Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney - The Other Girls

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THE OTHER GIRLS

By

MRS. A. D. T. WHITNEY

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1893

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1873, by
JAMES R. OSGOOD AND COMPANY,
in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington.

* * * * *

By Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney.

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* * * * *

PREFACE.

"Wait until you are helped, my dear! Don't touch the pie until it is
cut!"

The old Mother, Life, keeps saying that to us all.

As individuals, it is well for us to remember it; that we may not
have things until we are helped; at any rate, until the full and
proper time comes, for courageously and with right assurance helping
ourselves.

Yet it is good for _people_, as people, to get a morsel--a
flavor--in advance. It is well that they should be impatient for the
King's supper, to which we shall all sit down, if we will, one day.

So I have not waited for everything to happen and become a usage,
that I have told you of in this little story. I confess that there
are good things in it which have not yet, literally, come to pass. I
have picked something out of the pie beforehand.

I meant, therefore, to have laid all dates aside; especially as I
found myself a little cramped by them, in re-introducing among these
"Other Girls" the girls whom we have before, and rather lately,
known. Lest, possibly, in anything which they have here grown to, or
experienced, or accomplished, the sharply exact reader should seem
to detect the requirement of a longer interval than the almanacs
could actually give, I meant to have asked that it should be
remembered, that we story-tellers write chiefly in the Potential
Mood, and that tenses do not very essentially signify. It will all
have had opportunity to be true in eighteen-seventy-five, if it have
not had in eighteen-seventy-three. Well enough, indeed, if the
prophecies be justified as speedily as the prochronisms will.

The Great Fire, you see, came in and dated it. I could not help
that; neither could I leave the great fact out.

Not any more could I possibly tell what sort of April days we should
have, when I found myself fixed to the very coming April and Easter,
for the closing chapters of my tale. If persistent snow-storms fling
a falsehood in my face, it will be what I have not heretofore
believed possible,--a _white_ one; and we can all think of balmy
Aprils that have been, and that are yet to be.

With these appeals for trifling allowance,--leaving the larger need
to the obvious accounting for in a largeness of subject which no
slight fiction can adequately handle,--I give you leave to turn the
page.

A. D. T. W.
BOSTON, _March_, 1873.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER
I. SPILLED OUT
II. UP-STAIRS
III. TWO TRIPS IN THE TRAIN
IV. NINETY-NINE FAHRENHEIT
V. SPILLED OUT AGAIN
VI. A LONG CHAPTER OF A WHOLE YEAR
VII. BEL AND BARTHOLOMEW
VIII. TO HELP: SOMEWHERE
IX. INHERITANCE
X. FILLMER AND BYLLES
XI. CHRISTOFERO
XII. LETTERS AND LINKS
XIII. RACHEL FROKE'S TROUBLE
XIV. MAVIS PLACE CHAPEL
XV. BONNY BOWLS
XVI. RECOMPENSE
XVII. ERRANDS OF HOPE
XVIII. BRICKFIELD FARMS
XIX. BLOSSOMING FERNS
XX. "WANTED"
XXI. VOICES AND VISIONS
XXII. BOX FIFTY-TWO
XXIII. EVENING AND MORNING: THE SECOND DAY
XXIV. TEMPTATION
XXV. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE PREACHING
XXVI. TROUBLE AT THE SCHERMANS'
XXVII. BEL BREE'S CRUSADE: THE TAKING OF JERUSALEM
XXVIII. "LIVING IN"
XXIX. WINTERGREEN
XXX. NEIGHBOR STREET AND GRAVES ALLEY
XXXI. CHOSEN: AND CALLED
XXXII. EASTER LILIES
XXXIII. KITCHEN CRAMBO
XXXIV. WHAT NOBODY COULD HELP
XXXV. HILL-HOPE

THE OTHER GIRLS

CHAPTER I.

SPILLED OUT.

Sylvie Argenter was driving about in her mother's little
basket-phaeton.

There was a story about this little basket-phaeton, a story, and a
bit of domestic diplomacy.

The story would branch away, back and forward; which I cannot, right
here in this first page, let it do. It would tell--taking the little
carriage for a text and key--ever so much about aims and ways and
principles, and the drift of a household life, which was one of the
busy little currents in the world that help to make up its great
universal character and atmosphere, at this present age of things,
as the drifts and sweeps of ocean make up the climates and
atmospheres that wrap and influence the planet.

But the diplomacy had been this:--

"There is one thing, Argie, I should really like Sylvie to have. It
is getting to be almost a necessity, living out of town as we do."

Mr. Argenter's other names were "Increase Muchmore;" but his wife
passed over all that, and called him in the grace of conjugal
intimacy, "Argie."

Increase Muchmore Argenter.

A curious combination; but you need not say it could not have
happened. I have read half a dozen as funny combinations in a single
advertising page of a newspaper, or in a single transit of the city
in a horse-car.

It did not happen altogether without a purpose, either. Mr.
Argenter's father had been fond of money; had made and saved a
considerable sum himself; and always meant that his son should make
and save a good deal more. So he signified this in his cradle and
gave him what he called a lucky name, to begin with. The wife of the
elder Mr. Argenter had been a Muchmore; her only brother had been
named Increase, either out of oddity, such as influenced a certain
Mr. Crabtree whom I have heard of, to call his son Agreen, or
because the old Puritan name had been in the family, or with a like
original inspiration of luck and thrift to that which influenced the
later christening, if you can call it such; and now, therefore,
resulted Increase Muchmore Argenter. The father hung, as it were, a
charm around his son's neck, as Catholics do, giving saints' names
to their children. But young Increase found it, in his earlier
years, rather of the nature of a millstone. It was a good while, for
instance, before Miss Maria Thorndike could make up her mind to take
upon herself such a title. She did not much mind it now. "I.M.
Argenter" was such a good signature at the bottom of a check; and
the surname was quite musical and elegant. "Mrs. Argenter" was all
she had put upon her cards. There was no other Mrs. Argenter to be
confounded with. The name stood by itself in the Directory. All the
rest of the Argenters were away down in Maine in Poggowantimoc.

"Living out of town as we do." Mrs. Argenter always put that in. It
was the nut that fastened all her screws of argument.

"Away out here as we are, we _must_ keep an expert cook, you know;
we can't send out for bread and cake, and salads and soups, on an
emergency, as we did in town." "We _must_ have a seamstress in the
house the year round; it is such a bother driving about a ten-mile
circuit after one in a hurry;" and now,--"Sylvie _ought_ to have a
little vehicle of her own, she is so far away from all her friends;
no running in and out and making little daily plans, as girls do in
a neighborhood. All the girls of her class have their own
pony-chaises now; it is a part of the plan of living."

"It isn't any part of _my_ plan," said Mr. Argenter, who had his
little spasms of returning to old-fashioned ideas he was brought up
in, but had long ago practically deserted; and these spasms mostly
took him, it must be said, in response to new propositions of Mrs.
Argenter's. His own plans evolved gradually; he came to them by
imperceptible steps of mental process, or outward constraint; Mrs.
Argenter's "jumped" at him, took him at unawares, and by sudden
impinging upon solid shield of permanent judgment struck out sparks
of opposition. She could not very well help that. He never had time
to share her little experiences, and interests, and perplexities,
and so sympathize with her as she went along, and up to the agreeing
and consenting point.

"I won't set her up with any such absurdities," said Mr. Argenter.
"It's confounded ruinous shoddy nonsense. Makes little fools of them
all. Sylvie's got airs enough now. It won't do for her to think she
can have everything the Highfords do."

"It isn't that," said Mrs. Argenter, sweetly. Her position, and the
soft "g" in her name, giving her a sense of something elegant and
gentle-bred to be always sustained and acted up to, had really
helped and strengthened Mrs. Argenter in very much of her
established amiability. We don't know, always, where our ties and
braces really are. We are graciously allowed many a little temporary
stay whose hold cannot be quite directly raced to the everlasting
foundations.

"It isn't _that_; I don't care for the Highfords, particularly.
Though I do like to have Sylvie enjoy things as she sees them
enjoyed all around her, in her own circle. But it's the convenience;
and then, it's a real means of showing kindness. She can so often
ask other girls, you know, to drive with her; girls who haven't
pony-chaises."

"_Showing_ kindness, yes; you've just hit it there. But it isn't
always _fun to the frogs_, Mrs. A.!"

Now if Mrs. Argenter disliked one thing more than another, that her
husband ever did, it was his calling her "Mrs. A.;" and I am very
much afraid, I was going to say, that he knew it; but of course he
did when she had mildly told him so, over and over,--I am afraid he
_recollected_ it, at this very moment, and others similar.

"I don't know what you mean, Mr. Argenter," she said, with some
quiet coldness.

"I mean, I know how she takes _other_ girls to ride; she _sets them
down at the small gray house,--the house without any piazza or bay
window, Michael_!" and Mr. Argenter laughed. That was the order he
had heard Sylvie give one day when he had come up with his own
carriage at the post-office in the village, whither he had walked
over for exercise and the evening papers. Sylvie had Aggie Townsend
with her, and she put her head out at the window on one side just as
her father passed on the other, and directed Michael, with a very
elegant nonchalance, to "set this little girl down" as aforesaid.
Mr. Argenter had been half amused and half angry. The anger passed
off, but he had kept up the joke.

"O, do let that old story alone," exclaimed Mrs. Argenter. "Sylvie
will soon outgrow all that. If you want to make her a real lady,
there is nothing like letting her get thoroughly used to having
things."

"I don't intend her to get used to having a pony-chaise," Mr.
Argenter said very quietly and shortly. "If she wants to 'show a
kindness,' and take 'other' girls to ride, there's the slide-top
buggy and old Scrub. She may have that as often as she pleases."

And Mrs. Argenter knew that this ended--or had better end--the
conversation.

For that time. Sylvie Argenter did get used to having a pony-chaise,
after all. Her mother waited six months, until the pleasant summer
weather, when her friends began to come out from the city to spend
days with her, or to take early teas, and Michael had to be sent
continually to meet and leave them at the trains. Then she began
again, and asked for a pony-chaise for herself. To "save the cost of
it in Michael's time, and the wear and tear of the heavy carriages.
Those little sunset drives would be such a pleasure to her, just
when Michael had to be milking and putting up for the night." Mr.
Argenter had forgotten all about the other talk, Sylvie's name now
being not once mentioned; and the end of it was that a pretty little
low phaeton was added to the Argenter equipages, and that Sylvie's
mother was always lending it to her.

So Sylvie was driving about in it this afternoon. She had been over
to West Dorbury to see the Highfords, and was coming round by
Ingraham's Corner, to stop there and buy one of his fresh big loaves
of real brown bread for her father's tea. It was a little unspoken,
politic understanding between Sylvie and her mother, that some
small, acceptable errand like this was to be accomplished whenever
the former had the basket-phaeton of an afternoon. By quiet, unspoken
demonstration, Mr. Argenter was made to feel in his own little
comforts what a handy thing it was to have a daughter flitting about
so easily with a pony-carriage.

But there was something else to be accomplished this time that
Sylvie had not thought of, and that when it happened, she felt with
some dismay might not be quite offset and compensated for by the
Ingraham brown bread.

Rod Sherrett was out too, from Roxeter, Young-Americafying with his
tandem; trying, to-day, one of his father's horses with his own Red
Squirrel, to make out the team; for which, if he should come to any
grief, Rodgers, the coachman, would have to bear responsibility for
being persuaded to let Duke out in such manner.

Just as Sylvie Argenter drew up her pony at the baker's door, Rod
Sherrett came spinning round the corner in grand style. But Duke was
not used to tandem harness, and Red Squirrel, put ahead, took flying
side-leaps now and then on his own account; and Duke, between his
comrade's escapades and his driver's checks and admonitions, was to
that degree perplexed in his mind and excited off his well-bred
balance, that he was by this time becoming scarcely more reliable in
the shafts. Rod found he had his hands full. He found this out,
however, only just in time to realize it, as they were suddenly
relieved and emptied of their charge; for, before his call and the
touch of his long whip could bring back Red Squirrel into line at
this turn, he had sprung so far to the left as to bring Duke and the
"trap" down upon the little phaeton. There was a lock and a crash; a
wheel was off the phaeton, the tandem was overturned, Sylvie
Argenter, in the act of alighting, was thrown forward over the
threshold of the open shop-door, Rod Sherrett was lying in the road,
a man had seized the pony, and Duke and Red Squirrel were shattering
away through the scared Corner Village, with the wreck at their
heels.

Sylvie's arm was bruised, and her dress torn; that was all. She felt
a little jarred and dizzy at first, when Mr. Ingraham lifted her up,
and Rodney Sherrett, picking himself out of the dust with a shake
and a stamp, found his own bones unbroken, and hurried over to ask
anxiously--for he was a kind-hearted fellow--how much harm he had
done, and to express his vehement regret at the "horrid spill."

Rod Sherrett and Sylvie Argenter had danced together at the Roxeter
Assemblies, and the little Dorbury "Germans;" they had boated, and
picknicked, and skated in company, but to be tumbled together into a
baker's shop, torn and frightened, and dusty,--each feeling, also,
in a great scrape,--this was an odd and startling partnership.
Sylvie was pale; Rod was sorry; both were very much demolished as to
dress: Sylvie's hat had got a queer crush, and a tip that was never
intended over her eyes; Rodney's was lying in the street, and his
hair was rumpled and curiously powdered. When they had stood and
looked at each other an instant after the first inquiry and reply,
they both laughed. Then Rodney shrugged his shoulders, and walked
over and picked up his hat.

"It might have been worse," he said, coming back, as Mr. Ingraham
and the man who had held Sylvie's pony took the latter out of the
shafts and led him to a post to fasten him, and then proceeded
together, as well as they could, to lift the disabled phaeton and
roll it over to the blacksmith's shop to be set right.

"You'll be all straight directly," he said, "and I'm only thankful
you're not much hurt. But I _am_ in a mess. Whew! What the old
gentleman will say if Duke don't come out of it comfortable, is
something I'd rather not look ahead to. I must go on and see. I'll
be back again, and if there's anything--anything _more_," he added
with a droll twinkle, "that I can do for you, I shall be happy, and
will try to do it a little better."

The feminine Ingrahams were all around Sylvie by this time: Mrs.
Ingraham, and Ray, and Dot. They bemoaned and exclaimed, and were
"thankful she'd come off as she had;" and "she'd better step right
in and come up-stairs." The village boys were crowding round,--all
those who had not been in time to run after the "smash,"--and Sylvie
gladly withdrew to the offered shelter. Rod Sherrett gave his hair a
toss or two with his hands, struck the dust off his wide-awake, put
it on, and walked off down the hill, through the staring and
admiring crowd.

CHAPTER II.

UP-STAIRS.

The two Ingraham girls had been sitting in their own room over the
shop when the accident occurred, and it was there they now took
Sylvie Argenter, to have her dress tacked together again, and to
wash her face and hands and settle her hair and hat. Mrs. Ingraham
came bustling after with "arnicky" for the bruised arm. They were
all very delighted and important, having the great Mr. Argenter's
daughter quite to themselves in the intimacy of "up-stairs," to wait
upon and take care of. Mrs. Ingraham fussed and "my-deared" a good
deal; her daughters took it with more outward calmness. Although
baker's daughters, they belonged to the present youthful generation,
born to best education at the public schools, sewing-machines, and
universal double-skirted full-fashions; and had read novels of
society out of the Roxeter town library.

There was a good deal of time after the bathing and mending and
re-arranging were all done. The axle of the phaeton had been split,
and must be temporarily patched up and banded. There was nothing for
Sylvie to do but to sit quietly there in the old-fashioned,
dimity-covered easy-chair which they gave her by the front window,
and wait. Meanwhile, she observed and wondered much.

She had never got out of the Argenter and Highford atmosphere
before. She didn't know--as we don't about the moon--whether there
might _be_ atmosphere for the lesser and subsidiary world. But here
she found herself in the bedroom of two girls who lived over a
bake-shop, and, really, it seemed they actually _did_ live, much
after the fashion of other people. There were towels on the stand, a
worked pincushion on the toilet, white shades and red tassels to the
windows, this comfortable easy-chair beside one and a low splint
rocker in the other,--with queer, antique-looking soft footstools of
dark cloth, tamboured in bright colors before each,--white quilted
covers on table and bureau, and positively, a striped, knitted
foot-spread in scarlet and white yarn, folded across the lower end
of the bed.

She had never thought of there being anything at Ingraham's Corner
but a shop on a dusty street, with, she supposed,--only she never
really supposed about it,--some sort of places, behind and above it,
under the same roof, for the people to get away into when they
weren't selling bread, to cook, and eat, and sleep, she had never
exactly imagined how, but of course not as they did in real houses
that were not shops. And when Mrs. Ingraham, who had bustled off
down-stairs, came shuffling up again as well as she could with both
hands full and her petticoats in her way, and appeared bearing a cup
of hot tea and a plate of spiced gingerbread,--the latter _not_ out
of the shop, but home-made, and out of her own best parlor
cupboard,--she perceived almost with bewilderment, that cup and
plate were of spotless china, and the spoon was of real, worn,
bright silver. She might absolutely put these things to her own lips
without distaste or harm.

"It'll do you good after your start," said kindly Mrs. Ingraham.

The difference came in with the phraseology. A silver spoon is a
silver spoon, but speech cannot be rubbed up for occasion. Sylvie
thought she must mean _before_ her start, about which she was
growing anxious.

"O, I'm sorry you should have taken so much trouble," she exclaimed.
"I wonder if the phaeton will be ready soon?"

"Mr. Ingraham he's got back," replied the lady. "He says Rylocks'll
be through with it in about half an hour. Don't you be a mite
concerned. Jest set here and drink your tea, and rest. Dot, I guess
you'd as good's come down-stairs. I shall be wantin' you with them
fly nets. Your father's fetched home the frames."

Ray Ingraham sat in the side window, and crocheted thread
edging,--of which she had already yards rolled up and pinned
together in a white ball upon her lap,--while Sylvie sipped her tea.

The side window looked out into a shady little garden-spot, in the
front corner of which grew a grand old elm, which reached around
with beneficent, beautiful branches, and screened also a part of the
street aspect. Seen from within, and from under these great, green,
swaying limbs,--the same here in the village as out in free field or
forest,--the street itself seemed less dusty, less common, less
impossible to pause upon for anything but to buy bread, or mend a
wheel, or get a horse shod.

"How different it is, in behind!" said Sylvie, speaking out
involuntarily.

Ray shot a quick look at her from her bright dark eyes.

"I suppose it is,--almost everywheres," she answered. "I've got
turned round so, sometimes, with people and places, until they never
seemed the same again."

If Ray had not said "everywheres," Sylvie would not have been
reminded; but that word sent her, in recollection, out to the
house-front and the shop-sign again. Ray knew better; she was a
good scholar, but she heard her mother and others like her talk
vernacular every day. It was a wonder she shaded off from it as
delicately as she did.

Ray Ingraham, or Rachel,--for that was her name, and her sister's
was Dorothy, though these had been shortened into two as charming,
pet little appellatives as could have been devised by the most
elegant intention,--was a pretty girl, with her long-lashed,
quick-glancing dark eyes, her hair, that crimped naturally and fell
off in a deep, soft shadow from her temples, her little mouth,
neatly dimpled in, and the gypsy glow of her clear, bright skin. Dot
was different: she was dark too, not _so_ dark; her eyes were full,
brilliant gray, with thick, short lashes; she was round and
comfortable: nose, cheeks, chin, neck, waist, hands; her mouth was
large, with white teeth that showed easily and broadly, instead of,
like Ray's, with just a quiver and a glimmer. She was like her
mother. She looked the smart, buxom, common-sense village girl to
perfection. Ray had the hint of something higher and more delicate
about her, though she had the trigness, and readiness, and
every-day-ness too.

Sylvie sat silent after this, and looked at her, wondering, more
than she had wondered about the furniture. Thinking, "how many girls
there were in the world! All sorts--everywhere! What did they all
do, and find to care for?" These were not the "other" girls of whom
her mother had blandly said that she could show kindnesses by taking
them to drive. Those were such as Aggie Townsend, the navy captain's
widow's daughter,--nice, but poor; girls whom everybody noticed, of
course, but who hadn't it in their power to notice anybody. That
made such a difference! These were _otherer_ yet! And for all that
they were girls,--girls! Ever so much of young life, and glow, and
companionship, ever so much of dream, and hope, and possible story,
is in just that little plural of five letters. A company of girls!
Heaven only knows what there is _not_ represented, and suggested,
and foreshadowed there!

Sylvie Argenter, with all her nonsense, had a way of putting
herself, imaginatively, into other people's places. She used to tell
her mother, when she was a little child and said her hymns,--which
Mrs. Argenter, not having any very fresh, instant spiritual life, I
am afraid, out of which to feed her child, chose for her in dim
remembrance of what had been thought good for herself when she was
little,--that she "didn't know exactly as she _did_ 'thank the
goodness and the grace that on her birth had smiled.'" She "should
like pretty well to have been a little--Lapland girl with a sledge;
or--a Chinese; or--a kitchen girl; a little while, I mean!"

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