Chapter 14

Uncle Titus Oldways never went out of town, unless on business. Rachel Froke stayed, and kept his house; she sat in the gray room, and thought over the summers she had had.

"Thee never loses anything out of thy life that has been in," she said. "Summer times are like grains of musk; they keep their smell always, and flavor the shut-up places they are put away in."

For you and me, reader, we are to go to Z---- again. I hope you like it.

But before that, I must tell you what Luclarion Grapp has done.

Partly from the principle of her life, and partly from the spirit of things which she would have caught at any rate, from the Ripwinkley home and the Craydocke "Beehive,"--for there is nothing truer than that the kingdom of heaven is like leaven,--I suppose she had been secretly thinking for a good while, that she was having too easy a time here, in her first floor kitchen and her garden bedroom; that this was not the life meant for her to live right on, without scruple or question; and so began in her own mind to expect some sort of "stump;" and even to look about for it.

"It isn't as it was when Mrs. Ripwinkley was a widow, and poor,--that is, comparative; and it took all her and my contrivance to look after the place and keep things going, and paying, up in Homesworth; there was something to buckle to, then; but now, everything is eased and flatted out, as it were; it makes me res'less, like a child put to bed in the daytime."

Luclarion went down to the North End with Miss Craydocke, on errands of mercy; she went in to the new Mission, and saw the heavenly beauty of its intent, and kindled up in her soul at it; and she came home, time after time, and had thoughts of her own about these things, and the work in the world there was to do.

She had cleaned up and set things going at Mrs. Scarup's; she learned something in doing that, beyond what she knew when she set about it; her thoughts began to shape themselves to a theory; and the theory took to itself a text and a confirmation and a command.

"Go down and be a neighbor to them that have fallen among thieves."

Luclarion came to a resolution in this time of May, when everybody was making plans and the spring-cleaning was all done.

She came to Mrs. Ripwinkley one morning, when she was folding away winter clothes, and pinning them up in newspapers, with camphor-gum; and she said to her, without a bit of preface,--Luclarion hated prefaces,--

"Mrs. Ripwinkley, I'm going to swarm!"

Mrs. Ripwinkley looked up in utter surprise; what else could she do?

"Of course 'm, when you set up a Beehive, you must have expected it; it's the natural way of things; they ain't good for much unless they do. I've thought it all over; I'll stay and see you all off, first, if you want me to, and then--I'll swarm."

"Well," said Mrs. Ripwinkley, assenting in full faith, beforehand; for Mrs. Ripwinkley, if I need now to tell you of it, was not an ordinary woman, and did not take things in an ordinary selfish way, but grasped right hold of the inward right and truth of them, and believed in it; sometimes before she could quite see it; and she never had any doubt of Luclarion Grapp. "Well! And now tell me all about it."

"You see," said Luclarion, sitting down in a chair by the window, as Mrs. Ripwinkley suspended her occupation and took one by the bedside, "there's places in this town that folks leave and give up. As the Lord might have left and give up the world, because there was dirt and wickedness in it; only He didn't. There's places where it ain't genteel, nor yet respectable, to live; and so those places grow more disrespectable and miserable every day. They're left to themselves. What I think is, they hadn't ought to be. There's one clean spot down there now, in the very middle of the worst dirt. And it ain't bad to live in. _That's_ started. Now, what I think is, that somebody ought to start another, even if its only a little one. Somebody ought to just go there and _live_, and show 'em how, just as I took and showed Mrs. Scarup, and she's been living ever since, instead of scratching along. If some of them folks had a clean, decent neighbor to go to see,--to drink tea with, say,--and was to catch an idea of her fixings and doings, why, I believe there'd be more of 'em,--cleaned up, you know. They'd get some kind of an ambition and a hope. Tain't enough for ladies--though I bless 'em in my soul for what I've seen 'em do--to come down there of a Fridays, and teach and talk awhile, and then go home to Summit Street and Republic Avenue, and take up _their_ life again where they left it off, that is just as different as heaven is from 'tother place; somebody's got to come right down _out_ of heaven, and bring the life in, and live it amongst them miserable folks, as the Lord Jesus Christ came and did! And it's borne in upon me, strong and clear, that that's what's got to be before all's righted. And so--for a little piece of it, and a little individual stump--I'm going to swarm, and settle, and see what'll come."

Mrs. Ripwinkley was looking very intently at Luclarion. Her breath went and came hurriedly, and her face turned pale with the grand surprise of such a thought, such a plan and purpose, so simply and suddenly declared. Her eyes were large and moist with feeling.

"Do you _know_, Luclarion," she exclaimed at last, "do you realize what this is that you are thinking of; what a step it would be to take,--what a work it would be to even hope to begin to do? Do you know how strange it is,--how almost impracticable,--that it is not even safe?"

"'Twasn't _safe_ for Him--when He came into the world," Luclarion answered.

"Not to say I think there's any comparison," she began again, presently, "or that I believe there's anything to be really scared of,--except dirt; and you _can_ clean a place round you, as them Mission people have done. Why, there ain't a house in Boston nicer, or sweeter, or airier even, than that one down in Arctic Street, with beautiful parlors and bedrooms, and great clean galleries leading round, and skylighted,--_sky_ lighted! for you see the blue heaven is above all, and you _can_ let the skylight in, without any corruption coming in with it; and if twenty people can do that much, or a hundred,--one can do something. 'Taint much, either, to undertake; only to be willing to go there, and make a clean place for yourself, and a home; and live there, instead of somewheres else that's ready made; and let it spread. And you know I've always looked forrud to some kind of a house-keep of my own, finally."

"But, Luclarion, I don't understand! All alone? And you couldn't use a whole house, you know. Your neighbors would be _inmates_. Why, it seems to me perfectly crazy!"

"Now, ma'am, did you ever know me to go off on a tangent, without some sort of a string to hold on to? I ain't goin' to swarm all alone! I never heard of such a thing. Though if I couldn't _swarm_, and the thing was to be done, I say I'd try it. But Savira Golding is going to be married to Sam Gallilee, next month; and he's a stevedore, and his work is down round the wharves; he's class-leader in our church, and a first-rate, right-minded man, or else Savira wouldn't have him; for if Savira ain't a clear Christian, and a doing woman, there ain't one this side of Paradise. Now, you see, Sam Gallilee makes money; he runs a gang of three hundred men. He can afford a good house, and a whole one, if he wants; but he's going in for a big one, and neighbors. They mean to live nice,--he and Savira; and she has pretty, tasty ways; there'll be white curtains, and plants blooming in her windows, you may make sure; she's always had 'em in that little up-stairs dress-making room of hers; and boxes of mignonette and petunias on the ledges; and birds singing in a great summer cage swung out against the wall. She's one of the kind that reaches out, and can't be kept in; and she knows her gifts, and is willing to go and let her light shine where it will help others, and so glorify; and Sam, he's willing too, and sees the beauty of it. And so,--well, that's the swarm."

"And the 'little round Godamighty in the middle of it,'" said Mrs. Ripwinkley, her face all bright and her eyes full of tears.

"_Ma'am_!"

Then Mrs. Ripwinkley told her Miss Craydocke's story.

"Well," said Luclarion, "there's something dear and right-to-the-spot about it; but it does sound singular; and it certainly ain't a thing to say careless."

* * * * *

Desire Ledwith grew bright and excited as the summer came on, and the time drew near for going to Z----. She could not help being glad; she did not stop to ask why; summer-time was reason enough, and after the weariness of the winter, the thought of Z---- and the woods and the river, and sweet evenings and mornings, and gardens and orchards, and road-side grass, was lovely to her.

"It is so pleasant up there!" she would keep saying to Dorris; and somehow she said it to Dorris oftener than to anybody else.

There was something fitful and impetuous in her little outbursts of satisfaction; they noticed it in her; the elder ones among them noticed it with a touch of anxiety for her.

Miss Craydocke, especially, read the signs, matching them with something that she remembered far back in the life that had closed so peacefully, with white hairs and years of a serene content and patience, over all unrest and disappointment, for herself. She was sorry for this young girl, for whom she thought she saw an unfulfilled dream of living that should go by her like some bright cloud, just near enough to turn into a baptism of tears.

She asked Desire, one day, if she would not like to go with her, this summer, to the mountains.

Desire put by the suggestion hastily.

"O, no, thank you, Miss Craydocke, I must stay with mamma and Helena. And besides," she added, with the strict, full truth she always demanded of herself, "I _want_ to go to Z----."

"Yes," said Miss Craydocke.

There was something tender, like a shade of pity, in her tone.

"But you would enjoy the mountains. They are full of strength and rest. One hardly understands the good the hills do one. David did, looking out into them from Jerusalem. 'I will look to the hills, from whence cometh my strength.'"

"Some time," said Desire. "Some time I shall need the hills, and--be ready for them. But this summer--I want a good, gay, young time. I don't know why, except that I shall be just eighteen this year, and it seems as if, after that, I was going to be old. And I want to be with people I know. I _can_ be gay in the country; there is something to be gay about. But I can't dress and dance in the city. That is all gas-light and get-up."

"I suppose," said Miss Craydocke, slowly, "that our faces are all set in the way we are to go. Even if it is--" She stopped. She was thinking of one whose face had been set to go to Jerusalem. Her own words had led her to something she had not foreseen when she began.

Nothing of such suggestion came to Desire. She was in one of her rare moods of good cheer.

"I suppose so," she said, heedlessly. And then, taking up a thought of her own suddenly,--"Miss Craydocke! Don't you think people almost always live out their names? There's Sin Scherman; there'll always be a little bit of mischief and original naughtiness in her,--with the harm taken out of it; and there's Rosamond Holabird,--they couldn't have called her anything better, if they'd waited for her to grow up; and Barb _was_ sharp; and our little Hazel is witchy and sweet and wild-woodsy; and Luclarion,--isn't that shiny and trumpety, and doesn't she do it? And then--there's me. I shall always be stiff and hard and unsatisfied, except in little bits of summer times that won't come often. They might as well have christened me Anxiety. I wonder why they didn't."

"That would have been very different. There is a nobleness in Desire. You will overlive the restless part," said Miss Craydocke.

"Was there ever anything restless in your life, Miss Craydocke? And how long did it take to overlive it? It doesn't seem as if you had ever stubbed your foot against anything; and I'm _always_ stubbing."

"My dear, I have stubbed along through fifty-six years; and the years had all three hundred and sixty-five days in them. There were chances,--don't you think so?"

"It looks easy to be old after it is done," said Desire. "Easy and comfortable. But to be eighteen, and to think of having to go on to be fifty-six; I beg your pardon,--but I wish it was over!"

And she drew a deep breath, heavy with the days that were to be.

"You are not to take it all at once, you know," said Miss Craydocke.

"But I do, every now and then. I can't help it. I am sure it is the name. If they had called me 'Hapsie,' like you, I should have gone along jolly, as you do, and not minded. You see you have to _hear_ it all the time; and it tunes you up to its own key. You can't feel like a Dolly, or a Daisy, when everybody says--De-sire!"

"I don't know how I came to be called 'Hapsie,'" said Miss Craydocke. "Somebody who liked me took it up, and it seemed to get fitted on. But that wasn't when I was young."

"What was it, then?" asked Desire, with a movement of interest.

"Keren-happuch," said Miss Craydocke, meekly. "My father named me, and he always called me so,--the whole of it. He was a severe, Old-Testament man, and _his_ name was Job."

Desire was more than half right, after all. There was a good deal of Miss Craydocke's story hinted in those few words and those two ancient names.

"But I turned into 'Miss Craydocke' pretty soon, and settled down. I suppose it was very natural that I should," said the sweet old maid, serenely.

XVII.

QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS.

The evening train came in through the little bend in the edge of the woods, and across the bridge over the pretty rapids, and slid to its stopping-place under the high arches of the other bridge that connected the main street of Z---- with its continuation through "And."

There were lights twinkling in the shops, where they were making change, and weighing out tea and sugar, and measuring calico, although outside it was not yet quite dark.

The train was half an hour late; there had been a stoppage at some draw or crossing near the city.

Mr. Prendible was there, to see if his lodgers were come, and to get his evening paper; the platform was full of people. Old Z---- acquaintances, many of them, whom Desire and her mother were pleased, and Helena excited to see.

"There's Kenneth Kincaid!" she exclaimed, quite loudly, pulling Desire's sleeve.

"Hush!" said Desire, twitching away. "How can you, Helena?"

"He's coming,--he heard me!" cried Helena, utterly impenitent.

"I should think he might!" And Desire walked off a little, to look among the trunks that were being tumbled from the baggage car.

She had seen him all the time; he had been speaking to Ruth Holabird, and helping her up the steps with her parcels. Mr. Holabird was there with the little Westover carryall that they kept now; and Kenneth put her in, and then turned round in time to hear Helena's exclamation and to come down again.

"Can I help you? I'm very glad you are come," he said, cordially.

Well; he might have said it to anybody. Again, well; it was enough to say to anybody. Why should Desire feel cross?

He took Helena's bag; she had a budget beside; Mr. Prendible relieved Mrs. Ledwith; Desire held on valiantly to her own things. Kenneth walked over the bridge with them, and down the street to Mr. Prendible's door; there he bade them good-by and left them.

It was nice to be in Z----; it was very sweet here under the blossoming elms and locusts; it was nice to see Kenneth Kincaid again, and to think that Dorris was coming by and by, and that the lanes were green and full of ferns and vines, and that there was to be a whole long summer; but there were so many people down there on the platform,--there was such a muss always; Ruth Holabird was a dear little thing, but there were always so many Ruths about! and there was only one cross, stiff, odd, uncomfortable Desire!

But the very next night Kenneth came down and stayed an hour; there was a new moon glistening through the delicate elm-tips, and they sat out on the piazza and breathed in such an air as they had not had in their nostrils for months and months.

The faint, tender light from the golden west in which the new moon lay, showed the roof and tower of the little church, Kenneth's first beautiful work; and Kenneth told them how pleasant it was up at Miss Arabel's, and of the tame squirrels that he fed at his window, and of the shady pasture-path that led away over the brook from the very door, and up among pines and into little still nooks where dry mossy turf and warm gray rocks were sheltered in by scraggy cedars and lisping birches, so that they were like field-parlors opening in and out from each other with all sorts of little winding and climbing passages, between clumps of bayberry bushes and tall ferns; and that the girls from Z---- and Westover made morning picnics there, since Lucilla Waters had grown intimate with Delia Waite and found it out; and that Delia Waite and even Miss Arabel carried their dressmaking down there sometimes in a big white basket, and stayed all day under the trees. They had never used to do this; they had stayed in the old back sitting room with all the litter round, and never thought of it till those girls had come and showed them how.

"I think there is the best and sweetest neighborliness and most beautiful living here in Z----, that I ever knew in any place," said Kenneth Kincaid; "except that little piece of the same thing in Aspen Street."

Kenneth had found out how Rosamond Holabird recognized Aspen Street as a piece of her world.

Desire hated, as he spoke, her spitefulness last night; what she had said to herself of "so many Ruths;" why could not she not be pleased to come into this beautiful living and make a little part of it?

She was pleased; she would be; she found it very easy when Kenneth said to her in that frank intimate way,--"I wish you and your mother would come over and see what Dorris will want, and help me a little about that room of hers. I told Miss Waite not to bother; just to let the old things stand,--I knew Dorris would like them,--and anything else I would get for her myself. I mean Dolly shall take a long vacation this year; from June right through to September; and its 'no end of jolly,' as those English fellows say, that you have come too!"

Kenneth Kincaid was fresher and pleasanter and younger himself, than Desire had ever seen him before; he seemed to have forgotten that hard way of looking at the world; he had found something so undeniably good in it. I am afraid Desire had rather liked him for his carping, which was what he least of all deserved to be liked for. It showed how high and pure his demands were; but his praise and admissions were better; it is always better to discern good than to fret at the evil.

"I shall see you every day," he said, when he shook hands at parting; "and Helena, if you want a squirrel to keep in your pocket next winter, I'll begin training one for you at once."

He had taken them right to himself, as if they belonged to him; he spoke as if he were very glad that he should see them every day.

Desire whistled over her unpacking; she could not sing, but she could whistle like a blackbird. When her father came up on Saturday night, he said that her eyes were brighter and her cheeks were rounder, for the country air; she would take to growing pretty instead of strong-minded, if she didn't look out.

Kenneth came round on Monday, after tea, to ask them to go over to Miss Waite's and make acquaintance.

"For you see," he said, "you will have to be very intimate there, and it is time to begin. It will take one call to be introduced, and another, at least, to get up-stairs and see that beautiful breezy old room that can't be lived in in winter, but is to be a delicious sort of camping-out for Dolly, all summer. It is all windows and squirrel-holes and doors that won't shut. Everything comes in but the rain; but the roof is tight on that corner. Even the woodbine has got tossed in through a broken upper pane, and I wouldn't have it mended on any account. There are swallows' nests in the chimneys, and wrens under the gable, and humming-birds in the honeysuckle. When Dolly gets there, it will be perfect. It just wants her to take it all right into her heart and make one piece of it. _They_ don't know,--the birds and the squirrels,--it takes the human. There has to be an Adam in every garden of Eden."

Kenneth really chattered, from pure content and delight.

It did not take two visits to get up-stairs. Miss Arabel met them heartily. She had been a shy, timid old lady, from long neglect and humble living; but lately she had "come out in society," Delia said. Society had come after her, and convinced her that she could make good times for it.

She brought out currant wine and gave them, the first thing; and when Kenneth told her that they were his and Dorris's friends, and were coming next week to see about getting ready for her, she took them right round through all four of the ground rooms, to the queer corner staircase, and up into the "long west chamber," to show them what a rackety old place it was, and to see whether they supposed it could be made fit.

"Why it's like the Romance of the Forest!" said Helena, delighted. "I wish _we_ had come here. Don't you have ghosts, or robbers, or something, up and down those stairs, Miss Waite?" For she had spied a door that led directly out of the room, from beside the chimney, up into the rambling old garret, smelling of pine boards and penny-royal.

"No; nothing but squirrels and bees, and sometimes a bat," answered Miss Arabel.

"Well, it doesn't want fixing. If you fix it, you will spoil it. I shall come here and sleep with Dorris,--see if I don't."

The floor was bare, painted a dark, marbled gray. In the middle was a great braided rug, of blue and scarlet and black. The walls were pale gray, with a queer, stencilled scroll-and-dash border of vermilion and black paint.

There was an old, high bedstead, with carved frame and posts, bare of drapery; an antiquated chest of drawers; and a half-circular table with tall, plain, narrow legs, between two of the windows. There was a corner cupboard, and a cupboard over the chimney. The doors of these, and the high wainscot around the room, were stained in old-fashioned "imitation mahogany," very streaky and red. The wainscot was so heavily finished that the edge running around the room might answer for a shelf.

"Just curtains, and toilet covers, and a little low rocking chair," said Mrs. Ledwith. "That is all you want."

"But the windows are so high," suggested Desire. "A low chair would bury her up, away from all the pleasantness. I'll tell you what I would have, Mr. Kincaid. A kind of dais, right across that corner, to take in two windows; with a carpet on it, and a chair, and a little table."

"Just the thing!" said Kenneth. "That is what I wanted you for, Miss Desire," he said in a pleased, gentle way, lowering his tone to her especial hearing, as he stood beside her in the window.

And Desire was very happy to have thought of it.

Helena was spurred by emulation to suggest something.

"I'd have a--hammock--somewhere," she said.

"Good," said Kenneth. "That shall be out under the great butternut."

The great butternut walled in one of the windows with a wilderness of green, and the squirrels ran chattering up and down the brown branches, and peeping in all day. In the autumn, when the nuts were ripe, they would be scrambling over the roof, and in under the eaves, to hide their stores in the garret, Miss Arabel told them.

"Why doesn't everbody have an old house, and let the squirrels in?" cried Helena, in a rapture.