine and Frieda up stairs were surprising themselves and each other. The first glimpse of Catherine’s swollen cheek had roused Frieda’s sense of mirth, but compassion for physical pain followed quickly.
“Ach weh! Weh! Schade! Schade!” she had murmured in a deep sympathetic tone, which Catherine found unexpectedly soothing. Accustomed as she had always been to brisk remedial measures, and beyond those, to wordless pity and a deliberate ignoring of the evil, she was interested and touched by this demonstration. She had felt shy with Frieda from the first, wishing so earnestly to know her well and win her love that she could not be perfectly simple and natural with her. This shyness had combined with the little aloofness, which every one felt in Catherine, to shut Frieda’s heart. But this morning the barriers were down. Catherine, instead of being perfect, exquisite, was nothing short of hideous. The agent had proved192that she could look absurd. Here she was shown mortal to the point of needing help from Frieda. What made Hannah feel awkward and useless, caused Frieda to come to the front, competent and tender. She made Catherine cozy with pillows, and sat beside her, speaking, in tones which carried healing and comfort, of all sorts of interesting and delightful things and places. She told stories of her school in Germany, of her home and Hannah’s visit, of her little friend who had been to a birthday party at the palace, of the strange “church social” to which Hannah had taken her in Berlin, of her rides with Herr Karl in the Tiergarten, rapturous descriptions of the Tiergarten itself, dropping unconsciously into German phrases, her eyes shining and her cheeks taking on an unwontedly charming color, while Catherine lay and listened, entranced, as though she were in a world where pain had no power.
It was not so pleasant at the little gray church. Hannah, all through the sermon, wrestled mentally with the parable. It seemed to her it was a very slippery parable! She would no sooner highly resolve to hold it till she had wrenched its moral from it, and reduced that moral to terms which the youngest babe could surely comprehend, than she would find that the elusive subject had slipped from her grasp, and her whole mind would be fixed upon the problem of how long it would take a fly to193crawl all the way across the expansive back of Mrs. Graham, who sat in the pew in front.
She went through the service like a well-constructed automaton, rising, sitting, singing even, with no notion of what she was doing or why she was doing it. She bowed her head with the others for the benediction, and then the soft stirring and cheerful tones of greeting about her, told her that her hour was come.
The superintendent directed her to “Miss Smith’s class.” To her final dismay, she found that that meant a seat on the platform in full view of the congregation. The little church was barely more than a chapel, and the chorus choir had two pews upon the platform. Here, it seemed, for purposes of segregation, Catherine held her flock during the interminable opening exercises, after which she led them to their own room in the basement. As one in a dream, Hannah went to the seat pointed out to her. Margaret Kittredge and Peter and Perdita were already present. The little Hamilton girl came in with two unknown others. Then more and more. The little girls settled themselves fussily, getting up frequently to crush their stiff starchy skirts into place. Their wide-brimmed hats interfered when they moved and they were never still. The little boys huddled together, and punched each other without motive, crowding each other off the seat, and showing the pennies they held in their moist little palms.
194The superintendent tapped his bell. The noisy groups of the Sunday-school at large lapsed into an approach to order, the teachers staring consciously ahead with an excess of propriety, and the children alertly refraining from anything more riotous than fumbling with hymn-books. Hannah’s own charges felt the change in the atmosphere, and quietness fell upon them. She welcomed it gratefully, aware that it was in no wise due to her own effort, and spreading a hymn-book open for the first song, stooped to allow the small boy next her to look on, then lent her voice as freely as she could to the chirping chorus. As the exercises continued, she became rather more accustomed to her prominent seat, and, inspired by Dorcas Morehouse’s austere countenance in the front row below her, she even turned once and looked down the squirming row beside her, shaking her head gravely at Perdita, who was showing signs of uprising. Peter caught the look of reproach and passed it on to his twin with interest, hauling her into her place with a tug which resulted in a loud parting of gathers. The Bible reading over, “birthdays” were called for, and the little Hamilton girl trotted importantly forward to the superintendent’s table, where she let seven pennies drop from her fat fingers into a yawning frog, receiving in exchange a printed text. Acknowledging this courtesy with a jerky bow, she switched her way back to the pew she had left,195and crumpled herself into a space not half wide enough to hold her. The minister rose to lead in prayer. Hannah bowed her head devoutly, trusting in the power of example. She was conscious of the heavy breathing of Margaret beside her, due to the unwonted strain of pressing her chin close to her chest. The minister’s voice droned on and on, but Hannah was sending up a fervent petition of her own, and for a brief space heard nothing. Then–Bang! “I want to sit by Her.” There was a thud of falling bodies, and Elsmere, late but ardent, plumped himself into the place at Hannah’s right, from which he had forcibly removed a little boy with fat red legs, which were now waving in the air. Hannah felt herself as red as the evicted legs, and as the prayer came to an abrupt stop, would have given worlds to be able to flee and hide her mortified face.
At a tap from the bell in the superintendent’s hand, the class slipped to the floor, shook out its skirts and grasped its caps. The organ started up wheezily, and every one burst into song: “See the mighty host advancing, Satan leading on!” as Hannah, heading the wiggling line of wandering-eyed children, got somehow off the platform and into a little basement room which had been equipped for primary work with chairs of varying heights, a great colored chart and a mission map.
There she breathed more freely. Whatever the196next half-hour had in store for her, she would at least be alone with it. These fifteen wigglers had become part of her. She must blush for them as for herself, but they were not onlookers, anyhow. The mere absence of Dorcas’ gaze was refreshment.
There was a brief period of settling into chairs, some mild squabbling over two desirable blue ones, a little dispute as to the privilege of passing the envelope, and at last Hannah found that something definite was expected of her. The chart showed a brightly-colored shepherd holding in his arms a weak lamb.
“Say, won’t that lamb kick him? They’re awful leggy,” suggested an interested youth in the first row.
“I seen a lamb onct,” announced his neighbor, rocking perilously on the two back legs of her chair. “It was a ram lamb and it butted me in my stomach, it did. Hurt. Hurt awful.”
“Huh!” grunted Perdita. “I don’t believe it hurt as much as when my mother sewed my finger in the sewing-machine. Did your stomach bleed?”
“Children,” said Hannah desperately. “Don’t talk, please. No, Peter, not another word from anybody. Now who can tell the Golden Text?”
Dead silence.
“Doesn’t any one know the Golden Text?”
“Miss Smith doesn’t do that way,” suggested some one. “She always says: ‘Peter, you may tell us the Golden Text.’”
197“Very well,” agreed Hannah hurriedly. “Peter, you may tell us the Golden Text.”
“Let me,” cried Elsmere. “I know ’bout lambs. Mary had a little lamb, fleeciswhitissnow.”
“Elsmere,” said Hannah sternly. “I asked Peter to tell us the Golden Text.”
“Mine is a walker,” said Peter loudly.
Hannah looked mystified.
“Pooh!” remarked the Hamilton girl loftily. “That ain’t this Sunday’s. ‘Wine is a mocker’ was to-morrow’s. ’Tain’t this Sunday’s.”
“What is this Sunday’s?” asked Hannah hopefully. “Doesn’t anybody know? ‘I am’–don’t you remember? ‘I am the good–’:
“I am the good–” Peter got so far and then stopped, stolid.
“I know,” cried Elsmere once more. “Put in his thumb, pull out a plum, good boy am I!”
The others snickered, and Hannah bit her lip. “No. ‘I am the good shepherd.’ It was Jesus who said it. Now all of you say it together.”
Lamblike, they followed her lead, and she succeeded in passing over several minutes. But they soon grew restive again, and one little hand pawed the air.
“Well, what is it?”
“The Grahams is coming to our house to dinner.”
“That’s nice. Now we will talk about the shepherd psalm. How many of you know it?”
198There was a moment of doubt. “Shall not want?” ventured one of the older ones presently.
“Yes, that’s it exactly,” said Hannah gladly. “You’ve all heard it lots of times. Now I’ll recite it for you, and then you can tell me what it means.”
With the Bible prudently open to save her from any possible embarrassment at a sudden lapse of memory, she began slowly to recite the psalm, pausing for explanatory comments as she went along.
“I was in a valley onct,” said a sleepy boy, who had contributed nothing so far to the morning’s entertainment. “I fell off’n the dock and the boat was clost up to me, and that was a valley.”
“How’d you get out?” asked several with interest.
“Man pulled me out,” and the speaker subsided.
Hannah stole a glance at her watch, as she finished the psalm. She had strung it out as long as she could, but there were still several minutes to dispose of.
“Now I wonder who can tell me what that was all about?” she asked, with feigned sprightliness. “I think you can, the little girl with the red dress. What’s your name? O, yes, Gwendolen.”
Every one turned to look at Gwendolen. She stuck her finger in her mouth, presumably to stem the tide of speech, for as she withdrew it the words fell out over one another all in one breath.
“Don’t want anyfing to eat. Lay down in the199grass an’ roll. Put kerosene on my head. Can’t git any more in my cup, all spillin’ over.”
The door opened and once more the superintendent tapped his bell. Hannah, with a deep sigh of thankfulness, marshalled her troop and drove them back to their place, taking her martyr’s seat in their midst.
Through the reading of the secretary’s report and the singing of three stanzas of the closing hymn, they behaved fairly well, subdued by the drowsy atmosphere of air unchanged since the morning service. The last stanza of the hymn was nearly sung. Elsmere rose to his feet and plucked Peter by the hair of his head. Hannah cast an appealing glance at the superintendent, who was nearer the offender than herself. He took a quick stride forward, with his hand uplifted, just as the last wailing sound of the hymn died away. His hand on Elsmere’s collar, he observed the congregation standing with bowed heads. They had misinterpreted his gesture. Casting a look of understanding at Hannah, gripping Elsmere tightly, he pronounced the expected benediction, and as the audience broke up into home-going groups, set the boy down with emphasis.
“We don’t usually close with a prayer,” he said to Hannah, “but they thought that was what I meant, when I stepped forward. I nearly throttled the child but–”
200“I think you will be forgiven,” said Hannah firmly. “Miss Smith will be here next Sunday, but I, I am thankful to say, shall not!”
PART THREE
TOGETHER AT LAST
Out on a Dakota prairie, in a corner of a motionless Pullman sat a short girl in a plain blue suit, her grey eyes behind thick glasses bent upon the pages of a red leather book.
“‘Beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness.’” She read the words over and over, and the book fell from her hands as she looked out on the limitless fields. “‘Beauty for ashes.’ What a striking way of putting it! ‘The oil of joy’–why, I wonder what we are stopping here so long for. It doesn’t look like a station.”
And suddenly Alice Prescott sat up straight and looked about her, alert and alive.
The porter came slowly in response to her repeated ring. “What’s the matter? Why, there’s an engine off the track a little ways off, and our crew and engine has gone to help. No, nobody hurt. Just a freight engine. Don’t know how long. Mebbe one hour. Mebbe two.”
“But I’ll miss my connections!”
204“Too bad, Miss.” The porter looked at her with lazy curiosity. The train had already been at a standstill for ten minutes, and every other woman on the car had put him through a catechism long ago. This girl looked awake and practical. How could a porter understand that the mere beauty of words and ideas could render one unconscious to delays in transportation?
Alice rose and walked up and down the aisle. Three women, rather overdressed, were playing cards in a remote section. A man slept in a corner. She went to the door, and seeing groups of passengers standing outside along the track, jumped down from the high step and walked a little, tasting the fresh air with pleasure. The country offered nothing to her gaze. Her eye, accustomed to mountains, found endless level stretches harrowing rather than soothing. She recalled a Dakota girl at Dexter who was always telling of the beauty of the prairie, and longing for it. “I suppose it’s a matter of habit,” she thought to herself. “There is certainly something that kindles your imagination in such a sight. It would be dreary if it weren’t cultivated, but it must be wonderful to see a whole country reclaimed from wildness and made productive. ‘Beauty for ashes’ O!” and with a little shiver of pleasure, she repeated the lines that had so charmed her a few minutes before. “‘The spirit of heaviness.’ What a strange thing to include in the205same message with the vengeance of the Lord! It makes blues and dullness seem so important. It doesn’t say anything here about Christ’s coming to heal bodily suffering or sin, and it does explicitly say he is to cure the blues. Isn’t that interesting?”
Her walk had brought her to the first of the line of day-coaches by this time, and she glanced up at the listless faces leaned against the dirty window-panes. As she passed, each pair of eyes rested wearily on her figure. Suddenly a thought struck her. Blues and dullness! Where were they ever more to the fore than here? She entered the car impulsively and stood looking people over. She spoke to the nearest woman.
“It’s a nuisance having to wait so, isn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to come out for a little walk?”
“No,” snapped the woman, “I wouldn’t.” Alice flushed, then smiled and went on down the aisle. Evidently her mission of good fairy was not going to be successful at the start. “Some people want to be ‘heavy,’” she thought. “I’ll take some one who looks as though she wanted to be lightened up. Here’s one.”
The red-eyed cindery young woman who was curled up in her seat, dabbing her cheeks with a smeary handkerchief, looked as though any change would be a welcome one. Alice stopped resolutely. “Can I do anything for you?” she asked, not at all sure of her reception.
206The girl lifted her eyes and swallowed a sob. “Nobud-d-dy can,” she wailed; “I’m going to be m-m-married!”
Alice’s face twitched. “Won’t you tell me about it?” she asked. “Cheering folks up” was proving an intricate business. “If the garment of praise doesn’t fit any one,” she thought, “I’ll just have to carry it back and wear it myself.”
The bride gulped and spoke again:
“It’s to be to-night and I’ve missed my train at the Junction already, and I don’t know what to do. Everybody was invited and the supper won’t keep, and I lost my solid silver hatpin, anyway.”
“Can’t you come out and walk with me?” suggested Alice. “The air will make you feel better. Bathe your eyes and come.”
Still tearful, but manifestly a little relieved, the bride obeyed and, once out on the prairie, poured forth her tale. She had at the last moment decided she could not bear to be married without a veil, and had gone early in the morning to the nearest town to invest her last money in that frivolity. Fate was against her, however, for there were no veils in the shops, and a persuasive milliner had induced her to give up her cherished notion and buy a hat instead. “And I’m most sure the ribbon’s cotton-back,” she sighed. “I don’t know why I bought it, anyway. That’s always the way with me. I think I know what I’ll get, and then they207coax me into getting something different. Once I went down town to buy me a pair of black stockings, and I got an Alice blue silk waist, instead. Stephen he thinks it’s funny and he says he’ll see to the shopping when we’re married. I wisht he’d come to-day.”
“Wouldn’t it be fun if he had?” said Alice. “There is a minister on the train, and we could have had a lovely wedding out here!”
This romantic idea cheered them both for a time, but its power was brief. There were signs of a tear-shower imminent, and Alice was at her wits’ end for devices to adjust that garment of praise to fit.
Then came a great inspiration. “Let’s walk to the Junction,” she exclaimed. “I’ll go with you, and you can get a team there, and drive home.”
“But you’d miss your train.”
“O, no, I wouldn’t. It has to come right along there behind us, and I could jump on the cow-catcher if it came; but it can’t come without an engine, and there isn’t one in sight, and it’s only two miles to your Junction, you say. That won’t be anything of a walk. Go and get your hat-box.”
The hat-box was not all. Though the journey was to be only a short one, the bride had taken a satchel with her of a type Alice especially loathed. This was a trifle, however, to a spirit so bent on adventure, and Alice seized the “grip” and started off at a brisk pace.
208“I can’t walk so fast,” said the bride fretfully. “My shoes hurt.”
Alice looked from her own broad-soled street shoes to the high-heeled, misshapen things on her companion’s feet. The latter looked at them, too, with pride and affection. “I’m going to wear them at the wedding and I thought that, being they was so tight, I’d best break ’em in a little first.”
“I see,” and Alice moderated her own pace to the hobbling gait of the wedding slippers. Two miles seemed more of an undertaking now and she began to wonder if she had been rash in her suggestion. “I’ll carry it through,” she said to herself. “I know I can, and I won’t back down. We’ll get tired if we keep going without rests,” she said aloud. “So let’s walk ten minutes and then rest. You can tell by your watch.”
The bride brightened at the allusion to the great plated and chased timepiece suspended from a rhinestone dove very near to her breast-bone. “Steve give me that when we was first engaged,” she explained, and Alice smiled indulgently. “He give me my bracelet for Christmas, and all his friends give me bangles.” She jingled the thing proudly as she spoke. “There’s thirty-four of ’em.”
“Thirty-four friends! He must be a popular man!” said Alice.
“O, he is, awful. And he’s the handsomest! You just ought to see him.”
209“The garment of praise is settling into place without a wrinkle,” thought Alice. “I hope she won’t take it all, for I may need a corner of it myself, to console me for this abominable bag, and the tinkle of that bracelet. I suppose she would think it was finer than the jade one Mrs. Langdon gave me. And I wonder what she would think if she knew my necklace was under my dress, so it wouldn’t show in travelling. O, well, she’s a nice little thing, and I hope Steve will be good to her.”
“I’m afraid you’ll be all beat out helping me,” said the bride remorsefully, as they paused once more for a rest. “I don’t know how I’ll ever thank you, anyhow.”
“O, that’s all right,” and Alice seized the bag and bore it mightily forward.
“O, dear,” sighed the bride presently. “There’s somebody driving this way. I wish they was going the other, and would give us a lift.”
The black speck down the road, which here ran alongside the track, expanded rapidly, developing into a smart buggy with two good horses, and a man driving. He leaned forward as he neared them, and suddenly reined in the horses with a jerk.
“Great Guns!” he shouted, throwing the reins over the dashboard, and leaping out over the wheel.
“It’s Steve,” cried the bride in a rapture, and Alice pinched herself with delight as Steve embraced his lady.
210“However in the world did you get off here?” he asked, releasing her enough to reply.
“How did you?” she answered, and he laughed, “O, I thought I’d drive over to the Junction to meet you and carry you home, and I heard about the train being stalled out here and couldn’t get out for hours, so I drove on, that’s all. But the idea of you hoofing it in!” He put his head back and laughed loudly.
His fiancée then remembered Alice and introduced her, telling Steve of her kind interest. He was all cordiality, and offered to give her a ride back to the train.
“No, no,” she protested. “I love to walk. And do hurry along home and have the wedding. I’m so glad it all turned out all right; and you’re feeling happier, aren’t you?” she asked the girl.
Steve put his arm around his little bride gently. “I guess she won’t ever feel bad again. I shan’t let her go off alone any more. And thank you for what you done. I shan’t forget it. Say, couldn’t you stop off now for the wedding?”
“O, do,” begged the bride, and Alice had to refuse tenderly. She watched them get into the buggy, and drive happily away, waving to her as they did so. Then she turned back to her train, and her own car.
One of the card-playing women was tired and inclined to be sociable. So Alice sat with her, by211invitation, and listened to the history of her family’s diseases and operations, and her difficulties with servants, till the train was started once more and the rumble of the cars resumed their interrupted song of “Getting nearer, getting nearer.”
“I must hear it that way every minute,” Alice thought, as she took her own seat again, and while the lamps were lighted, watched in the windows not the rushing landscape but her own face. “It would be so easy to hear ‘Getting farther,’ and think of leaving home for nine whole months, but I’ll just remember Hannah and Catherine and Frieda and dear Dexter,–and that will keep the garment from slipping off my shoulders.”
On the second afternoon after Alice’s arrival, the four girls walked down to the post-office to mail their letters, Catherine having written to Miss Lyndesay, while the other three wrote to their mothers. Now, pleasantly conscious of duty performed, they strolled idly along the street.
It was “library afternoon” and Catherine had a book to exchange for a busy neighbor, who much enjoyed the library privileges, but seldom had time to choose her own books. The girls turned in at the library door, which was hospitably open. Several people were waiting at the desk, while Algernon busily attended to their wants. Catherine laid down her book and went over to the fiction shelves to find something to take its place. The other girls wandered about, looking at the soldierly rows of books, and at the effective picture bulletin which Bess had made to celebrate the Fourth of July, a list of patriotic books under crossed flags,–turned the pages of the half dozen magazines on the reading-table, and then, by common consent gathered213in the little alcove devoted to children’s books.
“Three copies ofAlice in Wonderland!” exclaimed Alice. “That seems a rather large proportion!”
Catherine, who had securedFriendship Village, and was rejoicing in her good fortune, answered the criticism.
“You see, each member of the club selected a book for the first order, and Dot and Max both choseAliceand neither would give up, so we finally ordered two; and then somebody gave us a copy afterward.”
“What did you choose?”
Catherine laughed. “Can’t you guess?”
Hannah pounced on a big copy of Pyle’sRobin Hood.
“This, of course. Do you remember how you gave it to me to read the first evening I was at your house?”
Frieda had been looking the shelves over as if seeking something, and now straightened up, disappointed.
“Nowhere is there theLaetus Sorte Meabook,” she said sadly.
“That’s so!” exclaimed Catherine, regretfully. “We’ll put it on the suggestion list at once. Do you see any other lack, any of you?”
They all laughed, looking about at the few hundred volumes on the shelves, but Frieda said earnestly:
214“There are many Germans here, Dr. Harlow told me. And the older ones cannot read English. Can they have no share in the library?”
“That’s right,” said Alice. “They are taxpayers and I should think you ought to get a few German books every year, Catherine. It’s done in other places.”
Algernon was at liberty for a moment, and came over to the group.
“Are we talking too much?” asked Catherine.
“No, no. There’s no one at the reading-table. What are you discussing?”
“Frieda thinks there should be German books here for the people in town who can’t read English.”
“There ought,” said Algernon gravely. “But I don’t know what to order. I don’t want to start out with Goethe and Schiller. I asked the German minister, and he gave a list of religious books, but that isn’t what we want, either.”
Frieda’s eyes shone. “Please let me make you a list,” she said eagerly. “And I have two or three books in my trunk which I would gladly give, O, gladly.”
Algernon’s pleasure was as great as her own.
“That would be simply bully! We can order one each time we send for new books, and it won’t be long before we have a good supply. I say, Catherine, would you mind taking the desk for a few minutes? There come the program committee215of the Study Club, and I ought to be free to talk with them.”
Catherine consented willingly, always liking to manipulate the simple machinery of the loan desk. Frieda sat down at once with a pencil and paper to make out her list, and Alice and Hannah helped themselves to magazines and waited.
Catherine looked about her at the little room and her heart swelled with pride and pleasure. So much had come of her thought of making Algernon useful. He was already quite a different person, with a dignity that became him well. The pile of cards in the charging tray before her showed that the library was being used by a goodly number of borrowers. The program committee was evidence that part, at least, of its use, was for more than mere recreation.
“O, I am so glad, so glad!” sang Catherine’s heart. “There are so many things to be glad about. And see my dear, dear Wide-Awakes. I think they really are the most beautiful girls I ever beheld!”
A stranger might have thought that rather an extravagant speech, for Catherine herself was the only one of the four who could be called beautiful. But Frieda’s face was unusual and interesting, Alice’s sweet, though plain, and Hannah’s the sort that always called for a second glance and a smile of pleasure.
“Have you anything in the library on the Past,216the Present and the Future?” asked a voice, and Catherine stopped her musing.
“The what?” she asked, not believing her ears. She had been thinking of the past, the present and the future as she watched her three friends’ faces, but that was quite a different matter.
“I have to write a paper on that subject,” said a complacent young woman, rather showily dressed, “and I thought I’d maybe better read up on it a little.”
“I should think it would be wise,” murmured Catherine. “But I hardly know–the Past, the Present, and the Future of what?”
“Why, not of anything. Just the Past, the Present and the Future,” said the other, with a shade of impatience in her tone. “Maybe I’d better wait till the real librarian is at liberty. He always knows what to give out.”
“Perhaps that would be best,” faltered Catherine. “It is such a very large subject, you know.”
“Yes, that’s why I chose it. I like a large subject. There is so much more to say on it. I wrote on ‘Woman’ last year, but it wasn’t broad enough!”
A little girl, who came in wanting a fairy story, gave Catherine a chance to turn away and hide her amusement. The child wanted to know what the story was about, and before Catherine realized what she was doing, she had her arm about the little girl’s waist, and, kneeling beside the low217table, was showing her the pictures in a beautiful illustratedTanglewood Tales, telling the story of Persephone as that sweet sad tale has seldom been told.
Some one came in and wanted a book, but Catherine did not know it. Alice, who had had some library experience at college, stepped quietly to the desk and served the customer. Hannah dropped her magazine and stole nearer the alcove, listening to the story. Frieda looked up from her writing, as Catherine’s voice, full of wistfulness, came to her ear:
“And Mother Ceres wandered and wandered over the face of the earth, but there was not any Persephone anywhere. And the grass forgot to grow, and the flowers forgot to blossom, and the wheat withered and died, for Mother Ceres’ heart was broken. How could she care for other things, when Persephone was gone?”
The members of the program committee, one by one, paused in their busy searching through Poole’s Index, and waited while the sweet voice went on:
“And poor little Persephone was lonely down in the dark king’s palace underground. She pined and pined, and would not eat or be comforted. And the poor King was sad, too. He wanted a little girl so badly, you know, and now that he had found one, he could not make her happy. It is a terrible thing not to be able to make people happy!”
218The little girl cuddling close to Catherine, her eyes turning only from the pictured page to Catherine’s face, sighed softly.
Algernon, watching and listening to the story of the tempting pomegranate, suddenly drew a deep breath, and his face lighted up as it always did when a new idea came to him.
“And then Quicksilver hurried her away, past the fierce dog with the three terrible heads, and up to the world again. Such a dry parched world! Not any green grass, not a single, flower. Not a single corn-stalk or spear of wheat. And poor old Mother Ceres sitting at home on her door-step, weary and sad and hopeless, wishing for her own little girl. And what do you think? As Persephone and Quicksilver walked along, pretty fast, you may be sure, for you can think how eager the little girl was to see her dear mother again, all along the sides of the path where they walked, the grass turned green and the flowers began to blossom and nod, and the corn-stalks lifted up their heads and waved new tassels, and the wheat sprang up, and the trees put out fresh leaves, and the birds sang, and the little dried-up brooks began to run and ripple over stones. And Mother Ceres, sitting and looking out over the dry brown world, suddenly saw a green glow over everything and she stood up, very angry, and said: ‘Does the earth disobey me? I said that if the earth should ever grow green again,219it should be along the path by which my daughter should come back to my arms.’
“And then a sweet child voice said: ‘Open your arms, dear Mother, for I have come back to you, and all the earth is green and blossoming!’”
The little girl threw her arms around Catherine’s neck and kissed her.
“O, I’m so glad she came back,” she cried. “Tell me about it again.”
Catherine smiled but her eyes were dreamy still. Algernon made his way over to her.
“You found my vocation for me,” he said eagerly, “and now I’ve found yours. We’ll have a story-hour in this library hereafter,–with bars up to keep the grown-ups out! You’re better than the professional I heard at Madison.”
Catherine looked bewildered, but Alice took her hand and squeezed it.
“I knew you could. I heard you once ‘telling’ to Jonathan Edwards out under the hemlocks when you thought no one else was listening. It’s a glorious gift, dear, and I feel sure you’ll do wonders with it some day. See! Hannah and Frieda are almost crying! Come on, girls. She doesn’t even know what she has done. We’ll have to take her home and have her mother explain it!”
Catherine revived from her dazed condition sufficiently to protest against being led out of the door, and the four went gayly up the hill together;220but Catherine’s mind was intent on the suggestion which Algernon had made. “Professional? Work? A vocation? Anything so simple and delightful, andnaturalas telling stories? CouldIdo something that would make lots of people happier and better, as Aunt Clara’s pictures do, and Mother’s work and Father’s?” The bliss of the idea was quite too much for her, and she broke away from the others, exclaiming:
“I’ll race you all to the porch steps. One, two, three, scramble!”
Dr. Helen, dismissing her last patient at the office door, glanced into the waiting-room. To her surprise, she saw Alice sitting there with a magazine in her hand.
“Why, my dear, what is wrong? Are you ill? Come in here.” Alice rose and followed her into the little white room.
“Nothing is wrong. I wanted to see you alone for a few minutes, and I thought this was the best way to do it. Are you quite free now?”
“Entirely. Sit down in this comfortable chair. I was startled. To have you fall ill after a week with us would be distressing.”
“It has been such a dear week!” sighed Alice. “And I’ve rested all the time and have loved being with the girls. No, I’m quite well. But I had a letter from Mrs. Langdon, at Dexter, you know, just before I left home, and she told me I might tell you, if I cared to, what she has never let me tell any one outside the family,–that is, that I am one of the girls she is helping through college. I’m222glad she said I might, for I’ve often wished Catherine knew, and it will be next best if you do.”
“It is a rather trying condition of Mrs. Langdon’s,” said Dr. Helen sympathetically, “and sometimes creates difficult situations for the girls concerned, but I long ago gave up hope that she would ever change her ways. I quite understand how you feel, because, during my last two years at Dexter, I was one of her girls, too.”
“You?” Alice’s tone expressed the deepest surprise, and Dr. Helen continued.
“My father could not afford to send me, and I earned the money for my first two years, and was struggling along, trying to spend several hours a day earning money and at the same time to keep up with my work, when Mrs. Langdon, who was staying at home that winter, heard about me from friends. She helped me finish my college course, and gave me substantial aid in taking my professional course. I repaid the money afterward, but I couldn’t repay the kindness.”
“She is wonderfully kind,” said Alice, “though her queer ways make you forget it sometimes. I had had letters from her before I left home the first year, of course, about the business part, and I went on, feeling that I wasn’t going entirely among strangers, but she paid no attention to me at all. It was only by chance that I met her in the spring through Hannah.”
223“Poor child! You must have been much disappointed and very lonely at first. But she is a friend worth having, in spite of her peculiarities. I am glad she let you share your secret with me. Did she say anything about her own health when she wrote? I almost never hear from her.”
“Not a word. But she asked me to call on her old friend, Madam Kittredge, while I was here.”
“She is our pastor’s mother, a beautiful woman, and nearly blind. You must certainly call. Catherine always makes the rounds of the old ladies among our patients once a summer, and she loves to go to Madam Kittredge’s. She must take you. I wonder–What is that? Come!”
A rustling of skirts and the sound of whispers was heard in the waiting-room. In answer to the doctor’s invitation, the door was slowly opened, and Hannah put her head in at the crack, Frieda’s appearing just below it, and Catherine’s just above.
“Well, here you are!” cried Hannah. “We’ve been searching the house from attic to cellar for Alice, and finally had an inspiration and came here.”
“Anything so exclusive as this,” remarked Catherine, as she entered, “makes the rest of us jealous.”
“Fearfully chealous,” said Frieda earnestly, putting her arm around Alice’s neck, and perching on the arm of her chair.
Hannah and Catherine sat down on the window-seat,224pushing the curtains out of the way as they did so.
“Mother really wanted to have her office curtains made of antiseptic gauze,” said Catherine. “Why don’t you two say anything?”
“You interrupted me just as I was having an inspiration,” said her mother.
“O, what a pity,” sighed Hannah. “Because Catherine is bored.”
“Bored? Catherine? Did she tell you so?”
“Yes, I did,” said Catherine stoutly. “I knew they were, too; and I thought if I owned up that I was, they would say they were, but they won’t.”
“Incorruptible politeness!” said Dr. Helen. “How do you account for your own sudden ennui?”
“It’s not just to-day,” said Catherine. “I really think my life is rather dull, anyhow. Of course, having the girls here is quite an event, but I wish there were big, exciting things I had to do or see to. Mending, and helping Inga make salads and beds, and even going to college is tiresome. Just what every one else does. And the worst of it is that every one expects me to be enthusiastic all the time!”
They all laughed at Catherine’s disconsolate tone, but Dr. Helen looked professional. “This heat is enough to make any one cross,” she said. “I suppose the rest of you feel the same way, but, being guests, don’t dare say so?”
225“Do prescribe for us, Dr. Helen,” begged Hannah. “I don’t feel especially bored just now, but I often do. Going to Europe was the only event in my life!”
“And going to college in mine!” said Alice.
“Coming here is all that has ever happened to me,” said Frieda solemnly.
“You poor things! It is a serious state of affairs. I suppose you pine for kidnappers, or lovers or financial difficulties or fearful illnesses or Arctic explorations.”
“Exactly!” cried Catherine. “Especially the last, on a day like this. But, really, Mother, of course, I don’t feel as I said more than once in a great while, and I was talking to amuse myself; but can’t you suggest something for us to do this afternoon? The more we lie around and keep cool, the warmer we grow. The Boat Club seems to have tired of picnics, and I want to do something while Alice is here,–something really interesting and pleasant to remember, something we didn’t plan ourselves.”
“Yes, do tell us something,” the others pleaded.
Dr. Helen drew a prescription pad to her.
“Don’t talk,” she said, “while I am thinking. I’ll undertake the case, if you will all agree to follow orders exactly, and in case of a relapse, to remember and act upon the spirit of to-day’s prescription.”
“Agreed!” they chorused, and then sat in silence226and watched her hand as it moved over the little sheets. These she folded like powder-papers, endorsed on the outside, and handed over to her patients.
“To be taken at half-past three o’clock, in good spirits and your prettiest afternoon frock,” read Hannah. “I didn’t suppose that you would prescribe spirits, Dr. Helen! What does yours say, Catherine?”
“They are all alike on the outside,” said Dr. Helen. “Now run away and play. I have telephoning to do, and mustn’t be bothered.”
They bent over her for kisses and danced away, looking anything but bored.
At half-past three, dressed according to orders, they gathered on the porch, and at a signal opened their little papers.
There was a minute of silence, and then their eyes met, annoyed and yet amused a little.
Hannah spoke first.
“Evidently the rest of you aren’t any more fascinated than I am! I didn’t count on going off all by myself to see a stranger! But we asked for a prescription, and we all promised to follow it, so here goes. Doctors always give disagreeable medicine!”
“Mine isn’t unpleasant, except that I have to do it alone,” said Alice. “Which way does Madam Kittredge live, Catherine?”
227“Two doors beyond Dot’s, where we were yesterday. You can’t miss it. I wish I could go with you, but let’s hurry up and get back. Do you know the way to yours, Frieda?”
“It tells the way plainly enough,” said Frieda, grumbling a little. “But I think I wish I were a scientific Christian, like the ones you told me about!”
The others laughed sympathetically.
“Too late to save yourself now,” said Hannah. “Go ahead and get it over, and then we’ll get even with Dr. Helen some way for playing us such a mischievous trick. Good-by. I have to go down town for mine.”
Dr. Helen from her window watched them separate, and smiled. A few minutes later Bert appeared, looking for some one to amuse him.
The doctor told him of the malady that had seized her maidens, and of their quest for healing.
“It’s an epidemic,” said Bert solemnly. “I’ve got it bad, and I saw Arch an hour ago, and he was so low he couldn’t even smile. Said he was going to cut out paper dolls or string buttons, if this kept up. Can’t you prescribe for us, Doctor?”
“Why, yes. Get Archie and bring him up here to supper this evening. Tell him he needn’t smile. Perhaps my ladies-errant may have stories to tell that will ease your pain a little!”
Bert joyfully undertook to bring Archie, and set228off at once while Dr. Helen gave Inga instructions for an especially festive supper, and with her own hands prepared a frozen dessert.
The four girls, who had barely slept apart in the week since Alice’s arrival, were now walking along widely separate paths, each one feeling oddly alone, and yet not wholly disliking the sensation. Catherine, well-used to her mother’s ways and beliefs, smiled to herself as she went off to tell stories and play cat’s cradle with the washerwoman’s little girl, who had a “spine” and had to be “kep’ quiet with high epidemics somethin’ fierce.”
“It’s just like Mother,” she thought. “She knew I was peevish and really needed to be alone. Just as she used to send me to my ‘boudoir’ to pout by myself when I was little. The hours with the girls seem so precious that I can’t bear to lose one, but I suppose I did need to be alone. You know, Mr. Squirrel, or Mr. Oakkitten, as Frieda would call you, what George Herbert said: