CHAPTER IVTHE SACRIFICE
“Butwhy did she try to make me appear so young?” Beth asked her mother, as they sat side by side busily sewing the afternoon following Larry’s party. “Really, I felt hurt. I cannot understand Mrs. Haven.”
Mrs. Baldwin looked at her eldest daughter thoughtfully—as though, however, her mind were a great way off.
“Why did she, Mother?” repeated Beth.
“I can understand Euphemia,” said Mrs. Baldwin, quietly. “You must not mind her, my dear.”
“But I cannot see why she wants me to seem childish, even if you do, Mother mine,” the girl said, somewhat impatiently.
“I fear one meaning is, that Euphemia feels that Larry would better remember you only as his playfellow when he, too, was a child,” Mrs. Baldwin said. “He is a man now, you know, and must have a man’s feelings as he has a man’s duties to perform.”
“Why, what nonsense, Mother!” exclaimed thegirl, throwing back her head and laughing delightedly. “He is only a great, big boy—that’s all Larry Haven is.”
Mrs. Baldwin shook her head, gravely. “You do not understand the difference between fifteen and twenty-two,” she said.
“Yes, Ma’am, I do,” the girl responded smartly. “I know my arithmetic. It’s seven years—just seven years, Mother mine.”
“That is not the real difference, Beth,” her mother pursued. “The difference is not to be measured by time——”
“No! One would think it were eternity to hear you,” laughed Beth.
Her mother laughed too; yet she was more serious than Beth could see any occasion for.
“There is a freshness and a boyishness about young men—and some men when they become older—that make them seem less mature than quite young girls,” Mrs. Baldwin said, finding it a little difficult to impress her daughter with the change in her whilom playmate.
“Larry Haven has stepped over the line from boyhood to manhood, whether you realize it or not, Beth. There is a vast difference now between you two. You look forward to study and the acquirement of text-book knowledge——”
“Oh! how much!” murmured Beth.
“While he looks back upon his school course. The difference between knowledge wished for, and knowledge attained, is vast. It isn’t measured by mere time, as I said before. It is a difference in the attitude of one’s mind toward most things in the world. However much Larry may seem just the same as he used to be, he is not the same. He is a man grown, and you are only a girl.”
“Oh, Mamma! That is a sharp one,” said Beth, laughing placidly. “I really can’t see that being fifteen instead of twenty-two makes much difference between Larry and me. I can still make him say just the thing I want him to say—I always could. And I can still get the best of him in an argument.”
Mrs. Baldwin had to laugh, although it was not a very cheerful laugh. “Your being able to argue did not come from your studies in school, child, that is sure. You have always been good at that. You would argue now that you and Larry were equal.”
“Oh! I realize our inequality, Mamma,” Beth said sadly. “It’s the difference in our education, not our ages, that troubles me. He may be only a boy, but he’s got something in his head that I haven’t. And oh, Mamma! I want it so!”
“My dear girl!”
“I know. It is wicked, but I must say it. Itold Larry last night that I meant to go to Rivercliff this September. And I mean to! It seems to me that I would sacrifice almost anything for the chance to go there. Imustgo!”
“My dear!”
“Yes. It sounds dreadful, doesn’t it? I just get desperate when I think of how badly I want to learn. And if I don’t become a teacher, what is to become of me? Am I to go into the dye factory to earn my living? Dear Mother! I must earn my living somehow. The children are getting bigger, and need more and more. They must be educated, too. If I could get my teacher’s certificate in three years I could help you all.”
“I know—I know, child,” said her mother. “You would help us if you could.”
“Now I’ve made you cry! I’m so sorry! Do forgive me! But it isn’t that I would help the family if Icould. It is that Imust! Don’t you see it, Mamma? Papa is getting no younger. Already Marcus talks of going to work. Am I better than my brother? The family needs my help as much as it needs his. And I should be able to do more than he.”
“But, my dear——” cried Mrs. Baldwin, surprised by the girl’s earnestness. She began to doubt if her daughter was quite as childish as she had supposed.
“At least,” went on Beth, ignoring her mother’s half-spoken protest, “you must let me go to work this summer to see if I can earn enough, somehow, to pay for my first half, if no more, at Rivercliff.”
“And what after that, daughter?” asked Mrs. Baldwin.
“I don’t know. I am reckless—or inspired!” and Beth laughed shakingly. “A way may be opened. I’ll take a chance.”
“Where can you get work for the summer?” her mother asked gravely.
“Well—I would go into the factory for a short time——”
“Oh, no! what would Larry say? You cannot do that,” her mother cried, with an energy that quite surprised Beth.
“Indeed!” sniffed the girl. “I guess you mean, what would Larry’s mother say? I am not beholden to Mrs. Haven.”
“No,” said Mrs. Baldwin, seriously. “But you would not wish to offend Larry’s mother.”
Beth showed herself puzzled. “Why, not deliberately,” she said. “Of course not. Nor Larry either. But why worry about them more than our other friends? Lots of folks who know us, and in no better circumstances than we are, either, will turn up their noses at me if I go to work in the dye factory. But you know how it is,Mamma. A position in a store or an office is awfully hard to find in Hudsonvale. You wouldn’t want me to go to a summer hotel to be a waitress or a chambermaid?”
“Mercy me, Beth! What are you thinking of?” almost screamed Mrs. Baldwin.
“I’m thinking of making money to pay for my schooling at Rivercliff,” laughed her daughter. “I’ve read of lots of girls who earn their tuition fees by doing those things.”
“But you!”
“Who am I?” asked Beth. “Better than other girls? You’ve taught me to sweep, to dust, to make beds, and to be tidy.”
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Baldwin hastened to say. “Every girl should learn the domestic duties.”
Beth began to giggle at that. “Larry says not. He’s going to hire a cook when he gets married. He forgets that the cook may leave suddenly. I believe they have a way of doing that.”
“For goodness’ sake!” gasped her mother. “What didn’t you and Larry talk about last night?”
“Why—lots of things. We didn’t have much time to really talk. We’ll wait till he comes here to see us to have a really old-fashioned confab together,” Beth said laughing. “But he’s a funny boy!”
“I tell you he is a boy no longer,” Mrs. Baldwin said, a little worried.
“Oh, wait till you see him. He’s just the same old sixpence of a Larry. You’ll see, Mamma. But he is handsome in his dress suit. Doesn’t look at all like an undertaker.”
Mrs. Baldwin, shaking her head, rejoined:
“For you to go to work at any domestic service is out of the question. And your father would never hear to your working in the factory.”
“What shall I do then, Mamma? Peddle? Be an agent? Go from house to house and try to make people buy what they don’t want and don’t need and really would be better off without?” and Beth laughed gaily. “Or shall I go right out with a mask and a club and become a highway robber?”
Her mother had to laugh again at this suggestion. Really, Beth was practical in her ideas. “Much more so than most girls of her age,” thought the troubled mother, with a sigh.
She could not but be impressed with the earnestness of Beth’s desire for an education. She had already had quite as much schooling as Mrs. Baldwin—and Mrs. Euphemia Haven—had been given when they were girls.
“But the world is different now,” sighed the foreman’s wife. “And more is expected of girls. If Euphemia——”
She did not finish her speech—there were some things she could not admit even to herself. But the next afternoon she dressed herself and went out. “Calling,” she told the curious girls. But she refused to say on whom she was to call.
After a sleepless night Mrs. Baldwin had made up her mind that Beth should have her desire if it were possible. By a sacrifice that she could not bring herself to tell even Mr. Baldwin about, she would raise sufficient money to pay for Beth’s first year at Rivercliff. She was quite sure Euphemia Haven would buy her Grandmother Lomis’ corals. For years she had wanted them. And Euphemia would give four hundred dollars for them.
“It is Beth’s sacrifice, not mine,” the mother thought, wiping her eyes before she mounted the walk to the Haven mansion. “And it is to benefit Beth. I am sure the child would rather have a year at school than the jewelry.”
She rang the bell and was admitted by the butler.