Part 16

“Then I shouldn’t _be_ disturbed; my mind would be absent from my ear and I should not hear that doubtful appeal. The _doubt_ is what I object to.”

Marion and her mother had not returned from their drive to Meadow Centre, where Mrs. Kenney had a school friend. They intended to “spend an old-fashioned day,” Mrs. Kenney remarked at the breakfast table; it was five o’clock in the November afternoon and the old-fashioned day was not yet ended.

Judith and her fancy work, covers for Nettie’s bureau, had taken possession of the light in the bay window; as the light faded, she sat thinking with her work in her lap. Roger entered and threw himself upon the lounge, clasping his hands above his head; his thinking was weaving itself in and out of a suggestion of his mother’s that she should take Judith home for the winter.

To the suggestion he had replied nothing at all.

“Then the doubt is gone,” answered Judith, brightly. “I do not know how to put my thought.”

“Isn’t that rather a new experience?”

“It is the experience of every day,” she answered, unmindful of his teasing. “I wonder why God keeps us so much in the dark.”

“Perhaps we keep ourselves in the dark.”

“That is what I wanted to know.”

“Can you tell me exactly what you mean? Are you in the dark about anything?”

“About everything,” she exclaimed with such energy that his only reply was a laugh.

“Just now I mean one special thing that I cannot tell you about.”

“O, Judith, are you growing up to have secrets?” he groaned.

“I am growing up _with_ secrets. Aunt Rody used to exasperate me by telling me I would ‘outgrow’ something, when all the time I knew I was growing into something.”

“Growing into a new thing is the best way to outgrow an old thing.”

“Then I am satisfied about something.”

Roger wished that he could be—about something.

“I wish I could tell you. But I don’t know why I shouldn’t. I’m afraid Marion doesn’t care for Mr. King, and I want her to so much.”

In the twilight she could not see the illumination in the face across the room on the lounge.

He was satisfied about something.

“What are you getting down into?” he asked jubilantly.

“Why,” pricking her work with her needle, “I think he—cares a great deal, and he is so splendid that I want her to care. How they would work together. Bensalem has been getting her ready.”

“Well, I declare!” he exclaimed, rising to his feet.

“Are you displeased?”

“There’s nothing to be displeased about. Is this the way girls plot against each other? No wonder we men have to tread softly.”

“It isn’t plotting exactly. It’s only hoping.”

“Is that your secret?”

“Yes, and don’t you tell,” she said, alarmed.

“No; it shall be my secret; yours and mine. Now what are we going to do about it?”

“We cannot do anything. She admires him around the edges, somehow. And he’s as shy of her as he can be. I seem to be always interpreting them to each other.”

He laughed, greatly amused.

“In spite of my selecting the most innocent love-stories for you, you have grown up to the depth, or height, of this. I’ll never dare put a finger in a girl’s education again.”

“But, Roger—”

“Don’t ask me to help you out.”

“Marion will not. She doesn’t seem to understand anything.”

“No wonder,” thought Roger, remembering her early experience; “she has been a burnt child; she’ll never play with that kind of fire again.”

Aloud he replied: “She needs a wise head like yours. What would you advise her to do?”

“To be _natural_; just her own self, and she isn’t. I believe she’s afraid.”

“So will you be when you are as old as she is.”

“I don’t know what to be afraid of.”

“May you never know. Is that all you are in the dark about?” he questioned, seating himself in his study chair, and wheeling around to face the girl in the bay window.

A girl in blue, as she was when she sat in the bay window in Summer Avenue and wrote letters to Aunt Affy; the same trustful eyes, loving mouth, and yellow head.

Now, as then, she did not know what to be afraid of. It was only this last month that she had brought her questions to Roger. Marion had not grown ahead of her to answer her. And Aunt Affy had been so absorbed in Aunt Rody this last year that she had feared to trouble her with questions.

“I have a book-full of questions laid up for you; rather the answers would be a book-full. Life seems full of questions. There’s always something to ask about everything I read.”

“Ask the next book.”

“The next book doesn’t always know.”

“The next person may not always know.”

“I can easily find out,” she laughed.

Then she became grave, and, after a moment’s silence, said: “I wish I knew why we couldn’t have _an idea_, as we pray a long time for something, whether it were going to be given us or not.”

“Something that you have no special promise for?”

“Yes; something in the ‘what-so-ever.’ It does seem so hard to have it grow darker and harder, and not to know whether you may keep on or not; whether giving up would be in faith—or despair.”

“Judith, you’ve touched a sensitive point in many a heart that keeps on praying.”

“Do _you_ know?” she asked.

“I can tell you a story.”

His story was all she desired.

“You know when Jairus came to the Lord to plead for his daughter, he fell at his feet and besought him greatly, saying: ‘My little daughter lieth at the point of death.’ Then Jesus went with him. We do not know what he said, but he went with him. Then, as they went together, the crowd came to a stand-still that the Lord might perform a miracle and answer the prayer of a touch. But, by this time, Jesus had been so long on the way that news came of the death of the little daughter. It was too late. She was dead. They said to the father: ‘Why troublest thou the Master any further?’ He might as well go home to his dead child, the Master had not cared to hasten—this woman was not at the point of death, she might have been healed another day. But think of the comfort: _as soon as_ Jesus heard the message, he said to the father: ‘Be not afraid; only believe.’ Is he not saying that every hour to us who are fainting because he is so long on the way?”

“Yes,” said Judith, “but he did not _say_ he would raise her from the dead. Perhaps the ruler did not know he had power to raise from the dead.”

“No; he only said: Be not afraid: only believe. Is not that assurance enough for you?”

“Now, don’t think I am dreadfully wicked, but I know I am; I want him to say: ‘Be not afraid, I know she is dead, but I have power enough for that; believe I can do _that_. He did not tell him _what_ to believe.”

“He told him to believe in the sympathy and power that had just healed this woman who had been incurable twelve years, all the years his daughter had been living.”

“But,” persisted Judith, “he might believe that, for he had just seen it; but to raise from the dead was beyond everything he had seen, and Christ gave him no promise for that.”

“Perhaps he believed that the Master had power in reserve—he surely knew he was going to his house for something—he did not bid him believe, and then turn back; he went on with him to his house.”

“Now you have said what I wanted. It was the _going on with him_ that kept up his faith. As long as Jesus kept on going his way he couldn’t but believe. He gave him something even better than his word to believe in. I shouldn’t think he would be afraid of anything then.”

“Then don’t you be afraid of anything. Not until the Master turns and goes the other way.”

“He will never do that,” Judith said to herself.

The clock on the mantel struck the half hour: half-past five. Judith rolled up her work and went out to the kitchen. The tea kettle was singing on the range; everything was ready for the supper, biscuits and cake of her own making, jelly and fruit that she and Marion had put up together in the long summer days, to which she would add an omelet and creamed potatoes, for Roger was always hungry after a walk, and then coffee, for Mrs. Kenney would like coffee after her drive.

“I don’t mind now if my prayers do get stopped in the middle,” she thought as she arranged the pretty cups and saucers on the supper table, “if Jesus goes all the way with me—he will take care of the rest of it, and next year—if something _dies_ this year, he can bring it to life next year. If He wants to; _and I don’t want Him to, if He doesn’t want to_.”

Roger came out into the kitchen to watch her as she moved about, and, to his own surprise, found himself asking her the question he had intended not to ask at all.

“Would you like to go back home with mother for the winter? You may have a music teacher, you have had none but Marion, and take lessons in anything and everything. Mother would like it very much,” he said, noting the gladness and gratitude in her face; “Martha will take your place here with Marion.”

“Oh, yes, I _would_ like it,” she answered, doubtfully. “Did she propose it?”

“Yes.”

“You are sure you didn’t suggest it, even,” she questioned, still doubtfully.

“I am not unselfish enough for that,” he answered, dryly.

“But who would pay for it?” she questioned, with a flush of shame. “No; I will not go—until I earn money myself.”

“A letter came last night from your Cousin Don—I really believe I forgot to tell you—perhaps I was jealous of his right to spend money for you. He asked me to decide what would be best for you, from my knowledge of yourself, and said any amount would be forthcoming that your plans needed. His heart is in his native land still. He will never come home to stay as long as his wife”—“lives” in his thought was instantly changed to “objects” upon his lips.

“So you would really like to go back to city life?”

“Yes,” said Judith with slow decision.

Why should she not go home with John Kenney’s mother, she argued, as she stood silent before Roger. He was studying medicine in New York; he had written her once, only once, and then to tell her that he had decided upon the medical course: “If I cannot have something else I want I will have _this_. Life has got to have something for me.”

A week later Lottie Kindare had written one of her infrequent letters; the burden of the letter seemed to be a twenty-mile drive with John Kenney and an engagement to go to see pictures with him.

“I have always liked John, you know—John with the crimson name.” She was glad of both letters; they both revealed something she had no other way of learning. She had not hurt John beyond recovery, and Lottie would have something she wished for most.

“Don will be glad to take the responsibility of you. You give him another reason for staying alive.”

“Hasn’t he reasons enough—without me?”

“He ought to have,” was the serious reply. “Everybody should have, excepting yourself.”

“Myself appears to be the chief reason to me.”

“Take as much time as you like to decide—and remember, you go of your own free will.”

“Roger, you know it isn’t that I choose to _go_—” she began, earnestly.

“Oh, no,” he said, as he turned away, “not Caesar less, but Rome more.”

He went into the study and shut the door.

“The child, the child,” he groaned, “she has no more thought of me than—Uncle Cephas.”

When his mother and sister returned, and the supper bell rang, he opened the door to say to Marion that he would have no supper, he had work to do.

“Yes,” he thought grimly, “I _have_ work to do—to fight myself into shape.”

XXXI. ABOUT WOMEN.

“Like a blind spinner in the sun, I tread my days; I know that all the threads will run Appointed ways; I know each day will bring its task, And, being blind, no more I ask.”

—H. H.

“I wish you would tell Judith Mackenzie all you know about women’s doings,” said Jean Draper Prince one morning late in November.

“I am ready to give the Bensalem girls a lecture upon what women outside of Bensalem are doing,” said the lady in the bamboo rocker with her knitting. “All the ambitious girls, all the discouraged girls.”

The bamboo rocker was Jean’s wedding present from Judith Mackenzie; Jean had told Mrs. Lane that the broad blue ribbon bow tied upon it was exactly the color of Judith’s eyes.

Mrs. Lane had not visited Bensalem since the summer she gave Jean Draper the inspiration of her outing; but many letters had kept alive her interest in the Bensalem girl, and kept growing the love and admiration of the village girl for the lady who lived in the world and knew all about it.

Jean said her loveliest wedding present was the week Mrs. Lane came to Bensalem to give to her. The loveliest wedding present was shared with Judith Mackenzie.

Jean’s husband was the village blacksmith; his new, pretty house was next door to his shop. It was not all paid for, and Jean was helping to pay for it by saving all the money she could out of her housekeeping. If she only might earn money, she sighed, but her husband laughed at the idea, saying his two strong hands were to be forever at her service.

The small parlor was in its usual pretty order; in the sitting-room were a flower stand, and a canary’s cage; Mrs. Lane preferred the sitting-room, but with her instinct that “company” should have the best room, Jean had urged her into the parlor, drawing down the shades a little that the sunlight should not fade the roses in the new carpet.

“Judith is the craziest girl about doing things,” replied Jean; “she is ambitious, and she thinks she must earn money. I told her you wrote for a paper that was full of business for women, and could tell her what to do.”

“What does she wish to do?”

“Study, and write—she writes the dearest little stories,—or anything else, if she cannot do that. She has _ideas_,” said Jean, gravely; “she is a rusher into new things. I wish she would be married and have a nice little home and care how the bread rises and the pudding comes out of the oven.”

“Isn’t she interested in housekeeping?”

“Oh, yes. But it is Miss Marion’s. Not her own. It is the _own_ that makes the difference,” replied the girl-wife contentedly, nodding and smiling out the window to the man in shirt-sleeves and leather apron who stood in the doorway of the shop talking to the minister on horseback.

How could she ever tell Judith that Bensalem was gossiping about her staying at the parsonage?

“Your work is your own; it comes to be your own, whatever it is. Every girl cannot marry a blacksmith, Jean, and have a small home of her own.”

“I know it. I wish they could. What I wish most for Judith is for her to go back to Aunt Affy’s.”

That afternoon as the three sat together in the blacksmith’s parlor, Jean with towels she was hemming for her mother, and the other two with idle hands and work upon their laps, Jean suddenly asked Mrs. Lane to tell them about women and their doings.

“As I waited in the station for my train the day I came here,” began Mrs. Lane in the conversational tone of one prepared for a long talk, “a lady sat near me, also waiting, with a bag in her hand. I had a bag in my hand, but there was nothing unusual in mine; she told me she was going to Dunellen to take care of ladies’ finger-nails. She had a good business in Dunellen and the suburbs in summer, when the people were in their country homes; there were a few ladies who expected her that day.”

“I wouldn’t like to do that,” declared Jean, “although I would do almost anything to pay off our mortgage.”

“In Buffalo is a woman who runs a street-cleaning bureau; in Kansas City a woman is at the head of a fire department.”

“Worse and worse,” laughed Jean.

“A Louisville lady makes shopping trips to Paris.”

“Splendid,” exclaimed Jean, who still dreamed of outings.

“A lady in New York makes flat-furnishing a business.”

“That is making a home for other people,” said Jean.

“But her own at the same time,” answered Judith.

“New Hampshire has a woman president of a street railway company; and in Chicago is a woman who embalms—”

“Dead people,” interrupted Jean; “oh, dear me!”

“The world is learning the resources of the nineteenth century woman. A Swiss woman has invented a watch for the blind. The hours on the dial are indicated by pegs, which sink in, one every hour.”

“That is worth doing,” observed Judith; “I want to do real work. I know I do not mean my work to end with myself.”

“Lady Somebody has classified her husband’s books, with a catalogue—his papers fill five rooms; think of the work before her.”

“But that is not for herself,” demurred Judith.

“I believe Judith would like to be famous,” said Jean with a laugh. “Bensalem is such a little spot to her.”

“A lady is about to translate King Oscar of Sweden’s works into English; would you like to do that, Judith?” asked Mrs. Lane, who felt that she had been a friend of Judith MacKenzie’s ever since Jean Draper had known her and written of their girlhood together.

“Not exactly that,” said Judith.

“The first woman rabbi in the world is in California. She has been trained in a Hebrew College; Rabbi Moses, the celebrated Jewish divine in Chicago, urges her to take a congregation.”

“Then how can the men give thanks in their prayers that they are not born women?” asked Judith quickly.

“Do the Jews do that?” inquired Jean.

“Yes. But I don’t believe old Moses did, or this Rabbi Moses,” said Judith.

“A lady has received the degree of electrical engineer,” continued Mrs. Lane, who appeared to both her listeners to be a Cyclopedia of Information Concerning Women.

“Judith doesn’t mean such things,” explained Jean; “I don’t believe she wants David to teach her to be a blacksmith. But there is a woman in Dunellen who has a sick husband, and she is doing his work in the butcher’s shop.”

“Would you rather go to Washington, that city of opportunities for girls? The government offices are filled with women, and young women. Those who pass the civil service examination must be over twenty. Many states of the Union are represented. As the departments close at four in the afternoon, some of the girls take time for other employments, or for study. One I read of attends medical lectures at night. Some, who love study, belong to the Chautauqua Circle. French women, as a rule, have a good business education. In the common schools they are taught household bookkeeping. The French woman is expected to help her husband in his business.”

“Not if he is a blacksmith,” interjects the blacksmith’s wife.

“Harper has published a series called the Distaff Series: all the mechanical work, type-setting, printing, binding, covering, and designing was all done by women.”

“I think I would rather make the inside of a book,” said Judith. “But think of the women that do that and every kind of a book.”

“A lady took the four hundred dollar prize mathematical scholarship at Cornell University. There were twelve applicants; nine were women.”

“That is _hard_ work,” acknowledged Judith, to whom Arithmetic and Algebra were never a success. She had even shed tears over Geometry, and how Roger had laughed at her.

“There’s a lady on Long Island who has a farm of five hundred acres; they call the farm, ‘Old Brick.’”

“Horrid name,” interrupted Jean, turning carefully the narrow hem of the coarse towel.

“It was a dairy farm, but she found milk not profitable enough, and gave it up and made a study of live stock. She has made a reputation as a stock raiser; she raises trotters and road horses,” said Mrs. Lane, watching the effect of her words upon Judith.

Judith colored and looked displeased. Was this all Mrs. Lane, Jean’s ideal lady, had to tell her of women’s brave work?

“In Italy nearly two millions of women are employed in industrial pursuits, cotton, silk, linen, and jute. Three million women are busy in agriculture. You might try agriculture here in Bensalem.”

“What do their homes do?” inquired Jean, the home-maker.

“Oh, they do woman’s work, beside.”

“It is all woman’s work, I suppose, if women do it,” answered Judith, discouraged.

“Judith, who is the sweetest woman you know?” asked Mrs. Lane, touched by the droop of the girl’s head and the trouble in her eyes.

“I know ever so many. No one could be sweeter than my mother. And my Aunt Affy is strong and sweet, and doing good to everybody. And Mrs. Kenney, Marion’s mother, she is _in_ things, busy and bright always.”

“I have told you some things women may do; now I’ll tell you some things a woman—one woman—may not do. She cannot do—is not allowed to do—some things a washer-woman in Bensalem may do—But I’ll read you the slip; I have it in my pocket-book.”

She took the cutting from her pocket-book and asked Judith to read it aloud.

Judith read: “Queen Victoria, not being born a queen, probably learned to read just like other persons. But after she became afflicted with royalty she found that a queen is not allowed to have a great many privileges that the humblest of her subjects can boast. For instance, she isn’t allowed to handle a newspaper of any kind, nor a magazine, nor a letter from any person except from her own family, and no member of the royal family or household is allowed to speak to her of any piece of news in any publication. All the information the queen is permitted must first be strained through the intellect of a man whose business it is to cut out from the papers each day what he thinks she would like to know. These scraps he fastens on a silken sheet with a gold fringe all about it, and presents to her unfortunate majesty. This silken sheet with gold fringe is imperative for all communications to the queen.

“Any one who wishes to send the queen a personal poem or a communication of any kind (except a personal letter, which the poor lady isn’t allowed to have at all) must have it printed in gold letters on one side of these silk sheets with a gold fringe, just so many inches wide and no wider, all about it. These gold trimmings will be returned to him in time, as they are expensive, and the queen is kindly and thrifty; but for the queen’s presents they are imperative. The deprivations of the queen’s life are pathetically illustrated by an incident which occurred not long ago. An American lad sent her majesty an immense collection of the flowers of this country, pressed and mounted. The queen was delighted with the collection and kept it for three months, turning over the leaves frequently with great delight. At the end of that time, which was as long as she was allowed by the court etiquette to keep it, she had it sent back with a letter saying that, being queen of England, she was not allowed to have any gifts, and that she parted from them with deep regret.”

“Well,” exclaimed Jean, with an energy that brought a laugh from her small audience, “I would rather be the Bensalem blacksmith’s wife.”

“I wish I could take this to Nettie,” said Judith; “she thinks sometimes she would like to be a queen.”

“She is, in her small province,” replied Mrs. Lane. “I have something for her; I think I can help her step out into as wide a world as she cares to live in. No; don’t ask me; it is to be her secret and my own. Now, Judith, tell me, what is the secret of the happy and useful lives you know?”

“I don’t know,” replied Judith, truthfully. “But they are all married. I am thinking of girls—like me. Their work came to them.”

“As mine did,” said Jean, contentedly, with a glance from her work out the window where the blacksmith was shoeing a horse.

“Your Aunt Affy was not married—”

“No, she was not. She had her work. It was in her home. She was born among her work. But I have not a home like that,” Judith answered in short, sharp sentences.

“Why, Judith,” reproached Jean, “what would Aunt Affy say to that?”

“It would hurt her. She would look sorry. I do not know what gets into me, sometimes. She would adopt me and be like my own mother.”

“Do you resist such a sweet mothering as that?” rebuked Mrs. Lane. “I think I lost some of the sermon Sunday morning by looking at her face.”

“I do not mean to _resist_ her,” said Judith, not able to keep the tears back.