Kitabı oku: «Just Sixteen.», sayfa 11
THE SORROWS OF FELICIA
IT was a pretty chamber, full of evidences of taste and loving care. White curtains draped the windows and the looking-glass. There was a nice writing-table, set where the light fell upon it exactly as it should for convenience to the writer. There was a book-shelf full of gayly bound books, a pretty blue carpet, photographs on the faintly tinted blue wall, – somebody had evidently taken pains to make the room charming, and just as evidently to make it charming for the use of a girl. And there lay the girl on the sofa, – Felicia, or, in schoolroom parlance, Felie Bliss. Was she basking in the comfort and tastefulness of her room? Not at all! A volume of "In Memoriam" was in her hand. Her face was profoundly long and dismal. She murmured mournful lines over to herself, only pausing now and then to reach out her hand and fill a tumbler from a big jug of lemonade which stood on a little table beside her. Felie always provided herself with lemonade when she retired to her bedroom to enjoy the pleasures of woe for a season.
From the door, which was locked, sounded a chorus of knocks and irreverent voices.
"Sister, are you in there?" demanded one.
"Are you thinking about Life, sister?" asked another.
"Have you got your sharp-pointed scissors with you?" cried the first voice. "Oh, Felie, Felie, stay your rash hand."
"We like lemonade just as much as you," chimed in Dimple, the youngest of the four.
"Let us in. We are very thirsty, and we long to comfort you," said voice the second, with a stifled giggle.
Felicia paid no attention whatever to these observations, only murmured to herself, —
"But what to her shall be the end?And what to me remains of good?To her perpetual maidenhood – "
"Who is 'her'?" demanded that bad Jenny through the door. "If you mean Mrs. Carrington, you are all wrong. May Curtis says her engagement is announced to Mr. Collins."
"Oh, children, do go away!" cried Felie in a despairing tone.
"Forgive these wild and wandering cries,
Confessions of a wasted youth;
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in Thy wisdom make me wise."
"Hear her!" said Betty outside. "She's having it very badly to-day. I wish I knew Tennyson. I should like to tell him what I think of his writing a horrid, melancholy, caterwauling book, and making the Bliss family miserable. Felie, if you've drunk up all your lemonade, you might at least lend us the pitcher."
It was no use. Felicia either did not, or would not, hear. So, with a last thump on the panels of the long-suffering door, the trio departed in search of another pitcher.
If anybody had told Felie Bliss, at seventeen, that she really had not a grief in the world worthy of the name, she would have resented it deeply. She was a tall girl, whose bones and frame were meant for the use of a large woman, when their owner should have arrived at all that nature meant her to be, but who at this period of her life was almost startlingly long and thin. She had "outgrown her strength," as people say, which was Felie's only excuse for the almost tragic enjoyment which she took in mournful things. She was in fair health, and had an excellent appetite, and a real school-girl love for raisins, stick-cinnamon, sugar-plums, and soda-water; tastes which were highly at variance with the rôle which she wished to play, – that of a sweetly-resigned and long-suffering being, whose hopes had faded from earth, into the distant heaven toward which she was hastening. Felie's sweet-tooth was quite a trial to her; but she struggled with it, and resisted enjoyment as far as was possible with her naturally cheerful disposition.
She was an interesting perplexity to her family, who were contented, reasonable folk, of the sort which, happily for the world, is called commonplace. To her younger sisters, especially, Felicia was a never-failing and exciting conundrum, the answer to which they were always guessing, but never could find out. For days together she would be as cheerful as possible, full of fun and contrivance, and the life of the house; then, all of a sudden, gloom would envelop her like a soft fog, and she would retire to her room with "In Memoriam," or some other introspective volume, and the fat jug of lemonade, lock the door, and just "drink and weep for hours together," as her sister Jenny expressed it. It was really unaccountable.
All her books were deeply scored with lines against the woful passages, and such pencilled remarks as "Alas!" and "All too true!" She sat in church with a carefully arranged sad smile on her face; but this, as unsuitable to her natural expression, was not always a success. Felie was much aggrieved one day at being told, by an indiscriminating friend, that her face "seemed made to laugh, – no one could imagine it anything but bright." This, for a girl who was posing for "Patience on a monument smiling at grief," was rather a trial; but then the friend had never seen her reading "King John," and murmuring, —
"Here I and sorrow sit – "
with a long brown stick of cinnamon, in process of crunch, occupying the other corner of her mouth. But perhaps the friend might have found even this funny, – there are such unfeeling people in the world!
Felie's letters were rather dull reading, because she told so little of what she had said or done, and hinted so liberally at her own aching heart and thwarted hopes. But her correspondents, who were mostly jolly school-girls, knew her pretty well, and dismissed these jeremiads as, "Just Felie's way. She does love to be miserable, you know, but nobody is better fun than she when she doesn't think it her duty to be unhappy."
Felie didn't come down to tea on the evening of the day on which our story opens. An afternoon of lemonade had dampened her appetite, but at bedtime she stole out in her dressing-gown and slippers, helped herself to a handful of freshly baked cookies and a large green cucumber pickle, and, by the aid of these refreshments, contrived to stave off the pangs of hunger till next morning, when she appeared at breakfast cheerful and smiling, with no sign upon her spirits of the eclipse of the day before. Her family made no allusion to that melancholy episode, – they were used to such, – only Mr. Bliss asked, between two mouthfuls of toast, "Where were you gadding to last night, child? I didn't hear you come home."
"I was not out. I didn't feel very – very bright, and went to bed early."
"Oh!" – Mr. Bliss understood.
"He who makes truth unlovely commits high treason against virtue," says an old writer; but he who simulates grief, and makes it ridiculous, commits an almost equal crime against true feeling. Felie had been playing at sorrow where no sorrow was. That very day a real sorrow came, and she woke up to find her world all changed into a reality of pain and puzzle and bewilderment, which was very different from the fictitious loss and the sham suffering which she had found so much to her mind.
She had no idea, as she watched her father and mother drive off that afternoon, that anything terrible was about to happen. Only the "seers" of the Scotch legends could see the shroud drawn up over the breast of those who are "appointed to die" suddenly; the rest of us see nothing. The horse which Mr. Bliss drove was badly broken, but he had often gone out before and come back safely. It was only on this particular day that the combination of circumstances occurred which made the risky horse dangerous, – the shriek of the railroad-whistle, the sharp turn in the road, the heap of stones. There was a runaway, an overset, and two hours from the time when the youthful sisters, unexpectant of misfortune, had watched their parents off, they were brought back, Mr. Bliss dead, Mrs. Bliss with a broken arm, and injuries to the spine so severe that there was little chance of her ever being able to leave her bed again. So much can be done in one fatal moment.
It is at such dark, dark times that real character shows itself. Felie's little affectations, her morbid musings and fancies, fell from her like some light, fantastic drapery, which is shrivelled in sudden heat. Her real self – hopeful, self-reliant, optimistic – rose into action as soon as the first paralyzing shock of pain was past, and she had taken in the reality of this new and strange thing. All the cares of the house, the management of affairs, the daily wear and tear of life, which has to be borne by some one, fell upon her inexperienced hands. Her mother was too shaken and ill to be consulted, the younger girls instinctively leaned on what they felt to be a strength superior to their own. It was a heavy load for young shoulders, and Felie was not yet eighteen!
She made mistakes of course, – mistakes repented of with bitter crying and urgent resolutions. She was often tried, often discouraged; things did not smooth themselves easily, or the world go much out of its usual course, because Felie Bliss was perplexed and in trouble. There were no mornings to spare for tragedy, or Tennyson. Felie's eyeballs often longed for the relief of a good fit of tears; that troublesome little lump would come into her throat which is the price of tears resolutely held back, but there was too much to do to allow of such a weakening self-indulgence. Mother must be cared for, the house must be looked after, people on business must be seen, the "children," as she called her sisters, must not be suffered to be too sad. And then, again, "In Memoriam," beautiful as it is, and full of sweet and true and tender feeling, did not satisfy Felie now as it had done when she was forced to cultivate an artificial emotion outside of herself.
"If I had time and knew how to write poetry, I could say a great many things that Tennyson never thought of," she told Jenny, one day. It is so with all who suffer. No poet ever voiced the full and complete expression of our own personal pain. There is always something beyond, – an individual pang recognized and understood only by ourselves.
So the years went on, as years do even when their wheels seem weighted with lead. The first sharpness of their loss abated. They became used to the sight of their father's empty chair, of his closed desk; they ceased to listen for the sound of his step on the porch, his key in the door. Mrs. Bliss gradually regained a more comfortable measure of health, but she remained an invalid, the chief variation in her life being when she was lifted from bed to sofa, and back again from sofa to bed. Felie was twenty-four, and the younger ones were no longer children, though she still called them so. Even Dimple wore long dresses, and had set up something very like a lover, though Felie sternly refused to have him called so till Dimple was older. Felie was equally severe with Dr. Ernest Allen, on her own account. "She was a great deal too busy to think of such a thing," she declared; but Dr. Allen, who had faith in time, simply declared that he "didn't mind waiting," and continued to hang his hat on the hat-tree in the Bliss's entry three times a week.
Indeed, looking at Felicia Bliss, now that she had rounded physically and mentally into what she was meant to become, you would not wonder that any man should be willing to wait a while in hope of winning such a prize. A certain bright cheer and helpfulness was her charm. "The room grew pleasanter as soon as she came into it," Dimple declared. Certainly Dr. Allen thought so; and as a man may willingly put off building a house till he can afford to have one which fronts the sun, so he considered it worth while to delay, for a few years, even, if need be, and secure for life a daily shining which should make all life pleasanter. He had never known Felie in her morbid days, and she could never make him quite believe her when she tried to tell of that past phase of her girlhood.
"It is simply impossible. You must exaggerate, if you have not dreamed it," he said.
"Not a bit. Ask Dimple, – ask any of them."
"I prefer to ask my own eyes, my own convictions," declared the lover. "You are the most 'wholesome' woman, through and through, that I ever knew. A doctor argues from present indications to past conditions. I am sure you are mistaken about yourself. If I can detect with the stethoscope the spot in your lungs where five years back pneumonia left a trace, surely I ought to be able to make out a similar spot in your nervous temperament. The idea is opposed to all that you are."
"But not to all that I was. Really and truly, Dr. Allen, I used to be the most absurd girl in the world. If you could have seen me!"
"But what cured you in this radical and surprising manner?"
"Well," said Felie, demurely, "I suppose the remedy was what you would call homeopathic. I had revelled in a sort of imaginary sorrowfulness, but when that dreadful time came, and I tasted real sorrow, I found that it took all my strength to meet it, and I was glad enough of everything bright and cheering that I could get at to help me through.
"I wonder if there are many girls in the world who are nursing imaginary miseries as I used to do," she went on. "If there are, I should like to tell them how foolish it is, and how bad for them. But, dear me, there are so many girls and one can't get at them! I suppose each must learn the lesson for herself and fight her fight out somehow, and I hope they will all get through safely, and learn, as I have, that happiness is the most precious thing in the world, and that it is so, so foolish not to enjoy and make the most of it while we have it. Because, you know, some day trouble must come to everybody. And it is such a pity to have to look back and know that you have wasted a chance."
IMPRISONED
THE big house stood in the middle of a big open space, with wide lawns about it shaded by cherry-trees and lilac-bushes, toward the south an old-fashioned garden, and back of that the apple-orchard.
The little house was on the edge of the grounds, and had its front entrance on the road. Its doors were locked and its windows shuttered now, for no one had lived in it for several years.
Three little girls lived in the big house. Lois, who was eight years old, and Emmy, who was seven, were sisters. Kitty, their cousin, also seven, had lived with them so long that she seemed like another sister. There was, besides, Marianne, the cook's baby; but as she was not quite three, she did not count for much with the older ones, though they sometimes condescended to play with her.
It was a place of endless pleasure to these happy country children, and they needed no wider world than it afforded them. All summer long they played in the open air. They built bowers in the feathery asparagus; they knew every bird's-nest in the syringa-bushes and the thick guelder-roses, and were so busy all the time that they rarely found a moment in which to quarrel.
One day in July their mother and father had occasion to leave home for a long afternoon and evening.
"You can stay outdoors till half-past six," Mrs. Spenser said to her little girls; "then you must come in to tea, and at half-past seven you must go to bed as usual. You may play where you like in the grounds, but you must not go outside the gate." She kissed them for good-by. "Remember to be good," she said. Then she got into the carriage and drove away.
The children were very good for several hours. They played that little Marianne was their baby, and was carried off by a gypsy. Lois was the gypsy, and the chase and recapture of the stolen child made an exciting game.
At last they got tired of this, and the question arose: "What shall we do next?"
"I wish mother would let us play down the road," said Emmy. "The Noyse children's mother lets them."
"I'll tell you what we'll do," said Lois, struck by a sudden bright idea. "Let's go down to the shut-up house. That isn't outside the gate."
"O Lois! yes, it is. You can't go to the front door without walking on the road."
"Well, who said anything about the front door? I'm going to look in at the back windows. Mother never said we mustn't do that."
Still, it was with a sense of guilt that the three stole across the lawn; and they kept in the shadow of the hedge, as if afraid some one would see and call them back. Little Marianne, with her rag doll in her arms, began to run after them.
"There's that little plague tagging us," said Kitty.
"Go back, Marianne; we don't want you." Then, when Marianne would not go back, they all ran away, and left her crying.
The shut-up house looked dull and ghostly enough. The front was in deep shadow from the tall row of elms that bordered the road, but at the back the sun shone hotly. It glowed through the low, dusty window of a cellar, and danced and gleamed on something bright which lay on the floor within.
"What do you suppose it is?" said Emmy, as they all stooped to look. "It looks like real gold. Perhaps some pirates hid it there, and no one has come since but us."
"Or perhaps it's a mine," cried Lois, – "a mine of jewels. See, it's all purple, like the stones in mother's breastpin. Wouldn't it be fun if it was? We wouldn't tell anybody, and we could buy such splendid things."
"We must get in and find out," added Kitty.
Just then a wail sounded close at hand, and a very woful, tear-stained little figure appeared. It was Marianne. The poor baby had trotted all the long distance in the sun after her unkind playfellows.
"Oh, dear! You little nuisance! What made you come?" demanded Emmy.
"I 'ant to," was all Marianne's explanation.
"Well, don't cry. Now you've come, you can play," remarked Lois; and Marianne was consoled.
They began to try the windows in turn, and at last found one in a wood-shed which was unfastened. Kitty scrambled in, and admitted the others, first into the wood-shed and then into a very dusty kitchen. The cellar stairs opened from this. They all ran down, but – oh, disappointment! – the jewel-mine proved to be only the half of a broken teacup with a pattern on it in gold and lilac. This was a terrible come-down from a pirate treasure.
"Pshaw!" said Kitty. "Only an old piece of crockery. I don't think it's fair to cheat like that."
Little Marianne had been afraid to venture down into the cellar, and now stayed at the top waiting for them.
"Let's run away from her," suggested Kitty, who was cross after her disappointment.
So they all hopped over Marianne, and, deaf to her cries, ran upstairs to the second story as fast as they could go. There were four bare, dusty chambers, all unfurnished.
"There she comes," cried Kitty, as Marianne was heard climbing the stairs. "Where shall we hide from her? Oh, here's a place!"
She had spied a closet door, fastened with a large old-fashioned iron latch. She flew across the room. It was a narrow closet, with a shelf across the top of it.
"Hurry, hurry!" called Kitty. The others made haste. They squeezed themselves into the closet, and banged the door to behind them. Not till it was firmly fastened did they notice that there was no latch inside, or handle of any sort, and that they had shut themselves in, and had no possible way of getting out again.
Their desire to escape from Marianne changed at once into dismay. They kicked and pounded, but the stout old-fashioned door did not yield. Marianne could be heard crying without. There was a round hole in the door just above the latch. Putting her eye to this, Lois could see the poor little thing, doll in arms, standing in the middle of the floor, uncertain what to do.
"Marianne!" she called, "here we are, in the closet. Come and let us out, that's a good baby. Put your little hand up and push the latch. You can, if you will only try."
"I'll show you how," added Kitty, taking her turn at the peep-hole. "See, come close to the door, and Kitty will tell you what to do."
But these mysterious voices speaking out of the unseen frightened Marianne too much to allow of her doing anything helpful.
"I tan't! I tan't!" she wailed, not venturing near the door.
"Oh, do try, please do!" pleaded Lois. "I'll give you my china doll if you will, Marianne."
"And I'll give you my doll's bedstead," added Emmy. "You'd like that, I know. Dear little Marianne, do try to let us out. Please do. We're so tired of this old closet."
But still Marianne repeated, "Tan't, tan't." And at last she sat down on the floor and wept. The imprisoned children wept with her.
"I've thought of a plan," said Emmy at last. "If you'll break one of the teeth out of your shell comb, Lois, I think I can push it through the hole and raise the latch up."
Alas! the hole was above the latch, not below it. Half the teeth were broken out of Lois's comb in their attempt, and with no result except that they fell through the hole to the floor outside. At intervals they renewed their banging and pounding on the door, but it only tired them out, and did no good.
It was a very warm afternoon, and, as time went on, the closet became unendurably hot. Emmy sank down exhausted on the floor, and she and Kitty began to sob wildly. Lois alone kept her calmness. Little Marianne had grown wonderfully quiet. Peeping through the hole, Lois saw that she had gone to sleep on the floor.
"Don't cry so, Kitty," she said. "It's no use. We were naughty to come here. I suppose we've got to die in this closet, and it is my fault. We shall starve to death pretty soon, and no one will know what has become of us till somebody takes the house; and when they come to clean it and they open the closet door, they will find our bones."
Kitty screamed louder than ever at this terrible picture.
"Oh, hush!" said her cousin. "The only thing we can do now is to pray. God is the only person that can help us. Mamma says he is close to every person who prays. He can hear us if we are in the closet."
Then Lois made this little prayer: —
"Our Father who art in heaven. We have been naughty, and came down here when mamma didn't give us leave to come; but please forgive us. We won't disobey again, if only Thou wilt. We make a promise. Help us. Show us the way to get out of this closet. Don't let us die here, with no one to know where we are. We ask it for Jesus Christ's sake. Forever and forever. Amen."
It was a droll little prayer, but Lois put all her heart into it. A human listener might have smiled at the odd turn of the phrases; but God knew what she meant, and he never turns away from real prayer. He answered Lois.
How did he answer her? Did he send a strong angel to lift up the latch of the door? He might have done that, you know, as he did for Peter in prison. But that was not the way he chose in this instance. What he did was to put a thought into Lois's mind.
She stood silent for a while after she had finished praying.
"Children," she said, "I have thought of something. Kitty, you are the lightest. Do you think Emmy and I could push you up on to the shelf?"
It was not an easy thing to do, for the place was narrow; but at last, with Lois and Emmy "boosting," and Kitty scrambling, it was accomplished.
"Now, Kitty, put your back against the wall," said Lois, "and when I say 'One, two, three,' push the door with your feet as hard as you can, while we push below."
Kitty braced herself, and at the word "three," they all exerted their utmost strength. One second more, and – oh, joy! – the latch gave way, and the door flew open. Kitty tumbled from the shelf, the others fell forward on the floor, – they were out! Lois had bumped her head, and Emmy's shoulder was bruised; but what was that? They were free.
"Let us run, run!" cried Lois, catching Marianne up in her arms. "I never want to see this horrible house again."
So they ran downstairs, and out through the wood-shed into the open air. Oh, how sweet the sunshine looked, and the wind felt, after their fear and danger!
Their mother taught them a little verse next morning, after they had told her all about their adventure and made confession of their fault; and Lois said it to herself every day all her life afterward. This is it: —
"God is never far away;
God is listening all the day.
When we tremble, when we fear,
The dear Lord is quick to hear, —
Quick to hear, and quick to save,
Quick to grant each prayer we make,
For the precious Gift he gave,
For his Son our Saviour's sake."
"I love that hymn," Lois used to say; "and I know it's true, because God heard us just as well in that little bit of a closet as if we had been in church!"
