Kitabı oku: «Helen Grant's Schooldays», sayfa 3

CHAPTER III
AIR CASTLES WITH FOUNDATIONS

Aunt Jane said Helen must stay home from church Sunday morning, and help with the dinner. Joe Northrup and two cousins were coming to visit. In the afternoon all the younger portion went to Sunday School, and the little leisure Helen had afterward was devoted to reading aloud their library books. And when she came down Monday morning, Aunt Jane said in her brisk, authoritative fashion:

"Now, Helen, you fly 'round and get at the washing. See if you can't learn something useful in vacation. A big girl like you ought to know how to do 'most everything. I washed when I had to stand up on a stool to reach the washboard."

Considering that for the last two months Helen had helped with the washing before school time, and had often run every step of the way because she was late, the request did not strike her as pertaining strictly to vacation. She went about her work cheerily. Uncle Jason had whispered in her ear, "Don't you worry. I guess it will all come out right."

Then the clothes were folded down, and after clearing the dinner away, Helen began to iron. Aunt Jane dropped on the old lounge and took her forty winks, then changed her gown, put on a clean white apron, which Helen knew was for company, and the thought added to her blitheness. Between three and four Mrs. Dayton drove up in the coupé with Mrs. Van Dorn, who continued her journeying around. The Mulfords' front-yard was rather pretty, with two borders of various flowers in bloom, and, as the younger children had gone over to the woods, it was quiet and serene all about. Helen glanced out of the side window, and gave thanks for the decent appearance of the place.

The conversation seemed to be not altogether dispassionate. She heard Aunt Jane raise her voice, and talk in her dogmatic manner. Oh! what if she couldn't go! She clasped her hot hands up to her face, and the iron stood there on the cloth and scorched, a thing Aunt Jane made a fuss about.

Truth to tell, Mrs. Mulford had two minds pulling her in opposite directions. It would just spoil Helen to go. She would hate working in the shop afterward. She would be planning all the time to get to the High School. She knew enough for ordinary girls. She would have to work for her living, and she couldn't spend three years getting ready. There was a little feeling, also, that she didn't want Helen any nicer or finer than her own girls. They had a father who could help them along. Helen hadn't. And if education shouldn't do more for her than it had for her father!

But there was the money, and any kind of work that made actual money was a great thing in Mrs. Mulford's estimation. Nine or ten weeks. Twenty-seven or thirty dollars!

"You see, I'd counted on giving Helen a good training in housework this vacation. When girls go to school they aint good for much that way. And 'long in October she's going in the shop, and then she won't have much chance to learn. An' I d' know as it'll be a good thing for her to spend her time readin' novels an' settin' 'round dreamin' and moonin'."

"She'll read a good deal beside novels. Mrs. Van Dorn is a very intelligent woman, and keeps up to the times. She has all the magazines, and the fine weekly papers, and she knows more of what is going on in the big world than most of the men. Then Helen would assist me in many things. Oh! I would see that she'd learn something useful every day," Mrs. Dayton declared, with a bright smile.

"Then she aint fixed up. She's outgrown most of her clothes, an' I'd 'lotted on having her sew some. She can run the machine, and I don't believe in girls who can't do any sewing. I'd be ashamed to bring up one so helpless. Here's my Jenny making most of her weddin' things. We don't count on having a dressmaker till the last, to put on the finishing touches."

"About the clothes," began Mrs. Dayton in a persuasive tone, "I have two or three lawn dresses that would make over nicely for Helen. And you know I did quite a bit of dressmaking through Mr. Dayton's long illness. And there's my machine. She would have some time to sew. Oh, you could depend on me not to let her waste her time."

Mrs. Dayton had certainly been a thrifty woman, if it was on higher lines than anything Mrs. Jason aspired to. She had money in the bank, beside getting her house clear.

Aunt Jane's arguments seemed over-ruled in such a pleasant yet decisive manner that she began to feel out-generaled. Uncle Jason had said yesterday, "You'd better let her go. If they wanted her in the shop right away you'd send her. So what's the difference!"

"There's a great deal of difference," she answered sharply, but she couldn't quite explain it. For Helen the three dollars a week really won the day. Aunt Jane tried to stand out for the rest of the week, but Mrs. Dayton said she would come over on Wednesday, and she knew she could fix Helen up, without a bit of trouble.

"Don't let her fool away her money," said Aunt Jane. "You'd better keep it until the end of the month."

Mrs. Dayton nodded and rose. The carriage was coming slowly up the road.

Aunt Jane did not go out in the kitchen, but upstairs, and looked over Helen's wardrobe. A white frock, a cambric, blue, with white dots, and a seersucker, trimmed with bands of blue. Then, there was the striped white skirt of Jenny's she meant to make over. They could do that to-morrow. She could conjure some of it out before supper-time, and put in the shirts and collars, though at fourteen Helen ought to know how to iron them. She would forget all she had learned. It really wasn't the thing to let her go.

Helen went on ironing. 'Reely's white frock fell to her share; indeed, it seemed as if 'most everything did to-day. She was hot and tired, and, oh! if she could not go!

"I don't see why those young ones don't come back. 'Reely hasn't a bit more sense than Fan. She needs a good trouncing, and she'll get it, too. You leave off, Helen, and shell them beans; they ought to have been on half an hour ago. And lay the two slices of ham in cold water to draw out some of the salt; then the potatoes. I'll iron."

She did not ask, and Aunt Jane did not proffer her decision. Helen feared it was adverse, then she recalled the fact that Aunt Jane always told the unpleasant things at once. Ill tidings with her never lagged. So she took heart of hope again. Then there were raspberries to pick. And supper, and children scolded and threatened.

"Well?" said Uncle Jason inquiringly.

"She was here, but I haven't just made up my mind. She'll be here Wednesday."

"Whew!" ejaculated Uncle Jason.

She went down the garden path to meet Jenny, who took the shortest way across lots.

"I'm goin' to sleep on it," she said, after she had told Jenny.

"But you'll let her go! Why, it would be foolish!"

"I s'pose I shall. But I'll keep her on tenter hooks to-night. Right down to the bottom I don't approve of it. She'll be planning all summer to get to that High School. Three years is too much to throw away when you're dependent on other folks."

So Helen had to go to bed unsatisfied, for Uncle Jason wouldn't be waylaid.

"I've cut you a frock out of that striped muslin of Jenny's," Aunt Jane announced, the next morning. "Sew up the seams, and put in the hem, and then I'll fix the waist."

Aunt Jane was "handy," as many country women have to be.

"You were mighty close about that business of Sat'day afternoon," Aunt Jane flung out when she could no longer contain herself. "I s'pose it don't make much difference whether you go or not?"

"Oh, I should like to go." Helen's voice was unsteady. "But Mrs. Dayton told Uncle Jason to talk it over with you, and then she would come and see you, and he said – that it would be as – as – and it seemed as if I hadn't much to do with it until – "

"Well, I've decided to let you go and try. They may not like you. Rich old women are generally queer and finicky, and don't keep one mind hardly a week at a time. So it's doubtful if you stay. Then it is a good deal like being a servant, and none of the Mulfords ever lived out, as far as I've heard."

Helen colored. She had not thought of that aspect. Neither had she considered that her dream might come to an untimely end.

"And it seems a shame to waste the whole summer when there's so much to do."

"But if they had wanted me in the shop you would have let me go, wouldn't you?" Helen said in a tone that she tried hard to keep from being pert.

"That would have been different. A steady job for years, and getting higher wages all the time. I've told Jenny to engage the chance."

Years in a shop, doing one thing over and over! She recalled a sentence she had heard Mr. Warfield quote several times from an English writer, "But that one man should die ignorant who had a capacity for knowledge, this I call tragedy!" She was not very clear in her own mind as to what tragedy really was, but if one had a capacity for wider knowledge, would it not be tragedy to spend years doing what one loathed? She hated the smells of the shoe shop, the common air that seemed to envelop everyone, the loud voices and boisterous laughs. And she wouldn't mind helping someone for her board, and going to the High School. Why, she did a great deal of work here, but it seemed nothing to Aunt Jane.

The frock was finished, and she washed it out, starched it, and would iron it to-morrow morning. Then there were stockings to mend, although the two younger boys went barefoot around the farm. And she worked up to the very moment the carriage turned up the bend in the road, when she ran and dressed herself while Aunt Jane packed the old valise. The children stood around.

"Oh, Mis' Dayton, can't I come some day?" cried Fanny. "How long are you going to keep Helen?"

"Till she gets tired and homesick," was the reply.

A smile crossed Helen's lips and stayed there, softening her face wonderfully.

They shouted out their good-bys, and asked their mother a dozen questions, receiving about as many slaps in return. For the remainder of the day, Mrs. Jason was undeniably cross.

"That girl'll turn out just like her father," she said to Jenny. "She hasn't a bit of gratitude."

"And I hope the old woman will be as queer as they make them," returned Jenny with a laugh.

In the few years of her life, Helen had never been visiting, to stay away over night. This was like some of the stories she had read and envied the heroine. There was a small alcove off Mrs. Dayton's room, with a curtain stretched across. For now the house was really full, except one guest chamber. There was a closet for her clothes just off the end of the short hall, that led to the back stairs, which ran down to the kitchen, a spacious orderly kitchen, good enough to live in altogether, Helen thought.

She helped to take the dishes out to Joanna, and begged to wipe them for her.

"If you're not heavy handed," said Joanna, a little doubtful.

"Or butter-fingered," laughed Helen. "That's what we say at home. But these dishes are so lovely that it is like – well it's like reading verses after some heavy prose."

"I'm not much on verses," replied Joanna, watching her new help warily. She did work with a dainty kind of touch.

Mrs. Dayton came, and stood looking at them with a humorous sort of smile.

"She knows how to wipe dishes," said Joanna, nodding approvingly.

"It is a good deal to suit Joanna. No doubt she will excuse you this time from wiping pots and pans, and you may come out of doors with me."

The lawn – they called it that here at North Hope – presented a picturesque aspect. A party were playing croquet. Mrs. Disbrowe was walking her twenty-months'-old little girl up and down the path. Mrs. Van Dorn sat in a wicker rocking chair that had a hood over the top to shield her from the air. Her silk gown flowed around gracefully, and her hands were a sparkle of rings.

"Oh, how sweet the air is," said Helen. "There's sweet-clover somewhere, and when the dew falls it is so delightful."

"They have it in the next-door lawn and the mower was run over it awhile ago."

Helen drew long delicious breaths. No noisy children, and the soft laughs, the gay talk was like music to her. She walked across the porch.

"Mrs. Dayton said you were fond of reading aloud," began Mrs. Van Dorn. "Your voice is nice and smooth."

"Your voice is like your father's, Helen! I had not remarked it before. Only it is a girl's voice," Mrs. Dayton commented.

"I am glad it suggests his," exclaimed Helen with a pleasurable thrill.

"Where is your father?" asked Mrs. Van Dorn.

"He is dead," said Mrs. Dayton. "Both father and mother are dead."

"I was an orphan, too," continued Mrs. Van Dorn. "And I had no near relatives. It is a sorrowful lot."

"Helen has had good friends, relatives."

"That's a comfort. I heard, we all did, that you were one of the best speakers at the closing of school. It was in the paper."

"Oh, was it?" Helen's eyes glowed with gratification.

"Yes. So Mrs. Dayton suggested you might be as good as some grown-up body. That was Robert Browning's poem you recited."

"It is a splendid poem," cried Helen enthusiastically. "You can see it all; the squadron – what was left of it after the battle – and the 'brief and bitter debate,' and the order to blow up the vessels on the beach. And then Hervé Riel, just a sailor, stepping out and making his daring proposal, and going 'safe through shoal and rock!' Oh, how the captain must have stood breathless! And the English coming too late! I'm glad someone put it in stirring verse."

Helen paused with a scarlet face. She never talked this way to anyone except Mr. Warfield.

"Yes," said Mrs. Van Dorn, "I have seen the man who wrote it, talked with him and his lovely wife, who wrote verses quite as beautiful. I think you like stirring poems," in a half inquiry.

"Yes, I do," she replied tremulously, and in her girlish enthusiasm she thought she could have fallen down at the feet of the man who wrote Hervé Riel. She never had thought of his being an actual living man.

"And do you know Macaulay's 'Horatius'?"

"Oh, I don't know very much – only the poems in the reading books, and a few that Mr. Warfield had. I know most of Longfellow."

"The Center is rather behind the towns around, although it is the oldest part; settled more than a hundred years ago. But it is largely farms. The railroad passed it by some fifteen years ago, and the stations have improved rapidly. Why, we have quite a library here, and the High School for more than a half the county," explained Mrs. Dayton.

"It's not as pretty as this Hope. And the range of hills to the northeast – I suppose you call them mountains – and the river, add so much to it."

"And we have only a little creek that empties into Piqua River, and a pond in a low place, that we skate on in the winter," said Helen rather mirthfully. "I can't help wondering what the ocean is like, and the great lakes, and Niagara Falls, and the Mississippi River with all its mouths emptying into the Gulf of Mexico. And the Amazon, and the Andes."

"And Europe, and the Alps, and the lovely lakes, and the Balkans, and the Gulf of Arabia, and India, and the Himalayas, and Japan – "

"Oh, dear, what a grand world!" exclaimed Helen, when Mrs. Van Dorn paused. "I don't suppose anyone has ever seen it all," and her tone was freighted with regret.

"I have seen a good deal of it. I have been round the world, and lived in many foreign cities."

"Oh! oh!" Helen put her head down suddenly and pressed her lips on the jeweled hand. The unconscious and impulsive homage touched the old heart.

"And people who have done wonderful things, who have painted pictures, and made beautiful statues, and built bridges and churches and palaces," the girl assumed.

"Most of them were built before my time, hundreds of years ago. But I have been in a great many of them."

"And seen the Queen!"

"If you mean Queen Victoria, yes. And other queens as well. And the Empress of the French when she had her beauty and her throne."

"Oh, dear!" sighed Helen with a long breath. And Aunt Jane had called her a queer old woman; Aunt Jane, who had never even been to New York.

It was getting too dark to play croquet. Mrs. Disbrowe had gone in some time ago with her baby in her arms, and somehow it had suggested the Madonna picture to Helen. The gentlemen smoked and talked. Then Mrs. Van Dorn rose and bade them good-night, and pressed Helen's hand.

"I think I shall like your little girl very much," she said to Mrs. Dayton, in the hall. "She's modest and not at all dull."

Mrs. Van Dorn stepped off, as if she was still at middle life. She was wonderfully well preserved, but then, for almost forty years she had taken the best of care of herself. She wouldn't have admitted to anyone that she was past eighty. Sometimes in her travels she had a maid, often when she was abroad she had both a maid and a man. For two years she had been traveling about her own country, and seeing the changes.

Yet her life had not been set in rose leaves in her youth. She had worked hard, had a lover who jilted her for a girl not half as pretty but rich. And when she was thirty-five, a rich old man married her, and gave her a lovely home; then, ten years afterward, left her a rich widow, and told her to have the best time she could. If she could only have had one little girl! She thought she would adopt one, but the child with the lovely face had some mean traits, and she provided for her elsewhere. She traveled, she met entertaining people; she liked refined society; she acquired a good deal of knowledge with her pleasure.

But to grow old! And one had to some time. At ninety perhaps. What did Ninon de l'Enclos do, and Madame Recamier? Plenty of fresh air, as much exercise as she could stand, bathing and massage, cheerfulness, keeping in touch with the world of to-day, and once-in-a-while a long, quiet rest, and early to bed as she was doing here. Ah! if one could be set back twenty years even, twenty real years, and have all that much longer to live!

The child's admiration had touched her. It was not for her diamonds and emeralds, for her Chantilly lace, nor for the fact that she had money enough to buy costly things. Helen Grant was ignorant of the value of these adornments. It was for the understanding of something finer and larger, experiences garnered up, real knowledge. How odd in a little country maiden! And this was sweeter than any of the ordinary flatteries offered her.

Helen thought her little bed delightful, and she was not sure but it was all a dream. She was still more bewildered when she opened her eyes. Someone was gently stirring about. She sprang out on the floor.

"You needn't get up just yet," said Mrs. Dayton.

"Oh, I am used to it," with a bright smile. "And maybe I can help."

She did find many little things to do. It was so pleasant to be allowed to see them herself, and do them without ordering. Mrs. Dayton said "Will you do this or that," as if she could decline, but she was very glad to be of service.

Then the boarders sauntered in to breakfast, and that was done with. Helen dusted the parlor, she had swept the porch and the paved walk down to the street before the boarders were up. Then she helped with the dishes.

"That girl knows how to work," and Joanna nodded approvingly.

"Perhaps you would like to go to market with me," suggested Mrs. Dayton. "It would be well for you to learn your way about in case I wanted to send you out of an errand."

"Oh! it would be splendid! But Mrs. Van Dorn – "

Mrs. Dayton laughed. "There comes Miss Gray, and the fussing will take a good hour. Though I think it pays, even at a dollar an hour."

Helen was silent from amazement.

"Oh, she has patients at three dollars an hour, real invalids. And she could get more in the city. Joanna knows about the breakfast. Mrs. Van Dorn is wise enough not to gorge her stomach with useless and injurious food. I never saw a person take better care of herself."

It was a very pleasant walk under maples and elms, with here and there an old-fashioned Lombardy poplar; lindens with their fringy tassels, and horse-chestnuts with their dense, spreading leaves. There was but one real market in Hope, but numerous smaller attempts. Mrs. Dayton gave her orders for the day's provision.

"Now, we will go around the longest way," smilingly. "There's the High School. It calls in quite a number of winter boarders, and sometimes the large boys prove very troublesome. And here is the Free Library, though there is quite a tax to support it, and numerous contributions. There is a fine reference-room for the scholars. Education seems to be made easy now-a-days. Let us go in."

The lower floor was devoted to the library. A large room was shelved around in alcoves, reserved for some particular kind of books. History, biography, science, music, discoveries and travels, as well as novels. The reading-room was at one end, the reference department at the other. Just now it was very quiet, being rather dull times.

Up on the next floor was a fine auditorium for amusements and lectures. In the wings were small rooms used for lodge meetings and such purposes. Helen was very much interested. Oh, what a happy time! And yet she felt a little conscience-smitten, as if she wasn't doing her whole duty.

The papers had come, and presently Mrs. Van Dorn took her accustomed seat. Mrs. Pratt was at the corner of the piazza doing needlework. Miss Lessing was sketching from nature. The younger girl was out hunting wild flowers.

Helen read the home news, then the foreign news. It seemed queer to know what they were doing in London, and Paris, and Rome, that hitherto had been merely places on the map to her. And then what financiers in New York were talking of, which really was an unknown language to her, but not to Mrs. Van Dorn, who for years had held the key.

Perhaps the charm in Helen was her interest in what she was doing. Sometimes she made quite a fanciful thing of her work at home, though she was not what you would call a romantic girl. And now most of the time she was reading, she put life into her tones. Mrs. Van Dorn had been here and there, and she wanted the descriptions of things to seem real to her.

"You're a very good reader," she said approvingly. "You must not let anyone cultivate you on different lines with their elocutionary ideas, or you will be spoiled. Who taught you?"

"Mr. Warfield. He was principal of the school. I was in his class last year."

"He has some common sense. When you go to an opera you expect to hear ranting and sighing, and sobbing, but sensible people do not talk that way about the every-day things of life."

"I don't know what an opera is like," said Helen with a kind of bright mirthfulness at her own ignorance.

"I suppose not. Men and women singing the love, and sorrow, and woe, and trials of other men and women, long ago dead, or perhaps never alive anywhere but in the composer's brain. It is the exquisite singing that thrills you. But you wouldn't want it for steady diet."

Miss Lessing spoke of two famous singers who had been in New York during the winter. And she had heard the Wagner Trilogy, which she thought magnificent.

"Yes. I've heard it at Beyreuth." Mrs. Van Dorn nodded, as if it might be an ordinary entertainment.

"Oh, it has been my dream to go abroad some time," and Miss Lessing sighed.

And there was a girl in the world who loved her own folks quite as well as a journey abroad. There was pure affection for you! Miss Lessing would jump at the offer she had made Clara Gage.

They were summoned in to luncheon. Mr. Conway was the only man of the party, not much of a talker, but the ladies loved to sit and talk over their morning's adventures, or their afternoon's intentions. Mrs. Dayton never hurried them. They all considered it the most home-y place at which they had ever boarded.

Mrs. Van Dorn went off for her nap. So did several of the others. Mrs. Dayton took Helen up-stairs. She had exhumed two of her old lawns, and thought they could modernize them into summer frocks. They were very fine and pretty, and Helen was delighted.

It was four o'clock when the coupé came, and Mrs. Van Dorn rang for Helen to come up to her room, and carry her shawl, and her dainty case with the opera glass in it for far sights, and a bottle of lavender salts. And then the driver helped them in, and away they started.

"One could almost envy that girl!" said Daisy Lessing. "I don't see why some of us couldn't be as good company."

They paused at the Public Library.

"Will you go in, Helen, and ask for 'Lays of Ancient Rome,' Macaulay's," said Mrs. Van Dorn. "I hope it won't be out."

Helen came back with the book, and sparkling eyes.