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

M >> Mrs. A. D. T. Whitney >> The Other Girls




"Isn't all that about 'inner meanings,'--that words in the Bible
stand for,--Swedenborgian, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Well?" Miss Kirkbright smiled.

"Are you a Swedenborgian?" Sylvie asked the question timidly.

"I believe in the New Church," answered Miss Euphrasia. "But I don't
believe in it as standing apart, locked up in a system. I believe in
it as a leaven of all the churches; a life and soul that is coming
into them. I think a separate body is a mistake; though I like to
worship with the little family with which I find myself most kin. We
should do that without any name. The Lord gave a great deal to
Swedenborg: but when his time comes, He doesn't give all in any one
place, or to any one soul; his coming is as the lightening from the
one part to the other part under heaven. _Lightening_--not
lightning; it is wrongly printed so, I think. He set the sun in the
sky, once and forever, when He came in his Christ; since then, day
after day dawns, everywhere, and uttereth speech; and even night
after night showeth knowledge. I believe in the fuller, more inward
dispensation. Swedenborg illustrated it,--received it, wonderfully;
but many are receiving the same at this hour, without ever having
heard of Swedenborg. For that reason, we may never be afraid about
the truth. It is not here or there. This or that may fail or pass
away, but the Word shall never pass away."

"What a long talk we have had! How did we get into it?"

The car was coming up the slope, half a mile off. They could see the
red top of it rising, and could hear the tinkle of the bell.

"I wish we didn't need to get out!" said Sylvie. "I wish I could
tell it to my mother!"

"Can't you?"

"I'm afraid it wouldn't keep alive,--with me," Sylvie answered, with
a little sigh and shadow. "Not even as these flowers will that I am
taking to her. I can take,--but I can't give, and I always feel so
that I ought to. Mother needs the comfort of it. Why don't you come
and talk to her, Miss Kirkbright?"

"Talk on purpose never does. You and I 'got into it,' as you say.
Perhaps your mother and I might. But I have got over feeling about
such sort of giving--in words--as a duty. Even with people whom I
work among sometimes, who need the very first gift of truth, so
much! We can only keep near and dear to each other, Sylvie, and near
and dear to the Lord. Then there are the two lines; and things that
are equal--or similarly related--to the same thing, are related to
one another. He can make the mark that proves and joins, any time.
Did you know there was Bible in geometry, Sylvie? I very often go to
my old school Euclid for a heavenly comfort."

"I think you go to everything for it--and to everybody with it,"
said Sylvie, squeezing her friend's hand as he left her on the
car-step.

Nothing comes much before we need it. This talk stayed by Sylvie
through months afterwards, if not the word of it, always the subtle
cheer and strength of it, that nestled into her heart underneath all
her upper thinkings and cares of day by day, and would not quite let
them settle down upon the living core of it with a hopeless
pressure.

For the real stress of her new life was bearing upon her heavily.
The first poetry, the first fresh touches with which she had made
pleasant signs about their altered condition, were passed into
established use, and dulled into wornness and commonness. The
difficulties--the grapples--came thick and forceful about her. At
the same time, her reliances seemed slipping away from her.

She had hardly known, any more than her mother, how much the
countenance and friendliness of the Sherrett family had done in
upholding her. It was a link with the old things--the very best of
the old things,--that stood as a continual assurance that they
themselves were not altered--lowered in any way--by their alterings.
This came to Sylvie with an interior confirmation, as it did to Mrs.
Argenter exteriorly. So long as Miss Kirkbright and the Sherretts
indorsed anything, it could not harm them much, or fence them out
altogether from what they had been. Amy Sherrett and Miss Kirkbright
thought well of the Ingrahams, and maintained all their dealings
with them in a friendly--even intimate--fashion. If Sylvie chose to
sit with them of an afternoon, it was no more than Miss Euphrasia
did. Also, the old Miss Goodwyns, who lived up the Turn behind the
maples, were privileged to offer Miss Kirkbright a cup of tea when
she went in there, as she would often for an hour's talk over
knitting work and books that had been lent and read. Sylvie might
well enough do the same, or go to them for hints and helps in her
window-gardening and little ingenuities of housekeeping. Mrs.
Argenter deluded herself agreeably with the notion that the
relations in each case were identical. But what with the Sherretts
and Miss Kirkbright were mere kindly incidents of living, apart
somewhat from the crowd of daily demand and absorption, were to
Sylvie the essential resource and relaxation of a living that could
find little other.

Sylvie let her mother's reading pass, not knowing how far Mrs.
Argenter was able actually to believe in it herself, but clearly and
thankfully recognizing, on her own part the reality,--that she had
these friends and resources to brighten what would else be, after
all, pretty hard to endure.

The Knoxwells and the Kents and old Mrs. Sunderline were hardly
neighbors, as she had meant to neighbor with them. The Knoxwells and
the Kents were a little jealous and suspicious of her overtures, as
she had said, and would not quite let her in. Besides, she did not
draw toward Marion Kent, who came to church with French gilt
bracelets on, and a violently trimmed polonaise, as she did toward
Dot and Ray.

Old Mrs. Sunderline was as nice and cosy as could be but she never
went out herself, and her whole family consisted of herself, her
sister,--Aunt Lora, the tailoress,--and her son, the young
carpenter, whom Sylvie could not help discerning was much noted and
discussed among the womenkind, old and young, as a village--what
shall I say, since I cannot call my honest, manly Frank Sunderline a
village beau? A village _desirable_ he was, at any rate. Of course,
Sylvie Argenter could not go very much to his home, to make a
voluntary intimacy. And all these, if she and they had cared
mutually ever so much, would hare been under Mrs. Argenter's
proscription as mere common work-and-trade people whom nobody knew
beyond their vocations. There was this essential difference between
the baker's daughters whom the Sherrett family noticed exceptionally
and the blacksmith's and carpenter's households, the woman who "took
in fine washing," and her forward, dressy, ambitious girl. Though
the baker's daughters and the good Miss Goodwyns themselves knew all
these in their turn, quite well, and belonged among them. The social
"laying on of hands" does not hold out, like the apostolic
benediction, all the way down.

I began these last long paragraphs with saying, that neither Sylvie
nor her mother had known how far their comfort and acquiescence in
their new life had depended on the "backing up" of the Sherretts.
This they found out when the Sherretts went away that autumn. Amy
was married in October and sailed for England; Rodney was at
Cambridge, and when the country house at Roxeter was closed, Miss
Euphrasia took rooms in Boston for the winter, where her winter work
all lay, and Mr. Sherrett, who was a Representative to Congress,
went to Washington for the session. There were no more calls; no
more pleasant spending of occasional days at the Sherrett Place; no
more ridings round and droppings in of Rodney at the village. All
that seemed suddenly broken up and done with, almost hopelessly.
Sylvie could not see how it was ever to begin again. Next year
Rodney was to graduate, and his father was to take him abroad. These
plans had come out in the talks over Amy's marriage and her leaving
home.

Sylvie was left to her village; she could only go in to the Miss
Goodwyns and down to the bakery; and now that her condescensions
were unlinked from those of Miss Kirkbright, and just dropped into
next-door matter of course, Mrs. Argenter fretted. Marion Kent would
come calling, too, and talk about Mrs. Browning, and borrow
patterns, and ask Sylvie "how she hitched up her Marguerite."

[In case this story should ever be read after the fashion I allude
to shall have disappeared from the catalogues of Butterick and
Demorest, to be never more mentioned or remembered, I will explain
that it is a style of upper dress most eminently un-daisy-like in
expression and effect, and reminding of no field simplicities
whatsoever, unless possibly of a hay-load; being so very much
pitch-forked up into heaps behind.]

Not that Sylvie dressed herself with a pitchfork; she had been
growing more sensible than that for a long time, to say nothing of
her quiet mourning; though for that matter, I have seen bombazine
and crape so voluminously bundled and massed as to remind one of the
slang phrase "piling on the agony." But Marion Kent came to Sylvie
for the first idea of her light loops and touches: then she
developed it, as her sort do, tremendously; she did grandly by the
yard, what Sylvie Argenter did modestly by the quarter; she had a
soul beyond mere nips and pinches. But this was small vexation, to
be caricatured by Miss Kent. Sylvie's real troubles came closer and
harder.

Sabina Bowen went away.

She had not meant to be married until the spring; but she and the
cabinet-maker had had their eyes upon a certain half-house,--neat
and pretty, with clean brown paint and a little enticing gingerbread
work about the eaves and porch,--which was to be vacated at that
time; and it happened that, through some unforeseen circumstances,
the family occupying it became suddenly desirous to get rid of the
remainder of their lease, and move this winter. John came to Sabina
eagerly one evening with the news.

Sabina thought of the long winter evenings, and the bright
double-burner kerosene she had saved up money for; of a little round
table with a red cloth, and John one side of it and she the other;
of sitting together in a pew, and going every Sunday in her
bride-bonnet, instead of getting her every-other-Sunday forenoon and
hurrying home to fricassee Mrs. Argenter's chicken or sweet-bread,
and boil her cauliflower; and so she gave warning the next morning
when she was emptying Mrs. Argenter's bath and picking up the
towels. She steeled herself wisely with choice of time and person;
it would have been hard to tell Miss Sylvie when she came down to
dust the parlor, or into the kitchen to make the little dessert for
dinner.

And now poor Sylvie fell into and floundered in that slough of
despond, the lower stratum of the Irish kitchen element, which if
one once meddles with, it is almost hopeless to get out of; and one
very soon finds that to get out of it is the only hope, forlorn as
it may be.

She had one girl who made sour bread for a fortnight, and then
flounced off on a Monday morning, leaving the clothes in the tubs,
because "her bread was never faulted before, an' faith, she wudn't
pit up biscuits of a Sunday night no more for annybody!" The next
one disposed of all the dish towels in four days, behind barrels and
in the corners of the kettle closet, and complained insolently of
ill furnishing; a third kindled her fire with the clothes-pins; a
fourth wore Mrs. Argenter's cambric skirts on Sunday, "for a finish,
jist to make 'em worth while for the washin'," and trod out the
heels of three pairs of Sylvie's best stockings, for a like
considerate and economical reason. Another declined peremptorily the
use of a flat-iron stand, and burnt out triangular pieces from the
ironing sheet and blanket; and when Sylvie remonstrated with her
about the skirt-board, which she had newly covered, finding her
using it as a cleaning cloth after she had heated her "flats" upon
the coals, she was met with a torrent of abuse, and the assurance
that she "might get somebody else to save her old rags with their
apurns, an' iron five white skirts and tin pairs o' undersleeves a
week for two women, at three dollars an' a half. She had heard
enough about the place or iver she kim intil it, an' the bigger fool
she iver to iv set her fut inside the dooers."

That was it. It came to that pass, now. They "heard about the place
before iver they kim intil it." The Argenter name was up. There was
no getting out of the bog-mire. Sylvie ran the gauntlet of the
village refuse, and had to go to Boston to the intelligence offices.
By this time she hadn't a kitchen or a bedroom fit to show a decent
servant into. They came, and looked, and went away; half-dozens of
them. The stove was burnt out; there was a hole through into the
oven; nothing but an entire new one would do, and a new one would
cost forty dollars. Poor Sylvie toiled and worried; she went to Mrs.
Ingraham and the Miss Goodwyns, and Sabina Galvin, for advice; she
made ash-paste and cemented up the breaches, she hired a woman by
the day, put out washing, and bought bread at the bakehouse. All
this time, Mrs. Argenter had her white skirts and her ruffled
underclothing to be done up. "What could she do? She hadn't any
plain things, and she couldn't get new, and she must be clean."

At New Year's, they owed three hundred dollars that they could not
pay, beside the quarter's rent. They had to take it out of their
little invested capital; they sold ten shares of railroad stock at a
poor time; it brought them eight hundred and seventy-five dollars.
They bought their new stove, and some other things; they hired, at
last, two girls for the winter, at three dollars and two and a half,
respectively; this was a saving to what they had been doing, and
they must get through the cold weather somehow. Besides, Mrs.
Argenter was now seriously out of health. She had had nothing to do
but to fall sick under her troubles, and she had honestly and
effectually done it.

But how should they manage another year, and another? How long would
they have any income, if such a piece was to be taken out of the
principal every six months?

In the spring, Mrs. Argenter declared it was of no use; they must
give up and go to board. They ought to have done it in the first
place. Plenty of people got along so with no more than they had. A
cheap place in the country for the summer would save up to pay for
rooms in town for the winter. She couldn't bear another hot season
in that village,--nor a cold one, either. A second winter would be
just madness. What could two women do, who had never had anything to
provide before, with getting in coal, and wood, and vegetables, and
everything, and snow to be shoveled, and ashes sifted, and fires to
make, and girls going off every Monday morning?

She had just enough reason, as the case stood, for Sylvie not to be
able to answer a word. But the lease,--for another year? What should
they do with that? Would Mr. Frost take it off their hands?

If Sylvie had known who really stood behind Mr. Frost, and how!

The little poem of village living,--of home simpleness and frugal
prettiness,--of _that_, the two first lines alone had rhymed!

They had entered upon the last quarter of their first year when they
came to this united and definite conclusion. That month of May was
harsh and stormy. Nothing could be done about moving until clearer
and finer weather. So the rent was continued, of course, until the
year expired, and in June they would pack up and go away.

Sylvie had been to the doctor, first, and told him about her mother;
and he had called, in a half-friendly, half-professional way, to see
her. After his call, he had had an honest talk with Sylvie.

God sometimes shows us a glimpse of a future trouble that He holds
in his hand, to neutralize the trouble we are immediately under;
even, it may be, to turn it into a quietness and content. When
Sylvie had heard all that Doctor Sainswell had to say, she put away
her money anxiety from off her mind, at once and finally. Nothing
was any matter now, but that her mother should go where she
would,--have what she wanted.

Then she went to see Mr. Frost.

"He would write to his employer," he said; he could not give an
answer of himself.

The answer came in five days. They might relinquish the house at any
moment; they need pay the rent only for the time of their occupancy.
It would suit the owner quite as well; the place would let readily.

Sylvie was happy as she told her mother how nicely it had come out.
She might have been less so, had she seen Mr. Sherrett's face when
he read his agent's letter and replied to it in those three lines
without moving from his seat.

"I might have expected it," he said to himself. "She's a child after
all. But she began so bravely! And it can't help being worse by and
by. Well, one can't live people's lives for them." And he turned
back to his other papers,--his notes of yesterday's debate in the
House.

* * * * *

Early in June, there came lovely days.

Sylvie was very busy. She had kept her two girls with her to the
end, by dint of raising their wages a dollar a week each, for the
remainder of their stay. She had the whole house to go over; even a
year's accumulation is formidable, when one has to turn out and
dispose of everything anew. She began with the attic; the trunks and
the boxes. She had to give away a great deal that would have been of
service had they continued to live quietly on. Two old proverbs
asserted themselves to her experience now, and kept saying
themselves over to her as she worked: "A rolling stone gathers no
moss;" "Three removes are as bad as a fire."

She had come down in her progress as far as the closets of their own
rooms, and the overlooking of their own clothing, when one
afternoon, as, still in her wrapper, she was busy at the topmost
shelves of her mother's wardrobe, with little fear of any but
village calls, and scarcely those, wheels came up the Turn, and
names were suddenly announced.

"Miss Harkbird and Mr. Shoot!"

Sylvie caught in a flash the idea of what the girl ought to have
said. She laughed, she turned red, and the tears very nearly sprang
to her eyes, with surprise, amusement, embarrassment and flurry.

"What _shall_ I do? Give me your hand, Katy! And where on earth _is_
my other dress? Can't you learn to get names right ever, Katy? Miss
Kirkbright and Mr. Sherrett. Say I will be down presently. O, what
hair!"

She was before the glass now; she caught up stray locks and thrust
in hairpins here and there; then she tied a little violet-edged
black ribbon through the toss and rumple, and somehow it looked all
right. Anyway, her eyes were brilliant; the more brilliant for that
cloudiness beneath which they shone.

Her eyes shone and her lips trembled, as she came into the room and
told Miss Euphrasia how glad she was to see them. For she remembered
then why she was so glad; she remembered the things she had longed
to go to Miss Euphrasia with, all the hard winter and doubtful
spring.

"We are going away, you see," she told her presently. "Mother must
have a change. It does not suit her here in any way. We are going to
Lebanon for a little while; then we shall find some quiet place, in
the mountains, perhaps. In the winter, we shall have to board in the
city. Mother can't be worried any longer; she must have what she
wants."

Miss Kirkbright glanced round the pretty parlor, as yet undisturbed;
at all that, with such labor, Sylvie had arranged into a home a year
ago.

"What a care for you, dear! What will you do with everything?"

"We are going to store some of our furniture, and sell some. Dot
Ingraham is to take my plants for me till we come back to Boston;
then I shall have them in our rooms. I hope the gas won't kill
them."

Rodney Sherrett said nothing after the first greeting for some
minutes. He only sat and listened, with a sober shadow in his
handsome eyes. All this was so different from anything he had
anticipated.

By and by, in a little pause, he told her that he had come out to
ask her for Class Day.

"I wouldn't just send a card for the spread," said he. "Aunt
Euphrasia wants you to go with her. I'm in the Reward of Merit list,
you see; I've earned my good time; been grinding awfully all winter.
I've even got a part for Commencement. Only a translation; and it
probably won't be called; but wouldn't you like to hear it, if it
were?"

"O, I wish I could!" said Sylvie, replying in earnest good faith to
the question he asked quizzically for a cover to his real eagerness
in letting her know. "I _wish_ I could! But we shall be gone."

"Not before Class Day?"

"Yes; just about then. I'm so sorry."

Rod Sherrett looked very much as if he thought he had "ground" for
nothing.

Then they talked about Lebanon, and the new Vermont Springs; perhaps
Mrs. Argenter would go to some of them in July. Miss Kirkbright told
Sylvie of a dear little place she had found last year, in the edge
of the White Mountain country; "among the great rolling hills that
lead you up and up," she said, "through whole counties of wonderful
wild beauty; the sacred places of simple living that can never be
crowded and profaned. It is a nook to hide away in when one gets
discouraged with the world. It consoles you with seeing how great
and safe the world is, after all; how the cities are only dots that
men have made upon it; picnicking here and there, as it were, with
their gross works and pleasures, and making a little rubbish which
the Lord could clean all away, if He wanted, with one breath, out of
his grand, pure heights."

All the while Sylvie and Rodney had their own young disappointed
thoughts. They could not say them out; the invitation had been given
and been replied to as it must be; this was only a call with Aunt
Euphrasia; everything that they might have in their minds could not
be spoken, even if they could have seen it quite clearly enough to
speak; they both felt when the half hour was over, as if they had
said--had done--nothing that they ought, or wanted to. And neither
knew it of the other; that was the worst.

When Rodney at last went out to untie his horse, Miss Euphrasia
turned round to Sylvie with a question.

"Is this all quite safe and easy for you, dear?"

"Yes," returned Sylvie, frankly, understanding her. "I have given up
all that worry. There is money enough for a good while if we don't
mind using it. And it is _mother's_ money; and Dr. Sainswell says
she _cannot_ have a long life."

Sylvie spoke the last sentence with a break; but her voice was clear
and calm,--only tender.

"And after that?" Miss Kirkbright asked, looking kindly into her
face.

"After that I shall do what I can; what other girls do, who haven't
money. When the time comes I shall see. All that comes hard to
me--after mother's feebleness--is the changing; the not staying of
anything anywhere. My life seems all broken and mixed up, Miss
Kirkbright. Nothing goes right on as if it belonged."

"'Lo, it is I; be not afraid,'" repeated Miss Kirkbright softly.
"When things work and change, in spite of us, we may know it is the
Lord working. That is the comfort,--the certainty."

The tenderness that had been in heart and voice sprang to tears in
Sylvie's eyes, at that word.

"How _do_ you think of such things?" she said, earnestly. "I shall
never forget that now."

Aunt Euphrasia could not help telling Rodney as they drove away
toward the city, how brave and good the child was. She could not
help it, although, wise woman that she was, she refrained carefully,
in most ways, from "putting things in his head."

"I knew it before," was Rodney's answer.

Aunt Euphrasia concluded, at that, in her own mind, that we may be
as old and as wise as we please, but in some things the young people
are before us; they need very little of our "putting in heads."

"Aunt Effie," said Rodney, presently, "do you think I have been a
very great good-for-nothing?"

"No, indeed. Why?"

"Well, I certainly haven't been good for much; and I'm not sure
whether I could be. I don't know exactly what to think of myself. I
haven't had anything to do with _horses_ this winter; I sent Red
Squirrel off into the country. What is the reason, Auntie, that if a
fellow takes to horses, they all think he is going straight to the
bad? What is there so abominable about them?"

"Nothing," said Miss Kirkbright. "On the contrary, everything grand
and splendid,--in _type_,--you know. Horses are powers; men are made
to handle powers, and to use them; it is the very manliest instinct
of a man by which he loves them. Only, he is terribly mistaken if he
stops there,--playing with the signs. He might as well ride a
stick, or drive a chair with worsted reins, as the little ones do,
all his life."

Rodney's face lit straight up; but for a whole mile he made no
answer. Then he said, as people do after a silence,--

"How quiet we are, all at once! But you have a way of finishing up
things, Aunt Euphrasia. You said all I wanted in about fifty words,
just now. I begin to see. It may be just because I _might_ do
something, that I haven't. Aunt Euphrasia, I've done being a boy,
and playing with reins. I'm going to be a man, and do some real
driving. Do you know, I think I'd better not go to Europe with my
father?"

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