PIECES OF WORLDS
Mr. Dickens never put a truer thought
into any book, than he put at the beginning of “Little
Dorrit.”
That, from over land and sea, from
hundreds, thousands of miles away, are coming the
people with whom we are to have to do in our lives;
and that, “what is set to us to do to them, and
what is set for them to do to us, will all be done.”
Not only from far places in this earth,
over land and sea, but from out the eternities,
before and after, from which souls are born,
and into which they die, all the lines of
life are moving continually which are to meet and
join, and bend, and cross our own.
But it is only with a little piece
of this world, as far as we can see it in this short
and simple story, that we have now to do.
Rosamond Holabird was coming down to Boston.
With all her pretty, fresh, delicate,
high-lady ways, with her beautiful looks, and her
sweet readiness for true things and noble living,
she was coming, for a few days only, the
cooperative housekeeping was going on at Westover,
and she could not be spared long, right
in among them here in Aspen Street, and Shubarton
Place, and Orchard Street, and Harrisburg Square, where
Mrs. Scherman lived whom she was going to stay with.
But a few days may be a great deal.
Rosamond Holabird was coming for far
more than she knew. Among other things she was
coming to get a lesson; a lesson right on in a course
she was just now learning; a lesson of next things,
and best things, and real folks.
You see how it happened, where
the links were; Miss Craydocke, and Sin Scherman,
and Leslie Goldthwaite, were dear friends, made to
each other one summer among the mountains. Leslie
had had Sin and Miss Craydocke up at Z ,
and Rosamond and Leslie were friends, also.
Mrs. Frank Scherman had a pretty house
in Harrisburg Square. She had not much time for
paying fashionable calls, or party-going, or party-giving.
As to the last, she did not think Frank had money
enough yet to “circumfuse,” she said, in
that way.
But she had six lovely little harlequin
cups on a side-shelf in her china closet, and six
different-patterned breakfast plates, with colored
borders to match the cups; rose, and brown, and gray,
and vermilion, and green, and blue. These were
all the real china she had, and were for Frank and
herself and the friends whom she made welcome, and
who might come four at once, for day and
night. She delighted in “little stays;”
in girls who would go into the nursery with her, and
see Sinsie in her bath; or into the kitchen, and help
her mix up “little delectabilities to surprise
Frank with;” only the trouble had got to be
now, that the surprise occurred when the delectabilities
did not. Frank had got demoralized, and expected
them. She rejoiced to have Miss Craydocke drop
in of a morning and come right up stairs, with her
little petticoats and things to work on; and she and
Frank returned these visits in a social, cosy way,
after Sinsie was in her crib for the night. Frank’s
boots never went on with a struggle for a walk down
to Orchard Street; but they were terribly impossible
for Continuation Avenue.
So it had come about long ago, though
I have not had a corner to mention it in, that they
“knew the Muffin Man,” in an Aspen Street
sense; and were no strangers to the charm of Mrs. Ripwinkley’s
“evenings.” There was always an “evening”
in the “Mile Hill House,” as the little
family and friendly coterie had come to call it.
Rosamond and Leslie had been down
together for a week once, at the Schermans; and this
time Rosamond was coming alone. She had business
in Boston for a day or two, and had written to ask
Asenath “if she might.” There were
things to buy for Barbara, who was going to be married
in a “navy hurry,” besides an especial
matter that had determined her just at this time to
come.
And Asenath answered, “that
the scarlet and gray, and green and blue were pining
and fading on the shelf; and four days would be the
very least to give them all a turn and treat them
fairly; for such things had their delicate susceptibilities,
as Hans Andersen had taught us to know, and might
starve and suffer, why not? being made of
protoplasm, same as anybody.”
Rosamond’s especial errand to
the city was one that just a little set her up, innocently,
in her mind. She had not wholly got the better, when
it interfered with no good-will or generous dealing, of
a certain little instinctive reverence for imposing
outsides and grand ways of daily doing; and she was
somewhat complacent at the idea of having to go, with
kindly and needful information, to Madam
Mucklegrand, in Spreadsplendid Park.
Madam Mucklegrand was a well-born
Boston lady, who had gone to Europe in her early youth,
and married a Scottish gentleman with a Sir before
his name. Consequently, she was quite entitled
to be called “my lady;” and some people
who liked the opportunity of touching their republican
tongues to the salt of European dignitaries, addressed
her so; but, for the most part, she assumed and received
simply the style of “Madam.” A queen
may be called “Madam,” you know.
It covers an indefinite greatness. But when she
spoke of her late, very long ago, husband,
she always named him as “Sir Archibald.”
Madam Mucklegrand’s daughter
wanted a wet-nurse for her little baby.
Up in Z , there
was a poor woman whose husband, a young brakeman on
the railroad, had been suddenly killed three months
ago, before her child was born. There was a sister
here in Boston, who could take care of it for her
if she could go to be foster-mother to some rich little
baby, who was yet so poor as this to need
one. So Rosamond Holabird, who was especially
interested for Mrs. Jopson, had written to Asenath,
and had an advertisement put in the “Transcript,”
referring to Mrs. Scherman for information. And
the Mucklegrand carriage had rolled up, the next day,
to the house in Harrisburg Square.
They wanted to see the woman, of course,
and to hear all about her, more than Mrs.
Scherman was quite able to tell; therefore when she
sent a little note up to Z , by
the evening mail, Rosamond replied with her “Might
she come?”
She brought Jane Jopson and the baby
down with her, left them over night at Mrs. Ginnever’s,
in Sheafe Street, and was to go for them next morning
and take them up to Spreadsplendid Park. She had
sent a graceful, polite little note to Madam Mucklegrand,
dated “Westover, Z ,”
and signed, “Rosamond Holabird,” offering
to do this, that there might not be the danger of
Jane’s losing the chance in the meanwhile.
It was certainly to accomplish the
good deed that Rosamond cared the most; but it was
also certainly something to accomplish it in that
very high quarter. It lent a piquancy to the occasion.
She came down to breakfast very nicely
and discriminatingly dressed, with the elegant quietness
of a lady who knew what was simply appropriate to
such an errand and the early hour, but who meant to
be recognized as the lady in every unmistakable touch;
and there was a carriage ordered for her at half past
nine.
Sin Scherman was a cute little matron;
she discerned the dash of subdued importance in Rosamond’s
air; and she thought it very likely, in the Boston
nature of things, that it would get wholesomely and
civilly toned down.
Just at this moment, Rosamond, putting
on her little straw bonnet with real lace upon it,
and her simple little narrow-bordered green shawl,
that was yet, as far as it went, veritable cashmere, had
a consciousness, in a still, modest way, not only
of her own personal dignity as Rosamond Holabird,
who was the same going to see Madam Mucklegrand, or
walking over to Madam Pennington’s, and as much
in her place with one as the other; but of the dignity
of Westover itself, and Westover ladyhood, represented
by her among the palaces of Boston-Appendix to-day.
She was only twenty, this fair and
pleasant Rosamond of ours, and country simple, with
all her native tact and grace; and she forgot, or
did not know how full of impressions a life like Madam
Mucklegrand’s might be, and how very trifling
and fleeting must be any that she might chance to
make.
She drove away down to the North End,
and took Jane Jopson and her baby in, very
clean and shiny, both of them, and Jane
particularly nice in the little black crape bonnet
that Rosamond herself had made, and the plain black
shawl that Mrs. Holabird had given her.
She stood at the head of the high, broad steps, with her mind
very much made up in regard to her complete and well-bred self-possession, and
the manner of her quietly assured self-introduction. She had her card all ready
that should explain for her; and to the servants reply that Madam Mucklegrand
was in, she responded by moving forward with only enough of voluntary hesitation
to allow him to indicate to her the reception room, at the door of which she
gave him the little pasteboard, with,
“Take that to her, if you please,”
and so sat down, very much as if she had been in such
places frequently before, which she never had.
One may be quite used to the fine, free essence of
gentle living, and never in all one’s life have
anything to do with such solid, concrete expression
of it as Rosamond saw here.
Very high, to begin with, the ceiled
and paneled room was; reaching up into space as if
it had really been of no consequence to the builders
where they should put the cover on; and with no remotest
suggestion of any reserve for further superstructure
upon the same foundation.
Very dark, and polished, and deeply
carved, and heavily ornamented were its wainscotings,
and frames, and cornices; out of the new look of the
streets, which it will take them yet a great while
to outgrow, she had stepped at once into a grand,
and mellow, and ancient stateliness.
There were dim old portraits on the
walls, and paintings that hinted at old mastership
filled whole panels; and the tall, high-backed, wonderfully
wrought oaken chairs had heraldic devices in relief
upon their bars and corners; and there was a great,
round mosaic table, in soft, rich, dark colors, of
most precious stones; these, in turn, hidden with
piles of rare engravings.
The floor was of dark woods, inlaid;
and sumptuous rugs were put about upon it for the
feet, each one of which was wide enough to call a
carpet.
And nothing of it all was new;
there was nothing in the room but some plants in a
jardiniere by the window, that seemed to have a bit
of yesterday’s growth upon it.
A great, calm, marble face of Jove
looked down from high up, out of the shadows.
Underneath sat Rosamond Holabird,
holding on to her identity and her self-confidence.
Madam Mucklegrand came in plainly
enough dressed, in black; you would not
notice what she had on; but you would notice instantly
the consummate usedness to the world and the hardening
into the mould thereof that was set and furrowed upon
eye and lip and brow.
She sailed down upon Rosamond like
a frigate upon a graceful little pinnace; and brought
to within a pace or two of her, continuing to stand
an instant, as Rosamond rose, just long enough for
the shadow of a suggestion that it might not be altogether
material that she should be seated again at all.
But Rosamond made a movement backward
to her chair, and laid her hand upon its arm, and
then Madam Mucklegrand decided to sit down.
“You called about the nurse,
I conclude, Miss Holabird?”
“Yes, ma’am; I thought
you had some questions you wished to ask, and that
I had better come myself. I have her with me,
in the carriage.”
“Thank you,” said Madam Mucklegrand, politely.
But it was rather a de haut en
bas politeness; she exercised it also toward her
footman.
Then followed inquiries about age,
and health, and character. Rosamond told all
she knew, clearly and sufficiently, with some little
sympathetic touches that she could not help, in giving
her story.
Madam Mucklegrand met her nowhere,
however, on any common ground; she passed over all
personal interest; instead of two women befriending
a third in her need, who in turn was to give life to
a little child waiting helplessly for some such ministry,
it might have been the leasing of a house, or the
dealing about some merchandise, that was between them.
Rosamond proposed, at last, to send Jane Jopson in.
Jane and her baby were had in, and
had up-stairs; the physician and attending nurse pronounced
upon her; she was brought down again, to go home and
dispose of her child, and return. Rosamond, meanwhile,
had been sitting under the marble Jove.
There was nothing really rude in it;
she was there on business; what more could she expect?
But then she knew all the time, that she too was a
lady, and was taking trouble to do a kind thing.
It was not so that Madam Mucklegrand would have been
treated at Westover.
Rosamond was feeling pretty proud
by the time Madam Mucklegrand came down stairs.
“We have engaged the young woman:
the doctor quite approves; she will return without
delay, I hope?”
As if Rosamond were somehow responsible all through.
“I have no doubt she will; good morning, madam.”
“Good morning. I am, really,
very much obliged. You have been of great service.”
Rosamond turned quietly round upon the threshold.
“That was what I was very anxious
to be,” she said, in her perfectly sweet and
musical voice, “to the poor woman.”
Italics would indicate too coarsely
the impalpable emphasis she put upon the last two
words. But Mrs. Mucklegrand caught it.
Rosamond went away quite as sure of
her own self-respect as ever, but very considerably
cured of Spreadsplendidism.
This was but one phase of it, she
knew; there are real folks, also, in Spreadsplendid
Park; they are a good deal covered up, there, to be
sure; but they can’t help that. It is what
always happens to somebody when Pyramids are built.
Madam Mucklegrand herself was, perhaps, only a good
deal covered up.
How lovely it was to go down into
Orchard Street after that, and take tea with Miss
Craydocke! How human and true it seemed, the
friendliness that shone and breathed there, among them
all. How kingdom-of-heaven-like the air was,
and into what pleasantness of speech it was born!
And then Hazel Ripwinkley came over,
like a little spirit from another blessed society,
to tell that “the picture-book things were all
ready, and that it would take everybody to help.”
That was Rosamond’s first glimpse
of Witch Hazel, who found her out instantly, the
real, Holabirdy part of her, and set her
down at once among her “folks.”
It was bright and cheery in Mrs. Ripwinkley’s
parlor; you could hardly tell whence the cheeriness
radiated, either.
The bright German lamp was cheery,
in the middle of the round table; the table was cheery,
covered with glossy linen cut into large, square book-sheets
laid in piles, and with gay pictures of all kinds,
brightly colored; and the scissors, or scissorses, there
were ever so many shining pairs of them, and
the little mucilage bottles, and the very scrap-baskets, all
looked cozy and comfortable, and as if people were
going to have a real good time among them, somehow.
And the somehow was in making great
beautiful, everlasting picture-books for the little
orphans in Miss Craydocke’s Home, the
Home, that is, out of several blessed and similar ones
that she was especially interested in, and where Hazel
and Diana had been with her until they knew all the
little waifs by sight and name and heart, and had
their especial chosen property among them, as they
used to have among the chickens and the little yellow
ducks at Homesworth Farm.
Mrs. Ripwinkley was cheery; it might
be a question whether all the light did not come from
her first, in some way, and perhaps it did; but then
Hazel was luminous, and she fluttered about with quick,
happy motions, till like a little glancing taper she
had shone upon and lit up everybody and everything;
and Dorris was sunny with clear content, and Kenneth
was blithe, and Desire was scintillant, as she always
was either with snaps or smiles; and here came in beaming
Miss Craydocke, and gay Asenath and her handsome husband;
and our Rosa Mundi; there, how
can you tell? It was all round; and it was more
every minute.
There were cutters and pasters and
stitchers and binders and every part was beautiful
work, and nobody could tell which was pleasantest.
Cutting out was nice, of course; who doesn’t
like cutting out pictures? Some were done beforehand,
but there were as many left as there would be time
for. And pasting, on the fine, smooth linen,
making it glow out with charming groups and tints of
flowers and birds and children in gay clothes, that
was delightful; and the stitchers had the pleasure
of combining and arranging it all; and the binders, Mrs.
Ripwinkley and Miss Craydocke, finished
all off with the pretty ribbons and the gray covers,
and theirs being the completing touch, thought they
had the best of it.
“But I don’t think finishing
is best, mother,” said Hazel, who was diligently
snipping in and out around rose leaves or baby faces,
as it happened. “I think beginning is always
beautiful. I never want to end off, anything
nice, I mean.”
“Well, we don’t end off
this,” said Diana. “There’s
the giving, next.”
“And then their little laughs and Oo’s,”
said Hazel.
“And their delight day after
day; and the comfort of them in their little sicknesses,”
said Miss Craydocke.
“And the stories that have got
to be told about every picture,” said Dorris.
“No; nothing really nice does
end; it goes on and on,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.
“Of course!” said Hazel,
triumphantly, turning on the Drummond light of her
child-faith. “We’re forever and ever
people, you know!”
“Please paste some more flowers,
Mr. Kincaid,” said Rosamond, who sat next him,
stitching. “I want to make an all-flower
book of this. No, not roses; I’ve
a whole page already; this great white lily, I think.
That’s beautiful!”
“Wouldn’t it do to put
in this laurel bush next, with the bird’s nest
in it?”
“O, those lovely pink and white
laurels! Yes. Where did you get such pictures,
Miss Hazel?”
“O, everybody gave them to us,
all summer, ever since we began. Mrs. Geoffrey
gave those flowers; and mother painted some. She
did that laurel. But don’t call me Miss
Hazel, please; it seems to send me off into a corner.”
Rosamond answered by a little irresistible
caress; leaning her head down to Hazel, on her other
side, until her cheek touched the child’s bright
curls, quickly and softly. There was magnetism
between those two.
Ah, the magnetism ran round!
“For a child’s picture-book,
Mrs. Ripwinkley?” said Mrs. Scherman, reaching
over for the laurel picture. “Aren’t
these almost too exquisite? They would like a
big scarlet poppy just as well, perhaps
better. Or a clump of cat-o’-nine-tails,”
she added, whimsically.
“There is a clump of
cat-o’-nine-tails,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley.
“I remember how I used to delight in them as
a child, the real ones.”
“Pictures are to tell
things,” said Desire, in her brief way.
“These little city refugees
must see them, somehow,” said Rosamond,
gently. “I understand. They will never
get up on the mountains, maybe, where the laurels
grow, or into the shady swamps among the flags and
the cat-o’-nine-tails. You have picked
out pictures to give them, Mrs. Ripwinkley.”
Kenneth Kincaid’s scissors stopped
a moment, as he looked at Rosamond, pausing also over
the placing of her leaves.
Desire saw that from the other side;
she saw how beautiful and gracious this girl was this
Rosamond Holabird; and there was a strange little
twinge in her heart, as she felt, suddenly, that let
there be ever so much that was true and kindly, or
even tender, in her, it could never come up in her
eyes or play upon her lips like that she could never
say it out sweetly and in due place everything was
a spasm with her; and nobody would ever look at her
just as Kenneth Kincaid looked at Rosamond then.
She said to herself, with her harsh,
unsparing honesty, that it must be a “hitch
inside;” a cramp or an awkwardness born in her,
that set her eyes, peering and sharp, so near together,
and put that knot into her brows instead of their
widening placidly, like Rosamond’s, and made
her jerky in her speech. It was no use; she couldn’t
look and behave, because she couldn’t be;
she must just go boggling and kinking on, and losing
everything, she supposed.
The smiles went down, under a swift,
bitter little cloud, and the hard twist came into
her face with the inward pinching she was giving herself;
and all at once there crackled out one of her sharp,
strange questions; for it was true that she could not
do otherwise; everything was sudden and crepitant
with her.
“Why need all the good be done
up in batches, I wonder? Why can’t it be
spread round, a little more even? There must have
been a good deal left out somewhere, to make it come
in a heap, so, upon you, Miss Craydocke!”
Hazel looked up.
“I know what Desire means,”
she said. “It seemed just so to me, one
way. Why oughtn’t there to be little
homes, done-by-hand homes, for all these little children,
instead of well machining them
all up together?”
And Hazel laughed at her own conceit.
“It’s nice; but then it
isn’t just the way. If we were all brought
up like that we shouldn’t know, you see!”
“You wouldn’t want to
be brought up in a platoon, Hazel?” said Kenneth
Kincaid. “No; neither should I.”
“I think it was better,”
said Hazel, “to have my turn of being a little
child, all to myself; the little child, I mean,
with the rest of the folks bigger. To make much
of me, you know. I shouldn’t want to have
missed that. I shouldn’t like to be loved
in a platoon.”
“Nobody is meant to be,” said Miss Craydocke.
“Then why ” began Asenath Scherman,
and stopped.
“Why what, dear?”
“Revelations,” replied
Sin, laconically. “There are loads of people
there, all dressed alike, you know; and well it’s
platoony, I think, rather! And down here, such
a world-full; and the sky full of worlds.
There doesn’t seem to be much notion of one at
a time, in the general plan of things.”
“Ah, but we’ve got the
key to all that,” said Miss Craydocke. “’The
very hairs of your head are all numbered.’
It may be impossible with us, you know, but not with
Him.”
“Miss Hapsie! you always did
put me down, just when I thought I was smart,”
said Sin Scherman.
Asenath loved to say “Miss Hapsie,”
now and then, to her friend, ever since she had found
out what she called her “squee little name.”
“But the little children, Miss
Craydocke,” said Mrs. Ripwinkley. “It
seems to me Desire has got a right thought about it.”
Mrs. Ripwinkley and Hazel always struck
the same note. The same delicate instinct moved
them both. Hazel “knew what Desire meant;”
her mother did not let it be lost sight of that it
was Desire who had led the way in this thought of
the children; so that the abrupt beginning the
little flash out of the cloud was quite
forgotten presently, in the tone of hearty understanding
and genuine interest with which the talk went on;
and it was as if all that was generous and mindfully
suggestive in it had first and truly come from her.
They unfolded herself for her these friendly
ones as she could not do; out of her bluntness
grew a graciousness that lay softly over it; the cloud
itself melted away and floated off; and Desire began
to sparkle again more lambently. For she was not
one of the kind to be meanly or enviously “put
out.”
“It seemed to me there must
be a great many spare little corners somewhere, for
all these spare little children,” she said, “and
that, lumped up together so, there was something they
did not get.”
“That is precisely the thing,”
said Miss Craydocke, emphatically. “I wonder,
sometimes,” she went on, tenderly, “if
whenever God makes a little empty place in a home,
it isn’t really on purpose that it might be
filled with one of these, if people only
thought.”
“Miss Craydocke,” said
Hazel, “how did you begin your beehive?”
“I!” said the good lady. “I
didn’t. It began itself.”
“Well, then, how did you let it begin?”
“Ah!”
The tone was admissive, and as if
she had said, “That is another thing!”
She could not contradict that she had let it be.
“I’ll tell you a queer
story,” she said, “of what they say they
used to do, in old Roman Catholic times and places,
when they wanted to keep up a beehive that
was in any danger of dwindling or growing unprofitable.
I read it somewhere in a book of popular beliefs and
customs about bees and other interesting animals.
An old woman once went to her friend, and asked her
what she did to make her hive so gainful. And
this was what the old wife said; it sounds rather
strange to us, but if there is anything irreverent
in it, it is the word and not the meaning; ‘I
go,’ she said, ’to the priest, and get
a little round Godamighty, and put it in the hive,
and then all goes well; the bees thrive, and there
is plenty of honey; they always come, and stay, and
work, when that is there.”
“A little round something
awful! what did she mean?” asked Mrs.
Scherman.
“She meant a consecrated wafer, the
Sacrament. We don’t need to put the wafer
in; but if we let Him in, you see, just
say to Him it is his house, to do with as He likes, He
takes the responsibility, and brings in all the rest.”
Nobody saw, under the knitting of Desire Ledwiths brows, and
the close setting of her eyes, the tenderness with which they suddenly
moistened, and the earnestness with which they gleamed. Nobody knew how she
thought to herself inwardly, in the same spasmodic fashion that she used for
speech,
“They Mig up their parlors with
upholstery, and put rose-colored paper on their walls,
and call them their houses; and shut the little
round awfulness and goodness out! We’ve
all been doing it! And there’s no place
left for what might come in.”
Mrs. Scherman broke the hush that
followed what Miss Hapsie said. Not hastily,
or impertinently; but when it seemed as if it might
be a little hard to come down into the picture-books
and the pleasant easiness again.
“Let’s make a Noah’s
Ark picture-book, you and I,” she
said to Desire. “Give us all your animals, there’s
a whole Natural History full over there, all painted
with splendid daubs of colors; the children did that,
I know, when they were children. Come;
we’ll have everything in, from an elephant to
a bumble-bee!”
“We did not mean to use those,
Mrs. Scherman,” said Desire. “We did
not think they were good enough. They are so
daubed up.”
“They’re perfectly beautiful.
Exactly what the young ones will like. Just divide
round, and help. We’ll wind up with the
most wonderful book of all; the book they’ll
all cry for, and that will have to be given always,
directly after the Castor Oil.”
It took them more than an hour to
do that, all working hard; and a wonderful thing it
was truly, when it was done. Mrs. Scherman and
Desire Ledwith directed all the putting together, and
the grouping was something astonishing.
There were men and women, the
Knowers, Sin called them; she said that was what she
always thought the old gentleman’s name was,
in the days when she first heard of him, because he
knew so much; and in the backgrounds of the same sheets
were their country cousins, the orangs, and the little
apes. Then came the elephants, and the camels,
and the whales; “for why shouldn’t the
fishes be put in, since they must all have been swimming
round sociably, if they weren’t inside; and
why shouldn’t the big people be all kept together
properly?”
There were happy families of dogs
and cats and lions and snakes and little humming-birds;
and in the last part were all manner of bugs, down
to the little lady-bugs in blazes of red and gold,
and the gray fleas and mosquitoes which Sin improvised
with pen and ink, in a swarm at the end.
“And after that, I don’t
believe they wanted any more,” she said; and
handed over the parts to Miss Craydocke to be tied
together. For this volume had had to be made
in many folds, and Mrs. Ripwinkley’s blue ribbon
would by no means stretch over the back.
And by that time it was eleven o’clock,
and they had worked four hours. They all jumped
up in a great hurry then, and began to say good-by.
“This must not be the last we
are to have of you, Miss Holabird,” said Mrs.
Ripwinkley, laying Rosamond’s shawl across her
shoulders.
“Of course not,” said
Mrs Scherman, “when you are all coming to our
house to tea to-morrow night.”
Rosamond bade the Ripwinkleys good-night
with a most sweet cordiality, and thanks for the pleasure
she had had, and she told Hazel and her mother that
it was “neither beginning nor end, she believed;
for it seemed to her that she had only found a little
new piece of her world, and that Aspen Street led
right out of Westover in the invisible geography,
she was sure.”
“Come!” said Miss Craydocke,
standing on the doorsteps. “It is all invisible
geography out here, pretty nearly; and we’ve
all our different ways to go, and only these two unhappy
gentlemen to insist on seeing everybody home.”
So first the whole party went round
with Miss Hapsie, and then Kenneth and Dorris, who
always went home with Desire, walked up Hanley Street
with the Schermans and Rosamond, and so across through
Dane Street to Shubarton Place.
But while they were on their way, Hazel Ripwinkley was saying
to her mother, up in her room, where they made sometimes such long good-nights,
“Mother! there were some little
children taken away from you before we came, you know?
And now we’ve got this great big house, and
plenty of things, more than it takes for us.”
“Well?”
“Don’t you think it’s
expected that we should do something with the corners?
There’s room for some real good little times
for somebody. I think we ought to begin a beehive.”
Mrs. Ripwinkley kissed Hazel very tenderly, and said, only,
“We can wait, and see.”
Those are just the words that mothers
so often put children off with! But Mrs. Ripwinkley,
being one of the real folks, meant it; the very heart
of it.
In that little talk, they took the
consecration in; they would wait and see; when people
do that, with an expectation, the beehive begins.
Up Hanley Street, the six fell into pairs.
Mrs. Scherman and Desire, Dorris and Mr. Scherman,
Rosamond and
Kenneth Kincaid.
It only took from Bridgeley Street
up to Dane, to tell Kenneth Kincaid so much about
Westover, in answer to his questions, that he too
thought he had found a new little piece of his world.
What Rosamond thought, I do not know; but a girl never
gives a young man so much as she gave Kenneth in that
little walk without having some of the blessed consciousness
that comes with giving. The sun knows it shines,
I dare say; or else there is a great waste of hydrogen
and other things.
There was not much left for poor little
Desire after they parted from the Schermans and turned
the corner of Dane Street. Only a little bit
of a way, in which new talk could hardly begin, and
just time for a pause that showed how the talk that
had come to an end was missed or how, perhaps, it
stayed in the mind, repeating itself, and keeping
it full.
Nobody said anything till they had
crossed B Street; and then Dorris said, How beautiful, real
beautiful, Rosamond Holabird is!” And Kenneth
answered, “Did you hear what she said to Mrs.
Ripwinkley?”
They were full of Rosamond! Desire
did not speak a word.
Dorris had heard and said it over.
It seemed to please Kenneth to hear it again.
“A piece of her world!”
“How quickly a true person springs
to what belongs to their life!” said
Kenneth, using that wrong little pronoun that we shall
never be able to do without.
“People don’t always get
what belongs, though,” blurted Desire at last,
just as they came to the long doorsteps. “Some
people’s lives are like complementary colors,
I think; they see blue, and live red!”
“But the colors are only accidentally I
mean temporarily divided; they are together
in the sun; and they join somewhere beyond.”
“I hate beyond!” said
Desire, recklessly. “Good-night. Thank
you.” And she ran up the steps.
Nobody knew what she meant. Perhaps
she hardly knew herself.
They only thought that her home life
was not suited to her, and that she took it hard.